David Gibson: June 2008 Archives

Sunday was the annual Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, but the focus this past weekend was on the Apostle to the Gentiles, in light of the inauguration by Pope Benedict XVI--along with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople --of the Pauline Year to mark the 2,000 year since the birth of Saul, who Greek-speaking Christians came to know as Paul. The rest of us came to think of him as the "second founder" of Christianity, after Jesus. No surprise, given his outsized contribution to the New Testament and to the spreading of the Gospel--and also to the spiritual legacy of the church. But it has been a conflicted legacy in many ways, which is being addressed with a resurgence of great scholarship on Paul. Revisionism? Perhaps? Or just getting it right, finally?

CNS's blog has a roundup of resources to get us kick-started, but I'd also highly recommend this Tablet essay by an English Jesuit, Nicholas King, who frames Paul nicely. Here's a sample:

There is no doubt at all of Paul's humanity: he is a passionate lover, and a prickly, irritable authoritarian, both at the same time. He is a gifted theologian (one of the three unmistakably great minds in the New Testament), with a startling ability to think on his feet when faced with new and unforeseen situations.

One of Paul's strengths is that he is at ease in at least three backgrounds. He is, according to Acts, a Roman citizen. Then he clearly belongs in the Hellenistic world into which he was born at Tarsus, and to which he spent the last 30 years of his life preaching. Finally but by no means least in importance, he is a Jew who took his Law-based Pharisaic Judaism immensely seriously, and if Acts has it right he studied under the great Pharisee teacher Gamaliel.

All three of these backgrounds are important to Paul, though he has reservations about each of them...

The misbegotten blog-confession (there must be a juicy neologism in there) of the Washington Post's "On Faith" co-founder, Sally Quinn, that she took communion at the funeral of her friend Tim Russert has provoked a pretty healthy web-storm. As it should. Quinn is by all accounts a fine person with many longtime friendships in Washington, of all places. But she is not Catholic, she is writing about religion, and she should have known better than to take communion and say silly things about it. Now Slate's very own Melinda Henneberger offers her take on the episode--one with which I am in hearty agreement, not least because she quotes me. Read "How Sally Quinn Made Me a Better Catholic."

L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, confirms rumors that those nifty red loafers Benedict XVI has worn since the day after his election are not name brand, but personally cobbled by some Vatican Geppetto. According to the AP:

"Obviously the attribution was false," the Vatican newspaper said in its Thursday's editions. "Such rumors are inconsistent with the simple and somber man who, on the day of his election to the papacy, showed to the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square and to the whole world the sleeves of a modest black sweater," it said.

L'Osservatore Romano said the pope's interest in clothes has nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with liturgy -- what symbolism traditional garments can bring to the Christian liturgy.

"The pope, therefore, does not wear Prada, but Christ," L'Osservatore said.

I still think they could market papal loafers and make some real cash--more than the few Euros those Swiss Guard keychains fetch...

AGGIORNAMENTO: Lest anyone think these fashion posts are about frippery or flippery, I do consider these matters with a serious side, as well as a good bit of fun and history (which I consider one and the same). In that regard, I would point folks to the blogs of Fr. Guy Selvester, a priest of the Diocese of Metuchen in my native New Jersey and the reigning expert (well, outside of the papal apartments) in ecclesiastical heraldry and vesture as well as a fine blogger and founder of "Shouts in the Piazza." It was from Father Guy that I first heard, months ago, word that the pope did not in fact wear Prada. Nonetheless, the official Vatican confirmation is newsworthy.

Along with that, I'd direct interested readers to the latest from Sandro Magister's Chiesa website, where his latest essay brings together all the sundry issues here, from Prada to the motu proprio, and puts them in a larger context with the help of the pontiff's own MC, Msgr. Guido Marini. Whether one welcomes these developments or fears them is a pretty good gut check for where you stand on this papacy, and Vatican II, and the foreseeable future of the church.

Pope Benedict's penchant for high ecclesiastical fashion has been noted here and here, but in neither story did I note his preference for a wide-brimmed red summer hat. Snappy lid, Your Holiness. But I wasn't sure what to call it--a galero or saturno or what--until now. CNS' intrepid Carol Glatz has finally resolved the mystery...Read all about it here.

A story in this morning's NYTimes, "For Iraqi Christians, Money Bought Survival," reveals a little-known (to most of us in the U.S., I suspect) story of how Iraqi Christians have been paying off militias in exchange for their lives. The story starts with Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, who died earlier this year after he was kidnapped because he apparently thought it was safe enough to stop paying the extortion money. This story, as the entire tragic story of our enormous collateral damage to the church in Iraq, is shameful for the United States. Yet this Times piece raises questions of moral or ethical culpability on the part of Iraqi Christians:

Officials say the demands could be hundreds of dollars a month per male member of a household. In many cases, Christian families drained their life savings and went into debt to make the payments. Insurgents also raised money by kidnapping priests. The ransoms, often paid by the congregations, typically ran as high as $150,000, several priests and lay Christians said. In a paradox, this city, long the seat of Iraqi Christianity, also became known as the last urban stronghold of Sunni insurgents. Another, more painful, paradox is that many of Iraq's remaining 700,000 Christians paid to save their lives, knowing full well that the money would be used for bombs and other weapons to kill others. Archbishop Rahho was a man of God who preached peace in his sermons. How he was contorted into fulfilling the role of providing payments to the insurgents is a complex question.

Is it complex? My reflex is to absolve him and other Christian leaders of the burden of guilt, without too much complex thinking on my part.