It's a real treat to be doing my research at a Catholic institution, learning from the huge wealth of theological tradition and spirituality from this sister church. There is so much I admire in the weight of history that has deepened my own desire to draw from resources beyond my own evangelicalism. The latest developments with regard to invites from Rome to Anglicans unhappy with the prospect of women bishops seems very perplexing though. Maggi Dawn gives a useful summary of the situation here. I couldn't help chuckling when i was told by a Catholic woman recently, full of anxiety and exasperation, "The last thing our church needs is a bunch of reactionary misogynists."
The trouble is, I think our churches have gone about this the wrong way round. I was reading some Thomas Merton today and this is what he was saying in the midst of Vatican II reforms in the 1960's: "conservatives and progressives in the Church are so concerned with total victory over each other that they are more and more closed to each other." For Merton, there was a clear sense that when the church lost sight of its love and compassion for the stranger it would lose love and compassion for herself. He goes on to say, "If we cannot see [God] in the stranger and the alien, we will not understand him even in the Church. We must find him in our enemy, or we may lose him even in our friend...How can we reveal to others what we cannot discover in them ourselves?" I think of controversies over Islam, homosexuality, women bishops and wherever we place ourselves in these arguments, I suspect that we will find faultlines in the church at the points where we have been unable to see the grace of God beyond the place we stand in.
On a more positive note of mission and evangelism with grace and humility, Steve Taylor has written a brief reflection on my earlier post of the "Ten Commandments of Mission" published by the Christian-Muslim Forum. For me, these exemplify something of the ability to be confidently oneself in the very process of giving the other genuine space.
i like this post.
Posted by: amarige | November 19, 2011 at 03:23 AM