This is from Sandro Magister of the Chiesa blog:
The Unprecedented "Presumption" of Changing the World
A homily and a Mass of Pope Francis. An essay by the sociologist Luca Diotallevi. Convergent in seeing in the Eucharist the genesis of the new world
by Sandro Magister
ROME, April 11, 2013 – Almost one month after his election as pope, there are two words that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has not yet pronounced: religious freedom.
He did not say them, contrary to expectation, even in the discourse that he addressed to the ambassadors from almost all the countries of the world.
The only time he has spoken of religious freedom - although without calling it by name - was on Saturday, April 6, in one of the brief homilies that he improvises during the morning Masses in the chapel of the Casa di Santa Marta, where he resides.
But he did so in a style of his own. Pope Francis did not waste any words against the persecutors, nor against those who in more subtle forms suffocate the freedom of believers.
Instead, he took the side of the persecuted:
"To find the martyrs it is not necessary to go to the catacombs or to the Colosseum: the martyrs are living now, in many countries. Christians are persecuted for their faith, today, in the 21st century, our Church is a Church of martyrs.”
Then he identified himself with ordinary Christians. He cited the words of Peter and John in the Acts of the Apostles: “We cannot remain silent about what we have seen and heard.” Then he continued:
"The faith is not negotiable. There has always been, in the history of the people of God, this temptation: to cut a piece away from the faith, perhaps not even very much. But the faith is how we speak of it in the Creed. We must overcome the temptation to do a bit as everyone does, not to be so very rigid, because right from there begins a road that ends in apostasy. In fact, when we begin to cut up the faith, to negotiate the faith, to sell it to the highest bidder, we start down the road of apostasy, of infidelity to the Lord.”
For Pope Francis, religious freedom means above all “having the courage to bear witness to faith in the risen Christ.” A faith that is complete, and public. A faith that presumes to transform society.
“The presumption” is precisely the title that the sociologist of religion Luca Diotallevi has given to his latest essay, published in recent days.
It is an essay harshly critical toward the theories of “secularism” - theories widespread even within the Church and improperly applied to Vatican Council II as well - that rule out a direct connection between the Gospel and the social order, in homage to a presumed “neutrality” of the state.
To the paradigm of “secularism” Diotallevi opposes the paradigm of religious freedom, typical of the Anglo-Saxon world but with theological foundations that have their bedrock in the "De Civitate Dei" of Augustine and before that in the New Testament.
According to this vision, the “saeculum" between the first and second coming of Christ is an interweaving of time and eternity, it is a conflict between sin and grace. In this conflict participate the thrones, the principalities, the dominations of which the New Testament speaks, referring to the powers of this world. They are the rebel powers over which the cross and resurrection of Jesus have won definitive victory, victory that however has not yet had its fulfillment. In the “saeculum" these powers still oscillate between the extremes of anarchy and absolute dominion, while the Church, which safeguards the gift of victory, works to hold them back from one and the other extreme.
After Augustine, this New Testament vision of history has been developed in our time by Oscar Cullmann and Joseph Ratzinger, extensively cited by Diotallevi.
But the most original feature of the essay is where it identifies in the celebration of the Eucharist the source and summit of this “presumption” of the impact of the Christian faith on the social order, here as well in full continuity with Benedict XVI.
Diotallevi writes:
"Every Eucharistic liturgy, every Mass, is a rite in which the participant makes the claim of sharing in the one work of victory and making an effective proclamation of it. The Eucharist does not provide any definite or definitive model of social order. The heavenly Jerusalem will come on the last day and from on high, and the Eucharist works and proclaims the victory that shatters space and time so as to generate time and space for that gift. It works and proclaims the definitive defeat of the plans of dominion of the powers and principalities, opening and indicating a never-stabilized intermediate condition between absolute dominion and anarchic dissolution of social life.”
And again:
"The celebration of the Eucharist proclaims and realizes the prohibition of any statalization of the Church and any ecclesiasticization of politics. The pilgrim Church does not found the earthly 'civitas,' but dwells there and by dwelling in it preserves it.”
In the light of this vision, it becomes even more understandable why Pope Francis decided to celebrate the Mass last Holy Thursday not only in a place, like the juvenile detention facility of Casal del Marmo, in which the conflict between sin and grace is more visible than elsewhere, but also in the presence of persons of other faiths and of no faith.
Because the Eucharist is the Church that makes itself visible, it is the victorious work of God that breaks through into history and is presented to the gaze of every man, it is Jesus raised on the cross between the two thieves, with the centurion who recognizes him as Son and the earth that trembles.
The educated pagans of the first centuries were not mistaken when to identify Christianity they described it in the very act of celebrating the liturgy.
11 comments:
interesting
Well, it certainly is the theology to which I subscribe. Now, if we could only see the essential connection between proper liturgy, the TLM, and traditional Catholic identity and embodying this theology in the world. Rhetoric like this is inspiring and wonderful to hear, but the Devil is in the details (literally) and the implementation of this theology in Catholic life.
Unfortunately, opening the Church to the world (V-2), with unjustified optimism, meant a good portion of the Church Militant switching sides, joining the forces of modernism. The Holy Father states this much himself. So far, it is not obvious how He proposes to rally his troops.
Our internal contradictions will not be resolved with inspirational words alone. He needs to find a way to gather in all forces of Catholic tradition, even those on the Church's very peripheries.
Success in the fight against the forces of secularism requires Church unity. Concurrent conflict with secularists and Catholic traditionalists --as we have it now-- will not bring success on either front. May God give the Pope wisdom and strength to live up to this challenge.
He also needs to identify h and removonh hostile elements tendencies
I don't think that either Francis's homily or Diotallevi's analysis really concerns "religious freedom" as we, as Americans, tend to discuss it on this blog or in terms of the controversial statements of VII. VII and Americans talk about the right of people to practice whatever (principally non-Catholic) religion they please without state interference. Rather than talking to non-Catholics about their faiths, Francis here is focusing on exhorting Catholics not to fall away from the Catholic faith.
A5, I don't disagree, but I think that when Pope Francis went to the prison he was acting similarly as when Christ descended into Hell. Those children were in a place created by their gods and are enduring the fruit of their worship. It is easy to conceive, in this day and age, that those children have never heard the Word in any correct form. I can also conceive that the politicians are in the same boat, to some degree, based on the somewhat corrupted form of Liturgy that evolved under the influence of the spirit of Vatican II.
John, yes, VII's desire "to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church" (SC 1) through dialogue with the world has failed to bear the fruit of conversion of cultures, at least so far. In his first encyclical, Pope Paul VI said the Church and the world "should meet together, and get to know and love one another". Where is the fruit of this interaction? Is the Church more free to proclaim the Gospel today than she was fifty years ago? Perhaps in some formerly Communist countries. But, is the world more open to her voice today than then?
rcg, that's a very insightful reflection on the papal visit to the jail.
Father McDonald,
Since I was born after VCII, I find myself struggling to understand the following words of Pope Paul VI, especially given what happened in the Church from the late Sixties on. Some would say the more the Church divests herself of her non-essentials, the greater her religious freedom will be. Given these words of PVI, I'm curious to know what you think:
"No one should deceive himself into thinking that the Church which has now become a vast, magnificent, and majestic temple built to the glory of God, should be reduced to the modest proportions which it had in its earliest days, as though this minimal form were the only one that is genuine and lawful. Nor should one conceive the desire of renewing the whole structure of the Church just by taking account of the special spiritual gifts (charism) of some of its members. Some imagine that the only genuine renewal of the Church is one which is born from the ideas of a few, admittedly zealous, people who not infrequently consider themselves divinely inspired. Their vain dreams of the wrong sort of renewal could easily defile the very shape which the Church ought to have. We must love and serve the Church as it is, wisely seeking to understand its history and to discover with humility the will of God who guides and assists it, even when He permits human weakness to eclipse the splendor of its countenance and the holiness of its activity. It is precisely this holiness and splendor which we are endeavoring to discover and promote." (Ecclesiam Suam 47)
Here we go... Will Pope Francis be the one to finally, in union with the world's bishops, consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary?
http://www.santuario-fatima.pt/portal/index.php?id=61512
The fact he will consecrate his papacy to Our Lady of Fatima is an optimistic sign it may finally happen, nearly 100 years after Our Lady requested it.
In the early Church it would have been unthinkable to celebrate the Eucharist in the presence of heathens and infidels. Even the catechumens had to withdraw before the "Mass of the Faithful", which begins at the Offertory.
John, that is an excellent point and the point I read elsewhere that Christ washed the feet of disciples, not just anyone. I cannot defend the specific ceremony Pope Francis did, he may have been overcome by feelings of solidarity with the poor. But I still think he was not just making a point, but mostly reaching out to abandoned children in an act of compassion. He could have done it in another way.
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