2001 Conference Speaker's Texts
Joan Chittister Keynote talk: "Both Roots and Wings; Moving the Vatican II Church Into a New Millennium"
Elsa Tamez "Liberation Theologies in Latin American Today"
John Dear "Living Peace: A Spirituality of Gospel Non-Violence"
Bernard Cooke CTA After 25 Years: Was Detroit a Prophetic Dream?"
Claire Noonan Bates Homily from Sunday Eucharist
Malcolm Nazareth "Here & Now with Anthony de Mello"
Liberation Theologies
in Latin American Today
Elsa Tamez
Presented at the Call To Action conference, Chicago, November
2-4. 2001.
There is a song by a well known Spanish singer named Juan Manuel Serrat. The title of the song is: "Disculpe Senor" that is: "Excuse me Sir." The meaning of the song is more or less this: "Excuse me Sir, but in the waiting room there are some poor people that want to talk with you. What should I say to them? Should I tell them that you left and that they may come tomorrow.." In the next verse the secretary enters again to the boss's office and and says "Excuse me Sir, but there are more poor people, the waiting room is full of them, and adds, " Do you want me to call . Guard to check if all these people have their papers in order.... ". In the third verse the secretary comes back to her boss to tell him that things are worse and worse. There are millions of poor people coming. The secretary finishes saying: "If you don't need me now I'll go home, and may God protect and inspire you, because the problem is that these poor people don't realize that Karl Marx is dead and buried."
This song reflects the mentality of many people after the fall of the Berlin wall and the failure of historic socialism. For them it seems that with the collapse of this system all the social problems and the inequalities have been resolved. The poor, economically speaking, continue to exist even with the fall of socialism. They do not even know who Karl Marx is. For many, after the 1990s speaking of social and political change means something out of style or old fashioned. To talk about revolution is something anachronistic, likewise to talk about the poor. This sound somewhat tedious and repetitive for those who love new things. Therefore Liberation Theology as it was known in books lost its relevance for some readers. Many people from the First World and some from Latin America think that Latin American Theology has already accomplished its role or its purpose in history.
And this is because after the 90s, with the end of the Cold
War way of thinking, that was rigid and bipolar, was undermined.
The world was seen as more complex. New theories started to be
attractive. Crucial dimensions, that had been ignored because
of the urgency of political praxis began to appear, such as daily
life, subjectivity, the importance of the body, the environment,
the culture, the other religions, etc. New theological actors,
like women, indigenous people and those of African descent , that
were not taken seriously before, manifested themselves freely
and openly. Liberation Theology was as, then, impacted and challenged
by a new reality. And this is the current situation that it is
experiencing and that it is not well known in the USA and in Europe.
Liberation Theology is going through deep transformations. The
new actors in this Theology have
enlarged it to the extent that we speak in plural of Liberation
Theologies, where the poor
continue to be a central concern but not the only one.
It could not be another way. If Liberation Theology had been close-minded it wouldn't have been faithful to its own method. We know that Liberation Theology is not a theology subject. It is a Method of doing theology. It shows a way of doing theology. Its starting point is reality, concrete life, where the people experience oppression and discrimination, and at the same time they have an encounter with the God of life and solidarity. And this God invites us to transform that negative reality. Theological thinking, that is the systematization of the discourse, is a second moment of this reality and praxis. Every historical situation, every different experience of oppression and discrimination will require anew discourse, always liberating.
In the 1990s the course of history changed. Our eyes were opened to new realities not seen before, and new Theologies of Liberation emerged strongly. Besides the cry of the poor, the cry of the earth, of the poor women, of the poor blacks, of the poor indigenous was heard. Otherness, culture and the ecology dimensions were added to the economic and politic dimensions. Also, biblical hermeneutics is now a very important movement.
It is important to mention that, particularly during the first
part of the last decade, the strength of the people's movement
became weak. But thanks to the weakness of the revolutionary and
protagonist movement, the feminist, the indigenous and the black
movements erupted. These movements existed already but they were
not considered to be really important. In my opinion it is because
the majority of the actors in Liberation Theology were men, mestizos
and white. The moment when women, indigenous and blacks became
actors in doing theology, Liberation Theology was enriched and
increased. It passed from singular to plural. Today there are
more and more women, indigenous and Afro doing theology of liberation
from their own realities of oppression and discrimination, looking
for transformation and shaping their theological thoughts.
Their discourse reflects their own experience of God. I will refer
to these three Liberations Theologies briefly.
I start with the Feminist Theology. I consider myself a liberation theologian and a feminist theologian, so I am a Feminist theologian of liberation. Since the beginning a very few women were in the Liberation Theology movement. But we did theology in the same way that men did. There was no distinction. It was in the '80s when we women started to appropriate for ourselves the method of Liberation theology. We began to reflect on the poor woman's perspective as doubly oppressed because of her gender and her class. Little by little women entered in theological studies. Today there are a considerable quantity of women students and professors of theology. The Latin American Feminist theology has made several interesting jumps that can be perceived in different Congresses (in 1980, '85, '94 and 2001). In the beginning the theology started with the experience of poor women as point of reference. We emphasized their condition of economic oppression as women. That is what we call today the Feminization of poverty. Later we reflected on women's identity, and on the theological discourse as revealing their otherness as women. Phrases like "I feel God in a different way" or "tenderness praxis", together with "justice praxis", let us see this moment of feminization of God and theology. Afterwards the gender theories were seriously taken into consideration and since then began to challenge the orthodox theology, built with patriarchal categories. A deconstruction and reconstruction of the systematic theology and the biblical hermeneutic has been proposed. Traditional church leaders are very afraid of that. Today there is variety in the theological approaches of Latin-American women theologians. Some of them follow ecofeminism; others are more close to the economic and politic struggle approach. However the majority of Latin American Women adopt the gender theories. In the present, Latin American Women theologians have a fruitful dialogue not only with First World women theologians but also with women theologians from Africa and Asia. Women scholars are the best organized, they gather every one or two years to work on biblical text from their own hermeneutic approach.
Indigenous Theology, made by the indigenous people from the diverse Latin-American cultures has advanced firmly since its flowering in 1992. This theology is not new. It has always existed, however, it was carried out clandestinely because it had been catalogued as syncretistic and bad by christian orthodoxy, The indigenous theologian Zapoteca, Eleazar Lopez says: "The theological and spiritual voice of the indigenous communities appears as a rediscovery of deep identities. This is a great challenge to the institutions that traditionally had been considered as the only owners of the truth about God. In a dialogue with Liberation Theology, the Cuna theologian Aiwan Wawa had said that "the option for the poor" should be "the option for the impoverished other." In this option otherness is included. Indigenous theology, or Indian or Amerindian theology is conscious of its plurality, because there is no theology that embodies all the indigenous theologies of each indigenous culture. This way of doing theology is enriched by the ancestral wisdom and its own categories of thinking and expressing their encounter with God. Their experience and resistance, its theological heritage, splendidly rich in stories and myths is now refashioned and used to renew the struggle for the Kingdom of God. According to Eleazar Lopez, "The current erruption of indigenous theologies with its many forms, is a call of life for every body, but especially for the church. In the indigenous searching of God the Church will find reasons to rejuvenate and continue the struggle for the Kingdom. The place that our people deeply long for through their myths and utopias". According to this theologian, church and indigenous peoples can joint forces and spiritual energies to reinvigorate life and to find human and Christian alternatives to the cur-rent crisis that afflicts the world. In brief, indigenous theology in Latin America is cosmic, celebratory, communal, contemplative and very concerned with inter-religious dialogue.
The Afro-Latin-and Caribbean theology embraces the black theology coming from South America, Central America and the Caribbean. In these regions there are black communities that, even though living in different situations because of their geographical location, identify with each other. That is because they share common experiences such as slavery, racism and a neoliberal economical system that oppresses the poorest, among whom are many blacks.
There have been several congress -and workshops where they share, affirm and advance in their Afro-Latin-American theological thinking. In these places one can observe how they articulate the problems with which they are confronted: the racial-thnic, cultural, religious, economic and afrofeminist-Latin-American questions. Nevertheless, for the Latin American black theologian racism precedes the other realities, because before they being oppressed by poverty they experience discrimination for the color of their skin. They say that, the mestizos and whites who are poor can camouflage their situation of disadvantage, and avoid discrimination but not the blacks and indigenous.
Another very significant characteristic of Afro-Latin-American theology, is the serious consideration of afro-religious expressions; for example the Candomble from Brazil or the Vudu from Haiti. These expressions are often manifested in symbiosis with popular Catholicism. Currently according to the Brazilian Black theologian, Antonio Aparecido da Silva, one of the most important things that is happening among the afro descendents in Latin America is the realization or assumption of their own identity as Afro-Latin Americans or afro-Caribbean. They are making room in all levels of pastoral or civil black organizations for the recuperation and reaffirmation of the black identity. Coming from different countries they are going beyond the national borders in Latin America in order to identify the common causes that unite them. Among the common causes are the diaspora experience, poverty, afro-religiosity and the liberation utopias. This is the space where their theology emerges
These Theologies including Liberation Theology have started a dialogue among themselves. It has begun in workshops and congresses of theology. It hasn't be easy. In the beginning the necessary affirmation of identity of each theology gave no room for dialogue. However, the time arrived when dialogue started. Theologians from the different theologies of liberation (both women and men), have met on different occasions. They have seen the need to band together as they experience every stronger blows from neoliberal economic politics.
Liberation Theology centered in the economic-political transformation was forced to rethink its outlook and include other topics not considered before. For instance, the cultural concern or the holistic point of view that are strongly present in the three theologies are contributions that have enriched Latin-American thinking. Likewise, one could say the same about subjectivity and the dimensions of daily life that are visible in the three theologies.
So then, in Latin America we cannot talk about one Liberation Theology only but of Liberation Theologies. The most important concern now of all theologies is the link between the contexts of economic and political oppression, with which we are living because of globalization. The debate that we have right now is whether Latin American Liberation Theology should be "the umbrella" of all liberation theologles or if all theologies should walk side by side, including Liberation Theology. In fact, each theology at the same time that it theologizes its specificity is looking for an economic mid political transformation also. This is because women, indigenous and blacks are part of the excluded from the neoliberal market system.
Let's go back to the song we started with, where the poor don't
know that Marx is dead and therefore they continue claiming their
rights. The fact that we live in a different time in which the
mind opens to a very complex world, in which new theories appear
as to be better instruments for understanding the secrets of the
world or the fact that we live at a moment in history when terrorism
has become visible in the USA, don't make disappear a powerful
and unjust economic system that causes enormous inequalities in
the world and excludes millions. We believe that terrorism is
a product of the effects of the globalization. Therefore to struggle
against terrorism and for areal peace means to struggle not only
against some crazy suicidal terrorist but against the globalization
of the free market also.
Living Peace: A Spirituality
of Gospel Non-Violence
John Dear, Philadelphia CTA Conference, Sept 15, 2001
(Dear's talk was delivered fours days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. This is a transcript of an audio tape.)
I was with some peacemakers over the summer and someone was saying to me, "Everything we've been through, the Vietnam war, Central America, anti-apartheid, anti-homelessness, anti-nuclear, is in preparation for something to come. All of our lives for peace and justice, as Christians, and we've seen it this week, and it's going to get worse."
I was in Los Angeles at the Call To Action conference and I was saying, "Things are going to get worse, things are going to get worse." I had a whole talk there. To be honest with you, I am totally wiped out and in a total state of shock, and in total grief. I was thinking this is absurd of me even to speak, we should just sit in silence for the weekend or go and sit in at the White House or something. I was in the World Trade towers four times last weekend. I was coming back from a wedding and had dinner there by myself. You know, I live in Manhattan and everybody in Manhattan is totally wiped out by what has happened, but everyone knows somebody. I spent two hours in the bookstore there talking to these people, and now they are all gone.
I went in on Tuesday, a lot of my community walked in there, we went to St Vincent's church, we went down as far as we could and then I spent all day Thursday and Friday - I got accepted by the Red Cross to be a chaplain. They set up Thursday morning in downtown Manhattan the main armoury as a place for family members to register. So within three hours they had 3,000 people lining the streets to go inside. I was inside and immediately family members were coming up, breaking into tears.
The first woman was a young 24 year old who was married one year and her 24 year old husband is on the 103rd floor and "I know I am going to see him, he' s still up there," and she is crying, and "Let's pray together." Up until yesterday afternoon. Then I left all that. And also talking to police officers. I'm an ex-con you know, a long felon record, and here I am ministering to the police. So that 's one of the reasons why I'm in a shock. They are crying too, for what they have seen, not just because of their friends who have died but their stories, they all had to do shifts, it is much, much more horrific than is on TV. So anyway, we all know that.
And then on the way here yesterday afternoon, I went to the funeral of Fr Mike, the Franciscan priest who went right there with the fire department and was killed. He is having his funeral now as we speak. He was just a great guy.
And the country is just rattling on for war. We're going to annihilate Afghanistan, and Baghdad, Iraq if it is even more possible, or Pakistan, or Libya or everybody, ending states, Bush says in this morning's Daily News which has a horrific picture of Bush at the pulpit at the national cathedral. Calling upon God, as if God is going to lead us in a victory of the new millennium of war.
I just spent the whole year working on a book on Gandhi and the minute the bomb went off in Hiroshima, he said, "Unless the world adopts non violence, we are doomed, we are doomed." And he said that up the hour he was killed, if you really study his work, and that is the way I feel.
Like all of you, I'm just trying to, I don't know what to say. But I'm just expressing my feelings. I 've been thinking of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, image that scene, his whole life is to make the journey to Jerusalem, and he gets there and he breaks down and cries and said, "If only you had understood the ways of peace. "
And you think of Mary and John and the women at the foot of the cross, which is another image of where we are, and that haunting, I think terrible line of Jesus, from Luke chapter 13, where he says, " You remember the 18 people who were killed when the tower fell down at Siloam, and you think they are more guilty that the people of Jerusalem? Not at all! But unless you repent, you will all perish like they did." What a thing to say in light of a disaster! I mean, that is his words, yet I've thought about that since Tuesday, you know, all of us, all of us, and all of us in the this room, repenting, repenting of the culture of violence. And learning to enter into the gospel non-violence.
So we are in a time of great grief, all of us, we are all grieving, all the people in the country are mourning, and the world. And that is our first thing, I think, as part of our ministry of peace, and it is a time of prayer, a time of deepening non violence, a time of interfaith work more than ever, building communities of peace, a time of action and I think with this conference becoming a church of peace that teaches the message of Jesus that we are not a people who retaliate. Our message is, violence doesn't work, violence doesn't solve anything, violence only leads to further violence and the never ending spiral of violence. Killing people who kill people is not the way to teach people that killing is wrong. Bombing those who bomb doesn't stop the bombing. State sanctioned terrorism does not stop terrorism. Violence in response to violence only leads to further violence.
Star War! Hundreds of billions of dollars to put nuclear weapons into outer space is not going to stop the terrorism of this violence. It is all insanity, not just immoral and illegal and impractical and anti-Christ, anti-God, anti-human. Our message is that there is not only no just war, there is no justified violence, no justified bombings. We don't retaliate (applause.)
I think we have to spend the weekend talking about that, preparing to go home and being apostles of non violence, prophets of peace. Everyone we meet, love, compassion, non-violence, but we don't promote killing. So maybe I could just say a few things and then we can have a conversation. In LA, I told a lot of stories about my life, and what happened to me, and how I got in a lot of trouble. It was very sad (laughter.)
Maybe I could just tell one or two brief stories that helped me. I don't know if they will help us now. In 1985 I went to live and work in El Salvador. You remember in the midst of all the horrible stuff happening in El Salvador, we were getting all these messages from the Jesuits and a group of us young Jesuits go into downtown Salvador and the first day I was there, we had this meeting with the famous Jesuit president of the university and theologian Ignacio Ellacuria. And he is the president of the university and these guys are like 50 Martin Luther Kings, and I still haven't recovered from the Jesuits of El Salvador. And we sit down with him, and his first words I want to tell you, I want to ask you to reflect on, he says, "The purpose of our work here in El Salvador is to promote, to proclaim the reign of God." I was like, "Wow!" because I had just come from Georgetown University and I couldn't imagine the president saying the purpose of Georgetown is to promote the reign of God. It was like, make a lot of big bucks. And then, he said, "However, you can no longer be for the reign of God unless you stand up publicly, publicly, and actively against the anti-reign. You can no longer say you are for peace unless you are publicly, actively against war. " In other words, you can't, it's no longer good enough to say "I'm a good person, I'm doing good in the world," you have to also publicly, actively stand up against evil and resist evil.
That's what Gandhi said. Non cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good, and that's an important truth and lesson that we need to learn and it is hard and horrible, but it means standing up and saying "No" to retaliation and violence and further warfare. And so he said, "So we are here in El Salvador, we are against not only the rebels and the starvation and the poverty and the injustice, we are against U.S. military aid and the bombings and all the gunsand they are going to kill us. But we are proclaiming the reign of God."
And that night we had dinner at the house of the Jesuits in a little room about a quarter the size of this room with a big bay window, and one of them said, "John, look around, look around the room." The whole room was covered with bullet holes, and they been strafed a dozen times. They said, "Look at the chair you are sitting on," and I notice it is all chipped. He said, "One time we were at dinner like this, we saw the black sedan coming around the corner, we all ducked, they opened fire, and they kept going and we went on." And they are laughing.
They were bombed 21 times between 1979 and 1985. One night, the bomb goes off outside the window at 4 am and blows open the window, the Jesuit in the bed flies across the room and he remains asleep (laughter.) They are all laughing, making fun, and I'm sitting there like this, shaking. And one of them turns to me and said, " This is what it means to be a Christian, John. We are not going to leave." They were averaging 10-15 death threats a week for the previous 7 years.
And then they sent us out to work in refugee camps for three months and we saw the daily bombs and were interrogated and then we would have these reflection sessions with them, and they were getting a great kick out of the whole thing of these young gringo Jesuits down there.
You know, of course, on Nov 16, 1989, they were woken up at 1 am and dragged out and put in front and forced to lay down on the lawn and shot in the head and, not to gross you out but as John Sobrino later told me, their brains were removed and put next to them. As Sobrino says, the message was sent to all over Latin America, "This is what you get if you THINK about reality, if you think about reality." Sobrino would say we have to think about what is happening in the world and speak about it. We have to be people who proclaim the reign of God, the reign of peace and non violence and justice and we have to stand up publicly against the anti-reign of war, injustice, and violence and death and destruction.
And you know, what does one do? So my friends and I like all of you, have just been organizing, and speaking out, and traveling and lobbying and crossing lines all over the country; this is our life of non violent resistance against evil and its just led me into jail cells across the country but my passion for many year, even through the Gulf War. I was living in California at the time, and we were having daily demonstrations that never got into the media, with thousands, and then 100,000 people and 200,000 with larger civil disobedience even than during the Vietnam War.
But how do I, I who have known martyrs, practice the gospel like they did, to the point of risking one's life? Can it be done in this country? This has been a big question of mine for the last 20 years; I've been at this for about 21 years. And so, on December 7, 1993, with Philip Berrigan and two others, after 10 years of preparation and all kinds of other experiences, I walked at 4 am into the Seymour Johnson air force base in Goldsberg, NC, the cutting edge of the US war machine where the F15 and F16s are, the same planes that are now flying over Manhattan and flying over DC breaking the sound barrier all week. And we walked past the "Trespassers will be shot on sight," sign, you know, "Shoot to kill," sign.
At 4 am through the darkness, through a field, up the hill, down the hill, through a creek, up a hill, and there before us lay the whole Seymour Johnson air force base. Three huge airports with 75 of these huge airplanes, thousands of soldiers milling about, police cars at 4 in the morning, and Phil and I were absolutely socked because we said to ourselves, "While the rest of us sleep, the war machine barrels on full steam." We didn't know it but they were in the midst of full scale war games to bomb Bosnia. Remember, in 1993. Those planes can carry nuclear weapons, they were used during the Gulf War.
What does one do? So we were envisaging the prophet Isaiah who says, "Some great day, the people are going to climb up the mountain of God, God is going to instruct them, they are going to go down the mountain, the first thing they are going to do is disarm." Because once you meet God, you realize God is a God of peace and you have to disarm. And they go down the mountain and they beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks and thinking of Jesus, who said, "Love your enemies, don't nuke 'em," we walked in fear and trembling and here comes one big airplane with no one around it and we each had a little hammer and I came up to the side of it and I went like this... you know, it's like the old cartoons, you say "Take that!" I didn't even put a dent in it! But "swords into ploughshares" .
Immediately there are 10 soldiers with machine guns aimed at us and then 20, and I was the spokesperson for the group. We had practiced all this, and I said, " We are unarmed, peaceful people. We mean you no harm, we are just here to dismantle this weapon." (laughter). I thought they were going to. Gosh, you know, when you go through something horrific like that, you think, 'Well, that's very reasonable" You thing that people would say, "Of course! Why didn't we think that! Go right on ahead. Dismantle them all. What were we thinking?" For a split second, they are standing there looking at us, with machine guns, and we are looking at them with a hammer and a bible, but then things got really serious, and they threw us on the ground, and there were a hundred soldiers, then 500 soldiers and then a thousand soldiers, they had 3 machine guns at each one of our heads and our faces were in the ground and they were kicking us and I'm thinking of Ignacio Ellacuria, and the Jesuit martyrs, face down on the ground at UCA in El Salvador, and I thought, "Oh, oh, oh, you can practice the gospel here in the United States and risk your life, if you dare." And it means walking with our fears into these places of death, and saying, "No more. Not in my name." We are going to stand up and resist the anti reign of death. And practice Jesus' gospel non violence. And it is going to be risky.
And so they put us in jail and I faced 20 years in prison on two felony counts of destruction of government property and conspiracy to commit a felony crime and it was horrible. You know, I've been reading Gandhi for 20 years and he's saying "Oh, you've got to widen the prison gates, enter it like the bridal party. " My cell was half the size of this little stand I'm on, Phil was in the bottom bunk, I was in the top bunk, here's the toilet, here's the slot in the door. We never left for 8 months.
There is no way to describe the reality of prison. We were in county jails throughout North Carolina and we never actually made it to prison. We went into trial, we ended up disrupting the trial because we didn't like what was being said, and we got more time for contempt, and I mean, I could go on and on about that, the incredible experience. Maybe I will just tell you one story.
At Phil's trial, I was called in as a witness and there is a packed courtroom like this, and there is a mean old judge here and jury right here, and they all hate us and they all work at Seymour Johnson air force base and Ramsey Clark, the former Attorney General says, "OK, Fr. John, what did you see happen on December 7?"
I said, " I saw Phil Berrigan stand up for humanity and spark disarmament and show us a way out of our madness," and they are pounding the gavel with, "You can't say that! Get out! Take him out." You know, "Off with his head." So the prosecutor stands up and, I'm silenced, and the prosecutor stands up and starts yelling at me, pointing his finger, "Who drove the car? Who drove you to the Seymour Johnson air force base?" And I said, we practiced this too, "We take responsibility for our own actions, we're not going to incriminate anybody." They are trying to widen the circle of conspiracy, you know. As far as the government is concerned, I am as top a terrorist, seriously, as the people who did the World Trade towers, they think that anyone who goes into nuclear weapons bases are the same kind of terrorist. So they are really trying to go after the Ploughshares Movement. I could tell you more about that.
So the judge orders the jury out, and he starts yelling at me, "You can't plead the 5th, you've got to, you know, its five more years of contempt," the years are piling up for me already, and he's saying, "You've got to tell, you've got to tell," and I finally said, "OK, I'll tell who drove the car." There is stunned silence. I'm looking at all my friends in the peace movement at the back and they are all like this, and the jury is brought back in and the prosecutor yells at me, and says, "Who drove the car?" and I say " Thank you, thank you for pushing me to the truth of this question. Because the truth is, we were driven to the Seymour Johnson air force base by the Holy Spirit." (laughter). He's pounding the gavel, "Off with his head! Take him out! Strike that! Get the jury out of here!" That's exactly what happened. They canceled the trial. They wiped me out, dragged me out.
I had hundreds of experiences like that, I mean, the gospel just comes alive when you take so many risks. And what I am learning, what I am learning like all of you working for peace and justice, is the ancient lesson, you know from the Abolitionist, the Abolitionists working to abolish slavery, there is thousands of years, to the Suffragettes, only a hundred years, you know these great women marching the streets as if they are going to get the right to vote. To the abolition movement, to the civil rights movement, to the anti war movement, to the earth movement, the old lesson: that in the end of these movement, positive non violent social change only happens when good people break bad laws and accept the consequences. In other words, when we risk ourselves, when we take an extra step and it is we can't lose, we can't lose, if we keep going forward and giving our lives to these causes and the creation of the world without war and weapons, even to the point of going to prison for the rest of our lives or getting killed, we can't lose. If we do it in a spirit of love and peace. That is what he proved in South Africa and in India.
This is the lesson of Jesus, that peace will only come about through that old theological term, the Pascal Mystery. Actually, when I was in prison, I got thousands of letters, but it was Joan Chittister who wrote to me that really, I got it, she said "I couldn't even write to you. This is like 6 months I'm sitting here, I didn't know what I was going to say to you. What does anyone say to someone like that? Well, I've thought and thought and thought," this is what she writes to me, " I guess the only way we are going to help change anything is by walking throughout the Pascal Mystery of Jesus." And I think, "Oh, right, the Cross." That was what Ellacuria was trying to tell me in El Salvador and that was what the peace movement and all these great movements of non violence are about, taking up our own cross, and going forward.
OK, in a nutshell: I think the world is addicted to violence and death as a normal legal way of proceeding. There are 35 wars happening right now, and the U. N. says every day, 60,000 people, mostly women and children, die from starvation. Every day. On top of that, we have the whole litany of violence, from death penalty, torture, imprisonment; we could go on and on. We have the whole corporate, multinational greed situation that is depressing the poor, leaving 2 billion people in total misery like the World Trade towers landed on them long ago. We are destroying the planet, from the ozone to the oceans, it is a whole culture of violence. And on August 6, 1945, as a people addicted to war, yes, you retaliate, we crossed the line by dropping this bomb on Hiroshima and vaporizing 140,000 people. Today we have 30,000 nuclear weapons, no movement for peace treaties, we are dismantling all the peace treaties, including the ABM in a few months, we are going to put nuclear weapons all around the planet, we are headed towards destroying the planet. I think if we are going to use Ellacuria as a model, in thinking about reality, the World Trade Centers is inevitable, if you understand that you reap what you sow, and it is going to continue to be so horrific.
We are addicted to violence, and the only way out is through the sobriety of non violence. Martin Luther King - the most powerful thing he said for me, was the night before he was killed, before he said "I've been to the Promised Land, looked over and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there, but we as a people will get there." But just before that, he said, "The choice is no longer violence or non violence, that is not what we are talking about. It is non violence or non existence." And he was deadly serious with this message over and over and over again. How deeply have you, have we, gone into that question? It's so powerful.
For me, non violence comes from the heart. It is the vision that all life is sacred, that every human being on earth is equal, that we are all sisters and brothers of one another, every human being a child of the God of peace. Once you accept that, that we are equal, every human being, you can never hurt another human being, much less kill somebody, much less allow war, mass murder, nuclear weapons and poverty and starvation and racism and sexism and torture to continue in your name. That is the vision of non violence. So non violence is not passivity. That's another way of looking ....It is action: creative, public, resistant action for love and truth that seeks justice and peace for the whole human race, for the whole human family, Giving our whole lives for it, on one condition, there's one thing: there is no cause for which we will hurt or kill another human being. Rather, we are a people who are willing to suffer in the struggle for justice and peace. Without even the desire to seek revenge or retaliation. We are a people like Jesus who don't inflict killing on others but who are willing to be killed as we seek love and justice and truth for the whole human race, for the whole human family.
For me the only way out, speaking as a Christian in these days, is to keep returning to this, by looking at Jesus. I think Jesus is completely the face of the God on non violence. Everything he did was about non violence. Gandhi had this famous quote, "Jesus was the most active resister of personal non violence (sic) in the history of the world and the only people in the whole world who don't know he is non violent are Christians." That is a very sad statement, and we have to start teaching that, it's really the only way out. So, all Jesus is saying is, not only love God, not only love one another, love your enemies. Then-the only place the only where I think he really describes God-then you will be like God who gives the sun to the good and the bad, and the rain falls on the just and the unjust and you will be like God, be compassionate like God is compassionate. Forgive everyone, seek justice for everyone. His last words, his last words that we really know, with the gang around him, "Put down the sword," as he is being dragged away; that is what they heard. Think about it; we still haven't heard that message of Jesus.
He is organizing the poor in Galilee, healing, forgiving, loving, encouraging, saying "God loves you," then says, "We're going to Jerusalem." Then everything he does, I think, is illegal. And civilly disobedient. He breaks every law imaginable trying to get us to be human, and he is on this campaign-imagine Gandhi's salt march, that is the way I think of Jesus-going to Jerusalem, he goes into Jerusalem, he turns over the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple, the center of systemic injustice, and says, "No more, this is a house of God." And they arrest him and torture him and execute him, a victim of the death penalty. As he dies on the Cross, he says, "The violence stops here, in my body, but I still insist on the vision of non violence and love and truth." And God raises him from the dead, and he comes back and says to the community, "Now you go back there and you start the same journey to your own Jerusalems." And that is where we are today.
Maybe a few little points, then we will have some discussion. What to do, now and in the days ahead? This is for myself. I think, what is the spirituality of non violence, how do we live the life of gospel non violence and peace. For me, again, it is about action, and I would begin with action. It is the title of our organization, Call To Action. We are not just called into action, we are acting. I had the chance to know Cesar Chavez pretty well, and about a month before he died, I spent an evening with him. I said, "What do you say to people? If I get invited to speak to people, what should I say? What do we do?" And without blinking he went like this (gestures) "Public action, public action, public action. Tell people to act publicly for justice and peace." That is why I tell you that. That is the same thing Ellacuria said, that is what King and Gandhi and Dorothy Day said, you have to stand up. In the days ahead, we all have to, you know, we are going to have to organize and stand up publicly as the war continues.
"Don't just stand there, do something." And "Don't just do something, stand there." So take a stand and keep acting. You don't have to do everything, but do one or two things as Romero said, and do them well, with a good heart, with a lot of heart, and in a great, deep spirit of non violence.
Secondly, practice non violence, talk about non violence, deepen non violence in your own lives, study it if you haven't, explore it. I'm just so edified by the great sisters all over School Of Americas movement, the Hennessy sisters from Iowa, Sr Dorothy is 88 years old and she is doing a 6 month term right now, in prison, which is going to be very hard. Don't romanticize jail. I didn't say, and I want to mention now, just as the jail experience was very hard, it was also a profound spiritual experience of grace. So I think that is where I met God. And what I'm trying to say is that Sr Dorothy, at some point, stopped going to conferences, and said I'm not going to sit at home in the community in retirement, I'm going to cross the line, and if they put me in for 6 months, I'm going to go there. She is challenging me to keep doing the same thing. And I invite you to reflect on it, to take another step on the road of non violence.
Third, the only way to become people of peace, to live a spirituality of non violence as well, is through prayer. As Nancy said last night, we have also to be contemplative. What do I mean? Especially in these days, if we are glued to the TV, we are going to be filled with so much despair, as we are watching what is going to be unfolding this week. No, we have to turn to the God of peace every day for an hour and meditate, and there, meet the God of peace, allow the God of peace to disarm our hearts which are filled with violence. Every one of us could push a button, could kill someone, could fly that plane, I mean, this is what Thich Nhat Hanh has been trying to teach. We are all one, we are all people, we are the victims as well as the terrorists, and we all have to be disarmed. And we can only be disarmed by God. And that happens through prayer and fasting, certainly. And then we can become channels of God's peace, because we don't know what to do. We are addicted, and so we have to turn to a higher power, and let the Holy Spirit of God fill us with peace and then show us what to do, even in the day by day and hour by hour thing.
Fourth, community. Community is so critically important as we go back to our local communities. I mean forming communities of peace, peacemaking and resistance in our parishes. I could talk about his endlessly. You know, a lot of people, our friends, ourselves, are going to sit home and watch TV, it numbs you, fills you with despair. That is not the answer. The only way to get out of that is to go and meet with a couple of friends. Maybe once a week, or even more than that, meet together and say, "What are we going to do? OK, we are going to vigil, we are going to organize, we're going to send contributions, we are going to do non violent civil disobedience, or something." So form communities, and ultimately the church is the great community.
The fifth thing I've just mentioned is the whole business that we are here for, the church. I was speaking with one of the speakers last night in the hallway and we were talking about reforming the church. I would just say, I think change in the church will only come about non violence and Gandhi's word of satyagraha. That powerful image that Nancy gave last night about being hospice workers and midwives. Hospice workers practice satyagraha. She said they are very gentle people. And midwives are very determined, they are in there in the blood and the pain and they are making something good happen. Helping something good to be born. What I am talking about is being purged of our resentment and our anger and our hatred for church officials. We are not getting anywhere if we are going to be filled at resentment with certain people in the church. So we don't maybe deserve a new church if we are still a people of all this violence who hate certain people in the church, if you see what I am saying. Resentment is one part of it. I've been studying the scribes and the pharisees for years, and they are filled with resentment. There is a big part of us. They were trying to make things right. You could argue from Jesus' perspective and we can't be people of resentment and violence and hatred.
That means becoming the church now that we wish the church to be. You know, as we are seeking to reform the church, we have to be the community of peace and non violence in the name of Jesus. That is us, everybody in this room, it's nobody else, we have to become the church we want to seek. By that I mean the famous line of Martin Luther King, you know, Dan Berrigan whom I lived with never met Dr. King but he heard him once at Selma, and he was blown away, the one line he remembered was Martin Luther King saying his definition of the church. "The church," Dr. King said, "is the place you go from." Isn't that powerful? In other words, we don't stay put, it is just the beginning, we go out into the world with the message of non violence which says that we don't retaliate, you don't seek revenge, you love one another.
Sixth, this is a critical question, what is your image of God? Who is your God? It may be THE question of the times. It is is the question of St Ignatius, and the heart and the best of Jesuit spirituality. Who is the God you worship?Yesterday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President and the warriors were in the National Cathedral, worshiping god with a small 'g', calling down blessing for a preparation for war. I think this is the critical bottom line reason for all the problems in the world, and I think you can go behind this, and Gandhi as well, it is a matter of faith. What is your image of God? I think through our experiences we keep talking about this. We are learning the good news if we dare take another step on the road of non violence and the life of peace, that our God is not a god of war, but the God of peace. Not a god who blesses bombings but a God of mercy. Not a god of vengeance, retaliation, can't wait to throw us all into hell, but a God of unconditional love for every human being, boundless mercy and forgiveness. Not a god of violence but the God of non violence. Not a god of death, but the God of life. Do you believe that God is non violent? Do you worship a God of non violence? That is a powerful question and I don't think you should answer it right now, I think you should sit with that question in the months ahead and share it with your communities. Why? Because I believe if we start to imagine God as the God of peace and non violence, and start to worship a God of peace and non violence, we then will become people of peace and non violence. And I think we don't believe God is non violent. But that is the image of Isaiah, you climb the mountain, you meet God, you get disarmed, and you start disarming.
The last thing is just to keep our eyes on Jesus in these times, to take up the Cross of non violence and the enter through our own lives into the Pascal Mystery. In the process we will find hope, I think. We have to give each hope, we have to hold each other's hands and comfort each other. But the best way I have found to be hopeful is to do hopeful things. It is very, very simple. You don't have to do everything, but one or two hopeful things, always engaging in them, and not to place our hope, as Thomas Merton said, in "Trying to end it all tomorrow. We're going to bring peace or be effective, or straighten everything out." That's the way the Pentagon thinks. We are human like Jesus, compassionate. We live in the hope of resurrection and the God of peace. We want to do hopeful things and follow Jesus on the road of the Cross.
So I encourage us to go back home to our communities. They are going to need us now more than ever. To form groups, to do public actions, to study and practice non violence, and most of all, to become apostles of non violence and prophets of non violence, prophets of peace in our local communities. Then we will become the church and we will receive the gift of the church of peace from the God of peace. We will receive it as a gift, and we will become signs of living peace in this time of war.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Q.
The Taliban is not the people of Afghanistan, the Taliban are
young male thugs who are among other things persecute women through
a deliberate distortion of the Koran and I pray every day, "to
the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, preferably non violently."
I'm not a pacifist, I just use the word "preferably non violently.'
The point I want to make is that these things, racism, sexism,
militarism, and lots of other things, are very interconnected
and I've been wearing this patch, a piece of this mesh that goes
across the eyes of the women in Afghanistan when they wear the
burqa and you are not allowed to have medical care or to go to
school. But, what I want to say, is that the persecution of the
women in Afghanistan to me is intimately linked to the overall
militarism of the people, misguided. I wouldn't want want the
gender justice issues in church and society to be put aside in
the wake of this particular issue like happened in England at
the time of World War 1.
DEAR
One of the Jesuits was saying to me as I was leaving yesterday,
"Oh, the only way out is if good Muslim leaders around the
world stand up and say, 'This is not Islam'." And I said
to him, "No good religious leaders who are practicing non
violence are going to get the attention of the media around the
world." I don't want to point the finger at any Muslims because
it is us Christians who are going to be devastating Afghanistan.
We have to start standing up and being the voice of Christ non
violent. That is one thought.
Having worked at the Fellowship Of Reconciliation, which is the largest interfaith peace organization in the world, I'm totally convinced that Islam is about non violence. As is Judaism, as is Hinduism, and Buddhism, and Christianity. All of them. And I've met religious leaders around the world who have affirmed that. But this will not get into the media. What you are going to hear are the Taliban, Afghan leaders and all spouting their violence like our leaders are. But I urge you to keep in mind that we don't know what is going on over there, beside the horrible persecution, but the good people of all faiths who are resisting in small grassroots ways like we are. We just have to do what we can do. That is one thought.
Your thing about the issues being one. I couldn't agree more. All the issues are one, o-n-e. If you get involved in one or two, you are involved in all of the movement of non violent change. But I do urge you to speak out on Star Wars and the death penalty and the situation in Iraq.
Q
It struck me last evening as I was listening to a reporter
interview one of the so called terrorists who is now in prison,
and how he justified what they did as convinced that god is with
them and doing them. And it suddenly flashed me back to what the
President was saying in the cathedral, that sounds exactly the
same. The same kind of violence, god is on our side, to hit back.
DEAR
This is at the heart of the whole question. Remember back to the
Gulf War. From day one, "God bless us, God bless us."
Billy Graham spent the night at the White House on January 16,
1991, praying for direction on the bombing. At the same time,
Saddam and the other military leaders in the Middle East were
praying. So everyone is invoking god, and it is not God. But I
am urging us, really, not to point the finger at anyone, "Well,
who is your god?" Because it is in each one of us too, if
this truly is a culture addicted to violence, each one of us is
sick. You could talk about communities as creating, like the AA
model, communities of non violence where we gather together, "Hi,
I'm John, I'm addicted to violence." "Hi John"
and we go around. And we turn to the higher power, the God of
non violence. I think this is perhaps the number one task ot the
church at this point as we stand on the brink. If I could just
say one more word, it is just that I that, while I think things
are really bad, things are going to get worse. I'm not optimistic
at all. I'm terribly pessimistic. But I am hopeful. You remember
Barth said there is a difference between optimism and hope, hope
is the biblical word. So we believe in God, and maybe a lot of
people can wake up.
Q
Hi. I'm Candice, I'm addicted to violence. When we were all
traveling ... Barbara Lee, Representative from California, was
only vote in House of Representatives against us using all necessary
force. She stood alone. Her statement says she didn't do it for
show, she did it out of courage. The other thing is that, I would
love to see us all at noon down on Monument Ave, holding signs
and praying. If you are like myself, you have a number of signs
in the trunk of your car. I think we should gather.
Q
I think I understand what you said, and I can agree with it.
I think there is a complex issue here. I want to concentrate on,
what is our response to those specific people that inflicted this
punishment against the American people. What do we do with those
people? Do we bring them to justice?
And if we do, how?
DEAR
I mean, if you mention specific people, lots of them are dead.
I like your word, "specific," because, not to get philosophical,
but the specific people we are dealing with are the people in
this room. What I am trying to talk about is to be human with
one another and not to play god. Like we are going to solve this.
That is one thing that I think is very, very deep and very hard
for all us, especially in times like this, to be aware.
OK, people who are planning to blow up the world, like George Bush, maybe you are saying they need to be put into a program or prison where they are going to be disarmed or taught non violence. What I'm saying is that the world is, all the world leaders are complicit in terrorism.
Same Q
I understand what you are saying, but there are more people
that support this project that are still alive. What do we do?
They are still out there. Don't we have a right to bring those
people to justice?
DEAR
Sure, but that is the agenda of the Pentagon, but I don't like
ultimately that question. Yeah, we want justice, but justice,
but you look at justice in the question of the whole world, it's
a complex issue.
It is bigger than complex. When you have two billion living in poverty, when the military aid to Israel, the oil situation, the whole world trade situation. So, with all due respect, I don't know that as Christians, that is our question. I'm going to keep making this stupid and simple. As Mother Teresa said, "What would Jesus have us do?"
Same Q
I don't think it is simple. I think it is complex. And it think
you have to deal with these people. That is not an easy answer.
DEAR
I don't think I will ever personally, but if I do, I will be,
you know, forgiving. I don't want to kill them
Same Q
I didn't say that.
DEAR
I know, you're right, they are really deep questions. I just don't
want vengeance and violence. When the word "justice"
is used in the media, that is what it is translated as. And that
is not the biblical understanding of justice, I think. Thanks
for the question, keep talking, I don't have any answers.
Q
I want to draw everyone's attention to HR 2459 which is to
establish a department of peace. It is in Congress now. It is
to have the President to have a Secretary of Peace. ......Barbara
Lee is one of the cosponsors. Go back home and get your Congressman
to sponsor it. That is something concrete.
DEAR
That reminds me, if you are looking for concrete things to do,
at the Pax Christi table, they have the press release that went
out Tuesday afternoon, they have a prayer service on what to do
about the bombings, and praying for no retaliation, then they
have a list of concrete suggestions and you could probably also
get this on their web site.
Q
Could you elaborate on what Jesus really meant when he said,
"Vengeance is mine, I will repay."
DEAR
Sure. He never said it. It is not in any of the four gospels.
As I recall, he said things, "Love your enemies." I
mean, this is the whole thing, he came to fulfill the Law and
the Prophets, and it is love, love, love. He doesn't talk about
vengeance or revenge. He talks about... ("Oh," from
questioner). Yeah, that is in the Hebrew scriptures. There is
a very big difference. Read your sermon on the mount. Next!
Q
Oct 13 is international day against weaponisation of space.
DEAR
Very important. Every city in the country is hoping to have something.
It is in New York, in over 50 countries, it is international days
against Star Wars. That is a concrete thing you can get involved
with.
Q
Can you help us to find some ways in which God was present
in all this? I've heard of two different ways. One is that God
was grieving with all us. The other was that God was with all
the rescue workers, all the doctors and helpers. Can you help
us to find other ways of God's presence.
DEAR
That is a key question. I think God is present everywhere, among
us. But God is. As I understand the story of Jesus, after he rises
from the dead, he sends the Spirit upon the community of peacemaking,
community of non violence. So God is urging us to go out and to
disarm and to speak of repentance of violence and practicing non
violence. This reminds me to give an image. During the whole Kosovo
thing, there was a massive movement of non violence that got wiped
out, as you know, and wasn't supported internationally, but I
think God was very present there. So God is present among the
poor, the suffering, you know, as Jesus said in Matt. 25, among
those dying and in prison, I think God is present also in those
practicing God's way of non violence. That is a question we can
all sit with. Where is God? But I think God is grieving. These
are days of being with Christ crucified. But it is also Christ
going to Jerusalem.
Q
I'm a hospice nurse. About three months ago, I was taking care
of a man in his mid eighties who had been in World War II. I knew
he was going through some spiritual distress. I spent a lot of
time with him. He talked about his life, about what a good life
he had. Then he just broke down and talked about what he had done
in World War II. He was face to face with death at this point,
and this was the only regret he had in his life.
The second comment I wanted to make. Someone made a comment yesterday about not hating the military. They too, they are coming from a different direction, but I think if we hate them, if we are non violent we hate what they represent, but they too are human beings and we have to open up our hearts and try to understand where they are coming from and love all.
DEAR
Thank you so much for those moving statements. I think that what
you are saying is: In one of Dan Berrigan's books, he says that
during the Vietnam War, we have to tell and teach each other everything
we have been taught is a lie. You know, after the year 300 when
Constantine took over the church, not only did he set up bishops
and model the church on the empire, if you really look at the
history, that is what happened. He did it then so he could go
and wage war, and we've been doing it for 1700 years and saying
war is justified. Which has nothing to do with Jesus, so we have
to help like you did with that dying man, and say "No, no,
no," and that is what Jesus talked about, repentance. I'm
sorry about our participation in the military and I'm going to
accept Jesus' way of non violence.
The other thing you said is so important too. We can't hate the military and George Bush. That is not what Jesus is about. Go and study Dorothy Day and Gandhi if you can't get if from the gospel about we LOVE everyone so much that in the days ahead we are going to be doing things, organizing, doing vigils, contacting Congress, speaking out in the media, crossing lines and going to jail and saying, "No more bombings, not in our name." Because we love you. We are going to go deep, deep, deep into love. And that can only happen through prayer. Truly, really loving our enemies, everybody around the world, and the military leaders here at home that make, and our church leaders as well, however it is that we are filled with resentment and hate for
Q.
I'm a seminary student and campus minister. I have been aware
that the man who asked a question earlier, about what do we do
with these people, I've been aware of the pastoral dualism in
this the past few days. To hear the rage and fear that Americans
are expressing, and also to be present to the non violent ways
of Jesus. And I think that right now, believe it or not, that
our country is showing kind of a good model, they are not meaning
to I think. They are deliberating and waiting so they can have
a huge deliberation, but they are waiting. There is a deliberation,
and I think that right now an encouraging word is to say to people
that your confusion and non violence can co exist and that those
things can co exist well and that we can look to our country right
now and sit in this, sit in this as Christians, as people of God,
and ask yourself these deeper questions, and hopefully the minds
will cool and as people of God maybe we should be praying for
this deliberation. That as it lasts even longer, minds are cooling.
And that maybe a new model is forming.
DEAR
To follow up on that note, how about if we stand and have a 10
second prayed because all of this is so heavy...
We center ourselves again in the present of the God of peace, and welcome the God of peace into our broken hearts, into our grief, into our community, to the world.
God of peace, we thank you for the gift of life, this day, for the gift of peace which you are giving us. We ask you to fill our hearts with your spirit of peace and help us to go forward from this room as true followers of the non violent Jesus, as prophets of peace, apostles of peace. People who walk the road of non violence, breathing, full of compassion, full of wisdom, following your lead. Please disarm our hearts and make us instruments of your disarmament. We ask this in the name of Jesus, our brother and our peace. Amen
Call To Action After
25 Years - Was Detroit a Prophetic Dream?
Bernard Cooke
Presented at Call To Action conference, Nov 2, 2001 in Chicago
This evening we are gathered as what E. Johnson in her book on the communion of saints calls a community of memory, but also as a community of hope for the memory itself gives reason for hope. So, I hope we can together recall what has happened to us, especially in our faith awareness over the past quarter century. When sixteen hundred people gathered in Detroit twentyfive years ago it was a Pentecost moment. Carrying the hopes and dreams of millions whom they represented, guided by the visionary leadership of persons like Cardinal Dearden and Monsignor Jack Egan, they dreamed of what the Church might become in the United States and the world. Like the disciples on the first Pentecost, the Spirit moved them, young and old alike, to dream dreams and see visions. It was not a completely new dream, for it was the dream already shared worldwide a decade before at Vatican H., the dream of a Christian community of equal discipleship dedicated to the ministry of transforming the world. The question is: what happened to the dream? And the answer is: the dream still lives, CTA, i.e. us, live that dream along with many others - and what I wish to talk about with you for a few minutes is the way in which the vision of Vatican 11 and Detroit has changed the outlook on our lives and our faith over the past two and a half decades. I have no intention of reviewing the events or emerging structures that marked CTA's past quarter century - that has been thoroughly done in the most recent CTA publications. Instead I intend to focus on what has happened to us who make up CTA.
One thing to remember as we look at our recent history: what has been happening to us is part of an immense and radical shift in human culture - we have been privileged to be on the cutting edge of that shift, moved by God's Spirit to help make that shiftanother step in realizing the reign of God. And as good Pope John XXIII urged us, we must learn to read the signs of these times.
It is all too evident that there has not been within the Catholic Church a unified shift in our Christian worldview. As a matter of fact, one of the things that has characterized our thinking about our faith and ourselves has been an increasing division between ourselves and some others in the Church. Precisely because the change in understandings is so basic, the split between those who wish to move to something very new and those who wish to defend what is mistaken for tradition is deep and painful CTA has been one of the more open and evident proponents for the newness of Vatican 11, and for that has been attacked, sometime viciously, accused of abandoning authentic Catholic faith. It could not be otherwise, if we have been faithful to the dream. But part of that fidelity is remaining open to, listening to, and loving those who with their own genuine motivations are opposed to us - and I believe we have done that. One of the virtues that has marked CTA has been its inclusiveness, something that not everyone in the Church sees as a virtue. We have worked conscientiously at being inclusive, ethnically and racially, ordained and non-ordained, women and men, young and old
But we ourselves have changed a good deal, even in the short span of CTA's existence, hopefully the change has been growth. Basic in that change has been the realization that our previous assumption that there was division between sacred and secular was not accurate. Perhaps without reflecting on how central to the forwardlooking vision of Vatican was the rethinking of sacred and secular we have absorbed this new insight as we lived it. We have come to understand that the sacred is not some special semi-magical religious sphere, a sphere where God is at work as distinguishedfrom the secular where humans are left to their own devices.. Instead we are slowly realizing that all that is not sin is sacred, that the so-called secular is itself meant to be sacramental. We have seen that the kingdom of God, which we more accurately now call the reign of God, is not in some distant and future heaven but here and now. Strange that we had forgotten Jesus' words that the reign of God is in our midst. I think it is only fair, however, to remember that many of us were conditioned for this shift by our involvement in pre-Vatican 11 movements like Young Christian Students. As someone remarked, "If you want to see the old YCS crowd, just go to the CTA conference,"
Along with this new respect for the so-called secular world has come a most important shift in our view of our own bodiliness. Not that we lacked a fundamental gratitude for that bodiliness prior to Vatican 11, but it has taken us a long time to shed completely and with balanced maturity the inherited negativity or fear of our bodies. What I think has happened for the past couple decades among our members has been a greater acceptance of and gratitude for being part of creation. And might I suggest that it has been primarily the women among us who have led us to this more honest and mature perspective.
Obviously, an important facet of this has been a noticeable maturation in our attitude towards our sexuality. Happening such as the AIDS pandemic and the overall cultural movement towards re-evaluating homosexuality have unquestionably been major influences, but I believe that our growth together in realizing what it means to see God's creation as Christians has had much to do with shedding some of the fear and negativity towards sex and at the same time not capitulate to the adolescent voyeurism that is so prevalent in our society. I think this has been due to some extent to greater rebellion, but in revolution, which is the creation of something new rather than simply abandoning or destroying what has been. We have discovered that Vatican II's statement that we, the people of God, are the Church is really true. There are not two Churches, one clerical and one lay. The task is far from complete, but we have moved irreversibly towards true equality and democracy. That has not meant that we refused legitimate authority; we accepted it and still do. What we resist because it is contrary to the nature of the Church is domination.
All this we have done with a measure of fear and trembling, for this is new territory and there are no handy road maps A massive restructuring of power is taking place in our world today; new forces of communications and technology which CTA Is using are revolutionizing human life and no one knows where all this is going. Because it is part of this world, the same forces are impacting Christianity; our Church is being born. anew. Most of us were not brought up to think this new way about our role and our rights in the Church. For all of us the existence of CTA has been a great support in this adventure; for we are not engaged in it as isolated individuals. Instead, we share the faith and experience and friendship of one another, aware that we struggle together to follow the impulse of Christ's Spirit.
There have been lessons to learn about life in the Church,
lessons about how to understand the Bible, lessons about the nature
of Eucharistic liturgy, lessons we are still learning, and not
all of Church officialdom has been eager to have us learning them.
Let me draw attention to only one, but an important one. Truth
is one thing; law is another. Both are important; but truth is
more fundamental. And truth cannot be
legislated; either something is true or it is not. No one can
pronounce something as true, simply because he or she is official.
Now that we have mentioned learning, I think we can all agree that the past quarter century has been for all of us a period of learning. Among other agents, CTA has played an important part in fostering this learning - no more than a glance at the programs for our national conferences or at our CTA publications is sufficient to justify that claim. However, the more we have learned, the more conscious we have become of our ignorance, more aware of our need to team from one another. Some of this learning has been painful, even somewhat frightening. We are not nearly as certain about things as we once were. We have had to adjust our interpretation of favorite biblical passages, we have had to face the frightening realization that what we assumed were rather factual statements about God and our human destiny were metaphors for a reality beyond our understanding, for example, that "heaven" is not a place - which, of course, does not deny the reality of heaven. But as we began to acquire a more critical understanding of our faith we discovered that the God beyond our grasp was more wonderful and consoling than the God we had imagined was there.
Stripped of some of the unjustified pride that we Catholics had a special monopoly on truth, we have become much more respectful of the religious views and moral insights of others. The same thing has happened with regard to our attitude towards others in the Church. Very importantly, CTA meetings among other agencies have alerted us to the international character of the Church. I mentioned earlier that a characteristic of CTA in which we can glory has been our inclusiveness - certainly no one of us agrees with all the views proposed in a conference such as this one, but we have grown in our respect for those who differ from us. We are not there yet, but we are well on the way to move beyond tolerance and espouse pluralism. Thank God, for this is now making Christian ecumenism a real prospect and religious belief in God a source of human unity rather than the force for division that historically it has been.
Let me end by remembering something that has been a major part
of the experience of CTA during the past couple decades or so.
That has been the movement of women toward equality and leadership.
Not to be politically correct, but because it is unavoidably evident
- not only in CTA, but strikingly so there, women have been key
to much that has happened. Their wisdom and perspective and experience
have flowed into a deepening of our Christian anthropology and
ethical reflection, into our spirituality and ministry. When at
times there seemed no good reason why they should, they have remained
faithful and hopeful and aggressively patient. Unfortunately,
we must remember the disgraceful way in which Church and society
treated some of them because they were on the cutting edge of
the revolution that is taking place. But the memory of their perseverance
and courage has helped us to remain a community of hope. Perhaps
the past twenty-five years have at times been hard years, but
they have been good years.
Claire Noonan Bates
Call to Action national conference, Chicago
November 4, 2001
Isaiah 43:18-21
Matthew 5:1-12
Joan couldn't have selected a better Scripture reading to follow
her powerful address than the one we heard from Isaiah just now.
Words meant for a people of deep roots,
but a people too
mired in pain to trust their wings.
Isaiah addresses a people in exile.
a people driven from their homeland,
a people besieged
and beleaguered.
A people in many ways like us. For many of us, also, find ourselves
in a sort of exile.
Some in exile from our home the church--
because our gifts have been rejected,
because the current
structure does not satisfy
some
even because of who we love.
Some of us find ourselves in exile from our national home--
driven out by our fellow citizens
because we oppose
this war
or
because we cannot abide unfettered capitalism
or
because as our Sankofa rite commemorated, white dominance persists.
What a strange commandment Isaiah gives to his people exiled to
Babylon, and to us assembled at CTA, "Remember not the events
of the past," he says, "the things of long ago consider
not."
Strange because the past things of which he speaks are Israel's
days of glory,
the Hebrews's great moment of victory,
the redemption
of Exodus
when
the Lord parted the mighty waters and defeated the powerful Egyptian
army.
Forget that? Consider it not? Why? What else had they--what else
have we--to hold us up?
"Ah," Isaiah answers, "See, God is doing something
new. Do you not perceive it?"
Where once God made dry land appear in the midst of a raging river,
Now She creates a river in a dry place.
Where once we had great councils of the bishops,
Now we have the sure steps of the laity.
Where once we were gathered in Detroit and invited to speak,
Now we assemble in Chicago refusing to
be silent.
This is a new day,
but a day no less rich in blessings.
No less rich because
God remains,
Christ
lives
the
Spirit moves!
Moves in the desert of sorrow
to make a river of consolation:
the Chicago CTA
chapter meets for prayer in the aftermath of September 11. Amid
the din of vengeful voices, they grieve the loss of life; they
weep for the coming war; and they know the holy comfort of the
Spirit.
In the wasteland of war,
the spring of peacemaking bubbles up:
Ellen Turner of
the northern California CTA creates an opportunity for a Muslim
woman to preach at their parish Sunday Eucharist. Christians and
Muslims meet and know one another as children of God.
In the desert of cynicism,
thousands of single-hearted twenty-somethings
spring forth:
lay volunteers
and missioners choose voluntary simplicity, communal prayer, the
gospel option for the poor, and see the face of God.
In the wasteland of ecclesiastical persecution,
the river of Benedictine obedience makes
a way:
religious women
and thousands of supporting Catholics rejoice in their prophetic
faithfulness to Christ.
Through the desert of political persecution,
the river of holiness flows:
19 year old Rachel
Hayward and 88 year old Dorothy Hennessey and 24 of their companions
languish in jail for announcing the reign of God at the military
gate.
In whatever dry place we find ourselves,
whatever the cause of our exile,
the God of Redemption
is making a new way,
is
giving us a river from which to drink.
So we watch,
we open our eyes
we look for the
new thing.
And seeing the new thing
the river of consolation
the spring of
peace
the
way of gladness
we gather around the table of thanksgiving,
we lift our voices in grateful praise!
THE SPIRITUALITY OF ANTHONY DE MELLO
"Here & Now with Anthony de Mello": Workshop Presentation by Malcolm Nazareth at Call to Action Conference, 3 November 2001. Chicago
1.0
My dear sisters and brothers,
Most of us know Anthony de Mello, some of us personally, others from hearsay, or through his books and tapes. I knew him personally as Tony. I will present a bio of Tony de Mello as I knew him and an account of his spirituality as I understand it today on hindsight. Final ten minutes for your valued comments and questions.
For me, Tony's life and thought embody in a wondrous way the trajectory of the spiritual fusion of East and West. In the 20th century Tony effected such a fusion in healing ways that have spoken eloquently to men and women around the world. These people, whose lives Tony touched during and after his lifetime, came from very diverse strata of society in India and abroad.
1.1
Tony De Mello had a special regard and affection for the peoples
of North America, especially those of the United States. He died
at age 56 on the 1st of June 1987, at Fordham University, New
York, on the first night after his arrival from India. De Mello's
untimely death occurred when he was about to set out on a short
trip around the US to present a series of "satellite retreats."
Given his health condition there was much fatigue involved. Yet, Tony gladly undertook the journey (as he said) "to pay the Americans for all they do for me which is more than I can say." As Jesuit Fr. Valles wrote two months after his guru's death in a valuable book Mastering Sadhana (p. xii), Tony's "death in New York links him forever to America in earthly embrace."
Friends, after September 11 it has taken much courage for all of us to travel to Chicago for this CTA conference. May this presentation on De Mello spirituality be taken as a warm hug of solidarity from Tony to his American friends in our time of grave national crisis.
Tony wrote the following about "Tribulation" in his One Minute Wisdom, p. 223:
"Calamities can bring growth and enlightenment," said the Master.
And he explained it thus:
Each day a bird would shelter in the withered branches of a tree
that stood in the middle of a vast deserted plain. One day a whirlwind
uprooted the tree forcing the poor bird to fly a hundred miles
in search of shelter-till it finally came to a forest of fruit-laden
trees.
And he concluded: "If the withered tree had survived, nothing would have induced the bird to give up its security and fly."
Brothers and sisters, last night Bernard Cooke put a positive spin on the events of September 11. I believe he said, "We've learnt not to look upon our nation as a 'superpower' anymore. Ever since that fateful day we've rejoined the human family." Had it not been for the terror attacks we would've continued living out a delusion of our own making, wouldn't we? It took a massive calamity to burst the massive bubble of our collective illusion.
On Tony's view, every calamity carries a potential to move us one step closer toward living fully in the here-and-now. Will our great nation wake up and win the hearts of nations in the Two-Thirds world especially those that have significant Islamic populations? Will we choose to rise and shine as true world leaders? Or will we continue to sleepwalk our way through the 21st century?
1.2
Eleven years after Tony was buried in Bandra, Mumbai, the Vatican
Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith found his publications
posthumously dangerous. Cardinal Ratzinger issued a declaration
on 24 June 1998 concerning the writings of Father Anthony de Mello,
SJ. Already in '98, Doubleday had 8 de Mello titles in print,
with sales running into "the millions" collectively.
Jesuit Fr. Norris Clarke of Fordham reportedly said that the Indian
Jesuit's continuing popularity might explain why Rome had felt
it necessary to act the way it did.
I'm reminded here of Tony's words on "Persecution" in his One Minute Wisdom, p. 192:
A disciple was one day recalling how Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed were branded as rebels and heretics by their contemporaries.
Said the Master, "Nobody can be said to have attained the pinnacle of Truth until a thousand sincere people have denounced him or her for blasphemy."
To my knowledge, most all other Catholic theologians and authors who've come under Ratzinger's fire were rapped on their knuckles during their lifetimes. What's Tony's distinction? Cardinal Ratzinger, who's a sincere and honorable man, went a-knockin on Tony de Mello's grave and denounced his views as a danger to the Catholic faith more than a decade after his death. That's his distinction. Good for you, Tony. Now we have reason to believe that you attained the pinnacle of Truth.
2.0
Anthony de Mello was a Bombay Province member of the Indian Assistancy
of the Society of Jesus of which I too was a member for 25 years.
Tony was born in 1931, joined the Bombay Jesuits at age 16 in
'48, studied philosophy in Barcelona, Spain, psychology and counseling
at Loyola University, Chicago, and spiritual theology at the Gregorian
University in Rome.
Before and after his 1962 priestly ordination Tony worked in
diverse capacities in the land of his birth. He is best remembered
in South Asian Catholic circles as a spiritual mentor to countless
persons of scores of nationalities and languages especially those
who had embraced religious life and the priesthood. Tony's first
language was English. However, he mastered Spanish and was fluent
also in-
believe it or not-Ciceronian Latin. Tony also knew Marathi, French,
and other languages. This may in part account for his popularity
as a teacher of healing and spiritual insight in English and Spanish-speaking
parts of the world among Christians, non-Christians, and no-religionists
as well.
2.1
I joined the Bombay Jesuits at age 16 in 1965. Tony was my spiritual
guide from '68 when I first came under his influence. Thanks to
him I received a powerful impetus to study yoga, Indian classical
music, and Indian languages such as Sanskrit and Marathi. I benefited
from his guidance rather closely and intensely for five years
until 1973. After that, too, from a distance, as it were, but
with quite the same intensity, I felt the power of Tony's mentoring
during the final 14 years of his life. Tony conducted spirituality
programs (called "maxi-sadhana" and "mini-sadhana")
which lasted from several weeks to a whole year. I was only able
to attend some of his "micro-mini-sadhana" prayer seminars.
It was thanks to Tony that I embarked on a decades-long quest for my Indian roots in Hindu thought and spirituality in the Maharashtrian context of western India. As part of this quest I was charmed first by the Marathi Hindu poet-saints, then by the spirituality of Jiddu Krishnamurti, and finally by the path of Gautam Buddha. Eight years after my priestly ordination and three years after Tony died I left the Jesuits and went to Philadelphia, PA. It was 1990 when I began my doctoral studies in religion at Temple University. During the course of these studies I married Mariani who also knew Tony personally for many years.
Tony challenged me personally to get in touch with my emotional life. That was Tony the psychotherapist in the early 1970s. Valles refers to this phase in Tony's life as Sadhana One. Tony's theology of religions was primitive at that time. Having made my preliminary explorations into Hindu religion and spirituality, I approached him with my questions about Christology. The Tony of Sadhana One provided me with a set of answers that were most unsatisfactory. I told him so. I walked away from him knowing that Tony hadn't yet dared to encounter any non-Christian religion with openness and vulnerability. His Catholic Christian theological conditioning was blocking his spiritual progress, if I may presume to say so.
In those years Tony failed me in what was my desperate personal search for a theology of religions that would work. At that time it was the writings of Raimundo Panikkar, Aloysius Pieris, and Salvino Azzopardi that brought solace to my fevered Catholic brain. I continued along in my search for answers to questions which my own interfaith experiences were posing to me with mounting insistence and urgency.
2.2
It was sometime in the mid-'70s that Tony opened his heart and
mind to vipassana meditational practice. I'm inclined to think
that this was a major turning point for Tony as he slowly began
to move into a Sadhana Two phase. After seriously practicing vipassana
and thus exposing himself to Buddhist spirituality, Tony dared
to confront the theology which he had learnt in theological school
with, what now seem to me to be the vital existential questions
for our time: What is our human situation? What are various religious
responses to the human predicament? Is the response of Jesus Christ
to the human predicament substantially different than the response
of Krishna, the Buddha, or Moses? If the spiritual response of
Jesus Christ was qualitatively different than theirs or Confucius',
Lao Tzu's, Muhammad's, or Baha'u'llah's how or why is Christ different?
Why should I as a Catholic care about such differences? And finally,
from the point of view of ultimate reality, do the similarities
and differences between the various religious paths matter at
all? In a nutshell, what is spirituality?
In his 1982 Song of the Bird we find Tony's terrific reply (see "True Spirituality"): Spirituality is that which succeeds in bringing a person to inner transformation. Question: "If one applies the traditional methods handed over by the masters, isn't that spirituality?" Tony's response: "It isn't spirituality if it doesn't function for you. A blanket is no longer a blanket if it fails to keep you warm." Question: "So spirituality does change?" Tony wrote: "People change and needs change. So what was spirituality once is spirituality no more. What generally goes under the name of spirituality is merely the record of past methods."
That was bold. The statement came from Tony in Sadhana Two. Simply put, Ignatian spirituality needs to be updated to meet current human needs. Otherwise it's a mere milestone in the history of spirituality. A mere formula or a menu. One can't eat a menu and satisfy one's hunger. Benedictine spirituality, or Franciscan spirituality, or Maryknoll spirituality. Does it help deliver the goods? Does a particular spirituality bring people to inner transformation? Only then is it worth it's salt.
Tony of Sadhana Two posthumously leads us to search for an answer to the question: What is relevant spirituality for today? What's spirituality for me? For us? Tony gave no facile answers. He only indicated a direction in which to look. Seek. We shall find.
2.3
My interfaith explorations were in full swing in the mid 1970s.
Tony in the Sadhana Two Phase was beginning to speak to my interfaith
experiences. I said to myself: "Now Tony's getting serious."
His teaching and practices were becoming relevant in areas that
were cutting-edge ones for me. And I wanted to connect with him
again.
In his Sadhana: A Way to God: Christian Exercises in Eastern Form, Anand, India, GSP, 1978, 2nd printing 1979), you see a staunchly Catholic Tony seriously engaging with non-Catholic and non-Christian spiritualities. But, even in this early stage of Sadhana Phase One, Tony seems to have been a wee bit condescending in his approach to other religions see Sadhana, pp. 42, 124. Such mild "condescension" vanished for good only in his first book of story-meditations The Song of the Bird which was first published in 1982. Look at the following passages:
Jesus at the Football Match
Jesus Christ said he had never been to a football match. So
we took him to one, my friends and I. It was a ferocious battle
between the Protestant Punchers and the Catholic Crusaders.
The Crusaders scored first. Jesus cheered wildly and threw his
hat high up in the air. Then the Punchers scored. And Jesus cheered
wildly and threw his hat high up in the air.
This seemed to puzzle the man behind us. He tapped Jesus on the
shoulder and asked. "Which side are you shouting for, my
good man?"
"Me?" replied Jesus, by now visibly excited by the game.
"Oh! I'm not rootin for either side. I'm just here to enjoy
the game."
The questioner turned to his neighbor and sneered, "Hmm,
an atheist!"
On the way back we briefed Jesus on the religious situation
of the world today. "It's a funny thing about religious people,
Lord," we said. "They always seem to think that God
is on their side and against the people on the other side."
Jesus agreed. "That's why I don't back Religions, I back
People," he said. "People are more important than Religions.
Men and women are more important than the Sabbath."
"You ought to watch your words," one of us said with
some concern. "You were crucified once for saying that sort
of thing, you know." "Yes-and by religious people,"
said Jesus with a wry smile.
In the same Song of the Bird book please read "The Zen Master and the Christian," "The World Fair of Religions," and "Discrimination," and you'll notice that Tony is for the first time beginning to scoff at world religions including his own. I discern in these passages at least a whiff of an influence of Bertrand Russell on Tony. Tony is beginning to express a basic cynicism about religions and their contribution to humankind. Listen to this passage on "Ideology" (I cite Tony's words here including his sexist language):
It is crushing to read of man's cruelty to man. Here is a newspaper account of torture practiced in modern concentration camps.
"The victim is bound to a metal chair. Electric shocks are then administered to him in increasing intensity, until he confesses.
"The torturer cups his hand and slaps the victim on the ear repeatedly till the eardrum breaks.
"A prisoner is strapped to a dentist's chair. Then the dentist drills till he strikes a nerve. The drilling goes on till the victim agrees to cooperate."
+++
(Tony's footnote):
Man is not naturally cruel. He becomes cruel when he is unhappy-or
when he surrenders to an ideology.
One ideology against another; one system against another; one religion against another. And man crushed in between them.
The men who crucified Jesus were probably not cruel men. They could very well have been gentle husbands and loving fathers who became capable of great cruelty to maintain a system or ideology or religion.
If religious people had always followed the instinct of their heart rather than the logic of their religion we would have been spared the sight of heretics burning at stakes, widows walking into funeral pyres and millions of innocent people slaughtered in wars that are waged in the name of religion and of God.
Moral: If you have to choose between the dictates of a compassionate heart and the demands of an ideology, reject the ideology unhesitatingly. Compassion has no ideology. (unquote)
+++
2.4
My friends, do you think Tony is profound here? Well, he sure
is. But, believe me, he's only groping at this point. Wait for
his other books such as One Minute Wisdom where he becomes more
radical. Now is Tony truly launched. Here he's cut his moorings
to the Christian tradition to which, however, he's tied by silken
cords not easy to discern. But now he's daring to call things
by their names with increasing boldness and authority.
His 1985 book One Minute Wisdom, in my view, makes Tony an incipient heretic (a la Ratzinger). Because here Tony dares to come up with bold statements that only mystics can utter so brazenly. Here he sounds now Buddhist, now Sufi, now Taoist, now Hindu, now Jewish. The master in Tony's book is clearly an interfaith master. The Christian is hidden, but absolutely there. Tony has begun to point out that all formulas, including theological and spiritual ones are no more and no less than formulas, intellectual concepts, fabrications of the human brain that cannot but think in terms of binaries. Tony's final expressions of spirituality in his posthumous One Minute Nonsense (Chicago, Loyola University Press, 1992) and More One Minute Nonsense (Loyola, 1993) are basically supplements to his One Minute Wisdom.
2.5
In today morning's De Mello meditation "The Lamp of the Body"
(The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello, with
Introduction by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., New York: Doubleday,
1992, pp. 137-42) we pondered these stunning De Mello claims:
Formulas divide. The sharing of formulas doesn't enrich the sharers.
The ocean of truth is unbounded by formulas. Every conclusion
that a human being arrives at is adulterated by self-interest.
Unless one holds one's conclusion provisionally, every conclusion
is a product of muddled thinking. For, most thinking is contaminated
by emotion, namely, by desire and fear and self-interest. I quote:
"People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by
their head; it is done actually by the heart which first dictates
the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning
that will defend it."
Now that's what I call sweeping and profound. Tony magisterially continues: "Think how tightly you hold on to your conclusions regarding people, for instance. Are those judgments completely free of emotion? If you think they are, you've probably not looked hard enough." Wow!
Try doing a reality check on yourself. Look at your response to the events of 9/11 and after. The choices that you made, the conclusions at which you arrived, the judgments about people, things, events, and situations, that you continue to make. Are those judgments truly free of desire, fear, and self-interest? Be ready for surprises.
2.6
Is violence your answer to 9/11? Is non-violence your answer?
Whether seemingly positive or seemingly negative, are your responses
knee-jerk reactions or truly free from moment to moment? How would
one come to know? More often than not, aren't we in a state of
spiritual bewilderment and confusion? Simply because we're attached
to something or other and unable to engage in what Tony calls
"clear thinking"? Look at the predicament of the Muslim
king in this story from Song of the Bird (Anand, India: Gujarat
Sahitya Prakash, 204-205).
The Slave Girl:
A Moslem King fell passionately in love with a slave girl and had her transferred from the slave quarters to the palace. He planned to marry her and make her his favourite wife, but, mysteriously, the girl fell seriously ill on the very day she entered the palace.
She grew steadily worse. Every known remedy was given her, but to no avail. And the poor girl now hovered between life and death.
In despair the King made an offer of half his kingdom to anyone who would cure her. But no one attempted to cure an illness that had baffled the best physicians of the realm.
Finally a hakim appeared who asked to be allowed to see the girl alone. After he had spoken with her for an hour he appeared before the throne of the King who anxiously awaited his verdict.
'Your Majesty,' said the hakim. 'I do indeed have an infallible cure for the girl. And so sure am I of its effectiveness that, were it not to succeed, I should willingly offer myself to be beheaded. The medicine I propose however, will prove to be an extremely painful one-not for the girl, but for your Majesty.'
'Mention the medicine,' shouted the King. 'And it shall be given her, no matter the cost.'
The hakim looked at the King with a compassionate eye and said, 'The girl is in love with one of your servants. Give her permission to marry him and she will be instantly cured.'
Poor King! He wanted the girl too much to let her go. He loved her too much to let her die.
+++
(Tony's footnote:)
Beware of love! If you walk into it, it will be the death of you.
2.7
Tony in Sadhana Phase One and Tony in Sadhana Phase Two dealt
with attachments. The difference between the two Tonys lay in
method and style.
Tony's charisma was compelling. He very easily charmed and convinced his audience to radically sacrifice their earthly possessions in favor of the poor. He magnetically drew his admirers to commit themselves to the making and conducting of 30-day Ignatian exercises. Tony strongly encouraged his audience to become practitioners of vipassana and to go study this form of Buddhist meditation under Burmese master Goenka. In his earlier years Tony had delved deep into Ignatian spirituality which he mastered in Spanish under the guidance of Fr. Calveras, S.J. Later Tony had been gripped by the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi. Tony had also come under the spell of Bertrand Russell for awhile. Tony had been taken by the British philosopher's brutal honesty. In Tony's final years, however, he was quite captivated by J. Krishnamurti. In my estimate, this was when the Tony of Sadhana Two reached the zenith of his achievement as an East-West healer-and-guru.
I was fortunate to have seen Tony perform both earlier and later in his Phase Two. In seminar sessions attended by 50 or more people, Tony would publicly tackle a problem in three to five minutes before our very eyes. He would deftly ask a couple questions or make a few comments to a client and, like a skillful surgeon, almost invariably succeed in exposing the roots of a knotty problem. He would then give the client an assignment or offer him or her a formula to repeat in private and ask them to report back to the group the following day. Some of Tony's clients were dedicated priests or seasoned religious who'd been agonizing over major psycho-spiritual problems for decades. It seems to me that some were set on the road to healing and recovery in merely one or two public seminar sessions. Recovery for Tony's clients was, quite simply, arrival into the here-and-now.
The earlier Tony in Phase Two seems on hindsight to have been somewhat tentative. It must have been unsettling for him to let go of his inherited Christian theology of religions which simply didn't work anymore for him as an Indian Christian than it did for 20th century Christians in other countries and continents. The later Tony in the same Phase Two, or Tony at the end of his life, acted with the speed, sharpness, and finality of a Zen master. That is why in an article on Tony which I published in a leading Marathi Sunday paper Ravivar Sakal on 12 June 1988, I gave him the title "Tathagata Father Tony." Tathagata is a Sanskrit or Pali epithet from the Buddhist tradition. It is a title that Gautama gave to himself. It means "Thus Gone One" and indicates that an Enlightened One (literal meaning of "buddha") has himself or herself walked along the spiritual path that he or she talked about.
To my mind, Tony, who was born and raised solidly Roman Catholic and Jesuit, dared to be baptized in the Jordan of diverse Asian spiritualities. He had been deeply influenced by the lives and works of eminent Hindus such as Swami Ramdas of Anandashram, Kerala, and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi of Sabarmati Ashram, Gujarat. Even more than the above, Tony was shaped by Goenka Guruji's teaching and practice of vipassana and by the "path of choiceless awareness" of Jiddu Krishnamurti. It was all these vital experiences that would seem to give Tony's interfaith spirituality a Christian base, a Hindu body, and a Buddhist superstructure. Hence the weird title which I devised around the time of his first death anniversary "Tathagata Father Tony."
2.8
Through his insightful interventions Tony played a role in many
peoples' lives pretty much like the physician (hakim in Arabic)
in the story of the Muslim King which I read a little while ago.
Sometimes our thinking is muddled not by gross desires or obvious
self-interest and fear. Rather, our attachments may be of a more
subtle nature. Let me give you a personal example of how Tony
helped me.
As a young Jesuit in training to be a priest I was struggling
with a question about alcoholic beverages. I had successfully
persevered for nine long years in my decision to abstain from
all such beverages. I was feeling proud and happy with my teetotalism,
on the one hand, and yet secretly unhappy, on the other. I was
28 at that time. I was experiencing this secret hankering to know
what was so special about beer or whisky that got some people
so addicted. The following words from Tony helped to free me:
"If you can enjoy without guilt and abstain without compulsion,
you're free."
I gave Tony's words some thought, then figured out that I was indeed compulsively abstaining from alcohol. I decided to walk into a bar and buy myself a beer. The decision was not easy. It meant throwing away an element of my self-image into which I had grown but in which I was feeling trapped. I sipped and savored my first beer in nine years. That was a freeing experience. A spiritual experience (pun intended). Ever since my couple freeing walks into bars in the late '70s, I've felt free at times to drink, at other times to abstain. Powerful words, these: "If you can enjoy without guilt and abstain without compulsion, you're free."
2.9
In part, Tony's gift to the Catholic church was to make spirituality
or inner transformation sound effortless, almost easy. Or more
correctly, he suggested that most all efforts to wake up are futile.
Waking up happens inspite of us and our efforts to wake up. Look
at these passages. One is titled, "Insanity" (quote):
On the question of his own enlightenment the Master always remained reticent, even though the disciples tried every means to get him to talk.
All the information they had on this subject was what the Master once said to his youngest son who wanted to know what his father felt when he became enlightened. The answer was, "A fool."
When the boy asked him why, the Master had replied, "Well, son, it was like going to great pains to break into a house by climbing a ladder and smashing a window-and realizing later that the door of the house was open."
[Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom, Anand, Gujarat: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, 1985, 170.]
3.0
A great thinker once said that when the history of humankind is
written millennia from now they will look upon the late 20th century
as the epoch of religious pluralism. For, it was from that period
that people of different religions on a massive scale faced each
other for the first time in history. Entire nations and ethnic
groups figured out the historic challenges posed by the encounter
of the world religious traditions and determined how to meet the
challenges. The 11th of September 2001 is one such challenge that
reminds us of the unfinished business that Jews and Muslims, Christians
and Muslims, Muslims and atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, and people
of all religions have to tackle at the start of a new millennium.
3.1
During our epoch of religious pluralism Tony's greatness in part
consists of his having gone deep with an incisive and fearless
mind, with a free, compassionate, and sensitive heart into the
diverse spiritual riches of humankind. He took the mandate of
Vatican II to heart-he took world religions seriously. To repeat
what I said at the outset of this presentation, Tony's personal
quest among the religions of the world embodies the trajectory
of the spiritual fusion of East and West. This trajectory indicates
initial tentativeness and later a great sense of confidence. Already
in 1978 George E. Ganss, S.J., wrote of Tony: "He is a person
in whom the best currents of the East and the West flow naturally
together." (Sadhana: A Way to God: Christian Exercises in
Eastern Form, Anand, India, GSP, 1978, 2nd printing 1979, p. xi).
3.2
Tony's sense of humor and his love for human beings enabled him
to view even sacred things from a balanced, yet critical perspective.
In all of his writings and through all that people remember of
Tony the single image that predominates and overrides everything
is his smiling, happy face. A single dangerous, most explosive
aspect of Tony's thinking and practices was his loud, ringing,
musical laughter. It wasn't easy for one to be depressed for too
long when one was around Tony.
3.3
Tony experimented, one might even say he played around easily
with, different spiritualities. He pondered their significance
and utility for seekers, always beginning his experimentation
of new spiritual practices with himself. (This point is echoed
by Valles in Mastering Sadhana, pp. 50-51). In time, Tony came
up with a personal grasp of correlations between different spiritual
paths. He had a deep, solid grasp of how spirituality functions
in human life.
3.4
To conclude: Anthony de Mello brought clarity to his field. He
encouraged us to look into and even see through religions and
spiritualities and, most importantly, to make them work for ourselves
and for others in a religiously plural world. Thanks to Tony,
some of us have been helped to live in the here-and-now.
Malcolm Nazareth, Founding Director
Center for Interfaith Encounter, St. Cloud, MN
Ph: 320/203-9849; www.geocities.com/mmnazareth
