Pope John XXIII – About Things That Matter

My Fight with Richard Rohr

I’m going to pick a little fight here with Richard Rohr, a man I truly admire and whose credentials make disagreement with him rather audacious. After all, he’s a best-selling author of more than 30 books, and is considered one of our great contemporary spiritual teachers. But bear with me anyhow.

My bone of contention with Fr. Rohr is his domestication of the historical Jesus. The Franciscan friar’s emphasis on Jesus as the “Universal Christ” ends up transforming the Master from a politically revolutionary figure into a spiritual teacher who in his time, it seems to me, would have had zero appeal to his intended audience. Certainly, he would have represented no threat at all to the Roman Empire that eventually executed him as a terrorist insurgent.

The distinction I’ll make is important for believers today living in the belly of the beast that proudly claims to succeed Rome as the world’s hegemon. That succession makes it a matter of urgency for Jesus’ disciples to determine our political stance toward issues like climate chaos, military budgets, nuclear stockpile updates, regime changes, interference in foreign elections, and identification of official enemies.

Should we be politically engaged as resisters to empire? Or is our task confined to tending our own gardens and reforming our own lives and behavior to more resemble Jesus meek and mild? Father Rohr, it seems to me, errs by emphasizing the latter position.

Let me develop that point by first expressing my appreciation for Richard Rohr. I’ll then look at his depoliticization of Jesus compared with what we know about the Jesus of history. Finally, I’ll offer some practical conclusions.

Fr. Rohr and Me

I truly admire Richard Rohr. In fact, I identify with him. He’s just a bit younger than me and completely shares my intensely Catholic background.

Like me, he was raised at a time when we Catholics believed we possessed the whole truth. Protestants were the enemy and, we were convinced, on the road to hell.

Though he entered the seminary a bit later than me (beginning with college rather than with high school), his formative years were entirely shaped by the church. Like mine, his priestly world of certainty was shaken to its core after Pope John XXIII summoned the Second Vatican Council to open the church to the world.

Suddenly Protestants became our “separated brothers and sisters in the faith.” Non-Christian religions were validated as authentic responses to a universal religious impulse. The task all religions shared became understanding, serving, and sanctifying the world.

Richard Rohr stands prominent among those who embraced the mandate of Vatican II and who remained faithful to its call despite a rightward shift in the church following a long period of retrenchment and rejection of Vatican II’s principles by the reactionary popes, John Paul II (1978-2005) and Benedict XVI (2005-2013).

Through it all, Richard Rohr not only remained faithful to the Council’s principles. He has continued its progressive shift by reinterpreting in insightful, common sense ways traditional Catholic doctrines such as the Trinity and Jesus as Universal Christ.

Rohr has even treated liberation theology with sensitive respect. That’s the Marxist-influenced movement that emerged in the Catholic Church when Global South churches were invited to apply Council insights in the former colonies.

The result was reflection on the following of Christ shaped by the experience of the poor and oppressed intent on improving their collective lives economically, politically, socially, and spiritually.

Liberation theology recovers the relevance of the historical Jesus who was a Jew preaching reformed Judaism to other Jews. The center of his message was the Kingdom of God which every Jew of his time understood as the reconstitution of King David’s reign with its 12 tribes intact.

Rohr, Jesus and Rome

Nevertheless, Fr. Rohr is very gingerly, almost apologetic in his endorsement of liberation theology’s emphasis on the Jesus of history. And when he searches the Christian Testament, he finds forgiveness rather than prophetic judgment and revolutionary fervor.

All of this comes out in a YouTube video on Ragamuffin TV entitled “Jesus and Empire.” There, Fr. Richard emphasizes Jesus’ forgiveness not only of individuals, but, as he puts it, of “social constructs.” He forgives Judaism for being legalistic. He forgives Romans for being oppressive. He forgives life for being absurd to the point of making his own execution necessary.

Generally according to Fr. Rohr, Jesus’ way of resistance was simple refusal to participate in the Roman system of oppression, while advocating complete nonviolence. Specifically, Rohr says:

Far from advocating the violent expulsion of Rome from the Holy Land, Jesus’ approach was “sort of Nonviolence 101.”
Jesus is telling us to “clean our own cups” before even thinking about judging or attacking others. Don’t make the problem “out there” or you’ll never get beyond it,” was his teaching. Other people are not the problem; it’s you that has to change.
[Although Fr. Rohr does admit with a chuckle that Jesus had some “pretty harsh things to say” about the pharisees – e.g., calling them “whited sepulchers” (Matthew 3:27) and pronouncing harsh “woes” for the rich, well-fed and apparently happy (Luke 6: 24-25), while apparently condemning to eternal flame those failing to recognize him in the hungry, naked, sick and imprisoned (Matthew 25: 31-46).]
It’s also significant that none of the gospels even mentions the town of Sepphoris, the bustling Roman regional capital just 9 miles down the road from Nazareth. Such silence again indicates that Jesus refused to participate in the Roman system. The implication is “O.K., that’s what the Romans are about; but I’m not going to get you into an anti-Roman frenzy.”
Jesus goes further. He even shows friendship with Romans. He cures a centurion’s servant at a distance without chastising the officer for oppressing the Jewish people (Matthew 8: 5-13; Luke 7:1-10).
According to two Gospel accounts, it was a Roman soldier who first acknowledged Jesus’ divinity, “Indeed, this man was the son of God” (Mark 15: 39; Matthew 27: 37).
Fr. Richard sums up Jesus’ attitude towards Rome as “damning with faint praise.” Or rather, he ignored the “stupid” Roman system in favor of building a better one, viz., the Kingdom of God. It was, “Hey, guys, let’s do it better and I’m going to give you the rituals, teachings and keys to how to accomplish that. But let’s not be negative ‘anti people;’ let’s be for something.”
The “something” to be for was simple living – rather like Wendell Berry’s concentration of his creative efforts on just one piece of land. After all, small is truly beautiful.
In summary, Jesus embodied the Universal Christ – the life principle that comprises our True Self that unifies the entire human race and all of creation. In opposing others, you are really opposing yourself, because the other is yourself (Matthew 7:12).

The Historical Jesus

My gentle fight with Richard Rohr turns on many of the points just listed, but principally on his understanding of that understanding of “Christ.”

Take those points already reviewed:

For starters, Jesus’ attitude towards violence is far more complicated than Fr. Rohr allows. Without going into detail, he’s remembered as saying some disturbing things on this subject. For instance:
1. “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing . . . Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division” (12:49).
2. “And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12).
3. “If you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one” (Luke 22:36-39).
4. Additionally, on the day of his arrest, the leader of Jesus’ group was armed and had no compunction about using his weapon against the arresting police (John 18:10).
5. Then, there’s the fact that all lists of Jesus’ apostles contain “Simon the Zealot.” [In Jesus’ day, those called Zealots were committed (often violent) revolutionaries.]
6. Finally, there’s Jesus’ “cleansing of the temple” and the perplexing use of force involved there (Matthew 21:12–17, Mark 11:15–19, Luke 19:45–48, and John 2:13–16).
The fact is that the entire concept of non-violence is a modern one. No one in Jesus’ day thought that a power as mighty as Rome could somehow be defeated without some sort of muscular resistance. Granted, Jesus might have rejected that avenue. But he nowhere explains that alternative.
As for Sepphoris and Gospel silence about it. . . The Gospels are silent about the entirety of Jesus’ life as a construction worker – and everything else about him after the historically questionable “infancy narratives” found only in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Does this mean that Jesus boycotted human life in general?
Regarding Jesus’ contacts with Roman soldiers, it’s a quite common occurrence, of course, during any war or occupation for soldiers to be “converted” to local ways and wisdom and even to reject the whole colonial project.
Finally, a message of “Don’t judge the Romans and reform yourselves instead,” would have garnered Jesus zero followers among his peasant listeners. And instead of killing Jesus as an insurgent, the Romans would have likely ignored or approved of him.

Then, of course there are the many elements in the Christian Testament that indicate Jesus’ opposition to Rome. For instance, apart from the provocative statements above:

Jesus was born in Galilee which was by all accounts a hotbed of anti-imperial rebellion.
His mother is remembered as composing a revolutionary song that celebrated “putting down the mighty from their thrones while exalting the humble, filling the hungry with good things while sending the rich away hungry” (Luke 1:46-55).
She and Joseph gave all of their sons revolutionary names: Yeshua (Joshua), Simon, Joseph, James (Jacob), and Judas.
Jesus’ basic proclamation that he was ushering in the Kingdom of God had as its inevitable corollary the ushering out of Roman occupation. To Roman ears, that claim was unequivocally treasonous.
The same was true of the titles “Messiah” and “Christ.” They were anti-imperial, revolutionary titles.
In Jesus’ context, there was no practical distinction between the Roman Empire and Jesus’ Jewish archenemies belonging to the “scribal establishment” and including the Temple priesthood. Its high priests were virtual employees of the empire. By attacking them, Jesus was attacking Rome.
Similarly, Jesus’ statements against and interactions with Galilee’s king, Herod Antipas involved the Roman empire (Matthew 2: 6-18; 14: 1-12; Luke 13: 32; 23: 6-12). Herod too served at Rome’s pleasure
At one point, the Gospel of Mark recounts Jesus’ identifying a band of terrifying demons with the hated Roman Legions and with polluting pigs. Afterwards, he causes the pigs to drown “in the sea” – a phrase deliberately recalling the fate of Egyptian troops perishing in the Red Sea while pursuing the Hebrew founding fathers and mothers (Mark 5: 1-17).
Above all, after applying their torture, the Romans crucified Jesus using a form of execution reserved for insurgents against imperial authority. That is, Rome treated Jesus as an anti-imperial bandit.
On his cross, the titulus or statement of Jesus’ crime read specifically, “King of the Jews” – an ipso facto anti-imperial claim.

Fr. Rohr’s Universal Christ

Fr. Rohr ignores all of that. More particularly, however, the meaning that he gives the term “Christ” was definitely not the understanding of the historical Jesus nor of anyone in his audiences.

Rather, Fr. Rohr’s use of the term comes from Paul of Tarsus, who never actually met the historical Jesus and shows little interest in him. It also derives from the ahistorical Gospel of John which nearly four generations after his death transforms Jesus into an anti-Jewish mystic.

Other key sources for Rohr’s Universal Christ are the highly symbolic Book of Revelation which barely made it into the Christian canon along with the so-called “gnostic gospels” most of which were written centuries after the death of Jesus.

By way of contrast and as described for instance by Reza Aslan, “Christ” meant one thing and one thing only for Jesus and his contemporaries. The Christ was the promised Messiah who would be (1) a descendant of King David, (2) who would restore David’s royal line and the 12 tribes of Israel, and (3) expel foreign occupiers from Judah’s Holy Land. That’s it. There was simply no other understanding of that term in Jesus’ context. Again, Jesus did not take pains to explain any other interpretation.

To repeat: along with the dozens of others claiming messiahship in his day, Jesus called the ushering in of Davidic sovereignty the “Kingdom of God.” But that necessarily entailed opposition to Roman occupiers. As I said, the ushering in of God’s Kingdom necessarily entailed the ushering out from Israel the Roman kingdom – the occupation forces that shaped every aspect of life in first century Palestine.

Clearly, the occupiers understood that. For them, the concept of God’s Reign was treasonous. So, every man who claimed to be the agent of David’s kingdom restoration (and again, there were dozens if not hundreds of them in Jesus’ world) suffered crucifixion at the hands of Roman executioners. The ones so crucified all claimed to be messiahs or Christs, i.e., God’s anointed.

Conclusion

None of what I’ve written here is meant to diminish the status of Fr. Richard Rohr as the great spiritual teacher and inspirational author he is. Much less is it intended to denigrate the spiritual value of the Universal Christ concept.

As reflected in Rohr’s most basic sources (Paul of Tarsus, John’s Fourth Gospel, the Book of Revelation, and the Gnostic Gospels) – as well as in strains belonging to all the world’s Great Religions – the idea of a Life Force unifying all of creation is not merely valid; its practical recognition is essential for the survival of our species and planet.

As acknowledged by Fr. Richard, the Universal Christ also has important political implications. If we truly recognize that reality, we’ll indeed see that our neighbors actually are ourselves – and so is every other element in creation.

Instead, what’s argued here is that Fr. Rohr’s explicit diminution of Jesus’ anti-imperial stance is inadequate for Christians living in the belly of the beast that has so proudly and arrogantly identified itself as Rome’s contemporary successor.

That beast currently threatens life on our planet in ways undreamt of by previous imperial iterations no matter how depraved. It has literally set the globe ablaze. Its endless wars immiserate populations everywhere. It recognizes no finally valid international law. It imprisons a greater percentage of its citizens than any country on earth. Its nuclear policy portends endless winter.

In dire circumstances like those, Fr. Rohr’s Gospel of endless forgiveness and of cleaning one’s own cup (while personally helpful) is simply insufficient as the response of Christians to the unprecedented threat our own country represents in these truly apocalyptic times.

Something else is needed.

We need a burning sense of urgency. We need to open our eyes. We need to resist our own country as the greatest existential threat human history has ever experienced.

And that means first of all rejecting indoctrination and knee-jerk patriotic denial that typically characterizes Christian communities. It also entails the transformation of local churches into something like Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Confessing Church where entire congregations unite specifically as communities of resistance sponsoring direct action that only communities (vs. individuals) can prosecute successfully. For instance, in our case:

Joining street-level acts of resistance to empire at every opportunity
Sponsoring specifically anti-imperial education programs
Lending each other community support in collectively refusing to pay war taxes
Counselling young people against entering the military
Political campaigning for peace candidates
Divesting from and boycotting key economic engines of the U.S. economy like Amazon and Wal-Mart
Forming or joining local credit unions

But above all, in our churches we must escape contentment with cleaning our own cup or tending our own garden as a somehow adequate response to our extraordinary times.

Such uncontroversial spiritual solipsism may let us off the hook. But it was not the way of the historical Jesus.

Notre Dame in Flames: Its Image Evokes the Resurrection Our World Requires

It was religion in flames. It was a reminder of the conflagration engulfing our very planet. It should have clarified the relevance of the resurrection story that Christians across the world defiantly celebrate this Easter Sunday. It made me think of female prophets like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and presidential candidate Marianne Williamson.

Notre Dame in Flames

Of course, I’m referring to the recent conflagration within the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Everyone’s heart went out to the people of Paris as they sang hymns to Mary while helplessly watching her beloved basilica burning on the other side of the Seine. We’re told that even the fire-fighters sang to the Grande Dame while dousing the inferno and risking their lives to rescue relics of Jesus’ true cross and crown of thorns. The spectacle brought the world to tears.

How like the rest of us, I thought, as we witness the Catholic church (and religion in general) hopelessly ablaze! Pedophilia, patriarchy, the antipathy of our children towards the faith that we elders once embraced so fervently have all contributed to the disaster. So has the successful counter-revolution waged by two reactionary popes (John Paul II and Benedict XVI) against the hopes enkindled by the ecumenical movement and Vatican II. Then there’s the heresy of know-nothing religious fundamentalists attempting to counter the creative ferment of liberation theology and of science itself . . . They’ve all done their parts to bring down the new church that John XXIII (and so many of us) once hoped for. Instead, the institution now lies in ruins, in putrid irrelevance. The strewn ashes embody our bleak despair. Only a miracle on the scale of Jesus’ resurrection can save us now.

A World Burning

But the combustion of Notre Dame presents only the palest reflection of our despondency before our very world in flames. That too was imaged forth in the cathedral’s conflagration. The climate chaos caused by our mad consumerism and worship of mammon, weapons, and war has set the planet ablaze. So, we stand there on the opposite shore of our own Seine, our mouths agape, the flames flickering against our mirrored eyes as we stand witness in hopeless impotence and despair. The stench of the ruins, the loss of our treasure, the cost of rebuilding . . . It’s all too much to think about. Mary help us!

And she does! She along with her sister prophetesses bring news of resurrection – just as they did for the male followers of Jesus’ who wallowed in the despondency following that first Good Friday. Yes, the women are here once again to save us with their news of resurrection and its impossible future!

What seems dead can return to life, they all insist. Another America is possible shouts the infant terrible, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Another world is possible Sweden’s teenaged Greta Thunberg repeats for all with ears to hear. Yet more: another God is possible proclaims Marianne Williamson with her invitation to a New Age characterized by the miracle of revisioning EVERYTHING. Naomi Klein, Maria Lopez Vigil, and (from their graves) Dorothy Day, Harriet Tubman, all those suffragettes, and Rosa Parks echo the message. In fact, an entire army of latter-day Jean D’Arcs broadcast the Good News that despite what the world tells us, resurrection – radically new life – is indeed possible. It’s the redivivus message of the goddess Miriam herself – of our Lady, of Notre Dame in flames.

If you want to actually see the hopeful vision of resurrection for America, watch again Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s video published just last week. Through the fascinating art of Molly Crabapple, AOC calls us to face head-on the sad facts of our planet’s Good Friday. Nearly 50 years ago those facts were researched, but cynically obscured and denied by Exxon and its supporting cast of male politicians. All that time they foresaw that without resurrection, disasters like Puerto Rico (devastated by a Hurricane named Maria!!) inevitably represents our common future.

AOC reminds us that devastation caused by an entire system requires systemic reform. That includes a new economy with decent salaries and the type of benefits the industrialized world once took for granted and aspired to – affordable schooling, healthcare for all, meaningful work, comfortable retirement – all in a context where polluters are assigned responsibility for the destruction caused by their decades-long denial allowing them to privatize profits while socializing costs. They owe us! Reparations are due!

Yes, the crisis of climate chaos changes EVERYTHING!

Moreover, it’s all been done before just as our young prophetess insists. In the face of the Great Depression’s and World War II’s lesser crises, FDR put together the original New Deal.

It changed the entire economy. It recognized that unions, full employment, environmental protection, decent jobs, recreation, art, music, dignified retirement, and strict regulation of greedy corporatists were all part of the clean slate the country and world needed to survive.

And it worked! Our nation and the western economies prospered as never before, as countries across the industrialized world implemented what came to be called the welfare state.

Religion Flaming Out

For her part, Marianne Williamson calls us to re-vision the God of resurrection who makes fundamental change possible. Like no other presidential candidate, she puts her finger exactly on the spiritual transformation required to change everything. We need another God, she says in effect. Not the imperial one foisted upon us since Constantine in the 4^th century. That’s an idol. What we need is the God of Jesus: the champion of working people, widows, orphans, and immigrants. We need the God reflected in the teachings of the one who taught that whatever we do to the least of the brethren, we do to him.

Yes, that’s the God of the Bible – a divinity who remains foreign to most. It’s as if we have all been imprisoned in Plato’s Cave. Nothing that the world (and very little that the church) tells us is true, especially about God. Another God is possible, Williamson insists. That God’s vision is 180 degrees opposite that described by our desperate politicians through their media minions. It’s the direct opposite of most of the drivel we hear from the pulpit.

And it’s here that Williams joins Ocasio-Cortez. Insisting that the resurrection we celebrate today is indeed real, Marianne calls us to support something like the Green New Deal. It promises new life for us here and now, including Medicare for all, gun control, higher minimum wages, the overhaul of public education, criminal justice reform, raising taxes on the rich, and repairing damage done by our history of racism.

Conclusion

“Impossible!!” the world shouts with one accord. “It’s too costly. Making changes like the GND proposed by our prophetesses would take decades. Such alterations could never be accomplished by 2030.”

And yet, when the world saw Notre Dame in flames, the money poured in. Already more than a billion dollars have been pledged. Artists and artisans from across the world have pledged their labor. And whereas initial estimates were that it would take 100 years to rebuild Notre Dame, France’s President Macron now assures us that the cathedral will be back to normal, even more beautiful than before in only five years!

That’s what happens when human beings commit themselves to achieving the impossible. As Marianne continually repeats, “There is no order of difficulty in miracles.” And she’s right. Miracles – fundamental changes in perception – are indeed possible. Our times demand them.

Yes, resurrection can happen. Easter calls us to make it happen to save our planet – and our church.

John the Baptist’s Desert Revival and Pope John XXIII’s Aggiornamento

Third Sunday of Advent Readings: Zep. 3: 4-18a; Is. 12: 2-6; Phil. 4: 4-7; Lk. 3: 10-18. http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/121612.cfm

The lead article in the November 11^th edition of our diocesan newspaper, Crossroads, published a sermon by the bishop of our Lexington diocese, Ronald W. Gainer. It had been given on Saturday November 3^rd at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Lexington – the Saturday before the General Election. Bishop Gainer called attention to a new and “dangerous, corrosive change . . . at work in the soul of our nation.” “In recent decades,” the bishop said, “forces are working overtime . . . to eliminate religion and God from the nation’s soul.” According to Bishop Gainer, those forces ignore the consistency of the Church’s moral teaching over the centuries – about “the sacredness of every human life.” Those teachings recognize certain acts as “intrinsically evil.” These include “abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide and embryonic stem cell research. Being against the intrinsically evil means standing up for the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman, the God-given right to freedom of religion, and against the evil of racism. There is nothing wrong with being a single-issue voter, the bishop emphasized; and abortion is the pivotal single issue for Catholics. The bishop concluded that political “candidates who refuse to oppose the evils he listed or who actively support them disqualify themselves from receiving Catholics’ support in the voting booth.”

Curiously, Bishop Gainer’s list of “intrinsic evils” did not include priests raping children. As a result, his remarks came off as out-of-touch, triumphalistic, self-serving, dishonest, and tired. We had heard it all before: “They’re wrong; we have never erred. ‘They’ are persecuting us. Only one issue is important, abortion. Vote Republican, even if that means economic disaster for the poor at home or abroad” (e.g., in the wars and drone strikes which also went unmentioned in the bishop’s remarks).

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A little over a month ago, I attended the concluding Mass at the “Call to Action Conference” (CTA) in the Grand Ballroom of the Galt House in Louisville, Kentucky. CTA is the annual meeting of progressive Catholics who are trying to follow the spirit of the Second Vatican Council. (Vatican II set an agenda of church renewal and reform when the world’s Catholic bishops met in Rome from 1962-1965.) About 1000 people were present at CTA’s concluding liturgy. It reminded me of what spirited worship is like. Our good friend, John Wright Rios was the music leader with a group he assembled of about 15 instrumentalists and singers. There were drums, guitars, piano, trumpet and dancing. Hymns were in English and in Spanish with words projected on four large flat screens. The liturgy featured women in prominent roles, including three of the five concelebrants. Sister Simone Campbell of “Nuns on the bus” fame and who had spoken at last summer’s Democratic Convention gave the homily. What she said was insightful, inspiring, funny, and challenging. It made me see what the church is missing by insisting on an all-male, highly in-bred clergy. Sister Campbell spoke of the deep-seated divisions in our country and the need for universal love even of our enemies. She addressed the spiritual poverty and hunger experienced by all of us including leaders in the church, in politics, in our schools and universities. Poverty and hunger of body and spirit was the focus of Jesus’ work as described in the gospels. The church needs more Jesus, she said, and less triumphalism and pride.

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Today’s readings are about religious revival and about the renewed recognition of God’s presence in our midst. In the first and third reading, the message is delivered by severe critics of temple worship – Zephaniah and John the Baptist. Zephaniah was a religious reformer from the seventh century BCE (just before the Babylonian Exile). He was known as the champion of “the poor of the land” (2:3; 3:12), and a fierce critic of Assyrian imperialism and the adoption of Assyrian religious ideology by Israel’s ruling elite. He accused the priests of his day of abandoning Yahweh in favor of Baal and Astarte. The outspoken Zephaniah threatened to drive out the priests and cleanse the temple by force.

Then in today’s gospel, John the Baptist picks up Zephaniah’s theme more than five hundred years later. Luke pictures John at the Jordan River – far from Jerusalem’s temple and its priesthood. John is leading a religious revival in the desert – the place of Israel’s birth long before there was any temple. Like Zephaniah, John is a layman. And his words to the religious leadership are harsh. In Luke’s verses immediately preceding today’s excerpt, he calls the crowd a “brood of vipers.” Matthew’s version is more specific. He says that curse was hurled at the Sadducees and Pharisees, the religious leadership of the day. According to John, they are snakes in the grass.

John contrasts the failed leadership of these men with God’s leadership present in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, of course, turns out not to be a priest or rabbi either, but a workingman from Nazareth. Yet according to John, Jesus is more powerful and more worthy than John himself. As a lay leader, Jesus will bring not only the Holy Spirit, but a cleansing fire. He will separate the wheat from the chaff – what is essential from what is not – what is nourishing from what is not – the kernel of truth from its encasements. Those shells are now outdated, John says. We are about to enter a new era. Chaff, John declares, is good for nothing but burning in the hottest fire imaginable. He calls the crowds to the kernel of truth: share their surplus with the poor.

This year we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. It was a movement of reform and revival in the spirit of Zephaniah and John the Baptist. Pope John XXIII was the 1960s embodiment of their prophetic tradition. He summoned that meeting of the world’s bishops and used the word aggiornamento to describe the Council’s project. Aggiornamento meant updating.

Pope John’s vision was one of church revival and reform that connected Jesus with the actual lives and problems of people and the world – especially the poor. Those lives are characterized by either unemployment or overwork, by low wages, poverty, over-priced healthcare, misogyny, racism, inaccessible education, scant prospect of retirement, and by the train of evils introduced by climate change, inflated “defense” budgets and wars largely initiated by the United States.

Today’s readings suggest that serving the world (the church’s mission as identified by Vatican II) involves addressing those problems – the kernel instead of the chaff. Doing so leaves no place for triumphalism, infallibility or wallowing in self-pity about how the church is being mistreated and misunderstood by a hostile world. It does however mean trying to address the very good reasons the world might have for being hostile.

Neither is service of the world advanced by focusing on matters (as important as they might be) far removed from daily life. Identifying Christianity with opposition to stem cell research, gay marriage, contraception, and revoking Roe v. Wade is old and tired. It’s a form of denial that distracts from Jesus’ essential concern for the poor and their problems. It is to mistake chaff for wheat. So is silence about the church’s checkered past, its fallibility, errors, crimes against humanity, and scandals as prominent as priests’ rape of children.

“Call to Action” attempts to recapture the spirit of Vatican II, separate wheat from chaff, and address the “signs of the times.” The “prayers of the faithful” following Sr. Campbell’s homily addressed war, poverty, climate change and the other problems I’ve just mentioned. The response of the people was not the usual “Lord, hear our prayer,” but “Aggiornamento!”

Let that be our response to Zephaniah, John the Baptist, and Jesus today. Aggiornamento!

What might aggiornamento mean for us today?

(Discussion follows)