Oopen Letter to Religious Leaders, re Faith

Special to The National Catholic Reporter draft 6.2

May 31. Feast of the Visitation; Anniversary of the Magnificat.

“Take Care , lest the light in you become darkness.”: Luke 11:35

An Open Letter to All Religious Leaders concerning the Crises of Faith in the World.

“All Catholics are going to hell,” my future mother-in-law once announced with conviction to her daughter. “But mother,” said the young woman, now my wife, “there sure a lot of Catholics in the world.” Her mother quickly replied, “Honey, heaven won’t be crowded!” “But how can you judge so easily?” Janette asked. “Honey, it is my Christian duty to judge others,” was her mother’s certain answer.

Burned by a devout mother who ran off to church, leaving her as first born in charge of four younger siblings, Janette swore she would never marry a minister. Luckily for me and our children, they both mellowed.

Christians and believers of many stripes assume their faith gives them the moral high ground and a sense of entitlement to judge another’s faith and behavior. Faith is easily taken over by our Dark Side. This process, I propose, is a main source of much conflict, violence and war in our world. Maybe we cannot have peace in the world until we have religious peace.

I offer three views: 1) How is faith so easily taken over by our Ego, or “Dark Side?” 2) What is genuine and authentic listening? and 3) What does our Catholic faith community need to face the world with love, understanding and service? I suggest that our American experience has something distinctive and urgent to offer religious leaders and the Vatican and Catholic theology.

Faith is often regarded as an entitlement by many, as providing the moral high ground from which to make many judgments about others’ faith sincerity and certain destination. We can hold our faith so fiercely that it seems that everyone who believes differently must be outside salvation. They must be further from God than we are.


Herein, I propose, is the tragic flaw of all the great world religions., resulting [ower is preferred to love. Ideology trumps service/reason/science. Hubris wins over humility. Culture triumphs over principle. Ego discounts learning. Entitlement spurns listening to the People God. Control gets the better of honesty. Emotion rules reflection. Ultimately, the darkness of pride drives out the Light in far too much of religious history. Including today, vastly, on all sides.

What happens? We take the absoluteness belonging to God and transfer it to Our Way to God. Then we are ready to judge others. . Faith has been taken over by the Dark Side of human nature. There may be no more pressing issue for world peace than facing this blindness.

Consider that Faith is a supernatural gift we cannot earn or deserve or even reach by reason. Aquinas and the Scholastics only showed that faith was not contrary to reason.

Because faith cannot be earned or deserved, it can be accepted only with humble gratitude as invitation to a new and different way of life. The light of faith is the transforming grace that can change everything. “How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.” Lyrics of Amazing Grace.

However, when we take what is a free gift and use it to judge another’s free gift, faith has been taken over by the ego, the Dark Side of human nature we all possess.

God’s love never intended the free and extraordinary gift of faith be employed to discount another’s different gift.

Repeatedly in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus scolds his disciples: “I have been with you all this time and you still do not understand”. How long has it taken us in this country to understand the full implications of our Bill of Rights? It is possible that Christians have long employed faith to prove their superiority over others, creating conflict, violence and wars. Jefferson’s Separation of Church and State in the First Amendment addressed this long abuse.

To use faith as a platform to judge others’ faith as of lesser value makes faith into an idol rather than a precious gift. Idols are jealous of other idols. Faith, according to Jesus, is given us for loving service, to risk ourselves in loving the least, last, lost, and lame, to see Christ in everyone, without exception. Jesus makes this quite clear when he describes how the sheep will be separated from the goats in Matthew 25, vv. 36 ff.

The early Christian community did not grow by creed, code, cult and papal power. From that small Palestinian sect of Jewish Christians to become a majority in the Roman Empire by the time of Constantine, was a growth of approximately 25 % per year, according to demographers. “See how those Christians love one another,” said the pagans, “See how they care for the widow, the orphan and the poor.” Christianity was a movement without need of a strong papacy. Doctrines such as “Outside the church there is no salvation,” Apostolic Succession and creeds were not necessary

However unique is our faith, we cannot say that it is objectively superior to another. That is taking the absoluteness that belongs to God alone and making our gift of faith, our way to God an absolute rule for others. Subjectively faith can be absolute for oneself, but making it superior to others is forgetting the extraordinary giftedness of our faith. It is also a prideful challenge to the Providence of God, who is the source of all blessing and love.

For the word faith, substitute Grace, as faith is, in fact, a free, unparalleled and undeserved gift of grace. To use such a gift of grace to say: “When you do not believe as I do, you are further from God than I am” is an outrage and perhaps even a insult against God’s freedom to give or not to give. .

Jesus said repeatedly “Your faith has saved you.” He did not say, “because your faith is like mine, you are saved.” To insist that our story of faith is better than another story is to judge both the light and leadings of another human being. It is an arrogant misuse of that supernatural gift of grace that is faith. Moreover, to use faith as “power over” others is to replicate the vast misuse of faith by many others in the world today.

“Take care lest the light in you become darkness.” Jesus said in Luke 11:35. For that reason, we do well to pay heed to Paul’s advice to the church of Thessalonika: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances. Test everything; retain what is good. Refrain from every kind of evil.” (1 Thess 5:19-22)

Gregory of Nyssa, Saint and Bishop, Church Father of the Fourth Century, may have captured the redeeming phrase for us. “Concepts create idols, only wonder and awe can appreciate mystery.”


Next, let us examine the process of genuine and authentic listening. Having spent many thousands of hours listening as a family therapist, I offer some insights.

To listen well, one must set aside pre-conditions and assumptions to allow the different point of view of the other to be fully grasped. This kind of listening is difficult, a stretch, and one that can be maintained only by openness and willingness to be vulnerable. Martin Buber spoke of this process beautifully if mystically in his little book “I and Thou.” There is grace present and we are likely to be changed by this kind of listening.

But when one is convinced of the superiority of one’s faith, and that it is unique among Wisdom traditions, one cannot hear or tolerate divergent views. In this case one hears only what is acceptable and safe.

Moreover, we know now that we can see only what we are ready to see. Our Unconscious has “Lions at the gates of our awareness” that do not allow us to perceive what is actually there to others. Our preconceptions shape and blind us. One cannot accept or honor the amazing diversity of gifts among humans.

If a leader is insecure of what might come to awareness, one can demand an oath of unconditional obedience to one’s office as a pre-condition for making priests into bishops. Surely makes governing easier, but very limited and often blind.

No genuine authentic listening is possible when we believe that our faith is superior to that of others. This Dark Sid use of faith is true of many believers and all stripes of fundamentalists. Jesus warned against it, more than once.

Some would say that I am proposing that all religions are equal. I am not. What I am saying is that is God’s judgment to make, not ours, no matter how precious we hold our own faith. To say that someone else’s understanding of this Mystery we call God is less than ours is simply pride. God’s Love calls us to cherish our differences, brothers and sisters all. God seeks lovers, “since Love is Lord of heaven and earth..” (Hymn, How Can I Keep from Singing?)

Lastly, what does this Catholic faith community need and deserve in our modern world that we may respond more fully to God’s Love?

We need a servant leadership which models the loving service of Jesus. We need bridge building among Wisdom traditions for mutual understanding and respect. St. Benedict in his Holy Rule advised the Abbot to welcome the stranger who came to the gate, and even the youngest in the monastery, because Christ might speak though either.

The catholicity of our faith means that we must welcome the stranger, offering hospitality as did Abraham when he kept his tent open on all sides so he could see the traveler coming from a distance and have a feast prepared.

Our faith communities are strengthened by welcoming the diversity of gifts among us. We need canonical rights affirmed both in the parish and at the diocesan level. We want to see our leaders lead with love and hospitality. We need to welcome and embrace modern science, psychology, biblical research and build a theology of marriage upon a psychology of married love. There can be no conflict between faith and science. We are a community of thinking Catholics, no longer sheep.

A community is most healthy when all are active, feeling wanted and involved, and when each takes responsibility for the common welfare. Yves Congar, O.P. , one of the fathers whose writings helped bishops at Vatican II, said if Catholic hierarchy ever trusted and let loose the laity, we could have a second rebirth that would dwarf the first Pentecost.

We are created equal. The diversity of faiths among us does not make us unequal, inferior or superior. If we take the unconditional grace of faith and make it a requirement for others, we do not yet understand the enormity of the divine gift given us. We still do not understand that Jesus never intended his teaching to be used as “power over,” against others, nor against his own people and their traditions.

However, Catholics today have no rights face to face with the pastor or th bishop. Basically the bishop has the power of a feudal lord. He can do anything he pleases. The Association of the Rights of Catholics in the Church has sought to bring the collegial understanding of the Church into the reality of shared decision making and accountability. ARCC has developed and works to implement a Charter of the Rights of Catholics in the Church and a Proposed Catholic Constitution. They await a bishop with the vision ti share his decision making in order to empower the laity. (See website)

American Catholics desire a thinking faith community where these matters can be openly discussed, where we accept and welcome the divergent views of those around us, Protestant, Hebrew, Muslim, Buddhist and others. There is not one we cannot learn from. Grace abounds, lessons are everywhere, and “the most beautiful thing, in the universe” according to Einstein, “is the mysterious.” For the person of faith that is grace.

Do we Catholics want to be known by how we emulate, embrace, embody and celebrate the abounding grace and universality of God’s love? Are we led by Grace? Are we invited, enabled, empowered, and impelled to lead by love?

Which faith is better objectively is God’s judgment to make. We humans are pervasively and ultimately subjective, seeing reality as we are, not as it is.

Does it matter to this mystery we call God how we arrive, whether by catholic bus, Protestant train, Hebrew auto, Muslim caravan, Buddhist flight, or on foot after a perilous journey through many addictions? Our prideful posturing over our way being a better way does not praise the Mystery of Love by which we are surrounded.

Want proof that God does not care about the make or model of the faith vehicle you arrive in? we now know that faith is a health factor promoting well-being and healing regardless of the source of faith. Even medicine accepts faith as a health factor. As for healing from faith, God does not care about the particulars of your faith journey Examine psychoneruoimmunology and faith on the internet.

The formula is rather simple: Gather the People. Tell the Stories, Break the bread, Celebrate the Vision, and Welcoming he Stranger by Loving Service.
Without the last, the first four fail. We are going to be measured simply by Love, not by the means of travel.

If God is Love, the Holy Spirit, would God not be known by love? If this mystery we call God wants lovers, maybe, just maybe, all that counts in life is that we get there. And maybe, just maybe, Love does not care how we get there, how we arrive at Love, as long as we get there?

We are invited to sing with Mary her song: “My soul magnifies the Lord.” (Luke 1: 46). Grace summons us to honor those who sing a different song.


“See how those (you fill in the species) LOVE....!” What if this were the way we measured ourselves? +++

End

Note to editor: Paschal Baute, Ed. D. , is a married Catholic priest with three children and three grandchild/ is a priest of the Celtic Christian church, an old Catholic jurisdiction. My resume can be found at www.paschalbaute.com.
For much writing on the interface between religion and psychology google “Paschal Baute”

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Civilization's First Attack Ads, by John Lundberg

If you've missed Rudy Giuliani's 9-11 exploitation ads or waited anxiously for Swiftboaters to start running some shadowy Bin Laden video, this 2008 Democratic primary is for you! At the rate it's devolving, voters in South Dakota and Montana can look forward to Deal or No Deal getting interrupted by footage of Hitler at the Reichstag--with Obama.

All the ridiculous sniping got me wondering how politicians went after one another before television. It turns out the Ancient Greeks--inventors of Democracy--may also have invented the first smear tactic: the attack poem.

Don't laugh. Poetry was primarily spoken, not written, back then, and it was often recited publicly. A well-timed poetic assault in front of the right audience could do some serious damage to one's rival. Archilochus, a soldier and renowned poet in the 7th Century BC, had such a gift for these attacks that it's said he drove a rival--and his entire family--to hang themselves. His verse was nasty enough to get him banned from Sparta. Just how how nasty could Archilochus get? Here's a poem he directed at a rival (all translations are from Brooks Haxton's book Dances for Flute and Thunder from Viking Press):

Swept overboard, unconscious in the breakers,

strangled with seaweed, may you wake up in a gelid

surf, your teeth, already cracked into the shingle,

now set rattling by the wind, while facedown,

helpless as a poisoned cur, on all fours you puke

brine reeking of dead fish. May those you meet,

barbarians as ugly as their souls are hateful,

treat you to the moldy wooden bread of slaves.

And may you, with your split teeth sunk in that,

smile, then, the way you did when speaking as my friend.

Such attacks weren't an uncommon practice. Even the kinder, gentler--though no less passionate--poet Sappho (7th-6th Century BC), lashed out at her enemies:

Dead, no thought of you from anyone

who wants or wishes anything,

no one word said concerning you, forgotten,

wavering beyond extinction, may you be

unseen, and restless there, among the corpses.

In a particularly vicious (and effective) political attack, Timokreon of Rhodes (5th Century BC) wrote the following lines about Themistokles, a hero in the Athenians' war against the Persian Empire. Off the battlefield, not everyone held Themistokles in such high regard. Here's Timokreon's attack:

Themistokles--who kept Timokreon his former host in exile,

and who helped his fellow thieves, hurt friends, and murdered

anyone you like, for money--first was ostracized,

and then, before he killed himself in shame, set up

an inn for scum and losers, whom he served cold meat.

There, at his own table, lowlife daily cursed his name.

It's the textual equivalent of stabbing someone on the forum floor. Simonides, a friend of Themistokles, struck back at Timokreon after his death with the following epitaph:

Having eaten much, drunk much, and said much ill

of many men, here lies Timokreon of Rhodes.

I guess it's heartening to know that politics hasn't deteriorated much since Ancient Greece. If anything, it's gotten more civil (and probably less artful). How might the old attack poem look today? Here's my best shot:

Barack--who kept me from my rightful nomination,

who would not wear flag pins, and called many men

bitter--long ago he crossed paths with scum and losers:

a thief, a former Weatherman and a crazed preacher

who said "God Damn America." He's also Muslim,

some say, though I take him at his word.

And, of course, the responding epitaph:

Having spent much, won...not so much, and said much ill

of one man, here lies Hillary's campaign.

Here's hoping we can use that last one soon.

END

Paschal: aside from the above, in both the Old Testament and the New we find plenty of "attack ads" or diatribes against others, even among the words of Jesus.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lundberg/civilizations-first-attac_b_98647.html?view=print

How Texas viewed polygamist cults differently.

Unlike Arizona and Utah, it closed a compound forcibly.
By Miguel Bustillo and Nicholas Riccardi,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
April 12, 2008

ELDORADO, TEXAS -- After a polygamist sect took up residence outside this tiny ranch town a few years ago, the library stocked paperback, cassette and hardcover copies of "Under the Banner of Heaven," an unsparing look at such groups that was suddenly in hot demand.

The local weekly newspaper devoted stories in nearly every edition to the outsiders. And it posted online audio clips of the sect's self-styled prophet, Warren Jeffs, ranting in a creepy monotone about the Beatles being covert agents of a "Negro race."

The people of Eldorado (pronounced el-doh-RAY-do) took in the sect's arrival with nervous anticipation -- because they understood that, unlike in Utah and Arizona, this would not last long in Texas.

Texas' aggressive raid this month -- in which state investigators took custody of more than 400 children, disclosed evidence that men were marrying girls at puberty, and discovered beds allegedly used for sex acts inside a towering temple -- is the most decisive action against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in at least half a century.

Court papers released Friday showed that state investigators hauled off a cache of evidence from the polygamist compound that included marriage and birth records and what was cryptically described as a "cyanide poisoning document."

Texas' raid contrasts sharply with the approaches of Arizona and Utah, which have looked the other way for decades while the FLDS put underage girls into "spiritual marriages." The 10,000-member sect was founded in the 1930s by religious leaders who continued practicing polygamy after it was banned by the Mormon Church in 1890.

"God bless Texas," said Flora Jessop, an activist who escaped the FLDS at age 16. "The state has done in days what Arizona and Utah failed to do in more than a century -- protect children."

Authorities in the sect's home states have recently taken more aggressive steps; Utah successfully prosecuted Jeffs last year for being an accomplice to rape after he arranged the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her cousin, and Jeffs awaits trial in Arizona on similar charges.

Utah and Arizona officials have long argued that polygamists are too entrenched in their states to simply stamp them out. In Utah, Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff's office has prosecuted polygamists for child abuse. But it has never contemplated a full-scale raid like the one in Texas, spokesman Paul Murphy said.

"Our approach has been, if there is child abuse in one family, we will deal with that family," Murphy said.

The office is trying to build trust in polygamist communities to report crimes such as underage marriage, Murphy added, but the Texas raids have sowed panic even in groups that practice polygamy only among consenting adults.

Texas Rangers stressed they tried to respect the group's religious privacy while searching for a 16-year-old girl who called a family shelter and claimed she was sexually abused by a man she was forced to marry at age 15. But after being refused a key to the compound's imposing temple, Texas Rangers forced their way inside -- and even applied Jaws of Life rescue tools to its doors -- as 57 men from the sect cried and prayed.

The girl, who claimed she gave birth eight months ago and was pregnant once again, has yet to be found.

"You can worship what you want, think what you want. But if you act to abuse girls sexually in Texas, we are going to take action," said Texas Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar.

The only FLDS event that compares to the Texas action is the dramatic 1953 raid by Arizona state police and the U.S. National Guard on the community of Short Creek. Authorities took about 400 residents -- the entire FLDS population at the time -- into custody and hauled away 236 children.

Emotional accounts of Short Creek children weeping while government agents stripped them from their mothers generated a backlash, and Arizona Gov. John Howard Pyle lost his job the next year, a lesson that influenced future Utah and Arizona politicians.

In Texas, however, the only criticism of the raid so far seems to be that it took too long to happen.

"It should have been taken care of a long time ago," said Charmarie Swinford, 37, a waitress at the Hitch'n Post, an Eldorado restaurant that had one item on the lunch menu: hamburger. "I have a daughter who's 14, and I just can't . . . " she said, her voice trailing off.

Men from the sect first showed up in Eldorado, population 1,800, in 2003 and said they were looking for a hunting retreat.

But soon after the men starting building up an exotic game ranch on the outskirts of town, it became clear that this was no hunters lodge.

WHY GOOD PEOPLE KILL, Rosa Parks, referencing the work of psycholotgist Stanley Milgrim.

Why Good People Kill
Iraq murders reveal the warping power of conformity and dehumanization.
by Rosa Brooks


Are Americans good people?

After Vietnam — after My Lai, after the free-fire zones — many Americans were no longer sure.

After Haditha, the same question is again beginning to haunt us. We're supposed to be a virtuous nation; our troops are supposed to be the good guys. If it turns out that Marines murdered 24 civilians, including children and infants, how could that have happened?

In response to Haditha, U.S. government officials quickly reverted to the "bad apple" theory.

It's a tempting theory, and not just for the Bush administration. It suggests a vast and reassuring divide between "us" (the virtuous majority, who would never, under any circumstances, commit coldblooded murder) and "them" (the sociopathic, bad-apple minority). It allows us to hold on to our belief in our collective goodness. If we can just toss the few rotten Americans out of the barrel quickly enough, the rot won't spread.

The problem with this theory is that it rests on a false assumption about the relationship between character and deeds. Yes, sociopaths exist, but ordinary, "good" people are also perfectly capable of committing atrocities.

In 1961, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a famous experiment. He told subjects to administer electric shocks to other people, ostensibly to assess the effect of physical punishment on learning. In fact, Milgram wanted to "test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist."

Quite a lot of pain, it turned out. Most of Milgram's subjects continued to administer what they believed to be severe and agonizing shocks even when their "victims" (actually Milgram's assistants) screamed and begged them to stop.

Milgram's subjects weren't sociopaths. On the contrary, most expressed extreme distress about administering progressively more severe shocks. But almost all of them did it anyway.

Milgram's basic findings have been extended and confirmed since the 1960s. Depressingly, experimental evidence and historical experience suggest that even the gentlest people can usually be induced to inflict or ignore suffering.

There are several key factors that lead "good people" to do terrible things. The first, as the Milgram experiments powerfully demonstrated, is authority: Most ordinary people readily allow the dictates of "authorities" to trump their own moral instincts.

The second is conformity. Few people have the courage to go against the crowd.

The third is dehumanization of the victims. The Nazis routinely depicted Jews as "vermin" in need of extermination, for instance. Similarly, forcing victims to wear distinctive clothing (yellow stars, prison uniforms), shave their heads and so on can powerfully contribute to their dehumanization.

Orders, peer expectations and dehumanization need not be explicit to have a powerful effect. In adversarial settings such as prisons or conflict zones, subtle cues and omissions — the simple failure of authorities to send frequent, clear and consistent messages about appropriate behavior, for instance — can be as powerful as direct orders.

Against this backdrop, is it really surprising that ordinary, decent Marines may have committed atrocities in Haditha? All the key ingredients were present in one form or another: intense pressure from authorities to capture or kill insurgents; intense pressure from peers to seem tough and to avenge the deaths of comrades; the almost inevitable dehumanization that occurs when two groups look different, speak different languages, live apart and are separated by a chasm of mistrust.

Add in the discomfort, the fear, the constant uncertainty about the identity and location of the enemy and the relative youth of so many of our soldiers, and you have a recipe for atrocities committed not by "bad apples" but by ordinary people little different, and probably no worse, than most of us.

Of course, individuals still make their own choices. Most of Milgram's experimental subjects administered severe electric shocks — but a few refused. If Marines are proved to have massacred civilians at Haditha, they should be punished accordingly.

But let's not let the Bush administration off the hook. It's the duty of the government that sends troops to war to create a context that enables and rewards compassion and courage rather than callousness and cruelty. This administration has done just the opposite.

Our troops were sent to fight an unnecessary war, without adequate resources or training for the challenges they faced. At the same time, senior members of the administration made clear their disdain for the Geneva Convention's rules on war and for the principles and traditions of the military. Belated and halfhearted investigations into earlier abuses sent the message that brutality would be winked at — unless the media noticed, in which case a few bad apples would be ceremoniously ejected from the barrel, while higher-ups would go unpunished.

If we're talking about apples, we should also keep another old proverb in mind: The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Rosa Brooks is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Her experience includes service as a senior advisor at the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, as a consultant for the Open Society Institute and Human Rights Watch, as a board member of Amnesty International USA, and as a lecturer at Yale Law School. Brooks has authored articles on international law, human rights, and the law of war, and her book, "Can Might Make Rights? The Rule of Law After Military Interventions" (with Jane Stromseth and David Wippman), will be published in 2006 by Cambridge University Press.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times