God is Justice not Love

 

“The option for the poor comes from the first centuries of Christianity. It is the Gospel itself,” said then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio during a 2010 deposition in a human rights trial. He said that if he were to repeat “any of the sermons from the first fathers of the church, from the 2nd or 3rd century, about how the poor must be treated, they would say that mine would be Maoist or Trotskyite.”

The new pope cuts to the chase.

The gospel is social justice. It’s what got Jesus murdered and why he did not live to an old age. The “malkuta Yahweh” commonly called the  “kingdom” or “Godly rule” is about justice, access to the  world’s goods which are skewed in favour of the privileged north. In Jesus time they were captured and hoarded  by the Roman empire and its minions. God’s rule on the contrary  demanded a just reconfiguration, a redustribution—”on earth  as it is in heaven.”

North Americans and conservative Catholics sentimentalize the gospel by  using the word “love” as Jesus’s message. And it’s primarily interpersonal. never structural or global.Well, we love Coke and dogs love Alpo, in other words “love” is a totally bastardized and inadequate word. Nobody gets crucified for “love”—but justice is another problem. God’s will  gets you into trouble.

Love in the New Testament as in last Sunday’s gospel–”Love one another as I have loved you”— is operational not simply emotional.It demands sharing. Contemporary usage born of massive advertising has cheapened the word LOVE.The real meaning is closer  is closer to justice.God is justice.

John Dominic Crossan says, “Think of justice as the body of love and love as the soul of justice”. Alfred North Whitehead’s “Justice is love grown imaginative”  hits the mark as  well. Crossan again, “Justice without love or love without justice is a moral corpse.That is why justice without love becomes brutal and love without justice becomes banal.”

In our privileged lives we don’t want justice. Parishes settle for charity because there is a terrible price to be paid for advocating  justice.The kingdom  will always be a tough sell in North America.We’re a resurrected people aren’t we? Not without the cross, not without justice.

No salvation outside this world

That marvellous Church man William Sloane Coffin got it right when he said that In times of oppression, if you don’t translate choices of faith into political choices, you run the danger of washing your hands, like Pilate.The believing person  must be the political person—with a difference. Our loyalties as Christians  will never be tethered to any political party. History has shown the sad results when churches  linked arms with state governments, catastrophic results ensued—from the Constantinian era to Hitler to you name it. The Church of England felt the backlash after WW1 when people remembered the lockstep promotion of war all in the name of the warrior Christ.  Political parties always want God’s blessings on their policies Latterly the Baptists and many evangelicals became the mouthpieces for GW Bush’s bellicose policies and it cost them credibility- almost as much as the Catholic Church in Germany when the future Pope Pius Xll, Eugenio Pacelli dissolved the Centre Party in Germany and paved the way for Hitler. Catholic churches in too many places still fly the American flag on their altars. Bad move. The simple reason is that states have “interests”, seldom deep evangelical  values—which Christians associate with God’s reign of justice and the common good. Constantine was no fool when he brought the Church into the imperial tent.

So where do Christians park their votes in a democratic society? We are still citizens but we  have a different politics—that of the Reign of God which judges all political parties. The Dominican giant Edward Schillebeeckx said  that “Nulla salus extra mundum” (No salvation outside this world) was the key to a meaningful theological response. This was obviously a riff on the classic medievalist notion “nulla salus extra ecclesiam—there is no salvation outside the Church”—a preposterous and arrogant assertion of 14th century popes like Boniface Vlll and Innocent lll.

Schilebeeckx turned this on its head and told us if you are looking for salvation, look into history and the world. You will find God active on the same side which Jesus privileged, that of the forgotten poor. Now contemporary theology has pointed to the despoiled earth as a manifestation of the Holy. This too is part of the common goods of the earth meant for all. No nation, no people is more important than any other. The super-developed west and its hogging of the globe’s resources stand in judgment and our  despoliation of the poor and the planet is a stench in the nostrils of God. So you should not vote for any party which ignores the poor and the earth. No Tea Party for you.

Our postmodern world has confused and challenged modern believers. Grand narratives, heretofore sacrosanct, have broken down. People seem adrift hence the move to a secure fundamentalism, a simplistic embrace in “one size” fits all theology, a rejection of pluralism. Some nervous Catholics embraced this concept, throwing their minds and hearts  to Rome with a desperate hope that ultimate meaning is alone brokered by the Catholic Church which holds out against any change. It is in Cardinal Ottaviani’s words, “Semper idem.” (always the same).The Pope and his bishops have the answers. Not so, a top-down hierarchical and patriarchal world has broken down and a new gestalt us emerging—more feminist, ecological and evolutionary. This is the meaning of vatican ll’s “signs of the times”. Rome (The Catholic Church) is merely one institution which has been unable to adapt to the “New”.

Conservative Catholicism, paralyzed by fear that things are out of control has run smack into evolutionary theology, in the key of D(Darwin). The price for staying the same is death. This is the sin against the Spirit. Now we are in history and change must be the only constant. The authentic Spirit (if Jesus is our lodestar) keeps prodding with the insistent call for biblical justice, for greater inclusion and compassion. It is OK for the patriarchal Church to die…this is the meaning of the Paschal Mystery, death is a prelude to deeper life.

The Holy for many today seems to be bypassing static churches hanging on to outmoded traditions or a Tradition which refuses to evolve The quest for meaning and purpose is a cardinal part  of being human but it is only found on the raucous seas of history’s turbulence, never in dogma or doctrine. Outside this world there is no salvation. The Church with its Christic values must be there joining other institutions raising up the whole human family, the earth etc. We will be bringing “the politics of the kingdom”, the evolutionary Spirit to the drama.This will mean we will have little truck with right wing parties. This wave will take us beyond the status quo, exceptionalism, fundamentalism, consumerism, nationalism, patriarchy etc  into the radical interdependence and relatedness of all human and planetary life.

Heschel and King

 

On the cover of my upcoming book is a picture of myself holding a holy text.It is called Who is Man by Rabbi Abraham Heschel. The reb who died at age 65 in 1971 shortly after welcoming my friend Philip Berrigan from prison was to me the great religious prophet of the times, along with Martin Luther King. They both insisted that the holy was alive in secular society, that it had long ago refused to be bottled up in the sanctuary. Their lives and words still resonate more than ever and thanks to a secular paper The Philadelphia Enquirer this article appeared on Christmas  Day 2012. Note the prophetic cooperation of rabbi and catholic nun

Speak and Act as Prophets Did:

The Teachings of Dr. King & Rabbi Heschel

By Sister Mary Scullion and Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Forty-four years ago, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. Forty years ago, his close friend and prophetic partner, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, died. In biblical tradition, “40” is a ripe number, suggesting a pregnant pause before a major transformation – Moses and the Israelites wandering 40 years in the desert, Jesus’ 40 days of temptation. What do we learn from their teachings, a generation since their deaths?

The two of them were, in their day, an odd couple. King was a product of the black Baptist church, raised in the oppressive confines of the Jim Crow South and the crucible of American racism. Heschel, descended from a long line of Polish Hasidic rabbis, fled Nazi-dominated Europe (where most of his family was killed).

A towering Jewish intellectual, theologian, and mystic, Heschel brought ancient Hasidic spirituality into the tumultuous world of social activism in the 1960s. Given his writings on the religious struggle of the modern person in a confusing world, and on the urgent relevance of the ancient Hebrew prophets, it was no surprise that he found a kindred spirit in King.

Today, religion is often divisive (even violently so); in the 1960s, Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel modeled a friendship rooted in deep admiration and mutual affirmation of their respective spiritual traditions. Today, we debate the role of religion in the civil arena – usually resulting in rancorous and judgmental culture wars; King and Heschel were public theologians and spiritually grounded activists, witnessing to the power of faith in the service of social transformation.

he iconic photograph of the two of them together at the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery is emblematic of the best possibilities of the vision of the civil rights struggle. (Later, Heschel noted famously of that experience, “I felt my legs were praying.”)

Heschel and King worked closely together in spiritually rooted prophetic opposition to racism, poverty, and militarism in American society. Like the biblical prophets, they spoke truth to power – but also spoke truth to the disempowered, who can only win their fair share of democratic power by learning and acting on the truth. They spoke truth to their own supporters, even when those supporters urged them to hush – as many did when they spoke out against the Vietnam War. The two of them witnessed to the absolute unity of means and ends, as embodied in nonviolence. The two of them likewise demonstrated a deep unity of prayer and social action.

A biblical generation later, many Americans who likewise see the connection of faith and social transformation are drawing on the legacy of these two brothers. What issues would Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel address today?

Perhaps the mass imprisonment of more than two million Americans, most of them black or Hispanic. Perhaps the breathtaking increase in poverty and economic inequality. Perhaps the horrendous violence in our society.
Perhaps the physical and legal attacks on American Muslims and Hispanic immigrants. Perhaps the government dysfunction that threatens our financial stability. Perhaps our collective failure to address the climate crisis that threatens the web of life, including human life, on our planet.

These two prophets would speak forcefully to the image of God in each person, the inherent dignity in even the most marginalized of our sisters and brothers. They would give voice to the “beloved community”
as the ultimate answer to the crises of poverty, homelessness, addictions, and violence. They would translate the language of Torah, Prophets, and Gospels into a concrete and compelling vision of justice and peace for our world today.

And they would not be content with rhetoric alone: In their generation, they modeled putting faith into action, and today they would urge us to collective action to address injustice and work for the common good. They would insist that any genuine vision must translate into concrete policies, legislation, and real public action.

But now that is our task. Today, no less than in his day, we are confronted with what Dr. King called “the fierce urgency of now.” As much now as then, we are challenged by Rabbi Heschel’s words: “In a free society, when evil is done, some are guilty; all are responsible.”

Forty years have passed since Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel worked and witnessed among us. Perhaps, like a biblical generation that represents a pregnant pause before a major transformation, we may be ready to act for a transformative rebirth in our time.
_ _ _

Sister Mary Scullion is executive director of Project HOME. Rabbi Arthur Waskow is director of the Shalom Center. Their organizations are among more than 50 sponsoring the King-Heschel Festival at Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia on Jan. 4 and 5. For more information, seewww.mishkan.org/story/heschel-king-festival.

Thank you, Charles Darwin

Darwin set us on the evolutionary path, the sine qua non of understanding  God and Jesus in an evolutionary world. Teilhard insisted that God was more the Omega than the Alpha, always luring us onward, always ahead of us. Christians have always borrowed  from the culture and December 25 is the classic example.

 Christmas 2012

 (The Divine Unfolding)

Through your own incarnation, my God,

All matter is henceforth incarnate

Teilhard de Chardin

Christmas melts the coldest hearts

The shortest day and the longest night

Dancing, feasting, fires and tarts

moves our inner axis to the cause of right.

The old Romans scoured the sky

for the first signs of lenghtening day

missed the babe emerging from the sty

and a deeper clue to the life-giving way.

Those clever folk of yore wisely scanned the stars above

filaments of mystery in a cosmos  frightening

missed the miracle of Word made flesh. Love

incarnate, a new creation, the deepest truth of things.

Winter solstice, December 21 and four days later on

Lo the renewal of light, the naked eye espied

The very birth day of Sol Invictus,Unconquerable Sun

“We’ll take it for the risen one” we cried.

We continue to gather two millenia now, an Advent gestating

We have seen something fresh, a new way of being

The  mystery of Christ, new patterns unfolding

The  Galilean points to a new way of seeing.

Wassail and rejoice; Hope has bought us gifts galore

Reconcilaition, forgiveness, compassion beyond compare

Tears, kindness, justice, peace and much much more

A heart attuned to the stars and grace, grace everywhere.

The Trinitarian Catholic

 

Mike Crosby, the prolific Capuchin author whose latest book Repair My Church is recommended to all (http://www.michaelcrosby.net/) ,  did a great job of summing up the modern “Trinitarian Catholic”. You gotta love Mike. He writes the pope as a fellow Catholic, usually gets no response—a typical  boorish tactic  from the bishops’ club. It’s either silence or a two  line  dismissal like “I’ll pray for you.” Nah, just talk to me.Listen to me etc. Their refusal to engage in any way with serious fellow Catholics is positively disgusting. Their FOD letters( Eff Off and Die) are incompreehensible given the gospel insistence on everybody’s dignity. I mean these guys do not have kids nipping at their heels and they are hardly inundated by letters. so pick up a pen or the phone, come to the parish and hear the anguished cries of your people.

Crosby keeps writing. Too many have simply walked away. given the rudeness and the distance these guys keep from the faithful.

While I will continue to endeavor to practice the truth in love in order to build up our church (see Eph. 4:15) and will continue to seek genuine on any theological and disciplinary differences in our church, I cannot, in my informed conscience, retract the words Bishop Blair quoted from me.

 I deeply believe that the governance model of the Trinitarian God must be replicated in the structures of the Church of Jesus Christ if it is to be perfected in the way God is Perfect Trinity. This demands non-discrimination among persons at every level, non-domination in all our relationships (including the way authority is exercised in our church structures) and non-deprivation of women from having full access to all the sacraments in our Church,  just as men. Fidelity to the Gospel of the Reign or Rule the God–whose governance reveals it to be a Triune Community of Equals sharing all in common–demands no less. The integrity of this Trinitarian God is at stake. 

Pretty good stuff.

Mike is simply saying what most of us are: We don’t believe in your  discriminating God.We flatly reject the bankrupt logic for barring women from all seven sacraments and from every function in the church.

Crosby keeps speaking and writing. Others  are not so lucky. They are banned, marginalized and written out of the nercesary conversation.

No way to run a church based on Jesus.

Stephen Harper cannot hear the cry of the earth

 

 

The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow

Dr. James Hansen is director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and adjunct professor in the department of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. He is the recognized voice, the voice of consensus among the scientific community. He  was the first scientist to warn the US Congress of the dangers of climate change.

 

In a recent article in the NY Times he turned his attention  to the appalling ecological footprint of Alberta’s Tar sands. he wrote:

 

Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.

If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically

Our PM Harper goes blithely on ignoring the sacredness of the “Greater Economy”. the natural world which sustains us. We have here a PM of massive tin ears unable to hear the pre-eminent sign of our time, the cry of the earth, the assault on the Body of God.

Richard Rohr reads “the signs”

When the Roman Catholic  church convened the Second Vatican Council in 1962, theological giants walked the land. They all had something n common.They had seen war first hand.They had  experienced the ultimate in scandals, Christians killing Christians in the heart of Christendom. The desiccated neoscholasticism, long on abstractions and intellectual formulations  had replaced ethics with a propositonal faith.The giants knew that this Christianity was dead.And so they went back to the drawing board, Many of them (Rahner, De Lubac, Chenu,Congar etc)  had been silenced earlier in their lives for daring to suggest that the Church was less than a perfect society, that it needed to heed “the signs of the times.” These theologians  had witnessed Nazism and Fascism. Blind obedience had become a cardinal virtue.Way overrated. The great Redemptorist  moralist Bernard Haring began his work on ethics, with responsibility replacing obedience. These church Fathers, having witnessed the liquidation of the human person in Europe then  produced the great breakthrough of the last century—a Council which would set the church on the right track, for a new engagement with the world. This dramatic U turn was halted after 14 years—the pontificate of John Paul ll and his enforcer Josef Ratzinger.

It proved to be too late. The new wine  had spilled into the old wineskins and burst them. Lay citizens were coming of age, the best educated generation o Catholics in history were acquiring voice. They demanded to be heard, to be active and not passive.

Still  prophets of the priestly class were still  around, still flush with the energy the Spirit unleashed. They were not afraid to speak.

One of them is Richard Rohr ofm whose reflection follows.

We must be honest and admit that there are only two remaining large systems in the world that are totally patriarchal in their style and in their leadership: Communist states and the Roman Catholic Church. Ours never looked quite as bad since we at least used the language of Jesus, the symbols of communion, humility, and service, and we men even dress in rather feminine robes. The Communist states make no display of humility themselves or respect for the feminine side of anything. But the real bottom lines in the Roman Church are becoming more and more apparent to thinking and spiritual people in the last decade or so. Despite the very clear reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960′s, the Roman patriarchy, a closed system that allows no prophetic critique, and their branch appointed officers (bishops) are step by step rolling back both the spirit and the letter of the Vatican II reforms – while pretending and saying they are not. (Remember, if you can reject this Council, then you have the basis for rejecting the other 20 Councils of the Church too! The Pope and bishops had better be very careful!)

 

Deceit and supposed magnanimity are at the heart of all patriarchies, or otherwise their subjects would see what they are actually doing. North Koreans also believe their “Great Father” is protecting them, as did many Filipinos under Marcos, and Russians under their Tsars and Tsaritsas.

 

No group accepted the reforms and tried to renew itself following the Council like the American Sisters. Yes, they made their mistakes, and also enjoyed certain matriarchal benefits over the laity. Nevertheless, this cruel, humiliating, and intimidating attempt by the Roman Curia (“the place that cares for”) to punish and control the American sisters is being seen for what it is, and what it is not: It IS male patriarchal control, hurt feelings because they are not that much in control any more, and it is certainly NOT anything like Jesus or the Gospel. Patriarchal systems normally engineer their own demise by such gross misuse of power. We all need to sincerely pray – and speak much needed Gospel to very worldly power.

 

– Richard Rohr, OFM

“Vatican Versus American Nuns”

May 10, 2012

The prophetic is back-on the CBC no less

The prophetic

Just when you think the prophetic is waning up steps renowned war artist Allan Harding Mackay.

A renowned war artist Allan Harding Mackay  whose work is in the National Museum sent CBC host of Power and Politics into shock on Tuesday’s show when he ripped up one of his Afghanistan paintings.

Mackay was in the finest tradition of the biblical prophets—I’ll choose Jeremiah here-when he expressed his disgust at the direction of the Tory government’s treatment of veterans, aboriginals and in general their shocking ongoing trashing of democracy, what Mackay  names as their abuse of parliamentary power.

Jeremiah was an old hand at this. From 626 BCE he raved on as prophets do, calling the nation back to its senses. His disgust was a  the ruling priesthood of Jerusalem and he was no slouch at using symbols.

In Chapter 13, Jeremiah ruins a linen belt, shows it to a priest and tells him, just like this belt you are a useless leader “with a stubborn heart.” Yahweh has bound israel but the priests have broken the bond

In chapter 27, Jeremiah is told “Make a yoke out of straps and crossbars and put it on your neck.’ Presumably Jeremiah walked around telling fellow Jews, submit to Babylon. Don’t believe these false prophets that all is OK. You are corrupt.

Well put Allan Harding Mackay in that long tradition of the prophetic. He uses a dramatic action to call attention to the present miserable state of  governance Canadians are now being subject to. He is telling us to wake up.

My favourite piece of disgust is Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s dropping the corporate tax rate another 1.5% in January to 15%. From 2000 on, the rate has dropped from 28 % to 15 now. This means a loss of about 13 billion a year. That’s a lot of infrastructure not getting fixed etc.

I was disappointed in Solomon’s incredulity. This is a smart guy who studied under Grefgory Baum at McGill.

Guess he’s forgotten about the prophetic.

Bravo to Allan Harding Mackay for attempting to wake us up.

Awake,by the way is a well known salutation of both Buddha and Jesus

The Cosmic Clock Signs 8

Carl Sagan, the late, brilliant American cosmologist who died at age 62 in 1996  in his book The Dragons of Eden (1977) introduced us to the now famous cosmic clock. It was an ingenious way to telescope the 14 billion year history of the universe into a single year. At this scale the Big Bang took place on January 1 at midnight, and the current time is mapped to December 31 at midnight…

The first fact that stuns you is that we are very late newcomers on the scene. This is a humbling reality.When you discover that all of recorded history  occurs in the last ten seconds before midnight.

Holy feces, Batman! check our egos at the door.

Humans from the crudest inception have been around for one-tenth of 1% of earth’s history….and Jesus is born at 11:59 and 56 seconds.Wow! And is salvation history just in the last two thousand years?

What does this do to our Creed? Our idea of God? Jesus?

This amazing story jet fueled by Darwin  describes an amazing process of complexification, diversification and novelty.

Christians believe that this indeed is a wild place, unpredictable as hell.Much easier to believe in the safe landing of heaven than deal with random genetic mutation, natural  selection over eons. No wonder Darwin had a breakdown knowing that the static God, the transcendent Unmoved  Mover, the God unrelated to the cosmos and creation was really dead.I mean who needs a God  unrelated to us, presiding over from the death and destruction  inherent i natural processes and in human history

It is now obvious that the old symbol system which served us well for centuries can no longer hold our new understanding of the universe. The old wineskins have simply become porous, dried up and cracking under the strain. New wineskins are dramatically needed.

Berry’s thinking would appear to be a window into a much needed new paradigm. So far Rome has treated him as a non-person.

Diarmuid O’Murchu, another evolutionary thinker the Vatican appears to have ignored  puts it this way:”At this cultural moment there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that that the boundaries of sacred space (Jerusalem, church, mosque, synagogue) and sacred word (Bible, Torah, Koran) cannot hold the spiritual energy embodied in religions”(Religion in Exile).

The Church, and in particularly the Catholic Church with its highly centralized Roman theology seems incapable now of breaking out of the fall/redemption model so beloved by fundamentalists  and indeed the Vatican bureaucracy. Church documents today resemble the preacher who, when he could not convince his audience wrote down in his notes,”At this point, shout louder.” Examples are many but the following will have to suffice here. In Dominus Iesus (2000) this statement:

As an innocent lamb  he merited life for us  by his blood which he freely shed.. In him God reconciled us to himself and to one another freeing us from the bondage of the devil and of sin.

and from the Catholic Catechism, Adam and Eve are real people:

390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.

Sally McFague on the other hand is a theologian who has given the ecumenical ecological community new ways to look at God—as friend, lover, mother and embodied in the world as God’s body. This last metaphor is particularly apt for us today since it is creation-centred rather than redemption oriented. It is focused on the incarnational presence of God in nature. McFague states the obvious: how utterly holistic this way of thinking is  when compared to say, God as king, judge or lord. Monarchical models like these connote distance, power, hierarchy and patriarchy. They are out of tune with our age. They say nothing to the nonhuman, sensate world. “God’s body” (and remember it is metaphor) connotes intimacy, closeness, care, nurturance and sustenance. Though not reduced solely to the Body (pantheism) God is absolutely present. This body may be poorly cared for, unattended and suffering. Vulnerable to be sure. Here the metaphor hints at the suffering love of Jesus on the cross. This is a God at risk in the evolutionary process but again, not reduced to it. One major plus for this model would be that it suggests that God loves fleshy bodies surely an antidote to the anti-sexual and negative anti-body teaching too long associated with a male celibate Catholic leadership.

Isn’t this exciting?

The biblical record with the Divine unfolding in creation and history where in Paul’s words (Romans) ‘we come to know the invisible nature” of God was merely preparing us for this New Story.

Freeman Dyson phrased it well:

The more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in someone sense must have known we were coming.”

Thomas Berry and the new story Signs 7

For those who see everything in terms of God  the entire world is one grand sacrament.Every thing and every historical event appear as sacraments of God  and God’s divine will.

So said Leonardo Boff, the brilliant Brazilian theologian.Boff grasped the great strength of the Catholic vision. God is always mediated. God comes through not down.There was a giant in our community who devoted his life to the huge issue of human-earth relations. The  earth, the cosmos is our essential sacrament.The Body of Christ is the entire universe. Look what we are doing to it!

Thomas Berry, Passionist priest  died on June 1, 2009 and left a body of writing which continues to inspire us,His impact has been and continues to be enormous.He understood before any that we faced our ultimate crisis in the continuous degradation of the planet.

Coterminous with Berry’s gradual appearance on the global radar was the impact of the Apollo moon shot  in 1969.Many of us can recall with utter amazement the breathtaking shots of our Mother Earth, “the big blue marble” beamed back to earth.The British astronomer and cosmologist Fred Holyle predicted at the time, “”Once a photograph of the earth taken from the outside is available a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.” Earth Day began the next year.

Berry who was born in 1914  had been radically influenced by the  cosmic musings of Teilhard de Chardin (d.1955), the Jesuit paleontologist whose visionary work on the evolution of the cosmos brought him into conflict with the Vatican still tethered to the biblical redemption story. VAtican ll in a sense was a time for Catholics catching up to Protestants as a biblical religion, hence the focus on “salvation history.” As if God had not always been active, saving and recreating.

Here came Berry shifting foci to the universe as the primary religious reality and the primary sacred community, the primary subject of incarnation and the primary unit of redemption. Whew! A slow theological turn had begun.

Now Catholics could join everybody else  win a single Creation myth. The science now was there but it needed a numinous dimension which the Bible might add.

The ramifications for theology became obvious.If the earth has been evolving for 14 billion years, what does this say about the Jesus story and our fixation with “the personal savior orientation” we all grew up wituh.one can readily see that the Vatican looked askance at Berry.He pressed on. The facts loomed large: how are we to think about the 115 billion galaxies out there, estimated to be 15-20 billion years old.It is obvious from the hints at my last essay that after Darwin,einstein and Hubble our theology ha lost a  vital connection with the new scales of time.

It is obvious that the traditional story we have literalized in scripture has lost power. Next to the majesty and the mystery of the New Story it lacks fire, juice and any trace of elegance. It has little purhasing power.Any creation story must now be told in light of the new science.

Here  the atheist Carl sgan gives us some perspective. With his Cosmic Clock he placed us in astrophysical time.What if we could compress the 15 billion year lifetime of the cosmos into a single year. To this we turn next time.

Readings: Thomas Berry

The Dream of the Earth  1988

The Universe Story  1992