The pope’s message that all religions are paths to God, languages of God, is what he has been saying since the beginning of his pontificate, and it is firmly built on the teaching of Vatican II and John Paul II. Unfortunately, the uptight, suspicion-ridden tone of the CDF document Dominus Iesus (2000) in tandem with the persecution of selected interreligious theologians such as Perry Schmidt-Leukel and Jacques Dupuis put a damper on such thinking in the Catholic world, and is still invoked by those eager to denounce the pope as a heretic.
On the basic issue, the pope is sensitive to the mystical core of the great religions. He will not deny that God makes Godself known to all, and particularly through their religions (as John Paul II noted). Augustine recognized that Plotinus had made great breakthroughs in knowledge of God, in his meditation on the absolute simplicity of the One, the “power of all things” (dunamis pantōn), who is not remote, but the very center, nearer to us than we are to ourseves, present in his entirety everywhere (totus ubique praesens). Augustine himself knew ecstatic moments of Plotininian mysticism, touching “idipsum” (the very reality of God) with the pinnacle of his mind, and letting his whole being be flooded with the presence of God as light (on reading some texts of Plotinus).
The critics of the pope focus their pearl-clutching on Islam, as if it were inconceivable that Muslims could reach God. I would answer in the words of a young man in a computer shop taking a break for prayer: “How many people can say that they know their creator?”
Catholicism is wasting away because it has cut itself off from the great concert of religious joy that is going on all the time as the divine Logos enlightens all minds (John 1:9). Pope Francis recognizes the closeness to God of many non-Christians, embraces them in mutual understanding. This ecumenical explosion is the antidote to religion as horror, as in Netanyahu’s “Remember Amalek!” which has now brought him to a new threshold of terrorism, using people’s mobile phones to blind them.
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Guidelines for the Advent of a Universal Mysticism: An Introduction | Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
• Andrew Harvey on Our “Divine Identity”
• The Mystic Jesus: “A Name for the Unalterable Love That All of Us Share”
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Living at a Time of Spiritual Evolution”
• Whether Christian or Muslim, James Foley Remains a “Symbol of Faith Under the Most Brutal of Conditions”
• Keeping the Spark Alive
Image: Kristen Solberg.
No comments:
Post a Comment