In coming weeks, I would like to return to some updated historical-critical reflections about the historical Jesus, so greatly needed in our contemporary times of politically tainted and distorted christianity.

Jesus of Nazareth was an historical figure and attempts to deny his historicity have been consistently rejected by contemporary scholarly consensus. His existence was also documented by ancient Roman and Hebrew historians.

Jesus was a Galilean Hebrew. Most biblical scholars and ancient historians believe that his birth date was around 6 to 4 BCE. (“BCE” meaning Before the Common Era.)

Jesus was not born in the year 1 AD because of historical miscalculations by the 6th-century Eastern European monk Dionysius Exiguus, who created the AD – Anno Domini “year of the Lord” dating system. The gospels of Luke and Matthew associate Jesus’ birth with the reign of King Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE.

Jesus lived only in Galilee and Judea, two distinct regions in the Holy Land. Judea, centered around Jerusalem, was the religious and political heartland. Galilee, to the north, was a rural, prosperous, and culturally diverse area.

Like most people from Galilee back then, Jesus had brown eyes, dark brown to black hair and olive-brown skin. Jesus spoke Aramaic and may have also spoken Hebrew and Greek. The languages spoken in Galilee and Judea during the 1st century included the Semitic Aramaic and Hebrew languages as well as Greek, with Aramaic being the predominant language.

Biblical perspectives on the historical Jesus are based on the Pauline epistles, written between 48 and 62 CE, and the gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John all written within seventy-five years of Jesus’ death. Those four gospels, however, do not represent all the early gospels available. This becomes clear in studying other gospels either discerned as sources inside the official four or else discovered as documents outside them. An example of a source hidden within the four canonical gospels is the reconstructed document known as Q, from the German word Quelle, meaning “source,” which is now imbedded within both Luke and Matthew.

Another ancient Jesus document, outside the four canonical gospels is the Gospel of Thomas, which was found at Nag Hammadi, in Upper Egypt, in the winter of 1945 and is, in the view of many scholars, completely independent of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. It is also most strikingly different from them, especially in its format. It identifies itself as a gospel, but it is in fact a collection of the sayings of Jesus given without any descriptions of deeds or miracles, crucifixion or resurrection stories.

Most contemporary scholars agree that Jesus began his public ministry when he was about thirty years old, as indicated in Luke 3:23. The New Testament does not specifically give the ages of any of the men and women who were Jesus’ disciples. Some of them may have joined Jesus as early as age 15 and would have still been teenagers at the time of his death and resurrection. Education for young Hebrews, in Jesus’ time, concluded at the age of 15.

What did Jesus do before his public ministry? We do not know. We can can only guess. Some historians suggest that Jesus, like his father, was first an early “blue collar” worker in construction work outside Nazareth. Others suggest that, after his father’s death, Jesus took over the work to support his mother, brothers, and sisters. Still others theorize that Jesus was a monk and spent years in study and prayer, before entering his public ministerial life. Frankly, I have no pet theory. I am more interested in what Jesus said and did in his public ministry.

When we look at the history and biblical testimony about the post-Resurrection apostolic community of Christians in Jerusalem, clearly the leader was James, the “brother of the Lord.” Peter played a role in the Council of Jerusalem, around 50 CE. But James was in charge and James issued the definitive judgment that converts to Christianity did not have to be circumcised. Then, according to the epistle to the Galatians, Peter went to Antioch. There he tangled with Paul, who rebuked him for treating Gentile converts as inferior to Hebrew Christians.

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 became the first Bishop of Antioch from around 44 to 51 CE. But he was never a bishop of Rome, because the early Christian community in Rome was governed not by a bishop but a group of elders: what today we would call a steering committee.

There is a tradition that Peter and Paul went to Rome and were put to death at the hands of Nero, probably between 64 and 68 CE. There has been a lot of historical development about Peter and the Papacy, in fact, over the past fifty years. The Roman Catholic biblical scholars, Raymond Brown (1928 –1998) and John P. Meier (1942 – 2022), for instance, were emphatic in their book Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Christianity, (Paulist Press 1983) that Peter was never a bishop of Rome. They wrote: “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.” (We do grow in our understanding.)

The Papacy did not begin in earnest until Constantine (272–337). The first great acclamation of “Peter as a pope,” however, came from Pope Leo I who was pope from 440 CE until his death in 461 CE.

After the deaths of James, Paul, Peter, as well as others who had known Jesus face-to-face, it became essential for the survival of the way of Jesus that his words and deeds be recollected and written down. This led to the birth of the four Gospels. The clear majority of contemporary biblical scholars believe that Mark was the first Gospel to be written, sometime around the year 70 CE. The Gospels contain bits of history, parables, metaphor, symbol, re-interpreted passages from the Greek (Septuagint) Hebrew Scriptures and imagined scenarios for key events in the life of Jesus.

Next week we will explore perspectives on Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, which is simple and succinct with a vivid account of Jesus’ ministry, emphasizing more what Jesus did than what he said.

Jack

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was thinking this past week about the US astronomer and author, Carl Sagan (1934–1996). I remember his observations a year before he died: “When people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority, (with)…critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what is  true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

Are many people today now moving into a post-truth state of mind? Certainly, the Internet is a goldmine of information as well as a minefield of misinformation and distortion. Facebook and other social media are hardly the sources of always reliable truthful statements.

What are the criteria for making reliable judgments about truthfulness? I look for reliable reporters, trustworthy news sources, and well-documented reports. I do not trust undocumented reports. Primary sources are crucial. We need to discern and help people discern the difference between fabricated stories and reality. We need to avoid fake history and fake news, but it is not always easy.

My own truth-seeking journey has taken several turns. As a small child I was a curious research examiner. One of my first explorations, when I was about four years old, was taking a small screwdriver and prying the back off my dad’s pocket watch to see how it worked. As an adolescent I tore apart old telephones, radios, old clocks, etc. My dad thought that was fine if I did not touch his watch. I was good at taking things apart. Reassembly was more difficult. But I could see how things worked. Or used to work.

In high school and college, I spent eight years – 180 miles from my home in SW Michigan — at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit. The country boy became quickly urbanized, and his intellectual and socio-cultural world expanded tremendously. In high school I reached the point at which I could write a term paper in Latin. I then moved on to learn Greek and Spanish. I also learned how to play the seminary pipe organ, with hands AND feet. It felt great. If he could have seen me, Bach would have laughed.

Seminary for me was a new world of experiences. I got used to showering every day with a bunch of naked guys but never found it a turn on. I did wonder however about some of my fellow students who had strong “particular friendships.” Some of those guys were also among those seminarians who mysteriously disappeared, usually while the rest of us were at morning prayer and mass. After breakfast, when we went to the dormitory to make our beds, we would see their lockers open and empty. Even their beds had disappeared.

Philosophy intrigued me, especially existentialism. The search for the authentic. I had to study Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274) of course but read as much as I could about Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980). At the same time, I was very religious. My classmates called me “Pious Dick.” I resonated with William James (1842–1910) and his The Varieties of Religious Experience. In many ways I was – for a while — a Catholic fundamentalist. I had questions but my spiritual director stressed that I should never question and never doubt. Those questions would later bombard me. 

In the 1960s, when I was in college, the “generation gap” was also very real for me. I was strongly opposed to the then developing U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Many of my older relatives, however, supported the war.

Several former friends and classmates died in Vietnam. I saw them as victims not heroes. Their parents thought I had betrayed them because I never went to Vietnam. But, for the record, I was not a “draft dodger.” I had completed my Selective Service registration when I became 18 years old. I carried my “draft card” with me but had a bonafide legal deferment because, as a seminarian, I was a divinity student.

Deep wounds last a long time. U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War began in the 1950s but escalated in 1965 until U.S. withdrawal in 1973. The American military presence in Vietnam had peaked in April 1969, with 543,000 military personnel stationed in the country. By the end of the U.S. involvement, more than 3.1 million Americans had been stationed in Vietnam and 58,279 had been killed. The Vietnam War tore America apart much more than the nineteenth century Civil War.

When I graduated from college in 1965, my bishop, Alexander Zaleski (1906-1975), who had gone to the American College seminary in Belgium at the Catholic University of Louvain, sent me to Louvain, better known today as Leuven. For me it was a tremendous eye-opening and mind-expanding experience. My father would often comment, with a chuckle, in later years: “Jack was never the same after Louvain.”  

In Leuven I began to question everything. It began early in my first year when my dogma professor, Fr. Gustave Thils (1909-2000), asked our class: “If tomorrow archeologists in Jerusalem would find the bones of the historical Jesus, would that destroy your belief in the Resurrection?” I thought of course it would. But I asked Professor Thils how he would answer that question. He said: “Of course not! Resurrection is not resuscitation.” 

I thought Thils was wrong, and so my questions began. It was in December of my second year in Leuven that the British theologian and Catholic priest, Charles Davis (1923–1999), whom I read and respected, announced he was leaving the Catholic Church. I was terribly upset. Davis explained that the Catholic Church had become too powerful and too dehumanizing and called it “a vast, impersonal, unfree, and inhuman system.” I went back to Professor Thils, with whom, I had discovered, I could really discuss my questions. I told him how upset and how sad I was because I had always considered Father Charles Davis to be an excellent theologian. Thils smiled and said: “Yes and Charles Davis still is an excellent theologian.”

Gradually I also came to a better understanding of “faith” as it appears in the Bible. It means first and foremost a relationship of trust and confidence in God. That understanding of faith still sustains me.

After three years in major seminary, and just one year away from priesthood ordination, I decided I wanted to become a non-ordained theologian and did not want to spend my life as a celibate priest. I informed my bishop. Bishop Zaleski was not happy and asked a couple of his priest friends to send me advice-letters to help me “think more clearly” about my vocation.

The priests back in Michigan stressed that many married men were quite unhappy and that, even as a celibate priest, there would always be ways for me to “have sex” with a woman or even a boy when I “needed it.” I was disappointed and angry. I was amazed that they could advocate immoral sexual behavior and be so blind to marital love and intimacy. I wrote back to the chief letter writer that love and marriage were much more than just having sex “when one needed it.” He never replied.

With the friendly help and support of professors Gustave Thils, in Leuven, and Edward Schillebeeckx (1914–2009) at the, then, Catholic University of Nijmegen, I began my journey toward becoming an historical theologian. I have never had any regrets.

In Leuven my classes were mostly in French, but classes in Nijmegen were in Dutch. Preparing for a year in Nijmegen, I spent a summer learning Dutch. My favorite teacher became my wife in 1970, and she is still my favorite teacher.

Well, enough personal history. Next week some thoughts about the historical Jesus — my theme for the remaining weeks of Lent 2026.

• Jack

 

 

On November 28, 2025, the Vatican released the following statement from Pope Leo XIV: “We must strongly reject the use of religion for justifying war, violence, or any form of fundamentalism or fanaticism. Instead, the paths to follow are those of fraternal encounter, dialogue and cooperation.” But since early 2026, however, Pope Leo has been dealing with a very specific Catholic fundamentalist problem.

 In the first week of February 2026, the Swiss-based Catholic fundamentalist group, The Society of St. Pius X, announced plans to consecrate new bishops without papal consent.

Founded in 1970 by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905–1991), The Society of St. Pius X prioritizes a pre-Vatican II, anti-Modernist stance, strictly adhering to the Tridentine Latin Mass and traditional Catholic doctrines. In 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal consent, arguing that it was necessary for the survival of the church’s tradition. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four other bishops. In the years since the 1988 excommunication, as Nicole Winfeld reported via Religion News Service, on February 19, 2026, the Society of St. Pius X has continued to grow, with schools, parishes, and seminaries around the world. Today it has 733 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates, and 250 religious sisters.

In the United States, at least since the second decade of the twentieth century, the word “fundamentalism” has usually been understood as something quite specifically Protestant, militant, and American. Few people realize, however, that a militant and sectarian “fundamentalist” movement emerged within American Roman Catholicism in the decades after World War II. The focal point was the St. Benedict Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded in 1940 to serve the growing number of Catholic students attending Harvard University and Radcliffe College.

Significant changes at St. Benedict Center came in 1943, however, when Leonard Feeney, S.J. (1897–1978) arrived as pastor. Feeney had been a literary editor at the Jesuit magazine America in the 1930s but, at St. Benedict Center, he gave incendiary speeches, leading Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968), then a Harvard undergraduate, to write Archbishop Richard Cushing (1895-1970) of Boston requesting his removal.

Feeney had declared that in strongly Catholic Boston, he wanted to “rid our city of every coward liberal Catholic, Jew dog, Protestant brute, and 33rd degree Mason who is trying to suck the soul from good Catholics and sell the true faith for greenbacks.”

Feeney was excommunicated on February 13, 1953. Nevertheless, he and his followers crafted the paradigm for American Catholic fundamentalism as an anti-modern, reactive, and sectarian impulse that has been with us ever since.

A helpful book about American Catholic fundamentalism is Fr. Mark Massa’s Catholic Fundamentalism in America (Oxford University Press, 2025). Massa, a Jesuit Priest, is professor of theology at Boston College and for nine years was director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. For the 2026–2027 academic year, he will be a visiting professor at Fordham University.

Massa recounts how American Catholic fundamentalists have reacted both to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and to the tensions of America’s pluralist, secular culture. Like their Protestant cousins, Catholic fundamentalists combine a sectarian understanding of religion with an aggressive anti-progressive stance. Their main enemies are not Protestants or secular Americans, but other Catholics who do not share their extreme views.

Like Protestant fundamentalists, Catholic fundamentalists have sought and found political conservatives with whom to make common cause on a range of issues, like the place of women in American culture, opposition to LGBTQ people, rejecting the value of pluralism within the Church and the larger culture, and rejecting the importance of cooperation with non-Catholics.

Contemporary Catholic fundamentalists merge their theological and political impulses into movements that go far beyond mere conservatism. Their fundamentalism is a rigid, ideological, and often militant approach that demands a return to an imagined pure, literal interpretation of foundational texts or beliefs.

They only listen to sources that they agree with. Their brains have stoped questioning. They no longer think for themselves. They obey their fundamentalist leaders, and have zero empathy for anyone outside their group,

Conservatism often treasures tradition, heritage, and “the way things were done” as a guiding, but sometimes flexible, framework. Fundamentalism goes farther by insisting on strict literalism and inerrancy of sacred texts and rejecting modern scholarly or contextual interpretations. Fundamentalism is dangerous because it fuels extremism, misogyny, and violence, threatening democratic values and social cohesion.

Fundamentalists view modern liberal culture as a corruption that must be erased and replaced with their specific, often archaic, ideology. While conservatives can work within democratic pluralistic frameworks and accept compromise, fundamentalists view compromise as a character flaw or a sin. Fundamentalists select and reinterpret certain specific past traditions to provide a sense of security against social change. But they really seek total control over society, including politics, culture, economics, and family life. They often adopt a combative, “war-like” stance toward opposing viewpoints, “them against us,” viewing “them” as treasonous.

By way of example, fundamentalists in the current U.S. presidential administration have embraced the “Great Replacement” theory, a far-right conspiracy theory that was first proposed by the French writer Renaud Camus (born 1946) in the late 1990s, and it has become increasingly mainstream within today’s Republican Party. The “Great Replacement” theory says that Brown and Black migration is destroying “western civilization.” It argues that such migration must be stopped and that Brown and Black people must be purged so that White Christians can dominate society and reinforce traditional religious and patriarchal hierarchies. These “Christians” ignore of course the historic fact that Jesus of Nazareth was certainly NOT a White-skinned European, but a Brown-skinned Middle Eastern Hebrew.

Contemporary fundamentalist-leaning Catholics are active in the incumbent presidential administration. Six of the nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices are Catholic, with a conservative majority. Individuals and groups associated with fundamentalist Catholicism are also among the key architects and supporters of Project 2025. The the architect of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s president, has close ties with the far-right fundamentalist Catholic institution Opus Dei, which grew strongly and flourished during the thirty-six years of the Francisco Franco (1892-1975) dictatorship in Spain.

I clearly remember what the award-winning journalist and columnist Heidi Schlumpf wrote in America magazine on November 7, 2025: “That the United States now seems to be exploding with Catholic fundamentalist movements is more than a little concerning, not just for the Church but for the country, if Catholics join forces with groups and individuals advocating for Christian nationalism. It is clear that Catholic fundamentalism, with its inherent militancy, is a serious threat, especially at a time of rising ideological violence. The solutions to these broader societal issues are not simple, but understanding the religious roots and connections is critical.”

Critical times. But I am not pessimistic. We need to deal constructively with Catholic fundamentalism by fostering dialogue over hostile debate, by focusing on charity, and by providing a more nuanced understanding of Catholic tradition.

We need to promote good education and encourage critical thinking, helping people understand that fear of questions and change can lead to rigidity, while true faith often involves grappling with complex questions.

• Jack