Let's have some more married priests, says the Pope

Another blogger I read led me to a new blog I hadn't read, and it's deliciously well written and funny. Maybe you have read about how the Pope is inviting schismatic Anglicans (Church of England folks) into the Catholic Church. Take a look at the Wasabi Mama blog.

Burning Bibles

What to get rid of all those Bibles you have that aren't really God's Word? Well, here is a church that will burn them for you...

See this video

Nun Sense

In 1965 there were 180,000 nuns in the U.S. In 2009 there are 59,000. The median age is 75. So, the Presbyterian Church has something in common with nuns.


But here is something interesting: There seems to be a liberal caucus of nuns and a conservative caucus. A national organization called the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) relates to the liberal nuns. And the Conference of organization. (I'll refer to them as the L nuns and the C nuns.)


These two types of nuns come from different theological perspectives. Father Timothy Radcliffe compares the two groups. He says that the L nuns emphasize the Incarnation of Christ. The C nuns emphasize the Cross. The L nuns see Christ as breaking through boundaries; the C nuns see Christ as gathering folk into community. The L nuns see religious life as being in solidarity with the poor and working for justice for the oppressed; the C nuns see religious life as divine espousal with Christ. Of course these polarities are generalizations and are about emphases. This dichotomy of sisterhood represents two different responses to Vatican II. The whole Catholic Church continues to debate the meaning of that historic Council of the Church. Pope Benedict was there as a theological advisor. And he takes a conservative view of the implications of the Council. But there is a diversity of opinion about Vatican II among theologians, priests, etc.


Sister Ilia Delio, writing in the Jesuit publication America (Oct. 12, 2009) says that from her perspective (as an L nun) the difference between the two groups is the fear of change. Her personal experience began as a C nun and journeyed beyond that perspective into the land of L nuns. She felt restrained and claustrophobic in the C nun world. It wasn't the type of spirituality she was made for. When she came in contact with a different breed of nuns, a more activist, liberal-minded order, she discovered that there are nuns and there are 'nuns.' The newly discovered nuns had none of the numbing characteristics of the old nuns. The new nuns had a habit of wearing jeans and sweatshirts. They seemed more alive. Her vocation as a nun was saved by her connection with fun nuns.


My own perspective is that there is a place for both C nuns and L nuns. It takes all kinds. Recently the Vatican has begun an investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (L nuns). Let's hope this doesn't become a habit.

Super Pastor

In Bruce Feiler's new book, America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story, he says that the character Superman was partly modeled on Moses. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, both from Cleveland and both Jewish, used the Moses narrative as the backdrop for Superman. Just as baby Moses was put in a basket in the Nile River to escape being killed, baby Superman is launched into space in a rocket ship to avoid extinction. And just as Moses was reared in the foreign environment of Egyptian royalty before receiving the vocation of liberating the Jewish slaves, Superman is raised in an alien place before being called to help humanity.


Moses, of course, was the preeminent leader in the Hebrew Scriptures. You want a model for a great leader, study Moses. Churches these days are looking for effective leadership. There is a wide-spread myth that all a congregation needs is a great charismatic leader in order to grow and increase the tribe. But Christian churches skip over Moses and go straight to Superman. (There are a few churches that look for Wonder Woman, but most seek a macho man.)


Yes, if we just get the right kind of pastor, one who can leap tall buildings, stop bullets with his teeth, make everyone tithe, and attract scores of people (especially young people) to join the church, we'll be alright. This wonderful pastor will look like an ordinary man most of the time. He will always know when someone is in the hospital, even though they notified no one. He will be able to challenge people with the truth about themselves without offending anyone.


He will have the energy to play with children and run with teenagers, yet will also relate to old people with his great wisdom and experience. Reverend Superman will bring innovations to the church which will draw younger families into the fold, while keeping all customs and traditions which will make older people happy. In fact, Pastor Superperson will have the uncanny ability to make everyone happy, even if they don't want to be happy.


His cape is hidden under his robe. His big 'S' cannot be seen by the average person. He never gets angry. He is an expert in administration, planning, evaluations, finances, budgets, investments, custodial supplies, church music (he plays the guitar), counseling, conflict management, public relations, marketing, acoustics, public speaking, liturgy, systematic theology, ethics, church history, Biblical archeology, demonology, fortune telling, ESP, marital relationships, adolescent psychology, schmoozing, listening to old ladies, rituals, computer technology, negotiating, golf, hermeneutics, philosophy, telling jokes, exegesis, epistemology, NASCAR, angelology, copy machine repair, the New Testament canon, ecclesial polity, brief prayers, predicting the weather, memorizing names, reading body language, mingling, story-telling, fund-raising, writing, motivating people, and he gets lots of sleep.


Well, motivating people is one of the main things that Super Pastor has to do. After all, church leaders want the church to grow, but they don't want to do it themselves. They think they need a 'leader' to motivate everyone to do something that they don't want to do. A real leader can get people off their haunches and inspire them to evangelize and give more money and give hours and hours of volunteer service. The trick is to get people to do things they don't want to do. The Superman minister can do that.


Of course I suppose one could look to Jesus as a model leader. But then you get into all that suffering and crucifixion stuff. No, better stick with Superman. He'll save the day. He will swoop down just in time and rescue the church. Perhaps it would be good if we could find out which seminary Superman graduated from.

Jazzy Religion

Pat and I got to hear clarinetist virtuoso Ken Peplowski recently. He played with the Dayton Philharmonic plus the sax section and drummer from the Air Force Band. It was billed as the Benny Goodman's Big Band Birthday concert. It was a blast. My foot tapped for two hours.

My favorite sound on the clarinet is the low, mellow ballad. Usually I don't care for the high-pitched sound of the clarinet. But watching this man play, and hearing the big band behind him, was a fascinating experience; and even the high-pitched sound brought pleasure to my hears. His fingers moved at incredible speed as he tickled that skinny reed instrument. I had the sense that he and the clarinet were one organism making music.

Peplowski actually played in the Benny Goodman band when it re-emerged in the 1980s. Mel Tormé said about him: "Since the advent of Benny Goodman, there have been too few clarinetists to fill the void that Goodman left. Ken Peplowski is most certainly one of those few. The man is magic."

Along with the art of Peplowski's playing, I enjoyed seeing and hearing the big band drummer up front and let loose. (We were only five rows from the stage.) The pounding percussion filled my body with exciting rhythmic joy. I'm thankful that God created humans with musical capabilities. Melody, harmony and rhythm combined in the right way can truly be a sacred experience.

In the concert notes Peplowski is quoted as saying, "Everything's a learning experience in jazz music – there's always an element of the unpredictable." I've often thought that there is a parallel between jazz and religion. Both have a basic framework within which to improvise. There is creativity and risk and adventure in the practice. Each player has their own 'voice' and style. But it is a communal experience. Playing with others gives the necessary 'communion' to make transcendent music.

Each time we gather to play/pray/worship it is unpredictable. God moves in mysterious and improvisational ways. The Holy Spirit is God's improviser. Christ is God's harmony. The Father is the key signature.

Maybe we Christians are too timid with our faith. Perhaps we should jazz it up more. Perhaps we need to loosen up and let it rip. We can't be afraid of making mistakes. In jazz, a mistake is an opportunity to create something new. It's a blip on the staff that turns into a grace note.

The wind that blows through the horn is the breath of God. The clash of the cymbal is the vibration of spiritual energy. The beat is the heart of God.

When Luther wrote Melanchthon and said, "Sin boldly," he was saying, Don't be afraid to improvise…Make music with God.

If, in our life of faith, all we are concerned about is playing the right notes at the right time, we will never be in tune with God's wild music. We have to take chances. The melody is there not just to play, but to play with. We have to break free and make something up. Newness is what God likes. He says at the end of Revelation, "Look, I make all things new." Taking a basic melody line and a basic chord progression and making something new out of it is the kind of creativity that our Creator likes to hear from us. To jazz up our faith is to create variations on the melody and to play alternative harmonies underneath. Good jazz musicians play in the Spirit. They let go of the right way and simply play on the Way.

Too much scrupulosity in religion makes the music boring.

Dear Lord, Great Composer, thank you for the magic of music and the particular delight of big band jazz.

Iris Murdoch’s Good is not good

I've tried to read a couple of novels by Iris Murdoch, but couldn't get past ten pages. I thought they might grasp hold of me since she deals with religious and philosophical themes. Maybe I'll try again later.

Then I decided to go straight to her non-fiction writings. I just read a little book about philosophy by Murdoch called The Sovereignty of Good. (Not 'God,' but Good.) In the three essays of this book, Murdoch mounts a force of resistance against existentialist-behaviorist schools of thought. She emphasizes the universal over the concrete, the objective over the subjective, and action over thought. She poses 'perfection' as the ultimate standard that should move philosophy.

Iris Murdoch is an unabashed Platonist. She argues that there must be some transcendent 'Beyond' that judges all that we assert. I like this emphasis on transcendence. It sounds very Lutheran, i.e. we are judged and saved only by that which comes from outside us. She is very hard on the Nietzschean emphasis on 'will,' just as Lutherans are on works righteousness.

The plumb line for her philosophy is the 'incorruptible.' This is the Platonic Ideal. She refers to 'art' as the perfect model for understanding the transcendent Ideal that is the measure of all things. Beauty exists not in the eye of the beholder, but beyond us in the eternal realm and manifests itself in our artistic expressions. She writes, "Art pierces the veil and gives sense to the notion of a reality which lies beyond appearance" (p. 86). And, "It is a kind of goodness by proxy" (p. 85).

Murdoch also refers to Plato's myth if the cave and makes the image of the 'sun' the analogy for the transcendent Good. It is by the light of the sun that we see; but looking directly at the sun blinds us.

Simone Weil's notion of 'attention' is used by Murdoch to express her belief about the 'gaze of love' that brings real knowledge.

This all sounds a lot like a Christian philosophy, and, after all, St. Augustine's theology is laced with Platonic thought. But the stinger for me was to find out that Murdoch does not believe that human life has a purpose. "We are simply here," she says (p. 77). Her realism about human nature is to the point, but her notion of pointlessness seems odd. She says, "I assume that human beings are naturally selfish and that human life has no external point or telos" (p. 76). It's hard for me to make sense of the viewpoint that there is an Eternal Good, but that life has no purpose. She says that we can be good, but we ought to be "good for nothing." She is clear: "The acceptance of our death is an acceptance of our own nothingness" (p. 100).

I wish Murdoch had a sense of the meaning of it all. Without that, I can't see a real foundation for the morality she is aspiring to. She says that the transcendent Good is the source of moral thinking and action. But a Good which has no purpose doesn't seem good to me. She tries to answer the philosophical What, but can't answer the Why. She even quotes Ecclesiastes, "All is vanity." But Ecclesiastes does not a gospel make. Where is the Good News in Murdoch's Good? Nowhere. It is truncated. It is Good without News. Which turns out to be Bad News—life without purpose. I don't get it. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I'm too teleologically wired. But aren't we all? If there is no reason to be, why be?

I believe Murdoch is on the right track in some ways. She is not willing to accept the relativistic direction of modern philosophy. But she doesn't go far enough. No is no reason to accept a Real Road if the road doesn't go anywhere. Perhaps she can accept a Jesus who is the Truth and the Life, but not one who is the Way, since her philosophy is going nowhere.

I was hoping to find more. But I was shocked to discover the Murdochian dead end. Perhaps we could call it the Murdochian murder of meaning. Not exactly a thriller.

poof!

 
George, who was 70-years-old, went for his annual physical. All of his test results came back normal. Dr. Smith said, "George, everything looks great physically. How are you doing mentally and emotionally? Are you at peace with yourself, and do you have a good relationship with God?" 

George replied, "God and me are real tight. He knows I have poor eyesight, so he's fixed it so that when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, POOF the light goes on when I pee, and then POOF the light goes off when I'm done."

"Wow," commented Dr. Smith, "That's incredible!" 

A little later in the day, Dr. Smith called George's wife. 

"Thelma," he said, "George is just fine. Physically he's great, but I had to call because I'm in awe of his relationship with God. Is it true that he gets up during the night and, POOF the light goes on in the bathroom, and then POOF it goes off when he's done?"

Thelma exclaimed, "That old fool! He's peeing in the refrigerator again!"