Some Thoughts on the Feast of Corpus Christi

I grew up as a privileged white male Catholic in Apartheid South Africa. In my senior high school days I slowly started to become politically aware, increasingly so through my student days and into adulthood. Outspoken critics of apartheid such as Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and Eugene Hurley O.M.I., Catholic Archbishop of my home town, Durban, inspired me and others to try to live with integrity as a Christian in the context of that place and time. 

There were also a few priests who dared to interpret and apply the Sunday mass readings to the social context and unjust laws of that time. These were all branded by politicians and by many in the white congregations as "meddlesome priests" and "churchmen meddling in politics who should stick to religion," even though there was nothing partisan in their homilies. Some were arrested and deported. Others were detained for 72 hours for questioning, released as required by law, and then immediately detained again for another 72 hours of 'questioning', all within the law. A close priest friend of mine, Fr Cosmas Desmond O.F.M., was banned and placed under house arrest. Another close friend, Fr Casimir Paulsen cmm, was arrested and then deported. Author, Catholic theologian and National Chaplain of the Young Christian Students (YCS) Albert Nolan O.P., went into hiding for a period.

More deafening, however, was the pious and devout silence of the majority of Christian and Catholic preachers. As happened in Germany after the Second World War, so after the fall of apartheid, the Catholic Church scrambled to find names of priests and bishops who had 'grasped the nettle' and spoken out against the evils of the previous regime.

With this as background, I recommend to your reading pleasure the Sunday Scripture Reflection for the Feast of Corpus Christi this year from the Catholic Theological Union by Scott C Alexander. I believe that this is an excellent example of "grasping the nettle".

We are all God's children

 

To Ingrid - Mother's Day 2024

 

July, 1976

You never cease to be for me

The mother of our daughters,

The mother of our sons.

Indeed, it seems to me

That in a way that's strange

You are more so mother now

Than when they all were little ones.

 

Your cares today, your fears, your tears

Are all the ways your love still shows

Still now, still more,

For those whose scrapes you washed

Whose prams you pushed

Whose noses wiped

Whose bruises kissed.

 

The years have flown and beauty fades

But you will always be the one

Who made me glad you stole my heart

And in exchange you gave me yours

For all the days that are to come.

Personal Reflection on Women's Issues, Synodality and Clericalism

The Cappa Magna

It is my considered opinion that a denied misogyny, thinly camouflaged by exaggeratedly lauding great female saints such as Teresa of Avila and Mother Teresa, while stressing the traditional roles of women and showing orthodoxy by promoting traditional pious practices, is at the root of not only the lack of progress with the ordination of women to the priesthood but also with a reluctance to discuss women deacons and the insistence upon celibacy for priests. In my opinion, the beast that cultivates, and is animated and fed by that misogyny, and that devours all discussion on women's issues at a synodal level, is clericalism. 

Clericalism as about clerics defending their position and lording it over everyone else below them in the hierarchy, verbally and symbolically.

I realize that I sound like a conspiracy theorist. Nevertheless, I am convinced that until we make clericalism unfashionable among a critical mass of clergy influencers and Catholics in general, I fear we will not make any meaningful progress in the synodal discussion on women's ordination or married priests. My point is that while I believe that we have to fight on all fronts that are occasions for ecclesial misogyny, our critical fight has to be with clericalism which is the ritualized bastion of ecclesial misogyny. We have to identify it and expose it. But how?

Simply being angry and casting stones will not be effective. I think that one of the foundations supporting clericalism is the beaten, defeated and compliant world view of the average lay man and woman Catholic who accepts and supports the presumption of clericalism. Those who are not beaten down, defeated and compliant have mostly left the Church - beaten, but now indifferent.

I leave you with two Scriptural quotes.

But everything exposed by the light becomes visible — and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said: “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Eph. 5:13-14

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another... Heb. 10:24-25

An Atomic Bomb on Gaza?

 

I am NOT Anti-Semitic. I am NOT  Islamophobic. 

I have a few, albeit a very few, Muslim friends, acquaintances and neighbours.

I have more who are Jewish.

I appeal to my Jewish friends: please do what you can to get the message to Netanyahu and his government that he has gone way beyond Exodus 21:23–25 - "An eye for an eye" עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן.

The rabbis will tell you that this passage does not demand revenge, but rather places a constraint on reciprocal justice. I fear that, with this merciless, vicious response, Netanyahu has blasted a bottomless pit of revenge and counter-revenge for generations to come.