By Jaimie McEvoy, 272 pages hardcover.
McEvoy tells the history of this recently torn-down Sisters of Providence hospital through the people who made it a great health care and community success. Top-notch medical practice and close, emotional links to New Westminster, Canada and nearby cities gave Saint Mary's its distinctive character.
As well, the Sisters and their Catholic spirituality, which they brought to life through their caring interactions with the poorest and most needy patients in the area for over 100 years, gave the hospital a soul, something that McEvoy paints quite clearly.
Beginning in 1887, The Life and Destruction of Saint Mary's Hospital shows the slowly growing hospital, in the hands of determined, dedicated Sisters and a supportive Catholic and non-Catholic community in British Columbia, dealing with the health problems particular to each era. In its first decades, it dealt with deadly smallpox, as well as typhoid, pneumonia, and even leprosy. Medical care could be rudimentary, with injured minors, cannery workers, or sawmill laborers sometimes having their limbs amputated because of gross infections and gangrene. In these beginning years, McEvoy notes, “if the disease didn't kill the patient, the medicine might.”
The Sisters always did things their way. For instance, before the era of government welfare support, they fed and sometimes sheltered the indigent, and at times gave out small sums of money. This played a crucial role in the Depression. In responding wholeheartedly to their vocations, the Sisters also broke the mold by accepting patients no other hospitals at the time would accept – the poor who couldn't pay their medical bills, natives, and Japanese workers. McEvoy notes the “cacaphony” of languages in the wards and lunchroom.
He also writes, “[I]t was from the beginning – as it would be for many decades – very much a hospital of the ordinary working man because it was just uphill from the industrial area and wharves on the Fraser River.” Working people played such an important part of Saint Mary's because the Sisters always reached out to them, often going door-to-door looking for the sick and needy. They also went to the far-flung logging camps in search for donations to continue their work, venturing into places that only prostitutes would normally go.
The hospital and the Sisters changed with the times, and Saint Mary's kept up with medical and technological advances, installing the latest elevator or using the latest medical equipment. Over the decades it developed many specialties, including palliative care, procedures for hip-fracture patients, breast health, ophthalmology, and diabetic treatment.
The province and the hospital had been on tenuous relations for some time, perhaps because of the hospital's independence or outspoken opposition to abortion. Yet the community support it received seemed to give it reprieve after reprieve. As the years passed, the B.C. Provincial government kept centralizing health care, until the 1990s, when local voices fell on deaf ears in the capital.
Thus McEvoy judges the folks in government for stifling local politics, which makes for a very good story. As well, McEvoy never forgets the spiritual heritage of the Sisters, and their original vocation. Yet The Life and Destruction of Saint Mary's Hospital misses a crucial side, which is some judgment of the forces of secularization that surrounded the hospital's closure in 2005. Local versus centralized politics is not the whole story. A better-rounded history would have spent some time discussing values of a secular government and society that might no longer be open to Catholic health care.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Illusion or Opportunity: Civil Society and the Quest for Social Change
By Henry Veltmeyer, 136 pages, Fernwood Publishing.
This hard-hitting book examines the attempt by the U.S. since the 1970s to force countries into its neo-liberal agenda. The move to build one economic system under American stewardship and its individualistic capitalism is usually called “globalization.”
Veltmeyer, a professor of development studies in Mexico, calls this imperialism. He traces this American imperialism from its start in the Cold War, when the U.S. tried to keep countries away from Soviet domination by sponsoring “development,” which included controlling the politics and economies of these countries.
Globalization since the 1970s, the heir to this original development, tries to put a pretty face on imperialism by masquerading as democratic and economic freedom. Non-governmental agencies (NGOs) work in these countries close to the poorest people, and mask this imperialism by pretending to take their needs into consideration.
Yet these NGOs are hardly doing that, considering that they don't ask the people what they need, but instead tell them what they need – including birth control for women in Catholic or Islamic countries, where such practice goes against the local religious culture.
“Aid,” Veltmeyer concludes, “more likely serves the interests of the donor country.” Aid does not empower the poor, disempowered people, but aims to keep in place the same, neo-liberal structures that cause poverty and environmental and social destruction in the first place.
The author continues: “However, it was clear that the agenda behind these policies was not economic development but rather globalization,” which he calls “the new world order.” The only authentic policies for the poor and disenfranchised are those that confront the wealthy and powerful and that overturn the corrupt, unjust system.
Micro-policies, programs that put small amounts of resources into the hands of local poor people, do not work – and are not meant to work – because too many people have to fight over “miserably” few resources. NGOs bill this as social capital. This concept looks worthwhile at first, as it aims to empower the poor. Yet Veltmeyer condemns the number one rule of such programs, which is that the poor must work within the system in order to get the resources.
Social capital programs are therefore counter-productive.
Illusion or Opportunity takes a big look at the world economic system. By its nature, this system impoverishes and dehumanizes people, tearing them away from their communities and poisoning their land and water. Rampant financial speculation in London, New York, and elsewhere, is particularly hard on the poor. Yet if governments taxed only 1% of the value of this speculation, people the world over would have enough resources for clean water systems.
Veltmeyer demands change to the entire structure of the world economy. Only that will help the poor. He cites terrible statistics to prove that neo-liberalism is a ghastly thing for the world's poor: “The richest quintile [one-fifth] of the world's people consume 86 percent of all products ... while the poorest quintile consumes only 1.3 percent....the three richest persons in the world have assets that exceed the combined GDP of the 48 poorest countries.” And so on.
This hard-hitting book examines the attempt by the U.S. since the 1970s to force countries into its neo-liberal agenda. The move to build one economic system under American stewardship and its individualistic capitalism is usually called “globalization.”
Veltmeyer, a professor of development studies in Mexico, calls this imperialism. He traces this American imperialism from its start in the Cold War, when the U.S. tried to keep countries away from Soviet domination by sponsoring “development,” which included controlling the politics and economies of these countries.
Globalization since the 1970s, the heir to this original development, tries to put a pretty face on imperialism by masquerading as democratic and economic freedom. Non-governmental agencies (NGOs) work in these countries close to the poorest people, and mask this imperialism by pretending to take their needs into consideration.
Yet these NGOs are hardly doing that, considering that they don't ask the people what they need, but instead tell them what they need – including birth control for women in Catholic or Islamic countries, where such practice goes against the local religious culture.
“Aid,” Veltmeyer concludes, “more likely serves the interests of the donor country.” Aid does not empower the poor, disempowered people, but aims to keep in place the same, neo-liberal structures that cause poverty and environmental and social destruction in the first place.
The author continues: “However, it was clear that the agenda behind these policies was not economic development but rather globalization,” which he calls “the new world order.” The only authentic policies for the poor and disenfranchised are those that confront the wealthy and powerful and that overturn the corrupt, unjust system.
Micro-policies, programs that put small amounts of resources into the hands of local poor people, do not work – and are not meant to work – because too many people have to fight over “miserably” few resources. NGOs bill this as social capital. This concept looks worthwhile at first, as it aims to empower the poor. Yet Veltmeyer condemns the number one rule of such programs, which is that the poor must work within the system in order to get the resources.
Social capital programs are therefore counter-productive.
Illusion or Opportunity takes a big look at the world economic system. By its nature, this system impoverishes and dehumanizes people, tearing them away from their communities and poisoning their land and water. Rampant financial speculation in London, New York, and elsewhere, is particularly hard on the poor. Yet if governments taxed only 1% of the value of this speculation, people the world over would have enough resources for clean water systems.
Veltmeyer demands change to the entire structure of the world economy. Only that will help the poor. He cites terrible statistics to prove that neo-liberalism is a ghastly thing for the world's poor: “The richest quintile [one-fifth] of the world's people consume 86 percent of all products ... while the poorest quintile consumes only 1.3 percent....the three richest persons in the world have assets that exceed the combined GDP of the 48 poorest countries.” And so on.
The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
Edited by Christopher Hitchens, Daca Press, 499 pages.
The Portable Atheist is filled with typical atheist nonsense:
“As I scan the newspapers, I cannot help but notice that in one happy city – London – the rats have come vomiting from the sewers again. Car bombs have been planted outside nightclubs, in the hope of maiming and dismembering young women who have the nerve to be immodest in public”; and again: “All religions must, at their core, look forward to the end of this world and to the longed-for moment when all will be revealed and when the sheep will be divided from the goats, or whatever other bucolic Bronze-Age desert analogy might seem apt.”
In bringing into one book essential writings of other atheists, Christopher Hitchens' gave himself a simple task – to lend intellectual credence to his belief that religious people are rats and fanatics. This collection offers an interesting insight into the mindset of contemporary atheism.
Ironically, it is often religious people who are defensively touting their intellectual credentials, citing great philosophers and scientists to somehow prove that they are more than simple stooges. Does this latest book by Hitchens suggest that things have changed and that now atheists are moving into desperation in their losing public war against religion? The brilliant Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI alone proved the intellectual and spiritual wealth and depth of Catholicism.
The angry, accusative language used by Richard Dawkins or Hitchens does reflect atheism's inherent violence and perhaps its lack of intellectual depth. Much more ruthlessly than most religions, atheism – including contemporary liberalism cloaked in rights language -- wants to sweep all aside and establish a monolithic culture.
But this is all nothing new for post-Christian zealots. The French Revolutionaries tried to get rid of the Catholic Church with violence, and worshiped the goddess Reason in Paris' Notre Dame; the Spanish Marxists killed thousands of Catholics; Lenin and Stalin forced millions of religious people to suffer on account of Christian beliefs; and Hitler murdered faithful Jews, Catholics, and Lutherans in the name of tribal atheism.
So here comes another atheist trying once again to pitch his belief to us, this time in calm, academic, reasonable gentlemanly tones, rather than in the harsh madness of Nazis and revolutionaries. Yet, when all is said and done, much here has already been said by every armchair atheist.
Elizabeth Anderson does the predictable run-through of violence in the Old Testament and Christian era. Rather than citing the relevant biblical passages and offering sufficient background information so that we can understand the violence of the Bible, by summarizing teaching and stories from the Bible in her own words, she can inflate the teaching. Proverbs' “spare the rod, spoil the child” becomes “Disobedient children shall be beaten with rods.”
She also uses a tiny three pages to cite centuries worth of violence from the Bible, and all without the theological insights that went into these episodes. To the casual reader, this looks like a infinite listing of grievous violence. She manipulates the reader by leaving things so naked. She fails to discuss the kind of society that was developing, and how, for example, “eye for eye” thinking was revolutionary for its time because it called for restraint in the relentless, limitless blood feuds that had been carrying on for generations among families and tribes.
She fails to examine how a very violent society is called by God, slowly but faithfully and steadily, to peace. She fails to examine how ancient Israel's prophetic era then called not only for peace but for justice and a relationship of the heart and not only of ritual between God and Israel. She passes over so much beautiful theology and poetry and the failures and successes of a pious people in search of the truth. She misrepresents the Bible and the entire story of the ancient Israelites.
Ian McEwan discusses this violence with the same superficial sweep, though unintentionally he does sum up best the reason that atheists, not religious types, are an endangered species: “Science may speak of probable rising sea levels and global temperatures, with figures that it constantly refines in line with new data, but on the human future it cannot compare with the luridness and, above all, with the meaningfulness of the prophecies of the Book of Daniel, or Revelation.”
Now if only he could see what his words really mean.
The Portable Atheist is filled with typical atheist nonsense:
“As I scan the newspapers, I cannot help but notice that in one happy city – London – the rats have come vomiting from the sewers again. Car bombs have been planted outside nightclubs, in the hope of maiming and dismembering young women who have the nerve to be immodest in public”; and again: “All religions must, at their core, look forward to the end of this world and to the longed-for moment when all will be revealed and when the sheep will be divided from the goats, or whatever other bucolic Bronze-Age desert analogy might seem apt.”
In bringing into one book essential writings of other atheists, Christopher Hitchens' gave himself a simple task – to lend intellectual credence to his belief that religious people are rats and fanatics. This collection offers an interesting insight into the mindset of contemporary atheism.
Ironically, it is often religious people who are defensively touting their intellectual credentials, citing great philosophers and scientists to somehow prove that they are more than simple stooges. Does this latest book by Hitchens suggest that things have changed and that now atheists are moving into desperation in their losing public war against religion? The brilliant Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI alone proved the intellectual and spiritual wealth and depth of Catholicism.
The angry, accusative language used by Richard Dawkins or Hitchens does reflect atheism's inherent violence and perhaps its lack of intellectual depth. Much more ruthlessly than most religions, atheism – including contemporary liberalism cloaked in rights language -- wants to sweep all aside and establish a monolithic culture.
But this is all nothing new for post-Christian zealots. The French Revolutionaries tried to get rid of the Catholic Church with violence, and worshiped the goddess Reason in Paris' Notre Dame; the Spanish Marxists killed thousands of Catholics; Lenin and Stalin forced millions of religious people to suffer on account of Christian beliefs; and Hitler murdered faithful Jews, Catholics, and Lutherans in the name of tribal atheism.
So here comes another atheist trying once again to pitch his belief to us, this time in calm, academic, reasonable gentlemanly tones, rather than in the harsh madness of Nazis and revolutionaries. Yet, when all is said and done, much here has already been said by every armchair atheist.
Elizabeth Anderson does the predictable run-through of violence in the Old Testament and Christian era. Rather than citing the relevant biblical passages and offering sufficient background information so that we can understand the violence of the Bible, by summarizing teaching and stories from the Bible in her own words, she can inflate the teaching. Proverbs' “spare the rod, spoil the child” becomes “Disobedient children shall be beaten with rods.”
She also uses a tiny three pages to cite centuries worth of violence from the Bible, and all without the theological insights that went into these episodes. To the casual reader, this looks like a infinite listing of grievous violence. She manipulates the reader by leaving things so naked. She fails to discuss the kind of society that was developing, and how, for example, “eye for eye” thinking was revolutionary for its time because it called for restraint in the relentless, limitless blood feuds that had been carrying on for generations among families and tribes.
She fails to examine how a very violent society is called by God, slowly but faithfully and steadily, to peace. She fails to examine how ancient Israel's prophetic era then called not only for peace but for justice and a relationship of the heart and not only of ritual between God and Israel. She passes over so much beautiful theology and poetry and the failures and successes of a pious people in search of the truth. She misrepresents the Bible and the entire story of the ancient Israelites.
Ian McEwan discusses this violence with the same superficial sweep, though unintentionally he does sum up best the reason that atheists, not religious types, are an endangered species: “Science may speak of probable rising sea levels and global temperatures, with figures that it constantly refines in line with new data, but on the human future it cannot compare with the luridness and, above all, with the meaningfulness of the prophecies of the Book of Daniel, or Revelation.”
Now if only he could see what his words really mean.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Pius XII: The Hound of Hitler
By Gerard Noel, 256 pages, Continuum Books.
This book has just enough going for it to keep a reader going until the end, when Gerard Noel punishes the faithful reader with ridiculous, condescending reflections on this pontiff. Catholics deserve a few good renditions of this complicated pope, but Noel, a writer and a journalist, ends up going way beyond his abilities of psychoanalysis.
His last few thoughts paint the pope as a pitiful, nutty old man with no critical self-awareness. The following words about the pope properly describe Hitler or Napoleon rather than Pius: “As time went on, Pacelli, monumentally conscious of his position as a man sent by God to save a deeply troubled world, came gradually but increasingly to inhabit a fantasy world. More and more, he feasted upon the image of himself as a demigod; a man above other men, the supreme arbiter of events. He was a sort of spiritual megalomaniac, and he was ever supremely conscious of himself as a man of destiny.”
Noel then decides in the next paragraph that he is going to save the late pontiff's reputation with his own psychologizing. The pope was a good man who didn't know what he was doing; Pius wasn't grounded in reality:
“Pacelli took his every action with the purest and loftiest of intentions. He was at no moment aware of himself as other than the divinely appointed guardian of the world's most precious heritage, being sometimes forced into terrible, heart-rending decisions for the greater good.”
As if the pope didn't have severe self-doubt and regrets. Pacelli for decades was in an impossible position. He was papal nuncio to Bavaria and Germany in the scary, unstable interwar period, and then as pope faced a bevy of dictators in Europe, from Franco and Salazar to Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin. The Brits were weak, the French were wimps, and the Americans were distant and self-absorbed.
Noel plants ridiculous or rude thoughts about Pope Pius XII throughout The Hound of Hitler, but balances this with excellent research and knowledge about the intricacies of the papal curia. This often good writing, in addition to the mesmerizing, evil politics at the time, make this a book that can't be put down, even with Noel's failures.
For example, the interactions of the strong-headed personalities at the top of the Church are fascinating. While recuperating from stress-induced illness at Rorschach, Switzerland, the future Pope Pius was nursed back to physical and psychological health by a Bavarian nun who had taken the name of Pasqulina, often referred to as La Popessa.
She followed him back to Munich, where he was papal nuncio to Bavaria, and shaped up his household. She stayed with him throughout his diplomatic career, later arranging the parties in Berlin when all of Germany's elite and not-so-elite called on him. She became a powerful though unofficial figure at the Vatican after his election as pope, and stood up to the most powerful cardinals when she saw fit.
The Hound of Hitler is an eccentric read, as it has many good and many bad points, but its coverage of the evil politics of the twentieth century does add to our understanding of that topic.
This book has just enough going for it to keep a reader going until the end, when Gerard Noel punishes the faithful reader with ridiculous, condescending reflections on this pontiff. Catholics deserve a few good renditions of this complicated pope, but Noel, a writer and a journalist, ends up going way beyond his abilities of psychoanalysis.
His last few thoughts paint the pope as a pitiful, nutty old man with no critical self-awareness. The following words about the pope properly describe Hitler or Napoleon rather than Pius: “As time went on, Pacelli, monumentally conscious of his position as a man sent by God to save a deeply troubled world, came gradually but increasingly to inhabit a fantasy world. More and more, he feasted upon the image of himself as a demigod; a man above other men, the supreme arbiter of events. He was a sort of spiritual megalomaniac, and he was ever supremely conscious of himself as a man of destiny.”
Noel then decides in the next paragraph that he is going to save the late pontiff's reputation with his own psychologizing. The pope was a good man who didn't know what he was doing; Pius wasn't grounded in reality:
“Pacelli took his every action with the purest and loftiest of intentions. He was at no moment aware of himself as other than the divinely appointed guardian of the world's most precious heritage, being sometimes forced into terrible, heart-rending decisions for the greater good.”
As if the pope didn't have severe self-doubt and regrets. Pacelli for decades was in an impossible position. He was papal nuncio to Bavaria and Germany in the scary, unstable interwar period, and then as pope faced a bevy of dictators in Europe, from Franco and Salazar to Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin. The Brits were weak, the French were wimps, and the Americans were distant and self-absorbed.
Noel plants ridiculous or rude thoughts about Pope Pius XII throughout The Hound of Hitler, but balances this with excellent research and knowledge about the intricacies of the papal curia. This often good writing, in addition to the mesmerizing, evil politics at the time, make this a book that can't be put down, even with Noel's failures.
For example, the interactions of the strong-headed personalities at the top of the Church are fascinating. While recuperating from stress-induced illness at Rorschach, Switzerland, the future Pope Pius was nursed back to physical and psychological health by a Bavarian nun who had taken the name of Pasqulina, often referred to as La Popessa.
She followed him back to Munich, where he was papal nuncio to Bavaria, and shaped up his household. She stayed with him throughout his diplomatic career, later arranging the parties in Berlin when all of Germany's elite and not-so-elite called on him. She became a powerful though unofficial figure at the Vatican after his election as pope, and stood up to the most powerful cardinals when she saw fit.
The Hound of Hitler is an eccentric read, as it has many good and many bad points, but its coverage of the evil politics of the twentieth century does add to our understanding of that topic.
Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire
By William T. Cavanaugh, 100 pages, Eerdmans.
Global capitalism destroys the lives and environment of factory workers in the developing world. They are sometimes literally worked to death, and must breathe noxious factory fumes, work 16 hour days 6 days a week, drink polluted water, put up with harassment and no rights at their workplace. Usually, the companies responsible are from the developed world, and the products are shipped back to rich countries.
Consumerism is therefore a pillar of this unjust system. Cavanaugh uses the writings of St. Augustine to show just how sinful and soulless consumerism has become. Marketing, through the branding of various products, gives a kind of enchantment or soul-like quality to goods that are, in the Augustinian view, literally nothing.
He makes some insightful, if surprising observations about consumerism and its relationship to gluttony and false asceticism: “What really characterizes consumer culture is not attachment to things but detachment. People do not hoard money; they spend it. People do not cling to things; they discard them and buy other things.”
We are not like Scooge, hoarding and counting our money and acquired things. Having is not the main prize; shopping is because we like the merry-go-round of buying new things, of course only to discover soon that the new products are as meaningless as any other acquired products. “Buying,” Cavanaugh notes, “brings a temporary halt to the restlessness that typifies consumerism.”
This restlessness is actually a spirituality. Marketing, and global capitalism itself, are spiritual ways of looking at the world, where we define who we are by our consumerism. People in North America are working the treadmill so that they can acquire meaningless goods, made in the shocking conditions that the author briefly though powerfully describes.
Consumerism “is a way of pursuing meaning and identity, a way of connecting with other people,” Cavanaugh notes.
Yet the system is so entrenched that even when people realize that this is not an authentic way to live, and they know something about the way people are treated in Asian or Central American factories and how animals in North America are treated before they become food products, they still don't know what to do.
Thankfully, Cavanaugh doesn't call for yet another political revolution. The Western world has had enough of those. He calls for grassroots Christian change in the economic system. Christians can start this by finding out the relationships between the things we buy and where they come from. We have to re-establish the connection between producer and buyer, and see how we are responsible for the dire working conditions in so many countries.
Again, Being Consumed turns to good old fashioned Catholic theology: “A sacramental view of the world sees all things as part of God's good creation, potential signs of the glory of God, things become less disposable, more filled with meaning.” A sacramental view rejects the superficiality of consumerism, in other words.
Christians need to reverse the trend championed by the World Trade Organization that gives more power to corporations and less and less to workers.
Global capitalism destroys the lives and environment of factory workers in the developing world. They are sometimes literally worked to death, and must breathe noxious factory fumes, work 16 hour days 6 days a week, drink polluted water, put up with harassment and no rights at their workplace. Usually, the companies responsible are from the developed world, and the products are shipped back to rich countries.
Consumerism is therefore a pillar of this unjust system. Cavanaugh uses the writings of St. Augustine to show just how sinful and soulless consumerism has become. Marketing, through the branding of various products, gives a kind of enchantment or soul-like quality to goods that are, in the Augustinian view, literally nothing.
He makes some insightful, if surprising observations about consumerism and its relationship to gluttony and false asceticism: “What really characterizes consumer culture is not attachment to things but detachment. People do not hoard money; they spend it. People do not cling to things; they discard them and buy other things.”
We are not like Scooge, hoarding and counting our money and acquired things. Having is not the main prize; shopping is because we like the merry-go-round of buying new things, of course only to discover soon that the new products are as meaningless as any other acquired products. “Buying,” Cavanaugh notes, “brings a temporary halt to the restlessness that typifies consumerism.”
This restlessness is actually a spirituality. Marketing, and global capitalism itself, are spiritual ways of looking at the world, where we define who we are by our consumerism. People in North America are working the treadmill so that they can acquire meaningless goods, made in the shocking conditions that the author briefly though powerfully describes.
Consumerism “is a way of pursuing meaning and identity, a way of connecting with other people,” Cavanaugh notes.
Yet the system is so entrenched that even when people realize that this is not an authentic way to live, and they know something about the way people are treated in Asian or Central American factories and how animals in North America are treated before they become food products, they still don't know what to do.
Thankfully, Cavanaugh doesn't call for yet another political revolution. The Western world has had enough of those. He calls for grassroots Christian change in the economic system. Christians can start this by finding out the relationships between the things we buy and where they come from. We have to re-establish the connection between producer and buyer, and see how we are responsible for the dire working conditions in so many countries.
Again, Being Consumed turns to good old fashioned Catholic theology: “A sacramental view of the world sees all things as part of God's good creation, potential signs of the glory of God, things become less disposable, more filled with meaning.” A sacramental view rejects the superficiality of consumerism, in other words.
Christians need to reverse the trend championed by the World Trade Organization that gives more power to corporations and less and less to workers.
Pope Benedict XVI: An Introduction to His Theological Vision
By Thomas P. Rausch, Paulist Press.
At the end of this demanding investigation of the theological teaching of the current pontiff, author Thomas Rausch acknowledges his still unanswered questions: “Is Pope Benedict's thinking really characterized by historical consciousness, or does it represent a closed hermeneutical circle constituted by the teachings of scripture, the fathers of the church, and the magisterium? Is his thinking truly open to historical development, to new experience, and to the knowledge that comes from experience? When all is said and done, these questions remain.”
Rausch is not as tough or adversarial towards Pope Benedict XVI as these above words suggest. In fact, his discussion of Benedict's dogmatic theology, interpretation of scripture, and teachings on the nature of Christ (Christology), the Church (Ecclesiology), and the liturgy are well-balanced.
The one major contention Rausch has with Benedict concerns the meaning and interpretation of Vatican II, at which the pope played a role as a theological assistant (peritus) to the then Bishop of Munich. The author does a good job of placing Joseph Ratzinger in the middle of the theologically tumultuous twentieth century, when controversial new theories of, for instance, the way to interpret scripture, hit the young Ratzinger square on. Before the Council, he attended and then taught at seminaries and universities that had some of the most controversial thinkers of the Church.
By the time Vatican II happened, Ratzinger had cast himself in the same block as the great French Jesuit Henri de Lubac. Dissatisfied with the legalistic, spiritually dry neo-scholastic theology of the seminaries of the time, de Lubac called for a “return to the sources,” in French rassourcement.
Along with aggionamento (“bringing up to date”), rassourcement was one of the twin pillars of Vatican II. Much of the shenanigans of the Council, as well as later interpretations of what went on, revolve around which of the pillars a given thinker followed. Throughout his career, Ratzinger has advocated a return to the Bible, the Church Fathers, and liturgy – rassourcement - which is explained quite well in Pope Benedict XVI. To understand Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Rausch shows, demands that one understand this journey to the sources.
Thus the current pope has never let go of the pre-Vatican Church's view of humans, which was centred around Saint Augustine's notion of original sin. Grace, in this viewpoint, is everything. Humans could never build the kingdom of God on earth; the kingdom, represented by the coming of Jesus Christ, could only be brought about by God. Rausch makes the invaluable point that, as an Augustinian more than a Thomist, Benedict is closer to the reformers, especially Calvin and Luther, in his thinking on grace and the nature of human beings. In fact, Rausch notes that Benedict likes Luther and often cites him in his own writings.
Reflecting an Augustinian viewpoint, Benedict avoids great change. Not only has he always denied that Vatican II broke with the past, but he has also lamented Pope Paul VI's rejection of a place for the Latin Mass in the post-conciliar Church.
Rausch's discussion on the philosophical basis to Augustine, and therefore to Benedict XVI's thought, is concise and useful. It enables the reader to see why the media and countless onlookers often regard Benedict as stubborn and unable to change. Following Platonism, Benedict believes in the existence of an intelligible, unchanging, ahistorical truth: “[L]ike Plato, Ratzinger locates the true and the good beyond the world of experience, in the spiritual.”
Thus Ratzinger instinctively opposes the moral and intellectual relativism of contemporary Western society, asserting that Plato's sense of wisdom is the antidote to such thinking. Rausch explains that if in the 1980s Ratzinger was opposed to Marxism and liberation theology because of its subjectivism and attempts to build the kingdom of God on earth (not to mention its rejection of ecclesiastical hierarchy), he began to turn his attention to the “dictatorship of reason” in the mid-1990s, after the collapse of Eastern European communism.
Ratzinger believes that experience of God does indeed bring knowledge of God, but that this is not the subjective theology of American Pentecostals. Rather, the experience of a personal God happens most authentically within the context of the hierarchical, apostolic, Eucharistic Church and its liturgy.
His sense of liturgy, as part of the return to the sources, and his reliance on Platonism and Augustinian theology, informs Ratzinger's opposition to secular salvation narratives such as Marxism, liberation theology, radical feminism, or relativism and skepticism. This Platonism anchors his assertion of, in Rausch's words, “the primacy of the idea.” Rausch defines this as “a 'principle of reception,' with the emphasis always on what is received in its givenness, rather than on what develops or changes in the world of time and experience.” This reflects an already-defined (that is, a priori) schema in the pope's thinking.
Pope Benedict XVI: An Introduction clearly shows the roots to the current pontiff's remarkably coherent, precise, and consistent theology. Rausch's discussion is, unfortunately, incomplete, as the book feels fragmented at times, as we move among widely different topics. Also, Rausch's brief criticism's of the pontiff's thinking are rushed and too brief. Perhaps these shortcomings reflect the depth and breadth of Benedict's thought, which is hard to grasp in its entirety, than any shortcomings on Rausch's part.
At the end of this demanding investigation of the theological teaching of the current pontiff, author Thomas Rausch acknowledges his still unanswered questions: “Is Pope Benedict's thinking really characterized by historical consciousness, or does it represent a closed hermeneutical circle constituted by the teachings of scripture, the fathers of the church, and the magisterium? Is his thinking truly open to historical development, to new experience, and to the knowledge that comes from experience? When all is said and done, these questions remain.”
Rausch is not as tough or adversarial towards Pope Benedict XVI as these above words suggest. In fact, his discussion of Benedict's dogmatic theology, interpretation of scripture, and teachings on the nature of Christ (Christology), the Church (Ecclesiology), and the liturgy are well-balanced.
The one major contention Rausch has with Benedict concerns the meaning and interpretation of Vatican II, at which the pope played a role as a theological assistant (peritus) to the then Bishop of Munich. The author does a good job of placing Joseph Ratzinger in the middle of the theologically tumultuous twentieth century, when controversial new theories of, for instance, the way to interpret scripture, hit the young Ratzinger square on. Before the Council, he attended and then taught at seminaries and universities that had some of the most controversial thinkers of the Church.
By the time Vatican II happened, Ratzinger had cast himself in the same block as the great French Jesuit Henri de Lubac. Dissatisfied with the legalistic, spiritually dry neo-scholastic theology of the seminaries of the time, de Lubac called for a “return to the sources,” in French rassourcement.
Along with aggionamento (“bringing up to date”), rassourcement was one of the twin pillars of Vatican II. Much of the shenanigans of the Council, as well as later interpretations of what went on, revolve around which of the pillars a given thinker followed. Throughout his career, Ratzinger has advocated a return to the Bible, the Church Fathers, and liturgy – rassourcement - which is explained quite well in Pope Benedict XVI. To understand Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Rausch shows, demands that one understand this journey to the sources.
Thus the current pope has never let go of the pre-Vatican Church's view of humans, which was centred around Saint Augustine's notion of original sin. Grace, in this viewpoint, is everything. Humans could never build the kingdom of God on earth; the kingdom, represented by the coming of Jesus Christ, could only be brought about by God. Rausch makes the invaluable point that, as an Augustinian more than a Thomist, Benedict is closer to the reformers, especially Calvin and Luther, in his thinking on grace and the nature of human beings. In fact, Rausch notes that Benedict likes Luther and often cites him in his own writings.
Reflecting an Augustinian viewpoint, Benedict avoids great change. Not only has he always denied that Vatican II broke with the past, but he has also lamented Pope Paul VI's rejection of a place for the Latin Mass in the post-conciliar Church.
Rausch's discussion on the philosophical basis to Augustine, and therefore to Benedict XVI's thought, is concise and useful. It enables the reader to see why the media and countless onlookers often regard Benedict as stubborn and unable to change. Following Platonism, Benedict believes in the existence of an intelligible, unchanging, ahistorical truth: “[L]ike Plato, Ratzinger locates the true and the good beyond the world of experience, in the spiritual.”
Thus Ratzinger instinctively opposes the moral and intellectual relativism of contemporary Western society, asserting that Plato's sense of wisdom is the antidote to such thinking. Rausch explains that if in the 1980s Ratzinger was opposed to Marxism and liberation theology because of its subjectivism and attempts to build the kingdom of God on earth (not to mention its rejection of ecclesiastical hierarchy), he began to turn his attention to the “dictatorship of reason” in the mid-1990s, after the collapse of Eastern European communism.
Ratzinger believes that experience of God does indeed bring knowledge of God, but that this is not the subjective theology of American Pentecostals. Rather, the experience of a personal God happens most authentically within the context of the hierarchical, apostolic, Eucharistic Church and its liturgy.
His sense of liturgy, as part of the return to the sources, and his reliance on Platonism and Augustinian theology, informs Ratzinger's opposition to secular salvation narratives such as Marxism, liberation theology, radical feminism, or relativism and skepticism. This Platonism anchors his assertion of, in Rausch's words, “the primacy of the idea.” Rausch defines this as “a 'principle of reception,' with the emphasis always on what is received in its givenness, rather than on what develops or changes in the world of time and experience.” This reflects an already-defined (that is, a priori) schema in the pope's thinking.
Pope Benedict XVI: An Introduction clearly shows the roots to the current pontiff's remarkably coherent, precise, and consistent theology. Rausch's discussion is, unfortunately, incomplete, as the book feels fragmented at times, as we move among widely different topics. Also, Rausch's brief criticism's of the pontiff's thinking are rushed and too brief. Perhaps these shortcomings reflect the depth and breadth of Benedict's thought, which is hard to grasp in its entirety, than any shortcomings on Rausch's part.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
The Mystery of the Transfiguration
By Raniero Cantalamessa, 144 pages, Servant Books.
Cantalamessa takes a holistic, sophisticated view of Jesus' transfiguration, surveying a great deal of spiritual and theological experience and reflection. He introduces the reader to the much-neglected debate between the 2 Christological traditions of ancient Christianity from the ancient Christian centres of Antioch and Alexandria, Egypt.
Briefly, Antioch tended towards a more Pauline interpretation, focused on the passion and resurrection of Jesus, while the Alexandrians emphasized the Gospel of John's theology of the incarnation, whereby the very fact of Jesus as God incarnate is the centre and transformative event of human history. St. Paul saw the great transformative event in the resurrection. Both, of course, are right, and each school realized the importance of the other viewpoint.
Cantalamessa's discussion tries to unite different points of interest and spiritual practices. He notes that up to today, the Greek, Eastern Orthodox Churches tend towards the incarnational approach of St. John, whereas the Latin Church has emphasized St. Paul's focus on Christ's resurrection. Echoing Pope John Paul II's call for the re-united Church of East and West that breathes with 2 lungs, Cantalamessa writes that we need the Antiochene (and therefore Latin) focus on Jesus' humanity, and the Alexandrian (therefore Greek and Eastern) locus on the divinity of Christ.
In this preoccupation with both perspectives and the richness from their unity, The Mystery of the Transfiguration takes a place in ecumenism, which of late has itself become a neglected feature of Christian life at a time when secular society keeps pushing Judeo-Christian values out of sight.
Cantalamessa takes the reader on a fruitful, richly spiritual journey through the New Testament and Christian spirituality. He starts with a close reading of the 3 synoptic gospels' portrayals of the transfiguration, noting that “The Passion is found at the very heart of the mystery of the Transfiguration.” Both events come out of Christ's kenosis, or self-emptying. Christ serves humanity by emptying himself of his own will, accepting the will of the Father. In both events, Christ shows his power and glory by choosing the opposite of these 2 things.
But Cantalamessa also finds interesting, and less sobering features of the transfiguration, writing that it “is the most fitting mystery, with its exultation of light, to introduce us to the contemplation of beauty,” such as found, he notes, in icons.
The author also connects the transfiguration to Jesus' baptism, because of the central role of the Holy Spirit in both cases, and therefore to our own contemplation of Christ: “It is not possible to contemplate Jesus except 'in the Holy Spirit.'” The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us.
Cantalamessa turns to the Eastern Christian emphasis on the divinization of humans through the Holy Spirit, since the Spirit “gives us not only 'adiuvante' ('helping') grace but also participation in the divine nature.”
This spiritual survey of Christian theology and history demands much from the reader, as it ties together such things as Eastern art of the Pantocrator; Eastern Holy Fools; St. Augustine's belief that humans are closer to the crucified than to the risen Christ until we pass to the next world; and the Protestant Theology of the Cross.
Cantalamessa takes a holistic, sophisticated view of Jesus' transfiguration, surveying a great deal of spiritual and theological experience and reflection. He introduces the reader to the much-neglected debate between the 2 Christological traditions of ancient Christianity from the ancient Christian centres of Antioch and Alexandria, Egypt.
Briefly, Antioch tended towards a more Pauline interpretation, focused on the passion and resurrection of Jesus, while the Alexandrians emphasized the Gospel of John's theology of the incarnation, whereby the very fact of Jesus as God incarnate is the centre and transformative event of human history. St. Paul saw the great transformative event in the resurrection. Both, of course, are right, and each school realized the importance of the other viewpoint.
Cantalamessa's discussion tries to unite different points of interest and spiritual practices. He notes that up to today, the Greek, Eastern Orthodox Churches tend towards the incarnational approach of St. John, whereas the Latin Church has emphasized St. Paul's focus on Christ's resurrection. Echoing Pope John Paul II's call for the re-united Church of East and West that breathes with 2 lungs, Cantalamessa writes that we need the Antiochene (and therefore Latin) focus on Jesus' humanity, and the Alexandrian (therefore Greek and Eastern) locus on the divinity of Christ.
In this preoccupation with both perspectives and the richness from their unity, The Mystery of the Transfiguration takes a place in ecumenism, which of late has itself become a neglected feature of Christian life at a time when secular society keeps pushing Judeo-Christian values out of sight.
Cantalamessa takes the reader on a fruitful, richly spiritual journey through the New Testament and Christian spirituality. He starts with a close reading of the 3 synoptic gospels' portrayals of the transfiguration, noting that “The Passion is found at the very heart of the mystery of the Transfiguration.” Both events come out of Christ's kenosis, or self-emptying. Christ serves humanity by emptying himself of his own will, accepting the will of the Father. In both events, Christ shows his power and glory by choosing the opposite of these 2 things.
But Cantalamessa also finds interesting, and less sobering features of the transfiguration, writing that it “is the most fitting mystery, with its exultation of light, to introduce us to the contemplation of beauty,” such as found, he notes, in icons.
The author also connects the transfiguration to Jesus' baptism, because of the central role of the Holy Spirit in both cases, and therefore to our own contemplation of Christ: “It is not possible to contemplate Jesus except 'in the Holy Spirit.'” The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us.
Cantalamessa turns to the Eastern Christian emphasis on the divinization of humans through the Holy Spirit, since the Spirit “gives us not only 'adiuvante' ('helping') grace but also participation in the divine nature.”
This spiritual survey of Christian theology and history demands much from the reader, as it ties together such things as Eastern art of the Pantocrator; Eastern Holy Fools; St. Augustine's belief that humans are closer to the crucified than to the risen Christ until we pass to the next world; and the Protestant Theology of the Cross.
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