Scattering the Proud - Christianity Beyond 2000

 by Sean O’Conaill, The Columbia Press, Dublin, 1999 
 (ISBN 1 85607 264 9)

 Reviewed by Paschal Baute, Lexington, KY

Sean O’Conaill, in a little paperback of 94 pages, has managed to penetrate to the inner meaning of Jesus in the context of scripture, church practice, history and challenge today. He contrasts the upper journey of the worldly with the downward journey of Jesus. The world always creates pyramids of status, esteem, power and control - which temptation the apostles repeatedly experienced: the upper and outer journey of influence and adulation, the human "heroic" journey--center and core of all our stories and cultural myths. This journey is always characterized by competition, envy, and, ultimately, violence and neglect of the many. 

Jesus’ followers since earliest times have been tempted to join the upward journey - which glorifies individuals and elites at the expense of the majority - ultimately denying to others the freedom to be different. Very early the political establishment under Constantine co-opted the Christian Way, and Christ became identified with Right Order and coercive power over salvation. This led in turn to the schism between East and West, Protestant and Catholic, between Christianity and liberal secularism, and is the root of the hidden schism within the church today. O’Conaill demonstrates how all the oppressions and distortions of Christendom are due to this human tendency which he calls, following Rene Girard, mimetic desire, the desire to possess something someone else has, or biblical covetousness. 

All the heroes of the ancient world, both real and mythical, undertook the upward journey. The Messiah was expected to emerge, like David, as a military hero and restore Israel to her ancient glory and expel the power of Rome.

Regardless of the titles put upon Jesus, and regardless of how much scripture is the actual words of Jesus, it is clear that Jesus’ journey was to be contradictory to this upper journey. Luke’s Magnificat declared he will exalt the lowly and put down the powerful -a completely new order turning upside down the pyramid of esteem, envy and abuse of power of the worldly expectation. Jesus began with unconditional acceptance of all -even the lowly and outcast just as they were, which upset all the expectations of the Temple system and the devout clerics of his time. Jesus embraced the downward journey -downward and inward. In proclaiming and demonstrating the unmerited love of his Father, Jesus countered the religious elite and entire clerical apparatus that was built upon the Temple system. Neither priests nor Temple rules were any longer to be necessary.

Therefore, Jesus broke all the rules of the upper journey, by setting out to topple the pyramid of exclusion supporting the elites of his time. Such challenge is always dangerous, for such pyramids are always self-protecting and reactively violent. Anyone who rocks the boat, as some of us anti-war Vietnam era protestors did, or as any who have tried to be a "whistle-blower" know, will be stereotyped and excluded. Try changing any of the status quo and one becomes a wild and dangerous person. 

Repeatedly it is clear that Jesus refused to create a pyramid of esteem: the greatest is the one who serves: the washing of feet at the last supper, which never became a sacrament, even though it has all three elements necessary: outward sign, inward grace. And Jesus said "Do it!" In his surrender to secular power in his execution, Jesus made it clear once and for all that power was never to be used to coerce human freedom to choose. Most devout persons today have not yet grasped this particular wisdom. 

I am too poor with words to convey the power and insight this author reveals in this short little book. And I am still too much a hidden occupant of the upper pyramid to say much more. Thomas a’Kempis’ Imitation of Christ led me in and out of the military during the Cold War in order to give my life to Christ in 1952 as a Benedictine monk, and I still fail that summons often. But O’Conaill makes clear a new and deeper understanding of the Jesus story that re-captures again my imagination and energy. It fits where my heart has arrived and my soul is touched once more. The upward journey skews power and wealth toward a minority, dis-empowers and impoverishes a majority. It follows that most will be deprived of self-esteem, economic security and political freedom.

If I were to choose a book for leading a discussion on the meaning of Jesus, this is my Number One choice, even though I have in hand a number of others on Jesus. Current religious hierarchy embraces a pyramid of esteem and power. Let me conclude with a rephrase of O’Conaill. 

No heresy of the word or of the meaning of the gospel, was ever greater than the violence done to Christ by the use of the power of the church to oppress, by torture, murder and exclusion, countless people, including women and children. No agency or movement or person has ever disgraced the cause of Christ as has Roman Catholic hierarchy over two millennia. I suggest that current religious practice in all denominations amounts to a stealth indoctrination in support of ensconced middle class consumer values with a blindness to the effect of those practices and attitudes upon two thirds of the world’s population today. 

Jesus still calls: "Do you love me, and will you follow me?"