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This Edition Copyright © Colin James Hamer 2000
Dialogue And Unity In The Teaching Of The Second Vatican Council
Why Ryle Is Not A Behaviourist
Gilbert Ryle's Wisdom
Using Word's As Metaphysical Symbols
The Gospel According To Mark
Creativity House - The Rainbow CYMBAL
Integrity I+N Truth
�Reincarnation� And The Mystery Of Iniquity
G-d And Professor Flew
Serving A Church In Dialogue With Non-Believers
Marxism And Christianity
On Being A Writer
Writing To The Point
Writing Between The Lines
The Alphabet Tells A Fascinating Story
Note: This paper was originally published as a two-part article under this title in the Clergy Review, vol. 54, nos. 1 & 6, January and June 1969, pp. 13-26 & 433-43. In order to accommodate in that June issue a report on a Conference of Indian Bishops, the editor removed from Part II a considerable number of quotations from Vatican II documents; in this revised version those cuts have been restored. My original purpose in assembling this article had been to provide all persons of good-will, whether believers in G-d or not, with a convenient and authoritative, unglossed but integrated summary of Vatican Council II teaching about the meaning and value of dialogue. At the editor's request, however, I had also included some additional comments of the sort he then felt were likely to be of interest to readers of the Clergy Review; many of those accretions were deleted from the privately circulated 1989 revised edition of this paper, in which account was also taken of the need to avoid inappropriately gender-discriminatory patterns of discourse. The present edition contains a small number of additional notes.
Introduction
Many welcome debate and even controversy because it provides an opportunity for sharpening one's wits, brings in money and enhances one's reputation, besides the humbling experience of the public revelation of our limitations. Certainly debate can be fun. But its real value is the promotion of better understanding. Irritation and impatience of contradiction, vehemence of assertion, and the determination to silence others are indications that one lacks the peace and tranquillity of certitude.
If it is true that religion is not an ideology, that no single theological system can ever be adequate for the expression of the meaning of G-d's Word, that there are no receipes or techniques for holiness, that the living, dynamic personality of Jesus Christ is the fulcrum of Christian living, that G-d and not the institutional Church is central, then dialogue between Christians ought to be possible.
Protagoras believed that �no one ever caused another who holds false opinions to change them for true ones: it is not, indeed, possible to think what does not exist, nor anything other than that which is experienced: this is always true. But, I think, the person who because of an inferior state of mind holds opinions of similar inferiority is led by an improved condition to hold opinions correspondingly improved. Some through ignorance call these notions true, I however call the one kind better than the other, but in no way truer.� (M. Untersteiner, The Sophists, Oxford: Blackwell 1954, p.52.)
Bias, self-complacency, suspicion and prejudice are to be recognized and acknowledged, but also resisted. Theological studies take time. While hoping for future theological agreement Christians can go on loving together all the time more.
This emphasis on increase and growth means looking ahead to a future perfect union, rather than taking precise compass-readings about the present situation. The living Church is more concerned about where it is going than about its actual whereabouts.
The only yardstick of the depth of sincerity and of the degree of person responsibility in present truth-claims is a capacity to respond to comment and criticism, to distinguish centrally relevant from irrelevant or marginal issues, to incorporate and not merely refute.
Dialogue is a free and cordial exchange between persons who trust each other and distrust themselves. It is not a terminological compromise nor a disguised teach-in. It is not the abandonment of one's own position. Spontaneous affirmation of fidelity to a present commitment is incompatible with genuine certitude, which needs no such prop - and it is always what must be true that turns out to be false.
Dialogue is a basic human need. No individual thinker grasps the whole. To concentrate on the seemingly essential can be to overlook the key to fresh and broader horizons. New experience and increased information may stifle some valuable insight. Awareness of the variety of plausible interpretations plunges common sense into a quandary of relativism. Better an awed silence or a hesitant stutter than catchwords and brash talk.
The Church is not a hospital needling persons with faith to make them forget the hazards of their present condition. It is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom. The Christian is neither a passive spectator of life nor the creator of her or his own certitude; she or he witnesses to Christ. Dialogue is a joyful �Yes� to the call to share in community living towards G-d.
Initiation into the community life of the family of G-d takes precedence over the moral formation of the individual Christian, and still more over instruction in abstract truth. Dogma is meaningless except in the context of Christian living.
The various institutional Churches value their differences, and this sort of solidarity, combativeness and team-spirit is a helpful stimulus to a greater degree of personal commitment and self-involvement in the reality of life towards G-d. But that which binds Christians together in virtue of a common Baptism is far more important than anything which causes division.
Because the Church has Christ's commission to teach all nations, Pope Paul VI in his Encyclical Letter Ecclesiam Suam (§§ 3, 32, 64-5, 68-9, 80-1, 109, 117.) accepted dialogue as instrumental to this end of bringing the message of salvation to as many as possible, so that it might effectively contribute to �union, understanding and harmony,� instead of being a reason for division.
He also saw the intrinsic value of dialogue or communication as communion in process of development.
The Church �must not only adapt itself to the forms of thought and living which a temporal environment induces - it must strive to approach these forms and to correct, ennoble, encourage and sanctify them. All things human are our concern. We share with the whole of the human race a common nature, a common life, with all its gifts and all its problems.
We desire to join with all who worship the one supreme G-d in promoting and defending common ideals in the spheres of religious liberty, human sister- and brotherhood, education, culture, social welfare and civic order. We declare Our readiness to meet the legitimate desires of our separated Christian sisters and brothers on many points of difference concerning tradition, spirituality, canon law, and worship, for it is Our dearest wish to embrace them in a perfect union of faith and charity, in the fullness of the Christian life.�*
Among Catholics, he said, this dialogue should be �conducted with the fullness of faith, with charity and with dynamic holiness, of frequent occurrence and on an intimate level, open and responsive to all truth, every virtue, every spiritual value that goes to make up the heritage of Christian teaching.��
Seen in this light, dialogue is not teaching, but a joyful communion, a sharing in the banquet of life to the maximum possible degree, because this is worthwhile in itself, and as a step towards greater union.
Hence, Paul VI claimed: �All these matters will become clear through our actually living the Christian life.�� Ecumenical dialogue in this way expresses the constant self-renewal of the Christian community. It is ecclesial,+ not the preserve of an élite nor the sport of extremists.
______________________
* §§ 42, 97, 108-9. The apparently abstract and impossibly utopian �perfect union� mentioned by the Pontiff was actually meant simply to recall Jesus Christ's solemn and dynamically evolutionary injunction: �What you must strive for is to be perfect (Lv 19:2; Dt 18:13); your heavenly Father is perfect.� (Mt 5:48)
� §§ 42, 97, 108-9, 113. Like many other members of the institutional Roman Catholic Church Pope Paul VI appears somewhat curiously to think it likely that he enjoys a fuller participation in the Paschal Mystery of Primordial Catholicism than did - or do - the many panentheistic agnostics to whom the Apostle Paul's discourse in Athens (Ac 17:22-31) continues to speak.
� § 38.
+ Today I would insist that truly to be effective it needs primarily to be in principle open to all persons without distinction of age, class, gender or race, since kinship is so much more important than any form of tribalism.
There is a need for the formation of experts in ecumenism who will meet regularly for study, correspond with other working groups, and hold, when appropriate, national inter-Church conventions. Truly ecumenical services of worship and witness will become regular features of life by mutual consent to the voice of the Spirit.
Meanwhile, periodic services, prayers, sermons and meetings for unity, backed up by full Christian collaboration in social and charitable works, will foster a spiritual openness towards others, and nurture increased understanding and enthusiasm for further dialogue.
The Second Vatican Council taught that Dialogue is a Human Need.
�The dignity of the human person demands that she or he act according to a knowing and free choice. Such a choice is personally motivated and prompted from within. It does not result from blind internal impulse nor from mere external pressure.� (GS no. 17 - quoted from W.M. Abbott, SJ, general editor, The Documents of Vatican II, London-Dublin: Geoffrey Chapman 1966, p. 214 - Unless otherwise stated, all references are to this edition.)
Yet effective freedom is not automatic. Group bias warps judgement, and lack of psychic integration hinders understanding and weakens the will. �Within the individual person there too often develops an imbalance between an intellect which is modern in practical matters, and a theoretical system of thought which can neither master the sum total of its ideas, nor arrange them adequately into a synthesis. Likewise, an imbalance arises between a concern for practicality and efficiency, and the demands of moral conscience; also, very often, between the conditions of collective existence and the requisites of personal thought, and even of contemplation. Specialization in any human activity can at length deprive a person of a comprehensive view of reality.� (GS no. 8, p. 206.)
Dialogue tends to correct this defect. Cardinal Newman's �imperial intellect� was the mind of a university, not an individual, and Christian tradition prefers the consensus fidelium (the worshipping community's shared feeling of what is pleasing to G-d) to private genius.
Dialogue is, of course, not a panacea: �Only in the glory of heaven will come the time of the restoration of all things. Then the human race as well as the entire world, which is intimately related to man and achieves its purpose through him, will be perfectly re-established in Christ.� (LG no. 48, pp. 78-9. I have elsewhere endeavoured to clarify in what sense �heaven� is in �time�.)
Pope John XXIII taught that dialogue was always compatible with fidelity to one's own beliefs: �One must never confuse error and the person who errs, not even when there is question of error, or inadequate knowledge of truth, in the moral or religious field. Neither can false philosophical teachings regarding the nature, origin, and destiny of the universe and of humankind be identified with historical movements that have economic, social, cultural or political ends, not even when these movements have originated from those teachings.� (PT §§ 158-9.)
It is easy enough to define a circle in the abstract, but any actually existing cartwheel is only approximately circular, and has other characteristics as well. Nobody is entirely or exclusively the typical �Communist�; she or he is a person, and so a mystery.
All persons have a call upon our love: �Respect and love ought to be extended also to those who think or act differently than we do in social, political and religious matters. With respect to the fundamental rights of the person, every type of discrimination, whether social or cultural, whether based on gender, race, colour, social condition, language, or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to G-d's intent.� (GS nos. 28-9, pp. 227-8.)
Though religion in the past has divided people, it is true to its nature when it brings them together.
�The love of G-d cannot be separated from love of neighbour. �If there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love therefore is the fulfilment of the Law.� (Rm 13:9-10; cf. 1 Jn 4:20.) For persons growing daily more dependent on one another, and in a world becoming more unified every day, this truth proves to be of paramount importance. In our times a special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbour of absolutely every person, and of actively helping her or him when she or he comes across our path.� (GS nos. 24-7, pp. 223 & 226.)
The imperatives of the Christian faith are even more compelling. �When the Lord Jesus prayed to the Father, �that all may be one as we are one� (Jn 17:21-2), he opened up vistas closed to human reason. For he implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and that of G-d's daughers and sons in truth and charity.� (GS no. 24, p. 223.)
The Urgency of Dialogue Today
�Profound and rapid changes make it particularly urgent that no one, ignoring the trend of events or drugged by laziness, contents her- or himself with a merely individualistic morality. The progress of the human person and the advance of society itself hinge on each other. For the beginning, the subject and the goal of all social institutions is and must be the human person, which for its part and by its very naure stands completely in need of social life.� (GS nos. 30 & 25, pp. 228 & 224.)
It is false to regard the human person as a conscious, willing, knowing and active subject independent of the world and one's fellows, or as a substantially complete and autonomous being whom a developing network of interpersonal relations perfects only in non-essentials. Although not constituted by the human inter-subjective field, persons are essentially their dynamic openness towards G-d and, as incarnate questioners, they are essentially correlative to the world of Nature and society - which is in turn constituted by a relationship to them.
Our entire world, properly understood, is a conception of human love, Nature being, by Ancient Tradition, the Bride of the human community. This cosmic union is consummated in the love of the total Christ, when all creatures become one in G-d.
Human beings have a central and essential rôle to play in this conversation, which is a process of progressive transmutation and self-identification within the very heart of the Paschal Mystery. Thus, although society is nowadays increasingly regarded as a neutral space within which individuals are free to pursue their own development, their own advantage and their own interest as if these were the expression of some supposedly �natural� right, access to being human is common or it is nothing.
�Let everyone consider it a sacred obligation to count social necessities among the primary duties of modern women and men, and to pay heed to them. For the more unified the world becomes, the more plainly do one's personal duties extend beyond particular groups and encompass by degrees the whole world. Every day human interdependence grows more tightly drawn and gradually spreads over the whole world. Every social group must take account of the needs and legitimate aspirations of other groups, and even of the general welfare of the entire human family. The destiny of the human community has become all of a piece, where once the various groups of women and men had a kind of private history of their own.
Thus, the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one. In consequence, there has arisen a new series of problems, a series as important as can be, calling for new effots of analysis and synthesis� (GS nos. 30, 26 & 5; pp. 229, 225 & 203-4). This makes dialogue imperative.
�The future of humanity lies in the hands of those who are strong enough to provide coming generations with reasons for living and hoping. Recent studies and findings of science, history, and philosophy raise new questions which influence life and demand new theological investigations. A more universal form of culture is developing, one which will promote and express the unity of the human race to the degree that it preserves the particular features of the different cultures.� (GS nos. 31, 62 & 54; pp. 230, 268 & 260.)
�Give no offence to Jew, or to Greek, or to G-d's Church, just as I, for my part, am ready to make myself acceptable to everyone in every respect, not aiming at my own advantage but at that of the many, so that they might obtain their salvation.� (1 Co 10:32-33.)
�Priests have been placed in the midst of the laity to lead them to the unity of charity. It is their task, therefore, to reconcile differences of mentality in such a way that no one will feel a stranger in the community of the faithful.�(PO no. 9, p. 553.)
Truth is a mosaic, which is the result of a vast number of small elements brought together by the attentive and concentrated study of many artists. To recognize fully that no one has the monopoly of truth is indeed true humility and true understanding. �Christ and the Church, which bears witness to him by preaching the Gospel, transcend every particularity of race or nation and therefore cannot be considered foreign anywhere or to anybody.�(AG no. 8, p. 594.)
�The Church, sent to all peoples of every time and place, is not bound exclusively and indissolubly to any race or nation, nor to any particular way of life or any customary pattern of living, ancient or recent.�(GS no. 58, p. 264.)
Hence, �distinguishing eternal realities from their changing expressions� (GS no. 52, p. 257), �in order to restore communion and unity or preserve them, one must impose no burden beyond what is indispensable�(UR no. 18, p. 360, quoting Ac 15:28).
We have to wish each other well, in spite of the diversity of points of view. We must get used to knowing how to enter into discussion and to listen to opinions opposed to our own. No one of us has a monopoly of truth: and no one of us has to hand the solutions of all problems. This sort of constructive dialogue between sisters and brothers is a question of justice.
�The Church therefore has this exhortation for her daughters and sons: prudently and lovingly, through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, and in witness of Christian faith and life, acknowledge, preserve, and promote the spiritual and moral goods found among these women and men, as well as the values in their society and culture� (NA no. 2, pp. 662-3). �Each has her or his own special gift from G-d� (1 Co 7:7). �Try all, hold fast what is good.� (1 Th 5:21.)
�While preserving unity in essentials, let all members of the Church, according to the office entrusted to each, preserve a proper freedom in the various forms of spiritual life and discipline, in the variety of liturgical rites, and even in the theological elaboration of revealed truth.� (UR no. 4, p. 349.)
�It is not the function of public authority to determine what the proper nature of forms of human culture should be. All the faithful, clerical and lay, possess a lawful freedom of inquiry and of thought, and the freedom to express their minds humbly and courageously about those matters in which they enjoy competence.� (GS nos. 59 & 62, pp. 266 & 270.)
�Infallibility in defining a doctrine of faith and morals extends as far as extends the deposit of divine revelation� (LG no. 25, p. 48). �Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not involve the faith or the good of the whole community. Rather she respects and fosters the spiritual adornments and gifts of the various races and peoples. Anything in their way of life that is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves intact.� (SC no. 37, p. 151.)
�Thanks to the experience of past ages, the progress of the sciences, and the treasures hidden in the various forms of human culture, the nature of the human person is more clearly revealed and new roads to truth are opened. These benefits profit the Church, too. For, from the beginning of her history, she has learned to express the message of Christ with the help of the ideas and terminology of various peoples, and has tried to clarify it with the wisdom of philosophers, too. Her purpose has been to adapt the Gospel to the grasp of all.
This accommodated preaching of the revealed Word ought to remain the law of all evangelization. For thus each nation develps the ability to express Christ's message in its own way. At the same time, a living exchange is fostered between the Church and the diverse cultures of people; she, in virtue of her mission and nature, is bound to no particular form of human culture, nor to any political, economic, or social system.
Let the lay-person not imagine that pastors are always such experts, that to every problem which arises, however complicated, they can readily provide a concrete solution, or even that such is their mission. It happens rather frequently, and legitimately so, that with equal sincerity some of the faithful will disagree with others on a given matter.
It is necessary for people to remember that no one is allowed in the afore-mentioned situations to appropriate the Church's authority for her or his opinion. They should always try to enlighten one another through honest discussion, preserving mutual charity and caring above all for the common good.� (GS nos. 44, 42 & 43; pp. 246, 242 & 244.)
�Various theological formulations are often to be considered as complementary rather than conflicting� (UR no. 17, p. 360). It is necessary to mould in ourselves a mentality rather than set up an inventory of injunctions to be carried out, or of norms to which we must conform. All problems, whether old or new, must be resolved in accordance with local conditions, and since these vary so much from country to country, it becomes extremely difficult as well as of doubtful value to put forward norms that are too detailed.
On the other hand, there is a need to avoid arbitrary interpretations. This is necessary in order to coordinate human efforts in a single line of action renouncing, after a certain point, individual points of view and even those of any particular social or historical institution, whenever this is truly required by the interests of the total cosmic community.
Christian Unity and Cultural Pluralism
�In imitation of the plan of the Incarnation, the local Churches, rooted in Christ and built up on the foundation of the apostles, take to themselves in a wonderful exchange all the riches of the nations, which were given to Christ as an inheritance (Ps 2:8). From the customs and traditions of their people, from their wisdom and their learning, from their arts and sciences, these Churches borrow all those things which can contribute to the glory of their Creator, the revelation of the Saviour's grace, or the proper arrangement of Christian life.
If this goal is to be achieved, theological investigations must necessarily be stirred up in each major socio-cultural area, as it is called.
In this way, under the light of the Tradition of the universal Church, a fresh scrutiny will be brought to bear on the deeds and words which G-d has made known, which have been consigned to sacred Scripture, and which have been unfolded by the Church Fathers and the teaching authority of the Church.
Thus it will be more clearly seen in what ways Faith can seek for understanding in the philosophy and wisdom of these peoples. A better view will be gained of how their customs, outlook on life, and social order can be reconciled with the manner of living taught by divine revelations. As a result, avenues will be opened up for a more profound adaptation in the whole area of Christian life.
Thanks to such a procedure, every appearance of syncretism and of false particularism can be excluded, and Christian life can be accommodated to the genius and the disposition of each culture.� (AG no. 22, pp. 612-3.)
�Doctrinal training should be so planned that it takes into account both the universality of the Church and the diversity of the world's nations. This requirement holds for all the studies by which candidates are prepared for the exercise of the ministry, as also for the other branches of learning which it would be useful for them to master. They will thereby gain a general knowledge of peoples, cultures, and religions, a knowledge that looks not only to the past, but to the present as well. For anyone who is going to encounter another people should have a great esteem for their patrimony and their language and their customs.� (AG no. 26, p. 616.)
The �congregation of the faithful, endowed with the riches of its own nation's culture, should be deeply rooted in the people. In order to be able to offer all the mystery of salvation and the life brought by G-d, the Church must become part of all these groups for the same motive which led Christ to bind himself, in virtue of his Incarnation, to the definite social and cultural conditions of those human beings among whom he dwelt.� (AG nos. 15 & 10, pp. 602 & 597.)
�All of Christ's faithful, whatever be the conditions, duties, and circumstances of their lives, will grow in holiness day by day through these very situations, if they accept all of them with faith from the hand of their heavenly Father, and if they cooperate with the divine will by showing every person through their earthly activities that love with which G-d has loved the world.� (LG no. 41, p. 70.)
�Through a sharing of resources and points of view, let those who teach in seminaries, colleges, and universities try to collaborate with those well versed in other sciences.
In pastoral care, appropriate use must be made not only of theological principles, but also of the findings of the secular sciences, especially of psychology and sociology.
May the faithful live in very close union with women and men of their own times. Let them strive to understand perfectly their way of thinking and feeling, as expressed in their culture. Let them blend modern science and its theories and the understanding of the most recent discoveries with Christian morality and doctrine. Thus their religious practice and morality can keep pace with their scientific knowledge and with an ever-advancing technology.� (GS no. 62, pp. 270 & 269... Had whoever wrote this passage been at that time well versed in contemporary psychology and specifically in Transactional Analysis she or he might have chosen - as might I - to avoid the nowadays frequently unhelpful quasi-parental use of �must�, preferring instead to rely on the self-correcting process of learning and individual growth from within. It is also regrettable that this passage is far from being the only indication that many spokespersons for the Church's magisterium appear naîvely and uncritically to accept as more probably true than otherwise the truth-claims of contemporary scientists and to endorse their belief in the highly doubtful myth of continuing human progress. In my judgment Zecharia Sitchin's various publications, mentioned more than once elsewhere in this Neith Network Library suite, are a painstakingly researched and meticulously presented valuable corrective to this still widespread tendency.)
Today society refuses to accept into its structure the utility person, those without cultural, technical or professional training. From now on every manifestation of our activity calls for personnel qualified in theology, liturgy, philosophy, paedagogy, science, technical knowledge, teaching, art, recreation, administrations, etc.
It is not a question of collecting degrees. What is required is simply an adequate preparation to work fruitfully in one of the innumerable fields of apostolic action open to us. Rational good sense and practicability, with a corresponding division of work and differentiation of sectors, calls for the establishment of centres of study and of technical offices with properly qualified personnel, who will, while avoiding the dangers of fragmentation and inappropriate forms of specialisation, be responsible for diagnosing problems in good time and for working out plans of campaign in different sectors, and gradually putting these into effect for the overall purpose of serving the common good of all.
For the New Pentecost to succeed, there should be close cooperation between all centres of study and action. Nothing has to be improvised. The programme of action should be studied and made to be studied. Both in selection and training there should be nothing that savours of improvisation, of empiricism, of subjectivism, or of false economy.
Apostolic efforts should be based on well thought out plans, and should make a well balanced use of the help modern science (pastoral, psychological and sociological) and methodology has to offer.
The profound crisis in the structure of family life calls for new methods and new modes of pastoral activity. The Church needs persons of perception always looking to the future, to foresee what is developing within society, to enable us to build for tomorrow.
�Numerous reforms are needed at the socio-economic level, along with universal changes in ideas and attitudes.� (GS no. 63, p. 272.)
� �The Christian faithful gathered together in the Church out of all nations, are not marked off from the rest of humankind by their government, nor by their language, nor by their political institutions� (Epistle to Diognetus, ch. 5). So they should live for G-d and Christ by following the honourable customs of their own nation� (AG no. 15, p. 603). Isolationism is dead, but unity is not uniformity nor a crippling centralization. In any domain, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin rightly emphasised, union differentiates.
Pope Pius XI had already insisted on this point in 1931 in his Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo Anno: �The supremely important principle of subsidiarity which cannot be set aside or altered, remains firm and unshaken: Just as it is wrong to withdraw from the individual and commit to the community at large what private enterprise and endeavour can accomplish, so it is likewise unjust and a gravely harmful disturbance of right order to turn over to a greater society of higher rank functions and services which can be performed by lesser bodies on a lower plane. For a social undertaking of any sort, by its very nature, ought to aid the members of the body social, but never to destroy and absorb them.�
�These objectives require that seminarians pursue their priestly studies, as far as possible, while associating and living together with their own people. Let their minds be kept open and attuned so that they can be versed in the culture of their people and be able to evaluate it. In their philosophical and theological studies, let them consider the points of contact between the traditions and religion of their homeland and the Christian religion.
The lay faithful should give expression to this newness of life in the social and cultural framework of their own homeland, according to their own national traditions. They should be acquainted with this culture. they must heal it and preserve it. Let them develop it in accordance with modern conditions, and finally perfect it in Christ. Thus the faith of Christ and the life of the Church will no longer be something extraneous to the society in which they live, but will begin to permeate and transform it.� (AG nos. 16 & 21, pp. 605, 604 & 611.)
Unfortunately, dialogue is often progressively eroded by noise.
Nevertheless, �the Church knows that her message is in harmony with the most secret desires of the human heart when she champions the dignity of the human vocation, restoring hope to those who have already despaired of anything higher than their present lot. Far from diminishing the integrity of the person, her message brings to human development light, life, and freedom. Apart from this message nothing will avail to fill up the human heart: �Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.� � ( GS no. 21, p. 220 - The concluding quotation is from St. Augustine's Confessions, but does not, of course, warrant the facile conclusion that explicitly conscious and externally communicated propositional knowledge of the Good News is required in each and every individual case! This truth is acknowledged elsewhere in the Conciliar documents, but sometimes overlooked. )
�Catholics should try to cooperate with all women and men of good will to promote whatever is true and just, whatever is holy and worth loving (cf Ph 4:8). They should hold discussions with them, excelling them in prudence and courtesy, and initiate research on social and public practice which can be improved in the spirit of the Gospel.
The laity should be specially formed to engage in conversation with others, believers or non-believers, in order to manifest Christ's message to all. In addition to spiritual formation, there is needed solid doctrinal instruction in theology, ethics, and philosophy, instruction adjusted to differences of age, status, and natural talents.
In the fulfilment of all the demands of formation, the unity and integrity of the human personality must be kept in mind at all times, so that its harmony and balance may be safeguarded and enhanced.� (AA nos. 14, 31 & 29, pp. 505, 519 & 517-8.)
�Working to plant the Church, and thoroughly enriched with the treasures of mysticism adorning the Church's religious tradition, religious communities should strive to give expression to these treasures and to hand them on in a manner harmonious with the nature and the genius of each nation.
Let them reflect attentively on how Christian religious life may be able to assimilate the ascentic and contemplative traditions whose seeds were sometimes already planted by G-d in Ancient cultures prior to the preaching of the Gospel.� (AG no. 18, pp. 606-7.)
�What does the most to reveal G-d's presence, however, is the sisterly and brotherly charity of the faithful who are united in Spirit as they work together for the Faith of the Gospel and who prove themselves a sign of unity.� (GS no. 21, p. 219.)
This important passage emphasises the religious activity of divine faith more than the theoretical activity of theology, the living faith that is implicit in one's concrete acts rather than in any mere theorizing, no matter how detailed and explicit, about the nature of such acts; in other words, it stresses the dramatically practical verstehen embodied in the vécu, and not any academic and purely theoretical erklären of the thematic. Attention is being drawn to the ontic world of common sense, not simply to some sort of ontological theory of the world. Thus, the meaning is existential and personal, and not just objective and existentialistic. In a word, the players in the game are more important than the rule-book or the referee.
Theology retains its value, since firmer bonds of sisterhood and brotherhood are the effect as well as the cause of harmony of mind, and theology exists to promote and mediate this harmony as well as, of course, encouraging closer union with G-d.
�It has pleased G-d to make human beings holy and save them not as individuals (non singulatim) without any mutual bonds, but by making them into a single people, a people which acknowledges Him in truth and serves Him in holiness� (LG no. 9, p. 25), �a people in which His daughters and sons, once scattered abroad, can be gathered together.� (AG no. 2, p. 586, quoting Jn 11:52.)
�G-d did not create women and men for life in isolation, but for the formation of social unity.� (GS no. 32, p. 230.)
Several French-speaking philosophers, including Mounier, Marcel, Maritain, Garrigou-Lagrange and Gillet used to distinguish between �individual� and �person�. Each human being is born as an ontological individual, but must work to become a moral person. As an individual she or he is closed, distinguished from and opposed to others, selfishly wrapped up in her- or himself; she or he effectively becomes a person to the degree that she or he succeeds in opening her- or himself to and communicating with others in understanding and love.
Because of each human being's material nature every woman or man is an individual member of a biological species to which she or he is subordinated as part to whole; her or his spiritual nature makes her or him a somehow autonomous personal centre of values, to be acknowledged as an end-in-itself and never merely as a means - to persons, all else is subordinate.
�The human family is gradually recognizing that it comprises a single world community and is making itself so.� (GS no. 32, p. 230.)
�Because the human race today is joining more and more into a civic, economic, and social unity, it is that much more necessary that priests, united in concern and effort, under the leadership of the bishops and the Supreme Pontiff, wipe out every kind of division, so that the whole human race may be brought into the unity of the family of G-d.� (LG no. 28, p.55. Many, including during the period immediately prior to his death Dom Bede Griffiths, have grown to feel that the very existence of a separately ordained priesthood is one kind of social division we might be better off if we could manage without. Although the Second Vatican Council documents frequently refer to the distinction between bishops and other priests, it is also well to remember that Pope John XXIII had made it clear that the Council was not to promulgate any new dogmas of Faith and that this distinction, although long customary within several Chiristian churches and by many Roman Catholic theologians traditionally regarded as an integral feature of the received doctrine, has never been defined to be an essential article of Catholic Faith; certainly, whether necessary or not, its retention is in some ways a continuing source of religiously motivated division among Christians.)
Bishops and priests �by unremitting study should fit themselves to do their part in establishing dialogue with the world and with women and men of all shades of opinion.� (GS no. 43, p. 245. At least as far as observable appearances go, many bishops and priests - perhaps the majority - seem so to understand �their part� as almost to confine their attention to that section of society which actively seeks it!)
�Catholic theologians engaged in ecumenical dialogue, while standing fast by the teaching of the Church and searching together with their separated sisters and borthers into the divine mysteries, should act with love for truth, with charity, and with humility. When comparing doctrines, they should remember that in Catholic teaching there exists an order of �hierarchy� of truths, since they vary in their relationship to the foundation of the Christian faith.
Concern for restoring unity pertains to the whole Church, faithful and clergy alike. It extends to everyone, according to the potential of each.
If the influence of events or of the times has led to deficiencies in conduct, in Church discipline, or even in the formulation of doctrine (which must be carefully distinguished from the deposit itself of faith), these should be appropriately rectified at the proper moment.� (UR nos. 11 & 5; pp. 354 & 350. Although the revocation of the condemnation of Galileo was a welcome courtesy, as Arthur Koestler's account in The Sleepwalkers helpfully explains, Galileo's arguments at the time were not altogether sound. It is, moreover, unwise to commit the Church too closely to acceptance of what nowadays passes for science� )
�Religious should carefully consider that through them, to believers and non-believers alike, the Church truly wishes to give an increasingly clearer revelation of Christ.� (LG no. 46, p. 77.)
Priests have �obligations towards all.� Their office �is not confined to the care of the faithful as individuals, but is also properly extended to the formation of a genuine Christian community.� This �constitutes an effective instrument by which the path to Christ and to His Church is pointed out and made smooth for unbelievers. Priests are never to put themselves at the service of any ideology or human faction.� (PO no. 6, pp. 544-6.)
�A true apostle looks for opportunities to announce Christ by words addressed either to non-believers with a view to leading them to faith, or to believers.� (AA no. 6, p. 496.)
Bishops �should remember that by their daily life and interests they are showing the face of a truly priestly and pastoral ministry to the faithful and the unbeliever, to Catholics and non-Catholics, and that to all persons they should bear witness about truth and life� (LG no. 28, p. 55). They �should manifest the Church's maternal solicitude for all, believers or not. Bishops especially are called upon to approach people, seeking and fostering dialogue with them. These conversations on salvation ought to be distinguished for clarity of speech as well as for humility and gentleness so that truth may always be joined with charity, and understanding with love.� (CD no. 13, p. 405.)
The Question of Atheism
�Human beings would not exist were they not created by G-d's love and constantly preserved by it. And a person cannot live fully according to truth unless she or he freely acknowledges that love and devotes her or himself to the Creator. Still, many of our contemporaries have never recognized this intimate and vital link with G-d, or else have explicitly rejected it. Thus atheism must be accounted among the most serious problems of this age, and is deserving of closer examination.
The word atheism is applied to phenomena which are quite distinct from one another.
1. For while G-d is expressly denied by some.
2. Others believe that human beings can assert absolutely nothing about G-d.
3. Still others use such a method so to scrutinize the question of �G-d� as to make it devoid of meaning.
4. Many, unduly transgressing the limits of the positive sciences, contend that everything can be explained by this kind of scientific reasoning alone.
5. Or, by contrast, they altogether disallow that there is any absolute truth.
6. Some praise human beings so extravagantly that their faith in G-d lapses into a kind of anæmia, though they seem more inclined to affirm the human than to deny G-d.
7. Again, some form for themselves such a fallacious idea of �G-d� that when they repudiate this figment they are by no means rejecting the G-d of the Gospel.
8. Some never get to the point of raising questions about G-d, since they seem to experience no religious stirrings nor do they see why they should trouble themselves about religion.
9. Moreover, atheism results not rarely from a violent protest against the evil in this world.
10. Or from the absolute character with which certain human values are unduly invested, and which thereby already accords them the stature of �G-d�.
11. Modern civilization itself often complicates the approach to G-d, not for any essential reason, but because it is excessively engrossed in earthly affairs� (GS no. 19, p. 216. Numbers adapted from those used by Peter Hebblethwaite, S.J., in The Month ,1966, p. 138 sq).
Catholics have tended to think of the problem of �G-d� in terms of the validity of the proofs of his existence. The Council recognizes that the denial of these proofs is marginal to contemporary Atheism, which focuses instead on human values, and rejects not so much G-d as religion, and this for humanist reasons.
Practical atheism (the way of life of those from whose level of attention, outlook, horizon, mentality and system of values �G-d� is habitually absent) can be a primitive attitude, but speculative atheism, considered historically, is a criticism of religion, a rejection of the theologian's scale of values, a post-religious and, in the West, largely a post-Christian phenomen.
Believers must resist the temptation to explain the atheist's act of assent in terms of psychological or sociological factors alone, and learn to appreciate a doctrinal standpoint for what it is - an affirmation and only derivatively a denial, a judgement that a certain state of affairs exists independently of one's desire or preferences, a judgement, which is not consciously free, that certain values ought to be realized, with a consequent free commitment to the logical and metaphysical principles consonant with a life dedicated to the incarnation of these values.
The affirmation of these values is not regarded as a free choice, therefore, but as the theoretical or atheoretical imposition of them on the existential subject as the inspiring principles of her or his way of life; only in this sense is atheism postulatory.
Because so much of contemporary atheism is affirmed as a system of values rather than as a metaphysical doctrine, careful attention should be given to the axiological foundations of atheism, which will be found to share the anthropological emphasis of most of modern thought.
The Church �strives to detect in the atheistic mind the hidden causes for the denial of G-d.
Every person remains to her- or himself an unsolved puzzle, however obscurely she or he may perceive it. For on certain occasions no one can entirely escape the kind of self-questioning mentioned earlier, especially when life's major events take place. To this questioning only G-d fully and most certainly provides an answer by summoning each one to higher knowledge and humbler probing.
Conscious of how weighty are the questions which atheism raises, and motivated by love for all, the Church believes these questions ought to be examined seriously and more profoundly.
A hope related to the end of time does not diminish the importance of intervening duties, but rather undergirds the acquittal of them with fresh incentives. While rejecting atheism, root and branch, the Church sincerely professes that all persons, believers and unbelievers alike, ought to work for the rightful betterment of this world in which all alike live. Such an ideal cannot be realized, however, apart from sincere and prudent dialogue.
Hence the Church protests against the distinction which some state authorities make between believers and unbelievers, thereby ignoring fundamental rights of the human person.
Believers can have more than a little to do with the birth of atheism. To the extent that they neglect their own training in the faith, or teach erroneous doctrine, or are deficient in their religious, moral, or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than reveal the authentic face of G-d and religion.� (GS nos. 21 & 19, pp. 218-9 & 217.)
�Preaching must not present G-d's Word in a general and abstract fashion only, but it must apply the perennial truth of the Gospel to the concrete circumstances of life. In the Christian community itself, especially among those who seem to understand or believe little of what they practise, the preaching of the Word is needed for the very administration of the sacraments. For these are sacraments of Faith, and Faith is born of the Word and nourished by it. Such is especially true of the Liturgy of the Word during the celebration of Mass.� (PO no. 4, pp. 539-40.)
�G-d in ways known to Himself can lead those inculpably ignorant of the Gospel to that faith without which it is impossible to please Him.� (AG no. 7, p. 593, quoting Heb 11:6.)
�Nor does divine Providence deny the help necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of G-d, but who strive to live a good life, thanks to His grace.� (LG no. 16, p. 35.)
�Since Christ died for all, and since the ultimate vocation of every woman and man is in fact one and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to G-d offers to each one the possibility of being associated with this Paschal Mystery. All this holds true not only for Christians, but for all persons of good will in whose hearts grace works in an unseen way.� (GS no. 22, pp. 221-2 )
Christian Unity
�That Church, Holy and Catholic, which is the Mystical Body of Christ, is made up of the faithful who are organically united in the Spirit through the same faith, the same sacraments, and the same government and who, combining into various groups held together by a hierarchy, form separate churches or rites.
Between these, there flourishes such an admirable sister- and brotherhood that this variety within the Church in no way harms her unity, but rather manifests it. For it is the mind of the Catholic Church that each individual church or rite retain its traditions whole and entire, while adjusting its way of life to the various needs of time and place.� (OE no. 2, p. 374.)
�From her very beginning there arose in this one and only Church of G-d certain rifts. In subsequent centuries more widespread disagreements appeared and quite large communities became separate from full communion with the Catholic Church. The Churches of the East have the power to govern themselves.
Through the celebration of the Eucharist of the Lord in each of these Churches, the Church of G-d is built up and grows in stature.� ( UR nos. 3, 16 & 15, pp. 345, 359 & 358. For summary details cfr my Voice In The Darkness, Zennor: United Writers 1978, pp. 73-5.)
�This Church, constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in union with that successor, although many elements of sanctification and of truth can be found outside of her visible structure. These elements, however, as gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, possess an inner dynamism towards Catholic unity� ( LG no. 8, p. 23. For a succinct discussion of �subsistence� cfr Giulio Girardi, De Problemate Realitatis - Institutiones Ontologiæ, Romæ: PAS - ad usum Auditorum - 1962, pp. 308-45).
Those �who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are brought into a certain, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church. All those justified by faith through baptism are incorporated into Christ. They therefore have a right to be honoured by the title of Christian.
Very many of the most significant elements or endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church herself can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church: the written word of G-d; the life of grace; faith, hope, and charity, along with other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit and visible elements. All of these, which come from Christ and lead back to Him, belong by right to the one Church of Christ.
Those sisters and brothers who are divided from us also carry out many of the sacred actions of the Christian religion. Undoubtedly, in ways that vary according to the condition of each church as community, these actions can truly engender a life of grace, and can be rightly described as capable of providing access to the community of salvation. It follows that these separated churches and communities, though we believe they suffer from defects already mentioned, have by no means been deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation.
For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church.
Nevertheless our separated sisters and brothers, whether considered as individuals or as communities and churches, are not blessed with that unity which Jesus Christ wished to bestow on all those whom He has regenerated and vivified into one body and newness of life. It is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the all embracing means of salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained.
Baptism constitutes a sacramental bond of unity linking all who have been reborn by means of it. But baptism of itself, is only a beginning, a point of departure, for it is wholly directed toward the acquiring of fullness of life in Christ. Baptism is thus oriented toward a complete profession of faith, a complete incorporation into the system of salvation such as Christ Himself willed it to be, and finally, toward a complete participation in Eucharistic communion.
The ecclesial communities separated from us lack that fullness of unity with us which should flow from baptism, and we believe that especially because of the lack of the sacrament of Orders they have not preserved the genuine and total reality of the Eucharistic mystery. Nevertheless, when they commemorate the Lord's death and resurrection in the Holy Supper, they profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ, and they await His coming in glory.
For these reasons, dialogue should be undertaken concerning the true meaning of the Lord's Supper, the other sacraments, and the Church's worship and ministry� (UR nos. 3 & 22, pp. 345-6 & 364. Some readers are likely to wonder in what sense Jesus Christ may be said to have establised a �system of salvation� - cfr. H. Ouseley, D. Silverstone & U. Prashar, The System, Runnymede Trust & South London Equal Rights Consultancy 1983. Re. the date of the Last Supper cfr. Annie Jaubert, The Date of the Last Supper, Staten Island: Alba House 1965. Highly relevant, too: Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred - Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World, Cambridge University Press, 1995).
If this kind of dialogue is not to degenerate into an escapist divertissement, a radical evasion of the challenge with which atheism today confronts the Church, it will be prudent to keep in mind Carl Jung's related letter of 9 September 1944 in which he wrote: �If a breach goes through a house, then the whole house is affected, not just one half of it. The house is no longer so trustworthy. The conscientious architect does not seek to convince the inhabitants that the rooms on one side or the other of the breach are still in excellent condition, but will concern himself about the breach and will seek ways and means of putting the damage right� As a doctor I am interested solely in the question: How can the wound be healed? It is quite certain that the breach will never be closed by both sides apologeticly extolling their advantages instead of bewailing their lamentable inability to make peace. While mother and daughter squabble, their mutual enemy - Antichrist - is coming to the fore and showing these Christians, who are quarrellling over �their� truth, what he can do, for he is more egotistical than all.�
Consider, for instance, Da Free John's influential statement of what appears to be a widely held view:
[In this essay Master Da has been described as bringing to bear his Realization of the seventh stage of life particularly upon the teachings of Paul of Tarsus. Paul's doctrines are said to have played a pivotal rôle in the process of turning the high Teaching of Jesus into a merely exoteric religion. The rapidly growing influence of the accompany exoteric Christian community led, it is claimed, to the gradual suppression of the esoteric practice and to the virtual loss of the radical Teaching itself. In juxtaposition to the �official� attitude epitomized in Paul's letters to his fellow Christians, Master Da Free John's critique aims to provide a confirmation to all true practitioners of the fundamental Truth that is the fountainhead of Christianity� It is the function of the great Spiritual Masters to regenerate the Truth and make it accessible to the men and women of their own epoch. This always involves a break with their tradition. Thus, both Jesus of Nazareth and Gautama the Buddha were critical of current teachings, and their own new Way clarified and purified the religious beliefs and practices of their day. Master Da Free John is the first Adept to be born at a time when humanity is preparing to mature into a unified world-culture. As with previous World Teachers, his Mission is to turn mankind to the Truth beyond all supposition, opinion, prejudice,, and experience. In his free criticism of all forms of seeking, he naturally also considers the major religious traditions of the world, including Christianity. As is obvious from the text of the essay itself, Master Da is highly critical of conventional Christian dogma and practice. At the same time, however, he is regarded by many as having a more genuine appreciation for the Adept Jesus and his original Way than can be witnessed in most quarters of Christendom itself.
Baba Ram Dass's interesting Lecture at the Menninger Foundation, Doing your own Being (London, Neville Spearman 1973) recommends about 50 �books to hang out with�, 90 �to visit with now and then.� 140 �it's useful to have met�, and 50 chosen by the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. Da Free John's entirely different �suggested readings related to the 4th stage of life� comprise Morton Smith's The Secret Gospel, Fred C. Conybeare's Myth, Magic & Morals, P.G.S. Hopwood's The Religious Experience of the Primitive Church, G.W. Kummel's The Theology of the New Testament, W.A. Meeks' The Writings of St. Paul, Albert Swchweitzer's The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle + E.H. Wahlstrom's The New Life in Christ.]
1. The Message (or �Gospel�) of Jesus of Nazareth is the universal Teaching of ego-transcending love of the Spiritual and Transcendental divine, to be practiced directly as well as in the self-transcending love and tolerance of all living beings. Paul of Tarsus, who did not respond positively to Jesus while Jesus was alive, transformed Jesus' universal and non-sectarian Teaching of ego-transcendence into the �pharisaical� (or priestly and dogmatic) religion of ego-salvation through the ritual sacrifice of Jesus. [Author's note: Scholars may rightly claim that the teaching of Paul was not entirely his own creation. It was generated collectively by the early Christ-cult, which developed within the Hellenistic culture of Jews and non-Jews. Paul simply gave that �conversation� a single voice. Even so, Paul epitomizes the point of view of that collective Christ-cult, and his own letters clearly formed the most prominent basis for the later dogmas of the Church. His teaching may even have provided material that was later used to edit, thematize, and enlarge the four �gospels�. Therefore, we may rightly say that when it came time to make �official� dogma and institution out of the Christ-cult, it was Paul's teaching that was legitimized and �made holy�. Editor's note: It is as mistaken to understand Paul's letters as primarily written to communicate a �point of view� as it is to read any other love-letters in that frame of mind! Likewise,the Church's dogmas do not primarily mediate �ideas� or a �point of view��] On the basis of the ego-consoling religion of Paul (whose thought was dictated by his own conventional and provincial Hellenism and Judaism), Christianity was transformed from the culture (or Spiritual practice) of self-sacrifice to the cult of vicarious salvation. And so Christianity took its place alongside (or even at the forefront) of all the conventional ego-based religious cults of the world.
The two-sidedness of Christian ideas (representing the Spiritual Way of Jesus and the contrasting religious method of Paul) is the basis for the internal conflicts and contradictions in the Christian tradition. It is Paul's �method� that made Christianity into a religion of worldly self-improvement, righteous cultism, and eternal self-glorification. But the Way of Jesus is the Way of all Great Masters: the Way of the sacrifice and transcendence of self in the Divine.
2. Paul's �cult of vicarious salvation� was founded on the belief that creatures are inherently separated from G-d (or Happiness) and, therefore, cannot and even should not sacrificed (or transcend) themselves and, thereby, enter into Union (or Reunion) with G-d (or Happiness). Even so, it was traditionally presumed that a sacrifice is necessary in order for such a Union or Reunion to take place. And on this basis it was presumed (by Paul) that a substitute sacrifice of self (by Jesus) had taken place. And belief that the substitute, vicarious, or priestly sacrifice of Jesus is forever sufficient to grant all other individuals or selves the ultimate Rewards of sacred sacrifice (which are Union or Reunion with G-d, Happiness, and all Blessings) thus became the basis for the popular Christian religion, which developed primarily on the basis of Paul's cultic and sectarian views.
The problem with Paul's religion is that it only permits people to participate in a myth, and, therefore, the salvation it seeks is also only a myth (or a conventional belief). [Editor's note: Is the author here considering myth and conventional belief as equivalents or as alternatives? In any case, does he regard myth as less or as more true than contemporary science? Is not science, too, in some sense a myth?�] The ancient sacred society of the Jews was, like other societies of the ancient world (among the Semites, the Hindus, and so forth) founded on the idea and the sacred techniques of sacrifice as the necessary means whereby the community and every individual maintained relations with the Divine, received the Blessings of the Divine, and, ultimately, achieved Union (or Reunion) with the Divine and the Divine Happiness. There was no presumption that the sacred system of sacrifices (which included those to be performed in everyone's name by priests as well as those to be performed by every individual in his own name) was either unnecessary or fruitless. On the contrary, it was presumed [Editor's note: �known� would be more accurate than �presumed�, provided we also take into account the great difference in both significance and interpretation when the many other gods were acknowledged to be divine and bountiful, and when Jahweh affirmed his own Divinity and Bountiful Loving Kindness - cfr. Z. Sitchin, Divine Encounters (New York, Avon Books 1996) and, in particular, Ps 82:6-7.] to be both necessary and fruitful for collective and personal sacrifices to be performed. The method of ritual sacrifice was the sacred means for achieving all desires in this world, in the next world, and in the Divine Domain.
After many centuries, the Jews of the time of Jesus and Paul were no longer a homogeneous and centralized social or cultural body. The ancient religion of sacrifices had grown corrupt and often too technical for anyone but a trained priest to understand and perform. And many different factions had arisen, each with its own dogmas of belief and ritual. This was the circumstance of religion in the time of Jesus and Paul, and it is the circumstance in our time as well.
Jesus was a Spirit-oriented rather than merely a religion-oriented individual. He understood the Way to G-d in Spiritual, mystical, and personal terms rather than in general, dogmatic, and ritualistic terms. Therefore, he Taught the Way of sacrifice in Spiritual, mystical, and personal terms. He Taught that there is no inherent separation or obstruction between creatures (or living beings) and G-d. He Taught that G-d is the Living Spirit, in Whom we exist, and in Whom we must live. He did not Teach that we need a mediator between ourselves and G-d, nor that there should be or can be any substitute for our own self-sacrifice as the means of Communing with G-d. He did not represent himself as a mediator or substitute sacrifice, since he did not presume there is any inherent separation or obstruction btween creatures (or living beings) and the Spiritual Divine. He only Taught a direct, non-ritualistic, Spiritual, mystical, and personal Way of sacrifice, which he thought represented and epitomized all of the ultimate Wisdom of the ancient Jews. [Editor's note: Apart from the puzzling denial of the need for mediation (since Jn 14:6 clearly presents Jesus as uniquely our mediator), I think this whole paragraph rings just as true if one substitutes �Paul� for �Jesus� as its opening word.]
Paul was a conventional Jew, trained in the sectarian rabbinical system of his time. He was not Taught by Jesus (or the disciples of Jesus), nor does the point of view characteristically expressed in his letters represent the unique and radical Teaching of Jesus. Paul came to feel that he (and mankind in general) was and is inherently separated from G-d and Happiness. And he felt there was no effective means for restoring himself (or anyone) to G-d or Happiness, since there was - it seemed to him - some kind of inherent obstruction in everyone that could not be transcended.
Then, as reported in his letters, Paul experienced a mystical phenomenon (which he associated with Jesus) that encouraged him to believe that the inherent obstruction and separation between creatures and G-d had been conquered, for everyone, bu the death (or ritual blood-sacrifice) and resurrection of Jesus. And he spent the rest of his life proclaiming this religion - which is the faith or systematic belief in the effective power of Jesus' self-sacrifice to bring everyone to eventual Union or Reunion with G-d and Happiness. (In all of this, Paul was more of a Greek �gnostic� than a Jew.) [Editor's note: Paul was very far from being the only Jew with a profound understanding of and appreciation for Greek culture. He was a gnostic in the sense that he cultivated gnosis, not in the sense that he subscribed to any stereotypical form of gnosticism - something that is to a not inconsiderable extent in any case a figment of the academic imagination.]
I must criticize this religion (which was an invention of Paul and the popular Christ-cult) because (1) it is not the religion or Way Taught by Jesus (but is only a mythological and priestly religion about Jesus), and (2) it is not a method that in fact and in Truth does what it proclaims to be able to do (that is, if the ego merely witnesses or believes in the self-sacrifice of another, it neither transcends itself nor Receives the Ultimate Results of the other's sacrifice).
First of all, as I have already indicated, Jesus Taught a radical and free Way of Spiritual self-sacrifice, or the Way of self-transcending love of G-d, and ultimate inherence in G-d (or the Spiritual and Transcendental Divine)
[Editor's note: G-d is more properly called Transcendent (which, of course, does not exclude but implies Immanence) than �Transcendental�, since the latter term is abstract. While panentheism is true, pantheism is notably less so; the difference is very largely that beween one word used to call to mind the actual state of affairs and another word used to propound a theory that fails - as theories commonly do - entirely to match the facts of the case� Before Jesus spoke about the Father, he conversed with Him.] expressed in daily life via self-transcending love, or tolerance and service, of all living beings. Jesus heartily proclaimed that we are all inherently intimate with G-d (Whom he described as �our Father�). He did not at all subscribe to the view that living beings are inherently evil or inherently separated from G-d. He described every living being as a child of One Father. And by that he did not mean that we should be childish (and so act in such a loveless and self-possessed manner that we effectively separate ourselves from G-d). Rather, his idea of the Fatherhood of G-d was related to the conventions of Jewish laws of inheritance. He conceived of every human child as the direct inheritor (even through birth in his or her mother's womb) of the blessings and status of all that a child is rightly to receive from his or her parents. And, in the case of a child of G-d, what is ultimately inherited is Blessing and Union and Happiness from, with, and in the Living or Spiritual Divine.
Jesus Taught that we are tending to separate ourselves from the Spiritual Divine. He described the Father as One Who is always ready and even seeking for intimate Reunion with those who separate themselves from G-d. Therefore, Jesus did not at all subscribe to the view that we are inherently separated from G-d (and thus, even by virtue of the Will of G-d, inevitably going to death and hell, unless a voluntary mediator or substitute self-sacrificer can appear between us and G-d and so create Union). Indeed, the idea of a necessary mediator or ritual substitute is the most obvious and conventional kind of priest-talk, a kind of sinful (or �off the mark�) presumption, the kind of which Jesus was always critical.
Jesus Taught that �sin� (or all that we do or think or believe or presume that separates us from G-d or obstructs our Union with G-d and Divine Happiness) is not inherent. He Taught that we can and should and must repent of (or renounce) sin (or the tendency to separate from G-d). He Taught that such repentance purifies us (as long as it is practiced as a continuous and real exercise, followed by changes of mind and action). And he Taught that such self-purification, rather than any participation or belief in ritual or substitute sacrifices, is the basic or foundation means for entering into Union or Reunion with the Spiritual Divine.
Now, repentance (or the renunciation of the tendency to separate from G-d) is basically a process of self-transcendence. Indeed, the self (as contraction from G-d) is sin. And, therefore, the Way Taught by Jesus is the Way of repentance from sin, or the direct Way of self-transcendence.
Jesus Taught that once we are established in self-understanding (which is the awareness of sin, or awareness of the action of separation from G-d), and once that self-understanding has become expressed as responsibility for sin, or free renunciation of the tendency to separate from the Living Spirit that is G-d, the Way in practice must become one of continuous self-transcendence in relation to G-d (or the Spiritual Condition of existence) and all of the conventional relations of the manifest self. And he summarized that practice via the ancient Jewish summary of the Law, which is to love (or sacrifice or transcend self in every moment through the practice of self-surrender in relation to) G-d and neighbour.
The four �Gospels� of the New Testament otherwise suggest that Jesus and his direct disciples also Taught �secret� practices of Union with the Spiritual Divine. Those practices were given to those who had truly (and practically) responded to the Teaching about repentance and self-surrender, and they clearly represented ancient traditional mystical and psycho-physical techniques (primarily of the type that is typically promoted by esoteric schools of the fourth and fifth stages of life).� And, in any case, those �secret� or �inner circle� instructions were simply extensions of the basic public Teaching of Jesus, which was always a call to each individual to renounce self-possession and constantly transcend self in Communion with the Spiritual Divine.
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[� Author's note: In the literature of the Way of Radical Understanding, which is the Way that I Teach, I have described the seven stages of the development or Spiritual evolution of human life. Briefly, the seven stages of human life may be summarized as follows:
Whereas Jesus Taught a direct Way of Union with G-d, Paul proposed a religion about Jesus. Whereas Jesus Taught the Way of self-transcendence as the necessary means of Communing with G-d, Paul taught that �selves� cannot transcend themselves in G-d. Paul taught a conventional religious path founded on egoity rather than the transcendence of egoit. He taught that we should believe in the sacrifice of Jesus as a substitute for our own sacrifice. Of course, he spoke of repentance, but he saw it only as an egoic or self-based gesture, not as itself a salvatory or self-transcending process (but only a behavioural response to the myth of Jesus' universally effective self-sacrifice). For Paul, the self is incapable of direct Divine Communion, and so it can participate in the Divine only at a distance, or through belief. For Paul, God-Communion is a mediated event: Jesus participates in G-d-Communion, and we, like those who observe a priest performing a ritual in our name, particpate in G-d-Communion only sympathetically, indirectly, and, for now, only partially. Paul taught a religion in which we remain as egos, self-possessed, but made hopeful (and, hopefully, more loving and benign) by what we believe about Jesus. Therefore, in Paul's view, our actual and full entrance into G-d-Union must wait for a future Event (either in the universal righteous judgment and transformation of mankind at the �second coming� of Jesus, or in some other time or place or circumstance after death). [Editor's note: Although this seems to me to be an utter travesty of what Paul actually taught, the author is not alone is believing Paul taught this - hence arise various questions which merit further investigation�]
3. The religion of Paul is what we traditionally call �Christianity�. It is a conventional, exoteric, worldy religion, founded on the mind and other limitations of egoity. And it has been the instrument of governments and un-Enlightened leaders for controlling and dominating millions of un-Enlightened people for nearly two thousand years.
I am not primarily disposed toward professing or criticizing any doctrine or practice that is associated with Jesus of Nazareth. However, I was born into a society that is disposed toward domination by the Christian cult and the systematic suppression of truly Spiritual culture. Because of this bias, the people of the nation of my birth, and of the West in general, are universally indisposed to consider the real matters of Spiritual life, and this causes them to arbitrarily reject the Great Tradition [Editor's note: The �Great Tradition� is (if the original editor of this essay is correct) Master Da Free John's term for the sum total of all of the magical, religious, and esoteric Spiritual traditions, teachings, and paths of all of the races and cultures of Man. He Teaches that in our modern era the entire Great Tradition, so understood, must be viewed, accepted and acknowledged as the rightful inheritance of every single human being. His own Teaching, the Way of Radical Understanding or Divine Ignorance is presented both as an original epitome of this entire Great Tradition and as a radical, Divinely inspired alternative to it. Like Joan D'Arcy Cooper, the author of the anonymously and only posthumously published Meditations on the Tarot - A Journey into Christian Hermeticism and the Apostle Saint Paul, I sense clearer discernment is needed; not all elements in tradition belong to Tradition�] of true Spiritual and Transcendental Teaching (including the Teaching of Jesus).
Therefore, it is necessary for me to criticize the cultic religion that has been created by lesser minds in response to the person of Jesus of Nazareth. In order to clarify my own radical Teaching, it is necessary for me to criticize the teachings of Paul and, what is more important, to restore an understanding of the radical Teaching of Jesus.
If the radical Teaching of Jesus is understood, then it is liberated from the Christian cult of Paul and the exoteric institutions of traditional Christianity. And if the Teaching of Jesus is thus liberated, everyone is liberated from a form of mind that has long prevented the Enlightenment of Western people. The Teaching and Way of Jesus are such as can be seen to have many other examples or likenesses in the fourth and fith stage traditions of the Great Tradition of human religion and spirituality. The Teaching and Way of Jesus are not unique - they are simply true. And there is no justification for the righteous domination of the world by Christianity or any other sect), nor for the aggressive and suppressive tactics of Christians in relation to other sects and traditions. The Great Tradition is our common inheritance, and it is the Way of Truth that we must all discover and practice (rather than any divisive and exclusive sectarian approach that supports rather than directly transcends the limitations of egoity).
Jesus was a radical Teacher. He instructed people within his native tradition, but he Taught them how to transcend themselves and their religious conventionality via a direct and radical process of G-d-Communion. His exoteric (or public) and esoteric (or inner circle) Teachings must be seen to belong basically to the traditions of the fourth and fifth stages of life, but the Way he proposed would inevitably, if practiced to the degree of perfect self-transcendence, lead even to the Realization of the seventh stage of life. And Jesus may thus, with some clear justification, be presumed to be an example of an Adept of the seventh stage type.
The radical Teaching of Jesus stands in utter contrast to the compromised religious views of Paul. Jesus would not at all have agreed that human beings are inherently sinful, �fallen�, or separated from G-d, or that they therefore need a mediator or a substitute for their own free action of repentance and Communion with G-d. Indeed, one of Jesus' primary efforts was to criticize such conventional �pharisaical� or priestly views. Jesus was committed to the view that every human being is inherently free to repent of self and turn directly to G-d, Who is the Living Transcendental Spirit in Which we all exist.
Jesus clearly felt that his rôle, as a Realizer of G-d, was to criticize and purify the minds and institutions of his time, and to Awaken people to the Way of G-d-Communion. He also served his intimates as a Spiritual Transmitter, or a Master with the unique Power to Awaken committed practitioners to the profound Awareness of the Spiritual Divine. But Jesus was not otherwise disposed to be regarded or proclaimed as a cultic or priestly substitute for the self-transcending practice of others. Therefore, he shunned the attempts of people around him to declare him to be the Messiah or to put him in a position of wordly or institutional responsibility. It was only after his death (or whatever form his passing from the scene may have taken) that a cult began to develop around his person, and Paul became the leading literary exponent of that cult.
We must understand that historical Christianity is not the product of Jesus, but it is the result of the �sinfulness� or self-possessed un-Enlightenment of those who knew or came after Jesus. Therefore, Christianity is not founded on the radical Teaching of free G-d-Communion but on the conventional religion of ego-fulfillment via the traditional idea of outer (on non-personal) sacrifice.
Jesus proclaimed that sin, or self, must and can be transcended via repentance, or self-understanding and a life-practice of total psycho-physical conversion from egoity to G-d-Communion. That life-practice involves basic features that are also to be found in the Way that I Teach as well as in the many schools of the Great Tradition. It includes (1) the discipline of self-transcendence in the context of all worldy relations, circumstances, and bodily functions and (2) the practice of constant Remembrance of (or psycho-physical Communion with) the Spiritual and Transcendental Divine. That practice was proposed as the basic means, to be elaborated over time in terms of the fullest possible Spiritual and mystical practice, and to be fulfilled ultimately in the Realization of a kind of Spiritual �Advaitism� (or non-dualism), wherein there is perfect Union with (or no separation from) and ultimate inherence in the One Spiritual and Transcendental Divine.
If this Way is conceived to be the truly �Christian� Way, then there is no need for a �Christ� (a mediator or substitute sacrifice), since the lie of separation through sin is transcended in Truth. I cannot at all call myself or the Way that I Teach �Christian� in the usual cultic sense, because the traditional Christian religion about Jesus specifically contradicts the Teaching and the Way of Jesus and the Divine Truth Itself. The traditional Christian path is a conventional, ego-based, ego-serving, �pharisaical� or un-Enlightened religious path. It is not the Way Taught by Jesus. [Editor's note: Here and elsewhere the author displays a remarkable talent for closing his eyes to the lives of the Saints and to the many truly charitable achievements to the credit of Christianity throughout the course of the last two thousand years.] Jesus criticized the Judaism of his homeland, and I must criticize the Christianity (as well as other conventional paths) of my homeland, of my time, and of all times. Even so, Jesus presumed that Judaism must be understood or transformed in radical Spiritual terms, and, on the basic of such understanding, he proclaimed himself to be a Jew. Likewise, if what we mean by �Christianity� is the radical Teaching and Way of Jesus (rather than the ego-based religion of the �Christ� myth), then I am a Christian - even as I am also a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Taoist, or an adherent of the Way of Truth in all traditions of the Great Tradition.
Christianity will continue to play a divisive and exploitative rôle in this world until it purifies itself and fully embraces the Way of self-transcending love and freedom in the Spiritual and Transcendental Divine. Only if it abandons its exclusive claims and ceases to confront and damn all other religions and Adepts will it begin to demonstrate the love, tolerance, and truly sacrificial attitude of Jesus. And if Christianity is going to be thus transformed, it must freely abandon the ego-based beliefs and cultic presumptions of Paul and embrace the free Spritual Wisdom of Jesus.
The path of Paul does not achieve what it seeks and proclaims.� The cultic sacrifice of Jesus is not a sufficient substitute for self-sacrifice. As long as the ego is the basis of religion, there is no Reunion with G-d. As Jesus Taught, there is no substitute for the individually initiated and personally practiced self-transcending love of G-d (or the Spiritual and Transcendental Truth), and there is no true religion without self-transcending love, tolerance, and cooperation in relation to others.
I appeal to all Christians for a new understanding of Jesus. I appeal to all Christians as one who was born into the religion of Christianity, who grew to suffer and transcend the burden of its faults, and who came into this world to Demonstrate and Teach the One Way, Truth, and Life, just as all other Awakened Adepts, including Jesus, also came to Demonstrate and Teach It in their time and place in history. I appeal to all Christians to consider these criticisms and, by abandoning the conventional cult of Jesus, be restored to the Way of G-d-Realization in the midst of the universal and free community of those who surrender to the Living G-d.
The original institutionalization of the Influence of Jesus was not based on the Teaching of Jesus. It merely substituted a new form of priestly religion, which is always based on external sacrifice, for an older one. The Protestant Reformation of that institutionalized religion didn't go far enough. It eliminated a certain level of sacramental priesthood (and thus brought Christians a few feet closer to the altar of self-sacrifice), but it didn't eliminate the ancient priests' religion. Therefore, Christians are still tied to the myth of Jesus as Priest and Substitute Sacrifice, and they continue to be exploited and huddled into the darkness of un-Enlightenment by theologian-priests and preacher-priests (or �salvation salesmen�), who are always pestering and herding the common people with egocentric �gospels� of false hope, instead of becoming and showing others how to become Saints and Adepts in the Way that Jesus Taught. [Editor's note: Cannot a similar criticism be made with at least equal justification of Master Da Free John's own involvement in self-proclamation?]
In such a dark time as ours, it is not inappropriate to say that what killed Jesus went on to make his Church. The same ego-power that suppressed and murdered Jesus went on to cover up the real source of responsibility. The outrageous abuse of the Jews (and all non-Christians) in countries dominated by Christian institutions and the promotion of the concept of Jesus as a cosmic sacrifice rather than a murder victim and a bearer of the Wisdom that the public (or every ego) does not want are weighty evidence for the existence of a yet unspecified perpetrator. The �guilty party� is the same one addressed by Jesus - not in the mythic form of the Devil, but in the form of every human self. It is the ego, the self-contraction, �sin�, or the separative and un-Enlightened gesture of being. That Wisdom-quenching self must be transcended in every single case. And until there is a growth of Wisdom in the world, neither religion nor secular society are a refuge from falsehood and suffering.
The history of the Christ-cult is a typical case of the tendency of ordinary people, who, when confronted by suffering (and even a discipline or Way of life they are not prepared to practice) are, by reaction, moved to make much out of a phenomenon they cannot understand. Thus, Jesus is raised up by our own un-Enlightenment, and the height of his ascent seems to increase only according to the depth of our ignorance.
The Great Adepts are born to Help mankind to Realize the Truth - not, like pharisees and other conventional religionists, to prevent themselves as well as all others from the Realization of Divine or Transcendental Bliss and Love. Therefore, it is time for Christians to finish the Reformation and resort to the Teaching and the G-d of Jesus. Christians must renounce �Caesar's� priests and State religions. Christians must surrender themselves, one by one, to the Living Spiritual and Transcendental G-d, and so enter the Great Way nakedly, free of all self-armour, superiority, moral righteousness, and conflict with other lovers of Truth. We all, in all traditions of the Great Tradition, must abandon our G-d-substitutes and our Enlightenment-substitutes if we are to Realize G-d, Truth, Freedom, Transcendental Happiness, and sane Community with all living beings.
In every generation, the Masters of the past are dead (now gone on to G-d). Therefore, in every generation, those who have Realized what the elder Masters Taught must come forward, alive to Teach the people. Those who have not themselves become Masters through Realization must remain silent and seek the Truth, but the Realizers must give their Radiant Witness and Demonstration. Only in this manner does the Truth survive, uncorrupted and Alive, generation after generation. And if any generation is without living Masters, then its children are without Light, even if holy books are piled up, one upon the other, like a fortress in the Night.
It is because of the need of our poor benighted generation that I declare all of this to you. Abandon the cults of the past and learn the Way of self-sacrifice in the Living Divine Being.
�The apostles' office of nurturing the Church is permanent, and was meant to be exercised without interruption by the sacred order of bishops. Therefore, this sacred Synod teaches that by divine institution bishops have succeeded to the place of the apostles as shepherds of the Church. The order of bishops is the successor to the college of the apostles in teaching authority and pastoral rule; or, rather, in the episcopal order the apostolic body continues without a break. Together with its head, the Roman Pontiff, and never without this head, the episcopal order is the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church. But this power (potestas) can be exercised only with the consent of the Roman Pontiff.
It devolves on the bishops to admit newly elected members into the episcopal body by means of the sacrament of orders. Episcopal consecration, together with the office (munus) of sanctifying, also confers the offices of teaching and of governing.� The power which the bishops �personally exercise in Christ's name is proper, ordinary, and immediate. In consecration is given an ontological participation in sacred functions, as is clear beyond doubt from tradition even liturgical.
The word functions (munera) is deliberately employed, rather than powers (potestates) since this latter word could be understood as ready to go into action (ad actum expedita). But for such ready power to be had, by the nature of the case it needs canonical or juridical determination by hierarchical authority, since there is question of functions which must be exercised by several subjects working together by Christ's will in a hierarchical manner.�
This communion is �an organic reality which demands a juridical form, and is simultaneously animated by charity. Without hierarchical communion, the sacramental-ontological office, as distinct from its canonical-juridical aspect, cannot be exercised. The Commission has decided not to go into questions of liceity and validity, which are left to the debate of theologians, especially with regard to the power which is de facto exercised among the separated Easterns and which is explained in various ways.� (LG nos. 20, 22, 21, 27 & the Explanatory and Prefatory Note, pp. 40, 43, 41, 51 & 99-101. Also cfr. note 37 above.)
Conclusions
When Pope John XXIII convoked the Second Vatican Council, many persons were startled, and yet he was simply doing what Pius XII would have done several years earlier, had world conditions allowed.
Despite the impossibility of assembling all the Bishops of the Catholic Church in Council immediately after the end of the Second World War when, on 1 November 1950, Pius XII infallibly defined as a dogma of the Catholic Faith the truth that Mary the Mother of G-d has been assumed body and soul into the glory of Heaven, he was not acting on individual whim.
Doubts about the fact of the Assumption had existed during the dark ages but, mainly through the influence of Saint Albert the Great, these were dispelled in mediæval times. On 27 December 1863, at the suggestion of her confessor, Archbishop Saint Antony Mary Claret, founder of the Claretian Order, Queen Isobel II of Spain had written to Pope Pius IX petitioning him to define this particular already clearly recognized Catholic doctrine as a dogma of the Faith and, between 1869 and 1941, at least 1,332 patriarchs, archbishops and bishops, representing 820 residential sees (at that time 73% of the total), had similarly petitioned the Holy See.
Although some Catholic theologians are of the opinion that the Pope in canonizing a Saint exercises the prerogative of infallibility proper to his office, all admit that most teachings of the magisterium have not, even when true, any stamp of infallibility upon them.
In laying down operational guide-lines for the Second Vatican Council John XXIII, as earlier noted, made it clear that he thought the Church already had enough infallible dogmas to be going on with, and that it would definitely not be a function of the Council to add to their number.
Hence, for instance, although the Council teaches that it is no longer simply a matter of theological opinion but is definite Catholic doctrine to be accepted as true by all the faithful that Bishops are sacramentally and not just administratively and juridically higher in rank than other ordained Priests, this is not a point of dogma.
Again, while the First Vatican Council had in 1870 defined as a dogma that, when certain specific criteria are satisfied, the Pope enjoys that prerogative of infallibility which Jesus Christ gave to his Church, the interpretation of this truth was to some extent made problematic by the fact that the nature of the infallibility of the Church herself was not then, and has still never been defined. At the level of Catholic doctrine the Second Vatican Council has, of course, considerably clarified many points at issue, but that is not at all the same thing.
Despite the facts I have just mentioned, and which are not at all controversial, one unfortunate habit which seems to be developing within the present-day Church is that of cavalierly treating all authentic sources of Catholic teaching prior to the Second Vatican Council as if they had suddenly and, indeed, almost overnight become totally out of date.
Some who indulge this habit appear to base their case on the passage I have already quoted from the Second Vatican Council's decree Unitatis Redintegratio which spoke, however, of appropriately rectifying at the proper moment any deficiencies that the influences of time and circumstances may have introduced into formulations of Catholic doctrine as distinct from the actual deposit of Faith itself, and it has never been the practise of Popes to repudiate the teachings of their predecessors in office lightly, and in the case of those teachings which have been held to be infallibly defined dogmas it still seems to me entirely reasonable that this point of protocol should continue to be observed.
Here is my translation of something Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote in the Corriere Della Sera on 10 June 1974:
Is, one may ask, non-violent development the only Christian option, or can revolution be a moral obligation? What use should be made by the Church of publicity, press- and other media-services, information films, publications? What about the stock-piling of nuclear weapons, the ecological crisis, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, Glasnost, the economic problems of Latin America, apartheid in South Africa, the continuing annihilation of aboriginal peoples, the conflict in Northern Ireland, gender and racial discrimination?
Such questions (not all of them by any means happily resolved since this paper was first published, when one person in four was Chinese, one out of five was starving, one in three was living under Communism, and every second Christian was a non-Catholic) suggest that the Church divisions of the past may, indeed, have but little bearing on the Christian issues of today.
In a religiously pluralist society persons of all religions and of no religion must learn not merely to coexist, but to live together in justice and peace.
Lord Herbert of Cherbury tried the claims of revelation at the bar of reason. Montaigne and Bodin gave moral guidance independently of religious faith. Machiavelli's political theory did not rest on G-d. Grotius thought that international law provided access enough to the Law of Nature. The natural science of Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno was independent of any Church-controlled theology.
Feuerbach discarded from philosophy the �G-d� whom Spinoza, Fichte and Hegel seemed to have drowned in a sea of pantheism, and whom Descartes and Kant had previously attempted to banish beyond the frontiers of an allegedly self-sufficient world.
More recently, Bonhoeffer has rightly complained that religion has been individualism, while humankind is a community; religion has been tied to an abstract metaphysics of the unearthly, while each person's actual vocation is here; religion has been only a segment of life, while G-d is the key to everything; religion has been a superstitious search for magical solutions, while Christ commands us to bear one another's burdens; religion has been the satisfaction of the few, while Jesus died for all.
Merely to attack the world's claim to have come of age is pointlessly to expect adults to mull over the problems of adolescence; the carrot of pie in the sky ignobly exploits human weakness, press-ganging it into the service of ends neither understood nor freely accepted; to assume that in fidelity to Christ we can no other is to confuse a particular stage in the development of religious consciousness with the unfathomable riches of G-d.
The religious liberal's satisfaction in working for man's ethical transformation seems a surrender to secularist humanism. Tillich's and Bultman's concern to awaken man's unconscious thirst for G-d threatened to make religion a luxury extra. For Barth the divine event of revelation, which is universally relevant, actual and transcendent, has so to transfix and permeate the religion which signified, rather than expressed, its presence, as effectively to become its extinction as an anthropocentric-religon. But his teaching that our decision has already been made for us in Christ, and that it is blasphemous for any woman or man other than Jesus ever to claim autonomy, rather smacks of Platonism and seems ill-attuned to the authentic teachings of Tradition.
The cross is the challenge. Bonhoeffer says G-d helps us not in omnipotence, but in poverty and suffering, to live and grow up before him and with him, as if there wasn't a G-d. Man must watch with Jesus in Gethsemane. But can there be a theology with a doctrine of G-d?
Unbelievers should be helped to understand that in Christianity �one is saved from sin and introduced into the mystery of G-d's love which is communicated in Christ.� (AG no. 13, p. 600.
Christian unity is more than the uniting of denominations which are already Christian. Clarity of doctrine needs to be supplemented with univeral empathy and imaginative sympathy between women and men of all civilizations and cultures. Official talks have, moreover, to be translated into creative cooperation and growth towards unity at the local level here and now. (Equally if very differently helpful are John Reader, Local Theology - Church and Community in Dialogue, London: SPCK 1994, and David J. Constantine, The Significance of Locality in the Poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin, London: Modern Humanities Research Association 1979.)
As Rabindranath Tagore appreciated: �Power has to be made secure not only against power, but also against weakness - for there lies the peril of its losing balance. The weak are as great a danger for the strong as quicksand for an elephant. They do not assist progress because they do not resist, they only drag down.�
For us hear one planet Earth, the pageant of creation is not yet sufficiently disclosed, there is a sense in which the Last Judgment may well be the first, and we have to watch and pray, that we enter not into temptation. This humble and loving fear will, I trust, eventually bring us together into appropriate forms of unity, and into an ever fuller participation in our Father's joy.
- Shalom & Welcome! - 
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