Being Church in Asia: New Evangelization and Challenges
Being
Church in Asia: New
Evangelization
and Challenges
Joseph
Mattam, SJ.
(Asian
Conference on New Evangelization, 4-6/9/2012, Ishvani Kendra, Pune).
Introduction
Since
some time, the expression “New Evangelization” has come into our theological
and ecclesial vocabulary and the Pope has called for a Synod to articulate a vision and strategy for
such an endeavor. This is addressed primarily to those who were once believers
and are now no more interested in the Christian faith; millions in Europe and
America show no more interest in the ‘faith’ that once governed their life.
Proclaiming the gospel to such persons is not going to be an easy task.
However, this invitation to New
Evangelisation (NE) is a grace filled moment for the Church to return to Jesus
and rediscover itself in the way Jesus had envisaged his Body to be in the
world, as the salt, leaven and light. If
the Church responds to this invitation and becomes the kind of Church that
Jesus wanted, then this NE will be a great blessing for the world. This calls for a lot of honesty; we need to
look at the past and see where we have gone wrong which has led so many to
leave the church. It seems to me that the only way we can do this NE is by
going back to the very old pattern of the early church of the first century,
when there was a lot of enthusiasm, zeal and commitment to Jesus. Obviously, we
cannot turn back the calendar and the clock, but we can look back to our roots
and rediscover the essentials that we seem to have allowed to slip away.
In
this paper I shall not focus on the normal themes like the wider context that
affects the message, as we are familiar with our context: religious pluralism,
religious intolerance, communalism, and fundamentalism; the massive poverty of
the millions; illiteracy; female infanticide; child labour; abuse of women and
many other factors that deeply affect our mission work. This is an important area that
we have to keep in mind. But I rather want to focus on the reasons for the
present impasse, which unfortunately the Lineamenta
does not seem to do, and see what it is that is going to be ‘new’ in our present day approach.
Without a proper diagnosis, one cannot prescribe a remedy.
1.
The Old Approach
At first we shall
look briefly at the ‘old’, as what happened in the past has its effects on the
Church today, and especially on the abandoning of the faith by millions of
‘believers’. In the early centuries, ‘gossiping the gospel’ by every member of
the believing community was the way the faith spread; also the mutual love of
the members of the community brought in followers (Acts). Later with more
aggressive evangelisation, due to the natural-supernatural divide that made baptism
absolutely necessary for salvation, evangelisation came to be the task only of
the Clergy and Religious. In this period certain emphases marked our efforts.
1.1 Great importance to doctrines
The evangelisation
work in the past emphasized a great deal (far too much) the importance of
dogmas, doctrines and statements of faith formulated and taught by the Church. Faith itself was understood as an assent to
these truths. Catechism books emphasized doctrines and children had just to
memorize many unintelligible formulae. This emphasis had devastating
consequences like heresy
hunting, the Inquisition, burning of heretics, torture, witch-burning and other cruelties
in the name of the God, and divisions in the Body of Christ. There was a time
when people were in awe of words like ‘hypostatic union’, ‘transubstantiation’,
‘consubstantial’, etc, but today people just do not care about these and
similar words; they just ignore such. I
am not saying that doctrinal developments are unnecessary; they all had their
reason at certain time in history; but now we need to go back to the Gospels
and present Jesus to the people. What was originally a revolutionary, counter-cultural
movement became dogmatic and ritualistic rather than being faithful to its original
call to be radical, revolutionary and prophetic. There was also a shift from experiencing
Jesus to thinking and talking about Jesus.
1.2 Emphasis on cultic practices
Another emphasis of
this period was cultic practices and rituals. The Church has built thousands of
beautiful churches and developed elaborate, lengthy liturgies in various Rites.
The number of sacraments grew and finally, thanks to Peter Lombard’s synthesis,
the 4th Lateran Council declared that there were the present seven
sacraments. Prayers, Novenas and other devotions too grew, as also the number
of saints and blessed, though it was during John Paul II’s time that the
greatest number was added to the list of saints and blessed. The mediatory role
of the saints was very much emphasized, as God came to be seen more and more
like the emperor, inaccessible to the ordinary, requiring mediators on earth
and in heaven. So, our unique God-given Mediator, Jesus suffered a setback.
1.3 Monoculturalism
Mono-culturalism
ruled the Church for centuries. The church as it was in Europe was literally transplanted
in the so-called mission countries allowing no creativity in these countries.
Examples abound: Mateo Ricci, de Nobili and others who attempted something in
line with the culture and habits of the people were not only opposed but were
condemned. The perennial theology of St Thomas was compulsorily taught everywhere and that too, in
Latin. That assured uniformity which was considered a great value. The Church
remained basically Euro-centric; even today when one looks at the number of
office bearers in the Vatican Curia and central commissions, and the number of
Cardinals one sees that it is mostly Euro centric, though there are more
Christians in Africa and Asia compared to the European countries.
1.4 The Clergy-Laity Divide
The
clergy-laity divide is another characteristic of this period that has deeply
affected the life of Christians. Without denying the great good the clerics
have done throughout the centuries, we must not ignore the harm it has done to
the Church. This division which was not known for the first two centuries,
would eventually control the life of the Church. This division does not stem
from Jesus, for he did not seem to want a two-tier Church made up of a superior
class called Clerics and an inferior class of the laity. For Jesus, all his
followers are equal as brothers /sisters/friends (Matt 23.8ff; Jn 13), though
they have distinct functions. Paul was clear about the distinction of charisms and functions but without the notion of a
hierarchy of persons (1Cor 12. 12ff; Rom 12.4ff; Eph 4.11ff) and was unaware of
what today we call ‘priests’[1].
Jesus
did not leave behind him a hierarchy, a class of people called “priests”.
Whenever he used the term ‘priest’ it was about the Jewish priests for whom he
had little regard (Luke 10.31; 17.14). Jesus never spoke of himself or any of
his disciples as priests; the gospels and the genuine Pauline epistles do not
present Jesus as a priest. If Jesus had spoken of himself as a ‘priest’ that
would have totally misled the people about his identity and mission. Only the
letter to the Hebrews, with justifiable reason presents Jesus as a priest and
his murder as a sacrifice; but then that is the end of priesthood. The main
function of the Jewish priests at Jesus’ time was offering sacrifices, and Jesus,
like the prophets before him (e.g., Amos 5.21-22, 25) was opposed to sacrifices
(Matt 9.13; 12.7); his cleansing of the temple, the prediction of its
destruction and his words to the Samaritan woman (Jn 4. 21-24) show that he
wanted a completely new form of worship and a new type of community which would
give primacy to interpersonal relations over cultic acts (Matt 5.23; 25. 31ff).
Jesus does not seem to have interest in cultic practices. His visits to the
temple were primarily to teach. Through his attacks on them the temple priests
became the arch enemies of Jesus and, ultimately it is they who turn him over
to the Romans. Had Jesus wanted the priesthood to be the backbone of his
community, definitely he would have spoken about it. The generally held view
that on Maundy Thursday Jesus ‘ordained priests’ has no foundation in the NT. Besides, from what I have mentioned above, it
is clear that Jesus could not have thought of ordaining ‘priests’ before his
death, as ‘priests’ were not in his horizon. Professor Herbert Haag of the
Catholic Universities of Tubingen and Lucerne says: “The New Testament does not
recognize any priesthood, whether sacramental or universal” (H. Haag 1997: 72)[2].
Quoting Haring, Haag says: “The Church of the first three centuries did not
know…either the concept or the reality of a ‘clergy’” (p. 45); he traces the
formation of classes of priests separated from the people back to the “fall of
the Constantinian era” (p. 45).
The NT had a multiplicity of
ministries, but by the 3rd century these are channeled into the
threefold ministry of Bishop, priests and deacons, formed into a hierarchy of
an order of priests. With this, there emerged a class called the laity, the
non-clerics. Clerics are the norm, just as when we used to speak of
‘non-Christians’ the understanding was the norm was ‘Christian’. “The
brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Pet 5.9) eventually became 2 classes, the
ordained and the non-ordained, one superior to the other, and their distinction
became characteristic of the Church. The
majority of the members of the Body of Christ are devalued, as only the
ordained can hold offices in the Church, preside over the worship and
participate in the decision making processes.
1.5
The leaders Jesus wanted
Jesus spoke about and wanted to leave behind him leaders who would be
different from leaders in the world and gave them very clear and precise
instruction. “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, It
will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you, must be
your servant and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave” (Matt
20.24-28); “But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and
you are all brothers. And call no one your father on earth…The greatest among
you will be your servant” (Matt 23. 8-11); “But not so with you; rather the
greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who
serves… I am among you as one who serves” (Lk 22. 24-27); see Mark 10. 35- 45
and John 13. 1-18).
Can
anyone recognize in the present day Church leaders(Reverends, Lords, Graces,
Excellencies, Eminences, Holiness) the kind of leaders Jesus envisaged? The
function of the leaders Jesus wanted to leave behind was to “feed my lambs”,
“take care of my sheep” and “feed my sheep” (Jn 21.15-17); namely, to care for
and build up the community, and not the service of God by offering sacrifices
and by producing and defending doctrines. The early disciples of Jesus followed
his teaching and practiced the “brotherhood throughout the world” as is evident
in the writings of Paul. While, he was conscious of his authority as an apostle
(Gal 1.1), he speaks of himself as a servant (1 Cor 3.5), others as his
brothers/ sisters/ fellow prisoners (Rom 1.13; 1 Cor 1.10; 2 Cor 1.8). Paul
commissioned Timothy and others to leadership in the community by laying hands
on them, but this cannot be seen as an ordination to the ‘priesthood’. The idea
of a ‘priest’ does not arise in the first two centuries. Haag concludes: “This
survey has shown that all ministries are the creation of the Church. None can
be traced back to Jesus, not even that of the bishop, and least of all that of the
priest.” (Haag,108). The ministries arose as response to the problems the
community faced (e.g., Acts 6).
The later leaders either ignored or refused
to follow the teaching of the Lord, and on their own authority declared
themselves ‘priests’ busy with ‘sacrifice’, and patterned themselves on the
empire, taking titles, dress code and behaviour pattern from the empire system:
Reverends, Lords, Eminences, Excellencies and Holiness which have nothing to do
with what Jesus wanted, and in fact, are explicitly opposed to what he had
wanted. The empire system with its craze for power, privileges, wealth and
luxury corrupted the leaders. The civil societies of Greece and Rome were
highly hierarchical and that is the pattern the Church leaders followed instead
of the Gospels. They also moulded God unto the image of the emperor. Yves Congar,
in Power and Poverty in the Church,[3]
has shown clearly how this development on the pattern of the empire happened. At a time when the Bible was
not read by the people, any practice could be defended as coming from the
Bible; but today, as everyone can read what is in the Bible, and biblical
scholarship is spreading very much, we may not ignore what is given there so
clearly about the leaders and how they have deviated from what Jesus wanted.
2. Comments on the old approach
2.1 Positive contribution
Christianity
is the basic inspiration of European culture and civilization. Literature, art,
music, etc all are inspired by Christian themes; the Churches in Europe are
architectural marvels. In Africa and Asia Christianity came to the rescue of
the oppressed and the suppressed population through education and health care
ministries. The Dalits and other oppressed groups were at least partially
liberated. The Religious, especially women, have rendered great service to the
orphans, sick, handicapped and other underprivileged persons. Obviously, this
description is not exhaustive.
2.2 Negative impact
But with the coming of Christianity,
the indigenous people who lived with gospel values like egalitarianism, concern
for one another, anti-consumerist, anti-greed and nature-friendly attitudes abandoned
those and took up the European consumerist, greedy competitive culture. Christianity,
with its emphasis for centuries on “saving souls for an after-life” has not succeeded
in preventing wars, colonialism, and genocide as in America, slave trade,
economic disparities and structured injustice through trade and economic
policies; the Holocaust and other atrocities. Christian nations have colonized
the Asian and African countries and impoverished them. This is surely not
inspired by the Gospel. There is hardly any period in the history of Europe
when there were no wars. Jesus had taught nonviolence! Christian presence in
the West has not in any way prevented sexual abuses and sexual promiscuity which
are on the increase. Now churches are becoming empty of occupants and more and
more churches are being bought by Hindus and Muslims. The number of Catholic
and Protestant churches being taken over by Muslims is really shocking.[4]
The number of persons
officially leaving the Church is also increasing.
Thus the
old approach has not been a great success when we look at the overall picture.
We keep in mind too, that even after 20 centuries of aggressive, hectic
missionary efforts we have not reached more than 25% of the world population
and less than 2% in Asia. Hence it is
that we need to think of something really ‘new’ for the NE, not a repetition of
the past. People are not buying set formulae or pious platitudes anymore; the old
emphases did not succeed in bringing people to a spiritual awakening. There is
an anguished and sometimes confused search, for a more liberal outlook. Modem people
mired in profound cultural change want to know who they are, what enslaves them,
what stands in the way of spiritual progress. They want to rediscover God
beyond all that has been identified through the years with the name of God:
laws, norms and doctrines.
2.3 Marginalization of the majority
Another
unfortunate consequence of the old system due to the clericalisation, is the
marginalization of the majority of Christians, especially women; their charism
and gifts have been neglected and they have been reduced to passivity. This
neglect and marginalizing of more than 99% of the population cannot but have
the kind of result that we are seeing today; the next great exodus will be of
women, as they too have been marginalized and treated as second class citizens.
The past history of the Church is a
history of clericalism, ritualism, legalism and dogmatism; none of which helps
the growth of the kind of community Jesus wanted, and these drive people away
from the Church. Any society
which neglects such a large percentage of its population, pushing them to the
margins and making them voiceless and passive will eventually die; but so far
due to the iron fist approach of the hierarchy, and the “shoot the messenger”
policy, by silencing, punishing and finally excommunicating dissidents, the Magisterium has managed to keep the
system going; but this is not going to be possible anymore.
2.4 Departures from the Church
There are many causes for departures
from the Church, like growing secularization, materialism, consumerism, individualism,
the loss of sense of sin, etc, but one of the major causes for the large scale
departures from the Church seems to be the clericalisation and the culture of
the hierarchy, as many recent studies have shown. American
Sociologist priest Andrew Greeley in his forthcoming book, Priests: A Calling in Crisis says “for some reason, priests of all
generations are unable or unwilling to see the clergy as responsible for the
departure of disaffected laypersons—a problem that today plagues the U.S.
Church”.
In 2011, William J. Byron, SJ and Charles Zech,
conducted an “anecdotal” survey for the diocese of Trenton on “Why are they
Leaving?” I quote below some statements from this
report of Byron. It shows clearly that “The
church in America [read: the clergy] must face the fact that it has failed to
communicate the Good News cheerfully and effectively to a population adrift on
a sea of materialism”. “The recent
church teaching on end-of-life issues; the moving, instead of removing, of
priests and bishops involved in the molestation of children…; and the absence
of any priest I can talk to.” Others
refer to “the exclusion of women and married men from the priesthood; the
absence of priests ready to listen to the people; lack of trust in the management”;
“I have no way of influencing the selection or change of a priest or bishop”. “Deploring
the absence of any feedback mechanism to hear from the voiceless laity”, “leaders
are unwilling to discern the presence of the Spirit in what laypeople are
saying” (Byron 2011; http://www. catholicapologetics.org/).
Byron published an
article in America, 30 April 2012:
“Why they left: Exit interviews shed light on empty pews”. In this study he gives a lot of insights into
why people left the Church. I quote below some of the answers of the people
interviewed. “Ask a question of any
priest and you get a rule”. Several chose to specify
that they separated themselves from “the hierarchy”. One said, “I stopped going regularly because
the homilies were so empty”. A woman wrote, “I tried different Catholic
churches in the area because I just didn’t seem to be getting anything out of
the Mass, especially the homily”. The question about their pastors was answered
with words like: “arrogant,” “distant,” “aloof”; “insensitive”, “priestly
pomposity,” “aloofness” pointing to “clericalism”
in the diocese. “Hypocrisy, history of
discrimination against women, unwelcoming attitude”; “Bishops covering up child
abuse and transferring offending priests to other parishes.” Several respondents noted that they were
victims of sexual abuse by clergy. Many gave: “the exclusion of women from
ordination” as the cause of their separation.
Henri Boulad, SJ in a
personal letter to Pope Benedict XVI speaks about the serious situation the Church
in Europe is facing; religious practice is
in constant decline; seminaries and novitiates are emptying. Many priests are
leaving the priesthood; many of them, both in Europe as well as in the Third
World live in concubinage; the language of the Church is out of date,
anachronistic, boring, repetitious, and totally unsuited to our age. It is
clear that our faith is very cerebral, abstract and dogmatic. It speaks little
to the heart or the body. Hence many Christians are turning to the religions of
Asia, to sects, to New Age, to evangelical churches, occultism and more. The
paternalistic style of a Mater et
Magistra Church is definitely off the mark and no longer fits the bill
today. Dialog with other churches and religions is today in a disquieting
decline (http://www.
youtube.com/ henribouladonline; copied in a letter to me).
Thomas C. Fox writing on “Abusive Ecclesial authority” says, “Some
bishops are acting like bullies, abusing the authority of their offices in name
of enforcing orthodoxy”; “The
notion of a hierarchical Church is both foreign, inimical and anathema to
current liberal, free-thinking and secularist thought. … Abusive authority will
remain like an unwanted cancer, depleting life from the Body of Christ” (Fox 2012).
Professor Anthony M
Stevens refers to the Vatican and clerical narcissism as a reason for people
leaving the Church. He quotes Irish
Prime Minister Enda Kenny who spoke of the Vatican’s “dysfunction,
disconnection, elitism and the narcissism that dominate the culture of the
Vatican to this day.” He defines “clericalism” as “an elitist mindset, together
with structures and patterns of behavior corresponding to it, which takes it
for granted that clerics—in the Catholic context, mainly bishops and
priests—are intrinsically superior to the other members of the Church and
deserve automatic deference.” The culture of the hierarchy of our Church has been
cited in various studies as being one of the causes of the growing disaffiliation
of Catholics from the Church.
Hans Zollner, SJ, a clinical Psychologist and Dean of the
institute of Psychology at the Gregorian, has confirmed that he has been
studying the phenomenon
of growing narcissism within the Catholic clergy (http://
www.catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/vatican2/abuse.htm: The Abuse of
Ecclesiastical Power).
“More than
a hint of hypocrisy” is the title of an article by Tom Robert in the National Catholic Reporter (31/7/2012);
he says the inaction of the bishops in the child abuse cases “has angered and disillusioned so many current
and now-former Catholics." “Need for Vatican Transparency” is the
editorial of the Tablet (18/8/2012);
it says: “the VatiLeaks affair highlighted something rotten in the Vatican
system: administrative chaos, rivalries rather than partnerships between those
in the highest levels of the Roman Curia, allegations of financial
mismanagement” (p.2). The dogmatism of the hierarchy and bossing over the
people are forcing people to leave the Church. More and more frustrated
Catholics are turning to News Media to voice their disapproval of the culture
of the hierarchy. A Web Site Dedicated to Removal of a Catholic Bishop of a Major
Diocese - the Diocese of Cleveland OH (http://
transferbishoplennon.webs.com) has come into operation.
Archbishop Howard J. Hubbard of the Catholic Diocese of
Albany writes about the “Failings in the Church’; he refers to Clergy sexual
abuse, parish closures, anemic parish life, pastoral insensitivity, poor preaching/liturgy, failure to implement
the reforms of Vat II, esp. in participation and Collegiality, and the new translation of the missal
(Published on 10/6/2011 in Evangelist
On Line Edition, Web Site. http://www.evangelist.org/main.asp?SectionID=17&SubSectionID=79&ArticleID=23114&TM=37723.69.
Also in Origins, Nov 17/2011).
The National Catholic Reporter of
29/8/2012 reports that at Beaver Island people are
departing in droves from an idyllic, close-knit Catholic community because of
the behavior of its new pastor.
What the late
Cardinal Martini of happy memory said is also remarkable. He said :”the Church
must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the Pope and
Bishops…The Pedophilia scandals oblige us to take a journey of transformation”
(Reported in New York Times, 1 Sept.
2012). In his last interview with Fr Sporshill, S.J. he said that the Church
was “200 years out of date” (Reported by
Andrea Tornielli in his Facebook).
We
might also add that often the Religious do not live up to their call and cause
scandal; the consumerist culture that has invaded religious communities also
causes scandal.
Finally, the remark
of Bishop Geoffrey James Robinson of Sydney should wake us up. He said “The
Pope and the bishops have lost credibility and it is only the People of God who
can restore it to them” (March 2012 in Chicago http://bishopgeoffrobinson.org/).
Due to
the lack of priests, in some places in Belgium and Holland people have begun
settling up their own ‘ecclesias’ with lay men and women presiding over the
Eucharist; some Catholics look at them as being Protestants, but this is going
to be the shape of things to come. Very sincere Catholics are dismayed that
their churches are incapable of changing and seeing the ‘signs of the times’
and responding to them creatively and lovingly (Gladys Ganiel: New York Times, 17th July, 2012).
3. New
Evangelisation
Without the
willingness on our part to look honestly into the causes of our present
situation and are ready to take effective steps, the whole talk of NE will be
just that: empty talk. What, then, are the new elements to be emphasized
in the NE? I can think of a few very important aspects.
3.1 Emphasis on Jesus and not the doctrines. The NE
will go back to Jesus; we would focus on Jesus and expose people to the unique
and beautiful person that Jesus is so that, just as the early Christians who were
attracted to this person and were ready to suffer and die for him, we enable
people to discover Jesus. Remember, in the first century there were no
doctrines or dogmas. We would emphasise Jesus’ options, value system and his
priorities. I see Jesus as a call
to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that each of us can be. I
believe our purpose as the followers of Jesus is to build a world where
everyone has a better chance to live, love and be and share the earth of God.
That seems to me to have very little to do with carting around doctrines and
dogmas enunciated in past centuries which were all responses to problems that
arose in particular places and times. What is needed in the NE is not repeating toothless old
stuff, but rather presenting faith in Jesus in a language that recasts the
faith in a pertinent and meaningful way for men and women of today.
For Jesus, orthodoxy
was not as important as orthopraxis. “Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”,
will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father
who is in heaven (Matt 7.21). The Church
was not the object of Jesus’ preaching; he announced a dream, the Kingdom of
God that represents an absolute revolution in relationships between people and
with God. Jesus did not teach any new doctrine, but a new way of life, a
nonviolent form of life, as is expressed in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7).
He taught us that we are all brothers/sisters as we have one Father in heaven
(Matt 23.8; 6.9); that we should love God by loving the neighbour, by meeting
the needs of the needy (Matt 22.34ff; 25.31ff); he gave priority to proper
interpersonal relationship over cultic practices (Matt 5.23; Matt 25.31ff; Lk
19.1-10). He spoke of the importance of forgiving, seventy times seven (Matt
18.21-35; 6.12). Jesus was a man rooted in God whom he named ‘Abba’ with whom
he spent many hours in silent prayer. By his long hours of prayer he showed us
that prayer was not a matter of words addressed to God to inform God (Matt 6.7)
or change God’s mind, but a surrender to the Father’s will. The only prayer he
taught emphasizes that we are all brothers/sisters, meant to honour God as
father in the way we live and thus bring about the rule of God on earth (the
Kingdom) by sharing bread, by unconditional love and by mutual protection (Matt
6.5-14).
3. 2. This approach
takes Jesus not as the founder of a new religion but as the Way, the Truth and
the Life of what each one of us can be. Some consider him as a reformer of
Judaism and the early disciples continued going to the temple as long as it
stood. When the temple was destroyed in 70 CE, and only when they were no more
allowed in the synagogue they began to look at themselves as distinct from the
Jews. There is a great deal of controversy around Matt 16.16-19[5]. Just as we take the idea of incarnation from the Gospel of John, we need
to take also the founding of the Church from John, where the emphasis is not on
orthodoxy but on love. That is going to be the Church of the future.
3. 3. The NE will go beyond the clergy-laity
divide to the Community as Jesus envisaged it, namely a brotherhood/sisterhood
of people who would live in love, serving one another as
brothers/sisters/friends. Here the ‘foot washing’ Master becomes the ideal.
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no
longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3. 28).
These words of Paul will have to be taken seriously to understand the nature of
the community that Jesus wanted and in NE, we would need to go back to the type
of community that Jesus envisaged.
3.4 Leadership according to what Jesus wanted. In no other area was
Jesus as explicit and clear as in this area, for Jesus the kind of leadership
for his “contrast community” was very important. The Jewish nation was to be a
contrast community; but with the coming of the Monarchy it ceased to be a
contrast community. The same thing happened to the Church: Jesus had envisaged
his followers to be a contrast community and thus to be the salt, leaven and
light; but with the leaders following the empire system, the Church also ceased
to be a contrast community, and became a religion like any other with dogmas,
doctrines, priesthood, rules, regulations and religious practices, none of
which was of interest to Jesus. For, from around the 3rd century the leaders
began modeling themselves on the empire system, and that is what is continued. This will have to change radically and revert
to the pattern suggested by Jesus, which has not been so far attempted in the
Church, for as Jesus told Peter at the foot washing that “later you would
understand what I am doing” (Jn 13.7) that ‘later’
has not yet happened in the church as the leaders have chosen to follow the
pattern of the empire, both in life style, titles they took for themselves,
their dress and other claims to honour and dignity. In Kerala, for example, the
bishops’ houses are called Aramana,
Palaces. Going beyond the
Church-made clergy-laity divide, the leadership will have to form themselves
into the kind of persons envisaged by Jesus: servants of the community, as I
have described it earlier. NE will be a non-starter without taking this first step; it will be
like a man with no hair on his head waxing eloquent about cultivating a
full grown lush hair on the half bald. The fact that the last two
millennia the leaders took another route is no reason for not going back to the
insights of the NT. Just as it is never too late for any
sinner to repent, and return to Jesus, it is never too late for the hierarchy
to repent. The call for a NE may be seen as a providential opportunity for the
Church to rediscover its true nature, its Jesus-willed image of a servant
Church, Body of the foot-washing Servant God. Unless this trend is reversed and
come to what Jesus wanted, no Evangelisation is going to be effective, as the leaders
follow the ‘worldly outlook’.
Leadership is a
service to the community and it ought to be open to every member of the Church
who is willing and capable of serving the community. Once the sacred aura about
the priesthood is removed and seen it as a development within the community
during its many centuries of growth, we can go back to the community that Jesus
dreamt and it would speak to the people of today, unlike the present day clerical
church which no more attracts people to Jesus. We will need to go back to Jesus’ leadership style and form leaders who
would be authentic, honest, humble and truthful, with clear vision of what
Jesus wanted, not men and women who look for prestige, power and privileges for
themselves. These would be God-centred persons, as Jesus was, walking in faith
and be the living embodiment of Jesus’ compassion.
3.5 The NE will focus on the youth, their enthusiasm and idealism and
enable them to be fully involved in the life of the community. That is why a
new type of leadership which respects all members and is not authoritarian or
autocratic will have to be developed. The leaders will have to respect the
freedom of individuals, and make use of the gifts of every member for the
wellbeing of the community. We will need a multiplicity of approaches. We need
to focus on the essentials as coming from Jesus. Not our old tradition of
doctrines and laws.
3.6 The NE will open doors of love and compassion
to all and play down the importance of canon law books. The NE will approach
people to listen to them, and learn from them. We need to work at winning over hearts, not hardening them. Humility and genuine love would be
the characteristics of the community we want to form. Jesus’
command to teach people what he has taught us, namely, “love one another as I
have loved you”; “be compassionate as your Heavenly Father is compassionate”,
will be done more by our life than our words. The NE will recognize
the relative unimportance of the later developments which were often due to the
problems of someone in the West, which often resulted in a new doctrine. These
will have to be relativised and we would emphasise the NT thrust of proper
living. So many of Paul’s letters, for example, speak of the way of life of the
disciples and proper attitudes of a Christian (Col 3.12ff; Gal 5.16ff, Eph
4.17ff, etc). What sociological form it
will take, we shall have to wait to see and by remaining open and obedient to
the ever present and dream-creating Spirit of Jesus we will be able to work out
what is required, just as the early Christian communities formed ministries as
and when the need arose.
3.7 The NE will have
to use expressions, forms of prayer and worship which are more suited to the
Indian mind and spirit. In Asia one would emphasise the contemplative
tradition, as against the present practice of volumes of vocal prayers. If we remain close to the New Testament, then
there is no need to fear of any alienation, as the NT is itself very eastern in
spirit and formulation. Since, in the past we were presenting doctrines and
formulae from the West that we had to speak of inculturation.
3.8 In the ecclesiology of the early Church, we notice that there existed a
healthy pluralism and the presence of various types of local Churches marked by
diversity in patterns of worship, kerugma, ministries and organizational set up;
yet dynamically united in the same faith. In the following
centuries, the increasing emphasis on homogenization, uniformity and
centralization suppressed this initial variety and creativity of the local
Churches. We will have to follow effectively the inspiration of Vatican II which
rediscovered the importance of local Churches within the universal Church. Our interest is not to carry some existing structure to a new place, but
by letting the Gospel take root in the lives of the people and allow new forms
of leadership, worship, etc to arise within the different communities. In the future
the concern will not be uniformity and centralization, but just as in the early
Church, there were many forms of Church communities in different places, a
multiplicity of forms will have to co-exist. The neurotic urge of the Vatican
to control everything will have to be curbed. In future the universalism of the Latin Church
will have to give way to local cultures, languages and customs.
3. 9. The NE also will focus on women in the Church and enable them to
contribute their charisms and gifts at various levels for the wellbeing of the
community. During the last two millennia, while they have contributed much to
the betterment of the people by their selfless services, at the level of
leadership they were totally absent from the Church and this mistake has to be
corrected.
3.10.
The NE calls for discernment and repentance, especially on the part of the hierarchy,
as they have contributed much to the present impasse we have reached. There is
a saying that the fish rots from the head; something similar has happened in
the Church, as the leaders took the path of the empire abandoning Jesus’
teaching. This obviously is going to be the
test about the sincerity of the Church in its call for NE. Without a serious
and genuine discernment about what has gone wrong, all the conferences will be
just talk among intellectuals, with no pastoral effect. To make
our "Asian" voice heard by the Synod of Bishops our conference may urge
for a process of discernment and repentance as part of the process of NE.
3.11. What I am suggesting is a ‘Radical evangelisation’, namely, Radical
understood in the sense of going back to the roots in Jesus; to evangelize as
Jesus evangelized focusing on the transforming and saving power of God's
unconditional and abundant love.
We must understand Radical, New Evangelization in terms of the Jesus Movement cutting across religious
boundaries; we do not focus on Church membership. Jesus addressed the human
problem from the perspective of his prophetical mysticism and even paid for it
with his life. Just as Jesus presented God to people in the way he lived,
namely in giving food to the hungry, health to the sick, hope to the hopeless,
freedom to the sinner and life to the dead (he was the good news), we too have
to become the good news that we want to proclaim, not by more words as by our
life. As followers of Jesus we have the same responsibility to address the
human problems of today from the same prophetical and mystical perspective
rather than being preoccupied with church membership, which is primarily a
sociological concern. This radical/new evangelisation invites us to join hands
with people of good will cutting across religions and ideologies and address
the human concerns; then perhaps more people might follow the Jesus movement.
Jesus' focus on the Kingdom of God is precisely that approach. It will be
very unfortunate if we keep on repeating a few outdated and obsolete dogmas and
forget the burning issues of humans today. We will be more relevant only
if we go out of our narrow domestic concerns. Jesus’ dream of the Kingdom of
God included all types of people from the most diverse backgrounds, religions,
cultures and genders (see the wedding parables; for some of the ideas here I am
indebted to M. I. Raj, S.J.).
3.12
For this new and radical Evangelisation, Jesus’ instruction to his disciples in
Mark’s gospel (6.7-13) is very relevant. He instructed them to take nothing for
the journey but a walking stick – no food, no sack, and no money in their
belts. They had to travel light. His suggestions would have sounded to the
disciples as rather inefficient, slow and rather primitive. The Church down the
centuries has become overloaded with a lot of baggage: of doctrines, laws,
customs, ceremonies, rituals, institutions; the movement Jesus started has
become a monument; community became a bureaucracy. Simplicity was the heart of
Jesus’ movement with only a walking stick and no money; they had to trust the
people whom they serve would care for them. We need to examine if we have permitted
possessions and power over others to substitute for service to others in the
spirit of true simplicity. We need simplification at various levels and
spheres. We may dream of a day when going back to the earlier form of the
Eucharist when it was celebrated in homes, presided over by the head of the
family or group and thus build up Eucharistic communities of love, concern,
care and service. Jesus had spoken about the “little flock”, not empires. We
need to form living, meaningful small communities where everyone is known and
knows everyone. We need to train ourselves to recognize Jesus in the community,
in each of the participating members. Thus, through these small ‘Eucharistic
communities’ the whole Church will be effectively an Evangelizing Church.
Conclusion
What
John O’Malley, SJ says is my humble request to the leaders. He says that the Vatican II has moved us “from commands to invitations, from laws to
ideals, from definition to mystery, from threats to persuasion, from coercion
to conscience, from monologue to dialogue, from ruling to service, from
vertical to horizontal, from exclusion to inclusion, from hostility to
friendship, from rivalry to partnership, from suspicion to trust, from static
to ongoing, from passive acceptance to active engagement, from fault finding to
appreciation,…, from behavior modification to inner appropriation.” (quoted in:
Kaiser 2012).
References
Boring,
Eugene, M. (1995): The
Gospel of Matthew, in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol 8, Matthew, Mark,
Abingdon Press, Nashville.
Brown, Raymond .E., Donfried, K.P. and Reumann, J. (1973): Peter
in the New Testament, Minneapolis:
Augsburg.
Byron, W. SJ and Zech Charles (2011): On their Way out: What exit interviews could teach us about lapsed
Catholics, America , 3 January, 2011.
Byron, W.
(2012): “Why are they leaving: Exit interviews
shed light on empty pews, America, 30 April.
Filteau, Jerry (2012):
“Unusual Study asks former Catholics why they left the Church”, in National Catholic Reporter (http://ncronline.org), 23
March.
Fox, Thomas C. (2012): National Catholic
Reporter, 1 May (http://ncronline.org/blogs/sisters-under-scrutiny/abusive-ecclesial-authority-puts-our-bishops-spot)
Gladys Ganiel (2012): New York Times, 17th
July.
Haag, Herbert (1997): Clergy& Laity: Did Jesus want a Two-Tier
Church? Burns and Oates, Wellwood, Kent
Kaiser, Robert Blair (2012): “The
Second Vatican Council has already made us free”, in National Catholic Reporter, Aug 7.
Raj,
M.I., S.J (2005): Learning from the Bible to do Contextual
Theology, Vol 2, Delhi, (unpublished Doctoral thesis).
Stevens, Anthony, M.
(2010): http://onfaith. washingtonpost. com "The
Abuse of Ecclesiastical Power" http://www.catholicapologetics. info/
modernproblems/vatican2/abuse.htm
[1] In Rom 15,14ff he refers to his
‘priestly service’. About this, Nicolas King says:”This is not the only time in
Romans Paul uses this liturgical language: see 12.1. Is he trying to snare the
attention of his Jewish readers, and win them to his side”? The New Testament, Freshly translated by
Nicholas King, Kevin Mayhew, Suffolk, p.375.
[2] 1 Peter 2.9 is not about cultic
priesthood but about the holiness of the community, a people set apart for God,
coming from Exodus 19.6.
[3]
Helicon, Baltimore, 1964
[4] In Germany as a whole,
more than 400 Roman Catholic and more than 100 Protestant churches have been
closed since 2000, according to one estimate. Another 700 Roman Catholic
churches are slated to be closed over the next several years, and many have
been bought by Muslims (cfr. gatestoneinstitute.org).
[5] Commenting on these verses The New Interpreters’ Bible says:
“Matthew’s most important editorial change is the addition of these words to
Jesus’ response to Peter. Their origin continues to be disputed, but the
majority of scholars would attribute them to pre-Matthean tradition or to
Matthew himself, rather than tracing them back to the historical Jesus” (E.
Boring 1995:344). In a footnote to this
text, referring to R Brown (1973), Peter
in the New Testament, the author adds: “The dominant scholarly view now
regards the sayings, and perhaps the whole scene, as a retrojection of
post-Easter confession into the narrative of Jesus’ life.”
Another footnote says: “This passage was not used for support of the
papacy until the third century and later, and then was opposed by leading
figures such as Origen and Augustine.” (p. 345). Brown makes a similar observation about Matt
16.16b-19. “In the exegesis of the
Church Fathers and, indeed, even of the medieval theologians (including Thomas
Aquinas) surprisingly little attention was focused on this text for
establishing the authority of the Roman church” (R.E. Brown 1973: 83). Besides,
the fact that the parallel passages in Mark (8.27-30) and Luke (9.18-20) do not have these words also adds
weight to the arguments given above that these words are not of the historical
Jesus, but a post resurrection addition due to the situation of the community
of Matthew at the time of the writing of the gospel. Due to the destruction of
Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 C.E. the future of Judaism was in jeopardy as
the Jews were deprived of their religious and cultural centre. Various factions that existed had to find a
synthesis for them to survive. “This synthesis and the process of its
construction and the emergence in the post-70 period are referred to as formative Judaism” (M. I. Raj 2005:
289). Today, authors claim that the
Gospel of Matthew makes more sense when it is read against the background of formative Judaism. During this time the
confession of Jesus as the Messiah was sufficient reason for exclusion from the
synagogue (Jn 9.22). By the time Matthew wrote his gospel, his community had
separated itself (or was forced to) from the mainline Judaism. (M I Raj,p. 294). Yet, the
Matthean community was trying hard to show their Jewishness by bringing the
Mosaic Law to the centre of their communal life. They had to show that their
faith in Jesus as the Messiah was not an aberration from the Jewish faith but
was its very heart. They wanted to hold on to their continuity with the old,
while they were also looking forward to the work of God in the Gentile Church
(M I Raj, p. 294). “They were struggling to define and defend a Jewish
Christianity to the Jews, on the one hand, and to realize their identity with
gentile Christians, on the other. This
twofold challenge explains the basic tensions encountered in the Gospel” (M.I.
Raj p.295). Matthew accomplishes this
difficult task by presenting the Christian Church as “a perfected or fulfilled
Judaism, brought to its goal by the long awaited Christ” (M.I. Raj, p. 295; See Gal 6.6). Since they have been
rejected by the Jews, they had to set up their own ‘Church’ and hence Matthew
speaks of the founding of the Church on Peter. Matthew suggests Jesus and his
disciples as the true and new Israel; hence
Jesus says he has not come to abolish the law but to perfect it, etc. (Matt
5.17-20; M I Raj 296). About this text
R. Brown says in a footnote that “Aramaic speaking origin is not necessarily equivalent to origin from the historical Jesus or even origin in the
Jerusalem Christian community…We have pointed out the possibility of
post-resurrectional origins…that possibility has to be combined with a theory
of subsequent community influence on
the development of the scene” ( R.E.Brown 1973: 91, footnote no. 212).
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1 comments:
The article is insightful, sincere and thought- provoking. At the same time there are some overstatements and generalizations regarding the institutional church and the hierarchy. The invitation to rediscover the spirit of the apostolic church and reflect on what it means to be a Christian in today's context is certainly very good and inspiring. Thanks to Fr. Joe for this article. Francis Pudhicherry SJ
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