“What do you think?” - Who is the greatest? A Reflection on the 25th Sunday Readings - B (Y-not question the Sunday Readings)

Thanks, Joe. I think one of the major difficulties today is that you simply cannot have an honest conversation with the hierarchs today — those who are supposed to be THE spiritual guides for humanity. They couldn't enter into a dialogue like the one we're having here because they simply would not have a job tomorrow if they were found to be questioning the sort of things we're questioning. The only way a person can have an honest conversation with them is if you happen to be close enough personally to one of them to have the sort of late night conversation over a bottle of Scotch that someone wrote about in a fictionalised conversation with a bishop on NCR not so long ago.

At the top of the tree they simply can no longer speak from the heart — they can no longer speak the truth — as the entire culture of the institution now militates against it.

My sense is that there are four types of personalities promoted up through the ranks today — and none of them can enter into honest dialogue with the hundreds of millions across Europe, North America and countries like Australia who have stopped listening and stopped participating.

• Presently at the top of the list are what I dub the mummy's boys. They're into all the "bling" — what some of them on blogs actually dub the "ecclesial eye candy" — and they're into all the liturgical rules and this affected manner of speaking and engaging in with people. It is a fantasy world they live in. They dream of returning the Church to a state of Middle Ages Triumphalism, not to the humility and "way" of Jesus. They have enormous power since the accession of Benedict to the papal throne.
  
• Next are the bully boys described so brilliantly by Chris Geraghty in his recent book "Dancing with the Devil". They don't actually believe anything, have never read any theology since they left the seminary. All they are proficient at is holding their whetted finger to the wind to ascertain which way the ecclesial wind in blowing on any particular day to facilitate their own advancement up the hierarchical feeding trough. If we'd been blessed with another JXXIII instead of JPII and BXVI they'd still have been at the top of the feeding trough but singing from a completely different hymn sheet.
  
• Next we have the naive. A lot of them are genuinely nice people. They didn't enter the priesthood for advancement and glory but genuinely to "serve their people". When promoted into the episcopal ranks they are often genuinely surprised and see it as a "calling from God" to better serve their people. Their focus tends to be local rather than national or international. Privately many of them would share outlooks similar to the many who have left or who are thinking of leaving but they do not perceive themselves to have any power to change anything or even challenge the status quo. Many of them are naive as all get out in the company of those in the first two categories. They are also collectively powerless. That was demonstrated in the entire +Bill Morris affair.
  
• Finally you have the bureaucrats. Similar to the bullies except they are not quite as ambitious. They want "the quiet life". They don't want to stir up any trouble, or be found anywhere near any place where trouble or controversy is to be found. They just want to preserve their place in the queue until they can retire and live out their remaining years in peace and without great hassle. They couldn't give a rats about all the games being played at the top of the tree and while prepared to preserve their place in the queue they are not particularly interested in fighting in any overtly cut-throat way to advance themselves.

The institution once set up this superb two-tier education system that was a brilliant strategy for channelling "the best and brightest minds" eventually into the upper management ranks of the institution. That structure started to collapse decades ago. The "best and brightest" in Catholic schools today are amongst the first to exit the pews. They seek to contribute their talents in other domains of society today. The "best and brightest" still in the ecclesial ranks were shown the exit door decades ago — by the likes of JPII and BXVI. The evidence today is that seminaries are recruiting from the social misfit sectors of society not the "best and brightest".

I think the prognosis is pretty dire for institutionalised religion. The great hope has to be that in wider society there is still great interest in spirituality and value is placed on the spiritual dimension of life. Institutional religion might be in a state of collapse but I don't sense spirituality is in a state of collapse. Eventually something has to emerge out of this great questioning so many are engaged in today.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

Cathy, Ynot and all,

What a day? Again so much to digest and mull on. We've just watched three fascinating programs on television: The Great South Land on the ABC, and then the program on human evolution on SBS followed by Terry Pratchet's moving documentary on the right to die also on SBS. Earlier on Compass I watched the program on John Flynn, the founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Then there's all the discussion in this place.

Could I make two responses to Cathy's post and then a more general one...

Religious Freedom: Cathy I don't have any objection to people who want to worship the sun, or the moon, engage in Wicca beliefs, or engage in liturgical practices in Catholicism from the Middle Ages, the 1950s or at any other time. I think all people ought be provided with the freedom to find their own way spiritually. What I object to is when some minority segment of a population starts trying to force everybody to think and act in their way and is provided with the capacity to ostracise or outlaw people, and more so some majority, who do not agree with their theologies, philosophies and ways of thinking and acting. That seems to be what is occurring in the Catholic Church at the moment where, at the Second Vatican Council, the assembled leaders of the Church discerned a certain way forward in our thinking, behaviour and theology and a small minority objected to that and they have endeavoured (successfully) to impose their viewpoint to the extent that nearly 90% of the baptised across the educated world have walked out the door and ceased participating and listening. There is also evidence that the majority of priests and bishops have been effectively silenced (as I have discussed in other posts).

If some people get their spiritual highs from Latin masses and certain types of devotions, I have never had any objection to that and have long believed the rest of us ought to accommodate their needs. I believe it has gone well beyond that today and we are now in a situation where, with encouragement from the very top of the hierarchical tree, it is those minorities whose beliefs and practises are being touted as the only authentic or "orthodox" expression of Catholic belief and practise. There is simply no encouragement given from the highest ranks any longer to the forward-oriented, throw open the windows of the Church to the world and the future of humankind view which was broadly encouraged by any intelligent reading of the Vatican II documents and the discernment of the majority of those who assembled at that Council. Both views — which Benedict has labelled "the hermeneutic of continuity" and "the hermeneutic of rupture" – terms intended to be disparaging in themselves of the forward-oriented interpretation of Vatican II – cannot both be correct. In certain respects they are mutually exclusive. Benedict himself argues that himself and promotes what is the minority, hermeneutic of continuity, interpretation. Self-evidently from the numbers leaving, most people are not buying his interpretation. A minority do – and in zealot-like ways. Can you not see that many people find this objectionable?

The difference between Childish and Child-like: As I interpret it, when Christ, or anyone, invites us to be "child-like" the invitation is to have the sense of awe, wonder and inquisitiveness about life that small children exhibit. It is not an invitation to the immaturity, naivety and gullibility that are also characteristics of the state of mind of children. The way some people in the Church seem to interpret these words of Jesus is to a mindframe of immaturity, naivety and gullibility. I think there is a huge difference between the terms "childish" and "child-like".

Our need for role models: In recent days, and particularly triggered by the scenes around the world of Islamic protests — now actually leading to deaths — over this childish film made in the United States about Islam, I have found myself wondering about our need for role models. Would Muhammed have encouraged the sort of behaviour we have been seeing unleashed around the world at the moment? It has led me to again mulling on this question of what behaviours Jesus calls people to and, more so, the human need for roles models or icons.

I found the documentary tonight with scientist, Alice Roberts, on evolution interesting, even fascinating, in many respects. In the final analysis though I think she was concentrating on what might be termed "genetic evolution" — how our genes have changed — rather than "mental evolution" — how our minds have changed down through historical time. Would there be anyone to deny that there has not been a vast evolution in humanity mentally and intellectually — how we understand the world around us and how we understand ourselves? Intrinsic to this evolution, I would submit, is this process of continually building on the accumulated knowledge of those who have preceded us. For a long time it was a relatively slow process but, in more recent times, seems to have speeded up enormously simply by such things as the information that is now readily available to us.

What I am essentially leading to in this discussion is a question I've been mulling on today": is Jesus Christ the "greatest" human being that has ever lived? Or put another way, is Jesus Christ "the fullness of revelation" or "the complete roadmap to life", including now in the 21st Century, and will he continue to be "the complete roadmap to life" in the 25th Century? Bear with my argument to get to those questions...

I think human society is evolving and not just mentally but morally as well. Our moral beliefs and laws are evolving based on the insights, beliefs and previous practices of our forebears in much the same way that civil law evolves over time based on the precedents of previous knowledge and law and how these need to change to keep abreast of increasing human knowledge and our changed moral outlook. Look at the big questions such as how attitudes to lending money for interest (usury) have changed, out attitudes to how war ought be conducted, changing attitudes in the world (and in the Church) to capital punishment.

Some seem to posit that Jesus might be likened to some pre-programmed computer hard drive that God inserted into Creation at some specific point in time around 2,000 years ago. This "hard drive" contained all the laws and all the knowledge and was immutable and couldn't ever be changed — or allowed to further evolve. Jesus was "it" — the "greatest" — because he was born of a virgin, conceived by God the father directly, and injected miraculously into our human story like we might imagine some kind of brain transplant or "mental operating system update" similar to what Microsoft, Apple or any vendor of software might offer its clients from time to time.

In Jesus case though, we were informed by the theology we were brought up on, that there would only be ever one "mental and moral upgrade" and it would be Jesus the Christ. Mental and moral evolution ceased with Jesus. Jesus was to be viewed as providing the entire answers to everything. He was to be worshipped as "the greatest".

I find myself asking myself today whether I still believe the foregoing. Is that why I continue to "follow Jesus" today, or look to him as "the greatest" role model that ever lived? I look at our own children and kind myself asking: what forms their "moral compass" today? How do they discern what is right and wrong? In their professional lives how do they discern what behaviour or thinking is morally or ethically acceptable and what pushes or crosses a boundary to make some behaviours morally or ethically unacceptable? Given so many people have ceased religious practise in the educated world, I find myself asking how much are they dependent on the "moral capital" that is the legacy of civilisation when the church and religious leaders had more input into telling society what was morally right and wrong?

If, in a hypothetical, our children had to start again from scratch where would they begin in building a moral and ethical framework for what was acceptable and what was not acceptable in human behaviour? It's a hypothetical because of course we cannot erase previous human history, knowledge and experience.

To me, it seems, we need role models like Jesus the Christ, like Muhammad, like all the prophets and teachers of the Old Testament – and similarly in all the other great religions of the world. Similarly we need the Augustines, Aquinases, Thomas Mores, Teilhard de Chardins, John Henry Newmans and John XXIIIs right down into our present day. At one level I'd argue we need these role models in a pretty animalistic way — just as animals need leaders and behave in what we describe as "herd behaviours". That seems locked into us somewhere deep down at the almost genetic level, and certainly at the lizard-brain level. These protests we see igniting all around the world at the moment over this YouTube film I think can only be explained by behaviours emanating from the lizard-brain or animal instincts of human and mob behaviour. It is not rational and logical. Don't scoff too loudly because we Christians engage in similar behaviour at times also. The point I'm trying to make here, it seems to me, goes to the heart of this discourse this weekend from Christ himself. These people protesting around the world need Muhammad to be "the greatest" for a need within themselves. They need a leader just like animals need a leader. It's the need for a "greatest" within themselves not the "greatness" of the leader that is driving this behaviour. Is this what the discourse of Christ is trying to separate out and get his followers to think seriously about?

What I am leading to here is that I sense we also need role models at a higher level of our intelligence. This is similar to the way in which precedent and previous wisdom gradually moulds new laws whether in legal law or in scientific insight and law. That is why we honour the great jurists, law makers, and scientists of the past who provided significant breakthroughs in our thinking, and moral laws and behaviour.

I find myself increasingly asking: do I honour and follow Jesus Christ because I think of him as the Son of God — the embodiment of the perfect God — or because I think of him as the Son of Man — the embodiment of the perfect human being?

There is a saying about Jesus, in fact it was a part of the Great Jubilee logo: "Jesus: the same yesterday, today and forever". I find myself asking if I truly believe that today? I mean: is he "the same" or does not Christ evolve? Is his "resurrection" real and he continues to live — and evolve — today? Isn't my understanding of who Jesus is, and how he might change my life today, different to my father's view? Isn't the view of many theologians today different to what might have been the view of Augustine or Aquinas? Do we really believe Jesus is "the same yesterday, today and forever" or do we really believe in the resurrection that he is "alive today" in other words, like each of us, he continues to grow and evolve today? Can you see the confusion?

I pay attention to what commentators like Tom McMahon and John Chuchman are writing urging us to go back and lock on to the historical Jesus. I honestly wonder though if the "historical Jesus" is the One I am looking for? I do not doubt there was an historical figure named Jesus. My sense though is that I am not merely looking for some nice person who told us to run around "loving one another" and being nice to one another 2,000 years ago. He offered us a way of actually engaging in that deceptively simple process. I don't view Jesus merely as some "computer software upgrade" that was injected into the human story 2,000 years ago — end of story, there will be no more "upgrades", this is the end of Divine revelation! He is continually being enlarged and enhanced by the ongoing scholarship and reflection that continues to this day. Sure the words of scripture are "the same" as they were in the time of Aquinas or Augustine but isn't our understanding and interpretation of those words vastly more sophisticated today than it was in the time of those two Greats?

Do I continue to believe today Jesus is "the greatest"?

I think I do. But in a different way to the way in which I would have thought of it in the past. I think we human beings do require these great models and icons of what it means to be be human (and god-like). Jesus is not to be worshipped though in the manner in which we might worship some great sporting or film star from the present or the past. This is not celebrity worship that we are invited to engage in here. To me the importance of Christ the Messiah is that he represents or embodies "the wisdom of the ages". The resurrection mythology is endeavouring to say to us that he is alive today — in other words he "continues to grow and evolve" today. He might be "the fullness of revelation" in the sense that there is not going to be another Christ. That does not mean we yet, even after 2000 years, fully understand the man or that he ceased teaching us those two millennia ago.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

Hello Journeyman,

I agree with most of the points you make, and that the Jewish heritage of Jesus should not be put aside or overlooked.

In response, though, I would raise a few points:
1) Greek was the common language throughout the Mediterranean world, hence the use of Greek in the Gospels. A good portion of Jews by that time were no longer confident with Hebrew, hence the Septuagint emerging. It seems as if Jesus (or Yeshua) generally quoted from the Septuagint version (at least as shown in the Gospels). Even people like James, the brother of Jesus, referred to him (in writing) as Jesus.
2) I agree that it is unlikely Jesus was referred to as "Saviour" during his lifetime, but Rabbi (which was a title of respect given to a person learned in Scripture and the Law) would certainly seem very likely. We know the Jesus's opinions and interpretations of the Law were respected, even by Pharisees and Saducess, so, why should he not be addressed as "Rabbi"? In Matthew, we see Jesus arguing and teaching precisely like a Jewish Rabbi (which is what he was, after all!)
3) Now, if the very early Christians (many of whom were Jews), felt that 'Jesus' was the right transliteration of Christ's name, surely that should be given some credence? The Jerusalem Christian community of James were highly Jewish (i.e. they saw themselves as Jews firstly), and they used, when writing in Greek, the form 'Jesus'.

Well, I hope you will consider these points. My only concern about using 'Yeshua' is that, in fact, we have no way of knowing the original Aramaic pronounciation of Jesus' name, but our earliest surviving evidence (i.e. the NT) seem to indicate that those who actually DID know (the authors of James, Matthew and Jude), use 'Jesus'.

Well, I make no claims to being much of a scholar, but hope you will consider these points.

Dear Joe Journeyman,

"To some, it might be a distraction."

Very definitely, but I am probably easily distracted. Mea maxima culpa as my parish priest would say.

I found it so off-putting that I surveyed the generous extent of your commentary, discovered Yeshua at the end still going strong and couldn't face the questions in between.

You plan to continue this practice. Well, since commenters stick to the Gospel passage, despite the topic being the Sunday Readings, You'll probably never have to mystify us good/bad Catholics with Yirmiyahu.

Of course we need to be aware of and take into account Jesus' Jewishness, but this needs a lot more than baffling transliteration of Hebrew names in a commentary based on a Greek text - so far as we have an early text.

But I'm glad the thought helps you. I suspect it baffles not a few others.

Mary