The process that leads to the birth of religion is reversed, in regard to the explanation that Freud had given. In Christ, it is God who makes himself victim, not the victim (in Freud, the primordial father) that, once sacrificed, is successively raised to divine dignity (the Father of the Heavens). It is no longer man that offers sacrifices to God, but God who “sacrifices” himself for man, consigning for him to death his Only-begotten Son (cf. John 3:16). Sacrifice no longer serves to “placate” the divinity, but rather to placate man and to make him desist from his hostility toward God and his neighbor.
Christ did not come with another’s blood but with his own. He did not put his sins on the shoulders of others — men or animals — he put others’ sins on his own shoulders: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24).
Can one, then, continue to speak of sacrifice in regard to the death of Christ and hence of the Mass? For a long time the scholar mentioned rejected this concept, holding it too marked by the idea of violence, but then ended by admitting the possibility, on condition of seeing, in that of Christ, a new kind of sacrifice, and of seeing in this change of meaning “the central fact in the religious history of humanity.”
Some years ago, I researched the history of Christian interpretation of the book of [i]Esther[/i] in the Middle Ages. Because the plain sense of that book explicitly promises the Jews’ deliverance from those who hate them, I wondered how the “persecuting society” of the Christian Middle Ages interpreted that book. Did Christian readers see in “the mirror of the sacred page” [i](speculum sacrae paginae)[/i] a portrait of themselves? I was surprised to discover that medieval interpreters turned [i]Esther[/i] into an allegory in which they, the Christians, were identifed with Esther and Mordecai, and the Jews themselves were identified with the anti-Jewish persecutors Haman and his family. In other words, [i]Esther[/i] was taken as a story of Jewish persecution of Christianity, not the other way around. The medieval interpretive strategy robbed the text of its prophetic power to speak against Christian anti-Judaism.
I’m reminded of this when I read the sly, veiled comment at the tail-end of this dense sermon. So the Pope’s confessor thinks that the Catholic Church is being persecuted as the Jewish people was? [i]Why?[/i] Because people are demanding from their bishops transparency and accountability for past decisions that endangered Catholic children? Is that really the moral equivalent of the Shoah?
While I agree that this situation is far more complex than the simplistic version that many are using to sensationalize (if it possible to sensationalize something already so sensational) this scandal, yet I must say that this Pope and his advisors sometime seem to be tone deaf to how their comments strike others. Just as most of us instinctively recoil when somebody begins comparing their sufferings to Christ, so the Vatican must understand how it sounds to compare the situation that they’re in with the brutal murder of millions of innocent people. Especially because they had more than ample time to figure out exactly how all this was going to play out in the first place. Even if their first instinct was to protect the institution (and how wrong that was) they should still have been able to realize that they were fashioning, piece by piece, with their own hands and words, all the ammunition that would ultimately be used against them.
I’ve slept on this, and there’s no way to respond to the above comment without violating Dr. Harmon’s request for peace and quiet during the Triduum. Perhaps, jhp, you need to go back and reread the sermon in light of the quotation.
In fact it was a quote from a Jewish friend and dialogue partner, of Cantalamessa’s and of other Catholics, stating in a letter that the current attacks remind him of some of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism – not that they are equivalent to it. He was apparently identifying grounds for empathy with Catholics in the Vatican at this time, though in news articles the implication of equating their experience to that of the Jews has been slyly introduced following the friend’s rather different actual words.
It is a fact that within Judaism the whole people, never an individual such as Jesus Christ, is identified with Victim in the Scriptures.
It was pleasing to recognize even before his name was given that this sermon’s inspiration came from Rene Girard, whose thoughts I have found very helpful. There was an interview with Girard by Peter Robinson of NRO, posted on that site perhaps late last year or so, and to listen to Girard explain his thinking on sacrifice, violence and man’s nature is wonderful (perhaps because I can understand it!). Christ’s was and is a new kind of sacrifice, which changed everything between God and man.
At the risk of disturbing the peace of the Triduum (#2), I would venture to respond. By quoting from his friend’s letter, Fr.Cantalamessa approved of its sentiments and they then became his own. I’m hardly the only reader who finds the identification of beleaguered Catholic bishops with persecuted Jewry a very dubious one, to say the least.
The quoted letter is unattributed and (frankly) sounds apocryphal. It doesn’t seem to you a gross exaggeration to say, as he did: “I am following with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the Church, the Pope and all the faithful [b]by the whole world.[/b]” Really? …[b]”by the whole world”[/b]? To decry the abuse crisis as now “passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt” is really hypocrisy. When the whole bench of Ireland’s RC bishops was summoned to Rome in December for a public scolding (the precipitating event that caused the current round of investigation and recrimination) wasn’t that all about Pope Benedict assigning “collective guilt” but assuming no “personal responsibility”?
[Comment deleted by Elf]
More or less just what I thought, #6. Guess it’ll have to wait until after Easter Sunday though.
Very unfortunate, very unfortunate indeed. It’s hard to imagine how such a disastrous public relations blunder could have found its way into Fr Raniero’s homily. After all, he’s no novice. He’s been preaching in the big leagues for many years and presumably knows what subjects to avoid. I find it unfathomable how Fr Raniero could ever have reasonably entertained the comparison between the present journalistic “persecution” of the Catholic Church with the horrific persecution of the Jewish people. Perhaps the blunder witnesses to a bunker mentality of the brethren at the Vatican. Everyone is feeling under attack and just ain’t thinking straight. And to introduce this topic in a Good Friday homily. Well, it’s just unfathomable, inexcusable, embarrassing, stupid. I imagine Fr Raniero has already sent a private apology to the Holy Father. Instead of helping matters, he’s just made everything worse. Hopefully the story won’t have legs.
I don’t know what sermon you all are reading. The sermon I’m reading, linked to by Dr. Harmon, is about scapegoating and victimhood. The quotation from the friend (and no, it doesn’t smack of the apocryphal–are you implying that Fr. C. made this up, JHP?) makes the connection cogently: Benedict, despite his best efforts to clean house, is now being made the scapegoat for the Church’s failure to keep children safe.
Now, I’m sure someone can make the argument that it’s not scapegoating, it’s holding the person at the top accountable. And someone can also make the case that it doesn’t help the preacher’s argument and was bound to be misinterpreted. But it’s *clearly not* trying to draw some sort of moral equivalence between the Holocaust and the current crisis, except in this area of victimhood and scapegoating. It was certainly insensitive, but I think it’s point is pretty clear.
Yes, exactly, Anglicanum. In fact on seeing Fr. Kimel’s comment here I was hoping he might also have something to say about the sermon’s actual topic.
Does anyone else find it troubling that the word used by the letter-writer, ‘remind’, has journalistically spiraled into ‘compared’, ‘equivalent to’, ‘equated with’, ‘likened’, in the space of two days? It’s like a distorting echo chamber.