It’s Jesus’ Fault!
24 June 2008 - 22 סיון 5768 by Huw
The Archbishop of Genoa and President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, said this week the impossibility of divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Communion “does not depend on an external disposition but rather comes from the interior of the sacrament of the Eucharist itself, the sacrament of the perennial unity between the love of Christ and humanity.”
I rather like that. The problem isn’t in the sinners who have done this thing: rather it’s in the bread and the wine. They told us we can’t give communion to you when we asked ‘em. Which I find odd: because Jesus gave communion to Judas - who had already sold him away.
This is the problem I have with all the traditions of men impinging on the gospel: it’s not that they are there - they will always be there! It’s that we imagine we can know more than Jesus and the Twelve even here. The traditions of our communities are important. But we confuse them with the Gospel at every turn.
There are those who would read Jesus giving communion to Judas as a curse: and they would cite the teachings of the Church about receiving communion in an unworthy manner and then they would say, “Judas killed himself. See?”
There are those who say that Judas didn’t get communion.
There are those who say that the last supper wasn’t “a mass” and that Jesus sharing bread with all his disciples means something different than how we understand “mass” today.
And there are several shades between each of these options.
And if I am to pick one to be right I have to say that the others are all wrong: I must pick a side (one out of many). And someone will say I’ve picked the orthodox side, others will say otherwise. And who will be right?
Again, I think it’s interesting that it’s impossible at all to give communion to these folks - because of something in the sacrament itself.
In a comment to an earlier post, Chris Jones said this:
“If, however, [inclusivity] means that Christian orthodoxy has been reduced to one option among many, and that both orthodox and heterodox may authoritatively preach and teach from the Church’s pulpit, then a genuine theological conservative will not only frown, but outright scowl, on such a situation.”
He has hit on the exact nature of the question. Did Jesus grant his followers the power to say who was in and who was out? Or did he tell them to let God sort it out on the last day?
Ehh… Clearly the Church has historically said the former: that God gave the Church the power to exclude some for “heresy”. But it takes several turnings of a blind eye to avoid seeing how much of that has been politically motivated over the last two thousand years. I’m not yet ready to say any particular battle over theology was waged as Jesus would have.
And, to be honest, what we call “orthodoxy” is only one option among many - it is within even the Orthodox Church where there are Nestorian saints feasted without appology, not that such would happen now mind you, the attitudes are too rigid now: we strain at gnats of doctrine and swallow mules of un-charity to our neighbour over and over.
As said in these pages several times, now: I see no evidence that God gives two figs for Doctrine. Over and over Jesus is worried about sin and over and over about love of neighbour - so much of the two that it often seems as though the former is defined by the latter rather than vice versa.
I can see how, through historical actions, one can arrive at either the “orthodox” position or at any other position along the theological spectrum. But if there can be Nestorian saints, there can be saints at any other point in the spectrum. It’s only our personal and poltical biases that prevent that from being so.
I’ve met living saints - embodiments of God’s love - in many paths (some, not even Christian): even met them among genuine theological conservatives.
Over at Episcopal Cafe, we find a link to this article by Bruce Coggin discussing “The Faith Once Delivered to the Saints”. While there are some problems with the article (as noted in a comment at the bottom) it does well in enumerating the various streams that made up Christianity before Constantine. And we see (especially in that critical comment) how it all hinges on what Constantine did: did he piously call a council to debate a theological issue or did he say to a group of Christian leaders, “I need a unified church, get me one and stop this bickering amongst yourselves! I don’t care what you pick, just go with it.”
How we reply to that choice makes up our minds, pretty much, about how we feel about one action among many. And it’s clear that either choice - or any other choice among many - requires either an intimate knowledge of Constantine’s soul (which we don’t have) or else a huge leap of faith (and we all have to make it).
At the point where you leap, I’m willing to pray for you and take communion with you. I’m not going to hang you over the petty choices of my community as compared to yours: to do so is to let the traditions of men divide us. When we feast together - overcoming, or, despite our different choices - I think God is more honoured in the joining than he was by the division.
We seem to think that God - and God’s Church, God’s sacraments, etc - need protection. Why that would be so escapes me. God has not defended us in 2000 years from anything: and outwardly pious popes murdering their illegitimate children strikes me as a larger issue than communion of divorced persons. God will take care of his own - even when his own reject him, hand him over to enemies, abandon him and let someone else bury him. We don’t need to defend him or protect the Church. As Bruce Coggin ends:
Our job is not to protect it; God requires no protection. Our job is to be open to it, to do our best to understand it, and to work with those who are with us — and those who are against us — and trust God to take care of the tares among the wheat.
Now that is an interesting point. When the Master had an opportunity to reject some one from the act of Communion, He instead offered Himself. Wow, what imagery. Thank you.
Whe in Rome, do as the Romans do?
Divorsed people taking communion in the States is rather a moot point to most congregations and individuals. For doctrine to be truly doctrine, it muist be accepted by the faithful. Rome acknowledges that tenant. Doctrine is not driven by consensus of theologians and opapal infailibility - although that is part of the Roman equation.
I think his statement should be turned around from the pop-culture and looked at inour individual hearts. “Am I worthy at this moment? Am I in chairity with my neighbors?” These are questions, I’ll be asking; it has also given me some courage to think about my two divorces - what was my part; have I done everything I can to atone?
Good post, thank you for sharing it.
-kevin
St. Paul, in 1 Cor., where he admonishes sinners not to receive unworthily, is the basis for the Church’s ancient practice of refusing the Eucharist to those in a public state of sin–to keep them from further harm and to admonish them. Yet ultimately, this is ordered toward their reconciliation in the love of Christ, hence it emerges from this sacrament of Love.
Hi Stan -
I’m quite aware of the argument - although, as I noted, I’ve seen no evidence that what the text says is true: Is it authentically Pauline? A quant superstition held over from our tribal past? Or is the text there referring to the Body of Christ - that is the whole of the Church (all denominations) - and not to the bread and wine - a later development of Doctrine? Is it a midrash on Eucharist raised by a Pauline (or pseudo-Pauline) author? It is clearly not an authentic teaching of Jesus, however. So who knows? All we have are claims to knowing - with very little (if any) evidence.
I know what the Roman Church teaches but it’s not based only on that one line from Corinthians - but on several assumptions including knowing all the answers to the questions I posed above. It’s all our midrash, our comments based on text, our traditions of men - which Rome is entitled to keep - as are the rest of us who don’t keep those traditions (but keep our own…)
Likewise we use our midrash to keep us apart - prot from catholic, orthodox from the rest, anglican from presbyterian, gay from straight, men from women, Jew from Arab…
All are one in Christ.
I’ll stick with that.
I was once at a panel talk on early Jewish and Christian views of the Bible at the University of Notre Dame. A graduate student, hoping to aruge that the Jews had a better handle on the Bible than did the early Christians, argued that Paul’s letters ought to be understood as Midrash rather than as divine revelation. An Orthodox Jewish professor of Hebrew Scripture began to chuckle before he was finished, and congratulated him on his creativity, but ended with: “I am sorry to disappoint you, but while we Jews view our Midrash as a divinely-guided tradition, it is quite different from the early Christians, whose writings make clear that they held the Scriptures as the divinely-_inspired_ word of God. Even I, a carnal Jew,” (said he with a smile) “know the difference. The Pauline corpus and Jewish midrash are, within their traditions, two entirely different entities.”
Obviously, he didn’t think that the New Testament epistles were divinely inspired, but for the Christian tradition, which _does_ think them inspired, the modern interest in calling them “midrash” nor “non-Pauline” cannot discount their inspiration.
I thank you for your story - but I know a host of scholars who would disagree with him - noted Orthodox theologian Paul Tarazi among them. The question of did Paul imagine he was writing scripture, alone, could take a few days to hash out. (I cite Fr Tarazi because while he starts with the midrash/higher critical view he ends in Orthodoxy…)
I know some Jews view Midrash to be divinely inspired - I’m even down for that point of view: midrash is, in the end, all we have. But in that divine-human dance there is development and evolution. So too with us. And in the process of that discussion can be the admittance of mistakes.
The basic assumption, of course, in both of our points of view, is a claim about that Midrash: on the one hand, that having that divine dialogue, the church can not err; and on the other than having that human dialogue the church can err.
As I noted, the question is not which one of us is right: for both of us will insist (and with deep faith in God in the insistence) that he is right. But rather is the difference, itself, enough to keep us from eating together?
Recently I’ve been intrigued at Juan Oliver’s exegesis of what Paul meant in warning people against receiving when they didn’t discern the body. In the letter’s context, the body of Christ he is talking about is the community where eucharistic meal has been celebrated so brokenly that some are sharing the abundance they’ve brought with their own church friends only and the poor are not receiving. It looks to me like Juan’s right and it’s the difference between prooftexting on the basis of a verse or two and reading the verse in the context of the argument Paul is actually making.
Donald - Your comment called to mind a story I’ve blogged before: forgive me if I’ve shared it with you in the past. It was one of the most formative things ever said to me. I don’t know if formative is the right word… seminal? foundational? Anyway…
You, Margaret L and I were siting in the office at the table. I asked you: “When I hold up the bread and say, ‘Lizzie, the Body of Christ”, am I saying something about the bread, something about Lizzie, or something else?” And you said, “Yes.”
I’ve been wrestling with that forever in a wonderful way: it’s a seed from which all kinds of things have grown.
It may all be midrash, yes, but that’s like saying that Copper is an element as is Gold. If I believe an element to be Gold, the simple fact that you say it’s an element, just as is Copper, won’t cause me to discard the Gold as worthless.
The difference, then, is that the bimillenial tradition of Catholicism on this matter believes this ‘midrash’ to be revealed and interpreted by the Holy Spirit not for the purpose of ‘protecting Jesus from sinners’ but rather for protecting sinners from themselves and leading them to the love of Christ.
There is too much for me to comment on in this post and its comments. It has some nicely meaty parts. However, ultimately it resolves to the very common argument, “Who are you to tell me what I must believe?” I do not see that question as being as profound as many scholars seems to think it is.
If anything, that question points more towards a debate that arose at the Enlightenment. The common Western answer has been some type of individualism. One need only look at the results of “scholarship” differences between “European” scholars and “non-European” scholars to see how this has affected discourse.
I would summarize it by saying that the more “individualistic” the culture it, the more your “scholars” will have difficulty with community imposed standards. The more your culture tends towards “group”, the more your “scholars” are willing to accept an authoritative community that can legislate limits.
And, no, I do not have a good way to resolve those interpretative questions. One can look at both Scripture and Holy Tradition and see both “individualism” and “communitarianism.” I will say that I think way too many in the West have rejected any meaningful role for an “authoritative community.”
Fr. Ernesto,
1. AMEN,
2. the Enlightenment not only privileges ‘individual’ over community but ‘idea’ or ‘thinking’ over affect and action. I keep trying to remind myself that the root meaning of PISTEO is trust. So much church discourse assumes that common faith means common opinion (and the Enlightenment version of that is that the church is a group of individuals who share or subscribe to the same religious opinions).
Just back from a month in Malawi, one thing that struck me powerfully this visit is that shaking literally everyone’s hand that happens whenever someone comes into a group (even a meeting that’s underway)isn’t accompanied by much speech. in fact introducing people by name often happens later on, somewhat as needed. But the hand to hand greeting feels necessary to people for the group’s life and work to continue. That’s a rigorous group standard which is about affect and trust (and ritual for that matter). My opinions (and my name even) will belong in the group, but first, we need to know the group.
I agree with you that the Enlightenment made the individual something it hadn’t been before. What began as a possibly inspired assertion of God’s radical and absolute love for each one becomes an idolatry of the separate individual. The conversation about individual rights that sprouted new human hope has grown like a wildly invasive weed. ‘Rights’ now stands as an absolute and it’s extremely difficult to have serious conversation about a common good. This isn’t good for theology.
And, in our critique of this, I think it’s essential we also catch on continuing Enlightenment assumptions that thinking (opinions, arguments, ’statements of fact’) are the substance of faith.
I think that instead it’s trust, it’s trust in God and the community, and relationship.
How does a trust that abjures statements of fact or dogmatic articulations of that in which we have trust — how does such a trust avoid degenerating into the very individualism that we wish to avoid?
Stan,
I don’t think we need to abjure statements of fact or dogmatic articulations. But I do think it’s useful to take the long perspective from which we can see Chalcedonians acknowledging centuries after the fact that the anathemas of Nestorian Christians and Monophysites may have stumbled over words and missed the common faith. How do we talk to one another, take the power of words seriously (and accept it gratefully), but not put precision of words over relationship to one another and continuing discovery of God present among us?
I’m not arguing for content-less faith. I’m doing a workshop this weekend in Iowa and the sponsors requested that the liturgy include the Nicene creed. We’ve come up with a cantor-sung creed punctuated by a congregational sung refrain, “Lord we trust you, your love is life.” It does two things - takes us from individual voices to our shared voice as a congregation (singing0 and reframes it as prayer (relationship to God in a context of our relationship to one another).
These concerns are much on my mind because of this weekend’s workshop (Music that Makes Community)and from continuing reflection on the community in and through music piece I had on Episcopal Cafe this week:
http://www.episcopalcafe.com/daily/music/communication_begins_in_song.php
I’m grateful for this conversation and the quality of listening we offer one another here. Thanks, Huw, for calling us to it.
Thanks everyone… I come back to my blog at lunch time and find a wonderful conversation grown up here!
Stan -
I wonder if there mightn’t be a confusion of the map for the territory? By expressing trust in God (using such things as the Nicene Creed) we’re using valuable and historic maps. But the trust expressed is in God - not the in Creed, yes? When churches make changes in the creed (as with the Roman Church did with the Filioque) or refuse to make changes (as the Oriental Orthodox did) or use different words (as the New Zealand prayer book does) are we expressing different trust? or different gods? or different understandings/experiences?
My former parish did not use the Creed in their liturgy, yet I can assure no one’s trust there was without content. But their experience of trust-in-communion is where we find the importance, and the source from where Eucharistic actions flow.
Most people miss an important point in the old Council of Trullo (600’s) that relates to this. In the 95th canon they give instructions for how to receive heretics and apostates back into the faith. There are three methods, baptism + chrismation, chrismation alone, declaration of faith alone. Which method used depends on which heresy (or apostasy).
What most people miss is that two of the three methods assume that the person is already a Christian and does not need a full initiation into the Body of Christ, even if they have never been a member of the Catholic/Orthodox Church.
I would argue that this shows an interesting balance between insisting on the Truth of the creedal formulations while recognizing that God looks for trust and is willing to work with people while they “learn their theology.” In that canon the Church clearly reemphasizes that Truth is Truth and that it is God’s Truth. But, it also clearly demonstrates that “God so loved the world . . .”
I think that we, too often, separate Truth and, “. . . so loved the world . . .” Then we come up with either a “love” that tolerates non-Truth in inappropriate ways or a Truth that has difficulty with a God who “. . . so loved the world.” The trick is to find a balance that insists on Truth, even to the point of excommunication when necessary alongside a recognition of God’s grace. We need to stop separating the two.