In the beginning, the West's philosophical and religious insights were profoundly dynamic (only now are we acknowledging the underlying Buddhist influence): the essence of Being was Becoming; life was an élan vital, a vital, personal thrust into all-encompassing, endlessly enriching, mysterious Being.
Jesus gave us the God Spel of our total acceptability to His Heavenly Father: the Kingdom of God is within, a personal empowerment so overwhelming that there is no limit to what we may become. Peter Abelard could tell his students: Ye are gods -- and mean it. And how they grew as a result.
For those who live in the Kingdom, each day is Grace, Epiphany, Transfiguration: an occasion of joyous and unexpected growth -- even in the face of grinding poverty/ unemployment/adversity: "See how the wild flowers grow," Jesus tells the people. "They do not work or make clothes for themselves. But I tell you that not even King Solomon with all his wealth had clothes as beautiful as these..."(Luke 6.28f.)
The key words concern growth, about not selling ourselves short, not settling for less than we are: Listen, Taste, Decide, Do, Become, Be...
However, within a handful of generations, the alarm bells are being rung and the brakes applied.
The churchmen replace Jesus: God, Grace, the Kingdom, Soul, Church, Sin, Sacrament, Love, Forgiveness all become THINGS, to be put in little boxes, dissected, labeled, ritualised and regulated.
Let's look at one of these in some detail, just to see what happens when an ACTION word becomes a THING/NOUN...
Did Jesus found a "Church"? Emphatically not - not in the institutional sense of today. Even the churchmen have grudgingly accepted the unanimous conclusion of history and biblical exegesis on that score.
But they continue to console themselves with the wishful thought that what they have made with human hands nevertheless represents the mind and intention of Jesus - or rather "Christ" (the Metaphysical Being which they have fashioned and tailored to their own needs).
The Church, they say, is what Christ would have founded, had He been among us long enough to be confronted with the realities...
What Jesus did establish was the act of coming together on the part of His friends and disciples to explore, pray about and act upon the implications of His teaching and personal witness: the values of the Kingdom of God, the implications of the communal meal He shared with them, female and male, respectable and outcast.
This living example was preserved in the Agape Eucharist of the first generations. That act of coming together was "church"/ecclesia. Of itself, it guaranteed what later became known as the "Real Presence": "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them..." (Matthew 18.20) It did not require a priest with special powers to bring it about; it happened by the action of the people coming together.
In the hands of churchmen, however, the act of "church" became a NOUN THINGIE, a CORPORATION - with the ethos and ethic of any modern American equivalent. The tell-tale signs include:
• A sophisticated myth-making machine for self-projection/damage limitation/the rubbishing of one's "enemies";
• A centralised bureaucracy claiming Divine Right to override local church arrangements;
• A dizzy power structure to drive the ambitious and the hungry to distraction; with enough snakes and pitfalls to hone to perfection the skills of unsleeping vigilance and self-promotion (nessun dorma - no one sleeps in the Vatican, not more than a few hours anyway), so that only those matching the biblical injunction to be clever as serpents can reach the top and thus demonstrate their "salt"/suitability to be entrusted with ultimate power;
• The division of the seamless robe of Jesus into endless specialisms - to further the disempowerment of the many (and also of the few). Either you are reduced to silence, or may speak (provided you are accredited with recognised tokens of right-thinking) only within the narrow confines of your "specialism".
The result is that we are denied an over-all view, an all-encompassing, uplifting vision such as talented people like Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila and Joan Chittister, Thomas Aquinas, Teilhard de Chardin and Hans Kung, were able to offer in their time. By definition, such people become "suspect" as soon as they "stray" from the area covered by their paper qualifications...
It all serves the cause of containment - it is a character of every big corporation that only the man (it is almost invariably a man) at the top has the "over-all view"/knows "all the facts" and is thus "best placed" to make the decisions.
Feed into it the concept of personal disinterest/the "servant of servants" tag/of doing only "what is best for the firm" (with "infallibility" as an optional extra), the exoneration of underlings from ultimate responsibility for implementation of orders (indeed the prospect of reward/recognition for carrying them out to the letter)
and you have the basis for extensive collusion.
Churchmen see themselves as upholders of God's Truth; but how easily they economise on truth to suit themselves: they can produce
• lies: "Mass attendance is holding up quite nicely, despite many surveys to the contrary";
• damned lies: "Clerical lapses from celibacy and clerical abuse of children are not symptomatic of anything fundamentally wrong with church structures, but in
all cases are due to individual failings"; and
• infallible statements: "It is God's will (which we are not at liberty to ignore) that women may not become priests".
This from the same people who, throughout history, have not hesitated to re-interpret the teaching of Jesus and to re-cast God in their own interests: e.g.,
(i) the permission of divorce in the early Church when - biblical experts agree - Jesus excluded it (Matthew 5.31f. v Mark 10.5-9);
(ii) the papal condemnation of Franciscan poverty (established by St. Francis in imitation of Jesus) because it didn't sit too well with the papal pomp of the day;
(iii) forging the "Donation of Constantine" to give them political as well as spiritual sovereignty in the West, despite the lesson of the Third Temptation in the desert. The "Donation" was merely the most spectacular of a long line of forgeries from a department of forgery/creative writing which operated throughout the Middle ages to establish clerical rights to property and privilege as the need arose.
Those who support churchmen in such economies of truth are regarded as "Right-Thinking"/"Orthodox"/"True Believers"; God is on their side and will reward them with eternal salvation. Those who raise a critical or prophetic voice in protest are "misguided"/"off-the-wall"/a "menace to society" - "heretics" whom God will surely spew from His mouth.
In this Clerical Corporation you will find:
• The ultimate management technique: compulsory celibacy, giving total control and total mobility of personnel, beyond accountability and civil law: the dream of every
• secular boss.
• Subtle and not so subtle tests of loyalty; with graded perks and banishments. A few examples:
My old Professor of Ethics in Rome, Lambruschini, was confident that the special commission set up during Vatican 2 to look into contraception would lead to a
change in the Church's position. (He himself was a member of the commission and advised us of the imminent change with many nods and winks). Yet it was he who was
given the job of presenting an uncompromising "No Change" message to the world's press -- for which he received a bishopric.
Charles Curran and Hans Kung lost their teaching posts for not being so "adaptable". At least they got their day in court - even if it was a Church court (akin to the British government’s “Diplock courts” introduced in N. Ireland in 1973 to secure “conveyor belt” convictions for those whom the security forces wished to intern).
In a church court, the proceedings are held in secret, the accused does not know the identities of informants; he/she is not allowed to cross-examine; no inspection of
documents is permitted him/her; the prosecutor and the judge are one and the same; no appeal to an independent court is allowed/worth it; the point of the process is
the victory of the establishment, not the discovery of truth (see H. Kung, Christianity, p. 408).
The Church lectures the world on human rights; one of the last places where you should expect to find such rights is within the Corporation itself. The contradiction is blandly dismissed: the Corporation claims the right to put the moral law on hold/in a state of suspension "for the higher good" (i.e., its own vested interest). Thus we find:
• Financial and political vested interest as sophisticated, ruthless and worldly as anything in Washington, Berlin, Moscow or London.
• Anyone who thinks that the heady days of Bishop Marchinkus and the Banco Ambrosiano are a thing of the past is a born-again optimist. "The Church," Marchinkus candidly observed, "does not run on Hail Marys." Certainly the Church as corporation does not - and cannot. Instead of minimal lip service to what Jesus said about the hoarding of wealth and property (Matthew 6.19-21,24; 19.23f.), there continues to be in the Catholic Church massive speculation, off-shore accounting, "laundering" of ill-gotten funds, investment in weapons of war, etc.
• As for sleeping with the enemy, the Corporation has done and continues to do business with the most corrupt regimes ever to darken the face of the planet:
• The Vatican has a foreign policy like any other state; any coincidence with Gospel values is purely accidental. It was the Vatican which invented the science of western diplomacy/espionage/double-speak: e.g., women priests (declared "impossible" in terms of Gospel and Tradition for the "free" world) were quietly introduced into the underground church of Czechoslovakia in order to deceive government surveillance: e.g., the case of Father - or should it be Mother? - Ludmila Javorova. How the rules change when there is a will...
• Skulduggery beyond the imagination of mere mortals; though (it goes without saying) always for the sake of "Holy Mother Church;" eg., joint Vatican-CIA missions to America to counter the work of Liberation/"Marxist" priests and nuns - even to the extent of quietly condoning the assassination of such priests and nuns. Vatican and CIA foreign policies in S. America dove-tail. Both view "liberation theology" as communism by any other name. The CIA pours millions of dollars into church activities there - in return for priests and bishops reporting back on "liberal" colleagues.
Jesus ate with His disciples and friends. Churchmen nearly always eat alone. John XXIII tried to change this when he became pope (one of the many "sensations" his short term of office caused).
But in how many presbyteries will you find the custom of a mid-day meal which is, in every sense, the People's - as in Fr. Des Wilson’s council house in Springhill, Belfast?
In how many presbyteries/episcopal residences will you find such openness? In how many such modesty of lifestyle - though it was good enough for the One who had no place to lay His head (Matthew 8.20)?
Jesus said, "Call no man Lord" (Matthew 23. 7-10); and only His Heavenly Father was Good (Mark 10.18). But try to write to priests in your diocese and you are at once confronted by a baffling array of titles: Right Reverends (monsignors), Very Reverends (parish priests - though not always); Most Reverends (bishops); and Reverends (ordinary Paddies)...
As for the wild flowers of the field, forget it! The clerical wardrobe comes straight from pagan Rome - and an ancient fixation with class and social status: tiaras, mitres and skull-caps, togas and cloaks of various hues and edgings, palliums and stoles, satins and silks, rings and rods of office, special sneakers, coloured socks, etc., etc. - right down to prescribed underwear for bishops (“Gird Thy loins, My Lord!”).
The rise of church as Corporation (the gift of the Emperor Constantine so that churchmen could avoid paying taxes) meant disinventing the democracy of the early church, which was centred on the people, who chose from among themselves those who they wished to minister to them. The way was cleared for an imposed ministry, in time professionalised and distanced from the people; a form of disempowerment of the many in order to empower the few, the clerical caste.
Revelation and insight into the mystery of God were hijacked - to ensure that only what fitted clerical vested interest was promoted. An official "canon" of "revealed" truth was established - by a wild coincidence, precisely coinciding with the needs of 4th century churchmen. 95% of the available Christian literature was dismissed as suspect, heretical or unsafe - including gospels which highlighted the active role of women in the early church (e.g., Thomas, Philip).
Knowledge was strictly controlled, both as to its access (throughout the 1,000 years of the middle ages, only male clerics had access to university education or its equivalent) and its dissemination: e.g., the control of printing, the use of Imprimatur/Nihil Obstat, ownership of meeting places, etc.
The sacred moments of life were reduced to just seven, which could be conveniently ritualised and controlled. The most intimate of human relationships were subject to inspection: e.g., the potency trials of the Middle Ages. Those seeking annulment on the grounds of impotency had to demonstrate their partner's "feebleness" before a committee of beady-eyed clerics armed with set-squares, etc. to measure the angle of erectio, the extent of penetratio, the degree of ejaculatio; while the partner opposed to the annulment presumably tried to perform like Valentino/Madonna on heat.
Such private moments continue to be subject to minute clerical inspection and approval - as anyone who has undergone a marriage annulment can testify.
Being a NOUN THINGIE, the Corporation projects itself as "the same, yesterday, today and forever" - as if it partakes of divinity. Whatever is convenient to its self-image is ploughed back into the beginning and shrouded in mystery/mystification to prevent prying eyes from spotting the "join". Thus:
• The original custom of the people deciding for themselves who should minister to them; of sensus fidelium as the People's sure grasp of the church's faith (rather than the prerogative of bishops) have been written from the record or so emasculated as to retain only token significance today. The revised standard version of tradition is that we had a clerical hierarchy "from the beginning"...
• Ordination is said to go back to Jesus (in reality, only to the third century); the so-called indelible "mark" of priesthood only to the thirteenth; compulsory celibacy to the tenth.
• It is claimed that there never were women celebrants of the Eucharist: a second century re-writing of history and a blatant lie...
• Jesus, the fierce critic of priesthood, is transformed into High Priest (Epistle to the Hebrews); what He performed at the Last Supper is claimed to be the Mass (in reality, both as to its theology and liturgical compilation, a gradual invention of many centuries: e.g., the act of "consecration"/"making Jesus present" dates only from the ninth century).
Such is the link between truth-unity-sameness in a clerical mind-set based on NOUN THINGIES that the most obvious fact of change, of pluralism from the very start, of doctrine that has looped the loop, cannot be acknowledged.
Only the dead and the past (a highly selective reading thereof) are allowed to dictate how we manage the future; instead of the actual needs of the present hour.
The teaching of Jesus and His personal example, officially the basis of Christian living (and so glaringly different for what passes for church today), is casually dismissed by the Corporation as "inappropriate," a "counsel of perfection," "unrealistic," "only for the few."
Instead of Christian praxis, of Action This Day in the name of Kingdom values, we are offered the Gospel of Diplomacy and "Reconciliation" ("Love and Forgetfulness") instead of Justice/the removal of offensive structures.
Whole generations are calmly written off, deprived of sacraments and pastoral care in order to preserve man-made rules of celibacy, male ministry and the status quo.
The health of a community's faith is reduced to a numbers' game: the number of communicants, baptisms, confirmations, clubs and sodalities, the size of collections (especially Peter's Pence - a good way for the ambitious to project super zeal and loyalty to the Pope, not infrequently by diverting funds from elsewhere.
The result is a league table of "cushy" parishes for those whom the bishop wishes to reward for outstanding "service"/not rocking the boat.
One could go on and on: the Corporation-Church of the churchmen is an easy target. But to do no more than list its shortcomings is a disservice. It is wrong to demonise the priesthood, for invariably it begins with great idealism and generosity; its failings are our failings.
Even before Moses came down from the mountain with his Commandments, the priests of Aaron had succumbed to the human need for something tangible - instead of a life of endless pilgrimage in faith, in angst and uncertainty, having to shape each day in fear and trembling. After a time, that can wear you out. In the end, you need to "arrive" somewhere: there is a profound desire for basic certainties, for NOUN THINGIES rather than endless becoming.
The Golden Calf did not come cheaply; it represented the best that the culture of the day could provide; it was meant to be a generous response to a mystery which surpasses human imagination. But once cast by human hands, it inevitably dragged that mystery down to a human level and made an idol of it.
Priesthood inevitably leads to idolatry, to debasement, to cutting God down to a size that we feel comfortable with. Priests end up doing what they do because we collude with them: like other professionals, they supply a need. Were we to stop paying for what today passes as "ministry," they would offer something better.
We are, I believe, essentially Spirit (that Celtic insight makes much sense to me). Spirit is the most alive thing there is: if it is not forever reaching beyond itself, it yields to the forces of gravity; it is pulled down, cools and solidifies.
I use physical metaphors here which should not be taken literally; I need to find the one that makes sense to me: I'm talking about heavy versus light in our lives; opaque versus transparent, sluggishness versus swiftness of foot, that which chokes as opposed to that which energises, dead weight versus the incredible lightness of new being.
There are times when we are tempted to shrink ourselves to fit the categories which those in authority would like to squeeze us into. We collude with them - in return for the allurement of false certainty.
I can pack myself into a small bundle, pull a string round it and truss it up (what a short string!), place it in front of me, circumnavigate it in a matter of moments and say: This is me. This is all there is: Joe Bloggs, I945-02. A Life...
There is always that temptation, in moments of weariness, of surrender, to become a pathetic little package. But as soon as we slip a stick through the string, hoist it on our shoulder and resume our pilgrimage of BECOMING, our spirit expands at the speed of light. We are once more infinity, endless horizon, limitless possibility. For we have re-entered the Space that is God within us, a Lebensraum/Living Space where we may grow and grow.
This is Transfiguration, Epiphany, the Kingdom of God, the promise of life in all its fullness. We find it at the very moment when we discover that we are not-a-thing, that we are NOTHING and have nothing. In that sense (and in that sense only), Jesus said: Blessed are the poor - for they shall see God (Luke 6.20): we who have finally lost every thing, can at last see straight, appreciate what is really important and what is merely incidental.
The great thing about Spirit is its ability to reabsorb whatever becomes cold and solid in our lives, to re-kindle and re-cast it. Whatever the burden we carry, whatever the nature of the things that slow us down and wear us out, these can be taken up into that inner fire and made light again.
Then we no longer need the crutch of NOUN THINGIES and Corporations; only the companionship of like-spirited friends. We are back on the road of BECOMING - a people once again...