Jesus and Sin

I am reading Spencer Burke's book A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, in which he promotes (his view of) spirituality over (his take on) religion in the postmodern age. Burke is one of the founding members of the emerging church movement. While I do not agree with everything he says (so far) in this book, I find some of his ideas beautifully resonant. For example, in a section of Chapter Three ("Grace and the God Factor") called Grace, sin, and spirituality, he says the following about Jesus and sin:

Sin would perhaps be better understood in our culture if it were presented as pursuing self-interest at the expense of the well-being of the larger (or smaller) horizons of our existence, whether through self-abuse or through lack of concern for the world in which we live.

Instead, sin has often been presented as a violation of the rules and regulations of religion. In Christianity, Jesus is held up as the model of sinless living, the ultimate example to which all humanity should aspire. "Jesus," it is said, "was tempted in all points as we are yet was without sin." This concept of Jesus as a sinless individual permeates Christian theology. But was Jesus really sinless? He certainly seems to have violated a number of the rules and interpretations of the Law that his contemporaries regarded as huge sins. He violated the Sabbath and excused his disciples for their violations. He interpreted the meaning of the Sabbath by telling the story of King David's questionable use of the Law in order to feed his men. He repeatedly talked to the unclean, the unlovely, and the unrepentant.

As I see it, Jesus may not have sinned against God, but he certainly committed sins against the religion of his day. Jesus lived his sinless life in grace - and that grace often transgressed the moral codes of religion. The challenge for followers of Jesus is to reframe the story and offer society a new understanding of exactly what grace is and what it means for us all.

What Burke is saying here reminds me of Hans Kung's remarks about how Jesus might relate to the Church authorities of today and of Marcus Borg's take on the subversive compassion of the pre-Easter Jesus. Again, it seems to me that we have a significant disconnect between what religious historians and theologians have determined Jesus really was about and what institutional Christianity requires us to believe. As for myself, the more I read about, the more I observe, the more I think about the Catholic Church, the more inclined I am to "find a congenial, compassionate way to live inside of it and yet outside of it," as Father Richard Rohr tells us.

A New Pope, A New Church

If it turns out that the Joseph Ratzinger indeed knew about and personally approved of the return of a sexually abusive priest to parochial service and as a result the pontiff is forced to abdicate, who will be his successor? One envisions the election of a new pope from the college of cardinals by the college of cardinals being immediately followed by questions from the press about the possibility of his involvement in cases of abuse cover-up. In fact, why would the press even wait that long? At the time of the election there will no doubt be a group of papabile, those cardinals considered among the most likely to be elected, and their careers will be scrutinized by hordes of investigative journalists from around the world. We can be certain that at least a couple of the frontrunners will be dead in the water before the second cloud of black smoke is emitted from the chimney on top of the Sistine Chapel. The papal election will become a farce and whoever emerges as the new Holy Father of the Catholic Church will have gone from “popable” to laughable.

The tragic story of sexual abuse and its cover-up by bishops and chancery officials, which is no longer simply an American story reflecting so-called American liberalism and secularism, has exposed to Catholics and non-Catholics all over the world the failure of the post-Vatican II restoration of a monarchical papacy, a blindly loyal episcopacy, and a complacent and obedient laity. The Church hierarchy—and the entire hierarchical system—has lost all the trust it needs to lead the faithful. It is time for the People of God to take responsibility for their Church and return it to its proper place as the loving, welcoming, child-protecting home of Christ.

If a new pope is elected from the ranks of the cardinals, or even if the cardinals are bypassed and a bishop is found who has not been tainted by cover-up or other misdeeds, the likelihood is very high that the hierarchical system and the clerical culture that allowed this tragedy to continue for so long will remain in place. John Paul II was pope for 26 years; his successor—and close friend and loyal supporter—Benedict XVI has been pope for five years. Nearly every bishop in the world has been appointed by these two; and nearly all of them will have sworn an oath of loyalty to the orthodoxy promoted by the restoration papacy. Even a bold and courageous bishop would have difficulty opposing his brother bishops.

I have a suggestion: Benedict should stay. He should humbly bow his head and apologize to all victims of the post-Vatican II Church, including children who were abused; women, who have been denied their rightful place in the Church, to its tragic detriment; gay and lesbian people, who have been marginalized by the Church; the large majority of priests, who have toiled faithfully in the vineyard but whose voices for truth have been silenced by the stifling pressure of doctrine. He should then call a new Vatican Council, one that has equal representation from the laity (men and women) and the clergy; clerical delegates would include ordinary parish priests, male and female members of religious orders, and theologians, as well as some bishops. At the council, the Roman curia would only be allowed an advisory role; it would have no voting rights. The agenda, from which no issue could be excluded, would also be determined by balanced representation. The pope would pledge publicly to abide by the spirit as well as the letter of the council’s decisions.

Or we could allow the present pope to resign and then insist that the college of cardinals as well as the entire episcopate be considered ineligible for election and instead elect a humble and holy priest as pope. In this case, I have a few recommendations. How about Jim Martin, the Jesuit from America Magazine? He seems to understand that the Church can peacefully and productively co-exist with modern secular culture. He recognizes that women and gay people have been wounded by their Church. Or we could elect Hans Küng, who after all was one of the chief architects of some of the most important documents to come out of Vatican II. There is also Richard Rohr, the Franciscan who believes in the emerging church, which loves the tradition but recognizes the need for reform.

Of course, none of this is going to happen. The point is, however, that we need a new Church, not just a new pope. We need people of courage and vision from both the laity and the clergy to share their vision of a reformed Church with the grassroots. Sure, the vast majority of the faithful may be as conservative as Benedict XVI and his curial comrades, but are we content to allow a majority that trusts a hierarchical system that enabled abusers of children, that discriminates against women and gay and lesbian people, that silences all dissenters to prevail?

It appears that the structure is beginning to crumble. It can be shored up for a while perhaps, but eventually it will fall. We should be concerned with how the Church will rebuild itself when that day comes.

Clerical Abuse: A Lesson From America

In the wake of the terrible storm of the revelation of clerical sexual abuse in Boston and beyond in 2002, priest and sociologist Andrew Greeley wrote a book entitled Priests: A Calling in Crisis. The purpose of the book, according to its author, is to “report the sociological facts about the Catholic clergy as these facts emerge from analysis of survey data” in order to correct the misinformation on the priesthood and abuse of minors disseminated by an uninformed press, inexpert clerical or ex-clerical spokespersons, and individuals and organizations with an ideological axe to grind.

There is a tradition of research on the priesthood that could provide a very different and more nuanced perspective on the Catholic priesthood in the United States, one in which most people were not interested during the fateful year of 2002 because, like all responsible research, it presents a picture that is gray, ambiguous, problematic, and hence easier to quote out of context and to ignore. Reaching back into the late 1960s and extending to an analysis of the 1993 Los Angeles Times study of the priesthood (Greeley, 1995), it presents priests as on average happy, mature, and self-fulfilled men. I hope this book contributes to the continuance of that tradition.

The storm that hit the United States in 2002 recently appears to have begun wreaking havoc in Western Europe. We are already seeing comments about celibacy as a possible direct or indirect cause of the abuse; there is no doubt that homosexuality and the “disproportionate number” of gay priests will be once again dragged out as another probable cause of clerical sex abuse. It is useful, then, to take another look at Greeley’s study, which is based on the 1993 Los Angeles Times survey of the priesthood as well as a replication of the survey, with slight modifications (“The second Times survey is the first time that a national sample of priests have been asked directly about their sexual behavior”), conducted by the newspaper in 2002. Each of the surveys polled approximately 2000 priests.

The 2002 survey revealed that approximately 16 percent of priests “admitted that they were either homosexual or inclined in that direction, hardly the large number claimed by such ‘studies’ as those of A.W. Richard Sipe or the Kansas City Star.” The number is, however, larger than generally accepted percentages of homosexuals in the wider population. While the percentage of celibate heterosexual priests is higher than that of gay priests, Greeley notes that “most homosexual priests appear to be celibate. Thus those who shrilly insist that it is time to say ‘goodbye to good men’ are merely displaying their own homophobia.”

One must consider also the possibility that a priesthood with a higher percentage of homosexuals might provide a haven for child abusers. While most homosexuals are not abusers and most abusers are not homosexuals, the propensity of Catholic conservatives to claim that child abuse is essentially a homosexual problem must be considered. However, those who argue in such fashion, no matter how exalted their positions in the Church might be, have yet to offer anything but their own unsubstantiated assertions to support their argument.

Since many abuses were committed by men who were ordained long before homosexuality became visible in the seminaries and the dioceses, the argument that there is a link between the increased presence of homosexuals and child abuse seems inherently improbable.

A preliminary report commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to investigate clerical sexual abuse has also found that there is no connection between homosexuality and the increased likelihood of sex abuse. In fact, according to a CBS report on the survey, “many experts on sex offenders reject any link between sexual orientation and committing abuse.” The study was prepared for the USCCB by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. At the meeting held for the release of the report one bishop asked a researcher from the college whether “their study indicated that homosexuality should be considered when evaluating a candidate for the priesthood.” The response was that if the exclusion of a homosexual candidate for the priesthood “were based on the fact that that person would be more probable than any other candidate to abuse, we do not find that at this time.”

Celibacy has also been cited as one probable cause of the clerical sex abuse crisis, both in 2002 and most recently in relation to the European situation. The highest ranking bishop in Germany, where victims of abuse have come forward in large numbers in the past few weeks, has denied that there is a link between sexual abuse of minors by priests and celibacy. The eminent theologian Father Hans Küng, no friend of the Church hierarchy, has termed the archbishop’s denials “erroneous.” The London Times reports:

He said it was the case that abuse was found also in families, schools and other churches. But he asked: “Why is it so prevalent in the Catholic Church under celibate leadership?” He said that celibacy was not the only cause of the misconduct but described it as “the most important and structurally the most decisive” expression of the church’s uptight attitude to sex.

In Priests: A Calling in Crisis, Father Greeley notes a similar response to the 2002 crisis in the United States.

Most of those who spoke to the media or wrote on the subject assumed that the reason [the abuse occurred] was obvious. Priests could not marry, either because of church law or because they were incapable of mature sexual love with a woman. Therefore they preyed on the young and innocent. The only way to stop the abuse was to eliminate the foolish celibacy rule and with it the sinister clerical culture that supported abusers. For Catholic “liberals” the abuse scandal provided a rallying point to push their demands for a married clergy, women priests, and a more democratic church.

Occasionally someone observed that abusers of the young were usually men with deep and perhaps incurable personality problems and that, if they marry, they often abuse their own children. Marriage then does not seem to be a cure for abuse. Almost no one said that it degraded women to assume that the abolition of celibacy would stop abuse.

Journalists sought out “experts,” mostly former priests, to answer their questions. Some former priests hinted that those who remain in the priesthood are not real men because they do not sleep with a woman. They spoke of the infantilism of the male clerical culture, which produced and protected abusers. They questioned the psychological maturity of priests, and their fidelity to the promise of celibacy.

These “experts” were not widely known in the Catholic population and had little influence in general on Catholic thinking—though most priests have heard about them. However, they used their fifteen minutes of celebrity to reinforce the general assumption among Americans that celibacy is unhealthy and that it was no surprise that celibates are freaks, and perhaps monsters.

Greeley goes on to show that there is no sound evidence, from either psychologists or sociologists, that celibacy results in psychological maladjustment among priests, maladjustment that would lead to acting out through the sexual abuse of minors. Through analysis of the data in the Times surveys, Greeley demonstrates that in fact the opposite is true and concludes:

Priests are clearly happy and satisfied men. They report on the average that the priesthood has been better than they had expected it would be, that they are very satisfied with their lives as priests, that they would choose to be a priest again, and that they are not likely to leave the priesthood. They score higher on measures of satisfaction than do doctors, lawyers, faculty members, and Protestant ministers.

The 2002 Times survey produced some interesting and surprising data about the attitudes of priests to the abuse scandal. Question 60 on the survey asks: "Thinking now about the recent allegations of sexual misconduct by priests….Do you think that most, many, some, or only a few of the allegations are true?” Only 19 percent of the respondents believed that most charges were true. 42 percent thought that many of the allegations were true, and 38 percent believed that only some or none of them were true. “It would appear that most priests even in the summer and autumn of 2002 were still in denial and do not understand the horror of the abuse of the victim and the victim’s family.” In fact, “[w]hen asked what troubled them most about the allegations of abuse, only 5% said that it was the suffering of the victims.”

It would appear that the respondents to the 2002 study tend to wash their hands of personal responsibility. You blame bishops and the whole Church and the media and the cover-up and the reassignment, and you worry about false charges and the greed of lawyers, and you regret the loss of credibility, but not many of you feel any personal responsibility and only 5% of you worry about the suffering of the victims.

You don’t ask yourselves how many times you knew or suspected that something bad was going on in a rectory or how often you demonized a victim and his family or blamed lawyers for causing the problem or how often you insisted that in a given case the priest was innocent. Had he not denied the charges? Had not the doctors and the police cleared him? How often did you admit even to yourself that maybe you were kidding yourself because of loyalty to the priesthood? So, of the various characters involved in the tragedy, the bishops and the media and the victims and the lawyers did bad things. But not priests. Forty-one percent want the responsible bishops to resign, and 11% want them to be indicted and sent to jail. But not the priests who might have cooperated in the cover-ups and certainly not those who knew deep down inside that something was wrong and did not speak up.

Greeley attributes this denial of responsibility to the “norms of clerical culture,” which include a taboo on “betraying” a fellow priest. “The problems in the priesthood come from neither celibacy nor homosexuality. The problems come rather from the iron law of denial and silence that clerical culture imposes on priests.” Bishops also belong to this band of brothers and often their first impulse is to help and protect a priest when he is in trouble.

This is not an excuse for their behavior but merely an attempt to put it in the context of the ideology of clerical culture. Cardinal Egan wrote sympathetically that a Bridgeport priest whom he reassigned was “graceful.” No one had told him that most abusers are charming men and graceful liars. Abusers often seem to their friends to be “one of the guys.” You stand by one of the guys even if you are a bishop.

Greeley believes that the bishops who reassigned abusive priests, especially after 1992, when guidelines for handling abuse cases had been set in place, committed grave sin. The worst of their sins was re-victimizing the victims by refusing to acknowledge them, by refusing to recognize "the terrible wreckage that sexual abuse causes for human lives.” He says that these bishops “were, in fact, according to the strict canons of the old moral theology, necessary cooperators in evil and objectively as responsible for the evil as those who actually did it.”

Priests with “deep and perhaps incurable personality problems” were responsible for the horrific abuse of young people both in America and in Europe. These priests should have been removed from ministry by their bishops. While it is possible that bishops did not understand the nature of pedophilia or ephebophilia when most of these abuses were taking place, it is not possible to imagine that they or their vicars general could not have been aware of the terrible pain suffered by the victims—children, innocent and helpless in the face of demands from such esteemed and holy men as priests—and their families. In his book on the Boston crisis, Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal, author David France recounts the experience of a mother, whose son had been abused by the priest Joseph Birmingham, when she confronted Monsignor John Jennings, head of personnel for the Boston archdiocese, about the serial abuse committed by Birmingham at her parish and expressed her concern for the potential victims at the parish to which the priest had just been reassigned.

Monsignor Jennings motioned for the women to sit on chairs arrayed before his expansive desk on a hand-tied Tibetan carpet. Elaine gestured to have her sister tuck in on her left and Judy Fairbanks on her right. “Make sure I don’t lose control,” she said under her breath, “because if I lose control we’ll screw the whole thing up.”

After introductions she got right to the point. “Our main concern is, number one, we want Father B. to have psychiatric help.”

Jennings held up a hand. “We wouldn’t agree to something like that,” he said.

“We want his new pastor to be notified that this problem exists. That way he can keep an eye on him.”

“We wouldn’t agree,” he scowled.

“Three, not to have any contact with young children. If he has to be around them put him in with the high school kids, and they’ll probably knock his block off if he tries something funny.”

Jennings shook his head as though to say the entire matter was out of everybody’s hands.

“Why can’t you have psychiatric treatment for him?” one of the women interrupted.

In its wisdom the church had done what would be done. “It’s not in the cards,” he said.

The women pressed their agenda, futilely visiting and revisiting the group’s three goals. Ultimately Jennings signalled the end of his patience. “Ladies, “ he exploded. He raised a scolding finger at Elaine. “You must be very careful of slander.”

Elaine climbed to her feet, tugging against her sister’s efforts to restrain her, insane with anger. If the desk had been any narrower, she knew she would have slapped the monsignor’s face. In her mind his collar had disappeared and he was no more noble than any common man. She raised her own finger back at him.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she said. “where do you think my husband would be if he pulled this shit? If he pulled this shit he’d be in jail. He’d never be able to have another teaching job in his life. Furthermore, if this archdiocese doesn’t have enough money to send Father B. for psychiatric care, I don’t know what religion is if it doesn’t even take care of its own. And if you can’t afford it, I suggest you people hock this Oriental rug!”

Elaine and the ladies left Jennings’ office and went immediately to see Father John McCormack who had previously been pastor of their parish and whom Elaine knew well. She was sure that he would help her, but all she got was a blessing.

She would never set foot back inside a Catholic church. She would even withdraw her son from St. John’s Preparatory, where he was expected to begin his freshman year in the fall. “I don’t know if you’re harboring the same type of men at your place or not, but I can’t take that chance,” she explained. The administration refused to refund her $500, and that became the last penny the Catholic church ever got from her or her family.

Even so, it did nothing to assuage her guilt and bitter self-recrimination. Over the following year she was back and forth to her doctor for high blood pressure and anxiety. She wasn’t sleeping. Her doctor said he had never seen such profound stress in such a young woman. Before the year was through, she would suffer a massive stroke that would freeze the right side of her body and close one of her eyes. She was thirty-seven years old.

The case of this woman and her son symbolizes the pain of families all over the U.S.—and as is now being revealed, in many countries of the world—caused by the callous indifference of the clerical hierarchy to the profound suffering of victims of abuse. I was going to say that the example was perhaps extreme and France’s retelling of the story somewhat melodramatic. On second thought, I am certain that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of similar “extreme and melodramatic” stories, all of them true, in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Ireland, and elsewhere.

I have said before that I am an unabashed moral relativist. The bishops—and particularly the Bishop of Rome—have emphatically declared that they are not. Yet it seems to me that the repeated victimization of children and the abetting of that victimization by the very shepherds who are divinely charged with watching over them is always and absolutely morally wrong. Blaming the horror of sexual abuse on homosexuals in the priesthood or on clerical celibacy is either monstrous ignorance or, worse, a smokescreen to cover the real sin. And the real sin is the failure of those in high positions—and perhaps even the highest position—to love and protect the children of God, and their failure, when their sin is exposed, to retreat in shame and in penitence to a monastery.

Tradition and Scripture

Last night I received the following e-mail from William in Dallas. He kindly gave his consent to my publishing it here, along with my reply.


Good Evening,

My name is william and i am not catholic but i do subscribe to the newsletter "Queering the Church" and this is where i found out about you.

I would like to ask you a question as a catholic man and please do understand i am not singling the catholic church out by any means.

I have wondered why after reading the post on Queering the Church about tradition and how many in Rome and in leadership positions within the catholic church seem to hold tradition with the same reverence as the word of God? Please understand that most if not all protestant churches including the one i am a member of are guilty of the same thing. Surprisingly our sunday school lesson was on this very subject with reference to Mark 7:6-8. Where the pharisees had confused and made the commandments of man more important than the commandments of God. I do know that all churches and all denominations have traditions but at least to me the catholic church is the most visible of churches that hold onto and follow traditions. I guess my question is two fold. Why do catholics put so much emphasis on all the liturgy and traditions of the church and little or no emphasis on the word of God? This question also could be used of protestant churches as well. And how has man in general been able to completely miss the true message of God and teach a message of man and calls it God's message?

I am a gay christian man and a member of a protestant gay church in Dallas. Those like me would not be welcomed into most conservative christian churches today and yet God's message of love is to all people without regard to their orientation, language, nationality, social standing,etc.

How and why did we all mess things up so bad?

Sincerely,
William


Here is my reply:


Dear William:

Thank you very much for your e-mail (It’s the first one I’ve received from anyone reading my blog.) Your question is an interesting and valuable one. But first a huge disclaimer: I am in no way a qualified theologian or expert on scripture. I am just a guy who decided to go back to the Catholic Church after a very long time and who has since that return thought and read and written about the experience. I hope that my blog does not give the impression that I actually know what I am talking about.

Having said that, I offer two propositions in answer to your question. The first is quite simple: I think that there is a huge range of opinion out there about Revelation, so it is likely that no two answers to your question are going to be the same.

The second is somewhat more complex.

In our local diocesan newspaper, a parish priest writes a regular column on the scripture readings for the week. A recent column touches directly upon your question. Here is what he says:

“Accordingly, ‘the Church does not draw her certainty about all revealed truths from holy Scriptures alone’, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting Vatican IIs Dei Verbum (The Word of God). She relies on Sacred Tradition: the ‘living transmission’ of God’s word by the apostles and their successors, a process demonstrated in the New Testament accounts themselves.

“The content of Sacred Tradition is what was ‘handed on’ (in Latin, ‘traditum’) by the preaching of the apostles, their example, and the institutions they established, even before anything was written down.

“Indeed, the criterion of the Church used in deciding what writings to include in the Bible was their agreement with the content of Sacred Tradition. (The canon, or catalogue, of the inspired books to be included in Sacred Scripture was not formally drawn up until 382 AD, at the Council of Rome.)

“The Catechism says that the Holy Spirit entrusted the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, both written and oral, to the Church, that is, the bishops in communion with the pope.

“It is this Church, founded by Christ on Peter, as on a rock, which Christ promised to guard from error: not the Bible, except insofar as the Bible would be backed by the Church’s Christ-given authority to teach. We call this authority her ‘magisterium’, from the Latin ‘magister’, meaning ‘teacher.’”

The priest goes on to instruct his readers on how to read the Bible, in light of the above information. There are some problems with the idea of Tradition and where it comes from, just as there have always been questions about the interpretation of Scripture. I have quoted Hans Küng quite a bit in my blog as he is a highly respected theologian and as he was a major figure in the formulation of Vatican II documents. In his The Catholic Church: A Short History, he says, of Peter: “But today even Catholic exegetes accept that the famous saying about Peter as the rock on which Jesus will build his church (Matthew 16:18-19; the statement is in the future tense)—of which the other gospels know nothing—is not a saying of the earthly Jesus but was composed after Easter by the Palestinian community, or later by Matthew’s community.”

We also learn from Küng that the councils of the fourth century, including Nicaea, were as much political as they were religious. I do not know of the Council of Rome, but the Second Ecumenical Council in 381, at Constantinople, which was at the time the centre of political power as well as of Church authority, was convened by the emperor Theodosius the Great. Here is what Küng has to say about Theodosius: “…a strictly orthodox Spaniard, who at the end of the fourth Christian century decreed a ban on all pagan cults and sacrificial rites and accused of lèse majesté those who broke this law. That made Christianity now formally the state religion, the Catholic Church the state church, and heresy a crime against the state.”

The issue of the source of Revelation—Scripture or Tradition, or both; if both, how much emphasis should be placed on one or the other?—was hotly contested at the Second Vatican Council. The progressive bishops, who were the majority in the council, argued that Revelation must be based on Scripture, which is the revealed word of God; the conservative Roman Curia vehemently argues otherwise. In the end, the progressives won, but of course Vatican II itself has been steadily reinterpreted by John Paul II and by Benedict XVI, especially when the latter was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

So what to believe? What to do? I am still forming my faith (In my blog there is an essay called “The Pilgrim and the Path,” which you might find useful. It is the story of my faith journey so far.), but I would tend to go with Jesus: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.”

There is an article in today’s New York Times, by Eric Lax, entitled “Have Faith in Love.” You might enjoy reading it.

I wish you joy and many blessings on your journey and hope we will correspond again.

Regards,

Ross

I would be interested in further comment on this question.

Innocent III and Francis of Assisi

From Hans Kung's book:


As early as 1209, six years before the Fourth Lateran Council, a truly historic meeting took place between Francis of Assisi and Innocent III, the Poverello (little poor man) and the sole ruler. The great alternative to the Roman system took shape here in the person of Giovanni di Bernardone, the name given at birth to the happy-go-lucky worldly son of a rich textile merchant from Assisi.

Innocent III was aware of the urgent need for reform of the church, for which he would soon convene the Fourth Lateran Council. He was sensitive enough to observe that the outwardly powerful church was inwardly weak, that the heretical currents in the church had increased powerfully, and that it was difficult to overcome them solely with force. Would it not be better to bind them to the church and meet their wish to engage in apostolic preaching in poverty? In principle Francis of Assisi was not unwelcome to him.

But precisely what was the concern of the Poverello? What was the meaning of the "rebuilding of the fallen church" which the twenty-four-year-old understood to be his calling in a vision of the crucified Christ in 1206? It was nothing less than an end to a self-satisfied bourgeois existence, and the beginning of real discipleship of Christ in poverty and itinerant preaching in accord with the gospel, indeed conformity to the life and suffering of Christ and identification with Christ. Specifically the Franciscan ideal had three key points:

1. Paupertas, poverty: a life with absolutely no possessions, not only for the individual member of the brotherhood but also for the community as a whole. Money, church buildings, and the quest for Roman privileges are prohibited. The brothers are to work, work hard in the fields; they are to beg only in an emergency. So Francis did not want a mendicant order.


2. Humilitas, humility: a life which renounces power and influence to the point of extreme forms of self-denial and mortification, patience in all situations, and a basic mood of joy which can endure even taunts, ridicule, and beatings.


3. Simplicitas, simplicity: discipleship of Christ in great simplicity in all that is done. Knowledge and learning are nothing but obstacles here. Instead of this there is to be a new relationship with creation, as is expressed above all in the "Hymn to the Sun": a new relation to animals, plants, and inanimate phenomena of nature; all creatures are brothers and sisters.

In conformity with Jesus, but not in confrontation with the hierarchy, not by drifting into heresy but in obedience to pope and curia, Francis and his eleven lesser brothers (fratres minores) were to realize their purpose and, like the disciples of Jesus, proclaim the ideal of the gospel life everywhere through itinerant preaching. On the basis of a dream according to which, as the tradition goes, a small, inconspicuous religious prevented the basilica of the Lateran from collapsing, the pope finally approved Francis' simple rule and published it in the consistory.

However, all this meant that Francis, dangerous though he seemed, had committed himself wholly to the church. He had promised reverence and obedience to the pope and bound the brothers by the same promise. At the wish of his patron, Cardinal Giovannni di San Paolo, he even had himself and his eleven companions elevated to the clerical state by the tonsure. This made their preaching activity easier, but at the same time furthered the clericalization of the young community. Priests too now joined the society. The process of the ecclesiasticization of the Franciscan movement had begun, and Francis, who had wanted to detach himself from all things in poverty, was now more dependent on holy mother church. Behind this stood above all the nephew of Innocent III, Cardinal Ugolino, who during Francis' lifetime made himself his friend and protector. A year after Francis' death he ascended the papal throne as Gregory IX, canonized Francis, against Francis' express wishes had a splendid basilica and a monastery built in Assisi, and at the same time relaxed the Franciscan rule by adding constant interpretive qualifications. At the same time, as we have seen, he established the central Roman Inquisition.

Francis of Assisi, with his gospel demands, was originally the alternative to the centralized, legalistic, politicized, militarized, and clericalized Roman system. It hardly bears thinking about: what would have happened had Innocent III, instead of integrating Francis into this system, taken the gospel seriously and adopted the key points of Francis of Assisi? What would have happened had the Fourth Lateran Council introduced a reform to the church on the basis of the gospel?

Innocent III died unexpectedly seven months after the conclusion of the council. On the evening of June 16, 1216, he was found in the cathedral of Perugia, abandoned by all, completely naked, robbed by his own servants. He was probably the only pope who on the basis of his unusual qualities could have shown the church a fundamentally different way, who could have spared the papacy a split and exile, and the church the Protestant Reformation. Even if a great church cannot be so enthusiastic and idealistic that it ignores the complicated questions of the exercising of office and the law; in other words, even if offices must be handed on in a legitimate way, the law implemented, and financial transactions carried out, the basic question still remains: should the Catholic Church be a church in the spirit of Innocent III, or in the spirit of Francis of Assisi? We recall the key words of Francis' program:

• Poverty. Innocent III stands for a church of wealth and splendor, of greed and financial scandal. But would not also a church have been possible which had a transparent financial policy, was content and made no claims, was an example of inner freedom from possessions and Christian generosity, and did not suppress the life of the gospel and apostolic freedom but furthered them?
• Humility. Innocent III stood for a church of power and rule, of bureaucracy and discrimination, of repression and the Inquisition. Would not also a church have been conceivable which was modest, friendly, and engaged in dialogue, was made up of brothers and sisters, and was hospitable even to those who did not conform, whose leaders engaged in unpretentious service and showed social solidarity, and which did not exclude from the church new religious forces and ideas, but made fruitful use of them?
• Simplicity. Innocent III stood for a church whose dogma was excessively complex, for moralistic casuistry and legal safeguards, a church wth a canon law which ruled everything, a scholasticism which knew everything, and a magisterium which was afraid of the new. But would not also a church have been possible which was a church of good news and joy, a theology orientated on the simple gospel, which listened to people instead of merely indoctrinating them from above, not just an official church which only teaches, but a people's church which keeps on learning afresh?

Amen.

The Church as the People of God III

Here are some interesting passages from Hans Kung's The Catholic Church: A Short History that remind us of the disconnect between Jesus of Nazareth and the original Church and the Catholic Church of today.

From Chapter I "The Beginnings of the Church":

From the earliest times until the present, the church has been, and still is, the fellowship of those who believe in Christ, the fellowship of those who have committed themselves to the person and cause of Christ and who attest it as hope for all men and women....The original meaning of ekklesia, "church," was not a hyperorganization of spiritual functionaries, detached from the concrete assembly. It denoted a community gathering at a particular place at a particular time for a particular action - a local church, though with the other churches it formed a comprehensive community, the whole church. According to the New Testament, every individual local community is given what it needs for human salvation: the gospel to proclaim, baptism as a rite of initiation, the celebration of a meal in grateful remembrance, the various charisms and ministries, Thus every local church makes the whole church fully present; indeed it may understand itself - in the language of the New Testament - as people of God, body of Christ, and building of the Spirit.

In answer to the question, "Was Jesus Catholic?"

Catholics who think along traditional lines tacitly presuppose that he was. The Catholic Church has always been fundamentally what it is today, the thinking goes, and what the Catholic Church has always said and intended is what originally Jesus Christ himself said and intended....[But] we must never forget what the sources are unanimous in reporting. Through his actions this man from Nazareth became involved in a dangerous conflict with the ruling forces of his time. Not with the people, but with the official religious authorities, with the hierarchy, which handed him over to the Roman governor and thus to his death....Even in today's Catholic Church might he have become involved in dangerous conflicts if he so radically put in question the dominant religious circles and cliques and the traditional religious practices of so many pious and fundamentalist Catholics? What if he even initiated a public protest action against the way in which piety was practiced in the sanctuary of the priests and the high priest and identified himself with the concerns of a popular church movement "from below"? Jesus was anything but the representative of a patriarchal hierarchy.

From Chapter II, "The Early Catholic Church":

Kung talks about the Pauline churches:

The presbyteral-episcopal constitution of the church is said to have been instituted by Jesus Christ, even to be a divine institution and therefore unchangeable divine law. However, a careful investigation of New Testament sources in the last hundred years has shown that this church constitution, centered on the bishop, is by no means directly willed by God or given by Christ but is the result of a long and problematical historical development. It is human work and therefore in principal can be changed.

In the lettters of Paul of which the authority is undisputed there is no mention at all of a legal institution of the church. In the Pauline churches there was neither a monarchical episcopate nor a presbyterate nor an ordination by the laying on of hands.

And yet Paul was convinced that his gentile Christian churches were in their way complete and well-equipped churches, which did not lack anything essential; the non-episcopal congregationalist churches of a later period would appeal to this. The Pauline churches are in fact largely communities with free charismatic ministries. According to Paul, all Christians have their personal calling, their own gift of the spirit, their special charism for service to the community.

In his first letter to the community of Corinth, Paul thinks it quite normal that the Eucharist is celebrated there without him and without anyone who has been appointed to an office, though at the same time it is taken for granted that a certain order should be observed. According to the earliest community order, the Didache (Teaching of the Apostles, around 100), above all teachers and prophets celebrate the Eucharist, and only after them elected bishops and deacons. The community of Antioch was clearly led not by episkopoi and presbyters, but by prophets and teachers. In Rome too, at the time when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, there was evidently as yet no community order with episkopoi. That makes the question of how a hierarchy came into being all the more interesting.

If the meaning of church is community of believers or worshippers, if Jesus was not Catholic, and if the Pauline churches were not hierarchically structured, how did we get to where we are today? Hans Kung has much to say on that score. Stay tuned.