Hope and Beauty in the Midst of the Global Coronavirus Pandemic

NOTE: The following was first published at The Wild Reed on March 14, 2020.


I went shopping today with my friend Deandre and saw for the first time what I'd only heard about or seen pictures of on social media: large areas of empty shelving in grocery stores and signage from store owners announcing to customers limitations of quantity of certain goods – namely toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

It was all very surreal.

And I couldn't help but think of Doris Lessing's novel, The Memoirs of a Survivor, about a woman's experience of a society crumbling as the result of an unspecified disaster, referred to as “The Crisis.”

In film director David Gladwell's 1981 adaptation of Lessing's novel (described by critic Albert Johnson as “a cinema journey full of discovery”), the main (and nameless) character/narrator is luminously portrayed by Julie Christie. (For my reflections on this film, click here.)

Of course, the event that is causing growing unease and panic around the world is not, as in Lessing's novel, "unspecified." No, for us in 2020 the event is the coronavirus pandemic, one which, globally, is unprecedented, and which here in the U.S. is about to get much worse because of the incompetence of the Trump administration and the lack of any real public health system.

Doris Lessing's The Memoirs of a Survivor is generally considered a dystopian novel, a story of end times.

Yet it can also be read as an allegorical tale of new beginnings. This is most resolutely symbolized in the salvific appearance of the mythic “Cosmic Egg” toward the end of both the novel and its film adaptation.

Writes Sharon R. Wilson about the significance of this symbol:

In Lessing’s revisioned creation myth, the Cosmic Egg requires human co-construction: the narrator mirrors her creator. Without the narrator’s journey through the wall and without her work to clean and order the chaos – work that matches that of the painter and gardener – presumably this egg could not open. As well as being a witness to the death and rebirth of the world, Lessing’s unnamed narrator is an active participant in its recreation.

I find this analysis of Lessing's novel, one that reflects the mystic path, to be both beautiful and hopeful.

And in recent days I've come across a number of writings by people who, in responding to the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic, also offer beauty and hope.

Some of these writings are by people I know – friends and/or colleagues. Others are by well-known thinkers and authors. All reflect the beauty and wisdom of the heart, the seedbed of hope.

__________________________

[N]othing feels stable. One month ago rumors rumbled, this week everything is shutting down. Within these last few days it has felt as if we were dropped into the plot of a sci-fi movie, where the viewer can see more broadly the entire scope of the problem and knows it is going to be bad. On screen characters are only beginning to sense the severity and react in fear. I hear the word, “surreal” quite a lot these days.

This morning I walked out of a bakery and into the familiar sound of honking just above my head. I looked up to see two geese preparing to land on a nearby pond. As I hopped into my car and headed down the highway, I was immediately gifted by a spectacular sunrise. It evolved from velvet purple, to azure blue to a popping bright yellow. As quickly as it arrived, it morphed to a calming lavender and ducked behind a bank of clouds.

When it seems as if nothing is the same, that everything is changing, as if there is no solid ground beneath you, take a deeper look. The birds are coming back to their summer homes, the lake ice is melting, the sun continues to rise and set in a predicable rhythm of grace. Regular life is still happening. Look beyond your (very normal) fear into the depths of your own heart. There you find stability. In that place, find peace. See grace.

And out of THAT heart space of stability, peace and grace . . . live.

Over this season you will find more posts than is normal for this space. I invite you to come, check in and breath. Take good care of yourself and those whom you love. And, be kind to each other.

– Andrea Wichhart-Tatley
“Within”
AndreaTatley.com
March 13, 2020

If we imagine we live on some isolated little island, we are living in a fool's paradise. What happens over there affects me here.

My own well-being depends on whether I let you fall to the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, telling myself that your life is none of my responsibility. If I let you be sick and without medical treatment, I myself will end up paying a price – as I will if I let you go without education, without food, without a job.

The butterfly beats its wings on the other side of the globe and the weather on my side of the planet feels the effects.

A global pandemic shows us that we are all connected to each other, all related, all kin, all in it together. And that we will not have lives worth living on this planet until we begin to recognize our interconnectedness.

– William D. Lindsey
via Facebook
March 14, 2020

If we view ourselves as besieged victims who need to go into hiding, then we will cultivate fear and hoarding. If we view ourselves as a community working hard to protect the most vulnerable among us, then we will cultivate courage and helping. Mindset matters.

– Len Niehoff
via Facebook
March 13, 2020

I was thinking this morning about how rapidly things can change. A week ago, I bought a new mattress at Macy’s. The sales person stood to shake my hand at the end of the transaction and I said, “Ah, no. We are supposed to be training ourselves not to shake hands now that the coronavirus has arrived in the U.S.” At that time, there had been five confirmed cases. We sort of laughed as we awkwardly attempted the elbow bump and he said, “Well, you are my first elbow bump of these new times.”

I left the furniture store and went to Trader Joe’s, where I leisurely shopped, overhearing the few other folks also shopping casually discussing things like what to purchase for dinner or what cheese to serve to guests gathering later that night. It was calm, the shelves were well stocked. I even bought a few hyacinth bulbs. And I probably touched my face 14 times without giving it another thought. It almost seems inconceivable that that was only a week ago in light of how much has changed in our world since then. That salesman might not even have a job this weekend as the stock market tanks, businesses voluntarily close for a few weeks in an attempt to “flatten the curve,” and people’s priorities shift from purchasing furniture to stockpiling toilet paper and disinfecting wipes.

By week’s end, my Facebook feed was full of photos of completely empty shelves at Trader Joe’s as the urge to hoard food and essentials became harder and harder to resist as the numbers of confirmed cases rose exponentially and the inevitability of self imposed isolation came into sharper and sharper focus.

As I was preparing the bedroom for the delivery of the new mattress later this afternoon, I was actually thinking how risky it feels to have strangers come into my “clean space” and what I would do if they arrive coughing and appearing unwell. I was pondering all this, and marveling at how long 24 hours can feel in a time of such uncertainty, when I flipped on the light in the dining room and discovered my hyacinth bulbs had bloomed. It sort of felt like the Universe was challenging my conclusion that everything that changed so quickly this week was in the negative column.

Alright Universe, you win. Sometimes rapidly changing things can surprise us with amazingly beautiful results. I hope you are surprised by beauty sometime this weekend as well.

– Amy Gabriel
via Facebook
March 14, 2020

As the world has slowed down in almost every experience of what the marvelous Sister Jenna calls “a global pause,” I’m having my most precious experience: a couple of days with my daughter India. . . . The coronavirus is reminding all of us to savor what we have, to go deep at a moment when we’re not as free to go wide. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal said that “Every problem in the world stems from [humanity’s] inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

We are being forced to be quieter than usual, and hopefully even in our sadness we will discover deeper wisdom. God knows there’s a lot of it to discover, about ourselves, about our country, and about our world.

What are we doing with our lives? Not how long will they be, but how meaningful will they be?

And who that we love can we love a little better, a little deeper?

These are the questions which emerge in the quiet, that remind me of this line from Rilke: “Let me not squander the hour of my pain.”

– Marianne Williamson
via Facebook
March 13, 2020

Italians are beating the social isolation imposed by the country's coronavirus lockdown by taking to their windows and singing in unison, with videos of the phenomenon racking up thousands of views online.

Since Monday, a series of decrees from the Italian government have drastically limited citizens' movements, with vast swathes of the economy shut down and people instructed to leave the house only when strictly necessary.

All cultural events have also been suspended, prompting some celebrities to start organising online performances and museums to put virtual tours online.

Another attempt to boost morale has now come in the form of impromptu music at people's windows. One recording in the Tuscan city of Siena has been viewed over 600,000 times on Twitter.

. . . Another social media initiative has seen Italians put up signs outside their homes saying "andra tutto bene" or "everything will be OK". The slogan is accompanied by a picture of a rainbow – often drawn by children at home as school is cancelled.

Italy has been struck by the worst European outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic, with more than 17,000 cases and 1,266 deaths.

– AFP News Agency
March 13, 2020

Video of quarantined Italians singing to each other across deserted streets from their windows, balconies and doorways during the coronavirus lockdown is as beautiful as it is haunting.

David Allegranti, a writer for Il Foglio newspaper, shared footage of residents’ stirring rendition of a local folk song in the northern city of Siena on Twitter Thursday night.

“This video is touching,” Rome-based Allegranti told HuffPost via email on Friday. “The first time I saw it I started to cry.”

Allegranti said a friend sent him the footage, although it wasn’t clear who actually took the video that has now spread across social media. Twitter users were equally moved by what appeared to be an impromptu communal singsong.

. . . There were reportedly similar scenes of neighbors spontaneously singing together in Wuhan, China, in the initial days of the outbreak there.

– Lee Moran
Excerpted from “Quarantined Italians Sing Together
Across Empty Streets In Hauntingly Beautiful Video”
The Huffington Post
March 13, 2020

Surviving this crisis will take a shift in mindset, and that’s tougher than we think – especially when we’re afraid.

Fear and anxiety can drive us to become very self-focused. This global pandemic is a real case of “getting sick together” or “staying well together.”

Our choices affect everyone around us. There is no such thing as “individual risk” or “individual wellness.”

This is the ultimate reminder that we are inextricably connected to each other. Turning away from collective action right now – as tempting as it is – will only generate more pain.

Owning and embracing our global interconnectedness (from a safe distance) and thinking about others as we make choices is, ironically, our only path to safety for ourselves and the people we love.

We can all get really shitty really fast when we’re afraid. I get it. I’m using deep breaths along with my personal mantra: ” Try to be scared without being scary.” Feel free to borrow both – they can help.

It’s also really normal for everyone to be on our nerves: The people who aren’t following the rules, the 10-second hand washers, etc. I get that too. TRUST ME.

But, like it or not, we just can’t give up on people. We’re all we have.

Stay awkward, brave, and kind. Love each other. Spread calm.

– Brené Brown
via Facebook
March 13, 2020

– Ricardo Levins Morales
“What to Do in a Pandemic”
March 2020

For the vast majority of people nationwide and worldwide, this virus is not about you. This is one of those times in life, in history, when your actions are about something bigger. They are about someone else. They are about something greater, a greater good that you may not ever witness. A person you will save who you will never meet.

You may be healthy, and your kids may be healthy. Your parents may be healthy. Everyone around you seems fine. And all the things you planned and the 2020 spring you thought you were going to have has been completely undone. You have to work from home. Your conference is cancelled. Your semester is over. Your work is cancelled. It all seems fast, and out-of-proportion and disorienting. You look at each action and think – but it would be okay if I did that. It’s not so big. We worked so hard. They would be so disappointed.

Your losses are real. Your disappointments are real. Your hardships are real. I don’t mean to make light or to minimize the difficulty ahead for you, your family or community.

But this isn’t like other illnesses and we don’t get to act like it is. It’s more contagious, it’s more fatal – and most importantly, even if it can be managed. It can’t be managed at a massive scale – anywhere. We need this thing to move slowly enough for our collective national and worldwide medical systems to hold the very ill so that all of the very ill can get taken care of.

Because at this time of severe virus there are also all of the other things that require care. There is still cancer, there are still heart attacks, there are still car accidents, there are still complicated births. And we need our medical systems to be able to hold us. And we need to be responsible because our medical systems are made up of people and these amazing healthcare workers are a precious and limited resource. They will rise to this occasion. They will work to help you heal. They will work to save your mother or father or sister or baby. But in order for that to happen we have very important work to do. ALL OF US.

So what is our work? Yes, you need to wash your hands and stay home if you are sick. But the biggest work you can do is expand your heart and your mind to see yourself and see your family as part of a much bigger community that can have a massive – hugely massive – impact on the lives of other people.

I remember the feeling of helplessness after 9/11 and after Hurricane Sandy. I remember how much people wanted to help. I remember how much generosity of spirit there was about wanting to give, wanting to be helpful, wanting to save lives. And many of you have had experiences since then – whether it was a mass shooting, or the wildfires, or floods. There have been times you have looked on and wondered how you could help. And now we ALL have that chance.

You can help by canceling anything that requires a group gathering. You can help by not using the medical system unless it is urgent. You can help by staying home if you are sick. You can help by cooking or shopping or doing errands for a friend who needs to stay home. You can help by watching someone’s kid if they need to cover for someone else at work. You can help by ordering take-out from your local restaurants. Eat the food yourself or find someone who needs it. You can help by offering to help bring someone’s college student home or house out-of-town students if you have extra rooms. You can help by asking yourself, “What can I and my family do to help?” “What can we offer?” You can help by seeing yourself as part of something bigger than yourself.

When the Apollo 13 oxygen tank failed and the lunar module was in danger of not returning to earth, Gene Kranz, the lead flight director overheard people saying that this could be the worst disaster NASA had ever experienced – to which he is rumored to have responded, “With all due respect, I believe this is going to be our finest hour.”

Imagine if we could make our response to this crisis our finest hour. Imagine if a year or two from now we looked back on this and told the stories of how we came together as a team in our community, in our state, in our nation and across the world.

Your contribution to the finest hour may seem small, invisible, inconsequential – but every small act of ‘not doing’ what you were going to do, and ‘doing’ an act of kindness or support will add up exponentially. These acts can and will save lives. The Apollo 13 crew made it their finest hour by letting go of the word “I” and embracing the word “we.” And that’s the task required of us. It can only be our finest hour if we work together. You are all on the team. And we need all of you to shine in whatever way you can.

– Gretchen Schmelzer
“This Can Be Our Finest Hour – But We Need All of You”
GretchenSchmelzer.com
March 10, 2020

Conversations will not be cancelled.
Relationships will not be cancelled.
Love will not be cancelled.
Songs will not be cancelled.
Self-care will not be cancelled.
Hope will not be cancelled.

May we lean into the good things that remain.

– Jamie Tworkowski
via Facebook
March 13, 2020

And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently. And the people healed.

And in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

– Kitty O'Meara
via Facebook
March 16, 2020

UPDATES . . .

It is shocking to think how much the world has changed in such a brief time. Each of us has had our lives and communities disrupted. Of course, I am here in this with you. I feel that I’m in no position to tell you how to feel or how to think, but there are a few things that come to mind I will share.

A few days ago I was encouraged by the Franciscans and by the leadership team here at the Center for Action and Contemplation to self-quarantine, so I’ve been in my little hermitage now for three or four days. I’ve had years of practice, literally, how to do what we are calling “social distancing.” I have a nice, large yard behind me where there are four huge, beautiful cottonwood trees, and so I walk my dog Opie every few hours.

Right now I’m trying to take in psychologically, spiritually, and personally, what is God trying to say? When I use that phrase, I’m not saying that God causes suffering to teach us good things. But God does use everything, and if God wanted us to experience global solidarity, I can’t think of a better way. We all have access to this suffering, and it bypasses race, gender, religion, and nation.

We are in the midst of a highly teachable moment. There’s no doubt that this period will be referred to for the rest of our lifetimes. We have a chance to go deep, and to go broad. Globally, we’re in this together. Depth is being forced on us by great suffering, which as I like to say, always leads to great love.

But for God to reach us, we have to allow suffering to wound us. Now is no time for an academic solidarity with the world. Real solidarity needs to be felt and suffered. That’s the real meaning of the word “suffer” – to allow someone else’s pain to influence us in a real way. We need to move beyond our own personal feelings and take in the whole. This, I must say, is one of the gifts of television: we can turn it on and see how people in countries other than our own are hurting. What is going to happen to those living in isolated places or for those who don’t have health care? Imagine the fragility of the most marginalized, of people in prisons, the homeless, or even the people performing necessary services, such as ambulance drivers, nurses, and doctors, risking their lives to keep society together? Our feelings of urgency and devastation are not exaggeration: they are responding to the real human situation. We’re not pushing the panic button; we are the panic button. And we have to allow these feelings, and invite God’s presence to hold and sustain us in a time of collective prayer and lament.

I hope this experience will force our attention outwards to the suffering of the most vulnerable. Love always means going beyond yourself to otherness. It takes two. There has to be the lover and the beloved. We must be stretched to an encounter with otherness, and only then do we know it’s love. This is what we call the subject-subject relationship. Love alone overcomes fear and is the true foundation that lasts (1 Corinthians 13:13).

– Richard Rohr, OFM
“Love Alone Overcomes Fear”
Center for Action and Contemplation
March 19, 2020

[T]his will change us. It must. All plagues change society and culture, reversing some trends while accelerating others, shifting consciousness far and wide, with consequences we won’t discover for years or decades. The one thing we know about epidemics is that at some point they will end. The one thing we don’t know is who we will be then.

I know that I was a different man at the end of the plague of AIDS than I was at the beginning, just as so many gay men and many others were. You come face-to-face with mortality and the randomness of fate, and you are changed. You have a choice: to submit to fear and go under, or to live with the virus and do what you can. And the living with it, while fighting it, is what changes you over time; it requires more than a little nerve and more than a little steel. Plague living dispenses with the unnecessary, lays bare whom you can trust and whom you can’t, and also reveals what matters.

. . . Plagues destroy so much – but through the devastation, they can also rebuild and renew.

– Andrew Sullivan
“How to Survive a Plague”
New York Magazine
March 20, 2020

What is this thing that has happened to us? It’s a virus, yes. In and of itself it holds no moral brief. But it is definitely more than a virus. Some believe it’s God’s way of bringing us to our senses. Others that it’s a Chinese conspiracy to take over the world.

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality,” trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

– Arundhati Roy
“This Pandemic Is a Portal”
Dnyuz
April 4, 2020

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• A Prayer in Times of a Pandemic
• An Infectious Disease Specialist Weighs-in on Covid-19
• A Prayer for the Present Moment
• Move Us, Loving God
• You, O Comforter, Are Ever Near
• The End of the World as We Know It . . . . . . the Beginning As We Live It
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything is Possible

Related Off-site Links:
The Shape of Love in a Time of Contagion – David R. Weiss (Full Frontal Theology, March 12, 2020).
Psychologist Offers Tips to Calm COVID-19 Anxiety – KARE 11 News via Allina Health (March 11, 2020).
Managing Stress During Coronavirus Outbreak – Shai Plonski (via YouTube, March 13, 2020).
Lizzo Leads a Mass Meditation Amidst Growing Coronavirus Concerns – Sandra Song (Paper Magazine, March 13, 2020).
Coronavirus Offers a “Blank Page for a New Beginning” Says Li Edelkoort – Courtney Mares (De Zeen, March 9, 2020).
We Can Waste Another Crisis, or We Can Transform the Economy – Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos (Jacobin, March 13, 2020).
Late-stage Capitalism Primed Us for This Pandemic – Bob Hennelly (Salon, March 15, 2020).
Bernie Sanders Can Lead the Fight Against Coronavirus. Joe Biden Can’t – Branko Marcetic and Meagan Day (Jacobin, March 13, 2020).
People Are Fighting the Coronavirus With Mutual Aid Efforts to Help Each Other – Lucy Diavolo (Teen Vogue, March 16, 2020).
Facing COVID-19 With Community Instead of Fear – Lornet Turnbull (Yes! Magazine, March 10, 2020).
A Pandemic of Love: Deeply Adapting to Corona – Jem Bendell (JemBendell.com, March 18, 2020).
Why Coronavirus Is Humanity’s Wake-Up Call – David Korten (Yes! Magazine, March 18, 2020).

BREAKING: God Tests Positive – David R. Weiss (Full Frontal Theology, March 16, 2020).

First and last image: Amy Gabriel.
Image 2: Julie Christie in Memoirs of a Survivor (1981).
Image 3: Deandre Dwyer.
Images 4-6: Michael J. Bayly.
Images 7-8: Screen caps from Memoirs of a Survivor.

Role of the U.S. Catholic Bishops in the Shutdown: Holding Government Funding Hostage in Battle Against Contraceptive Coverage

By William D. Lindsey


Note: This commentary was first published October 10, 2013 on William's blogsite, Bilgrimage.


In an editorial just uploaded to its website, America rightly deplores the effects of the shutdown of government on working people and people living on the margins of the American socioeconomic system. The editorial notes that many people are now forced to wonder when they'll receive the next paycheck, park facilities have been shuttered around the country, and hundreds of cancer patients, including 30 children per week, have been locked out of their last-resort treatment at NIH's Clinical Center. And it adds,

These are just a handful of the pernicious effects of the shutdown that resulted on Oct. 1 after the G.O.P’s latest effort to obstruct the Affordable Care Act. The closing of the federal government not only shuts down so-called nonessential services, like nutrition aid to women, infants and children, it also means that a federal flow of $3 billion a day into the already twitchy American economy has been cut off.

But then America goes on to maintain that the U.S. Catholic bishops "were aghast at the political breakdown" and wrote a letter to Congress on 1 October arguing that human needs must continue to be met, even if the government has shut down. Unfortunately, however, that 1 October letter, written as the shutdown began, comes on the heels of another letter that the USCCB sent (.pdf file) to Congress on 26 September. That letter is signed by Cardinal Sean O'Malley, chair of the Pro-Life Committee of USCCB (and a member of Pope Francis's "gang of eight"), and Archbishop William E. Lori, chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty.

The 26 September letter states,

We have already urged you to enact the Health Care Conscience Rights Act (H.R. 940/S. 1204). As Congress considers a Continuing Resolution and debt ceiling bill in the days to come, we reaffirm the vital importance of incorporating the policy of this bill into such "must-pass" legislation. [Emphasis in original]

In other words, though on 1 October, as the shutdown began, the U.S. Catholic bishops wrote Congress to insist that human needs must continue to be met during a government shutdown, on 26 September they were encouraging members of Congress to hold the re-funding of government hostage to their insistence that even private, non-faith-based employers be allowed a "Taco Bell" exemption from the requirement of the Affordable Care Act that they provide contraceptive coverage for employees.

Permit us to discriminate--permit anyone, even a private employer in a company in no way affiliated with a religion to discriminate--or else. Or else we'll hold the nation hostage until our "conscientious" demands are met. As Adele Stan notes, it appears the USCCB wants to have it both ways: we're for the shutdown of government as a tool of holding the government hostage until our "conscientious" demands are met; but we're against it when it creates suffering for people.

Stan writes,

The bishops want to be on the record as champions of health care for the masses, food for the hungry, and shelter for the homeless—things the government, when operational, helps to provide. But they’re happy to block access to such services for those in need of them unless Congress agrees to block women of all faiths or none, on the whim of an employer, from receiving prescription birth control as part of the preventive care benefit in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

If that doesn’t work, they wouldn’t mind seeing the global economy brought to its knees for the sake of making the most effective forms of contraception more difficult for women to obtain.

And she's correct. Via its 26 September letter to Congress, the USCCB gave a clear signal to Congress—and, in particular, to the radical Republican faction controlling the House of Representatives—that it approves of using the re-funding of the federal government as a weapon to try to roll back a provision of the Affordable Care Act to which the bishops object. So it's with astonishingly clumsy grace that the bishops, who have torn their moral credibility to shreds by their persistent shrill attacks on the Affordable Care Act, pretend now to give a hoot about the human effects of the shutdown they themselves helped to precipitate.

Pastoral leaders these men are clearly not, on the whole. Politicians, yes, and partisan ones, to boot. And they deserve to be held accountable, along with other religious and political extremists, for what has happened as they have harped about their right to a "religious freedom" that translates into their purported right to discriminate in the provision of healthcare, as the ACA is being implemented.


Related Off-site Links:
USCCB Takes on the Smell of the Elephants – Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, October 10, 2013).
Paralysis in Washington – The Editors (America, October 10, 2013).
Catholic Bishops to House: Shut Down the Government Unless We Get Our Way on Birth Control – Ian Millhiser (ThinkProgress.org, October 7, 2013).
At Any Cost: How Catholic Bishops Pushed for a Shutdown—and Even a Default—Over Birth Control – Adele M. Stan (RH Reality Check, October 6, 2013).
Catholic Bishops Want Entire Birth Control Rule Repealed, Not Just the Religious Exemption – Nick Baumann and Kate Sheppard (Mother Jones, February 9, 2012).
Doug Mataconis on the Bishops, Religious Freedom, and Living in a Civil Society – The Wild Reed (December 30, 2011).

An Update on This Issue: Walking Like a Duck – Ken Briggs (National Catholic Reporter, October 11, 2013).

Reforming the Catholic Church Today: Three Perspectives

By William D. Lindsey


Note: This article was first published May 14, 2013 on William's blogsite Bilgrimage.


[Following are] some articles I've run across lately, or have been sent by friends or have read on Facebook. These all have to do with reform of the Catholic church and with the role Pope Francis may or may not play in reforming the church:

In The Tablet, theologian Hans Küng sees the papacy of Pope Francis as a window of opportunity for continued reform of the Catholic church along the lines of Vatican II, after Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI sought to restore things to the pre-conciliar norms. If Francis fails to reform the church, Küng proposes that reform continue from the bottom of the church upwards, without the approval of the hierarchy and even in direct contradiction to hierarchical commands. Failure to move in the direction of reform will produce an ice age in the Catholic church, Küng believes, in which Catholicism "will run the risk of dwindling into a barely relevant large sect."

Küng sees a template for reform in the life and spirituality of the saint whose name the new pope took as his papal name--Francis lived poverty, humility, and simplicity:

Paupertas, or poverty: The Church in the spirit of Innocent III meant a Church of wealth, pomp and circumstance, acquisitiveness and financial scandal. In contrast, a Church in the spirit of Francis means a Church of transparent financial policies and modest frugality. A Church which concerns itself above all with the poor, the weak, the marginalised. A Church which does not pile up wealth and capital but instead actively fights poverty and which offers its staff exemplary conditions of employment.

Humilitas, or humility: The Church in the spirit of Pope Innocent means a Church of power and domination, bureaucracy and discrimination, repression and Inquisition. In contrast, a Church in the spirit of Francis means a Church of humanity, dialogue, brother and sisterhood, and hospitality for non-conformists too; it means the unpretentious service of its leaders and social solidarity, a community which does not exclude new religious forces and ideas from the Church but rather allows them to flourish.

Simplicitas, or simplicity: The Church in the spirit of Pope Innocent means a Church of dogmatic immovability, moralistic censure and legal hedging, a Church of canon law regulating everything, a Church of all-knowing scholastic and of fear. In contrast, a Church in the spirit of Francis of Assisi means a Church of Good News and of joy, a theology based purely on the Gospel, a Church that listens to people instead of indoctrinating from on high, a Church that does not only teach but constantly learns anew.

In the Portland Press Herald (Maine), Paul Kendrick sees how Francis will choose (or not) to address the abuse crisis in the Catholic church as the measure of whether the new pope is serious about reform. Kendrick was educated by the Jesuits, the community to which Francis belongs. The leitmotiv of Jesuit spirituality, taught to students in Jesuit institutions, is concern for social justice with a pronounced concern for the poor and vulnerable.

But the Jesuits themselves have betrayed their own spirituality, Kendrick maintains, in the abusive, unjust, demeaning way in which Jesuit institutions and communities have dealt with survivors of abuse suffered at the hands of Jesuits. The Jesuits have, Kendrick concludes, "failed to embrace those who were abused with love, compassion, care and understanding."

And so he will judge the new pope's commitment to the poor by whether Francis recognizes that the least among us include survivors of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic religious authority figures. Kendrick says he'll believe in Francis's commitment to reform and to serving the poor when he sees the following:

The day must come quickly when the new Jesuit pope has assured himself that, among other things:

• Bullying and manipulating hardball legal tactics against abuse victims have ceased.

• Professional, long-term medical and mental health treatment is available to all victims at no cost.

• Databases are published in every diocese in which the names, photos and other information about priests and church workers who abused children are listed.

• Church documents detailing trails of abuse and cover-up are made public.

• Measurable reparations and amends are made to compensate victims for their harms and injuries.

• Priests, bishops and other church leaders who cover up or conceal child sexual abuse will immediately be removed from office; i.e., they will be fired.

And in Religión Digital (by way of Iglesia Descalza), Benedictine sister Teresa Forcades maintains that the real basis for reform within contemporary Catholicism is not so much the arrival of a "Pope Messiah," but the continued vital presence of grass-roots communities, base communities, working for liturgical, theological, and structural reform of the Catholic church from the bottom up. These include communities working out of both feminist and liberationist theological insights, both of which have been challenging the "involution" of the Vatican II church under John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Forcades's interviewer asks her what she'd tell Pope Francis if she met him. Her response:

I would ask him to go ahead with this commitment to poverty, not just through symbolic gestures like those he's been making up to now, but also through structural changes. And that he would dare to alleviate that clericalism and that structural misogynism that I spoke of as the main problems.

Forcades's reference to a point she had made earlier in the interview is this: she argues several times and forcefully that "institutional clericalism and structural misogyny are palpable" in the Catholic church. There is no avenue to real reform of the church which does not address how clericalism has been institutionalized in the Catholic church, and how misogyny is woven into the governing structures of the church.

Three different viewpoints, each coming from a different position in the church, with different prescriptions for the type of reform so critically needed in the Catholic church today--but united in their insistence that reform is imperative and, in the case of Forcades and Küng, united, too, in their judgment that the previous two papacies set the church on a path of "involution" that has threatened to make the reforms begun by the second Vatican Council null and void.

Quote of the Day

. . . [T]he current critical reaction to the Vatican in places like deeply Catholic Ireland [may well be] a manifestation of a longstanding and very powerful desire among faithful Catholics to see the papacy finally do what it’s meant to do, according to the gospels. And that’s to serve. Not to dominate. Not to rule. Not to issue orders and condemnations.

To serve. To serve as Jesus served. To serve the unity of the body of Christ with a papacy embodying the ideal of service that Jesus bequeathed as the supreme ideal for those who seek to exercise leadership in the Christian community: to be the servus servorum Christi.

Maybe the “sharks” circling in the water aren’t smelling blood. And maybe they’re not sharks at all. Maybe they’re actually faithful Catholics who are delighted to see the imperial structures of a papacy modeled more on the values of Caesar than those of Christ crumbling before our eyes.

Crumbling because it has behaved in imperial ways rather than embodying Christ’s ideal of service. . . .

– William D. Lindsey
"John Allen on Vatican Critics as Sharks Out for Blood:
That’s One Way of Looking at It"
The Open Tabernacle
July 31, 2011

Recommended Off-site Link:
Vatican II Themes: The Church as Servant – Richard McBrien (National Catholic Reporter, August 1, 2011).
Bishop Gumbleton: A Priesthood Set Apart and Above Others is Not the Way of Jesus – The Wild Reed (September 28, 2009).

Image: Ford Madox Brown.

Fr. Wenthe's Lawsuit: "Callous and Selfish"

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Editor's Note: Following is an excerpt from William D. Lindsey's post, "David Clohessy Issues SNAP Press Statement on Wenthe Case: Laws Apply to the Church, Too." The "Wenthe case" that both Clohessy's press statement and Lindsey's post highlight refers to the lawsuit of Fr. Thomas Wenthe of St. Paul, Minnesota, challenging the constitutionality of the Minnesota law governing inappropriate behavior of pastors with those under pastoral care. Wenthe is accused of violating state law by allegedly having a sexual relationship with an adult female parishioner.

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. . . [In his media release, SNAP's] David Clohessy . . . provides very helpful context for interpreting what Wenthe and his attorney are trying to do. I want to excerpt some observations from David's press statement [that] address questions . . . about what might make abuse of a pastoral counseling relationship different from abuse of other adult relationships that don't involve a pastoral context.

First, I want to note that David calls on the bishops of Minnesota to denounce the legal tactic of Wenthe and his attorney, which attacks the constitutionality of Minnesota laws governing pastoral behavior. David notes that this is a "callous and selfish move" that would leave those receiving pastoral ministry vulnerable to exploitation by clerical predators, if it succeeded. He sees this move as "typical" of what predators do: Wenthe is "trying to exploit every possible legal maneuver and technicality to avoid responsibility for his sexual exploitation of a vulnerable parishioner."

In particular, David maintains that the "real blame" for this tactic lies with Archbishop Nienstedt of Minneapolis-St. Paul, who is permitting a priest in his charge to attack a law designed to protect people from pastoral predators who abuse their positions of trust and authority. And that statement leads to the heart of what David Clohessy wants to emphasize in this press statement.

As he notes, the argument of Wenthe's attorney that the current law criminalizes "any minister who has sex with anybody" is patently false. It's absurd. What the law deals with is the violation of pastoral boundaries. It seeks to punish the abuse of pastoral authority and pastoral relationships, which always involve an unequal distribution of power between the pastor and the one to whom (s)he is ministering, and which always involve vulnerability on the part of the one receiving ministry.

Here's the heart of David Clohessy's statement:

When will Catholic officials accept the fact secular laws that safeguard the vulnerable apply to them? When will they accept that religious belief, not criminal behavior, is protected in this country?

A highly educated, allegedly celibate man who holds the revered title Catholic priest cannot ever have truly consensual sex with a congregant. Catholics have been raised since birth to believe priests are God's representatives on earth, can forgive our sins, can turn wafers and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Priests always hold an exalted position, and when they have any sexual involvement with parishioners, it is always wrong and hurtful.

There is an inherent power imbalance between clergy and church members. It is much like a doctor-patient or therapist-client relationship, where any sexual contact is expressly forbidden. It's the duty of Minnesota’s Catholic bishops to help parishioners understand this and to speak out against this desperate legal move by one of their priests.

. . . Bob Schwiderski, Minnesota's SNAP director, has noted that the argument Wenthe and his attorney are using to attack the current Minnesota law is one diocesan officials in Minnesota have used in other similar cases in the past. If that's the case, then it appears that David Clohessy is absolutely correct when he implicates Archbishop Nienstedt. . . .


To read William Lindsey's commentary in its entirety, click here.


Related Off-site Links:
St. Paul Priest Challenges Sex Charges – Lora Pabst (Star Tribune, June 19, 2011).
Minnesota Priest Challenges Law: New Apologetic Excuses Violations of Pastoral Relationships – William D. Lindsey (Bilgrimage, June 20, 2011).

See also the previous PCV posts:
Archdiocese Blocks Bills to Help Sex Abuse Victims
Essential Reading: Tom Doyle's Response to John Allen, Jr.
SNAP Responds to Archbishop Nienstedt
The Scandal of Sexual Abuse
He Spoke Truth to Power, But Vatican Wouldn't Listen
Fr. Thomas Doyle: "There is Something Radically Wrong With the Institutional Catholic Church"
Statute of Limitations for Sex Abuse Victims: “You Can’t Get Healing in a Court of Law”

St. Paul-Minneapolis Catholic Archdiocese Releases New Strategic Plan: Who Was Consulted?

By William D. Lindsey


Editor’s Note: This commentary was first published on William’s blog, Bilgrimage.


The Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, which is "right-sizing" by closing churches and merging parishes (even as the Archdiocese engages in a hugely expensive, glitzy political video campaign against same-sex marriage), has a statement now on its website about the strategic planning process that supports the right-sizing.

This statement begins:

After 20 months of consultation, analysis, and prayerful consideration, the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis is announcing the Strategic Plan (pdf) that shapes the vision for the future of our local Church and restructures parishes to foster a more vibrant faith community.

And as I read that statement, the obvious question that leaps out at me immediately is, consultation with whom? Analysis involving whom? Consideration for whom?

What process of consultation supports the new strategic plan of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis? Can that process have been wide, if there is so much shock and anger among many local Catholics?

When I click on the strategic plan itself, I see a slick media-driven advertisement for the "new" lean and mean Archdiocese expected to arise from the ruins of the old. I see, in other words, precisely the kind of image-management media kit I would expect to find when corporate leaders decide to "right-size" their operation, to bring in larger profits even as employees are cut and expenses at the bottom of the corporate food-chain are curbed.

Nothing in the glitzy media-oriented advertisement I see with this strategic plan assures me that the right-sizing in which the Archdiocese is now involved -- or the baffling decision to accept a huge sum of money from an anonymous donor to bash gays for political gain when the archdiocese was planning to close churches and merge parishes -- depends on wide consultation of the people affected by the right-sizing process.

To the contrary, the tone of the media-driven strategic plan kit in and of itself tells me that the leaders of the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese have listened predominantly, overwhelmingly to corporate leaders and their gurus as they have crafted their plan for right-sizing.

And I wonder why those folks are in the driver's seat in American Catholicism now, as we plan for the future.


See also the previous Progressive Catholic Voice posts:
Breaking Up is Hard to Do: The Man at the Ten O'Clock Mass – Paula Ruddy (June 10, 2010).
What is the Church's Mission and How Are We Doing as Missionaries? – Editorial (March 1, 2010).
Sounding an Alarm – Paula Ruddy (July 13, 2009).

Recommended Off-site Links:
More Than 20 Churches to Close Under Plan to Restructure Twin Cities Archdiocese – John Brewer (Pioneer Press, October 15, 2010).
Archdiocese to Close 20 Churches, Merge Others - Rose French (Star Tribune, October 16, 2010).
U.S. Catholic Bishops and the Corporate Model of Pastoral Leadership – William D. Lindsey (Bilgrimage, October 16, 2010).
The Price of Catholic Homophobia: While Spending to Bash Gays, Minnesota Catholic Bishops Close Churches – William D. Lindsey (Bilgrimage, October 16, 2010).

Quote of the Day

The claim of many self-professed “orthodox” Catholics nowadays that they have the corner on dogmatic truth and the practice of the spiritual life is astonishingly self-righteous. And like all self-righteousness, it’s woefully oblivious of the manifold ways in which all of us fall short, both in what we know and what we do, in our lives of faith.

It’s absolutely impossible to be informed to the hilt about what the church teaches, and to follow every rubric to perfection. As Jesus himself teaches over and over in the gospels, the point of the spiritual life is not rubristic perfection at all. It’s our disposition of openness to God, our willingness to be led where we do not intend to go.

. . . The claim of today’s self-professed “orthodox” Catholics that they scrupulously adhere to every jot and tittle of church teaching (and that they know each jot and tittle) seems to me spectacularly to miss the point. The point is that church teachings have shifted constantly over the years, in response to new cultural insights and developments. And that any time we’ve chosen to imagine that we can freeze those teachings at a particular moment in time, we’ve been proven wrong. Because cultural development itself does not stop, and along with it, doctrinal development and development of the church’s moral teaching occurs. Because development and change must occur, if the teachings of the church are to reach new generations of believers, or believers in new cultural settings.

. . . Rather than trying to learn and follow everything, it might be wiser for Catholics today to try to focus on what counts above all. I wonder what would happen if we started the catechetical process with the gospels, for instance, as Terry Weldon wisely suggests we might do? With the Sermon on the Mount?

– William D. Lindsey
“The Catechism Again: The I-Believe-Everything
Approach to Catholic Orthodoxy”
The Open Tabernacle
June 2, 2010

Edward Schillebeeckx: An Appreciation

By William D. Lindsey


Editor’s Note: The following was originally published as Part 2 of of an appreciation of the late theologian Edward Schllebeeckx (pictured at right) by William D. Lindsey. For Part 1, click here. Both installments were originally published at William’s Bilgrimage blogsite, and cross-posted at the recently established Open Tabernacle.

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Edward Schillebeeckx was one of the primary theological advisors of the Dutch bishops at Vatican II, and his work in the area of ecclesiology in particular has now become canonical for the entire church, as it were, through the documents of Vatican II.

In key respects, Schillebeeckx belongs to a movement strong in French, Belgian, and Dutch Catholicism of the early 20th century. This movement was known as a ressourcement movement, a movement seeking to return to the sources—specifically, to the biblical and patristic foundations—of Christian theology.

The ressourcement movement was, in significant ways, a reaction to what happened to the Catholic church in its period of reaction, first to the Reformation and then to the rise of modernity. During the period of the Council of Trent, the church’s official response to the Reformation, and at Vatican I, which in many ways charted the church’s strong counter-push to modernity, the Catholic church opted for an ecclesiology that was not so much strongly grounded in either biblical or patristic sources as it was innovative. It was a contextual theology that had everything to do with the church’s reaction to movements it considered threatening, movements demanding a vehement and immediate push-back from the church.

In the Tridentine period, the period of the counter-Reformation, the ecclesiology that prevailed was what is called the “perfect society” model of Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. This ecclesiology laid great stress on the need of the church to function as an institution complete in and of itself, parallel (and superior) to the state, whose structures the church mirrors but which does not have the perfection of the church.

This notion of church stressed the need for top-down, hierarchical, monarchical government in the church, akin to (but more perfect than) that of the state. Indeed, the perfect society model made being church synonymous with monarchy, with absolute control (perfect control) of the whole church exercised from the top down through a hierarchical chain of command. The model of church that Trent set into motion placed the church and its structures over against secular models, while at the same time incorporating their key features.

This ecclesiology was then, as I note above, contextual. It was an adaptive ecclesiology, one that reflected the circumstances in which the perfect society ecclesiology was developed. It was a reaction to the Reformation, which seemed to be fragmenting the perfect society of the church, and to the rise of the nation-state, which went hand in hand with the Reformation, and seemed to be competing with the church for power and control.

Bellarmine’s perfect society model prevailed from the Tridentine period of the church through the first Vatican Council and up to Vatican II. Vatican I endorsed the model, adding to it the new twist of papal infallibility. During this period of its history, the Catholic church appeared to be locked into a bitter battle against secular society—against the world. Only in the church, which was a fortress of truth and light in the midst of a surrounding culture of error and darkness, could one find salvation. Only in the Catholic church could one find the perfect society that guarantees salvation.

I’ve labored over this quick theological sketch of the ecclesiological backdrop to Vatican II because it is essential to understand what Vatican II thought it was correcting, when it moved back to the sources, back beyond the 16th-century ecclesiology of Trent and the 19th-century ecclesiology of Vatican I. Many of those who now combat Vatican II argue that this ecumenical council was a radical departure from the tradition, that it rejected the tradition and flung the doors of the church open to a contemporary secularism that represents a wholesale departure from longstanding tradition.

In fact, the opposite is the case. The ecclesiology of Vatican II returns to more ancient, more venerable understandings of the church found in the texts of the New Testament and in patristic theology. It corrects what was in itself an innovation on the tradition—the ecclesiology of Trent-Vatican I—by reminding the church that the perfect society model and the fortress church model that developed in the Counter-Reformation and modern periods are themselves innovative ecclesiologies—new developments in the tradition not conspicuously rooted in scripture and patristic theology.

And so enter Schillebeeckx: as the bishops assembled at Vatican II began to recognize the need to re-emphasize images and theologies of the church that would correct the historically conditioned fortress church ecclesiology of Trent-Vatican I, they turned to the exhaustive theological work done by theologians of the ressourcement movement like Yves Congar (a mentor of Schillebeeckx’s) and Schillebeeckx, which delved into the biblical and patristic roots of Catholic ecclesiology.

Schillebeeckx was particularly brilliant in his ability to re-focus contemporary Catholic theology on the most fundamental meaning of sacramentality, which runs beneath the sacramental system of the church and provides meaning to that system, and which had been obscured by the theology of Trent-Vatican I. During the period of reaction of these two councils, the sacraments came to be viewed almost as “things,” as holy objects owned and dispensed by the rulers of the perfect society to their loyal subjects, insofar as those subjects were faithful and performed proper obeisance.

What this view of the sacramental life significantly overlooks is the way in which the sacraments are manifestations of the primary sacrament—the sacrament of Christ himself. The sacraments signify and effect grace because Christ himself signifies and effects grace in the world, as the primary, central sign of God’s salvific self-offering to the world. The church is sacramental—it is itself a sign of Christ’s sacramental presence in the world—because it is united with Christ. It mirrors Christ’s salvific presence in the world.

Schillebeeck’s pre-Vatican II work on Christ as the sacrament of the encounter with God (particularly in Christ, the Sacrament of the Encounter with God) and on the church as the sacramental sign of Christ helped those gathered at Vatican II to refocus Catholic ecclesiology and sacramental life on biblical and patristic roots that connect the church’s life, its role as a salvific presence in the world, to the primary sacrament from which the church’s sacramental life and salvific work flow—to Christ. At one level, this ecclesiology reorients the church to something that should never be lost sight of in Christian theology and Christian spirituality: to Jesus as the model, the center, of theological reflection and of the spiritual journey.

This is a strand of the theology of Vatican II that Schillebeeckx would deepen significantly in his two post-Vatican II works Jesus: An Experiment in Christology and Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World. These provide a rich treasure trove of biblical scholarship that sets Catholic theology back on a strong, vibrant biblical foundation—a project that reflects the particular concerns of Catholic theologians in countries like the Netherlands, where Catholics and Protestants coexist and seek to recognize the important theological contributions made by the traditions of each other. Schillebeeckx’s theology is especially strong in the area of biblical scholarship. In contrast to many Catholic theologians of the latter half of the 20th century (including Benedict XVI, whose biblical scholarship has often been criticized by theological colleagues as notably deficient), Schillebeeckx grounds his theology in painstaking, well-researched exegesis.

Note what this return to the sources—above all, to the central, perduring focus of Christian theology and spirituality on Jesus as the primary sacrament, and on the church’s role as a sacramental presence in the world through its fidelity to Jesus—does, as we begin to look at how the church lives in the world and interacts with the world. In the perfect society and fortress church models, the church’s primary obligation vis-a-vis the world is to combat the world, to correct the world. The church has it all. The world is deficient. The church offers to the world what the world lacks—in particular, dogmatic truth, perfect hierarchical rule, and the sacraments. And the world, if it is wise, will respond humbly and receptively to the offer.

The sacramental notion of the church—the idea that the church mirrors Jesus as the sacramental sign of God’s presence in the world—dislodges the certainties of the perfect society and fortress church models. It does so in two ways. First, if the church is a sacramental sign of God’s salvific presence in the world, it can hardly claim to have exclusive ownership of that salvific presence. To do so would limit God. It would imply that God’s salvific intent and “reach” in the world are limited, that they do not intend and encompass the entire world.

When ecclesiology grants that God wishes and intends the salvation of the entire cosmos through Christ, then the church pursues its sacramental task in the world in part by watching for signs of the Spirit’s presence anywhere those signs are to be found in the world—inside the church, certainly, but also outside its boundaries, since God is there, too, working salvation. The sacramental church of Vatican II (and of scripture and the patristic period) is a more chastened church than that of Trent and Vatican I, which purported to have it all, almost to own God and God’s salvific work in the world, through the sacraments. The church that seeks to be a faithful sign of salvation in the world both offers salvation to the world, and receives that salvation from areas outside the boundaries of the church, as the Spirit moves through the world fanning the flames of divine love everywhere.

The sacramental notion of the church developed so brilliantly by Schillebeeckx also dislodges the certainties of Tridentine and Vatican I ecclesiology in another key way. This notion of the church, focused as it is on Jesus as the initial, the Ur-sacrament, constantly calls the church back to reflection on how, precisely, it signifies the salvific presence of Christ in the world. If the church is a sign, and, specifically, a sign of Christ and of Christ’s salvation, in the world, then everything the church does, how it behaves, how it structures itself, how it regards the rights of its own members as it exercises governance, how its pastors engage in pastoral leadership—all becomes part and parcel of the sacramental sign of salvation of Christ in the world.

Or perhaps the church’s behavior, how its pastors exercise pastoral leadership, how the church deals with the human rights of its own members as it exercises governance, how it treats the least among us, becomes a counter-sign to Christ’s salfivic presence in the world. If the church can reveal Christ’s face to the world, it can also obscure that face. It can fail to be a patent sacramental sign of salvific love in the world.

As a Dominican theologian, a member of a religious community whose charism is all about engaging and dialoguing with those living in urban centers with strong intellectual movements (Dominic began his ministry as cities began to develop in the Middle Ages, many of them with large universities), Schillebeeckx had a strong concern to see the church respond dialogically, creatively, and above all, redemptively, to the cultures in which it found itself. As with Dominicans in general, Schillebeeckx was a preacher, someone concerned to proclaim the good news of Christ in ever-changing cultural contexts.

Schillebeeckx’s vision of Christian faith was inspired by a deep, profound, and broad grasp of who Jesus was in his humanity. In his work, he was able to articulate this vision across the whole spectrum of Catholic theology from Christology and ecclesiology to ecumenism and social justice concerns. Anyone who tries to understand the Catholic tradition following Vatican II cannot do so adequately without paying attention to the monumental contributions of Edward Schillebeeckx to that tradition.


See also the previous Progressive Catholic Voice post:
Edward Schillebeeckx (1914-2009)