"Our God dwells within us! The only way to become one with that God is to become one with our authentic self!" Maurice Blondel
Blondel’s moral philosophy indicates a new appropriateness for Saint lgnatius’ doctrine of the discernment of spirits as a means of pragmatically resolving our conscience in the process of making free moral choices. For that doctrine, as Karl Rahner points out, tacitly presupposes a philosophy of human existence in which a moral decision in its individuality is not merely an instance of general ethical normative principles but something positively individual and unique (Rahner, 1964. p. 110). Since humans are not just a material instance of a general nature, as a spiritual personal being humans are more than the point of intersection of general truths and maxims, more than the particular instance of a multi-pliable essence. This unique and special factor, the single human existence, can be summoned by an imperative prescription which is different in kind from any moral principle derived from general characteristics. Thus, the individuality of the person is the norm which the person must finally obey when pursuing his perfection by means of free choice.
The consequence of this understanding of humans for moral life is that a human’s conscience has a function over and above the application of general norms to concrete circumstances. That function is that whereby the individual person recognizes an individual obligation in conscience which cannot be deduced from general principles (Gerken, 1963. pp. 141-152). The divine will is also a personal free will which is capable of entering into a personal dialogue with the individual as such and of exercising free initiative in that dialogue. Further, this personal divine will respects the free choices which the individual existent has made in the past and thus, in the context of the dialogue respects the limits which those choices have established for future response. It belongs to the moral obligation of humans to be and to become by free choice the individual that they are. In the discernment of spirits one seeks an intellectual knowledge which is incapable of being expressed in objective concepts. This knowledge is ultimately grounded in the simple presence to itself of the intrinsically intelligible subject, which in the very accomplishment of its acts has knowledge of itself through self-consciousness without the contrast of knower and things known.
In important decisions, Rahncr maintains, practically every human chooses more or less in the manner which Ignatius had in mind. For, in such resolves. the person forms his or her choice nearly all the time from the basic experience of themselves and from the feeling of congruity and incongruity that the object of election has with their fundamental experience of themselves. They will make decisions, not only or finally from a rational analysis, but from the experience of whether or not sontething fits them. This experience is measured according to whether the thing makes them happy. satisfies them interiorly.
It is important to note the role that the creative imagination plays in making such a decision. One studies the choice to be made: one imagines the situation which such a choice would bring upon him or her; one tries to live in advance with such a choice. While doing this the person is constantly aware of what this choice causes in him. Saint Ignatius’ doctrine presupposes that the individual morality of a proposed course of action is not discovered exclusively in the objective essence of the action. Rather, the morality of the course of action is also discovered from its effects on the individual’s self-consciousness. Peace, joy, quiet, happiness: it is by using these as criteria that one learns whether the object of one's decision is good or not.
This doctrine is based on the theological presupposition that in every sincere believer the inner law of the Spirit is at work like a kind of connaturality with the God who speaks to him through Christ-a kind of power of discrimination, a spiritual sense of touch capable of discerning what is and what is not an authentic realization of God’s invitation. Conscience is sacred because, when I get down to the real self in my search for self-fulfillment, I find a depth in myself which does not belong to me but to which I belong, a depth which theologians refer to as the Holy Spirit dwelling in me.
The use of the discernment of spirits as a practical means of resolving the individual conscience is based on one all-important presupposition. That presupposition is a basic option, not in terms of any particular object, but a basic option in favor of transcendence, in favor of openness. Humans must open themselves to the presence within them of the infinite and transcendent God. Humans must freely assent to this reality of their own being. If the inclination in any given decision concerning a particular good is really one which fits the individual, then this particular movement will necessarily support ne's consolations and desolations (Rahner, 1964. p. 155). The individual reality which one meets, or which one must choose, or do, or suffer, is held up to one’s fundamental openness to God.
The appropriateness of the discernment of spirits as a practical means of resolving conscience lies in the fact that it does respect the uniqueness of the existing subject and his or her liberty of conscience while, at the same time, it gives humans a method whereby they can discover the will of God not as something totally outside themself, but as the deepest reality of their own will.
Further, this practice leads humans not just to an abstract conceptual aware-ness of God, but to a vital experiential sense of the presence of the divine spirit within. As Thomas Sartory observes in his article: Changes in Christian Spirituality:
Tomorrow the devout man will be a “mystic,” a man who has experienced something, or there will be no devout men. In the past any personal experience and decision always found its way prepared by the convictions of the public and by general religious customs taken for granted in which piety could find support. But this support is fading away. The personal religious experience of the individual, therefore, is going to be increasingly decisive [Sartory, 1968. p. 79].
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Freedom of Conscience PartII
FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE IN RELIGIOUS LIFE
Moral life, then, is evolutionary. It is a dynamic dialectic of fact and possibility, of the actual and the ideal. We must look for ideal human nature not in the past but in the future. And the key to that future is the creative moral freedom of humans. In this evolutionary framework natural law should no longer be understood as based on a static structure or essence; rather, it represents a statement of conditions for humanity’s own growth seen as a possibility and a task to be freely accomplished.
Conscience within this perspective is a developing form of self-awareness; it is to be understood as the deepest self-consciousness of humans insofar as it acts as a power of discrimination, deciding in every choice what will promote authentic selfhood and what will stand in its way. Humans on the moral level are characterized by self-development. They perceive every choice as a choice between authentic and inauthentic humanity. They see their life as having a meaning Only they can give it through free choice. Moral obligations can only be accepted; they cannot be imposed. A psychologically mature adult can be called on to commit his freedom; he cannot be called on to submit it. For as long as a human is not directing his or her or own activity on the moral level he or she is not to that extent a free agent. Consequently, to the degree that he or she is not a free agent, he or she or is neither a responsible nor a moral person.
As Ignace Lepp notes, the evolution of moral conscience takes place according to the same general laws that govern the passage of individuals and social groups from infancy through adolescence to maturity (Lepp, 1965, p. 8). The growth of human psychic life will always proceed from instinct to rational self-development, and should culminate in a continuous process in religious self-donation. On the level of religious life, conscience is transposed into love itself. Sin on this level becomes the refusal to be for others. Freedom is a true moral value for religious life only when and to the degree that it promotes a superior form of personal and community life. The fullness of moral life is to be found precisely in that act by which one establishes oneself as person in a community of persons.
With a personal community, the false notion of conscience is the idea that we are each equipped with an exclusively private source of moral information, that we have a conscience in isolation. Today’s identity crisis, its sense of alienation, and its crisis of faith are all related to the problem of the proper relation between person and institution. As John Sisk points out, modern man has been conditioned to think disjunctively of the relation of person to institution (Sisk, 1968). Institutions are the objective expressions of the communal and social aspects of ourselves. The institution tends to become the other, the enemy, only insofar as we are alienated from a part of ourselves, If a conscientious decision is really to be mine, I must make the effort of self-discovery; and I can do this only in communion with others. I cannot discover myself in isolation. Therefore, I cannot have a conscience in isolation.
If, as Vatican Council II declared, the Church in its essential reality ought to be an interpersonal community of love, then the achievement of true moral freedom and adult responsibility is a necessary condition for authentic religious life in the interpersonal community of the Church. Also, there can be no true moral authority unless a community is one of free persons. A community based upon power and subservience produces not authority but domination. Our call in Christ is a call to share in a community of love, a community in which each member retains his full personal responsibility and, consequently, his full personal freedom.
In the teachings of Paul, the negative aspect of the law was its inability to give life, precisely because it remained an external norm which did not contain in itself the dunamis, the power of life (Fitzmeyer, 1967). The law schooled man in preparation for Christ, the end of the law. The law was a temporary disposition of God permitted until mankind reached the maturity in which it would be able without a pedagogue to respond to Christ with an adult and personal commitment. The principle of Christian activity is no longer merely in the external listing of “do’s” and “don’ts” but, rather, in the internal whispering of the dynamic Spirit. Love in Paul’s teaching is the fulfillment of the law because it is itself a dynamic force impelling humans to seek the good of others. Ideal spiritual adulthood for the conscience would consist in this: that the compass of love would point the direction so unfalteringly that the external law is no longer needed. In such a human the law has been so fully assimilated, its deepest implications so much a matter of personal experience, that it has become a conscious instinct and an infallible power of discrimination. If we can assume that there has been a gradual assimilation of revelation within the community of the church, then, what the Council seems to be telling us is that perhaps today the Christian community is in a position to begin to live out Paul's concept of the new freedom which should characterize a follower of Christ in a more perfect manner than ever before.
Moral life, then, is evolutionary. It is a dynamic dialectic of fact and possibility, of the actual and the ideal. We must look for ideal human nature not in the past but in the future. And the key to that future is the creative moral freedom of humans. In this evolutionary framework natural law should no longer be understood as based on a static structure or essence; rather, it represents a statement of conditions for humanity’s own growth seen as a possibility and a task to be freely accomplished.
Conscience within this perspective is a developing form of self-awareness; it is to be understood as the deepest self-consciousness of humans insofar as it acts as a power of discrimination, deciding in every choice what will promote authentic selfhood and what will stand in its way. Humans on the moral level are characterized by self-development. They perceive every choice as a choice between authentic and inauthentic humanity. They see their life as having a meaning Only they can give it through free choice. Moral obligations can only be accepted; they cannot be imposed. A psychologically mature adult can be called on to commit his freedom; he cannot be called on to submit it. For as long as a human is not directing his or her or own activity on the moral level he or she is not to that extent a free agent. Consequently, to the degree that he or she is not a free agent, he or she or is neither a responsible nor a moral person.
As Ignace Lepp notes, the evolution of moral conscience takes place according to the same general laws that govern the passage of individuals and social groups from infancy through adolescence to maturity (Lepp, 1965, p. 8). The growth of human psychic life will always proceed from instinct to rational self-development, and should culminate in a continuous process in religious self-donation. On the level of religious life, conscience is transposed into love itself. Sin on this level becomes the refusal to be for others. Freedom is a true moral value for religious life only when and to the degree that it promotes a superior form of personal and community life. The fullness of moral life is to be found precisely in that act by which one establishes oneself as person in a community of persons.
With a personal community, the false notion of conscience is the idea that we are each equipped with an exclusively private source of moral information, that we have a conscience in isolation. Today’s identity crisis, its sense of alienation, and its crisis of faith are all related to the problem of the proper relation between person and institution. As John Sisk points out, modern man has been conditioned to think disjunctively of the relation of person to institution (Sisk, 1968). Institutions are the objective expressions of the communal and social aspects of ourselves. The institution tends to become the other, the enemy, only insofar as we are alienated from a part of ourselves, If a conscientious decision is really to be mine, I must make the effort of self-discovery; and I can do this only in communion with others. I cannot discover myself in isolation. Therefore, I cannot have a conscience in isolation.
If, as Vatican Council II declared, the Church in its essential reality ought to be an interpersonal community of love, then the achievement of true moral freedom and adult responsibility is a necessary condition for authentic religious life in the interpersonal community of the Church. Also, there can be no true moral authority unless a community is one of free persons. A community based upon power and subservience produces not authority but domination. Our call in Christ is a call to share in a community of love, a community in which each member retains his full personal responsibility and, consequently, his full personal freedom.
In the teachings of Paul, the negative aspect of the law was its inability to give life, precisely because it remained an external norm which did not contain in itself the dunamis, the power of life (Fitzmeyer, 1967). The law schooled man in preparation for Christ, the end of the law. The law was a temporary disposition of God permitted until mankind reached the maturity in which it would be able without a pedagogue to respond to Christ with an adult and personal commitment. The principle of Christian activity is no longer merely in the external listing of “do’s” and “don’ts” but, rather, in the internal whispering of the dynamic Spirit. Love in Paul’s teaching is the fulfillment of the law because it is itself a dynamic force impelling humans to seek the good of others. Ideal spiritual adulthood for the conscience would consist in this: that the compass of love would point the direction so unfalteringly that the external law is no longer needed. In such a human the law has been so fully assimilated, its deepest implications so much a matter of personal experience, that it has become a conscious instinct and an infallible power of discrimination. If we can assume that there has been a gradual assimilation of revelation within the community of the church, then, what the Council seems to be telling us is that perhaps today the Christian community is in a position to begin to live out Paul's concept of the new freedom which should characterize a follower of Christ in a more perfect manner than ever before.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Freedom Of Conscience
This will the first in a series of blogs exploring Church teaching on freedom of conscience
Bishop G. Emmett Carter observed in his comments on the Declaration on Christian Education that the theme of personal responsibility dominated many of the deliberations of the Second Vatican Council (Carter, 1966, p. 640, footnote). One such example is found in the opening lines of the Declaration on Religious Freedom which reads as follows:
A sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man. And the demand is increasingly made that humans should act on their own judgment, enjoying and making use of a responsible freedom, not driven by coercion but motivated by a sense of duty [Vatican Council II, 1966, n. 1, p. 675].
What is important to note here is that the document places this theme of personal responsibility within the context of a recent historical development of philosophical and theological understanding concerning the role that freedom must play in a humans life. Certainly, one can use the suggestive negative wording of an America editorial to say of the Church’s doctrine in this respect:
No one can account to God for his or her talents simply by pleading that he or she acted as an agent for Peter. The abdication of personal moral responsibility has never been a doctrine of the Church [America, 1968, p. 94].
The Council fathers, however, see this increasing awareness of the dignity of the human person as a sign of the times and as a definite positive step in the progress of civilization. This progress carries with it a parallel need for the Church to stress positively the right and duty of every individual to arrive at a greater freedom of conscience:
. . . every human has the duty, and therefore the right, to seek the truth in matters religious, in order that they may with prudence form for themself right and true judgments of conscience. . . . The inquiry is to be free, carried on with aid of teaching or instruction, communication, and dialogue [Vatican Council II, 1966, n. 3. pp. 680-681].
In practically the same words as the opening statement quoted above we read in Louis Monden’s work Sin, liberty and law:
The self-discovery experienced by man in the past century has given rise in him to an urgent need for mature autonomy in his existence, for a freedom from all bonds of dependence. There is a general feeling that for the first time in history man is being offered the chance to become fully himself [Monden, 1965, p. 75].
Monden sees a radically new historical context in which we must reconsider the relation that should exist between personal freedom and all forms of authority, including the authority exercised within the Church. He speaks of a universal phenomenon that sets modern man against all constraints on his personal moral decisions on the part of any outside agency whatsoever: “Before the sanctuary of his personal decisions of conscience every influence from without must come to a halt. Only his inner freedom decides what is good and what is bad” (Monden, 1965, p. 99).
Monden is inclined to see in this new spirit a call to humans to achieve a new moral maturity. He speaks of the new morality as a reflection in the consciousness of believers of a crisis of growth through which mankind’s collective consciousness is now passing.
With all its exaggerations, it [the new morality] might represent an attempt, both human and Christian, to break out of the shelter of exterior safeguards and to coincide in a renewed and more complete self-possession with the deepest roots of one’s own being and vocation. Then, all those exaggerations would only be the unavoidable ransom that youth must pay in breaking through to adulthood, not a phenomenon of decadence, but a sign of spring [Monden, 1965, p. 111].
Perhaps the single most important statement on conscience in the documents of Vatican II occurs in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World:
. . . man has in his heart a law written by God. To obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged. Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of man. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths. In a wonderful manner conscience reveals that law which is fulfilled by love of God and neighbor. In fidelity to conscience, Christians are joined with the rest of men in the search for truth, and for the genuine solution to the numerous problems which arise in the life of individuals and from social relationships [Vatican Council II, 1966, n. 16, pp. 213-214].
Practically every major theme which will be treated in this paper can be found in this statement. Conscience is described here as the voice of God speaking to humans immediately from within their own consciousness without the necessary aid of an external mediation. The human's freedom to follow his or her conscience is seen as the source of his or her true dignity. And this freedom is understood not as an anarchic principle but, on the contrary, as the only true foundation for real community and as the only valid ground for a solution to social problems.
Another example of the persistent theme of personal freedom and responsibility is to be found in the Declaration on Christian Education where it is applied to the formation of the conscience of the young: ". . . children and young people have a right to be encouraged to weigh moral values with an upright conscience, and to embrace them by personal choice." (Vatican Council II, 1966, n. 1, pp. 639-640). The Council thus indicates a corresponding obligation on the part of educators to lead young people to a true and responsible freedom of conscience.
Again, the same theme is to be found throughout the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, where it is stressed that the layman is not to exaggerate authority, but to take personal responsibility for his or her choices and actions:
Laymen should also know that it is generally the function of their well-formed Christian conscience to see that the divine law is inscribed in the life of the earthly city. From priests they may look for spiritual light and nourishment. Let the layman not imagine that his or her pastors are always such experts, that to every problem which arises, however complicated, they can readily give him or her a concrete solution, or even that such is their mission. Rather, enlightened by Christian wisdom and giving close attention to the teaching authority of the Church, let the layman take on his or her own distinctive role [Vatican Council II, 1966, n. 43 p. 244].
According to this document the layman’s role is to be that of mediator between the Church and the world, having the responsibility and the corresponding right to determine how the message of the Gospel applies to the complicated problems in the field of his competence.
One example of the free moral responsibility which, the Council insists, belongs to the conscience of the individual layman is to be found in the teaching of the Council on modern warfare, where the right of the layman to reach the moral decision to be a conscientious objector is stressed, and the corresponding duty of the state to enact laws respecting that right is noted (Vatican Council II, 1966, n. 79, p. 292). The council stresses further that each individual soldier can no longer justify his actions in time of war in terms of blind obedience to authority, but must bear personal responsibility for the morality of his actions.
The Council throws light on the moral freedom and responsibility of the individual both by what it says and by what it fails to say. As Daniel Maguire observes in his article, Morality and the Magisterium, the consistent refusal of the Church to use its prerogative of infallibility in the past (and most recently in the birth-control issue) is “theologically instructive”:
It seems to me that in practice, despite its firm grasp of the moral vision of the Gospel, the Church seems to realize . . . that it does not enjoy an infallibly guaranteed competence to apply that moral vision of the Gospel to complex natural law questions such as sexual questions, medical ethics, genetics, business ethics, international law, social reconstruction and war and peace [Maguire, 1968, p. 41].
It is precisely by determining how the moral vision of the Gospel is to be incarnated in concrete decisions in these areas of his competence that the layman “plays his own decisive role.”
In so acting, the Council and the magisterium acted in the spirit of the moral message of the New Testament. As Charles Curran points out in his article, The Ethical Teaching of Jesus, that message is a constant reminder of the absolute claim which the presence of the reign of God makes on the follower of Jesus (Curran, 1967). Jesus does not proclaim universal norms of conduct which are obligatory on all Christians under all circumstances. Rather, He indicates the goal and the direction that should characterize the life and the actions of His followers. “Give to everyone who asks” would be an impossible command, if it were understood as an absolute ethical imperative. Rather, such a demand indicates the thrust that should characterize the life of the Christian. How such an imperative is to be implemented in his situation is left to the free judgment of each individual. Christ does promise, however, the help of the Spirit, who will enlighten and strengthen each individual who sincerely seeks out the divine will in his situation.
Direct any questions to jjmcneill@aol.com
Bishop G. Emmett Carter observed in his comments on the Declaration on Christian Education that the theme of personal responsibility dominated many of the deliberations of the Second Vatican Council (Carter, 1966, p. 640, footnote). One such example is found in the opening lines of the Declaration on Religious Freedom which reads as follows:
A sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man. And the demand is increasingly made that humans should act on their own judgment, enjoying and making use of a responsible freedom, not driven by coercion but motivated by a sense of duty [Vatican Council II, 1966, n. 1, p. 675].
What is important to note here is that the document places this theme of personal responsibility within the context of a recent historical development of philosophical and theological understanding concerning the role that freedom must play in a humans life. Certainly, one can use the suggestive negative wording of an America editorial to say of the Church’s doctrine in this respect:
No one can account to God for his or her talents simply by pleading that he or she acted as an agent for Peter. The abdication of personal moral responsibility has never been a doctrine of the Church [America, 1968, p. 94].
The Council fathers, however, see this increasing awareness of the dignity of the human person as a sign of the times and as a definite positive step in the progress of civilization. This progress carries with it a parallel need for the Church to stress positively the right and duty of every individual to arrive at a greater freedom of conscience:
. . . every human has the duty, and therefore the right, to seek the truth in matters religious, in order that they may with prudence form for themself right and true judgments of conscience. . . . The inquiry is to be free, carried on with aid of teaching or instruction, communication, and dialogue [Vatican Council II, 1966, n. 3. pp. 680-681].
In practically the same words as the opening statement quoted above we read in Louis Monden’s work Sin, liberty and law:
The self-discovery experienced by man in the past century has given rise in him to an urgent need for mature autonomy in his existence, for a freedom from all bonds of dependence. There is a general feeling that for the first time in history man is being offered the chance to become fully himself [Monden, 1965, p. 75].
Monden sees a radically new historical context in which we must reconsider the relation that should exist between personal freedom and all forms of authority, including the authority exercised within the Church. He speaks of a universal phenomenon that sets modern man against all constraints on his personal moral decisions on the part of any outside agency whatsoever: “Before the sanctuary of his personal decisions of conscience every influence from without must come to a halt. Only his inner freedom decides what is good and what is bad” (Monden, 1965, p. 99).
Monden is inclined to see in this new spirit a call to humans to achieve a new moral maturity. He speaks of the new morality as a reflection in the consciousness of believers of a crisis of growth through which mankind’s collective consciousness is now passing.
With all its exaggerations, it [the new morality] might represent an attempt, both human and Christian, to break out of the shelter of exterior safeguards and to coincide in a renewed and more complete self-possession with the deepest roots of one’s own being and vocation. Then, all those exaggerations would only be the unavoidable ransom that youth must pay in breaking through to adulthood, not a phenomenon of decadence, but a sign of spring [Monden, 1965, p. 111].
Perhaps the single most important statement on conscience in the documents of Vatican II occurs in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World:
. . . man has in his heart a law written by God. To obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged. Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of man. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths. In a wonderful manner conscience reveals that law which is fulfilled by love of God and neighbor. In fidelity to conscience, Christians are joined with the rest of men in the search for truth, and for the genuine solution to the numerous problems which arise in the life of individuals and from social relationships [Vatican Council II, 1966, n. 16, pp. 213-214].
Practically every major theme which will be treated in this paper can be found in this statement. Conscience is described here as the voice of God speaking to humans immediately from within their own consciousness without the necessary aid of an external mediation. The human's freedom to follow his or her conscience is seen as the source of his or her true dignity. And this freedom is understood not as an anarchic principle but, on the contrary, as the only true foundation for real community and as the only valid ground for a solution to social problems.
Another example of the persistent theme of personal freedom and responsibility is to be found in the Declaration on Christian Education where it is applied to the formation of the conscience of the young: ". . . children and young people have a right to be encouraged to weigh moral values with an upright conscience, and to embrace them by personal choice." (Vatican Council II, 1966, n. 1, pp. 639-640). The Council thus indicates a corresponding obligation on the part of educators to lead young people to a true and responsible freedom of conscience.
Again, the same theme is to be found throughout the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, where it is stressed that the layman is not to exaggerate authority, but to take personal responsibility for his or her choices and actions:
Laymen should also know that it is generally the function of their well-formed Christian conscience to see that the divine law is inscribed in the life of the earthly city. From priests they may look for spiritual light and nourishment. Let the layman not imagine that his or her pastors are always such experts, that to every problem which arises, however complicated, they can readily give him or her a concrete solution, or even that such is their mission. Rather, enlightened by Christian wisdom and giving close attention to the teaching authority of the Church, let the layman take on his or her own distinctive role [Vatican Council II, 1966, n. 43 p. 244].
According to this document the layman’s role is to be that of mediator between the Church and the world, having the responsibility and the corresponding right to determine how the message of the Gospel applies to the complicated problems in the field of his competence.
One example of the free moral responsibility which, the Council insists, belongs to the conscience of the individual layman is to be found in the teaching of the Council on modern warfare, where the right of the layman to reach the moral decision to be a conscientious objector is stressed, and the corresponding duty of the state to enact laws respecting that right is noted (Vatican Council II, 1966, n. 79, p. 292). The council stresses further that each individual soldier can no longer justify his actions in time of war in terms of blind obedience to authority, but must bear personal responsibility for the morality of his actions.
The Council throws light on the moral freedom and responsibility of the individual both by what it says and by what it fails to say. As Daniel Maguire observes in his article, Morality and the Magisterium, the consistent refusal of the Church to use its prerogative of infallibility in the past (and most recently in the birth-control issue) is “theologically instructive”:
It seems to me that in practice, despite its firm grasp of the moral vision of the Gospel, the Church seems to realize . . . that it does not enjoy an infallibly guaranteed competence to apply that moral vision of the Gospel to complex natural law questions such as sexual questions, medical ethics, genetics, business ethics, international law, social reconstruction and war and peace [Maguire, 1968, p. 41].
It is precisely by determining how the moral vision of the Gospel is to be incarnated in concrete decisions in these areas of his competence that the layman “plays his own decisive role.”
In so acting, the Council and the magisterium acted in the spirit of the moral message of the New Testament. As Charles Curran points out in his article, The Ethical Teaching of Jesus, that message is a constant reminder of the absolute claim which the presence of the reign of God makes on the follower of Jesus (Curran, 1967). Jesus does not proclaim universal norms of conduct which are obligatory on all Christians under all circumstances. Rather, He indicates the goal and the direction that should characterize the life and the actions of His followers. “Give to everyone who asks” would be an impossible command, if it were understood as an absolute ethical imperative. Rather, such a demand indicates the thrust that should characterize the life of the Christian. How such an imperative is to be implemented in his situation is left to the free judgment of each individual. Christ does promise, however, the help of the Spirit, who will enlighten and strengthen each individual who sincerely seeks out the divine will in his situation.
Direct any questions to jjmcneill@aol.com
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Genesis of the Idea of God as Human Destiny
Blondel believed that he could discover all the a priori aspirations implicit in the human will by means of his dialectic. Most fundamental is the drive out of isolation and alienation into unity with ourselves, the world, our fellow man and God. This is the central message of Christian revelation concerning human destiny: “May they be one, Father, even as you and I are one.” Accepting this word not merely as revealed but as revealing, Blondel traces the stages in the dialectical process by which man searches for that oneness.
The appearance of human self-consciousness in the evolutionary process marks man and woman's awareness of moral consciousness as a thrust toward unity: humans are morally obliged from within to act as if humanity were one. Unlike Kant who was tempted to see moral truth as an end-in-itself and the other person as a means to that end. Blondel maintains that, like all truth, moral truth does not exist for its own sake. It is only by acting in accordance with the principles and values of moral truth that humans can achieve the unity of humanity in a human community.
Beyond the felt unity with other humans in the concept of humanity and the moral unity in the order of intention, the will strives for a unity with all humanity on the level of existence itself. The will as willing cannot be one with the will as willed until this existential unity is a reality. For Blondel, the ideal of existential unity among all humankind is the primary example of the category of human commitments that remain simultaneously necessary and impossible. In so far as these commitments are necessary, they represent a possible immanent dimension of the human’s existential reality: in so far as they are impossible for humans to achieve by their unaided freedom, they indicate the presence within humans of a power that transcends them. This is the key experience that leads humans to form an idea of God as the immanent transcendent. Having its genetic origin in the experience of the necessary and the impossible, it is a “projecting out of the unused and unusable potentialities of the human will” In order to find the perfect identity of themselves with themselves in their voluntary action, humans must look within theimselves until they reache the point where that which is of themselves ceases, yet something remains.
What humans can know of God is precisely “that surplus of interior life which demands its employment.” Blondel is well aware that the possibility of existential unity among humankind, to which all humans necessarily aspires, would remain forever an abstraction unless humans could realize an existential unity with God, A human’s knowledge of God consists fundamentally in an immanent awareness that “at the root of his or her ego there is an ego which is no longer his or hers.” Yet it is only in the act of freely consenting to such an intimate presence that the actual consciousness of it as an immanent dimension of human’s existential reality is achieved: Only by free consent does that presence pass from abstract possibility into experienced actuality. According to Blondel, this transformation is the ultimate meaning of human freedom and the ultimate dimension of our moral life; it is grounded in the power to make God exist or not exist in our lives by reason of our own freely chosen existence.
Although the idea of union with God is a necessary idea, it is seldom brought to the degree of clarity and precision that it achieves at the end of a dialectical presentation. No matter under what form it is presented in consciousness, the thought of God as absolute is produced in us by a determinism which imposes that idea from within as a necessary result of the dynamism of our interior life. In turn, it produces a necessary influence on the organization of our conduct.
What emerges necessarily in consciousness and is inevitably efficacious in practice is not the concept of a speculative truth to be defined, but the perhaps vague yet certain. and imperious conviction of a destiny and ulterior end to be attained. The vital source of this sense of destiny is the presence within us of the absolute person. No matter under what form this presence reveals itself to consciousness, he it clear or confused, accepted or hidden, admitted or unnamed, the living truth of that presence has an inevitable efficacy. For this reason Blondel calls human action a sort of théergie: We cannot posit a free human action without cooperating with the absolute subject within us thereby causing him to cooperate with us. To inset the character of transcendence into our lives it is not necessary to perceive its
presence or directly recognize the action of the absolute in us and on us. Indeed, even our denial of its presence and action displaces only the object of affirmation; the reality of human action is not affected by this superficial play of words.
Since the idea of the absolute is necessarily projected as our destiny, it is equally necessary to sense the need actually to achieve it through the combined forces of our thought and action. Human action has the inevitable ambition to realize in itself the idea of perfection: “We cannot know God without willing in some way to become God." Just as the idea of God represents a paradoxical reality, at once immanent in us and yet transcendent, so too the choice and the action which necessarily follow upon this idea exhibit their paradoxical nature. Our ground for affirming God as absolute subject is the fact that He is conceived as that which we can neither be by ourselves nor accomplish solely by the force of our free action. Yet we have neither being, will nor action except on condition of freely willing and somehow becoming one with the divine who is the source and being of our own will and action. Hence, the only way to become one with ourselves is to admit another being within us by substituting another will for our own: “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
It is impossible to enter really into contact with another being, in fact, it is impossible to enter into contact with oneself without passing through the Uniquely Necessary who must become our unique will.
Rejection of the absolute by a human is nothing more than an attempt at avaricious self-possession which isolates us in a false subjectivity and inferiority. This results in a world of solitude and hostility, of rejection and discontinuity, without meeting or true presence, namely the modern world. Release from the prison of selfhood comes by communicating with the transcendent who as immanent in oneself is bridge to the other. “One cannot be for oneself or for another without being for Him first of all.” One cannot communicate with anyone unless it be with and by God.
Blondel sees in the act whereby humans achieves living communication with God an active dialectical resolution of the metaphysical problem of the one and many. It is love’s death to self and sacrifice of self that resolves this problem existentially: “Sacrifice is the solution to the metaphysical problem by an experimental method.” The act by which humans chooses to supplant their will by the Will of God is a negation both of ego and of the false appearances of being in it: “... it is the destruction of that self-will that holds me in isolation from all the rest.” Implicit in this “death” to self, which is the most perfect act of sacrifice, is the most perfect revelation of being, for one no longer sets the absolute source of being from without, but begins to possess it within oneself.
At the very root of being, in the common practice of life in the secret logic of consciousness, without God there is no fellow man for man. In order to be one, in order to exist, it is necessary that I do not rest alone; I have need of all the others. What is necessary, then, is to capture within myself the source of all unity (the divine will) and transmit the truth of its intimate action.
It is important to understand that a metaphysical priority of communion with absolute being does not imply a temporal or psychological priority of divine love over human love. Blondel repeatedly insists that the true nature of the option need not be explicit, but is necessarily implicit in the living reality of every free human action. Hence, to live “metaphysically” is not contingent upon the prior conceptual resolution of any metaphysical problem. To resolve the problem of unity by love in any one of its three possible aspects: love of God, of self, or of neighbor, involves a vital solution of that problem for all three.
Yet, the problem and its resolution are ordinarily posed within the context of love of neighbor. “Without that love which is active within the members of humanity there is no God for man; he who does not love his neighbor has no life in him.” Therefore, in any human encounter where a genuine interpersonal bond of mutual love is factually established, there is necessarily an implicit resolution of the option in favor of the divine will: “If any man loves he knows God, because God is love.” Without an implicit commitment to God there is merely a semblance of true love, which will prove to be ultimately unfounded and deceiving. A true act of love involves death to self, which in fact is a positive opening of the spirit to the action of the absolute. It thus goes well beyond an attitude of strict justice, which considers only the impersonal character of the other in his abstract dignity as a member of human society. An act of love, in order to be truly such, must be directed to the other as unique and as end in him or herself. “Charity is always universal and always attached to what is unique.”
Conclusion
In Blondel’s dialectic of life, existence and truth continually draw closer together without ever becoming entirely the same. The dialectic in life of the singular existence and universal truth is thus posited as a constant movement towards realizing in man the immanent and necessary connection between essence and existence, nature and liberty, constructive project and transcendent end. Yet throughout the course of their dialectical development, existence always remains to some extent inward and solitary, while truth remains to some extent abstract and exterior.
In the Hegelian dialectic the mediation of singular existence and universal truth could take place only in the abstract dimension of absolute spirit. It occurs independently of the existential freedom and moral commitment of man as a person. The individual is merely a means that reason uses to obtain its objectives. In contrast, it is Blondel’s conviction that such a mediation of existence with truth can be only the result of man’s free moral commitment and that its ultimate condition of possibility may depend on union with one man, Christ, who is “the way, the truth and the life.”
Woodstock College
New York, New York
The appearance of human self-consciousness in the evolutionary process marks man and woman's awareness of moral consciousness as a thrust toward unity: humans are morally obliged from within to act as if humanity were one. Unlike Kant who was tempted to see moral truth as an end-in-itself and the other person as a means to that end. Blondel maintains that, like all truth, moral truth does not exist for its own sake. It is only by acting in accordance with the principles and values of moral truth that humans can achieve the unity of humanity in a human community.
Beyond the felt unity with other humans in the concept of humanity and the moral unity in the order of intention, the will strives for a unity with all humanity on the level of existence itself. The will as willing cannot be one with the will as willed until this existential unity is a reality. For Blondel, the ideal of existential unity among all humankind is the primary example of the category of human commitments that remain simultaneously necessary and impossible. In so far as these commitments are necessary, they represent a possible immanent dimension of the human’s existential reality: in so far as they are impossible for humans to achieve by their unaided freedom, they indicate the presence within humans of a power that transcends them. This is the key experience that leads humans to form an idea of God as the immanent transcendent. Having its genetic origin in the experience of the necessary and the impossible, it is a “projecting out of the unused and unusable potentialities of the human will” In order to find the perfect identity of themselves with themselves in their voluntary action, humans must look within theimselves until they reache the point where that which is of themselves ceases, yet something remains.
What humans can know of God is precisely “that surplus of interior life which demands its employment.” Blondel is well aware that the possibility of existential unity among humankind, to which all humans necessarily aspires, would remain forever an abstraction unless humans could realize an existential unity with God, A human’s knowledge of God consists fundamentally in an immanent awareness that “at the root of his or her ego there is an ego which is no longer his or hers.” Yet it is only in the act of freely consenting to such an intimate presence that the actual consciousness of it as an immanent dimension of human’s existential reality is achieved: Only by free consent does that presence pass from abstract possibility into experienced actuality. According to Blondel, this transformation is the ultimate meaning of human freedom and the ultimate dimension of our moral life; it is grounded in the power to make God exist or not exist in our lives by reason of our own freely chosen existence.
Although the idea of union with God is a necessary idea, it is seldom brought to the degree of clarity and precision that it achieves at the end of a dialectical presentation. No matter under what form it is presented in consciousness, the thought of God as absolute is produced in us by a determinism which imposes that idea from within as a necessary result of the dynamism of our interior life. In turn, it produces a necessary influence on the organization of our conduct.
What emerges necessarily in consciousness and is inevitably efficacious in practice is not the concept of a speculative truth to be defined, but the perhaps vague yet certain. and imperious conviction of a destiny and ulterior end to be attained. The vital source of this sense of destiny is the presence within us of the absolute person. No matter under what form this presence reveals itself to consciousness, he it clear or confused, accepted or hidden, admitted or unnamed, the living truth of that presence has an inevitable efficacy. For this reason Blondel calls human action a sort of théergie: We cannot posit a free human action without cooperating with the absolute subject within us thereby causing him to cooperate with us. To inset the character of transcendence into our lives it is not necessary to perceive its
presence or directly recognize the action of the absolute in us and on us. Indeed, even our denial of its presence and action displaces only the object of affirmation; the reality of human action is not affected by this superficial play of words.
Since the idea of the absolute is necessarily projected as our destiny, it is equally necessary to sense the need actually to achieve it through the combined forces of our thought and action. Human action has the inevitable ambition to realize in itself the idea of perfection: “We cannot know God without willing in some way to become God." Just as the idea of God represents a paradoxical reality, at once immanent in us and yet transcendent, so too the choice and the action which necessarily follow upon this idea exhibit their paradoxical nature. Our ground for affirming God as absolute subject is the fact that He is conceived as that which we can neither be by ourselves nor accomplish solely by the force of our free action. Yet we have neither being, will nor action except on condition of freely willing and somehow becoming one with the divine who is the source and being of our own will and action. Hence, the only way to become one with ourselves is to admit another being within us by substituting another will for our own: “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
It is impossible to enter really into contact with another being, in fact, it is impossible to enter into contact with oneself without passing through the Uniquely Necessary who must become our unique will.
Rejection of the absolute by a human is nothing more than an attempt at avaricious self-possession which isolates us in a false subjectivity and inferiority. This results in a world of solitude and hostility, of rejection and discontinuity, without meeting or true presence, namely the modern world. Release from the prison of selfhood comes by communicating with the transcendent who as immanent in oneself is bridge to the other. “One cannot be for oneself or for another without being for Him first of all.” One cannot communicate with anyone unless it be with and by God.
Blondel sees in the act whereby humans achieves living communication with God an active dialectical resolution of the metaphysical problem of the one and many. It is love’s death to self and sacrifice of self that resolves this problem existentially: “Sacrifice is the solution to the metaphysical problem by an experimental method.” The act by which humans chooses to supplant their will by the Will of God is a negation both of ego and of the false appearances of being in it: “... it is the destruction of that self-will that holds me in isolation from all the rest.” Implicit in this “death” to self, which is the most perfect act of sacrifice, is the most perfect revelation of being, for one no longer sets the absolute source of being from without, but begins to possess it within oneself.
At the very root of being, in the common practice of life in the secret logic of consciousness, without God there is no fellow man for man. In order to be one, in order to exist, it is necessary that I do not rest alone; I have need of all the others. What is necessary, then, is to capture within myself the source of all unity (the divine will) and transmit the truth of its intimate action.
It is important to understand that a metaphysical priority of communion with absolute being does not imply a temporal or psychological priority of divine love over human love. Blondel repeatedly insists that the true nature of the option need not be explicit, but is necessarily implicit in the living reality of every free human action. Hence, to live “metaphysically” is not contingent upon the prior conceptual resolution of any metaphysical problem. To resolve the problem of unity by love in any one of its three possible aspects: love of God, of self, or of neighbor, involves a vital solution of that problem for all three.
Yet, the problem and its resolution are ordinarily posed within the context of love of neighbor. “Without that love which is active within the members of humanity there is no God for man; he who does not love his neighbor has no life in him.” Therefore, in any human encounter where a genuine interpersonal bond of mutual love is factually established, there is necessarily an implicit resolution of the option in favor of the divine will: “If any man loves he knows God, because God is love.” Without an implicit commitment to God there is merely a semblance of true love, which will prove to be ultimately unfounded and deceiving. A true act of love involves death to self, which in fact is a positive opening of the spirit to the action of the absolute. It thus goes well beyond an attitude of strict justice, which considers only the impersonal character of the other in his abstract dignity as a member of human society. An act of love, in order to be truly such, must be directed to the other as unique and as end in him or herself. “Charity is always universal and always attached to what is unique.”
Conclusion
In Blondel’s dialectic of life, existence and truth continually draw closer together without ever becoming entirely the same. The dialectic in life of the singular existence and universal truth is thus posited as a constant movement towards realizing in man the immanent and necessary connection between essence and existence, nature and liberty, constructive project and transcendent end. Yet throughout the course of their dialectical development, existence always remains to some extent inward and solitary, while truth remains to some extent abstract and exterior.
In the Hegelian dialectic the mediation of singular existence and universal truth could take place only in the abstract dimension of absolute spirit. It occurs independently of the existential freedom and moral commitment of man as a person. The individual is merely a means that reason uses to obtain its objectives. In contrast, it is Blondel’s conviction that such a mediation of existence with truth can be only the result of man’s free moral commitment and that its ultimate condition of possibility may depend on union with one man, Christ, who is “the way, the truth and the life.”
Woodstock College
New York, New York
Blondel: On The Knowedgeof God Part II
A Philosophy of Freedom
The question Blondel proposed to explore in his philosophy of action is the central question: What is the meaning of human life and its common destiny? Blondel argued that humans cannot choose to cease being; we are here, like it or not, for all eternity.
Yes or no, has life a meaning and do humans have a
destiny? I act with out knowing what action is, with-
out having wished to live………This appearance of
being that is at work in me, these actions fleeting as
a shadow, I understand that they carry within them
the weight of eternal responsibility, and even at the
cost of blood I cannot purchase nothingness, because for
me it can no longer be. I find myself condemned to life,
condemned to death, condemned to eternity. Why and
by what right, since I have neither known nor willed it.
Having posed the question of human destiny, Blondel makes the point that freedom is the very essence of the human subject and the essential condition of possibility for human existence. There can be no human destiny, unless that destiny can be achieved through human freedom.
Blondel made the passionate assertion that each of us must be able to choose life, choose death, choose eternity; otherwise the very existence of the human individual is an illusion. “There is no being where there is only constraint. If I am not that which I will to be, I am not. At the very core of my being there is a will and a love of being or there is nothing. If human freedom is real, it is necessary that one have in the present or at least in the future knowledge and will never to suffer any tyranny whatsoever.
Blondel’s understanding of human freedom differed radically from the classic understanding of scholastic realism. The scholastics taught that humans were substantially determined by their essence and only free on the superficial level of actions. Blondel taught that for a human to be is to act, and in acting to freely mold his or her own reality
Humans are not authentically human unless in the depth of their being and action they seize themselves as free source, action itself, a constant self-positing.. Human freedom is understood as the radical self positing of our own reality. We must exist at every moment as a consequence of our freedom
If in the depths of our own subjective being we meet with any determinism whatsoever - biological, psychological, social, or even a determinism that springs from the divine will, a determinism that lies radically outside the sphere of our freewill to determine ourselves - then we would be forced to accept the conclusion that the existence of the individual human person as such is an illusion.
The Principle of Immanence
This insight into the radical nature of human freedom led Blondel to accept the principle of immanence as the fundamental methodological principle governing his philosophy. He formulated that principle in there words: “Nothing can impose itself on a human; nothing can demand the accent of out intellect or the consent of our will which does not find its source from within ourselves”. “That necessity which appears to me as a tyrannous restraint”, Blondel wrote,” that obligation which at first appears despotic, in the last analysis, it is necessary that I understand it as manifesting and activating the most profound reality of my own will, otherwise it will be my destruction”.
Anything which presents itself from with out as essential to the achievement of human destiny and happiness must correspond to a need in the dynamic of the human will or, on the psychological level, to a profoundly felt desire in the depths of the human psyche.
Blondel did not hesitate to apply this methodological principle of immanence to any manifestation of the divine will. Although the divine will must manifest itself as in some way distinct from out finite human will, yet that revelation, if it is not to destroy our freedom and integrity, must be made in some way within our consciousness of self and prove capable of being assimilated into our free self-positing.
The entire movement of modern philosophy has been a continual movement toward a deeper understanding of the role the subject as such plays in human understanding and willing. This movement has led to the conclusion that there is only one possible method to attain the existing human subject as such in its unique freedom in a legitimate philosophical manner; we must renounce all attempts to make the singular existing subject into an objective content of knowledge, and be content to seize it in our immediate experiential awareness of self in the deployment of our free activity.
‘
’
The question Blondel proposed to explore in his philosophy of action is the central question: What is the meaning of human life and its common destiny? Blondel argued that humans cannot choose to cease being; we are here, like it or not, for all eternity.
Yes or no, has life a meaning and do humans have a
destiny? I act with out knowing what action is, with-
out having wished to live………This appearance of
being that is at work in me, these actions fleeting as
a shadow, I understand that they carry within them
the weight of eternal responsibility, and even at the
cost of blood I cannot purchase nothingness, because for
me it can no longer be. I find myself condemned to life,
condemned to death, condemned to eternity. Why and
by what right, since I have neither known nor willed it.
Having posed the question of human destiny, Blondel makes the point that freedom is the very essence of the human subject and the essential condition of possibility for human existence. There can be no human destiny, unless that destiny can be achieved through human freedom.
Blondel made the passionate assertion that each of us must be able to choose life, choose death, choose eternity; otherwise the very existence of the human individual is an illusion. “There is no being where there is only constraint. If I am not that which I will to be, I am not. At the very core of my being there is a will and a love of being or there is nothing. If human freedom is real, it is necessary that one have in the present or at least in the future knowledge and will never to suffer any tyranny whatsoever.
Blondel’s understanding of human freedom differed radically from the classic understanding of scholastic realism. The scholastics taught that humans were substantially determined by their essence and only free on the superficial level of actions. Blondel taught that for a human to be is to act, and in acting to freely mold his or her own reality
Humans are not authentically human unless in the depth of their being and action they seize themselves as free source, action itself, a constant self-positing.. Human freedom is understood as the radical self positing of our own reality. We must exist at every moment as a consequence of our freedom
If in the depths of our own subjective being we meet with any determinism whatsoever - biological, psychological, social, or even a determinism that springs from the divine will, a determinism that lies radically outside the sphere of our freewill to determine ourselves - then we would be forced to accept the conclusion that the existence of the individual human person as such is an illusion.
The Principle of Immanence
This insight into the radical nature of human freedom led Blondel to accept the principle of immanence as the fundamental methodological principle governing his philosophy. He formulated that principle in there words: “Nothing can impose itself on a human; nothing can demand the accent of out intellect or the consent of our will which does not find its source from within ourselves”. “That necessity which appears to me as a tyrannous restraint”, Blondel wrote,” that obligation which at first appears despotic, in the last analysis, it is necessary that I understand it as manifesting and activating the most profound reality of my own will, otherwise it will be my destruction”.
Anything which presents itself from with out as essential to the achievement of human destiny and happiness must correspond to a need in the dynamic of the human will or, on the psychological level, to a profoundly felt desire in the depths of the human psyche.
Blondel did not hesitate to apply this methodological principle of immanence to any manifestation of the divine will. Although the divine will must manifest itself as in some way distinct from out finite human will, yet that revelation, if it is not to destroy our freedom and integrity, must be made in some way within our consciousness of self and prove capable of being assimilated into our free self-positing.
The entire movement of modern philosophy has been a continual movement toward a deeper understanding of the role the subject as such plays in human understanding and willing. This movement has led to the conclusion that there is only one possible method to attain the existing human subject as such in its unique freedom in a legitimate philosophical manner; we must renounce all attempts to make the singular existing subject into an objective content of knowledge, and be content to seize it in our immediate experiential awareness of self in the deployment of our free activity.
‘
’
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Maurice Blondel: On The Knowledge Of God
I will never forget the joy and excitement I felt the first time I began to read the philosophical and theological thought of Maurice Blondel. I was student of theology at Woodstock College, a Jesuit Theological Seminary in Maryland. The Rev. Father Sponga, the rector of the seminary, offered an optional course in Blondel’s thought, having just completed a doctoral study of Blondel at Fordham University. Upon reading Blondel’s words, I had what I call a “disciples of Emmaus experience” an experience of “my heart burning within me” and knew that I was dealing with a genius with an extraordinary and original insight into the problems and the needs of our times.
I hungered for a philosophical framework which I could use to integrate my religious faith with the deep insights coming from the human sciences, especially psychology, insights based in the self-consciousness of the human subject, At the same time, I was intensely aware of the inadequacies of traditional Thomistic philosophy to provide that framework.
In its official teaching the Vatican remains exclusively committed to objective thomistic realism. At the time of the Modernist crisis Church authorities systematically rejected any effort to introduce the human subject into its moral reasoning. This is the deeper reason why the Vatican seems so out of touch whenever it deals with sexual ethics. Paradoxically, the Vatican, which teaches the Christian position that God is love, has no adequate philosophical foundation for dealing with love, human or divine, or with the unique human person and that person’s subjective consciousness.
In his encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, published in 1993, Pope John Paul II defended this choice because objective realism makes possible the formulation of absolute, universal laws essential to the power and absolute authority of the Church, whereas to introduce the human subject is necessarily to allow a kind of relativism, which could undermine the absolute authority of the hierarchy. In my understanding to systematically eliminate the human person and that person’s subjectivity is effectively to eliminate the role of the Holy Spirit in the development of Christian faith.
For over a hundred years progressive Catholic theologians have urged the hierarchy to develop their philosophical foundation by allowing for the unique human subject, the person, and that person’s contribution to theological thinking. Instead of basing its sexual morality. for example, on biology, gender differences and procreation, this would allow theologians to deal with the specific human purposes of sex such as interpersonal love and companionship, but the hierarchy adamantly refused to do so.
As far back as 1893, Maurice Blondel in his book, L’Action argued that objective realism, since it could only deal with abstract conceptual reality, was necessarily depersonalized and depersonalizing because the unique individual human person and that persons actions can never be objectified in a concept. He also maintained that love is a human experience that can only be known from within the action of loving.
He believed that a philosophy that included the unique human person would be much more compatible with Christian belief. The ultimate level of truth was not the conformity of human concepts with objective reality but the conformity of will-willing with will-willed. This truth can only be arrived at through human action and commitment and is a truth that is only available subjectively in individual consciousness.
Blondel defined philosophy as “life itself insofar as it attempts to achieve a clear reflexive consciousness of itself and gives direction to its action”. I appreciated immediately the holistic tone of that definition; philosophy has as its objective the whole of human life and not just language or thought in abstraction from life. In his first great work, his doctoral dissertation, L’Action: Essai d’une Critique de la Vie et d’une Science of la Pratique, published in 1893, Blondel took his central insight from a verse in Scripture, “but whoever does the truth comes into the light”(John 3:21).
Blondel saw human life as a continual dialectic between thought and action. He liked to compare the human intellect to the headlights of a car. Those headlights can illuminate our way only as far as the next curve in the road. The car must move forward to that curve before the headlights can illuminate what lies around that curve. In a similar way, each of us must act according to our understanding in order to arrive at the fullness of “light” which is wisdom. There is a kind of subjective experiential knowing that comes from human choice and action and cannot be achieved in any other way. This essential subjectivity represents a necessary relativism in human knowledge.
This insight lies at the heart of all modern efforts of human liberation. For example, women derive a unique kind of knowledge of themselves from their subjective experience of themselves as women. Lesbians and gays have a subjective source of knowledge of what it means to be gay or lesbian that comes from their immediate experience of themselves in their actions, a knowledge that is not attainable in any other way. The only way that we, who do not share their subjective experience, can obtain that knowledge is by listening carefully and respectfully to those who do have that subjective experience and can articulate its meaning. Dialogue with an open mind is the only approach to ultimate truth. Each of us carries our unique part of divine revelation.
I will post part II of this blog; Blondel's Philosophy of Freedom in my nexr blog
I hungered for a philosophical framework which I could use to integrate my religious faith with the deep insights coming from the human sciences, especially psychology, insights based in the self-consciousness of the human subject, At the same time, I was intensely aware of the inadequacies of traditional Thomistic philosophy to provide that framework.
In its official teaching the Vatican remains exclusively committed to objective thomistic realism. At the time of the Modernist crisis Church authorities systematically rejected any effort to introduce the human subject into its moral reasoning. This is the deeper reason why the Vatican seems so out of touch whenever it deals with sexual ethics. Paradoxically, the Vatican, which teaches the Christian position that God is love, has no adequate philosophical foundation for dealing with love, human or divine, or with the unique human person and that person’s subjective consciousness.
In his encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, published in 1993, Pope John Paul II defended this choice because objective realism makes possible the formulation of absolute, universal laws essential to the power and absolute authority of the Church, whereas to introduce the human subject is necessarily to allow a kind of relativism, which could undermine the absolute authority of the hierarchy. In my understanding to systematically eliminate the human person and that person’s subjectivity is effectively to eliminate the role of the Holy Spirit in the development of Christian faith.
For over a hundred years progressive Catholic theologians have urged the hierarchy to develop their philosophical foundation by allowing for the unique human subject, the person, and that person’s contribution to theological thinking. Instead of basing its sexual morality. for example, on biology, gender differences and procreation, this would allow theologians to deal with the specific human purposes of sex such as interpersonal love and companionship, but the hierarchy adamantly refused to do so.
As far back as 1893, Maurice Blondel in his book, L’Action argued that objective realism, since it could only deal with abstract conceptual reality, was necessarily depersonalized and depersonalizing because the unique individual human person and that persons actions can never be objectified in a concept. He also maintained that love is a human experience that can only be known from within the action of loving.
He believed that a philosophy that included the unique human person would be much more compatible with Christian belief. The ultimate level of truth was not the conformity of human concepts with objective reality but the conformity of will-willing with will-willed. This truth can only be arrived at through human action and commitment and is a truth that is only available subjectively in individual consciousness.
Blondel defined philosophy as “life itself insofar as it attempts to achieve a clear reflexive consciousness of itself and gives direction to its action”. I appreciated immediately the holistic tone of that definition; philosophy has as its objective the whole of human life and not just language or thought in abstraction from life. In his first great work, his doctoral dissertation, L’Action: Essai d’une Critique de la Vie et d’une Science of la Pratique, published in 1893, Blondel took his central insight from a verse in Scripture, “but whoever does the truth comes into the light”(John 3:21).
Blondel saw human life as a continual dialectic between thought and action. He liked to compare the human intellect to the headlights of a car. Those headlights can illuminate our way only as far as the next curve in the road. The car must move forward to that curve before the headlights can illuminate what lies around that curve. In a similar way, each of us must act according to our understanding in order to arrive at the fullness of “light” which is wisdom. There is a kind of subjective experiential knowing that comes from human choice and action and cannot be achieved in any other way. This essential subjectivity represents a necessary relativism in human knowledge.
This insight lies at the heart of all modern efforts of human liberation. For example, women derive a unique kind of knowledge of themselves from their subjective experience of themselves as women. Lesbians and gays have a subjective source of knowledge of what it means to be gay or lesbian that comes from their immediate experience of themselves in their actions, a knowledge that is not attainable in any other way. The only way that we, who do not share their subjective experience, can obtain that knowledge is by listening carefully and respectfully to those who do have that subjective experience and can articulate its meaning. Dialogue with an open mind is the only approach to ultimate truth. Each of us carries our unique part of divine revelation.
I will post part II of this blog; Blondel's Philosophy of Freedom in my nexr blog
Saturday, March 20, 2010
An Open Letter to Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Levada, Cardinal George
and all Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the World on the Issue
of Homosexuality
By John J. McNeill,
My initial open letter of November 2000 was addressed to the American Bishops at their annual conference. In the past ten-plus years, the contents of the letter have taken on greater relevance and force in the light of new scientific discoveries concerning the nature of
homosexual orientation and the psychological and spiritual needs of GLBT people, as well as recent statements from the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching authority out of touch with those discoveries.
As a result, I would like to readdress the letter to the following: Pope Benedict XVI; Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF); Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and his fellow American bishops and, finally, to all the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the world.
Catholic gay and lesbian people demand that, if the Church wants to be seen as their loving mother, mediating to us God’s unconditional love, the Church has no choice except to enter into dialogue with its gay members.
In 1974, the delegates of DignityUSA’s first national convention requested in a letter that a dialogue be opened between the American bishops and the members of the Catholic gay and lesbian community. With very few exceptions that letter was ignored.
Now, 38 years later, once again in the name of my Catholic lesbian siters and gay brothers I call for open dialogue.
For over 38 years, I have ministered as priest and psychotherapist to lesbians and gays. I helped found Dignity/New York to provide a safe and loving community within the Catholic Church for gay people. For over 33 years, I have given retreats for lesbians and gays at Kirkridge, an ecumenical retreat center.I have written four books on gay spirituality: The Church and the Homosexual, Taking a Chance on God, Freedom, Glorious Freedom and Sex: As God Intended: A Study of Human Sexuality As Play . I also published an autobiography on my own spiritual journey as a gay priest.
As a result of my experience, I have come to the conclusion that what is at stake at this point in time is not only the spiritual and psychological health of many gay and lesbian Catholics and other lesbian and gay Christians. What is at stake is your moral authority to teach on the issue of homosexuality. In the past, when you undertook a listening process to hear what the Holy Spirit was saying through the People of God, you won our respect. We respected you when you made your
statements on the economy, on nuclear warfare and, especially, your aborted effort to draw up a letter on the role of women in the Church. You listened carefully to what women had to say, and drew up your statements responding to what you heard from women. These actions gave us gay
and lesbians reason to hope that the Holy Spirit would lead you into a spirit of willingness to listen to us gay and lesbian Catholics.
What is at stake now is your own moral authority! Unless we gay and lesbian Catholics receive the message that you take us seriously and are willing to listen carefully to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you through our lives and our experience, your judgments on homosexuality
will be ignored, for the most part, and you will lose what authority you have left to deserve to be listened to with respect on this issue.
I have never heard the same level of courage from the American bishops in dealing with the Vatican as that shown by the Major Superiors of Religious Men in response to the egregious document issued by The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, entitled, “Some Considerations Concerning Homosexual Persons” as follows:
“We view (this document) as a hindrance to the Church leaders of the United States in this most difficult and sensitive area of human living. —We are shocked that the statement calls for discrimination against gay men and lesbian women. We find the reasoning for supporting such discrimination to be strained, unconvincing and counterproductive to our statements and actions to support the pastoral needs and personal dignity of such persons. Far from a help to the Bishops and other religious leaders in the United States Catholic Church, the statement complicates our
already complex ministry to all people.
“Moreover we find the arguments used to justify discrimination based on stereotypes and falsehoods that are out of touch with modern psychological and sociological understandings of human sexuality. We regret such actions by the CDF and we reaffirm our support for the human rights of all our brothers and sisters.”
As a gay Catholic theologian and psychotherapist, I am fully aware of the enormous destruction recent Vatican and USCCB documents, and news items, as well as actions taken by the USCCB and several state Catholic Conferences in the U.S. leading up to the November 2008
elections, have caused in the psychic life of young Catholic gays, and of the violence they will provoke against all gay people. This is compounded further by the initial Vatican reaction and
opposition to the United Nations proposal sponsored by France and backed by 27 European Union nations which seeks to end the practice of criminalizing and punishing people for their
sexual orientation—their very human nature and spiritual being. I find myself in a dilemma;what kind of faith and trust can I place in a teaching authority that I see clearly acts in an unloving, hateful and destructive way toward my gay family and is more interested in defending
its institutional interest than it is in truth and justice?
In the name of the thousands of gay and lesbian Catholics and other Christians to whom it has been my God-given privilege to minister, I make this statement:
At this point, the ignorance and distortion of homosexuality, and the use of stereotypes and falsehoods in official Church documents, forces us who are gay Catholics to issue the institutional Church a serious warning. Your ignorance of homosexuality can no longer be excused as inculpable; it has become of necessity a deliberate and malicious ignorance. In the
name of Catholic gays and lesbians everywhere, we cry out “Enough!”
Enough! Enough of your distortions of Scripture. You continue to claim that a loving homosexual act in a committed relationship is condemned in Scripture, when competent scholars are nearly unanimous in acknowledging that nowhere in Scripture is the problem of sexual acts between two gay men or lesbian women who love each other, ever dealt with, never mind
condemned. You must listen to biblical scholars to find out what Scripture truly has to say about homosexual relationships.
Enough! Enough of your efforts to reduce all homosexual acts to expressions of lust, and your refusal to see them as possible expressions of a deep and genuine human love. The second group you must listen to are competent professional psychiatrists and psychotherapists from
whom you can learn about the healthy and positive nature of mature gay and lesbian relationships. They will assure you that homosexual orientation is both not chosen and unchangeable and that any ministry promising to change that orientation is a fraud.
Enough! Enough of your efforts through groups like Courage and other ex-gay ministries to lead young gays to internalize self-hatred with the result that they are able to relate to God only as a God of fear, shame and guilt and lose all hope in a God of mercy and love. What is bad
psychology has to be bad theology!
Enough! Enough again, of your efforts to foster hatred, violence, discrimination and rejection of us in the human community, as well as disenfranching our human and civil rights. We gay and lesbian Catholics pray daily that the Holy Spirit will lead you into a spirit of repentance. You must publicly accept your share of the blame for gay murders and bashing and so many suicides of young gays and ask forgiveness from God and from the gay community.
Enough, also, of driving us from the home of our mother, the Church, and attempting to deny us the fullness of human intimacy and sexual love. You frequently base that denial by an appeal to the dead letter of the “natural law.” Another group to whom you must listen are the moral
theologians who, as a majority, argue that natural law is no longer an adequate basis for dealing with sexual questions. They must be dealt with within the context of interpersonal human relationships.
Above all else, you must enter into dialogue with the gay and lesbian members of the Catholic community. We are the ones living out the human experience of a gay orientation, so we alone can discern directly in our experience what God’s spirit is saying to us. And for the first time in history, you have gay and lesbian Catholic communities of worship
and prayer who are seeking individually and collectively to hear what the Spirit is saying to them in their gay experience—what experiences lead to the peace and joy of oneness with the Spirit of God and what experiences lead away from that peace and joy! God gave you the commission of discerning the truth. But there is no mandate from Jesus
Christ to “create” the truth. We pray daily that the Holy Spirit will lead you to search humbly for the truth concerning homosexuality through dialogue with your lesbian sisters and gay brothers.
The only consolation I can offer gay and lesbian Catholics in the meantime is the profound hope that the very absurdity and hateful spirit of recent Vatican and USCCB documents, news items and political actions will lead gay Catholics to refuse them and recognize the contradiction
of their message, and that of Jesus, who never once spoke a negative word concerning homosexuals.
I work, hope and pray that lesbian and gay Catholics and other gay Christians will exercise their legitimate freedom of conscience, discerning what God is saying to them directly through their gay experience. I hope, too, that they will be able to de-fang the poisons of pathologically homophobic religion, accepting the good news that God loves them and accepts them as gays and lesbians and refusing to be caught in the vortex of self-hatred vis-Ã -vis a God of fear.
I believe that we are at the moment of a special “kairos” in this matter. The Holy Spirit is “doing something new.” I was the guest at a gay ecumenical community that established homes for adult retarded people in the city of Basel in Switzerland. The extraordinary spirit of love and
compassion that permeated that community was a foretaste of what lies in the future. I believe there is a vast reservoir of human and divine love that has remained until now untapped because of prejudice and homophobia. The Spirit is calling on you to help release that vast potential of
human and divine love through your actions.
The worldwide prayerful vigils in December 2008 were to raise our concerned voices over the stance taken by the Vatican to perpetuate the
criminalization, incarceration and death sentences towards people of a homosexual orientation. It is not only counterproductive, it violates your own teaching that all persons are due dignity and respect and that homosexual persons should not suffer violence, injustice and discrimination. Furthermore, that they should be welcomed as full and equal members of the Church and society. We pray and hope that the same Holy Spirit who has graciously liberated us who are gay to
self-respect and self-love will liberate in you, our Catholic leaders, a profound love for your gay brothers and lesbian sisters and melt away all prejudice and judgmentalism in your hearts. May you make us welcome as full members in your family in Christ.
May God bless your efforts!
Sincerely in Christ
John J. McNeill
Comments from the Editor of Dignity's Quarterly News Journal
The open letter to the USCCB of November 2000 is currently popping up on several Internet user groups and blogsites, and appears in the Appendix in John’s latest book, Sex as God Intended:A Reflection on Human Sexuality as Play.
Since the release of John’s open letter, there have been numerous documents and communications promulgated by the Pope, Vatican offices and USCCB on matters related to homosexuality. Even more so during 2008. Except for minor nuances, they contain the same repetitive rhetoric. Repetition of falsehoods, erroneous interpretations and bad logic doesn’t
make for “the truth” and mitigates our trust and respect of “the teaching authority.”
I was in communication with John from the last week of December 2008 through early January 2009 . I learned he had but one response from a bishop of the United States in response to his initial open letter. John has issued this update and said that while announced as an open letter to the Pope, Cardinals Levada and George and the bishops of the world, it was also directed to ordinary gay Catholics for their discernment and investigation of personal and collective lived experience.
John suggests that the more out of touch the hierarchy of the Catholic Church get, “…the more we learn in a painful way to let go and grow up spiritually.”. He calls it “…the blessing of fallibility. We are witnessing the birth pangs of the Church of the Holy Spirit.”
and all Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the World on the Issue
of Homosexuality
By John J. McNeill,
My initial open letter of November 2000 was addressed to the American Bishops at their annual conference. In the past ten-plus years, the contents of the letter have taken on greater relevance and force in the light of new scientific discoveries concerning the nature of
homosexual orientation and the psychological and spiritual needs of GLBT people, as well as recent statements from the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching authority out of touch with those discoveries.
As a result, I would like to readdress the letter to the following: Pope Benedict XVI; Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF); Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and his fellow American bishops and, finally, to all the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the world.
Catholic gay and lesbian people demand that, if the Church wants to be seen as their loving mother, mediating to us God’s unconditional love, the Church has no choice except to enter into dialogue with its gay members.
In 1974, the delegates of DignityUSA’s first national convention requested in a letter that a dialogue be opened between the American bishops and the members of the Catholic gay and lesbian community. With very few exceptions that letter was ignored.
Now, 38 years later, once again in the name of my Catholic lesbian siters and gay brothers I call for open dialogue.
For over 38 years, I have ministered as priest and psychotherapist to lesbians and gays. I helped found Dignity/New York to provide a safe and loving community within the Catholic Church for gay people. For over 33 years, I have given retreats for lesbians and gays at Kirkridge, an ecumenical retreat center.I have written four books on gay spirituality: The Church and the Homosexual, Taking a Chance on God, Freedom, Glorious Freedom and Sex: As God Intended: A Study of Human Sexuality As Play . I also published an autobiography on my own spiritual journey as a gay priest.
As a result of my experience, I have come to the conclusion that what is at stake at this point in time is not only the spiritual and psychological health of many gay and lesbian Catholics and other lesbian and gay Christians. What is at stake is your moral authority to teach on the issue of homosexuality. In the past, when you undertook a listening process to hear what the Holy Spirit was saying through the People of God, you won our respect. We respected you when you made your
statements on the economy, on nuclear warfare and, especially, your aborted effort to draw up a letter on the role of women in the Church. You listened carefully to what women had to say, and drew up your statements responding to what you heard from women. These actions gave us gay
and lesbians reason to hope that the Holy Spirit would lead you into a spirit of willingness to listen to us gay and lesbian Catholics.
What is at stake now is your own moral authority! Unless we gay and lesbian Catholics receive the message that you take us seriously and are willing to listen carefully to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you through our lives and our experience, your judgments on homosexuality
will be ignored, for the most part, and you will lose what authority you have left to deserve to be listened to with respect on this issue.
I have never heard the same level of courage from the American bishops in dealing with the Vatican as that shown by the Major Superiors of Religious Men in response to the egregious document issued by The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, entitled, “Some Considerations Concerning Homosexual Persons” as follows:
“We view (this document) as a hindrance to the Church leaders of the United States in this most difficult and sensitive area of human living. —We are shocked that the statement calls for discrimination against gay men and lesbian women. We find the reasoning for supporting such discrimination to be strained, unconvincing and counterproductive to our statements and actions to support the pastoral needs and personal dignity of such persons. Far from a help to the Bishops and other religious leaders in the United States Catholic Church, the statement complicates our
already complex ministry to all people.
“Moreover we find the arguments used to justify discrimination based on stereotypes and falsehoods that are out of touch with modern psychological and sociological understandings of human sexuality. We regret such actions by the CDF and we reaffirm our support for the human rights of all our brothers and sisters.”
As a gay Catholic theologian and psychotherapist, I am fully aware of the enormous destruction recent Vatican and USCCB documents, and news items, as well as actions taken by the USCCB and several state Catholic Conferences in the U.S. leading up to the November 2008
elections, have caused in the psychic life of young Catholic gays, and of the violence they will provoke against all gay people. This is compounded further by the initial Vatican reaction and
opposition to the United Nations proposal sponsored by France and backed by 27 European Union nations which seeks to end the practice of criminalizing and punishing people for their
sexual orientation—their very human nature and spiritual being. I find myself in a dilemma;what kind of faith and trust can I place in a teaching authority that I see clearly acts in an unloving, hateful and destructive way toward my gay family and is more interested in defending
its institutional interest than it is in truth and justice?
In the name of the thousands of gay and lesbian Catholics and other Christians to whom it has been my God-given privilege to minister, I make this statement:
At this point, the ignorance and distortion of homosexuality, and the use of stereotypes and falsehoods in official Church documents, forces us who are gay Catholics to issue the institutional Church a serious warning. Your ignorance of homosexuality can no longer be excused as inculpable; it has become of necessity a deliberate and malicious ignorance. In the
name of Catholic gays and lesbians everywhere, we cry out “Enough!”
Enough! Enough of your distortions of Scripture. You continue to claim that a loving homosexual act in a committed relationship is condemned in Scripture, when competent scholars are nearly unanimous in acknowledging that nowhere in Scripture is the problem of sexual acts between two gay men or lesbian women who love each other, ever dealt with, never mind
condemned. You must listen to biblical scholars to find out what Scripture truly has to say about homosexual relationships.
Enough! Enough of your efforts to reduce all homosexual acts to expressions of lust, and your refusal to see them as possible expressions of a deep and genuine human love. The second group you must listen to are competent professional psychiatrists and psychotherapists from
whom you can learn about the healthy and positive nature of mature gay and lesbian relationships. They will assure you that homosexual orientation is both not chosen and unchangeable and that any ministry promising to change that orientation is a fraud.
Enough! Enough of your efforts through groups like Courage and other ex-gay ministries to lead young gays to internalize self-hatred with the result that they are able to relate to God only as a God of fear, shame and guilt and lose all hope in a God of mercy and love. What is bad
psychology has to be bad theology!
Enough! Enough again, of your efforts to foster hatred, violence, discrimination and rejection of us in the human community, as well as disenfranching our human and civil rights. We gay and lesbian Catholics pray daily that the Holy Spirit will lead you into a spirit of repentance. You must publicly accept your share of the blame for gay murders and bashing and so many suicides of young gays and ask forgiveness from God and from the gay community.
Enough, also, of driving us from the home of our mother, the Church, and attempting to deny us the fullness of human intimacy and sexual love. You frequently base that denial by an appeal to the dead letter of the “natural law.” Another group to whom you must listen are the moral
theologians who, as a majority, argue that natural law is no longer an adequate basis for dealing with sexual questions. They must be dealt with within the context of interpersonal human relationships.
Above all else, you must enter into dialogue with the gay and lesbian members of the Catholic community. We are the ones living out the human experience of a gay orientation, so we alone can discern directly in our experience what God’s spirit is saying to us. And for the first time in history, you have gay and lesbian Catholic communities of worship
and prayer who are seeking individually and collectively to hear what the Spirit is saying to them in their gay experience—what experiences lead to the peace and joy of oneness with the Spirit of God and what experiences lead away from that peace and joy! God gave you the commission of discerning the truth. But there is no mandate from Jesus
Christ to “create” the truth. We pray daily that the Holy Spirit will lead you to search humbly for the truth concerning homosexuality through dialogue with your lesbian sisters and gay brothers.
The only consolation I can offer gay and lesbian Catholics in the meantime is the profound hope that the very absurdity and hateful spirit of recent Vatican and USCCB documents, news items and political actions will lead gay Catholics to refuse them and recognize the contradiction
of their message, and that of Jesus, who never once spoke a negative word concerning homosexuals.
I work, hope and pray that lesbian and gay Catholics and other gay Christians will exercise their legitimate freedom of conscience, discerning what God is saying to them directly through their gay experience. I hope, too, that they will be able to de-fang the poisons of pathologically homophobic religion, accepting the good news that God loves them and accepts them as gays and lesbians and refusing to be caught in the vortex of self-hatred vis-Ã -vis a God of fear.
I believe that we are at the moment of a special “kairos” in this matter. The Holy Spirit is “doing something new.” I was the guest at a gay ecumenical community that established homes for adult retarded people in the city of Basel in Switzerland. The extraordinary spirit of love and
compassion that permeated that community was a foretaste of what lies in the future. I believe there is a vast reservoir of human and divine love that has remained until now untapped because of prejudice and homophobia. The Spirit is calling on you to help release that vast potential of
human and divine love through your actions.
The worldwide prayerful vigils in December 2008 were to raise our concerned voices over the stance taken by the Vatican to perpetuate the
criminalization, incarceration and death sentences towards people of a homosexual orientation. It is not only counterproductive, it violates your own teaching that all persons are due dignity and respect and that homosexual persons should not suffer violence, injustice and discrimination. Furthermore, that they should be welcomed as full and equal members of the Church and society. We pray and hope that the same Holy Spirit who has graciously liberated us who are gay to
self-respect and self-love will liberate in you, our Catholic leaders, a profound love for your gay brothers and lesbian sisters and melt away all prejudice and judgmentalism in your hearts. May you make us welcome as full members in your family in Christ.
May God bless your efforts!
Sincerely in Christ
John J. McNeill
Comments from the Editor of Dignity's Quarterly News Journal
The open letter to the USCCB of November 2000 is currently popping up on several Internet user groups and blogsites, and appears in the Appendix in John’s latest book, Sex as God Intended:A Reflection on Human Sexuality as Play.
Since the release of John’s open letter, there have been numerous documents and communications promulgated by the Pope, Vatican offices and USCCB on matters related to homosexuality. Even more so during 2008. Except for minor nuances, they contain the same repetitive rhetoric. Repetition of falsehoods, erroneous interpretations and bad logic doesn’t
make for “the truth” and mitigates our trust and respect of “the teaching authority.”
I was in communication with John from the last week of December 2008 through early January 2009 . I learned he had but one response from a bishop of the United States in response to his initial open letter. John has issued this update and said that while announced as an open letter to the Pope, Cardinals Levada and George and the bishops of the world, it was also directed to ordinary gay Catholics for their discernment and investigation of personal and collective lived experience.
John suggests that the more out of touch the hierarchy of the Catholic Church get, “…the more we learn in a painful way to let go and grow up spiritually.”. He calls it “…the blessing of fallibility. We are witnessing the birth pangs of the Church of the Holy Spirit.”
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Lindsey's review of my book: Sex As God Intended
One of John McNeill’s most significant contributions to Christian theology in Sex As God Intended (which builds on his previous works, including his classic study The Church and the Homosexual [1976]) is his carefully worked-out insistence that gay and lesbian human beings fit into God’s plan for the world. McNeill not merely asserts this: he demonstrates why it is the case, and he does so using unimpeachably traditional building blocks of Christian theology to make his case.
McNeill situates the lives of gay persons—he situates our existence in the world, an existence willed by the Creator—within the longstanding Christian tradition that through Christ, God has caught the entire cosmos up into a grand drama of divine salvation, in which all that has been created has a role to play in moving the created world to liberation. Echoing the Pauline insistence that the whole universe groans for salvation, and the declaration of patristic thinkers such as Irenaeus that the Spirit moves within all creation to make it (including human beings) fully alive, John McNeill asks what particular gifts gay and lesbian persons bring to the human community, to assist it in its movement to full life.
To ask this is also to ask precisely what it is that makes the human community fully alive. To ask about the particular gifts that gay and lesbian persons offer the human community is to ask about the eschatological goal towards which we move, as a human community. What is it to be liberated, to be saved? What does this mean, concretely? From what exactly do we seek salvation?
John McNeill’s thought is incisive on this point. In his view, the Western mind (and the mind of the human community in general) has, throughout history, been involved in a constant dialectic interplay between the masculine and the feminine (Sex As God Intended, p. 100). McNeill notes that great religious founders including Jesus and Ignatius of Loyola were, in cultures and historic periods heavily dominated by a masculine mind, “extraordinarily open to the feminine” (ibid.). He attributes the fruitfulness of such religious founders’ vision to their ability to draw on the creative energies of the feminine in cultures and periods resistant to the feminine.
In McNeill’s view, the human community is currently undergoing deep crisis as it attempts to move beyond the crippling strictures of a masculine mindset imbued with heterosexism and driven by feminophobia (pp. 98, 114). McNeill sees inbuilt in modernity itself “an essentially masculine crisis” (p. 105). The modern period joined the fate of the human race—and of the world itself—to men’s domination of women, to the subjugation of the feminine to the masculine, to the denigration of gay and lesbian human beings by heterosexual ones. In doing so, it has brought the human community (and the world itself) to a perilous point, at which we face the annihilation of everything by nuclear war and unbridled ecological destruction (p. 105).
The salvation of the world depends, then, on the ability of the human race to move beyond the intransigent, stubborn defense of masculine domination of everything, in our current postmodern moment. Unfortunately, at this point of peril, some churches, including the Roman Catholic church, have chosen to make the defense of masculine domination of everything so central to their definition of what it means to be a believer in the world today, that many churches view the attempt to correct the exclusively masculine worldview we have inherited as apocalyptic: to question the right of males to dominate is to court the destruction of the world (p. 110). Churches are impeding a necessary movement forward by the human community, by clinging to outmoded, unjust patriarchal ideas and structures, at a point in which those ideas and structures are revealed as increasingly toxic wherever they prevail.
Sts. Sergius and Bacchus
What do gays and lesbians, who are increasingly the human fallout of the churches’ adamantine resistance to the feminine, have to offer in this dialectical struggle for the future of the world? In McNeill’s view, gays and lesbians have a providential opportunity to “model the ideal goal of humanity’s present evolution,” by demonstrating what it might mean to live with a balance of masculine and feminine principles inside oneself and in the culture at large (p. 115). Gays and lesbians can offer, simply by living our lives with unapologetic integrity, an example of “balanced synthesis” that a culture heavily dominated by fear of the feminine and unjust power of the masculine sorely needs, if it is to remain a viable culture.
John McNeill follows his sketch of the dialectic evolutionary process through which humanity is now moving—or, rather, has to move, if it hopes to overcome forces with the perilous ability to destroy the entire world—with a reminder of the special gifts that gay and lesbian persons bring to church and society. This Jungian-oriented analysis of the contributions of gays and lesbians to humanity is one that runs through everything McNeill has written. It sustains his thought, and is one of his most valuable contributions to Christian theology.
Following Jung, McNeill notes that gays and lesbians bring these gifts to the human community and the churches:
Deep bonds of love, which bear an often unacknowledged fruit in many social institutions that transcend the gay community itself;
A sensitivity to beauty;
Supreme gifts of compassionate service evident in the contributions of gay and lesbian teachers, ministers, medical workers and healers, workers in the fields of human service that serve the blind, those with mental and physical challenges, and so on, and many other service-oriented fields;
An interest in and commitment to preserving the best of traditions, aspects of tradition that remain viable and are often overlooked by mainstream culture;
And the gift of spiritual leadership.
One cannot read John McNeill’s work without concluding that the church’s decision at this moment of its history to reject—even to seek to destroy—such gifts is tragically short-sighted. One cannot read John McNeill’s work while struggling, as an unapologetic gay person, to live in some connection to the church without feeling the tremendous weight of the tragedy that the churches are choosing to write today for themselves, the human community, and the earth itself by repudiating and undermining the gifts of gay and lesbian persons to the churches and the human community.
The unfinished question with which John McNeill’s theology leaves me, as a gay believer, is the question of what to do about that tragedy. For anyone who is unabashedly gay and who continues to believe that it is important to connect to the churches—for anyone who sees her or his sexual orientation as a gift of the same God whom the churches worship—the tragedy the churches are manufacturing by their cruel rejection of gay and lesbian believers produces existential, vocational crisis today.
How to live with any connection to an institution capable of such anti-Christian malevolence, an institution that not only has the capability to twist the souls of gay human beings, but which all too often gleefully uses that capability to do precisely that—to assault the very personhood of gay human beings in the name of a God who is Love? How to live with any connection to an institution that practices and foments violence against oneself and others like oneself, while preaching a commitment to peace and love? What to do about an institution that transmits rich spiritual resources of which one wishes to avail oneself, but which also introduces a stream of toxins into one’s life and into society, through its malevolence towards queer human beings? How to forgive an institution which tells one that it is the way to salvation, and at the same time closes that way to any gay person who refuses to curse God for the gift of his or her nature?
I don’t know the answer to these questions—not fully. I continue struggling to pursue answer to these soul-searching questions in my own life, and in my life as it is lived in solidarity with others who share this struggle. As a Catholic layperson, I sense that I sometimes have to look for answers in a different place than the place in which John McNeill (and James Alison, whose theology I also admire and find extremely helpful) find them, as former cleric.s My experience of the church has been different, and the language I speak out of that experience is different. I am connected to the church institutionally in a different way than are my fellow theologians who are gay and who are ordained. The experiences that have shaped them vis-a-vis the church are different, and so they sometimes come up with different answers to the questions I have just listed than the answers for which I search as a layperson.
This I can say, however: John McNeill’s prophetic theology opens up for me and for others a way that would never have been opened to us, had he not written books such as Sex As God Intended. For what he has accomplished, and for who he is, John McNeill deserves high honor and gratitude—and not only from the gay community. From the entire church.
(Crossposted from Bilgrimage, 29 March 2009.)
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Filed under: Theologians, church teaching, sexuality and gender | Tagged: changing church, gay theology, gender roles, heterosexism, homophobia, homosexuality, John McNeill, patriarchy, Progressive theologians, sexual theology
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The Foundations of Catholic Faith Meet the Lived Reality of Catholicism: Benedict’s Continued Silence about Uganda
frankcocozzelli
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Role Models of Remonstrance
The Road to Remonstrance
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The Underlying Dysfunction of the Denver Archdiocese’s Recent Actions
Why This Gay Man Takes Heart from the Feast of the Holy Family
Jayden Cameron
COMPANIONS ON THE JOURNEY
LIBERATED WITH JOY FROM A FAILING INSTITUTION
HOME EUCHARIST MOVEMENT
LIFE FINDS A WAY
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America A national (U.S.) Catholic news weekly commenting on religious and political themes.
Catholica Australian Catholic e-zine, with “an excitingly different way of looking at faith and spirituality.”
Commonweal An independent journal of opinion edited and managed by lay Catholics in the U.S.
National Catholic Reporter An independent American Catholic weekly that seeks to inform and inspire a just and peaceful world, serving as a platform for discussions of church, society and global community.
New Catholic Times: sensus fidelium A Canadian bi-monthly forum for conversation about the Catholic principles of solidarity with the poor, the common good, the dignity of the human person and the presence of God in all creation.
The Progressive Catholic Voice An independent and grassroots forum for reflection, dialogue, and the exchange of ideas within the Catholic community of Minnesota (U.S.) and beyond.
U.S. Catholic A forum for lay Catholics reviewing the intersection of US cultural and political life and the Catholic faith.
Catholic Opinon & Personal blogsites
Bilgrimage This blog is me on pilgrimage, sharing my journey with companions who want to walk along–towards truth that needs to be told but doesn’t get spoken, towards whatever and whoever draws us along to the horizon of hope.
Bridget Mary's Blog A womanpriest’s personal blog: “I was ordained a priest on July 31, 2006 and am interested in discussions on spirituality. We are interested in establishing a renewed model of priestly ministry.”
Catholic Anarchy
Clerical Whispers An Irish blog seeking to give the uncomfortable truth and news from the inside of the Irish Catholic church.
Confessions of a Liturgy Queen Ross Lonergan’s blog, focusing on Catholic issues and writers, as well as the experience of being gay and Catholic.
Enlightened Catholicism A place for Catholics who don’t find their Catholic identity in the standard definitions. “He drew a circle that shut me out. Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in.” Edwin Markham
Father Geoff Farrow A blog of Fr. Geoff Farrow, suspended from active ministry for speaking against proposition 8 in California, and an advocate for the rights of LGBT persons.
Gay Mystic A blog dedicated the future of a renewed, inclusive, fair and open Roman Catholic tradition, in the spirit of Pope John Paul I, and maintained by Jayden Cameron.
J. S. O'Leary A personal blog, which features “Essays on literary and theological themes”.
James Alison A website collecting the works of Rev. James Alison, a Catholic theologian whose work explores gay themes from a Catholic standpoint,
John McNeill Website Website of the pioneering (and prolific) theologian John McNeill, exploring gay themes in light of Catholic theology.
Nihil Obstat Examines public statements and letters of church officials and concerned Catholics in light of Christ’s ministry of justice and inclusion.
Perspective Thoughts of a Catholic convert
Sacredfisher Regina Colleen Heater’s sacredfisher.com is blog site is born out of the desire to reach people in both their hearts and their heads as they consider their lives in faith. The idea comes from Jesus’ call to make the apostles “fishers of men.”
The Catholic Story The website of Deacons Eric Stoltz and Vince Tomkovicz.
The Wild Reed Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective by blogger Michael Bayly.
There Will Be Bread Reflections about religion, life, food, faith, culture, theology, sometimes politics and more by Fran Szpylczyn.
Whispers in the Loggia Inside perspectives on matters Catholic (particularly institutional matters) by U.S. journalist Rocco Palmo.
Organizations & Resource Websites
Association of Rights of Catholics in the Church An association whose aim is “To bring about substantive structural change in the Catholic Church”, and “to institutionalize a collegial understanding of Church.”
Bishop Accountability A website documenting the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.
Call to Action Catholics working together for justice and action.
Catholic Association for Lesbian and Gay Ministries The website of the National (U.S.) Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries (NACDLGM), fostering ministry to the LGBT community and providing educational resources.
Catholics United Promoting the message of justice and the common good found at the heart of the Catholic Social Tradition.
Center for Social Inclusion The Center for Social Inclusion identifies causes of racial inequity growing out of public policy.
DignityUSA DignityUSA envisions and works for a time when Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Catholics are affirmed and experience dignity through the integration of their spirituality with their sexuality, and as beloved persons of God participate fully in all
Future Church FutureChurch seeks changes that will provide all Roman Catholics the opportunity to participate fully in Church life and leadership.
Institute for Progressive Christianity An ecumenical organization seeking to further awareness and understanding that the progressive tradition is rooted in core Christian gospel values, and to relate that tradition to personal faith, public policy, family, and the common good.
Mount St. Agnes Theological Center for Women A theological center for women founded to commit its resources in solidarity with women seeking fullness of life and equality in church and society.
New Ways Ministry A gay-positive ministry of advocacy and justice for lesbian and gay Catholics and reconciliation within the larger Christian and civil communities.
Roman Catholic Women Priests An international initiative within the Roman Catholic Church spiritually preparing, ordaining, and supporting women and men from all states of life, who are theologically qualified, committed to an inclusive model of Church, and called by the Holy Spirit
Saint Mychal Judge A blog devoted to encouraging greater faith, hope, and love through discussion of Father Mychal Judge, OFM, the saint of 9/11.
Soulforce Guided by principles of nonviolent resistance, Soulforce works to end the religious and political oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning people.
Stand up For Vatican II A campaign designed to involve the whole Church, Catholic organisations and individuals, who recognise the benefits the Second Vatican Council brought to the Church.
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests A support network for women and men wounded by religious authority figures (priests, ministers, bishops, deacons, nuns and others).
Talk to Action “Reclaiming Citizenship, History and Faith”, Talk to Action aims to counter the religious right.
Voice of the Faithful An organization seeking to provide a prayerful voice, attentive to the Spirit, through which the Faithful can actively participate in the governance and guidance of the Catholic Church.
WATER: Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual An international community of justice-seeking people who promote the use of feminist values to make religious and social change.
We Are Church An international movement committed to the renewal of the Roman Catholic Church on the basis of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the theological spirit developed from it.
Young Adult Catholics A blog dedicated to the progressive, faithful, Catholic voices of 20- and 30-year-olds and sponsored by Call to Action.
Other Christian Websites &Blogs
Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists A website of churches, organizations, and individuals on record as welcoming and affirming all persons without regard to sexual orientation or gender identity, who have joined to advocate for full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender person
Cross Left The online enagement organization of the Institute for Progressive Christianity and its strategy clearing-house and central hub for grassroots activism among progressive Christians.
Ekklesia An ecumenical religion and society think-tank at the cutting edge of culture, spirituality and politics.
Faith in America The mission of Faith In America is to educate the public about the harm caused to gay Americans when religion-based bigotry and prejudice is used to justify condemnation, discrimination and violence toward this minority population group.
Göran Koch-Swahne Swedish personal blog
Goodsoil Goodsoil is a collaboration of organizations working for the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their families in the full ministerial and sacramental life of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
Lutheran News A website providing Lutheran news of interest.
Lutheran News Aggregates news and blog comments on Lutheran and other churches.
Reconciling Ministries Network A movement of United Methodist individuals, congregations, campus ministries, and other groups working for the full participation of all people in the United Methodist Church.
Religion Dispatches A daily online magazine dedicated to the analysis and understanding of religious forces in the world today, highlighting a diversity of progressive voices and aimed at broadening and advancing the public conversation.
Street Prophets A blog about faith and politics sponsored by Daily Kos.
The Liberal Spirit A blog of progressive religious themes.
Statcounter
Blog at WordPress.com. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer
McNeill situates the lives of gay persons—he situates our existence in the world, an existence willed by the Creator—within the longstanding Christian tradition that through Christ, God has caught the entire cosmos up into a grand drama of divine salvation, in which all that has been created has a role to play in moving the created world to liberation. Echoing the Pauline insistence that the whole universe groans for salvation, and the declaration of patristic thinkers such as Irenaeus that the Spirit moves within all creation to make it (including human beings) fully alive, John McNeill asks what particular gifts gay and lesbian persons bring to the human community, to assist it in its movement to full life.
To ask this is also to ask precisely what it is that makes the human community fully alive. To ask about the particular gifts that gay and lesbian persons offer the human community is to ask about the eschatological goal towards which we move, as a human community. What is it to be liberated, to be saved? What does this mean, concretely? From what exactly do we seek salvation?
John McNeill’s thought is incisive on this point. In his view, the Western mind (and the mind of the human community in general) has, throughout history, been involved in a constant dialectic interplay between the masculine and the feminine (Sex As God Intended, p. 100). McNeill notes that great religious founders including Jesus and Ignatius of Loyola were, in cultures and historic periods heavily dominated by a masculine mind, “extraordinarily open to the feminine” (ibid.). He attributes the fruitfulness of such religious founders’ vision to their ability to draw on the creative energies of the feminine in cultures and periods resistant to the feminine.
In McNeill’s view, the human community is currently undergoing deep crisis as it attempts to move beyond the crippling strictures of a masculine mindset imbued with heterosexism and driven by feminophobia (pp. 98, 114). McNeill sees inbuilt in modernity itself “an essentially masculine crisis” (p. 105). The modern period joined the fate of the human race—and of the world itself—to men’s domination of women, to the subjugation of the feminine to the masculine, to the denigration of gay and lesbian human beings by heterosexual ones. In doing so, it has brought the human community (and the world itself) to a perilous point, at which we face the annihilation of everything by nuclear war and unbridled ecological destruction (p. 105).
The salvation of the world depends, then, on the ability of the human race to move beyond the intransigent, stubborn defense of masculine domination of everything, in our current postmodern moment. Unfortunately, at this point of peril, some churches, including the Roman Catholic church, have chosen to make the defense of masculine domination of everything so central to their definition of what it means to be a believer in the world today, that many churches view the attempt to correct the exclusively masculine worldview we have inherited as apocalyptic: to question the right of males to dominate is to court the destruction of the world (p. 110). Churches are impeding a necessary movement forward by the human community, by clinging to outmoded, unjust patriarchal ideas and structures, at a point in which those ideas and structures are revealed as increasingly toxic wherever they prevail.
Sts. Sergius and Bacchus
What do gays and lesbians, who are increasingly the human fallout of the churches’ adamantine resistance to the feminine, have to offer in this dialectical struggle for the future of the world? In McNeill’s view, gays and lesbians have a providential opportunity to “model the ideal goal of humanity’s present evolution,” by demonstrating what it might mean to live with a balance of masculine and feminine principles inside oneself and in the culture at large (p. 115). Gays and lesbians can offer, simply by living our lives with unapologetic integrity, an example of “balanced synthesis” that a culture heavily dominated by fear of the feminine and unjust power of the masculine sorely needs, if it is to remain a viable culture.
John McNeill follows his sketch of the dialectic evolutionary process through which humanity is now moving—or, rather, has to move, if it hopes to overcome forces with the perilous ability to destroy the entire world—with a reminder of the special gifts that gay and lesbian persons bring to church and society. This Jungian-oriented analysis of the contributions of gays and lesbians to humanity is one that runs through everything McNeill has written. It sustains his thought, and is one of his most valuable contributions to Christian theology.
Following Jung, McNeill notes that gays and lesbians bring these gifts to the human community and the churches:
Deep bonds of love, which bear an often unacknowledged fruit in many social institutions that transcend the gay community itself;
A sensitivity to beauty;
Supreme gifts of compassionate service evident in the contributions of gay and lesbian teachers, ministers, medical workers and healers, workers in the fields of human service that serve the blind, those with mental and physical challenges, and so on, and many other service-oriented fields;
An interest in and commitment to preserving the best of traditions, aspects of tradition that remain viable and are often overlooked by mainstream culture;
And the gift of spiritual leadership.
One cannot read John McNeill’s work without concluding that the church’s decision at this moment of its history to reject—even to seek to destroy—such gifts is tragically short-sighted. One cannot read John McNeill’s work while struggling, as an unapologetic gay person, to live in some connection to the church without feeling the tremendous weight of the tragedy that the churches are choosing to write today for themselves, the human community, and the earth itself by repudiating and undermining the gifts of gay and lesbian persons to the churches and the human community.
The unfinished question with which John McNeill’s theology leaves me, as a gay believer, is the question of what to do about that tragedy. For anyone who is unabashedly gay and who continues to believe that it is important to connect to the churches—for anyone who sees her or his sexual orientation as a gift of the same God whom the churches worship—the tragedy the churches are manufacturing by their cruel rejection of gay and lesbian believers produces existential, vocational crisis today.
How to live with any connection to an institution capable of such anti-Christian malevolence, an institution that not only has the capability to twist the souls of gay human beings, but which all too often gleefully uses that capability to do precisely that—to assault the very personhood of gay human beings in the name of a God who is Love? How to live with any connection to an institution that practices and foments violence against oneself and others like oneself, while preaching a commitment to peace and love? What to do about an institution that transmits rich spiritual resources of which one wishes to avail oneself, but which also introduces a stream of toxins into one’s life and into society, through its malevolence towards queer human beings? How to forgive an institution which tells one that it is the way to salvation, and at the same time closes that way to any gay person who refuses to curse God for the gift of his or her nature?
I don’t know the answer to these questions—not fully. I continue struggling to pursue answer to these soul-searching questions in my own life, and in my life as it is lived in solidarity with others who share this struggle. As a Catholic layperson, I sense that I sometimes have to look for answers in a different place than the place in which John McNeill (and James Alison, whose theology I also admire and find extremely helpful) find them, as former cleric.s My experience of the church has been different, and the language I speak out of that experience is different. I am connected to the church institutionally in a different way than are my fellow theologians who are gay and who are ordained. The experiences that have shaped them vis-a-vis the church are different, and so they sometimes come up with different answers to the questions I have just listed than the answers for which I search as a layperson.
This I can say, however: John McNeill’s prophetic theology opens up for me and for others a way that would never have been opened to us, had he not written books such as Sex As God Intended. For what he has accomplished, and for who he is, John McNeill deserves high honor and gratitude—and not only from the gay community. From the entire church.
(Crossposted from Bilgrimage, 29 March 2009.)
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Filed under: Theologians, church teaching, sexuality and gender | Tagged: changing church, gay theology, gender roles, heterosexism, homophobia, homosexuality, John McNeill, patriarchy, Progressive theologians, sexual theology
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Catholic News & e-zines
America A national (U.S.) Catholic news weekly commenting on religious and political themes.
Catholica Australian Catholic e-zine, with “an excitingly different way of looking at faith and spirituality.”
Commonweal An independent journal of opinion edited and managed by lay Catholics in the U.S.
National Catholic Reporter An independent American Catholic weekly that seeks to inform and inspire a just and peaceful world, serving as a platform for discussions of church, society and global community.
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The Progressive Catholic Voice An independent and grassroots forum for reflection, dialogue, and the exchange of ideas within the Catholic community of Minnesota (U.S.) and beyond.
U.S. Catholic A forum for lay Catholics reviewing the intersection of US cultural and political life and the Catholic faith.
Catholic Opinon & Personal blogsites
Bilgrimage This blog is me on pilgrimage, sharing my journey with companions who want to walk along–towards truth that needs to be told but doesn’t get spoken, towards whatever and whoever draws us along to the horizon of hope.
Bridget Mary's Blog A womanpriest’s personal blog: “I was ordained a priest on July 31, 2006 and am interested in discussions on spirituality. We are interested in establishing a renewed model of priestly ministry.”
Catholic Anarchy
Clerical Whispers An Irish blog seeking to give the uncomfortable truth and news from the inside of the Irish Catholic church.
Confessions of a Liturgy Queen Ross Lonergan’s blog, focusing on Catholic issues and writers, as well as the experience of being gay and Catholic.
Enlightened Catholicism A place for Catholics who don’t find their Catholic identity in the standard definitions. “He drew a circle that shut me out. Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in.” Edwin Markham
Father Geoff Farrow A blog of Fr. Geoff Farrow, suspended from active ministry for speaking against proposition 8 in California, and an advocate for the rights of LGBT persons.
Gay Mystic A blog dedicated the future of a renewed, inclusive, fair and open Roman Catholic tradition, in the spirit of Pope John Paul I, and maintained by Jayden Cameron.
J. S. O'Leary A personal blog, which features “Essays on literary and theological themes”.
James Alison A website collecting the works of Rev. James Alison, a Catholic theologian whose work explores gay themes from a Catholic standpoint,
John McNeill Website Website of the pioneering (and prolific) theologian John McNeill, exploring gay themes in light of Catholic theology.
Nihil Obstat Examines public statements and letters of church officials and concerned Catholics in light of Christ’s ministry of justice and inclusion.
Perspective Thoughts of a Catholic convert
Sacredfisher Regina Colleen Heater’s sacredfisher.com is blog site is born out of the desire to reach people in both their hearts and their heads as they consider their lives in faith. The idea comes from Jesus’ call to make the apostles “fishers of men.”
The Catholic Story The website of Deacons Eric Stoltz and Vince Tomkovicz.
The Wild Reed Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective by blogger Michael Bayly.
There Will Be Bread Reflections about religion, life, food, faith, culture, theology, sometimes politics and more by Fran Szpylczyn.
Whispers in the Loggia Inside perspectives on matters Catholic (particularly institutional matters) by U.S. journalist Rocco Palmo.
Organizations & Resource Websites
Association of Rights of Catholics in the Church An association whose aim is “To bring about substantive structural change in the Catholic Church”, and “to institutionalize a collegial understanding of Church.”
Bishop Accountability A website documenting the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.
Call to Action Catholics working together for justice and action.
Catholic Association for Lesbian and Gay Ministries The website of the National (U.S.) Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries (NACDLGM), fostering ministry to the LGBT community and providing educational resources.
Catholics United Promoting the message of justice and the common good found at the heart of the Catholic Social Tradition.
Center for Social Inclusion The Center for Social Inclusion identifies causes of racial inequity growing out of public policy.
DignityUSA DignityUSA envisions and works for a time when Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Catholics are affirmed and experience dignity through the integration of their spirituality with their sexuality, and as beloved persons of God participate fully in all
Future Church FutureChurch seeks changes that will provide all Roman Catholics the opportunity to participate fully in Church life and leadership.
Institute for Progressive Christianity An ecumenical organization seeking to further awareness and understanding that the progressive tradition is rooted in core Christian gospel values, and to relate that tradition to personal faith, public policy, family, and the common good.
Mount St. Agnes Theological Center for Women A theological center for women founded to commit its resources in solidarity with women seeking fullness of life and equality in church and society.
New Ways Ministry A gay-positive ministry of advocacy and justice for lesbian and gay Catholics and reconciliation within the larger Christian and civil communities.
Roman Catholic Women Priests An international initiative within the Roman Catholic Church spiritually preparing, ordaining, and supporting women and men from all states of life, who are theologically qualified, committed to an inclusive model of Church, and called by the Holy Spirit
Saint Mychal Judge A blog devoted to encouraging greater faith, hope, and love through discussion of Father Mychal Judge, OFM, the saint of 9/11.
Soulforce Guided by principles of nonviolent resistance, Soulforce works to end the religious and political oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning people.
Stand up For Vatican II A campaign designed to involve the whole Church, Catholic organisations and individuals, who recognise the benefits the Second Vatican Council brought to the Church.
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests A support network for women and men wounded by religious authority figures (priests, ministers, bishops, deacons, nuns and others).
Talk to Action “Reclaiming Citizenship, History and Faith”, Talk to Action aims to counter the religious right.
Voice of the Faithful An organization seeking to provide a prayerful voice, attentive to the Spirit, through which the Faithful can actively participate in the governance and guidance of the Catholic Church.
WATER: Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual An international community of justice-seeking people who promote the use of feminist values to make religious and social change.
We Are Church An international movement committed to the renewal of the Roman Catholic Church on the basis of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the theological spirit developed from it.
Young Adult Catholics A blog dedicated to the progressive, faithful, Catholic voices of 20- and 30-year-olds and sponsored by Call to Action.
Other Christian Websites &Blogs
Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists A website of churches, organizations, and individuals on record as welcoming and affirming all persons without regard to sexual orientation or gender identity, who have joined to advocate for full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender person
Cross Left The online enagement organization of the Institute for Progressive Christianity and its strategy clearing-house and central hub for grassroots activism among progressive Christians.
Ekklesia An ecumenical religion and society think-tank at the cutting edge of culture, spirituality and politics.
Faith in America The mission of Faith In America is to educate the public about the harm caused to gay Americans when religion-based bigotry and prejudice is used to justify condemnation, discrimination and violence toward this minority population group.
Göran Koch-Swahne Swedish personal blog
Goodsoil Goodsoil is a collaboration of organizations working for the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their families in the full ministerial and sacramental life of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
Lutheran News A website providing Lutheran news of interest.
Lutheran News Aggregates news and blog comments on Lutheran and other churches.
Reconciling Ministries Network A movement of United Methodist individuals, congregations, campus ministries, and other groups working for the full participation of all people in the United Methodist Church.
Religion Dispatches A daily online magazine dedicated to the analysis and understanding of religious forces in the world today, highlighting a diversity of progressive voices and aimed at broadening and advancing the public conversation.
Street Prophets A blog about faith and politics sponsored by Daily Kos.
The Liberal Spirit A blog of progressive religious themes.
Statcounter
Blog at WordPress.com. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
GAY MYOPIA
For many years now I have observed a reluctance on the part of gay leaders to acknowledge and welcome the support gay liberation receives from faith communities. A striking example of that occurred at the 25th anniversary of Stonewall in New York city. Three major gay religious events occurred that day. The first was an event sponsored by Integrity, the Episcopal gay group at the Cathedral of St. John The Divine. (The cathedral kept an AIDS memorial with the names of all the thousands who dies of AIDS in New York City.) Over four thousand gay believers gathered that morning to pray for gay and lesbian liberation. The preacher was Bea Arthur who ended her sermon singing "I'll be seeing you"! There was not a dry eye in the Church.
That afternoon, Dignity, the gay and lesbian Catholic group, held a service at St. Bartholomew's church on Park Avenue. There were several thousand in attendance. The preacher was lesbian theologian Mary Hunt, who forsaw the day when a woman would be pope.
That evening Metropolitan Community Church, a gay friendly church which is the fastest growing Christian Church in the world today, held a service at Lincoln Center. Again over a thousand people attended this gay church service. Troy Perry preached a very charismatic sermon on self love and self acceptance.
The next day the newspapers and the gay press showed pictures of the more provocative paraders and exhibitionists, etc., but not a word about the many thousands who attended these services. In fact, throughout the years the vast majority of people marching in New York's annual gay pride parade have been the religious groups. But there has never been any acknowledement of their presence and their support. For example. It is a fact that a sizable majority of Catholics favor and vote in suppot of gay rights despite the homophobia of the Catholic hierarchy. Gay historians have systematically overlooked or deliberately censored the contribution that gay religious groups have made to gay liberation.
This deliberate myopia (short-sightedness) came to a climax for me personally with the New York Times obituary last Monday , March 15th in memory of Father Robert Carter, S.J., my close friend and associate, a brilliant scholar and theologian who came out of the closet as a gay man, helped co-found Dignity/NY with me and was a founding member of the National Gay Task Force. Bob left academia and trained as a therapist and gave himself full time to working with AIDS victims in New York City. A subheading in the article calls Carter "A priest who saw no contradiction between homosexuality and Christianity".
In fact, the obituary quotes Carter going way beyond "no contradiction" all the way to affirming total compatibility. In his memoir Carter wrote: "Since Jesus had table fellowship with social outcasts and sinners, those rejected by the religious establishment of his time, I consider myself to have been more fully a Jesuit, a companion of Jesus, when I came out publicly as a gay man, one of the social rejects of my time. It was only by our coming out that society's negative stereotypes would be overcome, and we would gain social acceptance."
Here is the link to Fr. Carter's obituary in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/nyregion/15carter.html?hpw
The greatest opposition to GLBT liberation comes from the homophobic churches, many of whom mistakenly, even if sincerely, believe that God in scripture condemns gayness. To overcome that false belief the world needs the witness of respected gay theologians such as Father Robert Carter. I can understand and share the anger of the GLBT community against homophobic institutions. But by refusing to acknowlege the witness of their friends in the Christian community, the gay community is giving the impression that they see their enemy not just homophobic churches but the faith itself. I hope and pray that this is not the case, but that impression appears to be justified by the gay community's refusal to acknowledge and accept the support they have from the believing community.
For many years now I have observed a reluctance on the part of gay leaders to acknowledge and welcome the support gay liberation receives from faith communities. A striking example of that occurred at the 25th anniversary of Stonewall in New York city. Three major gay religious events occurred that day. The first was an event sponsored by Integrity, the Episcopal gay group at the Cathedral of St. John The Divine. (The cathedral kept an AIDS memorial with the names of all the thousands who dies of AIDS in New York City.) Over four thousand gay believers gathered that morning to pray for gay and lesbian liberation. The preacher was Bea Arthur who ended her sermon singing "I'll be seeing you"! There was not a dry eye in the Church.
That afternoon, Dignity, the gay and lesbian Catholic group, held a service at St. Bartholomew's church on Park Avenue. There were several thousand in attendance. The preacher was lesbian theologian Mary Hunt, who forsaw the day when a woman would be pope.
That evening Metropolitan Community Church, a gay friendly church which is the fastest growing Christian Church in the world today, held a service at Lincoln Center. Again over a thousand people attended this gay church service. Troy Perry preached a very charismatic sermon on self love and self acceptance.
The next day the newspapers and the gay press showed pictures of the more provocative paraders and exhibitionists, etc., but not a word about the many thousands who attended these services. In fact, throughout the years the vast majority of people marching in New York's annual gay pride parade have been the religious groups. But there has never been any acknowledement of their presence and their support. For example. It is a fact that a sizable majority of Catholics favor and vote in suppot of gay rights despite the homophobia of the Catholic hierarchy. Gay historians have systematically overlooked or deliberately censored the contribution that gay religious groups have made to gay liberation.
This deliberate myopia (short-sightedness) came to a climax for me personally with the New York Times obituary last Monday , March 15th in memory of Father Robert Carter, S.J., my close friend and associate, a brilliant scholar and theologian who came out of the closet as a gay man, helped co-found Dignity/NY with me and was a founding member of the National Gay Task Force. Bob left academia and trained as a therapist and gave himself full time to working with AIDS victims in New York City. A subheading in the article calls Carter "A priest who saw no contradiction between homosexuality and Christianity".
In fact, the obituary quotes Carter going way beyond "no contradiction" all the way to affirming total compatibility. In his memoir Carter wrote: "Since Jesus had table fellowship with social outcasts and sinners, those rejected by the religious establishment of his time, I consider myself to have been more fully a Jesuit, a companion of Jesus, when I came out publicly as a gay man, one of the social rejects of my time. It was only by our coming out that society's negative stereotypes would be overcome, and we would gain social acceptance."
Here is the link to Fr. Carter's obituary in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/nyregion/15carter.html?hpw
The greatest opposition to GLBT liberation comes from the homophobic churches, many of whom mistakenly, even if sincerely, believe that God in scripture condemns gayness. To overcome that false belief the world needs the witness of respected gay theologians such as Father Robert Carter. I can understand and share the anger of the GLBT community against homophobic institutions. But by refusing to acknowlege the witness of their friends in the Christian community, the gay community is giving the impression that they see their enemy not just homophobic churches but the faith itself. I hope and pray that this is not the case, but that impression appears to be justified by the gay community's refusal to acknowledge and accept the support they have from the believing community.
Monday, March 15, 2010
In memory of Fr. Robert Carter,S.J.
An excellent obituary for Robert Carter S.J. appeared in today's (Mon., March 15) New York Times. Bob in my mind was the quintessential Jesuit. A brilliant scholar in Greek patritics, he converted from atheism to Catholcism while a graduate student in Chicago. While we were residents at the Woodstock community residence on West 98th street in NYC, Bob gave his complete support to me in founding Dignity as a refuge for GLBT catholics from the homophobia of the Catholic church.
Bob left academia during the AIDS crsis to become a full time counselor to AIDS patients. Bob became the "heart" of Dignity's ministry. He radiated the compassion of Jesus for those who were outcasts and in pain.
Jesuit superiors under Vatican influence after several years forbade Fr. Carter from saying mass for Dignity, New York. For many years Bob travelled every weekend to Philadelphia to celebrate mass with Dignity there.
Up to the time of his death Bob said that the best choice he ever made as a Jesuit was to come out of the closet and identify himself with the gay outcasts. It was this action that made him a true Jesuit i.e. a true follower of Jesus' example.
Bob's support for me in founding Dignity gave me the courage to forge ahead with certainty that what I was about was the will of God. Thank you Robert! May you have an extraordinary experience of God's love for all eternity.
Bob left academia during the AIDS crsis to become a full time counselor to AIDS patients. Bob became the "heart" of Dignity's ministry. He radiated the compassion of Jesus for those who were outcasts and in pain.
Jesuit superiors under Vatican influence after several years forbade Fr. Carter from saying mass for Dignity, New York. For many years Bob travelled every weekend to Philadelphia to celebrate mass with Dignity there.
Up to the time of his death Bob said that the best choice he ever made as a Jesuit was to come out of the closet and identify himself with the gay outcasts. It was this action that made him a true Jesuit i.e. a true follower of Jesus' example.
Bob's support for me in founding Dignity gave me the courage to forge ahead with certainty that what I was about was the will of God. Thank you Robert! May you have an extraordinary experience of God's love for all eternity.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Fallibility of the Hierarchy
At the last supper Jesus told his disciples. "If I do not die, the Spirit cannot come to you! But if I die I will send the Holy Spirit, who will dwell in your hearts and lead you into all truth." Jesus was revealing a basic truth about spiritual maturity. Our external authorities must fail us before we can find the presence of God's spirit within us and within our experiences. If our parents had been infallible we could never have matured, take distance from their authority and take personal responsibility for our choices and actions. It is precisly where parental authority failed us that we found the oppotunity to mature.
Jesus's fallibility through death opened the possibility of our becoming spiritual mature humans hearing the voice of the spirit from within our self-consciousness and no longer dependent on external authority.
This message of Jesus was repeated in the teaching of Vatican II on freedom of conscience:
"Humans have in their hearts a law written by God. To obey it is the very dignity of the human; according to it we will be judged. Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of the human. There we are alone with God, whose voice echoes in our depths."
The Holy Spirit is trying to lead the Catholic church into a mature "freedom of conscience." In order to do so the Spirit had to grant us the gift of obviously fallible leaders. This is the context which gives meaning to the terrible failre of leadership from the hierarchy. This failure began when the papacy fumbled the issue of birth control. We are aware that the vast majority of married Catholics do not accept the hierarchy's teaching condemning birth control. Gays and lesbian Catholics are keenly aware that they can not follow the teaching of the Church on homosexuality without destroyong themselves psychically and spiritually.
The refusal of leaders in the Church to accept married men and women into the priesthood has been a major factor in the worldwide pedophile crisis.
Pope John Paul II paid special honor to Fr Marcial Degollado, a known pedophile and deposed Pedro Arrupe, the General of the Jesuits, a man with the reputation of being a saint, because he supported welcoming gay and lesbian Catholics to full membership in the Church, favored the ordination of married men and women and supported liberation theology.
The priesthood, limited to heterosexual chaste men is rapidly disappearing in the developed world and will soon do so in the rest of the world. Through all these actions the Holy Spirit is trying to transform the Church into a democratic institution where authority comes from the bottom up. Leaders of the Church are being asked to carefully discern what the Spirit is up to, to listen carefully to what the Spirit is saying through the "People of God".
It is time now to reconvene the Vatican council and complete the reformation of the Church which the Spirit began in Vatican II. Let us all pray that the Church will be open to this invitation of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus's fallibility through death opened the possibility of our becoming spiritual mature humans hearing the voice of the spirit from within our self-consciousness and no longer dependent on external authority.
This message of Jesus was repeated in the teaching of Vatican II on freedom of conscience:
"Humans have in their hearts a law written by God. To obey it is the very dignity of the human; according to it we will be judged. Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of the human. There we are alone with God, whose voice echoes in our depths."
The Holy Spirit is trying to lead the Catholic church into a mature "freedom of conscience." In order to do so the Spirit had to grant us the gift of obviously fallible leaders. This is the context which gives meaning to the terrible failre of leadership from the hierarchy. This failure began when the papacy fumbled the issue of birth control. We are aware that the vast majority of married Catholics do not accept the hierarchy's teaching condemning birth control. Gays and lesbian Catholics are keenly aware that they can not follow the teaching of the Church on homosexuality without destroyong themselves psychically and spiritually.
The refusal of leaders in the Church to accept married men and women into the priesthood has been a major factor in the worldwide pedophile crisis.
Pope John Paul II paid special honor to Fr Marcial Degollado, a known pedophile and deposed Pedro Arrupe, the General of the Jesuits, a man with the reputation of being a saint, because he supported welcoming gay and lesbian Catholics to full membership in the Church, favored the ordination of married men and women and supported liberation theology.
The priesthood, limited to heterosexual chaste men is rapidly disappearing in the developed world and will soon do so in the rest of the world. Through all these actions the Holy Spirit is trying to transform the Church into a democratic institution where authority comes from the bottom up. Leaders of the Church are being asked to carefully discern what the Spirit is up to, to listen carefully to what the Spirit is saying through the "People of God".
It is time now to reconvene the Vatican council and complete the reformation of the Church which the Spirit began in Vatican II. Let us all pray that the Church will be open to this invitation of the Holy Spirit.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Gay Marriage: God's Gift To Humanity
Jesus Christ's message of equality and love has been comtaminated by the institutions of patriarchy, male privilege, and the repression of the feminine. The time has come for the Church to cleanse itself and throw off these aberrations. Gay spiritual groups, I believe, are leading the way for the whole Church to bring about this trasformation.
The primary example of this liberation can be found in gay marriage. The traditional paradigm for heterosexual marriage in Western civilzation has been the patriarchal model. This model had two essential elements. The first element was the belief in male superiority and female inferiority. Under this model one bought a wife and she became the property of her husband.
Over a century ago Hegel made the point that whereever inequality existed between married partners, the fullnes of human love can not exist. In fact marriage was considered a legal contract but not a sacrament for the first 13 centuries of Christian civilization. In line with today's development of women's liberation, most women see themselves as the equal of males and refuse to play the role of submission and obedience. Any effort on the part of the male to impose this role leads to anger. And anger is the best anti- aphrodesiac going.
Marriage based on the patriarchal model is in serious trouble. Over half of all marriages end in divorce and that number is growing.. Providentially, God's spirit has given us a new model for human marriage, the model contained in gay marriage . In gay marriage both parties see themselves as equal, no superior and no inferior. The fullness of human love can only exist in partners who see themselves as equal. So gay marriage opens up the possibility of a happier and more fulfilling human love and one closer to the biblical ideal.
But there is a second and, potentially, more serious defect in the patriarchal model of marriage. Every human psyche has both masculine and feminine attributes. Both parties following the patriarchal model must accept only those aspects of their psyche that accord with their gender identity. Males, for example, should only accept the masculine dimension of their psyche amd suppress the feminine, which they then must project out onto their female partner. Women, in turn, must suppress everything masculine in their psyche and project out the masculine on their husband.
Many psychically healthier women today, who are more in touch with both their masculine and feminine dimension, and see themselves as whole persons, increasingly are unwilling to play the role of being mediators of the feminine emotional, spiritual and compassionate needs of men. They want a man who is a total human person in himself! They are demanding, and rightly so, that we men get in touch with our feminine dimension.
Many men, in turn, are coming into touch with both the masculine and feminine dimensions of themselves and refusing to play the role of being the mediator of the masculine needs of women for assertiveness and autonomy. It is this shift in consciousness that has caused the enormous amount of breakdown and divorce when heterosexuals try, with the Church's encouragment. to follow the traditional patterns of male dominence and female submission and refuse to recognize the equality of the sexes.
Both genders are being called on to develop the fullness of their own humanity, so that they can approach each other as complete, independent persons and not remain essentially dependent on the other gender for their completion. Once again gay marriage models a relationship based on both partners being totally in touch with both the masculine and feminine dimensions of their psyche and being able to call on both roles. The result is a more human and fulfilling love relationship between the partners.
Human sexual love is always a love between two unique human persons. Animal love is based on gender. The bull does not care which cow he mounts. But human love is directed towards the uniqueness of the person. I love this unique women or man and no other will do. Catholic teaching equates human sex with animal sex, basing it on gender difference and not on the uniqueness of the human person. Gay marriage then, rather than being a threat to the family, opend up a new paradigm for a fuller, more human and fulfilling love between the partners.
The primary example of this liberation can be found in gay marriage. The traditional paradigm for heterosexual marriage in Western civilzation has been the patriarchal model. This model had two essential elements. The first element was the belief in male superiority and female inferiority. Under this model one bought a wife and she became the property of her husband.
Over a century ago Hegel made the point that whereever inequality existed between married partners, the fullnes of human love can not exist. In fact marriage was considered a legal contract but not a sacrament for the first 13 centuries of Christian civilization. In line with today's development of women's liberation, most women see themselves as the equal of males and refuse to play the role of submission and obedience. Any effort on the part of the male to impose this role leads to anger. And anger is the best anti- aphrodesiac going.
Marriage based on the patriarchal model is in serious trouble. Over half of all marriages end in divorce and that number is growing.. Providentially, God's spirit has given us a new model for human marriage, the model contained in gay marriage . In gay marriage both parties see themselves as equal, no superior and no inferior. The fullness of human love can only exist in partners who see themselves as equal. So gay marriage opens up the possibility of a happier and more fulfilling human love and one closer to the biblical ideal.
But there is a second and, potentially, more serious defect in the patriarchal model of marriage. Every human psyche has both masculine and feminine attributes. Both parties following the patriarchal model must accept only those aspects of their psyche that accord with their gender identity. Males, for example, should only accept the masculine dimension of their psyche amd suppress the feminine, which they then must project out onto their female partner. Women, in turn, must suppress everything masculine in their psyche and project out the masculine on their husband.
Many psychically healthier women today, who are more in touch with both their masculine and feminine dimension, and see themselves as whole persons, increasingly are unwilling to play the role of being mediators of the feminine emotional, spiritual and compassionate needs of men. They want a man who is a total human person in himself! They are demanding, and rightly so, that we men get in touch with our feminine dimension.
Many men, in turn, are coming into touch with both the masculine and feminine dimensions of themselves and refusing to play the role of being the mediator of the masculine needs of women for assertiveness and autonomy. It is this shift in consciousness that has caused the enormous amount of breakdown and divorce when heterosexuals try, with the Church's encouragment. to follow the traditional patterns of male dominence and female submission and refuse to recognize the equality of the sexes.
Both genders are being called on to develop the fullness of their own humanity, so that they can approach each other as complete, independent persons and not remain essentially dependent on the other gender for their completion. Once again gay marriage models a relationship based on both partners being totally in touch with both the masculine and feminine dimensions of their psyche and being able to call on both roles. The result is a more human and fulfilling love relationship between the partners.
Human sexual love is always a love between two unique human persons. Animal love is based on gender. The bull does not care which cow he mounts. But human love is directed towards the uniqueness of the person. I love this unique women or man and no other will do. Catholic teaching equates human sex with animal sex, basing it on gender difference and not on the uniqueness of the human person. Gay marriage then, rather than being a threat to the family, opend up a new paradigm for a fuller, more human and fulfilling love between the partners.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Justice for Women in the Church
the past fifty years of ministry in both my study and experience I have becom more and more convinced that the deepest root of homophobis both in our culture and in our church is feminapbobia, the fear and suppression of the feminine. Consequently, the most important contribution that can be made to gay liberation is for the gay community to commit itseelf to women's liberation.
I published a book that deals with this connection in the epilogue: Emerging From The Heart Of The World. The book was recently reissued by Lethe press. The title is Freedom, Glorious Freedom: The Spiritual Journey To The Fullness Of Life For Gays, Lesbians, and Everybody Else. ( A summary of that study can be found in my article Misogyny and Homophobia on my website: www.johnjmcneill.com.)
I am aware that many bloga deal even better than I with empowering women in the Church. My hope is to offer a few suggestions for an effective pragmatic program to help brings this about.
My fist suggetion is to, as Republicans would say, "Starve the beast". The Vatican and the Bishops will not empower woman until they see it as a financial neccesity. Lets call on all the faithful to stop giving money to the institutional church and contribute money instead directly to charity. Refuse to directly support the institutional church until it deals with its female members in a just manner.
My friend Brendan Fay suggested that money should be sent to Mary Hunt's organization WATER, to set up a scholarship fund for woman, who feeling called by God to priesthood, need support to attend a seminary and prepare themselves to become effective priests.
In my next few blogs I will make further pragmatic suggestions on how to go about achievig justice for women in the institutional
I published a book that deals with this connection in the epilogue: Emerging From The Heart Of The World. The book was recently reissued by Lethe press. The title is Freedom, Glorious Freedom: The Spiritual Journey To The Fullness Of Life For Gays, Lesbians, and Everybody Else. ( A summary of that study can be found in my article Misogyny and Homophobia on my website: www.johnjmcneill.com.)
I am aware that many bloga deal even better than I with empowering women in the Church. My hope is to offer a few suggestions for an effective pragmatic program to help brings this about.
My fist suggetion is to, as Republicans would say, "Starve the beast". The Vatican and the Bishops will not empower woman until they see it as a financial neccesity. Lets call on all the faithful to stop giving money to the institutional church and contribute money instead directly to charity. Refuse to directly support the institutional church until it deals with its female members in a just manner.
My friend Brendan Fay suggested that money should be sent to Mary Hunt's organization WATER, to set up a scholarship fund for woman, who feeling called by God to priesthood, need support to attend a seminary and prepare themselves to become effective priests.
In my next few blogs I will make further pragmatic suggestions on how to go about achievig justice for women in the institutional
Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Role Of Women In The Church
In his book, Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas decisively makes the point that the future of the whole human race depends on allowing women to be on totally equal basis with men on every level. Tarnas concludes his book with this statement:
"The restless inner development and incessantly innovative masculine ordering of the reality charcateristic of the Western mind has been gradually leading, in an immensly long dialectic movement toward reconciliation with the lost feminiine unity, toward a profound and many- leveled marriage of the masculine and feminine, a triumphant and healing reunion. Our time is struggling to bring forth something new in human history. We seem to be witnessing, suffering, the birth labor of a new reality, a new form of human existence, a "child" that would be the fruit of this great archetypal marriage,, and that would bear within itself all its antecedents in a new form.
"Each perspective, masculine and feminine, is both affirmed and transcended, recognized as part of a larger whole; for each polarity requires the other for its fulfillment. And their synthesis leads to something beyond itself: It brings an unexpected opening to a larger reality that cannot be grasped before it arrives, because this reality is itself a creative act."
If it true that the future of the human race depends on the integration of the feminine on an equal basis with the masculine, it is equally true that the future of the Catholic Church will depend on its willingness to integrate women into its power structure. Tragically, however, the present leadership is fighting tooth and nail to prevent that integration.
Archbishop Weakland reveals the strength of that opposition in his memoirs, A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church. In 1968 Rembert was elected Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Order in Rome and held that post for the next six years. During those years Rembert describes a growing friendship with Pope Paul VI but simultaneously the development of a serious conflict with traditionalist Cardinals of the Curia, especially Cardinal Antoniutti. Their conflict was primarily over the autonomy and independence from central authority of the Benedictine monasteries. The conflict was also over the role of women in the Church. After visiting the convents of Benedictine nuns all over the world Rembert felt the need to facilitate the way women could use their gifts in the Church. He had no idea how important it would become and how much opposition it would generate from Cardinal Antoniutti and many members of the curia. For example, after Rembert organized a summer program for Benedictine nuns at St. Anselmo, the Benedictine Seminary in Rome, Cardinal Antoniutti canceled the program saying the nuns had no need of further formation. Rembert went directly to Pope Paul VI who ordered Antoniutti to allow the educational project to continue. (This same curial opposition to nuns continues today with the appointment of papal inquisitors to rein in the American sisters, eliminate their independence and bring them back under the authority of the men in the Vatican)
The present Pope would argue that he has no choice, that the decision to exclude women from priesthood was a decision made by God and Jesus and he has no authority to rescind that decision. What was unquestionably an unjust and sinful cultural failure in the past to recognize the equal status and dignity of woman has been transformed by the Pope into a divine dispensation. By this slight of hand the Vatican is trying to maintain the Church as an exclusively man's club and, as a result has made the institutional church deaf to the voice of the Holy Spirit, an heirloom from the past but irrevelant to the future of humanity.
Pope Benedict has frequently claimed that he is willing to give women positions of authority in the Catholic Church. At this juncture in time the faithful should call his bluff. No one needs to be a priest to be a cardinal. The faithful of the Catholic Church should call on the Pope to immediately appoint all elected heads of major religious order of women as Cardinals of the church. Certainly they are more deserving and better qualified than are most in the presenr College of Cardinals. And who is better qualified to choose out next Pope.
I believe also that the major religious superiors have the right and the duty to appoint a commision to send to Rome to investigate whether the Roman Curia is governing the Catholic Church is a spirit consonant with the teaching and values of Jesus Christ.
Posted
The Role Of Women In The Church
In his book, Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas decisively makes the point that the future of the whole human race depends on allowing women to be on totally equal basis with men on every level. Tarnas concludes his book with this statement:
"The restless inner development and incessantly innovative masculine ordering of the reality charcateristic of the Western mind has been gradually leading, in an immensly long dialectic movement toward reconciliation with the lost feminiine unity, toward a profound and many- leveled marriage of the masculine and feminine, a triumphant and healing reunion. Our time is struggling to bring forth something new in human history. We seem to be witnessing, suffering, the birth labor of a new reality, a new form of human existence, a "child" that would be the fruit of this great archetypal marriage,, and that would bear within itself all its antecedents in a new form.
"Each perspective, masculine and feminine, is both affirmed and transcended, recognized as part of a larger whole; for each polarity requires the other for its fulfillment. And their synthesis leads to something beyond itself: It brings an unexpected opening to a larger reality that cannot be grasped before it arrives, because this reality is itself a creative act."
If it true that the future of the human race depends on the integration of the feminine on an equal basis with the masculine, it is equally true that the future of the Catholic Church will depend on its willingness to integrate women into its power structure. Tragically, however, the present leadership is fighting tooth and nail to prevent that integration.
Archbishop Weakland reveals the strength of that opposition in his memoirs, A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church. In 1968 Rembert was elected Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Order in Rome and held that post for the next six years. During those years Rembert describes a growing friendship with Pope Paul VI but simultaneously the development of a serious conflict with traditionalist Cardinals of the Curia, especially Cardinal Antoniutti. Their conflict was primarily over the autonomy and independence from central authority of the Benedictine monasteries. The conflict was also over the role of women in the Church. After visiting the convents of Benedictine nuns all over the world Rembert felt the need to facilitate the way women could use their gifts in the Church. He had no idea how important it would become and how much opposition it would generate from Cardinal Antoniutti and many members of the curia. For example, after Rembert organized a summer program for Benedictine nuns at St. Anselmo, the Benedictine Seminary in Rome, Cardinal Antoniutti canceled the program saying the nuns had no need of further formation. Rembert went directly to Pope Paul VI who ordered Antoniutti to allow the educational project to continue. (This same curial opposition to nuns continues today with the appointment of papal inquisitors to rein in the American sisters, eliminate their independence and bring them back under the authority of the men in the Vatican)
The present Pope would argue that he has no choice, that the decision to exclude women from priesthood was a decision made by God and Jesus and he has no authority to rescind that decision. What was unquestionably an unjust and sinful cultural failure in the past to recognize the equal status and dignity of woman has been transformed by the Pope into a divine dispensation. By this slight of hand the Vatican is trying to maintain the Church as an exclusively man's club and, as a result has made the institutional church deaf to the voice of the Holy Spirit, an heirloom from the past but irrevelant to the future of humanity.
Pope Benedict has frequently claimed that he is willing to give women positions of authority in the Catholic Church. At this juncture in time the faithful should call his bluff. No one needs to be a priest to be a cardinal. The faithful of the Catholic Church should call on the Pope to immediately appoint all elected heads of major religious order of women as Cardinals of the church. Certainly they are more deserving and better qualified than are most in the presenr College of Cardinals. And who is better qualified to choose out next Pope.
I believe also that the major religious superiors have the right and the duty to appoint a commision to send to Rome to investigate whether the Roman Curia is governing the Catholic Church is a spirit consonant with the teaching and values of Jesus Christ.
Posted
The Role of the Gay Community in the Great Dialectic
Monday, March 1, 201
Along with the emergence of the feminine archetpe over the last fifty years,there was a parrellel emergence of a positive gay identity at all levels, social, political, cultural and spiritual all over the world. That emergence has a teleological purpose in the development of the anima-animus mundi. This presence of a visible gay community, for the first time is an integral part of that dialectic and is another aspect of the rediscovery of the feminine or, what I prefer to call, the balancing of the masculine and feminine in a new synthesis in the human personality.
Clearly the dominence in the dialectic of the masculine archetype with the repression of the feminine has gone hand in hand with the repression of the homosexual. G. Rattrey Taylor in his book: Sex In History points out that patriarchal cultures combined a subordinationist view of woman with a strong repression of male homosexuality; whereas cultures based on a matriarchal principle tend to combine an enhancment of the status of women with a relative tolerance for male homosexual practices. The rise of the feminine archetype in recent years gives us reason to hope that gays and lesbians will be fully accepted in the future human community. It is interestong to note that those countries who continue to severly persecute gays are the same countries that continue to severly subordinate women to men. because they are freqently in touch with and act in accord with the feminine dimension of themselves.
At the heart of all homophobia is feminaphobia and repression of the feminine. Gay men are seen as a threat to patriarchy because they are frequently in touch with and act in accord with the feminine dimension of themselves. So the evolution of the feminine archetype potentially brings along with itself gay male liberation.
Every dialectical movement toward a higher synthesis, if it is to succeed,must carry within itself the seed of synthesis. I believe that providentially the seed of synthesis in the masculine'feminine dialectic can be found if the LGBT community. This is a perfect example of the prophecy of scripture that the stone that was rejected becomes the cornerstone.
For this dialectic to reach a successful conclusion depends on the emergence of a visible group that can live out fully both its masculine and feminine dimensiom in good equilibrium and can bring forth a ballance synthesis of the two. This I believe is the providential role of the gay and lesbian political and spiritual groups that have sprung into existence over the past 50 years.
Posted by John McNeill at 12:14 PM 0 comments
Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Role Of Women In The Church
In his book, Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas decisively makes the point that the future of the whole human race depends on allowing women to be on totally equal basis with men on every level. Tarnas concludes his book with this statement:
"The restless inner development and incessantly innovative masculine ordering of the reality charcateristic of the Western mind has been gradually leading, in an immensly long dialectic movement toward reconciliation with the lost feminiine unity, toward a profound and many- leveled marriage of the masculine and feminine, a triumphant and healing reunion. Our time is struggling to bring forth something new in human history. We seem to be witnessing, suffering, the birth labor of a new reality, a new form of human existence, a "child" that would be the fruit of this great archetypal marriage,, and that would bear within itself all its antecedents in a new form.
"Each perspective, masculine and feminine, is both affirmed and transcended, recognized as part of a larger whole; for each polarity requires the other for its fulfillment. And their synthesis leads to something beyond itself: It brings an unexpected opening to a larger reality that cannot be grasped before it arrives, because this reality is itself a creative act."
If it true that the future of the human race depends on the integration of the feminine on an equal basis with the masculine, it is equally true that the future of the Catholic Church will depend on its willingness to integrate women into its power structure. Tragically, however, the present leadership is fighting tooth and nail to prevent that integration.
Archbishop Weakland reveals the strength of that opposition in his memoirs, A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church. In 1968 Rembert was elected Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Order in Rome and held that post for the next six years. During those years Rembert describes a growing friendship with Pope Paul VI but simultaneously the development of a serious conflict with traditionalist Cardinals of the Curia, especially Cardinal Antoniutti. Their conflict was primarily over the autonomy and independence from central authority of the Benedictine monasteries. The conflict was also over the role of women in the Church. After visiting the convents of Benedictine nuns all over the world Rembert felt the need to facilitate the way women could use their gifts in the Church. He had no idea how important it would become and how much opposition it would generate from Cardinal Antoniutti and many members of the curia. For example, after Rembert organized a summer program for Benedictine nuns at St. Anselmo, the Benedictine Seminary in Rome, Cardinal Antoniutti canceled the program saying the nuns had no need of further formation. Rembert went directly to Pope Paul VI who ordered Antoniutti to allow the educational project to continue. (This same curial opposition to nuns continues today with the appointment of papal inquisitors to rein in the American sisters, eliminate their independence and bring them back under the authority of the men in the Vatican)
The present Pope would argue that he has no choice, that the decision to exclude women from priesthood was a decision made by God and Jesus and he has no authority to rescind that decision. What was unquestionably an unjust and sinful cultural failure in the past to recognize the equal status and dignity of woman has been transformed by the Pope into a divine dispensation. By this slight of hand the Vatican is trying to maintain the Church as an exclusively man's club and, as a result has made the institutional church deaf to the voice of the Holy Spirit, an heirloom from the past but irrevelant to the future of humanity.
Pope Benedict has frequently claimed that he is willing to give women positions of authority in the Catholic Church. At this juncture in time the faithful should call his bluff. No one needs to be a priest to be a cardinal. The faithful of the Catholic Church should call on the Pope to immediately appoint all elected heads of major religious order of women as Cardinals of the church. Certainly they are more deserving and better qualified than are most in the presenr College of Cardinals. And who is better qualified to choose out next Pope.
I believe also that the major religious superiors have the right and the duty to appoint a commision to send to Rome to investigate whether the Roman Curia is governing the Catholic Church is a spirit consonant with the teaching and values of Jesus Christ.
Posted by John McNeill at 11:53 AM 2 comments
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Justice for women in the Church
Over the past fifty years of ministry in both my study and experience I have becom more and more convinced that the deepest root of homophobis both in our culture and in our church is feminapbobia, the fear and suppression of the feminine. Consequently, the most important contribution that can be made to gay liberation is for the gay community to commit itseelf to women's liberation.
I published a book that deals with this connection in the epilogue: Emerging From The Heart Of The World. The book was recently reissued by Lethe press. The title is Freedom, Glorious Freedom: The Spiritual Journey To The Fullness Of Life For Gays, Lesbians, and Everybody Else. ( A summary of that study can be found in my article Misogyny and Homophobia on my website: www.johnjmcneill.com.)
I am aware that many bloga deal even better than I with empowering women in the Church. My hope is to offer a few suggestions for an effective pragmatic program to help brings this about.
My fist suggetion is to, as Republicans would say, "Starve the beast". The Vatican and the Bishops will not empower woman until they see it as a financial neccesity. Lets call on all the faithful to stop giving money to the institutional church and contribute money instead directly to charity. Refuse to directly support the institutional church until it deals with its female members in a just manner.
My friend Brendan Fay suggested that money should be sent to Mary Hunt's organization WATER, to set up a scholarship fund for woman, who feeling called by God to priesthood, need support to attend a seminary and prepare themselves to become effective priests.
In my next few blogs I will make further pragmatic suggestions on how to go about achievig justice for women in the institutional church.
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Along with the emergence of the feminine archetpe over the last fifty years,there was a parrellel emergence of a positive gay identity at all levels, social, political, cultural and spiritual all over the world. That emergence has a teleological purpose in the development of the anima-animus mundi. This presence of a visible gay community, for the first time is an integral part of that dialectic and is another aspect of the rediscovery of the feminine or, what I prefer to call, the balancing of the masculine and feminine in a new synthesis in the human personality.
Clearly the dominence in the dialectic of the masculine archetype with the repression of the feminine has gone hand in hand with the repression of the homosexual. G. Rattrey Taylor in his book: Sex In History points out that patriarchal cultures combined a subordinationist view of woman with a strong repression of male homosexuality; whereas cultures based on a matriarchal principle tend to combine an enhancment of the status of women with a relative tolerance for male homosexual practices. The rise of the feminine archetype in recent years gives us reason to hope that gays and lesbians will be fully accepted in the future human community. It is interestong to note that those countries who continue to severly persecute gays are the same countries that continue to severly subordinate women to men. because they are freqently in touch with and act in accord with the feminine dimension of themselves.
At the heart of all homophobia is feminaphobia and repression of the feminine. Gay men are seen as a threat to patriarchy because they are frequently in touch with and act in accord with the feminine dimension of themselves. So the evolution of the feminine archetype potentially brings along with itself gay male liberation.
Every dialectical movement toward a higher synthesis, if it is to succeed,must carry within itself the seed of synthesis. I believe that providentially the seed of synthesis in the masculine'feminine dialectic can be found if the LGBT community. This is a perfect example of the prophecy of scripture that the stone that was rejected becomes the cornerstone.
For this dialectic to reach a successful conclusion depends on the emergence of a visible group that can live out fully both its masculine and feminine dimensiom in good equilibrium and can bring forth a ballance synthesis of the two. This I believe is the providential role of the gay and lesbian political and spiritual groups that have sprung into existence over the past 50 years.
Posted by John McNeill at 12:14 PM 0 comments
Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Role Of Women In The Church
In his book, Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas decisively makes the point that the future of the whole human race depends on allowing women to be on totally equal basis with men on every level. Tarnas concludes his book with this statement:
"The restless inner development and incessantly innovative masculine ordering of the reality charcateristic of the Western mind has been gradually leading, in an immensly long dialectic movement toward reconciliation with the lost feminiine unity, toward a profound and many- leveled marriage of the masculine and feminine, a triumphant and healing reunion. Our time is struggling to bring forth something new in human history. We seem to be witnessing, suffering, the birth labor of a new reality, a new form of human existence, a "child" that would be the fruit of this great archetypal marriage,, and that would bear within itself all its antecedents in a new form.
"Each perspective, masculine and feminine, is both affirmed and transcended, recognized as part of a larger whole; for each polarity requires the other for its fulfillment. And their synthesis leads to something beyond itself: It brings an unexpected opening to a larger reality that cannot be grasped before it arrives, because this reality is itself a creative act."
If it true that the future of the human race depends on the integration of the feminine on an equal basis with the masculine, it is equally true that the future of the Catholic Church will depend on its willingness to integrate women into its power structure. Tragically, however, the present leadership is fighting tooth and nail to prevent that integration.
Archbishop Weakland reveals the strength of that opposition in his memoirs, A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church. In 1968 Rembert was elected Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Order in Rome and held that post for the next six years. During those years Rembert describes a growing friendship with Pope Paul VI but simultaneously the development of a serious conflict with traditionalist Cardinals of the Curia, especially Cardinal Antoniutti. Their conflict was primarily over the autonomy and independence from central authority of the Benedictine monasteries. The conflict was also over the role of women in the Church. After visiting the convents of Benedictine nuns all over the world Rembert felt the need to facilitate the way women could use their gifts in the Church. He had no idea how important it would become and how much opposition it would generate from Cardinal Antoniutti and many members of the curia. For example, after Rembert organized a summer program for Benedictine nuns at St. Anselmo, the Benedictine Seminary in Rome, Cardinal Antoniutti canceled the program saying the nuns had no need of further formation. Rembert went directly to Pope Paul VI who ordered Antoniutti to allow the educational project to continue. (This same curial opposition to nuns continues today with the appointment of papal inquisitors to rein in the American sisters, eliminate their independence and bring them back under the authority of the men in the Vatican)
The present Pope would argue that he has no choice, that the decision to exclude women from priesthood was a decision made by God and Jesus and he has no authority to rescind that decision. What was unquestionably an unjust and sinful cultural failure in the past to recognize the equal status and dignity of woman has been transformed by the Pope into a divine dispensation. By this slight of hand the Vatican is trying to maintain the Church as an exclusively man's club and, as a result has made the institutional church deaf to the voice of the Holy Spirit, an heirloom from the past but irrevelant to the future of humanity.
Pope Benedict has frequently claimed that he is willing to give women positions of authority in the Catholic Church. At this juncture in time the faithful should call his bluff. No one needs to be a priest to be a cardinal. The faithful of the Catholic Church should call on the Pope to immediately appoint all elected heads of major religious order of women as Cardinals of the church. Certainly they are more deserving and better qualified than are most in the presenr College of Cardinals. And who is better qualified to choose out next Pope.
I believe also that the major religious superiors have the right and the duty to appoint a commision to send to Rome to investigate whether the Roman Curia is governing the Catholic Church is a spirit consonant with the teaching and values of Jesus Christ.
Posted by John McNeill at 11:53 AM 2 comments
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Justice for women in the Church
Over the past fifty years of ministry in both my study and experience I have becom more and more convinced that the deepest root of homophobis both in our culture and in our church is feminapbobia, the fear and suppression of the feminine. Consequently, the most important contribution that can be made to gay liberation is for the gay community to commit itseelf to women's liberation.
I published a book that deals with this connection in the epilogue: Emerging From The Heart Of The World. The book was recently reissued by Lethe press. The title is Freedom, Glorious Freedom: The Spiritual Journey To The Fullness Of Life For Gays, Lesbians, and Everybody Else. ( A summary of that study can be found in my article Misogyny and Homophobia on my website: www.johnjmcneill.com.)
I am aware that many bloga deal even better than I with empowering women in the Church. My hope is to offer a few suggestions for an effective pragmatic program to help brings this about.
My fist suggetion is to, as Republicans would say, "Starve the beast". The Vatican and the Bishops will not empower woman until they see it as a financial neccesity. Lets call on all the faithful to stop giving money to the institutional church and contribute money instead directly to charity. Refuse to directly support the institutional church until it deals with its female members in a just manner.
My friend Brendan Fay suggested that money should be sent to Mary Hunt's organization WATER, to set up a scholarship fund for woman, who feeling called by God to priesthood, need support to attend a seminary and prepare themselves to become effective priests.
In my next few blogs I will make further pragmatic suggestions on how to go about achievig justice for women in the institutional church.
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