To return to the topic of religion: I was awake for about two hours after 3 am last night and was thinking about religion rather more radically than I do when more than 1/2 awake. I think I'll try to set down, rapidly, some of the thoughts that came to me in those rather stressed and dreamlike few hours,
I am a Catholic, but am increasingly upset that the Church, at least the American branch of it, does not seem to go in for the Lord Jesus' nonviolent way. Rather it rubber stamps the horrible war mongering we are up to in service of our banker-munitions men rulers. Individual clerics and their civilian cohort are often in the opposition camp, but they have no influence on the public church, which seems, to quote Eliot, "wrapped the old miasmal mist" as much as ever.
I can't get out of my mind a website that outlined what the well-dressed bishop needs to appear on the altar. The custom-tailored rig costs something like $150K and is elaborate and antiquated to a fare-thee-well. I fear the Church (I mean the Rome-based political-religious HQ of it which functions as the top-down ruler) is asking for another reformation. It may get it from the surrounding culture, which is foundering (IMHO), as Japan shows in the recent tsunami events and as the world is showing in its reaction to Peak Oil.
Can the old Church survive all this unchanged? I doubt it. In what direction does it need to go? I'd say toward simplification of costume and rigamarole for starters. I do not mean toward more guitar music, etc., but toward a more direct worship of the man-God Christ and a keener appreciation of his tenets. The Oxford Group of the first half of the 20th century was going in the right direction, I'd hazard, until it was cut off by the deaths of Frank Buchman and, almost immediately, his appointed successor, Peter Howard. These untoward events seemed a clear rebuke of Buchman's own top-down theory of church-rule: clerics will lead, the sheep are to follow. As Newman made clear the Athanasian-Aryan crisis was resolved by the lay people not the clerics. Why expect anything different now?
And some sort of solution at least needs to be bruited for solving the shortage-of-priest problem. The profound and basic rules for the establishment and maintenance of an ecclesia are well known. Gather two or three in Christ's name and let the the resulting church be supported by the contributions of its members, without outside help. AA is the model here. If a church can't support itself, it'll disappear. Fair enough. And let it be clear that the HQ is supported and ruled by the multiple churches not vice versa. A church needs a place to gather but doesn't need to own it or decorate it in gold leaf, not at first anyway. Again, AA is the model.
One can be grateful for the great church that has existed for the last 2000 years without feeling obliged to keep it going as an ancient relic for 2000 more. The Spirit of Christ is the lodestar and determinant of all. But the Church has delivered an intact liturgy it would be crazy and improvident to reject. John Paul did not reject the Anglican liturgy, one of the most wonderful to emerge from the Protestant thing.
It will be a great day, too, when the Catholic Church recognizes that the Spirit of Christ, Second Person of the Trinity, has represented God to the human race from its beginnings. And has spoken to all races and in all languages in the "religions" dispensed over the centuries. (There is and can be only one religion, but there are many "vernaculars" of it.) The word "Christ" is local and language-bound; the Spirit (of Christ) is worldwide and universal.
Well, that's enough for one post. Enough, perhaps, to get me burned as a heretic in times past. but probably not today. Who cares enough to do it?
I am a Catholic, but am increasingly upset that the Church, at least the American branch of it, does not seem to go in for the Lord Jesus' nonviolent way. Rather it rubber stamps the horrible war mongering we are up to in service of our banker-munitions men rulers. Individual clerics and their civilian cohort are often in the opposition camp, but they have no influence on the public church, which seems, to quote Eliot, "wrapped the old miasmal mist" as much as ever.
I can't get out of my mind a website that outlined what the well-dressed bishop needs to appear on the altar. The custom-tailored rig costs something like $150K and is elaborate and antiquated to a fare-thee-well. I fear the Church (I mean the Rome-based political-religious HQ of it which functions as the top-down ruler) is asking for another reformation. It may get it from the surrounding culture, which is foundering (IMHO), as Japan shows in the recent tsunami events and as the world is showing in its reaction to Peak Oil.
Can the old Church survive all this unchanged? I doubt it. In what direction does it need to go? I'd say toward simplification of costume and rigamarole for starters. I do not mean toward more guitar music, etc., but toward a more direct worship of the man-God Christ and a keener appreciation of his tenets. The Oxford Group of the first half of the 20th century was going in the right direction, I'd hazard, until it was cut off by the deaths of Frank Buchman and, almost immediately, his appointed successor, Peter Howard. These untoward events seemed a clear rebuke of Buchman's own top-down theory of church-rule: clerics will lead, the sheep are to follow. As Newman made clear the Athanasian-Aryan crisis was resolved by the lay people not the clerics. Why expect anything different now?
And some sort of solution at least needs to be bruited for solving the shortage-of-priest problem. The profound and basic rules for the establishment and maintenance of an ecclesia are well known. Gather two or three in Christ's name and let the the resulting church be supported by the contributions of its members, without outside help. AA is the model here. If a church can't support itself, it'll disappear. Fair enough. And let it be clear that the HQ is supported and ruled by the multiple churches not vice versa. A church needs a place to gather but doesn't need to own it or decorate it in gold leaf, not at first anyway. Again, AA is the model.
One can be grateful for the great church that has existed for the last 2000 years without feeling obliged to keep it going as an ancient relic for 2000 more. The Spirit of Christ is the lodestar and determinant of all. But the Church has delivered an intact liturgy it would be crazy and improvident to reject. John Paul did not reject the Anglican liturgy, one of the most wonderful to emerge from the Protestant thing.
It will be a great day, too, when the Catholic Church recognizes that the Spirit of Christ, Second Person of the Trinity, has represented God to the human race from its beginnings. And has spoken to all races and in all languages in the "religions" dispensed over the centuries. (There is and can be only one religion, but there are many "vernaculars" of it.) The word "Christ" is local and language-bound; the Spirit (of Christ) is worldwide and universal.
Well, that's enough for one post. Enough, perhaps, to get me burned as a heretic in times past. but probably not today. Who cares enough to do it?
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