Francis [sic] Cabrini on the Feast of the Assumption with his son. He made the following observations: At one point the woman preacher said something to the effect that: He added, "Sadly these deviations were extremely distracting. Normally the moment before communion is a very peaceful time. However, I felt that my rights as a Catholic as well as those of my son, were being violated.
Given my state of mind, I refrained from receiving Our Lord. I received a blessing from the presiding priest who gave the following blessing: With every good wish, I remain Here is my response: However, I take full responsibility for it, something all church leaders should consider doing. Regarding the actual communication I would have to say that things must be pretty good in Texas if this poor soul was "extremely distracted" by the things that he relates.
I would have referred this troubled Texan to the wise advice of Pope Francis who calls the church to stop obsessing about "small minded rules. What did Jesus say about the splinter in your brother's eye? He and you seem so concerned about his so called rights as a Catholic being violated. I am more concerned about children being violated under your watch. You still owe us an explanation for your decisions involving Wehmeyer. As it turns out, the Sunday after I received this letter, the gospel reading was about handling differences in the church. Jesus says first of all go to the person and work it out.
He says nothing about first reporting back to the local ordinary. If the man wants to discuss his issues please give him my address. I do have a concern over his state of mind as I do for yours. Indeed, I do not see how you can continue in your position. It cannot be good for you. Even Cardinal Burke has apparently seen the light and is moving on. I will continue to pray for you. OK, its not going to be in contention for an Oscar. It is the story of an Irish priest. The scenery is spectacular, filmed on the rugged west coast of Ireland.
There are real characters portrayed and some humor. But it is a bleak film about the state of the contemporary church after the revelations of priestly sexual abuse and the maltreatment of teenage unwed mothers in church institutions. The title says it all. And right at the crosshairs is Father James, a vanishing breed of pastoral priests. As it turns out, he is a married priest. Well, his wife died and then he entered the seminary. But his marriage seems to be a very active presence in his life if in the background.
James's adult daughter comes back for a needed visit and notes the absence of a photo of her mother in her father's bedroom. He simply answers that he needs no photo for his daily awareness of her presence. The movie also involves a murder but I was more interested in the Irish context of a receding church. I then read the following column, "Getting real about vocations," by Father Brendan Hoban, an Irish priest heavily involved in church reform. This September 13 students entered Maynooth to study for the diocesan priesthood.
Last year there were And for more than a decade the figure has hovered within that radius. In my first year in Maynooth there were 84 of us; and the year before there were over And around that time the yearly figure hovered between those two extremes. We know now that there's a huge crisis in vocations. We know now what things will be like in the future. And, for some parishes, that future has already arrived: And when priests go on holidays or become suddenly ill, the emerging limited schedule of services is immediately cut-back, yet again.
There's now no denying the problem. It's just a question of doing the maths. Arguably the biggest difficulty we have is denying the reality of what's happening. This particular emperor is fully clothed, thank you very much. I wonder who's bringing him the wrong news? And for what purpose? The second difficulty is deciding on what to do with this train careering [sic] down the track that's going to devastate the Irish Catholic Church within the next two decades, wiping out parishes that have sustained themselves for centuries.
Plan A is praying for vocations and encouraging men, young and sometimes not so young, into a celibate priesthood. Plan B is doing the same. And that therefore Plan B would follow the same trajectory. Alternatively we suggested that married men of proven worth viri probati could be ordained; that priests who had left the ministry to marry could be invited back; and that women could be ordained deacons. The bishops told us that our proposals were 'not feasible'. Part of the problem is that a number of myths have emerged in recent years to muddy the waters and to undermine the need to re-image Catholic priesthood in our changing times.
One is that there are plenty of male, celibate vocations out there if we could only find them. All we have to do is appoint a full-time vocations director, use social media, pray and spread the net and we'll catch them. The evidence is not supportive of this position. We've been trying to attract male celibate vocations for years, using every possible strategy under the sun and throwing money and resources at the problem and the numbers keep going down.
Our hearts may want us to try again but our minds give us a different message. Another myth is that seminaries in America are full. If anything the vocations crisis is even more serious there. Yes, there are a few full seminaries but those in them are drawn from across the States and come from a very traditional, conservative constituency in the Church. The wisdom of pointing to one 'success story' is that the context tells a different story Some religious commentators have been repeating ad nauseam that the answer to the vocations' crisis is to re-invent traditional seminaries, to turn the clock back to the s, to sponsor a more traditional Catholicism.
This is not so much a solution as part of the problem. This circling of the wagons and insecurely reverting to an enclosed, persecuted Church is at odds with the faith of the people and is a recipe for disaster. It's defeatism at its very worst. It's a recipe for withdrawal from the world — the opposite of the very spirit of the Second Vatican Council.
Another myth is that the reason for the vocations crisis is that priests do not exhibit 'joy in their vocation'. Joy is a difficult sweet to suck on because fundamentally it's communicated not by organising large groups and singing happy songs but by living an authentic life.
Paul Tillich
People see through the happy-clappy joy, that mixture of naivety and piosity that has a hollow centre and crumbles under pressure. After what the Irish priesthood has endured for the last few decades this kind of 'joy' is whistling past the graveyard because it does not incorporate the reality of a lived life. Vocations, based on a false joy, will perish on the vine. As we already know. Having said all that, it does seem as if at last the debate on the future of the Irish Catholic priesthood is taking off. Hopefully the debate will deal with the issues rather than end up lobbing grenades over a high wall.
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St Thomas Aquinas, for example, in his famous Summa, always started by presenting fairly and honestly the arguments of those who opposed him before he attempted to refute them — a long-admired Dominican tradition. He has recently written a very powerful book, "A Question of Conscience," recounting his mistreatment by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when it was led by Josef Ratzinger. It should be for real. This is the fourth time we have so "concelebrated. There are other ways that the sharing continues.
This year, for example, two young people from Kateri will be participating in the Cabrini confirmation program. And thank you to all who make this weekend happen. In a recent editorial in the St Paul Pioneer Press August 24 on the desperate situation of the remaining , or so Christians in Iraq, she blames President Obama for their plight. She even oddly implies that Pope Francis is more bellicose than the President in this matter of saving the Christian community. Nowhere does she acknowledge that before George W. Bush invaded Iraq in , against the strong warnings of Pope John Paul II, the Christians numbered between one and a half and two million.
What happened to those missing one million-plus souls? It wasn't the rapture. Apparently the investigation he secretly conducted against his own policy of public disclosure of such investigations into claims he had abused a number of young men has concluded and the report has been sent to the Apostolic Nuncio. He has refused to release the results to the public, again against the policy he has imposed on all other clerics so accused of sexual abuse.
And he still has not explained to us his handling of Conlin, Wenthe, Keating and Wehmeyer or his freezing the lay pension plan. It seems he just changes the subject in a very cynical way. For him the real problem is not following his rigid brand of Catholicism. His task force on the mishandling of the clerical sexual abuse cases has submitted its findings and its proposed policy changes. The Archbishop has followed up on this by having all clergy, personnel and selected volunteers have periodic background checks every 3 years, attend safe environment training every 3 years and sign his code of conduct.
The need to strengthen our protections against sexual abuse is understandable and very necessary to win back trust lost by the failures not of those to be vetted under these strict policies but of our recent archbishops and their lieutenants. But his code of conduct goes well beyond protecting against sexual abuse.
Indeed, perversely, Nienstedt uses this code of conduct as a cover to continue his intolerant crusade for ultraorthodoxy. As part of the code of conduct all clergy and church employees must sign, he adds to this needed reform the following statements: Chruch Personnel will not publicly communicate messages contrary to Church teaching Nienstedt, judge, jury and chief executioner.
Nienstedt's orthodoxy focus in his addressing clerical sexual abuse is bizarre and over the top. This preoccupation of Nienstedt's is just like his trying to find me disabled and taken out of ministry because of my objections to his mean-spirited marriage amendment politics, and yet it appears he finds it just fine to have Wehmeyer fully function as a pastor. As an indication of the conduct code's stupidity, as it reads it prevents parents who work for the Archdiocese and its institutions from driving alone with minors — which does not distinguish if the children are their own. Again, as it reads it prevents minors from taking from the Eucharistic cup.
But these just reveal the lack of consultation and the shoddiness of the process.
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What is of utmost concern is the violation of the rights of conscience. That is spiritual abuse and it too is deadly. And he expects us to sign our rights away. In , the bishops of the United States agreed to form a National Catholic War Council to direct and encourage Catholic efforts in America's response to the war. As the war wound down, the War Council sought to offer the nation a plan, a blueprint, a program for postwar "social reconstruction.
Ryan became the author of that plan. He was a professor of sociology at Catholic University and was a priest of our Archdiocese. He came from South St. Paul and attended St. Thomas College and the St. That meant that he now had a national forum for his ideas and even a small staff and budget to promote them.
Ryan was a reformer. It included the following: Being very ecumenical, Ryan went on to work with Frances Perkins, Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor and the first woman to be a cabinet officer, to help institute programs such as Social Security. He was known as the "Right Reverend New Dealer," one of the great "labor priests.
The bishops can be taken to task for many reasons, but in the area of labor justice they are in continuity with Msgr. Labor Day gives us the chance to see how work in America matches up to the lofty ideals of our Catholic tradition. This year, some Americans who have found stability and security are breathing a sigh of relief. Sporadic economic growth, a falling unemployment rate, and more consistent job creation suggest that the country may finally be healing economically after years of suffering and pain.
For those men and women, and their children, this is good news. Digging a little deeper, however, reveals enduring hardship for millions of workers and their families. The poverty rate remains high, as 46 million Americans struggle to make ends meet. The economy continues to fail in producing enough decent jobs for everyone who is able to work, despite the increasing numbers of retiring baby boomers. There are twice as many unemployed job seekers as there are available jobs, and that does not include the seven million part-time workers who want to work full-time.
Millions more, especially the long-term unemployed, are discouraged and dejected. More concerning is that our young adults have borne the brunt of this crisis of unemployment and underemployment. The unemployment rate for young adults in America, at over 13 percent, is more than double the national average 6. For those fortunate enough to have jobs, many pay poorly. Greater numbers of debt-strapped college graduates move back in with their parents, while high school graduates and others may have less debt but very few decent job opportunities.
Pope Francis has reserved some of his strongest language for speaking about young adult unemployment, calling it "evil," an "atrocity," and emblematic of the "throwaway culture. What would our communities, parishes, and country look like if we all recommitted to each other and the common good? At their best, labor unions and institutions like them embody solidarity and subsidiarity while advancing the common good As a nation of immigrants, we recognize that a vibrant and just economy requires the contributions of everyone.
Those who come seeking decent work to support their families by and large complement, rather than displace, American workers. But we need to fix our broken immigration system to stop the exploitation and marginalization of millions of people as well as address the development needs of other countries Supporting policies and institutions that create decent jobs, pay just wages, and support family formation and stability will also honor the dignity of workers.
Raising the minimum wage, more and better workforce training programs, and smarter regulations that minimize negative unintended consequences would be good places to start. In doing this we follow the lead of Pope Francis in rejecting an economy of exclusion and embracing an authentic culture of encounter. Our younger generations are counting on us to leave them a world better than the one we inherited. In addition to his interest in environmentally friendly farming, Father Jaeger was also interested in sustainable technology that had a communitarian bent.
Back in the twenties, having returned from his service in the Balkans as a Red Cross officer doing relief work, he was apparently the first person in Mound to get a radio that could receive wireless broadcasts. Being a generous soul, he wanted to share this with others in the community.
He would call a parishioner who was the manual switchboard operator for the Mound telephone company. It was run out of her house. This was before dial phones, and she would simply ring the other people with phones and have them listen as Father Jaeger put the phone mouthpiece near the radio. Not quite the internet of things, but still neat. In his first statement to the faithful of the world, Benedict called for an end to what he knew would be "horrible butchery.
He contributed 82 million gold liras to support war-related relief programs. The Vatican refugee office continues in operation today. Last week in this column I mentioned the founding pastor of Our Lady of the Lake Church in Mound, Francis Jaeger, and his connection to the beekeeping department at the University of Minnesota.
He also had an interesting connection with World War I. Being from Slovenia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he was very familiar with the tinderbox conditions of the Balkan region where the war began with the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand. He also spoke the languages of the region. In he left his parishes, St. Bonifacius where he was pastor and his mission parish of OLL, and was commissioned as a relief officer for the International Red Cross.
There is a wonderful photo of him in his Red Cross uniform without clerical collar. As his service in the Balkans ended, he was knighted by the Orthodox King of Serbia. Jaeger's farm in St. Bonifacius was Herb Pauly who later followed Jaeger to Mound. He had great stories about Fr. Herb was a contractor. He never finished high school but was a student in Fr.
Jaeger's "night school" for the local young men. In his 90's Herb could still do complex math in his head using tricks he learned there. Jaeger also promoted gardening, and Herb for years had a large garden, giving much of the produce to the local food shelf. Herb himself lived to age and lived independently, still gardening until he turned I loved to visit with Herb and once took him to see a childhood neighbor, Ray Kramer.
Ray had an older brother, Alfred, who was Herb's grade school classmate. Alfred's picture was on the wall in a soldier's uniform and Herb recognized him, saying he was the only soldier from St Bonifacius to die in the war. Ray sadly replied, "Yes, he was the unlucky one. In particular, neonicotinoid pesticides have been connected with honeybee colony collapse disorder. This is especially a concern in rural areas where such pesticides are sprayed on farm fields to increase crop production. One happy exception to the decreasing number of bee colonies is happening in urban areas.
Indeed a growing number of urban rooftops now are homes to beehives. The University of Minnesota is at the forefront of this development. Their bee squad research group manages 12 Twin City rooftop bee operations. Professor Marla Spivak is a nationally known authority on apiology the study of bees.
Indeed the University has been a leader in the study of bees for over a century. One interesting Catholic connection is that the first head of the bee division at the University was a priest, Father Francis Jaeger. He was a long time pastor at Our Lady of the Lake parish in Mound. He owned a farm where he engaged local young men in learning about good farming techniques, including beekeeping. He began teaching at the University in , taking the train from Mound to the "farm" campus. His legacy there remains. In the United States, one of the best known collection of bee literature is at the University of Minnesota.
The apiculture collection at the University of Minnesota began as the personal collection of Fr. Jaeger's retirement in , the one-person division of bee culture was combined with the Department of Entomology and Economic Zoology. His collection was purchased by the department for the entomology library. Jaeger's library was composed of approximately monographs, pamphlets, bulletins, and several periodicals. There is an extensive group of books from eastern Europe he was born in Slovenia and spoke a number of languages ; publication dates range from to Some years ago I was talking with Professor Spivak about Fr.
Although she never met him — he died in — she holds him in high esteem. He was also a wonderful pastor. I have stories from parishioners who loved him. Let's hope it does not catch on with preachers, right? Diocesan attorneys have sought to prevent the release of the names to protect the good name of the priests where the accusations may be false or mistaken. I have to agree with the comments in the Star Tribune online edition of an Episcopal priest, Nancy Brantingham: It is another thing entirely if church authorities failed to report accusations to the proper authorities outside the church and simply decided on their own that the accusations weren't credible.
The bishops have long since proven that they are either incapable of identifying which accusations are credible or just plain unwilling to give accusations by lay people against clergy any credibility. But it has also been a disservice to the clergy. Indeed, in some cases the accused priest was not even informed of the accusation when it came in to the diocese. And the clergy personnel files themselves are not trustworthy. By happenstance, some years ago, I was able to see my own files.
It seems that only negative reports are saved in the files. My own contained complaints over my having girls serving at Mass, not washing my hands at the offertory, skipping the Gloria when it was not sung and other such misdeeds. But I was shocked that the files were not that well protected and that numerous chancery staff had unsupervised access to them.
Well, I write this from the 75th annual National Tekakwitha Conference, a gathering of Catholic Indians from around the country, and we are gathering in Fargo. That means it is a serious meeting. It is also great fun gathering with such a wonderful group of people, and it includes celebrations of the Mass and a grand entry celebration where representatives of numerous tribes wear their traditional regalia.
I am enjoying the event. Because our own archdiocese's parish of Gichitwaa Kateri is in the same region as Fargo, our community has been very active in putting on the worship services and workshops. I worked with two other community members in presenting a workshop about conservation issues and traditonal Indian values. In the course of the discussion I was even able to mention how Cabrini is trying to go to more compostable practices in serving food, and people were impressed.
My part of the workshop was on official church teaching on environmental concerns. I began with Pope John XXIII's papacy, which I remember, and his very well-received encyclical letter, Pacem in Terris Peace on the Earth , which addressed the issue of war and nuclear destruction during the cold war in the late 's. John had a great effect on world opinion.
But I said that today if John were to write it he would title it Pacem cum Terris, peace with the earth. We live in unprecedented times in terms of our destruction of the earth itself. In fact, Pope Francis has taken up this very concern. Just a few weeks ago he spoke of concern about the environment as "one of the greatest challenges of our time This is our sin, exploiting the Earth This is one of the greatest challenges of our time: They have traditionally had a profound awareness of our need to respect and care for "our Mother," the Earth.
I quoted a Lakota man, John Hollow Horn, from South Dakota who in presciently said, "Some day the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry with tears of blood. You will make a choice. If you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you too will die. It is great that Francis sees this. We as a society still have far to go. This is the gang who cannot shoot straight.
It harkens back to Soviet psychiatry. I do not usually use the label "disabled," but this outfit was definitely "unabled. In the ongoing crisis in our archdiocese, one of the main concerns that I hear is where are the priests? My usual response is that so many of the priests that were more accountable have left ministry for conscientious reasons such as getting married.
We are left with the more passive priests, indeed, passive-aggressive priests. And our vocation constraints filter out candidates who ask questions rather than merely take orders even as they might privately grumble. A good example of this reality is from a current National Catholic Reporter article: He described a 'black cloud' over the archdiocese adversely affecting him and several priests with whom he's spoken.
Archbishop Nienstedt, responding to calls for him to resign, said in a National Catholic Reporter news story: It is what God has called me to do, like a groom to the Church, for better or for worse. I have kept that promise since my ordination as a priest 41 years ago, and my episcopal ordination 18 years ago and I will continue to keep it. In this theological understanding the suffering spouse needs to remain unmarried until the former partner's death. If an episcopal separation would occur, I think our archdiocese can survive without an archbishop until death allows an eventual replacement.
This is bad theology. In fact, it brings to mind a meeting earlier this year of local south Minneapolis priests with Nienstedt. The meeting had been scheduled much earlier, but just a day before the meeting Minnesota Public Radio released the story on extra payments being made to priests who had been taken out of ministry for serious misbehavior and the toxic atmosphere at the Chancery under Nienstedt.
I began the meeting by asking him to resign, to which he replied that he was able to turn things around. None of the other priests or deacons picked up on this. After a while I then said that I considered him an accidental bishop and that had Francis been pope when our episcopal vacancy occurred, he never would have been selected. There was a gasp and another brother priest blurted out, "How can you say that? After a bit of discomfort, no one followed up. When Nienstedt left, the same priest turned to me and, with a straight face, said that Nienstedt had to resign.
AARP just released a new state scorecard on the best places to grow old. The scorecard was based on numerous measures that fall into one of five categories: Even more impressive was the United Health Foundation's report on American seniors health rankings. It's a ranking of states using 34 measurements from 12 data sources. Minnesota took top honors for the second year in a row in the latest ranking Mississippi ranked last.
What's so great about Minnesota? The state ranked high for everything from the rate of annual dental visits dental care is important for senior health , volunteerism keeps people active and mentally alert , a high percentage of quality nursing home beds, and a low percentage of food insecurity. Prescription drug coverage also is high, and the state ranked in the top five for a low rate of hospitalizations for hip fractures and a high percentage of able-bodied seniors.
Minnesota's high rate of health insurance coverage is most significant. The Catholic bishops, mostly older men, should think about this; it's a respect life issue. I cannot understand any of these actions. They seem inexcusable to me. The archbishop owes us some explanation. But rather than dealing with things that he is responsible for, Nienstedt rejects the example of Pope Francis and continues the culture wars.
His latest foray was in last week's Catholic Spirit where he continued his criticism of the Affordable Care Act and its accommodation for religiously based organizations. Certainly people can have their criticisms of various aspects of ACA. I for one am in favor of true universal care. But in his ongoing objection to it, Nienstedt cannot bring himself to say "President Obama" but rather can only refer to "the current federal executive. People can have their opinions about the president, but he appears to be a good father, husband and very conscientious in his onerous duties as president.
He honors the office he holds. The same cannot readily be said about John Clayton Nienstedt. I noticed the call-back number was from northwest Wisconsin. As it turns out, the call came from an old friend of my parents. Although I have not had contact with him for over 50 years, I remembered him and his family. He is now 93 and sounded like he was doing well. He wanted to call me after seeing my name in the media connected with my concerns over our archbishop. He wanted me to know that, as a Catholic, he fully supports me.
Mike, I recently came across an online video which really made me think, and I wondered why I have never really heard a homily on this subject. Jesus speaks about a narrow path to heaven and I think it would be great to hear a homily on this, regularly exploring it more in depth.
Below is the powerful video I am referring to which made me ponder it! Mary Faustina Kowalska was a sickly nun who lived in the early decades of the 20th century. She was uneducated but known for her visions, especially of hell. It certainly is hard to reconcile her vision of the narrow road with the basic scripture revelation of Genesis that God created all and called it good.
And it is very ironic that this coming Sunday the Gospel reading from Matthew has Jesus saying: As I responded to my correspondent, Sister Faustina's visions are considered private revelation and it is not necessary to follow her views.
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In fact, they could lead one down the wrong path. And what an appropriate Gospel for this 4th of July weekend. Maybe today we as a nation can be less narrow in who we welcome. Various rabbis have commented on this central teaching of Judaism. In particular, it is questioned why the word "justice" is repeated. One commentary that I like says that it means we must seek justice but seek it justly.
I have a concern about that in our Archdiocese. Archbishop Nienstedt and his predecessor, Harry Flynn, made grievous decisions that went against established procedures for providing safe environments procedures they themselves put in place. One of the most alarming decisions was by Nienstedt in assigning Curtis Wehmeyer as pastor of a parish. He knew of past serious misbehavior by Wehmeyer and yet assigned him as a pastor and compounded the misjudgment by not notifying the parish staff and leadership about this history.
Wehmeyer went on to abuse two young boys in the parish. This undermined all the good work of parish staffs and volunteers in providing safe environments. To show he was making amends, Nienstedt hired an outside firm to go through all clergy files. Based on that, certain files were flagged and referred to a new group, the Clergy Review Board, formed by Nienstedt. And just from what was in the files, some clergy have been removed from ministry without due process. Indeed, no outreach was made to the flagged clergy to answer any of the Board's concerns.
They were summarily told to take a "voluntary" leave of absence or they would be simply removed.
pastor's comments 2014
These clergy were unable to meet with their accusers on the Clergy Review Board. Their names have been released to the media. They have just been informed that an outside investigator will be reinvestigating the cases. It is a nasty business. And all to provide cover for the failings of the Archbishop. Here is part of a letter from Nienstedt released to the media concerning these clergy: However, as part of the Archdiocese's ongoing review of clergy files, the Clergy Review Board has now requested the investigation be reopened, in order to make sure that some key facts are clarified The temporary removal of xxxxxx xxxxxxx from ministry is not a presumption of guilt but is a statement to victims that we take every accusation seriously.
And now we hear of a six-month-long secret investigation of allegations against Archbishop Nienstedt himself. If he followed his own policies, he would have instead made the investigation public and taken a "voluntary" leave from ministry. What a tangled web we weave. The feast is of ancient origin, unlike more recent liturgical celebrations such as the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Of course, it is a feast which connects with the successor of these apostles, the Bishop of Rome, and this is an appropriate opportunity to pray for Francis.
In response to one question, Tobin said that some U. I was talking to a couple of brother bishops a while back and they were saying that bishops and priests were very discouraged by Pope Francis because he was challenging them. I think there was a particular image, perhaps, of what it means to be a pastoral leader in this country, and Francis is disturbing it.
In addition to the intimate relationship between philosophy and theology, another important aspect of the method of correlation is Tillich's distinction between form and content in the theological answers. While the nature of revelation determines the actual content of the theological answers, the character of the questions determines the form of these answers. This is because, for Tillich, theology must be an answering theology, or apologetic theology.
God is called the "ground of being" because God is the answer to the ontological threat of non-being, and this characterization of the theological answer in philosophical terms means that the answer has been conditioned insofar as its form is considered by the question. Many criticisms of Tillich's methodology revolve around this issue of whether the integrity of the Christian message is really maintained when its form is conditioned by philosophy. The theological answer is also determined by the sources of theology, our experience, and the norm of theology.
Though the form of the theological answers are determined by the character of the question, these answers which "are contained in the revelatory events on which Christianity is based" are also "taken by systematic theology from the sources, through the medium, under the norm. Experience is not a source but a medium through which the sources speak. And the norm of theology is that by which both sources and experience are judged with regard to the content of the Christian faith. As McKelway explains, the sources of theology contribute to the formation of the norm, which then becomes the criterion through which the sources and experience are judged.
The norm is then subject to change, but Tillich insists that its basic content remains the same: But since Christianity answers the question of estrangement with "Jesus as the Christ", the norm tells us that we find the New Being in Jesus as the Christ. There is also the question of the validity of the method of correlation. Certainly one could reject the method on the grounds that there is no a priori reason for its adoption.
But Tillich claims that the method of any theology and its system are interdependent. That is, an absolute methodological approach cannot be adopted because the method is continually being determined by the system and the objects of theology. Tillich used the concept of "being" Sein in systematic theology.
Therefore, it can be described as the power of being which resists non-being. For this reason, the medieval philosophers called being the basic transcendentale , beyond the universal and the particular… The same word, the emptiest of all concepts when taken as an abstraction, becomes the most meaningful of all concepts when it is understood as the power of being in everything that has being.
This is part four of Tillich's Systematic Theology. In this part, Tillich talks about life and the divine Spirit.
Life remains ambiguous as long as there is life. The question implied in the ambiguities of life derives to a new question, namely, that of the direction in which life moves. This is the question of history. Systematically speaking, history, characterized as it is by its direction toward the future, is the dynamic quality of life. Therefore, the "riddle of history" is a part of the problem of life.
Tillich stated the courage to take meaninglessness into oneself presupposes a relation to the ground of being: If one says that in this experience vitality resists despair, one must add that vitality in man is proportional to intentionality. The vitality that can stand the abyss of meaninglessness is aware of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning.
The second element in absolute faith is the dependence of the experience of nonbeing on the experience of being and the dependence of the experience of meaninglessness on the experience of meaning. Even in the state of despair one has enough being to make despair possible. There is a third element in absolute faith, the acceptance of being accepted. Of course, in the state of despair there is nobody and nothing that accepts.
Paul Tillich - Wikipedia
But there is the power of acceptance itself which is experienced. Meaninglessness, as long as it is experienced, includes an experience of the "power of acceptance". To accept this power of acceptance consciously is the religious answer of absolute faith, of a faith which has been deprived by doubt of any concrete content, which nevertheless is faith and the source of the most paradoxical manifestation of the courage to be.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Tillich believes the essence of religious attitudes is what he calls "ultimate concern". Separate from all profane and ordinary realities, the object of the concern is understood as sacred, numinous or holy. The perception of its reality is felt as so overwhelming and valuable that all else seems insignificant, and for this reason requires total surrender.
Man, like every living being, is concerned about many things, above all about those which condition his very existence If [a situation or concern] claims ultimacy it demands the total surrender of him who accepts this claim Tillich further refined his conception of faith by stating that, "Faith as ultimate concern is an act of the total personality. It is the most centered act of the human mind An arguably central component of Tillich's concept of faith is his notion that faith is "ecstatic". That is to say:. It transcends both the drives of the nonrational unconsciousness and the structures of the rational conscious In short, for Tillich, faith does not stand opposed to rational or nonrational elements reason and emotion respectively , as some philosophers would maintain.
Rather, it transcends them in an ecstatic passion for the ultimate. It should also be noted that Tillich does not exclude atheists in his exposition of faith. Everyone has an ultimate concern, and this concern can be in an act of faith, "even if the act of faith includes the denial of God. Where there is ultimate concern, God can be denied only in the name of God" [43]. Throughout most of his works Paul Tillich provides an apologetic and alternative ontological view of God.
Traditional medieval philosophical theology in the work of figures such as St. Anselm , Duns Scotus , and William of Ockham tended to understand God as the highest existing Being [ citation needed ] , to which predicates such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, goodness, righteousness, holiness, etc. Arguments for and against the existence of God presuppose such an understanding of God.
Tillich is critical of this mode of discourse which he refers to as "theological theism," and argues that if God is Being [das Seiende], even if the highest Being, God cannot be properly called the source of all being, and the question can of course then be posed as to why God exists, who created God, when God's beginning is, and so on.
To put the issue in traditional language: Rather, God must be understood as the "ground of Being-Itself". The problem persists in the same way when attempting to determine whether God is an eternal essence, or an existing being, neither of which are adequate, as traditional theology was well aware.
The question then becomes whether and in what way personal language about God and humanity's relationship to God is appropriate. In distinction to "theological theism", Tillich refers to another kind of theism as that of the "divine-human encounter". Such is the theism of the encounter with the "Wholly Other" "Das ganz Andere" , as in the work of Karl Barth and Rudolf Otto , and implies a personalism with regard to God's self-revelation. Tillich is quite clear that this is both appropriate and necessary, as it is the basis of the personalism of Biblical Religion altogether and the concept of the "Word of God", [46] but can become falsified if the theologian tries to turn such encounters with God as the Wholly Other into an understanding of God as a being.
Tillich's ontological view of God has precedent in Christian theology. Many theologians, especially those in the Hellenistic or Patristic period of Christianity's history that corresponds with the Church Fathers, understood God as the "unoriginate source" agennetos of all being. Their views in turn had pre-Christian precedents in middle Platonism. Tillich further argues that theological theism is not only logically problematic, but is unable to speak into the situation of radical doubt and despair about meaning in life.
This issue, he said, was of primary concern in the modern age, as opposed to anxiety about fate, guilt, death and condemnation. If God is not the ground of being itself, then God cannot provide an answer to the question of finitude; God would also be finite in some sense. The term "God Above God," then, means to indicate the God who appears, who is the ground of being itself, when the "God" of theological theism has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. The possibility thus exists, says Tillich, that religious symbols may be recovered which would otherwise have been rendered ineffective by contemporary society.
Tillich argues that the God of theological theism is at the root of much revolt against theism and religious faith in the modern period. Tillich states, sympathetically, that the God of theological theism. I revolt and make him into an object, but the revolt fails and becomes desperate. God appears as the invincible tyrant, the being in contrast with whom all other beings are without freedom and subjectivity.
He is equated with the recent tyrants who with the help of terror try to transform everything into a mere object, a thing among things, a cog in a machine they control. He becomes the model of everything against which Existentialism revolted. This is the God Nietzsche said had to be killed because nobody can tolerate being made into a mere object of absolute knowledge and absolute control.
This is the deepest root of atheism. It is an atheism which is justified as the reaction against theological theism and its disturbing implications. Another reason Tillich criticized theological theism was because it placed God into the subject-object dichotomy. This is the basic distinction made in Epistemology , that branch of Philosophy which deals with human knowledge, how it is possible, what it is, and its limits.
Epistemologically , God cannot be made into an object, that is, an object of the knowing subject. Tillich deals with this question under the rubric of the relationality of God. The question is "whether there are external relations between God and the creature". Another example might be suppose you take the argument in favour of abortion up until the baby was one year old, if a baby was one year old and turned out to have some horrible incurable disease that meant it was going to die in agony in later life, what about infanticide?
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with. A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating.
He invited her back to his room for coffee. And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin. The Economist , vol. Now a lot of people find great comfort from religion. Not everybody is as you are — well-favored, handsome, wealthy, with a good job, happy family life. I mean, your life is good — not everybody's life is good, and religion brings them comfort. There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting — it might be more comforting, for all I know.
But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true. Full text here dead link archives have an archived copy f8ofb. Lecture, BBC1 Television