http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0501/1224315407633.html

We are witnessing the cruel humiliation of a generation of clergy that deserves better.

THERE’S A column I would have written a few years ago, but can’t be bothered to write now. It was a reliable old standby about the latest abuse of power by the institutional Catholic Church. It would be fuelled by anger and by expectation – rage at the hierarchy’s latest folly but an implicit hope that the innate decency of Irish Catholicism would some day be allowed to blossom. There was something real at stake in this argument – the church’s hold on Irish public culture was so strong that everything it did mattered.

I thought about writing one of those columns in response to the Vatican’s censuring of five priests – Brian D’Arcy, Tony Flannery, Gerard Moloney, Seán Fagan and Owen O’Sullivan – simply for saying what most Catholics actually think about celibacy, women priests and homosexuality. But I couldn’t find either anger or hope.

All that’s left is a double dose of sadness – for a generation of idealists; for a society in need of moral leadership that is being given just one more, all too familiar dose of the most abject cynicism.

What we’re seeing now is the sadistic humiliation of a generation of clergy that deserves better. At a simple human level, there’s something genuinely tragic in the fate of these priests: not just those who have been silenced but all their like-minded colleagues. These were once young men and women, mostly in rural Ireland, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. They were infused with the energy of reform and renewal. The priesthood still had glamour, and it was still tied up with familial snobbery, social prestige and institutional arrogance.

But there was also a promise of something more: that the institution to which they were drawn was changing, opening up, moving away from cult-like obedience to obsessive sexual doctrines. It was engaging with deep questions about power and poverty. And it was reasonable to think that this process was sure to continue, to imagine that by 2012 the church would long since have made its peace with democracy.

These young men and women may have been naive, but they were not contemptible. Their families and communities invested in them their often meagre resources of pride and hope and idealism. They returned that investment, in many cases, by expanding the narrow horizons of the world from which they had come. Especially those who worked in developing countries brought back experiences and ideas that made Ireland a richer, more complex place. The relative success with which new migrants were integrated in the last decade, for example, owes much to their influence.

These people don’t deserve to be called to heel like errant lapdogs. It is easy to say that they should refuse to follow orders or just walk away from an abusive institution. But that would be to walk away from the only adult life they’ve known. It would be to write off decades of work and sacrifice – to accept that the most profound decision of one’s life was based on a delusion.

It’s desperately sad that what should have been a noble story in Irish life should end so cruelly. But there’s also a sadness for Ireland itself. Our society hardly needs yet more hypocrisy, another layer of self-serving cynicism. The institutional church disgraced itself by systematically covering up child abuse. It is almost beyond belief that its final conclusion from that trauma – the real outcome of all those apologies and visitations – is that the true problem is some mildly liberal articles in Reality or the Sunday World.

This is the institution that told us that it was unable to control child rapists in its ranks because it couldn’t just issue orders. Remember Cardinal Cahal Daly writing to the parents of a victim of the hideous abuser Brendan Smyth: “There have been complaints about this priest before, and once I had to speak to the superior about him. It would seem that there has been no improvement. I shall speak with the superior again.” Remember the stuff about how bishops were lords in their own dioceses and religious orders were their own kingdoms?

When priests were raping children, the institutional hierarchy was wringing its hands and pleading “what can we do?” The Vatican was very busy and very far away. But when a priest makes some mild suggestions that women might be entitled to equality, the church is suddenly an efficient police state that can whip that priest into line. The Vatican, which apparently couldn’t read any of the published material pointing to horrific abuse in church-run institutions, can pore over the Sunday World with a magnifying glass, looking for the minutest speck of heresy.

An institution so stupid that it thinks its Irish faithful is more scandalised by Brian D’Arcy than by Brendan Smyth is not worth anyone’s anger. It is doing a far better job of destroying itself than its worst enemies could dream of.

All we can do is mourn the passing of a strain of decency and hope in a society so inured to hypocrisy that one more example is neither here nor there.

Remember how uncomplicated Catholic belief once was, before the Church got “sophisticated”?  Catholics generally accepted without question not only that Christ is present in the Sacrament, but also that Noah really built his ark, Jonah actually spent three days inside of that whale, and the Red Sea did, in fact, close in on Pharaoh’s chariots and charioteers, wiping out his army and thus delivering the Israelites from destruction. 

Even the Biblical account of Creation presented few obstacles for believers: God created the universe out of nothing.  He saw that it was good and desired to share it. So He created Adam in His Own image and likeness.  He gave our first parents every gift, and then tested their fidelity to Him.  They failed the test and fell from grace, and all of nature fell with them.  Sin, sickness and death entered the world as the Serpent slithered out of the Garden of Eden.

Even children understood that God’s design had been utterly upended by Man’s free choice to disobey Him. Toddlers could see that God didn’t create sickness, suffering and death, but that these were the result of Man’s disobedience and the horrors of sin—in this case a sin committed by a man who had actually walked with God and was in possession of preternatural gifts. In other words, he knew what he was doing.  Adam’s fall brought an end to the paradise of God’s design.

Catholics used to accept this for what it is. So, for example, when a child was struck and killed by an automobile after chasing her ball into the street, her father didn’t clench his fists at the heavens and blame God for “killing” her. No, the child had simply forgotten to look both ways and was struck by a 2-ton vehicle. Her death occurred in the natural order. This is why parents taught their children safety rules in the first place, because it is quite possible for people—even children—to suffer and die before their time.   Suicide drives this point home. God does not will that the man should jump from the bridge onto the rocks below. But He allows it, just as he allows the suffering of the man’s children that results from his terrible decision to take his own life.  God didn’t “kill” the man on the bridge any more than He “killed” the little girl chasing her ball into the street.

So, far from blaming God for the existence of suffering in the world, Catholics prayed to Him for protection in the event of a bad choice on their part or if nature should rise up against them in the form of a flood or an earthquake or a car accident.

There’s no great mystery here. We pray for the intercession of God’s Saints and Angels every day—not so that God might change His mind and decide not to kill us that day, for that would be absurd; but rather so that He will in His providence intervene on our behalf against an often brutal Mother Nature. Those heavenly interventions are what we call miracles. And those miracles offer further proof that we are not alone in this world; that God is with us; that He did not give up on us after our first sin, but rather promised a redeemer Who would make all things new again. And to show us that no one can be spared the suffering Adam’s sin had brought into the world, He Himself hung from a Cross and died, thus offering men the ultimate sermon on redemptive suffering.

Everything about salvation and the history of the world must be seen through the prism of the Fall of Adam and Eve. Original Sin, suffering, death, the Incarnation, the Immaculate Conception, all the Sacraments (especially Baptism), the Resurrection, the Catholic Church—it all came about because Lucifer would not serve and Adam did not obey. Remove Adam and Eve from history and Christianity is rendered as pointless as a God who would create suffering just for kicks. All of Christendom knew this to be true—the Fathers, Doctors, Saints, and Martyrs down through the ages…until now.

I don’t have words to describe the sadness I felt in my heart this week as I watched Cardinal George Pell Archbishop of Sydney, Australia—a man rumored to be on the short list at the next conclave, and “conservative” extraordinaire—hem and haw and then go right ahead and deny that Adam and Eve are anything more than mythical constructs in a religious story told for religious purposes.  This took place during a debate between Cardinal Pell and atheist Richard Dawkins on the popular Australian television program Q&A.  (See www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD1QHO_AVZA)

Of course, His Eminence admitted that somewhere along the evolutionary scale there must have been a “first man” but, yes, that first man did indeed evolve from apes.

“Did humans evolve from apes?” asked an incredulous Tony Jones, host of the Q&A debate.

“Yes, probably,” Pell replied “probably—well from Neanderthals.”

“But you accept that humans evolved from non-humans, so at what point did the soul come about?” Jones asked.

Cardinal Pell: “The Soul is the principle of life. Whenever the soul was able to communicate then we had the first human.  But if there are humans, there must be a first one.”

Jones: “Are you suggesting a sort of Garden of Eden scenario with an actual Adam and Eve?”

“Well Adam and Eve are terms that mean ‘life’ and ‘earth’. Like an Everyman. It’s a beautiful, sophisticated, mythological account. It’s not science.  But it’s there to tell us two or three things.  First of all that God created the world and universe. Secondly that the key to the whole universe is humans. And thirdly it’s a very sophisticated mythology to try to explain the evil and the suffering in the world….It’s a religious story told for religious purposes.”

Whenever these anamorphous, modernist chestnuts are rolled out of the fire by one of our progressive churchmen, I find myself first wincing and then hoping the atheist fellow sitting across the table somehow failed to grasp the ramifications. Dawkins did not: “Ah, well, I’m curious to know,” replied the atheist, “if Adam and Eve never existed where did Original Sin come from?”

Exactly, Mr. Dawkins! It’s so simple even an atheist gets it.  Our Church teaches that every child born into this world enters in the state of sin—Original Sin.  Our Church teaches that Original Sin must be wiped clean from the child’s soul so that he can become a child of God and an heir to heaven.  Our Church teaches that the only way to remove Original Sin is through Baptism, arguably the most important of all the seven Sacraments since without it we cannot receive grace, can receive no other sacraments, and cannot enter heaven.

So Dawkins is quite right: Why in God’s name would Baptism be all that important if Adam and Eve—our first parents, who committed that original sin for which purpose Christ instituted Baptism—didn’t even exist?  I’m sure the Cardinal could offer a very “progressive” answer to this question but, for whatever reason, he didn’t.  So a few million viewers of the Pell-Dawkins debate walked away wondering since when have Catholics become so eager to debunk their own Scriptures and discard their own theology. Outright enemies of the Catholic Faith couldn’t invent more expedient ways to baffle (and thus alienate) non-believers than those the Modernist leaders of the Catholic Church have come up with all on their own.

The poor Cardinal either believes the Genesis narrative to be ‘mythical’ as a whole, or he’s so embarrassed by it that he feels compelled to pretend it is in order to impress a dolt like Dawkins. Either way the Cardinal’s position flies in the face not only of Pius XII’s teaching from 1950 in Humani Generis, #37 (‘original sin. . . proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam’), but also of the latest official Catholic teaching in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which repeatedly speaks of a real Adam (and Eve): cf. ##374-375, 387, 377, 390, 399, 402-406, 416-417.

So what, exactly, was the Cardinal’s point? Who did he imagine his waffling was going to impress? The atheist immediately recognized the theological gaff in his take on Genesis; the true Catholic was scandalized yet again; and the Muslim must have walked away jubilant, having witnessed yet another Catholic leader squandering what’s left of Catholic identity. After all, even Christian scriptures are evidently a collection of symbolic bunk!

But the Cardinal wasn’t done. When asked whether atheists can get to heaven he waffled again, saying “yes, if they’re good and sincere and seeking the truth.” But when the moderator asked him again, before going on to the next question, “So you’re saying atheists can in fact get to heaven?”  Pell’s final word was emphatic: “Absolutely. Absolutely.”   (Yes, he repeated that word!)

Pell has evidently embraced Karl Rahner’s “anonymous Christian” theory.  Few if any members of the audience or among the one million viewers of the program could have received any impression other than that, according to one of the most “conservative” Roman Catholic leaders in the world, one doesn’t have to believe in anything at all to be saved – that is, that faith is not necessary to salvation! One can only imagine what counter-testimony to the Church and the Gospel that would be for vast numbers of devout Protestants, who still stress the role of faith for salvation almost as much as pre-Vatican II Catholics once did.

But the Cardinal still wasn’t finished. When asked about Hell, he adopted Han Urs von Balthasar’s notorious hope for an “empty Hell”. He said there is a judgment after death, and hinted that perhaps someone like Hitler might go there. But again, his bottom line was liberal: Pell “hopes” that nobody is in fact eternally damned. And the Cardinal is not insane—he would hardly hope for that which is impossible. If we can hope for something then maybe it’s true.  But then what happens to Our Lord’s assurances that on Judgment Day many will seek to enter and will not be able to?  And what happens to the Council of Trent’s de fide teaching that the supernatural gift of faith is the sine qua non for justification? And what about that vision of a hell filled with souls of the damned that Our Lady showed to the children of Fatima?  Pre-Vatican II mythological poppycock, I presume. Again, if Catholics don’t even believe anyone actually goes to hell anymore, then, forgive me, but what the hell is the point of the Catholic Church!

Is everyone saved?  Apparently so, for when asked about gay “marriage” Cardinal Pell issued the usual bromides against hating homosexuals but then continued on with this whopper: “We believe that marriage is between a man and a woman; that it’s for the continuity of the human race.  We believe that men and women are made for one another spiritually, psychologically, physically…But for a homosexual couple to have a union?  Well and good and there’s no reason they shouldn’t.”

One wonders if the Cardinal simply stumbled into all this and really needs to stop accepting invites to appear on TV, or if his intention was actually to water-down the teachings of the Catholic Church to such an extent as to make the insufferable Richard Dawkins come off as a man of vision and insight by comparison.  Dawkins’ team would likely have paid a six-figure payoff for such ecclesial sellout on their behalf.

In sum, according to Cardinal Pell: Man certainly did evolve from monkeys, Adam and Eve were not actual people, Genesis is a myth, atheists certainly go to heaven, and homosexuals, far from living a sinful lifestyle, are perfectly free to have unions (whatever that means!).

With friends like these running His Church why would God need enemies?

Meanwhile Bishop Bernard Fellay stands at the gates of the Vatican, hat in hand, ready to sign an oath of orthodoxy before being allowed to enter. His “heresies”? Well, he believes God created our first parents, Adam and Eve were actual people, Genesis is not mythological, atheists and other people who hate the very idea of God are hardly on the fast-track to heaven, and homosexuals are as guilty of reproach and divine judgment as any other sinners—be they homosexual or heterosexual—who engage in  unrepentant immoral conduct.

I close this lamentation with the first comment posted on YouTube beneath the video of the Pell-Dawkins debate—viewed, by the way, 76,776 times so far, which is to say nothing of the millions of viewers who saw it live:

It baffles me how the Catholic hierarchy can concede most of the bible stories are myths, but continue to teach it as fact in Sunday school, religious schools and in church. The only part of the bible the Catholic church stands by is the death and resurrection of Christ. If the most senior Catholics don’t believe 99% of the bible why should anyone else?

Indeed! Welcome to the springtime of Vatican II.

Robert Crotty joined a monastic order when he was 17, but left the priesthood after a stint in Jerusalem changed his mind about the Bible.

Click here to listen to interview (.mp3)

Professor Robert Crotty was brought up in the Catholic church and his imagination was inflamed by the stories of miracles and visions in the Bible.

But as he began to look back into where the books of the Bible actually came from, Robert questioned what was true, and what was a beautiful fiction.

He was charged with heresy by the Catholic Church, and although he was acquitted he decided to leave the priesthood. Robert is now the Director of the South Australian Ethics Centre. Three Revolutions: Three Drastic Changes in Interpreting the Bible published ATF Press.

Click here to listen to this interview (.mp3)

Significant concerns with coal seam gas mining are the potential impacts that this industry will have on water security, food production, the environment and our health.

What awareness do you have of coal seam gas mining and the related issues?

Significant concerns with Coal Seam Gas are the potential impacts that this industry will have on
•  water security
•  food production
• environment
• health

Water security concerns
• large amounts of water are used in the extraction of the gas
• waste water from the process contains large amounts of salt
• the artesian base may be contaminated by the process

Food production concerns
• mining is happening on good cropping soil
• the mining interrupts the use of farming land
• use of and impact of chemicals on the soil makes it unsuitable for farming
• degradation of and devaluation of farming properties
• eventual impact on Australia’s food production and valuable export industries of beef and wine

Environmental concerns
• gas leaks of methane into the environment increase carbon pollution
• chemical leakage contaminates the land
• chemicals used in the fracking process can cause contamination

Health concerns
• reports from the USA identify many health issues in areas of high intensity coal seam gas production
• some local areas are already expressing health concerns (nose bleeds, headaches)
• mental health issues could result from the stress of loss of land and livelihood

Learn more about the Australian coal seam gas industry and what those affected are saying

The ABC has produced the most comprehensive map of Australia’s coal seam gas activities to date: ( http://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/coal-seam-gas-by-the-numbers/)

Some of the main points made in this program:

Extraction: Coal seam gas, 98% methane, is extracted by drilling down to the coal seam
Average wells in Queensland are 600 metres in depth
The drilling may pass through the aquifers used for drinking water and irrigation

‘Fracking’: This process is sometimes used and involves water and chemicals being pumped into the coal seam, which creates a network of cracks in the coal, releasing the gas and water trapped inside

Water Content: One of the most contentious issues around coal seam gas is its thirst for water, and what impact this might have on the aquifers of the Great Artesian Basin and stream flows in the Murray Darling Basin.  Agricultural industries rely on underground water supplies in the Great Artesian Basin, which lies under some of the most productive farming areas in Australia.

As the water flows out of cracks in the coal, the gas trapped inside is released.  A mixture of water and gas flows to the surface, where the water and gas are separated and sent for processing.  The water is very salty and may contain toxic chemicals from the fracturing process, as well as those naturally present in the coal seam.

The National Water Commission estimates the use of 300 gigalitres of water each year.  This suggests that 31 million tonnes of salt will be produced over 30 years.

What some of the locals are saying:

Reflecting on the impact of coal seam gas mining using Catholic Social Teaching

The Principle of Care for Creation

Coal seam gas extraction puts water availability and purity at risk.
All mining activities need to answer questions about environmental concerns.  One of the major issues with CSG is the use of large amounts of water.  Water is one of the most important resources of the planet.  It is also rich in religious symbolism.  We take care of water by ensuring both its preservation and its quality.

The Principle of the Common Good

At a reflection point in the grounds of Metta Karana Reflection Centre in Siem Reap, Cambodia, visitors are invited to draw water from a well.  When the bucket arrives at the surface, the water is pouring out of holes in the sides of the bucket.  A reflective process is then entered into about water belonging to all people, not just to those who own the well.  In many parts of the world, water is being viewed as a commodity to be sold, depriving those who depend on that water for their survival.  In Australia, The Great Artesian Basin is a resource that has been providing water for much of the drier parts of this continent since the first bore was struck in the late 19th century.  Risking contamination or severe reduction of the available aquifers leaves future generations deprived of this resource.

If much of the good cropping land is taken over by CSG mining, then the amount of food produced will be greatly reduced in a time of world food shortages.

The theme chosen for the Day: “Food Prices: From Crisis to Stability,” invites us to reflect on the importance of the different factors that can give people and communities essential resources, beginning with agricultural work, which must not be considered as a secondary activity, but as the objective of every strategy of growth and integral development.  This is still more important if we keep in mind that the availability of foods is increasingly conditioned by the volatility of prices and sudden climatic changes.  We observe at the same time a continuous abandonment of rural areas with a global decline in agricultural production and, hence, in food reserves.  Moreover, spreading everywhere, unfortunately, is the idea that food is just one more merchandise and, hence, also subject to speculative movement.

Pope Benedict’s message for World Food Day 2011

The Principle of Participation

The principle of participation can refer to the need for all of earth’s creatures to participate in discussions involving harm to any creature.

In light of our broadened sense of the earth community, our call for participation must go beyond the demands of our human community to ensure that the rights of the natural world are also represented at the table.

Maryknoll Office for Global Concern:
http://www.maryknollogc.org/ecology/Maryknoll%20Water%20document%20final1.pdf  page 3

The Principle of Accountability

This principle calls for all those involved in issues that may have ethical consequences to make a full disclosure of all information.  In the CSG debates, there is concern that the companies are not sufficiently up front with information regarding their use of chemicals and their thorough investigation into the environmental effects of their processes.  This principle also calls on those who are concerned about the effects of the process to keep pressure on the companies for full disclosure.

Video clips and further information

Sydney Food Fairness Alliance Forum:
Undermining our food bowls – how CSG & mining are threatening future food
Video:  www.sydneyfoodfairness.org.au
Lock the Gate Alliance Inc
Video and information:  http://lockthegate.org.au/
Coal seam gas under renewed pressure – Lateline
Information:    http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3305176.htm?
Great Barrier Grief – Four Corners
Information: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2011/11/03/3355047.htm
Queensland approves toxic waste discharge
Information:   http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-24/chinchilla-toxic-waste-discharge-approved/3677838

Please take action

Write to Federal and State Environment Ministers, your local Federal and State Members and Local Councillors.  See below for a possible letter to write:

Federal Minister is Tony Burke
Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities

Contact details
Email:   This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Address:The Hon Tony Burke MP
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Phone: (02) 6277 7640
Fax:  (02) 6273 6101

To find other Ministers, Members and Councillors, google their name or title

Possible points to make:
• Ask what assurances are in place to preserve and conserve our water and soil from any adverse effects from Coal Seam Gas exploration and mining
• Express concern about possible contamination of  the Great Artesian Basin due to the extraction process
• Express concern that the water being used in Coal Seam Gas extraction takes away from the availability of water for farming purposes.
• Possible contamination of soil from chemicals used in Coal Seam Gas extraction
• Concern that good cropping land is being  disrupted by having oil wells on the farm land
• The disruption to farming because of the extra roads, oil wells, traffic and pipelines on the property
• Difficulty of farmers finding workers when the gas companies pay high wages
• Division being caused in country towns due to the promise of prosperity from the coal seam gas industry and the possible loss of livelihood for farming families
• Concerns about what to do with the salty water that is brought to the surface in the extraction process

Other possibilities
• Watch for media reports on this industry
• Web sites that often ask for action on this matter are:
Friends of the Earth Brisbane: www.brisbane.foe.org.au
Lock the Gate Alliance: www.lockthegate.org.au
Get Up: www.getup.org.au
Sydney Food Fairness: www.sydneyfoodfairness.org.au

Possible Letter to Politicians

Dear Minister Burke

I am writing to you about the proliferation of the Coal Seam Gas Industry in Australia.

I have several concerns:
• the possible contamination of the Great Artesian Basin due to leakage of the chemicals used in the extraction process
• the possible contamination of soil through leakage of chemicals used in the extraction process
• good cropping land is being taken over by the coal seam gas industry when agriculture is such an important base for the Australian economy

There seem to be different rules for the use of water by farmers and the coal seam gas industry.  The strict controls on the use of water placed on Farmers do not seem to apply to those engaged in coal seam gas extraction processes.

I understand that legislation of this industry is a State matter.  However, because of the possible damage to our water and soil, there is a place for Federal intervention in this important issue.

I urge you to be proactive in preserving the integrity of our water and soil in the face of possible contamination that will affect our important farming industry.

Dear State Environment Minister / Local Councillors

I am writing to you about the proliferation of the Coal Seam Gas Industry in Australia.

We keep hearing about the wonderful benefits of this industry in terms of the economy.  However, I believe that there are other issues that must be considered in relation to this industry.

The main issue that needs to be addressed is the possibility of contamination of water and soil in the extraction process.

Our agricultural industry is of vital importance to our economy.  The increasing number of coal seam gas wells is already having an effect on our farmers with the increasing traffic on their properties, and roads and pipelines criss-crossing their properties.

I am asking you for assurance that you are doing everything in your power to safeguard the quantity and quality of our water and that you are supporting our agricultural industry as it faces a huge struggle against the might of mining companies.

Peter recently introduced us to a book, Perfect Brilliant Stillness, by David Carse, which Peter described as the book to end all books.

Terence Stamp, who reads the audiobook of Perfect Brilliant Stillness, says that almost every popular spiritual writer in America and Europe is teaching that ultimate spiritual enlightenment can be yours and that reading their books, or attending their seminars, will help you towards that end. Stamp says Carse’s book will tell you that these ideas are absurd, because it is quite obvious that neither you nor anything else had ever existed.

For Davis Carse there is no self, only the presence, the being, consciousness. He states that he as a man is merely a “thought construct”; Perfect Brilliant Stillness takes you on a magnificent journey to the ultimate questions of existence. It is a pity that it, too, is a presentation of Dogmatism.

In the fine print at the start of his book, David Carse wrote: There are many books out there that will help you live a better life, become a better person, evolve and grow to realize your potential as a spiritual being. This is not one of them.

It seems to me that David has listed many of the reasons why the Community gathers at SMX each weekend. So I take it that even David himself is suggesting that his topic is not suitable for a homily at a one-a-week Liturgy.

To the philosophers in our SMX Community who wish to promote the theory that nothing exists and the many other self-realisation practices, I suggest that they form a Philosopher’s Forum or a Guru Club and have regular meetings as another cluster group of SMX.

Schools of metaphysical philosophic theory are usually organised in a forum mode which is best suited for such topics to be presented and discussed. Homily-style presentation is certainly an unacceptable mode for the understanding of such theories.

Such ways of thinking are for the individual to espouse as a personal aid to life.  I am sure that Peter will find enough members of SMX Community who would be interested in regularly attending and participating in such a Forum.

The Philosophy that Christianity adopted to convey cultural meaning to its theology was the late Roman adaptation of Plato’s teaching; Neo-Platonism.  In doing so Christianity imported new concepts into its theology which over-emphasised particular elements, thus leading to distorted views.  One example of this is the importation of the dichotomy between soul and body which departed from the more integrated Hebrew and Biblical concept of the person.

Neo-Platonism held that the fullness of life was in the soul, which had been captured, dragged down and degraded by the body. Asceticism was seen as the only way of escape from both the body and the world.  The world was the dwelling place of the demonic.   Those who sought to understand Nature did so by making a pact with the Devil.

These Platonised concepts became fixed in Christian Theology and it permeated the intellectual elites of western culture.  The dichotomy created by Platonism between soul and body, matter and spirit, God and the Cosmos, has caused enormous tension in Western Christian culture by making us suspicious of matter and of all that is not spirit

In the Middle Ages there were some who broke out of this destructive mind-set.  Creation Mystics like Francis of Assisi, Hildegarde of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Nicolas of Cusa, and many more of the mediaeval and post-reformation mystics freed themselves from this intellectualised anthropocentrism. I am not sure we are able to declare such creation mystics and Davis Caste and Bob Adamson as having similar philosophic thinking.

In homilies at SMX I often hear what is sometimes called the Classic Philosophic Mystics and the Western Christian Mystics bandied together as if they were of similar philosophic thought.   I believe that is unfair to both. As I understand it Mysticism is the endeavour of the human mind to grasp the ultimate reality of things, and to enjoy the blessedness of actual communion with the Highest. The first is the philosophic side of mysticism; the second, its spiritual side.

Hans Küng writes that mysticism in Christianity emerged as a reaction to the increasing secularisation of the Church, the transformation of theology into an academic discipline and the externalisation of piety. Mysticism, which seeks self-realisation (salvation) within, appeared to many men and women to be a spiritual alternative: because of its tendency towards internalisation and spiritualisation; its inner freedom by comparison with institutions, works of piety and the compulsions of dogma;…. and its emphasis on a direct intuitive experience of union with the divine presence, fellowship and unity with God.

Küng says it is not surprising that the power-brokers in the Church regarded mysticism with mistrust and a threat to their powerbase and it was kept on the periphery of the Church, unable to exercise any significant formative influence on theology or Church practice.

Karl Rahner is quoted as saying that the Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all. Rainer’s comments were within the context of what has been called an “everyday mysticism”; a mysticism which recognised the mystery of God at the heart of everyday reality.  He spoke of a mysticism in which Christians discovered the hidden presence of God, the deep and holy ground in and of all created existence.

I am not sure that many who attend SMX for Liturgies want to be a captive audience in having to listen to regular lectures on philosophic theories. Give us a choice and present such theories to like-minded thinkers in forum style.

I believe many may prefer to listen to homilies that will help us live a better life, become a better person, evolve and grow to realise our potential as a spiritual being. A defining mark of SMX is its inclusiveness; giving too much attention to just one philosophic theory in our homilies, could well turn us into an exclusive group.

I believe we owe it to the Christian world to work hard to ensure that SMX remains a Beacon of Hope for future change. Future Christianity is generating itself from the lives of those who have fled to the margins and have abandoned the clerical-prescribed religious certainty offered in the parishes.

Despite its growing pains I rejoice that I have a faith community such as SMX to attend. Let us all get on with the consolidation of St Mary’s in Exile’s vision of being church (Followers of the Way of Jesus).

Tim

A good philosophical argument on Solipsism or Nolipsism (name depending on which stand you take) is by two philosophy professors who believes they have argued a good case for Nolipsism but they conclude against it in an essay which is named after the quote:

“Nolipsism is perhaps most closely allied with a class of views associated with Lichtenberg,  Wittgenstein, Anscombe, and sometimes Schlick, for which Strawson coined the term no-subject views.14 But it is important to emphasize that we stop short of endorsing nolipsism. The point of the skeptical part of the paper is simply that the earlier constructive account of the functional role of de se designators provides the basis for what seems to be a rather strong argument for nolipsism. One would normally be inclined to endorse such a strong argument were it not that our own computational structure (our epistemic norms) make it impossible for us to accept the conclusion.”

Written by Tim Carter

[ Ismael. J. T., and J. L. Pollock. “So You Think You Exist?  In Defense of Nolipsism.”

In Knowledge and Reality: Essays in Honor of Alvin Plantinga (Kluwer).

Edited by T. Crisp, M. Davidson, and D. Vander Laan. Berlin:

New York: Springer-Verlag. 2004 ]

This year we mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of the so-called ‘King James Bible’ (KJB) under the authority of King James I of England in 1611. That particular version of the Bible has had a profound impact on the history of religion in the English-speaking world, as well as playing a powerful role in the shaping of modern English. As a result of its influence on modern English and the subsequent development of English as the lingua franca of the modern world, the KJB has enjoyed an influence that its translators could never have imagined. Not  only is the Christian religion in a very different place because of the influence of this book, but even the present form of our global society owes a great debt to the KJB.

This is a good moment in time to pause and reflect on our debt to the forty-four scholars who worked in six different teams to prepare this translation, as well as to civil and religious authorities who sponsored the project, and the craftsman printers who brought the complicated project to a successful conclusion. They could never have imagined the migration of English dissenters to North America, nor the subsequent development of Anglophone cultural, economic and political influence around the globe. Four hundred years later we look back over a rich and complex story, and express our gratitude to the mostly nameless heroes whose efforts laid the basis of our modern world.

On reflection we note how much that we now take for granted was once controversial and highly contested. This Bible comes to us from the world before the Enlightenment, while we are very much children of the Enlightenment. In the world from which this version of the Bible derives, people were imprisoned, exiled and even killed by state and church authorities. This book comes from a world where kings exercised absolute authority and parliaments were yet to find their power to limit the prerogatives of the king.

The KJB was essentially a project to control dissent and limit religious diversity within the English-speaking kingdoms of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. At the time it was barely imaginable that significant numbers of Englishmen (sic) would be found beyond the shores of the British Isles. When the KJB project was commissioned at the Hampton Court conference of 1604, the colony at Jamestown, Virginia had not yet been founded. That would happen in 1607 while work on the KJB was underway. The Pilgrim Fathers were not to sail from Plymouth until September 6, 1620; some nine years after the publication of KJB.

I note in passing that my own direct ancestor, Joseph Jenkes, did not arrive in Massachusetts until 1642. Some twelve generations later I stand here as a visitor from an even more distant English society that also been profoundly shaped by the KJB and was equally beyond the imagination of King James and his Privy Council. Joseph was a dissenter who fled England to make a new life for himself in the colonies, and we can be reasonably sure he owned a copy of the KJB. More than three hundred years later, that same version of the Bible would dominate the religious community in which I was born and raised.

Much as we celebrate the heroic achievements of those who struggled for the right to read the Bible in their own language, and to do so free of interference by church or state, we also note those ways in which the Bible has been co-opted as a tool in the religious and social controversies of the modern world. The same Bible that served as an icon of liberty was used to justify slavery, to reinforce the supremacy of men over women, and to validate racism.

Today we find the KJB invoked by ultra-conservatives who wish to deny the humanity and the civil liberties of gay and lesbian persons. Their attachment to the KJB is even more remarkable given the well-known homosexuality of King James himself. We need not delve into those matters now, but it sometimes seems to me that the King James Bible might be better labeled as the ‘Queen James Bible.’

Re-imagining the Bible back then

We tend to look back at the KJB as the beginning of a long period of cultural and religious influence. It is natural and right to do that. However, the production of the KJB was also the conclusion to a process of change in attitudes to the Bible that had been taking place over the previous century as the Protestant Reformation upturned the religious and social order of Europe.

On the eve of All Saints Day in 1517, a Roman Catholic priest named Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Saxony. That act launched a major transition in the life of the European church. It marked the beginning of a process of reform and renewal of which the KJB was one of the most prominent fruits.

The Reformation especially impacted how the Bible was understood. This is often overlooked but it deserves our attention. The Bible before the Reformation was very different to the Bible after the Reformation.

At that time there was a significant re-imagining of the Bible, so that it came to be imagined  (at  least  in  Protestant  circles)  in  the  ways  in  which  we  so often  find  it understood today. Roman Catholics never accepted this unilateral re-imagining of the Bible, and it has never been a part of the Christian faith among the Greek Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox, or the many ancient Eastern churches: Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Syrian, or Mar Thoma Christians. Even the Anglicans were prepared to retain them within the Bible while abstaining from using them as authoritative for doctrine.

This novel re-imagining of the Bible among Protestants in NW Europe involved at least five major changes in the way the Bible was understood.

First, the contents and the sequence of the Old Testamentwere changed, after more than one thousand years of continuous Christian practice, to exclude those books found in the ancient Greek versions of the Bible but not found in the Hebrew versions of the Jewish Tanakh.

Secondly, the language of the Bible was changed. We sometimes struggle with issues of inclusive language, but the reformers engaged in a much more profound task as they took the risk (sometimes at the cost of their own lives) of making the Bible available in the vernacular.

Thirdly, new technologies impacted on the ways in which the Bible was re- imagined. Now copies of the Bible could be produced in great number and at low cost. Combined with the move to the vernacular, this helped to spread the influence of these news ways of imagining the Bible, including its recently reduced contents without the Apocrypha.

The fourth new development was that daily reading of the Bible by lay people became a possibility for the very first time in Christian history, albeit only in Protestant areas of NW Europe. We take this for granted, but without a growing level of literacy in the population, and also the invention of the printing press, this could simply not have happened. No longer the privilege of the religious orders, the Bible could now be owned and read by any person with enough wealth to secure a minimal education.

Of course they were mostly men, and men with power and status. Their reading of the Bible, now conveniently expressed in their own language, tended to reinforce their existing social privilege, and their views of women, children, servants, and hired labor.

Finally, a new degree of authority was attributed to the Bible. People who imagined the Bible in this way gave lesser weight to the authority of Popes and Bishops, the rulings of Church Councils, the force of Church Tradition, and even the prerogatives of the king. Heads rolled and thrones tottered as this new way of imagining the Bible took hold on the public.

We tend to note the last development, but not appreciate how radical all five changes were. In a very sense, Bible was re-imagined and re-engineered at the Reformation. This was not simply a recovery of ancient practices, but the development of a whole new set of possibilities for the Bible in the life of the church.

While this brave new way of imagining the Bible was soon challenged by the humanistic cultural revolution of the Enlightenment, it continues to shape the religion of many devout Christians as well as to attract the disdain of a skeptical public. It is, however, an unsustainable way of imagining the Bible and it is time for us to re-imagine the Bible all over again so that it can continue to serve as a sacred text for the churches in the third millennium.

Engaging with the ‘problem’ of the Bible

Since the Reformation—and especially in the last 150 years—grassroots Christian views of the Bible have become increasingly exaggerated and naïve, claiming far too much for the Bible. In this uncritical attachment to the Bible (known as ‘Biblicism’) the Christian Scriptures are defended as uniquely authoritative, inerrant, infallible, historically correct, self-sufficient, internally consistent, self-evident in their meaning, and universal applicable.1

The cultural revolution of the Enlightenment would soon mean that this high water mark of the Bible’s influence would subside as the Bible became the site for a profound and continuing challenge to the authority of the church. For cultural, historical, political, and social reasons, the nature and authority of the Scriptures were challenged by humanists and defended by religionists.

The controversy continues to our own time, although the churches mostly act as if the authority of the Bible is beyond question. In formal religious statements it often remains sufficient simply to cite a biblical reference to settle a theological point.

In  the  contemporary  church  we  can  observe  both  conservative  and progressive readings of Scriptures. This is a divide that cuts across traditional Catholic/ Protestant, Conservative/Liberal categories, and it exposes a reactionary/progressive dynamic within all expressions of Christianity. As people of faith, do we read Scripture primarily to preserve and protect beliefs, rituals and roles inherited from the past, or to seek new insights and gain fresh wisdom for the challenges of being faithful today? And if both, then what kind of creative balance is achieved, and how is it maintained?

At the heart of critical biblical scholarship—and indeed all scholarship, religious or otherwise— is a critical mindset that challenges traditional ways of thinking, including time-honored ways of using Scripture. The critical method is a sustained existential interrogative: Why? Why that? Why now? Why here? Why not? What if?

One significant danger associated with such a sustained critical perspective is the risk of discarding too much wisdom from the past in the quest for new and improved solutions to current challenges. But that risk does not outweigh the advantages of fresh insights that may arise from a persistent quest for improvement: better analysis, better diagnosis, and better praxis.

While critical religion scholarship has its own philosophical and theological grounds for such a critical (prophetic?) stance towards the tradition, it also acts as part of a broad progressive cultural alliance. Where ascendant religion tends to cling to power and protect its privileges, prophetic religion operates from the margins of respectability and may find common ground with artists, philosophers, scientists, and literary scholars.

Points of confrontation and challenge

We can usefully consider the problem posed by the Bible for theologians and church leaders under three categories: the world behind the text, the world within the text, and the world in front of the text. This metaphor of three biblical ‘worlds’ has been developed by Sandra Schneiders,2 and it will allow us to group the major problematic dimensions of the Bible according to their primary location in the historical world behind the text, within the text itself, or within our own acts of interpretation as readers.

From the perspective of the world behind the biblical textthere have been a considerable number of challenges posed for people of faith by critical biblical scholarship. The central characteristic of these challenges relates to the deconstructive impact of critical attention to questions of historicity, to traditional assumptions about the origins of the biblical writings, and to the increased number of ancient manuscripts now available to scholars.

As a result of our increased knowledge of the ancient past, the historical character of the Bible has been seriously compromised. The relationship between what ‘actually happened’ in the ancient past and how those events are narrated in the biblical texts is far more complex than has often been assumed by previous generations of Bible readers.

At the same time as the historicity of the Bible has been challenged, we have been able to gain a much more accurate understanding of the cultural and social dynamics of the ancient communities who first created and used these texts. We find ourselves knowing more about what life was like ‘back then,’ and yet also being less certain of the historicity of the biblical narratives. In this complex process it is tempting to seek short- term polemical advantage in certain discoveries or models, but perhaps wiser to refrain from doing so.

The need to suspend judgment on the historicity of the biblical narrative already implies a significant reduction of the claims so often made on behalf of the Bible and its contribution to Christian thought and practice. While it seems certain that ‘David’ was a ruler in Jerusalem during the tenth century BCE, it is even more certain that his achievements were nothing like those attributed to him in the Bible, and his vast empire is an exercise in religious imagination. Such historical reservations have significant religious and theological implications for people for whom God’s ‘mighty acts’ in the past are the basis of faith here and now. What if those mighty acts are fictional?

Not only are the events represented in the Bible more often fictional than historical, but the texts themselves have an uncertain pedigree as well as a confused history of copying and transmission. Moses did not write the Pentateuch, and David did not write the Psalms. More seriously, the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that only Psalms 1–91 were finalized by the second century BCE, and books such as Samuel and Jeremiah existed in both longer and shorter versions just a century or so before the time of Jesus.

Critical investigation of the world behind the biblical texts has established beyond reasonable doubt that the origins of the Bible were very different than Christians like to imagine. While this does not prevent us using the Scriptures in new and creative ways, it does require us to rethink how these sacred texts function in the life of the contemporary church.

As questions around the world behind the text multiplied, some scholars turned their attention to the world within the biblical text. Here we seem to be on firmer ground. No longer adrift in a world of historical ambiguity, the reader can simply engage with the texts as they stand. The historical questions can be set aside as we enter the world of the text.

In this hermeneutical move, the focus shifts from defending the historicity of the Bible to appreciating the literary artistry of the authors. But these were human authors, and ancient ones as well. They imagined their texts under the influence of literary and rhetorical conventions that are very different from those of today’s readers. These writers were shaped by Homer, and operated on the basis of mimesis and intertextual dynamics whose finer points escape us moderns.

The nagging historical anxiety of the modern West refuses to leave us alone even in the relative sanctuary of the biblical text. Are we reading accounts of actual events or symbolic narratives? And  even  when  the  events  may  have happened  (as  with  the crucifixion of Jesus), is the narrative more the product of imagination than memory? Is everything just melting away into (mere) story? Does this wonderful narrative have any basis in real events in the lives of actual people? Is Christian faith anything more than a heroic act of imagination?

More confronting still, what of the unacceptable values and immoral practices encoded in the text?3 Even if God did not command the ethnic cleansing of ancient Palestine, the Bible seems to have been written and approved by people who liked to imagine that she did. These sacred texts are increasingly recognized as artifacts created by persons with particular cultural and religious agendas in the ancient world, and the modern reader can find herself an intruder in an unfamiliar landscape when exploring the world of the text.

Then there is the world in front of the text, the lived realities of the actual readers here and now. Not only is it clear that it makes a difference who is doing the reading, it is also becoming increasingly clear that a text without a reader is a document that has no significance.

The impact of different readers is simple enough to recognize. Not only do different people discover (construct?) different meanings in the same text, but the same persons at different times in  their own practice as readers will report finding quite different meanings in the same texts.

It is for this reason, surely, that a classic text such as the Twenty-Third Psalm can be read at funerals as well as at weddings. The text has not changed, but the readers and their contexts certainly have.

As scholars of communication and literature rethink the relationship between author, text and reader there are clear implications for Scripture, which exists and functions as text at the hands and in the imaginations of readers. We are learning to reimagine what a text is and how it operates. While every text comes with certain assumptions, these operating conditions may not be valid at the time when it is read.

To remain significant, and especially to continue as a site for divine-human encounter, the Bible may need to be read contrary to its literal and historical significance. Only then can it serve as a source of wisdom for readers in contexts beyond the imagination of its authors and previous readers.

This is a necessary corollary for a sacred text in a religious tradition that accords primacy to the freedom of the divine Spirit to speak a prophetic word to the contemporary context of the faithful. However, it destabilizes both the text and the traditional interpretations of its significance. Under what conditions could we ever imagine the Bible to be the unchanging and self-explicating revelation of what the Spirit is saying to the churches?

This is an excerpt from a matter that the Catholic Church recently dealt with.

For the full response please read

Bathersby

Finnigan

Finnigan Harkin

When Cardinal Josef Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, few Catholics were aware of the central role he played for decades in reversing the reforms of the Second Vatican Council — to restore the Catholic Church to its status as an authoritarian monarchy and a system impervious to change from below. Few authors have told this story as well as Matthew Fox in his new book,The Pope’s War. Fox, an outspoken progressive theologian, was forced out of the Dominican Order in 1988 by order of Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith. The author of more than 23 books, Fox continues teaching and exploring the big spiritual questions today. Mark Day interviewed him recently for Catholica.

Matthew Fox argues that it is the Vatican that is in schism with the Second Vatican Council and the present structure needs to be buried. Matthew Fox’s website:www.matthewfox.org.

Mark Day: Do you agree with the Swiss theologian Hans Kung who asserts that Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, by opposing the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, created a schism in the Catholic Church?

Matthew Fox: Yes, absolutely. A council can trump a pope. A pope can’t trump a council. That’s good theology. What is clear is that these last two popes have broken with every major position the council authorized, including the power of national episcopacies to choose their own bishops, the role of the laity, ecumenism, the renewal of the liturgy, and the movement toward social justice. The Vatican is in schism. Catholics faithful to principles of the Council are not in schism.

Mark Day: You compare today’s church’s hierarchy and the Vatican to a “burning building.” You urge people to salvage only the essentials. What are they?

Matthew Fox: The greatest treasure the church is good people: Fr. Bede Griffiths, Dorothy Day, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, and so on. We don’t need to travel with basilicas on our backs. We only need are backpacks. The mystics and the prophets—how they did it with their practices and theologies—all this is really worth keeping. We need to preserve the teachings on the sacramentality of the universe, the wisdom tradition from which Jesus comes. And, of course, the tradition of the divine feminine. It is still present In Catholicism because it is pre-modern. The church did not throw out the goddess—but adopted her as the Mary principle.

Mark Day: You make a strong point in The Pope’s War about corruption in the church.

Matthew Fox: There is really a three legged stool of church corruption: the first is sexual abuse and cover up. The second is financial corruption, and the third is the “theological-ideological.” All of this is interwoven. It’s ideological, because it’s all about dualisms such as the secular versus the Christian. That’s where you get the fixation on birth control, homophobia, and celibacy. It’s all about sex. This also feeds Protestant fundamentalism. The two ideologies are buddy-buddy.

Mark Day: You don’t believe the Vatican is capable of reform?

Matthew Fox: Obviously, it can’t be reformed. I’m looking at it theologically. I believe the Holy Spirit is behind the movement to kill the Vatican as we know it—to kill the structure of the Catholic Church, to bury it, so we can start over. It’s about pushing the restart button. Just look at the right wing religious sects favored by the last two popes: Opus Dei, Communion and Liberation, and the Legionaries of Christ. No, the Vatican is not reformable. It’s a boy’s club, a bully’s club.

Mark Day: What role does sexism play in the church?

Matthew Fox: Sexism is entrenched and institutionalized in the church. We know that feminine leadership in the early church was everywhere. Even St. Paul, who is not an enlightened male, is explicit about the role of women in the early church. And of course, the role of Mary Magdelene has been rediscovered. She belongs to the wing of the church who took on healing. Mary Magdalene is the mother of the sacramental tradition in the church. Yet she has been described as a whore.

Mark Day: How does the Vatican relate to U.S. politics?

Matthew Fox: Well, I believe George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004 was due, in great part, to pressures from Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II. In June, Bush went to the Vatican and said, ”Hey, I’m against gays and I’m against abortion, and I deserve more support from the American Catholic bishops. “A week later, Ratzinger instructed the bishops that no Catholic politician (namely Kerry) should be supported who is not explicitly against abortion and gays. A study later showed that this heavily influenced the pro-Bush vote in Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico. Yet, nobody really denounced this intervention from a foreign power. It’s shocking. Once again, it’s about denial.

Mark Day: You have said at that at the highest levels our government have come under the influence of Opus Dei, an extreme right wing Catholic sect that demands absolute obedience from its members.

Matthew Fox: Yes, it’s widely known that Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas belong to Opus Dei—and that Justice Thomas Roberts may also be a member. AnotherOpus Dei member, former CIA director William Casey, gave millions of dollars to the Vatican and to the ultra-conservative Legionaries of Christ. Also, Daniel Ellsberg recently told me that some of the ranking commanders of our military are also Opus Dei. And what can we say about a whole new crop of right wing Catholic politicians such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum?

Mark Day: Has Pope Benedict XVI, replaced Christian spirituality with fascism?

Matthew Fox: Yes, absolutely. A German woman who translated my book told me she cried while reading it. She said, ”As far as fascism is concerned, my generation was promised, never again. But your book proves that fascism is back, and it is back through the German wing of the church.”

Mark Day: Is it true that the Vatican often relies on questionable sources when issuing a condemnation of Catholic theologians and thinkers?

Matthew Fox: Oh, yes. In my case the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith ignored the findings of three Dominican theologians who vetted my work and found nothing wrong with it. They gave more credence to gossip from non-reliable sources. They listened to all these right wing freaks that send them emails and faxes. They never examined their credentials, and most of them don’t have credentials.

Mark Day: Have these last two popes undermined the possibility of selecting progressive church leadership in the future?

Matthew Fox: Yes they have. It’s like stacking the Supreme Court. But remember, they are in schism. And don’t forget, all these cardinals, archbishops and priests, are also in schism. It means that any Catholic who is trying to live out the principles of Vatican II and the Gospel, is not in schism.

Mark Day: Why don’t more Catholics complain about this?

Matthew Fox: Well, that’s what the media, what television does. It numbs people. But it is also denial. In the new paperback edition of my book, I quote Meister Eckhart who said, ”God is the denial of denial.” To me that is a very powerful line. Until we can get over denial, the Spirit cannot flow again. Catholics need to quite hiding behind the pews, behind the religious orders.

Mark Day: Do you think Catholic reform groups like Call to Action, Future Church and others are growing, or are people simply leaving the church?

Matthew Fox: I recently attended a national convention of Call to Action in Detroit. It was sad to see that there was practically no one there younger than 50. I’ve had young people with newborn babies ask me how they should raise their kids since they don’t want anything more to do with the Catholic Church. The future of the church is with the young, and the young are not showing up in church, perhaps with the exception of Hispanics.

Mark Day: What are your thoughts on the Vatican’s newly created ordinariate to accept married Anglican clergy as valid Roman Catholic priests?

Matthew Fox: They welcome these Episcopal priests as long as they can prove they are homophobic and sexist. Don’t forget that the pope also welcomed back a schismatic bishop who proved himself a fascist and a denier of the Holocaust. It’s really endless. None of this has anything to do with Jesus.

Mark Day: One of Pope Benedict XVI’s main goals was to restore Christendom, or the church’s influence in Western Europe. Did the worldwide sexual abuse crisis derail that project?

Matthew Fox: Absolutely. Even in Poland. A poll taken there showed that only three percent of Poland’s population trust the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy. The pope’s former secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the primate of Warsaw, is now being accused of meddling in the affairs of the Polish government. This is the same man who was accustomed to charge $50,000 to anyone who requested a private Mass with the Pope in the Vatican.

Mark Day: Why are the mainline churches losing so many members, while the mega churches keep growing?

Matthew Fox: Well, that’s a sign that the whole thing needs shaking up. The Catholic problem is corruption at the top, and the Protestant problem is apathy. This allows the fundamentalists to hijack the name of Jesus. Too many people are falling asleep in the pews. They need to dance instead. We use video, dancing and different forms of expression in our “Cosmic Masses”.

Mark Day: How does the average churchgoer relate to these Masses, with video screens, dancing and rap sessions? Isn’t this going from one extreme to the other?

Matthew Fox: Bringing rave and rap and new forms of language into worship is very effective. It’s a way to make worship relevant for the young and also to wake up the older ones to think and to mediate. It really works. The Eucharist is beautiful, but it needs to be put into a new setting. You don’t need prayers read to you—they need to come from your heart. And this is what happens when you dance. It’s also pre-modern—it goes back to indigenousworship, which involves the body. I’m all for a wide variety of worship—but the Cosmic Mass is something that cuts across all lines of age and cultures.

Mark Day: This coming May you will be giving a retreat in Boston called “Occupy Christianity.”

Matthew Fox: Yes. It’s about how to push the restart button on Christianity. We will be discussing both the spiritual and the strategic dimension of renewing Christianity with both Catholics and Protestants. The Protestant churches need a restart as well—for different reasons. Both traditions need to go back to the basic spiritual teachings of Jesus for renewal. [www.matthewfox.org]

The Hardback edition of Matthew Fox’s book is available from Amazon and Fishpond HERE

• Fox, M. (1981). Western spirituality: historical roots, ecumenical routes / edited by Matthew Fox, Bear & Cp.

However, this former Dominican is now an Episcopalian priest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fox_(priest)) :

• Graduating summa cum laude from the Institut Catholique de Paris. After receiving his Ph.D., Fox began teaching at a series of Catholic universities, beginning in 1972 in Chicago with Barat College of the Sacred Heart (later purchased by DePaul University and subsequently closed). In 1976, he moved to Chicago’s Mundelein College (now part of Loyola University), to start the Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality, which developed an alternative pedagogy whose divergences from Catholic orthodox theology eventually would lead to severe conflict with church authorities. The institute’s programs integrated such training as “art as meditation” and “body prayer” with an intention to recreate for modern practitioners the visceral, emotional and intellectual connections that early church mystics had with their faith. In 1983, Fox moved The Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality to Oakland and began teaching at Holy Names University, where he was a professor for 12 years.[4]

Father Bob McGuire is being forced out of his South Melbourne parish. Photo: Justin McManus

The death throes of the latest Australian Catholic cause célèbre are being played out over the next few days.

Yesterday was Father Bob Maguire’s last Sunday Mass at his beloved St Peter and Paul’s Church in South Melbourne. The place was packed to the gunnels as usual.  On Wednesday, he will be made to retire and be relocated, much against his will and the will of his parish, which fought the dismissal with a Jesuitical doggedness.  The parish community, led by the local council’s deputy mayor, Frank O’Connor,  still failed to move the stony heart of Archbishop Denis Hart.

Father Bob is one of three priests sacked in recent years. While he has passed the retirement age for priests, hence his removal, Bishop William Morris of Toowoomba was made to leave last year for merely raising the issue of the ordination of women. And before that, Father Peter Kennedy got the chop from St Mary’s of South Brisbane for breaching church rules.

These beautiful men are the sacrificial lambs as an ancient faith battles to accommodate modernity.  Social change has been a post-war challenge for many institutions and Catholicism, through Vatican II, the Papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, the sex abuse scandal and now the banishment of Father Bob, lurches one step forward and two back into this third millennium.

What is the import of this dispute? Will Father Bob become a forgotten man in a tiny local battle in a small corner of the world or will he become a powerful metaphor that helps the Church grapple with change? Will this parochial stoush become a global touchpaper? Only time will tell.

Father Bob is 77. He is not just a national media figure with a show on ABC radio station Triple J, 55,000 followers on Twitter, appearances on SBS television guru, but he is also famous for his welfare work with the Open Family Foundation. He is the most celebrated Catholic in the country and yet he is being forced from office.  That is because he is also a constant challenge to the leadership in a faith where the notion of obedience is enshrined in the idea of the apostolic succession. Obedience is at the heart of his organisation and his vows.

The core of this debate was alluded to in November when Father Bob argued that this act of retrenchment was vengeance against a ‘Cafeteria Catholic’ by Cardinal George Pell. The idea of the ‘Cafeteria Catholic’ was first raised in America the 1970s and is a pejorative term that decries those Catholics who dissent from orthodoxy, by implying they choose their views as one chooses a meal in a cafeteria.  There are Catholics now who, rather than follow the line from Rome on the controversial issues, desire the freedom to choose.

The Australian version of ‘Cafeteria Catholicism’ was recently spelled out by Cardinal Pell when he travelled to Cork, Ireland in August last year.

His Eminence divided the Catholic world into two – ‘authentic’ and ‘cafeteria’ Catholics.  This dichotomy is to be found in all organisations for there are always conservatives and reformers in every assembly. ‘Cafeteria Catholics’ is a delightful jab at one’s foes.  Somehow food is the perfect put down.  One only has to think of Chardonnay Socialists, Latte Lefties and now Cafeteria Catholics.

However, cafeterias are also places where people engage in life. They are not posh. They are not sinful. They are vibrant hubs where humans congregate and thrive. That His Eminence would view the word ‘cafeteria’ as a put down indicates a willingness to take his faith to the margins of Australian society rather than sacrifice his religious purity.

So it is a shame to see the promotion of change resistance when change so obviously beckons. The ‘Cafeteria Catholics’ like Father Bob are derided as liberal Christians who ‘give to priority to the contemporary understandings’. The Pell Doctrine appears to favour a religiously pure Church even if that means smaller numbers and getting rid of Father Bob.

So this is not just a local battle on the age of a retiring priest. It is a fundamental and globally significant difference of the view of change and modernity in the largest denomination in the world.

Despite this significance, lest we forget that it also is an act of cruelty to evict an elderly man and his beloved dog, Franklin, from their home.

What is your view?

Should the godless care about how slowly venerable faiths take to modernity?

Is the failure of churches to embrace change a cause of sadness or an opportunity for atheism?

Are Cardinal Pell and Archbishop Dennis Hart the best things that ever happened to Australian atheism?

Is the tale of the Bobster an irrelevant local issue or a metaphor of historic significance?

Over to you . . .