Deus Caritas Est
In today’s second reading
No he
isn’t (Islamists)
Over and over again our Christian scriptures proclaim, Deus caritas est. God is love. No he isn’t, says Islam. On EWTN, which I try
hard not to watch, a Muslim convert to Catholicism made an interesting
observation. He said Islamic
theology never says God is love. It will
say that Allah is most gracious and merciful but never Allah is love. That’s
considered too weak and unworthy of Allah, the Almighty One.
Usama bin Laden is an Islamic theologian at heart. His theology proclaims that
That, of
course, paves the way for Usama bin Laden and Islamic terrorists. If Allah
is not love, then it’s not too difficult for Usama and his disciples to turn Allah
into a terrorist who sends suicide
bombers slamming into the
The same, of
course, applies to Christians. If God is love, how could the crusaders of the
12th and 13th centuries have gone forth in nomine Domini,
in the name of the Lord, to terrorize the countryside as they made their way to
the
As I look back now on a good half century of ministry I
see how much time and energy I spent on people whose Catholic God was not love
but terror. Of course, I first had to get rid of my own terrorist God before I
could be of any good to others. Back in those days Catholics were terrified of
God because they were in “bad marriages.” Terrified of God because of all their
“dirty thoughts.” Terrified of God because they hadn’t gone to confession for
ages or had hidden something in confession. Terrified of God because they were
practicing birth control. Terrified of God because they were gay or lesbian.
Some were even terrified because they had swallowed a few snowflakes on the way
to Mass, back in the days when a drop of water or a speck of food was strictly
forbidden before Communion. Then the Pentecostal
winds of Vatican II blew away much of the terror of the good old days. In its
place a Holy Spirit proclaiming God is love came rushing in.
The
god of terror dies slowly
But the
god of terror dies slowly. In his delightful little volume Travels with Charley
(his dog), John Steinbeck tells how he bought himself a huge RV equipped with
all the necessities for housekeeping and then went on a long exploration of the
good old USA. He relates how, one Sunday
morning in a
“The
prayers were to the point,” he writes. “They directed the attention of the
Almighty to certain weaknesses and un-divine tendencies which I know to be mine
and could only suppose were shared by others gathered there. The service did my
heart some good. It had been a long time since I heard such an approach. The
minister, a man of iron with tool-steel eyes and a delivery like a pneumatic
drill, opened up with prayer and reassured us that we were a pretty sorry lot.
Then he went into a glorious fire-and-brimstone sermon. Having proved that we,
or perhaps only I, were no damn good, he painted with cool certainty what was
likely to happen to us if we didn’t make some basic reorganizations of our
lives, for which he didn’t hold out much hope. He spoke of hell as an expert
would—not as a watered-down version but as a good hard coal fire with plenty of
draft to it and a squad of devils putting their hearts into their work, and
their work was me. I began to feel good all over.”
With the same
tongue-in-cheek or cynicism, I’m not sure which, he continues, “This Vermont
God cares enough about me to go to the trouble of kicking the hell out of me.
He put my sins in new perspective. Whereas they had been small and mean and
nasty and best forgotten, this minister gave them some size and bloom and
dignity. I hadn’t been thinking very well of myself for some years, but if my
sins had this dimension to them, there was still some pride left. I wasn’t just
a naughty child but a first rate sinner, and I was going to catch it. I felt so revived in spirit that I put five
dollars into the plate, and afterward, in front of the church, shook hands
warmly with the minister.” The god of terror dies slowly.
Religion
without terror
At this
point a question looms its head. If we take the terror out of religion, what in
the world will keep religion in business? More importantly, if we take the
terror out of religion what in the world will keep us religious? Let’s say you’re
on the road to
What’s
left? My gosh, the best is left. Your
humanity is left. That’s a voice down deep within yourself crying out for you
to be what you were created to be: a human
being. Not a selfish self-centered passer-by but a human being—compassionate, caring and serving.
The poor man waylaid by robbers certainly needs your humanity. Even God in some sense needs your humanity if he is to
reward you. But at the end of the day, you need your humanity even more than
they do. That’s what makes you a human being. That’s what fulfills you.
Yes, he
is (Benedict)
Deus caritas est. God
is love, says John in his first letter.
No he isn’t, says Islam. Yes he is, says
Pope Benedict XVI. On Christmas Day 2005, he put his signature upon his very
first encyclical. An encyclical is a teaching letter of highest papal authority. The first half is said to have been written by the pope in German, his
mother tongue. The encyclical was promulgated on January 25, 200,6 in Latin and
officially translated into seven other languages (English, French, German, Italian,
Polish, Portuguese and Spanish).
Encyclicals get their
names from their opening Latin words. And guess what the opening words of
Benedict’s very first encyclical are? They are “Deus caritas est”from John’s first letter. That’s the name with which
this encyclical will always be referred to in the future. The talk now will be
about Benedict’s encyclical Deus caritas est. The opening line of his
encyclical is “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God
abides in him” (1
Jn 4:16).
Speaking of
his very first encyclical Benedict said, "Since God has first loved us love
is no longer a mere command; it is the response to the gift of love with which
God draws near to us.” Then the pope made a veiled reference to Islamic terrorism
when he said, “In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with
vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence (Jihad), this message is both
timely and significant. For this reason, I wish in my first encyclical to speak
of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with
others." In
previewing his encyclical in Rome Benedict said, “The word love is so
tarnished, so spoiled and so abused, that one is almost afraid to pronounce it.
But we cannot simply abandon it. We must take it up again, purify it and give
back to it its original splendor.” That, he said, was the purpose of this first
teaching letter.
A surprise
A pope’s first encyclical is a reliable indicator
of the tone and direction his pontificate will take. Benedict’s choice of love
as the topic for his very first important statement to the universal church befuddled
those of us who try to pigeonhole him as a doctrinal hardliner and
disciplinarian. He surprised a number of people when he rejects the
polarization of Eros and Agape. (Eros is desiring love or sexual love, and
Agape is self-giving and ministering love.) Benedict rejects polarizing the two
because it makes Eros pagan and Agape Christian. He argues, instead, that both intermingle. But
at the same time, he wants to rescue love from cheap counterfeits. Love can
simply be another name for selfishness and desire, or a fleeting sentiment of
attraction. To become fully human, Benedict
says Eros must mature into Agape.
The pope’s affirmation of Eros, indeed, surprised
one person who wrote, “I started reading Deus
caritas est expecting to be disappointed, chastised and generally laid low.
An encyclical on love from a right-wing pope could only contain more damning
condemnations of our materialistic, westernized society, more evocations of the
`intrinsic evil’ of contraception, married priests, and homosexuality. It would
surely continue the Church’s grand tradition of contempt for the erotic, a
tradition that ensures a guilty hangover in any Roman Catholic who dares to
indulge in lovemaking for any reason other than the primary one of
reproduction. How wonderful it is to be proven wrong.”
Conclusion.
Despite himself
Benedict’s first encyclical is very profound. Benedict is a profound
man. It’s probably too profound for many of us except, perhaps, seminary
professors, preachers and picky theologians. His encyclical is very long. It contains
almost 16,000 words in 42 paragraphs over 70 pages. It’s probably too long for many
of us who are too busy for anything longer than a sound byte.
At the end of the day, what are we to say about this man who at one time as
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was called “Top Cop” for
John Paul II, or “God’s Rottwieiler,” or even “Cardinal Ratz”? What are we to
say about this man who at one time was called “Cardinal No”--- no to divorce,
no to birth control, no to homosexuality, no to women priests, no to married
priests, and even no to rock and roll? What are we to say about this man who at
one time, as dean of the College of Cardinals, was celebrant for the opening
Mass for the conclave (which, to the utter consternation of many, elected him as
pope) and in his homily berated the “dictatorship of relativism” -- berated the idea
that anything goes?
Today we praise him because
in his first letter to the universal church he did not draw clear-cut lines in
the sands or take to task wayward theologians or launch off into the
“dictatorship of relativism.” We praise him because, at the end of the day and perhaps
despite himself, he has it down right: God is not orthodoxy. God is not law. God
is not terror. God is love. Deus caritas
est.