"Christ Actually" by James Carroll

I have written many blogs regarding various aspects of Catholicism, especially those that cast new light on matters considered to be “truths” that cannot be altered. I also have referenced the personal gain from reading James Carroll’s earlier book, The Sword of Constantine.  I gained new knowledge of the how the Catholic Church acquired such a foothold in Europe due to Constantine’s need to bolster his empire with the strength of the Church’s organization and governance. He could control his empire more effectively by incorporating Catholicism as the State Religion. The book helped shape my understanding of the role that Catholicism had in fomenting anti-Semitic behavior.

Carroll’s new book, Christ Actually, is a very well researched (55 pages of notes) volume that is motivated primarily by the horror of the Holocaust. To think that Christians, often in the name of Christ, were motivated to discard thousands and thousands of fellow human beings because they were Jewish has gnawed him for years. This book tries to address the history of how Christianity became dissociated from its roots in Judaism.

I highlight findings that I considered new to me.

While I was aware that Jesus knew himself to be a Jew with the only intention to reform the practices that were not in synch with the Scriptures. He surely had no intention of founding a Church, no intention to dissociate himself from his people’s history of being a faithful people. He was a Jew, promoting the law of Abraham and Moses as others were doing, e.g., the Zealots, John the Baptist, and, in the process, becoming an irritant to the Romans. Jesus was crucified because he was an irritant. I was unaware that there were thousands and thousands of crucifixions done regularly by the Romans to secure their rule. Crucifixion was an easy and routine way to control the population. Carroll will ultimately conclude his research with the basic need, recognized as practically impossible, of Christians seeing themselves as Jews themselves!

I knew that the followers of Jesus, called Jesus Jews, considered themselves Jews, continued to worship in the Temple and synagogues. I knew that the Jesus Jews understood that it was only a question of time before all the Jews would become Jesus Jews. They would continue to practice Judaism, but now with new insights generated by the teachings and life of Jesus.

How things got convoluted was the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD by the Romans. I was aware that this horrendous war lasting two years with thousands and thousands of deaths was monumentally disorienting, resulting in the Jesus Jews separating themselves from their confreres.  They concluded that the all the problems resulting from this war and the destruction of the Temple were caused by their compatriots not seeing Jesus as they did.

Two things are important. The history of the Jews is marked by constant war. Jews were a constant source of concern by the various emperors because of their refusal to worship the deity identified by the emperor. Jews could not be controlled, resulting in constant wars referenced in various parts of the Old Testament. Jesus lived in such a world. Judaism cannot be understood without recognizing that their adherence to the One God of Abraham was inherently a flash point of concern to the Roman authorities.

The war in 70 AD did not end wars between Roman powers and the Jews, but it colored the perception of the Jesus Jews. From then on, they started to see that their problems would have been solved if all the Jews had become followers of Jesus.

Given that Jesus was crucified in the early 30’s and the Temple was destroyed in 70, we are dealing with two generations of Jesus Jews who would gather in houses while also attending the Temple and synagogues. Two generations of people sharing their memories or stories that they heard from others lead to all sort of distortions of history.  The Gospels were all written after the Temple’s destruction. John’s Gospel was not written until early in the next century. All would be telling stories that captured “truth” as each saw it. Mark’s Gospel was the first one written and was the least anti-Jewish. John wrote the last Gospel and was very anti-Jewish. Gospels were not written as history, but as a faith based renditions of Jesus

What all this ultimately means is that Christians who relied on the New Testament came to totally misunderstand Jesus. Christians no longer recognized Jesus as a Jew and, surely, did not think of themselves as Jews. Christians could now use the New Testament to develop anti-Semitic feelings, justified by the Scriptures attribution of Jesus’ death to the Jews. All of this is totally wrong.

Carroll continues the work that I was familiar with (Roger Haight, Erhman, Schillebeeckx) that addresses the evolution of how the Jesus Jews came to have insights into Jesus that he himself would not have endorsed. The idea that Jesus was God grew over time, but it was not until the Greek philosophical categories were applied to the Jewish constructs based in the Old Testament that believers came to understand Jesus as God.

Carroll deals with this entire issue of Jesus being God in a most realistic approach. Using Dorothy Day as a prototype of how Christians can approach Jesus, Carroll focuses on those who “see” God in Jesus through the life and behavior of Jesus. We find God in Jesus by servicing those in need. Consistent with the writings of Richard Rohr, God is found in the Silence of Love and the suffering that colors life. By embracing suffering, we find the Ultimate. Admittedly, all those who write in this vein use language that is somewhat abstract, but, in essence, once one gets to the point where they “see” God in all that is, whether human, animal, organic and inorganic, then it is relatively simple to see God in Jesus.

For Carroll, the relevance of Jesus is attributed to the ongoing history of so many finding “God” in him. Jesus captured a way of living that remains meaningful to so many that Carroll sees this as evidence of the validity of adhering to Christianity.

"Pay Any Price" by James Risen

James Risen is a well-known writer with the New York Times. His investigative journalism has brought him awards as well as the attention of the powers of our democracy. For some years, the Justice Department has tried to convince him to disclose the source of information resulting in a prior book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration”. His refusal is now still being contested and the decision to jail him for contempt of court is now under consideration of the US Supreme Court. In short, the credibility of this author has been established, if for no other reason than the government’s refusal to cease its goal to have him disclose the source of his book under the penalty of being imprisoned.

His new book, “Pay Any Price”, is an answer to the question of his identity as a journalist. Like others, he feels that journalism is a source of corrective discourse to counter actions by government.

Reading the book, at times, seems to enter an unreal world that is stranger than fiction. At times, my only source of reliance of the substance of the reporting was the unlikelihood that someone could dream up the narrative!

The government establishment was embarrassed by the failure to be aware of the planned attacks of 9/11. In reaction, the government went into high gear to improve his capacity to detect any plans against the well-being of the American public. Gobs of money started to float into the intelligence agencies resulting in scads of contractors being employed to provide expertise not otherwise available. Comparable to the need to use contractors to support the military when there no longer was a draft, the intelligence community searched for all sorts of skills to upgrade its capacity.  As Blackwater came to symbolize the problems resulting from contracting military intervention, so the race to hire intelligence experts ended up supporting even some scam artists with millions of dollars. The government’s haste to get on top of potential disasters became in so many instances a waste of money. So many contracts were written that the left hand had no idea what the right hand was doing.

Risen’s documentation of the well-known loss of billions of dollars provided Iraq at the beginning of the invasion is almost comical. Pallets of cash were delivered and to this day, so much of it is unaccounted for. Suspicions that much of the cash is in tunnels in Lebanon have not been proven. The bottom line is that the rush to provide financial support to the post-Hussein regime was gone!

The power of the intelligence community has become increasingly a source of concern to more and more people. Given the refusal for the intelligence community to be honest with the congressional committees and the public, it has taken the likes of Edward Snowden to bring many of invasive procedures out in the open.

Our democracy is built on the principle that we have a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” has been constantly thwarted by leaders of our intelligence agencies.

Thankfully, we are beneficiaries of some who have taken great risks to themselves and families to ensure that we know what is going on. The struggle for truth never ends because only truth will set us free!

Tribute to Peter, Paul, and Mary

Peter, Paul, and Mary have been favorites of mine for seemingly a lifetime. While watching recently a PBS special on their fifty years as performers, I was often in tears.

The focus on their support of peace among nations and love among people was reviewed in segments during the 60’s when advocacy for peace, withdrawal from Vietnam and promotion of civil rights were prominent sources of civil disobedience.

The 60’s were indelibly printed in my brain. Becoming a priest in 1963, I envisioned my being a part of a new world where Vatican II would change the entire ethos of Catholicism. It never occurred to me that I would become a victim of the traditional structure.

I recall being in my room in the rectory, attempting to play the guitar for songs like those of Peter, Paul, and Mary. Even in the quiet of the rectory, I could feel the energy of the inevitable victory of the truth that we win nothing my destroying our enemies. I could envision in the near future a world where color no longer made a difference. We were all brothers and sisters.

Watching the past being captured by the review of the careers of Peter, Paul, and Mary, I became so sad to think that the dreams of so many of us have been shattered by reality. Fifty years later, our nation still has not learned that arms no not lead to peace. We clearly still segment our vision by color of skin.

Tears of now an old man mean so little. To think that these fifty years have only enabled us to kill more easily and, even, quietly with the silence of drones. We now can kill with the deftness of guidance missiles that travel hundreds of miles with capacity to initiate options of where to land while in route to possibly three targets. And yet, we read daily about the mess in the Near East that seems only to get worse and in North Africa where so few nations are stable.

Reading about Ferguson or Staten Island’s tragic entanglement in race relations is dwarfed by an ever more segregated society with stories of injustice related to one’s color.

Tears may be spontaneous and have very little to offer to ameliorate our nation’s problems.  Peter, Paul, and Mary offered many of us hope for a world that we could almost feel. As much as many of us tried, we did not succeed and, unfortunately, it is unclear whether any of our advances have made this world better. If anything, the prognosis is even worse. We will get rid of war and violence and racial bigotry by an even more ominous method, viz., the destruction of our eco-system. Earth no longer capable of supporting human life will strangely achieve a level of peace never achieved by the former inhabitants.  What a tribute to our time on Earth!!