Peter And John Paul

[poliphilo]

I'm in the middle of reading Roger Lewis's enormous Life And Death Of Peter Sellers- which runs to over 1,000 pages. Sellers was always peculiar, but career success drove him over the edge into full blown paranoid schizophrenia. Oddly enough, his madness never affected his art- and he was as capable of giving wonderfully sensitive performances at the end of his career as he was at the beginning (though the films he graced with those amazing performances were frequently wrecked by his wayward behaviour.)

A little money, a little power- and Sellers turned into the Emperor Nero. As I've been reading this 20th century morality tale I've been thinking about the Pope. John Paul II was an immeasurably stronger character than poor Peter, but what did it do to him to be elevated to a position where he had no equals, where there was God, then himself as the unique mouthpiece of God and then, very far below him, everybody else?

Did he have doubts? Did he ever wonder whether he might be wrong in the opinions he laid down as law? And did he have any friends? Peter didn't; it's very hard for the powerful to have friends; people are afraid of them. So was there a secret room in the Vatican where John Paul could slob around in a tee-shirt with his shoes kicked off, drinking beer with his cronies, watching TV? Were there people around him who called him Karol? People who were allowed to tease and twit and criticise?

Seems unlikely, doesn't it?

And if he never came off duty, never allowed himself to be vulnerable, how inhuman he must have become!

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm with Spong.

On the whole.

I believe in a God who is everything and nothing, personal and impersonal. We are in God and God is in us.

The Vatican model is that God is up there somewhere and the Church hierarchy acts as the speaking trumpet through which He communicates with the masses. I find this wrong, plain wrong- and the sooner we get rid of it the better.

The Pope died heroically, but I find it hard to forgive him his views on gender and sex. A great many people have died needlessly because of the Vatican line on contraception.

The only kind of Church I think I could be happy to belong to these days would be something along the line of the Society of Friends- a non-hierarchical church with an ethos of listening rather than sounding forth.

Perhaps I should become a Friend.

It's a new, surprising and happy thought......

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Listening-yes: that is where I most find answers.

Karen attends Friends' Meetings.

Yes, I can imagine you there very easily.

As for Spong, I am still reading.

He says, "Can a person claim with integrity to be a Christian and at the same time dismiss, as I have done, so much of what has traditionally definied the content of the Christian faith? ... My problem has never been my faith. It has always been the literal way human beings have chosen to articulate that faith.

"I continue to insist that I am a Christian. I hold steadfastly to the truth of the assertian first made by Paul that 'God was in Christ.'

"I call the church to a radical shift from the way in which it has traditionally proclaimed its message...the Reformation dealt primarily with issues of authority and order. The new Reformation will be profoundly theological, challenging every aspect of our faith-story...Christianity postulates a theistic God...the time has come when all of us must move beyond the deconstruction of these inadequate...symbols...and chart a vision...of the timless God-experience, [as differentiated from] the time-warped God-explanations of the past."

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<i-a [...] spong</i>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

Listening-yes: that is where I most find answers.

Karen attends Friends' Meetings.

Yes, I can imagine you there very easily.

As for Spong, I am still reading.

He says, "Can a person claim with integrity to be a Christian and at the same time dismiss, as I have done, so much of what has traditionally definied the content of the Christian faith? ... My problem has never been my faith. It has always been the literal way human beings have chosen to articulate that faith.

"I continue to insist that I am a Christian. I hold steadfastly to the truth of the assertian first made by Paul that 'God was in Christ.'

"I call the church to a radical shift from the way in which it has traditionally proclaimed its message...the Reformation dealt primarily with issues of authority and order. The new Reformation will be profoundly theological, challenging every aspect of our faith-story...Christianity postulates a theistic God...the time has come when all of us must move beyond the deconstruction of these inadequate...symbols...and chart a vision...of the timless God-experience, [as differentiated from] the time-warped God-explanations of the past."
<i-A New Christianity for a New World, John Shelby Spong</i>

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure what he means by a "theistic God". I presume he means something like "a God who is thought of as a personality." The problem with Spong's position is that it's hard to see- when God has been converted into "a timeless God experience"- why we should still need a church to mediate Him to us.

This, anyway, is the conclusion I have drawn. I can experience God by looking out the window, by talking to people on LJ, by doing any number of things, so why should I also turn up at Church and sing hymns- unless of course I have a taste for it (which I don't and never really have done.)

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, you will find - in Catholic churches at least - a great deal more talk about how Jesus is within each of us, and that we are acting on his behalf, that we are his eyes and hands and hearts. Also, I've never found that the Church says the only way to communicate with God is through it - if this were the case, then personal prayer would be meaningless, and that's certainly not something the Church teaches.

This is not to say that there aren't issues at which I am at odds with my Church, and about which I fervently hope that the Church will someday change its policies. There are times when I am very, very angry at my Church.

I should probably also mention that as far as religion goes, I think everyone should do whatever works best for them. smile I myself was a pagan for ten years, and I have friends who are pagans of various sorts, agnostics, atheists, Hindi, Buddhist, Muslim, various Christian sects, etc.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If Jesus is within each of us, why do we still need the church hierarchy?

The Vatican, it seems to me, is a historical hangover. The Reformation (which has worked its work inside the Catholic Church as well as outside it) has rendered it largely redundant. And of course many, perhaps a majority, of Western catholics treat it as such and disregard the Pope's teachings on personal morality.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Why does any religion create "Church?" It's not just the monotheistic faiths that do it - Hindus have temples, as do Buddhists...pagans form covens and churches as well.

Part of it, certainly, is fellowship. The pleasure and joy we get when we gather with others who have the same beliefs we do. That fellowship leads to a sense of belonging, which most humans crave. "I belong here. These people are like me." Not that we want to completely lose our sense of individuality, but most of us want to feel like there are others out there with whom we have at least something in common.

Another part is, like it or not, anarchy in any form just doesn't work all that well. Churches provide governance and guidance. Otherwise, we might have a lot more people committing heinous acts, saying "Well, Jesus spoke to me and told me to do it." Or "My religion requires me to sacrifice a virgin each month on the full moon." And so forth.

Is it perfect? No. Do Churches make terrible mistakes, commit violence themselves? Yes. But I don't think anarchy is the answer to that.

Did any of that make any sense?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know what you mean.

"Churches" aren't going to go away any time soon. We need them.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

We are in God and God is in us.


This much I wholeheartedly believe.

(I think it was Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time who said something like: God created and then entered into our universe and therefore is fully inside and subject to its laws; that God in that sense is wholly us and we wholly God.)

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should become a Friend.

I highly recommend it.:)

I admire this the most: Friends look at unpleasant realities with clear eyes.

I stopped going to Catholic church as soon as I went home, and never met a religion I liked after that, until I went to Quaker meeting. But Quakerism is a way of being more than a religion, and it's a way that I like very much.

One of the members of my meeting spoke once about how we don't really know the other people in meeting. In some sense that's true, but in another sense, I know them more intimately than most people probably do. I have seldom been in a room with people and felt that I liked each one of them, but that's how I feel about my meeting. Even the intrinsically annoying people have demonstrated redeeming qualities.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I have Quaker ancestors.

My Allen great aunts were staunch pacifists and went on "ban the bomb" marches in the 50s and 60s. I'm very proud of them.

I have always, I rather think, been something of a Quaker manque.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Why have you been manque?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Because I was always something else. I was brought up as an Anglican and became an Anglican priest. Then I broke with Christianity and became a pagan.

And now?

Well, now I don't actually feel the need to join any particular group.