This has been a long time coming, but after much reflection I have decided to take an extended and perhaps permanent hiatus from blogging here at Vox Nova. As one of the blog’s founding members, it is difficult to step away from the project, especially after working with such great co-contributors over the last three years. I am quite happy with the work we’ve done, and I am honored to have been part of the blog for so long. But for a number of reasons I feel that now would be a good time to stop. My reasons for “blogging” are shifting. Other projects and parts of my life require more and more attention. And I feel I’ve kind of “said my piece” here over the years, suggesting elements of a politically radical Catholicism in the context of an idolatrous and crumbling nation, but I feel that in some ways my time here has run its course.

I am not leaving the “blogging world” entirely, only withdrawing from certain circles and conversations. I hope and plan to keep in close contact with the friends I have made through this online community. And I will likely continue to comment here from time to time.

For those who would like to continue following my work, you can keep up with me at my personal blog CatholicAnarchy.org and at the Rock and Theology project. The former might be undergoing some changes in the near future as well, so please stay tuned. And of course I am always open to new opportunities and projects, so please get in touch if you have any thoughts.

Thanks to all for the valuable conversations, encouragement, and challenges I have experienced here. Special thanks to Vox Nova bloggers past and present for putting up with me. Keep up the good work.

Peace,
Michael

“No one can kill the voice of justice.” – Archbishop Oscar Romero
“Whoever is not angry when there is cause for anger, sins!” – St. John Chrysostom

The convergence of these realities led me to write a reflection here on the ways in which I anticipated complete silence regarding the crucified peoples of the world today, especially those who have been victims of sexual abuse in church contexts. In my own local Catholic world, silence is indeed what I experienced in a number of ways. First, prompted by a comment on the piece, I sent the reflection to about 5 or 6 friends of mine who are priests in my diocese. Granted, Holy Week is a busy week for most priests. But I was struck by the silence I met in sharing those words in this way — only one of my priest friends wrote back. He was thankful for what I wrote, and said he was challenged by what I said.

And of course the silence that I predicted — the disappearance of the crucified — dominated the liturgies at the parish I attended. The victims of clergy sexual abuse were completely absent from those three liturgies. Victims of contemporary violence of any kind were absent. On Holy Thursday we were treated to the usual “the-washing-of-the-feet-means-service” homily, likely plucked from the pastor’s file of greatest hits. Nothing about, say, the kind of “class treason” embedded in that gospel narrative. Friday we heard about how Jesus is our “spiritual water filter” and about how we each “die a little bit every day,” like when our kids get their driver’s licenses or leave home for college. (Note that the focus was on death rather than on crucifixion, i.e. execution. Resisting this overspiritualized nonsense, when I joined the procession to venerate the cross, I kept squarely in mind the daughter of a friend who was sexually abused by her soldier father.) And so then on Saturday, at an Easter Vigil liturgy attended by, apart from the choir, about fifty people due to the West Virginia-Duke Final Four basketball game, what else could we expect to follow a half-assed celebration of the cross but a half-assed celebration of resurrection? Amidst the American Idol stylings of some of the cantors (one was decked out in a black shirt and metallic red necktie) and occasional liturgical dance routines (could this parish not see the irony of having a young girl in a leotard dance before the celebrant at a time like this?), I kept raising my eyes to a large, gorgeous tapestry of Oscar Romero hung from the opposite wall. What, I wondered, would be Romero’s thoughts on this middle-class, crucifixionless Easter celebration?

The Triduum I experienced, in the context of this community especially, was empty. Silent. It was, in a sense, liturgical death.

Do not get me wrong — my disappointment is not a matter of disagreement with “contemporary liturgy.” It is a matter of the tendency in official, parish-based, middle-class Roman Catholicism — and other forms of middle-class Christianity — to overly spiritualize the mysteries we celebrate such that our celebrations become what I have called a “willful liturgical obscuring of the continued crucifixion of Christ today.”

I admitted to a friend the other day that, during the Triduum, I was not in the best “spiritual space” so to speak. Upon further reflection, though, I completely disagree with that way of looking at it. I was in a very good “spiritual space.” I experienced in those days, even on the day of Easter, a kind of crucifixion. Not the “cross” of not getting along with a co-worker or my in-laws, but the cross of suffering through a literal and liturgical denial of Christ by my parish community. We often, as a church, simply do not know our Lord and do not want to know our Lord. “I do not know the man!” Feeling the emptiness and the darkness of that place was a real grace for me this year. A very good and very necessary “spiritual space.”

In the course of those days, I finished reading a classic work of Latin American liberation theology, Freedom Made Flesh: The Mission of Christ and His Church by Ignacio Ellacuría (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1976), a close friend and advisor to Oscar Romero and one of the Jesuits martyred in El Salvador in 1989. While I have some ambivalent feelings about the book, as Ellacuría is one of the few Latin American liberation theologians who made an explicit defense of the possibility of legitimate liberationist violence, the book is a fantastic account of the “historicity” of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and of the church as the ongoing presence of Christ (sacrament) in history.

“History” is of course central to Christianity. We Christians speak all the time about “salvation history,” the various historical events through which God has been working to save humanity. And because of this we think we take “history” very seriously. But as Ellacuría once wrote, “There is no history of salvation without salvation in history.” This view of the radical historicity of salvation is what led Ellacuría, and later Romero and Sobrino, to speak of the “crucified peoples” in the world today as Christ’s body, the continued presence of the crucified one in history. What needs saving in this world, I think Ellacuría would say, needs to be identified concretely. And it is the task of those who follow Christ to “take the crucified down from their crosses,” as he would often say.

And this brings us back to my concerns with the celebration of the Triduum that I experienced, because Ellacuría’s understanding of the historicity of salvation has everything to do with liturgy. In the book’s epilogue, entitled “Liturgy and Liberation,” Ellacuría wrote:

[The] saving word must be relived in the context of the actual historical situation, and it must be converted into here-and-now Christian experience. If it is not, it will find no listeners; it will be nothing more than a jumble of meaningless sounds, shedding no light on human lives and possessing no sacramental efficacy. (236)

And then in the section on the sacrificial nature of the Mass, Ellacuría wrote:

The Mass, which is first and foremost a sacrifice, is the most obvious locale for living out [the] Christian reality [of death and resurrection]. But there is a potential danger here too. We may place too much emphasis on its unbloody nature and on its intrinsic efficacy quite apart from the operative faith of the believer. Then we tend to take refuge in such notions as “purity of intention,” “interior death,” and a “poverty of spirit” wholly divorced from poverty in our lifestyle. We tend to go in for purely secular and profane activities that are a far cry from the gospel message, excusing ourselves on the grounds that our motives are pure. We prefer to “die” at morning Mass than to die with the oppressed people around us, feeling disinclined to look for the dying Chrst amid these people. But it is the ongoing passion and death of Christ in history that we should be living in the sacrifice of the Mass.

To be sure, the liturgical texts now in use in the Mass and the sacraments do not help us very much to grasp what dying and rising with Christ really means…. People are dying in real life. We all are summoned to die in real life. That must somehow be brought out in the Mass. (245-6)

And of course, these are not the words of an ivory tower theological intellectual. They are the words of a priest and teacher who looked for the dying Christ among the oppressed peoples around him and who indeed died with them.

Ellacuría reminds us not to let our dying and rising get too “spiritualized.” Part of the concrete “dying” that many of us in the Roman Catholic Church are experiencing has something to do with the anger brought on by the scandalous behavior of so many of our ecclesial leaders, the anxiety in feeling that the church as we know it is perhaps “passing away,” and of course the pain we feel in solidarity with those who have been abused by the church. For me, and probably others, an added dimension to this “dying” is the feeling of horror that so many Catholics, including many of our hierarchs, seem completely oblivious to these realities — blaming the media, gays, and Jews for “crucifying” the church and celebrating ahistorical liturgies that simply reinforce spiritual myopia. This is a real death.

So where, then, is this promised “resurrection?” Glimpses are hard to come by, as we so clearly remain on the way of the cross, but I did receive a concrete glimpse of the resurrection this past Saturday at liturgy.

A friend of mine is a teacher at a Catholic parish middle school in a city about an hour from me. The parish is the richest Catholic church in the state of West Virginia in the middle of a staunchly republican city. A couple days after the mine explosion in southern West Virginia on Easter Monday, my friend called me to tell me that the assistant pastor at the parish was planning to criticize Massey Energy, the owner of the mine, and its CEO Don Blankenship from the pulpit. As I have never, ever heard a homily critical of “Big Coal” in my home state, I decided to make the trip to hear the homily.

Coincidentally, members of the Westboro Baptist Church were scheduled to protest outside of the church during the Mass. They had planned to be there for at least weeks, intending to protest at Catholic churches and institutions in the state in response to the sexual abuse scandal — some of their signs read “Your pastor is a whore” — but the mine explosion gave them an opportunity to pull out their “God loves dead miners” schtick. (In case you’re not aware, the Westboro folks believe that God intentionally kills u.s. soldiers and coal miners as a punishment for “tolerating” homosexuality in society.)

The homilist tied together the Massey accident, the Westboro hate group’s appearance at the church, and the sex abuse scandal in his homily. He expressed disappointment in realizing that some of his parishioners must agree with the views of the Westboro Baptist Church (“Just get rid of the gay priest, and we’ll no longer be front page news”). Riffing on the “doubting Thomas” gospel reading, he insisted that we need to stop having doubts about the “dangerous story of Jesus,” and that faith in this story will require that we become “doubting Thomases” with reference to some of the assumptions that we take for granted in our world and in our church. In particular, he said, we need to doubt what we have been taught about gay and lesbian people, and we need to doubt that the heads of corporations like Massey Energy care about the safety of their workers more than they do the generation of profit. On the latter issue, he was unambiguous in saying that Massey and Don Blankenship are murderers and need to be held accountable for what they are doing to the people and land of southern West Virginia.

What is that? What is that sound? That strange sound here in the church? The Gospel? The Gospel made concrete?

It was clear from the homily that this priest was also experiencing a kind of crucifixion with all that is happening in the church, in our state, and in our world. There was a heartbrokenness there, a kind of admission that something (maybe many somethings) needs to die in our church. “We are summoned to die in real life,” Ellacuría says. But in embracing that cross, some of us in that congregation caught a glimpse of the resurrection and a glimpse of the church as it could be — a church of compassion and justice, and of prophetic solidarity with those who suffer. That homily, and the Eucharist that was its context, was a resurrection moment for me, a sign of hope that somewhere deep down, this church retains something of the Gospel underneath all of its ugliness.

Alleluia! He is risen! He is risen indeed!

It is probably no secret that in some respects there exists a sort of ongoing blog “spat” between this blog and another Catholic group blog that is politically and theologically “conservative.” As much as one might like to wish that such rivalries did not exist, it is simply the case that this blog was founded quite deliberately in response to the emergence of this blog, taking cues from Vox Nova’s style (right down to the very WordPress theme!) and tending toward direct commentary in response to our posts. Which is fine. We intended from the start that Vox Nova would generate conversation and that it would provoke strong feelings in what is largely a community of religious bloggers dominated by right-wing views. And if anything, despite my own regular irritation with the views and the blogging style of these folks, I truly believe that imitation is the best form of flattery.

But I’ll be the first to admit that the relationship between the two blogs has gotten ugly. Which is why I was strongly in favor of issuing an apology for any ways in which this blog has contributed to scandalous and abusive exchanges among members of the Body of Christ. Indeed, I ended up being the one to draft that apology. One commitment that we made at that time — reluctantly, for various reasons — was to moderate the comments at this blog in order to weed out problems before they started. This has since taken the form of simply not approving comments or of editing comments by removing irrelevant or insulting portions. A large percentage of comments are approved. Of the “problematic” comments, most are simply unapproved and only a few are edited.

As could have been predicted, the blog mentioned earlier responded by increasing its own tendency to moderate comments, especially those left by writers from this blog. This is certainly their prerogative. It seems obvious to me why some of our comments are not welcome there, especially when we point out that some of their contributors promote ideas that seem quite contrary to the faith and to human flourishing.

It is, however, an entirely different matter when comments are deleted and manipulated in order to distort the conversations that take place or to show a commenter in a bad light. This is a regular occurrence on the blog in question. It often takes the form of deleting a reader’s comment and then replying to the deleted comment by saying something like “We will not tolerate your insults” when no such “insult” ever took place.

The ethical problems with such fabrications should be obvious, but astonishingly the fabrications not only continue, but worsen. Tonight I left a comment commending one of this blog’s new writers for the new perspective he was bringing to the blog. In response, someone at the blog (obviously, I don’t know who) removed the words from my comment and inserted entirely new ones, in a sort of parody of my own views. Here is a screenshot of that entirely fabricated comment. (A second entirely fabricated comment followed this one.)

On the one hand, the comment is just too cute. I’ve been around the Catholic barfosphere enough to have the kind of despisers who know how to get under my skin. Fair enough. In the context of the relationship between these two blogs, the joke is pretty funny. On the other hand, the editing of my comment — no, the complete fabrication of “my” comment — points to a real crossing of an ethical line. Considering the source, I’m not really surprised that this took place. But surely the people behind this blog have enough sense to know how profoundly unethical such tampering is? The potential fallout from the exposure of such comment fabrication — even though intended as a “harmless joke” — could be disastrous for them and for their reputations.

Our own Nate Wildermuth has initiated an important conversation about the possible “renewal” of the Catholic blogosphere. That conversation has included some interesting and challenging ideas about what constitutes “good” Catholic blogging. At the very least, it seems to me that “good” Catholic blogging requires at the start a commitment to a very basic sense of ethics. The deliberate fabrication of comments using their access to a reader’s WordPress account seems to me a pretty serious breach of any sensible ethical framework for blogging. The American Catholic owes an apology — not so much to me, but to their readers as a whole. For any trustworthiness or credibility whatsoever that the bloggers there once had has now been deeply called into question.

[A slightly edited version of this review appeared in the Catholic Register (Canada).]

Ben Witherington brings biblical teaching on money to bear on the current economic crisis in Jesus and Money. Witherington is a well-published Evangelical biblical scholar whose works cover a wide range of scholarly debates, presenting them in accessible ways for lay Christian audiences. In this book, however, Witherington presents an incomplete view of biblical texts on wealth and oversteps the bounds of his expertise as he applies these texts to today’s economy.

This incompleteness is ironic, as Witheringon explicitly stakes out his position as a “canonical” approach to the scriptures (142). That is, he insists that Christians may not pick and choose parts of scripture that appeal to them while ignoring others. This, he says, is precisely the problem with his primary target throughout the book: advocates of the “health and wealth” or “prosperity” gospel who focus on texts which seem to suggest that material wealth is a sign of God’s blessing. Against this painfully obvious abuse of scripture, Witherington insists that Christians must not ignore other biblical texts about wealth, and in the first eight chapters he surveys a variety of texts from both testaments. Along the way he draws out insights in order to develop a “Christian theology of money,” presented in chapter nine, and suggestions for the life of discipleship in chapter ten.

The chapters contain useful background information for the biblical texts he chooses. Especially helpful are his descriptions of the economies of the ancient world and how they differ from our own. But his insistence on a canonical approach obscures the choices Witherington himself makes in presenting “the” biblical view on money. For example, Witherington’s survey features only one paragraph on the Hebrew prophets, an obvious source for a biblical view of wealth. The prophets are indeed essential for understanding the words and ministry of Jesus. Also, despite his consciousness of the limited role money actually played in the ancient world, Witherington tends to zero in only on passages that explicitly refer to money, overlooking, for example, the more general and pervasive biblical theme of God’s option for the poor and powerless. His neglect of the option for the poor is unfortunate, and he seems to downplay or even reject this idea in favor of stressing God’s “impartiality” (80-1).

Both in his analysis of scripture and in his attempt to apply it to the contemporary world, Witherington sees things from the perspective of middle and upper-class assumptions. These assumptions prevent him from subjecting biblical texts to any form of serious critique, particularly a class conscious critique. Texts that would not offend middle and upper-class sensibilities, such as passages from the book of Proverbs, are left unscrutinized, while more challenging passages, such as Jesus’ command to his disciples to sell all they have are explained away because, after all, how are we supposed to be good, generous Christians if we don’t have anything to give?

In this book, Witherington does not view today’s economic system from the perspective of people who are poor, and this, combined with his near exclusive focus on the prosperity gospel phenomenon, allows the deeper, hidden assumptions of global capitalism to escape scrutiny. For Witherington, “we are all responsible” for the economic crisis. Poverty and hardship are seen as occasional “emergencies” and “crises” rather than the ever-present underside of the global capitalist system. The emergencies that “occasionally” befall “our” economic system, and solutions for “fixing” them, look very different depending on where one stands.

Likewise, for Witherington, the problem with wealth is the “spiritual effect” it has on believers, not the material effects that capitalist values and structures have on the poor and marginalized. Wealth is “a potential spiritual stumbling block” (142) while generosity brings “spiritual rewards” (152) and so Christians should resist consumerism lest they experience “spiritual death.” Systemic injustice is noted in on few occasions (92), but “The bottom line of Jesus’s teaching about wealth and prosperity is that wealth is a danger to one’s spiritual life and well-being” (70).

From this perspective, all Witherington is able to do by the book’s end is make a few recommendations for how we might spiritually “deprogram” ourselves from consumer culture. Missing is the idea that Christians might work toward alternative economic structures, as Pope Benedict XVI argues in his recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate. Witherington suggests that Christians spend time with “holy rollers” rather than “high rollers” (158), but the thought that middle and upper-class Christians might spend time with and learn from those who are poor is glaringly absent.

Sadly, I find little reason to recommend this book. The few worthwhile portions contain information easily found in other, more complete, reflections on faith and economics. Fortunately there are many worthwhile recent biblical and theological reflections available, such as and Richard Horsley’s Covenant Economics: A Biblical Vision of Justice for All and Joerg Rieger’s No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics and the Future.

Although the passion narratives of our Gospels are well known to us and bring all sorts of images to mind, they are in fact quite sketchy overall. We fill in each of the four narratives in various ways: with one another, with images from art and film, and even with insights from the contemporary world. Or better, what often takes place is a process of “mutual illumination” through the interaction of the Gospel texts and our contemporary world. That is, while the Gospels certainly illuminate the contemporary world, the contemporary world can also illuminate the Gospels, helping us to understand them better.

This process of “mutual illumination” is quite common in theological reflection, whether it is of the formal academic type or the reflection all Christians do, but it is especially present in most expressions of liberation theology. In light of recent discussions about sexual abuse in the church, I revisited an essay I read a few years ago in which British liberation theologian David Tombs explores the interconnections between torture, execution, state terror, and sexual abuse in Latin America during the 1970s and 80s and brings this analysis to his reading of the passion of Jesus (“Crucifixion, State Terror, and Sexual Abuse,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 53, Nos. 1-2 [1999]: 89-109).

Like William Cavanaugh in his book Torture and Eucharist, Tombs describes how torture is a technology of state terror and dehumanization meant not only to punish an individual or to acquire information but as a means of terrorizing a whole population into submission. But Tombs examines more strongly the role of sexual humiliation (such as forced nudity and mocking) and sexual abuse (physical sexual violation) in the process of torture and state terror. He shows how sexual violence was a central aspect of torture as practiced in countries such as Argentina, Guatemala, and El Salvador. To anyone who has followed the exposure of the details of torture practices used by the united states military, the connection between torture and sexual abuse should not be surprising.

Tombs brings these analyses to the Gospels, bringing with them questions and insights that usually escape our view. Crucifixion, like contemporary torture, was an imperial practice of torture and execution designed not only to punish but to terrorize entire groups of occupied peoples. Using contemporary torture practices to illuminate the Gospel accounts of the passion, Tombs asks the disturbing question of whether it is possible that Jesus himself was a victim of sexual abuse during his torture and execution.

Read with the insights from contemporary torture in mind, Tombs sees in the Gospels clear evidence of at least sexual humiliation. In all accounts, Jesus is stripped of his clothes, sometimes multiple times, and mocked. In the Gospel accounts in which Jesus is flogged, it is entirely possible that Jesus was naked while he has beaten. And of course most assume that Jesus was naked as he hung on the cross. It is difficult to argue against the idea that there was an element of sexual humiliation in the torture Jesus went through.

Althouh it seems clear the Jesus underwent sexual humilation, there is no evidence in the Gospels one way or another about whether Jesus was the victim of sexual violence, but Tombs argues that there is a strong possibility. He cites ample extra-biblical evidence from Josephus and others of the kinds of sexual violence used in the ancient world both by the Romans and by other ancient cultures. In particular, he cites texts which show how sexual violence was often used in the context of crucifixion, the practice of which varied widely. Sexual domination of both men and women were common as a political tactic of terror, especially the practice of anal rape. Even castration was sometimes known to occur before crucifixion.

Again, Tombs is engaging is speculative historical inquiry and theology as there is no evidence in favor or against the suggestion that Jesus was sexually abused. He points out, however, that because of the scandalous nature of such actions, it is entirely possible that the evangelists downplayed any sexual abuse that may have taken place.

Such theological speculation is disturbing to our sensibilities. And it is important to ask why this is the case. We know Jesus underwent unbearably painful torture and death. We have no problem saying this year after year on Good Friday and Sunday after Sunday at Eucharist. Our knowledge of the depths of Jesus’ suffering moves us both emotionally and spiritually. But at the same time, we probably recoil from the suggestion that Jesus may have been raped. I think we are uncomfortable with this suggestion because ultimately we cannot stand a crucifixion that is too realistic. For all the ways that it reveals the “human” Jesus, one with us in suffering and death, the cross remains in many ways “otherworldly.” Crucifixion is hardly common in today’s world. We can safely imagine Jesus’ flogging, his crowning with thorns, and his death on the cross from a temporal and cultural distance. Even the crucifixion as portrayed in Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ, praised each and every year for its supposed “realism,” is ultimately more cartoonish than it is realistic. We simply do not want a cross that is too realistic, perhaps because we wish to preserve the uniqueness of Christ’ passion. We need to preserve that boundary because without it we would learn far too much about the “crucifixions” in today’s world and their “family resemblance” to the passion of Jesus.

Tombs says that reflection on the possibility of Jesus’ sexual abuse yields a number of profound theolgical and pastoral implications. First, it can “deepen Christian understanding of God’s solidarity with the powerless,” revealing the depths of evil that Jesus very well could have experienced in his life. In fact, Tombs says, refusal to consider the possibility that Jesus may have been the victim of sexual violence could indicate an inadequate christology that denies the fullness of the incarnation. Pastorally, this suggestion could contribute another facet of the liberating gospel to victims of sexual abuse by showing another way that Jesus shares in their human experience. This pastoral implication, he says, is true whether Jesus was sexually abused or “only” sexually humiliated, the latter of which is clearly seen in the Gospel texts.

Although he deals with sexual abuse in the context of political torture, Tombs’ analysis is striking to me this Holy Week as we are in the midst of a new wave of reports of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests. As I previously argued, this Holy Week it is essential for us as a church to see Christ crucified in those who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of religious officials and to bring these “crucifixions” explicitly into our Holy Week liturgies. Perhaps the connections between Christ’s crucifixion and contemporary violence are difficult for us to make. Tombs’ research can perhaps give us the nudge we need in making Christ’s passion a little more “real” and helping us to see Christ crucified in those who suffer sexual violence in today’s world and in today’s church.

3. Right to pump. Workplaces will have to provide “reasonable” break time and a private location — other than a bathroom — for breastfeeding mothers to pump breast milk for one year after the birth of a child. Women’s groups have long sought such guarantees, and this one will apply to all workplaces with the exception of employers with less than 50 employees, where the demand might create an “undue hardship.”

4. Postpartum depression. In addressing another priority for women’s groups, the bill singles out the problem of postpartum depression for expanded funding, worker training, publiceducation and research. The National Institute of Mental Health is due to conduct a national longitudinal study of women with postpartum depression, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services must produce a study on the benefits of PPD screening.

…

6. Adoption credit. Beginning with your 2010 taxes, the federal adoption credit goes up by $1,000 to $13,170 per child and now becomes refundable.

…

9. Abstinence education. The bill restores federal funding for abstinence-only education, the sex-ed technique that urges students to wait until marriage (while eschewing talk of contraceptives). Researchers dispute the effectiveness of the strategy, and it was getting the cold shoulder from the Obama administration. The health reform bill, however, allocates $250 million for such programs over the next five years.

German political theologian Fr. Johann Baptist Metz famously wrote on many occasions that the challenge for theologians in the second half of the twentieth century would be to learn how to write theology that places the world’s victims at the center of its reflection. In particular, Metz insisted that theologians could no longer do their work with their backs turned to Auschwitz. In his most recent book, Catholic theologian Tom Beaudoin echoes Metz, writing that today we cannot do theology with our backs turned to the victims of sexually abusive priests. (His reflections on the latest round of abuse reports can be seen here or here.)

But this is, I fear, precisely what is likely to happen in most Roman Catholic parishes during Holy Week. Given the tendency toward apolitical and irrelevant homilies that have become standard in our communities, I have my doubts that many Good Friday homilies will make reference to the crucifixions experienced by victims of sexually abusive clergy. A friend of mine, and a doctoral student in theology herself, remarked to me that the Pope’s silence in the face of cover-up accusations could be due to the view that Holy Week is perhaps not an appropriate time to discuss such things. I suggested in return that if in Holy Week we focus our attention on the suffering of Christ, then acknowledging the Christ that suffers in the victims seems entirely fitting this week. More than fitting. Necessary. But sadly, if we are to get any reference to the scandal at all, it is likely to be the sort of thing Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s flock received at Mass this past Passion/Palm Sunday when he insisted that it is Pope Benedict who has been “crucified”.

In such a context of silence, denial, defensiveness, and submissiveness, what would a Triduum celebration even mean if not the willful liturgical obscuring of the continued crucifixion of Christ today? The Catholic mystical tradition has consistently insisted that Christ suffers today in his body. But as Salvadoran liberation theologian Jon Sobrino presses us, “it would be idle to say that Christ crucified has a body in history and not identify it in some way. [...] From the viewpoint of christology we must ask what this body is.”

It is truly difficult to hear the continued reports of children raped by priests and not be struck by the presence of the Crucified One there. But this presence is denied — “I do not know the man!” — each and every time church leaders and members alike remain silent or utter words of defensiveness that embarrassingly fill nearly every news story or ecclesial statement covering the abuse.

Is a Triduum that intentionally turns its back on the suffering body of Christ in such a way worth celebrating? No doubt, we will hear once again the church’s language of “entering into the sufferings of Christ” as we do each and every year. But when will we learn that such pieties are at best meaningless or at worst utterly destructive if we are unwilling as a church to identify — and to identify with — Christ’s suffering body today? We cannot enter into Christ’s sufferings without entering those of his body. Indeed, the only way to enter into Christ’s sufferings is through the sufferings of others.

If we do not — if we cannot — do so, if we cannot, as Paul said, “discern the body” and we instead celebrate the holy mysteries without a recognition of the victims, we eat and drink condemnation on ourselves.

Archbishop Oscar Romero was conscious of the way the “crucified peoples” mediate the presence of the Crucified One. Despite his position of privilege, Romero saw the crucified people around him yet did not deny their presence, cover them up, or become defensive about the political and religious systems that produced them. Instead, he “incarnated” himself among the crucified and shone a light onto them insisting that they were the ones God loves the most. And he did this no matter how uncomfortable it would be and with no regard for the repercussions. We know the end of that story.

Despite Romero’s relevance as a true model for today’s episcopacy and today’s church, I fear that Romero too will be absent and unremembered over the course of this week’s liturgies. Although his life, death, and resurrection among his people mediates to us something of the Christ event, our backs, and the backs of our celebrants and homilists, will be turned to him as well.

Liturgy should always, though usually does not, draw us into the sufferings of others. During Holy Week, the celebration of the Lord’s passion and resurrection, this should be even more true. But as a life-long faithful participant in the church’s liturgical life, I am increasing frustrated by the fact that we literally have to work against the liturgy — as it is conducted by most celebrants and most communities anyway — in order for this to happen. The suffering of human persons at the hands of our social, political, and ecclesial systems is “disappeared,” removed even from our liturgies where our anamnetic words and actions suffer from the worst kind of spiritual myopia and, as Sobrino calls it, “christological deism.”

And from where I stand, just days away from these holiest of days, I anticipate only more silence in the face of the reality of the world’s suffering, especially that suffering directly caused by the church. And I am not sure I can take it this year.

Today in NCR’s story on the sainthood cause of Archbishop Oscar Romero, whose anniversary of martyrdom we celebrate today, Fr. Dean Brackley SJ notes that the hesitancy with which the church seems to be moving toward “Saint Oscar” is in part due to the fact that, by canonizing Romero, the church would hold him up not only as a model Christian but as a model archbishop. As Brackley says, “not everyone in the Catholic hierarchy is comfortable with presenting him as a bishop to be imitated.”

What kind of bishops does the church need in the twenty-first century? Bishops known for their (sometimes loud) participation in the “marketplace of ideas,” or pastors known for their continual conversion and for their humble walk with the oppressed even unto death? Indeed, what kind of church shall we be in the twenty-first century? A church that competes for political leverage or a treasonous church of solidarity, a church of the poor?

Today’s anniversary is a good opportunity to reflect on these questions, not only for bishops, but for all of God’s people.

That is, “If I am killed, I will rise in the Salvadoran people.”

Here are a few more resources on and quotes from Archbishop Oscar Romero who was killed by a u.s. funded and trained death squad 30 years ago today while celebrating Mass. My uncle has been serving as a priest in El Salvador since the early 1980s, and he has been looking forward to today’s celebrations. From a recent email from him:

This will be a big “Sorrows Week” as it’s known here. Our big local doings center around the 30th anniversary of the assasination of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero. There will be a big Mass in the cathedral on Wednesday, celebrated by Cardinal McCarrick of Washington (retired) and a bunch of bishops from the U.S.A., Central America, and Europe, especially Rome, or so our archbishop has promised.

I am looking forward to hearing reports from him about today’s events. Until then:

BBC reports on the 30th anniversary celebrations.

NCR reports on Romero’s sainthood cause.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove reflects on Oscar Romero and the radical act of staying put.

The Daily Show reports on the Texas school board’s exclusion of Romero from the curriculum. “And that is how Oscar Romero got disappeared by right wingers for the second time.”

David Horstkoetter, a doctoral student in theology at Marquette, posted his very fine paper on Oscar Romero and Johann Baptist Metz some time ago at his blog. It is definitely worth your time.

A two-part extended trailer for the documentary Romero By Romero featuring amazing footage of the archbishop and testimony from eyewitnesses:

Pope Benedict on Romero

‘I have no doubt he will be beatified. I know that the cause is proceeding well at the Congregation for the Cause of Saints,’ but said he did not have precise information.’ He was certainly a great witness [witness = martyr] for the faith, a man of great Christian virtue who was committed to peace and against dictatorship.’ Recalling that Romero was assassinated during the Consecration of the Host, he said it was ‘an incredible death.’ [Source]

Noam Chomsky on Romero

“Let it be quite clear that if we are being asked to collaborate with a pseudo peace, a false order, based on repression and fear, we must recall that the only order and the only peace that God wants is one based on truth and justice. Before these alternatives, our choice is clear: We will follow God’s order, not men’s.” – Archbishop Oscar Romero (July 1, 1979)

Archbishop Oscar Romero, presente!
St. Oscar of the Americas, pray for us!

At the end of the First Intercontinental Encounter in the Selva Lacandona, the Zapatistas said at one point, “We are not here to change the world, something that is very difficult, next to impossible. We are here to create a whole new world.” This looks very idealistic, romantic, not real, not pragmatic. Thinking time again with them about this, we have discovered that they are absolutely right and that this position is very realistic. To change the reality, it is very difficult, next to impossible. To create something radically new is feasible. You can do that tomorrow.

Please just think for a minute, let’s change the educational system in Mexico or in the United States. You can change the educational system? You can dedicate your whole life and the lives of your friends and your families and you will be a footnote in a textbook and nothing more. You cannot change that monster. But if you want to create a radically new thing, to learn whatever you want to learn beyond the system, you can create that tomorrow morning. You can immediately create something else, a different kind of situation.

This is the kind of thing about which we are thinking, “Yes, what we are trying to do is to create a whole new world and for this we need imagination. We need to invent that new world.”

- Gustavo Esteva, Mexican author, grassroots activist and “de-professionalized intellectual”