This Easter provides an opportunity to reflect how far I have traveled from my past. I can recall little from my childhood, although I do have a memory of my sister once being dressed particularly special for Easter. However, I have strong memories of Easter from my earliest days in the seminary through many years of my adulthood. I can recall my repeated statements about the crucial dimension of Easter on Christianity. Without it, Christianity would be null and void. I can recall some of my Easter liturgies where I shared my vision of the importance and relevance of Easter to Christian faith. And now, it is as though someone else said and experienced those views. How could a person like me leave such a large portion of life’s experiences as though they are totally irrelevant to the present?
Growing up with a mother (until see died when I was 13) who was highly committed to a faith experienced initially in her native Ireland, I inherited a commitment to Catholicism as it was presented to me in religious education. The main principle was believing; understanding was not necessarily correlated with belief. It was sufficient to believe without understanding. If my father ranted at times when under the influence of alcohol about his lack of belief, even though he generally adhered to the practices of weekly church attendance, his views were not considered. I grew up as a typical Catholic youth who identified with the inherited belief system, albeit with the pressure that anything else would jeopardize my eternal well-being!
Having been educated in public schools, I found life in a seminary to be a cultural shock. For the first time, I was with all Catholics, many of whom were better educated than I. I was compelled to overcome my intellectual deficiencies while complying with the rigid expectations of the seminary. Without now going into implications of that degree of conformity to external discipline, it is important to realize the Christian feast days, especially Easter, were highly significant moments in the year.
During the first four years of seminary education (1955-1959), I was exposed to traditional interpretations of Catholic beliefs. Clearly, Easter celebrated the physical resurrection of the body of Jesus. The biblical narrations, in general, were presented to us as history. This type of education was radically changed the very next year and through the remainder of my seminary education (1959-1963). With the election of Pope John XXIII, not only did we become invigorated by the Vatican Council and all its theological investigations, we were brought into a new era of biblical understanding. We were finally able to read European theologians who were involved in what could be considered radical views.
First, it is preposterous to think back that in the spring of 1959, our lecturer who received advanced education in scripture adhered to a literal interpretation and, in the fall semester of the same year, another professor introduced us to a totally different way of reading scripture. According to this professor (and consistent generally with current understanding), scripture was NOT history, but stories intended to convey faith perspectives intended for believers. Scripture was not intended to prove anything nor was there any intention to convince anyone of the historical validity of the passages.
At this time, then, we were led to understand the resurrection narrations as literary genre or myths that captured the faith of the community. I, in short, came to understand the resurrection as Jesus being alive, albeit, possibly only in faith. I considered this understanding to be consistent with reality, i.e., not a figment of my imagination as much as a reality beyond the metaphysics of material life. There was no problem for me to share the joy of Easter with people, even though it would have nothing to do with whether Jesus’ bones were still in the ground. I admit that some of my older priest cohorts considered me an unbeliever, but I felt highly committed to a belief in a Risen Jesus as the core component of my faith, even if quite different than their beliefs.
During my relatively brief time as a priest (1963-1969), Easter was a very special feast day. However, I was increasingly disturbed by my perception that the overwhelming majority of priests were continuing to tell people the same message of traditional Catholicism in spite of all the theological and scripture renewal readily available. I saw this dichotomy between what was considered current knowledge and what was generally shared with people as a lie. And the bureaucratic authorities were not apparently interested in any form of continuing education to ensure that only the best in theological investigations would be the norm of religious education. I felt alienated within the church I was ordained to serve.
Without now sharing all of the forces that enabled (forced?) me to leave the active ministry, I was unable to see any evidence that all the forces for change, including the Vatican Council, were effective. Nothing was changing.
During many years of my life subsequent to my leaving the priesthood and becoming married, I had no problem supporting my belief system that was generated between 1959 and 1969) by my constant reading of the best theologians. There was always a parish relatively nearby that would provide liturgies that epitomized the best of what I considered to be Christianity.
So, how did I transition from this relatively stable set of believes to my present status as a non-participant?
There are two major elements to this change.
First, my continued reading introduced new dimensions of understanding. It became clear that Jesus clearly was only interested in being a good Jew. He advocated reform of Judaism, but he clearly never envisioned establishing a church. The literary genre of the New Testament could only be understood within the context of the time (Dominic Crossen was a major influence). Jesus was definitely a rabble rouser who was involved in addressing major social injustices. He clearly was killed by Romans because he was an instigator. The Jews had nothing to do with his death. And, the resurrection was a story that appeared later as the small group of Jesus Jews saw that their belief was invigorated by the lively presence of Jesus (however one would want to describe that experience).
James Carroll’s book on Constantine was another major influence in seeing that Christianity, as we know it, can only be attributed to the King’s annexation of Christianity to his kingdom in order to secure his power.
But, I was still an active believer at least in a very convoluted way, i.e., I had to repeatedly remind myself of the relatively little reality that this belief system had for support.
My reading of the various books of Dairmuid O’Murchu was extraordinarily pivotal in my recognizing that not only Christianity, but also all religions, are really systems designed to promote material power structures. Writing from an evolutionary perspective, he made it clear that however one understands God, God was clearly present in a world that preceded any form of organized religion by eons of millennia. And it would be hard to understand any God not being benign to a universe empowered in some fashion by events ultimately subject to the Ground of Being. It would be impossible to understand such a God as not being known through evolution since evolution is the ongoing experience of how we know God.
And yet, I still could untangle all of this in a way that enabled me to regularly participate in Church worship. What was the breaking point?
Referring once again to Carroll’s book on Constantine, I was overwhelmed with my ignorance first of all. In spite of my education and reading, I was ignorant of the extent of the influence of secular power in the development of Catholicism. Finding out how much of anti-Semitism was a product of the Catholic Church was very disturbing. And then, reading Garry Will’s book, “Papal Sin”, brought into extreme clarity the actual lies that are supported by the official church. While I was aware of the dichotomy between what I knew as true and what were the official positions of the Catholic Church on many subjects, I had never got to the point of labeling this dichotomy as “lies”. However, since then, it has been a sore point whenever the church leaders defend positions that are untenable.
A few examples of how the church leaders defend what are clearly untenable positions:
1. Priesthood has to male and celibate because Jesus established priesthood as such.
Jesus did not establish any priesthood far less dictate the nature of the conditions of gender and celibacy. Jesus never envisioned himself as establishing a church, a religion distinguished from Judaism.
2. Necessity of recognizing Jesus as a means of salvation.
There are a number of theologians who have written on the issue of how the uniqueness of Jesus could be reconciled with the apparent value of other religions in helping people live a virtuous life. Even without adopting some of the more liberal theological views, I think that it was preposterous that the current pope would issue an encyclical in this day and age that reiterated the necessity of all peoples to come to Jesus and, in the process, clearly state the inferiority of all that was not Catholic.
3. The immorality of birth control.
While this issue is totally disregarded by all, it is amazing and disturbing to me that the official church cannot come out and say they were wrong.
So, at this point, I find myself unable to believe much of what I did formerly and am sufficiently angered by the Church’s leadership that I can no longer participate in church worship. While I used to able to translate the myth into a reality that I could share with others, there is no point in it now that I cannot tolerate the abuse of knowledge and leadership by those in authority.
My point in terms of leadership has more to do with providing people a way to change and adapt to the ever-changing culture and mores. While there are examples of great leadership, the examples only highlight the point of the general lack of leadership. Whether we focus on gender issues, or war, or race, or poverty, the church generally upholds traditional views even if unhelpful.
At this time, then, my God is known through evolution. He/she is utterly compassionate and loving that can support our hopes and dreams. Morality can best be defined through our commands to respect and nurture the evolutionary process which clearly includes how we deal with one another. And ultimately, in death, we will continue to be part that process as has been those who preceded us. And at this point, we can ponder how well we are doing since it does appear that we are pursuing almost the unimaginable, viz., destruction of the planet we call home. However, God is more that our world, and to the surprise of some of church leaders, we can remain part of evolutionary process that is more than this world, as we know it.
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