Categoria: Idiomas

Was the Collapse of this Theology the Main Reason for the Resignation of Benedict XVI?

Leonardo Boff10 Comentários

It is always risky to choose a theologian to be pope. He can turn his particular theology into the universal theology of the Church and impose it on the whole world. I suspect this has been the case with Benedict XVI, first as a Cardinal, appointed Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, (ex-Inquisition), and later, chosen as Pope. This was not legitimate and became the source of unjust condemnations. In effect, he condemned more than one hundred men and women theologians, for not being in tune with his theological reading of the Church and of the world.

Reasons of health and feelings of impotence in the face of the gravity of the crisis in the Church led him to resign. But not only that. The text of his resignation speaks of the “diminution of vigor of the body and of the spirit” and of “his incapacity” to confront the questions that made the exercise of his mission difficult. Behind these words, I believe there hides the more profound reason for his resignation: the awareness of the collapse of his theology and of the failure of the model of Church he wanted to implement. An absolutist monarchy is not so absolute that it can overcome the inertia of the aged curial structures.

The central theses of his theology were always problematic for the theological community. Three of them ended up being rebutted by the facts: the concept of the Church as a «small reconciled world»; that the City of Men only acquires value before God by going through the mediation of the City of God, and the famous «subsistit» that means: only in the Catholic Church does the true Church of Christ subsist, no other Churches can be called Churches. This narrow conception comes from a sharp intelligence that is hostage to itself, not having sufficient intrinsic strength or the necessary following to be implemented. Did Benedict recognize this collapse and coherently resign? There are reasons for this hypothesis.

The Pontiff Emeritus found in Saint Augustine his teacher and inspiration. In fact, Augustine was the subject of personal conversations with him. From Saint Augustine he took his basic perspective, starting from his theory of original sin (transmitted by the sexual act of procreation). This causes all of humanity to be a «condemned mass». But inside humanity, God, through Christ, set up a saving cell, represented by the Church. The Church is «a small reconciled world» that carries the representation (Vertretung) of the rest of the lost humanity. It is not necessary for the Church to have many members. A few suffice, so long as they are pure and holy. Ratzinger incorporated this vision. He complemented it with the following reflection: the Church is made up of Christ and the twelve apostles. This is why she is apostolic. She is just this small group. This excludes the disciples, the women, and the masses that followed Jesus of Nazareth. To him, they do not count. They are reached by the representation (Vertretung) that «the small reconciled world» assumes. This eclesiastical model does not take into consideration the vast globalized world. Benedict wanted to make Europe into «the reconciled world» to again conquer humanity. He failed because no-one undertook this project, and it was even ridiculed.

The second thesis is also taken from Saint Augustine and his reading of history: the confrontation between the City of God and the City of Men. In the City of God there is grace and salvation: she is the only path that leads to salvation. The City of Men is built by human effort. But, since it is already contaminated by humanism and her other values, it does not obtain salvation because it has not passed through the mediation of the City of God (the Church). This is why she is plagued by relativism. Consequently Cardinal Ratzinger harshly condemned the Theology of Liberation, because it sought liberation by the poor themselves, and made the poor the autonomous subjects of their own history. But since the Theology of Liberation was not created within the City of God and her cell, the Church, it is insufficient and vain.

The third is a very personal interpretation that Benedict gives to Vatican Council II when talking of the Church of Christ. The first Counciliar draft said that the Catholic Church is the Church of Christ. The debates searching for ecumenism, changed is to subsists, to make room for other Christian Churches that, in their own way, also realize the Church of Christ. This interpretation, as maintained in my doctoral dissertation, earned an explicit condemnation from Cardinal Ratzinger in his famous document Dominus Jesus, (2000), where he affirms that subsists comes from «subsistence» that there can be only one, and it is found in the Catholic Church. The other «churches» present «solely» ecclesiastic elements. This «solely» is an arbitrary attachment he makes to the official text of the Council. Some notable theologians and I, myself, have shown that this essentialist reading does not exist in Latin. The meaning is always concrete: «to have body», «to objectively realize». This was the «sensus Patrum», the meaning of the Fathers of the Council.

These three central theses have been refuted by the facts: inside the «small reconciled world» there are too many pedophiles, even among the Cardinals, and thieves of money from the Vatican Bank. The second, that the City of Men does not have saving gravity in front of God, is built on the error of limiting the action of the City of God solely to the realm of the Church. Within the City of Men the City of God is also found, not in the form of religious consciousness but in the form of ethics and humanitarian values. Vatican Cuncil II guaranteed autonomy to the terrestrial realities (another name for secularization) that have value independently of the Church. They are of value to God. The City of God (the Church) is realized by the explicit faith, by the celebration and by the sacraments. The City of Men is realized by ethics and politics.

The third, that the Catholic Church is the unique and exclusive Church of Christ and, even worse, that outside of her there is no salvation, a medieval thesis resurrected by Cardinal Ratzinger, was simply ignored as offensive by other Churches. Instead of «outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation», in the discourse of popes and theologians was introduced, «the universal offer of salvation to all human beings and the world».

I have a serious suspicion that this failure and the collapse of his theological structure took away his “necessary vigor of body and spirit” to the point, as he confesses, of “feeling incapable of exercising his ministry”. Captive to his own theology, he had no alternative other than to honestly resign.

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Pope Francis called to restore the Church

Leonardo Boff11 Comentários

In the social network I had predicted that the future Pope would take the name of Francis. And I was right. Why Francis? Because Saint Francis began his conversion upon hearing the Crucifix of the Chapel of San Damiano, telling him: “Francis go and restore my Church, she is in shambles” (Saint Bonaventure, Major Legends II, 1).

Francis took these words to heart, and rebuilt the small church of La Portiuncula, in Assisi, that is still housed in the interior of an immense cathedral. Later on, he understood that restoring the «Church that Christ had rescued with His blood» (ibid.), was a spiritual task. It was then that he started a movement to restore the Church, which at the time was presided over by the most powerful Pope in history, Innocence III. He began to live with lepers, and on the arm of one of them, he would walk the paths, preaching the Gospel in popular language, rather than in Latin.

It is worth knowing that Francis was never a priest, but only a lay person. Only at the end of his life, when the Popes forbade the lay to preach, did Francis agree to become a deacon, on condition that he would not receive any type of remuneration for that position.

Why has Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio chosen the name Francis? I believe it was because he has seen that the Church is in shambles, demoralized by the diverse scandals that affected her most precious resource: morality and credibility.

Francis is not just a name, it is a project of the Church, poor, simple, evangelical and bereft of power. She is a Church that walks with the least among us, that creates the first communities of brothers and sisters who pray the breviary under the trees with the little birds. She is an ecological Church that calls all beings by the sweet words, «brothers and sisters». Francis was obedient to the Church and to the popes, and at the same time he followed his own path with the Gospel of poverty in hand. Then the theologian Joseph Ratzinger wrote: «the “no” of Francis to that type of imperial Church could not be more radical, it is what we could call a prophetic protest» (Zeit Jesu, Herder 1970, 269). Francis does not speak, he simply inaugurates the new.

I believe Pope Francis has in mind a Church removed from the palaces and symbols of power. He showed that when he appeared in public. Normally the Popes, and principally Ratzinger, would place over their shoulders the muceta, that small short cape embroidered in gold, that only the emperors could use. Pope Francis appeared dressed only in white. Three points of great symbolic meaning are worthy of note in his inaugural speech.

The first: Pope Francis said that he wants «to preside in charity», something that has been sought since the Reformation and by the best theologians of ecumenism. The Pope should not preside as an absolutist monarch, invested with sacred power, as provided by canon law. According to Jesus, he should preside in love, and fortify the faith of the brothers and sisters.

The second: the Pope gave centrality to the People of God, as Vatican Council II does, but as was set aside by the two previous popes in favor of hierarchy. Pope Francis humbly asked the people of God to pray for him and for the people to bless him. Only after that did he bless the people of God. This means that he is here to serve, not to be served. He asks for help to build a path together and cries for fraternity for all humanity, as humans do not now recognize themselves as brothers and sisters, but as joined by economic forces.

Lastly, he avoided the spectacle of the figure of the Pope. He did not extend both arms to greet the people. He remained still, serious and somber, I would say almost as if startled. All that was seen was a white figure who lovingly greeted the people. But he radiated peace and trust. He displayed humor, speaking without official rhetoric, as a pastor talks to the faithful.

It is worth mentioning that he is a Pope who comes from El Gran Sur, (The Great South), where the poorest of humanity are and were 60% of Catholics live. With his experience as a pastor, with a new vision of things, from below, he can reform the Curia, decentralize the administration and give a new and credible face to the Church.

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Against forgetting the Holy Spirit

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

In a previous article we tried to rescue the dimension of the “spirit” that has largely been submerged in modern materialist and consumerist culture. Now we want to rescue the figure of the Holy Spirit, which is always marginalized or forgotten in the Latin Church. Since she is a Church of power, she does not coexist well with charisma, which belongs to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the fantasy of God and the motor of change, which are not welcomed by the old hierarchical institution. But the Holy Spirit is coming back.

Vatican Council II emphatically affirms: «The Spirit of God directs the course of history with admirable providence; it renews the face of the Earth and is present in evolution» (Gaudium et Spes, 26/281). The Spirit is always in action. But it appears with greater intensity when there are changes which bring about something new. Four such recent changes are worth mentioning: the Ecumenical Vatican Council II (1962-1965), The Latin American Episcopal Conference in Medellin, Colombia (1969), and the appearance of the Church of Liberation and of the Charismatic Catholic Renewal.

With Vatican II (1962-1965), the Church came into step with the modern world and its liberties. In particular, the Church established a dialogue with techno-science, with the world of labor, with secularization, ecumenism, other religions and fundamental human rights. The Spirit breathed fresh air into the crepuscular building of the Church.

In Medellín (1968) the Church stepped into the underworld of poverty and misery that characterized and still continues to characterize Latin America. Filled with the strength of the Holy Spirit, Latin American pastors made an option for the poor and against poverty and decided to carry out a pastoral practice of integral liberation: liberation not just from our personal and collective sins, but liberation from the sin of oppression, from the sin of the impoverishment of the masses, the discrimination against the Native nations of the continent, the contempt for the Afro-descendants, and the sin of patriarchal domination, that men have practiced over women since the Neolithic age.

From this was born the Church of the Liberation. Her face is seen in the reading of the Bible by the people, in the new form of being Church of the Ecclesiastic Base Communities, in the different social pastorals, (of the Native people, the Afro-descendants, the Earth, health, the children, and others), and in its corresponding reflection, the Theology of Liberation.

This Church of Liberation raised Christians who are politically committed to the oppressed, who opposed the military dictatorships that practiced persecution, jailing, torture and murder. It is doubtless one of the few Churches that has so many martyrs, such as Sister Dorothy Stang, and even bishops such as Enrique Angelleli, in Argentina, and Oscar Arnulfo Romero, in El Salvador.

The fourth change was the emergence of the Charismatic Catholic Renewal in the United States, beginning in 1967, and in Latin America, in the 1970s. It brought back the centrality of prayer, spirituality, and of living the charismas of the Spirit. Communities of prayer were created, communities to foster the gifts of the Holy Spirit, assistance to the poor and the sick. This renewal helped overcome the rigidity of the ecclesiastic organization and the coldness of doctrine. It ended the monopoly of the Word as the sole province of the clergy, opening a space for the free expression of the faithful.

These four events only can be properly theologically evaluated when they are viewed through the lens of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has always burst forth in history and in an innovative form in the Church, that consequently becomes the generator of hope and of the joy of living the faith.

We are living now in what is perhaps the greatest crisis of human history. It is its greatest crisis because it could be terminal. In fact, we have given ourselves the instruments of self-destruction. We have built a death machine that can kill us all and liquidate our entire civilization, that was so painfully constructed over thousands and thousands of years of creative work. And the majority of biodiversity could die with us. If this tragedy occurs, the Earth will continue her journey, covered with corpses, devastated and impoverished; but without us.

For this reason, we say that our technology of death has opened up a new geologic era: the Anthropocene. That is, the human being appears like a great meteorite threatening life. The human being may prefer to self-destruct and perversely spoil the living Earth, Gaia, rather than change its life style and relationship with nature and with Mother Earth. As once in Palestine the Jews preferred Barrabas over Jesus, the present enemies of life could prefer Herod to the innocent children. Then the human being would in fact show himself as the Satan of the Earth, rather than the guardian angel of creation.

At that moment we will invoke, plead and cry out loud the liturgical prayer of the feast of Pentecost: Veni, Sancte Spiritus et emite coelitus, Lucis tuae radio: «Come Holy Spirit and send from heaven a ray of light».

Without the return of the Spirit, we run the risk that the crisis will no longer be a purifying opportunity, and will degenerate into a tragedy, with no return. In the Ecclesiastic Base Communities they sing: «Come Holy Spirit and renew the face of the Earth».

 

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.

Rescuing the “spirit” Cathegory

Leonardo Boff4 Comentários

In today’s culture, the word, “spirit” has been devalued on two fronts: in the learned culture, and in the popular culture.

In the dominant learned culture, “spirit” is the opposite of matter. We more or less know what matter is, because it can be measured, weighed, manipulated and transformed, while the “spirit” falls in the realm of the intangible, indefinite and even nebulous. Matter is the word-source of the central values of human experience in recent centuries. Modern science has been built on the research and domination of matter. It has penetrated the elemental particles up to its ultimate dimensions, the realm of Higgs, where the condensation of the original energy in matter would have first occurred: the greatly sought bosons and hadrons and the so-called “God particle”. Einstein proved that matter and energy are equivalent. Matter is not real. It is highly condensed energy, and a field rich with interactions.

In the modern conventional sense, the spiritual values are in the super-structure and do not fit in scientific schemes. Their place is in the world of the subjective, left to the discretion of each person, or of religious groups. Stated rather grotesquely, but not too harshly, we can agree with Jose Comblin, a good specialist on the subject: «When “spiritual values” are mentioned, everybody thinks that a bourgeois is talking to a gathering of Rotarians or a meeting of the Lyons Club, after a copious dinner with fine wines and a delicious meal. For the people in general, “spiritual values” equates to “nice but empty words”. Or it pertains to the repertoire of the ecclesiastical speech: moralistic, spiritualizing and in a hostile relationship with the modern world».

As a result, the expression “spiritual values” appears with greater frequency on the lips of priests and bishops of conservative tendencies. It is common to hear from them that the present crisis of the contemporary world is basically found in the abandonment of the spiritual world: not attending mass or having any other explicit relationship with a hierarchical Church.

But given the recent scandals, the pedophile priests and the financial scandals linked to the Vatican Bank, official discourse about “spiritual values” has been devalued. It has not lost its value, but the official entity that announces them reaches very few.

In popular culture, the word “spirit” has great validity. It translates to a certain magical conception of the world, in contrast to the rationality learned at school. For the people, especially those influenced by the Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous cultures, the world is inhabited by good and bad spirits that affect different life situations, such as health and illness, the emotional life, success and failure, good and bad luck. Spiritualism has codified this vision of the world though reincarnation. It has more followers than we think.

However, in recent decades we have seen that excessive rationality in all fields and exaggerated consumerism generate an existential saturation and much deception. Happiness lies not in material things, but in the dimensions related to the heart, affection, relationships of love, solidarity and compassion.

New spiritual experiences are sought everywhere, this is, a meaning of life that goes beyond immediate interests and the daily struggle for life. These experiences open a perspective of hope and light in the middle of the market of conventional ideas and proposals, propagated by the means of communication and the so-called “institutions of meaning,” the religions, churches and philosophies of life. They have acquired strength through television programs and the big religious shows that follow the logic of mass spectacles and that, for that reason, move away from the reverent and sacred character of all religiosity. In a market society, religion and spirituality have become merchandise available for general consumption. And they produce large amounts of money.

In spite of this commercialization of the religious, fascination with the spiritual world is increasing, although mostly in the form of esoteric and self-help literature. Even so, it may open a path in the world of the profane and in the gray character of mass society. In the Christian media have appeared the Pentecostal Churches, the charismatic movements, and the centrality of the figure of the Holy Spirit.

These phenomena imply a rescue of the “spirit” category in a positive and even anti-systemic sense. The “spirit” is a consistent reference and is no longer under suspicion by the critics of modernity that only accepted that which passed though the sieve of reason. But reason is not everything, nor does it explain all. There is the a-rational and the irrational. In human beings, there is the universe of passion, affection, and feeling, that is expressed through the emotional and cordial intelligence. The spirit does not reject reason, better yet, the spirit needs reason. But the spirit goes beyond that, globalizing it at a higher level that has to do with intelligence, contemplation and the superior meaning of life and of history. In terms of the new cosmology, the spirit could be as ancestral as the universe, which is also the carrier of spirit. Are we now in the Era of the Spirit?

By the author: Fire from Heaven: The Holy Spirit in the Universe, in Humanity, in the Churches and Religions, (Fuego del cielo: el Espíritu Santo en el universo, en la humanidad, en las Iglesias y religiones), to be published soon by Editorial Vozes, Petropolis, RJ, Brazil.

Translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.