When Boney M sang their famous song based on Psalm 137, as a child I was completely unaware of it as a sad song, a slave’s song lamenting the conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC and the subsequent exile of the Jews to captivity in Babylonia. It is a catchy tune and it became one of the all-time best-selling singles in the UK.
That period in Jewish history is fascinating and echoes so much of our own time as a people of God. One minute we are a Catholic nation and as Julian of Norwich would say ‘all is well and all manner of things are well’. However, we know now through painful revelations and books like Mary Kenny’s The Way We Were and ‘The Best Catholics in the World’ by Derek Scally, Ireland was far from some national rural idyll.
The same for the Jews. They were God’s chosen people who had found the promised land and built a temple in Jerusalem to Yahweh. Yet their God stood idly by while the Babylonians invaded, wrecked the temple and carried away a large proportion of the population to captivity and slavery. Where was God, the protector of Israel?
Upheaval
For many faithful Catholics they ask the same questions, where is God in all this change and upheaval? And the answer that seems most appropriate is that of the Paschal Journey, it comes for us all and right now Christianity in the West is experiencing it, a dying process, as a way of doing things no longer seems valid or for some it’s still valid, but circumstances such as declining numbers of priests and parishioners are forcing change on them. As Pope Francis has said we are at a point in history where epochs are changing. That’s enough to make the mind dizzy.
Recalling Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Martini of Milan (1927- 2012), Pope Francis also said: “Cardinal Martini, in his last interview, a few days before his death, said something that should make us think: “The Church is two hundred years behind the times. Why is she not shaken up? Are we afraid? Fear, instead of courage? Yet faith is the Church’s foundation. Faith, confidence, courage… Only love conquers weariness”.
Willian Grimm, the publisher of the Asian News Agency UCAN has written: “It is increasingly obvious that parts, at least, of the Church are undergoing a painful and confusing death, a crucifixion”. He recalls Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and the themes of differing views which affect Christianity today. “In J.R.R. Tolkien’s saga, The Lord of the Rings, Treebeard the Ent (a tree herder) tells the hobbits Merry and Pippin of the estrangement of the Ents and Entwives.
Their differing views of happiness had moved them farther and farther apart until they lost all contact with each other to the loss of both since there were no longer any Enting offspring. “We believe that we may meet again in a time to come, and perhaps we shall find somewhere a land where we can live together and both be content,” Treebeard says. “But it is foreboded that that will only be when we have both lost all that we now have. And it may well be that that time is drawing near at last.”
In many parts of Christendom, the same story is being re-enacted. Differing views of what the Church can and must be are driving people farther and farther apart. Among the managers of the Catholic part of the Church, there are not a few who seem determined to drive away anyone who looks anew at old moral positions (especially those related to sex).
Foundation
Those new thinkers generally believe that Christianity is not about morality, but is a living and growing relationship with God in Jesus Christ that is the foundation and norm for morality. Traditionalists move farther and farther from the mainstream, in some cases going so far as to question the authority and even the orthodoxy of the Pope. Others, fed up with scandals, cover-ups, closed-mindedness, clericalism, irrelevance and refusal to accept the working of the Holy Spirit in Vatican 2 and the People of God, simply withdraw from involvement.
One has only to look at Catholic Twitter to see these differences played out and in the most venomous terms, so much so that the Pope even called out EWTN for its constant negativity of his pontificate. Is it possible that the Church and Christianity can find some unity in the future?
Grimm writes: “Well, nothing is impossible with God. However, the rest of Treebeard’s words may say something important about how God achieves the impossible: “that will only be when we have both lost all that we now have”. “When we look at the history of the divine relationship with God’s people, we tend to overlook the middle of the process. We see Moses lead the Hebrews out of Egypt and through the miraculously opened sea. Then, we jump ahead to the Promised Land as if there were not a period of 40 years of wandering in the desert (looking, as some Israelis quip, for the one place in the Middle East without oil). Egypt ends, but the Promised Land does not begin until after the long period of nothing when those who came out of Egypt are dead.”
Grimm asks, ‘what shall we do while the Church is dead’? We can’t just skip to the Resurrection, the time of being dead is used by God for something new. “Death increasingly appears inevitable, and attempts to forestall it may in fact be contrary to the will of God who may have something totally new in store for us” says Grimm. “During the centuries when Christianity was banned in Japan and being found out as a Christian meant torture and death, Christians had no clergy, no hierarchy, no facilities, no guidance and no contact with other communities. The Church was dead.
Commitment
“The only thing those Christians had was their commitment to each other. Violating that commitment would bring them rewards from the persecutors. Yet, believers remained faithful to one another and to their understanding of Christ.”
Instead of attempting to thwart what may be God’s will by postponing the dying, we should concentrate on building communities of mutual support that can define themselves by faithfulness not to forms but to Christ and one another. As Treebeard said, “it may well be that that time is drawing near at last”.
Note: The Synodal Times will return in September as we prepare for the October Synod of Bishops in Rome. Thank you for your support over the last year as we try to navigate a changing Church.
