A couple of months ago, I had an email exchange with a “young earth creationist.” He claimed that our Earth and its lifeforms were created by God between about 10,000 and 6,000 years ago. I replied that his “young earth creationist” perspective has already been strongly contradicted by established scientific data that puts the age of Earth at around 4.54 billion years. He proudly told me he was a devout fundamentalist Christian and not a “progressive liberal Catholic” like me.

The word “fundamentalist” was first used in print in the United States, in 1920, by the prominent American Baptist pastor Curtis Lee Laws (1868-1946), who was the editor of The Watchman Examiner, a national Baptist newspaper. Laws proposed that Christians who were fighting for the fundamentals of their faith should be called “fundamentalists.” But the term “fundamentalist” was not applied to other religious traditions until around the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1978-79.

In general, all fundamentalist religious movements arise when people are confronted with an unsettling disruption of their “normal” way of life. Sensing societal chaos, they develop strong feelings of anxiety and fear about losing control over their lives and losing personal and group identity.

Regardless of the religious tradition to which they belong, all fundamentalists follow certain patterns:

• Religious ideology is the basis for their personal and communal identity.

• They insist upon one statement of truth that is inerrant, revealed, and unchangeable

• They see themselves as part of a cosmic struggle between good and evil.

• They seize on historical moments and reinterpret them in the light of this cosmic struggle.

• They demonize their opposition.

• They are selective in what parts of the religious tradition and heritage they will stress.

Although we have not usually thought of Roman Catholics as fundamentalists, the term can be applied to some contemporary Roman Catholic individuals and movements. Catholic Fundamentalists consider themselves upholding purer beliefs and religious practices than regular Catholics.

An important book about U.S. Catholic fundamentalists, published this year, is Catholic Fundamentalism in America (Oxford University Press) by Mark S. Massa, S.J., who is professor and Director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. Professor Massa examines the motivations and the tactics of U.S. Catholic fundamentalists who have propagated an alternative universe of Latin masses and scorching rhetoric aimed at overthrowing post-Vatican II ‘liberal’ Catholicism.

Religious fundamentalists place such a high priority on doctrinal conformity and obedience to doctrinaire spokespersons that they end up sacrificing values basic to all the great religious traditions: love, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, and caring. When Christian belief becomes highly fundamentalized, churches start to become repositories not of grace but of grievances. They become places where something like tribal identities are reinforced, fears are nurtured, and aggression and nastiness become part of their holy cause.

In their overwhelming seriousness about “their” religion, fundamentalists do not hesitate to intervene in political and social processes to ensure that society conforms to the values and behaviors required by their fundamentalist worldview. This can then turn into militancy and attempts to pursue their vision with violence, force, and warfare. In this process their agenda then moves to override the well-being and lives of the people they are trying to influence.

Fundamentalism appeals for a variety of reasons:

• For people who feel unimportant or insignificant, fundamentalism says you are important because you are God’s “special messenger.”
• For people who are fearful, fundamentalism says “you can’t be saved without us…join and be saved.”
• For the confused, fundamentalism says one doesn’t have to think about doctrine nor even be educated in it. Just believe what fundamentalism teaches.
• Fundamentalism makes the fundamentalist feel good about himself or herself. It is self-stroking.
• Fundamentalism justifies hatred of one group of people for another, because it believes that God hates those who do not conform to the fundamentalist worldview.
• Fundamentalism appeals to people burdened by guilt and shame because it exempts them from responsibility for situations or actions that cause guilt and shame. Fundamentalism says…if you are one of us, you are OK.
• Fundamentalism excuses people from honest self-examination; and it justifies their prejudices, zealotry, intolerance, and hatefulness.

What does one do about fundamentalism?

• The best way to confront the narrow vision of fundamentalism is through broad-based education that emphasizes critical, analytical thinking skills.
• Broad-based education emphasizes the importance of gathering evidence and then proceeding to conclusions. Fundamentalists work in the opposite fashion. They begin with their conclusions and then search for arguments to support them.
• We need to establish channels for dialogue and support those institutions that promote multi-cultural knowledge and understanding.
• We need to courageously work against ignorance and speak-out about dishonest or faulty information. And speak-out about those who advocate and publish it.
• We need to humbly realize that we too are still on the road to discovery. We cannot fall into the trap of many fundamentalists who have become self-centered know-it-alls.

I conclude this week’s post with a Raymond E. Brown quotation mentioned in his obituary by Myrna Oliver, in the Los Angeles Times, August 12, 1998. Raymond E. Brown (1928-1998), the eminent Catholic biblical scholar, died at Saint Patrick’s Seminary and University in Menlo Park, California on August 8.

“Truth is always complicated by the human envelope in which it is enclosed. It is not only an intellectual problem, but one at the heart of the Gospel itself. It was not sinners who turned Jesus off. It was the righteous religious types who felt they had all the answers.”

• Jack

 Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be

 

 

 

 

Pastoral reflections

A follow-up on last week’s post about religious pluralism…

The historical Jesus, whose Hebrew name was Yeshua, belonged to the Hebrew faith tradition and had a keen knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures. He did not establish a new religion. He did not set up a church. He called people to a new way of life. “I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness.” (John10:10) His early followers were called “followers of the Way.”

 Thought-starter: How do we live and promote the Way of Jesus today? How can we really inspire and motivate people?

The Fourth Gospel even tells us that Jesus celebrated the Hebrew Chanukah (Hanukkah). “Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade.” (John 20:22-23)

Thought-starter: How do you imagine Jesus in the temple or in a synagogue? Did people stare in awe at him? Or did they raise their eyebrows when he walked in with his band of young followers?

Jesus’ disciples were young men and women, inspired by his example, teaching, and divine wisdom. Most of them were probably under the age of twenty.

Thought-starter: Where do young men and women today get their Christian inspiration? What do we need to do? Whose wisdom do they admire today? How can we speak meaningfully to them about Jesus?

As the post-Resurrection community of Jesus’ disciples and followers began to grow, non-Hebrew members also joined.

Thought-starter: How do we welcome God-seekers today, especially those turned-off by organized religion?

Post-Resurrection Christian structural developments led to two things: the composition of the Gospels AND the formation of Christian faith communities with their own Christian rituals, symbols, and leadership, independent from the Hebrew communities.

There was also a growing concern about passing on the heritage of Jesus to future generations. This called for religious structuring.

Thought-starter: What kinds of institutional structuring and re-structuring do we need today, especially in view of institutional misogyny, clericalism, and doctrinal rigidity?

In the earliest Christian communities men and women held leadership roles and presided at celebrations of Eucharist. At first there was no ordination. No separate clergy. Later ordination was introduced, not to transfer some kind of sacramental power but for quality control. Only qualified men and women could lead Christian communities.

 Thought-starter: How do we provide quality-controlled Christian leadership today? Have annual performance appraisals for clergy and bishops? Have parishes elect their pastors?

Religion and Faith:  

• Faith or “trust” is our personal and group experience of what we call the Sacred or the Divine: God. In Christian faith that experience is anchored in living in the Spirit of Christ.
• Religion is not faith. Religion is a system of beliefs, rituals, and symbols designed to help people understand their faith experience. We use religion. We don’t worship it.
• Unhealthy religion grows out of and supports clouded vision and hateful hearts.
• Religion is healthy when it points to the Sacred. It is unhealthy when it only points to itself: to rituals, symbols, and religious leaders. Particularly unhealthy when it manipulates and uses people for the leaders’ self-serving goals. When this happens, one needs a reformation.
• In Jesus’ days, as in our own days, some people have used religion-mixed-with-politics to achieve self-serving and ungodly goals. This combination was deadly for Jesus. It threatens our lives today as well. 

Strenghtened in Christian hope, we move ahead anchored in the belief so well expressed in Luke:

​“By the tender mercy of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us,

​To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,

​To guide our feet into the way of peace.” Luke 1:78-79

 

• Jack

 Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be

               

 

 

Following up on last week’s post about being open-minded and inquisitive, my thoughts this week are a reflection about inter-religious understanding and collaboration.

Right now, on both sides of the Atlantic, fundamentalist religions’ polarization is fueling conflict and aggression. I am thinking about the politicization of Christianity with white Christian nationalism in the United States; the Hindutva movement in India leveraging Hindu identity to demonize and marginalize religious minorities; religious divisions within Europe concerning moral issues like LGBTQ+ rights;  the extreme religious polarization in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and the global impact of social media in fostering religious extremism by connecting like-minded extremist people across borders.

Inter-religious education, tolerance, and understanding are crucial for the survival of humanity. For our survival and that of our grandchildren.

As I have often stressed, theological understandings do change over time. My own theological understanding of world religions began to change when I was a budding theologian and was greatly influenced by Nostra Aetate the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Non-Christians issued on October 28, 1965.

“In our time,” Nostra Aetate stressed, “when day by day humankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the church examines more closely its relationship to non-Christian religions. In the church’s task of promoting unity and love among all men and women, indeed among all nations, it considers above all, in this declaration, what people have in common and what draws them to fellowship. One is the community of all peoples, one their origin, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth. One also is their final goal: God. God’s providence, God’s manifestations of goodness, God’s saving design extended to all people.”

French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), one of the principal architects of modern social science, argued that religion is the most fundamental social institution, and, in one form or another, will always be a part of social life. Today, some 85% of people around the globe identify with a religion. While there are around 10,000 distinct religions in the world today, over three-quarters of the global population adheres to one of these four – Christianity (31%), Islam (24%), Hinduism (15%), and Buddhism (7%).

Another 7% of the global population identify with religions with much smaller followings. Judaism, though one of the three major Abrahamic religions (along with Christianity and Islam) is represented by just 0.2% of the global population (15.8 million), most of whom reside in Israel (7.2 million) and the U.S.A. (7.5  million). Had the Holocaust not wiped out over a third of world Jewry during World War II, it is likely the Jewish population would be twice the size it is today.

While I remain a strongly committed Christian, my own theological understanding has moved well beyond religious exclusivism: the theological position that maintains the absolute necessity of faith in Christ for all people. Exclusivists insist that there is no salvation in non-Christian religions. This position, today, is most often identified with conservative evangelical Christians.

Considering the world’s religions, I suggest we have to work together in what some of my favorite late twentieth century theologians like Karl Rahner (1904-1984), Hans Küng (1928-2021), Edward Schillebeeckx (1914-2009), and David Tracy (1939-2025) have called religious pluralism. We need to move beyond a simple tolerance for other religions and develop a positive appreciation for what they have to offer.

It is not always easy to be accepting of other religions. A friend reminded me last week that it was ten years ago, on December 15, 2015, that Larycia Hawkins, the first female African-American tenured professor at the evangelical Christian college, Wheaton College, in Illinois, was suspended from her job as professor after she vowed to wear a hijab for Advent in solidarity with Muslims and created a social media storm by posting on Facebook that she agreed with Pope Francis that “Christians and Muslims worship the same God.”

On February 8, 2016, Wheaton College and Professor Hawkins issued a joint statement that they had “reached a confidential agreement under which they will part ways.” On March 3, 2016, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia announced that Lyricia Hawkins would be appointed as the the University of Virginia’s Abd el-Kader Visiting Faculty Fellow.

Lyricia Hawkins’ story was later documented in A New York Times Magazine feature, on October 13, 2016: “The Professor Wore a Hijab in Solidarity – Then Lost Her Job.”

Nevertheless, today we all need to move from just inter-religious tolerance to collaboration. From collaboration to genuine appreciation. From appreciation to learning from the other. We are all on this journey together.

Global understanding, anchored in inter-religious dialogue and appreciation, is essential for everyone’s life and future.

• Jack

 

PLEASE NOTE THAT MY EMAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED

New Email address: john.dick@kuleuven.be

Have a fine week end.

– Jack

This week, I am thinking about social change in our contemporary world. When people become closed-minded, polarization increases. Today, around the world people are grappling with the difficulties posed by the onset of pernicious polarization, pushing people to divide themselves into distinct close-minded camps, anchored in fear, anxiety, and rage. What gets lost is care, compassion, and civility.

The historical Jesus was keenly aware of the dangers of polarization. In Matthew 12:25, he alerted the closed-minded polarizing people in his days, saying “Any country that divides itself into groups which fight each other will not last very long. And any town or family that divides itself into groups which fight each other will fall apart.”

Today especially we need to promote being open-minded and inquisitive in our family and friendship groups, and in our social groups, and church communities. It is urgently important.

Being open-minded means recognizing and considering alternative viewpoints or opinions on a given topic. It involves being open-minded and willing to listen to different ideas without at once dismissing them. It means learning how to live and share life with others. It involves realizing that we all have much to learn about life in all its dimensions. I would emphasize that being open-minded means being less judgmental and more inquisitive and considerate. Open-minded people consider multiple perspectives before reaching a decision.

Sometimes, being open-minded can be very tough. It shakes a person loose from beliefs and values once so comforting. I once believed and felt secure in my belief that Jesus’ disciples were only men, and for that reason only men could become priests. I thought about becoming a priest as well. I pictured the historic Jesus ordaining the Apostles at the Last Supper. But then, thanks to a university professor who kept asking questions and encouraged me to ask questions, I started asking my own questions. Very quickly I learned that some of my certainties had no historic foundation.

Today I know that Jesus’ disciples were men AND women. As an historian I have learned as well that women presided at Eucharistic liturgies in the early Christian communities. I have also learned that the historic Jesus did not ordain anyone because ordination did not exist during his lifetime. In fact, in the first three centuries of Christianity, we have no direct evidence of an ordination ceremony.

Now I realize that on our human life journeys we do learn new things, by being open to the knowledge and insights of other people. Being open-minded learners, we do need to continually adjust our understandings and beliefs.

Being an open-minded believer truly enriches a person’s life. I can think of several ways:

• Being open-minded and inquisitive enables one to explore and discover. Being an open-minded person allows one to experience new ideas and fresh thoughts that stimulate personal growth as they challenge old visions, understandings, and beliefs. It can be a very liberating look at one’s contemporary world through an open mind. Remember Paul in First Corinthians: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”
• Being open-minded and inquisitive opens a person to an awareness of divinity. Sometimes people get so wrapped up in their own little world that they miss the experience of God’s being with us, traveling with us, and loving us. This is spirituality which involves the recognition of a sense that there is something greater than oneself, something more to being human, and that the greater whole of which we are part is divine in nature.
• Being open-minded and inquisitive enables one to observe and critique the honesty and truthfulness of what others say. This is so important today when so much ignorance and falsehood are presented as reliable realities. We all need to be critical observers and courageous critics. I often think about the admonition of the Belgian Joseph Cardijn (1882-1967) “Observe, Judge, Act” — the three-stage social action process that involves observing and understanding a situation, evaluating it using principles and values, and then taking proper action to improve or change it. Cardijn, who became a cardinal a couple years before his death, is best known for his lifelong dedication to social activism.
• Being open-minded and inquisitive promotes personal change and transformation. Opening our minds to new ideas allows us the opportunity to change what we think as well as to change our view of the world. This does not mean one will necessarily change basic beliefs. It does mean one has to be open and respectful to people with differing perspectives. We work together. We must work together because our survival depends on it.
• Being open-minded and inquisitive does make oneself vulnerable. This is scarier. In agreeing to have an open-minded view of the world, we acknowledge that we do not know everything. We accept that there are possibilities we may not have considered. This vulnerability can be both terrifying and exhilarating. The jar is either half full or half empty. It depends on one’s perspective. I prefer to say that it is only half full.
• Being open-minded and inquisitive helps one see and acknowledge personal mistakes. With an open mind one begins to see things from others’ perspectives. One can recognize the mistakes one has made. From time to time, we all fail and fall. The challenge is to acknowledge it and then get back up again and continue the journey, anchored in the virtues of Christian humility and courage.
• Being open-minded and inquisitive strengthens oneself and gives stability. It presents a platform upon which a person can build, putting one idea on top of another. With an open mind, one learns about new things; and one uses innovative ideas to build on old ideas. In my field we call this ongoing theological development. Dangerous stuff for the old guard ecclesiastics. Nevertheless, everything a woman or a man or a child experiences adds up. It strengthens who one is and what one believes. Note well: It is extremely hard to build on experiences without having an open mind.
• Being open-minded and inquisitive helps one gain confidence. When a person really lives with an open mind, he or she develops a stronger sense of self. One can respect and appreciate but is no longer confined by the beliefs of others. Then the respectful dialogue can and should begin. It is absolutely necessary.
• Being open-minded and inquisitive promotes self-honesty. Being open-minded means admitting that one is not all-knowing. Even if one is an older theologian! Whatever “truth” one holds, each person must realize that the underlying reality in its depth has more to it than anyone realizes. This understanding creates a sense of honesty that characterizes anyone who lives with an open mind.

For some people, being open-minded and inquisitive is easy. It seems to come as effortlessly as breathing. For others, having such an open and inquisitive mind can be a challenge. But for anyone who wants to safely travel the road of life, it is essential. We remember the words of Jesus, in John 8:32, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

• Jack

 

I am working on a family project for a few days. This week’s post, therefore, is a guest article written by my good friend Patrick B. Sullivan, DPA. Dr. Sullivan received his BA in History/Political Science and Master of Public Administration degrees from the University of Montana, a Master of Divinity degree from the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, CA, and his Doctor of Public Administration from the University of Southern California. He has been a professor at two institutions for 12 years. He has a total of 50 + years of experience in the public sector. He is the past Director of the State Professional Development Center for the State of Montana. Currently, he is an independent consultant.

 

 

There are many groups in recent years who are apparently fascinated by the ten commandments. This is shown by their desire to have them displayed on courthouse lawns or in classrooms. It would seem prudent then, to take a closer look at the ten commandments in the context of today.

1. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall make no idols.

There are very few people today who create idols or worship some false god in the most literal sense. However, the commandment also warns us not to seek happiness or fulfillment in the wrong places. Only God and our intimate relationship with the divine can provide those. Too many seek happiness in what some happiness scholars refer to as “miswanting.”  We believe that if we get that great job, or the best car, or achieve prestige, we will be happy. Science shows us that this is not true. How many times, after achieving one of those goals do we find ourselves rather empty. When I completed my doctorate, I thought I would be happy, or at least happier. That is not the feeling I had at all. Instead, I just thought, “what’s next?”

2. You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain.

Most of us think that this is about actually cursing. It is more about falsely declaring that God said we should do something that goes against the primary commandment of love. When we claim that we can justify our uncharitable acts on the divine, we are taking God’s name in vain. How many times have we heard various preachers, politicians, or even sports figures declare that God has mandated that they should be successful, rich, or powerful? Religions have done this throughout the centuries. God’s name has been used to justify slavery, misogyny, and intolerance. Millions of people have been killed in the name of God.

3. Keep holy the sabbath.

When, exactly is the sabbath? Different Abrahamic traditions have different days.  Perhaps, it is every day. When Moses encounters God in the burning bush, he is told to remove his shoes, that he is standing on holy ground. So, keeping the sabbath holy could be seen as respecting that all of creation is holy every day. When something is holy, we respect it and treat it with care. This is especially true when we deal with others.  In the creation story in Genesis, the statement at the end of every day is “and it was good.”  After the sixth day, with the creation of humans, “it was very good.”  The seventh day was a day of rest but also a day of reflection.

4. Honor your father and your mother.

The difficult thing here is that our parents are not perfect. They make mistakes in caring for us. I know mine did. Nevertheless, they did bring us into this world. We give them respect for that reason alone. To honor them is to become the best person we can be. We stop blaming them for our own difficulties and grow. We also forgive their faults and celebrate their wise guidance.

5. You shall not kill.

Of course, actually killing someone other than in self defense is prohibited. God created us and we do not have the right to take that away. We also murder by neglect. When we look away when people are starving, we are killing them. Whenever we deprive people of what they need to live, we are killing them. When we fail to provide adequate health care, even though we have the resources, we are killing people.

6. You shall not commit adultery.

This is less about sexual activity and more about relationships. When we betray a solemn relationship, we harm the other person. We also harm the person with whom we betrayed. We are using another person for our own pleasure. The provision is about authenticity in all our relationships. Rape is a violent act more than it is a sexual one. Using another person’s body against their will is an act of adultery.

7. You shall not steal.

Taking what does not belong to us is more than a selfish act. It lays claim to something to which we are not entitled.  God has provided enough for everyone in this world. When we amass wealth while our neighbor is hungry, naked, or thirsty, we are stealing from them. There is no justification for having billionaires when others are suffering. When the uberwealthy claim that they are “self-made” they are stealing. This only shows a lack of gratitude and obligation to all those that got them to where they are today. There were parents, teachers, and other mentors who provided them with the skill to achieve. There are also all the workers that created their wealth and the infrastructure that made it possible. To make such a claim is selfish and false pride.

8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

This certainly includes falsely accusing someone of something they did not do. It even includes times when we did so without making sure of the facts.  More commonly, though, it includes gossip. When we pass along information about another person, we are sharing something that is not ours to share. This is especially a problem when we have not witnessed it ourselves. It doesn’t matter if it is true or not. We must ask ourselves the question of whether or not there is a good reason to share such information. Gossip is destructive within any group. It undermines trust for the target of gossip and the person who is sharing it.

9. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.

This one is a bit problematic because it implies that the neighbor’s wife is his property.  Perhaps, this needs to be understood in different ways. Again, it is about relationships. If we are looking at other people and wanting to either possess them or have them to ourselves, we are objectifying them. It also reflects a lack of gratitude for the relationship(s) we already have. It also applies to both male and female. To covet somebody is to fail to recognize their humanity.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.

Coveting that which is not yours is an act of selfishness and lacking gratitude. The lack of gratitude is probably one of the biggest problems we have today. People are widely upset because they feel they should have more than they do. They want to find someone to blame because they don’t have enough. It’s okay to have things (within reason) but we need to be grateful for what we do have.

Notice that all of the commandments are about relationship. The first three are about relationship with God or the divine or the cosmos, whatever your preference. The rest are about relationship with each other. The ten commandments are properly summed up with the greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord, your God with your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, … you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37)

 

 

After my post “God Thoughts,” several people ask me for “Jesus Thoughts.”

I am a strong believer in the significance of Jesus Christ and Christianity today, when human suffering, war, and hardened and hateful political polarization so characterize our contemporary life situation. The key issue for me is clarifying that being a Christian means not just talking about Jesus but living the way of Jesus – following the example of how he lived.

What emerges when we trace the Jesus images in the Gospels is a portrait of a human life in which the human opens to the Divine. In the earliest Gospel, Mark, we read: “After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time is fulfilled,’ he said. ‘The Reign of God has come. Repent and believe the good news!’”  (Mark 1:15)

Most biblical scholars agree that the reality of the Reign of God lies at the very heart of Jesus’ life and message. In the text from Mark, we see the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus had most likely spent some time as a follower of John the Baptizer but then recognized and responded to his own unique call from God. 

The “Reign of God” is a religious image. It is based on the metaphor of God depicted as a king. By proclaiming the Reign of God Jesus, was using figurative language that evoked the living tradition of an experience of God acting in history. For Jesus, God is not out there or up there but present and active in the lived-out events of everyday life, here and now with us. The Reign of God meant a new awareness that God’s justice would replace injustice. It meant that the poor and the marginalized would be reintegrated into society. The content of the Reign of God is reflected in Jesus’ sayings, parables, and his actions – in all the contours of his life and ministry.

Jesus experienced God’s presence and influence as close, near, and very personal. God for Jesus was not a cold-hearted taskmaster. He experienced God as an understanding, compassionate, and forgiving “Father.”  Jesus grew up in the Hebrew tradition which pictured God as male. A Hebraic anthropomorphism. God of course has no gender. God can be pictured just as much as “Mother” or “Father.”

Jesus explained life in the Reign of God very particularly in his parables. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, also known as the parable of the Neighborly Samaritan, for example, Jesus teaches a universal love that also extends to one’s enemies, whether they be personal enemies in the village or those of a particular group or nation. For Jesus the barriers between insiders and outsiders are broken down. Perhaps Christian political leaders should also be good and neighborly Samaritans?

The human Jesus opens our eyes to all that God means and enables us to see all that God is. Those who experienced Jesus experienced God’s revelation in his life. Their full understanding came after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Recall Matthew 27:53-55: “After Jesus’ resurrection…. When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified and said, ‘Truly this was the Son of God.’” One of my favorite post-Resurrection narratives is about the man and woman disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35): “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him…. They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’”

It is through the human Jesus – “Son of Humankind” and “Son of God” — that people were enabled to experience all that the word “God” means. We find that realization is so clearly expressed in the Fourth Gospel with its strong post-Resurrection belief and understanding. Recall, for instance, these passages: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:26); “If you knew me, you would know my Father also” (John 8:19); “Whoever sees me sees him who sent me” (John 12:45); “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9); and finally, “[Just as God] has loved me, so have I loved you” (John 15:9).

The Christian way of life is a life of spirituality: a journey through and with Christ into the life of God. Life in Christ is a mystery to be lived. To live in Christ is to live what the Apostle Paul called “a new creation.” 

I would emphasize that to be a Christian is not primarily to be “a religious person.” The historical Jesus was not anti-religion but religiously critical. It is important to remember that Jesus came to show us how to be truly human much more than how to be religious. In the depth of our humanity-shared-with-others we meet the living God. “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20)

To be a Christian is to be a whole human being; and Jesus is the portrait of that wholeness. Consider the faith system in which Jesus’ own life was nurtured. He broke religious boundaries again and again in his attempt to call people into a new humanity and to introduce them to a Divine presence manifested in the fullness of his own humanity. Anything that teaches one to hate or violate another cannot be of God. Jesus’ disciples saw and experienced in him a rare integrity. Each person whom Jesus met seemed to have the potential to become whole, to be invested with infinite worth. 

God was likened by Jesus to a wide variety of images. God was like a father who welcomed home the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32). God was like a shepherd who searched for the lost sheep (Luke 15:3–7), or like a woman who swept diligently until she found a lost coin (Luke 15:8–10). The God Jesus seemed to know was one in whom all are welcome. (Matthew 11:28) 

Christian spirituality requires that one take time to sit back and contemplate. It is through quiet contemplation, not speedy data-processing, that we effectively process our experiences and truly explore the mystery of life. The contemplative mind sees reality in its wholeness not just in its parts. Jesus took time to contemplate as well. Recall when he began his ministry. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us that after being baptized by John the Baptizer he retreated to the Judean Desert to pray. Through contemplation the historical Jesus came to understand his identity with God. Luke reminds us that “He frequently withdrew to the wilderness to pray.” (Luke 5:16)

Material for our own reflection: Jesus and the mystery of life. Jesus knew joy and the camaraderie of his close friends. He also faced anger and rejection from narrow-minded religious leaders. He knew fear and anxiety. Recall his “agony in the garden” as he contemplated his own torture and death at the hands of the Romans. “Then he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here and stay awake with me.’ And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.’” (Matthew 26: 38 & 39)

Jesus, who uniquely cared, served and loved, suffered at the hands of oppressive religious and political authorities. He lived the mystery of life: the Reign of God. He did not abandon God. God did not abandon him.

Jesus’ reassuring message for us is that God has not abandoned us either, although, like Jesus, we can experience dark days.

 

• Jack

Some days it seems so long ago; but I clearly remember the event. Yuri Gagarin, who died 57 years ago on March 27, 1968, was a Soviet cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) quickly announced to the Central Committee of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party that “Gagarin flew into space but didn’t see any God up there.” Khrushchev had a big laugh about that.

In the early 1960s the “death of God” movement was also coming into prominence. It was largely inspired by the proclamation of the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900) that “God is dead.” It was explored by a group of Christian theologians and philosophers, like the French Protestant theologian Gabriel Vahanian (1927-2012), the American Protestant theologian Thomas Altizer (1927-2018), and the American theologian and Episcopal priest Paul van Buren (1924-1988). The “death of God” theologians argued that traditional Christian concepts of God were obsolete in a modern, secular world.

In 1961 after Yuri Gagarin’s space trip, I remember reading Gabriel Vahanian’s historic book God is Dead: The Culture of our Post-Christian Era. (My parents saw the book and wondered what in heck was going through Jack’s head.)  Vahanian argued that the “death of God” happened when modern culture had lost a sense of the sacred. He argued for a transformation of a post-Christian and a post-modern culture. Vahanian – contrary to what some said later — was a true believer.

In many ways, Vahanian was echoing what Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) had expressed in his Letters and Papers from Prison. During his year and a half confinement in the Berlin Tegel military prison, Bonhoeffer questioned the role of Christianity in a “world come of age,” where human beings had lost a sense of a metaphysical God. He pondered the meaning of a “religionless Christianity.” In a note dated November 21, 1943, He wrote “My fear and distrust of ‘religiosity’ have become greater than ever.” “Even those who honestly describe themselves as ‘religious’” he wrote “do not in the least act up to it and so they presumably mean something quite different by ‘religious.’” Bonhoeffer of course was reacting to all the “good Christians” who supported Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism agenda.

The central theological question of how to speak of God in a secularized and suffering world was the primary focus in the writings, after the mid-1960s, of my theological mentor, at the Catholic University in Nijmegen, Edward Schillebeeckx, OP (1914-2009). Schillebeeckx emphasized that we experience God’s love, the creative and saving presence of God’s grace, wherever human persons minister to one another, especially to the neighbor in need. “Human love,” he stressed “is an embodiment, a sacrament, of God’s love.”

Pondering the crisis of secularization in the 1960s, Schillebeeckx suggested that the death of the “God of the gaps,”as he expressed it, could be a blessing that could give birth to a more profound understanding of human responsibility for the future of human history and the cosmos. That responsibility he stressed is always undergirded and empowered by the creative presence of God. The impact of radical secularization and Western technological cultures led Schillebeeckx to seek a spirituality of hope.

The focus on God’s Spirit as the source of the human ability to “hope against hope” became even more central in the spirituality of Schillebeeckx’s writings as he turned his attention to the vast and senseless suffering in our world today. Underlying Schillebeeckx’s spirituality of hope (“grace optimism”) was the faith conviction that God holds open a future “full of hope” and that human beings are the words with which God tells the story of grace.

In 1990, Schillebeeckx wrote in his book Church: The Human Story of God that the basic experience of the first disciples after Good Friday was: “neither evil nor the cross, can have the last word. Jesus’ way of life is right and is the last word, that is sealed in his resurrection. . . Suffering and death remain absurd and may not be mystified, even in Jesus’ case; but they do not have the last word, because the liberating God was absolutely near to Jesus on the cross, as during the whole of Jesus’ career.”

Sometimes, people learn very slowly. Quite often today, I fear that God, for many people, has been turned into just a cultural artifact. Our political leaders love to say, “God bless you” but they say it the same way the check-out person at the supermarket says, “Have a good day.” Is there really any belief behind it? Too many contemporary “believers” speak and behave in ungodly ways.

Nevertheless, God is still traveling with us on our journey. But I ask how do we best think of God today? What words? What imagery? God is just as much Mother as Father. Certainly, the old Hebrew and early Christian cosmology, with God enthroned in the heavens up above Earth is a passe. Khrushchev said Gagarin did not see God in space. But Khrushchev was blinded by his own ignorance and Communist ideology.

We need spirituality. Spirituality connects people to the Divine. To the depth of Reality. It provides peace and harmony in our lives. Spirituality goes to the very essence of what Christianity is all about. Spirituality is not something added on top of our Christian life.

Spirituality should be our way of life – in lived out awareness of the Divine Presence, the Sacred, the Ground of Being, Emmanuel, God with us. There are many ways to describe the depth of Reality, just like there are many ways to describe what it means to love someone and to be loved. Some of the old images of God may no longer speak to contemporary people; but God has not abandoned us. And we should not abandon God. We simply need to reflect on better ways of conceptualizing and speaking about our experience of the Divine.

We need open minds and open hearts. Our schools, study groups, and our parishes should be centers of excellence where people speak courageously about their awareness of the Divine Presence through personal shared faith stories, through drama, music, and art. And through deep reflection. We should invite and welcome the questioners and the seekers. We need to listen to young people at the start of their adult lives and to older people, confronting their life transitions.

Regardless of our stage in the human journey, the Gospels remind us that God lives and walks with all men and women, without making distinctions. Matthew 25:34-45, for example, is truly clear: “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger, and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison, and you came to visit me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

As the Franciscan spiritual writer Richard Rohr (born 1943) so often said: “The presence of God is infinite, everywhere, always, and forever. You cannot not be in the presence of God. There’s no other place to be. It is we who are not present to Presence. We will make any excuse to be somewhere else than right here. Right here, right now never seems enough. It actually is, but it is we who are not aware enough yet.”

• Jack

 

 

 

 

 

The relationship between religion and politics has been and continues to be a toxic and dangerous relationship. A key U.S. player in that relationship today is Kevin Roberts and his Heritage Foundation.

Kevin D. Roberts (born 1974) is the president of the Heritage Foundation, an activist conservative political think tank, based in Washington DC. Prior to assuming his current role, Roberts was the CEO of another conservative think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential think tank that opposes efforts to fight climate change and receives millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests.

Roberts is the architect of Project 2025, also known in 2024 as the “2025 Presidential Transition Project,” an initiative of the Heritage Foundation. It aims to promote conservative and right-wing policies to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power under the incumbent U.S. president. It calls for dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor fossil fuels. It recommends abolishing the Department of Education and terminating its programs. Funding for climate research would be cut. The National Institutes of Health would be reformed along conservative principles and Medicare and Medicaid would be terminated.

Roberts, 2024 book titled Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, features a foreword by J.D. Vance, in which Vance praises Roberts for “articulating a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics.” Dawns Early Light clearly outlines the Project 2025 agenda for the United States, stressing that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that would “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Vance switched from being an atheist to being a conservative Catholic and was baptized in 2019. Vance said he was drawn to the Catholic Church’s “ancient ways.”

Project 2025 lays out what is essentially a very conservative “Christian nationalist vision” of the United States, one in which married heterosexuality is the only valid form of sexual expression and identity. It opposes what it calls “radical gender ideology” and advocates that the government “maintain a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.” To achieve this, it proposes ending same-sex marriage and removing protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual or gender identity.

Project 2025 also recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants. It proposes employing the military for domestic law enforcement and calls for immediate capital punishment of convicted offenders.

What many observers do not realize is that Kevin D. Roberts, the architect of Project 2025, has close ties to the Catholic organization Opus Dei (“Work of God”). Opus Dei has long attracted significant controversy. Criticism has centered on its secretiveness and support for authoritarian, right-wing governments. An important book about Opus Dei is Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei by the investigative journalist Robert A. Hutchison (1938). The book was published in 1997, St. Martins Press, but the most recent version came out in May 2025. I would also recommend the important book by my friend Betty Clermont The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America (Clarity Press, 2009).

Kevin Roberts receives regular Opus Dei spiritual guidance at the Catholic Information Center, in Washington DC, headed by an Opus Dei priest. Another Opus Dei linked U.S. Catholic is Leonard Leo (born 1965), a self-declared Opus Dei operative. He is a lawyer, judicial activist, and co-chairman of the conservative legal think tank, the Federalist Society for Law and Policy. Leo has also emerged as a key architect and funder of Project 2025, backed by billions of dollars of slush fund dark money. Leo has actually created a network of influential conservative legal groups funded mostly by anonymous donors. He assisted Chief Justice Clarence Thomas in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991. Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States by a narrow Senate majority of 52 to 48. Leonard Leo also led campaigns to support the nominations of the conservative justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. All far-right Catholics except Gorsuch, who was raised Catholic but is now a member of the Episcopal Church.

Opus Dei was founded in Spain in 1928 by the Catholic priest Josemaría Escrivá (1902 – 1975). Popes Pius XII (1876 – 1958), John Paul II (1920 – 2005), and Benedict XVI (1927 – 2022) were strong supporters of Opus Dei. Josemaría Escrivá was declared a saint in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, who said Escrivá should be “counted among the great witnesses of Christianity.” Well, I find it significant that Escrivá was active in bolstering the support of Fascist regimes, including that of Francisco Franco (1936 – 1975) in Spain and Augusto Pinochet (1917 – 2006) in Chile.

Although controversial, Opus Dei remains influential within the Catholic Church. Lay people make up the majority of its membership. The remainder are secular priests under the governance of a prelate (leader) elected by specific members and appointed by the Pope. Fernando Ocáriz Braña a Catholic priest born in Paris in 1944, has been the head of Opus Dei since 2017 and he is the fourth person to head Opus Dei since its founding in 1928. Two of Opus Dei’s earlier prelates were bishops appointed by Pope John Paul II. Well known in the Vatican, Ocáriz has been an advisor to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), once known as the Holy Office, since 1986.  In 2022, Pope Francis announced that the head of Opus Dei would no longer be a bishop, but he said he has very positive sentiments about Opus Dei.

Pope Leo XIV has shown interest in Opus Dei’s statutes and maintains a positive relationship with the organization, as evidenced by his recent audience with its Prelate and his annual Mass for the founder. Opus Dei has also been working on revising its statutes as requested by Pope Francis, and these revised statutes are currently under review by the Holy See. 

Opus Dei has more than ninety-five thousand members. The current Archbishop of Los Angeles, José Horacio Gómez (born 1951) was the first numerary member of Opus Dei to be consecrated a bishop in the United States. (A numerary member of Opus Dei is a member who takes a vow of celibacy.) Archbishop Gómez was President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2019 to 2022. Another Opus Dei bishop is John Barres (born 1960) the Bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre in New York. He is a graduate of Opus Dei’s Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. He joined Opus Dei as priest. In general, Opus Dei bishops in the United States tend not identify as members of Opus Dei because bishops have only one superior, the pope.

The British journalist and Associate Editor at Thomson Reuters, Gareth Gore, has written a new book about Opus Dei, which came out in early October 2024: Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church (Simon & Schuster, 2024). Gore observed recently: “Like Project 2025, Opus Dei at its core is a reactionary stand against the progressive drift of society. For decades now, the organization has thrown its resources at penetrating Washington’s political and legal elite and finally seems to have succeeded through its close association with men like Kevin Roberts and Leonard Leo.”

Well, a lot to think about.

I conclude this week’s reflection with a quote from Sandra Day O’Connor (1930 – 2023) who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 until her retirement in 2006. O’Connor was the first woman to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. She retired from the bench in 2006 to care for her ailing husband. “Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”

 

 

Truth is the property of being in accord with facts or reality. Truth is usually held to be the opposite of falsehood. Our problem today is that falsehood in politics and religion, and medical misinformation are being promoted as truth while the actual truth-speakers are being condemned as dangerous trouble-makers.

As I was reviewing some notes about “truth,” two quotations caught my attention. The first is from the American writer William Faulkner (1897- 1962): “Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth.” The other quotation is from Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975), the German historian and philosopher who became interested in how the most outrageous lies get a political hold over people, ever since Nazi lies about the Jews and intellectuals drove her from Berlin in 1933 after her arrest by the Gestapo. 

Arendt wrote: “This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such people, deprived of the power to think and judge, are, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such people, you can do whatever you want.” I also recommend Arendt’s book The Origins of Totalitarianism. The most recent edition was published, very appropriately, this year in May.

Rather than making decisions on what is true or not true, many people today make decisions on what they FEEL is true or most probable. Narrow feeling perspectives replace thoughtful examination of the actual reality. In an email, for example, I asked a friend why he still strongly supports the incumbent U.S. president. His reply was polite and brief: “I just feel that God has blessed him. I feel he has been chosen by God to be president again. I trust my feelings.”

When people lose the ability to be critical observers and critical thinkers, they become unable to distinguish between verified facts and falsehoods. That becomes problematic, because they cannot recognize “the big lie.”

“The big lie” is a great distortion of truth. It was the propaganda technique, originally coined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 book Mein Kampf. There he wrote: “The great masses of the people… will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.” Hitler stressed that if a known falsehood is repeated regularly and treated as true, “the big lie” will be taken for granted rather than critically questioned. The Fuehrer’s lies were regular and colossal.

The key question is how do we know what is true and what is not true when watching the news, observing elected officials, listening to religious speakers, or using social media? 

Coming from a family of educators, my focus is on education. My paternal grandfather “Alonzo” was a hoosier schoolmaster. As John Alonzo Dick, I have inherited not just his name but more importantly his commitment to education. But we all have a responsibility to educate.

We all need to help people develop critical thinking skills. This is an essential part of education: learning how to observe and ask critical questions. What is the source of the information? Is it a reliable source? People who spread fake news and “alternative facts” sometimes create web pages, newspaper stories, or AI-generated images that look official, but are not.

We all need to combat ignorance. As an historian and a theologian, I realized long ago that a great many church leaders need remedial historical and biblical education. They may be well-intentioned but too often what they say about church history and biblical understandings is simply out of date and not true.

We are not expected to have all the answers on our own. As we look for truth, we can turn to trusted sources for guidance. That may mean a trusted mentor, a well-informed friend, an insightful public figure respected for her or his integrity, or a respected book using primary source material. Footnotes with documentation are important.

We ought to be greatly concerned about the survival of the humanities, now being unfunded and pushed to the side. The humanities insure and safeguard how we process document and understand the human experience. We desperately need literature, art, music, and history to truly be human and to understand who we are as human beings. Most importantly, we need the humanities to experience and relate to the Sacred – the Divine.

Fact-based knowledge, critical thinking skills, historical awareness, and anchors in art, music, and literature are essential elements in maintaining a humane and humanizing life and culture.

What sources of news can one trust? A credible news report will include a variety of facts, quotes from bonafide experts, official statistics, or detailed and corroborated eye-witness accounts from people on the scene. If these are missing, one should question the report’s truth and accuracy. Does the evidence prove that something definitely happened? Or, have the facts been selected or “twisted” to back up a particular fabricated viewpoint?

Ultimately, people will come to the realization that denying the truth doesn’t change the facts. But sometimes the process goes painfully slow. I often think about the observation of Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), the Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”

This week’s reflection comes a couple days early because I am busy with preparations for an important family reunion.