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Gianluigi Nuzzi's Sua Santità Raises Vatican Ire

Honduras Weekly
Gianluigi Nuzzi's recently-released book, "Sua Santità: Le Carte Segrete di Benedetto XVI" ("His Holiness: The Secret Letters of Benedict XVI") is causing a stir at the Vatican. In fact, the Vatican spokesperson referred to the book, which came out on Saturday, as "criminal". Father Federico Lombardi said in a statement that the book was an “objectively defamatory” work that “clearly assumes characters of a criminal act.” He promised that the Vatican would seek to find out who “stole” the documents, who received them and who published them, and he warned that the Holy See would pursue legal action against those responsible. Pope Benedict has already appointed a commission to investigate the so-called "Vatileaks" scandal to determine how the documents -- which include memos alleging corruption and mismanagement of Vatican affairs and internal arguments over efforts to comply with international anti-money laundering laws -- were leaked.

Authority in (and Beyond) the Church

If you look at who has more closely emulated Jesus’s life, Pope Benedict or your average nun, it’s the nun hands down.

By Brian McLaren
The issue of authority is critical to Christians, critical like an achilles tendon. If it's broken, the pain and immobility are undeniable. Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, and later Catholics and Protestants, divided over authority issues. Protestants have splintered into a thousand subgroups over authority issues. Authority issues -- can women have it? can gay Christians have it? can "they" have it as well as "us?" -- continue to divide. My suspicion for the last few years is that one kind of authority -- moral authority -- is going to survive and thrive in the chaos of our ongoing paradigm shifts. My suspicion was strengthened when I read Nicholas Kristof's New York Times piece (April 28, 2012) on the Pope-vs-Nuns conflict. Quotable:

Longing for Pelagius

Augustine justified government and church subjugation of its' citizens based on his personal inability to choose good over evil and his assumption that everyone else must be as incapable as he.

By Marco Cáceres
It is a shame that Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) won out over Pelagius (354-418 AD), also known as Morien. Christianity would have turned out differently (... and better, in my view) had the Briton won out over the north African. Mr. Augustine taught that humankind is sinful by nature, and that without the grace of the Creator that sinfulness could only earn one eternal damnation. It is a totally negative view of humanity, which it goes contrary to my belief in the perfection God's creation. If God is perfect, then I sense so is the product of God's work. According to Augustine, humankind's salvation came solely through the grace of God, as presented in the person and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and that this grace came only by God's pleasure, to whomsoever he chose to extend it, without requiring any effort on man's part to complete the transaction.

Torturing the Enemy and Destroying Ourselves

Urinating on dead bodies; cutting off fingers for sport; murdering women and children; night raid home invasions on civilians; and the most recent embarrassment of soldiers posing with dead body parts, are all possible during times of war because of the original lie that starts the war, which must include dehumanizing the enemy.

By Brian McLaren
Christian theologian and Cherokee tribe member Randy Woodley recently began a blog post by quoting the maxim that truth is the first casualty of war. “Tell a lie often enough,” he said, “and it becomes your truth.” A growing list of former US government officials, including a president and a vice president, have been working hard to repeat the lie that torture is justifiable as long as the right “we” is doing the torture, and the right “they” are the ones being tortured. Most recently, a former CIA chief counter-terrorism expert joined the chorus, singing the refrain that “enhanced interrogation techniques” work. In fact, he claims, they were pivotal in finding Osama bin Laden a year ago.

Leaving Behind the Old Humanity

Paul lists its characteristic behaviors: sexual immorality, impurity, doing whatever feels good, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. In this list, he echoes a similar list by Jesus: evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual sin, theft, false testimony, insults. Taken together, these lists provide a pretty good summary of much of our political and economic status quo; they describe the self-destructive and others-destructive characteristics of a suicidal, consumptive, dying system.

By Brian McLaren
It's not accidental, nor is it insignificant, that Easter occurred on a Sunday, the first day of a new week. Last week, the center of gravity was on the last day, set aside as a day of rest from all that had gone before. As the sun rises Easter morning, everything changes. The emphasis shifts from what lies behind to what lies ahead of us, from what we have done to what God is doing, from what we have been to what we shall become. This shift is conveyed in a fascinating term, common in the New Testament but too seldom appreciated today. Jesus is portrayed as "the firstborn from the dead" (Col. 1:18; Rev. 1:5).

Pope Benedict Commissions His Very Own Cologne

Since the earliest times of the Church, most popes seem to have forgotten Jesus' teachings of living modestly. Jewel encrusted, gold-spun hats, the finest fabrics, the best leather for their shoes seem to be a mainstay for popes going back centuries.

By Reno Berkeley
During a time when millions are homeless and suffering, Pope Benedict has decided to take decisive action and order his very own, personal eau de cologne. The fragrance was created by exclusive perfumier Sylvana Casoli, who has also created exclusive fragrances for Madonna and the king of Spain. The scent, reports say, has hints of lime, verbena, and grass in honor of the Pope's love of nature. The Pontiff is known for being a sharp dresser, favoring items that seem gaudy and flashy otherwise. What other male could get away with wearing expensive cherry red Italian loafers and Panama hats?

Holy Week: Two Different Meanings

... how Christianity’s primal narrative of Holy Week is seen and understood matters greatly. At stake is whether Christianity is primarily about individual morality and an afterlife, or whether it is also and equally about the coming of the kingdom of God on earth.

By Marcus J. Borg
Holy Week with its climax in Easter is for Christians what Passover is for Jews: the most important week of the year -- a sacred time during which its primordial and primal narrative is remembered and ultimately celebrated. What is this week about? Within Christianity today, two very different frameworks shape how this week is seen -- its meanings and significance. These two frameworks to a considerable degree divide American Christianity both theologically and politically. One framework is “the common Christianity” of the recent past and present -- what most Christians took for granted and what many still share in common. For it, the central message of Christianity, the gospel, the good news, is that Jesus died for our sins so that we can be forgiven and go to heaven. Within this framework, Good Friday is about Jesus as the sacrifice for our sins and Easter is about the promise of life beyond death.

The Catholic Church's Greatest Sin

Editor's Note: As part of his Easter week message, Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez of Honduras yesterday called on the Honduran government to stop "crucifying" the people of Honduras. He condemned the arrogance, corruption, and crime within the country. He expressed his disapproval of the low wages and unjust taxes the poor are forced to endure and prayed for those deprived of their liberty, for all the mothers who suffer because of the death of their children, for those emigrants killed during their journeys abroad, and the many other problems suffered by Honduras. Cardinal Rodríguez neglected to mention the causal role of the Catholic Church in some of the prevailing social injustices. It is always harder to look within.

By Ken Trainor
Everyone sins. We're human, after all. The Catholic Church hierarchy sins too, composed as it is of human beings. Even the hierarchy, I suspect, would admit they're human. What sins have they committed? The list is long (it's an old institution), but here are a few lowlights: Forcing Galileo to recant and publicly accept the Catholic cosmology even though they were wrong about the entire universe (and didn't admit it for 400 years); failing to speak out against the Nazi Holocaust during World War II; enabling centuries of oppression against Jews as Christians branded them "Christ-killers;" tolerating and tacitly supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa, choosing societal order over justice.

The Wrathful God Theory

When you believe that the greatest existential threat to a human being is God venting God’s wrath on that human being -- whether that wrath is deemed just or not -- you put human beings in two categories: the saved and the damned, the beloved and the hated.

By Brian McLaren
Someone recently wrote to me: “I am intrigued by the growing debate on penal substitution. My history of over 35 years is -- started Baptist, migrated to neo-Pentecostal community church, then Vineyard, and now ‘outside the institutional church.’ Where does the problem lie with this theory? Does it matter?” First, I should note how many people I meet and hear from in a similar situation -- former church members and even leaders/pastors who have made a few lateral moves in church affiliation but are now “alumni". My suspicion is that there is a relationship between church dropouts and atonement theory (among other things).

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Archbishop Óscar Romero: The Political Dimension of Faith

... how does one authentically opt for the poor without having first shared in their experience? This is a legitimate question for the many liberals, who have, then and now, fallen into a paternalistic attitude towards the poor, promoting mere asistencialismo rather than true emancipation. At best, the liberal consciousness acknowledges the evils of poverty, and even sympathizes with the poor, but never seriously calls into the question the very institutions and structures that produce and reproduce extreme economic inequality.

By Frederick Mills
One of the reasons for [El Salvador's] Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero’s continuing broad appeal has been his embodiment of both a liberation theology and a politics of emancipation. In a speech Romero gave less than two months before his death, he focused on how these two dimensions of praxis are related. Romero’s address, “La Dimensión Política de La Fe desde La Opción por Los Pobres” was delivered at the University of Louvain, Belgium, February 2, 1980, on the occasion of his acceptance of an honorary doctorate. His address defined three central concepts within his vision of theological practice. I will attempt to interpret the main categories of acercamiento, encarnación, and conversión in a way that makes them accessible to humanists generally, but at the same time honors Romero’s faith-based Christian point of view.