Theology

Sisters Lea and Consilia

Is Christ King? If so…A Very Different King!

Today is the feast of Christ, King of the Universe.

Since ancient times, men have insisted on having “kings”.  While kings seem to be a thing of the past, too many countries today are abandoning democracy for dictatorships both secular and professedly religious.  Christians too look to kingship…seeking to establish moral realms on earth.  Even we Catholics are modelling our evangelization on Pro-life Christendoms based on Christ as King.  But if Jesus or his Father have anything to do with being King, what kind of kingship do they claim?

On the everyday level, we the people almost always want someone to keep us safe, to keep order…someone to be in control of the chaos of an ever-changing world around us.

Scripture, however, warns us very specifically as to what happens when we long for kings to protect and save us:

that kings and their cohorts will
…conscript your children into their armies…use your children for their own profit and pleasure…tithe you on the little you make or own…take the best of your property to give to his officials…whereby you and your children will become his slaves.   (See 1 Samuel Chapter 8)

“When that day comes, you will cry out on account of the king you have chosen for yourselves, but on that day God will not answer you,” says Samuel the prophet.

“The people refused to listen to the words of Samuel.  They said, “No!  We want a king so that we in our turn can be like the other nations; our king shall rule us and be our leader and fight our battles.” 

God was not the king they wanted and so, like us today, the people rejected him.  And God told Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for it is not you they have rejected; they have rejected me and my rule over them.”

Even now, as back then, we choose  kings who offer us security and certainty, one who lifts us up in esteem with his power and prestige.  God was NOT this king and so was rejected by the people.

Jesus knew God differently than the people of his time.  Like his image of God, Jesus was no such king as the people wanted him to be. (One has to even wonder if Jesus ever wanted to be identified with the title “king”.)

If Jesus were the king the people wanted him to be, he would have acted differently at the Crucifixion, doing as the Roman soldiers mocked him to do.  He would have miraculously descended from the cross and exacted retribution on all those who persecuted him.  And he would have done this with great force and show of glory.  No such God was Jesus.  No such God was how Jesus knew God to be.

So we must ask, how is God’s rule different from that of an authoritarian leader/king?

And how is it that Jesus is proclaimed King as Christian tradition holds him?   There must be somewhere in that tradition a very different kind of king…or something other than king, no?

Key to these questions is the fact that Jesus saw and knew God differently…perhaps as differently as deconstructionist philosophers and theologians like John D Caputo see God

…repudiating a God of Power and Might who utilizes
rewards and punishments as force to keep order

…disputing the image of a protective parent God

…questioning the image of a God who desires loyal and obedient subjects

…challenging us, as Jesus did in his time on earth,
to look anew at how we see God today.

At a time when Jews expect a miracle and Greeks seek enlightenment, we speak about God’s Anointed crucified! This is an offense to Jews, nonsense to the nations; but to those who have heard God’s call, both Jews and Greeks, the Anointed represents God’s power and God’s wisdom; because the folly of God is wiser than humans are and the weakness of God is stronger than humans are. (1 Cor 1:22–25)

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A few books by John D Caputo which we highly recommend:

The Cross and the Cosmos, A Theology of Difficult Glory (most recent)

The Weakness of God, A Theology of the Event

The Insistence of God, A Theology of Perhaps

The Folly of God, A Theology of the Unconditional

Hoping Against Hope, Confessions of a Post-modern Pilgrim

Also check this John D Caputo Facebook link:

https://www.facebook.com/John.D.Caputo/?ref=nf&hc_ref=ARRHGqJhNa51Z4yay1Oq-abxFtO-OAwDHB8sHtiIZ9Q_gLmpA4ELPxN7LgSnaD-W6ss

 

 

 

 

Sisters Lea and Consilia

Is Church criminal activity the result of failed theology?

Seems that Church criminal activity IS the result of failed theology…according to Robert Mickens quoting Church historian, Massimo Faggioli, in Mickens’ recent article “Why Catholic Church leaders risk failing on the issue of sexual abuse”

Scrolling down Mickens’ article to the subheading The ongoing implosion of the Church, we find these words:

“As Massimo Faggioli suggested in a recent article published by La Croix International.” says Mickens,

It is not simply a question of dealing with a criminal phenomenon. It is also a theological question: from the theology of the sacraments (especially ordination to the priesthood) to ecclesiological models; from the role of women in the Church to last century’s magisterium on sexual morality. (Bold emphasis ours)

 

“The most complicated issue concerns the structural reforms required to address the mystique surrounding the priesthood and the episcopate, which are often still seen as positions of honor without the responsibilities that derive from holy orders.
(Indented text and absence of most quote marks in above two paragraphs are as in original Mickens’ article.)

At Rite Beyond Rome, we believe that Church criminal activity IS the result of failed theology.

If Vatican II had been taken seriously by the Church preceding Francis, it would not have been dismissed as simply a pastoral council. 

If Vatican II had been taken seriously back in the 1970’s, 80’s, 90’s up to the present day, collegial community would have been the hallmark of a modern theology transvalued in light of the very core of the Gospels and Church Tradition of Collegial Community…and not simply in light of episcopal collegiality which was also suppressed.

Want more on how the Church would look as a Collegial Community?

Also see:  Beyond Damage Control and Church Structural Reform: Theology Supports Sex/Power Abuse?

 

Sisters Lea and Consilia

Beyond Damage Control and Church Structural Reform: Theology Supports Sex/Power Abuse?

There was a time when damage control worked well for the church. That time is no more!

Now, damage control like sincere apologies, policy changes and even sacrificial scapegoats fail to convince Catholics and others that the Church is determined enough to change its fundamental “modus operandi”.

Fortunately for the church, Catholic consciousness has been raised by the Spirit of Vatican II to expect more than damage control. This new consciousness cannot be rolled back any more than a born child can go back into it’s mother’s womb.

Those who talk about the need for structural change in the church rarely, if ever, recognize the origin of church sex/power abuse in theology itself.

In the past several decades, Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and now Pope Francis have adamantly steered the church away from the deep theological reform that Vatican II set in motion. Their unwavering resistance to deep theological reform unwittingly supported the clerical power abuse and cover-up that we find today in the global Church. Continuation of this resistance will only lead to more virulent and deeply-entrenched power abuse cover-ups.

If the connection between theology and power abuse is not recognized now, then any policy and structural changes enacted by the Church will be worthless. As empowered as the laity will appear to be after all new policy/structural changes are in place, laity will NOT be allowed to cross the boundaries of “religious freedom” around well-guarded Church doctrine.

If Augustine could assimilate Roman ideals into Christian theology, surely by this time, Catholicism is capable of assimilating the best of modern findings in scientific, philosophical and theological research. Vatican II brought attention to the need for updating and adapting the Church to new conditions. With the extent, horror and gravity of the sex/power abuse scandals in the Church, one would think that the Church would wake up to Vatican II and its focus on the many momentous new questions that modern society must deal with in terms of human survival, not to mention the survival of its religious institutions.

The sex/power abuse scandals bring into question the domination model of traditional Biblical understanding and its application in doctrine. The domination interpretation of power in Scripture has been seriously questioned by many post-Vatican II theologians.  Even so, the institutional teaching authority of the Church has opposed little, if any, change in this ancient theology of power.

NOW IS THE TIME to re-evaluate theology that sanctifies and sacramentalizes domination. We must ask ourselves: Should modern scriptural interpretation be supporting the understanding of God as the One Who Desires Power Over Us?…justifying the way that we desire power over the earth and each other?

Sisters Lea and Consilia

God’s Holy Refugees, Driven by the Search for Real

What of the Religious Refugees… fleeing theologies
… theologies that clang against the consciousness
 of this age’s sins and (w)holy wisdom?

To the Nones and Dones and those most nearly done,
the silence of the Holy One is deafeningly loud
…in theologies describing 
 a god so praise-starved and power-hungry
…that it demands our constant adulation and servile obedience
…in theologies describing an all knowing Big Father/Brother in the sky
 speaking scriptural words of love between the narcissistic lines.

What consciousness is this…
that drives us from the comfort of a sacred family
…wrapped in the solace of sweet hymns and select scriptures
so we not see and question those Words and stories
…strewn with images of such an ignoble and inglorious God?

Bereft of temple, church, synagogue or mosque,
where do we go to find a home?
Or is there even such a place?

Religious refugees driven far from safe homes we knew so long ago,
…the hymns we sang, the Scripture read, so comforting,
now crash as awkward phrases against what we “Now Know”.
“Now Know” not so stately as the holy architecture of theologies 
so long held bosom-close for comfort.

O Saints before us, who lost your faith in such Go(o)d nonsense…
Is there not something…anything, 
 other than the loss we know today?

Or is all search for the comfort of meaning and certainty 
 a useless Sisyphus task of rolling boulder uphill 
 …until it rolls back crushing us
…worn weak and weary in the futility of it all?

We go down into the pit of despair
…
 with you, O Saints who went there before us.
We have still the wisdom of your love and your courage
 to live in the not knowing,
…in the shatter-scatter pace of life’s ever-changing face 
 that re-assembles its appearance from
 …horror to grief to love and back again
…in cycles too quick to ponder or assimilate,
 …sometimes barraged in unremitting painful questions:
Why them? Why me? 
 …Why even ask why?

We refugees of theologies 
that answer questions of the past
 with answers from the further past..
 …some wisdom there buried
 under all the dust and shite, for certain.

Yet there is this tingling sense that
 wisdom buried under ages having passed, 
 yet still is with us now
…
for every change of time from one epoch to another
 had its pain of cracking through, 
 like a babe breaking out its mother’s womb…
all tender and powerless, 
 …in need of succor and protection, 
 so like our new consciousness adapting…to its new place and time.

Let us have faith meanwhile, in each other,
 …in the everyday uncanonized saints of today and yesterday.
Not idolatrous faith, of course,
 but rather faith that nurtures love as it re-news life,
…as it makes life NEW again…
 Creation ongoing, ever-challenging us
…to go on loving…as best we can.

WHERE is the theology that can lead us
…in the way of this ever-adapting gypsy-like home-making faith?
WHERE is the theology sustaining
…a dynamic back-and-forth movement
 between the wisdom of the past
…and the present moment
…now challenging our consciousness 
 …to RISE UP and BE COUNTED.
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Painting “God’s Holy Refugees” by Consilia Karli, SFCC

Poem by Sister Lea, SFCC with Consilia Karli
https://RiteBeyondRome.com

 

 

 

 

 

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