Looking for the “Doorway to Compassion,” LGBT Catholics Find Doorway to Cathedral Closed

May 5, 2013 in Equality and Faith, LGBT Catholics, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | 4 comments

Reporting on today’s symbolic protest in New York against Cardinal Dolan’s recent likening of LGBT Catholics to “dirty hands” that needed to be washed clean, Joseph Amodeo describes how the group who simply wanted to enter the Cathedral with charcoal-blackened palms were treated:

At today’s vigil, we were greeted by four police cars, a captain, and eight uniformed officers. We were informed by the NYPD’s LGBT liaison that the Archdiocese was prohibiting us from entering the Cathedral, because of our dirty hands. When we tried to enter the Cathedral, security advised us that we could not enter. The representative for the Cathedral said that we could only enter the church if we washed our hands. I truly believe that Christ would have welcomed and embraced us. Instead, we stood vigil in front of the Cathedral for an hour. The Archdiocese’s response further reinforces the feeling of spiritual homelessness that many LGBT Catholics and their friends feel.
Dolan Dirty HandsHere in Honolulu, Marianist Fr. Bill Meyer, celebrating Mass today at the Mystical Rose Oratory at Chaminade University, spoke of what should be our lifelong effort to discover the “doorway to compassion.” Because wherever and whenever we are able to identify with others, no matter how different they seem, no matter how much they appear to be at odds with our understanding of the world, there in that space and in that moment, we welcome Jesus into our lives.

Cardinal Dolan’s shutting of the doors of the church in the faces of Catholics speaking their conscience and their faith breathes new life –in no doubt unintended ways– into lessons from the Gospel.  Instead of modelling the love of Jesus as it was manifested in story after story from the Gospels, today’s cold rebuff calls to mind the behavior of the Pharisees.

Matthew 23:13 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.”

Luke 11: 37-41
“When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal. Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.  You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.”

Has Cardinal Dolan refused others with truly dirty hands entry to the church? Has he called on NYPD to remove every Wall Street banker, every politician and every businessman or woman whose hands are stained with the blood and suffering of those who have been sent off to fight illegal wars, been put out of their homes through dishonest mortgage and re-financing practices, been made to work under exploitative labor practices, been denied help to feed their families? Have any of the people with hands dirtied by these practices been publicly denied entry to the church? If they have not, are we to conclude that “whited sepulchers” are more welcome in the church than people whose God-given sexuality makes clerics act in ways that Jesus would have denounced?

As Joseph Amodeo, organizer of today’s protest wrote: ” I and others are standing at the doorway to the Church knocking, seeking, and asking. By this action, I hope that the doors of the Cathedral will be opened to us not on a conditional basis, but rather with the understanding that we are all created in the image and likeness of God.”

We, who believe as Amodeo does, in a Gospel of love and acceptance, find strength in our faith that these words from the Gospel are to be taken seriously:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8

It’s a faith that anachronistic theology and misplaced power keep putting sorely to the test.

Will Pope Francis act to ensure a more Christ-like welcome to all?

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Building the Beloved Community: Hawaii, Malaysia and Beyond

May 3, 2013 in Cardinals, Equality and Faith, LGBT Families, Uncategorized, Women in the Church | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 comment

Puanani and Alimoni

Puanani Burgess (right) with Hogan Entrepreneur Alamoni Copney at a recent talk at Chaminade University. Pix: GInger Miller

The world that Puanani Burgess gets her audiences to visualize as she talks to them about “Building the Beloved Community” is peopled with her children and grandchildren, her husband and other family members and neighbors from her beloved rural Wai`anae. We hear about little Poha who remained disappointingly unmoved by the cows and horses and other sights and sounds of his neighborhood as his grandmother walked him around, pointing them out– until she bent down and realized that at his level, he was not seeing much beyond the long grass. Lifted up on her shoulders, he squealed in delight at the world now visible to him.

Seeing what others see. Feeling what they feel. That too was the lesson of the “weather ball.” This is a small squeezable ball that Puanani offers anyone who comes looking for advice or wanting to talk.  “Tell me what the weather is like inside you,” she asks, before they even begin talking about the issue at hand.

Leaders in the church. Heads of state. Politicians. Community organizers. All of us. We could all learn from the story of Poha and learning to see from his perspective. We would all be gentler and wiser if we used a weather ball with those whose lives we affect in ways big and small by our statements, actions and policies.

Does Being “Special” Preclude Being Equal?

Before Pope Francis tells women once again that they are “special” or reaffirms the actions taken to investigate the work of women religious in the United States, he could learn a few things by following the example of Poha’s grandmother. He might be surprised and enlightened by what the world looks like through the eyes of the women the church is so determined to police. The Pope has named a new advisory panel to help him with some much needed spring-cleaning of the Vatican. That’s the good news. The bad news is the panel is entirely drawn from the very group whose activities need to be cleaned up.

The advisory panel is made up of eight cardinals. All men, of course. They will pronounce on women’s reproductive rights and obligations among other things without the benefit of counsel from any women in their midst. They will tell women how they should behave, what they should think and how they should discern the lessons of faith and keep serving a church that regards them as “special”—just not equal. All this without once asking women to tell them what the weather is like inside their hearts and minds and the core of their being.

Who Exactly Has “Dirty Hands?”

Cardinal Dolan could also learn a thing or two from seeing the world as Poha sees it. And that “weather ball” might have kept him from issuing the disastrously patronizing newsletter in which he professed to welcome LGBT Catholics while likening their sexuality to having “dirty hands.” Pomp and power apparently have a way of making otherwise smart people tone deaf.

Malaysia: Building –or Fracturing –the Beloved Community

The stories coming out of Malaysia this General Election weekend attest to a similar “hearing” problem in high places. A country once known for being a model of racial tolerance and peaceful coexistence is riven by suspicion and high anxiety as stories go viral on the internet of voters being wiped off –or added to the rolls and there are troubling reports of obstacles in the way of a clean election. The good news here is that people are rising above racial and religious divides to go to the polls in greater numbers than ever before. They are more determined than ever before to press for clean government, the rule of law and a chance to regain the good name Malaysia once had as a healthy democracy with functioning checks and balances. The good name it had as a peaceful multi-religious, multi-racial society that was comfortable with its diversity till politicians made diversity a weapon with which to divide and conquer. Malaysians know better—and will say so with their vote on May 5.

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Malaysia Elections May 5: Churches Respond to Anti-Christian Campaign

May 2, 2013 in Christians in Malaysia, Free and Fair Elections, Malaysia General Elections, Politics and Religion, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Reproduced here is a commentary by Bob Teoh that appeared in the MalaysianInsider.com and MySinChew.com May 2. Links have been inserted to provide background.

Stung by the incendiary anti-Christian campaign in the run-up to Polling Day, Bumiputera churches in Sabah and Sarawak are hitting back with unprecedented vigour.

English: interior of St. Mary's Cathedral, Kua...

English: interior of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Kuala Lumpur (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A “pastoral communiqué” on the “Allah” issue has been hammered out to be circulated today, just two days before polling, to all city and interior churches. A copy of the communiqué was obtained by MySinchew today. The move is unprecedented in its unusually hard-hitting language which is uncharacteristic of Bumiputera pastors and church leaders who traditionally maintain a cordial relationship with the government.

 

“We, the native Christians of Sabah and Sarawak, have kept silent for a considerable length of time. Some have taken our silence to mean something else. Therefore, the time has now come for us to speak,” the communiqué said in its opening line. “Surely the way forward is no longer found in the status quo which expects the Bumiputera Church in Sabah and Sarawak to remain silent,” it added.

 

“Two-thirds of the Church in Malaysia is made up of Bumiputera Christians in Sabah and Sarawak. In this respect, we speak with pastoral and moral responsibility and authority against religious bigotry, racism and extremism in any form. But we are not alone as our non-Bumiputera brothers and sisters in Christ have also expressed similar concern over the ‘Allah’ issue on other occasions. We, therefore, speak as one voice,” the communiqué said.

 

Meanwhile, their non-Bumiputera counterparts in the peninsula issued an equally hard-hitting statement yesterday. The Christian Federation of Malaysia (CFM), the umbrella Christian body, issued a strongly-worded statement at what they call a “despicable and heinous” anti-Christian message on election campaign boards and demanded the Election Commission act swiftly to douse the sparks of such religious fear-mongering from catching fire once more.

 

“These fears are real given the recent history of Church burnings and threats to burn the Bible in Bahasa Malaysia,” said Rev Eu Hong Seng, chairman of CFM, and its executive committee.

 

“The message pits one community (Muslims) against Christians by spreading fear through scare tactics using the issue of ‘Allah’ which the High Court had allowed as a right to freedom of religion.”(The decision is under appeal by the government to be heard on May 8, three days after polling). Barisan Nasional has since denied the allegations and claimed it did not put up the advertising boards. Clearly upset with [Prime Minister] Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s flip-flop over the “Allah” and Aliktab controversy, the Bumiputera communiqué pointed out that “when the caretaker prime minister first mooted the Global Movement of Moderates, we were enthusiastic in extending our support for the initiative. But ironically, the movement is being incessantly and blatantly distracted by unscrupulous elements from within its own ranks,whose strange proclivity is leaning more towards racism and extremism.”

 

“A manifestation of such extremism is the extent to which fringe groups within our midst would go to advance their racism and religious bigotry over the controversy of the use of the word ‘Allah’ to refer to God by non-Muslims. They have even suggested an open season for burning Bibles (pesta membakar Alkitab). Nothing can be more seditious and incendiary. Yet they were tolerated by the authorities,” it added.

 

Christ Church and Town Square, Melaka

Christ Church and Town Square, Melaka (Photo credit: Kirk Siang)

It argued that the “Allah” controversy is not really about religion as such but about unreasonable government policies and laws.

 “In the face of such unreasonableness we cannot and should not remain silent. The time for us to speak has come,” it said. It was also careful to point out that “indeed, in speaking we are mindful to extend love to those who may not agree with us. The essence of God is love (1 John 4:8). Thus we are compelled to love even our enemies (Matthew 5:44)”.

 

The outrage has been simmering for a while but it was at the recent biennial general meeting in Kuching of the Association of Sarawak Churches, the umbrella Christian body in the state, that its chairman, Rev Datuk Bolly Lapok, the Anglican Archbishop of Sarawak as well as the newly appointed Archbishop of the Anglican Church in Southeast Asia, gave his no holds-barred address.

 

Those involved in drafting the communiqué revealed that the body of the text was largely taken from the archbishop’s address with his consent. It was known as the three “Ks initiative” with members of the drafting committee including their lawyers drawn from Kuching, Kota Kinabalu and Kuala Lumpur scrutinising the numerous drafts. Meanwhile, most churches in Sabah and Sarawak, especially those in the remote interior, are shifting the Sunday worship to Saturday to ensure their members vote in time as polling there closes earlier at 1pm. — mysinchew.com

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Emma’s Revolution: “Peace. Salaam. Shalom.”

April 7, 2013 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 comments

Emma's Revolution

Sandy O (left) and Pat Humphries: Emma’s Revolution benefit concert in support of marriage equality.

Being at the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu yesterday evening was a very catholic experience. Not a sign of the cross anywhere, but plenty of light and air in the room, illuminating issues that go to the heart of Catholic social justice teaching.

It was an evening of song by a group—Emma’s Revolution—that takes its name from Emma Goldman who reputedly said: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” For a couple of hours, Pat Humphries and Sandy O, with Gary Johnson on keyboard and accordion, told stories of love, solidarity and yearning. And great commonsense.

Really, does it make any sense for us to be making life miserable for others when, poor or rich, powerful or powerless, we all are “washed by the very same rain?” Without exception we all are “swimming to the other side” and we will all arrive as naked as the day we were born.

They sang of earth’s largess as “gifts we’ve been given to share.” Words that could have been lifted straight out of the Gospels. Or a Catholic hymnal.

In the church where a sitting President had once gone to Sunday school, a church where his grandmother had worshipped, they sang with urgency of the need for “change we can believe in.” Songs that held both people and politicians accountable. Even as they celebrated the election of Barack Obama as an event that made the ground shift under people’s feet, unsettling us in ways that made us see each other differently, they offered the cautionary note that we, the people, need to stay vigilant. More than ever, we need to remind politicians of the promises on which they rode into office.

Emma’s Revolution paid homage to women’s ordination and LGBT rights. To the need to do a better job of looking after our planet and each other. They looked at the quest for marriage equality through the prism of simply wanting to know that the community acknowledged their commitment and “had their backs.” They recognized Native Hawaiian activists for civil unions, Tambry  and Suzanne Young  who were in the audience.

They made the global matter by making it personal and local.  They made their advocacy on behalf of the planet local, noting that Hawaii now experiences only 170 days of trade winds, not the 220 it once enjoyed, describing the wind turbines they had seen on the way to Matsumoto Shave Ice and turbines they had encountered elsewhere. They spoke out against GMOs and the death penalty;  against drone warfare and what it does to the rules of warfare we had once pledged to respect.

On every issue, they sang for high stakes. They sang with the conviction that “we can learn to move together” and that even if “we may never reach consensus/Hope is still within our reach.” And with that might come “peace, salaam, shalom.”

And how Catholic is that?

With thanks to Pat Gozemba and Karen Kahn for the introduction to Emma’s Revolution.

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Passover Seder to Easter: Letting Go of Odious Orthodoxy

April 1, 2013 in Easter, Indigenous peoples, Passover, Quakers, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 4 comments

It was my first Passover Seder. Our host, Karen Kahn said it would be a celebration of liberation, not of religious orthodoxy. She and her wife, Patricia Gozemba have been warriors for many causes, from LGBT rights to clean air, education, home care worker protections and more. They also stand in solidarity with those who continue to fight for Native Hawaiian sovereignty. So, tilting towards freedom over orthodoxy was no surprise.

Pat, Karen, Dorrie, Sara

Clockwise: Sara Ching (seated center), Dorri Goodrich, Karen Kahn, Pat Gozemba.Passover, March 25, 2013, Honolulu.

Gathered round their table were people in whom diverse streams of history and cultural traditions met. Jewish, but also Irish Catholic, Native Hawaiian and Chinese, Indian Catholic from largely Muslim Malaysia, Anglo-German Quaker and Episcopalian. Gay and straight. Old and young. We took turns reading from what was billed as “A Humanist Modern Version Haggadah for Passover.”

As Holy Week ends with the alleluia of Easter, I wonder: where is our modern Catholic humanist promise enshrined?

Certainly not in the wearying repetition of bigoted orthodoxies. The kind spouted by Cardinal Dolan yet again this week. Gay people are entitled to no more than “friendship,” he says.  “Marriage is for one man and one woman to bring about new life.” He still believes that people will find the disconnect between Jesus and church less “unsettling” if only the church could somehow figure out a way to package timeless truths in a more attractive way. Not sure how exactly, but he’s working on it.

In late February, the Cardinal had spent hours in a legal deposition concerning his handling of hundreds of cases of sexual abuse of children in Milwaukee. Neither that nor his participation in the papal conclave appear to have moved this bureaucrat to some measure of humility. He, like the others, quickly got comfortable departing from tradition with a newly created “Pope Emeritus.” But women’s ordination? Full communion for LGBT Catholics? Not a chance. Catholics are leaving in droves even as the search goes on to find new packaging for tired thinking. Maybe even tweet about it.

What then does Pope Francis portend for the church? Dare we hope for some real newness? For an end to the very long, dark night of clerical hyprocisy? For an end to the hubris of Catholic exceptionalism?

To welcome new life in this week of liberation and resurrection, we need to let go. To empty ourselves of doctrines and rules that have weighed so heavily on us that it has become harder to breathe, let alone share the breath of life that has been given to us.

Pope Francis waves to crowds

Pope Francis waves to crowds (Photo credit: Christus Vincit)

Dare we look to Pope Francis for some real life-affirming newness? The anecdotes about the winning ways of Pope Francis are heart-warming, to be sure. The distancing from pomp. The ability to connect to ordinary people. The willingness to compromise. Armenian friends sharing in our Easter celebration today offered their congratulations. “Your Pope– he is a good Pope,” they said.

If he is indeed “my” Pope, my hope is he will be “everyone’s” Pope.  He can do what Pope Benedict XVI refused to do: repudiate the shameful Doctrine of Discovery. Thanks to two 15th century Papal Bulls that spawned this doctrine, the brutal colonization of non-Christian nations, the seizure of lands and the enslavement of native peoples by Europeans, and later Americans, became God-inspired endeavors. As recently as 2005, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in ruling against the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, cited this odious authority:

“Under the ‘doctrine of discovery,’ fee title to the lands occupied by the Indians when the colonists arrived became vested in the sovereign—first the discovering European nation and later the original States and the United States.”

Who better than a Pope from one of the Americas, laid waste by conquering Christian armies and their embedded missionaries, to repudiate this doctrine?

After all, in doing so, Pope Francis will only be catching up with the Episcopal Church who led the way, and others who followed: the Unitarian Universalist and Quaker faiths, and more recently, the World Council of Churches.

To borrow from the Haggadah for Passover, “only when we have made a world where nation shall not lift up sword against nation, where justice is universal, and where each person is free, will the age-old dream of peace be real.”

Then might we truly say “Alleluia!”

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A Pope from Hawaii? Bring on the mischief.

March 17, 2013 in Equality and Faith, LGBT Families, Ordination, St. Francis of Assisi, Uncategorized, US Bishops, Vatican | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 4 comments

South America, Argentina, Hispanics and a soccer team, have claimed him as their own. Maybe, one suggested, God is an Argentine? Perhaps we can make the case that Pope Francis is really from Hawaii. Wasn’t that the spirit of aloha we saw in his first appearances? In that diffident first wave to the crowds in St. Peter’s Square: in his request for a blessing from them before he would offer them his; in his aversion to pomp; his insistence on riding The Bus. And who can miss seeing the kinship to the Hawaiian culture of welcome and reverence for nature in his choice of the name shunned by previous popes, the name of that wild, moneyed merchant’s son turned champion of the poor and the abandoned, animals and the environment, worshipper of brother sun and sister moon?

Assisi

Assisi (Photo credit: pierofix)

It was hard to be optimistic in the run-up to the Papal election. The candidates were old and dyed in Pope Benedict’s woolly thinking.  They shared his teaching on women and homosexuals. Obedience trumped conscience. They have been scandalously negligent about responding to crimes within their pastoral and administrative ranks. And unembarrassed about inflicting visitations on congregations of women religious, publicly rebuking progressive theologians who have looked at the Gospel through the lens of our times.        

Straddling the Usual Divide Yet here we are. Habemus Papam. We have a Pope – and he has stirred some excitement. Some of that is relief that there wasn’t a sharper turn to the right. Pope Francis does not fit easily into a right or left view of the world. That straddling of the customary divide challenges us –and him. Plenty is being written about what he allegedly did or failed to do in Argentina’s so-called “Dirty War.” We learn all this the same week we talk about Hubris, the story of how an American President mis-led his country into a war that cost thousands of lives, including those of innocent Iraqi civilians. Church leaders did not prevail in preventing that war. Nor have they condemned its architects with the same zeal with which they have chastised champions of same sex marriage or women’s reproductive rights. But they continue to hold positions of power.

Catholics want Pope Francis to do better than them—and better than Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio. To speak more forcefully than ever for peace; to be less cozy with heads of state. Fewer photo ops, more tough questioning.

As Mei Li, a non-Catholic friend in largely Muslim Malaysia remarked, “How many people get to start anew like this?   A new name, a new life, a new kingdom here on earth. He could be what keeps thousands, maybe millions of people from getting AIDS. Even if my vote does not count, so to speak, I have to care what he teaches.”

Demonstrating that Everyone Counts It’s up to Pope Francis to demonstrate that everyone counts. We rejoice that he stands with the poor. Sr. Simone Campbell, who led the Nuns on the Bus, sees someone who will not, for instance, take kindly to Paul Ryan’s Budget Redux. While not optimistic about immediate change on gender equality or women’s rights over their own bodies, she expresses confidence that as this Pope learns more about the global church, he “will be touched by other peoples, see their struggles, see their lives and let his heart be broken.” And in that brokenness, might lie an opening for change.

Lay Catholics and religious who believe that we are overdue for reform will have to keep pressing for change grounded in the real lives of people today. Sr. Simone points out that the Vatican’s draconian actions against the nuns prompted a rallying of the laity. The sex abuse scandals stirred Catholics out of the pews into greater engagement within their parishes.  Vatican II Catholics need to affirm even more the ways in which it refreshed our faith. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50143016n

Bring on the mischief Time will tell whether Pope Francis does indeed have something of the soul and culture of these islands. We will see whether his initiatives call to mind that familiar Hawaiian olelo noeau about the interconnectedness of the future and the past: “I ka was ma mua, ka wa ma hope.”  Catholics understand that we cannot ignore the past or throw out all of tradition. We simply want to draw the best skeins from the past to weave a better world, leaving what is threadbare behind.  I share the optimism of Sr. Simone that the election of Pope Francis is a sign that “the Holy Spirit is alive and well and making mischief.” Bring on the mischief.

First published on http://www.civilbeat.com/voices/2013/03/17/18612-a-pope-from-hawaii/

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Pope Francis: Reason to Hope

March 13, 2013 in Papal Conclave, Uncategorized, Vatican | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

From beyond the boundaries of Rome, taking the name of that most beloved, most radical of saints, given to the grand signifying gesture, dedicated to simplicity and love for all of creation.

Yes,  there’s reason to look to Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina, now Pope Francis, with hope.

We Need New Thinking, Not New “Wrapping,” Cardinal.

March 10, 2013 in Cardinals, Papal Conclave, Politics and Religion, Pope Benedict, Uncategorized, US Bishops | Tags: , , , , | 7 comments

Timothy Dolan, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Ne...

Cardinal Timothy Dolan (Wikipedia)

As the papal conclave moves towards electing a new pope, what does it say about the prospects for real change in the Catholic church when one of its most prominent cardinals says of church teachings: “Let’s perhaps work on a way to wrap it in a more attractive way.”

We are told in the latest New York Times’ gushing profile of the “charming, cheerful cardinal” that Timothy Dolan can “work crowds like a gifted politician,” has a “strikingly contemporary worship style” and a “million-dollar personality.”  But the Cardinal, apparently, is also tone deaf.

Lay Catholics are not children to be won over or distracted by prettily wrapped presents. Lay Catholics are not slow to understand and in need of new visual aids or trinkets. New packaging will not help us be more appreciative of old re-gifted teachings that should be put away, not passed on.

The practices of the past have given us the leaders of today. To go forward, we need leaders with better listening skills and some measure of respect for the laity.  The extraordinary elevation of the clergy and the over-concentration of power at the top in a climate of secrecy and feudal obedience have had tragic consequences. Children and women and LGBT Catholics have suffered greatly from teachings that have become disconnected from reality.

Shed the Wrappings of Pomp and Secrecy

It is time for the leaders of the church to leave behind the culture of secrecy and monarchical power in which they wrapped themselves for too long. We need a simpler, plainer, church. And clergy less attached to the kind of grandeur we associate with corporate executives and heads of state.

Consider the New York Times’ admiring account of Cardinal Dolan’s round trip in a day using a jet borrowed from a billionaire so that he could “preside at a dinner in Manhattan without missing a meeting in Rome.”

Lay Catholics would be more impressed if he could try walking a little distance in their shoes. Catholics have felt for too long that their concerns are falling on deaf ears. Women are tired of being patronized. Does the Vatican get that?  We despair of seeing real change when the old ways seem as huge and immovable as the sculptures of the Vatican. We need to return to the New Testament vision of church as “a community characterized by radical freedom, radical equality, radical sharing and radical service.”

If church leaders could find the courage to dispense with some of the trappings of power and relinquish their attachment to systems of dominance that have long outlived whatever use they might once have had, the radiance of the Gospel might stand a better chance of shining through.  And so we pray.

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Out of “Horrible Inconsistencies,” a New Pope?

March 4, 2013 in Papal Conclave, Uncategorized, Vatican | Tags: , , , , , , | 5 comments

“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land.

English: Portrait of Frederick Douglass as a y...

English: Portrait of Frederick Douglass as a younger man (Photo:Wikipedia) Douglass was an American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer.

Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of ‘stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.’ I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which everywhere surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. . . .

The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.”


― Frederick Douglass, 1818-1895. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

The circumstances are different but these words from an earlier time are worth recalling as we contemplate the pomp and pageantry of Pope Benedict XVI’s departure and the grand spectacle of the gathering cardinals. As the cardinals arrive for the papal conclave, there  hangs over them all the shadow of complicity in the cover up and perpetuation of sexual abuse and sordid financial dealings that are only just beginning to unravel.

Oblivious to—or insufficiently humbled—by the “horrible inconsistencies” of today in which they are mired, the cardinals will vote to choose as the next Pope, one from among their circle of red.

As long as we hope for a Vatican Spring led by a new pope from amongst the current cardinals, we neglect the only real chance to reinvent the church: from the pews.  The church is ours to change.

It should not be acceptable to attach words like “palace” to “apostle,” or obscure so completely the radical simplicity of the Gospel message by the glitz and gaudiness of ceremony and the perversions of power.

Can we even conceive of Jesus in an “Apostolic Palace,” waited on by a butler who might bring him his red Prada shoes and gorgeous vestments?

It’s up to us in the pews to say “Enough.”

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