In keeping with a dialogue that must be had by the progressive religious community, I offer this article written for my quarterly ezine GARART. I hope you find it edifying:
I am not a "lapsed Catholic" or "recovering Catholic". I am a "deserted Catholic." I have been abandoned by my Church since the papacy of Paul VI. This casting-off of many Catholics in the United States and Europe is not only the result of the growth of secular society. It is also a part of the forty year suppression of the reforms enacted by the Second Vatican Council during the papacy of John XXIII.
After the Council, there was a sense of spiritual renewal in the Church, a sense of openness. While the Church’s fundamental positions on social issues remained; the sense of community existing in parish churches was palpable.
Community days were organized. The celebration of the Eucharist was not confined to Churches, separating the experience from priest and congregant. Communion was intimately shared with community at home masses. Liturgies were held outside to celebrate God’s hand in the creation of the beauty of nature. Gregorian chants, although still spiritually uplifting, were supplemented by more contemporary music, organs were replace by guitars, and there was experimentation with liturgical dance. Vocations increased as a result of this sense of vibrancy sweeping the Church.
I was one of the many swept away by this renewal and revitalization. After spending my high school years being educated by Jesuits, I entered the Order of Friars Minor with the hope of becoming a Franciscan priest. After ordination, my ambition was to work in Latin America. My goal was not to be a parish priest, but a worker—to hold a job working beside the working class in the hope of organizing them in the furtherance of social justice.
My Catholicism is the Church of Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. St. Francis of Assisi, the recipient of the stigmata and spiritual master, the Berrigan brothers, both Jesuit priests, who were performing acts of disobedience against the war in Vietnam. Some of their actions were illegal; they served jail time for their wrongdoing that only made them stronger and more resolute.
In 1971 when my birth date was unluckily the first number to be picked in the new draft lottery, I filed as a selective conscientious objector. My case was based upon the teachings of Christ, St. Francis Assisi, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and others. Would I have fought in World War II? Yes. Would I fight in Iraq? No.
I would have felt a sense of solidarity with the Irgun and Haganah, referred to as terrorists, in there fight for an independent Jewish State. I also felt a sense of solidarity with the Irish Republic Army, and the Sandanistas. Each was a liberation movement not wars of aggression. I ardently opposed the overthrow of Argentinean President Salvatore Allende Gossans for his socialist leadership would have sparked liberation of the poor and the oppressed of his country. Allende was overthrown by a military coup orchestrated by the CIA. He was replaced by Augusto Pinochet whose military regime killed 100,000 political opponents. The Argentinean strongman is dead but will be tried in absentia.
According to traditional Church history, after the death of Christ, there was no "coherent message" within the early Church. Each Apostle was teaching their version of Christ’s message. The Apostles’ Creed was created before their departure for the" Great Commission." Moreover, according to Catholic doctrine we are told that forty days after Christ’s execution, the third manifestation of the Triune, the Holy Spirit, infused his disciples with its seven gifts of spiritual knowledge. Whether this incident was of heavenly origin, an oceanic feeling as described by Sigmund Freud, or of a collective consciousness and unconsciousness union of the group something occurred on that day to further affect the lives of the Disciples of Christ.
Secular historians have revealed that the early Church was composed of communities, both men and women served as bishops and priests. The hierarchy of these early days was the Apostles. However, there was little institutionalization outside of this communal manner of living and worshiping.
The official acceptance as the Church of the Rome Empire in the 4th Century began Catholicism’s institutionalization. In 325 C.E. the Nicene Creed was written it was modified in 381 C.E. The Credo summarizes the doctrine of the Catholic Church. Throughout the ensuing centuries a plethora of doctrine and theology have laden this profession of faith. It is very thorny indeed to suggest, as many do today, that the Bible is inerrant and should be interpreted literally. This also calls into to question many facets of this Credo.
The notion of disestablishment is found to exist in the early Church. The Gnostic Gospels and the work of 1998 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature Jose Sarmago’s, The Gospel According to Christ are illustrative. Although the aforementioned is a work of fiction, it portrays a Christ more human and richly textured than the personification of God made Man described by the Catholic Church. The personification of the deity has led philosophers to conclude "God is Dead." "Christian existentialism" and "Theology of Liberation" believe this is untrue.
The Catholic hierarchy scorns a social interpretation of Christ’s ministry. This has been especially true in Central and Latin America where the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [i] , headed by Joseph Ratzinger, before his election to the papacy took a very hard-line approach to change in Church doctrine. As Prefect of the Congregation, Pope Benedict did everything in his power to undermine theologizing Christ’s teaching as empowering social liberation movements" except to declare such ideas heresy.
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[i] The proper function of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is to promote and safeguard the doctrine of faith and morals in the whole Catholic world; therefore, those things belong to it which touches this matter in any way. Fulfilling the function of promoting doctrine, it fosters studies in order that the understanding of the faith might grow and that a response can be prepared under the light of faith for new questions arising from developments in science and human culture. It is a help to bishops, whether individually or gathered in assemblies, in the exercise of the function by which they are constituted authentic teachers and doctors of the faith as well as the office by which they are held to safeguard and promote the integrity of that faith. This Sacred Congregation reproves doctrines opposed to the principles of the faith after the interested Bishops of a region have been heard. It studies the books referred to it and, if necessary, reproves them after the author has been heard and has had an opportunity to defend himself and after the Ordinary has been forewarned. It also examines whatever concerns "the privilege of the faith" whether in law and in fact. It is competent to pass judgment on errors about the faith according to the norms of an ordinary process. It safeguards the dignity of the sacrament of Penance. (Many priests post- Vatican II was apt to bestow general absolution during Mass—"May the Holy and merciful god grant you pardon, absolution and remission of sin..." The Congregation proceeds administratively or judicially according to the nature of the question to be treated.
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The Catholic Church, while fostering the pursuit of wealth within the Church and monarchies, aristocracies and later oligarchies, its message to the poor has always been—those who suffer will be greatly rewarded in the afterlife. (e.g., the vestals virgins promised suicide bombers). This of course offers little by way of solace. In the Third World this platitudinous palliative continues to be the Church’s pedagogy for the oppressed.
This "doctrine" is responsible for high birth rates among the "permanent peasant and poor class". This perpetuation of an underclass and the historic anti-intellectualism in existence among the peasants has fostered social policy that is detrimental to their lot in life. To be blunt, the message is keep them poor, pregnant and stupid, manifesting itself in contemporary society as complicity between the oligarchs and the Church.
In the United States there was a champion for newly arrived immigrants and others, Dorothy Day, a graduate of the University of Illinois, joined the Socialist Party in 1916. Soon thereafter, she became a member of the International Workers of the World (IWW). In 1917 she became a member of the staff of Masses (John Reed was a contributor), a very influential publication among the American Left. In 1928, after suffering from a crisis of faith which plagued her for years she turned to Catholicism. Her conversion created an estrangement from some of her radical friends.
In 1932 Day met Peter Maurin, a French-born Catholic who had developed a program of social reconstruction, which he called "the green revolution," based on communal farming and the establishment of houses of hospitality for the urban poor. The program aimed to unite workers and intellectuals in joint activities ranging from farming to educational discussions.
In 1933 Day and Maurin founded the Catholic Worker, a monthly newspaper, to carry the idea to a wider audience. Within three years the paper's circulation had grown to 150,000, and the original St. Joseph's House of Hospitality in New York City had served as the pattern for similar houses in a number of other cities.
The Catholic Worker took boldly radical positions on many issues and during World War II was an organ for pacifism and for the support of Catholic conscientious objectors. Day protested the Vietnam War and was arrested in 1973 while demonstrating in California in support of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.
She died at the House of Hospitality on the Lower East Side of New York City. Her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, was published in 1952. In the late 1990s steps were taken by the Vatican to begin the canonization process. For an in depth look at the Catholic Worker Movement and the life of this great lay leader go to http://www.catholicworker.org/
The traditionalist Catholic doctrine particularly as it is preached in the Third World is not an examination of the human condition within a Christian framework. In developed nations as well the Church does not explore the mystery of Being.
The discovery of Being is certainly not achievable through objective or rational analyses or demonstrations. Religious practice in general and theology in particular, should lead up to the point of making possible "the productive illumination of Revelation." Rather than rite, ritual and a spirituality based on priestly intervention it is only by means of inward revelation can man know God and gain any understanding at all of the human condition.
The quest for authentic existence, and the foundation of Christian existentialism, is to discover the means by which man recaptures and enjoy occasions of self-disclosure and genuine freedom. A unity with Christ, the spirituality of the Gospels, and revelation of the mystery. Existence, without resort to essence,is Being in Being, these are occasions of true authenticity and existential freedom. (We feel our own existence, not our essence, and the spiritual force within us.) The Buddhist mediation "It is You," disassociates us from essence to pure existence. There are mantras used to elevate us to this purely existential mode—the Trappist’s use the Kyrie as a meditation tool.
Both Catholicism and Fundamentalism are bereft in this regard, each adheres to an inerrant view of Scripture, anti-intellectualism, and since 1966 a Pentecostalism which entered the Catholic Church. By 1973 the movement had spread so rapidly that thirty thousand Catholic Pentecostals gathered at Notre Dame for a national conference. The movement had extended to Catholic churches in over a hundred nations by 1980. The most prominent leader among Catholic Pentecostals was Joseph Leon Cardinal Suenens, who was named by popes Paul VI and John Paul II as Episcopal adviser to the renewal. This movement in "mainline" churches is dubbed "charismatic renewal," known for its worshiper’s "speaking in tongues".
The authenticity of Being that allows man to experience self-disclosure is impossible to achieve under the yolk of poverty and lack of education. Repression bars the individual from achieving the inward revelation by which a human being can know God.
The roots of the Liberation Theology movement grew out of the Catholic Worker Movement, the progressive evolution of Teilhard de Chardin , (see below) and the Second Vatican Council. Liberation Theology, was specifically a movement within the Catholic Catholic. It is/was a theology of political activism, particularly in areas of social justice, poverty and human rights. The main methodological innovation of liberation theology is to do theology (i.e. speak of God) from the viewpoint of the poor and oppressed of the human community.
In ecclesiastical circles Latin American priests and other religious became accustomed to following developments in society and to study its problems, this interpretation acted as yielding a new vitality and critical spirit in pastoral circles. The relationship of dependence of the poor at the periphery of society at the caprice of the ruling elite had to be replaced by a process of breaking away and liberation. It was perceived by John Paul II that Liberation Theory was of a communists rather than socialist variant. Theologians such as Hans Kuhn, (he was relieved of his theological chair, although he still remains a Catholic priest) Leo Buff, de Chardin and Dietrich Bonhoeffer laid the foundations for a theology of liberation.
Its material foundations were provided only when popular movements and Christian groups came together in the struggle for social and political liberation, with the ultimate aim of complete and integral liberation. This was when the objective conditions for an authentic liberation theology came about.
The Second Vatican Council produced a theological atmosphere characterized by great freedom and creativity. This gave Latin American theologians the courage to think for themselves about pastoral problems affecting their countries which led to an intensified reflection on the relationship between faith and poverty, the gospel and social justice.
Liberation theology set out to reexamine the whole basic content of revelation and tradition so as to bring out the social and liberating dimensions implicit in both sources. This was not a matter of reducing the totality of mystery to this one dimension, but of underlining aspects of a greater truth particularly relevant to the context of oppression and liberation.
The "orthodox doctrine," under John Paul II, Benedict and to a certain extent Paul VI, of faith has caused a deep rift between western-Catholicism and Vatican conservatism on social issues. However, this return to pre-Vatican II orthodoxy demonstrates the Church’s modification from and an evangelical mission in advanced socio-economic societies to a more Third World episcopate where convention and "superstition" are more readily acceptable.
Instead of fostering Liberation Theology in Latin America, the church under Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict has annihilated it and in its place Pentecostalism has been encouraged as the way to find Christ. Of course the encouragement of the latter is opposed to Liberation Theology for it creates the division of spirit, soul and being. Thus in Latin America as well as all organized Catholic/Protestant religions there exist a fragmentation with regard to religious experience. Organized religion is predicated upon two facts that salvation is achievable solely through the Church; and secondly, that it is an individual (fragmentary) rather than a collective phenomenon.
This, as I mention in my essay, Converegence of Mind, Soul and Spirit, creates a vaulting of spiritual progress, i.e. the evolutive nature of spirit defined by Father de Chardin, (See, Convergence of Being Soul & Spirit).
Posted on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 10:23PM by joe garcia