In Our Own Words

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.

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.

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.

Following Jesus

May 2007

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 those statements. 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 practice in the culture of our country as a kind 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. As the unemployed are viewed as useless we see measurement of worth in terms of output to the "system". Allowing children to go hungry and the old to roast or freeze to death are but a few examples of love's opposite, a position found to be more and more acceptable in our culture, perhaps even one of our loftier goals.

We have witnessed a massive rollback of social programs and a corresponding shift from community oriented values to egocentric materialism and we have sunken into the 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 our populous. Nevertheless, we re-elected a President promising endless murder and pain to peoples, not armies. Murder and pain were to be inflicted on old men, boys, women and children, not necessarily soldiers. The genocide of Falujah was a war crime as repugnant as any ever committed, yet our "embedded" and morally reprehensible reporters working diligently for "the Media"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 diabolically 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 was 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. Fundamentalists are not alone in anti-God rhetoric. 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. In my thirty years in the world of business I rarely saw managers not act out of fear. Outsourcing, in fact, is nothing but fear of failure by our business giants. Business schools present outsourcing and slave labor as the business solution instead of real plans that are society centric and grow companies. 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 under-funded "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 created by Capitalism. 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). We forget the Psalms and their proud history of social concern and join the religious right in the perverse dance of Armageddon. Falwell, Graham and Robertson lick their lips and smile as everyone joins 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 work for them. 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. Google who is making money from porn.... you'll be surprised! It's about a movie industry that is 60% demonic possession, and devils and chain saws every weekend. Demons and devils and a Gnostic world of Rapture is the culture of this 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 American 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; unfortunately 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 ignoring that our neighbor's problems deeply affect us. But, hey, they aren't our 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