The Apostolic Catholic Church

In Our Own Words

On Liberation Theology

I really am not sure how the subject of "Liberation Theology" came into our discussions. I can only suppose it is a result of my thought that anyone discussing the role of the church in the modern world should at least understand the language and basis for Liberation Theology.

Unfortunately the words "liberation theology" like the word "Christianity" has several different meanings depending upon who is using it. Within liberation theology there are writers who are very near to the Anabaptist position (I find this position more interesting personally) all the over to those who sanctify violent revolution. Most of the people I have read only see violence as possible in a very limited use, somewhat near to the position of Bonhoeffer.

The basic premise of most liberation theology is that the church must give a preferential option to the poor. It is somewhat similar to the charism of the Apostolic Catholic Church. We seek to serve the poor because that is where Christ is found and where he serves. However our charism does NOT come from Liberation Theology. It does come from the clear preference of God as found in both the Hebrew Scriptures and in the New Testament. It is in every way in keeping with the practice of the early church. Our charism and practice is not based on any particular theology, but on the word of God itself. The tradition and the best theology of the church tend to reinforce the scripture.

With that said we must also realize that theology over the centuries has consistently enriched and invigorated the church. Theology has always been the means by which the people of God have made sense of the Gospel in ever changing human circumstances. For the church the present changes in human circumstances are greater than any time since at least the fourth century. How do we take the realities of a faith centered in a first century provincial backwater and apply it to twenty-first century realities? How does a first century centered religion apply to birth control, space travel, computers, internet, cell phones, Multinational Corporations, weapons of mass destruction etc? Theology does that for us and in doing so it helps form the Tradition of the church.

The struggle to explain the relevance of Jesus in a post Christian world is expressed in many of the current theologies;liberation theology, process theology, creation spirituality to name just a few. Most of us read them, reject parts of them, and are grateful for the parts of them that give us new insight into the Gospel and into our own practice of the Gospel in the modern world.

Good theology is a gift of God! We must always guard against an anti intellectualism that might cause us to avoid reading theology and to thus limit our insight into the Gospel of Jesus. Some do so out of intellectual laziness, but I am often tempted by fear. It is just so very painful for me to more fully understand the implications of the Gospel. It is most difficult to expand long held ideas but in doing so I can more easily enter into what the Eastern Church calls Divine Communion. In the west we have a somewhat less descriptive term, grace.

Charles Leigh - Spring 2008
Bishop, Apostolic Catholic Church

Charles Leigh - Sept 2006
Bishop, Apostolic Catholic Church

I was very uncomfortable. I had just been asked a question about the land in which I had been born. I hadn’t lived in the land of my birth for almost two decades and was out of touch with what was happening in America. I wasn’t quite clear what the questioner was really asking. I didn’t understand the context of the question.

I was serving as a missionary, in very rural villages, in Southern Africa. I had traveled a few hundred kilometers to the big city for a Church meeting. The person asking the question was a Bishop, in the denomination I was serving. Overcoming my uncomfortable feelings I began asking the Bishop some clarifying questions. He had spent an extended period of time in America observing a particular denomination in the Protestant Church, their various agencies and several Conferences. He was obviously disturbed and sad at what he had found. He was a kind; humble, but yet a person who had great discernment. His question was neither cynical nor critical. He asked me not because of any great knowledge that I possessed but I was the only American he knew who was living in Africa. He simply asked, “Can an American be a Christian?” He then went on to share some observations. He found the American Church, of our particular denomination, to be more about money, politics and power than about the gospel. He had attended some Church Conferences where Bishops were elected. He was appalled at the blatant politics of the process. Those experiences and others he shared were behind the question he asked. He stated, “I wondered if there was a dollar bill under every altar and an American flag in every Church.”He perceived the Church as more American than Christian.

Having been out of the American Church and culture for a few decades. I had little data to answer his question. I thought it was more a reflection he was sharing with me rather than a question I could even begin to answer. But it stayed with me.

When I returned to American, some years later, I experienced all the cultural shock that many new residents must feel. I loved the grocery stores and all the food that was available, the many amenities like electricity and running water.

There were other dynamics, in the culture, that troubled me greatly. I also observed activities and mindsets in the Church that caused deep reflections within me. I began studying this strange land and different Church that I was now part of to better understand her. I had done the same when I moved to the Caribbean and later to Africa. It was a study to understand how people lived and what gave their life meaning, to understand the stories they lived by in life. It was a quest to determine how can a person like me live in a place like this with a people like I was experiencing? It was a “How do I fit in?” How does this culture fit into the work of the Kingdom of God? I became like a foreign observer studying the culture and the Church, not to find fault but to understand. The more I observed, read and researched the more the Bishop’s question echoed in my brain, not only relating to that denomination but to Protestant Churches in general. I found, like the Bishop found, that the dynamics of Power, Position, Politics and Possessions had become the driving and motivating forces at work within the Church that both he and I knew.

Certain religious writers, in and of this culture, researchers and other returning missionaries began enforcing my observations and conclusions. There is far too much data to share at this point to include all the information. However there are some observations and data that might be of interest.

The purpose of this article is not to be negative or tear down but to raise an alarm. I do not have the skills or the gifting to be a prophet but hopefully there is something of the prophetic in what I write. The motivation is one of love. It is a deep desire for the American Church to return to her first love and to recognize the deception, the seduction of the culture and what it has done to her.

Over the years, George Barna, has been a great gift to me. He has enabled me to validate that what I was personally observing was more than my observations. He has also been a gift to the American Church. For those of you that do not know of him he is the founder and director of Barna Research. For over two decades George has carried on research through nationwide telephone polls. He is a professional Christian researcher. He has developed a research staff enabling the American Church to keep tabs on the pulse of Americans and American Church persons in regards to their views, attitudes and beliefs. Many of the leading denominational leaders use his research to formulate their policies, strategies and plans as a denomination. His studies reflect research he has done on both Protestant and Catholic Churches and their members.

One study, in particular, is important to give us a view of the spiritual health of the Church and of American Christianity in general. This study indicated that only 4 percent of Americans, Protestant and Catholic, had a “biblical” worldview. There was little indication that American Christians, in general, had integrated or had any desire to integrate biblical principles into their core being where they made their decisions about how to live life. The Protestant institutional Church also operated out of a cultural model rather than a biblical one.

I thank brother George for his excellent research. There are very concrete reasons for the “unbiblical” worldview dynamic. There has been a gradual, in one sense, rapid in another sense, shifting of the worldview of the American culture for the past eighty to one hundred years. In the late eighteen hundreds a philosophy of secular humanism began to take root in Western Culture. It was not really new but is as old as time. The Kings and prophets of Israel fought against it. Paul struggled with it in the Greek-Roman world of his day. It rose again in the eighteen hundred’s with new wording but was really no different than older philosophies. It has become the worldview of the West, and America, for over ninety percent of the population. The Church in America, and her people, embrace such a view. It is from that point of view most decisions are made. The ‘biblical’ worldview is not part of an individual’s or an institution’s thinking process. This is not a statement of criticism but rather a reporting of what most research in this area has clearly indicated. It has become the religion that Americans live by.

Secular Humanism is the ‘gospel’ clearly promoted, believed in, and evangelistically promoted by, television, film, music newspaper, magazines, books, the world of education and even the institutional Church. Who could escape such a heavy influence? The answer is no one raised and living in this culture could or can escape. The theology of our culture is more a manology. There are some exceptions but let me leave that for later. The end result is we have a culture, and a ‘Christian” Church that operates out of a gospel of a god that I have called SHIM.

Life decisions, of individuals and institutions, are made on the basis of a secular, humanistic, individualistic and materialistic worldview (SHIM). There seems to be an abundance of knee jerk reactions to anyone or thing that smacks of authority. Put another way this culture sees rebelliousness as a virtue. The Protestant Church often gives the impression she is theologically uncertain, is ignorant of scripture, ethically eclectic and sounds like religion is a side issue in their day-by-day operation. Even the many models and programs for church renewal embrace and use the SHIM understanding of life to bring about transformation. More often than not such programs and models merely further reinforce a way of life that is counter to the Gospel. The God of scripture, traditions of the Church historic, reason and experience has been relegated to a peripheral place in making decisions and living life.

The spirituality that emerges, from such a dynamic, is more secular than sacred. It is a spirituality that is egocentric. In doing spiritual direction, this author has noted that, for some people in our culture, having a spiritual director is like having one’s own physical trainer at the gym. It is status oriented and a status symbol. It is a spirituality that produces isolation rather than community. It is a spirituality that produces neurotic individualism rather than redemptive community. It is a SHIM spirituality that is neither sacred nor holy. It is a spirituality that produces further brokenness rather than healing or salvation. It is a spirituality that rejects scriptural holiness and replaces it with political correctness. It is a spirituality that is infected by a consumer society. It is a spirituality that is competitive and produces isolation rather than healing. It is a spirituality that wants to fix things and give answers rather than stand before the unfixable and the Mystery in life.

We have shifted from being a people under God to a culture that thinks we are gods. Following the god of SHIM has become the American way. Interestingly enough the viewpoint, philosophies and lifestyle of those who embrace SHIM are diametrically opposite of the values of scripture and the Kingdom of God.

As a result there has arisen an American Christianity that is neither scriptural nor Christian. Therefore we find many former Christians searching for a genuine spirituality among the Eastern religions. At some level they know that what the “Church” is selling isn’t providing what the God of the universe is offering. The American Church, of any denomination or stripe, has become synonymous with the culture. Some people at some level know our culture or our cultural religion is not working. There is a God inspired hunger for God’s truth. According to a very recent survey 26% of Americans suffer from some sort of mental illness. Rural Africa has a mental illness rate of 4.7%. One author commented that if the social scientists of the world sat down together for the purpose of designing a culture that would produce poorly functioning human beings they couldn’t have done a better job than in what we have evolved in America.

There is some difference between the Protestant Churches and those of the Roman Catholic faith. It is dangerous to generalize but nevertheless the structures of the Protestant Church seem to have embraced a SHIM orientation and blend themselves into the culture thereby deifying it. The average American feels right at home. In the Roman Catholic Church with its universal orientation, at the ecclesiastical level, embrace a more scriptural and traditional orientation. However, the person at the pew level generally buys into the SHIM model and ignores the orientation of the Church universal.

I believe it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. But one must first recognize that one is in darkness. We, in America, have been calling darkness light and light darkness and trying to spread our myth to “less developed countries.” The we includes the American Church. Our first step, as Americans, and for those who call themselves Christians and recognize the problem, is to recognize the darkness and the depth of our apostasy and rationalizations.

Let me share some of the exceptions I have found in this land. It is usually found among those folks who, for whatever reasons, have been able to become detached enough from our culture and our society to look at our American Church and culture with some objectivity and come to the conclusions indicated above. I have had the privilege of knowing some Catholic and Episcopal Sisters living out their lives in a cloister situation. The monks, the monastic movement and religious orders, in many ages and in many cultures, have tried to address this problem by becoming a sign and a symbol of an alternative life style. Hopefully they are then encouraging the surrounding culture to evaluate the way the people in the culture are living. Those choosing such an approach see clearly the illness of our society and Church. Their solution is to live a life style that stands in contradiction to our culture. They work with people through example and presence. During the last fifty years there have been groups of Christians hungry for authentic Christian community. In response there arose such groups as E. Stanley Jones’ Ashrams, the Lay Witness movement, the Cell group movement and the Walk to Emmaus. Indeed they provided opportunity for the hungry Christians to experience a deeper scriptural walk with God and a sense of committed Christian community. But alas they made little impression on the structures of the Church and her way of doing God’s business. There are some priests and protestant ministers who see the darkness and are using the same approach, of an alternative life style, except they are trying to renew the Church from within rather than as a witness from without. Is that the same as putting a new coat of paint on a barn with dry rot? A good question to ask is, “If the system, the institution has a structure that is built on the wrong foundations and is thoroughly diseased in the marrow of its bones can some individuals bring about the transformation?” I do not know the answer to such a question. I tend to be a bit skeptical. I know what Jesus said about faulty foundations. I do not know what God has in mind. God can bring about a change and God can and does use whatever and whoever He chooses to use. But God usually wants folks to do it His way. History indicates that God rises up a new people and sends His Spirit to new arenas when people no longer are obedient to kingdom values. The old fades away and dies. His Spirit moves on.

Is the Church doomed? Of course it is not doomed. Its perversions might be doomed. I lived, worked and served much of my adult life in third world countries in far different cultures. I experienced a Christianity and Church that acted out its life on Biblically sound principles. It believed the gospel and took it seriously. As a result the Church in some of these areas is growing, is meeting the spiritual needs of people and is transforming lives.

As I have talked with other missionaries, who have been out of this culture for a few decades, their stories are all the same. It reflects what I have shared above. Our culture is pagan and our American Church embraces those same values or lack of them. I do not hear such people speaking words of condemnation or ridicule but from a deep pain within. It is a pain that I share. They were motivated to share the gospel in remote lands. They saw the gospel come alive and God’s Church blossom. They returned to find a land that had become more pagan than the lands they went to serve and a Church that echoes those same pagan values.

Another exception I experienced. As a young man in the sixties I became part of a Protestant (mostly Methodist) group called the Ecumenical Institute. I was part of that community for a year. There were several such Religious Houses across the nation and later the world. One was in Atlanta, Georgia. We lived together in common in all things: living space, finances, community discipline and decisions. They stood as a sign and symbol over against a rapidly emerging secular culture and Church. The institutional Church saw it as a threat and as too heretical. It was neither. It was an attempt to live out the Gospel mandates in the world of the sixties. It did its work well. It was not for everyone. It was not generally popular. But it was a counter culture to the emerging god of SHIM. It was a sign and symbol that caught the Church’s attention. Did it reform the Church? No! I think it was a good approach like the many communities that arose before and after it. It did foster a remnant that wanted to be faithful to a Church that was not cultural.

As we look at Church history we find many periods where the institution and leadership had the gifting of sin rather than scriptural holiness. It was out of some such eras that God raised up monastic movements to stand in sharp contrast to so called worldly Christians. The test of time has shown that the monastic movements had and have such a purifying effect on Christian Life and the Church. There are many such movements within and outside of the institutional Church. I see them as a gift from God. There are many such communities and movements I could mention but I do not intend to be comprehensive in my illustrations. But one brief example might be helpful.

The Brothers and Sisters of Charity, based in Arkansas, has attempted to blend together a monastic, in residence community, and a domestic community to bring God’s gift by being a sign and symbol in a culture that has lost sight of God and His Kingdom. But all such movements are very clear, in their own thinking that America and the American Church have embraced the god of SHIM. These movements do not approach the problem, with a holier then thou mentality, but rather, “Here is the way we understand the faithful people of God are to live. We desire to be a sign and a symbol of those Christian values.”

Regardless of the methodologies or movements God raises up there needs to be clarity that Americans and American Christianity does follow the god of SHIM. We need to be clear that God, His Kingdom and the Kingdom values proclaim a gospel that embraces what I have called, STED (Sacred, Theistic, Ekklesia and Detachment) as a way of life that is faithful to the Gospel of Christ.

Such a way of life states clearly that all of life is sacred. I am not referring to a pantheistic point of view but that our Creator God makes himself present to us. He reveals himself to us and is present in His Creation, within us, in other people, in the events of life and the very creation itself. No decisions are secular. God is to be perceived not ignored in every decision we make and every event in our life. As people of faith it is imperative to recognize that all of life is sacred from conception to natural death.

The person of faith is called to focus all energy, strength and resources towards God not man. The focus is on the Eternal not the mundane. We are called to be Theistic not humanistic in our understanding of life. We live in the mundane but with the call and the vision to be guided by and focused on God. Our hope is in Him not in man or man’s schemes. This is one hundred and eighty degrees opposite of the secular and humanistic values of our culture and cultural Church.

We are called not to individualism, a perversion in God’s sight, but to community: ekklesia. Who I am in God’s Kingdom, and as a person, is directly reflected in those I relate to in community. There is an African saying that roughly translated states, “I am who I am as a result of those I relate to in my community.” In America or in American Churches there seem to be few if any communities that exist in the scriptural sense of that word community. The only exceptions are those monastic type communities who have taken the call to be in community as serious. There is periodic interest in small groups, within the Church, that are signs of the God given hunger for such a community based understanding of life and the Gospel.

The call is also a call where I consciously detach myself from SHIM. Detachment becomes an intentional life style. It is where I investigate each cultural norm and measure it over against scripture and tradition. It is not an attempt to justify the culture but a serious openness to let the Holy Spirit in to inform me how one is called away from the SHIM Culture. It is to enable one to “see” the Gospel with less influence of the cultural lenses.

All kinds of philosophies and man created ideas bombard our senses. Which one is correct? We are a synergistic people: a consequence of blending together a lot of strange thinking. We have become a SHIM people. The Old Testament prophets, Jesus and Paul clearly warn us such a concept of life is a dead end street.

Our choice is clear. If we have come to know the living Christ we will be a people who live and love under God not man. We embrace STED as a way of life, live in a world of SHIM people but are not of it.

Perhaps the renewal of the Church will come through many monastic communities springing up throughout this land. Perhaps they will call people to tend the holy and not be conformed to this world but be willing to be transformed and indeed show and exhibit what is the perfect and acceptable will of God for all of us.

Be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds that ye might prove what is the perfect and acceptable will of God.

Rev. Glenn Galtare
Priest, Apostolic Catholic Church

God's Healing Gift

Life often takes us to places we could never dream of in our own imaginations, and when we get out of our own way and let the Spirit and life take us, we may find ourselves on a much more exciting and meaningful journey than if we had followed our own pedestrian plans.

So it is with me, as I now find myself the wife of a priest, a deacon myself and creating a healing ministry in our fledgling Church of the Beatitudes to serve those in need of healing of body, mind and spirit. A healing ministry can have a myriad facets but the endpoint of all is bringing a person to wholeness, whether it be wholeness of body or wholeness of spirit.

As our ministry of presence with the poor begins to take shape, there will be a need to address the healing of the total person. The literature is full of research on the relationship between psychological and spiritual stress and the onset of illness. The poor and the marginalized living on the edges of society are especially susceptible to this stress and need to bring some kind of peace to their lives.

There are many avenues to healing. It can be energy work to aid the body in physical healing; it can be prayer, both for physical healing and for spiritual peace; it can be anointing; it can be the laying on of hands, or touch healing; it can be helping a person to realize their wholeness; it can be a listening, caring presence. We all need to tell our stories and have our life experiences validated, with respect, without judgment, whatever those stories may be. To simply be with people as they make their journey through life's traumas and tragedies is healing work.



However, there are more concrete elements to a healing ministry as we envision it, one of which is working with the body's electromagnetic field. Research has shown this work to have many benefits; it can alter vital signs, shorten healing time after surgery, provide relaxation and a sense of well being and, with ongoing treatment, has the potential to bring about healing of serious illness.

The body's electromagnetic field contains a flow of energy that, if uninterrupted, results in a healthy body. Illness, accidents, traumas and painful emotions disrupt and impede that energy flow. The body becomes stressed and the perfect setting for disease is created. The role of a healer/practitioner is to use energy emitted from the hands to smooth and release those disruptions, then replenish depleted energy by transmitting energy from the practitioner's hands to the individual. When the energy field is cleared and strengthened, healing can occur.

There are those who view this work as New Age silliness, or as something to be feared. It is neither. This energy is part of God's creation and is a gift to use in service to others. In this energy exchange is an incredible feeling of closeness to God, the God whose healing flows in the form of that energy.

Prayer is also an essential part of healing which, when combined with energy work, creates a powerful force for healing potential. "Where two or three are gathered in my name"; has been proven to be true.

In our scientific age, where only that which can be proven empirically is given validity, most of us, in spite of assertions to the contrary, do not really believe healing can happen. Though spontaneous healings do occur, they are rare. Most healings happen over time with prayer, energy work, medical intervention, etc., but they do occur. Few people have ever witnessed a spontaneous healing, adding to the belief that they do not happen. We have become skeptical and cynical and dismiss such notions as the creations of fanatics.

Science is concrete, touchable, follows defined rules. Spirituality is an internal life, a constant review and reflection of one's being. The two are not incompatible – humanity, while living in the scientific world, continually strives to touch God. The human spirit, no matter how jaded, at some level aches for the mystery and for connection with the unknown.

God loves his creation and wishes them to be healed and be whole. When we abandon ourselves to that love, let it heal us, make us whole, fill us, we can then carry that healing to those we serve in God's name. We are all healers. Let us heal in whatever way God calls us.

Myra Callahan, Deacon, deceased
Apostolic Catholic Church

We the People

The Apostolic Catholic Church is a movement made up of people who sometimes disagree. When a controversy occurs it can quickly become hurtful and destructive. Fortunately, the early Church provided a foolproof and simple method for avoiding hurt and destruction from within the community. It will always work if all parties approach the meeting with love and humility. It is clearly outlined in Matthew 18:15 to 21.

First we need to speak privately about the problem with our brother or sister. Usually between people of good will the controversies will go no farther than this first meeting. As your bishop I should not even entertain a complaint about another member unless the complainer has already spoken with that member

If the disagreement still cannot be worked out the complaining member should ask another wise person to meet together with the offending brother or sister. The clear intent of the early Church was that all this would be done privately without bothering the peace of the community. One is never to try to justify oneself to others nor to try to win converts to one’s position. To do so is soundly condemned in James (chapter 4). In the Apostolic Catholic Church we are called to hold one another accountable at every step of this process. In my position as your bishop it is my duty to abide by this apostolic method.

In the rare occasion when these meetings have not helped us to reassess our behavior in the light of Jesus’ law of love, then we are called to hold one another accountable as a community. This is not some sort of silly trial. It is an opportunity for the community and each individual in it to affirm love over ego and inclusiveness over exclusiveness. This was the clear intent of the early Church and it remains ours.


Finally as a member of the Apostolic Catholic Church we will not act on or repeat hearsay of anonymous accusations against anyone. James (Chapter 3) warns us of the deep and pervasive harm from such behavior. Such was the policy of the first century Apostolic Church and it remains the policy of the 21st century Apostolic Catholic Church.

Charles Leigh, Bishop
Apostolic Catholic Church

Following Jesus

With almost every voice in multimedia singing our merits as a Christian bastion against all forms of evil, it might be a good idea to evaluate the veracity of that statement. How could we best accomplish that? Science would urge us to investigate all the attributes of something in detail in order to best define what it is. People of Spirit might, on the other hand, request that we look at the fruit that is born of something to determine its intrinsic value. It may be useful to implement both approaches in examining the teachings of Jesus Christ and their reflection in the “Christian” culture of our country as a sort of sanity check and validation of congruence.

Teachings of Jesus - Our Cultural Values

1. Love - Hate
2. Peace - War
3. Truth - Lies
4. Humility - Pride
5. Justice - Injustice
6. Respect - Intolerance
7. Freedom - Paranoia
8. Compassion - Indifference
9. Generosity - Greed
10. Sympathy - Callousness
11. Charity - Avarice
12. Life - Death

LOVE / HATE
Despite the absolute clarity of the Gospel instructions, love is not one of our strengths. Love is viewed as an old fashioned sentimental feeling detrimental to business, to capitalism, to profit and the advent of the 60 hour work week. Wasn’t it the Sex Pistols that sang “Love Stinks”? Obviously as we continue to remove help and support for the poor, as we continue transferring it to the wealthy at levels never before seen on earth in the entire history of humanity, we exhibit our belief that love is irrelevant. Allowing children to go hungry and the old to roast or freeze to death are but a few examples of love’s opposite, found to be a more than acceptable substitute in our culture, perhaps even its loftiest goal.

We have witnessed a massive rollback in social programs and a corresponding major philosophical shift from community oriented values to egocentric materialism and have sunk into a stupor of narcissism. This philosophy is in direct opposition to Jesus and to God.

PEACE / WAR
Our official government policy is endless war. Since this policy was implemented we have supported war to levels of popularity reaching 80% and have seen enthusiasm wane only because of the slow progress of winning, along with the extremely short attention span of the populous. Nevertheless, we re-elected a President promising endless murder and pain to peoples, not armies. Murder and pain to old men, boys, women and children, not soldiers. The genocide of Falujah was a war crime as repugnant as any ever committed, yet our “imbedded” and morally reprehensible reporters said nothing. There have even been calls from pundits and a sizable portion of the citizenry for nuking countries in order to speed up the victory process. Though we are called by Christ to love….even our enemies, churches remain fearfully, sinfully and satanically silent and these agendas are given credence.

TRUTH / LIES
No Al Quaida connections were found. No chemical labs, no WMDs discovered. There was no ethical reason for war. The list of government lies is legend on every topic, not just the war issue. One need only to Google “government lies” on the Internet to see the broad, persistent purposeful agenda that is recorded and on public record for all to see. There were more lies in the “State of the Union” address than truths. The scope is of a scale that puts Nazi or Communist propaganda to shame. It is lies about every aspect of the world we live in and the peoples who live in it. It is lies about global warming, the environment, peace treaties, where the social security “trust” went, the health of education or anything else associated with the common good. It is interesting that one of the ancient titles for Satan was “Father of Lies”. Not a single “journalist or “lawmaker” or “churchman” uttered a word of reprimand.

HUMILITY / PRIDE
We have all seen the “Power of Pride” stickers. We have seen the arrogance with which our country tramples the wishes and hopes of the entire world while scorning the United Nations and all multi-polar attempts at problem solving. Working at solutions to our problems and perceived problems in a civilized manner is beneath us because we have become barbarians. The notion of a world community living in harmony is abhorrent to our government and our people. Once again choices are made that are in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus and the will of God.

The workplace has become microcosm of our culture. Pecking orders take precedence over good business decisions while petty rivalry has made us non-competitive and dysfunctional. There can be no creativity when fear and insecurity are so pervasive. Business schools present outsourcing and slave labor as business solutions instead of the need for real plans that are society centric. A street person could do better, for God’s sake! Our law schools produce lawyers that circumvent the law for the sake of the powerful. Ethics are a sign of weakness in our brutal new world order. “Pro Bono” is an underfunded “window dressing” that soothes the consciences of everyone as they dismantle the protection of law and the wisdom of Hammurabi.

It’s all about the propaganda machine, the media. Television in the form of “The Donald”, Survivor, The Contender or Fear Factor have become our culture, and human life becomes the stuff of soap operas. We act as neither servants nor stewards for one another, just players in a Dickinsonian drama. Arrogance and anger are holy virtues in today’s society, which sees humble people as wusses and losers. Jesus is considered the ultimate loser. The “Christian” religious right never mentions the Sermon on the Mount but revels in a tribal killer God who forces people to act one way, then perversely kills them for doing so (read Genesis and Exodus). The American Jews have been taught to totally forget the Psalms and their proud history of social concern and to join their religious right brothers in the perverse dance of Armageddon. Falwell, Graham and Robertson lick their lips and smile as the Joe Liebermans join the party.


JUSTICE / INJUSTICE
If you have the money, you have justice and as much as you want. Corporations rape whole peoples, the environment where they live, the places where they work and the families that they live with. They are the greatest child molesters of all. Seven corporations, all strongly for Bush, own most every media outlet. Little boys leer at women’s breasts on sit-coms, little girls kick groins and sex is for sale 24/7. It’s about Disney and Mermaid Phallic symbols and subtle subliminal Saturday morning cartoons. It’s about a movie industry that is 60% about possession, and devils every weekend. Demons and devils and a Gnostic world of Rapture is the culture of America. The glowing eyes of Jesus spitting flames from his mouth and tossing the damned to eternal agony is what is left of the God of love. This is the Jesus of the churches.

If you are sick, worry! There is no FDA to protect us. Drugs reach the market after little effective testing. Prozac and Ritalin keep the kids in a stupor and all is well. People destroy their brains or liver to prevent arthritis pain. Government is the slave of these corporate entities and there are few officials in Washington not on the take in a massive way. Just remember death row is for the poor; living wages, healthcare, housing and education are not. Women are second class citizens and racism is alive and well, thank you.

RESPECT / INTOLERANCE
Respect? For whom? The dot-heads, ragheads, rugheads, spics, niggers, mexes or red necks that are at constant war with each other because the powers to be tell them over and over that the other is the cause of all the problems? Are we a human family? We stare at our WWJD bracelets, wondering what the letters stand for, turn up the IPOD volume and burp in boredom, blissfully unaware that their problems deeply affect us. But, hey, they aren’t my neighbors anyway. We forget that Jesus was specific about who our neighbor was, to our own doom.

FREEDOM / PARANOIA
Freedom is God’s greatest gift and God’s ultimate revelation. When our laws allow the FBI or Homeland Security to tap your phone, search your house when you are not there, examine your credit and health records, all without just cause, and never having to let you know, then we allow the government to usurp God’s will. When you, an American citizen, can be whisked away by your government to death or imprisonment and torture….never to return….without a trial or just cause ….. just “disappeared” then just who are the terrorists we should be afraid of? When you are asked to spy on your mother, father, sister or brother, neighbors and friends, which Godly attribute are you following? Which God?

COMPASSION / INDIFFERENCE
Zero tolerance! Mandatory Sentences! No Child Left Behind! If they don’t directly harm themselves or others, release them from the mental hospitals! Cut Vet Benefits! It must be pay as you go! Change bankruptcy laws! Eliminate the Superfund! Relax anti-pollution laws! Day after day we punish others to the point of death, without remorse, without guilt, without the slightest pangs of conscience. CEOs make 10,000 times more per hour than those in the grunt jobs. Why is that? What do they do to effectively grow the business? Buyout? Outsourcing? Refusing to pay income taxes (like all Fortune 500 Companies)? When a CEO is not a good steward, that CEO is an offense to God. When the stockholders demand excessive profits, then they also become an offense to God.

GENEROUSITY / GREED
Generosity is such an easy one. Well let’s stop foreign aid! …..We did…a long time ago and now we give nations money and make them use it to buy our weapons. Or we send in the IMF and the World Bank to make them buy what they don’t need, then kill them in a long slow debt repayment scheme that slowly suffocates them. We make farmers throw away their seed kept for millenniums and force them to use bioengineered seed. Then we make them buy our expensive fertilizer that is ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED to make bioengineered seed grow. Then we jail them or kill them if they don’t cooperate. Jesus weeps because no one cares. It’s called Greed and yes, it is still a grave capital sin. Turn up that IPOD!

SYMPATHY / CALLOUSNESS
There are 200 million people out there who need not die of AIDS in the next decade. Proper, inexpensive protection and AIDS medicine would keep people alive and give children parents. Drug companies don’t care, churches don’t care, we don’t care. Holy abstinence for life is the only answer. A husband cannot use a condom to protect his wife and cannot afford drugs that would prolong his life and enable him to support his family. Sex, you see, is sin. Perhaps the only sin. The seven deadly sins have been reduced to having sex.

CHARITY / AVARICE
There is no social contract in America. There is no safety net. That wonderful godlike concept exists only in civilized countries like …all of Europe, for instance, and where there is dignity for humanity as in Cuba, Venezuela and Russia. I was stunned by the people stating how even Castro was forced to let the people see the Pope’s death on television. Here is a nation devastated by a generation of sanctions yet manages to have free healthcare, free education and pensions. At home we have only squalor and hunger and despair. The haves and the have-nots. The have-nots, by their very existence, exhibiting Calvinistically the proof of their deep sinfulness.

LIFE / DEATH
Life, so precious and God given and so unappreciated. Abortion is a very serious moral issue. We know that during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society abortions plummeted. We know that there are often outside factors leading to abortion. We take care of none of them. Wouldn’t honest sex education in the schools help to reduce this plague? Wouldn’t a living wage? Wouldn’t inexpensive neo-natal care? Wouldn’t cheap housing? Wouldn’t inexpensive daycare? How do we respect life if life is not that seamless garment of Bernardin’s? We have a packed Supreme Court , all nominated for their anti-abortion stance, a Republican majority in House and Senate and no reversal of Roe v. Wade. What’s wrong with this hypocritical picture?

During the Vietnam War 2-3 million Vietnamese civilians were murdered. We sold out Ho Chi Minh. He was honored at his post election inauguration by a front row of about fifty U.S. Army Generals and Colonels giving him a standing ovation. Then we gave Vietnam back to the French.
We stood and watched 1 million Cambodian civilians murdered in the Killing Fields while in full complicity with Pol Pot …..just to teach the Vietnamese a lesson.

In the last fifteen years a million Iraqi civilians (500,000 of them children) died during sanctions that devastated the population and over 100,000 more have died during the present war. We are against anyone who refuses our demands, seeks independence or wishes to follow God’s will. We are only interested in ourselves and our wishes correspond with corporate lust.

The death penalty is dispensed to the poor and only to the poor. It is assigned to those without proper defense whether innocent or guilty. So bad it is that the Republican governor of Illinois suspended the death penalty because of the innocent killed and the innocent likely to be killed. Forget that it is cheaper to grant life but that wouldn’t be as enjoyable. Who did Jesus butcher today, Brother? Sister?

WHAT IS LEFT?
How do we embrace a world in which the joy of life is a crapshoot that we won. We have lost this loving Jesus and this forgiving God of the Psalms. We do not admit that we all are stewards of this planet; in fact, we take responsibility for nothing. We fret about Rapture and Righteousness when we should be embracing the words of John that “God is love.” If we wish for God to abide in us then we too must abide in love. The solution is really that simple and it is the only solution.

Christianity today is as spiritually dead as the soul of the religious right, a whited sepulcher, so distant from Jesus that He is no longer heard. It is a barren fig tree, beyond bearing fruit. The name, once so holy, has been prostituted and damaged beyond repair. Where Evangelicals, Protestants and Catholics once lived lives that were concerned about their Salvation, they have fallen away. Evangelicals fly to the Once Save Always Saved (OSAS) heresy and self-righteousness, Mainline Protestants move to the sophisticated Arianism of the Jesus Seminar and destroy their own Spirituality. Catholics seek a dogmatic and secretive vendetta driven Opus Dei Church and have closed the windows that good Pope John opened so wide. Fundamentalists, now saved, find Spirituality in non-scriptural drivel like the Rapture, turning our Savior from gentle shepherd to blood thirsty wolf. Let Jerry and Pat and Billy, Canterbury, Rome and the rest have it. There’ll be no making of a silk purse out of this sow’s ear. Resurrection is reserved for souls and churches have none.

Perhaps it is time to declare belief in the teachings of Jesus. Let us forget the poor scholarship of Enlightenment driven historical criticism and Jesus Seminars and cling to this God who has never ceased to love us. Let us rise larger than Righteousness by being humble and non-judgmental. Let us admonish those who do not love the sinner and let us bear witness by our example. Let us for once acknowledge our own sinfulness and get the beam out of our own eyes.
Two thousand years have passed and we have not acknowledged our neighbor and therefore not acknowledged God either.

Difficult times are coming because of the selfish choices we have made. How technology has failed when divorced from Spirit! The bell tolls and materialism, narcissism and self indulgence will be impossibilities. We will find ourselves empty. The times that try souls are the times when perhaps we will have an opportunity to take on courage and put on God. There won’t be much else to distract. The stark choices of survival mode are coming. Will it be barbarism or neighborliness? Darkness or light? Many will opt for the former; we must opt for Light. We must be the presence of Christ. It is demanded of us.

Bernard Callahan, Priest
Apostolic Catholic Church