Taking a look at Pope Benedict's image of Jesus...
Sunday, 29th April 2007
Fourth Sunday of Easter

Dear friends,

I'm still up to my eyeballs in technical development of Catholica and that has put me a little behind the eightball for a series of articles I'd like to bring you on Sunday's on spirituality. I hope to have organised the necessary copyright clearances for that by next Sunday.

In the meantime I spent some time yesterday reading John Allen's current column from National Catholic Reporter on Pope Benedict's new book on Jesus. This is the most detailed analysis I've yet seen of this new book. What John Allen and Pope Benedict have to say makes for interesting reading in light of our present discussion here on Catholica regarding the nature and images we have of Jesus.

If you are looking for some meaty reflection today I do highly recommend that you go to the NCR website and read John Allen's column. Here's the link: ncrcafe.org/node/1056. By way of encouraging such an exercise I'd just like to pick up on three or four of the many points that John Allen raises.

The overarching challenge the Church faces...

Firstly he begins his commentary with some observations of the difficulties faced by religious leaders trying to communicate in the modern world. As Allen begins his column "when people pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV news, they generally aren't looking for a Sunday school lesson". One of the temptations I've faced at Catholica has been one of trying to set up this website as some clone of other Catholic communication endeavours — yet another publication like NCR, or The Tablet, or some replacement for OnLine Catholics, or a competitor to Eureka Street. That is basically not the model we're pursuing here albeit that at our present early stage of development that is probably what we look like to many. The reason I have shied away from that sort of model is in some measure summed up by the observations John Allen makes in his opening paragraphs. I tend to agree with him, people are, in general, not interested in reading homilies from bishops — or anyone else for that matter. My hope and dream is that eventually the readership of Catholica will be drawn largely from individuals who come across some challenge in life and who will find out about this community of individuals discussing similar challenges and how they have dealt with them within a spiritual context. I don't see Catholica ever being in the position, like most other "Catholic publications" of seeking to "sell" subscriptions. Our long terms success, I believe, is going to eventually come through being able to build a community that provides practical witness to how faith and our spiritual outlook can help us through the challenges of life whatever they might be. The success of our endeavour is, in the final analysis, going to come not from "selling subscriptions" but in how well we can adapt our technical interface to intersect with the millions of questions diverse individuals type into search engines each day. Can we find the language that helps us intersect with those questions? (For those "in the know" part of the inspiration for this endeavour is in fact drawn from some pretty basic principles that are laid out in The General Directory for Catechesis. We're basically endeavouring to set up a situation that intersects with those moments in people's lives when they are most open to being catechised — or, in plainer language, when they are more open to listening to the possibility that things of the Spirit might provide the answers they are looking for.)

Agreeing with Benedict on the centrality of Christology...

The foregoing leads on to the second point I'd like to take up from John Allen's observations. He argues at a number of points in his commentary that an emerging theme of Benedict's pontificate is the emphasis that His Holiness is placing on Christology — our understanding of who Jesus is and what sort of relationship he calls humanity into with himself, and with the Father and the Spirit. If Allen is correct in this assessment then I would count myself as an enthusiastic supporter of such an emphasis. A couple of years ago I interviewed Jesuit theologian, and reputedly one of the Church's most eminent Christologists (ie one who studies Christology professionally), Fr Gerald O'Collins, and at one point in the interview sought his response to the suggestion that what the world seemed hungry for at the moment was "a new Christology". Fr O'Collins in fact disagreed with me and suggested that we already have many images of Jesus and the proposition of having a "new" Christology is in a sense a grammatical absurdity. Jesus, he was arguing (I think), is defined by the totality of what we know of him and this rich tapestry of images that have been built up down through the centuries through which people relate to Jesus. While I understand, and to some extent agree with the point Fr O'Collins was making, and today I no longer suggest we need "a new Christology", I would continue to argue that the world is hungry for spiritual guides who can explain Jesus in ways which are more accessible in their lived lives. From what John Allen is arguing it would seem that Pope Benedict sees one of the major challenges facing the Church is this one of trying to explain Jesus better.

I'm still reserving my final judgment until I've read Pope Benedict's book for myself (the English version is going to be released on May 15th) but, from what I am picking up from John Allen and other commentators who have read the already published versions, I have serious questions as to whether His Holiness does come up with the fresh interpretation that is going to galvanise the world, or even just baptised Catholics, back into becoming enthusiastic for Jesus again. I presume most of the Popes in the last hundred or two hundred years would share Pope Benedict's enthusiasm for wanting to make Jesus "better known" or "more relevant" in people's lives. Unfortunately, the evidence on the ground, is that none of them so far have come up with the answers that have stemmed the flow of the baptised away from Sacramental participation and, seemingly, of how they (the Popes) think Jesus ought be "relevant" to our lives.

But our views do change in time with the benefit of the new insights God gives us...

At some points, from what John Allen is suggesting, His Holiness seems enthusiastic to take us back to some literalist interpretation of Scripture. For example, he suggests, on the question of God's gender that "Even if we can't give absolutely cogent reasons, the language of the prayer of the entire Bible remains normative for us, in which, the great metaphors of maternal love notwithstanding, 'mother' is not a title of God, and is not an appellation with which one may address God. We must pray as Jesus, on the basis of the Holy Scripture, has taught us to pray, not as it might strike us or please us. Only thus do we pray in the right way." [John Allen's translation from the Italian version of the book.] I will be interested in reading that section of Pope Benedict's book with particular interest. As I see it, over time the Church has refined, developed and at times reversed its thinking on significant earlier insights. Ian Elmer in Catholica provided an excellent example yesterday of how the Church's understanding of the Mystery of the two natures of Jesus was developed and refined over a period of centuries — and with considerable debate and pain. While I continue to believe "the totality of Revelation" has been given to us in Jesus Christ, I don't believe we yet understand what that totality is even 2000 years post his physical, earthly existence. New insights continue to be given to individuals, and to the human family collectively, which enable us to better understand Jesus, what he was saying, and the meaning to be derived from his words and the modelling provided by his life, death, resurrection and his ways of thinking and acting. None of this diminishes "the totality of Revelation". It does enable us to understand that totality a lot more fully, or better. I am not persuaded that the significant developments that have been occurring in recent decades in the realms of our human sexual nature do not have profound implications for how we understand, and relate to, the fundamental nature of God. The language of Sacred Scripture was composed in a far more paternalistic epoch in human history. I am open to be convinced by other arguments His Holiness might put forward in his book but I have to confess I am sceptical that, on this issue, we are inexorably tied into the Scriptural language that portrays God exclusively in Patriarchal terms or imagery that is condescending to women.

	What not to wear - according to Iran's police authorities. Photo from the BBC overage of the story.

Just look at the imagery on television news last night of Islamic fundamentalists in Iran "cracking down in the dress codes of women" and jailing them if they are seen in public showing too much facial hair. Christianity moved a long, long way from "stoning women" but there seems a streak in all religions that hankers for fundamentalism. The Sacred communications of God through Scripture do need to be interpreted and re-interpreted in light of the on-going insights that the Holy Spirit fosters enabling us to better understand the totality of Revelation in Jesus Christ, or in those Sacred Texts.

The final analysis...

There are other issues that I'd like to write about stemming from John Allen's commentary but I'll hold them either for discussion in any conversation that might develop in our forum, or until I've had a chance to actually read Pope Benedict's book. In the final analysis it is not actually my views, or those of yourself, the reader, that will count in the particular. Even the views of Pope Benedict will not be the final point of judgment on all of these difficult matters. The final evaluation or jodgment is God's as to whether it has been the failings of wider society, the laxness of the people, or failings on the part of religious leaders and our spiritual guides in how they have read this charge which is commissioned to all of us as to how we bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to all people!

In the final analysis is this game of interpreting Jesus to humanity will we be judged on our enthusiasm, or on our expressions of loyalty? Or will it be judged on how successful we were in actually "bringing the Good News to all people" — in how many people, in totality actually stopped to listen and were transfigured and redeemed by "the Word"?

Best wishes for a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life, and in our world,

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher
Catholica Australia