The Road Not Taken: Rediscovering Jesus’ Humanity and the Communal Life as Church

By Bill Moseley

Note: The following reflection was delivered before the start of mass at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church on Sunday, August 23, 2020.

First Reading – Isaiah 22:19-23
Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 138
Second Reading – Romans 11:33-36
Gospel – Matthew 16:13-20


Good morning everyone. My name is Bill Moseley and it is my privilege to reflect with you on today’s readings.

One of my favorite poems is “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. It starts as follows:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Many of us encounter different choices in life, and we may wonder about the road not taken. Sometimes these choices are clear, you have a decision to make, and at other times political forces and structures guide us in a way that make us less conscious of our decisions.

Dogma is an example of one such force that guides our thinking. According to Merriam Webster’s dictionary, dogma is defined as “a doctrine […] concerning faith formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church.” I would suggest that today’s Gospel reading is one of the building blocks that has been used to establish church dogma. It purports to answer two important questions. First, what is the nature of Jesus, is he God or a human prophet? And second, how will the legacy of Jesus be carried on after his passing? I want to interrogate both of these two questions and ponder some other interpretations than the established ones. You might call this a heretic’s view. But maybe it’s just another view, a view of a fork in the road we did not take long ago.

In today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 16, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Humanity is?” They answer, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or another of the prophets.” Jesus asks: “But you, who do you that I am?” Simon answers, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus then replies, “Blessed are you Simon, son of John!”… “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but God, my Father and Mother, in heaven. I tell you, you are the Rock, and upon this Rock I will build my church.”

Biblical scholars debate different aspects of this gospel text, but they largely agree that some parts were added at a later date, namely the question “who do people say that I am” as well as Jesus’ praise for Simon’s response and even the famous line “you are the Rock and upon this rock I will build my Church.” After you subtract the later additions, what remains are these different takes on the character of Jesus.

What does this text say about the nature of Jesus? Does it matter that a question was added at a later date? It might because the way you ask a question frames the information before us. There is a famous Peter Seller’s line in a Pink Panther film in which, upon seeing a man and a dog, he asks “does your dog bite?” The man answers no, so Peter Sellers reaches out to pet the dog and he is promptly bitten. Sellers then says “I thought you said your dog does not bite” and the man responds “that’s not my dog.” Many questions are loaded with assumptions.

I think it is significant that the question, “who do you say that I am,” was added later. This question sets up a dichotomy or a binary, Jesus is either human or divine, full stop. Furthermore, we are led to believe from Jesus’ appraisal of Simon’s response (also added later to the text), that divine is the right answer. But maybe this was never the question asked? Maybe this was a decidedly 4th century question reflecting a 4th century way of thinking about the world (the 4th century being the time when the Council of Nicaea codified the nature of Jesus). We know from contemporary queer theorists, and LGBTQ activists, that much of the world doesn’t fit into neat binaries. Sometimes things manifest on a continuum, simultaneously co-exist, or even just defy categorization.

Perhaps it’s my Vatican II sensibilities, but it makes sense to me that Jesus was simultaneously human and divine, as I believe the divine runs through all living things. Jesus’ task, as I understand it, was to show us how to let that divine more fully emerge in our daily lives, by being kind to others and ourselves, and by recognizing the common humanity and divinity in all of us, be they friend or foe. This was the path he charted for us to build heaven on earth, or the ‘way’ to contentment. Perhaps we are tempted to label Jesus as only divine, but I think that actually minimizes the true miracle of the transcendence he achieved. Rather than demonize or shun our humanity, we must embrace it.

As some of you may know, I recently lost my father to cancer just a month ago. He wasn’t a young man, but he was a very youthful 81, and I was taken aback by how quickly he declined at the end. While I have buried grandparents, aunts and uncles, the death of someone very close to you, be it sibling, spouse or parent, is equally devastating and deeply grounding. To help him bath one week, and then to touch his dead body in another was one of the realest things I have ever experienced. To see his ashes literally poured into the soil made vividly visceral the Ash Wednesday refrain, from dust you come and to dust we shall refrain. His death, perhaps the most human of human actions, made me feel oddly more connected to the world. I think the challenge of modern society is that we are so removed from aspects of our humanness (birth, illness, death) that we rarely connect to deeper energies.

The other common interpretation of this gospel reading is that it is a rationale for the institution known as the church and for papal succession. “You are the Rock and upon this Rock I will build my Church.” As noted previously, this phrasing was also a later addition. Interestingly, Matthew is the only Gospel that uses the term church or ekklesia in Greek.

The way one lived was clearly very central to Jesus’ message. His was not a cerebral, abstract message as a different approach to living was part of his project. We were to care for one another, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to share our wealth. Living in community was not uncommon for early Christian collectives and it worked, as I have heard fellow parishioner Harrison Nelson argue, because it enabled poor and marginalized communities to live a better life. The Christian message is a guide to better living more than anything else, a roadmap for building heaven on earth.

But Christians were also persecuted within the Roman Empire and they suffered greatly during the first centuries following Jesus’ death. This changed when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. This shift was important because it not only ended the persecution, but because it fundamentally changed the lived, communal aspect of Christianity. Instead of small communes led by elders who acted more as facilitators than rulers, we see the emergence of a Church organization patterned on the hierarchical and patriarchal structure of the Roman Empire with a male leader at the top.

I cannot blame our forbearers for the decisions they made. Persecution and death were no fun and I am sure they were thrilled when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Debates about the nature of Jesus ended after Emperor Constantine called the Council of Nicaea and the Roman Catholic Church became the strongest political force in Europe, outlasting the Roman Empire. That original way of Christian living, in a commune patterned on the life of Jesus with his disciples, would also become a distant, strange and alien form of social organization, marginalized to convents, monasteries, and kibbutzs. Just like the debate about Jesus’ humanity, this debate about how to live together and how to organize the faithful was seemingly shut down in the 4th century. As such, today’s gospel reading, with all its additions, shows us how they tried to close the door on future debate.

We currently live in a very unsettled time when institutions and authority are being questioned, and when sexism, racism and homophobia are increasingly recognized as systemic problems. The contemporary Catholic Church, an institution built by humans, is not immune from these important social debates.

But it is discouraging. I have been waiting since Vatican II for major church reform and it just never seems to come. I remember having a college professor in the 1980s, in a course on Catholicism, tell me that change was just around the corner. But the Church remains as hierarchical as ever, single men are in charge, and the younger ranks of the priesthood appear to be stacked with unimaginative, ecclesiastical conservatives. Part of me just wants to move on, to give up, to leave the church.

But, as much as some may have wanted to have buried it, the door was never completely closed on alternative ways of organizing the church. Jesus was a rabble-rouser who had his own issues with abuses of power within the Jewish community, turning over tables at the temple and showing his very human anger. Today’s Old Testament Reading from Isiah also speaks to the need for institutional change. As President Obama shared in a speech a few nights ago: they win if we stay home, “those who benefit from keeping things the way they are -- they are counting on your cynicism.” “We can't let that happen. Do not let them take away your power.”

Jesus, fully human and divine, had sound ideas for better living. We need to rediscover that road not taken and keep working to make it a reality, no matter the obstacles in our path. We are the Church, we have the power to make change. Thank you.

Note: Thanks to the Cabrini Word Team for helping me think through the issues in this text. Any mistakes or errors are my own.


The author may be contacted at moseley@macalester.edu or may be found on twitter at https://twitter.com/WilliamGMoseley

We Need to Talk About David Hass

By Jamie Manson

NOTE: This article was first published June 30, 2020 by the National Catholic Reporter.

I first heard about sexual abuse allegations against composer David Hass [right] from a Facebook friend in a post last week. "I haven't heard much talk about this among progressive Catholics," she wrote. "Maybe our hearts are too broken."

Since the story first came to light, three of Haas' victims have come forward, telling NCR's Soli Salgado about the ways they were groomed, forcibly kissed and relentlessly pursued by the composer of well-known post-Vatican II hymns.

The news stunned the progressive Catholic world, whose liturgical soundtrack is filled with Haas' songs. His lyrics, so imbued with calls for love, justice and inclusion, earned him a place in the canon of luminaries of the Catholic reform movement.

Not surprisingly, the kneejerk reaction has been to "cancel" Haas: remove his music from hymnals and stop playing his compositions at worship services. While those actions may be justifiable, my hope is that we don't just rush to eradicate him and quickly move past yet another sad and ugly episode of "fallen Catholic hero." We must also take the opportunity to have a crucial conversation about what his alleged abuse reveals.

Since Pope Francis started to get serious about clergy sexual abuse about two years ago, many well-intentioned theologians, commentators and even some church leaders (including the pope himself) have pointed to clericalism as the root of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. But the Haas story demonstrates that there is something even more systemic and more destructive at work in the patterns of abuse in the church.

The Haas revelations are reminiscent of reports in February of this year that Jean Vanier, the venerated founder of the L'Arche community, had his own sordid history of abusing adult women. In my response to that story, I wrote:

In nearly every case of sexual abuse we have heard about in the church over the years — whether the situation is priests abusing children, or bishops raping nuns, or ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick sexually coercing seminarians, or … Vanier sexually assaulting adult women — there is one common denominator: the patriarchal belief that a special class of spiritual men are entitled to use women, children and other vulnerable men for their sexual gratification.

Though Vanier's patterns of abuse were more cultic and ritualistic than what Haas' victims have described so far, they were both members of that elite class of spiritual men, and, therefore, benefitted from the Catholic patriarchal mindset. The fact that neither of them was ordained shows the church's problem with sexual abuse is not rooted in clericalism, it's rooted in a theology of male superiority.

The Catholic Church teaches a theology of "gender complementarity," which means that though men and women are equal in dignity, they have complementary roles in the church and the family. In this scheme, God designed men to lead and take initiative, and God created women to receive and serve. The doctrine is the basis for the church's hierarchical theology, which essentially teaches that it is part of God's plan that women and children should be completely under the control of men.

When religious power is totally in the hands of men, it creates a culture of devaluation and distrust of women. Men support one another and cover for one another, and they treat women as disposable and their stories unworthy of belief. Rather than listen to abused women, men silence them or blame them for leading men into temptation.

This is why, even though the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis knew of at least one serious claim of sexual assault against David Hass from 1987, they still allowed Haas to create a music camp for teenagers.

This is also why right now, the women who are coming forward to tell their stories of sexual misconduct by Haas are being questioned or distrusted on social media, or simply ignored by leaders, colleagues and fans who just don't want to deal with it.

Part of the doubt cast on Haas' victims is rooted in our theological tradition that trains us to not believe women. But complementarity feeds another source of doubt about women victims, namely the Catholic penchant for male hero worship.

Haas seemed particularly adept at cultivating a sense of stature. As NCR reported, he gave his Music Ministry Alive program "the aura of prestige" and groomed students to desire his attention. One victim told NCR that her classmates hoped he would look at them when he sang his famous hymn "You Are Mine."

All of our lives, Catholics have been fed the notion only men are worthy to be priests because God only wants men to be leaders. Regardless of how progressive some Catholics try to be, time and again, we find ourselves falling into and feeding the belief that men are singular and exceptional. Haas, it seems, not only knew this, he exploited it.

If there is any benefit to the revelations about Haas and Vanier, perhaps it will open up a conversation about the abuse of adult women by men in spiritual power. Though some church leaders, including Pope Francis, regularly denounce violence against women, the reality is that a theology of gender complementarity entrenches and sanctifies gender inequality — and gender inequality is the root of all violence against women worldwide.

The stories of Vanier and Haas show us that "clericalism" cannot be the rallying cry for what needs to change for our church to stop sexual abuse and its cover up. What needs to change is the institutional church's consecration and elevation of male power. The hierarchy can create as many training programs, policies and procedures as they like, but until they address male dominance as the underlying cause of sexual abuse, the crisis will never be resolved.

Jamie L. Manson is an award-winning columnist at the National Catholic Reporter. Follow her on Twitter: @jamielmanson.

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See also the previous posts:
• Complementarity of the Sexes: A Trap
• Pope Francis' Woman Problem

Image: David Haas performing at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, February 2017. (Edited screenshot from YouTube/RECongress)