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.

photo by Rachel J Allen

The following is a substantial excerpt from Franciscan Richard Rohr’s article in the July August 2002 issue of Sojourners Magazine “Beyond Crime and Punishment” dealing with the clerical sex abuse scandal. Fr. Rohr is the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation and is a contributing editor at Sojourners

“The Myth of Male Celibacy”

THE REVELATIONS OF the last year seem to be the beginning of the end of what some call “the myth of celibacy.” It’s not that male celibacy was always false or deceitful, but it was in great part an artificial construct. Men, with the best of original intentions, found out that they were not the mystics that celibacy demanded. That is exactly the point. Celibacy, at least in the male, is a most rare gift. To succeed, it demands conscious communion with God at a rather mature level, it demands many transitions and new justifications at each stage of life, and it demands a specific creative call besides. Many who have ostensibly “succeeded” at it have often, by the second half of life, actually not succeeded—in the sense of becoming a God lover, a human lover, and a happy man besides.

Practically, however, the demand for celibacy as a prerequisite for ministry is a setup for so many false takers. Not bad men, just men who are still on a journey: young men who need identity; insecure or ambitious men who need status; passionate men who need containment for their passions; men who are pleasing their pious mothers or earning their Catholic father’s approval; men who think “the sacred” will prevent their feared homosexuality, their wild heterosexual hormones, or their pedophilia; men with arrested human development who seek to overcompensate by identification with a strong group; men who do not know how to relate to other people and to women in particular.

None of these are bad men; they are just on a many-staged journey, and we have provided them an attractive way-station that often seems to work—for a while. But then they go on to the next stage and find themselves trapped, searching, conflicted, split, acting out, or repressing in, and often at variance with their now public and professed image.

The process lends itself to a Jekyll-and-Hyde syndrome, even among men who are very honest and humble in other areas. The price is far too high once you have committed your life publicly and sacredly. I know how hard it continues to be for me, my closest priest friends, and many that I have counseled and confessed. Many of us stay in not because we believe the official ideology of celibacy anymore, but because we believe in our work, we love the people, and we also know God’s mercy. But that loss of belief in the very ideology is at the heart of the whole problem now. We cannot prop up with law and social pressure what the Spirit does not appear to be sustaining. The substructure has collapsed. “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” (Psalm 127:1).

Add to that a rather large superstructure of ascribed status and security, and we have a system that is set up for collapse. Studies of male initiation say it is dangerous to give ascribed status to a man who has not journeyed into powerlessness. He will likely not know how to handle power, and may even abuse it, as we have now seen.

In general, I think healthy male celibacy is rare, and it probably is most healthy as an “initiation” stage to attain boundaries, discipline, integrity, depth, and surrender to God. In the long run, most men, as the Buddha statues illustrate, need to have one hand touching the earth, the concrete, the physical, the material, the sexual. If they do not, the other hand usually points nowhere.

WE SHOULD MOVE ahead reaffirming our approach to grace, healing, mercy, solidarity with sinners, patience, and transformation—while also cooperating with the social system whenever there are true victims’ rights to be redressed. We should do this generously, magnanimously, and repentantly.

We Catholics should also see celibacy as primarily an intense initiation course of limited (one to 10) years, much like the monks in many Asian countries. Celibacy has much to teach the young male about himself, about real passion, prayer, loving others, and his True Self in God. We dare not lose this wonderful discipline and container. (Who knows, maybe both Jesus and Paul were still in that early period of life?!) It could be a part of most Catholic seminarians’ training, and during that time much personal growth could take place. Some would likely choose it as a permanent state. Most would not.

How differently the entire process of priestly formation would be configured. What a gift to the religious orders (where celibacy is essential). Our precise charism would become clear, although we would surely become much smaller. What an opening to the many fine men who are attracted to a marriage partner. And what focused intensity this could give to spiritual formation during that celibacy period, instead of all of the hoop games, telling the directors what they want to hear, mental reservations, non self-knowledge, acting out, and “submarine” behavior that make many seminaries a haven for unhealth. Seminaries would not drive away sincere spiritual seekers, but would attract them. Not men looking for roles, titles, and uniforms to disguise identity, but men looking for holiness and God through which to express identity.

Male sexuality does not go away. It is not easily sublimated or integrated. It is either expressed healthily or it goes underground in a thousand different ways. Sex is and probably always will be a central issue for most males, and it can never develop honestly inside of a “hothouse” of prearranged final conclusions.

We should not be looking for a system where mistakes can never happen, but just a system that can distinguish health from unhealth and holiness from hiding. Like no other institution, the church should be the most prepared to deal with mistakes. That is our business. The steps to maturity are necessarily immature. Let’s start by mentoring the good and the true, and also surrendering to that mystery of grace, forgiveness, and transformation that is our birthright as Christians. Many priests and seminarians have always done this, and I hope this gives them the courage to know why and how they are both “sons and heirs” of a true wisdom tradition. Such disciplined sons, and only such sons, have earned the authority of “fathers.”

Richard Rohr, OFM, is founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The Cardinal Newman Society has launched a petition drive objecting to President Barack Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame University’s commencement this year. Here is another approach to the issue.

George B. York III sent this letter to the National Catholic Reporter. It is presented here by permission of the author.

God and Man at Notre Dame

Notre Dame’s President, Fr. Jenkins, has extended
an invitation to President Obama to speak on
campus; the President has accepted. Some object,
asking, How could the President of Notre Dame
compromise with abortion? Closely observing
Jesus’ behavior in the Gospel of Luke, (7:40 and
following), I find Fr.Jenkins’ position consistent
with Jesus’ behavior, and in no way a compromise
with abortion.

In the story of Jesus’ evening in Simon’s
house an outsider, a woman, washes Jesus’ feet
with her tears and dries them with her hair. Simon
thinks, `Doesn’t he know what kind of woman she
is?’ Knowing what Simon is thinking, Jesus
surprises him by simply pointing to ways in which
Simon did not welcome Jesus; in so doing, Jesus
invites Simon to convert from hypocrisy to a
different way of judging and acting toward fellow
humans. While Jesus is uncompromising toward
misdeeds or sin, isn’t he also uncompromising when
it comes to accepting others, friend and foe alike, in
this case, welcoming the woman and challenging
but not rejecting Simon? Are humans defined only
by their real or supposed misdeeds?

About the strategy of some of his brother
bishops to `make war’ on abortion, South Dakota
Catholic Bishop Cupich told them: `…a prophecy of
denunciation quickly wears thin …what we need is a
prophecy of solidarity, with the community we
serve and the nation that we live in’. (quoted in
Commonweal Editorial, 5/12/08).

The way of implementing a prophecy of
solidarity is indicated by American Jesuit
Cardinal Avery Dulles. In commenting on
envisioning unity among Christians; he says, `The
first condition . . . is that the various Christian
communities be ready to speak and listen to one
another. . . . The process of growth through mutual
attestation will probably never reach its final
consummation within historical time, but it can
bring palpable results. . . . The result to be sought is
unity in diversity.’ (First Things, ‘07)

Those are not just a Christian condition and
result; they are fully human. Does experience not
validate a claim that the better way between
different, opposed individuals and groups is one
leading to “unity in diversity”? Are exclusion and
isolation anything but impotent and sterile? Aren’t
Simon and the woman drawn within a more human
process? As a result don’t they depart from their
evening with their ability to hear reason and with
their freedom intact? In fact, is it not credible that
both Simon and the woman are invited, if not
actually drawn, closer not only to Jesus but also to
one another? Finally, to return to Bishop Cupich’s
solidarity, doesn’t `E pluribus unum’ mean unity in
diversity — union, not in sameness, but in
difference?

Such solidarity is impossible when one’s
starting point is that expressed in Simon’s initial
attitude: “Doesn’t Jesus know what kind of woman
she is?” Therefore, I have to wonder, Is it truly
Christian or even human to start, as some seem to
start, with a question like: “Doesn’t Fr. Jenkins
knowwhat kind of man Obama is?”

Isn’t the call to every Christian to put on the
mind of Jesus who Christians believe emptied
himself of power and the ways of power and drew
others neither by compromise with sin nor by
isolating rejection or coercion? To the extent a so-
called `prophecy of denunciation’ expresses a spirit
like that of the Pharisees (Simon’s initial attitude),
isn’t it a betrayal of the mind of Jesus? ? Isn’t such
prophecy animated by a spirit aiming at institutional
control, expressing a desire to force conformity in
the name of real or supposed truth? In the case of
NotreDame, doesn’t it express an ill-advised wish to
forceFr. Jenkins to dis-invite a supposedly unclean
Obama?

To the extent your answer is `Yes’, you see
why I say that Fr. Jenkin’s invitation to Obama
could be called a compromise with abortion only if
Jesus’ firm but friendly challenge to Simon could be
called a compromise with hypocrisy.

George B. York, lives in Denver. His
publication, `Michel de Certeau or Union in
Difference’ (2009, ISBN 978 0 85244 684 3),
concerns Faith in the understanding of a celebrated
French Jesuit historian.

There are all kinds of stories of growing up Catholic but very few that focus on that core of the culture that is the Sign of the Cross. “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” This Trinitarian invocation begins and ends almost every event, every ritual, every meal – whether it is a blessing pronounced by the Pope or the gesture we learn from our parents before we can talk.

For all of Catholicism’s lengthy tradition, its mantras and catchphrases, Trinity Sunday is the only Sunday that fails to attempt in words what is incomprehensible. The priest who has a sermon for each Sunday looks into his bag or online list of stock themes, works hard on the presentation, and raises the white flag of surrender as he steps into the pulpit. The standard disclaimer is “We really cannot understand the Trinity. It is a matter of faith.” After confusing those who are awake in the congregation with St. Patrick’s shamrock “three in one” or various other analogies, he repeats the opening disclaimer and makes a hasty retreat to the Nicene Creed, where we sleepwalk our way through beautiful Trinitarian poetry that we ignore out of repetition. “…Light from light, True God from True God, Begotten not made, One in Being with the Father…”

For those of us who graduated from Catholic schools and had a good review of the Trinitarian controversies of the first three centuries and the further travails of this teaching in Church history, the sense of incomprehensibility grows.

William Paul Young’s allegory, The Shack, presents a weekend encounter with the Holy Trinity by a deeply wounded and grieving father. It is a mystical healing encounter that shows us that our concept of God has more to do with us than with the Divine. As a work of fiction it is easier for us to comprehend than the abstractions of theology. The contemporary setting and the issue of why the innocent are slaughtered make this central Mystery more accessible to us than the writings of the mystics who lived in different times and cultures.

Athan Smith tells us that his reading of The Shack brought the Trinity to the center of his life.

I encourage you to read the book. Once you do, that automatic gesture – the Sign of the Cross will be the gift that it is – an entry point to the very life of God.