promoting community, liberty, faith, family, and peace." That's what AmCon magazine calls itself on its twitter page. But they are more Catholic than the Pope:NEW: "Likewise, the certain fact that souls were saved by the missionaries, the enduring belief of Christians that the Gospel is true and must be spread, is paramount; everything else is secondary." https://t.co/Rf3A7zcYxK
— The American Conservative (@amconmag) July 8, 2021
and frankly are so dead wrong on this issue of soteriology I think even the USCCB would disagree with them (well, not unanimously, probably).America may be a republic, but the Church is a monarchy. https://t.co/lPjyMNbOvX
— The American Conservative (@amconmag) July 7, 2021
Whatever good was present at the Ossossané ossuary—where those who had not yet encountered the fullness of Truth honored their dead as best they knew how—is increased a thousandfold in the cemeteries of the residential schools, where baptized Christians were given Christian burials. Whatever natural good was present in the piety and community of the pagan past is an infinitesimal fraction of the grace rendered unto those pagans’ descendants who have been received into the Church of Christ. Whatever sacrifices were exacted in pursuit of that grace—the suffocation of a noble pagan culture; an increase in disease and bodily death due to government negligence; even the sundering of natural families—is worth it.
Nothing drives that sentiment, that belief, that conviction, except the certainty that people don't matter and things don't matter, only ideas matter. Start with the French missionaries "saving" the "pagans" by bringing their soteriology to the natives of Canada. As the old story goes of the Inuit told by the missionary about this version of the Gospel, where you must accept it in order to be "saved": "If you hadn't told me about this, would I have gone to hell?" "No, of course not," replies the missionary. "Then why did you tell me?" Except Leary might think the natives were going to hell, because this atonement theory of soteriology only works if the damnation is absolute and ineradicable except by somehow believing in, and moreover "accepting" (never did figure out the precise mechanism of that) the blood sacrifice that God spared even Abraham, as something essential to being "saved."
Even as I type that I realize it's senseless. I mean, seriously. How does one assent to this proposition? Are magic words involved? Is there a concept that, after 60+ years in this, I still don't grasp? I used to have earnest young Baptist girls ask me if I'd "accepted Jesus into my heart." I asked them which ventricle he was supposed to fit in. I was serious. The metaphorical heart they clearly meant was not something I accepted people into; I loved them or I didn't. I still love my wife, after 50+ years of knowing her. Why? I can't really tell you. Did I accept her into my heart? Or is that a special status available only to Jesus? I'm serious, this concept makes no sense to me at all.
So has God damned all souls who never heard the gospel? All of humanity before, oh, Paul, doomed? All of humanity beyond the reach of Christian missionaries, damned? Who believes that nonsense anymore, and how do they justify it? God is love, but sucks to be you? I don't understand it, and I won't sugarcoat my disgust with it by trying to couch it in more "objective" or "rational" terms. It's bullshit. It's utter garbage, and as antithetical to the radical acceptance of persons that is the heart of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, that is the true "good news" of the gospels (a term that just means "good news"), of the "euangelion," that I reject it outright as fraud and lies and, if I believed in him, as coming from Satan. But we don't need Satan to be this evil; we're completely capable of it ourselves.
"Whatever sacrifices were exacted in pursuit of that grace." That is the chief sin of the Pharisees, at least as they are portrayed in the gospels (it's a false historical picture, but a useful foil here, as it is there). Only ideas matter; people are unimportant. It's a cruel and disgusting reversal of the first of all being last and servant of all, because all must be servant, not to each other, but to the Idea.
And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. 40Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also? 41But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you. 42But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. 43Woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets. 44Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them. 45Then answered one of the lawyers, and said unto him, Master, thus saying thou reproachest us also.
Jesus there, in a dialogue Luke says connects directly to his crucifixion, is condemning the practice of raising the Idea above the person. Leary is arguing it doesn't matter how those people lived or died; all that matters is their salvation. How is that any different from the Pharisees and lawyers portrayed in Jesus' diatribe who insist on the purity of their righteousness by passing over "the love of God." Perhaps it makes Leary feel better to think all is well because those who died were saved, and salvation is all that matters. But the people Jesus attacks thought their rules and laws were all that mattered, too.
Ideas don't matter. Things don't matter. People matter. You have to start there, or all the rest is desolation.
I honestly don't know of too many theologians who would argue in this day and age that salvation is all that matters, and all the rest after that mere persiflage. I suppose there are a few pastors who hold to that horrific line, removing the last vestiges of the Gospel from what they declare is their Christianity. It certainly isn't mine. I want no part of it. The salvation provided by the gospels is how we can see and learn that we must live as last of all and servants of all. It is not some metaphysical prize that secures us the right place in the afterlife and so makes whatever life we live here insignificant. It is not the only teaching of the Gospel that matters; because it's not a teaching of the gospels at all. It was a concept unknown and undescribed until the 4th century, and even then it came along only as an apologia as the church spread into the more "sophisticated" Greek influenced world (I don't now slight Greek thought by that), and some better explanation of the crucifixion, of the worship of a crucified God, needed to be made. Anselm universalized the message as best he could with the atonement theory, but that idea has long ago ceased to "provide light and life to its generation." It is past time to let it go.
Or just to realize it isn't the only Christian idea out there. Or indeed, the most important one.
Grant that thy Church may be delivered from traditions which have lost their life, from usage which has lost its spirit, from institutions which no longer give life and power to their generation; that the Church may ever shine as a light in the world and be as a city set on a hill.
HEAR OUR PRAYER, O LORD.
O Christ, may the Church, whom thou didst love into life, not fail thee in her witness for the things for which thou didst live and die.
TEACH US TO DO THY HOLY WILL, O LORD AND MASTER.
O Christ, the people who are called by thy Name are separated from each other in thought and life; still our tumults, take away our vain imaginings, and grant to thy people at this time the courage to pro-claim the gospel of forgiveness, and faithfully to maintain the ministry of reconciliation.
TEACH US TO DO THY HOLY WILL, O LORD AND MASTER.
I don't think worshipping salvation as the be all and end all of human life is teaching us to do God's will. But maybe that's just me.
(Having finished this, I learn the summary of facts provided by this article refer to a current news story I wasn't already familiar with. But now, knowing only the briefest details, I learn how much Mr. Leary leaves out, obfuscates, or just distorts in order to justify his position on what is good and what is bad here. I would call his version beastly; I would call it fiendish; but the truth is, it is human; all too human. “The ends justify the means.” Ecce homo. Only we are capable of knowing that. Only we are capable of accepting that as truth, or convincing ourselves it is. To say it is human, very very human, to be capable of such cruelty, is the most damning thing I can come up with.)
I know this has started accreting, but this is closer to what I’m driving at, without as much specificity as to target. Laying down church law is ever so much easier than reaching out to the marginalized (and recognizing them as marginalized, which means they are people where they are, and not people when we’re through with them). Laying down the law makes us powerful; reaching out to the marginalized makes us vulnerable. I know which condition I think the Gospel calls us to bear.“It’s not that Francis has ever had any illusions about his own mortality and his small window to enact his vision of a more inclusive church that emphasizes reaching out to the marginalized over laying down church law” https://t.co/jG4keX7JaP
— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) July 9, 2021
In the reporting about Francis not issuing an official apology for the recently discovered bodies around Canadian residential schools - a lot of which were administered by religious denominations, including the RCatholic church - mostly they haven't noted that him not doing so was because the Canadian Conference of Bishops are divided on issuing an apology and having Francis go to Canada to deliver it. One of his major initiatives was to restart the devolution of decision making out of the Vatican and into national conferences and dioceses - which, considering how many of the bishops were JPII right-wing hacks and almost as bad appointed under Benedict XVI has its downsides along with a few up sides.
ReplyDeleteIt's remarkable how much of that late-classical-medieval theology has been problematic in the way these white-supermacists are taking advantage of. I was just reading some of the early debates in the First Congress surrounding slavery and, though with a decidedly Federalist-secularist (you could almost say Mammonist) accent, they are saying similar things in support of keeping up the slave trade.
One of the things that was most eye-opening for me was reading the Pauline letters without taking that later theological thinking for granted, they're a totally different thing if you do that. Augustine is one of those I blame for a lot, perhaps it's because I haven't read Anslem at all. I find Gregory of Nyssa and Issac of Syria more congenial and, to my thinking, closer to scripture. Though there's a lot in Orthodox theology that's seriously messed up too. I do find that the closer to the Scriptures you get the less messed up it is, though lots of it is still confusing and unclear.
Maybe I should mention that a lot of the Canadian bishops opposition is based on the enormous debt that JPII's visit to Canada left them with, something like 34 million dollars and that the various scandals of that time decimated the support of the churches. JPII was not a very good Pope in a lot of ways.
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