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by Rocket Kirchner
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February 11, 2013
In the next few weeks there will be a whole litany of accusations against the Papacy of this retiring Pope, most of which I agree with. We all know what they are. There is no need to waste ink on them. Instead I would like to present the unique contributions of his Papacy that will probably go unnoticed even by the most astute Catholic scholars. So here goes.
Since this Pope came to power I heeded the words of Hans Kung, “Let’s wait and see”. Kung was silenced and reduced to an Ecumenical theologian by Cardinal Ratzinger before he became the Pope. But what did Kung know about Ratzinger that I was missing when he made that famous remark. I call it “the second chance remark”. Well, it has taken me many years to see and understand that second chance statement.
One must first understand that Pope Benedict is one of most brilliant intellectuals in the world. Of course brilliance and ethics don’t always go together. However, he has done an end run around some of the most vexing philosophical issues of our time. He has used a three prong approach to the world of intellectuals to effect the world of the common man. The first is to the non-believer. The second is to the Protestant. And the last is to the Catholic. I will give each one an example in that order.
First to the non-believer he hits the ground running after being ordained the Bishop of Rome with an unusual book entitled, Jesus of Nazareth. Why is it so unusual? It is unusual because he does not even mention the Church in it. A Pope writing a book and not even mentioning the Church? What is going on here? It is fascinating that he makes the case that the spiritual explosion in the ancient world did not happen at Pentecost, but rather when Christ himself showed up on the scene. This is a pre-ressurection theology. And get this: The evidence he uses about Jesus being the promised Messiah is from Jewish sources who rejected him. He states categorically that the proof positive that Jesus is the ONE, is that the Jews rejected Him. How is that for a socio-philosophical twist? He subtracts the entire Gentile world from the gospel, and places Christ and his claims back into its original Judaic controversy.
Secondly, he addresses the Protestant problem with the Church of Rome by giving a speech in Vatican Square on Origen of Alexandria being a true teacher of God. What? Origen was considered a heretic. Origen’s heresy according to the Church of Rome is this: All human beings will be saved, including the devil and his fallen angels. This is called the doctrine of Trinitarian Universalism. Now what in the world is a rightwing reactionary Pope doing defending Origen? Because despite Origen’s heresy, he always remained loyal to Rome. In other words he was called a “faithful dissenter”. What this Pope is doing is out Protestant the Protestants by stating that one can have ideas even as far out as Origen, and yet remain faithful to the Rite of Rome.
Last but not least is Benedict’s emphasis on one line in the ancient Ambrosian Mass. This one line counters of all of the rotten fruit of Modernism that sought to reduce man to an animal, and not a spirit. In the Antiphonal the priest says, “The Lord be with you”. And the Responsorial coming from the parishioners used to be “and with you also”. Instead, now it is “and with your spirit”, affirming that man is a spirit, with dignity created in the image and likeness of a loving Creator, not a bunch of accidental protoplasm.
So, despite all my complaints about this Pope, somehow he has managed to pull off these 3 things of vital historical importance. It is just too bad that the rest of his Papacy was a travesty and failed miserably.
Suggested links:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1823651/posts
http://www.case.edu/artsci/jdst/reviews/Jewish.htm
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/column.php?n=1831
***
Next pope could come from outside Europe
AlJazeeraEnglish·Feb 11, 2013
With the news that Benedict the 16th is stepping down, thoughts are now turning to who his replacement might be.
A new Pope is expected to be elected by the end of March, ahead of the feast of Easter.
Some of the most likely successors come from Africa and Latin America.
Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands reports.
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Assessing the Anomalies, that might be the better headline here. :) This Origen-ism, it’s…profound, unexpected, out of left-field, and stunning. Origen was definitely lucky not to be drummed out of the Church as a heretic, and it’s…curious…that Benedict/the Church has/have embraced him, so late in the day. Especially in light of the obvious tomfoolery (to put it lightly) of the past centuries.
An olive branch? A delusion? A hope upon hope?
I appreciate deeply your pointing this out, Rocket! May God Continue to Bless and Keep you and yours! +++
Pat– good to hear from you ! i was just thinking yesterday about what St. Peter said in his Epistle about the Jesus going down into Hell and [preaching to the spirits there . What would he be preaching ? THE GOOD NEWS ! this verse is in favor of Origen’s position . Check out the top link . it is the entire speech given by Benedict on Origen . Origen knew that the Sacraments and their illumination were key to the evolving soul in Christ . ..in order not to have to re-incarnate again .
The next Pope in my view will be from Brazil . What a long awaited revival that will be if the white smoke goes over the Vatican and its him .
David , ran out of room below . There is a book that took me by surpise some years back by a self educated women named Rosemary Haughton . it is called ”The Catholic Thing”. She uses the analogy of 2 sisters . one is very rigid , and one is a dancer . the rigid one with the ruler in her hand is the instituionaized structure . the dancer is faithful dissenters , the monastaic renewals , the innovators…the fringe devotees..etc..
Origen is one of the main dancers. so is St. Francis . According to Haughton the 2 sisters need each other in order to make up what she calls the Catholic Thing.
One of the most rigid Popes and corrupt ones like Eggs Benedict steps up to plate to re-introduce and brag about one of the dancers Origen of Alexandria is no light matter. that speech he gave is an extreme example of the sister to sister interplay . a connundrum indeed.
and yes , maybe E.B. is hedging his bets with the wings of the Eschaton . But i think that there is more to it . I am gonna look into what the Jesuits scholars have to say about this one .
This is a risky commission Rocket!!
Why don’t we plunge into the controversial heart of the matter and just ask one definitive question:
Would the world be better, healthier, happier, more honest, fair, creative and open, without a “Church of Rome?”
I know my answer ~ I’ll put my money on Malachy (pronounced m’larky if you’re at all Irish?) If the terminal prophetic punters are right, Ratzinger is the emissary of the End. Hurrah!!!
Small point: it’s a false argument to assert legitimacy on the basis of rejection. It proves nothing, other than prejudice. One man’s messiah is bound to be another’s devil. It’s far too parochial and anthropocentrist, for my taste, to place such inordinate emphasis on a single Palestinian preacher, historical or not; despite the priestly PR.
Now I am in no way trivializing or detracting from authentic spiritual experience, nor indeed, from the very real probability of human-Angelic interaction. Only this: notwithstanding the extant hierarchies of awesome spiritual beings mankind has recorded since the emergence of symbolic cognition, we have not a clue what may or may not exist in the super-galactic infinities of Space/Time/Mind/Consciousness/Spirit. I will tell you what I really think ~ the Universe is an intelligent organism, and Her intelligence manifests as spiritual awareness.
Under the demented cassocks, may lurk some human beings, but until they are liberated from their own fetishist fancy dress, ermine (cruelty) and gold (materialist greed) and pretentiously sexist liturgical chains, we should not accord them special privilege, nor one iota of exemption from the moral standards expected from everyone else in this deeply flawed human estate.
PS ~ I hope you got my message on Jill Dalton’s NDAA page about Dr Benjamin Carson’s astonishing speech at Obama’s prayer breakfast…
David , most people have never studied Origen of Alexandria . He was probably the most fringe eccentric thinker . He believed in re-incarnation , and the eventual redemption of all beings , including Satan and his angels . Anyone who even brings this up , even in the most rarified Catholic intellectual circles is held in immediate suspect. And yet This Pope delivered a whole speech on Him at Vatican Sqaure …and states that not only is he n longer a heretic but a true teacher of God . That is unprecedented !!!! Me and my good friend Father Simon have been scratching our heads over this . but we love it ! cause we love Origen’s work .it is so out there . I still dont know why the Pope did this ,.
check the link on it , and you can read for yourself the speech . What is Eggs Benedict seeing that we are not ?
BTW — i have no interest in getting into a debate over the Catholic Church , or why i am personally a Catholic , or why this Pope’s record in general is so bad . But i am interested in the 3 things i wrote about as something highly unusual .
Thanks for the reply Rocket. I actually think you’re drawing attention to something quite radical and unusual, that is therefore very interesting. I shall look into Origen’s story; unless one is a specialist in these matters, there is always a tendency to consign all these old patristic eggs to one little yellow basket of prejudice…hah hah.
I think your critics could be a bit less caustic and more on topic, but then, as you yourself seem to imply, the institutional crimes of the Vatican are a grotesque moral travesty, almost beyond words, never mind belief…
I respect your desire to avoid all this. My own view is that the entire set-up is a perverse social anachronism, that should be designated a museum of psychopathology. So it is understandable why any reference to it will be controversial and arouse intense feelings of revulsion
You may have heard about the new row that has erupted, implicating the Irish government in the horrendous abuses of the infamous Magdalene Laundries…http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/
I lived in Ireland and I know just how much power these brutes enjoyed.
David , well …it is interesting that Gregory of Nyssia ( a great christian mystic ) and Julian of Norwich also embraced a form of Origenism .
Origen in theory believed that all beings will be restored over various re-incarnations and the karmic debt paid by christ to its original primal state in the cosmic universe.
so –Satan will be restored to being Lucifer again .
Talbot wrote a great book about this called ”The inescapable love of God ” . Given your love of the Gnostic , Origen would be someone to look into . He figured a way to paradoxically remain loyal to Rome in a quasi -gnostic theology .
never has the Bishop of Rome stood up and called Origen a ”true teacher of God ”. i am fascinated by this whole thing .
David ,here is a good overview on Origen’s universal redemption . it is called ”Apocatastasis”. St . Augustine opposed it , but many did not . it is interesting to note the imortance that Origen puts on ”Sacramental illumination ” to help bring this about . To Origen , the mystic force of illumination is the name of the game for the eventual redemption of all beings as an inevidibility . of course all of this begs the question as to regards to free will . But those who side with the restoration of all beings state that divine love will carry the day
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Apocatastasis here is the link .
Actually, this is truly fascinating, so I thank you for that.
Sometimes, words are an embarrassment; silence does a better job.
Time is a wonderful device, without it we’d understand nothing. Of course from an Indian perspective, perhaps Nothing is really all there is. I am an eternal student ~ maybe “contemplative” is more accurate.
What I get from this is a fundamental institutionalized teaching about the nature of error and rectitude. The problem is we cannot establish deviance until we know what is orthodox. In other words, until there is an absolute rule, there can be no breach.
Where Christianity seems to err from its own tradition, is in the notion that this rule exists. If it does, I don’t know what it is, other than the invocation of universal love.
Surely, such love must be unconditional & all encompassing, therefore Origen must be right.
Interesting that “E B” should close his pontificate on such a note, unless of course he is hedging his eschatological bets.
Absolutely ridiculous. The actual histories of Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and Richard A. Horsley give us a take on the “real” Jesus and his life, from all extant historical sources including what testimony was given by Jews, while Ratzinger’s screed about Jesus still hews closely to ahistorical, “revealed” Catholic doctrine. Origen is included by Ratzinger as worthwhile solely because he knuckled under to the Pope and Catholic church of his time, not because he was democratic and inclusive in his thought. And the Episcopal church within which I was reared has always used “and with your spirit” as the response to “the Lord be with you,” so Ratzinger invented or introduced nothing new at all.
Wythe , nice to hear from a man who knows his theology . I am a HUGE fan of J.D.Crossan . His work on the the revolutionary bio of Jesus is really quite a contribution to socio-relgiuo thought . but all the men you mentioned are naturalists ala Jefferson’s Bible.. I am not a naturalist . my thought processes are a mixture of Soren Kierkegaard and Thomas Merton . .
if you have ever read Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth , like i said ..what makes it different is not the replay of extant jewish sources , but the fact that a Pope is not writing about the Church .
In regards to Origen , i think that there is something else at work here besides Origen’s submission to Rome . and that is this : Origen ‘s view on re-incarnation is linked to the Eucharist being the actually body and blood of Christ . when Christ said that John the Baptist IS Elijah , the word IS –correlates to ”this IS my body , this IS my blood .
As far as ”with your spirit ”…this was put aside for many years . and it was because of Modernism and its influence . But it is fully back under Eggs Benedict .
when the white smoke went up and Ratzinger became Pope my heart sunk , so dont think as a Catholic i am defending his Papacy . I am glad to see him go . Bring me that cat from Brazil …and lets get some real social justice moving !
and so much for your genuflections to Benedict’s homage to “faithful dissenter” Origen, when he tramples on the holy conscience of one of his priests.. From Father Roy:
Oh God Rocket, give me an effin break. This guy preserved the role of Opus Dei over Vatican banking- maintaining investments in weapons contractors, continued the suppression of liberation theology, continued the toxic denial of the church’s horrendous treatment of abused children by the priesthood, sheltering one of its arch villains with a Vatican post- Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston (wanted by the Massachusetts justice department), continued to deny priesthood to women, excommunicating brave and socially conscious priests like Roy Bourgeois who supported that, maintaining the church’s idiotic stance on birth control. In short this pope did nothing to create a revolution of peace and sanity in the world and was therefore not cut out for the job in the first place.
John– thanks for your reply . as i said before –my heart sunk when the white smoke went up and Ratzinger became Pope . all of us at the Catholic worker house for the poor felt that way . But why state the obvious . we all know he was a skunk . so what ? why repeat the same bad news. i am interested in these 3 anamolys , especially the speech on Origen . it fascinates me .
I was favorable toward Arinze the last time and am favorable toward Arinze this time. I also look favorably on any cardinal who promotes social justice.
I certainly don’t agree with all he did, but I respect him as someone who sincerely and humbly seeks to be a servant of Christ.