Perhaps it could emerge from the current Roman Catholic synodal movement? I would like to see a Roman Catholic constitutional convention, with a broad selection of lay and ordained members, assisted by historians, theologians, and sociologists.
The task would be three-fold:
First: Draw up a constitution for the Roman Catholic Church, as one of several – very valid and important — Christian traditions. The constitution would clarify that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Christian Community is broader than than just the Roman Catholic Church.
Secondly: Create a new administrative structure, covering all aspects of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical governance, from the bishop of Rome to local bishops and to local parishes.
Thirdly: Clearly establish that the bishop of Rome, the pope, could be a man or a woman and should be elected for a limited term of office by an international body of lay and ordained representatives. She or he would be the chairperson of an international administrative board of directors. Much of the old Vatican bureaucracy could be dismantled.
Under the new Roman Catholic Constitution, there would be no need for a papal electoral college or a smoking stove in the Sistine Chapel. The cardinal electors could be retired and hand in their red hats. The old stove that sent up white smoke when a new pope was elected could be put in a papal museum or simply recycled.
We need to move ahead. Broad-reaching church reform is necessary. But, I would emphasize that church reform is about much more than the necessary structural institutional changes.
Genuine church reform must be primarily about how people experience and live their Christianity. About one’s pattern of life. About how one lives respectfully with others and lives with self respect.
The historical Jesus did not establish or lay down any pattern or plan for church structure. He clearly did imphasize, however, a necessary pattern of life, which we see in the “Sermon on the Mount” found in Matthew 5-7. It is a message of love, compassion, and selflessness. Jesus encourages his followers to love their enemies, to forgive others, and to care for the poor and marginalized.
Paul the Apostle reminds Christians as well, in 1 Corinthians 13, that “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Constructive and effective reformation promotes healthy religion.
For many years I promoted and conducted performance appraisals for church ministers, calling attention to signs of their involvement in healthy or unhealthy religion. I was appraised as well by colleagues.
Healthy religion is grounded in contemporary life with all of its ups and downs. It deals with reality not fantasy.
Unhealthy religion is grounded in fantasy and longings for the “good old days,” which, we know from history, were not so good for a great many people.
Unhealthy religion is anchored in historical ignorance and antiquated and discredited theological understandings. The disciples of Jesus, for example, were men AND women. Women DID preside at Eucharist in early Christian communities. The historical Jesus did not ORDAIN anyone.
Healthy religion builds bridges between people and promotes collaboration.
Unhealthy religion separates people into qualitative classes. It demonizes “those who don’t fit in” and validates hatred and cruelty through racism, misogyny, and homophobia.
Unhealthy religion imposes power OVER people in often dismissive and demeaning ways through abuse, control, repression, and coercion. It uses guilt, fear, and overly-strict rules.
Healthy religion empowers people and promotes love and respect, and compassion and collaboration.
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Concluding thoughts for today: As I have now done for several years, starting next week I will be away from my blog for some late spring R&R. I hope to return around mid-June with fresh thoughts. Frankly, I do not want to become just another babbling old man.
For your summer reading I strongly recommend an excellent book by William G. Joseph: An Evolutionary Biography of God: Christianity in a World of Science. It is well worth reading and available on Amazon.
Bill is a Roman Catholic priest, physicist and computer scientist. He is also a very good friend. Bill brings his knowledge and awareness to bear on biblical narratives by looking at them through the scientific knowledge we have today, with attention to the profound human truths they are dealing with. In the process Bill calls us to a deeper and richer contemporary belief. I find his book energizing.
In the preface for a new book about Pope Pius X, pope from 1903 to 1914, Pope Francis has expressed great admiration for his early twentieth century predecessor. “I love Pius X very much, I’ve always loved him,” Francis wrote in the preface to Omaggio a Pio X (Homage to Pius X), a newly published work by Msgr. Lucio Bonora, an Italian priest who has worked for many years in the Vatican Secretariat of State.
I find admiration for Pope Pius X rather surprising. Yes, he enabled children to receive Communion at an earlier age, age 7, and he encouraged people to receive Communion regularly. But he stressed teaching of medieval scholastic philosophy and theology in Catholic institutions, and he condemned “modernist” interpretations of Catholic teachings.
Modernists sought to explain Roman Catholic theology in terms more in sync with contemporary insights from science, philosophy, psychology, and history. They understood that theological ideas are conditioned by the historical circumstances in which they are formed.
Pope Pius X denigrated Scripture scholars who were already stressing that the Bible should not be read strictly as a collection of historical documents because it contains elements of history, religious beliefs, metaphors, and imaginative descriptions of important religious people and events. Pius X also banned women from singing in church choirs. Pope Pius XII (1939 – 1958) — whose pontificate is still being evaluated — greatly admired Pope Pius X and canonized him as Saint Pius X in 1954.
Thinking about popes past and current, I suggest it is helpful to examine the story of the papacy. It has its factual history, but also, from the start, some significant imagined history.
And so, we start from the very beginning… Jerusalem, after the death and Resurrection of Jesus, was the first center of Christian life and preaching. The first Christian community there was led not by Peter the Apostle but by James who was a brother of Jesus of Nazareth. (According to Mark 6:3 Jesus had four brothers and two sisters. This brings up a question perhaps for a future reflection.)
Within ten years after Jesus’ death and Resurrection, Christianity had already begun to spread along the seaways and roads of the Roman Empire, northwards to Antioch, where Peter the Apostle had a leadership role among Hebrew Christians, and on to Ephesus, Corinth and Thessalonica, under the leadership of the Apostle Paul. Paul, originally known as Saul of Tarsus, was a sophisticated Greek-speaking rabbi who, unlike Jesus’ early disciples, was himself a Roman citizen.
Called the “Apostle to the Gentiles,” Paul became an enthusiastic supporter of non-Hebrew Christians. He insisted that the life and death of Jesus not only fulfilled the Hebrew Law and the Prophets but made sense of the world and offered reconciliation and peace with God for the whole human race, not just Hebrews.
And Peter? The Apostle Peter and his wife certainly belonged to the group of young men and women, most in their late teens or early twenties, who were Jesus’ close disciples. Peter, however, was never the first bishop of Rome, because the Christian community in Rome was governed not by a bishop but a group of elders: what today we would call a steering committee. Peter was, however, martyred in Rome during Emperor Nero’s persecution of Christians, which started in 64 CE right after the Great Fire of Rome. Historians put Peter’s death as well as Paul’s death between 64 and 68 CE.
By the second and third centuries, however, we see stories about Peter springing from historical suppositions, legends, and much creative imagination by people like Irenaeus of Lyons (died 202 CE) the influential early bishop in the south of France. Contrary to what some say or think, neither Peter nor Paul brought Christianity to Rome. Before Peter and Paul would have arrived, there were already Christian elders and house churches in Rome. But there was no central administrator. No bishop of Rome. At some point Peter may have been one of these elders. We really do not know for certain.
The Roman Catholic biblical scholars, Raymond Brown (1928 –1998) and John P. Meier (1942 – 2022), were emphatic in their book Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Christianity, (Paulist Press 1983): “There is no serious proof that he (Peter) was the bishop, or local ecclesiastical officer, of the Roman church: a claim not made till the third century. Most likely he did not spend any major time at Rome before 58 CE when Paul wrote to the Romans, and so it may have been only in the 60s and relatively shortly before his martyrdom that Peter came to the capital.”
Long after Peter’s death, the Christian community in Rome did come under the leadership of a single “overseer,” as bishops were called. The bishops of Rome were strongly supported by Emperor Constantine (c.272-337), who needed Christianity to unify his empire. Thanks to Constantine and the religious devotion of his mother Helena, Peter and numerous legends and suppositions about Peter developed in third and fourth century Rome. Constantine built a church — now called “Old St. Peter’s Basilica” — over what was believed to be a burial site with Peter’s bones. Old St. Peter’s Basilica stood, from the 4th to 16th centuries, where St. Peter’s Basilica stands today in Vatican City.
When the Roman Empire began to clearly fall apart in 376, the Bishop of Rome, called “pope” (from the Latin word for “father” papa) began to exercise more civil authority. Then when the Western Roman Empire finally collapsed in 476, the pope took over the clothing, pomp, and ritual of the Roman Emperors. The papal title became Pontifex Maximus — “Supreme Pontiff” — a title that had been held by the Roman Emperors.
The first great acclamation of “Peter as a pope,” did not come, however, until the fifth century. Pope Leo I, pope from 440 CE until 461 CE, greatly contributed to the development of the belief that first pope had been Peter the Apostle. The belief was based on Pope Leo’s his personal devotion and suppositions about Peter. It was not based on any historic evidence.
Certainly, since early centuries CE, there has been a long line of papal bishops of Rome. Some were kind and benevolent. Others were crafty authoritarians or simply immoral rulers.
Pius IX, pope from 1846 to 1878, for example, was one of the crafty authoritarians. For him the most disturbing event in his long pontificate was the loss of the Papal States, which popes had controlled from 756 to 1870. But Pio Nono, as he was known in Italian, was also alarmed about “modern” intellectual problems confronting the church. He laid the foundations for the anti-modernism of his successor Pius X, when in 1864, he issued his “Syllabus of Errors,” condemning liberalism, modernism, and the separation of church and state. Roman Catholicism, he insisted, should be the state religion in all countries.
Wishing to consolidate and regain his papal power, Pio Nono created the Roman Catholic dogma of papal infallibility, which was defined dogmatically at the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) in the document Pastor aeternus. Papal power in grand form.
Three not so exemplary historic popes were Sixtus IV, Julius II, and Alexander VI.
POPE SIXTUS IV (1471-84), established the Spanish Inquisition but had among his accomplishments as pope the construction of the Sistine Chapel and the creation of the Vatican Library. He also was known to have a substantial sexual appetite during his time as pope. He had six illegitimate children, one of them the result of incest with his sister.
POPE JULIUS II (1503-13), called the “warrior pope” because he led the papal army in battle, had all the attributes and corruption of an unscrupulous Renaissance prince. He is now best remembered for commissioning his friend Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. His other claim to fame is that he was the first pope to be afflicted with “the French disease,” syphilis. He got it from Rome’s male prostitutes.
And the all-time winner of course is Rodrigo Borgia, who took the name POPE ALEXANDER VI (1492-1503). He confirmed the rights of the Spanish crown in the New World, especially after the discoveries of Christopher Columbus. But Alexander became one of the most controversial of the Renaissance popes, because he acknowledged fathering several children by his mistresses. In August 1503, the pope and his son, Cesare, began suffering from Malaria. Cesare survived, but Alexander succumbed to the disease. Pope Alexander VI left behind a legacy of corruption and scandal. Although his behavior was typical of Renaissance-era popes, he became known as the embodiment of sexual imorality, lived a lavish lifestyle, and abused his power to improve his children’s futures.
There are, however, two medieval popes whom I do particularly appreciate. The first is Martin V (1417 to 1431), who on December 9,1425 founded the Catholic University of Leuven, my alma mater. Next year we will celebrate its six hundredth anniversary.
The other is Pope Adrian VI (1522-1523) He studied at our Catholic University of Leuven where he was ordained a priest and became, successively, professor of theology, chancellor, and rector. The great Humanist Erasmus was one of his pupils. Pope Adrian VI was resented by the Romans as an outsider. After a pontificate of barely twenty months, Adrian died on 14 September 1523. Poison was immediately suspected.
And the papal story goes on and on…In my life time so far there have been seven popes: Pius XII (1939 to 1958), John XXIII (1958 to 1963), Paul VI (1963 to 1978), John Paul I (26 August 1978 to 33 days later), John Paul II (1978 to 2005), Benedict XVI (2005 to 2013), and Francis (elected in 2013).
The future:
Certainly, high on the list of reforms for the contemporary Roman Catholic Church must be a total reform of the Roman papacy.
How refreshing it would be if the next pope would confine to a museum or sell to theatrical costume shops all the old Roman imperial dress and ritual objects and regalia. Some things could be sold on eBay.
A truly contemporary pope should adopt a more contemporary way of dressing and walking on this earth and implement a shared-decision-making leadership style. The pope should not be an authoritarian monarch.
This week, watching young children playing in our neighborhood, I thought how delightful it would be to see the young children of a married pope, riding their bikes and playing in front St. Peters. Maybe the papal husband and wife could invite local children to an Easter egg roll in front of St. Peters on Easter Sunday afternoon.
Of course, I would like to see men AND WOMEN as popes. But they should be elected for a five-year term of office by lay and ordained representatives of the global church. They could be allowed ONLY one second five-year term. Popes should be understood not as authoritarian administrators but chairpersons of the church’s board directors.
This week’s brief reflection is a follow-up to last week’s. A number of people have asked me to clarify the meaning of faith and how it is related to religion. Yes I have touched on this in the past, but perhaps it is good to review it for followers of my blog new and old.
FAITH IS AN EXPERIENCE: In the Faith Experience people do have an experience of the Divine, often described under various names: God, Creator, Father, Mother, Allah, the Ground of Being, etc. To be open to the faith experience, we need quiet and reflective time.
We are often so busy doing that we neglect simply being.
Sometimes people cannot put a name on their deepest human experiences. I still remember the observation by Dag Hammarskjöld (1905 –1961) who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. He wrote: “God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason.”
And these days I resonate more and more with the words of Karl Rahner (1904-1984) one of the most influential Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century: “I must confess to you in all honesty that for me God is and has always been absolute mystery. I do not understand what God is. No one can. We have intimations, and inklings. We make faltering attempts to put mystery into words. But there is no word for it, no sentence for it.”
BELIEF: Belief is the attempt to put into words the meaning of our Faith Experience. Belief is really theology which is “faith seeking understanding.”
RELIGION: Religion is an attempt to interpret and systematize Belief. Any religion is a system of beliefs and practices that helps people understand and live their faith experience. Religion therefore gives people: rituals, ritual places, ritual leaders, sacred books, sacred places, sacred days and seasons, codes of morality and creedal statements of belief. Religion provides helpful aids – MEANS – that point people to the Divine. That is good and proper. But religion is not Faith. Sometimes religion gets distorted and very religious people can be very ungodly. And all religions go through a four-stage life cycle.
RELIGION LIFE-CYCLE:
(1) They begin with the charismatic foundational state, e.g. the primitive Christian community.
Here men and women had such a vivid lived awareness of the Faith experience that they had little need for institutional structure. They relied on do-it-self and charismatic ways of praying, speaking, and celebrating. Men and women, who were local leaders, presided at Eucharist. It all seemed so very natural and normal.
(2) Then when people started thinking and asking “how do we safeguard what we have and how do we pass this on to the next generation?” the religion entered stage two.
This is the stage of institutionalization: important statements like the Gospels are written down, set ways of praying like official sacramental rituals and gestures are established, and properly authorized leaders are established. Ordination was then created as a kind of quality control mechanism to make certain that the Christian leaders are competent and reliable. Ordination, please note, was not originally about power over people and not about sacramental power!
(3) After some time, the religion enters stage three. I call it the stage of self-focused short-sightedness.
The institutional religion becomes so self-centered and so self-protective that it becomes less a means and path to the Divine and more and more the OBJECT itself of religious devotion. This stage comes close to idolatry.
In stage 3, the religious institution and certain institutional leaders, become religious objects and are treated like IDOLS. People get so involved in acts of religious veneration that they miss or distort the Divine.
(4) When stage three happens, the only solution is REFORMATION.
Reformation demands a serious effort to regain the vision and focus on the Divine – the spirit and life of stages one and two. To recapture the vigor and creative enthusiasm of stages one and two and create new structures and theological explanations to guide contempory believers.
All religions need periodic reformations. The old saying in Latin ecclesia semper reformanda est was true yesterday and is certainly true today: “the church must always be reformed.”
Another Voice 