A Palestinian Gandhi

As long-time readers and friends will remember, last September I had the opportunity to participate in a marvelous gathering of Evangelicals for Peace. Among the many blessings of that daylong meeting at Georgetown was the chance to hear in person from Sami Awad of the amazing Holy Land Trust. Awad is a Palestinian Christian and a genuine proponent of non-violent protest. He is a singular figure in the Palestinian community and many refer to his as a modern day Gandhi.

My friend Aaron Taylor and the good folks at Middle East Experience have will be featuring Sami in a live interview/call next Friday, March 22nd. To register to participate in the call visit this link. This promises to be a great opportunity to interact with a genuine faith hero.

(UPDATE) Positive Reaction from Jewish Leaders to Pope Francis

Jewish reaction to the naming of Cardinal Bergoglio as the new pope has been positive.

JewishJournal.com reports that he is remembered fondly for his compassionate response to Jews in Argentina:

As archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio attended Rosh Hashanah services at the Benei Tikva Slijot synagogue in September 2007.

Rabbi David Rosen, the director of interfaith affairs for the American Jewish Committee, told JTA that the new pope is a "warm and sweet and modest man" known in Buenos Aires for doing his own cooking and personally answering his phone.

After the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in 1994, he "showed solidarity with the Jewish community," Rosen said.

In 2005, Bergoglio was the first public personality to sign a petition for justice in the AMIA bombing case. He also was one of the signatories on a document called "85 victims, 85 signatures" as part of the bombing's 11th anniversary. In June 2010, he visited the rebuilt AMIA building to talk with Jewish leaders.

"Those who said Benedict was the last pope who would be a pope that lived through the Shoah, or that said there would not be another pope who had a personal connection to the Jewish people, they were wrong," Rosen said…

Israel Singer, the former head of the World Jewish Congress, said he spent time working with Bergoglio when the two were distributing aid to the poor in Buenos Aires in the early 2000s, part of a joint Jewish-Catholic program called Tzedaka.

“We went out to the barrios where Jews and Catholics were suffering togeher,” Singer told JTA. “If everyone sat in chairs with handles, he would sit in the one without. He was always looking to be more modest. He's going to find it hard to wear all these uniforms.”

Bergoglio also wrote the foreward of a book by Rabbi Sergio Bergman and referred to him as “one of my teachers.”

Last November, Bergoglio hosted a Kristallnacht memorial event at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral with Rabbi Alejandro Avruj from the NCI-Emanuel World Masorti congregation.

He also has worked with the Latin American Jewish Congress and held meetings with Jewish youth who participate in its New Generations program.

“The Latin American Jewish Congress has had a close relationship with Jorge Bergoglio for several years," Claudio Epelman, executive director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, told JTA. "We know his values and strengths. We have no doubt he will do a great job leading the Catholic Church."

In his visit to the Buenos Aires synagogue, according to the Catholic Zenit news agency, Bergoglio told the congregation that he was there to examine his heart "like a pilgrim, together with you, my elder brothers."

"Today, here in this synagogue, we are made newly aware of the fact that we are a people on a journey and we place ourselves in God’s presence," Zenit quoted the then-archbishop as saying. "We must look at him and let him look at us, to examine our heart in his presence and to ask ourselves if we are walking blamelessly."

Renzo Gattegna, the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, offered Italian Jewry's congratualations to the new pope with the “most fervent wishes” that his pontificate could bring “peace and brotherhood to all humanity.”

In particular, Gattegna voiced the hope that there would be a continuation “with reciprocal satisfaction” of “the intense course of dialogue that the Jews have always hoped for and that has been also realized through the work of the popes who have led the church in the recent past."

In a separate article, JewishJournal.com reports that international Jewish leaders are also hopeful that the new pope will prove to be a friend of Jews around the world as we was a friend of Jews in Argentina:

“In the Jewish community in Buenos Aires, the widely shared impression is that he’s very friendly, that the cardinal was determined to have a cordial relationship with the Jewish community,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said…

World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder, who met Bergoglio in 2008, expressed optimism that Francis would continue the work of building relationships between the Catholic Church and world Jewry.

“He always had an open ear for our concerns,” Lauder said in a statement. “I am sure that Francis I will continue to be a man of dialogue, a man who is able to build bridges with other faiths.”

Bergoglio’s reputation in Argentina is not that of a reformer. He is known to be socially conservative, upholding the church’s traditionally held positions on gay rights and abortion. He has not said much publicly about Israel in the past, but Hier said he is hopeful that Francis will emerge as a supporter of the Jewish state.

“We very much see him as a pope in the tradition of John Paul II and John XXIII,” Hier said. John Paul II established formal relations between the Vatican and Israel; John XXIII is believed to have influenced the drafting of “Nostra Aetate,” the 1965 declaration that stated Jews could not be held responsible for the death of Jesus.

UPDATE:

Religious News Service filed a report highlighting the significance of the pontiff's age and memory of the Holocaust:

“We welcome Pope Francis I to his new role as leader of the Catholic Church,” B’nai B’rith International President Allan J. Jacobs said in a statement. “Catholic-Jewish relations had remained a focus of Pope Benedict XVI and we look forward to continuing the solid foundation that already exists for interfaith dialogue.”

Other Jewish leaders and scholars noted that Francis’ relatively advanced age — 76 — is important to the Jewish community, in that the Holocaust happened during his lifetime and can conjure memories for him of the horrors to which anti-Semitism can lead.

Argentine Anglican Archbishop on Pope Francis

Many will be wondering the impact that Pope Francis will have on relations between Christians. A very positive reaction comes from Anglican Archbishop Gregory Venables who has known Cardinal Bergoglio for years. He posted the following last night from Buenos Aires:

Many are asking me what Jorge Bergoglio is really like. He is much more of a Christian, Christ centered and Spirit filled, than a mere churchman. He believes the Bible as it is written. I have been with him on many occasions and he always makes me sit next to him and invariably makes me take part and often do what he as Cardinal should have done. He is consistently humble and wise, outstandingly gifted yet a common man. He is no fool and speaks out very quietly yet clearly when necessary. He called me to have breakfast with him one morning and told me very clearly that the Ordinariate was quite unnecessary and that the church needs us as Anglicans. I consider this to be an inspired appointment not because he is a close and personal friend but because of who he is In Christ. Pray for him.

A Missional Pope?

I believe that where Pope Benedict grew attention from theologians in the Christian world, the new pope will be an object of admiration and analysis for those involved in the missional action of the Church. What a cursory examination of Cardinal Bergoglio’s career demonstrates is a profound desire to see the gospel unleashed as Good News for all, and a willingness to stand in prophetic word and action to bring that Gospel to all. Here are some of the highlights from speeches and articles.

From a February 2012 interview with Vatican Insider:

the entire continent is a missionary state…the paradigmatic aspect remains: all ordinary activities of the Church take place in view of the mission. This signifies very strong tensions between centre and periphery, between parish and district. We need to come out of ourselves and head for the periphery. We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a Church that is wrapped up in its own world: when a Church becomes like this, it grows sick. It is true that going out onto the street implies the risk of accidents happening, as they would to any ordinary man or woman. But is the Church stays wrapped up in itself, it will age. And if I had to choose between a wounded Church that goes out onto the streets and a sick withdrawn Church, I would definitely choose the first one…

We seek to make contact with families that are not involved in the parish.  Instead of just being a Church that welcomes and receives, we try to be a Church that comes out of itself and goes to the men and women who do not participate in parish life, do not know much about it and are indifferent towards it. We organise missions in public squares where many people usually gather: we pray, we celebrate mass, we offer baptism which we administer after a brief preparation. This is the style of the parishes and the diocese itself. Other than this, we also try to reach out to people who are far away, via digital means, the web and brief messaging.”

From a 2011 article on his concerns for Argentina:

Bergoglio raised his voice to accuse the Argentinean capital of becoming a “meat grinder,” presiding over a Mass for the victims of human trafficking, slavery-like working conditions, and the cartoneros, who live by digging through garbage. “For many, Buenos Aires is a meat grinder which destroys their lives, breaks their will, and deprives them of freedom,” he cried during the Eucharistic celebration held at the Constitución train station. Recalling the parable of the Good Samaritan, Bergoglio condemned the fact that “in our city there are people committing human sacrifice, killing the dignity of these men and these women, these girls and boys that are submitted to this treatment, to slavery. We cannot remain calm.” Buenos Aires is “a factory of slaves, a meat grinder,” where “mafia leaders” are defended, who “never show their faces and always save their own skin - perhaps for that recipe, so much our own, that we call bribes.” The cardinal urged his fellow citizens to report “breeding grounds for submission, for slavery,” “altars where human sacrifices are offered and which break the will of the people,” asking that “everyone do what they can, but without washing their hands of it, because otherwise we are complicit in this slavery.”…

The cardinal asked priests not to be “puritans” and to stop centering their homilies on moral aspects, but instead on the gospel of Jesus Christ. “We speak of morals because it is easier,” he emphasizes. “Furthermore - and this is bad taste - we deal with themes related to matrimonial morals and those tied to the sixth commandment because they seem more colorful. Thus we give a very sad image of the Church.”…

From a September 2012 article about one of his speeches: 

“I say this with sadness and if it sounds like a complaint or an offensive comment please forgive me: in our ecclesiastical region there are presbyteries that will not baptise children whose mothers are not married because they have been conceived outside holy wedlock.”

This unique call for an end to the use of sacramental blackmail to subdue the hopes of those who want their children to be baptised, was pronounced Sunday by Fr. Bergoglio in his homily, during the closing mass for the Convention of the ecclesiastical region of Buenos Aires. The convention examined the issue of urban pastoral care.

In this “hijacking” of the sacrament that marks the beginning of Christian life, the Jesuit cardinal sees the expression of a rigorous and hypocritical neo-clericalism which also uses the sacraments as tools to affirm its own supremacy. For example by rubbing the fragility and wounds of faithful in their faces or by dampening the hopes and expectations of those who supposedly do not fulfil the “requirements” in terms of doctrinal preparation or moral status. Not only are such pastoral models misleading, but according to Bergoglio, this modus operandi distorts and rejects the dynamics of Christ’s incarnation, which is reduced to a mere doctrinal slogan to serve the interests of religious power. “Jesus did not preach his own politics: he accompanied others. The conversions he inspired took place precisely because of his willingness to accompany, which makes us all brothers and children and not members of an NGO or proselytes of some multinational company.”…

But according to Bergoglio, by clericalising the Church, the hypocrites of today “drive God’s people away from salvation.” They are the followers of the “Pharisees’ hypocritical Gnostisism,” which Jesus always turned his back on, “appearing among the people, the publicans and the sinners.”

On “Being Pastoral”

My blogging friend Michael Sean Winters has written a beautiful post giving rich meaning to the expression “being pastoral”. He writes in the context of the Catholic Church’s search for a new pope, but what he writes I think applies to pastoral ministry in any Christian context. Great thoughts:

What pastoral experience teaches is humility. It teaches both the pastor and the flock that along the pilgrim’s path there are many bumps in the road, there is the constant awareness that life’s travails can sometimes make it difficult to discern or even contemplate a better, more heavenly road, there is the fact of human frailty, often found in the most steadfast of hearts. In short, a pastor encounters sinners and, hopefully learned that any one who pastors in the name of Jesus Christ must be, first and foremost, an ambassador of God’s mercy…

A good pastor must be rooted in the faith of the Church and capable of proclaiming that faith. But, a good pastor also gets to know his flock and speaks to them in ways they can understand. A good pastor comforts those who need comforting, no matter the source of their broken-heartedness and he also challenges those who have become too comfortable or conformist. A good pastor helps his flock form their consciences to be more and more consonant with the teachings of the Church but also helps to assuage those consciences when they fall short, as fall short we all do…

It is what the Church needs, a man who loves the people of God as Jesus did, not in spite of their sins but because of them. Jesus came to heal the sick of soul and ours is a soul-sick world. Only a pastor can find the words and the example to convey that ineffable mercy one encounters in the confession. Our world needs to be reminded that our God is the Father of Mercies. Only then can they be invited to consider the many and manifold ways in which they have need of mercy. Jesus understood this which is why we call Him the Good Shepherd.

Benedict’s Progressive Legacy (UPDATE)

In addition to the analysis of John Gehring featured below, I have updated this post with the insights of Michael Sean Winters, who says the following about Benedict's social vision:

On the economy, Benedict staked out positions that were far more radical than what passes for progressive politics in the U.S. For example, in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, the pope defended the rights of workers in the most explicit terms: "Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, partly because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labor unions. Hence traditional networks of solidarity have more and more obstacles to overcome. The repeated calls issued within the Church's social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum, for the promotion of workers' associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honored today even more than in the past, as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level, as well as the local level." This warm embrace of organized labor is not on the agenda of today's Republican Party to be sure.

Benedict also challenged modern capitalism for the gross inequalities it produces both within and among nations. In his recent World Day of Peace message, he listed five threats to world peace, and he started with "unregulated financial capitalism." The others: terrorism, international crime, fanaticism and fundamentalism. You do not need to conduct a poll to imagine how many Republicans would respond if President Barack Obama lumped together "unregulated financial capitalism" with terrorism and international crime.

The effects of capitalism were not the only problems he discerned. In Caritas in Veritate he noted the ways capitalism fails at its core and in its ethical demands. The market requires competition, not solidarity. It lionizes self-assertion, not self-surrender, and it values thrift and frugality, not gratuitousness and generosity. The market's heroes are self-made men. But, as Benedict taught, Christians are called to follow Jesus, whose entire life was an act of solidarity, who never asserted himself but always self-surrendered to the will of the Father, whose grace is never thrifty or frugal but gratuitous, always a bit surprising, never stingy. Most obviously, Jesus was not a "self-made man." Benedict, like previous popes, did not propose a specific economic system, but his critique of modern capitalism, root and branch, was stinging. Why did this never garner much in the way of headlines?


John Gehring, Program Director at Faith in Public Life, has an interesting article up at Catholics in Alliance for the Commong Good. He examines elements of Pope Benedict’s work that leaned in a more progressive direction, particularly economic policy and environmental stewardship:

John Gehring

In his 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict denounced the “scandal of glaring inequalities” and called for a more just distribution of global wealth. A defining theme of Benedict’s papacy – especially after the 2008 global financial crisis – was an uncompromising critique of economic systems that subjugate the human person to the demands of profit. In his World Day of Peace message just last month, he lamented “the prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated financial capitalism.” Along with “terrorism” and “international crime,” the pope named unfettered markets as a threat to stability and peace. It’s an understatement to say you won’t hear that kind of talk from most U.S. politicians who rely on Wall Street largesse to finance campaigns. While free-market fundamentalists lobby for greater deregulation of markets and corporations, the Vatican’s justice and peace council during the Benedict era called for a “minimum, shared body of rules to manage the global financial market” and a “world reserve fund” to support countries hard hit by the economic crisis.

Benedict has also been called the “Green Pope” for defining environmental stewardship in stark moral terms and his frequent warnings about climate change. More than any of his predecessors, this pope has articulated a clear theology behind what he calls the “covenant between human beings and the environment.”  In 2011, the day before world leaders from 194 countries met in Durban, South Africa to chart the next steps to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gases, the pope used his weekly noon blessing to urge the international community to “agree on a responsible, credible and supportive response to this worrisome and complex phenomenon, keeping in mind the needs of the poorest populations and of future generations.” He told a Franciscan environmental group attending the Durban conference that “there is no good future for humanity or for the earth unless we educate everyone toward a style of life that is more responsible toward the created world,” according to Catholic News Service. Under Benedict’s tenure, several Vatican buildings were outfitted with solar panels and the Vatican has pledged to install enough renewable energy sources to provide 20 percent of its needs by 2020, a measure in line with a European Union proposal.

Ratzinger/Benedict and the Mystery of Reform

Those who are certain of the theological direction of the next pope would do well to remember that even a cursory look at the life of Ratzinger/Benedict (RB) shows the difficulty in predicting the future choices and attitudes of leaders of the Church. Surprise and irony abound. One need look no further than the fate of one of RB’s favorite theologians to see how unpredictable the waves of reform can be. Henri de Lubac, whose books Ratzinger wrote glowing reviews of and whose insights Benedict incorporated into an encyclical, was from 1950-1956 silenced by the Vatican. That’s right, a man who the seemingly strict orthodox RB adored was once on the outs of the leadership of the Catholic Church, before he was eventually named a Cardinal.

If you think that ironic, consider that Ratzinger, who would become famous globally as the leader of the Vatican’s doctrinal enforcement Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote a famous speech given by Cardinal Frings during Vatican II deeply critical of that Office. In fact, at one time Ratzinger had been under investigation for heresy by the Office that he eventually led as the “Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith”.

All of which is to say that Catholic people and institutions change and develop and reverse course in ways that are hard to predict. Reformers can become consolidators, and the men who they appoint can become reformers. It is the cycle of Church History that those consumed with the present can sometimes forget, thereby closing themselves off to the possibility of surprise and reform. Vatican reporter John Allen suggests that there are four camps among the Cardinals in Rome to elect the next pope, and that at least one of these camps contain leaders interested in elements of reform. Allen calls this camp the "pastoral camp" and describes Cardinal Schonborn as a possible choice that could emerge from this group:

Second, there's the "pastoral camp," meaning cardinals looking for a less ideologically defined pontiff, one with the capacity to heal internal rifts, such as the recent priests' rebellion in Austria, and to take a new look at thorny issues such as Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics.

One point of reference for this camp may be Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, a Dominican and theological protégé of Benedict's who's kept lines of communication open with his dissident priests, and has hinted he'd be open to reconsidering mandatory celibacy.

Whenever you hear a cardinal over the coming days proclaim that the church needs a "pastoral" pope, as Italian Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo did Feb. 16, saying that's what the time demands rather than a Vatican bureaucrat, this is the sort of thing they often have in mind.

Schönborn is nobody's idea of a left-winger, but he's also no ideologue.