Tom McMahon turns his attention to how the Second Vatican Council considered the laity in his series looking back on the Documents of Vatican II. He's going to have more to say in a subsequent commentary but he ends today by suggesting the document on the laity was "grossly inadequate and limp". Perhaps it is easier to pass a judgment like that today. At the time of the Council the document might have been viewed as a big leap forward from the clericalism that had been building up for centuries? That seemed to be the message Tom was conveying last week.

How the world has changed since the Document on the Laity...

Last Wednesday in our Senior Health gathering I introduced the idea of the human body recycling two thousand gallons of fluid daily, a beautifully complex machine that controls a myriad of chemicals. We studied how Dopamine is a major factor in human health from awakening of the pituitary gland to the crippling effects of its loss which leads to Parkinson's. Overall this senior group is studying dementia, in particular Alzheimer's. By the year 2020 it is projected that 58,000 will have AlZ in Santa Clara County, its 2009 population estimate just under two million. Even though I consider care of our health as a spiritual issue I have no intention in this commentary of furthering our health study; I point here to the marvelous complexity of the human person and a chilling awareness of how the religion of my youth has experienced human nature. Clear is my awareness of how precious is this process we call life.

Fr Walter M Abbot SJ, editor of the Documents of Vatican II, died on 5th March 2008. America Magazine carried at obituary later than day.

As I hold in my hands 8-month-old grandchild, Audrey, I feel her sacredness — this infant is creation at its most complex and beautiful. I am alive in the age of special respect for the human person. I do make comparison to the attitude of the Roman Church toward persons just a short time ago. When the Vatican Two Document on Laity was written few knew the word "Dopamine" and few lived to the ripe age of today's senior citizen. During and after the Fall of the Roman Empire, the Crusades, and the Black Plague human beings were not care-fully studied. It would take the age of modernity to realize the human body as one of the Creator's masterpieces.

Child-to-seminarian-to-ordained-priest-to-married-man-and-therapist: I have been one becoming aware of the marvelous evolution of myself as maturing person. In early days of youth and ministry I accepted without question the notion that I, and the 3000 upon whom I poured baptismal water, became a "child of God" through the instrumentation of God's representative, the priest. Looking back I can see the progress made since medieval days. In educational systems of today every child is taught his/her individual worth. Up until the Vatican Two document APOSTOLICAM ACRUOSTATUM (DECREE ON THE APOSTOLATE OF THE LAITY) I struggled mightily as I ministered in the 1960's to the elite of a Roman Catholic parish. (Do you remember those days when we were so sure that only Catholics went to heaven?) I regret today that the focus on laity was how they could be used by Roman Church officials to foster institutional growth. With the development of the middle class Rome had a keen eye on the money that was now vested in ordinary people and Rome would control the people from its remote and isolated ivory towers.

Over the years my concept of people (laity) has broadened to include all humankind. I'm now a volunteer host for AmTrack at our local railway station, spending last Sunday night sorting out missed schedules and showing people of every race under the sun where to go to catch their train or bus. What a variety the Creator has produced … and every little tot is a beautiful child of God. Grandmothers dressed in traditional Indian sari carefully guarded children as we talked, the kids tucked safely into flowing garments; one beautiful child, perhaps four, turned as her parents walked away and offered me a generous smile with twinkling eyes. As outcast from the Roman religion for marrying as priest I am keenly aware of discrimination and how it has many a Roman Catholic by the throat, they so often thinking themselves as special in the eyes of their God. I don't buy it at all, especially this business of people special to God with instantaneous entry into heaven upon death. All people are God's people.

Zoroaster (628-551 BCE)

The God of Evil and the God of Good...

Perhaps four thousand years before Jesus a prophet /teacher named Zoroaster gave the world the first notion of the existence of the god of evil and the god of good. The notion of a good god heavily influenced a Persian-captive Judaism, carrying along the concept of a possible after life. Plato would continue this theme as he observed the movement of the sun and the moon, surely influenced by the Egyptian theology of the sun god Re. Zoroaster saw life as a mental struggle between truth and lie — today, literature spins on the concept of good and evil. Zoroaster is considered an unnamed prophet in Islam and highly regarded in Bahá'í. His name might mean "he who loves the light". Modern day Christians might be willing to see the seed base of Jesus being called "the Light of the World". The world of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus teemed with the myth stories of a god-man to be sent by the gods to save the human race. The idea of human salvation has been long lived and we need to keep on track, humbly, aka humanly, while seeking truth. Zoraster chose a god of goodness and that's the path I am following. I see Jesus on the same path.

What am I to be saved from?

OK … what am I in the 21st Century to be saved from? Pius the 12th in 1940 spoke of the Adam and Eve story as myth while Augustine's "original sin" concept got a deep six when educated people began to understand symbolism. How could an evolutionary people be stained with a fault committed by ancient ancestors who really never existed? Somewhere in the early Middle Ages, as mayhem accompanied empire destruction and mass annihilation in old Europe (Holy Roman Empire and Black Plague), the value of human life got lost and saving one's soul took over. Substitute guardians came into play as godparents as the saving waters of baptism poured over the heads of infants who could be soon orphaned. 50 million bodies they could not save but this illusive soul surely could. Trent polished up the sacramental system that offered eternal salvation — a system I entered intimately by ordination, yet always with a picture of my standing before my father's grave at age 14 wondering how his buried body could also be high in the sky … and what was this soul? Thomas means doubter and I was on my way to holding my childhood faith up for careful scrutiny.

A major human crisis (two opposed directions) confronted me within three hours of my ordination. I returned to my childhood home and as I got out of our auto Joe Higgins came from his home and we met in the middle of 15th street (where I had skate boarded downhill, played ball, and jumped on the back of the ice wagon with the neighborhood kids) … and Mister Higgins (I had never called him anything but Mister) knelt and kissed my anointed hands. I have tears in my eyes as I write about this, clearly recalling my stark and frightening awareness: "O God, I am no longer one of them!" The kid from 15th Street was seen to be different, no longer a real human. I would take some 20 years of searching to re-establish myself fully as a genuine human being, a proud member of the laity. From this position as parent and lover I would be able to appreciate the true human condition.

I will write next week on the glorious world of God and people, the human race to which I was born a member and was returned in full participation by leaving clericalism. The Vatican Two Document on Laity is grossly inadequate and limp. We shall return.

Tom McMahon in San Jose. Ca. glad to be home. 27/07/2010

©2010 Tom McMahon

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