This morning I was happy to help organize a choir for the annual Artists’ Mass at Regis College at the Toronto School of Theology, which happened to fall on the feast of All Saints, the Christian “MemorialDay.” For the processional the choir created an adaptation of the traditional “Litany of the Saints” from the Roman Missal arranged for guitar, clawhammer banjo, two fiddles (a.k.a. violins), bass, and three cantors. We followed the Litany with “Alleluia! Sing to Jesus” for a gathering hymn.
Here is an mp3 of the Litany/”Allelluia! Sing to Jesus” Medley, as well as an mp3 of our version of “For All the Saints” which was used for the presentation of the gifts. Right-click on each of the links to download the track.
I am looking forward to this year’s annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion for a number of reasons. First, it will be my first time attending the conference and thus marks an important “first” in my theological life. Second, the schedule looks fantastic, and I am looking forward to hearing/seeing some scholars that have been important influences in my studies. Third, this will be my first trip to Montreal despite having lived in Canada for over three years now, and it will be nice to visit there a mere two weeks before we move back to the u.s. of a.
Finally, I am looking forward to a meeting there with some of the other participants in the Rock and Theology project that I’ve hooked up with in recent months. (My most recent post, on the inclusive Christian spirituality of the indie rock band Sunny Day Real Estate, is here.) The project’s blog has generated some interesting reactions, largely positive (“This is a very, very, very interesting project similar to a thousand and one conversations I’ve had over the years”) but also some negative, the latter usually along the lines of “This isn’t real theology” or “Rock music does not belong in the Mass.” The former complaint is usually the result of a very narrow definition of “theology” or a very narrow view of what sorts of culture-making are worthy of theological reflection. The latter, a quite common response to the blog, is simply the result of careless misreading or of superimposing one’s own pet liturgy-war interests onto the project. None of us, from what I can tell, have much interest in arguing for the use of rock music in the liturgy.
It looks like we must always struggle in the Church and elsewhere to situate the precise status of truth. In an intellectualistic perspective tributary to Hellenism, there was a tendency to link truth (intellectual, speculative or practical) and concrete action, as if they were part of the process of cause and effect. Moreover, it is always difficult for human beings, at whatever level they are in a hierarchicized world, to be content with probability, just as it is hard to make room for other ways of looking at questions, ways that are legitimate but hard to reconcile with one another. One needs to be careful about falling into what might be called a “pathology of the truth”: in the end and despite all appeals to the truth and to revelation (sometimes well founded), a certain anxiety concerning orthodoxy can arise from a preoccupation with the need for intellectual security rather than from a jealous love of the Word of God. This sense of security is sought more by way of excluding other positions than by the humble interiorization of the truth.
…
When truly new perspectives emerge, they often cannot be worked out in the grid of the existing synthesis and one risks judging them (indeed even condemning them) in terms of the categories at hand. But the latter have to be integrated into a wider whole that is in the process of being built. Excessive caution, outright rejection or condemnation slow down and even hinder the process of refocusing.
(Ghislain Lafont, OSB, Imagining the Catholic Church: Structured Communion in the Spirit (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), p. 146.)
I’m currently knee deep in readings related to the question of the status of the “local church” in Roman Catholic ecclesiology and how local churches (understood in different ways of course) relate to the “universal” church. This issue of course involves explorations of the meaning of “catholicity” and the exercise of authority at the various levels of the church. Indeed, much of the reading has me coming back to the idea that the church has been struggling to get beyond a pyramidal and territorial view of ecclesial authority toward an understanding rooted in the image of ecclesial and episcopal communion. The latter is a much more open (or “deliberately vague,” in Roger Haight’s terms) concept that allows for a richer sense of episcopal authority, leaving behind the mechanical and rigid jurisdictional view of Christendom.
So in the midst of this focus of study, two stories involving bishops in “discommunion” jumped out at me this week. The first was the case of Richmond bishop Francis DiLorenzo refusing to allow the local Pax Christi USA group to meet on diocesan property. The story has circulated a bit through the Catholic blogosphere already, often pointing out that one of the meeting’s featured speakers was retired Richmond bishop Walter Sullivan, a well-known and much admired bishop to folks involved in Catholic social justice ministries in Appalachia. Read the rest of this entry »
I never thought of Peace as a word that was moveable. All our words have been shifted by Consumerism and Militarism. Democracy is gone, America and Freedom are gone. Peace always stayed there in one place.
Peace patiently waited for us to notice the best things about ourselves. Peace always stayed with us. Peace was ignored by the governments and the powerful but it was still there – the monument that is made of the sky and the wind, our memories of a face and our loving touch. But now we have to change our words around. They have taken the word Peace and we’ll have to make up a new word, a secret signal.
Predator drones will be released tonight destroying the word we always depended on. The flying bomb will go out over the villages, sailing over the sleeping children and prayers and friends stopping for a laugh. The bombs will float and hesitate and change direction from computers in Florida and Missouri and the soldiers at the computers will know that Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And so they will be consumers of a war that is now being marketed as a product named Peace.
So – it has come to this. War has finally captured Peace.
In his fantastic book Who Count as Persons?: Human Identity and the Ethics of Killing (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2001), Jesuit ethicist John Kavanaugh argues that ethics has become “de-personed” (20). Narrative theology and virtue ethics, for example, “have been marked, until recently, by a strange absence of the subject of ethics, the one who does ethics: the person” (21). Although these approaches to ethics have challenged modern “grand claims about some timeless and spaceless ‘autonomous man,’” unmasking them as “fraudulent strategies that justify power and self-interest,” Kavanaugh insists that “not every possible model of the human person is a pretense,” and that an essential, but forgotten, task of ethics is to “investigate just what kind of being the human being is and to examine what human beings uniquely introduce to the world” in order to ground ethics in the human person (22-23).
The majority of Kavanaugh’s book goes on to make a radically personalist argument against killing human persons. The “cultural relativism” of our times, which often leads to the denial of the dignity of human persons, can only be challenged “if there is a foundation for ethics other than the heritage one finds oneself lodged in” (106). That foundation for ethics is the human person itself. “We cannot ‘do’ ethics or ‘be’ ethical,” he says, “if at the same time we negate personal existence” (107). After establishing the human person as the ground of all ethics, he formulates the primary law of ethics. Said positively, that primary law is “Affirm the reality of personal existence,” i.e. love persons and love personal existence. Said negatively, it is “Do not treat persons as non-persons. Do not reduce persons to the status of an object” (108). Read the rest of this entry »
About a week and a half ago I was able to meet one of my high school and college rock idols, Peter Buck of R.E.M., as one of his side projects played at a small rock club here in Toronto. Little did I know that our brief meeting would give me the opportunity for a little reflection on the role of secular “spiritual directors” and the way they can sometimes prepare us for hearing the gospel in new ways. I blogged about it over at Rock and Theology. Here’s an excerpt:
R.E.M. isn’t simply a band that is “political” merely in an “issues” kind of way. Sure, there are “issues” that the band has always cared about: eco-justice, human rights, etc. But their music, at least throughout the first part of their career, had more of a vague mysticism going on. Not that they made (m)any overt references to religion per se. “Losing My Religion” is not really about religion, after all, and only a couple of their songs seem to be directly “about” religion. But R.E.M. nevertheless demonstrated a “secular” mysticism that blended a deep sense of compassion and solidarity with a kind of “catholicity” that was place-based (rooted as it was in the American South generally, and in their hometown of Athens, Georgia specifically) without being place-bound, seeing themselves as deeply connected with diverse peoples and with creation.
If you are a regular reader of Vox Nova, you no doubt have noticed some changes around here over the last couple of months. First, we have added a group of new contributors. We could not be happier with these additions and look forward to their insightful posts. Thanks for the generally warm welcome that many of you have extended to them. We’ve also made some changes in the sidebar, particularly in the “blogroll” section, to better reflect our current interests and commitments. We are also likely to make some changes to the appearance of the site in the upcoming months. So expect a new coat of paint and some general freshening up.
One change you have likely not seen is a change in the general quality of the comments our posts receive. While we receive and appreciate much positive feedback for our work on this blog, Vox Nova has regrettably become a code word in the Catholic blogosphere for “brutal comment boxes.” In fact, one of our new contributors decided to leave us after a very short time in part because of the reception he received from our commenters. This is unfortunate, and should not have happened. Though we have discussed this problem behind the scenes for months now, Fr. Tom Rosica’s pointed commentary on the state of the Catholic blogosphere and independent online media have made us think even more deeply about this important issue. A recent speech by the Holy Father, though not referring to the conduct of Catholics online, also gave us much on which to reflect.
No doubt we, the Vox Nova bloggers, are not without responsibility for this situation. Read the rest of this entry »
Last Saturday, a friend of mine from Dayton, Ohio described an encounter he had with the anti-Obama protesters gathered in his city:
Today as I was driving through Dayton, Ohio a number of people were out on the street corners with signs saying, “Support our Troops… Obama doesn’t!” “Down with healthcare!” “Obama is Hitler…” Yes, they were all white and all upper-class.
I kept asking myself, “What would a nonviolent, creative response be?” As some people were honking their horns in support, I decided just to shake my head in shame and give a thumbs down…
Immediately one of the Tea Party protesters got in their SUV, started cussing me out with hand gestures, and followed me to the local grocery store. They went inside with me all the time starring at me with contempt and hatred.
This, from the most “well-trained” military in the world. From Democracy Now!:
In other Iraq news, an unarmed Iraqi man was killed by US forces in Fallujah Wednesday after throwing his shoe at their convoy. The military says the soldiers opened fire thinking the shoe was a grenade. The shooting came one day after the Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi was released from prison after a nine-month term for throwing his shoes at former President George W. Bush.
I started praying the rosary at a young age, probably before I started Catholic school in kindergarten. Of course, all through Catholic elementary school we prayed a decade of the rosary as a school each morning during the months of May and October, traditionally considered “Marian” months. Sometime in grade school, probably first grade, I received a really nice Italian rosary from my uncle who is a priest. It was blessed by Pope John Paul II, and I remember being very proud of it. I was crushed when it was stolen from my desk one day.
The Church and the “Dangerous Memory” of 9/11:
Narratives of Fear, Narratives of Hope
The way the memory of 9/11 functions in American spirituality is nothing new. As Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle have shown in painful detail, American civil religion is a living tradition that depends upon the memory of violence as a primary means of identity formation [75]. September 11 is merely one of the most recent of these “interruptive” memories in a long history of selective memories that involve killing and dying for sake of the national community. What is perhaps unique about the memory of 9/11 is the openness with which it has been used to secure the global dominance of the United States by exerting military and economic power in what supporters and critics alike are describing as a “new imperialism,” or “American empire.” 9/11 has bolstered the militaristic tendencies of other nations as well, allowing them to use terrorism as an excuse for oppressive policies [76]. “There’s no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland” [77] Bush has warned the American people, and although the War on Terror has generated a massive protest movement and opposition from Republicans who fault Bush for “botching” the war in Iraq, a significant portion of Americans remain committed to the overall imperial vision, supported by an impoverished American spirituality of selective memory.
A Critique of Post-9/11 American Spirituality in Light of Metz’s Political Theology
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 quickly became part of the national mythology and symbolism of the United States, and a central memory of what I have called American spirituality. This is only natural, for as we have seen in Metz’s theology, our memories of suffering shape individual and collective identities and character. The symbolic power of the memory of 9/11, however, rather than functioning as a “dangerous memory” as Metz describes it, has been manipulated and its power used for violent, self-serving ends, perhaps predictably so. The concepts central to Metz’s understanding of dangerous memories can be used to evaluate the way in which the memory of the victims of 9/11 functions in American spirituality. Using the five-year anniversary speech of President George W. Bush as an example and starting point, this second part of the paper will examine the rhetoric and symbolism of 9/11 with reference to four concepts central of Metz’s political Christian spirituality: interruption, memory, solidarity, and hope. We will then briefly situate this powerful, but very recent symbol, within the larger history of memories that make up the narrative of American spirituality and suggest a particular role for the Church in light of this spirituality.
Metz on the Dangerous Memories of Christian Spirituality
Like [Sandra] Schneiders, the German political theologian Johann Baptist Metz has articulated an approach to Christian spirituality that attempts to resist the tendency toward privatization by refocusing it as the narration of the “dangerous memory” of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Metz’s theology emphasizes the centrality of memory in human experience, and therefore in spirituality. All human experience, all spiritualities, are grounded in the narration of memories. As he states in Faith in History and Society, memory is indeed what gives human beings, both as individuals and as communities, their historical identity: “Identity is formed when memories are aroused” [6]. Metz demonstrates this negatively, noting how the identity of slaves was formed precisely by uprooting them from their historical communities and deforming their memories [7].
I often come back to the political theology of the German Fr. Johann Baptist Metz for helpful fundamental theological categories. I first encountered Metz’s theology while working on my undergraduate theology thesis on a political reading of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. I had an opportunity to spend some more time with Metz during the first term of my doctoral studies in a course on Catholic social thought.
My first class that term, the first class of my doctoral work, fell on September 11, 2006, the five year anniversary of the terrorist attacks in united states. Re-reading Metz later that term, I found that his powerful image of Christianity as the preservation of “dangerous memories” took on an entirely new meaning for me in light of those attacks and all the various uses that the memory of that event inspired, particularly by various actors in the Bush administration. The five year anniversary, hyped in the media, seemed like a good marker giving enough critical distance from the event to attempt to generate some theological reflection. Criticizing the Bush administration was easy enough for anyone paying attention and not living in a state of denial. But Metz provided the concepts and the language to reflect on those events and the narrative that flowed from it theologically, to understand the rhetoric of the Bush administration and the wider context of american history as an anti-theology of domination fueled by the new (but then again not so new) religious symbol of 9/11/01.
[T]he catholic Church of God is the koinonia of local churches mutually recognizing themselves as churches of God. This mutual recognition we think is essential. The Latin West concealed this in its desire to make everythng depend upon the relationship with the Church of Rome and its bishop. The catholic communion was seen as a totality of local churches all in communion with the sedes of Rome, without it being made clear that this necessary relationship with Rome is in the service of the mutual koinonia of local churches throughout time and space. In the gospel of God, which expresses the divine plan to reconcile all the human blocs shredded by sin, this mutual relationship is what counts more than anything else. What good would it be for them all to be in communion with Rome if the local churches remained water-tight compartments, shut up in their differences, as portrayed in a book for children which shows the Church as a great sun radiating around Rome, with the rays only converging. In the Holy Spirit and by the power of the Eucharist, it is mutual recognition that forms the concrete fabric of koinonia.
[...]
The function of the local church of Rome and of its bishop must be understood in this perspective. It seems to us above all to be a ministry of recognition. Its principal task is that of ensuring the mutual recognition of the churches and basically the maintenance in each of them of the traits of the Church of Pentecost. Thus it is the guardian of communion, a communion which is realized in and by the local churches themselves, not imposed by some authority that transcends them. For communion is not realized around Rome, but thanks to Rome.
J. M. R. Tillard, “The Local Church Within Catholicity.” The Jurist 52 (1992): 448–54.
In relation to our current/recent discussions on eschatology, a quote from Lesslie Newbigin:
There is a way of bringing the eschatological perspective to bear on our present perplexities which relieves them at no cost to ourselves, which allows us to rest content with them because in the age to come they will disappear. That is a radically false eschatology. The whole meaning of this present age between Christ’s coming and his coming again is that in it the powers of the age to come are at work now to draw all men (sic) into one in Christ.
Quoted in Yves Congar, Diversity and Communion (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1984), p. 163.
Well, Labour Day is almost over, but nevertheless you should check out my friend J Marinelli’s cover of “Fire in the Hole” by the great West Virginian pro-union, feminist bluegrass/folk singer HazelDickens. J is a musician from WV currently living in Kentucky. J’s version can be heard on his MySpace music page. Lyrics can be viewed here.
In response to Matt Talbot’s recent powerful post, “Sins That Cry Out To God,” our contributor Mickey replied, “When I read about things like this, I find it very difficult to put what I feel into words.”
I agree. Matt’s post, an account of systemic abuse in Catholic schools in Ireland which could accurately be described as a form of religious terrorism, left me speechless for a number of reasons. But one feeling I had in response is the same feeling I have whenever I hear such stories: it is the overwhelming feeling that we Catholics must stop this nonsense of making the ecclesiological claim that the Church is holy, not sinful. You know what I mean: the absurd distinction between saying that the Church’s members are sinful and do sin, but that the Church could never be sinful itself because it is the “spotless Bride.”
You still encounter from time to time the absurd claim that the Roman Catholic Church has not taught “definitively” whether or not torture is “intrinsically evil,” that is, whether or not it can ever be justified. I encountered that claim tonight in the comboxes of an up and coming right-wing Catholic blog. There was no attempt by the bloggers there to correct that untruth. It’s a baffling claim, as the intrinsic evil of torture has been affirmed both at the level of the “universal” church as well as in the teaching of the u.s. Catholic Bishops. I believe these teachings have been covered and discussed here at Vox Nova before. But it is worth reminding ourselves of the clear teaching on this matter.
During the last presidential election it became clear to many of us that despite their overwhelming presence in the media the american bishops making the most noise in their opposition to Barack Obama reflected a minority view within the conference. A necessary tactic, then, for republican Catholics was to amplify their voices even more and even to claim that their numbers were larger than they really were. I exposed one such effort for what it was here.
It seems that now we are beginning to see some more visible, public responses to the scandalous behavior that we — we Catholics, and sadly the rest of the world who could not help but watch and be astonished at american Catholic “discourse” — witnessed during that election cycle. Santa Fe Archbishop Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan has publicly criticized the “combative tactics” of these right-leaning bishops, assuring that the majority of u.s. bishops disagreed with them.
David Gibson now reports on the sudden and shady resignation of Scranton bishop Joseph “The USCCB doesn’t speak for me” Martino, claiming that “there are strong indications that Martino was pushed before he jumped.”
Whatever the ins and outs of the internal church maneuvering, the upshot is that a leading voice in the anti-Obama wing of the church hierarchy has been silenced while both Obama and Biden continue to take center stage.
Although the efforts seem to me a little late coming, it is refreshing to see signs that, despite republican efforts to increase the volume of these marginal and extreme views, someone — maybe a number of someones — is finally reaching over to turn the amplifier down saying “Enough already.”
[Critics of liberation theology] can abandon the idea that we care more for the transformation of structures than for the transformation of persons, that we care more for the social than for the personal. The contrary is the truth. Our revolution is directed toward the creation of a new human being. But unlike the attackers, we seek to posit the necessary means for the formation of this new human being. And the indispensible means is a new social structure. [...] How far can you get with the idea that a person should not place his or her heart in money and material things (the central idea of the Sermon on the Mount) if the existing social system inculcates just the contrary under pain of blows and death? Perhaps an insignificant minority can heroically resist the peremptory mandates of such a system. But Christianity cares about all human beings. It cannot content itself with saving a tiny minority. [...] Structural change will be a mere means for personal change — but a means so obviously necessary, that those who fail to give it first priority demonstrate by that very fact that their vaunted desire to transform persons is just empty rhetoric.
Jose Miranda, Communism in the Bible (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1982), p. 6.
Chris Blosser responded to Vox Nova’s Henry Karlson’s series which gives a positive spin on “immanentizing the eschaton” (see part one here) with a post that issues a warning against too quickly embracing such ideas. Blosser riffs off of countless passages from Ratzinger’s personal theology as well as his writings in his official ecclesial roles as head of the CDF and as Bishop of Rome to critique Henry’s post, as well as my own claims about the ways in which the Church is called to “prefigure the Kingdom in history.”
As I read him, sifting through the endless Ratzinger references, this is the main concern he has with Henry’s (and my) position(s):
At the same time, our work on this earth is provisional — we should enter into the social, political and economic realms, cognisant of the necessary imperfections of human affairs, accomodating the demands and reality of human freedom, and particularly vigilant concerning pseudo-messianic attempts to realize “the absolute in history.”
Aside from quibbling with his choice of words about Christians “entering” the “social, political and economic realms,” as if Christians are anywhere else BUT in these “realms,” I have no argument with Blosser’s concerns and his warning that we should never think that we will realize “the absolute in history.”
In spite of the ideological cleft [in the american Church], it is possible for reasonable adherents of each side to appreciate their adversaries’ point of view. Few conservatives are so extreme that they deny all mutability in the tradition or question the possibility that the church might have something to learn from developments in secular society. The church itself encourages its members to be men and women of their own time and to proclaim the faith within the framework of new cultural situations. Many traditionally Catholic ways of thinking, speaking, and acting derive from the secular culture of the past, including the Hellenism of late antiquity and the classicism of medieval and early modern Europe. These cultural elements should not be unduly sacralized. Doctrinal conservatives should therefore be able to understand why some Catholics might regard the official teaching on the points we are considering [birth control and the ordination of women] as open to change.
Several recent posts at Vox Nova have turned their critical attention to individuals who have shown up at President Obama’s appearances with guns. Countless comments have defended these people as being law abiding citizens, and that only a few of these individuals seem to be motivated by hatred or racism. While I would not want to paint every one of these people with the same brush, it seems really clear to me that this is not simply a matter of a few “nutcases” acting as individuals. This is clearly an organized movement.
A recent news item shows, too, that not only are hatred and racism involved, religiously motivated and justified hatred is involved. It seems that Chris Broughton, who was made famous for bringing an assault rifle to an Obama event in Arizona, attended a service at Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe the day before the event during which Pastor Steven Anderson preached a sermon entitled “Why I Hate Barack Obama.” A few passages from that sermon: Read the rest of this entry »
On their “special report” page on gay marriage, Catholic Answers gets right to the point: among the many benefits of heterosexual marriage is that “fact” that it will make you richer.
OK, now for something that we can all agree on. Over the past couple of days I have been trading emails with a Catholic theologian who is also a home brewer. He recently published a new book, and so I congratulated him and said that it was now time to kick back with one of his brews and relax. I attached the text of the following “Blessing of Beer” from the Roman Missal:
P: Our help is in the name of the Lord.
All: Who made heaven and earth.
P: The Lord be with you.
All: And With Your Spirit.
Let us pray.
Lord, bless + this creature, beer, which by your kindness and power has been produced from kernels of grain, and let it be a healthful drink for mankind. Grant that whoever drinks it with thanksgiving to your holy name may find it a help in body and in soul; through Christ our Lord.
When folks find out that I describe myself as a Catholic who is also an anarchist, they often ask me “what about Romans 13″ in which Paul encourages his hearers to “submit” to civil authorities. I’m often tempted to respond, with Brian Walsh, “to hell with Romans 13!”
Our new contributor, David, is a scholar of Pauline literature so he is certainly more qualified than I am to comment on this often-cited chapter of Romans. But I was struck recently at what the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says about it, and how it places that passage next to chapter 17 or the book of Revelation. Here’s an excerpt:
The Apostle certainly does not intend to legitimize every authority so much as to help Christians to “take thought for what is noble in the sight of all” (Rom 12:17), including their relations with the authorities, insofar as the authorities are at the service of God for the good of the person….
… When human authority goes beyond the limits willed by God, it makes itself a deity and demands absolute submission; it becomes the Beast of the Apocalypse, an image of the power of the imperial persecutor “drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Rev 17:6). The Beast is served by the “false prophet” (Rev 19:20), who, with beguiling signs, induces people to adore it. This vision is a prophetic indication of the snares used by Satan to rule men, stealing his way into their spirit with lies. But Christ is the Victorious Lamb who, down the course of human history, overcomes every power that would make it absolute. Before such a power, Saint John suggests the resistance of the martyrs; in this way, believers bear witness that corrupt and satanic power is defeated, because it no longer has any authority over them.
(Compendium, nos. 380, 382. Emphasis in original.)
A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story
by Diana Butler Bass
HarperOne / $25.99 US (list)
[Amazon] [HarperOne]
The title of Diana Butler Bass‘ new book immediately grabbed my attention, as I am a pretty big fan of Howard Zinn. Indeed, Bass’ book is billed as an attempt to write church history “in the same spirit” as Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. With this kind of title and marketing strategy, Bass is likely to attract a lot of readers. The difficult part, though, of modeling a book after such a classic work is that readers and reviewers have no choice but to evaluate the book in light of the original.
More specifically, Bass intends to respond to our “posttraditional” situation in which different factions of the church each suffer from their own brand of collective amnesia: conservatives have forgotten the ethical impulse of historic Christianity and progressives/liberals have forgotten the devotional roots of that ethical impulse. Each chapter, then, strives to highlight the devotional and ethical practices of various moments in the church’s history through the narration of the “subversive” and “alternative” stories of ordinary Christians, sidestepping the usual account of “Big-C” Christian history (“Christ, Constantine, Christendom, Calvin and Christian America”) in favor of a more radical, socially engaged story of what Bass calls “generative Christianity.”
If this sounds like a big job, it is. Zinn needed close to 700 pages to cover the 200 year history of the united states. The identically-titled scholarly version of A People’s History of Christianity, edited by Richard Horsley, spans seven volumes. That Bass squeezed her people’s history into 300 pages of 13-point font type made me a little skeptical of how much it could possibly cover.
The Lord’s Supper: Five Views
Edited by Gordon T. Smith
InterVarsity Academic / $18.00 US (list)
[Amazon] [IVP]
This slim volume is part of InterVarsity’s popular “Five Views” series. Acknowledging from the start its limited scope and that not every perspective could be included, the book presents theologians from Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Baptist, and Pentecostal traditions giving an overview of his or her church’s eucharistic theology. Each chapter is followed by short responses from the other four theologians who note areas of agreement and disagreement, as well as possible ways forward in understanding and practice.
The chapter by Brother Jeffrey Gros is a very fine presentation of the contemporary Roman Catholic theology of the eucharist, drawing on the Catechism as well as contemporary Catholic theologians. Gros covers the historical debates about the nature of Christ’s presence in the sacrament leading up to a well articulated section on what transubstantiation means and does not mean. He also includes a helpful discussion of debates about the “sacrificial” nature of the eucharist and a good summary of ecumenical dialogues that have taken place between the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian churches.
Morning’s Minion pointed out the increase in the Catholic blogosphere of “private charity” language in the midst of the heath care debates. He is right that such ideas have no basis in Catholic social teaching. Charity is both a personal and ecclesial response to social injustice but is also understood to be the very foundation of just systems. To seek to “institutionalize” charity through just social systems is precisely in harmony with, and the entire point of, Catholic social thought: to create a social order in which it is easier to be good, as Peter Maurin would say. The sectarian desire to keep charity private, as if it should not transform the social order itself, is simply to lack faith in charity to transform the world. It also effectively institutionalizes the opposite of charity, creating social orders in which it is easier to be selfish.
I recently finished an essay entitled “Destructive Obedience: U.S. Military Training and Culture as a Parody of Christian Discipleship” for a reading course on war and peace in Christian thought. The paper is rather lengthy, but I’m trying to figure out a good way to share pieces of it here at Vox Nova. To tide you over, here is a passage from an article by Emmanuel McCarthy and John Carmody which gets at the argument I make in the paper. (Too bad I only found it tonight and could not incorporate it into the essay!)
To say, “I will not kill a fellow human being,” is an expression of consciousness flowing from a profoundly catholic, empathic awareness of the “other” as “self.” To say, “I will kill a fellow human being,” is the consequence of an external, patterned, repetitive, cultural and parochial undermining of the pre-existing human faculty and tendency toward empathy, by means of intentional information-deprivation or distortion. The “other” becomes an abstraction that is less than “self.” Read the rest of this entry »
Beginning in 1969, the movement of Christian base communities took root in the poor communities of El Salvador. Small groups gather, often in their homes, to study the Bible and celebrate the sacraments as communities of faith. Their discussions lead to new interpretations of the Gospel based on their daily experiences, and to new understandings of their situation, illuminated by scripture reflection.
The Christian base communities have been attacked for their devotion to the Gospel. Christ the Savior church in the Zacamil district of San Salvador was bombed in 1980 and remained closed for four years. In November 1989 the church was desecrated again by Army troops who violated the tabernacle and scattered the Blessed Sacrament on the floor. The following prayer was offered by the people of the parish to commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of the Christian base communities in Zacamil on February 12, 1984. The church was decorated with red flowers in memory of the 623 martyrs from this parish. The Eucharist was celebrated by a thousand people, among them twelve priests and the Archbishop.
WE BELIEVE in God,
who created us free and walks with us in the struggle for liberation.
WE BELIEVE in Christ,
crucified again in the suffering of the poor, a suffering which calls out to the conscience of people and nations, a suffering which ends in resurrection.
WE BELIEVE in the power of the Spirit,
capable of inspiring the same compassion which has led our best brothers and sisters to martyrdom.
WE BELIEVE in the Church,
called forth by Jesus and by the Holy Spirit.
[I don't usually cross-post my Rock and Theology blogging here at Vox Nova, but I thought there might be sufficient interest in this piece to warrant posting it here. The record I describe is one of those obscurities that one almost wishes she could keep to herself, but it's just too cool not to share it. Enjoy.]
The debates over filesharing, particularly with relation to music, continue to rage. Over at Rock and Theology, the topic was recently brought up in posts here and here, both of which extended the question of “free” music to the sharing of theological reflection. My own view on the sharing of music, both as a “consumer” of music as well as a musician, is quite liberal. (Two great sources on the politics involved in new music technologies are the irreverent and often potty-mouthed site Tiny Mix Tapes and the personal blog of New Testament scholar and Episcopal priest A. K. M. Adam.)
Regardless of where one stands on the issue, most lovers of music would probably agree that music-sharing technologies are simply fantastic for preserving, sharing and discovering out-of-print music. Countless music blogs have sprung up for exactly this purpose. While poking around on blogs featuring rare and out-of-print ’60s psych-folk, I stumbled on a remarkable record by one Fr. Pat Berkery called Prayers for a Noonday Church, released in 1969. Here’s the gist: the hip Fr. Pat recites deadpan theological poetry over a psychedelic rock backing band, exploring themes like the sacraments, the priesthood, and the changing meaning of the sacred. The song titles are simple: “Baptism,” “Confession,” “Chalice,” “Seminary,” etc. Occasionally the band will riff on melodies from traditional Catholic hymns. (The song “Blessings” begins with an organ playing “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.”) For a quick sample, you can download the first track, “Baptism,” here.
After an explosion of interest in the Catholic blogosphere surrounding the election controversy and subsequent protests in Iran, there has been no peep whatsoever regarding the obvious coup that has taken place in Honduras in which School of the Americas graduates removed president Manuel Zelaya from power.
This silence likely mirrors the relative silence in the u.s. corporate media in general. Latin America simply has not mattered very much to most North Americans, including North American Catholics.
What it certainly shows, though, is that the predominantly right wing Catholic blogosphere, ostensibly interested in independent reporting and commentary on matters from a faith perspective, is simply no different from the rest of america. Interest in “freedom” and “democracy” only goes so far. Cries for democracy are reported and affirmed only when the results would correspond to the Catholic right’s political positions. When the democratically elected leader is a somewhat left-leaning figure, democracy matters little.
For those who are interested in keeping up on the events in Honduras, I recommend the following sites:
“[T]he teaching of the Catholic Church on any number of so-called life issues — abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, the waging of war — runs counter to the theory and practice that prevails in the political order we call ‘the United States of America,’ but Catholics have nevertheless managed to accomodate themselves all too well to this political order. This becomes disturbingly clear during wartime when the church ceases to be a body in and of itself and becomes, in keeping with [Randolph] Bourne’s description, just one more cell within the body politic of the state. This is why Catholics rarely if ever ask themselves a question that must be asked in the United States in this day and in wartime: Why should Catholics defend a political order that protects by law the so-called right of parents to destroy their unborn sons and daughters?”
(Michael J. Baxter, “Dispelling the ‘We’ Fallacy from the Body of Christ: The Task of Catholics in a Time of War,” Dissent from the Homeland: Essays After September 11, Ed. Stanley Hauerwas and Frank Lentricchia (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2003), 114)
Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican:
A Vision for Progressive Catholicism
by Rosemary Radford Ruether
The New Press / $23.95 US (list)
[Amazon] [New Press]
As one of the pioneers of feminist theology, Rosemary Radford Ruether has had impressive, if controversial, career and if her new book is any indication, she is showing no sign of slowing or toning it down.
Her new book, part of the “Does Not Equal” series from The New Press, reads as a manifesto for “progressive Catholicism” against what Ruether, as others do, perceives as a wave of traditionalist back-pedaling. The series clearly intends to challenge and complexify religious traditions that appear from the outside to be monolithically “right-wing.” Such a series is indeed welcome and necessary at this historical moment when “religion is back” so to speak (although in most parts of the world, religion never went anywhere). Two other titles in the series are Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican… or Democrat and Judaism Does Not Equal Israel (I’m particularly interested to read the latter, written by Marc Ellis, a well-known Jewish liberation theologian).
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Vox Nova
"In their patriotism and in their fidelity to their civic duties Catholics will feel themselves bound to promote the true common good; they will make the weight of their convictions so influential that as a result civil authority will be justly exercised and laws will accord with moral precepts and the common good."
Second Vatican Council, Apostolicam actuositatem 14
Posted by Michael J. Iafrate 
Posted by Michael J. Iafrate 
Posted by Michael J. Iafrate 
In his fantastic book Who Count as Persons?: Human Identity and the Ethics of Killing (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2001), Jesuit ethicist John Kavanaugh argues that ethics has become “de-personed” (20). Narrative theology and virtue ethics, for example, “have been marked, until recently, by a strange absence of the subject of ethics, the one who does ethics: the person” (21). Although these approaches to ethics have challenged modern “grand claims about some timeless and spaceless ‘autonomous man,’” unmasking them as “fraudulent strategies that justify power and self-interest,” Kavanaugh insists that “not every possible model of the human person is a pretense,” and that an essential, but forgotten, task of ethics is to “investigate just what kind of being the human being is and to examine what human beings uniquely introduce to the world” in order to ground ethics in the human person (22-23).
I started praying the rosary at a young age, probably before I started Catholic school in kindergarten. Of course, all through Catholic elementary school we prayed a decade of the rosary as a school each morning during the months of May and October, traditionally considered “Marian” months. Sometime in grade school, probably first grade, I received a really nice Italian rosary from my uncle who is a priest. It was blessed by Pope John Paul II, and I remember being very proud of it. I was crushed when it was stolen from my desk one day.
The way the memory of 9/11 functions in American spirituality is nothing new. As Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle have shown in painful detail, American civil religion is a living tradition that depends upon the memory of violence as a primary means of identity formation [75]. September 11 is merely one of the most recent of these “interruptive” memories in a long history of selective memories that involve killing and dying for sake of the national community. What is perhaps unique about the memory of 9/11 is the openness with which it has been used to secure the global dominance of the United States by exerting military and economic power in what supporters and critics alike are describing as a “new imperialism,” or “American empire.” 9/11 has bolstered the militaristic tendencies of other nations as well, allowing them to use terrorism as an excuse for oppressive policies [76]. “There’s no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland” [77] Bush has warned the American people, and although the War on Terror has generated a massive protest movement and opposition from Republicans who fault Bush for “botching” the war in Iraq, a significant portion of Americans remain committed to the overall imperial vision, supported by an impoverished American spirituality of selective memory.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 quickly became part of the national mythology and symbolism of the United States, and a central memory of what I have called American spirituality. This is only natural, for as we have seen in Metz’s theology, our memories of suffering shape individual and collective identities and character. The symbolic power of the memory of 9/11, however, rather than functioning as a “dangerous memory” as Metz describes it, has been manipulated and its power used for violent, self-serving ends, perhaps predictably so. The concepts central to Metz’s understanding of dangerous memories can be used to evaluate the way in which the memory of the victims of 9/11 functions in American spirituality. Using the five-year anniversary speech of President George W. Bush as an example and starting point, this second part of the paper will examine the rhetoric and symbolism of 9/11 with reference to four concepts central of Metz’s political Christian spirituality: interruption, memory, solidarity, and hope. We will then briefly situate this powerful, but very recent symbol, within the larger history of memories that make up the narrative of American spirituality and suggest a particular role for the Church in light of this spirituality.
Like [Sandra] Schneiders, the German political theologian Johann Baptist Metz has articulated an approach to Christian spirituality that attempts to resist the tendency toward privatization by refocusing it as the narration of the “dangerous memory” of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Metz’s theology emphasizes the centrality of memory in human experience, and therefore in spirituality. All human experience, all spiritualities, are grounded in the narration of memories. As he states in Faith in History and Society, memory is indeed what gives human beings, both as individuals and as communities, their historical identity: “Identity is formed when memories are aroused” [6]. Metz demonstrates this negatively, noting how the identity of slaves was formed precisely by uprooting them from their historical communities and deforming their memories [7].
I often come back to the political theology of the German Fr. Johann Baptist Metz for helpful fundamental theological categories. I first encountered Metz’s theology while working on my undergraduate theology thesis on a political reading of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. I had an opportunity to spend some more time with Metz during the first term of my doctoral studies in a course on Catholic social thought. 
Chris Blosser 
A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story
The Lord’s Supper: Five Views
Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican:
