Necessary Council

 Pope Emeritus Benedict xvi spoke to the Franciscan University in Steubenville that the Second Vatican Council was not only meaningful, but it was necessary.

What exactly is was the vision of the council? Who/what took up the council or who/what failed the council? Interpretation, misinterpretation of, and reaction to the council created different catholic identities. The struggle for creating a catholic identity has set liberal, conservative, neoconservative and traditionalist Catholics to compete in defining what constituted an authentic Catholic worldview. This identity struggle naturally leads to a power conflict and politics.

Their stand on questions related to Cold War politics, US foreign relations and dictatorships, White nationalism etc did influence the created catholic identity. Many of these identities directly counter the dialogical nature of the church that the council envisioned. Anything that seems pious, churchy and christian is not necessarily catholic or Christian.

Church is a communion. Was the church fragmented that the council was 'necessary'? Not only the socio-economic context, but even the intellectual context made it necessary. If then, how is the dialogue with religions and reasons maintained and continued today? or, rather are they all dumped as unnecessary? Sixty years after the council, have the above mentioned identity competitions de-shaped the clergy and the faithful far away from what the council initiated in the church?

Unceasing prayer

 We all have a normal human growth. Similarly we also need to have a growth in spirituality and life of prayer. Perhaps a time of wonder, curiosity are initially necessary. Perhaps we may be guided or corrected by the fear of a punishment. We cannot remain there. We need to grow to an adolescent infatuation, to a mature romance and a conjugal bond.

A genuine prayer can be there only if there is a true image of God. Does God count the money we put in the temple treasury and give blessings accordingly? Does God act as a judge who denies justice to people or condemn and orders punishment? These prevalent images of God is what Jesus challenged. Of course, it is easy to picture and calculate such an image of God. Relationship of love with God adds responsibility not only towards god but also towards others. Otherwise, religious sacrifices and rituals would suffice for our spirituality and prayer.

Very often we are more conscious of the use and benefits of prayer, in other words, the utility aspect. Do we say, I love or I marry .... in order to get this and that? Is that expression proper? It is not proper in prayer also.

Continuity in prayer is a constancy of a relationship, a conversation in love; there may or may not be words, there may be joy and complains, there may be intimacy and pain of separation. The embrace of love is what underlies prayer. So it is not about the words we use or the methods we follow, but the genuinity of love and trust that guide our life of prayer.

The chosen in touch of others

God's choice is not that he picks up some and leaves others. Choice is a subjective experience of having been able to respond to the revelation of God, a message to a time. Since it's open for all its not a preferential privilege to some.

Time is a slow revealer. So the message understood by the 'chosen' one may not be understood by others. That is why we need each other to understand the sign of God's revelation in each of us, a sign that Jesus is alive in us. Usually the sign of Jesus will be responded with crucifixion ie we need to be ready for a self emptying sacrifice. Kindness, mercy, compassion, love are the approaches of that sacrifice, not the rituals that are empty of God.

The only sign

Race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion have been used to claim purity and elitism. It automatically condemned 'others' and separated them, promoted hatred and suspicion. It grows dangerous as God is fixed within this corrupt purity. It can never produce holiness and establish justice and peace that God wills.

St Paul maintained a distinction between children according to the body and the children according to the promise. Children according to the body is bound to the purity according to their race, language, religion... Children of the promise share joyfully the gifts of God, and make the presence of God a living reality. Jonah had closed God within his own laws, morality, and people, but he had to learn that God cares for all. The universality of God's love is the sign of Jonah. The strange thing there is that it was the 'others' the lawless people who were open to the message of God as soon  as they heard it. Even Jonah resisted against the message that God's salvation extends to all nations. 

Children of the promise, according to St Paul, was those coming to follow Christ, who share in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The children of the promise deepen its meaning and breaks forth itself in the initial announcement of the angels, "Peace to people of Good will." In them the Spirit is alive and active, and Christ is made visible. It was when meeting the 'good' people in pagan land the church began reflecting whether it is not improper to consider these good people may be deprived of heaven. Today, we may see 'even among godless' people there are good people, very good people. Do they not share the joys of the kingdom of God? There is a usual saying that it is not just enough to do good, but one must know Christ. Who has known Christ? One who clams to have known Christ and keep many people away in condemnation or a 'godless' one who exercised some Christ-like attitudes? 

Then should we not preach? Should we not evangelize? yes, teaching to walk like Christ loving every one, seeing the care and mercy of God for everyone, and seeing that happily. Kingdom of God is not in our devotions, prayers, and laws. It is in "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit" which is made available for all. "The only sign it will be given is the sign of Jonah." God can not be in custody of some religion, culture, or tradition.

Populism-religion

Modernity gathered people from all around to cities, and became a profit producing power. It mixed many peoples and suggested secularism concerning religion, and globalism concerning economics, politics and culture. Modernity's perfect human and society never came even amidst all its 'progress.' While economy maintains its monopoly in a global sense, in politics and culture nationalism with 'its own religion' takes the new political current.  Nationalism, traditionalism, populism are a super mix glue which is changing today's political equations. The populist affirmation and intensification in culture regarding traditions is just politics, nothing about religion. Unfortunately for us today, that sense of religion is the true and original religion.