Benedict Goes to China

I note this week the Pope says non-baptized deceased babies no longer must reside for eternity in limbo, forever excluded from heaven. This might not seem like much but to theologians it's cutting edge.

It overturns a millennium of Roman Catholic teaching that humanity is flawed by the taint of original sin upon conception. On one hand, the new stance aligns Catholics with today's Protestant evangelicals who also discount infant baptism in lieu of the drama of an adult born-again experience accompanied by a public confession and vow of repentance. On the other hand, evangelicals won't like it much if a baby is conceived unto a state of grace, and the door is open to universal salvation, even if the deceased baby was born to non-believers.

It's been said only an anti-communist like Nixon could go to China. This is the second trip to theological China for this perhaps not so reactionary Pope. The first was a hint it might be permissable for married African men with AIDS to use condoms. It's been suggested that "pressing" pastoral needs led to new things, yet I retain an inability to construct a logical edifice of systematic theology that doesn't begin with original sin. And they call me revisionist?

Like the ghost of Christmas past, a diminutive Dominican monk haunts my thoughts for it was with him in seminary that I first debated the concept of universalism. I asked how it could be that a dying man in Africa equates to a man on a date in Omaha; the former activity, sans condom, might result in the birth and slow starvation of a sick child; the latter, whether or not the Nebraskan gets lucky on a Saturday night. The monk replied the question implied one life was more valuable than the other. I still don't know after five years which he meant. Do you? If so, do tell.

A fellow seminarian, a future chaplain at a children's hospital, no less, enflamed by the debate, charged up the same anti-universalism hill, albeit in a more feminist way, wrote an angry term paper, and received a poor grade. I, on the other hand, submitted twenty pages, when five was the assignment, received the highest grade, and an encouraging note about my 'fuzzy' logic. For those who complain, you know who you are, Ann, Barry, et al, that the blog is too intellectual, now you know who to thank: a funny little monk in red suspenders. Apparently, there's gold in them ther hills; you just have to sift for the nuggets.

Perhaps the man once known as the Vatican's theological rottweiler is demonstrating a rare contemporary, most commendable, courage, and in the process, will no doubt disenchant many, not unlike my Dominican friend, who appear unable to think in anything but all or nothing terms. Please allow me to introduce another brave theologian, not so modern, 12th century, with the unlikely name of Abu al-Walid Muhammed Ibn Rushd, or Averros, for short, though I haven't a clue how the latter is short for the former. You'll easily grasp why he's one of my heroes; I note according to Al Jadid magazine, that "he never missed reading or writing except the day he married and the day his father died. I can do him one better - on the day I married Connie, in Vermont, the cable was out, a book was handy, so....

Averros, famed for the translations of a rediscovered Aristotle that secured a home for science in the West, and paved the road for the Renaissance, sought to integrate philosophy, and faith, as understood through revelation. He didn't read Scripture literally; but he thought analytic philosophy could confirm the truth of God. He wasn't able to determinedly prove Creation, but taught, rather, that humanity's existence in itself philosophically proves the existence of a God out of time that everlastingly recreates the universe, which, if not for the constant regeneration of the Creator, would cease to exist.

While Averros never claimed a dual equal truth for philosophy and theology, as attributed to him by his followers, the Latin Averroists, he offered that one truth can be comprehended on multi-linguistic levels from various perspectives. It's true for example that an elephant and a mouse are different; it's true they're both mammals; it's also true they're both animals. It just depends on your perspective. This is not an avocation of moral relativity, either, quite the opposite, it contends God's One truth lies at the heart of both philosophy and theology. It's nevertheless unsurprising that Averros was dually condemned as a heretic by the Church and Muslim fundamentalists.

I used to consider conscience as the final definitive proof of God. Then I read of an experiment where people in an office who weren't honoring the honor system to pay for coffee became gradually more honorable after someone painted an eye above the coffee-maker. It appeared to be a sort of group evolution at work, that when supplemented and enforced by an eye in the sky, increased prospects for everyone. You can explain it all scientifically. Or, per Averros, it could be explained from the perspective of evolution, and from God; that it's possible for people to transcend their inhumanity, in His presence, known through His Word (His eye), as revealed in a Godly language, intelligible to humans, that inspires progress through the adaptation of goodness.

Conversely, history shows an unguarded conscience, in the absence of a transcendent morality, can appeal to our worst instincts. I note a book by Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience, where she writes, "The perpetrators of genocide had a powerful sense of right and wrong, based on civic values that exalted the moral righteousness of the ethic community and denounced outsiders." Koonz demonstrates that this 'ethnic fundamentalism,' instilled as civic duty, extinguished "neighborliness, respect, and ultimately compassion, for all those banished from the ethnic majority."

Sometimes even a more well intentioned conscience is just as dangerous. Before the war, Lord Londonderry, an English aristocrat, as told in Making Friends, by Ian Kershaw, so strongly desired peace, he discounted Nazi persecution completely. Kershaw wrote that although Londonderry was aware of it and couldn't countenance the same in his own country, his single-mindedness enabled him to relegate the issue "as no barrier to closer relatoins with Hitler's regime," so that "its ferocious and pitless brutality ... posed an unnecessary obstacle to the better relations with Germany that he sought." In other words, it wasn't a showstopper.

When I hear, "Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength, for pardon only, and not for renewal," from Rite II, Prayer C, it never fails to startle. It's my intention, indeed, on most Sunday mornings, to seek solace only; now I'm ordered into the presence of a God who's not only going to grant that free gift, by forgiving me of my sins, but One that aditionally requires strength and renewal. What if I'm already too weary to carry that burden?

Yet, the exchange that takes place during the Eucharist dually reaffirms the mutual responsibilities of the old covenant and propels a new one with force to overcome the drag of the original sin I sense is hosted within my body and soul. Although I philosophically endorse mercy and grace, over anger and punishment, and heartily endorse the infusion of compassion as a deciding factor in doctrinal matters of faith, since it will end suffering, and save lives, is it necessary to throw the baby out with the font water?

Never fear; the Vatican is covered both ways. It has a way, as here, of publishing something new that reflects the Pope's thinking but is not an official teaching like an encyclical. This allows for a tacit nod and a wink that something warrants correction, but, not really, for then all those infant souls that weren't supposed to be in heaven over the past two thousand years, at the cost of the anguish of millions of fathers and mothers, might have been there all along.

You can't absolutely diminish the original doctrine of original sin or the logical foundation of all the Scripture that follows Genesis falls away. Or at least that's what the diminutive Dominican taught. I sure do like the implication, though, that the entire messy scope of human activity might better be examined on a case by case basis than adjudicated with a one size fits all univeralism. The Pope's got it right; whatever would my monk think?