Higher Ground

Wanted to recommend an excellent new film, "Higher Ground," by actress and first-time director Vera Farmiga. There's an insightful review that I found which gives the general idea, but on a personal level I found the film to be a refreshingly honest and respectful take on the subject of religion. It's a bit irreverent at times but the overall message is one that helps bring home the message that, paradoxically, doubt is an essential part of authentic faith.

An Emerging New Model?

As a follow-up to the previous post, here is another news story, which shows how movements for reform are underway within the Roman church itself. As someone who worships now in the Lutheran tradition, I do find it a touch ironic that these reformers are essentially repeating the prophetic stance Martin Luther took almost 500 years ago in the early 16th century. Nevertheless, however long it takes, whatever the tradition one feels most comfortable participating in, the most essential point is the same: to understand that the church doesn't rise and fall on the dictates (whether benign or injurious) of any one figure or leader but that at its core it remains the work of God's Spirit - surprising, challenging, liberating, and integrally transformative for all.

Time for a New Model

I ran across this compelling news story today and thought I would comment on it briefly. As the article notes, in the wake of the very serious clerical sexual abuse scandal currently rocking Ireland, the country's prime minister recently spoke in a critical way of the Roman Catholic Church's institutional culture. I think quite insightfully, the prime minister pointed to the institution's general tendency to protect its own image over the good of those under its care and its internal culture of bureaucratic obfuscation and arrogance. These are truths that may be difficult to hear but which are borne out by the facts, both contemporary and historical.

Reporting sad news like this should never be the end of the story, however. For that reason, to end on a more positive note, I would propose that, as has happened in many other parts of the world over the past several centuries, Ireland now too is in the midst of a process that will allow it eventually to develop a healthier separation of church and state. This will be much better in the long run both for the nation and for the institutional church, whatever the current Vatican protestations.

I think a more difficult but equally necessary long-term task also remains for the Roman Catholic Church itself. Fundamentally, the institution remains an absolute monarchy on the model of long-discredited historical political regimes. It is very long past due for the Roman church to relinquish some degree of its desire to control so deeply and to acknowledge that the diversity of Christianity and of world religions that we find around us is not a problem but in fact a blessing and a gift. What this means practically for the Roman church and for Christianity in general and how both are currently structured is still something to be worked out with time. However, what is profoundly clear is that the current way in which the Roman church functions quite simply does not function, at least not in a way that promotes the overarching goal that, unless I'm mistaken, both it and all other religious traditions of good will seek - namely, the freedom and flourishing of humanity and all creation.

Peace,
Pastor/Padre Chuck