In a world waking up to the reality of sexism and sex abuse at every level of seemingly every institution, the church's slowness to adapt and engage with feminist demands has weakened its hold, with some women leaving the faith altogether.

In her latest book, "Can You Be a Catholic and a Feminist?", theologian Julie Hanlon Rubio (pictured) argues that while many Catholic feminists in the 1970s had outlined a way for their two identities to coexist, it is much harder today.

Being a Catholic feminist today

"Beginning in 2017, the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements came together to raise profound questions.

Not for the first time, Catholic women confronted the sins of the priests, bishops, and the Vatican, as well as the flaws of the hierarchical structure that enabled abuse.

Some stopped going to Mass or putting money in the collection basket," Rubio writes in her book.

"Suddenly the possibility of not being Catholic seemed all the more real. Previously satisfactory answers to the question, ‘Why stay?' no longer felt sufficient in the face of such egregious failures," she wrote.

Each one of the nine chapters of the book addresses a topic: human dignity, sex, work, marriage, life, gender, power, prayer and belonging.

Each topic is analysed from both a Catholic and a feminist perspective, seeking points of tension as well as opportunities for synergy.

Balance and leadership

When it comes to understanding our common humanity, the dignity of each individual in terms of their sexuality and the importance of striking a balance is important, Rubio writes.

This balance has to be struck between personal flourishing through work and a commitment to family, Catholics and feminists can find common ground, according to the theologian.

But questions concerning abortion and the lack of female leadership in the church remain the most problematic for feminists wishing to stay in the institution, the book argues.

Surprisingly, the chapter on prayer highlights the greatest point of tension between feminism and Catholicism.

"I sit in church, and we know that there is so much knowledge in the room, and women are silent unless they are reading the words of men.

"Women never have the opportunity to lead the congregation in prayer, and that should really trouble us," Rubio told RNS in an online interview on Tuesday (March 19).

"Even though it's not necessarily the tension that people feel, there is something wrong with that," she added.

Pope Francis

Rubio acknowledges the work Pope Francis has done to promote the visibility and influence of women in the church.

Not only has he spoken strongly to condemn violence against women, but he has also appointed a large number of women to lead Vatican departments.

He called for a Synod on the theme of Synodality, born from a massive consultation of Catholic faithful at every level and in every country, which resulted in a summit where women were allowed to not only participate but also vote for the first time.

Even so, the author lamented the small number of women theologians asked to participate actively in the synod. "At the end the bishops are going to enter the room and make the decisions," she said.

The Vatican recently announced that the second synod gathering, scheduled for October, will focus on how to make the church more synodal, pushing controversial issues, including the question of women's leadership, to the summer of 2025.

Changing views on women

The Catholic Church has not always been on the right side of history concerning the role of women, initially opposing the suffrage of women and the push for women to work outside of the home, Rubio observed in the book.

Many steps have been made to promote women in the church since then, but there is still much work ahead.

While feminism has moved to address today's discourse on gender, sexism, racism and diversity, the church "moved more slowly and stands at odds with the social conversation," Rubio said.

In many Western countries, women are less likely to compromise on abortion, which the church strongly condemns.

Women are finding unconventional spaces to wield influence, Rubio said. "Change is happening in parishes," she said, which "are finding different ways of giving women power to lead."

As the Vatican buys time by creating study groups to find alternatives to clericalising women, young Catholic women explore new and unregulated pulpits, such as Instagram and TikTok.

"They might not call it preaching, but I would," Rubio said.

"It doesn't violate any rules, but it's a different way in the church. If you have 100,000 followers, you can't say you don't have power or influence in the church."

Women today see a society where they can thrive, she said, which makes the lack of female leadership in the church even more striking and makes walking away more of a possibility.

Being a Catholic and a feminist is possible, according to Rubio.

"When you put Catholicism and feminism together, you get something that is really rich," Rubio said, especially when it comes to combining their robust beliefs on inherent human dignity.

"When you put these things together, that for me is worth staying for," she added.

• First published by Religion News Service
• Claire Giangravé is an author at Religion News Service.

Dr JJ Carney and Dr Max Engel's research offers insights into the spiritual dimensions of athletic competition and how the two worlds can interconnect.

Evangelisation through sport

Carney and Engel teach a popular course examining sport from a faith perspective.

Their research posits sports as a unique platform for spiritual engagement and evangelisation, and their book "On the 8th Day: A Catholic Theology of Sport" aims to help students recognise the intrinsic links between religious beliefs and the realm of sports.

"The trials and tribulations in sports can lead to profound encounters with Jesus through the Paschal Mystery" notes Engel.

Examining sports' ritualistic and spiritual practices also challenges the distinction between superstition and genuine spiritual acts.

"We focus on ritual and prayer as a means of deepening one's relationship with God" Carney clarifies, differentiating between authentic spiritual practices and mere rituals.

"That's different from saying 'I'm going to pray this way, and God will make sure that field goal goes through'."

The professors also strive to help students recognise the grace, communal bonds and self-sacrifice in sports, mirroring Jesus' teachings.

Suffering death and resurrection in sport

Engel noted that sports' inherent suffering and loss present "an opportunity to encounter Jesus through the paschal mystery".

The researchers encourage students to explore how formative experiences like season-ending injuries or championship defeats relate to core Catholic teachings about the passion and resurrection of Christ.

"Seeing other people go 'Oh, I see what you're talking about...I didn't realise what sacrifice for the team had to do with Jesus' sacrifice for us'" Engel said, describing some students' reactions.

Student growth and insight

For Carney and Engel, some of the most rewarding aspects involve witnessing students' perspectives evolve as they uncover spiritual truths through the athletic lens.

Carney cited instances where pupils began to understand how "just because you didn't win the championship didn't mean God wasn't in that difficult experience".

Engel echoed that sports can serve as "an easy entrée" to explore profound theological concepts through a familiar passion, fostering deeper self-reflection among students.

Source

• Southern Nebraska Register
• CathNews

Its "established, dogmatic models of the theological approach to sexuality have become anachronistic."

Zacharias made the statement when speaking at a conference in Rome on sexuality and culture at the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences.

New sexual ethic needed

What the Church needs to do now is to develop new theological ethics of sexuality, Zacharias said.

That is "a task for the entire church community" Zacharias (a professor of moral theology at the Salesian University of São Paulo) told the conference on 21 February.

"We cannot ignore that in recent decades there has been a remarkable evolution regarding terminologies, concepts and descriptions related to sexuality" he said.

This has had a profound influence on developments individuals have experienced on their conceptions of their own sexuality, he explained.

He told those at the conference that the Church therefore "should not talk about sexuality without considering the understanding we have of it today".

It should also keep in mind potential problems with modern understandings of sexuality he added.

He quoted the Augustinian theologian Sister Ivone Gebara to make his point.

The Church's "theology of binary sexuality is no longer able to understand the complexity that we discover in ourselves".

Sexuality can't be ignored

Zacharias told his audience he thinks Catholic theology has not helped people integrate their sexuality into the individual "personhood".

The clerical sex abuse crisis involving some of the Church's ordained ministers shows this to be the case, he said.

"Sexuality is a constitutive dimension of each person, a central aspect in the life of human beings that characterises who a person is to the point that it cannot be left out in the process of personal fulfilment."

It doesn't matter what a person's vocation in life is, he said.

Every person's sexuality "has a legitimate role in all phases of their development" he explained.

Therefore it "cannot be confined to the context of marriage" or reduced to a means for procreation.

The Church needs to n overcome "an essentially negative view of sexual desire, as if it were something to be repressed at every moment" and which suppresses a person's desire for love.

"Self-control is self-control, it is not a virtue" he said.

Human love

Zacharias told those at the conference that he thinks sexuality "acquires its true human quality if it is oriented (toward), elevated and integrated into love.

"Authentic love moves one toward self-transcendence, and makes sexuality a 'place of reciprocity,' a place of affirming the good of the other" he said.

"The integration of sexuality does not depend solely on the will of the person."

A challenge for Church theology will involve affirming "the meaning of sexuality in light of an eminently relational anthropology" he suggested.

Sex cannot be treated as a "separate entity, an object for ethical reflection".

It must be considered as part of "the whole of the relationships which it serves".

Source

• UCA News

It seemed hardly newsworthy.

The Pontifical Institute of Theology was founded in 1718 for the theological formation of priests, and later for bringing theologians together to discuss theological topics.

More recently it has held an occasional conference, mainly with Italian contributors, and has issued occasional publications.

The document is of interest, however, because it clarifies the place within the Catholic Church which the Pope ascribes to theology and consequently to theologians and theological colleges.

In doing so, it summarises his more detailed treatments of the subject and also illuminates the different ways of viewing the Catholic Church which separate him from many of his critics.

In describing the place of theology in the Catholic Church, the Pope appeals to the same metaphors that he applies to the Church. It is to be outgoing, to work at the frontiers of church, and to be open to the world it enters.

He contrasts this with a church and theology that are self-referential, inward-turned, and stand over and against the world.

This openness implies that theology will be attentive to its context and not self-contained. Theologians should reflect on faith from inside their engagement with the world and not from above it.

It follows that theology will take the natural form of dialogue in which it engages with in the language of the cultural frameworks it enters. In the Pope's vision it is not interdisciplinary but transdisciplinary.

The emphasis on dialogue in theology corresponds to Pope Francis' understanding of synodality within the Church.

It naturally flows into communal practices of listening and discernment among theologians, which will also be reflected in their teaching and formation of ministers.

The centrifugal mission of theology to proclaim and articulate faith in dialogue with the non-Christian world also demands also a corresponding centripetal movement. Pope Francis defines this as the search for wisdom. Theology must begin on bended knees in adoration, turning naturally to love for people in need and in reaching out to them.

Finally, he describes Catholic theology as inductive, in that it begins with the concrete situations of people and there finds and discerns the proclamation of the Gospel.

This outline echoes other reflections by Pope Francis on the place of theology in the Catholic Church.

It raises five questions. Why does he see it as important? Why is it controversial in the Catholic Church? What are its limits? What does it take for granted? How does it hang together?

First, the Pope sees Catholic Theology as part of a larger reform of the Catholic Church guided by Vatican II.

The mission of the Church at all levels is to proclaim the Good News to people at its margins and allow the Gospel to speak to them. This means engaging with different cultures on their own terms.

For this to happen Catholics at all levels need to listen and to discern where God is leading them. Pope Francis embodies this way of being Church in the idea and practices of synodality.

Within the Catholic Church, theologians and theological institutions in which priests are educated are central in this process of listening to the Word of God through the lives of other Catholics and through the world views of those to whom they reach out, especially the poor.

Second, this understanding of theology and its place in the Catholic Church is not shared by all Catholics or theologians.

It is inductive, in beginning with the world to which we go out and allowing the Gospel to illuminate and be illuminated by it.

Many theologians begin with the understanding of faith and ask about its ramifications for the world.

Their approach is more deductive.

Such disputes about theological method and conclusions are common in Catholic as in other theology. The parties usually coexist more or less amicably, allowing the non-committed or less rigorous to borrow from each of them.

In the Catholic Church today, however, a relatively small number of theologians, high Church officials and lay Catholics regard Pope Francis' theology and the practices he is introducing as a betrayal of the faith that has been handed down to him.

Pope Francis, in turn, has accused them of rejecting the authority of the Spirit in Vatican II, of being narrowly concerned with the internal life of the Church, and of separating themselves from the Church.

In many Catholic communities around the world, however, Pope Francis' vision of the Church also faces immobility in which many bishops and priests, including younger ones, do privilege the inner life of the Church and its hierarchies and boundaries over engagement.

Pope Francis describes this attitude as clericalism.

This resistance is often less theologically than personally based.

For that reason, the Pope sees the importance of the formation of priests and of local congregations in a synodal rather than hierarchical vision of their ministry.

Third, the mission the Pope gives to theologians and institutions within the Catholic Church is necessarily limited in its expression and scope. It takes for granted that Catholic theology will work within the developing tradition of the Church and not above it.

Many fine theologians, too, are not Catholic, and many theologians who are Catholic define their role by the canons of secular universities and not by the needs of the Catholic Church.

The mission given to theology, too, is also limited by the very argument made for it.

Pope Francis addresses the needs of a Church that he sees as tempted to be introverted, to be self-referential and not to communicate the joy of the Gospel. He also addresses a world on the edge of self-destruction.

In such a Church and in such a world, the task of theology is to model a way of engaging with faith and the wider world. In the future, other situations may demand other priorities.

Fourth, the account of the mission of theology is necessarily broad.

It understandably fails to mention the human factors involved in any large reorientation. Theologians must bring scholarship and specialisation to their understanding of the Gospel throughout the Christian tradition.

These qualities and the laborious development of them do not always lend themselves to going out to the boundaries of the Catholic Church and engaging in dialogue.

Nor do theological degrees always provide wisdom. Pope Francis' desired reform, then, will demand a diversity of personal gifts, knowledge, experience and enthusiasms that cannot be regimented.

Finally, the central point and the test of success of Pope Francis' hope for theology lie less in its method than in its sapiential character.

Discernment through prayer nurtured by the Gospel and by life within the Church is the centripetal force that holds together the going out to and entering of other worlds.

• Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
• First published in Eureka Street. Published with the writer's permission.

Those Catholic bishops even include those theologians that have enthusiastically welcomed his pontificate as a much-awaited turn in the orientation of Church teaching for a more dialogical relationship with the world and the "existential peripheries".

The Jesuit pope's anti-elitism keeps a him at a safe distance from academic theologians. But, at times, he has issued important statements about theology's role in the Church.

Some notable examples include his letter in 2015 to the Grand Chancellor of the Catholic University of Argentina.

There are also his publication in 2017 of Veritatis Gaudium, the apostolic constitution on ecclesiastical universities and faculties; and his address in 2019 to the Pontifical Theological Faculty of Southern Italy.

Three days after the conclusion of the Synod assembly's first session, Francis also issued Ad theologiam promovendam, a "motu proprio" to approve the new statutes of the Pontifical Academy of Theology.

The document was issued in Italian (no translations available yet) and is technically concerned with an academy that functions like a Vatican-based theological "think tank".

But in reality, the text is aimed at the whole Church - theologians and all believers.

A "courageous cultural revolution"

Francis calls for a "courageous cultural revolution": a more contextual theology that not only teaches the People of God, but also learns from them. It is a theology that is less abstract and more pastoral.

The pope says theology must develop "in a culture of dialogue and encounter between different traditions and different branches of knowledge, between different Christian confessions and different religions, openly discussing with everyone, believers and non-believers".

These encouragements are in line with the usual characterisation of Francis as a progressive pope, one who is bringing about a more welcoming and dialogical Church.

But there is also another aspect of Francis' view of theology that is repeated in Ad theologiam promovendam, which constitutes a real and different kind of test for our theology today.

The pope defines theology as "true critical knowledge as sapiential knowledge, not abstract and ideological, but spiritual, elaborated on our knees, shaped by adoration and prayer", a knowledge that cannot "forget its sapiential/wisdom dimension".

Francis also encourages theology to be dialogical and transdisciplinary, as well as communal.

"Dialogue with other forms of knowledge evidently presupposes dialogue within the ecclesial community and awareness of the essential synodal and communion dimension of doing theology," he writes.

"The theologian cannot help but experience fraternity and communion firsthand, at the service ofevangelization and to reach everyone's heart [...]

"It is therefore important that there exist places, including institutional ones, in which to live and experience collegiality and theological fraternity."

Challenging "progressives" no less than "conservatives"

This document calls theologians to be more contextual, but it's a contextuality different from the way in which post-Vatican II academic theology has interpreted it.

This is because it implies also a more incarnational, embodied, and testimonial view of a profession that is also a vocation.

"The theologian cannot help but experience fraternity and communion firsthand, at the service of evangelisation and to reach everyone's hearts," Francis says.

But this type of fraternity and communion is very difficult (and even impossible at times) to incorporate in academia, job descriptions for new positions, or evaluations of Catholic theologians' accomplishments.

Those who believe this pontificate has vindicated their view of Catholicism, sometimes have a difficult time seeing that Francis is challenging "progressives" no less than "conservatives".

This is true also for theologians. And the challenge is twofold.

Confronting the technocratic, market-driven institutions

First, the problem of the role of theology today is not just about ideological orientation, "conservative vs. progressive", but also institutional; that is, its mission in the modern technocratic world of knowledge.

Many universities, even Catholic universities with graduate programs of theology, now must operate in a market system.

There are significant differences between system where universities are publicly funded and other mixed system, and different kinds of presence of Catholic theology in public or private, secular or Catholic universities: but all of them operate in a market-driven system of knowledge.

The problem is how to start this "cultural revolution" of theology in such universities. In Francis' view of theology, the heart and the spirit have a very important role.

But our academic systems have become places where technocratic heartlessness and an ultra-pragmatist, transactional view of knowledge are actually rewarded - and our students see and know that.

In this system, which has become highly procedural and bureaucratized, the heart of the matter (in our case, theo-logy as an active love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of God) can easily become empty.

The ongoing shift from a Euro-centered Church to a global one

Second, Francis calls for this "cultural revolution" in the middle of a cataclysmic change in the Church, that is, the transition from a Euro-centered Catholicism to a global Catholicism.

This transition is affecting Euro-Western theology in a particular way.

There is a growing number of students of theology in schools in Europe and North America who come from Africa and Asia, and this is slowly changing the culture in those institutions.

In many institutions of higher education in the Western world there are more international students of theology than non-local students. But they study a Catholic theology that is still largely European and Western.

European and North American schools of theology are trying to hire more professors from Africa and Asia.

The question is how to value their original background, their formation which often took place in Europe or North America, and the multi-cultural Churches in which these schools are located and/or to where the students will go back to for their teaching and ministry.

But the turn of Catholicism toward the global south raises questions also in that global south itself.

"In Africa there is no idea of the importance of theology. They say: 'What's the point of theology if our churches are already full?'" remarked an African theologian at a recent international conference.

European Catholics could ask a similar question, in a very different situation: "Our churches are almost empty. Do we really need people studying theology, or do we need something else?".

Even if theologians embrace the pope's plan, will the universities?

All this is massively changing the culture of Catholic schools of theology in ways that are very profound but rarely articulated in public for reasons of sensitivity of the students and faculty.

This de-Europeanizing and de-Westernizing of Catholic theology has become (or will soon become) a question of survival for important institutions of higher education. They cannot survive only with students of theology coming from Europe or the West.

They need students from the global south.

Francis calls theologians to a "cultural revolution", to "transdisciplinarity", and to a more sapiential and synodal way of doing theology.

Are theologians, individually and collectively, ready and willing to be part of this profound rethinking epistemologically and methodologically?

Today's Catholic theologians are part of a Church where the role of theology is not clear in the eyes of the institution and even Pope Francis himself. We saw this at the first session of the Synod assembly on synodality.

What exactly is the role of theology in a synodal Church? This is a time of shifting expectations from theology - ecclesial, academic, and public expectations.

Moreover, professional theologians work in institutions that are more and more part of a system dominated by technocrats and managers.

If the reorientation the pope has outlined is taken seriously, schools of theology will have to rethink their systems of recruitment, evaluation, and promotion. They will have to re-examine courses and curricula, as well as mission statements.

Even if theologians embrace the reorientation outlined in Ad theologiam promovendam, how will Catholic universities - with their institutional sponsors and donors - allow this? To paraphrase Mao Zedong, this "cultural revolution" for theology will not be a dinner party.

• Massimo Faggioli is currently lecturing at the Catholic University Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium as the recipient of the "Francqui Chair". You can follow him on X @MassimoFaggioli
• First published in La Croix. Republished with permission.

He signalled how this shift must take place, through "transdisciplinary dialogue with other scientific, philosophical, humanistic and artistic knowledge, with believers and non-believers, with men and women of different Christian confessions and different religions." (n.9)

As a consequence, the persons who carry New Zealand's Catholic intellectual leadership are now challenged from the top.

They are called from the Pope himself to engage theologically in ways that respect the beliefs, customs, practices, values and even experiences of other faiths and cultures.

The importance of Ad theologiam promovendam for New Zealand's Catholic intellectual voice is that it is now the approved new statutes for the Pontifical Academy of Theology.

This means Ad theologiam promovendam is now the framework for standard Catholic theology worldwide.

Although Francis provided no theological method, something still to be developed by theologians, his framework is clear - dialogue, relationship building, inclusion, engagement, and even experience in a spirit of intellectual charity and prayerfulness.

He called Catholic theology institutes to "weave a network of relationships with other training, educational and cultural institutions, professions and Christian communities that know how to penetrate, with originality and a spirit of imagination, into the existential places of the elaboration of knowledge." (n.7)

Calling especially directors of Catholic theology academies to task, Francis signalled how important it was that "institutional places exist to live and experience collegiality and theological alliance." (n.6) This would mean Catholic theology institutes in New Zealand accepting invitations to dialogue.

Francis referred back to his Address to the Members of the International Theological Commission on 24 November 2022: "Ecclesial synodality commits theologians to do theology in a synodal form, promoting among them the ability to listen, dialogue, discern and integrate the multiplicity and variety of requests and contributions." (n.6)

We can now hold Catholic theology schools that refuse to offer theological inquiry across religious borders as unsafe places to study today. They risk, as Francis stated, "closing in self-referentiality, isolation, and insignificance." (n.5).

Instead, Francis called for his theology academies to be "inserted in a web of relationships, first and foremost with other disciplines and other knowledge." (n.5) Herein lies Francis's universalist approach.

But rather than a weak interdisciplinary dialogue such as the multidisciplinary style in which diverse viewpoints can still remain detached, Francis emphasised the transdisciplinary approach.

This not only favours a better understanding of the object of study from multiple viewpoints, but "the placement and fermentation of all knowledge within the space of Light and Life offered by the Wisdom that emanates from Divine Revelation." (n.5)

To counter potential traditionalist criticisms, this call is actually close to the classical idea of the university from Latin universum, all things, everybody, all people, the whole world, literally, "turned towards the one," from unus "one" and" versare "towards."

From this we get universus meaning "all together, all in one, whole, entire, relating to all," which seems to be the impulse for Francis' universal outreach.

Hence, Francis has not dismissed any source but encouraged them all, sacred and secular, inside and outside religion, especially the concrete situations in which we are inserted, our basic human experiences.

What is new in Ad theologiam promovendam is Francis's push for the personal experience of the religious other and of difficult things we too often want to ignore such as global warming, poverty, homelessness, and suffering.

Francis made the point that we are living in very different times from when Irenaeus, Augustine, the Apologists, Cyril of Jerusalem, the Cappadocians, Athanasius, and Cyril of Alexandria, did theology.

The same can be said for Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Aquinas, and the entire scholastic tradition, and even the moderns such as Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Thomas Merton, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Therefore, constant return to these Church writers may not necessarily help contemporary theologians respond effectively to current situations.

The Pope's call for greater experiential knowledge of each religion means that a new and effective theological method is now required.

Perhaps Robert Cummings Neville's trans-religious approach might be a good place to start.

In 2017, Neville offered a way to theologise across religious borders by exploring faith-content, what is believed in diverse religions, the "fides quae creditor" that Augustine deftly distinguished from the actual believing or faith proper. Neville's approach was comprehensive and non-critical.

This may also warrant a new definition for theology, one that moves beyond "faith seeking understanding" to signify a competency to converse globally on theological ideas and worldviews, as Francis said, "openly engaging with everyone, believers and non-believers." (n.4)

Neville used the expression "intellectual side of religion" to describe such a theology that brings together insights from all over to develop mutual understanding amongst diverse faith traditions.

The theological possibility of recognizing the equality of theological ideas may be obtained by a methodical modification of specific faith-content to obtain mutual theological concepts which understand and respect the relative points of separation between religions while remaining faithful to one's own home tradition.

The curious consequence of such an approach is the possibility of knowing different ideas about the same theological topics while still believing in those topics.

This is an extraordinary proposition, an outstanding insight into the prospect of a universally relational theology of dialogue and encounter, as Pope Francis has promoted.

Yet the ultimacy of Francis's new approach to Catholic theology lies in being undertaken with intellectual charity because, "it is impossible to know the truth without practicing charity," and also "developed on one's knees, pregnant with adoration and prayer." (n.7)

Let us hope Francis's initiative gives New Zealand's Catholic intellectual leadership time to pause and reflect and open to engage and build relationships across religions and worldviews.

Let us hope that local leadership will support their universal leader's promotion of theology along this journey of dialogue in charity and friendship. With Francis' momentum, maybe they will feel more encouraged to do so.

• Dr Christopher Longhurst is a Catholic theologian, Fellow of KAICIID, and lecturer in theology at Te Kupenga Theological College of Aotearoa New Zealand. The English translations of Ad theologiam promovendam are his.

Pope Francis's revision of the statutes of the Pontifical Academy of Theology is an important development within the discipline of contemporary theology.

Francis emphasises the need for an open theology within a synodal, missionary, and open Church.

Updating the statutes also encourages a robust exchange with various sciences and fosters an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to theological investigations. It is an invitation to scholars from diverse denominations, religions, and academic disciplines to participate in the life of a church that is "open" and engaged in in contemporary questions.

Antonio Stagliano, the Academy President, expressed enthusiasm for this new mission, emphasising the goal of promoting dialogue across all knowledge areas.

For him, the objective is to engage the entire people of God in theological research, transforming their lives into theological experiences.

Theologians wishing to pursue this line of reflection would do well to consider the theological and social perspective of the German Reform theologians of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

More specifically, they should consider the work of Romano Guardini (1885-1968), whom Pope Francis references both directly and indirectly in his writings.

With his first major work, "The Spirit of the Liturgy" (1918), he set standards for the Liturgical Movement and liturgical renewal and contributed to the shape of the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council.

Two other books among his many publications, "Liturgie und liturgische Bildung" (1966) and "Das Ende der Neuzeit" (1950) are also seminal for contemporary theology.

Industrial society of the late 19th century

Guardini's perspective reflects the significant process of change that occurred from the late 19th to the mid-20th century.

He pays attention to the impacts of:

• social transformation through industrialisation, war, and new and often unstable republics;
• the philosophical movements of rationalism and the critiques of positivism and Neo-Kantianism, through Life-philosophy and Existentialism and
• reform theology movement's critique of Neo Scholasticism.

Life-Reform Movement

The Life-reform Movement (Lebensreform) movement was a politically diverse social reform movement in France and Germany that found renewed interest in the Romantic movement.

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), a leading German proponent, differentiated between the individual's life and life as a whole, emphasizing that understanding life required accessing the full, unblemished experience.

He criticised the traditional modern philosophy, focusing on rationality that neglected dimensions of will and emotions.

Like Dilthey, Guardini placed experience at the centre of his reflections on liturgy and life.

While Dilthey argued against limiting sciences to deterministic natural scientific methods, Guardini criticised the restriction of theology by Neo-Scholasticism.

Guardini's criticism of modernity and Neo-Scholasticism mirror each other insofar that an industrial model of living fundamentally changes people's perception of time and alters how individuals relate to others, to their bodies, to society and to nature:

• Industrialisation also brought about a significant change in the human-earth or human-nature relationship.
• Nature became a resource to be exploited, not a "brother" or "sister" or "mother" to be cherished and cared for as we read in Laudato Si'.
• Theologically, God and belief became functions of each other in a mechanism of ritualisation.

The issue for Guardini with respect to theology is that the systemisation of theology (as an academic discipline) especially through Neo-Scholasticism has resulted in theologies loss of contact with its base: namely how people live, work, pray and believe.

Catholic Reform Theologians

Catholic reform theology explored a heightened synthesis of theological and religious knowledge, and Guardini's primary focus was the youth movements of Juventus and Quickborn.

The Catholic youth movement continued the broader movement that emerged at the beginning of the German Empire, emphasizing the importance of educational reform, body, and self-improvement.

Although initially apolitical, it was still exposed to contemporary ideological currents and oriented itself accordingly.

The First World War and the politically polarized phase of the German Youth Movement were transformative events.

The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 forced all other youth organisations into compulsory integration into the Hitler Youth or dissolution.

Theology and life

Among the Reform theologians, Guardini represents the openness to the world and questions of faith posed in the context of culture, that the Pope has offered to theologians.

Guardini advocated for reforming Catholic believers through liturgy, using a liturgical experience that would address the true essence of humanity and not stunt it through tired ritualisation.

True liturgical encounter awakens and glorifies life through the liturgical act when it is intimately connected to the life of God present and active in the whole of creation.

Like Guardini, and as Pope Francis has written, we live in a "change of epoch" that requires deeper theological engagement with societal and cultural changes that mould our understanding of faith, worship, salvation and God.

Just as Guardini's work focused on the relationship between liturgical practice, lived faith and an openness to the world in the Catholic Church, today's cultural context is as central to theological reflection as Scripture and Tradition.

Guardini proposed that liturgy and life are fundamentally connected experiences, and it is the person, as a whole, integral being who prays and lives.

The notion of context is central to theological reflection. Culture is a third source of theology.

To do theology — in any context that considers how people believe and how they pray — theologians must use Scripture, the Living Tradition of the Church and Culture as their sources of reflection when considering how a transformative event becomes a theological experience.

In the context of contemporary theological reflection is seen in an openness to the world and questions of faith and culture.

Paralleling Guardini's focus on the relationship between liturgical practice, lived faith, and an openness to the world Pope Francis emphasises the importance of theological engagement with societal and cultural changes.

Canon Law - not the answer

Francis has set a new direction in the discussion of key theological debates around ordination, blessings of couples and questions of sexuality and gender that the juridic discipline of Church Law cannot answer because it is not a theological discipline.

Starting with Canon Law to solve these theological questions only ends in frustration.

Instead, starting with what people do when they pray when they call on God's name or when they praise God is an utterly theological starting point because it is thoroughly incarnational.

In the end, all theological questions of any significance concern the relationship between what is believed and what is prayed.

Thus, all important theological questions are essentially liturgical questions that refer back to the interrelationship between living, praying and believing as transformative experiences of God's Grace.

• Dr Joe Grayland is a priest and theologian in the Diocese of Palmerston North. Currently on Sabbatical, he is lecturing at the University of Tübingen, Germany.

The Pope signalled how this shift must foster a "fundamentally contextual theology" based on a nexus between relationships, experience, and no longer being self-referential.

The following offers a brief exploration of these features to help appreciate Francis' call for a more open and forward-thinking theology today.

Theology's new relational basis rests - dialogue

According to Francis, theology's new relational basis rests in dialogue.

He said theology "cannot but take place in a culture of dialogue and encounter between different traditions and knowledge, between different Christian confessions and different religions, openly confronting all, believers and non-believers."

This perspective has significant consequences.

The central presupposition of a theology of dialogue is that anyone can understand what is believed about God more deeply when they open themselves to the truth statements of all religions.

However, not only has Francis promoted the importance of theology across religious borders, but for him, theology is no longer only "faith seeking understanding."

Non-believers or people without faith are to be involved.

Therefore, Francis has not only cast the Catholic theology net into the fresh waters of other faith traditions, but he has also overcome the risk of excluding people who do not have faith.

For Francis to undertake this theology across religious borders, we "will have to face the profound cultural transformations" that society is undergoing.

Those transformations affect us all. Intentionally or not, the Pope has made theology relevant for everyone.

Concrete human experience

The Pope has emphasised another source for theology, namely, human experience, the concrete situations in which we are inserted, and knowledge of things gained through our involvement in them.

This is really not revolutionary because experience has been a theological source in the Catholic tradition for quite some time.

However, what is new is Francis's push for the experience of the other.

He is clearly seeking that theology reaches into "the open wounds of humanity and of creation and within the folds of human history, to which it prophesies the hope of a unique fulfilment."

Perhaps Pope Francis' emphasis on broad interfaith experience, even for non-believers, is probably the document's most revolutionary aspect.

He has encouraged a search for the wisdom of the world, call that Wisdom whatever you want - in the Catholic tradition, it is the divine Logos Jesus Christ, to be more clearly a common trans-religious source of theological understanding.

In other words, Francis's new theology is simply a nuanced comparative and intercultural theology.

This new theology's existential basis is signalled by fostering a "fundamentally contextual theology, capable of reading and interpreting the Gospel in the conditions in which men and women live daily."

Still, despite Ad theologiam promovendam's revolutionary undertone, Francis's argument in favour of an existential theology across religious borders is actually rooted in the biblical command to love our neighbour.

He affirmed that "it is impossible to know the truth without practising charity."

Obviously, this requires engagement and connection; therefore, he has linked dialogue and experience-based knowledge because we cannot love what we do not know.

This may be the document's most outstanding and transformative feature.

Theology: a free search for truth

The Pope also made the case for theology no longer being self-referential, that is, a defence of already held positions.

The Motu Proprio begins: "To promote theology in the future we cannot limit ourselves to abstractly re-proposing formulas and schemes from the past."

Francis has indicated that for theology to be worthwhile today, it must reach beyond its own methods and engage with other branches of knowledge.

Rather than proving its own presuppositions, it must be the free search for truth "as part of a network of relationships, first of all with other disciplines and other knowledge."

In other words, theology must be transdisciplinary, that is, "the pooling and fermentation of all knowledge in the space of Light and Life offered by the Wisdom that flows from God's Revelation" (Veritatis gaudium, 2018).

Further, according to the Pope, contemporary theology must present itself as "a true knowledge, as sapiential knowledge, not abstract and ideological, but spiritual, elaborated on its knees, full of adoration and prayer."

In this sense, Pope Francis has blurred the fundamental distinction between theology as knowledge-based inquiry and religion as faith-based practice.

For the Pope, theology is no longer just an academic pursuit.

While prior Magisterial teachings have already affirmed that we can know something decisive about God through other faith traditions (Nostra aetate, 1965), Francis has catapulted Catholic theology into the open space of no longer determining its own position solely from the sources of Scripture and Tradition.

For Pope Francis, a theology whose sources remain within its own system is a closed theology that will eventually become irrelevant.

But a theology that goes beyond its own borders develops friendship with all, therefore being highly relevant for all times.

Evolving consequences

With these hallmarks, Pope Francis has promoted an open theology focused on dialogue and human experience. He has indicated how these are meaningful sources of theology, places we must go to understand more fully God, ourselves, and the world.

With Pope Francis now onboard, we can say that theology schools which do not allow theological inquiry across religious borders are not safe places to study today. They risk exclusivity, isolation, and the production of Francis' "little monsters" - priests and seminarians, even some laity more concerned about defence propositions for what they know little about.

Consequently, opportunities for theology students must exist in Catholic theology schools to study theology beyond a single faith tradition.

Let us hope that any future Catholic Chair of Theology at one of New Zealand's universities will embrace Francis' call for a forward-thinking, experience-based theology of dialogue and relationship.

In sum, Ad theologiam promovendam has promoted an open theology that seeks to understand its own content in a relationship with the people and content of other faiths.

This is more in line with what theology really is, a seeking of understanding, and this is why it is important also for people who do not have faith, and especially important in a country like New Zealand, which has a remarkably high religious diversity with little means to manage that diversity.

• Dr Christopher Longhurst is a Catholic theologian, Fellow of KAICIID, serves on the executive of the Association of Practical Theology in Oceania, and is lecturer in theology at Te Kupenga Theological College of Aotearoa New Zealand.

The developers of Magisterium AI trained an AI robot on a database of 456 Church documents.

These include: Scripture the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Code of Canon Law, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, 90 encyclicals, seven apostolic constitutions, and 26 apostolic exhortations.

The result of all that training, according to Matthew Sanders of Longbeard, a digital marketing and design agency connected to the project, is that the Magisterium AI:

"doesn't hallucinate (make stuff up), and it also provides citations so you know where its answers were generated from."

The project, which Sanders says can prepare homilies, is backed by Fr. David Nazar, rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, who serves as chair of the AI's "scholarly advisory committee."

Sanders said by email that while "there is a great deal of fear around AI … there are many who feel it could be a powerful tool to share truth."

The Magisterium AI project is available online, but in a beta-testing form at present.

At The Pillar, we wondered just how good it really is — and whether it could answer questions as well as a seminary professor and a working canon lawyer.

So we put it to the test.

For theology, we asked Magisterium AI to answer the same questions as Angela Franks.

She's a professor of theology at St. John's Seminary in Boston, with specializations in "theology of the body, the New Evangelization, the Trinity, Christology, and the thought of John Paul II and Hans Urs von Balthasar."

For canon law, we asked the robot to answer the same questions as Timothy Olson, JCL, who is chancellor of the Diocese of Fargo, North Dakota, and an instructing judge in Fargo's diocesan tribunal.

We asked each expert to spend less than an hour answering the questions we gave, while the Magisterium AI answered each question in usually 1-2 minutes.

We told both the machine and the experts to answer each question in just 4-5 sentences.

We'll show you how the machine and the experts answered the questions, and give you a few notes to ponder. (Nota bene: We are not including the machine's footnotes, but we note that it has given us 3-5 footnoted references on at least every question.)

But is the machine up to snuff? Should theologians and canonists be excited for a new tool — or worried about job security? Is the AI on the right track?

Well, we'll tell you what we think, especially about who answered each question better. But we admit our own biases — we're old fashioned, and we're probably pulling for the people here.

So are we right?

You'll have to decide that for yourself.

Theology

What is baptism, theologically?

The machine:
Baptism, theologically, is a sacrament that signifies the forgiveness of sins and the cleansing of the soul. It is a participation in the paschal mystery of Christ, where the believer is configured to Jesus Christ and becomes a new creation.

Through baptism, one is incorporated into the Church, receives the promised Holy Spirit, and is justified.

Baptism is the sacrament of faith par excellence, where faith and baptism are intimately linked. It is a gift from God that is received through the Church, and it marks the beginning of a new life in Christ.

Dr. Franks:
CCC 1213 tells us: "Holy Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit (vitae spiritualis ianua), and the door which gives access to the other sacraments. Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: ‘Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water in the word.'"

Pillar verdict:
The machine gave a pretty good answer here, and mentioned more things - like the Holy Spirit - than did Dr. Franks. But the machine also seemed to do a strange bit of question begging: saying that baptism is the sacrament of faith, where faith and baptism are intimately linked. Baptism is, indeed, the sacrament of faith — but does the AI's sentence mean anything?

Dr. Franks' answer is a straight excerpt from the Catechism, and a pretty clear one. We hope on future questions, she'll answer in her own words, but we'll give her this one. Read more

• First published in The Pillar. Republished with permission.

I bought Betty Edwards' highly recommended "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain."

One of the ways to free the right brain from left brain control, writes Edwards, is to practice drawing negative spaces — the spaces that surround the objects you want to bring artfully to life.

I had assumed that art rendered the fullness of things, not the emptiness around them.

My greatest art (and maybe learning) experience occurred when I was around seven, sitting at the kitchen table and gazing at the illustration on the closing pages of Watty Piper's "The Little Engine that Could." Here we see that famous little train making it into town as dawn lights up the sky.

Like most kids, I had to draw the sky as a straight blue line far above the ground below, but in the illustration, the sky came all the way down to the ground.

I ran outside to check, and lo, it was true!

A lesson in art

Having assumed that truth and beauty lay in fullness, I clearly needed a lesson in the value of negative spaces.

painstakingly followed Edwards' instructions to draw all the spaces around the legs, arms, rungs, seat and back of an old chair. I was surprised that I succeeded in rendering something that looked like an actual chair.

Edwards predicts that after completing her chair drawing exercise, "you will begin to see negative spaces everywhere."

This was indeed the case for me.

I saw how negative spaces in works of art, road signs and in nature were necessary to the realization of our appreciation of what we saw. How, for example, can one appreciate the shape of a vine maple leaf without the space around it?

A lesson in life

The same may be said for our life.

How can we value the flow of our experience without gaps, pauses, absences, lapses and losses?

These deepen our perception, our appreciation. Yes the negative spaces in our life may bring us sorrow, but by putting memory and love to work, they also bring us understanding and joy.

I don't agree with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett's assertion that "nothing is more real than nothing" (quoted in Edwards' book).

But I do see the value in what we might assume to be nothing. Dark skies are full of stars, and dark matter matters. Black holes, I gather, are wombs of creation as well as tombs of destruction.

The quiet

The negative space I value most in life is silence.

We are so surrounded by loud, constant sound that we might at first find near silence unsettling, but it can really open us up to new dimensions of reality. I count as blessed those moments when I can hear nothing but maybe some of nature's low murmurs.

Many religious traditions value silence as a space where a supreme power might be experienced.

"I will come to you in the silence," promises God at the outset of David Hass' hymn, "You Are Mine," sung in both Catholic and Protestant churches.

Some religious folk might agree with Beckett that nothing is the ultimate reality.

I love the joke about the Daoist monk who struggles to find something to give a fellow monk for his birthday. "How do you give someone something who already has nothing?" he ponders.

In the theology of these folk, the "theo" (god) is absent.

This is not the case, of course, for those who align themselves with Abrahamic theological traditions.

In these, God/Allah is ever present. Still, some devotees of these traditions hold that their deity can best be experienced if they make themselves negative spaces so that they can be unified with the All.

Creating unity

In "Drawing of the Right Side of the Brain," Edwards says that emphasizing negative spaces when drawing "automatically creates unity."

She speculates that our appreciation of art that emphasizes negative spaces bespeaks "our human longing to be unified with our world … perhaps because in reality we are one with the world around us."

I have, alas, not progressed in my attempts to draw beyond roughing out that chair through its negative spaces.

Edwards' advice has, however, helped me understand something important about what we yearn for in art, life and theology.

• Walter Hesford is a former professor of English at the University of Idaho. He currently coordinates an interfaith discussion group and is a member of the Latah County Human Rights Task Force and Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Moscow.
• Republished with permission of Religion Unplugged

In an interview with America Magazine, Francis responded to a question posed by Kerry Webber, executive editor of the magazine published by the Jesuits of the United States:

"Many women feel pain because they cannot be ordained priests. What would you say to a woman who is already serving in the life of the Church but who still feels called to be a priest?"

The Holy Father was unequivocal in his response:

"And why can a woman not enter ordained ministry? It is because the Petrine principle has no place for that," the pope said.

"The ministerial dimension, we can say, is that of the Petrine church. I am using a category of theologians. The Petrine principle is that of ministry," the Holy Father said.

A theology of the ‘Marian principle'

The pope explained that there is another "theological" way in which women play a vital role in Church life.

The dignity of women, he said, reflected the spousal nature of the Church, which he called the "Marian principle".

"The way is not only [ordained] ministry. The Church is woman. The Church is a spouse. We have not developed a theology of women that reflects this," Pope Francis said.

"The Petrine principle is that of ministry.

"But there is another principle that is still more important, about which we do not speak, that is the Marian principle, which is the principle of femininity in the Church, of the woman in the Church, where the Church sees a mirror of herself because she is a woman and a spouse.

"A church with only the Petrine principle would be a church that one would think is reduced to its ministerial dimension, nothing else. But the Church is more than a ministry.

"It is the whole people of God.

"The Church is woman. The Church is a spouse. Therefore, the dignity of women is mirrored in this way," the pope said.

"Therefore, that the woman does not enter into the ministerial life is not a deprivation.

"No. Your place is that which is much more important and which we have yet to develop, the catechesis about women in the way of the Marian principle," he said.

"There is a third way: the administrative way.

"The ministerial way, the ecclesial way, let us say, Marian, and the administrative way, which is not a theological thing, it is something of normal administration. And, in this aspect, I believe we have to give more space to women," Pope Francis said.

Theologians must explore and venture

At a recent meeting with members of the International Theological Commission, Pope Francis told the Commission that it is the vocation of the theologian is always to risk going further because they are seeking and they are trying to make theology clearer.

"The theologian dares to go further, and it will be the magisterium that will stop them," the pope said.

Theologians must explore and "venture" out further to help enrich doctrine while catechists must stick to established, "solid" doctrine, never anything new, Pope Francis told theologians.

The pope singled out the women members on the Theological Commission, saying women bring a different intellectual perspective to theology, which can make it "more profound and more ‘flavourful'."

Francis suggested that the prestigious ITC could consider including more women in their group.

In September, women's role in the Catholic Church was the focus of a New Zealand group working for gender equality in Church leadership.

A media release from a group called "Be the Change, Catholic Church, Aotearoa" notes New Zealand women's suffrage was granted on 19 September 1893, and the September anniversary shows the Catholic Church is 129 years behind New Zealand in recognising the leadership skills of women.

To mark women's suffrage and highlight God's call for the Church to allow women to exercise their gifts, on 18 September, Catholic women in Auckland and Wellington mounted an installation of women's shoes at their respective cathedrals.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• CathNews New Zealand
• CathNews New Zealand
• CathNews New Zealand

Theology is the possession of a Christian skill which can enhance life for the individual and the communion of which that person is a member. It has a vital role to play in a synodal church.

I have tried to look at this in various ways in previous articles; now I want to conclude these meditations by looking at how it can change the way we see ourselves and our discipleship.

Repetition

Repeat anything often enough and not only will people believe it - hence the constant repetition of adverts and why so much energy goes into 'building brands' - but, eventually, people will forget that there are completely different ways of thinking about a problem.

One of the duties of theology is to stop us in our tracks when those tracks have become ruts. It should get us to look afresh at reality, our place in it, and what it is all about.

Here I want to consider just two situations where this applies.

Situation 1: Living in a post-religious world; are people really not "religious"?

One of the most significant cultural developments of recent decades across the developed world is the number of people who reject any recognized form of religion, who say they do not believe in God or a god, or who ignore organized religion in their lives with the simple statement: "I'm not religious!"

Christians respond to this situation in a variety of ways.

One obvious reply is to try to "convert" them to accept the traditional language, vision and practices of Christianity.

After all, this is the basis of all missionary plans when missions were sent out in areas that had never heard of Christ and there they "won" many new people for the faith.

So why should they not view the society around them as "a new pagan land" and preach to such people?

While it is true that Christians must always proclaim Jesus as the Lord's Christ, addressing fellow citizens does not seem to have the same impact as missionaries had in parts of Africa in the last two centuries. Part of the reason for this is that the languages and practices of Christianity appear to many post-Christian societies as simply an appeal to go backwards.

This is a point that was made in a different way recently in La Croix by John Alonso Dick when he wrote about "changing the conversation" and quoted T.S. Elliot's poem "Little Gidding":

For last year's words belong to last year's language.
And next year's words await another voice.

Christianity - at least in its traditional language and practice - is explicitly that from which many are running away (and often for very good reasons), and they cannot abide the notion of returning.

Inviting people to "come home" to Christianity is equivalent to saying they should love the technology of the early twentieth century, outmoded social views such as the restrictions on women of the nineteenth century, or the religious clashes and bitterness of even earlier.

The situation is that they have tried Christianity and found it wanting.

Moreover, the history of clerical abuse has destroyed the credibility of the Catholic Church as a witness to anything noble in the eyes of many.

Clerical pomposity and attempts to influence public policy make Catholicism something that people reject with disgust.

It is so easy to imagine that this post-Christian situation is the equivalent to being a-religious, as so many claim. But this, for those who believe in God the creator, would be a great mistake.

Post-Christian does not equate to being without religious longings.

Are they godless?

But does that mean that they are godless, that the great questions do not trouble them, or that for this generation Augustine's claim that every heart is restless until it rests in God (Confessions 1,1,1,) is no longer true?

If it is true that they are truly godless, then it must be a case that now, for the first time in history, there are hearts and minds in which the Holy Spirit is no longer speaking.

To say they are godless is tantamount to saying that God has gone away.

But part of the good news of the creation is that God never goes away, and in every heart, his Spirit is somehow active.

It means that the quest for God is taking new forms, finding different expressions, and the challenge facing Christians is twofold.

First, for themselves to recognize these new expressions of God's presence in human life and work - and not assume that God only speaks in the older language with which they are familiar.

Second, to help their fellow citizens recognize for themselves these divine stirrings, the deep human need for the Infinite, and to forge with them a new language - a language and religious culture and practice - that belongs to today and tomorrow (rather than being that of yesterday spruced up for today).

This view of the situation of modern women and men was elegantly summed up in this way at the Second Vatican Council nearly sixty years ago:

For since Christ died for all, and since the ultimate destiny of all humanity is the same, namely divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers all of us the possibility, in a way known to God, of being made partners in the Paschal Mystery (Gaudium et spes 22.5).

But finding this new "language" is very difficult - it is even more difficult than learning a foreign language because we do not know its grammar - and then we have to translate our older "language" into it.

In this task of translating the Christian past into the human situation of today and tomorrow, theology plays a crucial role.

So every study of theology is intrinsically an act of mission - and no explicit missionary act can take place without theological reflection. Put bluntly; the more people say, "I'm not religious," the more those who profess faith need the skills of theology.

Situation 2: Making God in our own image - what are the limits of tolerance and mercy?

One of the depressing aspects of being a Christian is that whenever one hears of narrow-minded intolerance, one often finds that this intolerance is backed up by people who are loud in their professions of their Christian faith.

I met a gentleman recently who was not only homophobic but who also saw all contemporary tolerance of homosexuality as misguided and inviting divine wrath to come upon society for "putting up with it".

He summed up his basic view with this phrase: "It's against the law of God!"

And in the conversation, I could hear two other hidden assumptions: laws need a penalty if they are to have any bite; and just as human legal systems punish "accomplices", so God must punish those who "connive" with those who break his law.

Around the same time, Pope Francis was reported as "changing Church teaching" by saying that the death penalty was incompatible with Christian teaching.

In response, a news program interviewed a US-based Catholic who said that this was all part of the slippery slope of the "Church losing its way and going soft on sin". For this person, God was the final policeman and creation was a kind of police state with God watching everything and biding his time before releasing his vengeance.

When we see a crucifix, we might ask a theological question: do we think of God as power or as love?

As I watched that interview - and I have heard the same sentiments often over the years — I wondered just where the message of love fitted with this answer.

Perhaps love is not what it's about, but power? Certainly, both the man I met and the other I heard on TV would have seen divine power as more "real" than divine love.

But while we can argue about whether or not "the bible" is for or against homosexuality, or whether or not the death penalty is needed and permitted, in both cases such arguments are only addressing the presenting level of the problem.

I suspect that there is a deeper problem. We think about the world around us, we have views on "justice", law and order, and the role of power in human relationships. And then we build a god in our own image, a god who ought to work as we would work ourselves (if only we had a chance).

Here is a basic question each of us as Christians must answer: is the fundamental aspect of God towards the creation one of power or love?

This is one of the hardest questions in all of theology.

It is also where the whole three thousand-year history of our theology intersects with one's personal outlook on life.

If we think of God as love, we might better appreciate the prayer for homosexual couples recently published by some Dutch bishops, and why a Jesuit theologian, Jos Moons, called having such a prayer "actually quite Catholic".

Faber's answer

The nineteenth-century hymn writer Frederick Faber (1814-63) proposed this very different vision to that of God-as-power, which seems to come to the very heart of the issue:

There is a wideness in God's mercy
like the wideness of the sea.
There's a kindness in God's justice,
which is more than liberty.
There is no place where earth's sorrows
are more felt than up in heaven.
There's no place where earth's failings
have such kindly judgment given.

For the love of God is broader
than the measures of the mind.
And the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we would gladly trust God's Word,
and our lives reflect thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord.

What a wonderful piece of theology, though — alas — it is a hymn we hardly ever sing!

God's love is broader than the measures of our human minds, and so we must be wary of ever presenting anything but mercy and gentleness lest we betray the God we claim to serve.

But this level of mercifulness is not just a human trait nor a psychological or social disposition: it is the very challenge of discipleship. Such a level of forgiveness and tolerance, the level the world needs if there is to be peace, can be seen on reflection to be itself a gift, a grace, and so something for which we must be eucharistic.

In formal theological jargon what those two men who wanted a god of vengeance had done was to assume that justice was a univocal concept in the human and divine spheres, and so drew god down to their own level.

What Faber did was to say that if you can imagine the widest reality you can - for him it was the sea and for us is might be the light-years that separate the galaxies - then that is less than the "wideness" of God's affection for us.

Theology is not a body of ideas, nor the ability to provide the exegesis of doctrine, nor knock-down arguments to those who challenge Christian beliefs.

It is an invitation to imagine beyond our imaginations' bounds. I have responded to those too-human-bound images of the divine with a piece of poetry because theology is, in the final analysis, more like poetry than prose.

Theology and theologies

Theology is not just about knowing "what you are about".

It's more a matter of having the skills to think about what you know and do, to clarify what is obscure and confused, and to then help others in their quest.

God's infinity, Deus semper maior, is most truly recognized in God's mercy; but appreciating the range of that mercy and seeing what response it calls forth from human beings is a most complex challenge - and skill in theology is one great facilitator in this task.

In these five articles on the study of theology as a help towards a synodal Church, I have worked outward in a series of circles:

• religious questions that concern me as an individual;
• religious questions that concern me as a member of the Catholic Church;
• religious questions that concern the Catholic Church in relation to other Christians;
• religious questions that concern Christians in relation to other religions;
• religious questions that concern 'religious people' - those who believe in the Transcendent with other human beings.
• religious questions that concern every human being - though many would not see themselves as asking religious questions.

We all inhabit each of these circles simultaneously because each of us is the centre of a world whose outer reaches (and they might be just next door or even among our closest friends) interact with the whole of humanity.

Being a believer in this world - exploring my own doubts and questions, working with other Catholics and other Christians, encountering others every day of every religion and none - calls on us to think through our choices, what it means to follow Jesus's Way of Life and to reject the Way of Death, and to bear witness to hope and love.

This vocation is neither easy nor straightforward.

We both follow a well-mapped route which our sisters and brothers have travelled before us, and have to explore new routes and carve out new paths.

On this journey, being well-skilled in theology is like having a compass as well as a map.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Here I want to give a more concrete form to the argument by looking at a basic problem of Christian theology and a current problem in Catholic practice.

We all ask theological questions and we cannot avoid them! Sometimes we realize this and we carry on the questioning with skill and a cupboard full of resources, sometimes we do it badly, with a limited range of ideas, and make a mess of it.

The poor cook has only a handful of recipes, relies on tins of sardines, and cannot cook a piece of meat without burning it; the good one has enough training and built-in resourcefulness that with the same ingredients we get an interesting meal!

So it is with the study of theology: the same questions that lead the untrained person to throw it all up and say that the world is mad and a mess, can, with some theological training, be seen to refer to basic human issues and it can be seen that there are ways out of our problems. Discourse can then replace discord, and enlightenment can take the place of bigotry and ignorance.

I want to develop this by looking at a couple of situations where there is "a commonsense answer" and another, more theologically informed answer. Then I will leave it up to you to choose.

Situation 1: Living as an individual disciple: What is 'God'?

Everyone I meet appears to know what the word G-O-D means. For a great many people I meet the answer is simple: there is no god - it is an illusion and the universe does not need a god and there is no evidence in human life for god: just look at suffering!

For others, there is a god and there are ways of describing god. There are "Acts of God", which are always nasty like fires or floods or earthquakes. There's also "the Man Upstairs" and it's a good idea to "keep in with him".

This Man Upstairs is very much like a lord of the manor whom you do not really like, indeed resent, but you know that you have to be "nice" to him, as you do not want the consequences of making him angry.

I know other people who cannot utter a sentence without mentioning god and god seems to be the actual motive force of everything - except for some reason he keeps hiding.

So it is "Thank God for a lovely day" - but what about the storms that kill people? Or "God is above us all" - so no need to worry! - So why bother doing anything? Or "do not be sad, God loves us" - but I am sad and I want to shout out in anger as the agony of death, decay and destruction I see around me.

By contrast, most other words need very careful definition. I have to learn how to use language precisely and if I were a car mechanic and referred to a "rocker arm" as a "yoke" you would probably (wisely) not trust me to service your vehicle.

Much of education is trying to explain how to use language so that it illuminates rather than obscures. But "god" is such a simple a word and we all seem to know all about it.

The atheist knows there is no god, while some religious people know more about god than they do about the physics of their refrigerator.

So why have theologians asserted over and over again: we do not know what we mean by the word G-O-D and that the whole task of theology is to ask the real question (it is not a learning game): what is God?

Late medieval attempt to picture in statues the whole mystery of God - Father, Son, and Spirit - in human images. While such a desire to see God may answer both a human and a catechetical demand, it not only fails, but betrays the deeper reality that the Divine is greater than all we can imagine.

Could it be that we confuse the question "what is god?" with the question "how many gods are there?"

To the latter question the atheist will answer that there is no god. The official answer of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and members of many other religions will be there is one god.

Others, including those who refer to the Man Upstairs and who thinks of God as the super-boss among a class of bosses, will say there is more than one god.

By contrast, "what is God?" is an attempt to put words on mystery. It is a mystery that is glimpsed here and there for a moment, felt intensely and then felt as absent, a vision which is more akin to poetry than to prose, a sense rather than a cold-blooded deduction from evidence.

"What is God?" is a question that is the pursuit of a lifetime and, while we may pray and worship and work, we must always resist the falsehood of thinking we have an answer.

If you think you have captured God in a sentence or a single idea or "have it worked out", then that is your projection, your idol, rather than the Reality which is beyond the universe but which beckons us.

It takes a lot of training in theology to appreciate this fundamental maxim: Deus semper maior - "whatever G-O-D is, is always greater than what we think God is".

An early modern attempt to imagine that which is beyond imagination. Mystery cannot be fitted within the categories of our empirical experience, nor depicted in this material way.

So let us use the G-O-D with reverence and be sensitive to how we can be spreading confusion by overuse.

Situation 2: Living in a community of Catholic disciples: Are we short of presbyters?

Anyone even vaguely familiar with the Catholic Church today knows that there are not enough priests to staff the parishes; that communities are losing their churches due to this shortage because the remaining priests are usually greying and often exhausted through trying to cover too much territory.

And while priests from Africa and India may bring welcome help, this is far from ideal: they are needed in their own cultures and often have difficulty adjusting to a western European religious environment.

The answer to the priest shortage is so obvious to many people as to need no reflection: ordain married men, abolish compulsory celibacy, or even consider ordaining women - as other Churches have done.

But as soon as these possibilities are suggested a series of counter-arguments, usually designated as "from tradition", are advanced so as to make any change appear impossible or so far in the future as to be beyond any visible horizon.

Faced with this impasse, most arguments seem to revert to the history of practices: could what happened in the past, tell us something about the future?

But once we turn to the past we find that cases are put forward from each side as to what happened or did not happen, the significance of Jesus doing or not doing something, whether or not "apostles" equal "bishops" and whether or not those around Jesus were "ordained" or simply picked - or maybe there is no difference?

Then, even when answers to these questions emerge, another problem pops up: can the Church do something that appears never to have been done before? Or if something has always been done in one way can it now be done in another way?

So faced with a crisis in the present and the future, we seem to pore over the details of the 16th century (Trent's rejection of those who challenged the notion of celibacy as a more perfect form of discipleship) or the 12th century (first imposition by the Western Church of celibacy as a pre-requisite of ordination), or even (to the dismay of biblical scholars) the exact details of Jesus' meal on the night before his crucifixion (asking, for example, were women present).

Can theology throw light on this question?

A sign in a German town - when the sign was made there were three celebrations of the Eucharist each weekend, not there is just one. This change is not the result of a major demographic shift in the area, but doe to the fact of ever fewer presbyters. The model of the presbyterate still demanded by Roman Catholic Church practice no longer fits the pastoral reality of this local church. The sign is an analogue of the absurdity of theory confronting reality and reality being found wanting.

The first point to note is the style of the argument: it looks backwards to the past while imagining the past as a (1) complete, (2) clear and (3) adequate statement of all that we need to know about the structure of the Church.

The past, it seems, sets the parameters of discussion and contains the precedents for what can and cannot happen now.

So we might start by noting that the notion that ever closer scrutiny of the past (as containing the answers to any possible question now or in the future) is very similar to the way as some in the Reformed churches relate to "the bible" as having within it a clear answer to every possible question.

So asking whether the "tradition allows" women to be priests is like asking whether "the bible allows slavery or capital punishment". The assumption is that there is an answer in the book and if it countenances the practice, then it is allowed, while if it criticizes it, then it is forbidden.

But the bible has no criticism of slavery or capital punishment and does not condemn those who would stone a woman who committed adultery. Likewise, until the later 19th century the tradition had little problem with slavery.

I knew a priest who had been a prison chaplain and was with many men before they were hanged. He could not understand why people now thought it immoral. I have also met Christians from cultures where stoning women still occurs - and they say they can "understand" the practice!

But asking these questions of the past misses a more basic fact of life: cultures change and sometimes their insights amount to an enrichment of human life and sometimes to its diminution.

But a culture's past is as different from its present as that culture is from a foreign culture, and the future will be different again.

So maybe we need to refine our questions. Perhaps we should ask what can we do now that would help us pursue the goal of building the kingdom of God, affirming the dignity of each person, recognizing the presence of the Spirit in every one of the baptized.

We thus shift the focus from where we have come from (because we are no longer there) to where we are going (because that is where we soon will be).

This question allows us to assess what we value and value what we possess. It asks what it means to say "thy will be done" today.

We are only asking these questions - about celibacy, the form of ministry, and about who can be ordained - because we are no longer in the older situation. So we look forward and know that we may make mistakes - we have made many in the past.

But if we focus on purpose and what we are called to become, we will at least be honest. And, moreover, we will break out of the circle of endless details about what some verse in some first-century text means or what happened in the fourth or fifth centuries.

These questions may be great historical questions (and, as such, respond to our needs as history-producing beings), but they are not questions about what is demanded of us on the path of discipleship moving into the future.

Clearer questions

One thing that the study of theology should do is to help us clarify our questioning.

The past - and all its texts such as those that are in the bible - is our memory, an important key to our identity, and one of the deep common bonds between us.

But the past is not "the universal religious encyclopedia" in which are all the answers just waiting for one of us to go and "look them up".

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

A door to a synodal Church

But if voices are to witness to the truth, the speakers must seek to be as informed as they can be.

In matters relating to faith, an essential part of that personal equipment is to be theologically literate. Viewed in this light, we can see the study of theology as a doorway to a synodal Church.

But there are three obstacles to such widespread literacy.

First, among Roman Catholics, "theology" was historically confined to the ordained. Many Catholics have simply never thought that taking a serious interest in theology is any of their business.

The old attitude of the "the clergy speak, the laity listen" is still alive as we reach the 60th anniversary of the opening of Vatican Council II (1962-65).

Second, there has been a marked swing away from the teaching of theology in many universities.

The emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ("STEM Subjects") means that theology is excluded as somehow useless, a confessional matter, or as a poor use of resources.

Third, many highly committed Catholics - both lay and clerical - have never considered how the formal study of theology can be a resource for the Church and the world.

While individual academic subjects strive to say everything about something, theology strives to say something about everything.

Therefore, what follows is the case for getting more and more Catholics to take up theological studies as an aspect of the synodal path we have no upon.

Discipleship

Words have a sparkle as well as a meaning.

For many Christians today the word "discipleship" - a notion that has a very wide range of meanings - has a very positive sparkle.

It captures a sense of personal commitment, of life as a movement of growth and learning, and seems to fit very well with a sense of belonging within a Church that imagines itself as the pilgrim people of God.

"Theology", by contrast, has little sparkle; indeed, it seems a dull word relating to a rather boring and obscure academic pursuit.

When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers' (Ps 8:3): the wonder of the universe - which we today see in greater detail than ever before - has always been a starting point for theological questioning.

But let us look at a series of situations - scenes that confront us as Catholic Christians every day - and see if looking at them with the resources of theological speculation can help us to do three things.

First, theology can help to reposition these problems so that they might be seen as opportunities rather than roadblocks.

Second, theology can help us to relate to them differently as individual disciples and as a community of disciples, the Church, and thus find ways "through" the problems.

Third, theology can provide us with alternative ways of talking about what we hold precious as disciples and so help us in the task of evangelization.

What is theology?

What exactly do we mean by theology?

Most Christians think of theology primarily as an academic subject. It's a body of information that exists "out there", something that's difficult to get one's head around and must be absorbed by religious experts. And, so, it is really the business of the clergy.

It is like the religious equivalent of physics. Physics is complex and seems to be awfully important. So we are glad that there are egghead off in some university somewhere who work on it, but we can get on with life quite well without it!

Just so with theologians. No doubt they are useful, but just as the egg still boils whether or not you understand the physics, so faith keeps going and God is still "above us all" whether or not you have read a theology book!

But, actually, theology is not really like physics. It is far more like cookery: the more you know about cookery, the easier everyday cooking - and cooking is not only unique to human but affects us every day - becomes.

'Wisdom is calling out in the streets and marketplaces' (Prov 1:20): wherever humans come together, there are latent theological questions. Theological questions are as close as the local weekly market.

This might seem a little bit arrogant but think of the number of times either religious questions or questions with a religious dimension come up in everyday conversation.

A person is knocked down on the road and someone says: "If your number's up, your number's up!" Do you accept that life is so determined? Even if you do - and there have been many deterministic religions - don't you still look both ways before crossing the road?

One athlete on winning a race bows to the ground and thanks Allah; another blesses herself; a third does nothing because he thinks that is superstition. Are there different gods or if just one God, why so many arguments. Or is it all hocus pocus?

As I write this I recall the bomb thrown into a church in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday a couple of years ago, another bomb that exploded in Kabul in a dispute between Sunni and Shia, and the tensions in the United States that arise from some of the apocalyptic ideas held by members of the fundamentalist "Christian" right who deny climate change and imagine they can predict the future by stringing together a few biblical texts.

All three stories set me thinking. Perhaps religion is bad for human beings. Should it perhaps be consigned to the dustbin of failed stupidities? That is a basic theological question.

'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these' (Mt 6:28-9): the beauty of the world around us is another starting point for theological reflection.

Religion produces discord but could it also be the sponsor of discourse between groups since societies always develop religions, even if today they are usually god-less religions. That too is a theological question.

Discord or discourse
All religions argue about what their "original" texts/stories or founders meant/ said/wanted.

Are there better ways of looking at these questions that might generate more light than heat, and are there ways of pursuing these questions that are creative rather than destructive?

Once again, we have theological questions.

If we are encountering these questions, then as a community we might seek to address them in a careful, considerate manner - and we have a noble goal: replacing discord with discourse.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

I pull one toward the back of the truck and let the momentum lift the weight.

I bring down the side of the can on the lip of the hopper, and bags tumble into the stinking mess: coffee swirls with exploded ketchup packets and fetid leftovers.

If there is a bulk pick-up, Craig, the driver, will come out to help me, but I am usually alone. It's just me and people's trash.

One summer during college, I worked for my hometown's road department as a garbage man.

I rode the back of the truck as the cool morning gave into the hot afternoon.

Our route was taped to the dashboard: a thousand-time photocopied map of side streets and cul-de-sacs.

We had to be finished by lunch.

A swift run meant that we had time for an omelette and toast at the Hanover Diner and some days a nap at a dead-end street.

I never could sleep for long. I was afraid that I would get caught.

The other guys, who knew better, said that nobody would care unless we missed a house.

We never did.

Some people lined thick rubber trash cans against the curb. Others slouched over-stuffed bags over the curb, their contents spilt during the night.

Bears loved to lap yogurt containers, and often left a trail of ruptured diapers and torn bags of fast food across dewy lawns.

Some people rushed down their driveway at the last minute, in robe and slippers, pushing one can in front and pulling one behind, as if a missed week of trash meant their home would be overwhelmed.

It might. We have to throw away most of our lives.

Shredded bank statements. Mildewed jeans kept in a humid attic. Black and white televisions, their rounded screens split with cracks. High school quizzes, saved for a nostalgia that evolves into clutter. Wool sweaters pocked with jagged tears.

Sooner or later, it all has to go.

A. R. Ammons once wrote, "garbage has to be the poem of our time because/ garbage is spiritual, believable enough/ to get our attention."

Before becoming a garbage man, I never gave much thought to dragging trash cans to the end of the driveway.

I didn't worry when I packed cans full of shredded grass spit from my father's mower.

I didn't realize those heavy lifts probably stressed or strained some backs.

We don't understand most jobs, most lives until we inhabit them.

I was only thinking of getting rid of what was not needed. Trash cannot stay in a house. The new has to replace the old.

There is a rhythm to garbage.

There is only so much room—in our houses, in our hearts—and at some point, we have got to let go.

Unto dust we return our food, our pillows and sheets, our clothes, our mirrors, our carpets and rugs.

Our material comforts serve a purpose, and then they become worn and warped, and they need to be tossed.

There is a strangely silent communion between us on the truck and the people who often leave very personal things—reams of bank statements, old college love letters—bundled in the road at the end of their driveway.

It is an offering based on faith.

Every other week was bulk collection. People would put out old recliners and chipped bookcases. Sometimes we found Atari consoles, warped from the early morning rain, among the big items.

We knew that people drove pick-ups after dark the night before, looking for tossed treasures to sell and maybe sometimes to keep.

That refrain, the idea of garbage given new life, makes me think of our once-a-week trek to the county recycling centre. Continue reading

• Nick Ripatrazone Nick Ripatrazone has written for Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, The Paris Review and Esquire. His newest book is Ember Days, a collection of stories.

There are features of our Western world's culture that seem to fit the image.

Important aspects of our lives seem to have become disconnected from what gives them meaning. If this is true, it is hardly healthy. I offer the following examples.

"Me" disconnected from "we"; and "my" from "our"

To say modern culture suffers from acute individualism is by now a truism.

Clamours for "my rights" often involve little or no sense of "my responsibilities".

It seems incredible that some would regard public health requirements as infringements of their rights - it's as silly as regarding the road rules as violations of their freedom.

During the pandemic, some have been willing to put other people's lives at risk for no better reason than to enjoy themselves. Obviously, legal restrictions are no substitute for moral formation.

But all is not lost:

• Catastrophes can still bring out the best in people.
• It is still easy to admire individuals who are generous, even risking their own lives for others.
• It is still easy to dislike gross forms of self-centredness and self-aggrandisement.
• People still give generously to charitable causes.
• And it is still easy to pity individuals caught up in over-anxious self-concern.

But there are also subtler forms of disconnect that we can become used to; they become ‘normalised'.

For example, in most if not all cultures, marriage has been a moment of celebration for whole communities. Now, "what we do is nobody else's business". Within an individualist culture, it isn't easy to see anything wrong with this. It's the culture that has become reductionist.

Work used to be regarded as an expression one's person and relationships with others. Now, within the culture we are regarding as ‘normal', it is reduced to a commodity and business transaction. Commercial value attaches to the work, not the person doing it, so work becomes unmoored from its own deepest meaning.

The common denominator to all forms of self-centredness is failure to realise that we can become our own true selves only through being "for others".

This paradox is at the centre of Jesus' teaching.

The drift away from his Gospel has become a drift away from what we need to become our own true selves. This will show up in the uglier kinds of self-centredness.

Facts' unmoored from truth

When truth is reduced to whatever we say to get whatever we want - whether it is true or not - we are targets for manipulation. We become vulnerable to every kind of spin - commercial spin, political spin, and agenda-driven ideologies.

Scientists work hard to establish facts.

They know we need to act on what is objectively true.

Solving crimes, the judicial system, and research in every field are all based on the premise that truth matters.

All these, and most of life, would be turned up-side-down if it were enough to say: "truth is whatever the individual thinks it is - it is true for her/him" and "right is whatever the individual chooses - it is right for him/her".

How could we even say rape or sexual abuse are wrong if it might be "right" for the person doing it?

So, we cannot escape the need to acknowledge an objective difference between true and false, and right and wrong.

Conspiracy theories during the pandemic duped some people into believing claims that were far more bizarre than anything the sciences ever present us with.

What kind of culture is it when they are so gullibly believed?

Parroting cliches is a lazy alternative to serious thinking. For example: lazy thinkers don't distinguish between judging a person's actions (which we may do, and sometimes must), and judging their conscience (which we may not - because we cannot know whether or how much they are guilty before God.)

That is the meaning of the saying: "who am I to judge?"

"Who am I to judge", doesn't mean we can't judge their actions!

But even when we rightly judge that another's actions are wrong, it is often necessary to look further.

Their offending can have deep roots in early experience of abuse or deprivation or cultural alienation.

If we are personally attached to truth, we will look more deeply, and avoid superficial judgments and demonising.

Lazy thinking also buys the slogan used to justify abortion: "it's my body," even though the sciences leave no doubt that the embryo is actually someone else's body.

Sexual activity unmoored from sexuality's meaning

I recently heard some young people say they felt it was wrong to send sexual imagery online, but they didn't know why.

They will not come any closer to knowing through "consent education".

"Consent education" is right to teach the need to avoid activities that are not legal or consensual or safe. But that is as far as it can go because it is unconcerned with sexuality's meaning - other than it being a source of pleasure.

That kind of ‘education' allows, if it doesn't promote, the idea that anything goes provided it is legal, consensual and safe.

But is it?

A more holistic education would allow young people to learn about virtue.

Modesty is the virtue that protects chastity.

Of course, if society has given away the virtue of chastity, then it won't feel any need for modesty. Chastity is the virtue that applies self-respect, restraint and respect for others, to sexuality.

Unchastity involves a lack of self-respect, restraint and respect for others.

The Department of Internal Affairs' statistics regarding the extent of attempts in NZ to access child sex sites, and the increasing demand for younger children, and more violent forms of abuse, show where we go when the meaning of sexuality is ignored, or reduced to pleasure.

There have been strong, organized and determined cultural movements whose agenda has been to "liberate" sexuality from all previous restraints.

We look back incredulously to the 1960's through 1990's when some activists described themselves as ‘victims' of harsh laws aimed at preventing "man-boy love"; and children as ‘victims' because harsh parents didn't want them to have that kind of loving care!!

"Inter-generational sex" and "man-boy love' were euphemisms intended to promote the acceptability of what society calls pederasty.

For some, the aim was to shed categories such as ‘heterosexual' and ‘homosexual' in favour of more fluid and non-binary language. Even though by the 1990's those movements had mostly lost their credibility, the underlying ideologies have a way of re-surfacing.

So sooner or later, we do need to come to the question: what is sexuality's meaning?

What is its purpose?

Yes, it is for pleasure.

But so is unchastity. So, there must be some meaning beyond that.

Honest reflection recognises two purposes that are entwined and come together uniquely in marriage: they are sexuality's potential for deeply nurturing the love of two people, and in a way that is also designed to generate new life as the fruit of their love. And because new life needs to be protected and nurtured, the child's parents need to be in a relationship that is stable, committed and faithful.

Whatever allowances we rightly make for people of various orientations or preferences (see below), ultimately it is marriage that can fulfil sexuality's deepest meanings.

Detached from marriage, sexual activities are detached from sexuality's meaning.

Gender identity unmoored from sexual identity

Gender identity is not a label that is put on us, by ourselves or by others. It is given by nature long before we start making our own decisions.

But what about the tensions between biological reality and psychological/emotional reality that some people experience?

We move closer to an answer when we allow both faith and the sciences to be part of our thinking: the world is a work in progress, and we are part of this evolving world.

This means that none of us is a finished product. We are all at one stage or another of being unfinished.

We can be born with deficiencies, or incur disabilities, some of which last through life.

In fact, we are never finished while death is still in front of us.

When there is something that cannot be resolved or fulfilled within our present span of life, it helps to remember that our life was not something we had a right to in the first place; it is simply a gift. And our present life is not the whole of it.

In that kind of world, personal development does not always take place at the same pace or even follow the usual pattern.

Those who are caught in any of the dilemmas resulting from different stages of, or lines of, development have a right to the same respect and unconditional love as everyone else.

Still, as Professor Kathleen Stock, herself a lesbian, writing about "Why Reality Matters for Feminism," reminds us, there are only two biological sexes and no amount of hormonal or surgical treatment can change that.

She is aware that by seeking surgical or hormonal treatment to support gender change, people are implicitly acknowledging the link between gender identity and sexual identity.

But she is also aware, and critical of, the more recent claim that they should not need to; it should be enough simply to declare that you are male or female, regardless of biological reality.

Is that where the separation of gender identity and sexual identity can take us?

If reality matters, then it matters to acknowledge that, both socially and biologically, male and female find a certain completion in each other, precisely by being each other's ‘opposite' - which is what the ancient Genesis story has been saying all along.

Politics unmoored from the common good

Politics unmoored from the common good is politics unmoored from its own purpose.

The purpose of political involvement is to create a social and economic environment in which everyone has the opportunity to progress towards achieving their own potential and a fulfilling life.

In a true democracy, political parties differ over how to do this, while being united in a common pursuit of the common good.

Partisan self-interest placed above the common good is a throw-back to tribalism, and like ancient forms of tribalism, it undermines the unity that is needed for achieving the common good.

The alternative to the common good is mere partisan power.

This gives rise to all kinds of inequalities and absurdities (e.g. being duped by misinformation and lies that have been discredited by the courts; basing decisions about masks and social distancing not on science but on which political party you belong to!)

We might be surprised at such fickleness, though perhaps less surprised that it happens in a country where States can still pass anti-democratic laws, and that does not yet have a proper separation of powers.

But the lesson for ourselves is how foolish and self-destructive we too could become through unmooring rights from responsibilities. ‘facts' from truth, and politics from pursuit of the common good.

"Religion" unmoored from ordinary life

Early in the Christian tradition, St Iraneus said the glory of God is human beings coming alive through seeing God in all that God has made and all that God is doing in human lives.

We are being drawn to God through the experience of created beauty, goodness and truth.

Popes St John Paul II and Benedict XVI have picked up Iraneus' theme, emphasising that since human beings becoming fully alive is God's agenda in creating and redeeming us, it is also "the route the Church must take."

So, religion is not somehow running alongside our ordinary lives; it is our ordinary lives being made extraordinary, being sanctified, graced - family life, civic life, industrial and commercial life, political life…

Of course, this is unfinished work, and so it will be until God is "all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28).

In the meantime, people for whom life's shortfalls create a sense of insecurity are the ones more likely to seek escape into "religion" perceived as some kind of separate sphere, or construct built on to life, or, worse, a kind of bubble (even having its own separate language).

This perception of ‘religion" being alongside ordinary life is the assumption of some bloggers, and it seems, even some bishops (in Britain, Ireland, France and USA) who resent government restrictions affecting church gatherings even during a pandemic.

It is as if the sciences and good government don't apply to "religion's" separate sphere.

A concept of religion unmoored from the needs of the common good is unmoored from the ordinary processes of becoming more truly human and fully alive, which is what gives glory to God.

Conclusion

A culture in which so many aspects of life have become unmoored from what gives them meaning is a culture that is reductionist, superficial, utilitarian…

The question is: within that kind of culture, how well equipped can we be to deal with the epic issues of our time - those that degrade human life, human dignity, human rights and the planet itself?

• Peter Cullinane is Emeritus Bishop of Palmerston North. He has a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Angelicum, Rome and a Master of Theology from Otago University. Bishop Cullinane is a former President of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Conference and between 1983 and 2003 he was a member of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL).

Christoph Theobald SJ was a major figure at a recent May 5, "Today and Tomorrow. Imagining Theology" Vatican symposium on the future of Catholic theology.

Following the symposium, the 74-year-old Theobald, who teaches theology in Paris, spoke with La Croix's Christophe Henning about the challenges facing the future of theology.

"Pope Francis is pushing for in-depth theological work," says Theobald. "The so-called ecclesiastical sciences - theology, philosophy, the humanities, etc. - constitute a laboratory for overcoming the crisis we are going through."

"The pope emphasizes that we are not living in an epoch of change, but in a change in epochs. An anthropological crisis that affects the human being, but which is also planetary and environmental. His encyclicals Fratelli tutti and Laudato si' make a fairly precise diagnosis of this crisis, for which there is no ready-made answer."

Theobald says that the charism of theologians is to undertake a critical work and seek, in a forward-looking manner, solutions for the future.

"We cannot solve today's problems with yesterday's systems."

There are three challenges Theobald identified for the theology of the future.

Firstly, the Church no longer reaches people in their daily lives.

"It's a question of admissibility. Faced with de-Christianization, we must work on a theology of daily life and find a way to speak with our contemporaries."

The second challenge Theobald noted is the need to enter into dialogue with the different significant traditions. He said it's not only a question of dialogue with Judaism or Islam, but with all spiritualities, even agnostic ones.

"Now, this diversity is disturbed by a secularism which is not dying down anywhere in Europe. It is even more intense in France. We must work on a theology of politics that takes into account these different traditions."

Finally, Theobald continued, it's urgent to reflect on the enormous development of digital technology which is invading our lives.

"What remains of a theology of consciousness when everything is managed by algorithms and computers?" Theobald asked.

"We are at a turning point, especially in Europe. It is essential to develop foresight.

There is no vision in the face of uncertainty, even though we should live by the central virtue of hope and dare to develop, as in the Bible, "dreams" of the future.

This is the role of theology," concluded Theobald.

Sources

La Croix International

"I come from the land of William Tell and we weren't brought up to be subservient," he said.

"Why should we always crawl? Standing tall suits a theologian too."

Küng paid dearly for that independence, being stripped of his right to teach Catholic theology by St. John Paul II and repeatedly frustrated in his efforts to reform the tradition-bound Vatican.

But Küng's theology books became bestsellers, his articles were printed around the world and his causes — such as abolishing priestly celibacy, challenging papal infallibility and championing interreligious dialogue — became markers for a more open and questioning Catholicism.

"Küng remained one of the spokesmen of an informal global liberal Catholicism that never found its organizational form," said Bernhard Lang, a German theologian who studied under Küng at Tübingen University.

"The rebellious Swiss was jokingly called ‘Martin Luther Küng' by his followers, but he didn't see himself as a Martin Luther." He never wanted to found a new church, just reform the Catholic one he belonged to, Lang noted in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

"Hans Küng loved the church. He even loved the pope," Bishop Felix Gmür of Basel, head of the Swiss bishops' conference, said on learning the theologian had died in his home in Tübingen in southwestern Germany.

"He wanted a renewed church that deals with people's lives as they are and the world as it is."

Bishop Georg Bätzing, head of the bishops' conference in neighbouring Germany, hailed his "concern to make the gospel message understandable and give it a place in believers' lives."

It's often forgotten that Küng, who was born in Sursee in Lucerne canton in 1928, was a loyal priest in good standing, educated in Catholic universities in Rome and Paris and incardinated, or registered as a priest, in his home diocese of Basel. He also wore suits, drove sports cars and skied until late in his long life.

He was self-assured to the point of arrogance, unafraid to criticize popes and question church teachings. After the Vatican barred him from teaching Catholic theology in 1979, he continued as a professor of ecumenical theology at Tübingen, whose theology department has a deep tradition that included Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI. In 1995 Küng launched the Global Ethic Foundation to find common ethical ground among the world's faiths.

Küng crossed swords early on with the Vatican, which began investigating him in 1957 after he published a book questioning whether Catholics and Protestants were really so divided over issues that led to the Reformation.

He played an active role at the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, whereas a theological adviser he argued for liberalizing reforms and dashed off speeches in Latin — the official council language — for bishops from several countries to read to the plenary.

In subsequent years, he repeatedly challenged church teaching with bestsellers such as "Infallible?" (1970), "On Being a Christian" (1974) and "Does God Exist?" (1978). After he wrote a stinging criticism of St. John Paul II's first year in office, the Vatican withdrew his permission to teach Catholic theology.

That didn't stop him. Among other of his over 70 books were "Can the Catholic Church Be Saved?" (2011). In "Die Happy?" (2014), he said he might opt for assisted suicide — which the church opposes — "if I show any signs of dementia."

His growing interest in other religions prompted Küng, who spoke six languages fluently, to also write books about Judaism, Islam and Asian faiths. His works have been translated into about 30 different languages.

Küng had a famously complicated relationship with Pope Benedict XVI, whom he brought to Tübingen to teach in the 1960s when the then-Father Ratzinger was a liberal theologian. He later turned more conservative and headed the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, before becoming pope in 2005.

Shortly after that, the two former colleagues held a private meeting to discuss world ethical questions. Benedict did not lift Küng's teaching ban and the theologian soon went back to blasting the conservative pope.

Küng's work on global ethics brought him into contact with political and social leaders around the world. Before the United Nations General Assembly in 2001, he repeated the motto: "No peace among nations without peace among religions. No peace among religions without dialogue between the religions. No dialogue between the religions without investigation of the foundation of the religions."

He was enthusiastic at the election of Pope Francis in 2013, seeing in him a possible successor to the reforming Pope John XXIII, but gradually grew disillusioned with him too.

The Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano carried an interview on Wednesday with Cardinal Walter Kasper, former head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, who was Küng's assistant in Tübingen as a graduate student in the early 1960s.

"He was a combative man, he loved a dialogue painted in strong colours," the German cardinal recalled. "We had our differences, but that never caused any enmity. … In the depth of his heart, he was Catholic.

He never thought of leaving the church." Küng had given the church "reform ideas that have become current issues in Germany," Kasper said, including ideas such as women's ordination or optional celibacy with which Kasper did not agree.

But younger church leaders have drifted in Küng's direction. Gmür and Bätzing, for example, support blessing same-sex couples, as does Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.

"Küng spearheaded two major developments in Catholic theology after Vatican II," Massimo Faggioli, professor of historical theology at Villanova University, told Religion News Service.

"His books took theology out of the shadow of church control and he looked at religions with a global perspective. His work on global ethics made him unique in appeal and influence."

Margot Kässmann, a prominent German Lutheran theologian, recalled Küng's example for others.

"As a student, I learned from him how to stand tall," she said. "You have to stand up for your convictions, even if they are not always a majority in your church."

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, also a Protestant, praised Küng as an exemplary public intellectual in a condolence message to his sister.

"With his Swiss incorruptibility, he never evaded the necessary dispute about the right path to peace and understanding," he wrote.

The London Catholic weekly The Tablet, a regular outlet for Küng's articles, called the late theologian "one of the most influential and prophetic voices of 20th century Christianity."

It quoted the Rev Yves Congar, a French theologian also active at the Second Vatican Council, as saying of his Swiss colleague: "Küng goes straight ahead like an arrow. He is a demanding, revolutionary type, rather impatient … We need such people."

• Tom Heneghan is an author at Religion News Service. Republished with permission.

They then let it be known that they can't discuss something with you … because they are locked in a small room. And their justification takes the form: "Can't because we say we can't because we said we can't".

This act of communication is called a "tantrum".

It is not meant to educate you about anything. Other, accidentally, than the self-importance of its perpetrator and their circular grasp of logic.

It is meant to interrupt whatever you were doing, play on your emotions and try to exercise power over you.

It demands the end of the dialogical and the imposition of the absolute. The kind of absolutism we associate with angry infants.

Luckily, as adults know, a tantrum only has the power over you that you give it.

I say this not to insult the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose senior members surely know the communication games they are playing with the German Synod.

I say it to offer protection to people who are hurt and scandalised by their responsum to a dubium regarding the blessing of the unions of persons of the same sex.

For when you perceive that something is a tantrum, you are less likely to be hurt by anything said by the tantrum thrower. Less likely to think it has anything to do with you.

More aware that a self-fuelling delusion is at work.

Having said that, the CDF responsum does seem to follow the tantrum model of capricious "educatio interrupta".

It produces a self-provoked question, and gives a self-referential answer. One which it hopes will be an act of power, not an act of dialogue.

Then it justifies itself with circular logic: from an apriori deduction of the presumed intrinsic heterosexuality of all humans, the CDF assumes an objectively disordered tendency and intrinsically evil acts to be at work in both partners in a same-sex relationship, and so reaches the only conclusion that it can.

And it quotes itself extensively to prove it.

And this is their sadness: our brethren (sic) are locked into an account of objectivity which bears passing little relationship to the reality of creation as we are coming to know it and participate in it.

And they will be so locked until either a pope or a council sets them free from running around on this treadwheel, gives them formal permission to move on.

A key question behind moving on from tantrum teaching is this: How is divine wisdom in fact, and in practice, revealing the intelligibility of all created things to us and turning us, by our active and intelligent participation in that creative wisdom, into daughters and sons of God, heirs to creation?

Our learning over the last hundred years or so about the matters we now refer to as LGBT+ serve as a good test case for how we might begin to answer this.

Where frightened morality tries to close things down, wisdom, starting from our rejects, opens up the reality of what is, as we undergo being forgiven for our narrow goodness and hard-heartedness, sifting through our fears and delusions. And so we discover our neighbours as ourselves, and how we are loved.

Only a theological anthropology of learning that accompanies how we do, in fact, learning can help with this. Not one which demands a series of deductions from presumed first principles, and then discards the bits of reality that don't fit.

And so to the matter of blessings given to, received and shared by, same-sex couples: Our Lord teaches us to know a tree by its fruit.

He provokes our learning process. And it leads us to find things to bless, forms of blessedness old and new.

The power and the glory of the Creator do tend to show themselves through our becoming, as we discern what we are for and who we are.

It is a learning which is especially blessed when we find ourselves being forgiven for having categorised groups of people in false ways, and discovering that life is richer and better for all of us when they are encouraged to be who they are.

The CDF, faced with the same tree and its fruit, assures us that because it is the wrong sort of tree, therefore the fruit must be bad.

That is not a learning process.

It is a holding to a restrictive sacred which sets its brandishers free from the need to learn.

I'm very glad that so many Catholics are dodging the tantrum and hewing to Our Lord.

The responsum is unlikely to dissuade us from blessing God as we find God blessing us.

• James Alison is a Catholic theologian, priest and author. He has studied, lived and worked in Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Spain and the United States as well as his native England. James earned his doctorate in theology from the Jesuit Faculty in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1994 and is a systematic theologian by training.
• First published in English by The Tablet. Republished with permission of the author.

The decree, which notes God "cannot bless sin," reiterates traditional Catholic teaching on sexuality. But the outpouring of painful reactions demonstrates the limits of Pope Francis' welcoming gestures toward LGBTQ people and is a stark reminder that my church continues to deny people their full humanity.

Straight Catholics who love our church and LGBTQ friends and family in equal measure are finding it increasingly difficult to square the church's often contradictory messages.

The Catholic catechism insists gay people should be treated with dignity and "every sign of unjust discrimination" should be avoided.

This is the same church that, in a 2003 Vatican statement, said allowing children to be adopted by same-sex couples "would actually mean doing violence to these children."

The same church that has promised to welcome and accompany gay Catholics is now opposing the Equality Act in Congress, which would ban discrimination against people based on sexual orientation and gender identity. And in a U.S. Supreme Court case that will be decided this summer, Catholic Social Services in Philadelphia wants to continue operating as a government contractor and receive city funding while refusing to place foster children with same-sex couples.

It's a strange and un-Christian form of love that tells people they are equal in God's eyes but then acts in ways that deem their committed relationships and parenting as inferior.

The Vatican's latest statement is likely to cause spiritual and psychological damage to young LGBTQ people who already experience higher rates of suicide, and push more people away from the institutional church.

This statement stings even more coming after what has felt like, for many LGBTQ Catholics, a shift with Pope Francis toward more welcoming and inclusive language.

"Not since the anger over sex abuse in 2002 and 2018 have I seen so many people so demoralized, and ready to leave the church," tweeted the Rev. James Martin, a prominent Jesuit priest and advocate for LGBTQ Catholics who has met with Pope Francis and serves as a Vatican adviser.

"And not simply LGBT people, but their families and friends, a large part of the church."

Perhaps a necessary reckoning over how the church thinks about LGBTQ people and human sexuality is arriving.

Belgian Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp said the Vatican statement left him with "intellectual and moral incomprehension."

In a commentary published in several Belgian and international newspapers, the bishop apologized for those who found the decree "painful and incomprehensible."

The bishop noted that he knows same-sex couples "who are legally married, have children, form a warm and stable family and actively participate in parish life. I'm immensely appreciative of their contributions."

Archbishop Mark Coleridge, president of the Australian Bishops' Conference, told The Tablet, a weekly Catholic journal, the statement "isn't by any means the end of the conversation. I think it should give greater impetus to another kind of conversation about inclusion."

Even the Vatican statement, which in part came as a response to German bishops involved with ongoing discussions about blessing same-sex couples, cites the "positive elements" of gay relationships and acknowledges they should be "valued and appreciated."

Several U.S. Catholic bishops in recent years have made efforts to show greater welcome toward LGBTQ people.

After the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich called for "real, not rhetorical" respect for gays and lesbians.

Newark Cardinal Joe Tobin welcomed a pilgrimage of LGBTQ Catholics to the city's cathedral in 2017.

San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy has said the church's description of gay sexual intimacy as "intrinsically disordered" is "very destructive language that I think we should not use pastorally."

LGBTQ Catholics and allies will continue to remind our church that until there is real discernment about how a disordered theology that excludes and wounds is never holy, welcoming rhetoric rings hollow.

Catholic leaders can begin by showing more humility.

The hierarchy does not have a monopoly on truth when it comes to the complexities of gender and human sexuality.

Reform and renewal first begin by listening — and acknowledging you have something to learn.

• John Gehring is Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life. He is a contributing editor at Commonweal magazine, and an adjunct professor of journalism at American University. Gehring is a graduate of Mount Saint Mary's University in Maryland, and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.
• The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.
• First published in RNS, republished with permission.