Archbishop Chaput

The Birthday of the Church and the Path We Chose

By Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

PHILADELPHIA, May 17, 2013 (Zenit.org) - Anything without heart, anything without love -- and I mean politics, music, law, art, even religion --anything without love, no matter how brilliant, is finally inadequate and weak. At the end of the day, the human soul yearns to be loved, and to love in return.  And it won't settle for anything less.
God loves us so deeply that he sent his only son to live, suffer, die and rise again for our salvation. That's the message of Easter.  The message of Pentecost - the "birthday of the Church" that we celebrate this Sunday - builds on Easter.  In sending his Holy Spirit to the Apostles in the upper room, God invites each of us to join him in a passion for evangelizing the world.  We are Christ's witnesses.  Our mission is to respond to the fire of God's love.  But desire alone won't remake the world.  So how do we accomplish the work God sets before us?

First, we need to wake up, shake off the cocoon of the world's narcotic noise, and recover our clarity about right and wrong. We do this by praying, and we need to pray every day. Praying, no matter how unfocused we might be at first, clears the head and the heart. It also clears the ears, so we can hear God's quiet voice. Setting aside some silent time with God each day plants the first seed of sanity. It sends down deep roots, and the soul grows a little stronger every day. If we listen well enough and long enough, God will tell us what he wants uniquely from each of us.

Second, we need to seek out confession regularly and stay close to the Eucharist. We can't lose hope when we know we're forgiven. We can't starve to death when we're being fed with the Bread of Life. And the stronger we get in the Lord, the more we have to give to others. The sacraments are literally rivers of grace. They bring us new life. They have real power.

Third, we need to share Jesus Christ consciously with someone every day. We need to make a deliberate point of it. And we don't have to hit people over the head with the Bible to do it. Life naturally presents us with opportunities to talk about our faith with friends or colleagues.  Nothing is more attractive than a sincere, personal witness to the truth. And remember that what we give away in faith, we get back a hundredfold.

Fourth, we need to show a little courage. In the same Scripture passage where Jesus tells us to go and make disciples of all nations, he also tells us that he'll be with us always, even to the end of the age. If that's so -- and of course, it is so - then what can we really worry about? What better friend can we have in the struggle for soul of the world, than the God who created it and us?

Fifth and finally, we need to be faithful to those who love us, and to those whom God calls us to love. So often we overlook the simple fabric of daily life and the persons who inhabit it. But that's where real love begins. That's where all discipleship starts. It's why Augustine wrote that "to be faithful in little things is a big thing."
God made each of us to make a difference. Whether we seem to succeed or fail is not the point. We may never see how God uses us to achieve his will. But it's enough that we try -- and then profound things can happen.
Readers my age may remember that Dag Hammarskjold was secretary general of the United Nations many years ago, during the Congo crisis in the early 1960s. He was also a Christian serious about his faith. Hammarskjold died when his plane crashed on a peace mission in Africa in September 1961. After his death, his diary was found and published under the title, Markings. This is a prayer he wrote in his diary shortly before his death:

[Oh God,]
Have mercy
Upon us.
Have mercy
Upon our efforts,
That we
Before Thee
In love and in faith
Righteousness and humility,
May follow Thee,
With self-denial, steadfastness and courage,
And meet Thee
In the silence.
Give us
A pure heart
That we may see Thee,
A humble heart
That we may hear Thee,
A heart of love
That we may serve Thee,
A heart of faith
That we may live Thee,
Thou
Whom I do not know
But Whose I am.
Thou
Whom I do not comprehend
But Who hast dedicated me
To my fate.
Thou --
We live in an era wounded by sadness and cynicism, but also ennobled by men and women of grace; people not so very different from you and me. This year, on this Pentecost, we get to choose which path to follow, because while God's Holy Spirit calls each of us by name to his service, we have the freedom to say yes or no.
If we really want to preach the Gospel, renew the Church and give glory to God in the years ahead, the only means that will work is to speak the truth in love through the witness of our lives. And it's always been so.
Lord, make us instruments of your peace -- now and always.

Response to R. R. Reno's “Rahner, The Restorationist,” First Things May 2013, 45-51.

Vatican II emerged with a relational metaphysics embedded in Gaudium et spes #24: man finds himself by the gift of self. Carl Rahner remained with a substantialist metaphysics of the individual souped up with transcendental accessories. Rahner lost. Vatican II has been emerging in the last three pontificates and finding its voice in the common language of Francis. Life is self-gift. Get out of yourself. End clericalism and the self-referential. Go out to the existential peripheries. Think of others; forget self.

R. R. Reno’s “Rahner, the Restorationist” is a helpful example of the epistemological shift that must take place if we are to solve the crisis of Christ and modernity. Reno offers himself as a disenchanted Rahnerian who had high hopes that his conventional scholasticism – powered with transcendental accessories on the subjective side – could introduce a metaphysics of Being and conceptual apologetics with argumentative heft sufficient to take on modernity. In reality, Rahner had added the bogus transcendental method to a philosophy of the object that could not bear it. What was needed was a phenomenology of the subject that would release the believing/acting person as “being.”

              

  Vatican II was this full turn to the subject as ontological. The shift that took place was described by Wojtyla as passing from one epistemological plane to another, from “it” to “I,” something like changing the key that a melody is played in. All the notes are different but the melody is the same.  The Revelation is the same because it is the same Subject, Christ, but all the notes are different, and they are in tune with modernity, and will purify it. There is a metaphysics in Gaudium et spes #24, and Reno longs to see it. It will not bring about a new integralism because it is already beyond it. The ontological believing “I” that finds self by gift of self becomes the explanation of Humanae vitae, and the entire social doctrine of the Church. Finding self becomes the principle of subsidiarity, gift of self becomes the principle of solidarity. Instead of the still irreconcilable dualisms of supernatural/natural, grace/nature, faith/reason, clerical/lay, capitalism/socialism, conservative/liberal, there is only Christ, and man imaging Him. Christ, the God-man, is the meaning of reality. And man becomes real – “being” – by transcending himself as gift.

            

    And it is all secular, not secularized. Christ is the meaning of secularity because freedom is the mastering of self so as to make the gift of self. Christianity has no interest in “Christendom” as it has no interest in clericalism. As Pope Francis remarked: “it is more comfortable to be an altar boy than the protagonist of a lay path.” A truly Christian society will be truly secular. 

Pope Francis: Pentecost 2013 - The Spirit is Person-Gift Breathed Upon Us.

Pope Francis' Homily at Pentecost Mass

VATICAN CITY, May 19, 2013 (Zenit.org) - Here is the translation of Pope Francis' homily at Mass for the Solemnity of Pentecost which was celebrated this morning at St. Peter's Square. 

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today we contemplate and re-live in the liturgy the outpouring of the Holy Spirit sent by the risen Christ upon his Church; an event of grace which filled the Upper Room in Jerusalem and then spread throughout the world.

But what happened on that day, so distant from us and yet so close as to touch the very depths of our hearts? Luke gives us the answer in the passage of the Acts of the Apostles which we have heard (2:1-11). The evangelist brings us back to Jerusalem, to the Upper Room where the apostles were gathered. The first element which draws our attention is the sound which suddenly came from heaven like the rush of a violent wind, and filled the house; then the tongues as of fire which divided and came to rest on each of the apostles. Sound and tongues of fire: these are clear, concrete signs which touch the apostles not only from without but also within: deep in their minds and hearts. As a result, all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, who unleashed his irresistible power with amazing consequences: they all began to speak in different languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. A completely unexpected scene opens up before our eyes: a great crowd gathers, astonished because each one heard the apostles speaking in his own language. They all experience something new, something which had never happened before: We hear them, each of us, speaking our own language. And what is it that they are they speaking about? Gods deeds of power.
In the light of this passage from Acts, I would like to reflect on three words linked to the working of the Holy Spirit: newness, harmony and mission.

1. Newness always makes us a bit fearful, because we feel more secure if we have everything under control, if we are the ones who build, programme and plan our lives in accordance with our own ideas, our own comfort, our own preferences. This is also the case when it comes to God. Often we follow him, we accept him, but only up to a certain point. It is hard to abandon ourselves to him with complete trust, allowing the Holy Spirit to be the soul and guide of our lives in our every decision. We fear that God may force us to strike out on new paths and leave behind our all too narrow, closed and selfish horizons in order to become open to his own. Yet throughout the history of salvation, whenever God reveals himself, he brings newness and change, and demands our complete trust: Noah, mocked by all, builds an ark and is saved; Abram leaves his land with only a promise in hand; Moses stands up to the might of Pharaoh and leads his people to freedom; the apostles, huddled fearfully in the Upper Room, go forth with courage to proclaim the Gospel. This is not a question of novelty for noveltys sake, the search for something new to relieve our boredom, as is so often the case in our own day. The newness which God brings into our life is something that actually brings fulfilment, that gives true joy, true serenity, because God loves us and desires only our good. Let us ask ourselves: Are we open to Gods surprises? Or are we closed and fearful before the newness of the Holy Spirit? Do we have the courage to strike out along the new paths which Gods newness sets before us, or do we resist, barricaded in transient structures which 
have lost their capacity for openness to what is new?

2. A second thought: the Holy Spirit would appear to create disorder in the Church, since he brings the diversity of charisms and gifts; yet all this, by his working, is a great source of wealth, for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of unity, which does not mean uniformity, but which leads everything back to harmony. In the Church, it is the Holy Spirit who creates harmony. One of Fathers of the Church has an expression which I love: the Holy Spirit himself is harmony Ipse harmonia est. Only the Spirit can awaken diversity, plurality and multiplicity, while at the same time building unity. Here too, when we are the ones who try to create diversity and close ourselves up in what makes us different and other, we bring division. When we are the ones who want to build unity in accordance with our human plans, we end up creating uniformity, standardization. But if instead we let ourselve be guided by the Spirit, richness, variety and diversity never become a source of conflict, because he impels us to experience variety within the communion of the Church. Journeying together in the Church, under the guidance of her pastors who possess a special charism and ministry, is a sign of the working of the Holy Spirit. Having a sense of the Church is something fundamental for every Christian, every community and every movement. It is the Church which brings Christ to me, and me to Christ; parallel journeys are dangerous! When we venture beyond (proagon) the Churchs teaching and community, and do not remain in them, we are not one with the God of Jesus Christ (cf. 2 Jn 9). So let us ask ourselves: Am I open to the harmony of the Holy Spirit, overcoming every form of exclusivity? Do I let myself be guided by him, living in the Church and with the Church?

3. A final point. The older theologians used to say that the soul is a kind of sailboat, the Holy Spirit is the wind which fills its sails and drives it forward, and the gusts of wind are the gifts of the Spirit. Lacking his impulse and his grace, we do not go forward. The Holy Spirit draws us into the mystery of the living God and saves us from the threat of a Church which is gnostic and self-referential, closed in on herself; he impels us to open the doors and go forth to proclaim and bear witness to the good news of the Gospel, to communicate the joy of faith, the encounter with Christ. The Holy Spirit is the soul of mission. The events that took place in Jerusalem almost two thousand years ago are not something far removed from us; they are events which affect us and become a lived experience in each of us. The Pentecost of the Upper Room in Jerusalem is the beginning, a beginning which endures. The Holy Spirit is the supreme gift of the risen Christ to his apostles, yet he wants that gift to reach everyone. As we heard in the Gospel, Jesus says: I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to remain with you forever (Jn 14:16). It is the Paraclete Spirit, the Comforter, who grants us the courage to take to the streets of the world, bringing the Gospel! The Holy Spirit makes us look to the horizon and drive us to the very outskirts of existence in order to proclaim life in Jesus Christ. Let us ask ourselves: do we tend to stay closed in on ourselves, on our group, or do we let the Holy Spirit open us to mission?(my emphasis)

Todays liturgy is a great prayer which the Church, in union with Jesus, raises up to the Father, asking him to renew the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. May each of us, and every group and movement, in the harmony of the Church, cry out to the Father and implore this gift. Today too, as at her origins, the Church, in union with Mary, cries out:Veni, Sancte Spiritus! Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love! Amen.

Self-Referentiality and Suicide

The Loneliness of Modernity According to Benedict and Francis.

Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI: The Loneliness of Modernity: 

"It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will lost it much valuable energy. It will make it poor and cause it to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome... But when the trial of this sifting is past a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret" (Faith and the Future  Franciscan Herald Press [1971] 104-105)

Pope Francis and "Self-Referentiality" [March 2013] (Loneliness):

"Evangelizing pre-supposes a desire in the Church to come out of herself. The Church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery.

2. - When the Church does not come out of herself to evangelize, she becomes self-referential and then gets sick. (cf. The deformed woman of the Gospel). The evils that, over time, happen in ecclesial institutions have their root in self-referentiality and a kind of theological narcissism. In Revelation, Jesus says that he is at the door and knocks. Obviously, the text refers to his knocking from the outside in order to enter but I think about the times in which Jesus knocks from within so that we will let him come out. The self-referential Church keeps Jesus Christ within herself and does not let him out." 

Ross Douthat

All the Lonely People

Published: May 18, 2013: Eve of Pentecost, The Holy Spirit: Person-Gift 

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OVER the last decade, the United States has become a less violent country in every way save one. As Americans commit fewer and fewer crimes against other people’s lives and property, they have become more likely to inflict fatal violence on themselves.

Enlarge This Image

Josh Haner/The New York Times

Ross Douthat

In the 1990s, the suicide rate dipped with the crime rate. But since 2000, it has risen, and jumped particularly sharply among the middle-aged. Thesuicide rate for Americans 35 to 54 increased nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2010; for men in their 50s, it rose nearly 50 percent. More Americans now die of suicide than in car accidents, and gun suicides are almost twice as common as gun homicides.

This trend is striking without necessarily being surprising. As the University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox pointed out recently, there’s a strong link between suicide and weakened social ties: people — and especially men — become more likely to kill themselves “when they get disconnected from society’s core institutions (e.g., marriage, religion) or when their economic prospects take a dive (e.g., unemployment).” That’s exactly what we’ve seen happen lately among the middle-aged male population, whose suicide rates have climbed the fastest: a retreat from family obligations, from civic and religious participation, and from full-time paying work.

The hard question facing 21st-century America is whether this retreat from community can reverse itself, or whether an aging society dealing with structural unemployment and declining birth and marriage rates is simply destined to leave more people disconnected, anxious and alone.

Right now, the pessimistic scenario seems more plausible. In an essay for The New Republic about the consequences of loneliness for public health, Judith Shulevitz reports that one in three Americans over 45 identifies as chronically lonely, up from just one in five a decade ago. “With baby boomers reaching retirement age at a rate of 10,000 a day,” she notes, “the number of lonely Americans will surely spike.”

There are public and private ways to manage this loneliness epidemic — through social workers, therapists, even pets. And the Internet, of course, promises endless forms of virtual community to replace or supplement the real.

But all of these alternatives seem destined to leave certain basic human yearnings unaddressed.

For many people, the strongest forms of community are still the traditional ones — the kind forged by shared genes, shared memory, shared geography. And neither Facebook nor a life coach nor a well-meaning bureaucracy is likely to compensate for these forms’ attenuation and decline.

This point is illustrated, richly, in one of the best books of the spring, Rod Dreher’s memoir, “The Little Way of Ruthie Leming,” an account of his sister’s death from cancer at the age of 42. A journalist and author, Dreher had left their small Louisiana hometown behind decades before and never imagined coming back. But watching how the rural community rallied around his sister in her crisis, and how being rooted in a specific place carried her family through its drawn-out agony, inspired him to reconsider, and return.

What makes “The Little Way” such an illuminating book, though, is that it doesn’t just uncritically celebrate the form of community that its author rediscovered in his hometown. It also explains why he left in the first place: because being a bookish kid made him a target for bullying, because his relationship with his father was oppressive, because he wasn’t as comfortable as his sister in a world of traditions, obligations, rules. Because community can imprison as well as sustain, and sometimes it needs to be escaped in order to be appreciated.

In today’s society, that escape is easier than ever before. And that’s a great gift to many people: if you don’t have much in common with your relatives and neighbors, if you’re gay or a genius (or both), if you’re simply restless and footloose, the world can feel muchless lonely than it would have in the past. Our society is often kinder to differences and eccentricities than past eras, and our economy rewards extraordinary talent more richly than ever before.

The problem is that as it’s grown easier to be remarkable and unusual, it’s arguably grown harder to be ordinary. To be the kind of person who doesn’t want to write his own life script, or invent her own idiosyncratic career path. To enjoy the stability and comfort of inherited obligations and expectations, rather than constantly having to strike out on your own. To follow a “little way” rather than a path of great ambition. To be more like Ruthie Leming than her brother.

Too often, and probably increasingly, not enough Americans will have what the Lemings had — a place that knew them intimately, a community to lean on, a strong network in a time of trial.

And absent such blessings, it’s all too understandable that some people enduring suffering and loneliness would end up looking not for help or support, but for a way to end it all.

Francis - Economy as Gift

Pope Francis: Money Has to Serve, Not to Rule

Warns of the Dictatorship of a Faceless Economy

VATICAN CITY, May 16, 2013 (Zenit.org) - Pope Francis is emphasizing the predominance of ethics in economic and social matters and warning that "we have created new idols" with regard to money.

The Holy Father said this today when he received the credential letters of four new ambassadors to the Holy See: Bolot Iskovich Otunbaev from Kyrgyzstan; David Shoul from Antigua and Barbuda; Jean-Paul Senninger from Luxembourg; and Lameck Nthekela from Botswana. 

“Our human family,” the Pope said, “is presently experiencing something of a turning point in its own history, if we consider the advances made in various areas. We can only praise the positive achievements which contribute to the authentic welfare of mankind, in fields such as those of health, education and communications. At the same time, we must also acknowledge that the majority of the men and women of our time continue to live daily in situations of insecurity, with dire consequences. Certain pathologies are increasing, with their psychological consequences; fear and desperation grip the hearts of many people, even in the so-called rich countries; the joy of life is diminishing; indecency and violence are on the rise; poverty is becoming more and more evident. People have to struggle to live and, frequently, to live in an undignified way."

The Holy Father suggested that one cause of this is "our relationship with money, and our acceptance of its power over ourselves and our society."

He said the financial crisis "makes us forget that its ultimate origin is to be found in a profound human crisis. In the denial of the primacy of human beings! We have created new idols. The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.”

“The worldwide financial and economic crisis,” the Pontiff observed, “seems to highlight their distortions and above all the gravely deficient human perspective, which reduces men and women to just one of their needs alone, namely, consumption. Worse yet, human beings themselves are nowadays considered as consumer goods which can be used and thrown away. We have started down the path of a disposable culture."

The Bishop of Rome said this tendency is at the individual and societal level, and "it is being promoted!"

"In circumstances like these, solidarity, which is the treasure of the poor, is often considered counterproductive, opposed to the logic of finance and the economy," he lamented. "While the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling. This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good. A new, invisible and at times virtual, tyranny is established, one which unilaterally and irremediably imposes its own laws and rules. Moreover, indebtedness and credit distance countries from their real economy and citizens from their real buying power. Added to this, as if it were needed, is widespread corruption and selfish fiscal evasion which have taken on worldwide dimensions. The will to power and of possession has become limitless.”

“Concealed behind this attitude,” Francis warned, “is a rejection of ethics, a rejection of God. Ethics, like solidarity, is a nuisance! It is regarded as counterproductive: as something too human, because it relativizes money and power; as a threat, because it rejects manipulation and subjection of people: because ethics leads to God, who is situated outside the categories of the market."

The Pope said these economists and politicians consider God as dangerous because he is "unmanageable" and he "calls man to his full realization and to independence from any kind of slavery."

The Pope asserted that “there is a need for financial reform along ethical lines that would produce in its turn an economic reform to benefit everyone. This would nevertheless require a courageous change of attitude on the part of political leaders. I urge them to face this challenge with determination and farsightedness, taking account, naturally, of their particular situations. Money has to serve, not to rule! The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but the Pope has the duty, in Christ’s name, to remind the rich to help the poor, to respect them, to promote them. The Pope appeals for disinterested solidarity and for a return to person-centred ethics in the world of finance and economics.”

Relational Being Emerging in the Magisterium of Francis.

Notice the theme of self-gift that keeps emerging as the principal direction of Pope Francis. It has as its underpinnings the metaphysics of person in terms of being for and not in-self. This is the true Christian metaphysic that emerges from the encounter with Christ in the act of faith - where the whole self is given. Keep paying attention to the persistence of the theme as the papacy progresses, and begin to consider what has to happen if the very meaning of "being" = to be for the other as relation and for self as individual.

Self-Gift / Not Self-Referential

Pope: to follow Jesus, live life as a gift to give to others and not a treasure to keep for yourself 

During Mass this morning, Francis highlights contrasting attitudes of Jesus and Judas, who "never really understood what gift meant." "He who gives his life for love is never alone", who "loses" his life will find life in its fullness, he who keeps it for himself, loses in the end.


Vatican City (AsiaNews) - If you want to follow Jesus you must have an "open heart", "live life as a gift" to give to others, "not as a treasure to be kept to yourself", to the point of becoming isolated in selfishness. The contrast between love and selfishness, in the wake of Jesus' words: "no one has a stronger love than this, to lay down his life," was highlighted by Pope Francis during the Mass celebrated this morning in Casa Santa Marta.
But next to Jesus' words, the liturgy also presents us with Judas, "who had the exact opposite attitude." And this, he explained, because Judas " never really understood what it meant to gift himself." As reported by Vatican Radio, the Pope, indicated " Let us think of that moment with the Magdalene, when she washed the feet of Jesus with nard, which was so expensive: it is a religious moment, a moment of gratitude, a moment of love. And he [Judas] stands apart and criticizes her bitterly: 'But ... this could be used for the poor!'. This is the first reference that I personally found in the Gospel of poverty as an ideology. The ideologue does not know what love is, because they do not know how to gift themselves".
Instead, Pope Francis continued, Judas stood apart "in his solitude" and this attitude of selfishness grew to the point of his "betrayal of Jesus." He said those who love "give their lives as a gift", the selfish instead "safeguards his life, grows in this selfishness and becomes a traitor, but is always alone." However, those who "give their life for love, are never alone: they are always in the community, part of the family." The Pope warned that those who "isolate their conscience in selfishness," in the end "lose". This is how Judas ended up, the Pope said, he "was an idolater, attached to money". "And this idolatry has led him to isolate himself from the community of others: this is the drama of the isolated conscience. When a Christian begins to isolate themselves, he or she also insulates his or her conscience from the sense of community, the sense of the Church, from that love that Jesus gives us. Instead, the Christian who gifts his or her life, who loses it, as Jesus says, finds it again, finds it in its fullness. And those who, like Judas, want to keep it for themselves, lose it in the end. John tells us that 'at that moment Satan entered into Judas' heart'. And, we must say: With Satan the payback is rotten. He always rips us off, always! ".
But, Jesus always loves and always gives. And this gift of love, the Pope said, impels us to love "to bear fruit. And the fruit remains. " Pope Francis concluded his homily with an invocation to the Holy Spirit. "In these days of waiting for the feast of the Holy Spirit, we ask: Come, Holy Spirit, come and give me this big heart, this heart capable of loving with humility, with meekness, an open heart that is capable of loving. And let's ask this grace, of the Holy Spirit. And may He free us always from the other path, the path of selfishness, which eventually ends badly. Let us ask for this grace".

A True Conscience Comes Only With the Gift of Self

The isolated conscience

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2013-05-15 L’Osservatore Romano

Egoism leads nowhere. Love, however, frees. Therefore, those who are able to live their lives as “a gift to give others” will never be alone and will never experience “the tragedy of the isolated conscience”, easy prey of that “evil repaying Satan” ever “ready to swindle” those who choose his path.  Pope Francis gave this teaching on Tuesday morning, 14 May, to those present for the Mass celebrated in the Chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

The Pope commented on the day's readings, taken from the Acts of the Apostles (1:15-17, 20-26) and from the Gospel of John (15:9-17), wherein he began by recalling that in this time of awaiting the Holy Spirit, the concept of love returns, the new commandment: “Jesus says something remarkable to us: 'Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends'. The greatest love: to one's own life. Love always takes this route: to give one's life. To live life as a gift, a gift to be given — not a treasure to be stored away. And Jesus lived it in this manner, as a gift. And if one lives life as a gift, one does what Jesus wanted: 'I appointed you that you should go and bear fruit'”. So, we must not burn life down with egoism.

In this regard the Holy Father put forward the figure of Judas, who had an attitude contrary to the person who loves, for “he never understood — the poor creature —  what a gift is”. Judas was one of those people who never act from altruism and who always live in the scope of their own ego, without letting themselves “be seized by beautiful situations”.  This latter was the attitude of “Mary Magdalene, when she washed Jesus' feet with nard — very costly.  It is a “religious” moment, said the Bishop of Rome, “a moment of thanksgiving, a moment of love”. 

Among the concelebrants were the Colombian prelates, Archbishop Ricardo Antonio Tobón Restrepo of Medellín and Bishop Fabio Duque Jaramillo of Garzón, and Bishop Jesús García Burillo of Ávila, Spain. Also present was a group of the staff from the Vatican Museums and some seminarians who are guests of the Pontifical Portuguese College.

How Pope Francis Puts Spiritual Concepts in Today’s Terms: First Things

Thursday, May 9, 2013, 8:56 AM

Matthew Schmitz | @matthewschmitz

One of the more remarkable aspects of Francis’ pontificate has been his rhetorical style. Whereas Benedict XVI generally spoke in carefully crafted Latin paragraphs, Pope Francis has adopted a more casual style of Italian—often speaking without prepared notes. Most notable of all, Francis has gone about coining striking phrases that capture spiritual concepts in contemporary terms.
Archbishop Claudio Celli, head of the Vatican’s Council for Social Communication says that Francis uses images to “communicate concepts that people can perceive immediately.” According to Celli, Francis is ”helping us to rediscover that communication is not only an intellectual problem.”
Vatican observer Rocco Palmo cites an article in article in Avvenire by Stefania Falasca that compared Francis’ rhetoric to sermo humilis—the simple Latin by which the church once spoke to the ordinary man. Falasca also connects Francis rhetoric to “pastiche.” This, says, Falasca, “is precisely the juxtaposition of words of different levels or different registers with expressive effect. The ‘pastiche’ style is today a typical feature of communication on the web and of postmodern language. This is therefore a matter of linguistic associations unprecedented in the history of the Petrine magisterium.”
Here, then, is an early document of some of Pope Francis’ more notable phrases:

“Charitable NGO”

March 14: “We can walk as much as we want, we can build many things, but if we do not profess Jesus Christ, things go wrong. We may become a charitable NGO, but not the Church, the Bride of the Lord.”
“Apostle of Babel”

March 15: “He, the Paraclete, is the ultimate source of every initiative and manifestation of faith. It is a curious thing: it makes me think of this. The Paraclete creates all the differences among the Churches, almost as if he were an Apostle of Babel. But on the other hand, it is he who creates unity from these differences, not in ‘equality,’ but in harmony. I remember the Father of the Church who described him thus: ‘Ipse harmonia est.’ The Paraclete, who gives different charisms to each of us, unites us in this community of the Church, that worships the Father, the Son, and Him, the Holy Spirit.”

“Odor of sheep”

March 28: “This is precisely the reason for the dissatisfaction of some, who end up sad—sad priests—in some sense becoming collectors of antiques or novelties, instead of being shepherds living with ‘the smell of the sheep.’ This I ask you: be shepherds, with the ‘odor of the sheep,’ make it real, as shepherds among your flock, fishers of men.”

“Rosewater faith”

April 3: “Unfortunately, efforts have often been made to blur faith in the Resurrection of Jesus and doubts have crept in, even among believers. It is a little like that ‘rosewater’ faith, as we say; it is not a strong faith. And this is due to superficiality and sometimes to indifference, busy as we are with a thousand things considered more important than faith, or because we have a view of life that is solely horizontal.”

“Middle class of holiness”

April 14: “In God’s great plan, every detail is important, even yours, even my humble little witness, even the hidden witness of those who live their faith with simplicity in everyday family relationships, work relationships, friendships. There are the saints of every day, the ‘hidden’ saints, a sort of ‘middle class of holiness’ to which we can all belong.”

“Babysitter Church”

April 17: “When we do this [announce Jesus with our lives], the Church becomes a mother Church that bears children. . . But when we don’t do it, the Church becomes not a mother but a babysitter church, which takes care of the child to put him to sleep.”

“God spray”

April 18: “We believe in God who is Father, who is Son, who is Holy Spirit. . . . We believe in persons and when we talk to God we speak with persons who are concrete and tangible, not some misty, diffused god-like ‘god-spray,’ that’s a little bit everywhere but who knows what it is.”

“Satellite Christians”

April 20: “[Some Christians] are not rooted in the Church, do not walk in God’s presence, they do not have the comfort of the Holy Spirit, do not build up the Church. They are Christians of good sense, only they distance themselves from Jesus. They are, so to speak—‘satellites,’ who have a small tailormade church, in their own measure: using Jesus’s words in the Apocalypse they are ‘lukewarm Christians.’ This lukewarmness makes its way into the Church. They walk following only  their good sense, common sense, a sort of mundane prudence; that very  mundane prudence which represents temptation.”

“Identity card” Christianity

April 23: “Christian identity is not an identity card. Christian identity means being a member of the Church, since all these people belonged to the Church, to Mother Church, for apart from the Church it is not possible to find Jesus. The great Paul VI said: it is an absurd dichotomy to wish to live with Jesus but without the Church, to follow Jesus but without the Church, to love Jesus but without the Church (cf. Evangelii Nuntiandi, 16). And that Mother Church who gives us Jesus also gives us an identity which is not simply a rubber stamp: it is membership. Identity means membership, belonging. Belonging to the Church: this is beautiful!”

“No Church” vs. “Yes Church”

May 2: “There was a ‘No’ Church that said, ‘you cannot; no, no, you must not’ and a ‘Yes’ Church that said, ‘but . . . let’s think about it, let’s be open to this, the Spirit is opening the door to us.’”

“Teenagers for life”

May 4: “Dear brothers and sisters, how hard it is, in our time, to make the ultimate decisions! The temporary seduces us. We are victims of a trend that pushes us to the temporary . . . as if we wanted to stay teenagers for life! We should not be afraid of the agreed commitments, commitments that involve and affect the whole life! In this way, our lives will be fruitful!”

“Mr. Whiner”

May 7: “A Christian who constantly complains, fails to be a good Christian: they become Mr. or Mrs. Whiner, no? Because they always complain about everything, right? Silence in endurance, silence in patience. That silence of Jesus.”

“Pickled peppers”

May 10: “If we keep this joy to ourselves it will make us sick in the end, our hearts will grow old and wrinkled and our faces will no longer transmit that great joy—only nostalgia, melancholy which is not healthy. Sometimes these melancholy Christians faces have more in common with pickled peppers than the joy of having a beautiful life. Joy cannot be held at heel: it must be let go. Joy is a pilgrim virtue. It is a gift that walks.”
–
However wistfully we may recall Benedict’s carefully composed pronouncements, there can be no doubt that Francis is a great rhetorician of a different—and no doubt more broadly accessible—kind.

St. Basil: "We become God" - Explanation

First Letter of the Apostle John 4, 11-21:

“When anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwells in him and he in God.”

The reason for that is: like is known by like.  Hence, one must be the Son of God in order to know the Son  of God.

This takes place by the act of praying, not only in times of prayer, but by changing work into prayer. And this is done by making work gift to God and service to others.  But only the Holy Spirit is the Personification of Gift of Father and Son to each other.

Therefore, if one is able to forget about self by making of self gift in the work process, it is because of the presence of the Spirit in him. By so doing -  becoming gift to the others -  one becomes Christ , and this in the very process of secular work.  And since Christ as Word of the Father is nothing in Himself but totally from the Father and for the Father and for us, then we have become “another Christ” in the exercise of work. Thus we can re-cognize Him and say, “You are at the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16, 16).

This is the import of the “outrageous” affirmation of St. Basil at the conclusion of the quote below: “We become God.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Tuesday
The Work of the Holy Spirit
From the treatise On the Holy Spirit by St. Basil the Great, bishop

The titles given to the Holy Spirit must surely stir the soul of anyone who hears them, and make him realise that they speak of nothing less than the supreme Being. Is he not called the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, the steadfast Spirit, the guiding Spirit? But his principal and most personal title is the Holy Spirit.

To the Spirit all creatures turn in their need for sanctification; all living things seek him according to their ability. His breath empowers each to achieve its own natural end.

The Spirit is the source of holiness, a spiritual light, and he offers his own light to every mind to help it in its search for truth. By nature the Spirit is beyond the reach of our mind, but we can know him by his goodness. The power of the Spirit fills the whole universe, but he gives himself only to those who are worthy, acting in each according to the measure of his faith.

Simple in himself, the Spirit is manifold in his mighty works. The whole of his being is present to each individual; the whole of his being is present everywhere. Though shared in by many, he remains unchanged; his self giving is no loss to himself. Like the sunshine, which permeates all the atmosphere, spreading over land and sea, and yet is enjoyed by each person as though it were for him alone, so the Spirit pours forth his grace in full measure, sufficient for all, and yet is present as though exclusively to everyone who can receive him. To all creatures that share in him he gives a delight limited only by their own nature, not by his ability to give.

The Spirit raises our hearts to heaven, guides the steps of the weak, and brings to perfection those who are making progress. He enlightens those who have been cleansed from every stain of sin and makes them spiritual by communion with himself.

As clear, transparent substances become very bright when sunlight falls on them and shine with a new radiance, so also souls in whom the Spirit, become spiritual themselves and a source of grace for others.

From the Spirit comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of the mysteries of faith, insight into the hidden meaning of Scripture, and other special gifts. Through the Spirit we become citizens of heaven, we enter into eternal happiness, and abide in God. Through the Spirit we acquire a likeness to God; indeed, we attain what is beyond our most sublime aspirations – we become God. 

Charles Taylor on Ivan Illich

A Secular Age Chapter 20 Conversions, Section 2, Charles Taylor, 2007.

[pages 737 ff]

2

Is this a loss? One can argue that it is. First, in that in identifying the Christian life with a life lived in conformity with the norms of our civilization, we lose sight of the further, greater transformation which Christian faith holds out, the raising of human life to the divine (theiosis). Secondly, as Ivan Illich has so forcefully argued, something is lost when we take the way of living together that the Gospel points us to and make of it a code of rules enforced by organizations erected for this purpose. I want to follow Illich's argument a bit more fully, because as should become evident, his story is quite close to the one I have been trying to tell in these pages. Indeed, I have learned a lot from him.

     This understanding is rooted in a Christian faith. Illich, who had earlier been a priest, remained a Catholic Christian, orthodox in his theology, but profoundly original and iconoclastic in his understanding of the Church in history. He saw the actual development of the Christian churches and of Christian civilization (what we used to call "Christendom") as a "corruption" of Christianity.

     Scholars agree that the Christian church which arose in the ancient world was a new kind of religious association, that it created around itself new "service" institutions, like hospitals and hospices for the needy. It was heavily engaged in the practical works of charity. This kind of activity remained important throughout the long centuries of Christendom, until in the modern era, these institutions have been taken over by secular bodies, often by governments. Seen within the history of Western civilization, the present-day welfare state can be understood as the long-term heir to the early Christian church.

     Now most people, whether Christian or not, would see this as a positive credit to Christianity, as a "progressive" move in history for which the Church is responsible. Without necessarily denying that good has come from this, Illich sees also its dark side. In particular, he sees in the way this has worked out a profound betrayal of the Christian message.

     Illich starts right off in Chapter 1 to explain this, using what is perhaps the most famous story from the New Testament, the parable of the Good Samaritan. This arises out of a discussion of the meaning of the precept from the Ten Commandments: Love your neighbour as yourself. A scribe asks Jesus: "but who is my neighbour?", and Jesus' answer is the story. A traveler is robbed and beaten and left by the side of the road. A priest and a Levite — that is, important figures in the Jewish community — pass by "on the other side". Finally a Samaritan — that is, a despised outsider — comes, and he takes up the man, binds his wounds, and takes him to recuperate at a nearby inn.

     So what kind of answer is this to the original question? We moderns tend to think that it's obvious. Our neighbours, the people we ought to help when they're in this kind of plight, are not just the fellow members of our group, tribe, nation; but any human being, regardless of the limits of tribal belonging. We can generalize this, and say that all human beings, without discrimination, are the proper beneficiaries of our help, which ought to be given generously, following the example of the Samaritan. This story can be seen as one of original building blocks out of which our modern universalist moral consciousness has been built.

     So we take in the lesson, but we put it in a certain register, that of moral rules, how we ought to behave. The higher moral rules are the universal ones, those which apply across the whole human species. We concentrate on the move out of the parochial. But in Illich's view, in this we are missing what is essential here. What the story is opening for us is not a set of universal rules, applying anywhere and everywhere, but another way of being. This involves on one hand a new motivation, and on the other, a new kind of community.

     Illich's take on the parable can be put in this way: there are earlier forms of religious and social life which (a) are based on a strong sense of "we", more fundamental than the "I", hence a notion of insider/outsider, and (b) have a sense of the demonic, both the powers of darkness which surround us, and the spirits which protect us against them.

     These pre-modern ways of life also (c) have a strong sense of the fitting, of proportion. This means (i) that the things in the world have their appropriate form that they must live out, or live up to (one way of articulating this is the Plato-Aristotle notion of Forms), and (ii) they are set in a cosmos, where different parts correspond to other parts, and on different levels: heaven and earth, up and down, male and female, etc. (chapter 9).

     The Gospel opens up a new way, which breaks open these limits. The parable of the Samaritan illustrates this. So far, Illich agrees with the standard view. The Samaritan is moved by the wounded man; he moves to act, and in doing so inaugurates (potentially) a new relation of friendship/love/charity with this person. But this cuts across the boundaries of the permitted "we's" in his world. It is a free act of his "I". Illich's talk of freedom here might mislead a modern. It is not something he generates just out of himself; it is that he responds to this person. He feels called to respond, however, not by some principle of "ought", but by this wounded person himself. And in so responding, he frees himself from the bounds of the "we". He also acts outside of the carefully constructed sense of the sacred, of the demons of darkness, and various modes of prophylaxis against them which have been erected in "our" culture, society, religion (often evident in views of the outsider as "unclean").

     This shakes up the cosmos and the proportionalities which are established in it in "our" society, but it does not deny proportionality. It creates a new kind of fittingness, belonging together, between Samaritan and wounded Jew. They are fitted together in a disymmetric proportionality (chapter 17, p. 197) which comes from God, which is that of agape, and which became possible because God became flesh. The enfleshment of God extends outward, through such new links as the Samaritan makes with the Jew, into a network, which we call the Church. But this is a network, not a categorical grouping; that is, it is a skein of relations which link particular, unique, enfleshed people to each other, rather than a grouping of people together on the grounds of their sharing some important property (as in modern nations, we are all Canadians, Americans, French people; or universally, we are all rights-bearers, etc.). It resembles earlier kin networks in this regard. (In a tribe, the important thing is not the category we share in, but that I am related to this person as my father, that as my uncle, that other as my cousin, etc. Which is why anthropologists discover to their surprise that in "primitive" societies in the Amazon, say, people had words for the different roles, moieties, clans, etc., but no name for the whole group.) But it is unlike tribal kinship groups in that it is not confined to the established "we", that it creates links across boundaries, on the basis of a mutual fittingness which is not based on kinship but on the kind of love which God has for us, which we call agape.

     The corruption of this new network comes when it falls back into something more "normal" in worldly terms. Sometimes a church community becomes a tribe (or takes over an existing tribal society), and treats outsiders as Jews treated Samaritans (Belfast). But the really terrible corruption is a kind of falling forward, in which the church develops into something unprecedented. The network of agape involves a kind of fidelity to the new relations; and because we can all too easily fall away from this (which falling away we call "sin"), we are led to shore up these relations; we institutionalize them, introduce rules, divide responsibilities. In this way, we keep the hungry fed, the homeless housed, the naked clothed; but we are now living caricatures of the network life. We have lost some of the communion, the "conspiratio", which is at the heart of the Eucharist (chapter 20). The spirit is strangled.

     Something new emerges out of all this: modern bureaucracies, based on rationality, and rules. Rules prescribe treatments for categories of people, so a tremendously important feature of our lives is that we fit into categories; our rights, entitlements, burdens, etc., depend on these. These shape our lives, make us see ourselves in new ways, in which category-belonging bulks large, and the idiosyncratically-enfleshed individual becomes less relevant, not to speak of the ways in which this enfleshed person flourishes through his/her network of friendships. For Illich, there is something monstrous, alienating about this way of life. The monstrous comes from a corruption of the highest, the agape-network. Corrupted Christianity gives rise to the modern.

     Illich's vision goes beyond this understanding of the bureaucratic hardening of the Church, which happened relatively early on, and affects most branches of the Church, even Oriental ones. He sees that the process was taken much farther in Latin Christendom. We see it in the criminalization or judicialization of sin and its remission (chapter 5). Rules, oughts, and punishments take over more and more. But he also sees it in a series of developments which everyone recognizes as central to Western modernity, but which are hard to conceptualize: things like the growth of an objectifying standpoint on everything, including human life, which steadily becomes more and more dominant.

     We see this in what he calls the medicalization of the body. The medical knowledge of the body, which tracks the way our organs work, the various chemical processes which underlie these workings, and so on, involves our taking a standpoint outside ourselves. They devalue and set aside the lived body and its experience. This is not the source of real, scientific knowledge, and it must be set aside if we want really to understand what is going on within us. We get trained to see ourselves from the outside, as it were, as objects of science. But this doesn't just displace lived experience, it also alters it. The sense of imbalance, of not being "dans mon assiette", for instance, is no longer taken as a primary phenomenon, but just as a symptom of some underlying malfunction; and so is not attended to any more in the same way. Instead, I become more acutely aware of the things I am trained to see as important symptoms of life-threatening malfunction.

     So medicalization alters our phenomenology of lived experience, suppressing certain facets of this experience, making other recessive, bringing out still others. But it also covers its tracks; we don't see that we're being led to see/feel ourselves in different ways, we just believe naively that this is experience itself; we imagine that people have always experienced themselves this way. And we are baffled by accounts of earlier ages.

     Illich follows this development of the decentred, outside view through a series of often startling analyses: e.g., the development of the gaze, our eventual capture by a view of ourselves as we show up in media images, or in X-ray imaging, or in various ways of representing underlying processes visually, on graphs, etc. ("visiotypes"; pp. 158-160). We are in the process alienated from our anchoring in the world, in real fleshly reality; which we can only recover access to through the lived body, whose testimony is being distortively shaped or even denied by "virtual" reality.

     Similarly in his tracing of our self-conception as users of tools, as separable instruments; and then into our sense of ourselves as parts of systems (chapter 13). We move ever farther away from the lived body. This is the process I spoke about earlier with the term "excarnation".

     This takes us ever farther away from the network of agape. This can only be created in enfleshment. Agape moves outward from the guts; the New Testament word for "taking pity", splangnizesthai, places the response in the bowels. We cease being able to make sense of this the more we go along with these alienating self-images. Resurrection only makes sense when we take seriously enfleshment (p. 214), i.e., overcome excarnation.

     But the alienating view is also partly a creation of Christianity. There is a desire for power here, of course, but also the aspiration to help, heal, make life better. (Bacon links the new science to "improving the condition of mankind".) It is another monstrous creation of (corrupted) Christianity. And the corruption of the best is the worst (Corruptio optimi pessima).

     Illich's text here also offers a very deep insight, still in some ways inchoate, of our fears of darkness, and the powers of evil. In the earliest forms of religious life, we kept these at bay partly by propitiating them, and partly by turning for protection to benign spirits, eventually God. The new path of the Gospel invites us to step out of the old protections, erected by the old "we's", confident in our impunity before these forces. But this impunity is the obverse side of our fidelity to the network of agape; and as we turn our back on that, try to "organize", to regulate the network, we fall away, and the fears recur. But now in a new register; we face them more and more alone, without the "cover" of the old collective protections (chapter 6).

     This drives us further in the direction of objectification/disenchantment. Science just negates, denies this whole dimension of dark forces. We are now reassured, our fears calmed. But our sense of them remains in two ways: first, the fascination with the idea of such forces, and benign counter-forces; so much of popular stories, films, art, recreates them (Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Matrix, Pullman, Harry Potter). We give ourselves frissons, while still holding the reality at bay. Second, they re-emerge in modes of diabolical evil which we find ourselves involved in (Holocaust, genocides, Gulags, killing fields, etc.).



We can see that Illich's story is not just about Christianity, but also about modern civilization. The latter is in some way the historical creation of "corrupted" Christianity. This in many ways comes close to the story I have been trying to tell: how the modern secular world emerged out of the more and more rule-bound and norm-governed Reform of Latin Christendom.

     This civilization has pushed to its farthest limits the move which Illich describes as the corrupting of Christianity: that is, in response to the failure and inadequacy of a motivation grounded in a sense of mutual belonging, it erects a system. This incorporates (a) a code or set of rules, (b) a set of disciplines which make us internalize these rules, and (c) a system of rationally constructed organizations (private and public bureaucracies, universities, schools) to make sure that we carry out what the rules demand. All these become second nature to us, including the decentring from our lived experience which we have to carry through in order to become disciplined, rational, disengaged subjects. From within this perspective, the standard account of the Good Samaritan story appears just obvious: it is a stage on the road to a universal morality of rules.

     Modern ethics illustrates this fetishism of rules and norms. Not just law, but ethics is seen in terms of rules (Kant). The spirit of the law is important, where it is, because it too expresses some general principle. For Kant, the principle is that we should put regulation by reason, or humanity as rational agency, first. In contrast, as we have seen, the network of agape puts first the gut-driven response to this person. This can't be reduced to a general rule. Because we can't live up to this, we need rules. "Because of the hardness of your hearts". It's not that we could just abolish them. But modern liberal civilization fetishizes them. We think we have to find the RIGHT system of rules, norms, and then follow them through unfailingly. We can't see any more the way these rules fit badly our world of enfleshed human beings, we fail to notice the dilemmas they have to sweep under the carpet: for instance, justice versus mercy; or justice versus a renewed relation — the kind of dilemma which post-Apartheid South Africa faced, and which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was meant to meet, as an attempt to get beyond the existing codes of retribution. We connect up here with the discussion in Chapter 18, section 12.

     In this perspective, something crucial in the Samaritan story gets lost. A world ordered by this system of rules, disciplines, organizations can only see contingency as an obstacle, even an enemy and a threat. The ideal is to master it, to extend the web of control so that contingency is reduced to a minimum. By contrast, contingency is an essential feature of the story as an answer to the question that prompted it. Who is my neighbour? The one you happen across, stumble across, who is wounded there in the road. Sheer accident also has a hand in shaping the proportionate, the appropriate response. It is telling us something, answering our deepest questions: this is your neighbour. But to hear this, we have to escape from the monomaniacal perspective in which contingency can only be an adversary requiring control. Illich develops this theme profoundly in chapters 3 and 4.

*     *     *
What is Illich telling us? That we should dismantle our code-driven, disciplined, objectified world? Illich was a thoroughgoing radical, and I don't want to blunt his message. I can't claim to speak for him, but this is what I draw from his work. We can't live without codes, legal ones which are essential to the rule of law, moral ones which we have to inculcate in each new generation. But even if we can't fully escape the nomocratic-judicialized-objectified world, it is terribly important to see that that is not all there is, that it is in many ways dehumanizing, alienating; that it often generates dilemmas that it cannot see, and in driving forward, acts with great ruthlessness and cruelty. The various modes of political correctness, from Left and Right, illustrate this every day.

     As does also the continued pull to violence in our world. Codes, even the best codes, are not as innocent as they seem. They take root in us as an answer to some of our deepest metaphysical needs, that for meaning, for instance, or that for a sense of our own goodness. The code can rapidly become the crutch for our sense of moral superiority. This is, of course, another important theme of the New Testament, as we see with the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican.

     Worse, this moral superiority feeds on the proof offered by the contrast case, the evil, warped, inhuman ones. We even give our own goodness its crowning proof when we wage war on evil. We will do battle against axes of evil and networks of terror; and then we discover to our surprise and horror that we are reproducing the evil we defined ourselves against.

     Codes, even the best codes, can become idolatrous traps, which tempt us to complicity in violence. Illich can remind us not to become totally invested in the code, even the best code of a peace-loving, egalitarian, liberalism. We should find the centre of our spiritual lives beyond the code, deeper than the code, in networks of living concern, which are not to be sacrificed to the code, which must even from time to time subvert it. This message comes out of a certain theology, but it could be heard with profit by everybody.



I have been arguing, in part following Illich, that there has been a long-standing tendency in the West to slide towards an identification of Christian faith and civilizational order. This not only makes us lose sight of the full transformation that Christians are called to, but it also makes us lose a crucial critical distance from the order which we identify as Christendom, whether it be the one at present established, or some earlier one which we are fighting to restore.

     Illich thinks that this take-over of Christianity by an order which negates its spirit is the mystery of evil (mysterium inequitatis, pp. 169-170). Even if one doesn't go this far, one can see the dangers inherent in it. The belief that God is on our side, that He blesses our order, is one of the most powerful sources of chauvinism. It can be a fertile inspiration to violence. For our enemies must be His enemies, and these surely must be fought with every means at our disposal. That is the danger that the Catholic Church eventually perceived, which led to the Papal condemnation of Action Francaise in 1926. And this in spite of the fact that the particular civilizational order which this movement was struggling for, a restored Catholic monarchy, was highly attractive to many churchmen. Maurras tried to reassure his Catholic followers with his slogan "Politique, d'abord", implying that the political alliance was merely provisional, and didn't imply an identity of goal; but in fact what was going on was a kind of integral fusion of faith and political programme, which nourished a kind of conflict which hovered constantly on the edge of violence, with Maurras calling for the assassination of Republican politicians.

     The Papal condemnation was the occasion of Maritain's break with Maurras, and his move towards a very different position, one in which he came to see the reconstruction of Christian civilization in novel terms; not as a return to Christendom, that is, to a single civilization homogeneously and integrally Christian, but limited to one area. Rather he sought a unity of Christian culture on a global scale, but in a dispersed network of Christian lay institutions and centres of intellectual and spiritual life. "Au lieu d'un chateau fort dressé au milieu des terres, il faudrait penser a l'armée des étoiles jetées dans le ciel." (Instead of a fortified castle erected in the middle of the land, we must think of an army of stars thrown into the sky.) The central feature of this new culture will be "l'avenèment spirituel, non pas de l'ego centré sur lui-même, mais de la subjectivité créatrice" (the spiritual advent, not of the self-centred ego, but of creative subjectivity). This new understanding of philosophy and the modern condition reached its fullest expression in Maritain's Humanisme Intégral.