Rabbis Would Make Good Bishops

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel with

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King with

whom Heschel worked in the Civil

Rights movement and marched in 

Selma in 1965.   

As readers probably note, I don’t post the responses I get to this blog.  The first reason is that 80% are from folks who are otfw (a synonym of sorts for “just plain crazy”) but the more important reason—not unrelated to the first—is that I am not intending to start discussions but only to bring out historical information or shed on contemporary situations historical perspectives with which many people are unfamiliar.  Nevertheless, I do pay attention to those postings that seem to be from normal people (as opposed to extraterrestrials and escapees from a parallel universe where people never heard of the Second Vatican Council) and try to bring up subjects about which they comment or to indirectly answer questions they raise.  But I had a much appreciated and valuable comment after my posting on The Politics of Spirituality (Dec 12 2012) in which the responder pointed out a podcast about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the truly significant figures in American Religious History.  The podcast (and my correspondent) quoted Heschel as saying
“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined, not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid."    
This is so true.  And it is one of the reasons I do this blog.  Our Catholic Church in the United States is being taken down the road of being “irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid.”  It doesn’t have to go that path.  We have a Tradition, as Catholics, that is immensely relevant, exciting, liberating, and stimulating but we have been hijacked by moronic buffoons who are successfully undermining the our mission as Church to be the Gospel’s Light for our world.  As I have written before, thanks to our bishops and their short-sighted (and retrospective) “leadership,” everyone knows what the Catholic Church is against but no one knows what it is for. There could not be a more disastrous plan for “the new evangelism.”  We are running a negative campaign against our own mission! 
Well, to help us focus on a gospel message that is pertinent, electrifying, liberating, and energizing, let’s turn to another quote from Rabbi Heschel: “The God of heaven and earth is profoundly concerned with the widow and the orphan.”   Now that is a message worth proclaiming.  Why is it that when what we need is a Rabbi, God sends us bishops?  Well, of course, maybe it isn’t God who sent them.  Or then again, maybe he sent us what we deserve and not what we need.  I hope that we are not becoming as mediocre as our leadership. 
To hear that podcast about Rabbi Heschel plug this in:  http://www.onbeing.org/program/spiritual-audacity-abraham-joshua-heschel/227