A Lose/Lose Situation

Today is Aung San Suu Kyi’s 62nd birthday.

Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi is the non-violent, pro-democracy activist and leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma. She has been kept under a state of house arrest by the military dictatorship of Burma since 1989.

To mark the occasion of Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday, I’d like to share the first ever “political” commentary I had published – one that, as you’ll see, refers to events, or rather conditions, in Burma and their connection to corporate-led globalization. I also highlight (and lament) the gay community’s “selling out to corporate rule” - which is the “lose/lose situation” of my commentary’s title.

This particular commentary was published in the June 30, 2000 issue of the Twin Cities’ Lavender magazine. I wrote it as founder of the now defunct group Queers United for Radical Action (QURA).* Reading it seven years on, I can only smile at what a firebrand I was back then!

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A Lose/Lose Situation
By Michael Bayly

Lavender, Volume 6, Issue 133
June 30, 2000

Editor’s Note: The following piece was written by a reader in response to Paul Varnell’s commentary, “This March Is Sponsored By . . .” (Lavender, May 19, 2000).

Recently, OUT magazine concocted a “fashion spread” for its April 2000 edition. Entitled “Burmese Dreams,” this eight-page piece was the usual pathetic attempt to sell overpriced and, in this case, supposedly Burmese design-inspired clothes to gay men.

What made this particular marketing ploy especially repugnant was the fact that OUT magazine editors not only approved the putting of brown face paint on a Caucasian model, but also showed this model holding various tools and implements used in Burma’s slave labor camps.

These camps, established by Burma’s brutal military dictatorship, and populated by an estimated six million men, women, and children, serve the interests not only of the corrupt military regime, but also of Western corporations which profit from the military’s trampling of human, labor, and environmental rights in Burma.

This situation typifies the result of corporate globalization’s bottom line – profit above all other concerns. Though the case in Burma is perhaps the most extreme, the reality is that transnational corporations, based predominately in the United States and other northern hemisphere nations, and concerned primarily with auto, textile, and oil production, reap huge profits from exploiting the people and natural resources of nations in the southern hemisphere – be they in Southeast Asia, Africa, or Central and South America.

It is this state of affairs that Paul Varnell would have the GLBT community uncritically embrace – all for the “successful” advancement of the movement.

Varnell insists that the co-opting of the GLBT movement by corporate entities is a “win/win situation.” Yet in reality, the total, unquestioning acceptance of corporate influence of the sort Varnell advocates ensures, in any social movement, that the fundamental task of decision-making is inevitably, and often subliminally, transferred from the people to business “elites.” In other words, we get duped.

“Of course you’re accepted!” we’re told. “We’re marketing our product in a special way so that you will buy it and know that you are just like everyone else.” Many of us, however, do not want to be “just like” the consumerist junkies who comprise our society’s mainstream.

Furthermore, in the setup advanced by Varnell, power and direction are no longer channeled from a sense of egalitarianism and a base of democracy, but from a system of plutocracy – the rule of money. This is the “solid and reliable” reality Varnell would have us embrace – a reality that ensures our exploitation as surely as it is currently ensuring, through corporate globalization, the exploitation of millions of people and the environment.

Sponsorship and commercial arrangements may be as “American as apple pie,” as Varnell suggests, but other values – call them “meat-and-potato” values, if you like – should take priority if we are to maintain a healthy values system: human and environmental rights, for instance, or active resistance to greed and oppression.

Now, we all know what happens when we gorge ourselves on apple pie without first having a substantial meal of the basics. Yet, unfortunately, many in the GLBT community seem to be skipping the basics and heading straight for the “extras.” The results are draining our movement of vitality, vision, and credibility. OUT magazine’s aforementioned “fashion spread” is clear evidence of this.

As a gay man, I know whom I stand in solidarity with – and it’s not corporate America, whose greed ravages the people and environment of the planet. I didn’t undertake the painful journey of coming out from the closet of ignorance, denial, and oppression to ignore, deny, and oppress others. Yet alignment with corporate mantras such as “profit over all else” and “motives count for absolutely zero,” regardless of how “solid and reliable” they may appear to some, does just that.

Thankfully, there’s resistance to the GLBT community’s selling out to corporate rule. Many individuals and groups boycotted the recent Millennium March due to its overt corporate pandering. Of those who did attend, many noted a distinct blandness about the event, and longed for the spirit of creativity, adventure, and political consciousness of past events.

Closer to home, another example of this resistance is the Minneapolis City Council’s recent passing of a Selective Purchasing Agreement, which directs the city away from corporations and companies (such as 3M) that do business with Burma’s military regime. Though the measure was vetoed by Mayor Salyes Belton, whom many believed to have bowed to pressure from powerful corporations such as American Express, the initial passing of the measure was a hopeful and inspired moment.

The driving force behind getting the Burma Selective Purchasing Agreement presented and passed, albeit briefly, was Twin Cities resident Mick Schommer [right]. A gay activist, Schommer, like many individuals and groups within numerous and diverse communities, demonstrates the capability of making the connection between all forms of oppression. And as recent events in Seattle (against the World Trade Organization) and Washington, D.C. (against the World Bank) attest, this “connection” is increasingly being recognized as unfettered capitalism manifested in a distinctly corporate form of globalization which values profit over all other considerations.

The selling out to corporate rule is a betrayal of all that makes our journey as GLBT people and as authentic human beings unique – heightened conscious insight, increased creativity and inclusivity, and greater compassion. It also implicates us in the exploitation of others and the environment.

Now, that’s what I’d call a lose/lose situation.

* QURA was a network of LGBTQI activists involved in a diverse range of social justice issues. The network was dedicated to educating itself and the wider LGBTQI community on the threats to democracy, human life, and the environment posed by the nexus of corporate globalization, militarism, and environmental degradation. QURA also sought to organize and participate in educational and non-violent direct action events in order to facilitate positive and radical social and economic change, and to facilitate and share a uniquely queer spirit of resistance to all forms of oppression.


Related Off-site Link:
Faces of Resistance: Images and Stories of Progressive Activism at the Turn of the Millennium (1997-2006) – Michael Bayly.


UPDATE: Burmese Nobel Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi Has Turned Into an Apologist for Genocide Against Muslims – Mehdi Hasan (The Intercept, April 13, 2017).

It’s Time We Evolved Beyond Theological Imperialism

The above photograph was taken by Evaristo Sa during Pope Benedict XVI’s recent visit to Brazil. It shows the pope hugging children at “Farm of Hope,” a drug rehabilitation center in Guaratingueta, 200 kilometers from Sao Paulo.

For me, this image is a beautiful representation of that ancient understanding of what the papacy should be all about – a symbol of unity within the Church.

In this particular photo the pope is clearly bringing people together – and not just the children who feature in the photograph but those viewing it. Don’t you feel as if you could readily be part of such a loving and inclusive embrace?

Unfortunately, the pope also alienated some while in Brazil. I’m talking, of course, about his startling declaration that the indigenous peoples welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest of the Americas because they were “silently longing” for Christianity.


Reaction

According to various media reports, indigenous people throughout South America were not impressed by the pope’s comments. A Reuters article, for instance, reports that Brazil’s Indians found the pope’s comments “arrogant and disrespectful,” “wrong and indefensible.”

The article goes on to note that, “Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, through slaughter, disease or enslavement. Many Indians today struggle for survival, stripped of their traditional ways of life and excluded from society.”

“Even the Catholic Church’s own Indian advocacy group in Brazil, known as Cimi, distanced itself from the Pope,” reports the article.


“Theological Imperialism”

I think it’s fair to say that the pope’s comments reflect “theological imperialism,” which author and theologian Darmuid Ó Murchú defines in his book, Reclaiming Spirituality (Gill and Macmillan, 1997), as “the Christian claim (to which Judaism and Islam also subscribe) that our religion contains the fullness of revelation, in the light of which all other religions are deemed to be somehow inferior” (p. 29).

Ó Murchú also notes that such a claim and its promulgation and/or enforcement is both “arrogant and oppressive.”

Am I saying that the pope, personally, is arrogant and oppressive? No, just the theological framework from which he is operating. It’s a “framework” related, of course, to that “strange form of authoritarianism,” that “Big Book of Doctrine” school of theology identified by scholar Gary Macy, and to which I referred in a previous Wild Reed post.

This particular form of authoritarianism, writes Macy, “fomented both by the ultra-montanism of the late nineteenth-century papacy and by Enlightenment anti-clericalism, understands Roman Catholicism as fundamentally an attempt to provide the definitive answers to all questions, usually in one ‘big book of doctrine,’ whether it be Thomas’s Summa, Denzinger’s Enchiridion, or lately the Roman Catechism of the Universal Church.”

Understandably, such a “school of theology” can easily morph into theological imperialism.

The intrinsic superiority of Catholicism is still an official teaching of the Catholic Church. While some Catholics cringe at such a teaching, others revel in it. For instance, popular satirist Stephen Colbert’s comment, “I consider all religions equal. And by equal, I mean they’re all tied for second place behind Catholicism,” has recently been taken quite seriously (and celebrated) by a number of traditionalist Catholic bloggers. (Tellingly, by their own admission, the rest of Colbert’s humor goes over their heads!)

Recently, an anonymous visitor left a comment in which he asked if I believed that the Catholic Church holds the fullness of “Ultimate Truth.”

I have no problem with the concept of Ultimate Truth but I’ve long concluded that the Roman Catholic Church does not have a monopoly on such truth. Actually, I’ve come to believe that the entire Body of Christ, the Mystical Body of Christ, is what holds within itself Ultimate Truth.

And as Catholic Worker co-founder Dorothy Day noted: “That the Mystical Body includes only the Roman Catholic Church is heresy. The Mystical Body [of Christ] is the inseparable oneness of the human race. . . . In all human creation, there is no one that does not have Christ within.”

Through my theological studies and life experiences, I’ve come to understand Christ as that spirit of consciousness and compassion embodied by Jesus, and which Jesus calls each one of us to likewise embody.

I’ve come to recognize and experience this spirit, this Christos, as the active presence of that reality which is ultimately beyond comprehension yet which nevertheless envelops and infuses all matter. “Christos” and “God” are just two of many names given to the presence and action of this reality beyond and within human experience.*

My point is that the pope’s recent controversial comments in Brazil make sense, if you will, given the orthodox, theological framework he is operating from. That so many people have found his comments to be “arrogant” and “wrong” tells me that the Church as people of God is ahead of the Vatican in evolving beyond “theological imperialism.” Of course, most would not employ the intellectualized language of theology to make their case. Rather, they simply sense that no one faith tradition – not even Roman Catholicism – can claim a monopoly on God’s boundless presence in the world and throughout human experience and history.


A Pilgrimage of Discovery

Ultimately, of course, awareness of God in our lives and in the world, cannot be taught, it can only be evoked or awakened in the mind. That’s why I’ve come to believe that the language of theology is closer to metaphor and poetry than it is to doctrine and dogma.

So, employing the metaphorical and poetic language of theology, I like to suggest that together as the Mystical Body of Christ we are on a pilgrimage of discovery. We are continually discovering new aspects and dimensions of what it means to be fully human, and thus new depths of “the Truth.”

I’m not an absolutist. I don’t need to know that “my Church” has all the answers to every possible question, right at this moment in time. To claim that it does smacks of hubris – or, in the terminology of some, “religious imperialism.”

I don’t subscribe to a model of revelation that sees truths handed down from on high — complete and unchangeable. For as Pope John XXIII reminded us, “We are not on Earth to guard a museum but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

Such a statement implies that revelation filters upwards through human life and experience, that revelation is ongoing. It’s a concept that is both wondrous and unsettling. Yet for those who need absolute answers for absolutely everything, it’s a concept that is extremely threatening.

Embracing the reality of ongoing revelation propels us out of our comfortable ghettos of formulated answers and into compassionate, and at times challenging, engagement with the world. The Catholic tradition tells us that it is through such engagement that we are called to discern and incarnate the reign of God in every aspect of life.

In closing, I offer the words of Catholic theologian Leonardo Boff who, in an article titled “The Forsaken Ones,” notes the following:

Surely when the Latin American bishops in Aparecida, Brazil, had to deal with the central issue of the mission of the Church, they must have faced the still unresolved historical question arising from the treatment afforded the native peoples of these lands, and the Afro descendants. Christianity in general was always sensitive to the poor, but implacable and ethnocentric when it came to cultural otherness. The other (the Indigenous and the Black) was considered an enemy, pagan and infidel. “Just wars” were waged against them and they were read The Requirement (a document written in Latin, recognizing the king as sovereign and the Pope as the representative of God), and if the document was not accepted, forced submission was legitimized. We must never forget that our society is based on great violence: on colonialism . . .

This is why we were astonished when we quite recently heard that the first evangelization was “neither an imposition nor an alienation” and that trying to rehabilitate the religions of our ancestors would be “a backward movement and a regression”. Confronted with this, we cannot but hear the voice of the victims echoing into the present, witnesses of the other side of the conquest, such as the voice of the Mayan prophet, Chilam Balam de Chumayel: “Oh!, let us grieve because they arrived... They came to make our flowers whither away, so that only their flower may live... They came to castrate the sun.” And their lamentation continues: “Sadness was introduced among us, Christianity... That was the beginning of our misery, the beginning of our slavery.”

According to Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West, the Iberian invasion was the greatest genocide in human history. Destruction amounted to around 90% of the population. Of the 22 million Aztecs in 1519, when Hernán Cortés entered Mexico, by only one million was left by 1600. And the survivors, as expressed by the theologian Jon Sobrino, are crucified peoples hanging from the cross. The mission of the Church is to take them down from that cross, and bring them back to life . . .

The mission of the Church is one of justice, not charity: to reinforce the rescue of ancient cultures with their soul that is their religion, and after that, to establish a dialogue in which both parties’ complements, purifies and mutually evangelizes one other.

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* In light of all that I’m sharing, I guess you could say I embrace a Spirit Christology, rather than the traditional Logos Christology.

I’m certainly not claiming to have come up with this “Spirit Christology.” Indeed, it’s been present, in one form or another, both within and beyond Catholicism for centuries. Some maintain that it is the earliest form of Christology.

One contemporary Catholic theologian to have explored and articulated such a Christology is Jesuit theologian Roger Haight. His book, Jesus: Symbol of God (Obis, 1999), has been described as a “work of vast erudition” and a “thorough discussion” of post-modern Christology. Accordingly, it’s a work of scholarship that willingly explores beyond the parameters set by the current edition of that “Big Book of Doctrine” school of theology.

Not surprisingly, Haight’s work unsettles the gatekeepers of orthodoxy (see here and here). But then, that’s what good theologians should be prepared to do. They shouldn’t serve as mere stenographers for the Vatican.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
A Catholic’s Prayer for His Fellow Pilgrim, Benedict XVI
John Allen on the Censuring of Jon Sobrino
Authentic Catholicism: The Antidote to Clericalism
Beyond a PC Pope
Thoughts on Authority and Fidelity
A Dangerous Medieval Conviction
Charles Curran: Loyal Dissenter
Casanova-inspired Reflections on Papal Power – at 30,000 Ft.
The Onward Call

Good News from Colombia . . . and Massachusetts

Two positive developments in the Americas!

First, the Associated Press reports that:

Colombia is set to become the first Latin American country to give established gay couples full rights to health insurance, inheritance and social security under a bill passed by its Congress. The plan approved Thursday is expected to take effect soon. It is backed by the country’s conservative President Alvaro Uribe.

The measure would allow gay couples in long-term relationships to have the same health insurance and social security benefits as heterosexual couples. It also guarantees that assets accumulated during the relationship will be divided between the two, and in the case of death, inherited by the survivor. Previously, possessions were passed on to blood relations.

Some states and cities in Latin America have passed similar laws, but no other country in the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic region has done so at a national level, said Marcela Sanchez, director of the gay rights group Colombia Diversa. She said as many as 300,000 gay couples in Colombia stand to benefit.

“I’m elated,” said Catalina Gomez, an English teacher, who said she plans to use the new legal status to take out health insurance for her partner Monica, a self-employed designer and disc jockey. “It validates our union before the law so we no longer have to going around lying about our relationship.”

To read the full Associated Press report, click here.

The BBC’s coverage of this “great step” can be read here.



Meanwhile in the U.S., the Boston Globe reports that:

A proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage was defeated today by a joint session of the [Massachusetts] Legislature by a vote of 151 to 45, eliminating any chance of getting it on the ballot in November 2008. The measure needed at least 50 votes to advance.

The Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the group that spearheaded the court case that led to the Supreme Judicial Court’s 2003 decision to legalize same-sex marriage, issued a statement praising the vote.

“We’re proud of our state today, and we applaud the legislature for showing that Massachusetts is strongly behind fairness,” said Lee Swislow, executive director Advocates & Defenders. “The vote today was the triumph of time, experience, and understanding over fear and prejudice.”

An excerpt from an editorial of the Globe reads:

Legislators deserve to be proud of their votes, and residents can be proud of Massachusetts.

After three years of experience with gay marriage that has harmed exactly no one, the state’s gay and lesbian couples can now get back to their ordinary lives, enduring the mundane tasks and rituals of daily life alongside their neighbors and co-workers. But now they do so secure in the knowledge that they are full citizens in a Commonwealth of inclusion.


What a pity the leadership of the Catholic Church isn’t enlightened enough to be at the forefront of efforts to ensure full civil rights (including marriage rights) for LGBT people. Members of the Catholic leadership could (and should) be supporting and celebrating with us today these recent events in Colombia and Massachusetts.

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Postscript - June 21, 2007: Timothy Kincaid over at Box Turtle Bulletin reports that:

Colombia’s bill to recognize same-sex couples is not a go, after all. A floor vote was called for when many supporters were absent. And it seems the Catholic Church threatened Senators with being denied the sacraments, and some of those who previously supported the bill got cold feet . . .

So the race is still on for who will be the first Latin American country to grant same-sex couples rights and protections. Will it be Costa Rica? (Probably not.)

The Colombian bill will be reintroduced in July.


Image 1: Jose Luis Santos, 36, left, and Jaime Beltran, 34, a gay couple from Colombia pose for a portrait in Bogota, Friday, June 15, 2007. Colombia is set to become the first Latin American country to give established gay couples full rights to health insurance, inheritance and social security under a bill passed by its Congress. (AP Photo/William Fernando Martinez)
Image 2: Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Real Gay Agenda
The Changing Face of “Traditional Marriage”
Naming and Confronting Bigotry
On Civil Unions and Christian Tradition
Truth Telling: The Greatest of Sins in a Dysfunctional Church
The Non-Negotiables of Human Sex

Recommended Off-site Links:
“Bay State Stands Tall” (Hartford Courant editorial)
Love Makes A Family
Spouses for Life: A Wedding Album

Johnson and Tushnet Debate Is as Much About Revelation as It Is Homosexuality

A number of people have contacted me about this exchange in Commonweal between Bible scholar and author Luke Timothy Johnson and journalist and blogger Eve Tushnet. Both writers offer their views on homosexuality and the Church – and, in doing so, present two very different perspectives on what can be considered authoritative sources of divine revelation and thus the process or nature of such revelation.

For Luke Timothy Johnson, it’s clear that revelation is ongoing. “Implicit in an appeal to experience [as an authoritative source of revelation],” he writes, “is an appeal to the living God whose creative work never ceases, who continues to shape humans in his image every day, in ways that can surprise and even shock us.”

A static view of revelation, on the other hand, is presented by Eve Tushnet, who is a proponent of John Paul II’s “theology of the body” and thus, presumably, the Courage apostolate. Tushnet views personal experience as a source of revelation with suspicion as the answers have already been given via the teachings of the Church. Our task is not to challenge Church teaching or seek to expand, reform, or negate it but to make it “believable by becoming more Catholic.” Such a perspective reflects what historian Gary Macy has described as the “Big Book of Doctrine” school of theology.

At some future time I may write more about Johnson and Tushnet’s differing perspectives on homosexuality and thus the underlying issues of revelation and authority. Then again, I’ve probably said as much as I want to on such matters in previous posts – in particular the three-part The Many Forms of Courage and Thoughts on Authority and Fidelity.


Recommended Off-site Link:
Quaestio Disputata: Luke T. Johnson on Homosexuality by Joseph S. O'Leary.

Chris McGillion Responds to the “Exacerbating” Actions of Cardinal Pell

In reflecting on the recent actions of Cardinal Pell,
Chris McGillion ponders what it means to be Catholic.

Earlier this evening a friend who is a priest here in the St. Paul/Minneapolis Archdiocese informed me of a very well written commentary by Australian academic Chris McGillion in today’s (or, in Australian time, yesterday’s) Brisbane Times.


Described as “one of [the] most penetrating observers of the religious life of [Australia],” Chris McGillion (pictured above) teaches in the school of communication at Charles Sturt University. A journalist and author, McGillion has for a number of years been the religious columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald.

His latest commentary is in response to recent statements made by Cardinal George Pell of the Sydney Archdiocese. As has been noted in a previous post, a number of these statements focus on Pell’s seeking of a public commitment to a profession of faith and an oath of fidelity by principals, deputy principals and religious education coordinators in Catholic schools.

A profession of faith, McGillion notes, is “little more than the Apostles creed . . . which all practicing Catholics recite each Sunday at Mass.” An “oath of fidelity,” however, is something quite different. It is something “usually subscribed to only by senior clerics in the church,” and requires one “to hold fast to the deposit of faith in its entirety, to avoid any teaching contrary to it, and to follow the common discipline of the entire church.”

Such an oath would require those working in Catholic schools to publicly commit to non-core Catholic teachings on such issues as homosexuality or women’s ordination. As McGillion points out, these are teachings that “ many Catholics conscientiously reject and which even many bishops concede need further exploration and finessing.”

McGillion also highlights Pell’s “recent warning that Catholic politicians should consider the consequences of their vote on therapeutic cloning or, as [Pell] put it in the Herald last Friday, just as members of a political party who cross the floor on critical issues don’t expect to be rewarded and might be penalized, so it is in the church.” (So much for the primacy of conscience!)

It’s clear that it is the “veiled threats” by the Cardinal that most concern McGillion. Indeed, his main concern, as expressed in his commentary, is to do with “the way [Pell] is acting – rather than in his purpose.”

Such actions, McGillion observes, are “exposing and exacerbating disunity and division in Catholic ranks.” This is all the more unfortunate given that as a bishop, Pell should be “a symbol of unity of the faithful.”

McGillion concludes his commentary by offering two very different responses to the question, “What does it mean to be Catholic?”

“One answer,” he writes, “is to employ the faith to inform one’s decisions. That’s an understanding that is messy and uncertain but it is also creative and conducive to the development of responsible adults.”

And the second response? Well, it’s the one that Cardinal Pell “seems to prefer,” says McGillion, and it says that “to be Catholic means having ready-made answers universally applied to the dilemmas that life inevitably invites.”

Such an understanding, says McGillion, “is neat and tidy but also potentially stultifying.”

“More worrying,” he writes, “is that this is an answer that betrays an acute doubt about whether God is involved in some ongoing sense in human affairs.”

McGillion, who is the editor of the book A Long Way from Rome: Why the Australian Catholic Church is in Crisis (Allen and Unwin, 2003) writes with great clarity and a discernable sense of love for the Church. The perspective he shares and the questions he raises are valid and crucial at this particular stage of the Roman Catholic Church’s pilgrim journey.

To read Chris McGillion’s June 11 commentary in its entirety, click here.


UPDATES:
Cardinal George Pell Charged
with Multiple Sexual Offences
– Melissa Davey
The Guardian
June 28, 2017

Cardinal George Pell
Found Guilty of Child Sex Abuse
– Adam Cooper
The Sydney Morning Herald
February 26, 2017

Cardinal George Pell Released From Jail
After High Court Quashes
Child Sexual Abuse Conviction
– Melissa Davies
The Guardian
April 7, 2020

Why Have Media Outlets Been Fined
More Than $1 Million for Their Pell Reporting?
– Rick Sarre
The Conversation
June 4, 2021

Cardinal George Pell
Dies in Rome Aged 81
– ABC News
January 10, 2023

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The Two-Sided Catholic Crisis
• Thoughts on Authority and Fidelity
• Coadjutor Archbishop Nienstedt’s “Learning Curve”
• Reflections on the Primacy of Conscience
• The Question of an “Informed” Catholic Conscience
• Who Gets to Be Called “Catholic” – and Why?
• Our Catholic “Stonewall Moment”

Recommended Off-site Link:
“Secularism is Simply Respecting Difference” – a 2004 commentary by Chris McGillion.

Image: Allen and Unwin.

Corpus Christi

Body and Blood of Christ, 2004, installation, styrofoam, gold leaf, roses and neon. Ten ft. Exhibited at the National Gallery of Jamaica as part of Curator’s Eye 1, January 18 - June 19, 2004. Kingston, Jamaica.

Following is how Laura Facey, the sculptor of “Body and Blood of Christ,” describes her work:

Upon invitation for this exhibit, it was suggested I create a religious piece. The seed was easily sown and within a few days a rough five inch clay maquette of the Body and Blood of Christ evolved. The piece would be ten feet tall with the chest wound of Christ and a shadow of red roses.

During experiences of the stigmata (the appearance of the sacred wounds of Christ) the perfume of flowers has been evident. The concept complete, I sought affirmation from the universe.

I opened a small prayer book and read:

The only way we can know
the Spirit of God
is by complete humility.
He does not propound theories
for us to follow. Rather,
he helps us in the self-loss
in the following of our whole
selves into following the
naked Christ, ourselves naked.
Then things happen,
for the Holy Spirit is power
whereby we may learn
to hear truth.

Mother Mary Clare (1899-1987)

This is the Body and Blood of Christ given for you. These words are said at Holy Eucharist services in churches the world over. You also hear, Lamb of God, take away the sin of the world.

This is the emptying, the cleansing of your “inner home.” Then, into that prepared place is poured the body and blood of Christ. His life, shared as a divine example, not exception, is now inside of you!

My Christ is virile, whole, and alive.

At any moment we can choose to be a living Christ.

This is the essence of my work.

_______________________________

Images from around the world of Catholics
celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi . . .

Children in their First Communion attire prepare to walk over a floral carpet during a Corpus Christi procession in the northern Spanish town of Castropol June 10, 2007. In this traditional Catholic religious celebration, the procession meanders through streets decorated with colorful floral carpets which are later walked on by the children who have just celebrated their First Communion. (Reuters/Eloy Alonso)



Haitians sing as they take part in a traditional Corpus Christi procession in Port-au-Prince June 7, 2007. (Reuters/Kena Betancur)



Women wearing traditional mantilla dresses participate in a Corpus Christi procession in Carrion de los Cespedes June 7, 2007. The mantilla is an Andalusian traditional garment which women wear during grand and religious occasions. (Reuters/Marcelo del Pozo)

A man dressed in a red and yellow costume representing the devil, known as El Colacho, jumps over babies placed on a mattress in Castrillo de Murcia during traditional Corpus Christi celebrations, June 10, 2007. This northern Spanish town has for centuries chosen to protect its young from evil spirits with an unusual ritual in which a man dressed as the devil leaps over mattresses each holding four or five babies. (Reuters/Felix Ordonez)



A Roman Catholic altar boy holds up a cross while leading a procession of worshippers during the celebration of Corpus Christi in Port-au-Prince, Thursday, June 7, 2007. (Associated Press/Nick Whalen)


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
“Receive What You Are, the Body of Christ” – Reflections on the Eucharist
A Christmas Reflection by James Carroll
Palm Sunday Around the World
The Triumph of Love: An Easter Reflection
He is Risen!
The Ascension
Pentecost

Recommended Off-site Link:
Feast of Corpus Christi in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia.

John Pilger on Resisting Empire

One of the books I read while in Australia last year was Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire by renowned investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger.


Pilger has spent most of his adult life documenting the American empire and the resistance it has encountered from various places around the world. Freedom Next Time, for instance, looks at ongoing struggles in Afghanistan, Diego Garcia, India, Palestine, and South Africa.

In addition to authoring several books, Pilger has made over fifty documentaries – the most recent being The War on Democracy (the trailer of which can be viewed here).

Last Friday, John Pilger was interviewd by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales, the hosts of Pacific Radio’s Democracy Now! program. As you will see, this interview offers the type of informed conversation and analysis that is sorely missing from American media coverage of international events.

In the following excerpts from this interview, Pilger talks about his new book and film on resisting empire, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the failings of the mainstream media, and the rise of popular movements throughout Latin America.

_________________________________________


Amy Goodman: Talk about the main thesis of your book and your latest film, resisting empire.

John Pilger: Well, the book is about empire – [and] as you say, it’s about resisting empire. But it’s [also] about how modern empire works – especially through misinformation. It’s about double standards. It’s about censorship by omission, which runs through so much of the mainstream media. And it’s about that eternal struggle . . . of people against power and the struggle of people against the abandonment of collective memory and historical memory.

The title, Freedom Next Time, comes from, I suppose, looking at a number of struggles where people have glimpsed freedom, in some cases have touched it, as in South Africa, but it is yet denied to them. And it’s denied to them by the forces of empire. . . .


Amy Goodman: This week is the 40th anniversary of the Arab-Israeli war in 1967. There is a lot of coverage all over the world now about what is happening there. I was surprised to see a BBC documentary that said that the classic myth is the Israeli David to the Arab Goliath. But what that doesn’t include, the BBC said, is the US and British backing of Israel at the time.

You have done several films, Palestine is the Issue, and . . . years later another film, Palestine is Still the Issue. You have a chapter in your latest book, Freedom Next Time, [entitled] “The Last Taboo,” that begins with two quotes: Amira Hass, the Israeli journalist . . . who said, “An ideology that divides the world into those who are worth more and those who are worth less, into superior and inferior beings, does not have to reach the dimensions of the German genocide to be wrong.” And then you quote the Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, saying “There is no such thing as Palestinians. They never existed.”

John Pilger: Well, when you first quoted the BBC of the Arab Goliath and Israeli David, I’m afraid that is still the view. I quote at length in the book a pioneering study done by Glasgow University Media Group in which it asked a cross-section of viewers of television news in Britain, what they knew about the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict. And they found that of young viewers, I think people under the age of 21 who watched TV news, 92% of them thought that the settlers, the illegal settlers, were Palestinians. And the clear message from this report was that the more people watch television, the less they knew. And, I think Edward Said’s rather bitter lament just before he died, in which he blamed journalists – foreign journalists – for ignoring the history of the Palestinian struggle, never contextualizing it, never using the terms equally, like terrorism towards Israel as well as toward the Palestinians. . . . His complaint stands today, and I think the fact that we still have so much misinformation about what is the world’s longest military occupation and one of the world’s longest struggles for basic justice, is a reflection on the so-called media age in which we are said to live.

Amy Goodman: Do you feel like it changed from 1974, when you did Palestine is the Issue, to 2002, when you did Palestine is Still the Issue?

John Pilger: No. I made this film, Palestine is the Issue 30 years ago, and in calling the new film the same, Palestine is Still the Issue, [I] meant to say that . . . the basic issues are still there. It is about justice for the Palestinians, their right to return to their homeland, the right to live decent lives, the right to have all the things that we take for granted. . . .

You know, our language has been so distorted. You now have constantly in the United States, and to a great degree in Britain, Hamas, for instance, is reported always with the follow-on as the terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel. Israel is not reported as an organization – call it a terrorist if you like, I would – committed to the destruction of Palestine. And that is the news day after day, the destruction of Palestine, the building of a wall through Palestine, the denial of the occupied territories, the encircling and imprisonment of the 1.4 million people of Gaza. In other words, we’re still asked to see, with the very honorable exception of your own program and others, we’re still asked to see the Middle East in terms of Western/Israeli power, of its usefulness or its expendability.

Juan Gonzales: In your viewpoint, what is the basis for why especially the media in the West have such a blind spot toward a fair portrayal of the situation in Israel? And how has does that relate to your overall theme of this book of empire and the importance of understanding empire in the world?

John Pilger: I think I started to realize what I was first sent to Vietnam as a foreign correspondent, and [soon realized] that basically what we call the mainstream media, that amorphous thing, is an extension of great power. Yes, there are exceptions and very fine exceptions.

[In relation to the Israeli/Palestinian situation, you have] extraordinarily powerful, vociferous groups supporting Israel [and] associating any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. And I’ve been at the tail wind of this, with massive e-mail campaigns and so on. Very intimidating. It’s worked on the BBC to a great extent. I think when you have that, then the media will then revert back to what it sees, interestingly, as the center. Well, it’s not the center. It’s really an extension, an expression of government and power. Yes, personalities are criticized. George W. Bush is fair game probably now. Certainly, finally, Tony Blair is, but the system that produced them is not. . . .

Amy Goodman: John Pilger, talk about [your new film, The War on Democracy].

John Pilger: Well, the film The War on Democracy is the first one I have done for cinema that will be shown on television later. It opens in the U.K. on the fifteenth of June. It is set in Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, Central America, and here in the United States. And it really is, I suppose the story of empire, again, in the 21st century.

But it is the story of the backyard, the story of that whole neglected terrain of empire. And it’s a very positive story because it charts the rise of popular movements throughout Latin America: in Bolivia, in Argentina, in Ecuador, and in Venezuela, and the meaning for democracy with these popular movements, how they are very different from the representative democracy that we like, that we subscribe to in this country [and] in Britain, but how the grassroots are becoming part of a new movement, and how this threatens the United States. There is something of a deja vu of Nicaragua, where I also made a film in the early 1980s. But that was a small, isolated country of 3 million people. These are some very powerful countries, especially Venezuela, which is a supplier, of course, of much of the United States’ oil. . . .

Juan Gonzales: I’d like to ask you, given the historical reality in Latin America, that there have been popular movements arising certainly throughout most of the 20th century, and for at least during the Cold War, the United States was always able to argue: well, these are movements either instigated or inspired by communism, by the international communist movement. Obviously, [since] the collapse of the Soviet Union, our government cannot say that anymore. They have to deal with the reality, as you say, that these are popular movements dealing with the concrete conditions and contradictions of their own societies, where obviously the United States has a big role in the current realities of those societies. But to what degree do you sense . . . that the forces in these various countries are coming together in a sort of a common front against the American empire?

John Pilger: There has always been, as you suggest, a tradition of great popular movements in Latin America. In my view, Latin America has a great deal to teach us, and perhaps because it’s had a great deal to teach us in the West, we’ve chosen to ignore them. In the nineteenth century, countries like Venezuela, with its great son, the liberator Simon Bolivar, won independence. Most of the history of Latin America, the struggle against the Spanish, then against to some degree against the European invasion, and then against the Americans – the North Americans – has been largely ignored. And Chavez and Morales and others throughout Latin America and the great movements, are part of that historical process. But this time they’re ahead of the game.

The interesting thing in the past is the US, using the rather thin cover of communism, has been able to crush them. Castro was not a communist when he was declared an enemy – or at least he wasn’t a self-proclaimed communist when he was declared an enemy. The point about Castro and the point about all these people was that he was daring to be independent and daring to defy the United States.

And what is also interesting, is for the first time in modern history, not only are the indigenous people organizing, producing their own government, for example in Bolivia, but there is a regional cooperation between countries in which people barely knew anything about each other. The communications in Latin America were controlled by the British, for instance, in the 19th and early part of the 20th century. So it is a coming together. I have to say it is quite an exciting time. There are pitfalls. It’s not going to plan, exactly, here and there. But it is clearly that that old cliché about the Sandinistas, it’s the threat of a good example. And if you hear this campaign now being mounted in so much of the Western media, against Latin America, it is very evocative of the same campaign that painted tiny Nicaragua as a threat to the United States. . . .

Juan Gonnzalez: You’ve been to all these countries around the world where people are in resistance, do you perceive this Bush-Blair period, do you see as just an abnormality? Or do you see it as the empire consolidating its reactionary nature?

John Pilger: I think both are probably happening. There is no doubt that there is a crisis within the empire. But I think those who think it is about to fall apart, and collapse under the weight of its own contradictions and all that, they are wrong. . . .

To read Democracy Now!’s interview with John Pilger in its entirety, click here.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Taking on Friedman
In Search of a “Global Ethic”
Let’s Also Honor the “Expendables”
Praying for George W. Bush
John le Carré’s “Dark Suspicions”
Tariq Ali Discusses Rudyard Kipling

Recommended Off-site Links:
JohnPilger.com
Graeme Greene’s interview with John Pilger
Pablo Navarrete’s interview with John Pilger
Faces of Resistance: Images and Stories of Progressive Activism at the Turn of the Millennium

Crackerjack Man

Crack-er-jack – adjective. Slang. Of excellent quality or ability; fine.

Recently I shared the Richard Lowenstein-directed music video for the song “Saved Me” by New Zealand-born singer/songwriter Jenny Morris.

Friday night being music night here at The Wild Reed, I’d like to take the opportunity to share a second Jenny Morris song – “Crackerjack Man,” from her 1991 album Honeychild (dedicated, incidentally, to “Earth Shepherds and Freedom Fighters”).


As you’ll see, the video clip for “Crackerjack Man” is a much simpler endeavor than the one for “Saved Me,” which featured Lowenstein’s artful montage of images depicting life in Nicaragua during the time of the Sandinistas. But herein lies “Crackerjack Man” ’s special charm – at least for me. It’s basically, the singer, her band, and a great song.

And who would have thought a simple tale of a mother who can’t afford “new running shoes” for her children could be the basis for such a gem of a funky pop song!?

As Morris herself has mused: “How did it come to be that there are so many with so little and so few with so much?”

Time is never on your side,
You spend your life trying to keep your pride.
Like trying to pick up mercury,
You can’t always hold what you can see.

And how to face another day?
In rapid fire the children say,
“Why can’t we get some running shoes?”
And you can’t explain, and you can’t explain
And you can’t explain why they have to move.
But you have to move . . .

See also the previous Wild Reed post: Saved Me.

Authenticity, Changing Norms, and Life-long Monogamy

My friend Paula recently shared with me her thoughts on authenticity, changing norms, and life-long monogamy. As you’ll see, Paula offers erudite and thought-provoking reflections on these important realities.

She has also given me permission to share her thoughts and insights via The Wild Reed, so please feel free to join the conversation by leaving a comment.

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Do same-gender couples dissolve their partnerships more readily than opposite-gender couples do? Perhaps they do. I do not have statistics to answer this question. Whether justified or not, the charge of instability is used to argue against legal status for same-gender unions. Rather than settling that question, this particular charge raises the broader question of why life-long monogamous relationships should be the norm.

Is there a rationale for life-long monogamy for people of either orientation? The question is about norms or ideals. In practice, people of both orientations do what they do. For many reasons they do not live up to moral ideals. But are there good reasons for our saying that people should form and maintain life-long partnerships? Are they better for the individuals and for society?

The ideal of life-long marriage has its grounding in a view of the world and human life as static, enclosed lifetime by lifetime. Generation after generation people lived within their cultures, their geographical area, their religious traditions, maintaining the stability and smooth functioning of the society. In the cyclical, diurnal life of an agricultural/ village society or even an industrial society with rigid class divisions the task of each generation was to keep the universe intact for the next generation. Life-long monogamy was the norm because first of all the children needed formation, and then the young parental generation needed role models and the help of grandparents, and then the whole cycle began again. Male and female He created them. Till death do part them. The goal was stability.

To put that static worldview in Catholic religious language, sanctifying grace, delivered through the sacraments, including life-long marriage, administered by duly ordained men under the authority of bishops who are in turn under the authority of Rome, transforms the individual and community life of the local church. This cyclical life, measured by the events of the liturgical year, repeats generation after generation until God decides it's a wrap.

For a couple of centuries now, that cyclical worldview has been morphing into an evolutionary one in the West. In this view, the cycles are still rotating but they are rotating in expanding spirals moving forward.

Socio-economic circumstances have changed and so have norms of behavior. The focus has shifted from a stable community of individuals to the individual contributing to many overlapping and less stable communities during a lifetime. Transformation occurs in individuals, in their interior lives, and in communities through them. The interior life of one individual, his/her consciousness, is expanded through interaction with many various communities, including past communities, through vastly expanded technologies of communication. Individual interior lives evolve or they remain stagnant. Intimate relationships, partnerships evolve together or they dissolve. Individuals are responsible for their own integration and authenticity and for that of the communities that support their lives.

Part of integration and authenticity is responsibility for commitments to others, particularly children, and for the well-being of all. Each person has to choose the associations to continue and the ones to dissolve. This means that the predominant value has moved from life-long stability to life-long individual and communal growth to which stability, though still important, is subordinate. Couplings and communities are either conducive to growth or they are not. Some people grow through life-long commitment; for some the responsible move is dissolution.

Ethical understandings evolve. We have faculties to help us steer a course, imagination, desire, reason, and we humbly depend on dialogue with our religious traditions, the best thinking of communities of inquiry, and our fellow citizens to guide us in discerning norms of human behavior.

In this view, same-gender partners in whose judgment the stability of civil marriage would be conducive to their growth together, should be allowed to enjoy its rights and responsibilities. There is no life-long contract requirement to qualify for civil marriage.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Changing Face of “Traditional Marriage”
Naming and Confronting Bigotry
The Real Gay Agenda
On Civil Unions and Christian Tradition
Gay Adoption: A Catholic Lawyer’s Perspective
The Non-Negotiables of Human Sex

The Two-Sided Catholic Crisis

The Sydney Morning Herald reports today that Cardinal George Pell is calling for all Catholic school principals, deputy principals and religious education coordinators within the archdiocese of Sydney, Australia, to take an Oath of Allegiance to Church teachings.

According to the newspaper, “the oath demands ‘religious submission of intellect and will’ on questions of faith and morals - even if these are inferred but not defined by the pope and his bishops - and an acceptance that everything solemnly taught by church tradition is divinely inspired. It suggests they would be bound not only to impart these teachings but to live by them.”


That such a demand would come from Cardinal Pell (pictured above) doesn’t surprise me in the least. After all, here’s a man who, as I’ve documented in a previous post, has gone on record as saying that “the [Catholic] doctrine of the primacy of conscience should be quietly ditched” as it’s “a dangerous and misleading myth.”

Brian Coyne, who is a co-editor and regular contributor to the always topical and informative Catholica Australia website, has written an insightful commentary on this particular development in Australia (although I do wonder about the source of his statement that “85% of the baptized faithful across the Western world” have left the Church).

Interestingly, Coyne contrasts the crisis of Pell’s “Orwellian style tactic” with what he calls another side of the crisis facing Catholics – the financial and membership crisis in the U.S. of “one of the principal activist groups in the Church,” Voice of the Faithful.

Following are excerpts from Coyne’s commentary, “We’re in a Crisis!”

_______________________________________

Which ever way you look at it the Holy Roman Catholic Church is in the midst of an enormous crisis. This morning’s front page story in the Sydney Morning Herald regarding Cardinal Pell’s call for all Catholic school principals, deputy principals and religious education coordinators to take an Oath of Allegiance to Church teachings, underlines the crisis from one side.

One hardly needs to be Methuselah to appreciate the crisis - where 85% of the baptised faithful across the Western world have now vamoosed out the door - has now reached the point where, privately, even principals, deputy principals and religious education coordinators have serious misgivings of what the institutional leaders believe is “the truth”. . .

A serious question [has] to be asked: will Orwellian style tactics borrowed from the Totalitarian States of yesteryear that try to impose compliance on the faithful who are still trying to participate, address the underlying cause of the crisis?

The crisis is not all one-sided though. In news overnight from the United States, one of the principal activist groups in the Church disenchanted with the present direction being forged by the Church’s ecclesial leaders is itself in crisis. Thirty-eight newspapers across the United States yesterday carried an Associated Press story about the financial and membership crisis facing Voice of the Faithful.

The Church faces an enormous crisis at the moment. In the Western world, 85% of the ordinary faithful have just “given up” and quietly walked out the door without leaving any protest notes. They don’t write to the pope, or any bishops or parish priests explaining why they have left. They seem to have figured it simply isn’t worth the effort. No one is listening. These men seem to think they have all the answers, they know God’s mind even better than God knows it himself, and they never make mistakes.

The sad thing is that there are no really effective voices at the moment strong enough to protest. . . .

There is actually cause for some hope. While there has been a massive slide in participation in the spiritual and sacramental life of the institutional Church, this is not matched by any catastrophic decline in interest in spirituality and belief in God or Jesus Christ more generally.

One measure of this is that even though the institution seems to have lost interest in the spiritual welfare of its flock, others, like Papal Knight, Rupert Murdoch, and other media barons and publishers, have perceived there is a significant audience out there with spiritual needs and we have seen a steady increase in “body and soul” type programming.

In Australia the quality of religious programming on our own national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), has increased substantially in recent decades. Less and less of this secular programming is even interested in examining the decline of institutionalised religion and the failings of the existing system and it is forging out endeavouring to meet the aspirations of this now vast sector of the population that has left the likes of Cardinal Pell far, far behind. The people might be sick of the Church. They are not necessarily sick of God, sick of Jesus Christ, or the appreciation that the spiritual side of life is important.

The challenge each of us faces as an individual is where do we place our bets? Do you put your life, and eternity, on the line that the Cardinal has the right answer? Or do we have to strike out on our own? Self-evidently most have chosen the latter. My confident expectation is that the measures the Cardinal is presently implementing — which are basically a regurgitation of the policies that have failed so abysmally for close on 200 years and which have largely been responsible for driving the faithful out of the pews — will only exacerbate the drift. . . .

To read Brian Coyne’s commentary in its entirety, click here.


UPDATES:
Cardinal George Pell Charged
with Multiple Sexual Offences
– Melissa Davey
The Guardian
June 28, 2017

Cardinal George Pell
Found Guilty of Child Sex Abuse
– Adam Cooper
The Sydney Morning Herald
February 26, 2017

Cardinal George Pell Released From Jail
After High Court Quashes
Child Sexual Abuse Conviction
– Melissa Davies
The Guardian
April 7, 2020

Why Have Media Outlets Been Fined
More Than $1 Million for Their Pell Reporting?
– Rick Sarre
The Conversation
June 4, 2021

Cardinal George Pell
Dies in Rome Aged 81
– ABC News
January 10, 2023

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Authentic Catholicism: The Antidote to Clericalism
• Thoughts on Authority and Fidelity
• Keeping the Spark Alive
• Reflections on the Primacy of Conscience
• The Question of an “Informed” Conscience
• Paul Collins and Marilyn Hatton
• Our Catholic “Stonewall” Moment

Image 1: Sydney Morning Herald
Image 2: Catholic News