Never Too Old to Learn Some Lessons

It was the flowers that initially 

hooked me

I have to admit that I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.  The last attention I had paid to the man he was still “Gaseous Cassius” and, not having an interest in boxing, when he converted to Islam I turned my back on all the braggadocio and invested my brain cells other where.  You couldn’t escape him entirely of course, not if you read the newspapers or watched Walter Cronkite, but he was only a name from those part of the headlines that came from worlds which I, for the most part, did not inhabit.  He was enough older than me that during the years he made his mark I still had grades and college admissions to preoccupy me.  And I was slow in coming to my more liberal views—Viet Nam in particular was not a quick conversion for me but a long agonizing interior search for a moral compass that transcended the glib and easy slogans being yelled by crowds outside my college dorm.  And more important yet, my life already was the Church.  It was the heady years immediately after Vatican II, and I was taken up with the Liturgy and Ecumenics and outreach to the poor.  So who gave a second thought to a come-lately Muslim of questionable sharia orthodoxy from Louisville Kentucky?  And that is pretty much where I had left it.  So what was the fuss about?

I had no intention of watching the memorial service but sometimes circumstances conspire to the unplanned.  I had been in hospital for a few days with an infection in my lower intestinal tract and was being discharged.  I was waiting for my ride home.  The television was on.  And to be honest I was captivated by the gorgeous arrangements of hydrangea, tulips, orchids, roses and fern.  I have always had a “thing” for flowers and was struck by the incredible garden that surrounded the speakers. 

The first of the speakers I heard was the Reverend Kevin Cosby, pastor of Saint Stephen’s Baptist Church in Louisville and President of Simmons College.  It was the best of African-American preaching—solid, biblical, and yet pulling on the heart-strings for personal conversion.  And, unlike other Christian speakers, he honored the commission to bring Jesus into the conversation, the Jesus of Matthew 25 who shuffles with the lame and the tired through the hardships of Louisville’s (or Chicago’s, or Los Angeles’ or Nairobi’s West End.  Every city has a West End and like the mythical “liturgical east” it isn’t limited to one point of the compass.)

The second speaker to snap me to attention was Rabbi Michael Lerner.  I wasn’t impressed by his mourning prayer—just a little too post-orthodox for me—but the talk was powerful and, like Reverend Cosby’s—was a call for the personal commitment and conversion of the listener.

I didn’t get to hear all the speakers.  My ride came and there was a stop at the drugstore to drop off prescriptions, but as soon as I was back in my suite of rooms, my television was snapped on. 

I loved Billy Crystal’s talk.  I expected more from President Clinton but he didn’t do badly. He was warm and personal towards Mrs. Ali and the family and I suppose a more low-key approach was fitting for the end of the service to usher us back to the everyday world and the promise of a tomorrow in which I –and  I hope others—would have a different perspective on our mission in the world.  I was somewhat embarrassed by the blandness of Monsignor Kriegel. I am not sure what to make of the Buddhist chant; it seemed incongruous.  The Quranic verses were certainly appropriate to the occasion.  And the flowers were magnificent. 

The entire event confirmed in me my conviction and commitment to the Second Vatican Council’s declaration found in Nostra Aetate  

The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.

Secondly I learned that I need to pay more attention to those whom I often dismiss as being culturally, socially and historically marginal because I disagree with their foundational religious, intellectual, or cultural principles.  It is not my role to grade others—public figures or private individuals—for importance but rather to see the results they produce in their lives that effect change on either the global or the individual levels. 

Thirdly, I need to see that Islam—like the other religions, great and small of our world—produces people of wide vision, great tolerance, peace builders and reconcilers and not fall into the trap that only Christian trees bear good fruit.  While I have always defended those who faith follows different doctrines than mine, I do have a strong streak of Christian chauvinism that Friday’s service proved needs rethinking.  And I need to acknowledge that there are those for whom religious faith of any sort is not central to, or even part of, their lives but whose contribution to the betterment of our world far surpasses my own. 

And finally I think—I hope—that I have learned that the future requires people of any and all religious beliefs to work together in mutual respect with all people of good will in taking responsibility for making our world better. 

Is Vatican II in Danger?-- III a closer look behind the scenes

Yesterday we spoke of how the ecumenical and inter-faith agenda of Vatican II has fared in the years since the Council. It might be important to clarify our terms. “Ecumenical” refers to relationships among Christian groups. “Inter-faith” refers to relationships among religious groups that do not share faith in Christ, or relationships between Christians and non-Christian religions. Thus Catholic-Presbyterian dialogues over worship, for example, would be Ecumenical. Catholic-Buddhist or Catholic-Jewish (or Muslim , Hindu etc.) dialogues or collaborative charities, or other efforts would be “Inter-faith.” We obviously have much more in common with other groups that profess faith in Jesus Christ as Son of God and Savior than we do with groups that may recognize him as a Prophet (Islam) or a Holy Man (Hinduism) or who see him as simply a historical or mythological figure. There is therefore a sort of hierarchy of relationships. We have more in common with Jews, for example, than other non-Christian religions as we see that we share with them the Revelation of the Law and the Prophets given to the People of Israel. We share with Jews—and Muslims—the Abrahamic faith in the One God which gives us a closer tie with Islam than with the non-Abrahamic faiths. But while we do not share the faith in the One God revealed to Abraham with Buddhists or Hindus or others there is much truth in the wide spectrum of Asian religions—and indeed many of the indigenous religions of the world and at Vatican II the Catholic Church explicitly acknowledges this truth and affirms that we Catholics do not reject any element of this truth. The Council Fathers declared
The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. (NA para2)
This statement is a bone of contention for many who reject—in whole or in part—the Second Vatican Council. In fact there are three decrees of the Council which are extremely contentious—and I am not counting the decree on the Liturgy among them. That is an entirely separate issue and not nearly as divisive—though it has been divisive enough—as the three I will mention. They are the Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Reintegratio), the Decree on Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), and the Decree on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae). Opponents of the Council claim that these decrees represent a total reversal of the Church’s doctrine from before Council. And they are correct. The second Vatican Council did a 180 degree about-face on what the Catholic Church had taught on Ecumenism, Non-Christian Religions, and Religious Liberty. Some of the opponents of the Council have gone so far as to claim that this reversal, as a rejection of previously defined magisterial teaching, is heresy and therefore the “popes” who have supported it (John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and now Benedict XVI) are—as heretics—barred from the papal office and that the Chair of Peter is and has been since the Council began—empty. They are called “sede-vacantists” which comes from the Latin for “empty chair” (sede vacante). They reject all and everything about the Second Vatican Council.
A slightly less extremist position are the followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. While they are known mostly for their rejection of the new Liturgy, the Archbishop’s major complaint about the Council was the same complaint of the sede-vacantists, namely that the those three conciliar documents represent a repudiation of doctrines taught by the Popes and Councils and held by the faithful before the Second Vatican Council. Particularly troubling to Archbishop Lefebvre was the Document on Religious Liberty. Lefebvre came from a family whose political (and religious) ties were to a faction in French politics that are dedicated to restoring the Monarchy and reversing the French Revolution. Ever since the nineteenth century there has been a small but dedicated ultra-Catholic faction in France that seeks to establish the ancien regime with its alliance of Throne and Altar. Americans are generally not aware of this but the Catholic Church taught—up until the Second Vatican Council—that the Union of (the Catholic) Church and State was the political ideal and that Catholics had a duty towards political action that would establish the Catholic Church as the official State Religion—with restrictions on and even prohibition of other religious groups—in whatever nation they lived. This doctrine was generally overlooked in the United States as it was on conflict with our Constitution but there are some extreme right-wing Catholics—mostly in the Sede Vacantist group—who do still teach it today. Solange Hertz would be one; Atila Sinke Guimarães is another. This school not only represents a renunciation of the Second Vatican Council, but of Western culture since the Enlightenment with its positive values (I for one do not think all the values of the Enlightenment are positive) of equality of persons under law, freedom of conscience, republican government and other elements that provided the founders of our nation with the foundational principles of the American Revolution and Constitution. We will touch on this topic in future blogs when we treat some of the reasons for Anti-Catholicism in American history. Those voices who, especially in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, claimed that Catholics could not be good Americans actually knew Church teaching better than most American Catholics who did not see a conflict between their Church and their loyalty to the United States—but all that is for the future.
While the Holy See does not take the Sede-Vacantists seriously—and for the most part they, like Mrs. Hertz and her friends—are people who have constructed a bit of psychotic bubble, a universe of alternative realities, both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have made serious overtures to the Lefebvrist camp. Indeed Pope Benedict has lifted the excommunication and received them back into the Church without clearing up the Lefebvrist dissent from the Council. This is problematic for a variety of reasons. First it legitimizes dissent from official Church teaching. Secondly it may require revisiting the Council and its decrees to try to find ways to accommodate the Lefebvrists. This may explain one of the reasons for a reinterpretation—usually claimed to be an “authentic interpretation” of the Conciliar Documents. If this is so it will open yet more issues for while the Lefebvrists are willing to tolerate the existence of the “new liturgy” as long as they don’t have to use it, they are quite firm on rejecting the doctrinal changes that have permitted Ecumenical and Inter-faith relationships to develop on any official level.
When one recalls the heady enthusiasm of the Coinciliar years, Ecumenism has been for the most part hugely disappointing. I don’t think that any of us expected that Inter-religious dialogue would progress beyond the point of mutual respect and collaboration in projects that better the lives of people both locally and around the globe. It still has the promise to do that and in the process we have learned about some common ground that has been mutually beneficial. This has not been without controversy, however, particularly in the area of the influence of Buddhist and Hindu meditation techniques. But we had great hopes for Ecumenism during and after the Council. Forty years ago many of us thought that by this time we would have come to the point of, if not corporate reunion, at least sacramental sharing. There are reasons why this has not happened and not all the blame goes on the Catholic side. As I had written previously, the decision by most Protestant and Anglican Churches in the favor of the ordination of women has been a huge stumbling block . Underneath the surface is also a very different theology of human sexuality, manifest not only in divergent views of homosexuality but in the role of sex in marriage. There is also a different anthropology that gives a different level of urgency to the abortion issue as well as questions of embryonic stem-cells, in-vitro fertilization, genetic engineering and other topics very pertinent to today’s world. But our mistake, I believe, in not making greater progress while there was still much consensus on these other issues, was that we did not talk frankly and openly about our different ecclesiologies and theologies of the Sacrament of Orders. We avoided the tough questions where feelings are sensitive. Now we have several more tough and sensitive questions and it will be all the more difficult to resolve them. Far from backing off from Ecumenical dialogues we need to sit down, indeed chain ourselves to the table, and examine all the neuralgic points in full detail, ready on both sides (or all sides) to listen and open to being convinced (note, I said open, not predetermined). We still need the polite gestures and cordial ceremonial gatherings but we also need “to talk turkey.” Reconciliation will never come about without honest, truthful, frank, conversation, indeed argument. Somewhere here I have passed from history-in-the-making to theological turf where I have sworn not to go, so better to end this here. Next installment of Vatican II—in Danger? will be on the liturgy but probably not for a few days. I want to cover the issues of the nuns on the battlefields of the Civil War first.

The image today is a Buddhist monk with some Catholic Sisters at the beatification of Mother Teresa of Calcutta in 2003