Michelangelo's Creation of Eve - Sistine Chapel

One of my long term interests has been the field of the physical sciences – all branches including biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc. As an anthropologist, I’m always watching for new information about humans as a species (the physical science side) and as beings with meaning systems that help them make sense of the world around them (the social science side).

A few years ago, (OK so it was a lot of years ago – 1988), I read about the discovery in central Africa of the remains of a woman who seems to be ancestral to all current living human beings. The folks who found her remains and were studying them dubbed her “Eve,” or “Mitochondrial Eve.”

“Eve” came to my attention again this week because of this headline on www.msn.com, “Age confirmed for ‘Eve,’ mother of all humans.” The article explains that mitochondrial DNA from a woman living approximately 200,000 years ago is shared in an unbroken line by all living humans today. This report of the study confirming the age estimates of the original researches explains how the age estimate was reached and notes that “Eve” was not the first or only woman living at the time. It’s just that for whatever reason, only her mitochondrial DNA has survived in unbroken succession to contemporary humans. All other lines ended at some point when women of the line had only sons. Mitochodrial DNA is found only in human ova (eggs), so passes only along the female line. (Mitochondria are organelles present in human cells, serving as the powerhouses that produce the energy needed for life.)

For folks who come from a religious tradition in which the first woman was also called “Eve,” (“mother of all the living” Gn 3:20), the choice of name for this ancient woman resonates on many levels.

As school is starting again in the US, the question of how the origins of the human species occurred will almost inevitably be raised again in school districts and perhaps even courts. Bishop James Ussher (1581-1656) calculated that according to the Bible, creation occurred the night preceding October 23, 4004 BC according to the Julian calendar. Some very deeply earnest people believe that his timeline is correct. They are very concerned that their children are being harmed by educational programs that teach otherwise.

The purpose of this post is not to open that whole can of worms.

Our Catholic tradition does not insist that the early accounts of the creation, the great flood, or even the lives of the Patriarchs and other Biblical figures were literally, historically true. We have no problem with the idea that creation could have occurred over a period of billions of years, or that it could still be on-going. So it really doesn’t matter whether all descended from one woman and one man around 6,000 years ago or 200,000 years ago or 1 million years ago.

This is where it gets to be fun to be an anthropologist. The issue is how we explain the world around us. How did we all get here? Why do we do things differently from the way others do them? Are they human too? Why do we do things that hurt others? Why is it so hard to do what we know is right? Is it really right?

Teasing out the strands of meaning that bind together the members of a culture takes a long time. Meaning is embedded within the fabric of social relations. It seems so obvious to a member of a culture that theirs is the only way to understand life and social interaction that folks who don’t share that system of meaning may be seen as less than human. It’s a problem shared  by groups of people (or “peoples”) around the world, and is at the root of a lot of the larger problems we have today as citizens of a global community.

The thing that makes the dating of the life of “Eve” so exciting for me is that it makes so clear the reality that despite the myriad ways we humans have found for explaining the world around us, within us, and between us, we all share a common biological heritage. We are all sisters and brothers. Our explanations of reality are often different. Even within one country, culture or family, we may explain things differently. But underneath all the diversity, we are one family.

As we move forward, we must remember this reality. We are sisters and brothers. Muslims and Christians and Jews, and Hindus and Buddhists and Taoists and those of tribal faiths and those of no faith at all — all are brothers and sisters. May the Lord bless us with a deep awareness of this gift and the faithfulness to live in peace and justice and love on this world we share.

There is a growing cottage industry of books attempting to prove or disprove the existence of God. Today, on this spot on the Church calendar devoted to St. Bonaventure (July 15), reflection on his blending of the rational and the spiritual is even more important than when he formulated it seven centuries ago.

Unfortunately, we live in a time of two simplistic approaches. One claims that religion is literally a superstitious hangover from the time of Bonaventure – the late Middle Ages – and has no basis in rational scientific thought. The inhumanity to which we have been reduced by the rational technological world destroys our spirit just as surely as the dogma of the religious. The scientific rationalists show that there is no empirical proof for the existence of God and the literalist acceptance of the Bible only heaps on further irrationality. The spiritualists of the New Age, on the other hand, are concerned about energy flows, the design of built spaces and the sacred diffuse life force emanating from the planet, with its animate and inanimate manifestations.

As much as we might like to think that these debates are new, they are as old as recorded civilization. Christianity is unusual in the sense that it holds and affirms the supra-rationality of faith in the unknowable and then elaborates the faith experience and its doctrinal content in a rational manner. To say it in more simple terms, the Christian experiences and creates reality within the faith experience itself. Given the inherent order of creation itself, this experience reveals and elaborates that core capability of the human, which is critical reason. Creation is sacred and diaphanous and faith enlightens our minds and leads them to the perfect knowledge revealed in Christ.

These view are presented mystically, poetically, and rationally in St. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium Mentis Ad Deum (The Mind’s Road to God). This small book is in many ways a meditation on the the vision of Christ by St. Francis on Mount Alverno, in which the saint becomes so identified with the Risen Christ that he receives the stigmata and the five wounds appear on his body.

How can thinking people believe is the post modern question. How can people with systematic rationalized collections of belief be spiritual is the New Age question. In the post modern age, empirical science is truth. In the New Age there is my truth, my karma, and your truth, your karma. No faith is required. No revelation is possible. There is no enlightenment and encounter with the Divine - a Divine that we cannot control with mathematical models or the arrangement of crystals.

Bonaventure provides a guide to living for the post-modern / New Age Christian – delightfully encountering the “vestigia Trinitatis,” the footprints of the Trinity in creation, learning and understanding in enlightenment, and caught up in the wonder of the divine.

April 21 is the feast of St. Anselm of Canterbury, Doctor of the Church and the first scholastic philosopher of Christian theology. For Anselm faith and reason were not mutually exclusive. In fact, they went hand in hand. The following quote sets forth his approach to faith and its exploration.

“Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this, too, I believe, that, unless I first believe, I shall not understand.”

John Dominic Crossan, the co-founder of the Jesus Seminar, is well known for his iconoclastic views on the historical Jesus. Excavating Jesus, written with archaeologist Jonathan Reed, is stimulating and challenging. Crossan’s argument that Jesus was a Galilean peasant who engendered a Kingdom movement after the murder of John the Baptist is compelling to me as an anthropologist, but it doesn’t seem to be the whole story.

The blending of archaeology and exegesis is intriguing. The use of ancient historical sources, such as Josephus and Pliny, and literature not included in the Bible, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Gospels, weaves a colorful and variegated tapestry. Is this the actual Jesus of history?

I’m not entirely convinced. To me it seems implausible that such a movement could arise from so unremarkable a prophet. The number of Jews killed by Rome for posing as popular leaders is very large. Why would one be singled out for such an inflation into the Word made flesh? If the Gospel stories are to be taken as parables or mythic metaphors about a deeper meaning, who created this literature and for what reason? If Christianity were created in this way, it would be a social and cultural process without parallel. Zoroaster (the Persian priest who founded Zoroastrianism), Sidartha Gauthama, (the founder of Bhuddism), and the Prophet Mohammed (the founder of Islam), are remarkable historical figures – but none of them according to their followers claimed to be God.

If somehow the peasant founder or spokesman for a resistance or “terrorist” movement is magnified by his followers, why would devout Jews be so blasphemous as to make him into the messiah and a god? Somewhere there is a missing link between this peasant of history and the Christ of history.

It is very curious how Crossan holds the Gospel accounts up to the measure of Josephus’s history. Crossan then compares the claims of other contemporary religions as part of a general magical mentality. Somehow, Josephus could write from an historical perspective of relating true events but the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus are to be seen as parable and allegory? That isn’t to say that various oral and written sources weren’t involved in the development of the Gospel accounts. In fact Crossan goes to some effort to stress that the early Christian community took them to be true and those involved in their composition believed in their veracity.

All in all, there is still a core of speculation in this fascinating book. It is an attempt to put many puzzle pieces together. It seems, though, that the Jesus he finds would not be capable of inspiring a Jesus movement that would grow into Christianity. In many respects, Crossan’s Jesus of history could inspire a movement, but it does not seem plausible that it would endure, let alone become a world religion.

Portrait of St. Dominic by Gionvanni Bellini - 16th century

Greetings and Happy Feast Day to our Dominican brothers and sisters.

St. Dominic was one of the first founders of a religious order to emphasize the importance of education and logic in thinking and teaching about God. He had noticed that Cathar/Albigensian preachers were not ignorant men but rather cultured, educated people living righteous lives. He reasoned that only equally educated and rational teachers/preachers would be able to turn the followers of the Cathar preachers away from heresy and back to traditional Christian beliefs. He and his companions set out to do just that, while always seeking truth wherever it might be found.

St. Dominic is the patron saint of astronomers, astronomy, the Dominican Republic, falsely accused people and the Santo Domingo Indian pueblo.

I’m curious and haven’t found the answer to this question. Why is he the patron saint of astronomers/astronomy? I’d love to hear from anyone who knows.

Orbis Books has published a new work by Irish Catholic priest, Diarmuid O’Murchu, entitled Ancestral Grace. It  offers a challenging new perspective on evolution, environmental bioregionalism, Christian tradition and their reconciliation into a comprehensive and optimistic vision of the future of humanity.

I offer this quote from the book and invite you to consider it with open mind and heart.

Being human is the gateway to access divine meaning. Indeed, ancestral grace thrives on the great story of humans being receptive and responsive to divine initiative over several million years. The humanity of Jesus is the key that unlocks the secrets of divinity, not the opposite, as we have believed for much of the Christian era. The mystery of God becomes transparent in the mystery of the human. . . Jesus is the first disciple of ancestral grace.

~ Diarmuid O’Murchu

Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam

Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam. offered some interesting thoughts about the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ (AKA Corpus Christi) today in his homily and his blog. He has graciously agreed to allow me to share them in a post for this feast.

The Inner Meaning

During this time of year when there are so many of our rites of passage taking place––weddings, graduations, ordinations (even birthdays)––it’s interesting to take a look at the purpose of ritual. Anthropologically speaking, a ritual is a way of expressing and passing on our understanding of reality or of an experience to someone else. So, for instance, a graduation is not about a piece of paper and a cap and gown: it’s weightier, it’s heavy; that’s why tears flow from the eyes of parents as they see their child graduate or get married. The ritual is trying to carry all those memories and meanings, and summarize them in a single gesture: an exchange of rings, the laying on of hands, a birthday card, an embrace, throwing a shovelful of dirt on a coffin: all these rituals mean more than they mean, they carry an almost indescribable load of treasures.

In the Roman rite we celebrate the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ this week, and it’s safe to ask what Jesus was trying to convey to his disciples when he performed this rather odd ritual––not just breaking the bread and passing out the cup, but claiming that it was his very self. What exactly was he asking them to remember when they did it over and over again? I thought of five things, which certainly don’t exhaust the list of possible meanings.

1. First of all, this gesture looks backward and forward at Jesus’own life. Backward in that Jesus’ whole life had been spent being broken and passed out; his whole life had been dedicated to feeding those around him: taking care of their bodily needs through healing and feeding; and also feeding and healing them in a real way with the Wisdom of God, this incredible good news of God’s undying boundless care for every single hair on the head of very single human being from the greatest to––especially––the least. This ritual also looked ahead to the next day when Jesus allowed his body to be broken like bread and his blood poured out like wine––to say that it’s alright: you can survive even this, your real self cannot be annihilated, but like a seed that falls into the earth and dies it will yield a rich harvest of resurrection life.

2. This ritual symbolized––again what Jesus’ whole life symbolized––that Divine Love gives itself to humanity––that’s what God is like! The Divine is present, really present: divine love is offering itself to the world in this ritual meal.

3. This ritual also conveyed (and conveys) that this Divine Mystery is present everywhere, in creation, “in the earth and its produce.” Unfortunately the kind of hosts we use and our ornate chalices can actually hide the fact that this is actually wheat and grapes, real food: “which earth had given,” as we say, “fruit of the earth.” I think that this conveys that all matter is meant to be brought into right relationship with God, and that all matter can reveal and be a vehicle for the Grace of God. St Irenaeus wrote,

“This is why he took a part of creation, gave thanks and said: This is my body. In the same way he declared that the cup, an element of the same creation as ourselves, was his blood: he taught them that this was the new sacrifice of the new covenant.” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies)

But we add a line to the prayer over the gifts: it’s not just what ”the earth has given,” or “the fruit of the earth”; it’s also the work of human hands. There is a beautiful prayer of Teihard de Chardin:

I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar––
And on it I will offer you all the labors and sufferings of the world…
I will place on the paten the harvest to be won by labor. . .
Into my chalice I will pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the Earth’s fruits.

So, the fruit of the earth and the work of our hands all become vehicles for God’s grace, all is meant to be brought into right relationship with God.

4. This ritual is also meant to convey to us that God wants us to participate in the work of creation, and in divinity itself. That’s why we pray that incredible prayer, “by the mystery of the water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who came to share in our humanity.”

5. And how do we participate? Well, that’s the last thing I want to mention that this ritual is trying to convey (though we could go on and on): it conveys that this divine mystery is especially present whenever and wherever human beings meet and share together, that God is present in every gesture of unselfish love, in every occasion of someone laying down their life for another. That’s why we read the story of the washing of the feet before we celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday.

The Hebrews didn’t need another ritual, another sacrifice; we don’t need another ritual; and God certainly didn’t and doesn’t either. The prophets leading up to Jesus kept telling the people how God was sick of their sacrifices and rituals! Jesus himself quotes the prophet Hosea twice saying: “Go and learn the meaning of these words, ‘It is love that I desire, not sacrifice. Knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.’”

The church, and this ritual, has no other purpose but to communicate and convey and reveal that––the love and knowledge of God that is hidden in the heart of creation and poured into the center of every human being as our very source and our ground. This is what we will be judged on as a church, as individuals, as communities and as a whole: not the forms of our rituals and doctrines, but by the reality of the love and knowledge of God that we manifest.

Bede Griffiths wrote that: “All myth and ritual, all doctrine and sacrament, is but a means to awaken our souls to this hidden mystery, to allow the divine presence to make itself known.”

So: as we participate in this ritual, as we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, and/or when we gaze at the reserved Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacle or in a monstrance, let’s remember how weighty it is, how much it carries and conveys. And let’s especially pray that it would awaken us to the mystery of the knowledge of God, and the love of God that is poured into our hearts, so that we might make it manifest in our world, so that we might be the body and blood of Christ––that we might be broken and poured out for the sake of the world as Jesus was.

cyprian
14 june 09

Robin Young of National Public Radio’s “Here and Now” interviewed one of the patients of murdered late-term abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller.

“We speak with a former patient of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, the Wichita, Kansas doctor who was murdered on Sunday. She explains why the procedure was so necessary for her.”

Abortions past the 20 week “age of viability” are difficult to justify by pro-choice advocates. How could the loss of one of the three physicians who performs these procedures, which are less than 1% of abortions, represent any moral or clinical loss? The implications for the physical and mental health of families becomes evident in this interview. The values presented in this story are about the desire and wonder of having children, the anguish of carrying a doomed child, the inability of doctors to present the couple with any real alternatives.

An earlier ban on late term or “partial birth” abortions provides an exception for the health of the mother. Aren’t these just cavalier acts of barbarism by selfish women?

What would you do with a child that you wanted very much but who would not survive birth? What would be the most loving and caring thing to do? This is a very compelling story that should give us pause when we want to throw the first stone.

My Late-Term Abortion
President Bush’s attempt to ban partial-birth abortions threatens all late-term procedures. But in my case, everyone said it was the right thing to do — even my Catholic father and Republican father-in-law. This article provides another instructive example from 2004 published in the Boston Globe.

In this second case, the situation seems to be less clear cut since the birth of this child would have meant a short and very unacceptable quality of life for the child as judged by the parents.

In both cases there were voices which opposed the choices made by the parents. Reviewing both cases is useful in terms of gaining a more nuanced perspective on the ethical and moral issues involved and the struggles of these couples.

The supper at Emmaus' (1958) by Ceri Richards (1903-1970)

My favorite story is the Disciples on the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24: 13-35). Michael Traynor of the Lesscoolthanyou Channel captures the experience of the disciple before the Breaking of the Bread in a way that evokes a very current state of affairs.

Borgognone 1510

Easter time in the 21st century is a curious season. We are living in a time in which the rationality of the Enlightenment has been obliterated by the irrational violence and deconstruction of the Modern Era which ended with the creation of the atom bomb. In the 20th century we saw the the rise of the irrational as a counter to the idea of reason as the engine of human progress. Advances in science and engineering led to death on a massive scale whether in its industrial production form in the genocide of Jews and other peoples or its explosion from the sky in carpet bombing of Dresden or the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The darkness within the brilliance of the human heart and mind was also manifest in the Vietnam War epic movie “Apocalypse Now” based on the theme that facing the horror of one’s evil can only lead to self destruction.

So here we are on the cusp of the third millennium. Human progress seems more of an illusion. In fact, our Post-Modern sensibility is all about the inability of reason and science to get at ultimate truth. Everything is examined and found wanting. Physics has become the study of relativity, uncertainty, and mathematical models. Religion and philosophy are the products of language we create. The scriptures of Christianity are cultural creations which tell us more of the people who wrote them. They are robbed of their revelation.

Human romance and love are reduced to methods for the socio-biological dispersion of one’s genetic load. Religious experience is suspect because there is no way to know whether one is just engaging in psychological projection to create a hideout from the ultimate reality of the purposelessness of human existence. We are here by virtue of  a cosmic accident with a very low probability.

In our world, there is the torture and death of Good Friday but there is no need for a Resurrection or any life beyond our current suffering because it is not possible since we can never know the nature anything beyond nature with any certainty. So here is the greatest event of all human history and our greatest personal hope – the Resurrection and it is a non-event on a beautiful spring day that is to be borne with a grim courage in a time when miracles cannot happen.

The news is too good. Maybe that is why we are stuck on the Friday of Crucifixion. The pain we know is better than risking its loss in the certain joy of Resurrection. As people of the Resurrection we would have to leave too much behind – hurt, anger, fear, and death.