Irene Niravalambana

Liberation Theology rehabilitated

Pope Francis is about to meet with the founder of Liberation Theology, Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez, thanks to the current head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) – Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, which – on the face of it – is a 180° turn versus its past condemnations by the Vatican. Taken superficially, it is a meeting between Francis and a proponent of a theology that has been categorically denounced both by Blessed Pope John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict XVI.

A closer look reveals quite a different picture though:

Fr. Gutiérrez, unlike other teachers of Liberation Theology (e.g., Leonardo Boff), has never been censured by the Vatican.

John Paul II and Benedict XVI never condemned Liberation Theology as such, but only those variants of it that placed Marxist analysis at their cores and thereby de-Christified it. In fact, Benedict XVI (then then-Cardinal Ratzinger) is quite clear about the distinction in the “instruction” he published in 1984 as the head of the CDF:

“The aspiration for ‘liberation’, as the term itself suggests, repeats a theme which is fundamental to the Old and New Testaments. In itself, the expression “theology of liberation” is a thoroughly valid term: it designates a theological reflection centered on the biblical theme of liberation and freedom, and on the urgency of its practical realization. […] The warning against the serious deviations of some “theologies of liberation” must not be taken as some kind of approval, even indirect, of those who keep the poor in misery, who profit from that misery, who notice it while doing nothing about it, or who remain indifferent to it. The Church, guided by the Gospel of mercy and by the love for mankind, hears the cry for justice and intends to respond to it with all her might.”
Instead of this being a change brought in by Francis, the re-visiting of the position taken with respect to Liberation Theology escalated when Benedict XVI appointed Müller as the head of the CDF in 2011 – Müller, who was known to be a personal friend of Gutiérrez, whom he considered as his mentor and whose summer lectures he has been attending annually since 1998 in Peru.

While the new attitude is a change version previous positions, it is not a change as far as Marxist-based flavors of Liberation Theology go. Instead, it is a sign of support for those strands of Liberation Theology that have presented social justice and a focus on the poor on a wholly Christian basis. Fr. Juan Carlos Scannone, one of Pope Francis’ former professors puts it as follows: “In the Argentinean Liberation Theology, social Marxist analysis is not used, but rather a historical-cultural analysis, not based on class warfare as a determining principle for the interpretation of society and history.”

To get a sense of why Müller, who is clearly the catalyst behind the rehabilitation of some strands of Liberation Theology, took an interest in it, it is worth taking a look at the speech¹ he gave at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in 2008, when it awarded him an honorary doctorate.

There, Müller starts by admitting that he had read expositions of Liberation Theology as well as their criticisms by the CDF, before meeting Gutiérrez, but that his engagement with them was purely theoretical. His initial attitude was one of skepticism and concern about both a danger of leading to violence and a naïveté with regard to the application of Marxist principles. Attending a seminar lead by Gutiérrez then turned him “from academic reflection on a new theological concept to experience with the men and women for whom this theology had been developed.” From the start, Gutiérrez emphasized that Liberation Theology was about theology and not politics, with the aim “to understand the world, history and society and transform them in light of the God’s own supernatural revelation as savior and liberator of man.” The “point of departure” is very clearly put by Müller as follows:

“How one can speak of God in the face of human suffering, of the poor who don’t have sustenance for their children, or the right to medical assistance, or access to education, who are excluded from social and cultural life, marginalized and considered a burden and a threat to the lifestyle of the wealthy few.

These poor are not an anonymous mass. Each one of them has a face. How can I as a Christian, priest or layman, whether through evangelization or scientific theological work, talk about God and His Son who became man and died for us on the cross and bear witness to Him, if I don’t want to build another theological system in addition to the existing one, except by saying to the specific poor person face to face: God loves you and your inalienable dignity is rooted in God. How does one make Biblical considerations real in individual and collective life, when human rights originate in the creation of man in the image and likeness of God.”

Müller then moves on to what I believe is the core of his message, when he speaks about not only attending courses about Liberation Theology in various Latin American countries, but also their being accompanied by:

“long weeks of pastoral work in the Andean region, especially in Lares in the Archdiocese of Cuzco. There the faces acquired names and became personal friends, this experience of universal Communion in the love of God and neighbor, which must be the essence of the Catholic Church. Finally it was a deep joy for me when in 2003, in Lares, in the Archdiocese of Cuzco, being already a bishop, I could administer the sacrament of Confirmation to young people whose parents I had already known for a long time and whom I myself had baptized.

Hence I have not been speaking of liberation theology in an abstract and theoretical way, much less ideologically to flatter progressive church groups. Similarly I have no fear that this may be interpreted as a lack of orthodoxy. Gustavo Gutiérrez’s theology, regardless of which angle you look at it from, is orthodox because it is orthopractic and teaches us proper Christian action because it comes from true faith.”

Müller’s assessment of Liberation Theology comes not only from a reading of and reflection on its teachings, but from him personally having put it into practice and experienced its fruits. It is these fruits that reinforce the truth of its principles, whose flowing from “true faith” can be inferred from them. It is a “see, judge, act” process, which Müller says “has been decisive in my own theological development” and which follows Jesus’ own words as regards orthopraxy:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them.” (Matthew 7:15-20).

UPDATE (13 September 2013): The Catholic New Service has just tweeted that the Vatican has confirmed that a meeting between Pope Francis and Fr. Gutiérrez took place two days ago.

¹ The original, Spanish version can be found here. Note that the English text used above includes my adjustments based on this original (e.g., at one point “imperdible” is translated as “amazing” in the English referred to above, while I render it as “inalienable”).

The sickness of the Pharisees

Pope Francis’ homilies yesterday and today are a pair of true gems and since they have filled me with joy, I’d like to share their highlights here with you.

This morning Francis starts out by warning against various flavors of Christianity that don’t have the person of Jesus at their center – in other words, that are not honest! – and that get bogged down in paraphernalia. Their first type is what I’d call headless Christians:

“The Pharisees of today’s Gospel (Luke 6:1-5) make so many commandments the centre of their religiosity. [… T]hose who have the sickness of the Pharisees and are Christians that put their faith, their religiosity in so many commandments, so many. ‘Ah, I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this. Christians of this attitude … ‘But why do you do this?’ – ‘No, it must be done!’ – ‘But why?’ – ‘Ah, I don’t know, but it must be done.’ And Jesus – where is He? A commandment is valid if it comes from Jesus: I do this because the Lord wants me to do this. But if I am a Christian without Christ, I do this and I don’t know why I have to do it.”

Then Francis warns against what I’d say are procedural Christians:

“There are other Christians without Christ: those who only seek devotions … But Jesus is not there. If your devotions bring you to Christ, that works. But if you remain there [in those devotions], something’s wrong.”

Finally, there are the Christians 2.0 who seek novelty for its own sake:

“[Then there are t]hose who seek things that are a little uncommon, a little special, that go back to private revelations, while Revelation concluded with the New Testament. Such a spectacle of revelation, to hear new things [is misguided. Instead,] take the Gospel!”

With the wrong approaches ridiculed, Francis turns to how to tell whether one is on the right track:

“‘But Father, what is the rule for being a Christian with Christ, and not becoming a Christian without Christ. What is the sign of a person that is a Christian with Christ?’ The rule is simple: only that which brings you to Jesus is valid, and only that is valid that comes from Jesus. Jesus is the centre.”

A consequence then of such a centeredness on Jesus is joy:

“The Christian is fundamentally joyful. [… To be sure], there are truly moments of crucifixion, moments of pain – but there is ever that profound peace of joy, because Christian life is lived as a celebration, like the nuptial union of Christ with the Church.”

Getting rid of the clutter that has accumulated around following Jesus and seeking to imitate Him honestly and consciously will not annihilate difficulties, but will lead to profound peace and joy. I wish this for myself as much as I wish its consequences for everyone – especially those who endure the most difficult circumstances in war-torn parts of the world.

Oscar Wilde: Socialism, Jesus, Art

Even before reading his work, I was a fan of Oscar Wilde on the basis of his witticisms, with my favorite being the following (from The Picture of Dorian Gray): “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.” While it could be dismissed as just a throwaway flourish, I have always felt a sense of depth behind it and proceeded to read his writings with great joy.

The other day I then came across a reference to his essay, “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” in the context of theories of art and I was immediately keen to read it. Even though the essay’s focus is socialism – a topic of limited interest to me, since I have experienced a failed attempt of implementing it first hand – I would like to acknowledge Wilde’s prophetic anticipation of the flaws of its authoritarian flavor, as practiced in the Soviet bloc, when he says: “If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.” +1!

What I found more interesting than the call to anarchic socialism, were Wilde’s thoughts on Jesus, whom he introduces thus:

“‘Know thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, ‘Be thyself’ shall be written. And the message of Christ to man was simply ‘Be thyself.’ That is the secret of Christ.”

This is a great synthesis of the Gospel and it seems to me that it derives from what is already there in Genesis, which says that “God created mankind in his image” (1:27). Being created in God’s image and being myself put me on a path towards God, closeness to whom is my fulfillment, and I see why Wilde presents it as Jesus’ “secret” and then proceeds to elaborate on what this “Be thyself” implies:

“What Jesus meant, was this. He said to man, ‘You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you.’”

This very closely tracks Jesus’ saying: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” (Matthew 6:19-21). Such an attitude has direct consequences, which Wild puts in a particularly clear and again Gospel-mirroring way:

“If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way.”

Reading the above, in particular the point about freedom in prison (which Wilde too knew about from first hand experience), made me think of all those who have been and to this day are imprisoned not for criminal reasons but as a form of persecution for their beliefs and convictions, whether political, personal or religious. The Vietnamese Cardinal François-Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận then sprung to mind, who insisted that the focus needs to be maintained on living in every present moment even as he was in solitary confinement while imprisoned by the Communist regime:

“While in prison, everyone waits for freedom, every day, every minute. We must live each day, each minute of our life as though it is the last.”

His was not only a tolerance of the desolate conditions he had to endure but a being himself as a follower of Jesus:

“I am happy here, in this cell, where white mushrooms are growing on my sleeping mat, because You are here with me, because You want me to live here with You. I have spoken much in my lifetime: now I speak no more. It’s Your turn to speak to me, Jesus; I am listening to You.”

Returning to Wilde’s essay, there is a clear sense of him having understood something profound about Jesus’ message, while at the same time I have to say that I am far from agreeing with his views on the family (where he claims that Jesus advocated its abolition) or on the poor (although he certainly makes important observations there also, especially as far as dignity is concerned). Only after these topics does Wilde turn to art, which was the initial motive for my reading his essay, and kicks off by warning against the exercise of control over art:

“[W]henever a community or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft. A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.”

The key idea here is very much consonant with Kandinsky’s concept of the inner necessity and the dire consequences that Wild foretells in the case of dictatorship bearing on art are very much what I believe can be seen in that repugnant “art” called Socialist Realism or the soulless classicism of the Third Reich.

Wilde then makes a great point about the absurdity of public expectation and tastes attempting to influence art, by drawing parallels with science and philosophy:

“Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide difference. If a man of science were told that the results of his experiments, and the conclusions that he arrived at, should be of such a character that they would not upset the received popular notions on the subject, or disturb popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of people who knew nothing about science; if a philosopher were told that he had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought, provided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were held by those who had never thought in any sphere at all–well, nowadays the man of science and the philosopher would be considerably amused.”

Finally, Wilde underlines again the absurdity of measuring art against past criteria and precedents:

“[A]n educated person’s ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends.”

The above very much reminds me of Le Corbusier exclaiming: “Every day, every hour, the Earth sees splendors surging up which are truths and present-day beauty,” and I have to say that I feel great affinity with what the last three artists – Le Corbusier, Kandinsky and Wilde – whose thoughts on art I have read recently are saying. True art springs from the innermost being of an artist – necessarily in the now – and cares only about its own honesty and purity. Yet, it is not detached from the world, since – in Wilde’s words – it rises up from “the perfection of the soul that is within him,” a perfection rooted in God and thereby connected to the souls of all.

The Trinity – the mystery of love

Chagall abraham angels

Imagine coming across a popular science article containing the following:

“Science says light is “strange.” According to Albert Einstein, light is somehow also a stream of particles but not a stream of particles.”

You’d hardly think that you were reading the work of an award-winning journalist and would instead be checking whether the piece was a satire on the lack of science literacy.

Sadly, the same doesn’t seem to apply when it comes to the coverage of religion, since the above is a transposition of the following excerpt from an article published on the CNN Belief Blog yesterday:

“Christianity says the Trinity is a “mystery” of faith. According to Christian tradition, God begets a son who is somehow also Him but not Him.”

Not only is the source an established news broadcaster, but the author himself – Jeffrey Weiss – is described as “an award-winning religion reporter,” and – ironically – there is no suggestion of parody in the piece.

Instead of having a go at the article piece by piece, let me try to say what I understand by saying that God is both three and one. It is always easier just to mock than to put one’s neck on the line by being constructive, so I’ll take a risk and open myself to criticism next.

First, let me say that the Trinity is a mystery. What I don’t mean by that though is that it cannot be thought or spoken about, that it is irrational or that stating that it is a mystery is a conversation stopper. The universe too is full of mystery and while science is making tremendous progress in understanding it better and better, there are still many phenomena that we cannot fully explain (e.g., how does anesthesia work, what happened during the Planck epoch, what causes a reversal in the Earth’s magnetic field’s polarity, etc.). You could say that these phenomena are mysteries. What would be understood by that is that something about them eludes our explanatory capacity and, most likely, that we are trying to get a better understanding of them.

It is in this sense that the Trinity is a mystery, and the fact that our imperfect grasp of it fuels the desire of Christians to deepen their understanding, rather than being an obstacle to it, can be seen easily if one samples not only the output of theological work but also the insights of mystics and saints.

Before proceeding to share examples of Christian thought about the Trinity, let me put my own cards on the table (which, naturally, have their source in the experiences and thoughts of others :). I believe that the Christian teaching about God being both three and one is all about expressing core aspects of what love is, since God is Love. Love necessarily requires more than one party and is a dynamic relationship. Furthermore, it is a relationship in which change is fueled by loss and gain, by nothingness and being. When I take my son to the playground, instead of reading that next book or sleeping, I am losing my selfish plans (and in some sense annihilating that part of my self that was invested in them) and instead giving part of my self (that part which instead of pursuing my own plans will now chase him around a playground) to him. In some sense, as a result of my love for my son, part of me becomes part of him. However, when love is reciprocated, the element of loss, which is real, becomes compensated for, and – in this example – the laughter of my son, his joy, his wellbeing return to me as gifts from him and close the cycle started by my giving up on reading at the beginning of this story. Finally, the exchange of self that – motivated by love – took place here, is real in the sense that what was lost by one and gained by another are real and substantially change them. In some sense the exchange itself – the relationship – is as real as the persons between which it took place.

With an exposition of love in the above terms, the Trinity can be seen as its reductio ad absurdum, where the Father gives all of himself to the Son (thereby losing himself completely) and the Son reciprocates the gift by giving himself fully to the Father in return. The Holy Spirit then is the relationship of the Father and the Son personified, and by simultaneously not being and being, the three persons of the Trinity are the one God who is.

Such a conception of the Trinity makes all relationships of love be modeled on the innermost life of God, and while it is complex and abstract, it is no more so than theories of contemporary physics.¹ St. Gregory of Nazianzus (in the 4th century AD!) refers to the Trinity as “the infinite co-naturality of three infinites” (a phrase any thinker could be proud of) and Blessed Pope John Paul II explains the motive for such trinity: “God is one, but not alone.” That relationships are the key to the Trinity is also apparent already in St. Augustine, who equates love with the Trinity by saying: “If you see love, you see the Trinity. Since you see someone who loves, someone who is loved, and the love uniting them.” Augustine then proceeds to underline how completely the persons of the Trinity are “co-natural,” by saying that the Father “is not called Father with reference to himself but only in relation to the Son; seen by himself he is simply God.” (De Trinitate VII, 1, 2), which the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger explains as:

“‘Father’ is purely a concept of relationship. Only in being-for the other is he Father; in his own being-in-himself he is simply God. Person is the pure relation of being related, nothing else. Relationship is not something extra added to the person, as it is with us; it only exists at all as relatedness.” (Introduction to Christianity)

In summary, and in Chiara Lubich’s words, the Trinity is revealed to us “as unconditional, reciprocal self-giving, as mutual loving, self-emptying out of love, as total and eternal communion.” It is a mystery, but one that speaks volumes about what Christianity means both by love and by God and what relationships it strives towards already in the here and now.

¹ And I am not saying that theology is physics, but merely drawing a comparison between the level of intuitiveness and simplicity of their concepts.

Kandinsky: innermost necessity of the soul

[Warning: long read :)] Wassily Kandinsky, the father of abstract painting, is among those artists whom I have greatest affinity to, not for some specific reason, but simply because of the persistent bond that I feel between his work and myself. Looking at a piece like “Composition VIII” or at “St George I,” a reproduction of which we have in our living room, is always an experience that is hard to describe and that I prefer to leave unverbalized.

A couple of days ago I then came across a video from 1926 of him painting, which was a completely unexpected treat (thanks, @openculture!) and which lead me to his book “Point and line to plane,” where he gives the following, stunning definition of the point:

“The geometric point is an invisible thing. Therefore, it must be defined as an incorporeal thing. Considered in terms of substance, it equals zero. Hidden in this zero, however, are various attributes which are “human” in nature. We think of this zero — the geometric point — in relation to the greatest possible brevity, i.e., to the highest degree of restraint which, nevertheless, speaks. Thus we look upon the geometric point as the ultimate and most singular union of silence and speech. […] In the flow of speech, the point symbolizes interruption, non-existence The (negative element), and at the same time it forms a bridge from one existence to another (positive element). In writing, this constitutes its inner significance.”

This is clearly neither a mathematical definition, nor a scientific one (invisible=incorporeal?), but a phenomenological, even spiritual one. It is more like what a close friend would say in a eulogy, and that is how I felt when reading this book: to Kandinsky the point, line and plane were not some hypothetical concepts, but intimate friends and collaborators. His writing about them at times sounds like a person’s memoirs, rather than detached rationalizations of a theorist. Needless to say, I was hooked, and then delighted when I came to reading the foreword to the book (which I don’t tend to do as a rule) and discovering that “Point and line to plane” was the sequel to “On the spiritual in art.” This fact alone pointed me to another interpretative key for the above passage about the point, and its parallels with the person of Jesus and indeed with the Trinity jumped out at me. The process of non-existence, while simultaneously bridging between existences is precisely the dynamic between the persons of the Trinity (each emptying themselves – becoming nothing¹ – out of love for the other).

If you have any interest in art, I can’t recommend “On the spiritual in art” too highly – not only is it an insight into one of the greatest painters of all time, but, to my mind, it is of the order of Plato’s Republic in terms of foundation myths.

Kandinsky starts out by emphasizing the necessity to act in the present moment (much like Le Corbusier insisted too), instead of attempting to imitate the past, which he depicts in harsh terms:

“[E]very cultural period creates art of its own, which can never be repeated again. An effort to revive art-principles of the past, at best, can only result in works of art resembling a still-born child. […] The sculptor’s attempts to employ Greek principles can only achieve a similarity in form, while the work itself remains for all time without a soul.”

Within the space of a couple of pages from the beginning, Kandinsky then proceeds to present his view of the hierarchy of spiritual life, which he equates with that of artistic life, since “[the] grammar of painting [… are] the rules of the inner necessity […] of the soul.”:

“A large acute triangle divided into unequal segments, the narrowest one pointing upwards, is a schematically correct representation of spiritual life. The lower the segment the larger, wider, higher, and more embracing will be the other parts of the triangle. The entire triangle moves slowly, almost invisible, forward and upward and where the apex was “today,” the second segment is going to be “tomorrow,” that is to say, that which today can be understood only by the apex, and which to the rest of the triangle seems an incomprehensible gibberish, tomorrow forms the true and sensitive life of the second segment.

At the apex of the top segment, sometimes one man stands entirely alone. His joyous vision corresponds to a vast inner sorrow, and even those, who are closest to him, do not comprehend him. […] Artists are to be found in every segment of this imaginary triangle. Each one of these artists, who can see beyond the limits of his present stage, in this segment of spiritual evolution is a prophet to those surrounding him and helps to move forward the ever obstinate carload of humanity. However, one of those not possessed by such vision, or misusing it for base purposes and reasons, when he closes the triangle may be easily understood by his fellow men and even acclaimed. The larger the segment (that is, the lower it lies in the triangle), the greater is the number of people to comprehend the words of the artist. In spite of it and correspondingly every group consciously or unconsciously hungers for spiritual food.”

While the above is unquestionably elitist, there are several details to note, which, I believe, hint at a dichotomy with the universally-accessible. First, the interconnectedness of the entire universe of spiritual ascent and the impact of its protagonists on all (“where the apex was “today,” the second segment is going to be “tomorrow.””). Second, the positive view of everyone’s potential to comprehend advances in art, albeit with a delay (“[T]hat which today […] to the rest of the triangle seems an incomprehensible gibberish, tomorrow forms the true and sensitive life of the second segment.”). Third, the desire of all for genuine spiritual food, in spite of some contenting themselves with fakes. Added to the above pull towards democratization of the elite striving for spiritual/artistic progress is also his declaration that “[a]nyone, who absorbs the innermost hidden treasures of art, is an enviable partner in building the spiritual pyramid, which is meant to reach into heaven.”

This tension is further carried forward, when Kandinsky argues that there is only a single criterion for what makes eternal art – its “inner necessity” from the perspective of its author:

“The artist should be blind to the importance of “recognition” or “non-recognition” and deaf to the teachings and demands of the time. His eye should be directed to his inner life and his ear should harken to the words of the inner necessity. Then, he will resort with equal ease to every means and achieve his end. […] All means are sacred when called upon by innermost necessity.”

““[O]uter necessity” […] can never lead beyond the limits of the conventional, that is, traditional “beauty” only. The “inner necessity” does not know such limits and, for this reason, often creates results which are conventionally termed “ugly.” “Ugly” is, therefore, only a conventional term which continues to lead a sham life long after the inner necessity […] has been superseded. At that time, everything was considered ugly if it was not connected with the inner necessity of the time, and anything so connected was termed beautiful. Everything, which appeals to the inner necessity is already beautiful by its virtue, and will be recognized sooner or later.”

“As no “dissonant notes” exist in music, nor in painting “inharmony,” in these two art expressions every sound, whether harmony or discord, is beautiful (appropriate), if it results from inner need. The inner value of each and every movement will soon be felt, as the inner beauty replaces the sensuous aspect. Thus, “ugly” movements suddenly appear beautiful, from which an undreamed power and vital force will burst forth instantly.”

Rooting perfection in “inner necessity” also changes the criteria by which art is judged and the means that are justified for its pursuit:

“A “perfect drawing” is the one where nothing can be changed without destroying the essential inner life, quite irrespective of whether this drawing contradicts our conception of anatomy, botany, or other sciences.”

“Likewise, colours should be used not because they are true to nature but only because the colour harmony is required by the paintings individually. The artist is not only justified in using any form necessary for his purposes, but it is his very duty to do so. Neither anatomical correctness nor any basic overthrow of scientific statements are necessary, only the artist’s unlimited freedom in the selection of his means.”

“This unlimited freedom must be based on inner necessity (which is called honesty). This is not only the principle of art but of life. This principle is the great sword of the superman with which he fights the Philistines.”

More than anything, the above reminds me of St. Augustine’s most famous dictum: “Love and then what you will, do,” which we could put into Kandinsky’s mouth as “Be honest and then what you will, paint,” without incurring any contradiction with his own words.

I have to say that reading “On the spiritual in art” has made me feel even closer to Kandinsky and has armed me with new means, with which I can revisit his paintings (and those of others!) in an attempt to connect with the innermost necessity that lead to their creation.

¹ This self-emptying – kenosis – is explicitly indicated in St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2:5-9) and beautifully explained also by Hans Urs von Balthasar: “The Father, in uttering and surrendering himself without reserve, does not lose himself. He does not extinguish himself by self-giving, just as he does not keep back anything of himself either. For in this self surrender he is the whole divine essence. Here we see both God’s infinite power and his powerlessness; he cannot be God in any other way but in this “kenosis” within the Godhead itself.” (Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory: The Action Vol 4).

Against against understanding

You know the caricatures of religious people that Richard Dawkins battles like windmills? Well, I have just read a blog post by one of them. He even self-applied the label “Catholic” and had his missive published in the “National Catholic Register” … Richard, all is forgiven! I’m with you to un-delude this guy – you can even have him as an atheist at the end!

“The world burns because nobody is willing to burn for it.”

“[We are not] to dialogue with over a billion people whose lives are dictated by a false religion and a false ideology, an ideology that threatens to burn the world. [We are not asked] to understand them better.”

“God commissioned [us] to convert the world, not to dialogue with it.”

“There is no antidote to error but truth.”

“We should raise money to send missionaries and pray for their souls when they perish for the effort, and then send more missionaries.”

No, these aren’t the words of Abu Qatada, but those of a “Catholic” blogger.

Let me just be clear about one thing – the above are not the words of a Catholic. Being a Catholic is “not to have a ‘label’ but to live and testify to faith in prayer, in works of charity, in the promotion of justice, in doing good,” as Pope Francis is quoted in another article, ironically on the same website. Calling for “conversion, not dialogue,” a refraining from understanding and raising money to send missionaries to their death are not “works of charity, the promotion of justice, [or] doing good.”

And if that weren’t enough, the author of the above expletives disqualifies himself from the Catholic life by distancing himself from the Church’s teaching: “Well, if we listen to many Church leaders, we hear that we should seek to understand them better. […] And of course, we should seek to dialogue with them. Dialogue, dialogue solves everything. Baloney.” Well, not just any old church leader, but Pope Francis himself, who has been explicit about the Church’s desire to understand and dialogue not only with Muslims, but also with members of other religions, Christian denominations, agnostics and atheists. Everyone!

Does that mean that the Catholic Church and its leaders are not interested in spreading the Good News and in bringing Jesus to all, or as the blog’s author puts it in his closing paragraph:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Do we love the world enough to even tell them about Him?”

Now that’s baloney (in the parlance of our times). Pope Francis is monomaniacally focused on Jesus and on pointing to him at every opportunity. Just look at his daily homilies, where the word Jesus is by far the most frequently used. And you don’t need to look any further back than his last Angelus message, delivered only two days ago to see what he is all about:

“Jesus tells us that there is a door to enter into the family of God. This door is Jesus. Everyone is invited to enter this door, to go through the door of faith, to enter into his life and to allow Jesus into their lives, so that he may transform them, renew them and give them full and lasting joy.”

But it is an invitation, not a conquest, a desire for friendship, not a call to use force. The basis is understanding, compassion, friendship. To look at Jesus and infer from His words that He wants us to make others believe in Him is not having listened to Him at all. Just like Jesus didn’t set out to kidnap the apostles with a cohort of hired muscle, so we too need to invite instead of “burn and perish.”

LCWR "systems thinking" – the good, the bad and the ugly

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is an umbrella organization founded in 1956 by the Vatican and counting the leaders of 1500 congregations of women religious in the US as its members (spanning over 80% of all nuns and sisters in the country). Between April 2008 and July 2011 it has been under investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which has found “serious doctrinal problems” and “a diminution of the fundamental Christological center and focus of religious consecration which leads, in turn, to a loss of a “constant and lively sense of the Church” among some Religious.” In other words, the CDF are saying that the LCWR are taking Christ out of Christianity …

Among the multiple changes mandated by the CDF, the withdrawal of the LCWR’s “Systems Thinking Handbook” was one that particularly caught my eye, also because there are multiple references to it in the CDF’s doctrinal assessment and because its title alone makes me nervous. And as soon as I started reading it, my expectations were not only met but, sadly, exceeded and I very soon came to reading the text not with a question about whether the CDF were hounding the poor LCWR, but about why they haven’t enforced changes already. Roundabout the same point on my way through the “handbook,” I remembered my Aristotle professor and his admonition to apply the principle of charity when faced with another’s thoughts and it is that alone, which resulted in my take including a “the good” section.¹

So, let me start with the slimmest slice from the pie that is this Handbook – the good. Here what I am taking away from having read the 26-page publication is that its motives are good and that the intention behind the methods and attitudes presented in it is to bring about change that goes to the root causes of suffering and injustice:

“This is why it is necessary not only to feed the hungry or house the homeless but also to address the systemic relationships that result in social ills like poverty, homelessness, and hunger.”

Next, let’s move on to the bad (yes, that was it as far as the good is concerned), where the text unfortunately offers far richer pickings.

First, there is a ideologization already of the basic concept of “system” that is at the heart of this Handbook (an odd fact by itself, given the prominence of this text in an organization with canonical status):

“A ‘system’ is an entity that maintains its existence and functions as a whole through the interaction of its parts. The behavior of a system depends on the total structure. The interrelationship among the parts of a system, therefore, must be continually sustained for the system to exist. Systems are purposeful, open, counterintuitive, multidimensional, and have emergent properties not found in any of the parts by themselves. … systems thinking will prevent us from unconsciously employing the same mental models that are causing the problems we want to solve.”

While the first three sentences are pretty vanilla, and essentially paraphrase the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia definition, there is an immediate investment of the term with adjectives like “open” (what about closed systems) and “counterintuitive” (what about a simple system, like that of tea brewing: tea leaves + boiling water –> tea). The paragraph then concludes with an oxymoronic flourish: “systems thinking will prevent us from unconsciously employing the same mental models that are causing the problems we want to solve,” which Freud would have had a lot of fun with.²

Second, there are frequent counterpositions of “Western thought” on the one hand and “Organic thought” on the other, where the former is introduced thus:

“The limits of a short article do not allow for an adequate overview of the development of Western thought. We can safely say, however, that for almost a thousand years, Western thought has interpreted reality from the perspective of a worldview characterized by dualism and hierarchy. […] The ultimate result was a learned inability to think in any other than linear, dualistic, and hierarchical ways when dealing with problems, organizing ideas or work, and in structuring society, church, or our religious congregations. […] This way of seeing reality thus became an unconscious filter for the Western mind, a filter that made it easy to judge immediately what fit or did not fit a particular situation […] The world was stable and sure, a machine-like structure of predetermined and fixed relationships. The human mind could comprehend the universe in its entirety.”

The fault for the above blinkered and recalcitrant nature of “Western thought” is laid at the feet of Plato and Aristotle and all who followed them until the 1960s. The solution put forward by the LCWR is “Organic thought”:

“Th[e] “Organic” mental model prefers to look at wholes instead of parts, at processes instead of substances. [… T]he “Organic” mental model values chaos, connectedness, process, inclusivity, relationship, and a non-linear expression of authority.”

Commenting on the above is quite a stress test for my desire to apply the principle of charity, as a result of which I’d like to suggest that it is dramatically ill-informed and epically naïve. To suggest that Plato (i.e., mostly Plato’s Socrates; not to mention over two millennia of thinkers following him) had a sense of certainty, of the universe being “machine-like” and of “comprehend[ing] the universe in its entirety” is a claim that can only be made in the absence of any direct experience of his and his successors’ thought. In his Apology, Plato’s Socrates famously says “I do not believe that I know anything,” and even the concept of “system,” so central to the LCWR handbook, is extensively dealt with already by Aristotle.³ This is not to mention the importance attributed to the whole and its interrelationships in Christian sources, starting from St. Paul (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:12-26), via St. Hildegard (“God has arranged all things in the world in consideration of everything else.”) and St. Francis (who sings of fraternal relationships with creation) to Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere. To argue that pre-late-20th-century thought was linear, deterministic and endowed with a sense of its own omniscience is simply false and divorced from facts.

Third, there is an attempt to anchor the Hadbook’s approach to Vatican II and specifically to it’s Lumen Gentium, which – it is claimed – “consciously grounded ecclesiology in the holistic image of the “People of God,” rather than in the “top down” definitions of the past […] defined by dualism and hierarchy.” With the principle of charity at breaking point, I can at best see this statement as being an ultra-selective reading of Lumen Gentium that essentially omits its extensive third chapter (“On Hierarchical Structure”) and all of its numerous references to the role of the Church’s hierarchy not only in Lumen Gentium but also in all of the other Vatican II documents. No matter how hard I try, I cannot even chalk this up to the authors of the Handbook having missed some subtle in-between-the-lines content, as Lumen Gentium states quite directly that: “Bishops […] presid[e] in place of God over the flock, whose shepherds they are, as teachers for doctrine, priests for sacred worship, and ministers for governing. […] In the bishops, therefore [… Jesus], is present in the midst of those who believe.” Pretty hard to read this as a “holistic,” a-hierarchical twist versus the preceding 2000 years of the Church’s nature.

Finally, let’s turn to the “ugly,” where, I’m afraid, my threadbare principle–of–charity gloves may not be too effective anymore. While the above is confused and both theologically and philosophically lacking both in breadth and comprehension, the most serious issue with the Handbook is the following passage:

“[Sisters g]rounded in [“Western mind”] theology […] believe that the celebration of Eucharist is the summit of worship and at the core of what holds us together as a group. [… Sisters] situated within [an “Organic” mental model] believe that the celebration of Eucharist is so bound up with a church structure caught in negative aspects of the Western mind they can no longer participate with a sense of integrity [… and] believe that as long as men control women’s lives, there will be no justice. […]

Since so much of our identity is bound up with shared theological assumptions manifested in group behaviors and practices, who we are as a group can be called into question if we do not believe the same things. The function of ritual is to bring to visibility our deepest beliefs through symbolic word and action. Tension over which symbolic acts and words to use reveals differences at the level of belief. Such differences call into question our identity at the core of who we are. They push us to ask, “Is there something at the heart of who we are which is beyond a common Eucharistic theology and which holds us together?””

Err … No! For a Catholic to suggest that there may be something beyond the Eucharist as a means of bringing about unity is simply nonsensical. The Church is (as in identity) the Mystical Body of Christ and “[r]eally partaking of the body of the Lord in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, we are taken up into communion with Him and with one another. “Because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread”. In this way all of us are made members of His Body, “but severally members one of another”.” At least that is how Lumen Gentium (the only magisterial document referred to by the LCWR) puts it. And, no, it doesn’t then go on to say “or whatever else you might like to do instead” …

The above passage does another, worrying thing – i.e., it suggests that a problem with the Eucharist is that it is an instance of “men control[ling] women’s lives.” Would the authors of the Handbook have objected to receiving the Eucharist out of Jesus’ hands at the Last Supper? Would they have turned to him and said: “Sorry, mate, we won’t let you control us and deprive us of justice!” Maybe …

The ugly thing here, to my mind, is not so much that the LCWR leadership publishes a text like this Handbook, but that it considers their views to be consistent with “the Gospel of Jesus,” justified by Vatican II teaching and acceptable in the context of a Vatican-incorporated body. While their intentions are good, their reasoning is deeply flawed and their beliefs about the Eucharist are categorically not Catholic. This is unquestionably not a case of the CDF oppressing nuns, but instead a crystal clear case of an institution with canonical status having gone off the rails and placed their beliefs outside the Church (and done so with some margin). I sincerely hope that the women religious they claim to represent either leave the LCWR (if they don’t share its beliefs) or openly declare their loss of Catholic orthodoxy.

¹ In what follows, I will only reflect on the content of this publication and I have no intention to make inferences about the work of women religious in the US, about the doctrinal positions of the congregations whose leaders are members of the LCWR or about how the CDF have managed their investigation.
² The rest of the Handbook is peppered with plentiful displays of naïveté, such as a section entitled “The Need to See Things as They Really Are” or the list of the “Laws of Systems Thinking” of which I’d just pick out these three: “6. Faster is slower,” “9. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants,” and “10. There is no blame” :|.
³ E.g., see the following quote from his Politics: “the whole is of necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in an equivocal sense, as we might speak of a stone hand; for when destroyed the hand will be no better than that.”

Let’s be friends (even if we disagree)

Francis japanese

I know I keep talking about Pope Francis, but I can’t help telling you about his meeting with a group of Japanese school kids yesterday, since his words there were an even further crystalized and simplified exposition of the ideas he shared in the message to Muslims last month.

First, it’s worth noting a bit of the back story though. The 200 pupils – both Buddhist and Christian – of the Seibu Gakuen Bunri Junior High School from Tokyo had planned a trip to Rome long before the Vatican announced that Pope Francis wouldn’t be holding general audiences during the month of August. Not wanting to disappoint them, Francis instead met just with their small group yesterday in the courtyard of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.

To begin with, Francis praised them for their visiting a foreign country, since:

“to meet other people, other cultures is always good for us, it helps us grow. And, why? Because if we are isolated in ourselves we only have what we have, we cannot grow culturally; instead, if we go in search of other people, other cultures, other ways of thinking, other religious, we come out of ourselves and begin that beautiful adventure that is called “dialogue”.”

Then, he moved on to the core of his short talk, where he proposes meekness as the method of dialogue – a subject he has spoken of at least a dozen timed during his morning homilies:

“And what is the most profound attitude that we should have in order to dialogue and not fight? Meekness, the ability to find people, to find culture, with peace; the ability to make intelligent questions: “Why do you think this way?” “Why does this culture does that?” To listen to others and then talk. First listen, then talk. All of this is meekness.”

His next words though are what really caught my attention since they embody the essence of how dialogue must be an activity among friends and how its purpose is mutual understanding rather than conquest or proselytizing:

“And if you do not think like me – well, you know … I think in a different way, you do not convince me – but we are still friends, I have listened to how you think and you have listened to how I think.”

Having the head of the Catholic Church lay out his view of and expectations from dialogue in this simple way is a big deal. While these ideas are not new by any means, their plain exposition here leaves little room for misinterpretation and is a great contribution to the development of closer relationships not only between believers of different faiths but also none.

Finally, Francis wraps up his address by pointing to the ultimate end of dialogue, which is peace: “This dialogue is what makes peace. You cannot have peace without dialogue. All wars, all struggles, all problems that are not resolved, with which we face, are due to a lack of dialogue. When there is a problem, dialogue: this makes peace.”

It’s only pastoral …

Pope Francis has unquestionably introduced a dramatic change in what the pope does or does not do. He travelled back from the conclave on the bus with the cardinals who elected him, he asked the crowd in St. Peter’s square to bless him during his first moments as pope, the next day he went to pay his bill in the hotel where he stayed before the conclave, he phoned his newsagent back in Buenos Aires to cancel his newspaper subscription, he skipped a concert organized in his honor, he has been inviting vatican staff to join him for daily morning mass, he has had summaries and excerpts from his impromptu homilies published shortly after he delivers them and he even gave an almost hour and a half long interview in which he answered unscripted questions. None of this is news and one could begin to take it for granted, since Francis has been behaving in this immediate, open way from the get go and with complete consistency. Nonetheless, I would like to dwell on his behavior for a moment to talk about a particularly persistent throw-away label that keeps being applied to Francis’ words, in an attempt to contain, limit and at least implicitly make light of them and suggest that they ought to be taken with a pinch of salt.

That label is “pastoral.”

You’ll come across statements like: “up until now he has only shown the pastoral and – some would concede – populist aspects of his personality” (Andrea Gagliarducci), “The homilies are pastoral in nature, often using homespun language to make his points.” (John L. Allen Jr.), “[Pope Francis’ first,] pastoral-sounding message was another indication of how different a style [he] is approaching his papacy” (Natalie Baker) or “Pope Francis seems to be taking a more pastoral and conversational tone” (Bob Shine).

And the implication is invariably that Francis’ words are a bit of hand-waving, populist simplification for the great unwashed and that what he really means cannot be inferred from them and has to wait for a proper, systematically-theological, logically-rigorous¹ and magisterially-triplicated exposition, delivered under precisely prescribed conditions. His “pastoral” words are just a bit of fun for the punters, but nothing that serious minds need concern themselves about. Their “meat” will appear in encyclical form in due course.

To be honest, I find this tremendously misguided and divorced from the Christian faith, which is nothing other than an attempt to imitate, relate to and share with others the person of Jesus. The above attitudes are akin to their owners turning up at the Sermon on the Mount and knowingly whispering (whilst winking and nudging [they do deserve credit for multitasking]) to one of its listeners (let’s say a cheese-maker, to pick a random occupation): “Don’t worry about all that meekness or righteousness jazz … What the fella really means is more like Heidegger’s “in-der-Welt-sein” and it only applies to you in substance and not form anyway.” I can also see them tutting at Jesus’ simile about the eye of the needle (“Since several angels can be in the same place, this hardly represents any constraint at all.”), or his speaking about virgins running out of oil (“He doesn’t mean oil per se, but any of a plurality of incendiary fuels, including, but not limited to, oil.”)

All of Jesus’ teaching was pastoral, a lot of it was private and none of it was peer-reviewed, double-checked or nihil-obstat-ed. If anything, the pope’s pastoral teaching is of the highest importance, with later systematized, structured and cross-referenced expositions being of subordinate nature. Just like no theologian would dream of pooh-poohing the Gospel and preferring even the most sublime systematic theology to it, so the spontaneous, impromptu ad-libbing of Pope Francis too should receive preferential status over other forms of expressing the faith.

¹ Please, don’t get me wrong: I have nothing whatsoever against the systematically-theological and logically-rigorous. On the contrary, you could say that I consider it the worst form of thought, except for all others.

Francis: let’s share the joys of Muslims

A while ago now, Pope Francis wrote a, to my mind, very important message to Muslims at the end of Ramadan (on the feast of Eid al-Fitr), and, I believe, I, as a Christian, need to read it too, as if it were addressed to me personally. Aside from the gesture of Francis himself¹ sending the message “as an expression of esteem and friendship for all Muslims,” his choice of theme itself is of great importance, as is the way in which he introduces himself.

First, he ties himself closely to St. Francis, who had very close links with the Muslim world of his day and who – with Jesus and Mary – is revered also among Muslims and who, after speaking with Sheikh al-Malik al-Kamel (the Sultan of Egypt) told his followers: “[You] are not to engage in arguments or disputes, but to be subject to every human creature for God’s sake.” Then, Francis underlines a number of themes close to the hearts of Muslims: alms giving, a reverence for creation and the family:

“[W]hen the Cardinals elected me as Bishop of Rome and Universal Pastor of the Catholic Church, I chose the name of “Francis”, a very famous saint who loved God and every human being deeply, to the point of being called “universal brother”. He loved, helped and served the needy, the sick and the poor; he also cared greatly for creation. I am aware that family and social dimensions enjoy a particular prominence for Muslims during this period, and it is worth noting that there are certain parallels in each of these areas with Christian faith and practice.”

Next we arrive at the theme chosen for this year’s Ramadan message: “Promoting Mutual Respect through Education,” which Francis lays out as follows:

““Respect” means an attitude of kindness towards people for whom we have consideration and esteem. “Mutual” means that this is not a one-way process, but something shared by both sides. What we are called to respect in each person is first of all his life, his physical integrity, his dignity and the rights deriving from that dignity, his reputation, his property, his ethnic and cultural identity, his ideas and his political choices. We are therefore called to think, speak and write respectfully of the other, not only in his presence, but always and everywhere, avoiding unfair criticism or defamation.”

So far Francis’ message is universal and, I believe, applies to all human relationships and not only those between Christians and Muslims. Kindness, esteem, reciprocity, respect and refraining from gossip are all basics that prepare the ground for the “sincere and lasting friendship” that Francis speaks about later.

Then, Francis’ focus shifts to the aspect of religious belief in this context of human relationships:

“Turning to mutual respect in interreligious relations, especially between Christians and Muslims, we are called to respect the religion of the other, its teachings, its symbols, its values. Particular respect is due to religious leaders and to places of worship. How painful are attacks on one or other of these! It is clear that, when we show respect for the religion of our neighbours or when we offer them our good wishes on the occasion of a religious celebration, we simply seek to share their joy, without making reference to the content of their religious convictions.”

I believe the above is a key move by Francis, in that it explicitly calls for mutual respect of the religious expressions of others while placing the emphasis on the joy and wishing for the good of others that accompany them and that are universally human. No buy-in with regard to the content of religious expression is inferred from being kind and participating in the other’s joy. There is neither proselytizing or attempting to convert the other here nor the suggestion of syncretism.

All of the above is very consistent with what I have heard from Francis so far – we have to realize that we are all brothers and sisters before anything else can happen. In the context of speaking about the poor, his emphasis is always on “touch[ing] the flesh of Christ,” on looking into the eyes of those in need when they are being helped. Just like helping the poor is about building human relationships with them and not only about material assistance, so interreligious dialogue too – and the very essence of the Christian life – is about the exact same thing.

How is this to be achieved though? While the answer here is pretty obvious (education), it is nonetheless worth seeing how Francis puts it:

“Regarding the education of Muslim and Christian youth, we have to bring up our young people to think and speak respectfully of other religions and their followers, and to avoid ridiculing or denigrating their convictions and practices.”

It is impossible to respect and esteem caricatures – if that is how we get used to referring to others (whether they be of a different religion, or none, or of other convictions to our own) we are putting up barriers that prevent us from ever discovering what lives in the hearts and minds of our neighbors.

To conclude, Francis puts his own teaching into practice and concludes his message a follows: “Finally, I send you my prayerful good wishes, that your lives may glorify the Almighty and give joy to those around you. Happy Feast to you all!”

No pomp and circumstance, just sincere simplicity.

¹ Instead of having the message sent by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, who normally do so.