reposted from the blog of Leonardo Boff (most of the articles are in Spanish)
There is great disappointment with the institutional Catholic Church. A
double emigration is happening: one is exterior, persons who simply
leave the Church, and the other is interior, those who remain in the
Church but who no longer feel that she is their spiritual home. They
continue believing, in spite of the Church.
It’s not for nothing. The present pope has taken some radical
initiatives that have divided the ecclesiastic body. He chose a path of
confrontation with two important episcopacies, the German and the
French, when he introduced the Latin Mass. He articulated an obscure
reconciliation with the Church of the followers of Lebfrevre; gutted the
principal renewal institutions of Vatican Council II, especially
ecumenism, absurdly denying the title of «Church» to those Churches that
are not Catholic or Orthodox. When he was a Cardinal he was gravely
permissive with pedophiles, and his concern with AIDS borders the
inhumane.
The present Catholic Church is submerged in a rigorous winter. The
social base that supports the antiquated model of the present pope is
comprised of conservative groups, more interested in the media, in the
logic of the market, than in proposing an adequate response to the
present grave problems. They offer a «lexotan-Christianity» good for
pacifying anxious consciences, but alienated from the suffering
humanity.
It is urgent that we animate these Christians about to emigrate with
what is essential in Christianity. It certainly is not the Church, that
was never the object of the preaching of Jesus. He announced a dream,
the Kingdom of God, in contraposition to the Kingdom of Caesar; the
Kingdom of God that represents an absolute revolution in relationships,
from the individual to the divine and the cosmic.
Christianity appeared in history primarily as a movement and as the
way of Christ. It predates its grounding in the four Gospels and in the
doctrines. The character of a spiritual path means a type of
Christianity that has its own course. It generally lives on the edge
and, at times, at a critical distance from the official institution. But
it is born and nourished by the permanent fascination with the figure,
and the liberating and spiritual message of Jesus of Nazareth. Initially
deemed the «heresy of the Nazarenes» (Acts 24,5) or simply, a «heresy»
(Acts 28,22) in the sense of a «very small group», Christianity was
acquiring autonomy until its followers, according to The Acts of The
Apostles (11,36), were called, «Christians».
The movement of Jesus is certainly the most vigorous force of
Christianity, stronger than the Churches, because it is neither bounded
by institutions, nor is it a prisoner of doctrines and dogmas,founded in
a specific cultural background. It is composed of all types of people,
from the most varied cultures and traditions, even agnostics and
atheists who let themselves be touched by the courageous figure of
Jesus, by the dream he announced, a Kingdom of love and liberty, by his
ethic of unconditional love, especially for the poor and the oppressed,
and by the way he assumed the human drama, amidst humiliation, torture
and his execution on the cross. Jesus offered an image of God so
intimate and life-friendly that it is difficult to disregard, even by
those who do not believe in God. Many people say, «if there is a God, it
has to be like the God of Jesus».
This Christianity as a spiritual path is what really counts. However,
from being a movement it soon became a religious institution, with
several forms of organization. In its bosom were developed different
interpretations of the figure of Jesus, that were transformed into
doctrines, and gathered into the official Gospels. The Churches, when
they assumed institutional character, established criteria of belonging
and of exclusion, doctrines such as identity reference and their own
rites of celebration. Sociology, and not theology, explains that
phenomenon. The institution always exists in tension with the spiritual
path. The ideal is that they develop together, but that is rare. The
most important, in any case, is the spiritual path. This has a future
and animates the meaning of life.
The problem of the Roman Catholic Church is her claim of being the
only true one. The correct approach is for all the Churches to recognize
each other, because they reveal different and complementary dimensions
of the message of the Nazarene. What is important is for Christianity to
maintain its character as a spiritual path. That can sustain so many
Christian men and women in the face of the mediocrity and irrelevancy
into which the present Catholic Church has fallen.
2 comments:
This is a great post, but then Boff is one of my favorites. Christianity became corrupted when it became an end rather than a way. In it's long history it has had many saints who lived the Way, but not too many of them had Vatican addresses. Way too many with Vatican addresses thought they had arrived at the end--and still do.
Yes, and some of those saintly ones with Vatican addresses wound up dead. Not a healthy place to be, hazardous to the soul, though very beneficial to one's wardrobe! I'm sure the cancer that ended John XXIII's life was due to the stress of dealing with the Curia day in and day out, in and out in and out, every day! Imagine!
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