Stage center, Richard Rohr, OFM

Mass notes: Sunday, September 23, 2018 – 25^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This week I think I may have gained some important insight into the hermeneutical presuppositions (i.e., ideology) of the priest (and deacon) at our new parish. This is because he quite forthrightly based his preaching on the thought of Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, a New Mexico-(where else?)-based fellow with more than a few disciples, who has been described, probably quite aptly, as a new-age heretic. “Has anyone read his books?” Father asked the pew-sitters. Evidently some people had. “Yes? Yes? Good, good!” Well, hardly surprising, especially in our parish, which comes equipped, since 2015, with a Sacred Garden featuring a labyrinth – usually a good clue that some significant movers and shakers at the parish have moved ‘beyond’ the traditional apostolic Christian faith and on to some form of ‘alternative orthodoxy’ (as Rohr describes his own thought). And certainly Rohr’s books pair well with the scandalous fine collection of Sister Joan Chittister books displayed in the church lobby.

Father preached on Richard Rohr’s teaching about something like “the four stages of maturity of a spiritual (possibly Christian) community.” Given what he wanted to say, Father naturally took bits of the 2^nd reading from James and from the gospel, Mark’s, as his points of departure: “Where there is envy and selfish ambition [contentio], there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. … Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?” (James 3:16; 4:1) “Jesus asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. Jesus sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’” (Mark 9:33-35)

So, Father noted, James was writing to a dysfunctional Christian community; cue Richard Rohr and the four stages of development of maturity in community. I can’t remember exactly what they were – someday I’ll be less occupied with kids at mass and I’ll be able to take notes – but it was something like: (1) honeymoon (“I love these people!”); (2) disillusionment (“These people are selfish, disgusting sinners!”); (3) resignation (“I guess I still have to try to love these selfish, disgusting sinners (after all, technically I’m one of them)”); (4) finally just being kind and cool with everyone (“Just whatever, man, just be, it’s all good! Would you like some more soup?”). Well, something fairly amusing like that anyway. (Father's big on jokes and bonhomie, he's a good guy, not a ‘sourpuss,’ as they say.)

Father’s (Rohr’s) schema seemed a little vague, a little contrived, and perhaps with a hint of the insidious. It’s the kind of schema that is open to being subtly developed in a rather demagogical direction, to where the pew-sitters are encouraged to believe that it just would be ‘immature’ of them were they (1) too in love with their community (I don’t think this possibility is emphasized); or more importantly were they (2) to be critical of sin or challenge doctrinal error – the way that Jesus of Nazareth did.

So, next obvious question: Was Jesus of Nazareth (before he became Richard Rohr's resurrected ‘Cosmic Jesus’) spiritually ‘immature’? Presumably not, Father? But then hopefully you see what I mean when I say the schema seems vague, contrived, and perhaps insidious. Rohr – and presumably with him his adepts – seems to regard himself as mature (or rather, as the veritable icon of a “great advance in human maturity”), daring, great-souled; and subversive, certainly, but not insidious. But of course reality may not be quite what he thinks.

And in fact reality can’t be quite what he thinks, or rather it’s meaningless to talk about quite what he thinks reality is, because Rohr is (at least rhetorically) ‘through the looking glass,’ so to speak, and (claims that) he holds opposites together in the irresolvable tension of his own great soul – or at least that’s what he aims for and recommends to others. A few quotes to illustrate, first from Rohr’s Hope Against Darkness, a book allegedly about “the transforming vision of Saint Francis in an age of anxiety” (poor actual Saint Francis, his name is so abused!):

You could say that the greater opposites you can hold together, the greater soul you usually have. By temperament, most of us prefer one side to the other. Holding to one side or another frees us from the tension and anxiety. Only a few dare to hold the irresolvable tension in the middle. [A hint of “Hegel for Dummies” here perhaps?]

I’m seeing people of great faith today, people of the Big Truth, who love the church, but are no longer on bended knee before an idol. [For example, no longer kneeling for communion? As Rohr and (presumably following Rohr) our deacon say: when you receive communion, you are what you eat, and surely it’s a bit silly to go down on bended knee to worship yourself (your own (Richard Rohr’s own) ‘True Self’)?] They don’t need to worship the institution; neither do they need to throw it out and react against it. [Of course it never once occurred to people before ‘today’ that these were not the only two options!] This is a great advance in human maturity. Only a few years ago it was always [yup, it was always!] either/or thinking: ‘If it isn’t perfect I’m leaving it.’ We are slowly discovering what many of us are calling ‘the Third Way,’ neither flight nor fight, but the way of compassionate knowing. [“The way of compassionate knowing”; i.e., the way of ‘passive’ aggression, of undermining the Church from within? – not, by the way, a strategy discovered “only a few years ago”!]

Then there’s this bit of “irresolvable tension,” i.e., doublespeak (‘Rohr’ is German for pipe or reed, by the way, and one naturally thinks of the Pied Piper in this connection, leading away first the rats, and then – alas! – the children):

Observing nature, we see that diversity is essential to balance, wholeness, and resilience. Ecosystems thrive when a variety of species of plants and animals nourish each other. Diverse environments are much stronger and less susceptible to pests and disease than mono-crop fields. The world is a relational system full of complex inter-dependence among very different creatures. If we want sustainable communities, we must always welcome the “other” [so what about pests and disease? or, say, sexual predators, heretics, charlatans? or “the world”? (see the day's reading from James, in the next verse of which (4:4) James tells us, “adulterers, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?”) – hmm... we might also welcome some nuance, eh Father?] and learn to see [see? not love?] our neighbor as ourselves. Without it, we do not have community at all, but just egoic enclaves. (taken from Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation website, here)

So diverse ecosystems are wonderful: sure, great! I’m all for that (although, being a practical person, I’m also not a big mono-crop hater). Therefore, we must always welcome the “other.” Why? So that we are strong and not susceptible to invasion by the ever-threatening “other other”! That is, for Rohr (tolle! lege! and by all means dispute if you see fit!), we must welcome the “other” in order to defend against the “pest and disease” that are represented by the traditional, apostolic, Biblical, creedal, magisterial teachings and practices of the Christian faith (yes, including the teachings of Vatican II), as well as against the first principles of philosophy and theology. At least, so it seems!

In saying these kinds of things, Rohr assumes – following the gnostical logic of his own ideology – that his own great soul is the very measure of reality and so, quite consistently, he can patronizingly, smugly, glibly dismiss the “False-Self”-ness of those who might presume to measure him up and find his thought wanting (MENE, MENE, TEKAL, UPHARSIN and all that). So Rohr is an unfortunate kind of guru for a Catholic priest or deacon to be following in his preaching. But it’s also not surprising that such characters should arise from time to time, and raise up disciples to follow them (this is the case of a bug in the Church which in a sense rises to the level of a feature), especially in the kind of narcissistic, clericalist, “self-enclosed circle” of community that Ratzinger warns against in The Spirit of the Liturgy, wherein an incautious priest may tend to be drawn, by the very setup of the physical, ‘incarnate’ space, to regard himself as the centre of attention and who thus feels responsible for sustaining the whole thing by his own overactive, poorly grounded creativity (see Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 80 and my previous related comments on Ratzinger’s thesis here).

Mass notes: All about Uncle Ted?

Sunday, September 16, 2018 – 24^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

A whole homily about “Uncle Ted” Cardinal McCarrick and sexual abuse scandals in the Church? Is that really what my family and I need to hear about? I’m not saying ignore it, I’m not saying don’t address it, but isn’t the adversary perhaps quite happy that we’re so focused on this sensational news story and thereby distracted from worthier topics of contemplation? Oh well, I’m not in charge: Uncle Ted it is, but let’s not overdo it!

So yes, on this Sunday, visiting at another parish, we got to hear a bunch about “Uncle Ted” and related scandals. It was not very edifying, I thought, but in particular it seemed ironic that in his impassioned homily against abuse and abusers and protectors of abusers, the priest – following the Alberta bishops – elected to quote none other than Pope Francis in denouncing these evils. Heaven forbid that bishops and priests just go ahead and speak out against evil in their own voices, instead of needing to quote the pope!

At the climax of his homily the priest made the emphatic point: “Make no mistake: Jesus stands with the victims, not the abusers!” Oh? But didn’t Christ come to save sinners? Hurt people hurt people. Victims make new victims. Victimizers are/were themselves victims of abuse. So at what point, exactly, does Christ cease to “stand with” a sinner (with me, for example)? (Only) when my sins become a sensational news story? (Only) when they take on an overtly ‘political’ dimension?

Anyway, complications about the problem of evil, the perfection of God’s merciful love, etc., aside, we may well accept the rather banal point that Jesus does not stand with the abusers, at least in the sense that he warns them rather pointedly, “it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a great millstone around your neck” than to carry on as you do. But also we might note that Pope Francis – the guy the priest had just been quoting – actually has been standing with, defending, promoting the abusers (right up until it becomes overwhelmingly obvious in a given case of patronage that the political cost has become too heavy). And it’s very easy to condemn sexual abuse – it’s like when world leaders step up after an act of terrorism and reassuringly announce to the wondering world that they (still) unequivocally condemn such acts of non-state-sanctioned violence – but as Jonathan V. Last writes, there is a bigger picture:

The abuse itself is terrible, of course. We should say that out loud, because while the details are unspeakable they must be spoken of. Without the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report, we would know much less about the evil inside the church. (It is also instructive to note that authorities within the church opposed the release of this report.) But individual priest-abusers aren’t catastrophic to the church in any structural way. Predators will always be among us. It is a human pathology from which not even priests are immune. But the remedy for predation is straightforward: Whenever and wherever such men are discovered, they should be rooted out and punished.

The institutional damage is done not by the abusers but by the structures that cover for them, excuse them, and advance them. Viewed in that way, the damage done to the Catholic church by Cardinal Wuerl—and every other bishop who knew about McCarrick and stayed silent [e.g., Pope Francis?!]—is several orders of magnitude greater than that done by McCarrick himself.

So at this point surely Pope Francis makes a rather poor choice as a go-to for quotes about standing against abuse and not sheltering and promoting abusers.

In order to tie his homily to the day’s gospel, the priest used Jesus’ admonition to Peter, “Get behind me Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as humans do.” The preacher claimed an analogy here between Peter and abusive clergy. But it seems to me that sexually abusive clergy are not thinking “as humans do” in the way Peter was; they are thinking as vicious, pathologically perverted humans do, that is, they are thinking in a way that is really inhuman. Peter was not doing this. The rejection of the cross is human. Even Christ prayed that this cup be taken from him, because he was human, he had a real human nature and human will, and to embrace the cross requires a grace-powered act of will to transcend the merely human, that which is naturally human, that is, that which, at a strictly natural human level, is good. Sexual predators of young men, by contrast, are not acting in a way that is properly human, naturally human, in accord with human nature, that is, in a way that is humanly good. Suggesting an equivalence here between Peter and the abusers confuses the important distinction between the natural and the supernatural good. Grace both heals wounded nature and elevates what it heals. Peter’s desire to save his friend, our Lord, from suffering and death was naturally good; Peter just did not yet understand and was not ready to embrace the greater, supernatural good which it was necessary for him to take into account. In contrast, McCarrick’s perverse desires and actions to corrupt young men and in the process to do grave damage to the Church are far from any kind of good, natural or supernatural.

The priest also quoted the morally and intellectually rather more impressive authority of Thomas Aquinas in his homily. He noted that justice, according to Aquinas, is “rendering to each his due” (something to that effect). Great! But then the priest also claimed, I guess on his own say-so, and without further ado: “And what we need is not retributive justice, but restorative justice!” Excuse me? So is the priest claiming that retribution is not anyone’s due? Sexual predators should only be ‘restored,’ not punished? But is that not the very disastrous policy that he had been railing on against: “don’t punish abusers; restore them to ministry in some other parish!”? So I wonder what he could have meant. Jesus, anyway, along with common sense and a host of other witnesses too numerous to list, seems to teach us that justice requires restitution, that retributive punishment is indeed what is due to criminals and sinners. Aquinas too clearly teaches that punishment is retributive, so if the priest, after quoting Aquinas on justice, has some other view, I think he owes his listeners an explanation. And before attempting that explanation he might do well to read some of the Ed Feser’s exceptionally lucid work on the subject (see here for example), so that he is aware of what it is he needs to respond to if he really wants to maintain his anti-retribution position.