32 years ago today, on the feast of the Transfiguration, at the papal villa at Castelgandolfo. His death began that extraordinary season of papal elections that brought us John Paul I and John Paul II.
I think he was a great and much misunderstood Pope. Here’s a little piece from Rome Reports:
Note: There was one really major error in this video: Montini was given his cardinal’s hat on December 15, 1958, very shortly after John XXIII’s election, not in 1962!
And in case you are wondering, yes, I do plan to blog some more about John Paul I and his “God as Mother” theology soon.
This is the first of a new series inspired again largely by Pope John Paul I, but also by my interest in the writings of his successors about the vital subject of the imagery we use for God. I hope to finish it by this August for the 32nd anniversary of his election as Pope.
In his 1995 book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II wrote an in-depth analysis of the modern approach to God. This passage is especially telling:
Hegel’s paradigm of the master and the servant is more present in people’s consciousness today than is wisdom, whose origin lies in the filial fear of God. The philosophy of arrogance is born of the Hegelian paradigm. The only force capable of effectively counteracting this philosophy is found in the Gospel of Christ, in which the paradigm of master-slave is radically transformed into the paradigm of father-son.
The father-son paradigm is ageless. It is older than human history. The “rays of fatherhood” contained in this formulation belong to the Trinitarian Mystery of God Himself, which shines forth from Him, illuminating man and his history.
This notwithstanding, as we know from Revelation, in human history the “rays of fatherhood” meet a first resistance in the obscure but real fact of original sin. Original sin attempts, then, to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man only with a sense of the master-slave relationship. As a result, the Lord appears jealous of His power over the world and over man; and consequently, man feels goaded to do battle against God. No differently than in any epoch of history, the enslaved man is driven to take sides against the master who kept him enslaved. leaving man only with a sense of the master/slave relationship.” (1)
This is a profound statement of the origins of modern humanity’s alienation from God, and the source of so much atheism.
The Pope was not alone in this view. In his book Faith of the Fatherless, Paul Vitz posits that the rejection of the idea of God by many prominent atheists, including Freud, Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre, can be traced to their anger at dead, abusive or emotionally distant fathers. (2)
On the other hand, trying to fill in the gap, we have the pop culture feminist view of God as the “goddess within,” the life-affirming, fun loving earth mother Gaia. One of the most prominent examples of this is the idea of the “Sacred Feminine,” popularized by Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code, which counters the teaching of the Church with a sex goddess (I wrote about this here). Not all goddess worship is this silly. But it is often very tied to the rejection of the father. Comments I have heard from those who believe in a goddess indicate that they fundamentally reject the idea of God as an authority figure. A goddess, they reason is non-judgmental, and doesn’t have all the “rules” of the patriarchal male God. Here are more signs of a dysfunctional relationship with the father, as well as the Father.
This trend toward “feminization” of God baffles and upsets many Catholics. Of course, it is hurtful to see God the Father as understood in Scripture and Church tradition rejected by so many people. Not surprisingly, these Catholics particularly resist the idea of God as Mother when people try to bring it into the Church.
Once, maybe four or five years ago, we had a guest speaker come to our Secular Franciscan fraternity meeting in the Bronx. He wanted to give a talk about spirituality, but hardly got beyond the first paragraph where he encouraged us to think of God as mother. He met with fierce resistance to this idea from the membership of our fraternity – which, by the way is 100% female, most of them older women. I, who was the youngest in the group, was the only one not opposed, but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. The women in the group said to the speaker: “God is our Father; this is traditional, why are you changing it?”
People very frequently say to me when subject comes up: “Replacing God as Father with God as Mother feminizes the Church, and it’s already too feminized!” Or “It doesn’t help the spirituality of men in the church to replace God the Father with God the Mother. Men no longer have a real sense of masculinity because of this.” Or “Jesus told us how to speak of God as our Father, and that’s that. We don’t need any more than that.”
Yet our last three Popes have thought differently.
It all began in September 1978, when John Paul I startled a great many people during his very short papacy by proclaiming, “God is a father, but even more a mother.” (3) Yet this memorable remark doesn’t begin to exhaust what he had to say on this subject both before and after he became Pope. John Paul II continued this trend by speaking about God as mother in his encyclicals and letters, in his audience talks, and even in his lovely proclamation of the Our Father. In turn, his successor, Benedict XVI, has used some of the same imagery, and introduced theological clarifications to it.
Yet the idea of God as mother as taught by the most recent popes has penetrated very little into the mind or life of the Church. Many people continue to identify this feminine and maternal imagery for God with dissent in the Church, or at least with something suspiciously trendy, completely unaware that it is papal teaching.
But why have recent popes spoken about God this way?
It is true that we are almost a fatherless society. We are rapidly becoming a national of single mothers, with hardly a father in sight. Perpetual male adolescence is celebrated as the norm, and the responsibility of fatherhood is something people hardly expect anymore. Many people have no relationship with their fathers. In the past, literally or emotionally fatherless Catholics have often turned to priests as father figures. And yet this relationship has so often been betrayed because of the clerical sex abuse scandal.
Yet this emotional distance isn’t connected with just one parent. Radical feminism, and the prevalence of abortion has wounded many women precisely in their maternal instinct.
Some radical feminist pro-abortion women with whom I have had discussions have shown an amazing disgust for motherhood; they are unable to see pregnancy and childbirth, particularly of an unlooked-for child, as anything but “rape for nine months,” “slavery of the uterus,” and “forced motherhood.” Becoming pregnant makes you no more than a “breeder” or “incubator,” and Christianity, by its praise for motherhood, perpetuates this “dehumanizing” view of women. Some of these feminists have even denied that women have a biological maternal instinct, because this “naturalizes” the idea of women as mother – which is an contradiction of their ideal of woman as a career-driven, independent person; above all, motherhood is a slap in the face to the dream of being able to have sexual pleasure any time they like without unpleasant consequences like children.
What is most frightening of all is that women with this deficient maternal sense sometimes do end up becoming mothers. I feel certain their children must suffer for it. Other women who have had and regretted abortions have also admitted great difficulty in parenting when they do have “wanted” children because of their unresolved guilty feelings. So yes, motherhood in our society is in as much trouble as fatherhood is.
Some who have had both parents who were distant have found they were unable to relate to God as Father or Mary as Mother. One recent commenter on an internet post said:
I think there is definitely a correlation. In my own case, my father was rather distant (spent his energies in various get-rich-quick schemes) and my mother is an alcoholic. I became an atheist, quietly (they never knew) in my teens.
I’m now back Home, but I have a hard time with God as Father — oh, not intellectually (I’m solid there) but in terms of any emotional attachment — the heart just isn’t involved. Nor do I have any idea how to regard Mary as my Mother — again, I accept the concept intellectually, but there simply is no attachment. I have no idea how to change this at all — I just trust that God will forgive me my lack of love, as I truly do want to love Him and His Mother. I just don’t know how. (4)
This suggests that negative reactions to emotionally abusive or absent mothers also influence us spiritually.
But — presuming we can actually form an attachment to a spiritual mother- don’t Catholics have a sufficient mother figure in Mary? Why do we need to speak of God as mother?
Mary is a wonderful spiritual mother to us. Yet Mary is not God nor any part of God. In fact Catholics know that it is blasphemous to call Mary God. So she is not a divine mother; a divine mother is different.
If Mary really were sufficient as a spiritual mother, we wouldn’t expect to see John Paul II put forward the maternal image of God as he did. For it is just about impossible to imagine a more ardent or devoted lover of Mary than he was!
It’s well known that Karol Wojtyla lost his mother at a very early age. Soon afterward he asked the Blessed Virgin to become his mother. He put Totus Tuus (All Yours) on his episcopal coat of arms out of devotion to her. After the assassination attempt against him in 1981, he credited her with deflecting the deadly bullet from his heart. We can find a similar robust devotion to Mary in the other two Popes I have mentioned. So we can’t say that it was a lack of devotion to the motherhood of Mary that led them to speak of God as mother. Evidently, sometimes only a divine Mother will do.
Still, many have as much difficulty with the idea of God as Mother as they do with God as Father. Given that our sense of the motherhood as well as fatherhood of God may need healing, I hope we can learn something of what divine motherhood is like and how it differs from the neo-pagan conception of Gaia and the Sacred Feminine.
So I plan to make “God as Father and mother” the subject of my next few posts. We will learn something of what John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI have thought on this subject.
I think it’s important to stress that I am not striving to “replace God the Father with God the Mother” as some good Catholics fear – and some feminists are actually trying to do. I want to explore the maternal images of God that exist in the Bible that have come to be an important though unacknowledged part of the papal Magisterium and how they can affect our spiritual lives.
So next time I will start with the teaching of John Paul I.
NOTES
(1) John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, paperback ed., (New York: Knopf, 1995, 2003), pp. 225-26.
(2) Paul C. Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism; Dallas: Spence Publishing Co, 2009).
(3) Angelus address, September 10, 1978; L’Osservatore Romano [Italian ed], 11-12 September 1978.
Today is Good Friday. The day when Jesus paid the penalty for our sins. A day of repentance. And a day of remembrance. A reminder to us all to take up our cross and follow him in sorrow and persecution. The cross of persecution is being carried by Christians all over the world right now in a way it has not since Roman times, especially in India and the Muslim lands in the Middle East. We in the United States have had our own share. When the world cannot seduce us, it will always turn against us.
St. Peter, the first Pope and one of the earliest martyrs, experienced the worst that Roman wrath against Christians could offer when he was crucified in Nero’s gardens in 64 A.D. Years before he had denied Christ and run away; this time he was faithful to the end. He became something of a model for his successors.
Today, Peter is being crucified in Rome again — not to mention New York, Berlin and other major capitals — in the person of his successor, Benedict XVI. Crucified through hatred and unjust accusation.
I am reminded of what the Servant of God, Pope John Paul I, said to the assembled cardinals a few days after his election (August 30, 1978, to be exact).
. . . before the scrutiny was finished, [Cardinal Felici] came up to me, because he was in front of me before, and said, “A message for the new Pope.” “Thank you,” I said, (but it wasn’t over yet). I opened it. What was inside? A little way of the Cross! This is the road of the Popes, but in the Way of the Cross, one of the characters is also Simon of Cyrene. I hope that my brother cardinals will help this poor Christ, vicar of Christ, carry the cross by their co-operation, which I feel I need so much.
John Paul I’s way to Calvary as Pope was short indeed, but I believe it was filled with suffering that may well never be completely known. His successor, the Venerable John Paul II, who died five years ago today (has it really been five years already?) said at John Paul I’s death that the Christ’s call to Peter to follow him is also a call to die. Twenty-six years later, his own deathbed Way of the Cross brought so many people around the world to repentance.
Each of these Popes took up the cross in their own way. Today each one of us needs to be Simon of Cyrene, and help the Holy Father carry the cross by our prayers.
John Paul I and John Paul II, pray today and always for your successor on the chair of Peter.
Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your Dearly Beloved Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world. For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world. Amen.
Looking back over the posts I’ve done this year, I think I made some hits and misses in reporting on the biggest stories of the 2009 in regard to events in the Catholic Church. But I think I got the top six. In order:
5. Pope Benedict’s new social encyclicalCaritas in Veritate creates discussion about world events to secure social justice — and more ludicrous misunderstanding than you can imagine.
Other stories I covered: Pope Benedict’s trip to the Holy Land and the controversy over the film of Dan Brown’sAngels and Demons. And this may be “hometown” news for me, but it does have a great impact on the Church in the U.S. as a whole: New York got a New Archbishop, Timothy Dolan.
Others - controversy over the death of Ted Kennedy and this pro-abortion Catholic’s highly public funeral Mass, the new priestly sex abuse crisis in Ireland — I sort of missed. I certainly followed them while they were happening, but didn’t have time to blog about them.
The news came today, though it’s been rumored for some time. Pope Benedict released today a list of approvals of miracles approved for beatifications — and also decrees of the heroic virtue of Pope John Paul II and Pope Pius XII, together with that of Solidarity’s priest-martyr, Jerzy Popieluzsko.
The decree of Venerable for John Paul II comes less than five years after his death (on April 2, 2005). He might well be beatified next fall, if the miracle attributed to him is approved.
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"The history of the Catholic missions is by now a long road: at the beginning of that road is the Father of Mercy, who holds out his arms to all his children. All those who encounter the missionaries encounter the Father. And they also encounter the Son, the first missionary, who, obeying the Father, comes to earth, becomes flesh in human nature, is one of us, in solidarity with our misery (except for sin) and ends up dying for us in order to then return to heaven, carrying on his shoulders the human race his has won back.
Out of the same mold are the missionaries, who repeat, in some way, his journey. They too leave their fathers and families and depart to go among a foreign people. They too strip themselves of the refined culture they have acquired in their homelands; and of their native customs and habitat, of a hundred little comforts, in order to be in solidarity. With who? With a people who are on one hand naked and poor, and on the other rich in possibilities, which the missionaries intend to respect, value and elevate."
Albino Luciani (Pope John Paul I), to the people of his diocese of Vittorio Veneto, on his return from the diocesan missions in Africa in 1966
