Category Archives: Theology

YouCat, Violence and the Cross

Articles, Atonement, Catechesis

Q. Did God will the death of his only Son?

A. The violent death of Jesus did not come about through tragic external circumstances. Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). So that we children of sin and death might have life, the Father in heaven “made him to be sin who knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21). The magnitude of the sacrifice that God the Father asked of his Son, corresponded to the magnitude of Christ’s obedience: “And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour” (Jn 12:27). On both sides, God’s love for men proved itself to the very end on the Cross.

[YouCat – The Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2011 – Article 98]

Why should anyone be asked to believe that if God did will the death of his son for the reasons given, this death was not caused first of all by ‘tragic external circumstances’ – the sinful designs of men – that were never willed by God?

Does it not matter that through an obvious logical non sequitur a standard  Catholic catechetical source for young people could lead them to attribute the violence of the crucifixion to the will of God, rather than to human hatred?

Is it unimportant also that YouCat does not explain at this point that God’s primary project was, and still is, the utterly non-violent Kingdom of God?

As, according to the Gospel, it was the rejection of the Kingdom offered by Jesus that led to his crucifixion, why does YouCat background that rejection as a mere ‘tragic external circumstance’ and foreground the Father’s will that Jesus should die?

How can that decision help young people today to understand the prayer that Jesus gave us, for what the Father wills first of all – the coming of the Kingdom of God?

For me, in failing to insist that the killing of any person – Jesus included – is never desired, intended or arranged by God, this Catechetical approach goes to the heart of a problem well stated by Archbishop Eamon Martin in Kilkenny on October 18th, 2025. “People need the faith, they need the treasure that we have … but somehow we are finding it difficult to reach them!”1 Archbishop Eamon Martin speaking at the conclusion of the Pre-Synodal Assembly of the Irish Synodal Pathway in Kilkenny on 18 Oct 2025.
https://synod.ie/video-presentations-from-kilkenny-assembly-available-now/


Simeon, The Cross and ‘Secret Thoughts’

Simeon’s Prophecy

To begin with, that non sequitur in YouCat 98 is itself invalidated by the Gospel, taken holistically.  In Luke’s Gospel we are told that when the infant Jesus was presented in the Temple the prophet Simeon told his mother Mary that the crucifixion would happen “so that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare” (Luke 2:34,35). Given that the ‘external circumstances’ of the crucifixion included all of those actors who sought or acquiesced in Jesus’ death – all vividly described in the Gospels  – is it likely that God never intended us to learn anything from those accounts about the motivations of those same men? 

Indeed, given the contemporary resonance of those accounts, why would it not be likely that God’s willing of the crucifixion was always intended to reveal not only the hidden thoughts of Caiaphas and Herod and Pilate, and even Judas and Peter – but whatever lies always behind aggression?

Here we encounter all of the difficulties caused by studying only the singularity of the story of Jesus as Son of God – and never the obvious fact that, read just as the story of an honest individual, it is just one of many thousands of such stories of victimisation and torture – in history and the daily news as well as scripture.


Adolescence and Violence

To take just one example, in March 2025 the UK parliament discussed a streaming TV drama called Adolescence – centred on the fictional story of a thirteen-year-old boy who, in a fit of rage, stabs to death a 14-year-old girl who has rejected and then cyber-bullied him. This plotline resonated for many as reflecting a western cultural phenomenon known as the manosphere, a widespread male rebellion against the alleged excesses of feminism. The term ‘incel’ has emerged, to describe males allegedly deprived of their ‘right’ to sexual intimacy by these alleged feminist excesses – making these put-upon males ‘involuntarily celibate’.

For UK lawmakers the context of Adolescence is not just this online phenomenon but a plague of teenage knife crime that makes the deaths of young people from uncontrolled adolescent rage a dismal staple of the daily news.

As online subcultures now have global scope, all of this is necessarily impacting on the climate in which Irish adolescents go to school – where, coincidentally, they will encounter other plotlines of sexual aggression and murder. In one of those an ancient King of Israel arranges the death in battle of the husband of a beautiful woman whom he has secretly seduced. In the very same source two elders in Babylon conspire to proposition a young wife, threatening her with an accusation that will ensure her death if she does not comply. 

Is there not a pattern in these stories, very likely the same pattern as in some shocking episodes of teen-on-teen violence in Ireland? Have we humans – males especially – an often fatal difficulty in coping with any shameful disaster – as in recent killings of wives by suspicious husbands – and even sometimes of whole families by parents facing some kind of social catastrophe?

Wasn’t King David’s murder of Uriah an archetype that echoes down the ages – the celebrity king who cannot face the shame of exposure for selfishly seducing the wife of one of his own elite soldiers?

“All violence is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem,” insists the US prison psychiatrist James Gilligan, summarising the argument of a 1996 book focused upon what he calls the ‘epidemic’ of violence in his own land2James Gilligan, Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes. Putnam Publishing Group 1996.


Naming the Pattern

If we focus just on the most obvious issue that arises out of all of these stories – the problem posed to King David, to that 13-year-old in Adolescence, and to anyone – by social shame we can see not only a vulnerability but an extreme danger. These ‘tragic circumstances’ all too often offer a stark choice between violence and humiliation. What name can we give to the force – or weakness – or sin – that impels so many to give tragic free rein to violence in those circumstances?

Why does scripture take us constantly to this place of violence – if not to call us to see – and name – the pattern of behaviour, and the specific human weakness, that we find there?

Solomon’s Judgement of two women who claim the same child – by Gustav Doré

Cain’s murder of his brother, Abel; the jealous brothers of Joseph who sell him into slavery and then deceive their father Jacob; King Saul in his bitter rivalry with the younger David; King David himself in his plotting against Uriah; Solomon’s problem of the two women who claim the same infant after one of them has overslept her own child; Jezebel the wife of King Ahab in her dispossession and murder of Naboth; those two Babylonian elders who plot against Susanna; Herod the Great’s storied resentment of the infant Jesus; the capitulation of Herod Antipas to the desire of his wife Herodias to see the head of John the Baptist on a platter; Caiaphas the High Priest who sees the elimination of Jesus as a means of avoiding a greater disorder and his own overthrow; Pilate in his sentencing of Jesus to death, despite his obvious misgivings.

Is there not an obvious pattern, a sameness, in these stories of moral failure, and then violence?

Is not the consistent root cause of that failure what is now called status anxiety – fear of loss of the respect of important others – fear of shame?3Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, Penguin, 2004  

If so, what do we call the sin that led them in the end to capitulate to that fear – and to violence?

Does not Jesus’ disregard for his status – his freedom in calling out religious hypocrisy but lack of vindictiveness in accepting ‘blowback’ – cast the problem of his accusers and judges in the sharpest relief? Where he could accept the greatest humiliation they could not even accept the verbal charge of hypocrisy.

If his most singular virtue was indeed his humility – his willingness to tolerate humiliation, what was obviously – by contrast – their vice?


Integrity and Holiness

Is it not obvious that in asking Jesus to endure the Crucifixion the will of the Father was for Jesus to witness to the Kingdom of God of which he had preached unarmed and selflessly – right to the bitter end – and that the rejection of that kingdom by his accusers was the immediate cause of his arrest and trial?  Having preached mutual service rather than ambition, and the turning of the other cheek when insulted, how could it have been consistent for Jesus in the end to choose the only alternative to arrest and crucifixion – domination and war? 

How could he have chosen that option without matching and mirroring the pride of his enemies?

Is not aggressive violence always a choosing of pride before the kingdom of God? Is that same kingdom not exemplified by all who bear with humiliation without violence?  Are there not many such in Ireland today?

And was it not especially to take away all of these particular sins of pride – past, present and future – that Jesus died, in obedience to the Father?


Pride and Violence

Strikingly, although YouCat does list pride among the capital sins it nowhere defines or describes or instances this vice – especially as a danger to young people today. It does not even list pride in its index – while sexual behaviour and the church’s rules for that – including those for birth regulation – feature prominently.

And although YouCat does explore Jesus’s opposition to violence it does not link this to the explanation of the cross. Jesus is obedient to the Father but nowhere is it stated clearly that the Father’s willing of the Cross was a protest against prideful violence, and not a seeking of it.

And nowhere in YouCat is the psychology of violence explored – despite the fact that the Bible is probably the greatest of all literary sources on the subject.

St Anselm of Canterbury

The most likely explanation for these failures is the Catholic theological inheritance of the Middle Ages. St Anselm of Canterbury could not ask himself in the 1090s if the Christian violence sanctioned first by Constantine in 312 – for example the violence of the first Crusade (1096-99) – might be tainted by pride, so instead he interpreted the Cross not as a protest against violence but primarily as the logical repayment of a debt owed to the Father by sinful humanity4St Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo, c.1098. This unhelpful emphasis has trickled down the centuries – to the 1994 adult Catechism of the Catholic Church and to its 2011 offspring, YouCat.

The result is a resource that risks attributing the human weakness of status anxiety – and even the vice of pride – to God himself – when redemption obviously has to do with the opposite understanding – that God is, above all, both love and humility – and that he offers, through Jesus, freedom from all fear, including fear of shame.


‘Satan’?

The non-appearance of the name Satan in YouCat can possibly be explained  by the need to emphasise the totality of the victory of the Cross, but given the certainty of questions about Satan from young people, this is a mistake. There is an often overlooked advantage in attributing all human fault in the beginning to some source other than ourselves, and a particular advantage in attributing our status anxiety – our chronic tendency to doubt our own value as we are – to an external source, as do Genesis and the Gospels. That value becomes clear if we ask ourselves how we might counsel a young person who has been overwhelmed by an impulse towards violence, as in that TV drama Adolescence.

Is not murderous pride indeed a deeply mysterious and dark entity, a ‘force’ that can ‘get into’ us – in the most ‘tragic circumstances’? Do we truly know what we are doing then? Do we not all need to realise that this too was the Evil that was overcome in Gethsemane and on the Cross, for the forgiveness of even the worst of sins?

That the word ‘Satan’ means ‘the accuser’ – thereby naming the historical pattern of false accusation that can lead to ostracisation and lynching – is surely important for young people to know also, in a pervasive climate of online aggression and the scapegoating of immigrants.

And do we not all need to be fully conscious of what we are doing at Easter, when we renounce Satan, the author of all sinful pride?


‘Do Not Covet’?

Not for nothing does Genesis point to the ‘serpent’ as the author of all human dissatisfaction. “You are not enough as you are!” – is not this the insistent message we all mysteriously hear, in every encounter with someone who seems to have more. This too is something that young people need to understand. Our tendency towards comparison, towards feeling ashamed of what we seem to lack, and towards envy of others – especially for whatever makes those others more popular – explains the power and prestige of the 21st century ‘influencer’ – and all world conflict as well.

No one has explained the danger of this human frailty better than René Girard5Wolfgang Palaver, René Girard’s Mimetic Theory, Michigan State University Press 2013. If we must have whatever our envied neighbour has, what will we do if we cannot have that without violence?

To reflect on the danger of one’s own envy is to be ready to understand also why Jesus was envied by his enemies, and why he was accused. Themselves already socially eminent, those men felt keenly a lack of the supreme gifts of spiritual insight, leadership and healing they recognised in him. They felt most keenly of all his razor-sharp identification of their ‘mask-wearing’ – the pretences that too often go with mere religious performance. This was the birthplace of their conspiracy to kill him, rejecting the Kingdom they could otherwise have freely entered.

It is another peculiarity of YouCat that while it does list the warning against coveting among the ten commandments it nowhere explains the term. Don’t young people need to realise how this weakness, which we all share, is so helpful in explaining the chaos that surrounds us?

Covetousness, envy and pride – and not the will of God the Father – were together the wellspring of the violence of the Crucifixion, and lie at the root of all aggression today.

Revision

YouCat needs revision. In striving to emphasise Jesus’ obedient taking away of sin it backgrounds what led to his arrest, condemnation and execution – the rejection of the Kingdom of God by those in power. This is misguided, especially in a work intended for the young.    

  • YouCat needs to name and highlight the particular sins that motivated the enemies of Jesus – the sins that above all need to be taken away.
  • In explaining the crucifixion it needs to summarise what is now well known, especially following the insights of scholars such as René Girard and James Gilligan, about the psychological and social origins of violence.
  • As it stands, YouCat’s multiple references to sin, without specificity, reinforce the perception that Catholicism is still fixated on ‘sins of the flesh’, and its index – given especially what isn’t anywhere there – reinforces that view.
  • When it comes to ‘God’s will’ YouCat needs to say more clearly that God willed the salvific outcome of the crucifixion – the gift of Jesus’ obedience – but not the sin, the violent motives, that led to the crucifixion. The Cross reveals the human cycle of: covetousness > envy > pride > violence – but not any will of God for violence.
  • The absence of any mention of ‘Satan’ needs to be reconsidered, to justify the liturgical Easter references, to emphasise the subtlety of temptation and to name the mystery of evil.
  • Especially regrettable therefore is the marginalisation of Jesus’s central teaching on the Kingdom of God – the peaceful kingdom that can never emerge out of violence. How else can ‘God’s will’ – and the Lord’s prayer – be properly explained?      

Do not all young people these times need to know that when they ‘bite their tongues’ – instead of answering insult with insult, online or elsewhere – they too are building the kingdom of the Father – by taking up that cross?

Was it not to ensure the coming of that Kingdom that Jesus died, in obedience to the Father, to ensure that evil will not win – because covetousness, envy and pride – and violence and death and shame – now have no final dominion over anyone?

Notes

  1. Archbishop Eamon Martin speaking at the conclusion of the Pre-Synodal Assembly of the Irish Synodal Pathway in Kilkenny on 18 Oct 2025.
    https://synod.ie/video-presentations-from-kilkenny-assembly-available-now/
  2. James Gilligan, Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes. Putnam Publishing Group 1996
  3. Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, Penguin, 2004 
  4. St Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo, c.1098
  5. Wolfgang Palaver, René Girard’s Mimetic Theory, Michigan State University Press 2013

(This article was first published in The Furrow – in April 2026)

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The Cross Is God’s Victory Over Violence

Articles, Atonement, Catechesis, Christology, Evangelisation, Father, Jesus, Kingdom of God, Redemption, Scripture

Since Vatican II the Catholic Church has been hesitating to speak clearly of the insight at its core: that the refusal of God the Father to overpower the enemies of Christ was an emphatic rejection of the use of force to build the Kingdom announced by Jesus – the Kingdom of God.

It is time to end that hesitation. The Youth Catechism published by the Church in 2011 proves that no other explanation of the Crucifixion makes sense.

YouCat’s Confusing Question and Answer

The following question and answer occur on page 65 of YouCat, The Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Q 98. Did God will the death of his only Son?”

A. The violent death of Jesus did not come about through tragic external circumstances. Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). So that we children of sin and death might have life, the Father in heaven “made him to be sin who knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21). The magnitude of the sacrifice that God the Father asked of his Son, corresponded to the magnitude of Christ’s obedience: “And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour” (Jn 12:27). On both sides, God’s love for men proved itself to the very end on the Cross.

Is it truly obvious to anyone that God’s love for men (and, presumably, women) is proven by the statement that Jesus’s death on the cross resulted solely from God’s will.

That this inference does not come naturally – that it is counter-intuitive – is strongly suggested by all available research on Irish young people and their generally poor understanding of what happens at Easter, the church’s central sacramental event. Even so YouCat  is in use in some Irish dioceses as a reference source for faith formation – including the faith formation of adults. Question 98 (above) is not the only issue.

The Problem of Atonement.  If it was solely the will of God the Father – and not any  ‘tragic external circumstances’ – that caused the death of Jesus, then God the Father must also have predetermined the opposition to Jesus and the violence of the crucifixion. Why is it supposed that this theological perspective can close the distance between ourselves and God, when it is both scandalous and rendered obsolete by the most persuasive orthodox Catholic theology of the Cross? As Catholic teaching insists that God cannot will anyone to sin it can only be a mistake to allow any room for the inference that God the Father arranged or even condoned the violence of the persecution and crucifixion of Jesus.

The Kingdom of God is marginalized in YouCat, even though it was central to Jesus’ teaching. In Raymund Schwager’s dramatic theology of the Cross it was – and always is – the Father’s will – first of all – to build this Kingdom. Only peace reigns there – because all freely obey the two Great Commandments.  The crucifixion followed from the rejection of that kingdom by Jesus’ enemies – so this sinful rejection was a necessary cause of the predicament that obliged Jesus to choose between overpowering his enemies and death on the cross. His choice to undergo crucifixion rather than use force was not the repayment of a debt called in by God the Father for our sins but proof that the Kingdom of God cannot emerge out of violence. In Dignitatis Humanae (1965) the church rejected the use of force to spread the faith – and this was also the belief of the early church – so why is this not a sufficient explanation for Jesus’ own refusal to use force to build his Kingdom?

The Sins of Covetousness, Envy and Pride are not identified in YouCat as the sins of Jesus’s enemies that led to his arrest, false accusation and unjust execution. Nothing could be clearer than that these sins prevented them from following Jesus themselves. Yet Neither covetousness nor pride are indexed or defined or instanced in YouCat.  Envy is indexed but the explanation on page 254 confuses envy – which is directed toward a person or persons – and covetousness – a yearning for whatever the envied person possesses that the yearner cannot have without violence.

The Problem of Violence is not given central importance in YouCat even though it is central to scripture and to the dangers facing young people today. In revealing the role of covetousness, envy and pride in the opposition to Jesus the Gospel is also clearly pointing to the crucial role of those motives in all aggression.  That this revelation was intended by God is indicated by the warning to Mary given by the prophet Simeon in St Luke’s Gospel: “…and a sword will pierce your soul too — so that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare” (Luke 2:34-35). This is not seen in YouCat.  It does see Jesus’ opposition to violence but does not link that opposition – or the will of God the Father – to Jesus’ choice of crucifixion before violence.

The name ‘Satan’ is completely missing from YouCat. In Schwager’s theology, as well as in scripture and in the Easter liturgy, Satan is identified as the generator of all aggression, via temptation, deceit and hatred.  Young people need to know the meaning of this name – ‘the Accuser’ – the dark spirit behind all breaches of the 8th commandment against ‘bearing false witness’.  They also need to know what it means to renounce Satan in the Easter liturgy – to reject all blaming of others for our own mistakes, and all unjust violence to save ourselves.

An imbalance in moral theology is inevitable if there is a dominant focus on the rules relating to sexual behaviour but no identification of the role played by covetousness, envy and pride in the genesis of injustice, crime, civil violence and war.  How can e.g. the so-called manosphere and the new Christian imperialism be countered if this is not corrected? Many young People will sense this imbalance in YouCat and tune out.

The Resurrection is not seen by YouCat as God the Father’s peaceful response to the killing of his Son – another exercise of non-violence to overpower those who use violence against the truth, through the courageous witness of believers.  That too is part of the gift of the Gospel to all faced with speaking the truth on behalf of justice. The Christian Creed is a sure passport through all hostility to the faith, all false accusation and all injustice. Believers in Jesus’ Resurrection cannot be defeated by force or the threat of death. Might, for us, will never also be Right.

Conclusion

YouCat is useful as an explainer of the church’s past mistakes – but not the answer to major questions that many young people will raise today – especially about violence and the cross and God’s part in the crucifixion of Jesus.

Dignitatis Humanae (1965) – the church’s own teaching on the principle of religious freedom – allows for an entirely different perspective – that God the Father does not and never could condone any use of violence to advance or secure the Christian truth and the Kingdom of God.

That all-important event of the death of Jesus had obviously two essential causes – the conspiracy against Jesus on the one hand, and Jesus’ obedience to God’s non-violent will on the other. God the Father did not, and could not, have willfully predetermined the first of those causes – and Christian teachers (especially) need to feel free to say that. To say that God permitted the abuse of their own freedom by Jesus’ enemies is to say something entirely different – that Christian faith can never by conveyed to anyone by the use of force.

To engage the interest of young people in the Easter story Catechists will need to see that story – and the many others in scripture on the same theme of victimisation –  as a revelation of the roots of all violence in human concern for social status. Time and again, those who choose violence in scripture do so to ‘save their faces’ – i.e. to avoid losing status. That God willed Jesus to surrender to crucifixion to reveal this connection is missing from YouCat. This textbook does not even index the greatest of all sins – pride – or name the one who personifies that sin – Satan, the Accuser.

It is time to say clearly why Jesus accepted death on the Cross: to prove by his Resurrection that violence has no future – and that God’s peaceful Kingdom will come, despite all of its enemies.

(The final two paragraphs of this article were edited for clarity on Thursday 19th February 2026.)

[To read a summary of the dramatic theology of Raymund Schwager SJ, click here.]

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AI is Banal: Humans are Telepathic

Adult Faith Formation, Articles, Courage, Crisis, Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Scripture, Truth, Wisdom
Jesus Rescues the Accused Woman [John 8:1-11] by Lucas Cranach – (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Telepathy (from Ancient Greek τῆλε (têle) ‘distant’ and πάθος/-πάθεια (páthos/-pátheia) ‘feeling’).

No man-made machine will ever match the greatest human gift. Given true humility – the under-appreciated reward of all suffering – we humans can and do communicate (spiritually, emotionally and intellectually) – with the mysterious source of all that exists – and all that has still to happen.

This is the evolutionary destiny of humankind – communion with our Source, and then – lovingly – with one another. It is a gift that comes with humility – which comes, in turn, from disaster – often the inevitable consequence of what we tend to call ‘success’.

The current triumphalist hype over computerised artificial intelligence – ‘AI’ – is certain to prove hollow. While often helpful, AI will also mislead and deceive, especially by flattery – and far too much is expected of it (especially in the role of ‘friend’).  How could any mere human artifact be the end of human history? AI is dwarfed in importance by a gift that will come to our aid in the deepest danger – to clarify our minds and take us through the most harrowing historical test – now ongoing because of techno-grandiosity.     

The Imposters – Triumph and Disaster

Historical and personal triumph is not what it seems but the threshold of disaster.  This is confirmed by scripture as well as history.

To take some historical examples: the triumph of the USA following two World Wars 1914-45 and then the Cold War with the USSR by 1989. Overreach in Vietnam 1955-75 and then in the Middle East led to the disasters of 9/11 in 2001 and then the ignominy of the Trump presidencies 2016-20 and 2024-2028 – ending the American century that had begun in 1917 with US entry into World War I. The apparent victory of US liberal democracy, touted by one commentator as ‘the end of history’ in 1990, has been revealed as fleeting by a home grown populist autocrat driven by contempt for the power-limiting principles of those who designed the US constitution.  But populism too is set for disaster. Was it truly the destiny of the USA to become a mirror image of China and Russia, misled by the myth of the ‘great leader’?   

Biblical examples of hubris ending in disaster include:

The Downfall of the Tower of Babel, built to reach to Heaven (Genesis 11:1-9)

The Downfall of Saul – first King of Israel – in paranoid hatred of David, after early victories (1 Samuel 9-31)

The Downfall of Samson after early invincibility(Judges 13-16)

The Downfall of Belshazzar king of Babylon, after triumph over Israel (Daniel 5).

As for History itself, was it inevitable that US triumph in the Cold War in 1989 – the highest point of ‘the American Century’ that began with US entry into World War I in 1917 – would be followed by the humiliation of ‘9/11’ ?  Earlier historical examples include the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. – and the defeats of Napoleon I and Adolf Hitlers after their invasions of Russia in 1812 and 1941.  Triumphalist heroes always go too far and unite their enemies – so supreme victory is always paradoxical.

The development of nuclear weapons beginning during World War II 1939-45 was another obvious example of technological development far outstripping moral development. Why are we so much more skilled at making war than making a lasting worldwide peace?

As for the reign of Pope John Paul II – lauded for his role in the collapse of the USSR – was it inevitable that his ignoring of early warnings of the scale of clerical child sex abuse would tarnish his record once this became a global issue?

‘Power tends to corrupt,’ insisted the Catholic historian Lord Acton in 1887 ‘and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’  He was referring specifically to popes and kings who had abused power.

Jesus of Nazareth was aware of this pattern from the beginning  – the reason he resisted the temptation of not only political but institutional religious empowerment. He also knew from the scriptural record that disaster is often the necessary training for spiritual growth.

Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

“… sorrow, if welcomed with sincerity, becomes a place for conversion.”

Pope Leo XIV said this on August 13th, 2025 – at a general audience.  Commenting on the scriptural account of Jesus’ poignant last meal with the apostles he was highlighting just one of many passages in scripture that speak of disaster as the necessary threshold of better beginnings.  

Other examples include:

The throwing overboard of Jonah the prophet – by the crew of the ship on which he had attempted to flee from the mission given him by God – to warn the Ninevites of impending catastrophe. Rescued from this disaster he went on to fulfil this commission and become one of the many renowned prophets of Israel. (Jonah)

The selling of Joseph, son of Jacob, into slavery in Egypt by his jealous brothers – where Joseph won the favour of the Pharaoh and then became the saviour of his people, the Israelites, from famine. (Gen 37)

The flight of the young Moses from Egypt into the wilderness – to escape the consequences of a crime he had committed in anger.  It was there, in desolation, that Moses received the call to return to Egypt – as liberator of his people. (Exodus 2 &3)

The death of King David – seen as disaster by his son and heir Solomon, who thought himself unready to follow his father. The prayer then said by Solomon (1 Kings 3:5-14) led to the telepathic wisdom that made him renowned throughout the world of his time. That prayer is ready for repetition by anyone still today.

The blinding of Paul of Tarsus on his way to Damascus to persecute the followers of Jesus.  Convinced he had been waylaid by Jesus himself, now risen from death, Paul became an apostle to the non-Jewish world, setting a Jewish reform movement on an entirely new historical tack. (acts 9)

And Paul also used the gift that Jesus possessed to the highest degree – the gift of knowing what to say.  This included ‘death has no dominion’ (Romans 6:9) – the truest summary of the meaning of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus.

The Crisis of Technological Hubris

Exaggeration of the potential of technology will inevitably precipitate a crisis – because it postpones the necessary task of repentance – the radical rethinking that is needed to bring realisation of our greatest human need – the need to belong to something greater than ourselves. Techno hubris leads instead towards the aggrandisement of a minority – the technocrats – and the inequality and injustice that follow cannot be resolved by personality cults. The corruption of governance has always called forth the gift of prophecy – of speaking the truth fearlessly to power.

Do Not Worry About How to Speak

In all four Gospels Jesus of Nazareth – the greatest of all prophets – insists that the source of all wisdom and insight lies outside of us – but can nevertheless inspire – breathe in to – us at times of the greatest danger.

“But when you are handed over, do not worry about how to speak or what to say; what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes.” (Matt 10:19)

“And when you are taken to be handed over, do not worry beforehand about what to say; no, say whatever is given to you when the time comes, because it is not you who will be speaking; it is the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 13:11)

“When they take you before synagogues and magistrates and authorities, do not worry about how to defend yourselves or what to say, because when the time comes, the Holy Spirit will teach you what you should say.’”(Luke 12:11,12)

“Make up your minds not to prepare your defence, because I myself shall give you an eloquence and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to resist or contradict.” (Luke 21:14-15)

Jesus made clear that he too relied upon this source:

“For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.” (John 12:49,50)

For a breathtaking example of the use of this gift by Jesus, read John 8:1-11.

Attunement?

How can it happen that in a crisis we can know what to do – and can speak then as God would want us to?

First, we must already know and freely obey the Great commandments of love – of God above all and then of our neighbours – all other humans.

No hatred of any others – even of those who may hate us – can be given any room in what we feel.

This is the ‘tuning’ – the attunement – we must seek if we truly wish to serve the truth – and prayer – the honest addressing of our most serious concerns to God, as a persistent habit – is indispensable.

Note especially that ‘telepathy’ strictly means not ‘thought transference’ but a communication of feeling – our deepest emotions – over distance. To be spoken the truth must first be felt, lovingly. There is far too much evidence of the ability of honest people to speak wisely – and with inexplicable courage and insight  – to those who misuse power – for this to be dismissed as mere accident. Solomon’s request for a heart that is wise tells us where true wisdom comes from – not from our analytical brain but from our deepest emotional centre.

Experience of suffering – of powerlessness, grief and pain – is also vital – the necessary loss of the illusion of being somehow in control – for all experience of power is truly deceptive and deeply dangerous.  Only if our experience from the beginning has been one of powerlessness can we avoid the need to be stripped of power.

To suffer is essentially to experience humiliation – to realise that we are utterly powerless to save ourselves – and humiliation is almost always the necessary path to humility, the acceptance of our powerlessness as we now are.

A sudden loss of all power is the experience of desolation – but conversion is the experience then of rescue  – and the realisation in that moment, and forever afterwards – that we are held close by the One who made us.

Do not believe that there is a technological fix to the historical crisis now upon us – a consequence of the grandiosity that technological progress afflicts us with. Trust instead in the Trinity, and in your own mind and heart – and pray.

In this confidence you will then be given wisdom by the one who made you – and you will know what to do and what to say.

Eli tells the young Samuel that he had not woken him – that the voice Samuel had heard in the night must have come from God himself.

‘Here I am,’ said the young Samuel, waking up in the dark to a voice that only he could hear (1 Samuel 3:1). Are we not all being called awake in the night these times?

Views: 12

Why No Feast of Christ the Prophet?

Abuse of Power, Articles, Christology, Church Renewal, Jesus, Laity, Prophecy, Sexual Abuse

 Jesus had no tolerance for adult destruction of childhood faith – so why did the Catholic Church’s leaders hide clerical sex abuse from parents?

At the highest level, and globally, the clerical Catholic church of the 20th century not only failed to protect children from widespread clerical sexual abuse but conspired to conceal this failure from Catholic parents – until it was revealed by the victims themselves.

Not even yet, in 2025 – under an American pope – does the hierarchical church show any determination or sense of obligation to trace this failure to its historical source, or to measure the depth of disillusionment it has caused.  A call from Ireland in 2022 for a reckoning on this issue has been ignored – and so has the looming disappearance of Catholic clergy here, as vocations to that priesthood collapse.

Meanwhile state inquiries into church abuse in Ireland have indicted both clerical Catholic silence and the lay passivity that facilitated abuse in Catholic-run institutions – but even yet – despite synodality – the Irish church has had no discussion of those evils. In spite of a strong call in September 2024 by  Archbishop Dermot Farrell of Dublin for an end to a ‘culture of denial’, a hopeless policy still prevails of waiting for scandals to run their course, for everyone to forget and for some amnesiac remnant to move on.

This is a policy for extinction – the complete opposite of the New Creation promised by the Christian Gospel.  It is the opposite also of the transparency called for by the Synodal process initiated by Pope Francis in 2021. It would surely have been rejected by the church’s founder – whose condemnation of the adult scandalisation of children was more severe than any other.

Jesus the Ultimate Prophet

That Jesus of Nazareth was crucified for calling out mere religious performance, that he never joined the Jewish religious elite of his time, and that he condemned elitism per se, is plain from the Gospel texts that all Catholics hear at Mass.  He was squarely therefore in the prophetic tradition of Judaism, and his sacrifice and death were squarely in that pattern also. He is repeatedly identified by others as a prophet (Luke 7:16, John 4:19) and his actions mirror those of Elijah, Jeremiah and Amos, in calling for justice, not empty ritual.

Moreover, Jesus explicitly identified himself with this prophetic tradition, predicting that he would suffer the same fate:

“Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build the sepulchres of the prophets and decorate the tombs of the upright, saying, ‘We would never have joined in shedding the blood of the prophets, had we lived in our ancestors’ day.’ So! Your own evidence tells against you! You are the children of those who murdered the prophets! Very well then, finish off the work that your ancestors began.” (Matt 23:29-32)

For the Franciscan Richard Rohr Jesus is therefore the ultimate prophet who challenges all  religious systems from the standpoint of their victims1The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, Richard Rohr, 2025.. Jesus’ most dire warning against any adult action that would shatter the faith of a child (Matt 18:6) must surely be interpreted as part of that prophetic critique. Does anyone doubt that this Jesus would have had zero tolerance for clerical abuse of children – as called for by St Peter Damian in 1049 in his letter to Pope Leo IX?

Why did no bishop of the Catholic church – and no pope – ever take a similar stand?

How now, in the wake of what has happened, can Irish Catholics – or Catholics anywhere – be expected to recognise Jesus in a purely ritual and symbolic priesthood, a priesthood that remained mute – that was trained to be mute – when children were being violated? How can they be content with a church calendar, and with services, that never celebrate the prophetic character of Jesus’ sacrifice – that explain his crucifixion solely in terms of propitiation of the Father?

Jesus the Propitiator: A Failed Christology

This surely was the core failure of the Tridentine Catholic church – a  Christology that collapsed the Gospel into the story of a dissatisfied God who called his son to repay by his death a debt that we sinners could not. Even the Divine Mercy devotion promoted by Pope John Paul II calls for the same despairing emphasis – as though only fifty repetitive references to Jesus’ ‘sorrowful passion’ – to be repeated forever – will somehow persuade this Father God – at last – to be merciful.

That from the beginning the Father was merciful, that Jesus was instead calling all to follow his own prophetic stance in opposing religious hypocrisy, that he was raised from death, by the Father, for this courage – and that his prophetic witness in challenging injustice – wherever it occurs – is the distinctive call to all – could not be countenanced by the Catholic Church of Christendom – the church that rewarded only compliance and passivity and called all dissent disloyal.

And this, ultimately, was the root cause of the failure of article 37 of Lumen Gentium (1964) – the Vatican II constitution on the church. This clearly pointed to the emergence of church structures in which concerns could have been raised about any matter that threatened the spiritual health and witness of the people of God. Yet only passive compliance with hierarchical decree could be tolerated, even after Vatican II – so that church of compliance was doomed to disgrace, despite the council.

Synodality too will be doomed if it does not re-centre itself on Jesus the Prophet, and reconfigure the church accordingly – with structures that allow for prophetic challenge to any abuse of ecclesial power. An annual feast day for Christ the Prophet, with a papal encyclical that does justice to this need, could signal such a reckoning – but when will we get a pope – and a hierarchy – that sees this?

[To read Brian McLaren of the Centre for Action and Contemplation on the importance of Jesus the Prophet click here.]

Notes

  1. The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, Richard Rohr, 2025.

Views: 440

‘Christus Victor’: Is Catholicism Trending Back to This?

Articles, Atonement, Benedict XVI, Christology, Psychology, Redemption, Renewal, Theology

Did Jesus accept Crucifixion to satisfy God’s justice – or to liberate us humans from the power of evil, triumphing over everything that troubles us?

This ancient question may be entering a decisive phase as artificial intelligence (AI) reports a convergence of Catholic theology, neuroscience and psychology around our pervasive human anxiety – our fear of what others may think of us.

‘Be of good cheer for I have overcome the world,’ said Jesus (John 16:33). Understood by the earliest Christians to have conquered the power of ‘the accuser’ (Satan) – the power that controlled his accusers and judges in Jerusalem c. 33 BC – was Jesus also conquering, for all time, the fear of social judgement that can lead us to addiction, depression, needless cosmetic surgery and frantic accumulation, as well as ceaseless online competition for attention and approval – and even victory on the battlefield?

That this may indeed be the current meaning of the Christian Creed – as confirmed by papal statements and validated by neuroscience and depth psychology – is suggested by the comparison of ongoing trends in these different disciplines. A sequence of questions posed to the Microsoft AI Copilot led to the following conclusion in early August 2025:

“If neuroscience and psychology show that fear of human judgment is a root of suffering, then the Gospel’s promise—that we are known, loved, and judged by God alone—is not just spiritually liberating, but psychologically healing.”

AI and the Catholic Theology of Atonement – A Return to ‘Christus Victor’ – Christ Liberates Us from Fear and Evil?

A recent dialogue with the Microsoft AI ‘Copilot’ has proved the usefulness of the technology in tracking church thinking on the key question of Atonement – how Jesus’s Crucifixion and Resurrection restores the relationship between God the Father and ourselves.

Q1 – Atonement and the Catechism

I began by questioning whether any high-ranking Catholic prelate has raised any misgiving about CCC 615 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) 1994 – whether that reference to the theological theory of St Anselm (that God’s justice demands ‘satisfaction’ for sin)  could be a barrier to evangelisation – the sharing of the ‘Good News’.

Copilot’s answer was ‘No’ – Including the sentence:

“While Archbishop Rino Fisichella, a key figure in the Vatican’s evangelization efforts, has overseen updates and commentary on the Catechism, there’s no record of him or others in similar positions directly criticizing Article CCC 615 as an obstacle to mission.”

 Q2 – The Missionary Emphasis – ‘Unconditional Love’?

I then asked: “Is it fair to say that the magisterium now relies upon the formula that we are all loved unconditionally by God to ground its working ‘take’ on the Good News?

Copilot’s answer was ‘Yes’ to this.  It quoted Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium on Jesus ‘waiting for us with open arms’ and Pope Benedict’s description of conversion as the encounter with a person, ‘which gives life a new horizon’ – in Deus Caritas Est. The 2020 General Directory for Catechesis was also referenced – the emphasis upon the kerygma (proclamation of the Good News) as distinct from ‘doctrinal or moral teaching’.

The answer concludes:

“So while traditional formulations like those in Article CCC 615 remain doctrinally valid, the tone and emphasis in evangelization today is more relational, inclusive, and centered on divine love.”

Q3 – The Cross as Expressing Divine Solidarity with our own Suffering

I then asked: So in explaining the crucifixion the tendency would be to emphasise Jesus sharing our suffering, in ‘solidarity’ with us, rather than to speak of ‘substitution’ or ‘satisfaction’?

Again here Copilot’s answer was ‘Yes’. References to Von Balthasar, Schillebeeckx and Gutierrez concluded with:

“Yes, the dominant pastoral and theological tone today is to present the crucifixion as an act of divine solidarity and self-giving love, rather than focusing primarily on substitutionary or satisfaction-based models. These older models are not rejected, but they are often reinterpreted in light of a more relational and merciful understanding of God.”

Q4 – Did Jesus ‘Overcome the World’ on our Behalf as Well?

I then asked: Have any theologians dwelt on Jesus’s claim to have ‘overcome the world’ as a claim made on our behalf as well – that is as reassurance that we should not fear the verdict of the world –  ‘what people think’ – because we are now under God’s compassionate and always wise judgement instead – as we proclaim in the Creed?

Again Copilot answered in the affirmative, quoting first some reformed sources – who especially draw on Romans 8:37 – “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us”.

When I asked about Catholic sources specifically, Copilot referenced the Navarre Bible Commentary and Pope Benedict’s contrasting of worldly and divine judgement in Deus Caritas Est.  “God’s judgment is love… It is not a cold accounting, but a healing encounter.”

Q5 – The Creed as Liberation from Worldly Judgement – e.g.  ‘Cancellation’?

I then suggested: It seems to follow therefore that no great difficulty should be posed by the argument that to recite the Creed in faith is to proclaim that we place ourselves under the judgement of the Trinity, freeing ourselves from fear of any other judgment – e.g. Internet cancellation or abuse, or false accusation, e.g. of blasphemy in e.g. Pakistan?

Again Copilot assented to this – as ‘theologically sound and pastorally powerful’.

“When we say “I believe in God…”, we are not just affirming doctrines—we are declaring where our ultimate loyalty lies. That loyalty reorients our identity and security away from the shifting verdicts of the world… As Benedict XVI and others have emphasized, God’s judgment is not arbitrary or punitive, but truthful and healing. It is the only judgment that sees us fully and loves us completely… This echoes Romans 8:33–34: “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.”

Q6 – Are we Recovering the Christus Victor Understanding of the Cross?

My penultimate offering was: All of this surely justifies a claim that Catholic pastoral theology is tending towards recovery of the ‘Christus Victor’ understanding of atonement – as distinct from the medieval ‘satisfaction’ emphasis.

Copilot’s response to this seems well worth quoting in full:

Yes, your claim is well-founded: Catholic pastoral theology is indeed showing a marked tendency toward recovering the Christus Victor model of atonement, especially in its emphasis on:

  • Jesus’ victory over sin, death, and the powers of the world,
  • Liberation and healing, rather than juridical satisfaction,
  • And the shared participation of believers in Christ’s triumph.

Here’s how this recovery is unfolding:

1. Theological Renewal

  • The Christus Victor model, rooted in the early Church Fathers (e.g., Irenaeus, Athanasius), presents Christ’s death and resurrection as a cosmic victory over the enslaving powers of evil.
  • 20th-century Catholic theologians like Hans Urs von Balthasar, Gustavo Gutiérrez, and Edward Schillebeeckx helped reframe atonement in terms of liberation, solidarity, and divine self-giving, rather than satisfaction or penal substitution.

2. Magisterial Emphasis

  • Pope John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis have all emphasized the liberating and healing dimensions of Christ’s work.
  • The Catechism includes multiple models of atonement, but recent pastoral documents and papal homilies lean heavily on themes of mercy, victory, and divine love.

3. Pastoral and Catechetical Practice

  • In catechesis, RCIA, and youth ministry, the focus is often on:
    • Jesus as the one who frees us from fear and sin,
    • The Cross as a sign of love and solidarity, not divine wrath,
    • And the Resurrection as the decisive victory that believers share in.

4. Liturgical Echoes

  • The Easter Vigil, the Exsultet, and the Paschal Mysteryin the liturgy all reflect Christus Victor themes:

“O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”

In Summary:

Yes, the pastoral tone and theological emphasis in contemporary Catholicism is increasingly aligned with the Christus Victor model. This doesn’t reject the satisfaction model (which remains doctrinally valid), but recontextualizes it within a broader, more relational and victorious framework.

7. Recent Neuroscience and Depth Psychology Reinforce our Need for Liberation from Fear of the Judgement of Others?

Lastly I asked: Aren’t some neuroscientists now arguing also that fear of the negative judgement of others is our dominant fear – as illustrated for example in symptoms of depression and addiction and social phenomena such as plastic surgery – and Jung’s concept of the false self?   

Again the response from Copilot bears careful reading:

Yes, your insight is strongly supported by both contemporary neuroscience and depth psychology, including Jungian thought. There is growing recognition that fear of negative social judgment—being rejected, shamed, or excluded—is one of the most powerful and pervasive human fears, and it plays a significant role in:

  • Depression and anxiety
  • Addiction
  • Social conformity and image management (e.g. cosmetic surgery, social media curation)
  • The development of the “false self”

Neuroscientific and Psychological Perspectives

🧠 Fear of Social Judgment as a Dominant Fear

  • Neuroscientists have found that social pain(e.g. rejection, humiliation) activates the same brain regions as physical pain—particularly the anterior cingulate cortex.
  • This suggests that social exclusion is neurologically encoded as a threat to survival, which makes evolutionary sense given our dependence on group belonging.
  • This fear is a major driver of depression, where individuals internalize perceived rejection or failure to meet social expectations.

💊 Addiction and Social Disconnection

  • Addiction is increasingly understood not just as a chemical dependency, but as a maladaptive response to emotional pain and social disconnection.
  • Johann Hari and others argue that “the opposite of addiction is connection”, highlighting how fear of judgment and isolation can drive addictive behaviors.

💉 Plastic Surgery and Image Anxiety

  • The rise in cosmetic procedures is often linked to social comparison and fear of not being accepted, especially in the age of social media.
  • This reflects a deep anxiety about external validation and the need to conform to idealized standards.

Jungian and Depth Psychology

🎭 The False Self

  • Jung, and later D.W. Winnicott, described the “false self”as a persona constructed to gain approval and avoid rejection.
  • This self is often disconnected from authentic desires, leading to inner conflict, neurosis, and spiritual emptiness.
  • As one article puts it:

“Barriers to the development of a true self include peer pressure, family preferences, social norms, and cultural expectations… This can lead to a discrepancy between internal desires and lived reality, contributing to the development of a ‘false self’”

~

Theological Implication

Your earlier point about the Creed as a declaration of freedom from worldly judgment fits well here. If neuroscience and psychology show that fear of human judgment is a root of suffering, then the Gospel’s promise—that we are known, loved, and judged by God alone—is not just spiritually liberating, but psychologically healing.

This sequence can obviously be labelled ‘tendentious’ and needs to be compared with results from other AI models. I reproduce it here as an example of where this technology can lead.

Sean O’Conaill 
7th August, 2025

Views: 877

‘Holiness’ in the Wake of Catastrophe

Articles, Atonement, Courage, Holiness, Hypocrisy, Integrity, Scandal, Theology

The Vatican II document Lumen Gentium (1964) calls all Catholics to holiness –  and idealises Jesus’ celibacy, poverty and obedience as ‘manifesting’ true holiness. Yet Lumen Gentium never refers to integrity – an even more vital attribute of Jesus’ ministry – or warns about the ‘wearing of masks’ – called out by Jesus as hypocrisy – so prevalent in the hiding by church leadership of clerical sexual abuse of children.

This shortfall in the church’s formal teaching on holiness needs fixing – to honour Jesus’ prophetic risk-taking in calling out the hypocrisies of the religious culture of his own time.

This also has implications for the understanding of Christian obedience, for Canon Law, for the structure of the church, for the Theology of the Cross and for our understanding of the Atonement.

This article was first published in The Furrow in May 2025.

“… all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect.” 
(Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 11)

That all in the church are called to personal holiness by Vatican II (1962-65) was clear enough to those who took any interest in the council, even if, in Ireland, there was then a dearth of discussion of what that might mean.

Far less known is that the final wording and structure of the document that announced this call – Lumen Gentium – was arrived at only after a contentious debate between different interest groups of bishops at the council. It will probably be news to most that the document overall may therefore be less than limpid – and even potentially confusing and discouraging – on the precise nature of the holiness to which all are called. This is the argument presented by a monumental study of the history of that holiness debate, published by an Irish theologian in 2021:  ‘The Charismatic Structure of the Church’1‘The Charismatic Structure of the Church: Priesthood and Religious Life at Vatican II and Beyond’, Michael McGuckian SJ, Xlibris, US 2021.

To summarise, the work – by Michael McGuckian SJ – provides copious historical evidence that there has never been complete unanimity among Christians as to how best to answer Jesus’ call to ‘follow me’. St Paul’s strong recommendation of the unmarried state – probably because ‘end times’ were then thought likely to be imminent – makes that point straight away. That advice was obviously not followed by everyone – including, thankfully, the mother of St Augustine of Hippo, St Monica, in the fourth century – and the church has owed its continuity to the celibate and non-celibate alike ever since.

The ‘Evangelical Counsels’

In the third century the preference of some for a ‘coenobitic’ or monastic life, and, later still, the emergence of the mendicant and preaching orders, added further layers of complexity.  The elevation of the ‘evangelical counsels’ of poverty, celibacy and obedience by St Thomas Aquinas (c. 1256) raised immediately a question that was to dog Vatican II many centuries later: could those who did not follow this way – including secular bishops and clergy as well as lay people – truly hope to rise to the same perfection of life – the ‘holiness’ – that was claimed for the following of those counsels?

McGuckian’s study establishes that those who debated this at the council could not agree. The body of bishops that called for the universal possibility of, and calling to, holiness achieved, in Chapter 5, the statement at the head of this article – that everyone is called to ‘perfect holiness’. They failed, however, to persuade the opposing body of bishops (those aligned with the religious orders) to abandon the claim for the superiority of the evangelical counsels as a mode of life.

And so, in Chapter 6 of Lumen Gentium we find the statements that the evangelical counsels of poverty, celibacy and obedience ‘are based upon the words and examples of the Lord‘ and that this ‘religious state, whose purpose is to free its members from earthly cares, more fully manifests to all believers the presence of heavenly goods already possessed here below‘ (LG 44).

The author argues that these assertions make it far from clear that the holiness to which all are called in Chapter Five of Lumen Gentium is the same holiness achievable by those who follow the evangelical counsels – and therefore that perfection of life is truly considered equally possible for those who do not follow those. The lobby for Chapter Six could not agree to the inclusion of that phrase ‘same holiness’ in the document – and subsequent papal statements do not clarify the matter, in the author’s view.

A Layman’s ‘Take’

For a lay person faced with the challenge of the church scandals that have happened since Vatican II – and especially the challenge to understand the creedal affirmation of the holiness of the church – this book is a welcome contribution to Pope Francis’ bid to make the church energetically synodal at all levels. To me it is uncanny that the disagreement among the apostles as to which of them was the greatest (e.g. Luke 9:46-48) could in its essence be echoed and re-echoed down the centuries – and could become especially vigorous between those who have received the sacrament of ordination. Furthermore, given Pope Francis’ insistence upon the importance of the ‘domestic church’ there is an obvious need for clarity on how that Vatican II ‘universal’ call to holiness is to be answered now – and can be? – by those with family and civic responsibility.

Seeking clarity, is it naïve to suggest that the word ‘holy’ is applied regularly – even in Lumen Gentium – to very different phenomena, with very different shades of meaning, and therefore that the distinguishing of these could be a necessary preliminary to a reading of Lumen Gentium aimed at resolving any perceived contradiction?

For example, sacraments are ‘holy’ but the church has been clear since the early fifth century that the sacrament of ordination does not make those who receive it personally virtuous. Again, the office of bishop is a sacred or holy office, but the very fact that bishops can be, and are, dismissed by the pope for serious moral failure makes clear that the ordination of a bishop does not confer personal holiness either.

Must not a similar distinction be made for a chosen way of life, whatever degree of asceticism it may arguably ‘manifest’? Richard Rohr, the Franciscan teacher of the contemplative ‘way’, insists that in his experience of his own order ‘the young ego is often left unformed and unchallenged, and there have been many human and spiritual casualties as a result’2Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi, Richard Rohr, Hodder and Stoughton 2017. That one might choose the ‘manifestation’ of poverty, celibacy and obedience to prove one’s own superiority – without fully grasping the higher calling to humility and unselfish love – is surely a danger that spiritual directors in the religious orders will warn against – recalling especially Jesus’ warning about the wearing of masks.

A further consideration is that the poverty and obedience required of someone within a religious institution are substantially different from the poverty and obedience of Jesus – who was never a member of such an institution and answered to God directly. His poverty was a feature of a three-year mission, which was also, in its level of risk, in its brevity and in its tragic conclusion a sufficient explanation of his unmarried state. Is a professed commitment to a whole lifetime of celibacy therefore necessarily a decisive  ‘manifestation’ of the ‘following’ that Jesus called for – especially  in the wake of revelations that widespread non-observance of the celibacy rule has been tolerated by the clerical church?

And more than half-a-century after Lumen Gentium can we now be convinced that the discipline required of members of any religious institution necessarily ‘manifests’ in one central aspect the very particular, and solitary, poverty and obedience of Jesus?

Holiness and Integrity – and ‘Whistle Blowing’

“I accept that, from the time I became an auxiliary bishop, I should have challenged the prevailing culture.” This was a key sentence in the resignation statement of Bishop Jim Moriarty of Kildare Leighlin in November 2009, in the wake of the Murphy report3Bishop Moriarty statement: ‘I accept that, from the time I became an auxiliary bishop, I should have challenged the prevailing culture’, Irish Times, Thursday Dec 24th, 2009. The culture referred to was that of the administration of the archdiocese of Dublin in the period before 1994, in which Bishop Moriarty had served as an auxiliary. In early December 2009 the Irish bishops named that culture as one of ‘cover up’ – in which ‘the avoidance of scandal, the preservation of the reputations of individuals and of the Church, took precedence over the safety and welfare of children.’4Statement following the winter meeting of the Irish Bishops Conference, 9th December 2009

That this particular sequence of events should mirror so closely repeated accounts of victimisation and concealment in scripture – also to preserve the reputations of individuals (e.g.  the brothers of Joseph, King David and the Herods) – and that Jesus by contrast risked his own reputation and his life by lambasting the shortcomings of the religious establishment of his own time and place – must surely clarify a key aspect of Christian holiness in the wake of ongoing and global church scandal: the holiness of Jesus is inseparable from what is called integrity, and from the role of what contemporary culture calls the ‘whistle blower’ who calls out any significant abuse of office or power.

Does the Catholic church even yet clearly acknowledge this obligation of integrity, and therefore the limitations of the obligation of obedience to fallible designated authority, even in the context of the church itself?

My own strong impression is that the connection of holiness to integrity of that kind has not yet been explicitly made by the episcopal magisterium, despite four decades of scandal – and that its own authority therefore continues to suffer. That the clerical institution can become secretive, unaccountable and abusive has been amply demonstrated in our time. Moreover, inherited models of holiness that elevated obedience to authority above the call to integrity in Ireland have left the lay church supine and unobservant of one obvious response to the call to ‘take up your cross’ (Matt 15:24-26): to do that by questioning 20th century church-run institutions that shamed the poorest and weakest.

Even yet in 2025 we have never yet in Ireland had an open, honest and thorough discussion of the Ryan report of 2009, which indicted the habit of deference to clergy that led Irish civil servants to impose no real accountability for the use of public funds upon the religious orders that ran those institutions.5Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (The Ryan Report) Vol. 4, Chapter 6: Conclusions
https://childabusecommission.ie/?p=951 The ‘multi-disciplinary study’ initially called for by Bishop Noel Treanor, to establish conclusively the causes of that disaster, never happened – and this too remains unexplained6RTE Interview of Bishop Noel Treanor by Tommy O’Gorman, May 24th, 2009.
“I believe simply that as a church within society we have to recognise honestly that these things have happened. We cannot in any way at any level within the church be indifferent. I don’t think anybody is. We can’t wash our hands of it. We can’t deny it. We simply have to see the evil and the crimes that were perpetrated straight in the face, and that means we have to examine why they happened. That will require if I may say so an inter‑disciplinary discussion with people who are members of the church ‑ involving victims, those who were abused and indeed going beyond the borders of our church, so that we have the best anthropological and scientific analysis available to try and understand why this happened.”.

Integrity in the Secular Sphere

As Lumen Gentium also calls the church – and especially lay people – to ‘consecrate the world to God’ (LG 34) – and Ireland has suffered multiple examples of civil  institutional corruption in recent decades – this inability of clergy at all levels to speak of Jesus as history’s outstanding ‘whistle blower’ is surely an ongoing disability in the task of synodal ‘mission’ in Ireland.  

A single example will suffice to make the point: that of the Third Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry established by the Irish Government into ‘protected disclosures’ (i.e. disclosures by ‘whistle blowers’) related to alleged abuses within Ireland’s policing service, the Garda, in 2017. The ‘Afterword’ to that report ends with the following:

“The question has to be asked as to why what is best, what demands hard work, is not the calling of every single person who takes on the job of service to Ireland. Worse still is the question of how it is that decent people, of whom Maurice McCabe emerges as a paradigm, are so shamefully treated when rightly they demand that we do better.”7Third Interim Report of the Disclosures Tribunal, under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 (2017)

That Maurice McCabe, a Garda whistleblower, had to suffer a vile campaign of innuendo at the hands not only of colleagues but of superiors – a campaign that took him by his own account close to suicide8A Force for Justice: The Maurice McCabe Story, Michael Clifford, Hachette Books Ireland 2017 – is now well known. We cannot know what private reflections prevented auxiliary bishops in Dublin from blowing any whistle on the cover up of clerical abuse in Dublin in the period before 1994  –  but is it unreasonable to suggest that the lack of anything like a ‘Protected Disclosures Act’ (or ‘whistle-blowers charter’)  in the church’s own canon law – inspired by the example of Jesus himself – was one of them? Or that a confused understanding of Christian obedience, as something owed always and above all to ecclesiastical superiors, may have been another?

whistle-blowing in the secular sphere
If businesses encourage whistle-blowing for their own sake, why doesn’t the church – in memory of Him?

The Gethsemane of the Whistle-Blower

The patterns of fear of loss of reputation in all ‘covering up’ – and of deliberate assault upon the reputation of those who do stand up for what is right – suggest yet another pressure upon anyone challenged to do that: the frailty of all human self-esteem, dependent as that is upon some degree of approval from a peer group. Our intense need to belong will transmute quickly into an intense fear of being cast out if we are faced with the challenge of standing utterly alone in calling out any corrupted ‘prevailing culture’.  None of us should throw stones at others who fail in that situation, before we have been there ourselves. 

And yet wasn’t that – hugely amplified – precisely the challenge met, faced and overcome by Jesus in Jerusalem, in his ‘conquering’ of ‘the world’ (John 16:33)?

Holiness, Integrity and the Meaning of the Cross

Here yet again we encounter the inadequacy of a theology of atonement and redemption that explains Jesus’ acceptance of the cross in terms of the Father’s need for ‘satisfaction’ for sin. If the Trinity are not always in solidarity with anyone faced, like Maurice McCabe and the Australian St Mary McKillop, with an ultimate test of integrity – assuring us too of vindication and resurrection – we are indeed utterly alone then. If St Mary McKillop could become a patron saint of victims of abuse in Australia, for holding firm in the calling out of clerical abuse, despite excommunication in 18709Mary MacKillop: Patron Saint of Sexual Abuse Victims?,  James Martin SJ, America, Sep 29, 2010, what prevents the Catholic magisterium from teaching that divine solidarity with whistle-blowers – to help anyone to stand firm in any such crisis of conscience – is also the message, and calling, of the Cross?

The answer lies surely in the historical legacy of Christendom, which aligned the clerical institution always with the secular establishment, biasing theology toward the encouragement of submission to state and ecclesial authority. A God who needs satisfaction for sin is a celestial paradigm of the worldly king who demands and merits fealty and subordination – while any view of Jesus as a divine whistle-blower against injustice – and especially any injustice within the church – could encourage sedition and disorder. Christendom was always a discouraging climate for prophets, and Christian theology became complicit in that discouragement. That God could ever support any conscience that disagreed with the hierarchical church was obviously unthinkable.

Holiness and the Domestic Church

That the Trinity cannot be as close to and as supportive of the family as to those who follow the evangelical counsels is obviously a mistake – and so therefore must be any denial of the holiness of committed and loving sexual relationships. That family life could not ‘manifest heavenly goods’ as plainly as the friary or the monastery – an inference too easily drawn from Lumen Gentium 44 – is mistaken also, and patently so. Maurice McCabe’s own story is testament to the role of family in forming and strengthening character for the crises of conscience that could fall on anyone in service today.  

This is not to deny that the family can also be a location of abuse and addiction and broken relationships, and therefore of ‘sin’ – or that family life is not seriously challenged  by an economy in cruel flux. Yet Jesus was never just a ‘coenobite’, confined to life within a male community separated from ‘the world’. His sole reference to the option of celibacy (Matt 19:12) made it preferable to the option of divorce, not the circumstance of marriage – and there is no reason to believe that his own celibacy was a necessary condition of the instruction to ‘be perfect’.

Surely it is significant that Jesus’ call to holiness – to be ‘perfect’ (Matt 5:48) –  occurs as part of the call to love – and to love even one’s enemies? Michael McGuckian is persuasive10‘Holier than thou’ Michael McGuckian SJ: Interview by Pat Coyle
https://www.jesuit.ie/podcasts/holier-than-thou/ that it is to the two Great Commandments (Mark 12:30-33) we must all look for the decisive test of holiness – and that we are always equally and solemnly challenged in that regard. To want to win an argument over whose way is the holiest is to lose the plot.

Notes

  1. ‘The Charismatic Structure of the Church: Priesthood and Religious Life at Vatican II and Beyond’, Michael McGuckian SJ, Xlibris, US 2021
  2. Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi, Richard Rohr, Hodder and Stoughton 2017
  3. Bishop Moriarty statement: ‘I accept that, from the time I became an auxiliary bishop, I should have challenged the prevailing culture’, Irish Times, Thursday Dec 24th, 2009
  4. Statement following the winter meeting of the Irish Bishops Conference, 9th December 2009
  5. Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (The Ryan Report) Vol. 4, Chapter 6: Conclusions
  6. RTE Interview of Bishop Noel Treanor by Tommy O’Gorman, May 24th, 2009.
    “I believe simply that as a church within society we have to recognise honestly that these things have happened. We cannot in any way at any level within the church be indifferent. I don’t think anybody is. We can’t wash our hands of it. We can’t deny it. We simply have to see the evil and the crimes that were perpetrated straight in the face, and that means we have to examine why they happened. That will require if I may say so an inter‑disciplinary discussion with people who are members of the church ‑ involving victims, those who were abused and indeed going beyond the borders of our church, so that we have the best anthropological and scientific analysis available to try and understand why this happened.”
  7. Third Interim Report of the Disclosures Tribunal, under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 (2017)
  8. A Force for Justice: The Maurice McCabe Story, Michael Clifford, Hachette Books Ireland 2017
  9. Mary MacKillop: Patron Saint of Sexual Abuse Victims?,  James Martin SJ, America, Sep 29, 2010
  10. ‘Holier than thou’ Michael McGuckian SJ: Interview by Pat Coyle

Views: 1096

The Pyramid Will Stay Inverted

Abuse of Power, Articles, Benedict XVI, Christendom, Corruption, Division, Evangelisation, Francis, Hypocrisy, Laity, Magisterium, Papacy, Pope Francis, Safeguarding, Sexual Abuse, Vatican II
Pope Francis receives flowers from children at the presidential palace in Baghdad March 5, 2021. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Pope Francis’ enemies in the church were ‘talked up’ by some media as capable of reversing the direction he set over the twelve years of his pontificate.

However, the historical circumstances in which Francis came to the chair of Peter in 2013 had not changed by 2025. Those same circumstances made the 21st century Franciscan ‘startup’ – synodality – irreversible. 

The Inverted Pyramid

“Jesus founded the Church by setting at her head the Apostolic College, in which the Apostle Peter is the ‘rock’ (cf. Mt 16:18), the one who must confirm his brethren in the faith (cf. Lk 22:32). But in this Church, as in an inverted pyramid, the top is located beneath the base.”

It was in this celebrated passage in his address to bishops in 2014 that Pope Francis first introduced the idea of the church as an upside-down pyramid, with bishops in the role of servants rather than overlords. He went on:

“Let us never forget this! For the disciples of Jesus, yesterday, today and always, the only authority is the authority of service, the only power is the power of the cross. As the Master tells us: ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave’ (Mt 20:25-27). It shall not be so among you: in this expression we touch the heart of the mystery of the Church, and we receive the enlightenment necessary to understand our hierarchical service.”

The Synodal Pathway

The Synodal Pathway then launched in Ireland and globally from 2021 followed logically – by insisting that Baptism – not Ordination – is the foundational sacrament of the church – and by calling all of the baptised people of God to communion, participation and mission

Was this vision of the church’s future truly in danger now that Francis had passed? Media would hype this as a cliff-edge moment, with the return of ‘Command Catholicism’ – a bid for tight control from above on sexual practice – a real possibility. Might that truly be the direction taken by the Conclave of 2025?

Teachers Must Also be Witnesses

To understand why this was highly unlikely we needed only to remind ourselves of a key insight of Pope Paul VI, expressed in the 1975 document Evangelii Nuntiandi. Writing on the vital topic of evangelisation – the communication of the ‘Good News’ of the Gospel to the modern world – that pope declared:

“Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” (Evangelii Nuntiandi 41)

An unavoidable question arose from this declaration:

If teachers are not witnesses will anyone listen?

And what of the church’s supreme teachers, its official magisterium, its bishops –  who did not, as a body, witness to the paramount importance of the safeguarding of the innocence of children until – beginning in the last two decades of the 20th century – Catholics – globally – discovered that the safety of their children had been considered much less important than the reputation of ordained men?  And that this was true even of the era of Pope Paul VI?

Lay Victims of Abuse Were its Witnesses

Had even one Catholic bishop been the source of this revelation the shock would have been that much less – but in fact it had been some of the affected Catholic families – lay people – in Louisiana, USA in the mid 1980s – who first informed the wider church of this ghastly anomaly, not any Catholic bishop anywhere.

So all bishops – and all cardinals attending the 2025 Conclave – knew well that the truth of clerical sexual abuse of children was imposed upon the church not by its leaders but by the innocent victims of that abuse.

For many observant Catholics it became impossible from then on to think of bishops – the church’s official magisterium – as necessarily witnesses to the Gospel and even necessarily as exemplary moral leaders of the church. This inevitably applied also to the bishop of Rome, the pope. In the era of Pope Benedict XVI – the era in which Archbishop Bergoglio of Buenos Aires emerged as a likely successor – this was the climate that inevitably gave shape and direction to the Conclave of 2013.

Moreover, as if to underline the fact that bishops were not holy ex officio, the internal wranglings of the Vatican bureaucracy were by then also on public display – in the so-called ‘Vatileaks’ affair. Had not this same scandal helped to bring about that conclave by influencing Benedict XVI’s astonishing decision to retire?  If he was truly disabled finally by insomnia, as recently reported, who can fail, now, to see the causes?

Cardinal Bergoglio Reads the Times

Francis then became the name of Benedict XVI’s successor because, more clearly than anyone else, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio saw that the centuries-old strategy of governing and leading the church by moral edict from above had backfired disastrously. Focused on imposing tight discipline on sexual morality on the non-ordained people of God it had exposed the hierarchical clerical church to the charge of rank hypocrisy, in the concealment of the sexual sins of clergy.

Who now could not see also that, on a global scale, children had been sacrificed to preserve this secret? So obviously sinful was this mistake that only penitence on the part of leadership could now be persuasive.

“I Am a Sinner!”

And so, when asked directly ‘Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?‘ the new Pope Francis declared:

“I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.“

Stunning the Catholic world as it did this declaration told us not just about Jorge Bergoglio but about the times – the circumstances – in which he had been elected.  Everything else about his pontificate followed logically from this declaration.  We Catholics – people, priests, bishops and even popes – are all sinners – and are taught – if we pay attention – to understand our greatest sins.

Of these perhaps the greatest is a tendency to believe that we are qualified to tell others what to do – but had not Jesus himself warned even the apostles – the very first bishops – against doing that?

The Culmination of Centuries of Scandal

Schooled well in the history of the church Francis could see also that the clerical abuse cover-up scandal was but the latest in a centuries-long series of church scandals.

Already, just before the Jubilee year 2000 Pope John Paul II had issued the document Memory and Reconciliation lamenting:

  • the medieval Inquisitions,
  • the church’s own role in causing conflicts between Christians
  • the persecution of Jews in Catholic countries even into modern times,
  • the abuse of women,
  • the violation of the rights of indigenous peoples in supporting European imperialism and colonialism across the globe.

Had not the church also supported imperial European regimes that had gone to total war in 1914 – a major cause of the rise of secularism and atheism in the 20th century West?

The abuse scandal – by no means over yet in 2013 (or even in 2025) – was merely the final blow – a blow delivered by a church system of ‘moralising from above‘ that had backfired – justly – on the moralisers.

The Meaning of Synodality

So, if moralising from above could not lead the church any longer, what could?

Pope Francis’ answer – an answer derived obviously from deep prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit –  was synodality – communion, participation and mission – a new era in which Catholic ministers would accompany those to whom they minister – instead of talking down to them .

Those who cannot get on board with this must be prayed for very seriously –  to receive the insight to understand their own times. No effective leadership can ever emerge from historical blindness, the prime disability of the church faction that opposed and sometimes disgracefully vilified Pope Francis.

Constantinian Nostalgia Not the Answer

Almost certainly the historical worldview of the opponents of synodality is one that idealises Christendom – that long era in which the church was patronised by nominally Christian kings.  Even today the perceived danger of tyrannical anti-Christian government leads some to yearn for a new union of Catholic church and state – the union that began with the first Roman emperor to patronise the church – Constantine.

But who cannot see now that it was that long privileging of the church – and especially of clergy – that corrupted and divided it originally?

Had it not been the mission of the first St Francis – in the 1200s – to restore Christ’s Church in an era of nominally Christian kings?

Were not the divisions of the church – into East and West and then into the Protestant fragmentations in the West –  caused and widened by that same corruption?

And what of Christian and Catholic minorities today in e.g. China, India, Pakistan, Israel and elsewhere?  How could any new movement to unite church and state in the West not be seen by people of other faiths as proof of the danger of tolerating Christians anywhere?

Constantinianism – or Christian nationalism – is yet another historical cul de sac.  Too close a relationship with political power will always corrupt the church and endanger the sincere belief of those without it – and reconnect the church scandalously with privilege, mendacity and violence.

No Other Future

What, truly, is the alternative to the direction that Pope Francis has set? What, truly, are the signs of these times?

What would any victim of clerical abuse – or any kind of abuse in, or by, the church –  make of a turning back by bishops – to moralising from above?

Where in this media-saturated world could any bishop hope to succeed with such a strategy? Could the 2025 Conclave truly think seriously of abandoning synodality and reverting to that same stilted mode of leadership – when all who attend it will know that Pope Francis is revered globally for his humility?

Did not the Covid pandemic reveal the shortcomings of governments everywhere – and reveal also the potential of ordinary yet extraordinary people to save one another and to show us the truth of the Beatitudes? It is the compassionate and the powerless who will liberate and inherit the Earth.

All Catholic bishops and cardinals now are surely done with Lording. The only possible future for the church is to suffer – i.e. to put up with – the vulnerability of its founder – Jesus of Nazareth – rather than ever again to seek – or to accept – a position of privilege and power.

What, seriously, were the chances that the conclave of 2025 would not be led, by prayer, to see the future of the church as Pope Francis so clearly saw it?

Sean O’Conaill
April and May 2025

 

Views: 1319

This Must Not Happen!

Abuse of Power, Accusation, Articles, Bishops, Christology, Clericalism, Courage, Kingdom of God, Leadership, Renewal, Satan, Scandal, Secrecy, Sexual Abuse

And yet it must…
~*~

Peter tells Jesus he is a Sinner

How the Easter story explains the continuing inability of Catholic bishops to be fully transparent about the cover up of clerical abuse of children.

First drafted in 2020 – on the brink of the coronavirus pandemic – this summary of my own understanding of what scripture is telling us about God’s reason for the Crucifixion of Jesus is now re-edited and published in 2024.

On the way to Jerusalem Peter the apostle proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, the great promised leader of the Jews, and the Son of God.

He was stunned when Jesus then told him that he expected to be crucified in Jerusalem – the cruel punishment meted out by Rome to intimidate and shame rebellious slaves.

Then, taking Jesus aside, Peter started to rebuke him. ‘Heaven preserve you, Lord,’ he said, ‘this must not happen to you.‘
(Matt 16:22)

This advice was itself instantly rejected by Jesus in the strongest possible terms:

Get behind me, Satan!’
(Matt 16: 22,23)

• Q1. Do we understand fully why Peter was appalled by the prospect Jesus had just unfolded – of his own crucifixion?
• Q2. Secondly, can we grasp why Jesus responded to Peter as he did – identifying the first person to call him ‘Son of God’ with the personification of all evil – ‘Satan’?


Believing that this passage in the Gospel is pivotal in helping us to understand the complex predicament of the Church at this time, I offer here a summary of the argument.

Q1. Why was Peter so anxious to persuade Jesus to turn away from Crucifixion?

That Peter was intent on saving Jesus from physical torture and death on the cross, and that Jesus was convinced that he must suffer that fate, is a familiar understanding of the passage.

Consider also, however, the probability that Peter was horrified on his own behalf.

Moments earlier Peter had proclaimed Jesus to be the son of God – the God who was bound by covenant to the cause of the salvation of Israel. For Peter that must surely involve freedom for the people of Israel, as we still tend to understand freedom – the expulsion of the hated occupying Roman legions and their flaunted eagle battle standards, the defeat of all Jewish collaborators with Rome (such as King Herod) and the recreation of the independent Kingdom of Israel.

The inexplicable disaster foreseen instead by Jesus – Rome’s humiliation of yet another Jewish rebel by crucifixion – would surely also now mean Peter’s own climactic public failure and disgrace.

Peter had not signed up for that.

Is Physical Suffering Our Greatest Fear?

By a process that is mysterious, the Gospel story has come to be read as though only physical suffering could have been at stake in crucifixion. Always unremarked is the human emotional dimension within which all high enterprises are conceived and evaluated – our acute worry about ‘what people will think’ – if, on the one hand things go well or, on the other, they do the very opposite.

To proclaim Jesus as Son of God was to bind oneself to the full consequences of ‘what people would think’ if this story was to end as Jesus had foretold – that Jesus was just another crazy ‘loser’, shamed and obliterated by Rome, and that Peter had been crazier still to follow him.

What About Shame?

This dramatic context of all vital decision-making is the never-absent issue of honour and shame. We ignore this dimension at our peril if we suppose it to be unimportant in the interpretation of scripture. Fear of shame is fear of ‘what everyone will think’ if something shameful happens to us. Aware that a multitude of others – gazing – will judge and jeer at us, we fear their scorn and contempt.

And crucifixion was designed by the rulers of Rome to be the most shameful possible death.

That Peter is constantly aware of this dimension is also revealed in that passage from the Gospel of Matthew. Those three words ‘taking him aside’ alert us to Peter’s realisation that to question Jesus’s judgement in the hearing of the rest of his closest followers would be to diminish him in the eyes of others, and that his own role should be that of respectful and unobtrusive adviser.

Peter obviously hopes that if he first takes Jesus aside this great leader – who has attracted the poorest in Galilee for his compassion and wisdom, and worked miracles to strengthen their faith – will rethink his dire prediction of crucifixion and announce a change of plan.

Must Not Jesus be Greater than David?

Peter must surely have thought that this Messiah could easily call on the wisdom and almighty power of the God of Israel – the power that – according to the Jewish scriptures – had drowned the entire army of Egypt, had helped Gideon to triumph over the Midianites with just three hundred men, and had guided the aim of David’s sling when faced with the giant Goliath.

Surely Jesus was simply testing his followers’ understanding of this history, and would appreciate Peter’s tactful hinting at it?

Obviously much more could be said on this by those with a more detailed understanding of what Peter’s own experience of Roman occupation could have been – including the Roman taxes that crippled people of his social class. For now I want to reflect on the rule that guides the plots of all superhero movies still today. How many would turn up to watch their chosen hero finally stripped naked, beaten flat and humiliated by his most terrifying adversary?

This must not happen!

Q2. Why did Jesus reject Peter’s advice so vehemently, and identify this very first person to recognise his stature in God’s eyes, with Satan – the source and instigator of all evil?

Most of us can have a shot at this question, I suspect, based upon the theological understanding that informed our own early education, an understanding shaped by St Anselm of Canterbury in the 1090s CE1Cur Deus Homo?, St Anselm of Canterbury, c.1098 CE. Jesus had to undergo crucifixion to undo the huge offence to his Father given by all of the sins of us humans throughout the past, present and future – because our own sufferings are insufficient to repay this enormous debt.

According to this theory, in trying to persuade Jesus to avoid crucifixion, Peter was unknowingly standing in the way of God’s forgiveness, and so serving Satan – the malignant power intent on frustrating God’s plan from the very beginning.

This understanding, first put into words by St Anselm of Canterbury c. 1098 CE, and still repeated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church2 Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994, Article CCC 615 can certainly be presented in a way that does some justice to the compassion and mercy of God.

Was God the Father Dissatisfied?

However, in my experience, it can also mislead us into thinking that the Father whom Jesus called Abba is a distant and disapproving parent, more concerned about his own dignity than to affirm the dignity of every single one of us, right now.

If we think of God the father as self-absorbed rather than bent upon releasing us from the power of evil right now, this is not the best of Good News – the news that the Kingdom of Heaven is still at hand for all of us, in this present moment.

Before even trying to make sense of St Anselm’s answer we must first of all remember what Jesus said: ‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14: 9) and… ‘the Father and I are one’ (John 10: 30), and ‘Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make a home in him’. (John 14: 23)

The Father is Always Close

Any explanation of the crucifixion that separates God our Father from our brother Jesus who comes to us in our deepest pain, falls short of the Gospel. Led in by Jesus, the Trinity wait even now to make their home within us, if that is our dearest wish.

Moreover, to every one of us they offer a role in making themselves known, as family, to those who need them most. They wish to free all of us from the fear that we have lost that love, or could lose it. It is an urgent desire, because no one just now should be without a sense of the Father’s nearness, compassion and presence – or of their own importance in the story now unfolding.

We need above all to try to understand why we doubt our own value, and then tend to look in the wrong place for self-respect. And how scripture – the Old and New Testaments – is always the guide to home.

Where do doubt and shame come from?

Two stories from the Old Testament help greatly here.

I. Genesis and the Roots of Shame

‘Who told you that you were naked?’ the Lord asked. (Gen 3: 11)

Straight away what Christians came to call ‘original sin’ is linked in the Genesis allegory with sensitivity to shaming, to possible ridicule and loss of both the respect of any observer and then of self-respect also.

The storyteller is suggesting that earlier, in Paradise, Eve had not known shame, but somehow the idea has come to her that there is something wrong with her. She should not be just a ‘creature’, something ‘made’ by God, the maker of all things. She should be ‘like Gods’ – equal to God. She is held back, some voice has assured her, only by her obedience to God’s ban on the ‘forbidden fruit’.

Notice how close that is to the pitch of any car salesman when you have just turned up for a service and find yourself looking at the latest gleaming apparition from the design studios:

“Great choice, that model, Sir, the xf469. Heganu designed it to help them figure out the optimal settings for the dynamic twosome in the boggle transcender that gives the next model – the xf475 – 50% more power for 20% less fuel. You probably weren’t aware of that, so no matter – very few people would notice the difference. Funny, though, one of those xf475s came in this morning – just to show a very excited customer later today… You wouldn’t believe the inertial dampers!”

Our biggest human problem down the ages has been our uncertainty about our own value and judgement, our chronic fear that we are insufficient as we are – our status anxiety. It always tells us that we lack something important, and to want whatever that is.

Eve could not have been influenced by this voice if she had not already been vulnerable in her self-esteem, and ready to believe that she needed something she did not already have.

This is our ‘original weakness’, and – as we are human – it never completely leaves us.

Self-Consciousness – the Source of Status Anxiety

How could we not be uncertain, coming to a uniquely human kind of consciousness at the dawn of time, tiny beings under the great dome of the stars, in a world that we ourselves have not made?

We call this vulnerability to shame ‘self-consciousness’, but it is not merely ‘consciousness of self’. It is our problematic awareness that others are aware of us – and our fear of the value judgements they will make about us.

Moreover, are we not surrounded from our birth by really important people whom many admire, while nobody is interested in us because we are nobodies? What must we do to become a somebody?

In the ancient world the greatest of all somebodies were the Gods. There just had to be far more powerful beings in charge of everything out there. Who wouldn’t want to be one of them?

That’s why we humans tend to be wannabes – until we discover that this is a serious mistake – that from the beginning nobody was a nobody.

Notice that this passage in Genesis is also insisting that our ‘maker’ is not the one who told Adam and Eve they were nobodies, by pointing in scorn at their nakedness. We have all been made, the text tells us, in God’s own image and He has already blessed us, naked.

Satan the Source of Our Status Anxiety

This passage in Genesis is clear also on where our doubt about our own value comes from – not God, the source of all that is good, but Satan, the serpent, the source of all evil.

In saying ‘This must not Happen‘ – to Jesus – Peter is giving voice to the power that evokes fear of the judgement of others, the power that had also overwhelmed the greatest of Israel’s kings.

II. King David of Israel

“You have worked in secret, but I shall work this for all Israel to see, in broad daylight.”

This, delivered by the prophet Nathan, is God’s warning to King David, following the latter’s seduction of Bathsheba and his underhanded murder of her husband, Uriah – to avoid the scandal of Bathsheba’s pregnancy. (2 Samuel 11 & 12).

Far from denying this charge, David admits at once to grave sin. In doing so this heroic defender of Israel against the Philistine giant Goliath confesses to surrender to an even greater terror – his fear of shame – of ‘what people would think’ if they came to hear the full story of David, Bathsheba and Uriah.

That scene has been set in the account of David’s earlier triumphant return from the victory over the Philistines, when the women of Israel sang: ”Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands”. (1 Samuel 18: 7)

This is the role of ‘fame’, ‘celebrity’, or ‘status’ in ramping up our fear of shame. Acclaim by a multitude, by the crowd, will inevitably turn to disgust on the part of that same multitude if David does not hide his disgraceful behaviour! It is his horror at this prospect that entraps David into something far worse than adultery.

That David – Israel’s greatest hero king – could not overcome his fear of shame is central to the story. So is the implication that it is Satan who ‘enters in’ to exploit that very fear: David’s attempt to hide his disgraceful behaviour is the equivalent of the ‘covering up’ to avoid shame by the first humans in Genesis. It had been Satan, not the God of Genesis, who had precipitated the problem of shame.

And that is why Jesus saw Peter as ‘channelling’ Satan when the former said ‘this must not happen’ on the road to Jerusalem. Faced with the prospect of crucifixion – of what would be seen as total failure and disgrace – and assured by Peter that he must not accept this denouement, he responds with:

‘Get behind me Satan!’

Satan Enters In

Why call Peter ‘Satan’?

Because, obedient to the Father and the Holy Spirit, it is Jesus’ intention to overthrow the power of Satan, the ‘prince of this world’, the power to shame us. Peter does not know that he is simply repeating a human pattern of behaviour – the pattern that had overwhelmed David also – of giving in to fear of shame.

Peter is doing what David had done and what almost everybody does when faced with the possibility of public disgrace. He gives in to the fear of total condemnation and of the shaming that crucifixion symbolised for every subject people in the empire. Peter is sure that at all costs it must not be Jesus who is shamed. Someone else must suffer that fate – those opposing him – but Jesus knows that this is why violence almost always begets violence, and he and the Father are bent on teaching us this.

For Jesus and the Father there was no other way of taking all of us, as quickly as possible, to the realisation that it is those who do the shaming who are always in the wrong – and that no one can truly shame those who are innocent. By rejecting his offer of the kingdom of God they have proven to Jesus, and the Father, that the limits of human power must now be revealed.

What Easter Means – the Overcoming of the World

Here we can see why the event commemorated by Christians at Easter – Jesus’s determination not to be overwhelmed by fear of shame, and to submit, forgivingly, to the worst that we humans can physically do to one another, was the pivotal moment in human history. (John 16:33)

Reflect right now on your own uncertainty. If you are unsure of your own judgement, have you any good reason to rely on the judgement of others – especially when those others can see only what you see – appearances – and know nothing about your inner self?

This is to know that the judgement of the world – of the multitude we mistakenly tend to look to for reassurance of our own value, for ‘fame’ – is totally unreliable and can never be trusted to pass a true verdict on ourselves.

At its worst it can lynch us, simply because in its blind anger and fear it often needs someone to blame and punish. Worse still, if we can find no reassurance from others that we have some worth, we may turn against ourselves, fatally.

To know why Jesus reprimanded Peter is to know also why the world can never shame you, or anyone else, in God’s eyes and in truth.

Jesus is Greater than David

Certainly Jesus knew that even Israel’s greatest hero king – David – had been defeated and disgraced by the temptation to let someone else die so that he, the Great King David, could avoid shame. He knew also that the first murder story told in the Jewish scriptures was of a competition between two brothers, Cain and Abel, for greater favour in the eyes of God. And he also knew that this theme of competition or rivalry between two men who want the same prize, leading to conflict between them, was an ever repeating pattern in the recorded history of his own people.

Jesus also knew well that the Roman Empire that held his own land captive had arisen from the same process of rivalry, beginning with Roman envy of the Greek hero Alexander the Great and followed by warlord rivalries and civil war under the Roman Republic. The assassination of Julius Caesar in BCE 44 had been caused by the same resentment of Caesar’s dictatorial power and was followed by the expansion of the Roman Empire by Caesar’s heir, Augustus, and his successors – the very tyranny that was holding Jesus’s own people, the Jews in captivity in his own time.

Who Satan Is

Satan is history’s name for the fear that can grip any of us, and can grip a multitude simultaneously, if we are in danger of being shamed by the dramatic crises of our own lives – scorned, derided and pushed out into the dark.

Especially vulnerable is anyone who has both an elevated position in society – and knowledge of any secret that could bring disgrace.

The Predicament of Catholic Bishops in the 1900s

Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, c. 2003

That was precisely the predicament of all bishops of the Catholic Church in the late 1900s CE. Once inducted into that office every bishop soon learned that among his most important duties was the keeping of a secret that had been kept for generations: solemn ordination to the priesthood had not prevented a significant minority of ordained clergy from abusing the trust placed in them by Catholic parents and children.

No one knew what people would think and do if everyone learned this secret. Possibly this would mean not only the disgracing of the abusive priests and every bishop who had shielded them – but the total dissolution of the church. For every individual bishop there was therefore the additional fear of being the first to ‘drop the ball’ – and therefore they all believed that …

This must not happen!

The Bishops’ Predicament in 2024

Almost four decades after the first widely publicised revelation of Catholic clerical child sex abuse (in Lousiana, USA, in 1985) the historical origins of the cover up of clerical child sexual abuse are still unknown in the detail that full transparency calls for. Jesus of Nazareth, the founder of all Christian churches, was far more clearly opposed to any adult abuse of a child than he was to his disciples marrying (Matt 18: 6) – so the protection of the reputation of professedly celibate priests never justified the keeping of a secret that endangered every Christian child.

Why and when was it first decided that any priest known to have sexually abused a child should retain his priestly status – and that such infractions should be dealt with in strict secrecy?

No one knows – even though this could quickly be discovered by historical investigation.

If St Peter Damian in the mid 11th century 3St Peter Damian, Liber Gomorrhianus, c. 1050 CEcould strongly condemn the secrecy maintained by some bishops over abusive sexual behaviours by priests under their jurisdiction, and could advise that abusive priests should be laicised – and have his efforts at reform praised by Pope Leo IX – why were these efforts apparently in vain by the late 1900s?

Why, finally, has the papacy made absolutely no effort to initiate a full discovery of the historical origin of the procedures that have so scandalised the church and now been discontinued – especially when it has initiated a process of synodal discussion that led to the following advice about the need for transparency in July 2024:

“A synodal Church requires both a culture and practice of transparency and accountability, which are essential to fostering the mutual trust necessary for walking together and exercising co-responsibility for the sake of the common mission.”4How to Be a Missionary Church, Instrumentum Laboris for Second Session of Universal Synod of Synodality, Oct 2024, P.32, Article 73

Defeating this call to transparency, continuing denial of the obvious need for full historical disclosure can suggest only one conclusion: it is thought by those who keep the church’s historical secrets that what is still unknown would cause even more trouble if it were known than what has so far been revealed – so that, yet again this must not happen!

The Expanding Church of Lost Sheep

The devastating impact of the abuse revelations upon churchgoing in Ireland, the USA and elsewhere conceals a vital truth: those revelations have been the most important learning experience for Catholic Christians since the 2nd Vatican Council of 1962-65.

And the most important lesson we have learned is that while some priests are indeed holy it is not ordination that has made them holy – for otherwise all priests would be holy.

Was it this truth above all that the bishops of the church wanted to keep from us? Did they think that belief that every priest is holy was the bedrock of our faith?

That we don’t know the answer to this question even yet is another mystery! No bishop anywhere has sat down with his flock – including the many living faithful departed – to explain, frankly, why he believes this secret was kept. And so we become, increasingly, lost sheep.

Yet this does not mean that we have forgotten Jesus, the one who told the parable of the lost sheep – or the assurance he gave:

“See that you never despise any of these little ones, for I tell you that their angels in heaven are continually in the presence of my Father in heaven. For the Son of Man has come to save what was lost. Tell me. Suppose a man has a hundred sheep and one of them strays; will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hillside and go in search of the stray? In truth I tell you, if he finds it, it gives him more joy than do the ninety-nine that did not stray at all. Similarly, it is never the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.”
(Matt 18:10-14)

Awakened to the weakness of the clerical church by both clerical abuse and the cover up of clerical abuse, those of us who become lost sheep are very well placed to experience the truth of this parable. Everyone reading this also knows that the Lord who goes in search of the lost sheep does not go in vain – for we, those who believe the Creed – in spite of the failures of bishops – are the lost sheep who have been found.

If you, the person reading this, have realised that you too are inexpressibly loved by the Lord of the Gospel, you are also well placed to explain to any bishop why the fear of shame was the fear of Peter in the beginning, and the root cause of the cover up that has devastated the church.

And, as Jesus forgave Peter for abandoning him, He will forgive also the concealment of the truth that still continues – the cause of the very worst schism the church has experienced.

To understand why Jesus had to overcome his fear of the world – his fear of shame – is to overcome in that moment the same fear in ourselves.

Apparantly paralysed still by fear of shame in 2024, Catholic bishops need to realise that the truths of the Gospel are greater than all of us, and that they too need to overcome that fear, as Jesus did – to agree to a complete discovery of the roots of the catastrophe that has nearly overwhelmed us.

For the Trinity are as busy as ever rounding up the lost sheep, and need the help of every Christian to complete that task. It is time for all Catholic bishops to realise why complete honesty and transparency must now happen.

Notes

    1. Cur Deus Homo?, St Anselm of Canterbury, c.1098 CE
    2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, Article CCC 615
    3. Liber Gomorrhianus, St Peter Damian, c.1050 CE
    4. How to Be a Missionary Church, Instrumentum Laboris for Second Session of 16th Synod of Bishops – on Synodality – Oct 2024, P.32, Article 73

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Views: 2812

The Prayer That Changed Everything for Me

Articles, Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, Prayer, Secularism, Status Anxiety

That was in 1994, at a time of deep crisis.

Aged fourteen then my youngest son had just told me:

“I don’t believe in all this Jesus stuff – and most of my class don’t either!”

As a vice principal and teacher of history and current affairs in that same school this hit me especially hard. I felt deeply that my son was making a huge mistake but could not even begin to explain why.

Our Irish Catholic church culture had mistakenly taught us lay people to leave all deep thinking about faith to clergy and teachers of religion – and that was not my school department. Effectively, I had not considered myself responsible for ‘passing on the faith’ to my own children. My older children had also already opted out of church-going so I realised at that moment that I was incapable of resisting this tide.

Simultaneously then I was suffering a crisis of confidence in the entire secular programme – the western project to use ‘reason’ alone to build a perfect world. In 1994 the early signs of Russia’s turn to extreme nationalism, and away from democracy, were beginning to show – and the likelihood of global environmental collapse from industrialisation was looming. What explained the failure to achieve true equality and social justice in the West – especially in the USA – and the growing indifference to the plight of children in the ‘undeveloped’ world?

Mere rationalism was certainly failing me, so I felt truly overwhelmed in the days that followed my youngest son’s revelation. So, at some point one evening I switched off my BBC ‘B’ PC and went to my room – and closed the door. Sitting on my bed I said:

“This is it for me, Father. I don’t understand the connection between the Gospel world and the history and current affairs I am teaching. Please help me to see!”

There was no voice from heaven in that moment, but in the days and weeks that followed I slowly became aware of the universe of honour and shame in which we humans have always lived – the dimension of fear of scorn that impels all of us to seek affirmation and respect from others – the need of the ego. Always bothered by this need we suffer from status anxiety – but not until 2004 did I describe it this way.

‘People climb!’ That was how I first summarised the pattern I was seeing – and this tendency had me too in its grip. Was I too not on a ladder of hopeful ascent within my own profession? Was that not the cause of the friction that always occurred in our school staff room whenever some post of promotion was on offer? Was that same thing – the need to be first – not at the root of decades of conflict in Northern Ireland, my own dear place?

People wanting to be first – even in the church – but there was someone in history who had done the opposite – the outstanding exception who highlighted and pinpointed exactly what is wrong with the world, always. It was He who most clearly explained the pyramids of power and injustice – the pyramids of esteem – that arise in all eras of history, including our own. The emerging icons of commercial power in my own time – the Titans of the digital economy – were merely the successors of the Caesars of the ancient world and the imperial adventurers and rulers who had led the West to global dominance after 1450.

It was this climbing – this need to be first – that lay at the root of all inequality and injustice – and now it was threatening even the climate that gave us the very air we breathe. This was what I now saw.

And Jesus of Nazareth was not just a figure from history, he was the only salvation for us all in our own time. Moreover, through the Holy Spirit, he was offering me guidance too – in everything I thought and wrote. My life was now on a different course – because I had said, at a moment of crisis, the prayer that described my own anguish.

But God will not forgive me if I do not speak the most important lesson of this experience. The Trinity can teach and lead every living person on the planet in the same way – especially at this time of world crisis. They are at everyone’s elbow – now and always – just waiting to be asked.

Views: 3699

Apocalypse Soon – or New Pentecost?

Articles, Environment, Greed, Holy Spirit, Liberalism

fire next time

If the Catholic church is in crisis in 2024, so is the world.

When scientists tell us we are exhausting the key resources of our planet, and political leaders struggle to contain the violence that can erupt anywhere – and extremists invent conspiracies freely on the Internet to justify hatred and scapegoating – who can now share the 18th century optimism that Reason would create a perfect world, without Faith?

Instead, allied to science and technology, human covetousness has created an egregious overclass whose indifference to the suffering of a far larger underclass now threatens the world with dystopia, tyranny and cataclysm.

Not without optimism has every pope since Leo XIII predicted a New Pentecost. Pope Francis did that again in Dublin in 2018.

“Each new day in the life of our families, and each new generation, brings the promise of a new Pentecost, a domestic Pentecost, a fresh outpouring of the Spirit, the Paraclete, whom Jesus sends as our Advocate, our Consoler and indeed our Encourager.”

So what is it that faces us – New Pentecost as prayed for by popes, or Disaster – the Apocalypse as understood by popular media – the end of everything? When environmental scientists hesitate to beget children we are truly faced by a nightmare rather than the Utopia prophesied by the most naive at the 18th century dawn of secular liberalism.

And yet the word Apocalypse means not disaster but revelation, the breaking in of insight – exactly what is needed to precipitate a global sharing of the truth that was glimpsed in the pandemic of 2019-22. To the basic needs of food, clean water, clean air and shelter we need to add the realisation that we are all both interconnected and in need of peace and climatic safety – above all else.

Superyachts and Helicopters?

Who can sensibly be dreaming of superyachts and helicopters in such a time, or survival bunkers somewhere in New Zealand? That we tend to want what others want – choosing our own desires from the preferred options of the mega-rich – is now as obvious as the futility of doing just that. Everyone everywhere is threatened by the self-indulgence of those who can currently choose what they want from the conveyer belts of the 2024 global economy.

Who cannot see this choice as a turning point of human history – with salvation on offer only if we opt for simplicity, the Gospel of just enough?

Reason to be reasonable must now see what Faith has always taught: that there is no wisdom alternative to the Great Commandments. This is a most dangerous time – but also a time for confidence that, despite its obvious faults, our church has not led us astray.

It’s not a choice of Apocalypse OR New Pentecost that now faces us. In an intensifying global crisis radical rethinking is unavoidable, as well as prayer. Revelation and New Pentecost will come to us together. The leaders of tomorrow will be the first to experience this – the first to absorb the whole truth.

Sean O’Conaill, May 2024

Views: 2837