http://www.ai.edu RSS feeds for Aquinas Institute of Theology 60 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/126/The-Doctrine-of-the-Immaculate-Conception-Ever-Deepening-Treasure.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=216&ModuleID=743&ArticleID=126 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=126&PortalID=0&TabID=216 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/126/The-Doctrine-of-the-Immaculate-Conception-Ever-Deepening-Treasure.aspx Marty O'Bryan is currently enrolled at Aquinas Institute. She is studying towards a Master of Arts - Catechesis of the Good Shepherd degree. The most Blessed Virgin Mary, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God, and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, was preserved immune from all stain of original sin. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 124, #491) In the entire history of the Roman Catholic Church, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, Ineffabilis Deus, was the most protracted and controversial of all the questions ever posed for its consideration. Formally introduced around the year 1100, the question was not settled until 750 years later when, on December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX promulgated its doctrine. Two factors had slowed its acceptance: there was no clear evidence for it either in scripture or in the patristic writings. Regarding the former, the greatest scriptural evidence against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception lay in the writings of St. Paul where it is stated that all have sinned in Adam (Romans 5:12) and “all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) (O’Connor, vi). By the time the Church began to actively consider Mary’s sanctity, it was universally accepted that she had committed no sin during her lifetime. Thus, the dilemma: in light of her purity, how could Mary have been exempt from the universal need for redemption? From the early charges of heresy by some of the most illustrious Doctors of the Church (Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure) (Balic, 188-191), to the full and loving embrace by others with minds equally astute, theologians argued the truth of is claim, employing the theological practices of their respective moments in time. Throughout its long history, many came within its reach, some holding the treasure of its revelation in their hands, only to let go when faced with its paradox. Their tools of human thought and language developed with its history, beginning with effusively wrapped language of logic and followed by systematic analysis to dissect and articulate the argument. In the decades after its promulgation, the new lens of anthropology was employed to deepen the understanding of its truth; and today, the hermeneutic of the psychology of being is furthering the conversation. This paper will present a brief history of the development of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, pointing out along the way how near to it so many came before its official promulgation. The paper will also present its current meaning for the Church and new vistas for its interpretation that have opened in the light of faith. In addressing the history of the doctrine of Mary’s preservation from original sin, it is necessary to present the Church’s understanding of this sin. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), original sin is not an individual’s “personal fault.” It is the “deprivation of original holiness” in humankind’s nature, a deprivation that inclines human beings to sin (CCC, 102, #405), sin being the lack of the fullness of love for God and neighbor caused by a persistent attachment to certain goods (CCC, 453, #1849). This deprivation of original holiness that marks “the whole of human history” is due to “a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man . . . by the original fault freely committed by our first parents [Adam and Eve] (CCC, 98, #390).” This is frequently referred to as “the sin of Adam.” The Catholic Church, therefore, distinguishes between personal sin and original sin, the latter a term coined by St. Augustine (350-430). Early Christian writings do not offer evidence of the belief that Mary was free from personal sin. In the Eastern Church, Origen (185-254), when interpreting Simeon’s statement to Mary, “ . . . (and you yourself a sword will pierce) . . .” (Luke 2:35) as referring to the presence of sin, claimed that it was at the foot of the cross where Mary had sinned by doubting her son’s divinity and mission (Joussard, 55-57). Tertullian (c.160-220) held a similar teaching in the West (O’Connor, xi). A light, however, began to shine on the Church’s thought regarding Mary when St. Ambrose (340-397) spoke and wrote only of her sanctity and her “Divine Maternity.” St. Jerome (347-420) maintained the same and even more so (Joussard, 68). By the time of the Council of Ephesus in 431, the Church, moving further toward the doctrine, was now in agreement regarding Mary’s sanctity (her never having sinned); and it was at this council that she was given the title theotokos, God-bearer, “Mother of God” (Journet, 43). Prior to the Council of Ephesus, St. Augustine had articulated the doctrine of original sin. He held that original sin is transmitted in the marriage act, through which a person first comes into existence, and that all persons inherit it (McBrien, 187). A contemporary of his, the ascetic Pelagius, taught that all sin was personal sin and that one could overcome it through the strict exercise of one’s will (a heresy that was officially rejected at the Council of Ephesus). He also maintained that Mary was all holy and completely free from even the slightest stain of sin (Journet, 40). Augustine, completely agreeing with him regarding Mary’s personal sanctity, yet, finding it impossible to deny the teachings of Paul, declared in response to Pelagius that “pure grace” had exempted Mary from this universal principle. Here it was, the gem of truth; yet, he was unable to articulate how this had happened. Consequently, a few years before his death, Augustine, again faced with the question of Mary’s exemption from original sin, responded in the negative, writing that Mary was born with original sin and that only later was she sanctified by grace (Joussard, 69-74). For centuries, through the end of the patristic era, this opinion remained uncountered in the writings and preaching of the Fathers of the Church. There was one exception, however—the Venerable Bede (672-735). Reflecting on John the Baptist being filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb of Elizabeth, his mother, Bede preached that this was John’s purification from original sin (Journet, 77-78). That neither he nor others applied this insight to Mary is remarkable. Hence, fertile ground lay fallow. The Council of Ephesus in 431 had fueled the veneration of Mary, and it was in the Byzantine East that Mary’s sanctity was first celebrated liturgically (Dvornik, 90). By the end of the 7th century, the Feast of Mary’s conception, known as the Feast of the Conception of St. Anne, Mother of the Theotokos, had been added to other liturgies celebrating her sanctity (Dvornik, 90). The feast expanded to Byzantine southern Italy, possibly as early as the first half of the 9th century. Its celebration spread to Ireland; and, in less than two centuries, it was being celebrated in the monasteries of southern England (Bouman, 123-125). The veneration of the Blessed Mother’s conception and its liturgical celebration spread throughout Western Catholicism. While there yet had been no approbation from Rome, the dictum, “lex orandi, lex credendi,” (the law of prayer is the law of belief) was being borne out (Bevans, 97), thus opening the door more widely to official consideration. At the beginning of the Scholastic period in the Western Church (11th – 15th century), the schism with the East prevented any further nourishment of the West with the teachings from the Eastern Fathers on the Conception of Mary (Balic, 162). In addition, Augustine’s doctrine of the universality of original sin ruled absolute in the halls of theology (Balic, 162). Two beliefs prevailed. One was that the Holy Spirit had sanctified Mary at the moment of the Annunciation (Balic, 163). The other was held by St. Bernard (1090-1153). In a break from Augustine’s doctrine that sanctification from original sin occurred only after birth, Bernard claimed that Mary was purified while still within her mother’s womb. Almost 500 years after Bede, St. Bernard continued the conversation by moving the moment of her sanctification further back, closer to the very moment of her conception. The idea of her immaculate conception was very much in his mind, for Bernard wrote that her exemption from original sin would have lessened the redemptive act of Christ (Balic, 183-184), the thought of which he could not bear to embrace. St. Anselm (1033-1109), the father of Scholasticism, wrote that he was open to a “higher explanation,” believing that Mary “was brought into existence from Adam, in the same way as all others,” but that she “was one of those who were cleansed from their sins by Him [Jesus] before He was born” (Balic, 168). While not indicating at what moment in her existence she was cleansed, he nevertheless was also intimating an immaculate conception. Bernard’s and Anselm’s instincts could have flung open the gates to epiphanies for the next generations; however, the great theologians of the golden age of Scholasticism (approximately 1230-1340)—St. Bonaventure, St. Albert the Great, and St. Thomas Aquinas—dispensing with the effusive and mystical language of their predecessors, employed the analytic systematic, and didactic method of their day. Overlooking the writings of St. Anselm, they clung to Augustine’s teaching of the universality of original sin. Yet championing St. Bernard’s claim of Mary’s sanctification while still in her mother’s womb, they each wrote that, while without sin during her life, the Mother of God nevertheless required purification from the sin she had inherited (Balic, 186-192). It was the Franciscan and Scottish priest, John Duns (1266-1308), known as Duns Scotus, who solved the dilemma and reconciled the contradicting doctrines of original sin, of Christ as universal Redeemer, and of Mary’s preservation from original sin. He reasoned innovatively that Mary’s preservation from original sin would not have lessened Christ’s redemptive action at all and that, in fact, it would have made Christ’s redeeming act “more excellent,” writing that it would be “a more excellent benefit to preserve a person from evil than to permit him to fall into it and then deliver him from it (Balic, 207). With regard to Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin, Scotus was delightfully perceptive, writing that, since “everything is possible to God that is not manifestly contradictory in itself” (Balic, 204), and because of the merits of Christ, her Redeemer (Balic, 207), “God could have conferred as much grace on her in the first moment of her soul’s existence as He does on another soul at . . . baptism” (Balic, 205). With this insight, the brilliant and “Subtle Doctor” became known as the Doctor of the Immaculate Conception (Balic, 204), synthesizing and reconciling nearly 1000 years of argumentation and opening wide the path to its promulgation by Rome. This, however, would not occur for at least another 500 years. In spite of Scotus’ brilliant and synthesized articulation of the schools of Augustine and Anselm, their followers argued in opposition to one another, “maculists” against “immaculists.” The latter were led by the Franciscans with their allegiance to Scotus, their brother. The maculists were led by the Dominicans whose beloved Angelic Doctor, Thomas Aquinas, had argued with Augustine (Sebastian, 214). Aquinas’ canonization in 1323 fueled their vigor, as they saw it as an official sanction from Rome (Sebastian, 214). In 1477, Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV approved two offices and a Mass in honor of Mary’s Conception, which served as a catalyst for renewal of the argument. The argumentation and animosity rose to such fever pitch, each camp denouncing the other as heretics, that in 1482, and again a year later, Sixtus IV issued a Bull vehemently threatening with excommunication anyone who denounced another as being a heretic (Sebastian, 238). Beneath the raging battle of theological argumentation and name-calling, another sentiment was welling up. Encouraged by Sixtus IV’s approval of the offices and Mass in honor of the Virgin, universities began requiring students to take an oath to defend the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; and by the end of the 17th century, nearly 150 universities in Europe had expressed support of the doctrine, approximately 50 of them requiring the oath (Sebastian, 239-241). Theologians and saints of religious orders became known for their support of the doctrine—Carmelites, Jesuits, Augustinians, Sts. Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Joseph Cupertino (Sebastian, 241). The establishment of ecclesiastical congregations and confraternities throughout Europe dedicated to the Immaculate Conception and the widespread embrace of the doctrine by the faithful proved another doctrine at work, sensus fidelium, which states that the entire body of the faithful has a “deep instinct within the bosom of the mystical body of Christ” on matters of faith and morals (Bevans, 78-79). And so, the doctrine was advanced. Throughout this long period, provincial generals and heads of State were increasingly petitioning Rome to grant special privileges in observance of the Conception of Mary. While granting the status of “feast,” accompanied by days of obligation and dates of is celebration on the calendar, the magisterium remained silent regarding the feast’s status as dogma (Laurentin, 274-278). Over those 500 years, what appeared to be delay and uncertainty on the part of the magisterium was, instead, a prudence that encouraged deeper study and clearer articulation of the subject (Laurentin, 270). Finally, after consulting the bishops of the entire Church, Pope Pius IX, on December 8, 1954, read the decree of the bull, Ineffabilis Deus, “revealed by God” and therefore, to “firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful” (Laurentin, 312). Since that day in 1854, theologians have continued to reflect on the meaning of the Immaculate Conception, deepening and widening its implications for all. French Cardinal Charles Journet (1891-1957) saw in her immaculate purity “the Woman” who is united to Christ and whose history is the history of the Church itself—1) the Church before Christ, in her struggle with the serpent that continues to her glorification at the end of the age; 2) the Church in the time of Christ when, bound together, they battle the serpent with the shared weapons of purity and exemption from sin; and 3) the Church after Christ, when at the foot of the cross the Lord Jesus entrusts to her the members of his mystical body to stand with them in the victory over death, the “last enemy” (Journet, 34). In this perspective, the Immaculate Conception serves as the icon for hope and faithful perseverance until the triumphant return of Christ. German dogmatic theologian, Karl Rahner (1904-1984) sought the nucleus of Marian doctrine, aware of their historical and cultural contexts and examining them for what was eternally valid (Vorgrimler, 91). Through his anthropological lens of human freedom and responsibility and self-determination, Rahner saw in the Immaculate Conception Mary’s sign to the world of the graced human person with an inner orientation toward the divine and with the human capacity for the self-communication of God (Dallavalle, 265). In her book, Christianity & Feminism in Conversation, Regina Coll cites Sr. Carol Frances Jagen, B.V.M., who reflects on Mary as patron of the United States of America and on the popular image of Mary as the woman of Genesis, Chapter 3, who crushes the head of the serpent with her heel. Expanding the personal image to a societal one, Jagen asks if the image of the Immaculate Conception could be our symbol of freedom unbound by sin and calling us to the struggle for justice and peace (Coll, 96). American philosopher, Beatrice Bruteau, using the images from Lourdes—the Lady and the spring—sees the Immaculate Conception as the archetype for the revelation that each person possesses a true and unblemished nature (as opposed to the nature of original sin). For her, the Immaculate Conception is the archetype of the eternally “free-flowing” grace of God and the sharing of divine life that forms one’s personhood, transcending sin and upholding one’s human dignity (Bruteau, 181-195). Rahner emphasized keeping in mind historical and cultural contexts when mining Marian doctrine for its eternal validity. When the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was announced in 1854, the Western world had entered the “Age of Enlightenment.” It had left the medieval era where religion informed every aspect of life and was now rejecting God’s influence in people’s lives and religion’s hold on humankind’s view of the world. God had become secondary to science and reason. Narcissism reigned and awareness of sin waned (Streeter). Thus, the Immaculate Conception and her partnership with Christ in overcoming evil was a call to the world to recognize the true source of strength and wisdom. While its truth is being mined today with the new tools of psychology, the light of its initial interpretation still shines on the 21st century. The fact that its development spanned the longest time in the history of the Church suggest that it may be the most profound dogma ever proclaimed by the magisterium and that it holds centuries more of deposits yet to be discovered by the hearts and minds of the faithful. Works Cited (All scripture quotations are from the New American Bible, Oxford University Press, 1990.) Balic, Carlo, O.F.M. “The Mediaeval Controversy over the Immaculate Conception up to the Death of Scotus.” In The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, edited by Edward O’Connor, 162-163, 168, 186-192, 204-205, 207. Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1958:161-212. Bevans, Steven. An Introduction to Theology in Global Perspective. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2009. Bouman. Cornelius A. “The Immaculate Conception in the Liturgy.” In The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, edited by Edward O’Connor, 123-125. Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1958:113-160. Bruteau, Beatrice. “The Immaculate Conception: Our Original Face.” Cross Currents 39 (Summer 1989): 181-195. Coll, Regina A. Christianity & Feminism in Conversation. Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 2001. Dallavalle, Nancy. “Feminist Theologies.” In The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, edited by Declan Marmion and Mary E. Hines, 265. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005:264-278. Dvornik, Francis. “The Byzantine Church and the Immaculate Conception.” In The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, edited by Edward O’Connor, 90. Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1958:87-112. Jouassard, Georges. “The Fathers of the Church and the Immaculate Conception.” In The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, edited by Edward O’Connor, 55-57, 68-74. Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1958:51-86. Journet, Charles. “Scripture and the Immaculate Conception: A Problem in the Evolution of Dogma.” In The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, edited by Edward O’Connor, 34, 40, 43, 77-78. Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press,1958:1-50. Laurentin, Rene. “The Role of the Papal Magisterium in the Development of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception,” translated by Charles E. Sheedy, C.S.C. and Edward S. Shea, C.S.C. In The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, edited by Edward O’Connor, 270, 274-278, 312. Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1958: 271-326. McBrien, Richard P. Catholicism: New Edition. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994. O’Connor, Edward C.S.C. “Preface.” In The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, edited by Edward O’Connor, vi. Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1958:v-xvi. Sebastian, Wenceslaus O.F.M. “The Controversy over the Immaculate Conception from after Scotus to the End of the Eighteenth Century.” In The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, edited by Edward O’Connor, 214. Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1958:213-270. Streeter, Carla Mae, O.P. Outline, “World views. How Theological Reflection is Done.” Introduction to Theology and Theological Method, D503, Spring, 2011. United States Catholic Conference. Catechism of the Catholic Church. New York: Catholic Book Publishing Company Co, 1994. Vorgrimler, Herbert. Understanding Karl Rahner. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1986.   Jim Hubbman Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:19:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:126 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/123/A-Theology-of-Ministry-As-Expressed-in-Relationship-to-Conversion-and-Forgiveness.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=216&ModuleID=743&ArticleID=123 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=123&PortalID=0&TabID=216 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/123/A-Theology-of-Ministry-As-Expressed-in-Relationship-to-Conversion-and-Forgiveness.aspx Michael Durbin is V.P. and General Manager of Midwest Diversified Technologies, Inc., and has been a part-time graduate student at Aquinas Institute of Theology for the past four years. Michael delights in the awareness of our spiritual journey in life. This article will examine a spirituality of ministry in relationship to conversion and forgiveness, identifying the need to forgive oneself, forgive one’s family and community, and the need to forgive the institutional Church. Forgiveness is essential to understanding our ministerial role and revealing the needs and requirements of those around us. Without forgiveness our relationship with God becomes stagnant and does not develop. Our communal and sacramental life also becomes lifeless and self-absorbed. Our prayer time becomes occupied with hurts and faults of ourselves as well as others. Our human and holy relationship comes to a stand-still. Our desire to develop an intimate relationship with God is impeded by personal hurts, perceived, received and given, which require healing. In order for forgiveness to take place it is necessary to experience conversion of heart; a transformation of ourselves. Our thought processes and our behaviors need to change. The process of conversion is not something that we can initiate, but it is something to which we can respond to from awareness and attentiveness. Bernard Lonergan identified three types of conversion: intellectual, moral and religious (see Lonergan, 238-242). Intellectual conversion is knowing which goes beyond our senses of touching, tasting, smelling, hearing and seeing. Intellectual conversion includes experiencing, understanding, judging, and believing. Moral conversion takes place when we abandon personal self-satisfaction and make decisions and choices based upon values which we hold more important. Moral conversion does not mean moral perfection. It means that we are aware of what is morally correct but we may still be a slave to our passions. Saint Paul lamented that he did not understand his own actions as he did not do what he wanted, but continued to do the very thing he hated (see Romans, 7:15) We must discover our individual, group and general biases which keep us from true moral conversion. Religious conversion is being in the grasp of an overpowering total love that elicits an unconditional love response that affects us emotionally, intellectually and very often physically. We often attribute this experience to the Holy Spirit. We completely surrender ourselves to being in love with God. We recognize that God is our ground and that we are nothing without God. This experience is most difficult to describe as we do not always have an adequate vocabulary to express the experience. God is always providing us opportunity to experience, question, judge and make decisions about the people and actions within the world taking place around us. Thomas Aquinas understood this as the experience of the Incarnate Word of Jesus. Through the incarnate Jesus, God descended to us in the human form, using human words as understood in our world, and we must use the same means of communication to respond and ascend again to Our Father (see Congar, 117). Traditionally, we have understood this as grace; God’s grace acting upon us. But grace understood as the source of love must be returned as love. Love must become our response. The practice of psychological counseling, prayer, and proper spiritual direction can result in God’s healing grace which can provide us strength for forgiveness of the many hurts that we inflict upon or receive from each other. We must be attentive and aware of God’s call to conversion and our need to respond. The call and response is not necessarily supernatural but very natural as it takes place with the people and the world around us. Our response is an act of free will and it must be intentional. We cannot fall into conversion by accident. We must be fully aware and fully vulnerable to accept what will be required of us for conversion. We recognize the love of God and we intentionally respond with love. We intentionally respond in a loving manner to Jesus, our incarnate God, to our self, and to our community through the sharing and reception of the sacraments. Our conversion takes place when we respond through prayer in relationship with God and when we respond charitably in relationship with those around us. Our intentional change or conversion results in behavioral change which is observable and measurable. Our relationship with those around us is the means by which we come to know the incarnate Jesus. Jesus provided us many examples of healing and forgiveness as well as how we should pray to Our Father. A passage from John’s Gospel (John 20:19-23) is often cited as an example of how we are to forgive. When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." This passage is most often interpreted, and preached from the pulpit, as Jesus assigning the authority for forgiveness of sins to the institutional Church. The Church is given the authority to forgive and to retain sins. Forgiveness is an act performed by the Church to absolve sins. This authority is given by Jesus to the Church. This is the traditional understanding of this Gospel pericope, but the passage cries out for another interpretation. The story begins in the evening on Sunday; the very day of Jesus’ resurrection. The disciples are a small group and they are gathered together because of their common fear of being beaten or crucified for following Jesus. This gathered fearful group is no “church”; they are a Jewish faction of men and women who have lost their beloved leader to crucifixion and they are worried that they may now be subject to the same fate. Some of the disciples have been notified that earlier in the day Jesus had risen from the dead and Mary Magdalene had seen and talked to Jesus. As if there was not enough to be afraid about, some of the disciples are now seeing ghosts! There are some very human and very natural emotions that we can presume were present with the disciples in the room. As a group they are anxious and fearful. As individuals they are just plain scared and wondering if they will live to see the next day. They are also angry with one another and blaming each other for getting themselves into this mess. These crazy rumors brought by Mary Magdalene that Jesus is alive and risen from the dead only make the hurt and anger worse. The disciples are also likely to be angry with Jesus for coming to Jerusalem, getting himself killed, and placing them all at risk. The disciples’ anxiety levels are at the breaking point. With everything that has happened, and continues to happen, the disciples really miss the calming influence of Jesus. Jesus always knew what to do. Jesus would speak to the disciples and calm them. Jesus spoke to their hearts. Jesus spoke to the disciples as personal friends and as individuals. When Jesus appeared to the disciples he immediately says, “Peace be with you”. He is telling them to calm down. He is telling them that he is with them and that everything will be okay. He shows them his wounds so that they know he is real. Jesus emphasizes his call for calmness by saying a second time, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Jesus is not only greeting the disciples and emphasizing the need for calm and cool heads, he is also notifying the disciples of their mission; of their challenge. Jesus then breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is revealed as life. Breath is life. The breath of Jesus exhaled upon the disciples is the love of God as revealed in the Holy Spirit to bring life. The call of love from God brings life and must be returned as love, with our life, when we respond to God. The challenge to the disciples is to respond in love as they are given love: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”. Jesus, sent in love by the Father, now sends his disciples in love to the world. The forgiveness of sins is an admonition given by Jesus to the disciples as a challenge that must be met by each of them if they are to live in love with the Trinity, and if they are to live in love with each other. This is an individual challenge as well as a community challenge. It is a daily challenge for the individual members of the community as well as the entire community. We are all called to forgive sins. If we forgive the sins of anyone, including ourselves, they are forgiven. If we retain the sins of anyone, including ourselves, they are retained. Psychologically, Jesus is telling the disciples that for good mental health it is necessary to let go of the pain and hurt they have caused themselves and the pain and hurt they have caused others. Forgiveness of sins is necessary for the disciples to enter into a loving relationship with God and each other. Jesus is speaking to a theology of forgiveness which is necessary for our very salvation. Jesus is also pointing out that when we hold onto sin, our own sin, others’ sin, or the sin of the institutional Church, we are damaging our relationship with God. When we receive the Holy Spirit we are receiving the gift of love from God. Because we are beings with free-will we have the choice to accept or to deny the offer of love, and forgiveness, from God. When we accept the offer of love from God we respond in love and the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity bring gifts from God through the Holy Spirit. The Gifts of the Holy Spirit are for us and cause us to exhibit changed and converted behavior. The Gifts of the Holy Spirit include wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, piety, fortitude and fear or extreme respect of the Lord. When we enter into relationship with God, we become transformed and we begin to exhibit a change in behavior that is often identified as Fruits of the Holy Spirit. The Fruits of the Holy Spirit are tangible and palpable. They can be observed and felt by those around us. The fruits are not for us but are an expression of God’s goodness working through us for the good of those around us. God’s gifts to us are realized by others working with us as virtues. The fruits can be named and include: charity, joy, peace, mildness, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, modesty, longanimity, continency, and chastity. Relationship with God quite literally results in transformation of the human by the Holy Spirit. We no longer desire to retain psychologically unhealthy behavior that prevents us from coming closer in relationship to God. We begin to shed our self of biases. We accept the offered gift of understanding and we forgive ourselves. Likewise, we no longer have a desire to retain unhealthy hurts and memories about our family and community. With the grace of the Holy Spirit we make an intentional choice to forgive and we intentionally seek love and forgiveness in return. Very often, our transformed behavior compels us to seek reconciliation with offended family members, members of the community or with the Church. If we choose to deny the offer of love from God we retain the sins. We keep the sins of our self as well as the sins of others. We do not let go of the sins and we keep our self from experiencing the love of God in a close prayerful relationship and we deny our self the experience of a close loving relationship with our family and our community. When we retain the sins of the institutional Church we distance ourselves from the Body of Christ and we deny ourselves the grace of the sacraments. When we deny the Holy Spirit to do his work with us and with our church community we are only hurting ourselves. When we choose to retain the sins of our self and the sins of others, we choose to distance our self from God. We are creating an impediment to our own salvation. We are making a choice and we are intentionally denying the forgiveness of sins in our self and in others. Our response to retain sins may be logical and it may be righteous, but it is not healthy and it is not holy. Whose relationship with God is impaired by the retention of sins? Is it the person whom you will not forgive, or yourself? Perhaps the person you will not forgive is in a healthy and loving relationship with God and the rest of the community. The person you will not forgive may not even be aware of the hurt you continue to carry. Perhaps he or she sought reconciliation with you many years ago and you chose to retain his or her sin. His or her answer to your lack of forgiveness may have been to forgive your stubbornness. In this scenario, the lack of forgiveness hurts no one but you. If we fail to forgive our self we are placing our own ego and our own intentions ahead of God. We are declaring our self to be better qualified than God to judge. We are allowing our pride to control that which does not belong to us: God’s forgiveness. Negative and self-destructive behavior cannot always be dealt with in spiritual direction but may require professional psychological help. If we need further proof for a theology of ministry based upon forgiveness we should look to The Lord’s Prayer. As we recite the words of the prayer that Jesus taught us, we become aware of the following phrase: “…and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are asking God to forgive us our sins just as we forgive those who sin against us. We are making a promise, perhaps an implied contract, that we will forgive others who require our forgiveness, as long as God forgives us our sins. What happens when we do not forgive the sins of others, but we retain them? Does God stop forgiving us our sins and begins to retain our sins? Probably not, but God certainly could! When Jesus taught us to pray he was teaching us how to live. Forgiveness is a necessary part of life that we all must recognize if we are to have life and live it fully. Many of us recite The Lord’s Prayer daily. Some of us use the prayer for contemplative reflection daily. Our daily spiritual journey requires us to be attentive and aware of the Divine Indwelling (see Keating, 5). The Holy Trinity is present within us on every level of our lives, from the most physical to the most spiritual. The human and the holy are united in prayer and in action. Our call to holiness requires us to develop a theology of forgiveness which will benefit us in our entire life as well as in our ministry. A healthy theology of spirituality based upon forgiveness should be reflected in a life of goodness that is seamless and uninterrupted in expression. As a member of the Body of Christ we should reflect the forgiveness of Jesus as seen and experienced by the world. At the risk of proof texting a theological spirituality of forgiveness, in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus responds to a question from Peter about, “… how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus responds, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times” (Matthew, 18:21). The response given by Jesus is not to be taken literally, but is to be understood as an infinite number of times that Peter must forgive. The message from Jesus is clear: if you are to become a Christ-follower you must become a person of infinite forgiveness. The Body of Christ is not always a metaphor. The Body of Christ becomes a reality when Christian human beings, walking, talking and interacting with each other in the world, become an expression of the real presence of Christ. This Eucharistic language is intentional and is the mystery of God present in the world. We receive what we are and we become what we are. Our ministry is our “being”, and our being is in Christ. When the focus of our life is on Christ, our behavior is transformational and we quite literally become Christ-like. We no longer need to worry about “doing” ministry because we become ministry. The human and the holy is realized in the reality of our being like Christ. Resources (All scripture quotations are from the New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha. Oxford University Press, 2007.) Congar, Yves. I Believe in The Holy Spirit. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1983. Crosby, Michael H. The Dysfunctional Church: Addiction and Codependency in the Family of Catholicism. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1991. Day, Dorothy. The Long Loneliness. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1952. Hahnenberg, Edward P. Awakening Vocation: A Theology of Christian Call. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010. Keating, Thomas. Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit. New York: Lantern Books, 2007. Lonergan, Bernard J. F. Method in Theology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971. Zizioulas, John D. Being as Communion. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985.   Jim Hubbman Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:21:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:123 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/120/The-Regular-Life.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=216&ModuleID=743&ArticleID=120 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=120&PortalID=0&TabID=216 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/120/The-Regular-Life.aspx Greg Heille, O.P., his cousin and her son: taking energy from an old growth tree in the forests of North Carolina On Good Friday and Holy Saturday, I attended the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer at St Dominic Priory here in St Louis. Each year I am drawn into Frank Quinn’s beautiful antiphons for Holy Week, and each year there are some difficult antiphons that neither the cantors nor the assembly get quite right. In daily choral prayer, we miss notes and make mistakes and (now that Frank is in his grave) nobody really seems to mind: we simply press on. This is often the point for me in Religious Life: we fall down, we get up, we press on. It’s not about individually being perfect. By pressing on beyond our imperfect selves into the imperfect dance that is community, we again and again and over time find our perfection in God. For the past several weeks I have been taking an online course on parenting taught by Heather Forbes LCSW of the Beyond Consequences Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The course has to do with parenting children of trauma—and my dialogue partner is a cousin who has adopted a six year old (my godchild) who in the womb and in his early years has suffered the drama of drug addiction, adoption, and a major house fire. While children of trauma experience exaggerated fears and behaviors, we all experience what Heather Forbes calls “disregulation”: no matter how big or small our window of tolerance for the stresses life throws at us, we all reach our limit and we all get caught at times in fear and overwhelm when no amount of thinking will set things straight. When we are disregulated, we are not bad: we are overwhelmed. In these moments, we don’t need time out (judgment, control, consequences)—we need time in (a quality of safe relationship with loved ones, friends, co-workers, and community who love and care for us enough to assure us all will be well). Just as in Good Friday Morning Prayer, a challenging antiphon pushes a cantor’s singing voice beyond its limit and the community carefully presses on while the cantor finds his pitch, so too in religious community, each of us falls out of step and back into step again, both throughout each day and over the course of a life. We see each other’s mistakes and foibles and worse sides in community because at the end of the day or in times of trouble community is the safe place to bring our stress, our limits, our crises, and our disregulation. Thanks to the rhythms and the people that constitute what we call the Regular Life, we re-regulate again and again and again. It’s not about individually being perfect; it is about being made holy through the very human rhythm of Disregulation and Regulation. In the Regular Life, God is shepherding us into the perfect flow of that big Self beyond our little selves.     SuperUser Account Thu, 12 May 2011 14:26:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:120 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/85/Living-in-a-Narrative-and-Giving-Off-Sparks.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=216&ModuleID=743&ArticleID=85 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=85&PortalID=0&TabID=216 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/85/Living-in-a-Narrative-and-Giving-Off-Sparks.aspx Jerry is an ordained minister of American Baptist Churches USA, having served as Intentional Interim Minister in the United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), as well. Currently serving as Intentional Interim Minister at Friedens Peace United Church of Christ in New Melle, MO. 1999 Graduate of Aquinas with Certificate in Spiritual Direction. Semi-retired, writing, offering spiritual direction. I would really like to trade in my old narrative for a new model. Let me explain. I make bold to advance this trade-in option because of the early Christian community’s example. It “traded in” the dominant Greek philosophical narrative, i.e. logos, or “word,” for a new model of logos filled with new meaning through Christ. Play with this for a moment, by substituting “narrative” for “word” in the preamble of John’s gospel: In the beginning was the Narrative, and the Narrative was with God. And the Narrative was God. In the beginning with God, the Narrative began incarnating in Cosmos. (This sentence paraphrases John’s wording that says, “He was in the beginning with God.” I’m reading “was” as an active process of being and becoming – hence, “incarnating” – rather than a simple, passive state of existing in an ethereal, immaterial, eternal past.) It was through the Narrative that all things came into being, and without the Narrative, not one thing comes into being. What has come into being through the Jesus Narrative is Life, and this Life is Light for all people. The Narrative shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. . . . And the Narrative became flesh and lived among us … full of grace and truth. Consider the power of narrative. Narrative forms us and moves us toward destiny, and destiny is defined and formed by the quality and character of the narrative. We all live in a narrative; in fact, we live by narrative. Before we opt into a particular narrative we do well to discern the destiny toward which the narrative is trending. If we desire a destiny of just peace, for example, is a narrative titled “global war on terror” actually going to deliver us there? If we desire a destiny of personal and cosmic salvation, a narrative of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection titled “Resurrecting Our Crucified Humanness” may get us closer to it than the currently dominant atonement narrative titled “Satisfying God’s Offended Honor.” Part of the power of a narrative is that it gathers our energies and resources, and focuses them, for good aims, or ill. Here are some quick examples of this from the broad American narrative, as articulated in a column in the New York Times by Timothy Egan, Dec. 7, 2010, titled A Big Idea. He is arguing that what is missing from the Obama administration and is seriously weakening its effectiveness is a big idea, a controlling, or shaping narrative. By contrast, Teddy Roosevelt crafted a narrative titled “The Square Deal.” The story line leveraged the interests and energies of the little guy to fight monopoly capitalism at a time when the gap between the rich and everyone else was almost as great as it is today. Franklin Roosevelt expanded his cousin’s narrative with one titled “The New Deal,” which gathered “enough populist punch to help a New York politician with a moneyed accent” lead the nation through the Great Depression. Ronald Reagan countered middle-class anxiety with a narrative titled “Morning in America.” These national narratives altered the configuration of socioeconomic reality, thus changing near-term destiny. At some point in our life journey, each of us will choose, if only by default, one or more personal narratives in which to navigate life’s road. But first, we inherit a narrative (actually, a kind of woven cable of several narratives; but for this essay the singular “narrative” will work). We wake up already wrapped in the swaddling cloths of some kind of narrative. This narrative is given to us through birth into a family, a community, a religion, a culture, a nation. Individuals often are not aware of what their narrative is, but it will move them, and it will shape them, aiming them toward a particular quality of destiny, unless and until they choose a different narrative. At another level, especially in a mass communications culture dominated by entertainment values, Americans seem to flit among narratives like a butterfly seeking the sweet nectar of fragrant blossoms, or a teen-ager drifting dreamily from one over-priced boutique to another in marketing-induced fantasies of trendy fashion that they hope will somehow confer, at least temporarily, a shred of definitive significance. Take our current political culture. The bus of political narrative seems almost to be careening out of control, much as the bus of economic narrative has done. While I want to trade in this political and economic narrative for a new one, it feels like someone is already imposing a new narrative on the nation, and perhaps the world, but they’re not telling the rest of us where the story is taking us. It’s happened before. Somebody knew the narrative of decline, for example, that big-box retailing was going to perpetrate on mom and pop retailers, fraying the fabric of community and neighborhood that these “little guys” sustained, but they didn’t tell us this when they started spinning out this narrative. Americans’ uncertainty and anxiety stem, in part, from a fundamentally shifting narrative. But this isn’t the half of it. The trouble we have with our national, cultural, political, and economic narrative is rooted in a seriously compromised religious narrative. America would not be America without its religious narrative. I puzzle over the reasons why a culture so deeply influenced by Christian faith fails so often to embody public policy that is more in accord with the Christ figure so broadly revered, celebrated, and argumentatively defended. Why, in this “Christian culture’s” free-ranging lifestyles do we find such thirst for violence, such health-compromising self-indulgence, such persistent manipulation of fear, such broad immersion in addictions, and so many other symptoms suggesting that we don’t really trust, collectively, the faith narrative we say we believe? Our faith narrative seems to be a damaged vehicle in need of repair, or salvage. The damage that concerns me is in three particular areas: Atonement narrative, Justice narrative, and Eschatology narrative. The dominant Atonement narrative, called the penal satisfaction theory and supported by its close cousin the substitutionary atonement theory, generally governs religious orientation in this culture. It tends toward spiritual escapism in the popular mind, and its individual salvationist aims seem more identified with American individualism than with just community. Furthermore, its aims are directed more heavenward than earthward. This spiritual dysfunction of American faith narrative gives rise to a Justice narrative governing social discourse and expectation that is too comfortably lodged in the retributive dimension of justice, while discounting and even demonizing the distributive dimension of justice. Hence, the “Unamerican,” and even “socialism,” stigma that is suddenly attached to our honored one-hundred-year tradition of progressive income tax. And then there is the great capstone of Eschatology narrative that posits the kingdom of God in the ultimate future, after human history is over, thus removing much of its transforming tension from the present. This also relieves the principalities and powers in this world of any responsibility for their damage to the present. And the gleam in the eye of some who see their culture war enemies being “left behind” in the great Eschatological Escape is almost obscene. Profound narrative distortion in these areas of faith is killing a lot of Christianity’s potential for kingdom of God influence in our culture in this world. And these distortions are standard fare in popular Christianity Let me say a word here about kingdom. I’m sympathetic with the need for an alternative term, but words like “realm,” “rule,” and “reign” all seem weak, pale shadows of the potency contained in the reality to which kingdom refers. So, I’m going to ask that you indulge me in a preference for the word basileia, as in basileia tou theou, the New Testament Greek phrase for “kingdom of God.” The English term, “kingdom,” has obvious problems for 21st-century American democratic, egalitarian, inclusive culture. John Dominic Crossan’s book, In Parables, offers a fresh perspective on basileia. He goes beyond all the traditional “kingdom” terms by positing basileia as an order of reality that none of these terms really articulates. Basileia, per Crossan, is God’s purposive, creative energy, poised to spring into action when the situation is ripe. Jesus’ parables are about basileia. Think of basileia as that with which Jesus’ parables are pregnant and about to come to term. Shifting the metaphor now rather abruptly, according to Crossan’s concept, basileia is sort of like the baseball hitter, poised in the coiled-spring stance that awaits the opportune moment, as the baseball leaves the pitcher’s hand and begins its brief flight to the batter’s box. According to Jesus, this coiled-spring basileia energy, meeting a skillfully flung challenge of history and personal experience, is poised for advent, ready to break through in every moment, in every place, in every age. Will we, the batter, swing truly, or even see the ball coming? What might our faith and this world come to be, if we gathered with others to train, practice, and play our faith in the way that baseball players do from the pickup game of kids on a sandlot to the early training of Little League to the disciplined professionalism of major league players, and including all the baseball fans who gather to watch, cheer, moan, revel in victory, and writhe in defeat? This is basileia, poised to break into this-world materiality – the kingdom-at-hand that Jesus urges us to turn and embrace. And it is this basileia quality that is embedded in a certain kind of narrative that has the potential to reinvigorate our faith narrative and to recover authentic Christian vision for justice in this world’s culture. Part of the trouble we have with our political and cultural narrative is that our seriously compromised religious narrative posits kingdom of God as a celestial retirement center, rather than a terrestrial playing field on which there is poised a potency that is so near at hand that it would radicalize our practice of humanity if we dared touch it. It is here in our faith narrative, more than our political and cultural narratives, that we face the most profound challenges, because the religious narrative that is dominant in our culture is so little interested in a this-worldly, basileia quality of cosmic reality, compared to its interest in a next-world fulfillment of our favorite this-world ego-building projects. So, here’s the big question: How might we infuse the larger political, cultural, and religious narrative with the Christic Light of Jesus? Answer: Engage the narratives that Jesus spun. Engage with “the parable Jesus” through “the Jesus parables.” And in the sparking energy of the Jesus narrative, engage the culture. Jesus and Narrative. Many NT scholars make a convincing case for Narrative of the parable kind as being the bedrock material that can connect us acutely with the Spirit that animated and directed Jesus’ life. Not only this, Jesus’ parables are almost without exception about the basileia of God and can give entry into the culture of God’s basileia. The taming of Jesus’ parables and the domestication of the baseleia that the parables encapsulate may explain why the prayer we pray every Sunday – “thy kingdom come … on earth as it is in heaven” – fuels so little passion for basileia’s justice on earth, and stimulates so little resistance to the growing narrative of all war all the time, or of wealth for the few and poverty for the many. I am becoming convinced the longer I work with Jesus’ parables that these narratives can be a means of de-toxifying ourselves from addiction to the narratives of American culture. Jesus’ parables can be a force for the church’s liberation from captivity in the dominant cultural narrative. Even though, as in the parable of the talents, they have too often been used to create economically productive Americans rather than radically inventive reconcilers and passionately peacemaking disciples, Jesus’ parables can draw us into Narrative that is charged with dynamics of the basileia of God. But for them to exercise their redemptive power, we will have to reclaim them from popular misuse. Parables can transform because they are more than cute little stories with a practical moral lesson or spiritual insight. Parables are more, too, than clever illustrations that simplify complex, abstract truths that we assume are really better explicated in vast theological tomes – or wordy essays about them like this one. Parables are more than verbal articulations of invisible, otherworldly, spiritual tonic that will enhance our ability to survive the rigors of striving for success in the American Way of Life. To experience a parable of Jesus and not just hear it for its entertainment or instructional value is to find ourselves “living in a narrative and giving off sparks” (a phrase suggested by a certain tensive quality of fraught romance in Bonnie Tyler’s lyrics in Total Eclipse of the Heart: “Living in a powder keg and giving off sparks”). Several parable scholars have consistently sparked fresh thinking for me over the years, and especially in the last few years: John Dominic Crossan, Bernard Brandon Scott, Joachim Jeremias, Charles McCollough, C. H. Dodd, Robert Farrar Capon, William Herzog, Marcus Borg, among others. For Jesus, a parable is not just a story about an otherworldly ideal. It is his verbal representation of his experience, and more particularly, his experience of God. To make the incarnational point just a little more pointed, this is the God with whom Jesus engaged in his experience in this world. It is not just a fantasy concept about a God whom the pre-existent Christ left behind in heaven when he came to earth. So, if we find our way inside a parable of Jesus, we will encounter there not merely an idea of the God up in heaven but will encounter the same God in our life context with whom Jesus engaged in his earthly setting. Let me take this a step further and say that if we hear a parable of Jesus and are not shocked, or disturbed, or moved, or otherwise transported into an alternative realm of being, we have not experienced the parable. I once saw an amazing shot on goal in our eldest grandson’s high school soccer game (No, it wasn’t our grandson who made the goal … this time). The game was tight, near the end, with a score of 0-0. One of our players, Xavier, received a pass about thirty yards out, as our team was moving the ball down the field and beginning to close in on the goal. Xavier eyed a teammate positioning himself to receive a pass, as the defending team marshaled their forces against what was clearly shaping up to be a shot on goal. Then, at the moment of what might have been a kick to the intended shooter the gap for a pass closed and the potential shooter was swarmed with defenders, so Xavier masterfully re-directed his kick and hoisted the ball into the air. The ball soared, almost like an eagle in flight, arched over the heads of both teams and hooked amazingly toward the goal. With goalie’s gaze still fixed on the formerly anticipated play pattern, now abandoned, the ball passed over his head and sailed into the goal inches below the cross bar. It was one of those stunningly unexpected moments of glory that draws us to sports events again and again, or really to any event of human achievement. You can imagine the effect on our team’s crowd. Xavier’s parents were sitting behind me, and we all erupted in loud cheers of joy and excitement and turned to exchange high fives with Dad and Mom. It was absolutely electric. (Our team won a couple of minutes later by a score of 1-0.) Not only does an incident of successful play like this generate excitement in an athletic contest, it also confers larger gifts: Confidence, affirmation of hard effort, confirmation of ability, hope for future effort, courage to risk. God’s basileia is something like this shot-on-goal and the electric response it evoked. Jesus’ parables are charged with this kind of spiritual electric, this poised energy, ready to break through. We know we have really heard a parable when in hearing it we feel something like this spiritual charge sparking in us, or irrupting. It may not be so dramatic, but something will move in us, will shift, drawing us out of our inertness to spring into basileia movement, or perhaps to the contrary, send us fleeing from basileia into the safe room of our cultural comfort zone. Eschatological Character of Parables. I have come to understand the parables, at least some of the key ones, as eschatological, but not in the conventional sense of eschaton as events that unfold at the end of history. Eschatology has to do with an ending of world, not just the end of this world. We did not experience the end of this world on 9/11, but we did experience an ending of a world. A world ends for an individual when a beloved life partner dies and a new configuration of life emerges. A world ends when the manufacturing sector picks up and moves from the U.S. to China and leaves communities all over the country faced with the need to reconfigure their life. Will someone, some group, attempt a spiritually charged, socioeconomic shot-on-goal at an individual level, a community level, a corporate level, and risk the possibilities in transformation? What is peculiar about the eschatological in Jesus’ parables is that they have to do with the breakthrough of justice, i.e. fulfillment of God’s vision for human life, in this world. The breakthrough of basileia justice can bring about an ending of a world, or it can seize the opportunity in any world-ending experience, no matter how un-basileia-like the cause, to fashion new patterns of justice. The breakthrough of justice may occur at any time, not just at the “end times.” Thus, the eschatological dynamic in Jesus’ parables represents the sense of culmination that fulfills God’s purpose and character in a given historical moment, not just eschatological as chronologically final. A Parable Example: The Absentee Landlord (a.k.a. The Wicked Tenants). Read Mark 12:1-8 (and this parable’s other iterations in Matthew 21-33-41 and Luke 20:9-18), and read Thomas 65. Notice a couple of things about these iterations of the parable: (1) In Mark, as in Matthew and Luke, the gospel writer provides framing comments that are not intrinsic to the parable and likely were not attached to it when Jesus originally performed it. In Mark it is preceded by the question of Jesus’ authority and followed by interpretive commentary that some scholars believe is supplied by the gospel writer. The Gospel of Thomas, on the other hand, leaves the parable bare, simply tells it, without application, or framing, or interpretation. (2) The synoptic gospelers seem to be performing the parable in a particular historical setting that orients its meaning to the needs of the faith community in a very different context than that in which Christ originally told it. This can accrue added layers of meaning to the parable that put it at one remove, or more, from Jesus’ original thrust. So, how might the parable be experienced in its own right? A New Image. Charles McCollough points out three levels of violence in this parable: Structural, rebellious, reactionary (Visualized on 3-sided relief sculpture in The Art of Parables, Copper House, 2008) First scene: Landlord establishes his vineyard as cash crop, with sharecrop renters doing the work. Such a landlord was not a popular figure in a land where God was the owner and had made allotments to all with the expectation of an egalitarian, sustainable economy providing adequate benefits for all. However, now peasant land allotments were being confiscated to “join house to house, and add land to land.” (as in an earlier period – Isaiah 5) This was part of the design of the Roman imperial economy, the purpose of which was to form large estates for growing cash crops aimed at transferring the land’s wealth to an absentee, privileged elite. This system made the rich richer and more powerful and made the poor poorer and more disenfranchised. The real estate developments, marketing plans, and investment instruments for accruing and concentrating wealth were legal, if not just. What appears to be a resentful and even angry attitude by the tenant workers is not out of place. Second scene: Not surprisingly, the tenant workers’ resentment flares into the rebellious violence that is natural for tenants who seek to regain their land. They beat the landlord’s agents, including his son, while the distant landlord is awaiting their contribution to his wealth. Third scene: The third level of violence is the reactionary violence – the authorities are called in to crush the rebellion. This third level of violence exposes the cruelty of the first level, thus identifying the very foundation of the Roman empire and exposing the dominant consciousness that seeks to justify collaboration with this system among the subject peoples. Too often, the oppressed who react with violence are made the scapegoats and the villains. The landlord in his collaboration with an unjust system and its powers of enforcement is the villain in McCollough’s reading. This reading would suggest that Jesus was not telling this parable against the Jews’ religion; he was telling it against the injustice of collaboration in an economic system that produced widespread poverty and powerlessness, while generating obscenely concentrated wealth and power. The point was not God’s intention to transfer the keys of heaven from the Jews to the Christians, or to remove his blessing from the old religion and confer it upon a new religion. The parable’s point was to transform the commonly accepted reliance on the various forms of violence and to ignite a passionate sense of justice that would put the powers that be on notice that they’d better get with the basileia program, or they would find themselves under siege by God himself. And if they think Rome’s exactions on behalf of power and privilege are something, wait till they encounter God’s exactions on behalf of compassionate justice with the poor and powerless. All three synoptic writers (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) allegorize this parable to interpret it to the early church, making it a parable of next-worldly salvation: Landowner God sends his collection agents the prophets and his son Jesus Savior who are beaten and/or killed by the unfaithful Jewish leaders/tenants. Hence, God rejects the Jews and creates a new religion around their rejected Savior, who saves, by the way, by means of his passion, death, and resurrection, not by “the whole course of his obedience” (Calvin’s phrase), and thus certainly not by his passionate pursuit of compassionate justice in this life for all. This churchy reading of the parable is too oriented to ecclesiastical interests – to institutional religion’s interests – and not enough to God’s interest in human justice. Perhaps God is more interested in conversion from self-aggrandizement to justice than from non-religious to religious, speaking of superficial religiousness, of course. The Gospel of Thomas’s version of this parable gives it a non-allegorical cast, tells the story without interpretive overlays, suggesting that it may be closer to what Jesus actually told. Thomas concludes with the exhortation, “Now, you’d be well advised to listen up!” Salvation Reading, or Jubilee Reading? While a salvation-history reading tends to give rise to allegory regarding the church’s replacement of Israel as “God’s people” bearing the gift of salvation for the next life, a Jubilee reading would concentrate the parable’s conclusion something like this: “This just goes to show why it is necessary to enact the Year of Jubilee every fifty or so years. Sinful human nature requires that the social, political, and economic arrangements be re-shuffled and re-fashioned on some orderly pattern to assure egalitarian participation in the community’s life and access to the community’s resources. This can also deepen the community’s draft upon and its practice of compassionate justice. Without such an orderly reconfiguration of society, God’s beloved human family will suffer and atrophy, ultimately generating social conflict and repression.” (This author’s summation) Naming the Parable. Alternative titles encountered in parable research include these: The Wicked Tenants (most frequent in one form or another); A Man Planted a Vineyard (Scott); in J. B. Phillips’ translation there is simply the heading: Jesus tells a story with a pointed application; The Wicked Landlord (Wm. Herzog); McCollough’s title: The Absentee Landlord (Matthew’s term is oikodespotes: household despot). What if we named the parable in 21st century terms, following Herzog’s and McCollough’s lead? For example, “The Inaccessible Higher-ups.” Even “Absentee Landlord” works as a modern phrasing, as in urban absentee landlord and the pattern of exploitation that often goes with this role. (You might think of Paul McKee, who is advancing a vast North St. Louis development proposal. However, the point is not really the person; it is the system that is skewed to benefit wealth and power at the expense of the poor and disenfranchised. McKee may be as good a person as any of us at this table, but has simply decided to use what some would consider a deeply flawed urban sociopolitical system to further enrich himself and perhaps do some good on the side, as he defines it, for the city at the same time.) You might think of other titles. Here’s the thing about naming: The power of naming is the intellectual power to assume the prerogative of seeing things in a fresh and different way. It is the freedom to re-think and re-frame and re-orient perspective on a given reality. The power of naming something is the power of insight. It allows us to read the parable freely, without the inherited title’s bias. The power of naming is the power to re-calibrate and re-configure, opening up new possibilities for insight. Then, there is also the power to name: The gospel writer, and not even Jesus, for that matter, as far as we know, titled Jesus’ parables. This was done later, perhaps much later. The power to name is the power to bind the mind, or to liberate it. It is the power to set the course of a narrative’s meaning. Consider the power to name that devolved upon the President of the U. S. on Sept. 11, 2001. What might the outcome have been, if, when he stood before the nation to galvanize our response, the narrative had been named “The Campaign to Reconcile with Alienated Peoples,” instead of naming it “The Global War on Terror?” And what if commensurate resources, equivalent to those applied to “The Global War on Terror,” had been deployed? We had been reinforcing for a long, long time the “war” metaphor as a way of naming our concerns, organizing them into a narrative: The War on Poverty, The War on Crime, The War on Drugs, The War on Violence(!?) Is it any wonder that we are moving more and more deeply into a mindset of all war all the time? That we find ourselves mired in this metaphor, this narrative of “war,” even in our domestic politics? A Modern Parable. Finally, perhaps one way of discerning the level of one’s understanding of a parable is to write a contemporary, twenty-first century version and then compare. Here, in conclusion, is my attempt: A Wall Street banker designed a credit card and saturated the market with tantalizing promotional offers. Enticing short term incentives drew the poor and economically marginal into this system, along with the rich who enjoyed much more favorable terms. Material standards of living improved markedly as the poor acquired many things that made their lives easier and more enjoyable: Washers and dryers, microwaves, flat screen TVs, Bibles, computers, I-phones, home furnishings – all the things that fulfill the American Dream, making the formerly powerless feel that they were finally driving their own narrative. Minimum Required Payments were dutifully paid each month. The Wall Street banker thrived. Then, as promotional rates expired, elevated normal rates were imposed. The required minimum payments increased and penalties were exacted for late payment and for surpassing the credit limit. Interest rates were raised further to reflect a now-blemished payment record. Penalties piled upon penalties. Low-income consumers were less and less able to remit even minimum payments. The banker’s profits began to shrink. The banker sent bill collectors to pressure, harass, and frighten consumers into using their food and prescription and mortgage money to pay their credit card bills. The bill collectors employed outrageous and unethical methods. The consumers found themselves sinking in a bog of debt, drowning in the American Dream. Finally, the low-income consumers banded together and chased the bill collectors out of town. The banker appealed to the courts, who sent out sheriff’s deputies with subpoenas. The consumers stripped the deputies of their uniforms and sent them packing in their undies, while tossing the subpoenas in the trash. Finally, the company’s owner sent his son, the First Vice President for Community Relations, offering reward points for consumers who could be cajoled into some minimal form of compliance. The banker told himself, “They will be impressed by my exceptionally smooth and persuasive son, and they’ll be happy to get these consumer heaven goodies, and he will bring a great harvest of additional profits.” But the consumers said, “This is the banker’s only heir; come, let us strike terror into the banker’s heart by brutally killing this son of his. Then, the banker will know we mean business. He will be so intimidated that he will retreat into his secure, high-rise condo, and give up on trying to get us to pay. And then, all these goodies of the American Dream will be ours, debt-free!” So, they seized the banker’s son, beat him brutally and killed him, and threw his body out of the branch office into the street, so that all the world could see what happens when the powerful and rich elite overreach in their exploitations. Anyone with two ears had better listen! The point? Not that the authorities should be duly respected. Not that the absentee banker should prevail. Not that the son will redeem and redirect corporate heaven’s blessings. Not that the rebellious tenants should be condoned in their misbehavior. The point is that the whole system is screwed up and requires a basileia transformation. So, what, asks this narrative, are we going to do to live into these basileia forces now that history has pitched us this fast-breaking curve ball? The parable’s message is that it’s time to wake up and pay attention, because the whole house of cards is about to crumble (which it did, after Jesus’ death, forty years later), and it is in this crumbling that the advent of God, reversing everything, calls us to action on behalf of basileia. How are we going to participate in God’s incarnating the basileia here and now, in this world? When we live into Jesus’ Narrative of the Absentee Landlord, do sparks fly? They did when Jesus told it, according to the canonical gospels, because “…they wanted to arrest him.” This essay was presented at Chi Alpha, an ecumenical ministers group, meeting for dialogue and mutual encouragement since its founding in St. Louis in 1884. A different member each session (semi-monthly October through May) presents a paper for reflection and discussion. Administrator Account Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:41:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:85 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/86/They-Shall-Look-Upon-Her-Whom-They-Have-Pierced-Violence-against-Women-Ancient-and-Modern.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=216&ModuleID=743&ArticleID=86 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=86&PortalID=0&TabID=216 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/86/They-Shall-Look-Upon-Her-Whom-They-Have-Pierced-Violence-against-Women-Ancient-and-Modern.aspx Carol F. Williams Carol Williams is a retired physician who has studied at Aquinas Institute since 1998. Forty years’ experience delivering health care to women and young girls impresses one with how frequently intimate violence is a part of their lives.  The statistics are impressive:  one in six American women has experienced rape or attempted rape; nine of ten rape victims are female.  Fifteen per cent of sexual assault victims are under age twelve. (RAINN)   While physical assault that causes severe enough injury to bring a woman or child to medical attention is the type that is officially reported, less obvious, more subtle forms are frequent and most often remain hidden within the collusive silence of a family or culture.  Beatings that avoid the face and leave marks on the body normally covered by clothing are not uncommon.  Verbal abuse that demeans the girl or woman frequently accompany slapping and beating.  Physical abuse affects 4% to 8% of pregnant women. (Burnett, Adler)  Some would say that the failure of a male partner to exercise sexual continence in the face of increasingly severe, life-threatening medical complications with repeated pregnancies of the mother is a form of violence, as is the abortion forced upon the woman by her partner under threat to her life or to the lives of her children.  Domestic violence affects 30% of women in the United States, very likely a conservative estimate, given that many episodes go unreported.  A justice system that traditionally has tended to down-play both children’s and women’s testimony about abuse and violence compounds the difficulty they have had in obtaining justice. The rape victim suffers not only the horror and pain of the rape itself, but also the indignity of the rape exam in the emergency room, followed by the skepticism often heaped upon her by investigating police and the defense attorney if her case goes to trial. All of this is compounded by the sometimes desultory, incomplete processing of specimens in police laboratories.  There is the further horror of discovering she is pregnant from the assault, or worse, that she has contracted the HIV virus. Rape as a weapon of war is as old as wars themselves, continuing into the recent past and today in places like Bosnia, Sudan, Rwanda, and The Congo where rape is an integral part of genocide.  Western armies, including the U.S., have their own dismal history of raping civilians in places like Vietnam, as well as their comrades in arms.  The “comfort camps” visited upon the conquered people of Korea, China, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asia countries by the Japanese in World War II are well documented. The barbaric custom of female circumcision continues virtually unabated in eastern and central African nations, reinforced by a culture that sees such mutilations as guarantee of marriageability for the young girls.  Young Catholic nuns in one African country are forced by priests to have sexual intercourse in order to obtain supplies for the parish school; when they become pregnant, the priest takes them to the abortionist; alternatively the nuns’ order ejects them to an uncertain future on the streets where they are shunned by their families.  The preference in China for male children feeds the killing of unborn and born female babies.  The trafficking of women and young girls for the sex trade goes on unabated in both eastern and western hemispheres. Raping of children including infants has increased 400% since the end of Apartheid in 1994 in South Africa.  Infants are gang raped to the point of having to have extensive reconstructive surgery to repair their genital areas; many die from their injuries. (Meier) Violence against women and girls is global, endemic, and epidemic. Habakkuk’s cry rings out:  “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?  Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?  Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble?  Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.  So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.  The wicked surround the righteous – therefore judgment comes forth perverted.” (Hb 1:2-4 NRSV)   Habakkuk’s cry might well be that of Woman who down through the ages has suffered the horrors of rape and genocide, of status as chattel with no rights independent of man, unseen and unheard in the conversations of life.  Are the ancient prophets aware of her as a person? The prophets spoke their oracles against the backdrop of the Sinaitic Decalogue that regarded the wife as property of her husband (Ex 22:21-24) and as source of ritual impurity when menstruating. (Ex 19:15)   Further, the father was enjoined not to “profane [his] daughter by making her a prostitute.” (Lv 19:29)  The cost of causing a pregnant woman to miscarry was to be determined by her husband, and if injury more than miscarriage occurred, it was to be “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” (Ex 20:17; 21:22-25)  All decisions about recompense were in the hands of men without any input or opinion from the woman.  One of the more blatant imbalances of the ancient law code is in Numbers 5:11-31 where the woman is forced to take the blame for a man’s jealousy by drinking holy water mixed with dirt from the floor of the tabernacle; if she gets sick, she is guilty of adultery and if she does not get sick, she is innocent.  The curious episode of Miriam’s leprosy as punishment for questioning the sole authority of Moses in leading the people (both she and Aaron had questioned it) is an example of the common mechanism of laying the entire blame at the feet of the woman for something that is a joint affair.  Women as spoils of war (women of Shiloh, Jgs 21), as sacrifices to satisfy a vow (Jephtha’s daughter, Jgs 11), or to protect guests from demands of a mob (Lot’s daughters, Gn 19:1-11) are other examples of a general blindness to injustices visited on woman in Israelite culture. It is in this atmosphere of suspicion and of general disregard for woman as a full person that the prophets developed whatever attitudes they had toward her. Amos inveighed against the exploitation and injustice suffered by the masses of poor people during the period of peace and prosperity experienced by Israel prior to the final Assyrian invasion, but seemed oblivious to the particular plight of women who undoubtedly comprised the majority of the poor.  Further, while other Biblical writers are particularly concerned about the precarious circumstances of widows (Ex 22:22-24, Pr 15:25, Is 1:17, Ps 94:6, Gn 38:1-30), Amos is silent about them.  One also has to wonder about his condemnation of wealthy women (“cows of Bashan,” Am 4:1-2).  As Judith Sanderson points out, only gradually is widespread domestic violence across all economic classes beginning to be recognized in the modern world.  The powerlessness of women in domestic violence is rarely acknowledged.  It seems unlikely that it did not exist in ancient Israel, even among the “cows of Bashan.”   That said, Amos does hold women to the same ethical standard as men in their treatment of the exploited poor – the prophet denounces wealthy women because they use their positions of borrowed power and wealth to crush the poor.  An ethical demand that applies equally to the genders is present also in Hosea 4:14, where Yahweh does not punish whoring daughters and adulterous daughters-in-law because the men are committing the same sins; God does not punish one while the other goes scot free (but remember leprous Miriam).  Sanderson also points out that Amos does not consider the effect of war and its atrocities on particular women.  What happened to the pregnant women whose bellies were ripped open and whose children were killed before their very eyes?  What was the effect on Amaziah’s wife when she was forced into prostitution? (Sanderson, 218-221) Grace Immerson notes that against the backdrop of the patriarchal culture of ancient Israel, woman’s voice is mediated through that of an injured male, if it is heard at all.  The characterization of Israel as a whore or otherwise faithless woman reinforces the image of woman as evil against the image of the ideal male. (Immerson, 677)   Only one woman is mentioned as a leader of Israel by the prophets:  Miriam, who along with her brothers Moses and Aaron, led the people of Israel out of Egypt through the wilderness and to the threshold of the Promised Land. (Mi 6:4)   One comes away from a cursory survey of the Hebrew prophets with the sense that there was a general tendency to lay the burden of Israel’s guilt for its sins on the shoulders of woman.  Widows were the only women who should be protected from exploitation; even children rarely warranted particular protection if the family fell into debt and the father sold them into slavery.  Is there no end to the relational nightmare between men and women in a patriarchal society? God, answer the cries of our hearts, for our fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons do not hear!  Is your answer still the one you gave to Habakkuk?  “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.  For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie.  If it seems to tarry, wait for it: it will surely come, it will not delay.” (Hb 2:2b-3 NRSV)  What is the vision that God asks Habakkuk (and us) to wait for as it relates to violence against women and children?  Despite the patriarchal tone of prophetic writings, are we missing God’s quiet voice calling us to change how we relate to one another as male and female? I imagine desert places as generally quiet but barren places, harsh landscapes stripped of obvious signs of life.  In the prophet Hosea we hear Yahweh’s gentle invitation to Israel to begin their relationship all over again in the wilderness where their relationship first began.  Listen as Yahweh woos Israel:  “Therefore, I will now allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her…There she shall respond as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.  On that day, says the Lord, you will call me, ’Ishi’ (my man), and no longer will you call me, ‘Baali’ (my master, husband, owner, idol).” (Ho 2:14, 15b-16 NRSV)  This is language of courtship, of one person seeking union with a beloved other.  It assumes that both persons are of “marriageable age,” free to make a mature decision to enter into a covenant of mutual vulnerability and intimacy, of shared life in which an exploitative power differential does not exist, in which neither person is slavishly subservient to the other, a life of mutuality, of respect and dignity in which the operative principle is love.  I hear in this passage Hosea yearning for such a relationship with his wife.  He is no longer ranting at her; his anger is stripped away.  “Let’s go back to the beginning, into the silent stretches of the desert where we will not be distracted by the noise and violence of the world.”  Where are the opportunities for such new beginnings in male-female relationships in today’s world? Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearing, South Africa, 1996:  A white police officer is finishing his recital of what he had done to the son and husband of the older black woman sitting before him.  He had dragged her son, a non-violent protestor of Apartheid, out of the village, tortured him, killed him, and tossed his body into the river.  The officer came back later, took her husband away to an isolated area, doused him with gasoline, and set him afire.  He finished speaking, and the woman was asked what should be the officer’s punishment.  “Take me to where you burned my husband to death so I can gather his ashes and give him a decent burial,” she said.  “Then I want you to spend one week per month in my village, in my house, so I can mother you.” Rwanda, 2004:  A woman sweeps the dirt floor of her hovel.  Outside some ten year-old boys play kickball in the dusty yard.  The woman speaks:  “Every time I look at him, I remember – my husband and children hacked to pieces, the rapes over and over and over.  Six weeks later I realize I am pregnant.  I think about going to the abortionist…but I don’t go.  Those of my village who survive shun me because I carried the child of a Hutu.  There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t remember that day.  My rapists were Hutus; I am Tutsi.  He’s (nodding toward the outside) Hutu and Tutsi.”  She pauses.  “He’s Rwandan.” Nagasaki, August 9, 1945:  All is quiet now, unnaturally so, the mushroom cloud dissipated, the firestorm playing out its ruin as it spreads out from the center of Ground Zero – the Catholic Urakami Cathedral.  Only Mary remains, remnant of a statue that stood on the altar, her eyes charred hollows gazing out on a vaporized scene, her scream of horror stunned into silence.  Seventy-five thousand of her people are gone; more will die in the years to come of illnesses due to the effects of radiation.  A woman is three months pregnant at the time and will give birth to a baby boy who will become Archbishop Joseph Mitsuaki Takami of Nagasaki.  In May, 2010, he will travel to New York City, bringing Mary with him, to plead for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.” Oh, my people, God is calling us to those places, those desert places where silence reigns after the total annihilation of all that is human, after human beings have done the worst that they can to other human beings and to the earth that is their home and source of sustenance.  There in the vaporized silence, in the ashes and blood of genocide, sexual and racial oppression, God is calling us to start all over again in our covenanted relationship with God and with each other.  Listen…listen…listen…and hear the quiet voice of God nudging open our hearts and minds to hope for redemption.  Hear God in the South African woman when she invites the white police officer to accept her remothering of him.  Hear the hope in the voice of the Rwandan mother for a different future in Rwanda through the sons and daughters conceived in the slaughter house of 1994.  And hear Mary of Nagasaki pleading for a world free of nuclear weapons through her son Archbishop Takami.  It is a call to relearn what it is to be human, to remember the devastation that comes when we forget that true power does not reside in crushing the other, whether male or female, black, white, or yellow.  It is a call to transcend our wounds and learn how to forgive and to help the aggressor learn compassion and respect for the other.  It is a call for a new creation wherein male and female work together to bring God’s vision of universal peace to reality. They shall look on her whom they have pierced – by rape, by murder of husband and children, and the myriad other ways woman is pierced by her experience in a violent world.  Do you see Mary at the foot of the cross?  Do you hear her voice?  Do you hear Yahweh’s voice in hers?  Listen, my people!  She is calling you to lay aside your sense of shame at what you have done to her in so many ways and learn what it is to be the child from her womb, to be a child of God.  She is calling you, sons and daughters, to learn how to trust one another in mutual vulnerability, abolishing the power differential that makes one gender slavishly subservient to the other. “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.” Sources Consulted Burnett, Lynn Barkley, M.D., Ed.D., LLB(c) and Jonathan Adler, M.D.  “Domestic Violence.”  eMedicine (August 18, 2009). Donohoe, Martin, M.D., FACP.  “War, Rape, and Genocide:  Never Again?”  Medscape Ob/Gyn & Women’s Health, October 18, 2004. Fahrenthold, David A.  “Statistics Show Drop in U.S. Rape Cases.”  Washington Post, June 19, 2006. Green, Llezlie L.  “Sexual Violence and Genocide Against Tutsi Women,” excerpts from “Propaganda and Sexual Violence in the Rwandan Genocide:  an Argument for Intersectionality in International Law.” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 33 (Summer 2002):  733-776, 733-755. Immerson, Grace I.  “Hosea.”  In Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, edited by James D.G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson, 676-685.  Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans, 2003. Kykelhahn, Tracey, Allen J. Beck, Ph.D., and Thomas H. Cohen, Ph.D.  “Characteristics of Suspected Human Trafficking Incidents, 2007-2008.”  Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report (January 2009). “’Mary the Survivor’ of Nagasaki Visits Nonproliferation Conference.”  In “Signs of the Times:  Nuclear Disarmament.”  America, May 17, 2010, 6-7. Medline Abstracts.  “Violence Against Women During Pregnancy – Update 2005.”  (August 11, 2005). Meier, Eileen, M.P.H, J.D., R.N.  “Child Rape in South Africa.”  Pediatric Nursing (2002:28). Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 211th General Assembly.  “Background:  Resolution on the International Criminal Court (June 1999). Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN).  Web Page accessed October 10, 2010. Sanderson, Judith E.  “Amos.”  In Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringer, 218-223.  Westminster:  John Knox, 1998. ______.  “Micah.”  In Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringer, 229-231.  Westminster:  John Knox, 1998. World Health Organization.  “Female Genital Mutilation.”  Fact sheet 241 (February 2010). SuperUser Account Wed, 05 Jan 2011 20:59:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:86 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/87/The-Place-of-Imagination-in-the-Religiously-Differentiated-Consciousness.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=216&ModuleID=743&ArticleID=87 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=87&PortalID=0&TabID=216 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/87/The-Place-of-Imagination-in-the-Religiously-Differentiated-Consciousness.aspx Carla Mae Streeter, OP Aquinas Institute of Theology From the Interdisciplinary Conference Collective Memory in St. Louis: Recollection, Forgetting and the Common Good, “Memory and the Religious Imagination” Fontbonne University and the St. Louis History Museum October 21-23, 2010 Shaping an Adequate Human Anthropology What is imagination? If we are to answer this question, it will be helpful to provide an adequate human anthropology as a context for our answer. The popular trilogy is body, mind, and spirit. But is this adequate? Where are the emotions in such a triad? Are they included in body, or perhaps they a part of what we call mind. More, where would we locate the imagination in this familiar trilogy? Is the imagination part of what we call body, or is it better located in what we refer to as mind. And precisely what do we mean by the human spirit? Is it a natural part of the human being or some kind of ghost in a machine? The lack of clarity as to what we mean by the words we use, I suggest, comes from a lack of clarity of what we understand by the words we use. The ambiguity of the terms body, mind, and spirit present a real block to understanding the dynamic roles of human emotion and the imagination in the full creative function of the human being as we struggle today to develop full human potential for the progress of human culture. Do we have an alternative? Is there a way of clarifying both what we say and what we understand what we say to mean? I suggest there is. First, we will clarify the words we use. I suggest the terms organism, psyche, and spirit might be clearer and more inclusive. [1] By organism we will mean all the physical systems that belong to our embodiment: circulatory, digestive, auditory, visual, neurological, respiratory, etc. By psyche we will include our capacity to image, whether in dreams, fantasy, or in the complex linking of images we call imagination, and the human emotions. Aristotle and Aquinas differentiate what we will call the spontaneous emotions (love, hate, desire, aversion, joy, sorrow) and the considered emotions (courage, fear, hope, despair, and anger). Spontaneous emotions are much more rooted in feelings and bodily sensations. Considered emotions are influenced more by thought. Finally, by the human spirit we will specify those operations that distinguish the human from the animal realm. We experience wonder and awe. We question for understanding and meaning. We judge the correctness or lack of truth in the factual data given us. And finally, we evaluate, choose, decide, and act. These functions are performed by an attentive consciousness that can be aware of itself doing each of these operations.[2] With this new anthropological framework we have a possible new way of thinking about the soul. Operationally the soul would be our psychic energy and our human spiritual functions. Body would then be psychic energy and the organism with its systems. This enables us to locate both imagination and emotion. Both are part of our psychic reality. They are differentiations of psychic energy in a distinctive human soul, and both play key roles in cognition and decision. Imagination and emotion are the stuff of therapy, for the psyche can become as wounded as our organism can become ill because of disease. A strategic question for our purposes is what relationship imagination and emotion might have to the spiritual operations of attentiveness to experience, intelligent inquiry, reasonable judgment of fact, and responsible decision making. The Religiously Differentiated Consciousness What is consciousness? Perhaps the simplest reply is human awareness. It is psychic energy become aware of itself. When we are conscious we are aware that we are aware. We can be conscious that we are questioning. We can be aware that we have reached a judgment of fact, true or false. We can be conscious of making a deliberate choice and carrying it out. This is intentionality. We can intend these operations or not intend them. We are conscious to some extent even when we dream. It is only in dreamless sleep that consciousness rests. When we attend to ourselves experiencing, questioning, judging, and deciding, we are fully conscious. When we attend to the Holy, we experience awe. Contemplative wonder is evidence of the spiritual nature of the human being. The consciousness is religiously differentiated when it experiences the Holy. It might question that experience. It might reach the judgment that “God has moved in my life!” It might prompt a change in behavior or life direction. This experience will be stored in the psyche, imprinted on its feeling memory, and either lapse into forgetfulness or become the motivation for my new choices and behavior. Religious experience thus changes the psyche; it opens consciousness to what is beyond the human, beyond matter, to that which is transcendent; it expands what experiences or images the psyche holds. What is stored in the psychic memory can be called up later or repressed. What is stored can influence how we do self-reflexion, or refuse to do it. The experience of the Holy, stored in the imagination of the psychic memory can greatly influence the levels of operations of the human spirit: what we admit into attentive awareness, what we allow to be questioned, whether our judgment is reasonable, and whether our decisions are responsible. Where does intentionality come from? What is its source? I suggest that it is the very life force of the soul. It is released from the human love energy of the parents in conception, and this love energy is powered by the very Personified Love we call God, whether acknowledged by the parents or not. Life comes from the One Who Is. Materially we are made from star dust. Spiritually we are spun out of Love. This origin of the life force flows from the very ground of the soul, the center, core, apex,[3] name it as you will. When the human becomes aware that it has been grasped by the Holy (Rom. 5:5) the relationship that is grace begins. The person is religiously in-love. The person is different. The Place and Role of Imagination Our capacity to image and imagine is thus different. The Holy and our relationship to this Holy One is now in our conscious horizon. The religiously differentiated consciousness is a seedbed for images no longer limited by material boundaries. The new limit is the Transcendent. The imagination has become the fertile ground of possibility no longer held captive to empirical measurement. Its measurement is what is appropriate to a new relationship of love. The law, be it of physics, the body politic, or social mores, is respected but can no longer limit possibility. Like some transparent membrane, the imagination is free to draw images from the past, from present natural and human science, from poetry, art and literature, from history and economics, and from the richness of revelation and faith to spin future possibility. Like a drunk on a binge, the soul dances with the intoxication of one who is in love and this “condition” will deal with the human woundedness and blockage that stunts cognition. But, you will say, what about our biases, our propensity to ruin everything? This is where we need to honestly face the particular bias that cripples the imagination and thus severely limits attentiveness and intelligent questioning. This bias we will call dramatic because it infects us in the drama of life as we encounter crisis, hurt, and pain.[4] Therapists know the scene well. A client cannot entertain certain images because they are like asking the consciousness to touch a hot stove. The images are buried, repressed in the psyche, and so “shoot from the bushes” unbidden and without permission. The result is a form of emotional crippling, the avoidance of images that bring memories of violation, hurt, or pain. The term scotosis refers to a blockage, a covering over, or we might say a psychic callous.[5] To touch it is simply too painful. A bit of reflection brings home the clear understanding that images that are too painful to entertain will never become fertile images for new ideas. The cognition is thus crippled at its earliest stage, the forming of the image or phantasm needed for fresh thought. In the area of the pain, the thinker is effectively shut down. This bias needs to be dissolved. Dramatic bias dissolves under the skillful care of the therapist who will bring up the image from the recesses of the psyche and empty it of its toxicity. The result will often be tears of release. Being grasped by religious love can also dissolve this psychic blockage in the intimacy of contemplative prayer. The result again will often be tears of release. Few if any philosophical or theological thinkers address this issue. It is clear that left unaddressed, dramatic bias can abort clear and creative thinking related to the topic that has caused the bias in the first place. The subconscious memory then becomes the tomb of the imagination, binding it in the depths of repression and making it sterile in the initiation of creative thought. It is the imagination, free from bondage, that offers the fertile possibility for creating a new understanding and a new future. It is the unbiased imagination, unrepressed, that can draw from memory’s storehouse the stuff to dream possibility. As the feeder of our cognition, the imagination is the creative architect of our human future. Bibliography Crowe, Frederick E. “The Role of a Catholic University in the Modern World”-An Update. Communicanting a Dangerous Memory, Soundings in Political Theology. Fred Lawrence, ed. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1987: 1-16. Doran, Robert M. “Psychic Conversion,” The Thomist, 1977: 200-236. —– “Soul Making and the Opposites,” Psychic Conversion and Theological Foundations. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981: 137-154 (especially 148 ff.). —– Subject and Psyche. Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 1994 (Second Edition): 197-228. Lonergan, Bernard J. F.  Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, eds., 1992: 210-219. —– Method in Theology. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1971. —– Collection. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, eds., 1988. —– A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J., William F. J. Ryan, S.J. and Bernard J. Tyrrell, S.J., eds. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974. Schepers, Maurice. “Discovery of Mind and Psyche in the Development of the Theologian: The Conjunction of Intellectual and Affective Conversions,” African Christian Studies 7:3 (September 1991): 36-45. [1] This triad was suggested to me by the Jungian and Lonergan scholar Robert M. Doran, S.J. of Marquette University. [2] The differentiation of consciousness into distinct levels of operation that can be empirically verified by self-observation is the unique contribution of economist, philosopher, theologian Bernard Lonergan, S.J. Insight provides an introduction to only the first three levels dealing with cognition. The fourth level of evaluative judgment and decision appears in Method, chapter one, and the impact of religious love can be found in chapter four. [3] This term is used by Lonergan in chapter four of Method (107) and his explanation of it is “the peak of the soul.” [4] Lonergan treats dramatic bias with more length in Insight than the other three biases (individual egoism, group egoism, and general or theoretical bias). Establishing its capacity to shut down inquiry, he then drops it. It took Doran to approach him on this, only to be told, “You do it; I was interested in cognition.” So the treatment of dramatic bias through psychic conversion became a focus for Doran’s work as is clear from the entries in the bibliography below. [5] The term scotosis appears several times in Insight (e.g.215). Lonergan describes it as an unconscious process, a blind spot, a censorship that  “governs the emergence of psychic contents.” SuperUser Account Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:05:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:87 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/88/A-Tale-of-Two-Killings.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=216&ModuleID=743&ArticleID=88 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=88&PortalID=0&TabID=216 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/88/A-Tale-of-Two-Killings.aspx Two disparate cases have more in common than we might think Charles E. Bouchard, O.P. and Richard Peddicord, O.P. At first glance the death of an unborn child at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix and the death of convicted criminal Ronnie Lee Gardner in Draper, Utah, appear to have little in common. Yet analysis shows that both of them are governed by the Church’s teaching on the direct taking of innocent human life, by the technical but widely used principle of double effect, and by the principle of moral cooperation. It is not clear that these principles were applied equally in both cases. In Phoenix, the life of the mother was threatened by a rare but dangerous condition that made it impossible for her to carry the child to term; attempting to do so would almost certainly have resulted in the death of both mother and child. The hospital’s ethics committee allowed the termination of the pregnancy. They apparently did so because they judged the case to be analogous to others, like uterine cancer or ectopic pregnancy in which therapeutic actions intended to cure the pathology have the unintended but inseparable effect of the death of the unborn child. Some moral theologians analyzed the Phoenix case and agreed that it was an indirect and therefore permissible abortion. Bishop Thomas Olmstead of of Phoenix, however, saw the case differently. In his analysis, the mother’s situation did not meet the criteria of the principle of double effect. He judged the abortion to be an intentional choice to save the mother’s life by means of the child’s death. Because in his judgment this constituted a direct abortion, he declared that everyone else involved in the decision or the procedure itself had incurred excommunication. Utah: Capital Punishment, Innocence and Double Effect There is no doubt that Ronnie Lee Gardner’s killing was direct. He was strapped to the wall, a target was sewn to his chest over his heart, and five executioners (four of whom had real bullets in their rifles) fired on cue. Gardner was dead within moments. The popular analysis of this case is a variation on an “eye for an eye.” Gardner had committed robbery and two murders. He was a convicted criminal and had to to pay for his crime by death. This popular view is not consistent with Church tradition because Gardner’s death was also governed by the church’s teaching that killing an innocent person is never permissible. This is the difficult part. Gardner was both morally and legally guilty, but in the Church’s teaching on direct killing, it is not moral innocence that is at stake. Killing another person, legally guilty or not, is morally tolerable only if it is an unintended, secondary effect of some form of self-defense. Latin etymology is instructive in this matter. The English word “innocent” comes from the Latin prefix “in” (in English, “not”) and the Latin “nocere” (in English “to harm or injure”). The Church’s teaching, reaffirmed by John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, has always been that the direct killing of the innocent is the epitome of moral evil. But who is innocent? It is simply someone who, in the here and now, is not posing a threat to anyone. In the Church’s teaching, “innocent” does not refer to moral innocence. Even though it sounds like a contradiction, someone who is guilty of murder and is being held in a maximum security prison qualifies as innocent. His or her death may not be the object of another’s intention. The simplest case is someone who is the victim of assault or armed robbery. If the victim judges that her life is in danger, she can take whatever steps are necessary to stop the aggressor and preserve her own life. But her intention can only go so far as self-defense. She can never directly intend death, even of someone who threatens her life. The moral object – the end toward which the action is directed – must, in this case, be defense of self or others. If the victim shoots and aims for an assailant’s shoulder or knee, but kills him in the process, her action should be judged as indirect (that is, foreseen but unintended) killing. However, if she tortures or strangles a burglar, it is impossible that the intention was simply self-defense. Even courts recognize this when they characterize a killing to be first degree murder, second degree murder, manslaughter or self-defense. It is all about intention. We find the same double effect reasoning in the just war theory. A nation may not initiate war except to protect itself (vengeance as an acceptable motive for war was ruled out long ago). An advancing army may not slaughter a village in order to secure a position, but may take whatever steps are necessary to defend national sovereignty or the life of its citizens, even if this results in unintentional “collateral” damage. An individual soldier may shoot to disable or to protect his own life, but he may not beat an opposing soldier to death out of anger. In each case, the principle of double effect insists that we may not intend death, but only tolerate it as an unintended secondary effect of a morally sound intention. In criminal matters, the state has a right and obligation to protect its citizens. In a social version of self-defense it may even resort to execution, but only if the criminal poses an immediate threat to citizens and cannot be contained or isolated in any other way. The criminal’s death cannot be the result of an act of vengeance; it can only be the unintended and secondary effect of the state’s attempt to protect its citizens. Moral complicity In the Phoenix abortion case, the bishop judged those who had approved and participated in the procedure to be guilty of moral cooperation; inasmuch as they knowingly shared in the intention of this direct killing, they were guilty of homicide. No such judgment was made in the Utah execution, however. Even though Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City protested the execution, there was no suggestion that involvement in it or approval of it might constitute cooperation in a direct moral evil. In our judgment, Gardner was just as “innocent” –- in the sense of posing no threat to the populace—as the unborn child. In fact, his execution is a much clearer example of direct killing than the Phoenix case, in which certitude about moral intention is obscured by complex medical circumstances which few persons were even privy to, much less fully able to understand. The focus on capital punishment is usually about the criminal and what he or she “deserves.” But from a moral perspective, it is not about the criminal; it is about us and our growth in virtue. The virtue of temperance is not only about moderating our desire for food, drink and sex. It extends to satisfaction of all our desires, including those for anger, vengeance and retribution. The philosopher Seneca once said that there is a “certain roughness of soul” in those who do not shrink from causing others pain. Except in cases where it is absolutely necessary and where we as citizens and moral agents separate ourselves from direct killing by a very measured intention, direct killing motivated by anger or vengeance is a serious moral evil. The Phoenix abortion case and the Utah execution case differ in many ways, but they both remind us of the continuing usefulness of the principle of double effect and the crucial role of intention in assessing moral responsibility. Perhaps these cases will help us to refine our understanding of these two concepts. Fr. Charles Bouchard is Vice President for Theological Education at Ascension Health; Fr. Richard Peddicord is President and Associate Professor of Moral Theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology. Both live in St. Louis. SuperUser Account Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:13:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:88