AsOne,

The analogies between the "myths" of the New Testament and the universality of the myths referred to in this article would be legitimately drawn if those "myths" are actually included in the New Testament record.

The fact is...they are not!

The accounts of the life and death of Jesus are the complete opposite of the "universal" myth.

It is only the doctrines of the church which make these analogies seem legitimate.

This applies not only to the 'hero" myths, but also to the "creation" myths.

For instance, the New Testament "hero" is not a God who comes to earth in the form of a man. On the contrary, he is a man who reverses the process. He is a man who becomes "godly."

The New Testament "hero" was not born in a grandiose manner, of a virgin through one of the Gods. On the contrary, he is a man who was born in the normal fashion, through normal parents, and in the very humblest manner.

The New Testament "hero" is not merely a figure created in man's image, a reflection of man and his delusions of grandeur. On the contrary, he is a man who was chosen because his qualites and character reflected YHVH's image, not man's.

And so on, and so on.

But most importantly of all, we are told repeatedly that the death and resurrection of Jesus was a once-only event. He died once, and for all. Contrast this Biblical position with the vegetation deities of universal myth to whom invocations and sacrifices were necessary to ensure the return of the seasons.

The proposition of the Bible, from Genesis onwards, is that one does not have to sacrifice to the vegetation deities to ensure the return of the seasons. The God of the Hebrews so arranged nature that nature takes care of itself. We could go much further into this subject but that is enough for now.

There is in fact not a single resemblance between Biblical "myths" and the universal myths referred to in the article. The contrast is stark and deliberate on the part of the authors of the biblical materials.

We are living with the deleterious effects still. Somehow, faith has survived, although some would like to emphasise that its formal expressions in confessional statements and its liturgies have put pressure upon the integrity of 'faith' as a religious experience.

In our day, is its accessibility suddenly becoming yet more difficult?

Excellent question, herbie. What do others think in response?

Really briefly this time, Brian.

I think we need to bear in mind that the Christians were deeply embedded within disparate regions of imperial society well before Constantine. During the violent repressions under Decius and Valerian in the 250s, leaders (bishops) were widely apprehended and properties and wealth were confiscated. Within a few years Christians were left to themselves again - properties restored - and prospered, living a parallel life alongside the official Polytheism. It was fifty years (and further major violence from Diocletian in 303) before the era of Constantine, when Christians attained to the freedom of religion that took them into history.

As you remind us, the freedom came at a price. The imperial favours were inevitably corrupting of something in the movement. In my book, nowhere else more damagingly than within the ranks - indeed, within the very institution - of a newly privileged clergy.

We are living with the deleterious effects still. Somehow, faith has survived, although some would like to emphasise that its formal expressions in confessional statements and its liturgies have put pressure upon the integrity of 'faith' as a religious experience.

In our day, is its accessibility suddenly becoming yet more difficult?

I never did see 'Life of Brian' in one hit. Kids at school were always asking for it, and I wouldn't co-operate. A real meanie. I did, though, regularly expose them to Jesus of Montreal, which, to my initial surprise, they often had difficulty reading. Thanks for putting me in that context.

Your own reflections are subtly put and deeply perceptive. Do they add up to 'integrity'? - not that that term alone would take us as far as you have gone in spelling it all out. But if 'integrity' suits, I would think that it carries 'authority' along with it. No need really to look further?

In his resurrected state, Jesus Christ is beyond the restrictions of space or time or gender or anything else. Yet he is omnipresent in space and time.

That is mystery to us, of course, but to some extent we can become conscious of it, in faith and love.

There are various stillness exercises, contemplation practices, religious rituals and patterns of prayer which can assist us to be open and ready to accept the gift of a spiritual awareness of the real presence of Jesus, the Christ, in the world and in our lives.

It is most important for us to learn how to enter through whatever doorway such practices offer and to experience a vital relationship with Jesus Christ in our lives. Everything else - pope, bishops, priests, theologians, etc - is somewhat secondary.

It will help in this discussion to see things in the mythical (including religious) context:

Have a look at Joseph Campbell, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth

He grew up a Catholic and then realised that the same themes he had been taught ran through American Indian mythology. He later realised was also the case in other mythologies. Isis and Horus were the antique model for Mary and Jesus.

Reading Campbell gives you a valuable insight into your belief.

» Faith of a few is orthodox if it can be shared with the larger number. And it needs – or supposes – an increasing number. Without the ‘increasing word’ (Acts 6:7), faith walks a narrow and probably unknown path.
»

Herbie, I love your post and was particularly interested in your above comment: And as for your via media, well, it just shows how you are, "NOT an individual!!!!!" according to the Life of Brian (to clarify). Those who chose the middle path are usually the ones that can be most trusted. Why?

I was watching a wild life documentary the other day which featured a wilderbeast which had been cut off by a river from its herd - it had been attacked as the herd was moving across a river, half way across the river and lost its bearings and returned to the original shore. The young wilderbeast became disorientated and lost and sought out the company of any herd and even teamed up with another lost youngster from a different species - anything rather than be alone - until it saw its family across the river again. It tired every way to get back to its herd and even put its own life in danger of being eaten by crossing the river alone - a river filled with crocodiles and hippos. Our evolutionary animal origins in play. It made it, thank God, and became one of the herd again.

There is a very fine line between what we choose to believe and why we choose to believe it - a fine line between the need to be honest with one's self/self-consciousness and the need to belong to the group/collective consciousness.

Are we willing to risk our individual lives, to sell our self-honesty/our souls in order to belong? How much of what we choose comes from deep self-awareness and courageous choices or convictions, or, from being too willingly open to believing what others say is the truth for the purpose of fulfilling our deeply innate/biological-even need to belong to that group of 'others', whatever that group is?

Hitler (and his apostles) was a master of social psychology. How much social psychology is used by the churches, and groups within the churches (and society as a whole)? How much do churches say to anyone inquiring - do not believe what we teach because you so need to belong - search your heart, your spirit and decide deeply and honestly that what you are hearing is truth for you. Inform yourself, pray, discuss and then decide. Only then can faith be faith, and love be love, and hope be hope. Without this, it is mere need to belong, and conformity, and self-dishonesty and survival instincts and, while these are completely understandable, they are not pure, or personal or even real.

Until we personalise our faith we will be ever prone to the evil side of needing to belong and preserve the 'faith' of our group - and if this means attacking others who may contradict what our group believes, well, then you have the seemingly innate human process or wars, theological wars, sexual wars, economic wars, and wars too often instigated by those who have not dealt with this whole issue of why one believes what they do, not to mention not dealt with nor resolved their personal human imperfections/traumas. Hence the need to belong or even to bring others, even force others to believe what we believe - to create our own group to which one can have their need to belong, fulfilled.

How much of this social psychology was/is at play in the process/development of 'orthodoxy' you mention? And how much is it in play in all the controversial issues discussed here, on Catholica and on other boards and in any group, especially the politically correct based ones? That, to me, is the single most important question everyone everywhere must ask of themselves, and always ask.

And then, next to this, one can then discuss the nature of authority.

Stephen (who is not an individual - must be the Dutch in me!!!!!!).

Thanks, herbie, believe it or not I was endeavouring to encourage critical responses — and I do appreciate them both from the personal point of view for my own benefit but also as a publisher in that there's nothing like a bit of controversy to create reader interest. If it's legitimate 'controversy' rather than manufactured 'controversy' so much the better.

Just back on that rhetorical question that I suggested it might be hard to answer. What's your read or intuition on this: in the mix between faith and politics which do you think was the more responsible for the temporal 'success' of Christianity, or Catholicism? Was it this sense of 'faith' the you're discussing in the post above that eventually led to so many 'following Christ' via the various Christian churches? And how great a part did the politics play — Constantine, the Holy Roman Empire, the relationship between Church and Royalty/the Ruling classes in Europe, the forced conversions in Europe and later in the New World, the Inquisition, Triumphalism, the building of massive Cathedrals and the patronage of the arts and music that was brilliant pr for impressing the poor? Without all the political props would 'faith alone' have been enough for Christianity to prosper in the way it did or would it have disappeared like so many of the other Jewish cults and groups of the time that disappeared?

I ask the questions also in a contemporary context. I, for example, think the 'politics and pr' remains important but I also recognise the 'faith' attraction too — which, as you suggest, is not actually controllable by the politics, the pr, the institution or us, but is more in the provenance of the Spirit. I'd also argue though that the 'politics and pr' can either assist the 'faith step' — or it can hinder it. For example, it might be argued that the present 'politics and pr' in the Western world would seem to be a massive hindrance to the vast majority — people are leaving rather than joining. The 'politics and pr' would seem to drive more away than it attracts and the 'faith factor' does not seem strong enough to act as a counter to that.

Brian has been shepherding a lot of the conversation this last week or so on such matters that have evoked a variety of responses even apart from the Ian-Yvette string of academic controversy. In the very briefest way I will attempt to profile my own position on ‘faith and authority’.

It could be possible that my via media / middle path (if such it is, and invoking Newman’s phrase from his 19th century controversies and worries about Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism) will be of some value to those who do not stand quite comfortably with options already on the board.

On the history/faith discussion about Jesus (in terms, wasn’t it, of real/authentic?) I would have to come down irrevocably on the faith side. No gospel writer was involved with the historical quest for Jesus. As Ian has always insisted, the gospels came out of the ‘church’, i. e., out of a believing community. The gospel writers were part of that scene, i. e., believers within such more or less local community.

Each gospel needs to be treated independently, although a huge and intricate interdependence exists among them (even between the first three and John). John apart, who is a creator of some genius, we do have major indications from one of the other three about how a gospel came about. This is from Luke’s preface.

I have put up my thoughts on this before (check ‘herbie and/ Luke/Preface/eyewitness’ and something will probably come up), and will not repeat or enlarge here. Those comments were made in the context of Richard Bauckham’s prize-winning book of 2007 Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Bauckham’s extraordinarily novel (naive?) argument was that Luke used ‘eyewitnesses’ in the sense we understand such a term. My response is that that was impossible from a linguistic point of view; ‘eyewitnesses’ is the worst translation, and an article to this effect will appear in Scotland (Bauckham’s backyard) in June.

That leaves us to see Luke free of history and as a Christian believer just like you (?) or me (!). Luke is all about belief. Enriched belief. Belief coming from who knows where. And with Luke evidently feeling comfortable with such a situation (after all, he masters a perfect 2-volume account in Luke/Acts of the birth and expansion of Christian belief: he invented – or first reported the word ‘christian’) – and with his advertising at the same time the fragility of ‘faith’ (see the Emmaus story in his last gospel chapter), we ought not to be too concerned about our post-modernist attitudes (if those actually impact on ‘faith’).

See you later, Luke.

Meantime, another source in the New Testament – our earliest source – tells us what faith is, although not in a set of words making up a definition. This, of course, is Paul. Here we shift perhaps from Brian’s seeming overriding preoccupation with the ‘facts’ into what comes over to me as Ian’s image of Paul as a victim of his multicultural heritage. Vague, I know, and Ian will probably bop me one.

Whatever of the theories about Paul and the influences that made him what he was – an enormously complex set of questions spanning at least two major cultural spheres and countless minor cultural segments – we do have his personal accounts of and arguments for his position as a Jewish believer in Jesus within a multicultural environment.

What got him was not the claims about Jesus (and we do not have clear evidence of the type of claims for Jesus that he was exposed to) but the experience. The story of that experience (an encounter on his journey to Damascus to take in charge followers of the Jesus messiah) is told three times in Luke’s Acts and is rightly famous. We would be wrong, however, if we used that as our main source for giving accreditation to the gospel preached by Paul.

The source we need to consider is his own perception of what he was trying to do in raising the Corinthian people to faith in Jesus. And this we have in, especially, 2 Corinthians 2-6.

Why do I labour this? Because these chapters from Paul’s writings – 30/40 years before a gospel document had been composed – expose the processes that Paul understood as happening in the coming to faith of the small group of Corinthian believers.

Here enters our very fashionably modern and yet old question ‘On whose authority?’

Witness the angles on this question in the recurrent discussion.

You who seek authoritative answers – inured as you and all of us are to magisterial control of how we are to express ourselves publicly in regard to our adherence to Jesus of Nazareth – may well be surprised to view how Paul – so often maligned as a sexist and theological bully – tried to explain to a seemingly small group of Corinthians what his role actually was as an ‘apostle’ of ‘god’ promoting the interests of Jesus as ‘son’ of the same, plus, plus. [This is the sort of stuff that makes brevity a mirage. Hang on there, just a moment.]

We get an incisive image of his stance about the ‘faith’ he anticipates. He didn’t use ‘the faith’ in the way we do, and he did not anticipate that he would or could create or enforce it. Faith was not in his dispensation.

From 2 Corinthians 2-6 we learn that he did indeed preach (what? and how? – there are views on both of these questions), but his recorded interest is in the wash-up. People did believe.

In what? It would be difficult to say what Paul’s benchmark was on ‘what do you believe?’

He was not so much into orthodoxy – which did not exist in the diverse communities of that first century – as into auto-experience resulting in orthopraxis. (Tracing complex ideas in the shorthand I promised. But still not yet at the nub.)

In using the expression ‘auto-experience’ I invent a term to hint at what Paul was challenging the Corinthians to reflect upon (he called it in Greek syneidesis, which is probably best represented in English as consciousness.)

At 2 Cor 3:3 Paul informed the Corinthian believers that his ‘authority’ did not come from ‘letters of reference’ (our modern sense of authority) but from the word written on their hearts (what he calls their self-consciousness, syneidosis).

What does this line of thinking of this theological ‘bully’ add up to?

Faith, received, carries its own authority. Paul is not the boss.

Shared faith – which is a concomitant character of ‘faith’ - has its own authority.

Faith of a few is orthodox if it can be shared with the larger number. And it needs – or supposes – an increasing number. Without the ‘increasing word’ (Acts 6:7), faith walks a narrow and probably unknown path.

Essentially, however, faith in Jesus and his ‘god’ and in the ‘spirit’ who possesses and harmonises us is a gem in the heart of those who heard it fall in the silence of high moon or in the brilliance of morning light upon oceans or deserts.

One old word to describe faith was ‘ineffable’. (No jokes, please)

Brian

You've given us a lot to consider her, as have Ian & Vynette.

I looked for Newman's ON CONSULTING THE FAITHFUL . .. etc and it concludes with a warning.

I think certainly that the Ecclesia docens is more happy when she has such enthusiastic partisans about her [ . . . ] than when she cuts off the faithful from the study of her divine doctrines and the sympathy of her divine contemplations, and requires from them a fides implicita in her word, which in the educated classes will terminate in indifference, and in the poorer in superstition.

Indifference? Superstition?

Anger?

Mary

One of the major problems in selecting new Bishops is that, in the main, those priests who would make the best Bishops will not accept the position, as they see the actions of the magisterium as being oppressive.

That is not to say we do not have some excellent Bishops however in the main there are many priest who would have been much better as Bishops if they had been willing to accept the position.

It is up to us as Lay Catholics to express our concerns to the Australian Bishops Conference,however don't expect a reply, but if enough people write to them we do get a reaction down the line.

Let us pray for our Bishops.

BarryS

Thanks Brian for this.

I was reading your article and saying "Yes, Yes, this is how I feel too.

So, the Spirit is weaving in and out of our lives and we are being called to look at a more authentic way of being church. The hard part is convincing the Pope and Curia that we too are intelligent thinking Catholics who have a vision of church, which just might not be the same as theirs, but is just as authentic.

Perhaps we should call for Vatican III but this time to be chaired by a lay person with voting rights given to everyone who attends. Now that would be a new way of being Church!

Marian

Peter, this is an old problem as I'm sure you would realise. The ideal of course is that you would have an "assembly' of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics (or whatever the number is these days) but self-evidently that is logistically impossible. Societies need various kinds of assemblies — synods, parliaments, etc. — where delegates represent various sub-sectors of society.

The important question is the mind-set or culture that is either established at the outset, or creeps in over time, of how those delegates think of themselves. I'm not sure that Jesus would have had any thoughts regarding these matters because the development of 'church' as we have come to know it came after his time. Paul would have certainly had some views on the role of those who represented the local churches or assemblies though, and so would Peter. Did Paul, and the other early Church leaders, see the local leaders as spokespeople for 'head office' (if there was such a thing in their time) or God? Or did they see them as representatives of the local Churches who came together in assembly endeavouring to discern what God was saying collectively to the whole Church? Ian, and others have of course written on this.

Over time though some of these leaders began to like the sort of privileges that 'head office' could hand out and I think this is how, slowly over centuries, this culture gradually crept in where priests and bishops began to think of themselves as God-like (in persona Christi etc) and incapable of error and they liked everyone looking up to them for their great learning and wisdom — and, no doubt, their superior access to the Divine mind and Divine Grace (handing out indulgences and such like). It's all coming crumbling down now though almost as quickly as the destruction caused by a tsunami.

The more I think about it I'm positive the great majority of bishops who went along to the Second Vatican Council did not go along there with any great expectations of radical change. There was no 'liberal conspiracy'. I'm very certain given the culture of the time the overwhelming majority of bishops who attended would have had a quite conservative, don't-rock-the-boat personal disposition. I suspect the bishops themselves were probably as amazed as the rest of the world at what emerged out of the Council. The only 'human conspiracy' at Vatican II was with the rear-guard who thought they knew, or know, the 'mind of God' better than God knows the own Divine mind and certainly better than the majority of the bishops who assembled in Rome did. Like Islamic suicide bombers they simply have never let up — no matter what the cost to the Church or society. If there was any other kind of 'conspiracy' at Vatican II it was a 'conspiracy orchestrated by the Spirit that affected the majority will at that Assembly'.

I think, for their own sake, we need to lift our bishops and priests down off their pedestals. Some will no doubt resist LOL and so will some of their bootlickers in the lay church. The reality is bishops are men with all the cravings of ego and fears that all the rest of us have to contend with in life. Ordination or elevation to the status of bishop does not confer on them superior graces, or insights, or open up some magical direct line to God. They are all fallible individuals — including the Popes. If there is such a thing as 'infallibility' (I think there is by the way) it resides in the entire "Body of Christ" NOT in any executive or bureaucratic arm that is meant to serve "the Body of Christ".

We need bishops — or people with some title who are both leaders and representatives of the local churches. What needs to be changed is how they think of themselves and, to some extent, how Benedict's 'simple folk' and 'little people' view them.

PS Come to think of it a bit more. Jesus did have some rather cutting things to say about leadership even if he might not have had some specific model of temporal church structure in his mind.

Brian,

Just one little quote from Acts at this stage:

"Then the apostles and elders decided to choose delegates to send to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas; the whole church concurred with this. They chose Judas known as Barsabbas and Silas, both leading men in the brotherhood, and gave them this letter to take with them:" (Acts 15:22)

Peter

Catholicism, ultimately is not about rosaries, costumes, liturgical and musical styles, the architecture of church buildings, crucifixes on classroom walls, or Marian devotions. Neither is it some game of standing outside abortion clinics, or in newspapers columns and websites, protesting that we alone know the Fifth Commandment. Catholicism is ultimately a Way of thinking and acting modelled on the Way Jesus the Christ thought — and acted — his Way through the mountains and valleys of life to resurrection.

This is my conclusion as well Brian.

Although of course Catholicism has been and still identified with rosaries, costumes etc. etc. But that is only the window dressing . And by standing outside abortion clinics only makes people more anti Catholic (Christianity) as obviously people who seek abortions are in a complex and difficult situation and don't need reminding how 'sinful' they are.

I think we can get back 'to Galilee' and stop fussing about liturgical colors and we will get back to the what Jesus was about - and basically it is love God and one another. Easy to say but oh so hard to do.

Helen

Brian, thanks. This is an excellent post describing and encouraging me to continue in the thoughts you have outlined and which I hold personally.

I pass your post on to my old PP and to other thinking Catholics.

Francis, who has lived with the authentic Jesus and wants to discover him more and how he moves me re modern world.

Today's "Sunday Forum" is an attempt to extend the now lengthy discussion originally begun by Vynette and Ian Elmer [LINK] on a series of questions about how we interpret scripture, how we differentiate the historical Jesus from the real, authentic or risen Jesus and questions to do with authority — how we know if we have the right interpretations about these matters. It has been written by the editor of Catholica, Brian Coyne, and is the promised third part in his exploration of the question of authority.

I have to confess that I am in two minds as to whether Christianity succeeded* in the way it did because of the appeal of its fundamental ideas (the teachings and insights of Jesus Christ) or through the political force of Constantine, the Holy Roman Empire and the later political and colonialist forces in Europe. Throughout history there have been thousands, possibly tens of thousands of individuals with grand theories and religious or philosophical formulae. The vast majority of them lay as forgotten as the books published that no one wanted to buy. For the moment I am, of course, leaving out of contention the claim that Christianity, or Catholicism, makes that there might be a Divine power that explains their 'success'.

*I mean 'success' here in the simple statistical sense that Christianity was eventually transmitted to every continent and into almost every culture until it became numerically one of the dominant religious paradigms in the world.

My sense is that the 'politics' also had a lot to do with it albeit that for politics to succeed — particularly in any 'long term' there also needs to be a 'good idea', or 'compelling philosophy' at the foundation in the first place.

The question, of course, is largely rhetorical. Can any of us find a definitive answer either way to a question like that? Perhaps also rhetorical, but at least more capable of being influenced, is the future question of what is happening to Christianity and Catholicism now? For the first time Christianity has been eclipsed in the raw numbers by another religion, Islam, and even blind Freddy ought be able to recognise that in the more educated and affluent regions of human civilisation, Christianity and Catholicism is in rapid decline if not approaching a state where it is fighting for its survival.

When I analyse my own feelings as to why I persist (with the idea of Catholicism) I sometimes wonder if it is merely an ego thing — I want my footy team to be the biggest, the most 'successful', the one drawing the largest numbers of fans to its events. Alternatively, I wonder whether I genuinely do want the ideals our 'code' was founded on — the insights and wisdom of Jesus Christ — to be taken up by all of humankind? Do I genuinely believe the ideas of Jesus are so good, or so superior, to any other philosophy or set of ideas that exist out there in the spiritual marketplace that I want Jesus and his ideas, not my 'team', to succeed? Do you understand what I mean?

I've mulled on those questions of the last paragraph for a couple of decades I suppose. I'm not sure we can ever completely expunge the egotistical aspect from our psyche but my sense today is that I genuinely do believe Jesus — and the whole of authentic Catholic thought — does have something to offer humankind that is not found elsewhere. I'm not necessarily saying that what I believe is "authentic Catholic thought" is easy to define or find. For example what those on another discussion board such as EWTN, Catholic Answers, True Catholic, or CathPews might define as 'authentic' is about ten thousand light years from what I would describe as 'authentically Catholic', or what is the 'essence' in being Catholic or 'thinking in a Catholic way'.

These days I confess I find myself in quite deep disagreement with the directions in which Pope Benedict believes 'authentic Catholicism' resides. That does cause me some disquiet — but also causes me to want to read and reflect much, much more than I ever used to. Benedict seemingly wants to take Catholicism back to some idealised view that attracted him into the priesthood and seminary. He seems to believe if only he can impose on the Church again the sort of music, costume, smells and frame of mind that attracted him to what he loves about the Church, and Jesus, this will work for all those who have fallen away. I don't think it is going to happen in a million years. Benedict seems to want to take Catholicism back to some triumphalist middle-stage the institution went through — rooted somewhere between the Middle Ages and 1950s social conformism. My view is that he doesn't want to go back far enough — to re-discover the 'authentic Jesus'.

To me there are two critical questions here. The first is: Where do we find the 'authentic Jesus'? We need to find him before we find the 'authentic Church'. The second is this question of authority. Even if we think we have found the 'authentic Jesus' what measure of confidence can we find somewhere that we are indeed looking at the 'real McCoy' or as close to the 'real McCoy' as we can possibly get?

Yesterday Ian Elmer wrote an interesting post in the string where this discussion started looking at the question of the search for the 'authentic Jesus' [LINK]. Ian didn't use the term 'authentic Jesus' but rather differentiated between the 'real Jesus' and the 'historical Jesus'. As usual, it's a really thought-provoking and intelligent essay from Ian and I agree with much of what he writes.

The 'real Jesus' Ian describes is something more than the historical figure who lived around two millennia ago. He's that person but as he's been interpreted by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul and I'd also go on and add Anselm, Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas, Thomas More, Newman and all the way down into our own time with people such as Wojtyla, Ratzinger, Küng, Bonhoeffer, Schillebeeckx, Michael Morwood and even Tom McMahon, Andrew Kania or Tom Lee. All of us 'add to the picture of Jesus'. We layer on top of the historical figure our hopes, and our pains and insecurities. The 'real Jesus' Ian is writing about is a construct, certainly built on the 'historical person and data', but nevertheless somewhat mythical reflecting both genuine theological insights but also a lot of other stuff which, I submit, is largely emotional and more related to our hopes (and expectations of Jesus) than they often are to the genuine theological insights or even the historical truth. When I write of the 'authentic Jesus' I mean this 'risen Jesus' who continues to grow with the theological and spiritual insights of each Age — and each great, and lesser, mind — but he's the one stripped of all the emotive stuff … the superstitions, the myths (as opposed to the real mythology), the 'magician' who's going to find me the best job, give me the winning Lotto numbers, or cure Uncle Stanley's gout! The 'authentic Jesus' is this 'genuine Son of the Most High', 'the Word of the Creator of Everything' who shows us the Way of genuinely and authentically thinking and acting as God himself (the Perfect Being) might act if they were facing the particular questions, or challenges we are facing.

To me Jesus is wrongly likened to an Encyclopaedia, or some Book of Rules. He's neither of those things. They're static. Jesus is dynamic. One who helps us respond to the particular dilemmas of our moment in time which might be 2000 years removed from his human experiences. Yet the 'template' he represents is a response to the challenges, questions and dilemmas all people have IN EVERY AGE.

So how do we access this 'authentic Jesus'? Well firstly I think we have to immerse ourselves in his historical story — the Scriptural narratives. I think that is what both Ian and his sparring partner on the forum, Vynette (who has academic credentials in her own right), are both suggesting before they part company. As I wrote the other day, we have to become as familiar with the Jesus story of Scriptures as we become as familiar with the road map of some well-travelled route. We don't actually 'look up the map' every time we make some familiar journey but somewhere 'buried in our minds' a virtual map exists of our route. Jesus, and Scripture, is what might be described as the 'virtual map' of the whole of Life. It is not simply an 'historical tract' (and out of date) — it's the blueprint for all of Life and every life, right NOW!

The question, or problem, of "authority"...

But it needs to be constantly 'interpreted' just as we need skills 'interpreting' a road map, a street directory or our gps. And this is where we come to the problem of "authority". How can we be certain we're 'interpreting' the map or the blueprint the correct way? What's to prevent us coming up with some weird interpretation such as say 'the Little Pebble' or some other 'nutter' might come up with? What's to prevent us wandering off down some lunatic pathway of interpretation with the likes of the mad priest swinging naked from his internet steeple, or a Joseph Smith Jr, or some televangelist 'on the make'?

An additional problem before I address the problem of 'authority' is that most people don't have the time to be meditating and reading theological tracts eight hours a day. They have to earn a living, put bread on their table, or bake it for others to put on their table, or they're busy bringing up children. Much of what we know — in any discipline, even the sciences — we have to accept 'on faith' — on the authority of other people. For example I have never travelled to Newfoundland. I believe it exists though because other people who have been there have told me it exists. And I can see some evidence for its existence because I trust the pictures I see on my screen through Google Earth. My belief in the existence of Newfoundland is essentially a 'faith belief' no different in its essential 'faith' substance to my belief in the existence of Jesus — or of God!

My own view of the modern crisis Christianity (not just Catholicism) is facing with both its disunity, and its loss of appeal in the educated, affluent more socially sophisticated sectors of Western society comes down to two problems: which Jesus are we searching for? Or put another way: what is the picture of Jesus the institutions are presenting and asking people to 'have faith in'? Is it some picture of Jesus as some 'magician' or 'miracle worker' — someone who will reward us for standing outside abortion clinics and proclaiming at the top of our voices how much abortion is against the fifth commandment? Or is the picture of the 'real Jesus' to use Ian's term or the 'authentic Jesus' to use mine — the One who presents us with a way of accessing the Divine Way of thinking, and acting?

The second problem is one of Authority. Who do we trust in helping us interpret the 'virtual map of Life' that Jesus represents? Here again I think we have two conflicting views being presented by our own institution. One is this picture of "Father knows best" — just "trust us, and the Holy Father, obey us and God will reward you at the end".

My view is that most people have grown beyond that today — in the educated parts of the world at least. The abuse scandals are but one of the last nails in the coffin of that old form of authority that seems to posit that God talks exclusively through some royal telephone line to the Pope and his advisers and all we (the ordinary pew-sitters) have to do is demonstrate that we have memorised the Ten Commandments and then constantly proclaim that we're not disobeying any of them and we will be 'saved'. It's bullshit of course. But many seem to still believe it.

What's the alternative?

To me I think the alternative is this and to get to it I think we have to go right back to torrs and re-imagine our entire concept of 'church'. I believe, sincerely, the Holy Spirit in a totally unexpected way began leading us in this direction through the discernment of that great assembly of 'ordinary minds' — those bishops who assembled at the Second Vatican Council. Our 'authority' has to derive from 'ALL of the people' — the entire 'Body of Christ' as we label it in Catholicspeak — just as it does for my faith in the existence of Newfoundland or as it does in the way humanity discerns 'truth' in the scientific realm or any other discipline of learning. This, I believe, is the great insight Cardinal Newman was pointing towards in the quaint language of his time in his series of essays that became a book "On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine". Newman was not playing some game as Benedict seems to be on "Consulting the Little People, and the Insecure in Matters of Superstition". Read Newman's words carefully — and reflect deeply on them.

Catholicism will ultimately stand or fall on the validity of her insights not on papal pronouncements and encyclicals — or 'the faith' of Benedict's 'simple people'. Our collective and corporate or institutional responsibility is to be lifting the 'little people' and 'simple people' — to use Benedict's own terms** — to new insights about the meaning of Jesus not to be endeavouring to cement in their superstitions and insecurities.

The collective vision of the assembled bishops at the Second Vatican Council truly did open up the windows and mind of the Church to the world. That work needs to be resumed and with much urgency. If Catholicism is to regain its ascendancy as the most followed religion in humankind it needs to reopen the windows that these 'little people' in the Vatican have been slamming shut on the world — and on the Church's own people. We need to be trusting our bishops again but not elevating them to demi-God status but seeing them as flawed people just like all the rest of us but charged with a special responsibility of 'listening to' and 'representing' their people. I simply do not believe there was some conspiracy of liberals at the Vatican Council to 'take over the Church'. They were 'ordinary men' but when they put their collective minds together I do think they were 'inspired' in much the same way as the fisherman and ordinary folk who became the disciples of Jesus who wrote the scriptures were 'inspired'. Our bishops though need to be free to speak not for head office — but to speak for their people — and through great assemblies like the one we witnessed at the Second Vatican Council, or what we're seeing in embryonic form at the Parliament of the World's Religions, give us a mechanism for discerning 'the will of the Father in heaven' and the authentic 'call of the Divine Spirit'. If Catholicism does truly value its place of Primacy it needs to lose its ego — this sense that only we are right, only we can discern the true mind of God — and re-fashion itself with the enormous resources it has accumulated down through the centuries, into the structure and mechanism that allows the spirit to speak through the representatives of all people in 'the Body of Christ'. We need to start, and urgently, in healing the divisions between Western and Eastern Catholicism and between the Western and Orthodox churches.

Catholicism, ultimately is not about rosaries, costumes, liturgical and musical styles, the architecture of church buildings, crucifixes on classroom walls, or Marian devotions. Neither is it some game of standing outside abortion clinics, or in newspapers columns and websites, protesting that we alone know the Fifth Commandment. Catholicism is ultimately a Way of thinking and acting modelled on the Way Jesus the Christ thought — and acted — his Way through the mountains and valleys of life to resurrection.

Now, what are your thoughts and criticism in response?

**For those new to the Catholica discussion, Benedict used the terms "little people" and "simple people" in a homily in 1979 justifying the penalties imposed on Hans Küng that was quoted by John L. Allen Jr in his book Pope Benedict XVI. The full quote is: "The Christian believer is a simple person: bishops should protect the faith of these little people against the power of intellectuals". It can be found online at page 130 of the book HERE.