I just finished In Search of a Way the other night. The last few pages were absolutely brilliant. I now understand why you think that he was probably or at least very nearly a universalist, Jeff. He was clearly ahead of his time, keeping in mind that this book was first published in the 70’s. I apologise for the length of this quote, but it was all so brilliant, I couldn’t bring myself to leave any of it out:
“…I had walked 1,760 kilometres to reach this spot. At Vezelay, at Taize, at other stages too along the road to Rome there had been unexpected moments when all that I had experienced; the pleasure and the pain, sorrow and gladness, loneliness and friendship, came together in a moment of great happiness and I had thanked God for his goodness. I was hoping for a similar experience at the end of the pilgrimage, but instead I kept thinking of a pagan poet’s phrase and felt heavy within myself.
The Latin poet Lucretius devoted his life to liberating men from fear, which he considered to be the root of all evil. Man’s fear, according to Lucretius, is not of death but of the torments which will be inflicted on him after death by the avenging gods for the sins committed during life. This fear drives man to behave inhumanly against his fellow man. Lucretius tells the story of Iphigenia’s death. The Greek fleet, led by Agamemnon is on its way to Troy to rescue Helen. At the island of Aulis the fleet is becalmed. Agamemnon consults his seer, who tells him that he must sacrifice his daughter to the winds. Lucretius describes the death of this beautiful, innocent girl and ends with the thundering lines, Tantum relligio potuit suadere malorum (Such evils can religion do). This was the phrase which battered at my mind as I sat by the fountain and let loose painful memories of the cries I had heard from men and women, tormented by fear of what would happen to them after death and of the inhumanity which they practised against each other. Some were married outside the church and were torn between love of their partner and fear of an everlasting punishment for this love. Others, married within the church, felt they could not cope with any more children and practised contraception with guilty, fearful consciences, while others refused contraception although their partner wanted it, and their mutual love had grown into hate. I had met youngsters driven out of their Catholic homes by their parents because they would not attend Mass anymore; they had grown embittered and had come to hate their Catholic heritage. There were so many others who had said, ‘Religion has nothing to say to me: I’m much more interested in politics, in trying to work for justice in society,’ and so they abandoned their Catholicism because to them it seemed to have nothing to contribute to their own and other people’s real interests. They felt that the church was too silent and timid in major matters of social justice, too compromised by the powers and dominions of this world to speak out against them, too busy with her own survival as an organization to have time for a wider world. I had heard such people described as rebels in the church, victims of our permissive, materialist age and I seethed with anger. ‘What the…hell do you want to go to Rome for?’ the drunken student had asked me at the farewell party. More sober students asked, ‘Why do you remain a priest within the Catholic Church?’ I asked the question of myself.
I stay within the Catholic Church because the church is a sign which points beyond herself, beyond her structures and formulations, her disciplines and laws, to Christ, the image of the unseen God, in whom all creation has its being and who is always greater than anything we can think or imagine. The church points to him in scripture, in her tradition, her liturgy and in the life of many of her members. She points to Christ, and in Christ I can catch a glimpse of a hidden self, the self of which St. Paul writes when he tells the Ephesians, ‘Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until knowing the love of Christ which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.’ I need these outward signs.
I am a sinner within a Church of sinners, and therefore it is not surprising that sinfulness should be manifest within the Church and should find expression within the very structures of its organization. We live in a sinful Church, a learning Church. That is why the Church is always in need of reform and renewal, and it acknowledged this need in the Second Vatican Council. I acknowledge sinfulness within myself and within the Church. If I refuse to do so, I am being disloyal to myself and to the Church, because I no longer submit myself to the love and goodness of Christ and am in danger of changing the Church from being a sign of God’s presence into an idol, a substitute for God. Idolatry was the temptation of Israel, of Christ in the desert. It is also the temptation of the Christian Church.
The Church points to Christ who calls all people to himself. It is therefore not loyalty but disloyalty to Christ and his Church to condone any tendencies within it to narrowness, sectarianism, bigotry. A loyal Catholic is neither suspicious of nor indifferent toward Christians of other denominations, people of other religions or of no religion: if we are loyal to the Church, a sign of Christ’s love for all, we must go out to all, be ready to listen to them and learn from them. Christ came to bear witness to the truth. It is disloyalty to Christ and his Church to suppress or distort truth in the interest of particular ecclesiastical plans or policies. Quietly to condone such behaviour is to perpetuate it. Christ came not to be served but to serve. To oppose all forms of self-aggrandizement and triumphalism in ourselves and in the Church is to be loyal to Christ and his Church. Christ invites us; he does not coerce us. He encourages rather than threatens. He gave little detailed instruction about the future of his Church, but on one point he is unmistakably clear – on the exercise of authority among his followers. ‘You know that among the pagans, the rulers lord it over them, and their great men make their authority felt. This is not to happen among you. No; anyone who wants to be the first among you must be your slave.’
The hierarchy and the clergy are servants of the people, the Pope himself is servus servorum, slave of the slaves. A servant must listen to the needs of those he serves. Bishops and priests are disloyal to the Church when they do not allow the laity to speak their minds, or fail to listen to them when they do speak. To accept and comply with clerical domination within the Church is to be disloyal to it and to Christ. He is the fulfilment of the prophets with their message of justice for men. Amos is typical when he preaches God’s message to Israel: ‘I hate and despise your feasts, I take no pleasure in your solemn festivals. Let me have no more of your strumming on harps. But let justice flow like water, and integrity like an unfailing stream.’* To be so immersed in inner church affairs that we have no time or interest for questions of social justice, to be so absorbed in self-reflection for self-perfection that we cannot see beyond ourselves is disloyalty to Christ and to his Church.
Christ saw the temple desecrated by money lenders. He did not therefore abandon the temple, but cleansed it. Such behaviour cost him his life.*
Because the Church is a sign of God’s presence, whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts, it is therefore the very nature of the Church that she should put our lives and our values into question. When she is true to herself and to the Gospel, her questions are uncomfortable, revealing and shattering our idols. If she is true to Christ, she acts as society’s gadfly. Gadflies are brushed and killed, and Christ promised persecution for his followers…
Peter came, poor and powerless, to announce the Good News that the kingdom of God is not in bread and circuses, nor in exercising dominion over the nations, but that the kingdom is within reach of everyone and is to be found in the love that we bear one another. This message of love was subversive of law and order. It always has been, it always will be. Peter was put to death. The tradition continues.
I thought of my own family, living and dead, of my relations, friends, acquaintances who have given me so much and I thanked God for them. ‘I don’t think you know who you are,’ Laura had said this to me eight years before, a comment which had disturbed and distressed me. Now at the end of the pilgrimage I could see the truth of it and thank God for it. It no longer distressed: it gave me hope and encouragement. I don’t know who I am. None of us know who we are, because God created us for himself and we shall never know who we are until we are at one with him.
Lord, save us from every form of certainty which can rob us of this precious ignorance. Help us to keep searching after you, our Way, until we reach the end of the pilgrimage, when every tear will be wiped away and we shall know you, our God, as you are and in you be at one with ourselves, with all men, with all creation.”
Amen
). Do you recall offhand which title it was?
