Nolo episcopari

Much vague and sentimental journalism has been poured out to the effect that Christianity is akin to democracy, and most of it is scarcely strong or clear enough to refute the fact that the two things have often quarreled. The real ground upon which Christianity and democracy are one is very much deeper. The one specially and peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea of [Thomas] Carlyle – the idea that the man should rule who feels that he can rule. Whatever else is Christian, this is heathen. If our faith comments on governments at all, its comment must be this – that the man should rule who does not thing that he can rule. Carlyle’s hero may say, “I will be king”; but the Christian saint must say “Nolo episcopari.” If the great paradox of Christianity means anything, it mean this – that we must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry places and dark corners of the earth until we find the one man who feels himself unfit to wear it. Carlyle was quite wrong; we have not got to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule. Rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he can’t. (220-221)

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

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Nolo episcopari, Latin, lit., “I do not wish to be bishop”.

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So they nominated two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias. Then they prayed, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.” Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles. (1.23-26)

The Acts of the Apostles

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Duccio di Buoninsegna, Pentecost (1308)

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, Port-au-Prince

A combination photograph shows the badly damaged Cathedral after an earthquake in Port-au-Prince almost two years later on Dec. 29, 2011 (top), on Sept. 30, 2010 (middle), and on the bottom on March 18, 2010. (The Big Picture)

theopolitical

Paul was not just an itinerant preacher, but also a pastor. He was, nevertheless, a preacher — a proclaimer of the good news of God’s intervention in human history through Jesus Christ. This good news was not a private message of personal salvation, though it included the salvation of individuals. It was a political announcement, or better a theopolitical announcement (politics involving God), that challenged–and challenges–the very core of how people relate to one another in the real world. (41)

If God’s salvation, including peace and justice, comes through Jesus, then it does not come through Caesar–or any other political or imperial force or figure. This does not mean that Paul’s gospel was political neither than religious; it is just that the two were inseparable. Words like justice (or righteousness), salvation, savior, peace, church (or assembly), gospel and, or course, Christ (Messiah) were–and are–both political and religious because they had to do with how people relate to both God and others in the real world. Paul’s gospel, therefore, is theopolitical. (44)

Because the gospel is about God’s dramatic, cosmic, benevolent intervention, it is not merely a message about personal salvation, as so many perversions of the gospel imply. To be sure, Paul’s gospel calls individuals to a right relationship with God, but it calls them into a community where right relationships with God and with others — both insiders and outsides — are taught, learned, and practiced. Those who believe Paul’s gospel are not fire and foremost invited to eternal life when they die (though that is included: Rom 5:21; 6:22-23), but to a new life in this world under the sway of a new lord and savior in the company of like-minded companions (Phil 1:27-2:16). Hence the adjective “theopolitical” to describe the gospel, meaning a narrative about God that creates a public life together, a corporate narrative, that is an alternative to the status quo in the Roman Empire, the American empire, or any other body politic. (45)

Michael J. Gorman, Reading Paul

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the·o·po·lit·i·cal
adj., or or relating to politics involving God; of a narrative about God creating a public life together

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Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Effetti del Buon Governo in Città or “Effects of Good Government in the City” (c. 1338-40)

The Church and the Farm

One example of how Christians are meeting this call [to sustain forms of economy, community, and culture that recognize the universality of the individual person] is Church Supported Agriculture (CSA), which creates a direct link between family farmers and local congregations. Rather than limit their economic activism to demanding that the state intervene in the market, local churches are creating alternative kinds of economic spaces in which they resist the abstractions of globalization by face-to-face encounters between producers and consumers. In the CSA model, family farmers — most of whom farm organically and practice environmentally sustainable methods — sell their produce directly through local congregations. Parishioners either buy individual products or buy a share of a farmer’s produce at the beginning of the season, thus helping share in the risks of farming. The church serves as a drop-off point for produce and a place for farmers and parishioners to meet. In this space, they avoid the middleman and they personalize the food. Food no longer comes from some anonymous distant place; rather, it comes from another particular human being, and the consumer enters into a relationship with that producer. In this encounter, the person is seen as another self and another Christ, the universal in the particular. (87)

William Cavanaugh, Being Consumed

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Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan has started a community-supported agriculture program. (New York Times, Sep 20, 2009)

property

The ownership of property is not about power, and the wide distribution of property is not about a greater equilibrium of power. Rather, property has an end, which is to serve the common good. The universal destination of all material goods is in God. As Aquinas says, we should regard property as a gift from God, as gift that is only valid if we use it for the benifit of others (ST II-II66.1ad2). Thus Aquinas sanctions private ownership only insofar as it is put to its proper end, which is the good of all: “Man ought to possess external things, not as his own, but as common, so that, to wit, he is ready to communicate then to others in their need (ST II-II.62.2). Absent such a view of the true end of property, freedom means being able to do whatever one wants with one’s property, and property can thus become nothing more than a means of power over others. (29)

What is most important is the direct embodiment of free economic practices. From a Christian point of view, the churches should take an active role in fostering economic practices that are consonant with the true ends of creation. This requires promoting economic practices that maintain close connections among capital, labor, and communities, so that real communal discernment of the good can take place. Those are spaces in which true freedom can flourish. (32)

William Cavanaugh, Being Consumed

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prop·er·ty

n., something owned; a possession.

[Middle English, from Old French propriete, from Latin proprietas, ownership]

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Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Effetti del Buon Governo in Campagna or “The Effects of Good Government in the Country” (c. 1338-1340)

Reading Paul

In Paul’s day, Jewish zealous nationalism that focused on Israel’s internal purity was not the only temptation to violence. That nationalistic zeal was also directed outwardly toward an oppressive, violent regime–the imperial power of Rome. Paul would become a critic (at least an implicit one) of that form of violence, too–violence in the name of justice, peace, and security. Based on a misinterpretation of Rom 13:1-7, Paul is often portrayed as a political conservative who supported Rome, and perhaps all forms of political authority, even tyranny. However, like Jesus, he was a critic of imperial values such as domination and of imperial claims like divine status for emperors and divine blessing on the empire’s ambition. Paul mocked the Roman claim of providing pax et securitas (I Thes 5:3), offered an alternative form of divine justice, and proclaimed as Lord a criminal crucified by Roman power–rather than Roman power incarnate (the emperor). A politics of subversion, not intentional but as an inevitable consequence of the gospel, is central to Paul and to those who read his letters as Scripture. In that sense, Paul was a good, prophetic Jew. (19)

Michael J. Gorman, Reading Paul

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El Greco, St. Paul (1606)

truth

Thomas, then, did not regard Aristotle primarily as a historical author, any more than he so regarded Augustine or Dionysius Areopagita. He considered them as witnesses for the truth which revealed itself through them, both to himself and, he hoped, to his reader (not only of the Summa theologica but also of the commentaries on Aristotle); truth whose validity is established out of itself and by virtue of its own objective arguments. “If the teacher answers a question with mere citations, nudis auctoritatibus, then the listener will depart empty-handed, auditor…vacuus abscedet.” Insofar as philosophizing is in question, a historical author is not of primary interest, even if his name is Aristotle; of primary interest is the truth of the matters at hand. (54)

Josef Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas

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truth [truːθ]
n., the quality of being true, genuine, actual, or factual

[Old English triewth; related to Old High German gitriuwida fidelity, Old Norse tryggr true]

Catholic Theology

Catholic theology cannot establish itself as a de facto counter-magisterium, remaining in splendid isolation from the Church. Nor should it seek to win a lasting standing in the secular academy that offers it a career path like that of any other academic profession. Nor, finally, will Catholic theology flourish if it is transmuted into “religious studies” to market its remnant in a post-Christian society. Whatever one thinks about the best way to give coherent and even sophisticated shape to Catholic theology, we must acknowledge that the Church herself gives us our theological task: to assist the bishops in communicating, explaining, defending, and understanding the faith that comes from the apostles.

Reinhard Hütter, “The Ruins of Discontinuity”
First Things, January 2011

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Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, St Ambrose Addressing the Young St Augustine (ca.1747-50)

kiss

He still tried to think what was the right answer. Was it right to kiss his mother or wrong to kiss his mother? What did that mean, to kiss? To put your face up like that to say goodnight and then his mother put her face down. That was to kiss. His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces? (14-15)

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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kiss
n., a caress or touch with the lips.

[Middle English kissen, from Old English cyssan.]

on·o·mat·o·poe·ia
n., the formation of words whose sound is imitative of the sound of the noise or action designated.

[Late Latin, from Greek ονοματοποιια, from ονοματοποιος, coiner of names]

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Pompeo Batoni, Sacra Famigla (1760)

Sister Nature

If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden. For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in the proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not out Mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved. (115-116)

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

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Giotto di Bondone, Preaching to the Birds (1295-1300)