Contents
Articles
- The Body of Christ II: Death and Resurrection, Stephen Mitchell
- Irony on the Via Dolorosa, Caroline Pickard
- Our Wounded Body Politic, Frank Regan
- Religion and Politics in Latin America, Francis McDonagh
- The Idea of ‘Race’ and its Origins in Slavery, David Rhodes
- An Eco-Human Future, Ian Harris
Poetry
- Same Root, Dinah Livingstone
- St Cuthbert and the Otters, Neil Curry
Reviews
- Queer Holiness by Charlie Bell, reviewed by Edward Nickell
- The Power of Reconciliation by Justin Welby, reviewed by Pauline Pearson
- Holy Anarchy by Graham Adams, reviewed by Dominic Kirkham
- My life, you see: Selected Poems by Martina Thomson, reviewed by Kathryn Southworth
Regulars and Occasionals
- As I Please: John Pearson says goodbye, John Pearson
Editorial: Life for Each
The title of this Sofia is Life for Each – abundant life. This requires, first, that we should own our own life, not be owned by anyone else in any kind of slavery. But ownership of ourselves and our individual body is not enough for abundant life; we also need to belong to a fair and kind society, a body politic, and belong on terms of equal rights and dignity. These are ideal conditions which many individual lives lack and many societies fall short of.
Articles in this issue address the title ‘Life for Each’ from different perspectives. Stephen Mitchell writes on ‘Death and Resurrection’. Frank Regan, former editor of Renew, the magazine of Catholics for a Changing Church, writes about ‘Our Wounded Body Politic’. Francis McDonagh, retired Andes Programme manager for CAFOD, writes on ‘Religion and Politics in Latin America’, from the fifteenth century conquistadors to date. David Rhodes writes on ‘The Idea of “Race” and its Origin in Slavery’. And Ian Harris discusses the possibility of ‘An Eco-Human Future’, since life on Earth involves more than just human life.
John Pearson says goodbye to his As I Please column, in which he has been musing upon his own life and life in general. Most of these pieces have now been collected in book form, published by SOF this year (available online, see details sofn.org.uk/shop/shop.html).
This Sofia’s front cover shows an ash tree. The giant ash tree Ygdrasil was the Nordic world tree, the tree of life. The tree of life beside the river running through the beautiful city at the end of the book of Revelation has twelve kinds of fruit; there are all different kinds of life, and the back cover shows a banner illustrating the indigenous Mexican Zapatista double motto: ‘Another World is Possible – For a World with Room for Every World’. Abundant life also means a multitude of life styles, cultures and languages.
Dinah Livingstone
Letters to the Editor
Please send your letters to: Sofia Editor: Dinah Livingstone, 10 St Martin’s Close, London NW1 0HR. editor@sofn.org.uk
The Body of Christ
Warmest congratulations and grateful thanks for yet another really excellent edition of Sofia (146). Here is my letter on your main theme The Body of Christ. ‘The Body of Christ’ is a metaphor, isn’t it? Or is it a bureaucratic organisation that’s very fussy about who is or isn’t legally in it? Or is it more than a metaphor? What does it refer to?
At a SOF conference in Leicester a few years ago a Unitarian friend of mine, the late David Arthur, told us of an experience he had during a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. With a great crowd of pilgrims he attended mass conducted by the Cardinal Archbishop in the vast basilica. Speaking most clearly and emphatically in many languages the Cardinal said, ‘I invite every one of you to come up and receive the bread. I invite you whether you are Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu. I invite you whether you say you have no religion or say that you are agnostic or atheist. I invite every one of you.’
This was the last thing David had expected from a Spanish Cardinal and he was deeply impressed. So am I. Was the Cardinal showing us that the Body of Christ is, more than just a metaphor: Blake’s ‘human form divine’, Lear’s ‘unaccommodated man . . . poor bare, forked animal’; Gerard Manley Hopkins’s ‘jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch matchwood, immortal diamond’. As you say, ‘a vision of humanity’s fulfilment.’
Frank Walker, Cambridge
The Syrophoenician Woman
In my view, the Passion Story apart, the story of the Syrophoenician woman is, for SOF purposes, perhaps the most important story in the gospel of Mark. Read in the context both of Mark’s claim that Jesus never taught without parables, and the discussion around the parable of the Sower, the story of the Syrophoenician woman has a number of distinguishing features.
It includes the only example in Mark of a remote healing miracle, all the other miracles involve touch. Mark puts into Jesus mouth a phrase explicitly drawing attention to the precise words used by the woman: ‘… for saying these words…’ Jesus changing his mind when challenged to do so? What words exactly? The woman took Jesus’ insulting response, likening the woman and her daughter to ‘dogs’, and immediately turns it back to him, challenging Jesus for her own purposes. That challenge is one to which Jesus responds fulsomely. Mark’s Jesus is a rabbi searching for those who can turn a trope at the drop of hat. The very first recruits are invited to become ‘fishers of men’. Those who are entirely at home within figurative language are able to act as the yeast in the dough in the creation and sustaining of the realm of heaven.
One of the strengths of this magazine has been its insistence on the significance of poetry, alerting us to the power of metaphor and imagination to further the possibilities of understanding human potential. Long may the Network continue so to do.
David Lambourn, Bungay
Monarchy
Although I enjoyed reading John Pearson’s account as he reconsiders his attitude towards the monarchy, I cannot agree with his implied conclusion that the lifestyle of members of the Royal Family is privileged and something to be envied. Being born a senior member of the Royal Family carries with it the loss of the normal personal freedoms available to ordinary citizens. I cannot imagine a life in which every aspect of one’s private life is lived under the scrutiny of the public gaze and subject to their judgement at all times.
I like the idea of living in a Monarchy in which the head of State is not a political appointment but a ceremonial position which carries with it the weight of hundreds of years of tradition. As John says, ceremony is something we do rather well. I am grateful that there are Royal Personages willing to accept the obligation to stand as figureheads so that I can experience the formal celebration of great state occasions. Long live the monarchy!
Carol Palfrey, North Walsham, Norfolk
Pope Benedict XVI
I first became aware of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) through his writings, when at college and seminary in the 1960’s – 70’s, which impressed me with their erudition. This view began to change after years involved in ecumenical work seeking to build relationships with other churches and working towards agreed doctrinal statements. Concern changed to consternation when numbers of Anglican ‘refugees’ opposed to the ordination of women priests started to turn up in our parish. It soon became apparent that for these embittered souls there would be a warm official welcome to the church, but there would be no women at the altar of the Catholic Church nor even discussion of the issue.
Instead of discussion apodictic statements became the norm, such as the one that caused much mirth at one deanery meeting in which Buddhism was characterised as a form of ‘auto-eroticism’: when people wondered what this could mean the Dean quipped, ‘An undue love of motor cars!’
Disdain for discussion became the hallmark of Cardinal Ratzinger’s tenure as head of the Inquisition – renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) but unchanged in its secretive medieval procedures. Perhaps the most notorious case for the CDF under the direction of Cardinal Ratzinger (as he then was) was its remarkably inept confrontation with so-called Liberation Theology and theologians. Having met a number of these impressive figures, including bishops, one comment that stands out in my mind is that this was not about theology but power. The centralisation of power in the Vatican trumped every other consideration regardless of how destructive this was to the church.
As Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger’s legacy is of a timid man once burned by the experience of Nazism – then blinded by the glare of Modernity who sought guidance by looking in the rear-view mirror, while content to dismiss half of humanity with misogynistic drivel. Such is the supposed light of the world!
Dominic Kirkham, Manchester