Big Changes for Jesuit Spirituality

Newsflash! Pope announces changes to the Spiritual Exercises

13 March 2024

Pope Francis will hold a joint press conference with Arturo Marcelino Sosa Abascal SJ, the Father General of the Society of Jesus to announce the first major revision of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius in 500 years. This follows the discovery of a document found in Saint Ignatius’s desk with instructions not to open until the tenth year of the reign of the first Jesuit Pope. 

The Jesuit Curia has released a translation of the text of Saint Ignatius's letter.

Rome, January 4, 1556

As I near the end of my life, I pray (and worry) constantly about the future of our Company. Although it seems to be thriving, supplying extremely well trained priests to stem the tide of the reform movement and missionaries around the globe, something haunts me. The vision that I had by the River Cardoner is fading. I have been particularly troubled by the prospect of losing that vision after I die.

The administration of the Society will not suffer, there are plenty of talented men, but I fear our collective understanding of God’s will is more than slightly cloudy. .I am worried for the visionaries. Our men are certainly a cut above regular priests. We have a lot of second sons of high ranking families, bright kids, eager, many are extremely devout, but it is almost that they do everything too perfectly. The gay ones have to hide out because there are so many trying to prove themselves. Damn macho post medieval tribal culture is deadly.

Then I had an experience with a young applicant to the Society, a mestizo who came back with some missionaries from the Americas. He can neither read nor write, and his Latin is rudimentary so I had to have him work in the kitchen while he catches up, but he claimed to have had a vision of the Blessed Mother that directed him. He started to talk to me about it, and I was very moved. I have weighed the spirits carefully and it is clear to me that Mariano had an authentic vision.

Mariano says that the Virgin told him that we Jesuits place too much emphasis on earning God’s Love. I blame myself for the emphasis on love through actions and not in our hearts. (Love is expressed through actions, but it has to do with intent). He says that the Virgin told him that priests who are privileged and jealous of their position become blind to the immediacy of God’s love and can’t see that this love comes without any conditions. He’s absolutely right, but centuries of fighting have conditioned us to enforce conditions rather than seeing beyond them.

I would turn our enterprise over to Mariano if I could. I know that this is God’s will, but I can’t execute it. The Inquisition would go ballistic. The Pope’s funding scheme for Saint Peter’s would collapse. The Society would split apart with the infighting. Sometimes I am tempted to just let the cards fall where they may, those snobby Jesuits who spend years studying the minute distinctions in the writings of Avicenna and Aquinas need to do more quiet meditation, but I will have to leave that aside. I have decided to send Mariano into hiding,

This is where I am being led right now. I have to get this young man to safety and protect his vision. The time will be ripe at some point, but not at this moment. Until then we must protect this inspiration. The fires of the Inquisition need to be extinguished, and warring factions need to at least reach a detente. The church does need reform and a strong hand is necessary right now so fight fire with fire, but make sure that the proposition of “ends justify means” is discussed in the ratio. Keep an open mind. Things change.

I have authorized the foundation of a clandestine cell of Jesuits near Buenos Aires in the New World. Mariano will lead this small community. Their practice will be kept alive by recruits from the indigenous community that they will serve for as long as it takes. I want to keep the flame alive while things sort themselves out. Mariano has told me that the Virgin told him that Jesuits will begin to practice the quiet meditation that Xavier wrote about from Japan, and she approves. I find that perhaps the hardest thing to believe of all the wonders he shared with me, but I suppose it is possible.

Mariano has my permission to restructure the Spiritual Exercises. I will note them here so that anyone who reads this will know that I approve of the changes. He has turned them on their head. The first week will be the Contemplatio ad Amorem. The main meditation instruction will be the fourth method, to follow the breath as it rides on the sound of a word in prayer. Mariano says that human beings can find God in all things instinctively. He is right. In my version of the Exercises I thought I had to lead the retreatant by the nose. We don’t need to go through hell to experience the Presence in rocks and stones, mothers and babies, even in the clanging of pots and pans.

This experience will be the basis of the meditations on the events and sayings in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ during the second week which will stand as they are with the exclusion of the stories about Mary. The third week also remains as it is, but without my interpretation. We can approach the meditation on His sacrifice and death and allow them to speak for themselves, and create their own inner narrative. But again the story of Mary going to the tomb will be left for the entirely new fourth week.. 

The new fourth week is a series of meditations which Mariano received in his vision of the Blessed Virgin. She was the person who really allowed God to become human. I hope we don't have to wait 500 years to experience how Mary the Virgin can help guide us to continue the Incarnation, but 500 years is just a drop in the bucket of eternity. We can all begin to experience immediacy right now in the moment. We don’t have to wait. Waiting for the present moment is an oxymoron. However the changes in my Exercises will have to wait.

Mariano tells me that in the clandestine Buenos Aires cell, washing dishes will be part of everyone's daily practice. It should smooth out the rough edges between Avicenna and Aquinas. There may be random occurrences in the universe, but few mistakes.

Father Ignatius

Writing that Can Change the World

In a recent conversation with some former Jesuit friends, I mentioned that I’d read a thinly veiled complaint that there were no theologians actively contributing to the ongoing conversation about pressing issues of the day. Hiding behind a litany of some of the most influential religious thinkers of the last century, the author was crying out, almost plaintively, for a strong, persuasive voice that could shed some light, provide some guidance about a possible course of action. He or she obviously felt that a religious perspective makes a difference and it is missing.  

I asked my friends about the authors they were reading. I have to admit that I was less than impressed by some of the suggestions, but obviously I was just putting on my snarky and judgmental persona so I decided to take a step back and see if I could discover some of the characteristics that I thought made some writing and writers really stand out. This led me to examine what kind of writing, and I suppose by extension, what kind of thinking generated the kind of following that might help people in one way or another. 

What are the characteristics of truly great spiritual writing?

The most important characteristic is that people read it and that it generates some interest. This might be expressed in fostering more writing, spearheading some cultural ferment, or provoking a line of inquiry. And from a personal point of view, each one of us acts as our own unique editor. I’m no longer a kid with the possibility of many years for reflection and study. I might reread Shakespeare or explore certain tragedies that I neglected in my misspent youth, but I probably won’t. I’m a realist. I know that I don’t want to spend a lot of time on pulp fiction or pulp theology. I’m not going to exercise my peculiar tastes, or at least try not to, and condemn some popular writing that other people like but I wouldn’t touch with an unwiped hand, but I will try to distinguish it. For me the limiting characteristic is that it aims to hit certain notes that tickle my fancy but doesn’t really invite me to entertain a new line of thinking, or follow an uncomfortable thought to an unexpected conclusion or insight.

We’re talking theology, so obviously the sacred texts have generated quite a bit of interest, at least for the religions that have attracted followers. If they represented a particular type of literature, my task would be easy. But they do not really match the criteria that I’m looking for. Whether the Testament of Jesus, the Hebrew Bible, the vast array of Buddhist literature, or works that are considered sacred in India and China, they are for the most part a conglomeration of works by various writers or schools within a particular tradition. There are notable exceptions, The Qu’ran is the work of one man, the Prophet Mohammed, over a period of time. The evolution of his thought might reveal itself with study just as the various currents within the Biblical literature can also reveal themselves with study. This kind of study, however, requires more background, cultural and linguistic scholarship. If we were to consider the letters of Paul, or the prophetic writings of one figure from the Jewish tradition, perhaps I can use Amos as an example, or one particular Buddhist thinker, Eihei Dogen comes to mind, at least I feel closer to the kind of writing that has had an outsized influence and we can leave what we refer to as sacred writings in a category by themselves. (Just a note: at least as far as sparking interest or gaining some insight, there’s no chicken and no egg--you don’t need to know the detailed history of the covenant with Moses to get Amos, although the prophet might open a window into a deeper understanding of the Jews’ relationship with their god. You don’t have to know the sutras to be intrigued by a turning word from Dogen, although your curiosity might illuminate something about the sutra literature along the way).

Perhaps if I can identify several books, or types of literature or particular authors that I feel changed the world, and talk a little about what I think makes them special, I might begin to make my case. In no particular order and with huge obvious gaps, here are three works and two authors who exemplify what I’m aiming at: The Summa Theologica, Ovid, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, Diderot, and Howl.

My personal view of Aquinas is based on the rather vague and scurrilous rumors that he was as dull as dishwater. He had been a boy monk and thus insulated, my guess, from the tumultuous world at the end of what we call the High Medieval Period. I suppose that some of my resistance is also based on my assumption that he more than anyone was responsible for the rigid worldview in which clerical culture had wrapped itself for self-preservation. But these are just my prejudices, based on a loose reading of history. I just doubt that I would have asked Thomas to share a glass in the aula and sing the Carmina Burana. 

Another confession: although I have listed the Summa as one of the books that changed the world, I’ve only read the usual bits and pieces that were assigned in the ratio and got enough of the Unmoved Mover to pass the examiner. (Not entirely convinced actually, but that’s another story). So why do I include him? He invented Natural Theology. He had enough curiosity and intellectual integrity to actually explore the work of Aristotle and Averroes in a rigorous way that would begin the separation of reason from myth and magic, a process which after a few hundred more years would birth the Enlightenment. I have drifted far from his synthesis that we learned in philosophy, but I recognize that every time I begin a study of any modern philosopher, from Richard Precht to Michel de Certeau, I owe a debt to Aquinas.

Aquinas is entirely different from the second name on my list, Ovid. I actually do read Ovid, though with a dictionary and a grammar in hand to get through the tricky parts. Why do I select Ovid above Homer or Virgil? Because it was through him that some memory of the myths of the classical world survived when the darkness of war and cultural destruction descended on Europe. His verse was so simple and eloquent that they were preserved in monastic libraries. The monks could and did read him. We can still taste an unchaste godly world that we might find licentious and promiscuous, wild and irrational. Beauty, pleasure, sex, trouble, mystery. Totally worth it.

The next book that I’ve included on my list is The Spiritual Exercises of Father Ignatius. Thin, filled with a kind of jargon and extremely formal prayer formulas that makes it easy to dismiss, still it makes the short list. It is of course a very different kind of writing. There are examples in other religious traditions of step by step practice manuals, but nothing I think has had as far ranging effect on the inner life of individuals as Ignatius’s directions. I’m even withholding universal approval. The good bits have to be weighed against the bad, but through its use of imagination, concentration, and various mental disciplines, thousands and thousands of people have turned their attention inward. Whatever the result, this is important. I don’t think that you can find another book with a relatively short number of pages that’s had a wider effect.

Next we come to Denis Diderot. I learned about Diderot when I was studying 16th century French literature in Caen. He was one of the founders, editors and collaborators of the important "Encyclopédie." The Encyclopédie's aim was, according to Diderot, "to change the way people think.” Apparently it was also an ordeal to edit and write, but it was one of the main publications that promoted the Enlightenment, as well as the political upheaval that was to follow. Diderot appeals to me personally. He was Jesuit educated, had an early affinity for religious life which faded when he got some real experience in life. He was also a Bohemian. But most importantly he is an example of the kind of intellectual inquiry, mainly in France, but with ripples throughout Europe that changed society. I chose him for my list of important writers rather than someone famous like Voltaire or another rabble rouser because his aim was to simply present the argument of various luminaries on a level field as a way of fostering the debate that was going on in the salons of Paris. Reading between the lines, he was not motivated by personal gain at all--he always struggled--but he loved ideas and debate.

On a cold Friday night in 1955 at the Gallery Six Reading in San Francisco, Allen Ginsberg read his long poem “Howl” and the world really did change. There would be a far reaching legal decision about obscenity; City Lights Bookstore and the Beat Movement would enjoy their moment, actually several moments, in the sun; the collective discontent with the materialistic world of post war America found a focal point, and a sexual revolution, fueled by a new sense of freedom and to some extent drugs, would emerge along with its own art and music. I was only 11 years old, living a sheltered middle class life in a New England suburb. Of course I had no idea that 35 years later I would begin my own Zen training with one of the poets who also read that night, Philip Whalen. The effects were deeply personal. When I reread Howl, my current feeling is that it rambles and butchers language in ways that my Jesuit trained mind finds offensive, but I cannot deny that it is the kind of powerful writing that tapped into a very deep emotional reservoir and left anyone willing to listen shaken, questioning, and seeking new answers.

So after all that, what kind of writing am I looking for that would even begin to address the kind of situation that we find ourselves in? First off, none of these writers or their books are perfect; they do not contain the last word. I don’t think that they pretend to, not even Aquinas, which is the reason that I wanted to keep them separate from the category of literature we call Scripture. But as in Aquinas, the line of inquiry is open and curious while remaining rigorous. With Ovid there is also a deep respect for memories of the sacred stories that have guided our search, even with a touch of beauty. Perhaps their beauty is one of the most important characteristics. With Ignatius there is an invitation and a road map for an interior exploration using our own imagination and contemplation. Then onto an open field of inquiry we can join Diderot and his cohorts in a debate (How I would love to have visited the salon of the chatty but impeccable Mme de Sévigné and tried to follow the conversation). I think that even Allen Ginsberg would have enjoyed it, and I do know from experience that he could totally mind his manners while mysteriously funneling a high emotional jolt.

From Aquinas to Ginsberg, a slightly different take on the Western Canon.

Head versus Heart, Faith and Reason, Reason and the Emotions

The Discernment of Spirits in the Spiritual Exercises

After I published my discussion of Ignatius’s Discernment of the Spirits and William of Ockham's Razor, Occam’s Razor of Emotional Discernment, I received several careful and astute objections from the Companions, a group of former Jesuits. Ed Mowrey said: “a subject worth discussion—head vs heart in discernment I’d call it.  His reminder to ‘bring all of ourselves into the process of discernment’ is of course easy to hear.  Ironically Ken’s own approach in this little essay is all head-based.  I don’t fault him for that because it’s the inevitable outcome of growing up and being educated in a culture that clearly values head over heart. . .  .” 

I’d like to rise in my own defense, and attempt to spell out my reasoning. This is indeed a subject worth discussion. I contend that “Head versus Heart” is at best an oversimplification and, in the context of Ignatian spirituality, it may also be a strawman. 

 

I remember back to my college days, sitting through rambling one-note sermons of the Newman chaplain at Dartmouth, Father Bill Nolan. He came from the rigid, classical Thomistic theology taught in all seminaries pre-Vatican 2 (he’d been a Redemptorist before returning to the regular priesthood). Looking back it seems a rather defensive position at one the premiere liberal arts colleges in America, and in the end, didn’t hit the mark. He articulated in a rather rudimentary way what was a pretty widely held position that there was no essential conflict between faith and reason; that a good Catholic could hold the “supernatural” doctrine of the Church, and still be a thoroughly modern, scientific, clear thinking, rational human being. That in fact some doctrinal statements were amenable to the process of reason. After all, we had Saint Thomas Aquinas as our guide.

I graduated from college in 1966 and entered the Society. In Philosophy Edward MacKinnon, S.J., and a few others were trying to continue the appropriation of modern philosophy to the doctrinal bandwagon of Catholic theology. Foggy Mac, a slur more than a humorous Jesuit style nickname that reflected in my view some deep anti-intellectual bias in the rank and file, Ed left the Jesuits and, we imagined, the Church, as if a purely intellectual pursuit inevitably led one astray. Actually I think that he just decided to honor his sexual instinct in the normal way and give his emotional, sexual life a larger playing field. A simple explanation, but religious discourse is sometimes susceptible to far fetched and exaggerated stories. 

However, before moving onto considering the post-Vatican 2 fallout, especially in the new playing field of sexual freedom, let me make one observation: the fields, or domains, of faith and reason were held as essentially separate. Christianity is a revealed religion of the book. It has its roots in (quasi) historical personages and events which are themselves not easily amenable to reason. They behave more like myths. Thus the narrative of faith and its doctrines have to be held in an essentially different way than, say,  the Laws of Thermodynamics or Euclidean Geometry. As long as the wall between the domains stands, we confidently claim that we maintain our integrity. This is not to deny that grace, charm, even fun and play are available in the faith domain. That can be seductive which is also problematic.

Post Vatican 2, emotion, sexuality, our immediate feelings and their expression entered the world of religious practice. They just did. And as with the release of any repression, it lead to both a whole new world as well as unleashing a host of issues heretofore unattended. I may be exaggerating, but certainly in my own case, I would describe it as a kind of unravelling. 

Enter, or rather re-enter Father Ignatius and his revolutionary spiritual insight at Manresa. In 1522, he began an interior search to discern the will of God for himself as an individual, and eventually for his burgeoning religious order. Never veering from the given commandments and injunctions of the established Church (and perhaps fearing the harsh sentence imposed by the Inquisition), he sought to discover his personal destiny. What was the Spirit calling him to do? Where, or in the service of what mission, should he devote all his energy, his life, his entire will? When we undertook this discernment ourselves, he counseled us to weigh actual feelings, consolation and desolation, in a focused, orderly way which, over time, led to an “election” or an informed spiritual choice.

Voila! Here in this morass of unleashed emotional religious enthusiasm, sexual feelings, exploration of our underlying subconscious motivations, we have the example of a revered saint who used these very human parts of our psyche to discern the will of God. We got to play in a new ball park, and include an unexplored domain in our spiritual lives. 

There have been many positive things that have emerged from this exploration. Not only did we learn to use “I” statements, but therapists began to experiment with meditation as a tool for resolving or at least relieving the effects of trauma, while other psychologists mapped the distinct language of the emotions. They invented the new field of Emotional Intelligence. We have even begun to pinpoint the locus of the origin of emotions in the brain, and distinguish between what are broadly described as base emotions--fear, anger, and derivative feelings such as shame and guilt. The same can be said for distinguishing between the human sexual instinct and love.

The above description of the “Heart Domain” is not intended to be in any way definitive, but rather to indicate that the terrain is rich, varied, and bumpy, with lots of threads, sometimes conflicting, that require our attention. It is also a relatively new discipline, a work in progress. But we have to acknowledge that it is a far step from what Ignatius described in the early 16th century as the movement, conflict, even outright clash between the spirits of good and evil. I would contend that even though his mental model was viscerally real, his descriptive language was charged with an almost gnostic flavor which is very different from what we understand today as the science of mental health. 

It is not a bridge too far to take what we understand of our emotional life and interchange it with Ignatius' experience of conflicting spiritual forces. This exchange or interpolation, however, is not simply a case of X = Y where Y has all the attributes, causes and conditions of X! 

How are we to use this new rich “heart” vein to inform our spiritual lives and the real life decisions that we face in our day to day lives? I have spent a great deal of time over the past 35 or 40 years actually trying to understand the inner-working of our emotional lives, our basic drives, our instincts--the many facets of what we might generally for convenience call our “spiritual” selves. In the beginning of my search I immersed myself in Enneagram studies with Claudio Naranjo, then I explored every human potential school that I could find. I described my experience in the post Vatican 2 opening to the world of emotion, feeling, and sexuality as an unraveling. And to some degree, all those pieces remain in heaps on the floor where they fell. 

At the beginning of this short paper, I began to defend myself against the observation, perhaps opinion, that my use of Ockham’s Razor in analyzing the flow of emotions, felt impulses, attraction and antipathy, and trying to use this “information” was “head-driven.” Reading emotions is not the objective exercise where creating a list of pro’s and con’s helps yield a larger profit on the bottom line. On the other hand, listening to the language of our hearts is not learning to decode the strange language of Mars or Venus. It does not require that we suspend our intellectual judgement. It simply requires that we pay attention in a different, inclusive way. We have to bring all of ourselves to the endeavor of arriving at a good decision, especially one driven by a desire to do the will of God. 

I talked about the pre-Vatican 2 attempts to reconcile Faith and Reason. Following Aquinas, Bill Nolan et al tried to use the structures of Aristotelian analysis to negotiate the world of faith, but, I contend we had to maintain a wall between the world of Faith and that of our ordinary lives, which includes everything from making coffee to deciphering the algorithms of a Google search. Aristotle might help us distinguish between the human and divine natures of Jesus as long as the virginity of his mother Mary remained intact as a matter of faith. 

It may be a useful practice to suspend our habitual intellectual judgement when we first experience an onrush of newly discovered or released thread of emotions. In fact, it’s recommended in most psychological practice, a kind of agere contra to our normal head-driven way of experiencing the world. But this does not mean that the heart, our emotions deliver a kind of coded message that is separate from our heads, or normal intellectual processing. There is no need to erect a wall between our reason and emotions, our heart and our head. In fact, I would argue that the exact opposite is called for--to tear down any walls that exist. This is why Ignatius recommended the careful weighing of consolation and desolation over time. They have a natural way of sifting themselves out, and providing useful input for our decision making. 

Ockham’s Razor for our emotional life.

Occam’s Razor of Emotional Discernment

Novacula Occami

Asking another question of Occam’s Razor

In the process of doing his own spiritual work, my friend Daniel Shurman carefully teased out another layer in my understanding of Saint Ignatius’s Discernment of the Spirits by insisting on a dimension that is perhaps overlooked--seeking the Truth. 

When we studied scholastic philosophy, our Jesuit masters teased our intellects with an absurd question posed by Thomas Aquinas, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” It’s a question ad absurdum because it was designed to demonstrate that the time and space between heaven and earth cannot be measured no matter how hard you try.

Daniel tossed out the rigid philosophical reduction, and in its place created a generous space for the spiritual dimension of joyfully watching The Dance of Angels. 

Here’s how he did it. Daniel loves an elegant solution, and this pointed me back to William of Ockham’s Law of Parsimony.1 Occam’s Latin is of course succinct and worthy of a renowned philosopher: Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate, which translates as "Plurality ought never be posited without necessity.” Precise but also misleading—the word “parsimony” throws truth into a dustbin for the stingy. I prefer a more generous interpretation. Let’s try this: “The simplest, most beautiful solution is probably true.” A logical problem arises because non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate cannot be a tight fisted rule. Sometimes there is more than one reason or argument. Still a more elegant line of argument points to the truth. It also gives angels the freedom to dance.

Ockham actually gives us a tool rather than an ironclad rule; its metal is called “Occam’s Razor.” It shapes a proposition: whittle away the random thoughts; pare down your idea, the plan, the problem by shaving off unnecessary words, feelings, resentments, withholds, and you get closer to the truth of the matter. Wittgenstein said: "If a sign is not necessary then it is meaningless. That is the meaning of Occam's Razor" (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: 3.328).

While stuffy old Aquinas was puzzling over his absurd question about the quantity of angels,  Daniel invited Steve Jobs, along with Ockham, to observe the angels dance. Daniel and Steve zoomed out to watch a multitude of angels dance on the razor’s edge, and make connections. Then Daniel with his relentless and unflinching honesty zoomed in to observe the single angel pointing to a solution or, at least, marvel at the graceful lead dancer in the choreography. (And I’ve watched him dance with one very beautiful angel. He is masterful).

I was alerted to the emotional ambiguity of the discernment process by the renowned Jesuit Cardinal, Avery Dulles. In one of our last meetings, he held up the small volume of the Spiritual Exercises, and said, this is a book to be used, not just read. Then he said that there was a tendency to assign the simplest of feelings to the weighing of what Ignatius called “consolation and desolation” which tended to reduce it to a kind of “feel good” spirituality. He confessed that he was more inclined to be directed by reason than feelings, but still he thought that Ignatius’s recommendation of inclining towards the solution of what feels best pointed to perhaps something far deeper than one that just feels good in the moment.

Like Jobs who would “zoom out to connect the dots, then zoom in and simplify,”2 and Ockham who used a process of simplification as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models, Daniel examined the panorama of his own feelings to see a clear line that led to an elegant solution. 

Daniel reminded me in the most beautiful way that if we bring all of ourselves into the process of discernment, with patience, compassion and rigor, we true up our course of action.

 "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."3

____________________

1The Law of Parsimony is attributed to William of Ockham. And perhaps here he’s Plato to the genius of many schoolmen which is why I dragged Aquinas into the battle.

2“Steve would zoom out to connect the dots, then zoom in and simplify.” [John Sculley’s quote].

3 From “Ode on a Grecian Urn” By JOHN KEATS.

I’ve used William of Occam’s principle to discuss the use of condoms to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa in my blog Buddha S.J.

Rebel Mentor, A Conversation with Robert Brophy, Ph.D.

Robert Brophy died on August 16th after a long bout with Altzheimer’s. He was 93 years old. Bob, a former Jesuit, was a professor at Cal State University, Long Beach for many years; he taught university youngsters until a ripe old age; he was also our mentor in activism, a theologian, our companero, and a great hugger.

As a tribute to "Broph," I am posting a long interview he did with Morgan Zo Callahan and me for Intimate Meanderings, Over several sessions we explored many questions and interests of this amazing man.

 

Thank you, Bob, for your many years of dedication to the things that make all our lives worth living. A life well lived!

 

Rebel Mentor 

A Conversation with Robert Brophy, Ph.D.

 

El Salvador 

 

Morgan Zo Callahan (MZC): Recently I was reading the notes you took when you were an observer of elections in El Salvador several years ago in 1992. What was that experience like for you? Did some of our recent discussion of protesting this year again at The School of Americas remind you of that official excursion to El Salvador?

 

Robert Brophy (RB): Yes, it recalled to me my first trip to El Salvador in 1992, that country’s initial elections after the civil war. We were international observers in a urine-stinking grade school way out in Huachapan Province, where the temperature and humidity were enough to melt anyone into the floor. Picture me dressed in suit jacket and pants, dress shirt and tie with a camera hanging at my chest. The voters were mostly indigenous, small, and towered-over by the rich ranchers, one of whom got up on a table, pointing to his ballot, yelled out for all to attend: "This is how you are to vote!" Many had come at great trouble and risk. Buses, paid for by some organization, were mysteriously kept from running. The local death-squad, familiar to them all, had just come in as a group to vote and to intimidate, to remind of the thousands of “dissidents’ that had to be exterminated in El Salvador’s bloody past.

 

One table that I overlooked had amazingly started to count up and register their vote-tally at noon, due at 5:00 p.m.; they had already decided who had won! When I reported this to the UN observer, he wouldn't believe it but went and found it was so. He said sadly, "I can do nothing about it; we are here to observe only." It may have been he who pointed out that the voting lists posted by the door contained many of the dead, who had somehow already voted. As the afternoon waned, military aircraft thundered low over the village, not friendly or reassuring—reminding all of the risk they were taking.

 

That night, while we oversaw the official counting of ballots, an electric switch was tripped, and, when light was restored, a box of votes was missing, one from a rebellious district of the region, it was presumed. The highlight of the night was my discussion with a young member of the ARENA party. He had been educated at Rutgers and spoke English well. When quizzed by my companion, an African-American, and me about the status of El Salvador unions, he went into a tirade. His father had a big business and would never allow such a profit-stifling entity. But the "gem" of the evening was his response to my question of why the ARENA party's Roberto D’Aubuisson had planned and carried off the assassination of Oscar Romero over ten years before: "We never kill anyone who doesn't deserve it." It summed up the whole justification for the SOA—keep the rich in power at all costs; judge morality by its usefulness for keeping the status quo. He was probably a weekly communicant.

 

The Spiritual Exercises 

 

MZC: Broph, it's just so great to be in touch with you and hear what you are doing these years. We've come together at meetings and at SOA protests; we had intimate interchanges on the Internet and conversations at some meetings at Loyola Marymount University.

 

RB: I especially recall that we prayed and reflected together during a six-month “19th Annotation” retreat, October 1998-March 1999, that about eight of us made, exchanging reflections (“lumina”) by Internet email, progressing through each of the original, intensive four week Ignatian Exercises, keeping pace with each other. Don Merrifield was one of the Jesuits who joined us, but we were the “leaders”; that is, we acted as retreat directors for each other. It was a Companions retreat, initiated by Bob Holstein. We used the text Choosing Christ in the World: Directing the Spiritual Exercises According to Annotations Eighteen and Nineteen: A Handbook by Joseph A. Tetlow, S.J.

 

Ken Ireland (KI): You wrote on 9/18/07 that you were off to a peace and justice meeting where you were to review a book on Ignatian Exercises by Dean Brackley, S.J. who teaches at UCA, San Salvador, El Salvador. (Dean and I were at Woodstock together and lived in the same small community with Avery Dulles and Drew Christensen who is now the editor of America.) One of the main explorations of "Meanderings" is how we ex-Jesuits who have done the full Exercises continue to use the Exercises in our lives; most of us would agree that the SE, coupled with the strict training at the novitiate, had a major impact in our lives. Would you tell us what you've learned from Dean's book? And how do the Ignatian Exercises relate to peace and justice, how do the two enrich each other? There are several questions in there. Handle them however you like.

 

RB: It was more than just a review of the book, The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times: New Perspectives on the Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola (Crossroad 2004). “Michah 6.8,” the name of my justice and peace group, made the reading of Brackley, two chapters every two weeks for almost six months, into a new kind of Ignatian retreat. What amaze me are the insights into Ignatius that have arisen in the renewed Society. The retreats that I recall over the years 1946 to 1968 were individual-centered, the sins confronted were personal sins entirely, the evil admitted by the retreatant was undifferentiated, unspecified, not outward-related. In Brackley’s presentation, this concern with sin reflects our complicity in systemic evil. The Foundation’s “praise, reverence, and serve” is identified with Jesus’ option for the poor. “Indifference” means attaining freedom to choose and undertake justice. There is emphasis on personal sin, but conversion is seen in its social dimensions. Christ’s “Call” is to engage the greatest evil of our time, a widespread if not universal poverty that amounts to a criminal “deprivation,” enabled and driven by structural sin. That “Call” is embodied in the two “Great Commandments,” Love God with your whole heart and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10); our neighbor is quintessentially the one who suffers diminishment and injustice, is a pawn in Greed’s Chess Game, the world’s economic, social and political systems. Conversion is self-transcendence, turning to love as God loves, as imaged in Jesus. This Jesus was concerned about justice. The “Kingdom,” called here “The Reign of God,” is focused on the social implications of the individual’s vocation and quintessentially in the very mission of the Church, a new way to live together in Christ. Choice of vocation asks how do I best collaborate in the Beatitudes. The “Two Standards meditation” opposes riches, honor, and pride with poverty; invited insult, and humility is found in solidarity with the poor, a choice of “downward mobility” for Jesus’ sake. The final “week” centers on learning to love like God and in God. The “Contemplation to Obtain Love” is the Pentecostal experience, as always with social implications. Everything is prayer, life permeated with God’s ever-fine-focused love. It made one hell of a retreat.

 

The above is in my shorthand and does not do Father Brackley justice; it was my experience. Brackley, by the way, teaches at the Jesuit University of Central America (UCA), San Salvador, from which Liberation Theology flourished and still flourishes despite the Vatican’s frowning.

 

It strikes me that Pope Benedict’s latest warning to the Jesuits’ 35th General Congregation against “aspects of Liberation Theology” (17 Jan 08) evokes the underlying difference in theology between old and the new. For the pope, God intends the poor to be poor and the rich to be rich in a paternalistic world. “Charity” (the old alms-giving) trumps justice. Liberation Theology sees that as the problem. Benedict’s world was also Ignatius’ world, but Ignatius, according to Brackley at least, was progressively able to see beyond it.

 

KI: Can you describe the role that your spiritual practice had in your decision to take an activist stance against the Vietnam War? My question is quite close to one that Morgan asks: Could you point to anything from your experience of the Spiritual Exercises that made an impact?

 

RB: Not really. The Ignatian Exercises were not for me then the break-through that they are in the Brackley-mirrored approach; maybe in some way they were a time bomb ticking. Dean invites one to meditate on sin as one’s own and at the same time as enabling the systemic evil in which we are complicit. He does not deny personal sin but puts it in a larger human context. I did not have that. The “Two Kingdoms” were a medieval military metaphor but actually are the confrontation between the power-hungry profit-at-any-cost machine of the contemporary world, personal and corporate, by Christ’s call to a convert mind and stance against poverty, powerlessness, and deprivation. I always had and still keep a small statue of Ignatius on my desk and my vow crucifix. I was not untouched by Ignatius’s insights; I have always seen him as an inspiring revolutionary, insisting “nothing counts but the Lord”; the crucified are in Christ the exploited, deprived, degraded poor. The cross says the only way will be the hard way.

 

MZC: Is there anything from Ignatian Exercises that you find most life giving to you, to your life? What do you think are the most important spiritual possibilities for those making/giving the Exercises in today's world? How do the Exercises relate to our deepest yearnings and desires? Do you find the “Examen” to be helpful? How do you interpret the "Contemplation for Obtaining Love"?

 

RB: The Foundation is central. The world we live in is not Ignatius’ pre-Galileo one, but the one opened by Einstein and Edwin Hubble, cosmos-contexed 13 billion years from the Big Bang, protons and muons, black matter and black energy, NASA’s Hubble telescope. But the creator is the same and “indifference” is a goal shared with many faiths. “Contemplation” is changed. If the Gospel is full of metaphor, then I ask meaning rather than topography (though I have been to Palestine and appreciated the metaphor as palpable). I think the Exercises’ appeal is about getting one’s head on straight and one’s heart attuned. They help sort-out, correct one’s compass, renew. And the Barclay/Liberation Theology reading, that Jesus came to free every human “to be all s/he can be” is a challenge to see new depths, to seek the justice dimension. Yes, I find the Examen helpful for reality-check and reminder that all things are prayer. Prayer unceasing.

 

Peace and Justice Causes Most Worthy 

 

MZC: Would you describe your work with "conscientious objectors," at Cal State University Long Beach? How do you feel when you are teaching or engaged in peace and justice projects? What do you identify today as "most worthy causes" in peace and justice?

 

RB: Lacking a military draft the student-body is distracted from war and justice issues, though a CAMPUS Progressive Club does focus on them. Yet many students, mostly, but not all, being minorities, cannot achieve a university education because of the costs and ROTC offers a fiscal solution; becoming an Army Reservist offers further financial support. These students usually do not believe that they are being programmed and legally committed to kill other human beings. I suppose that the now-elongated Iraq war should to some extent have changed that, but sometimes the insight comes late. The first student that came to me as the Iraq war began was an ROTC cadet, an Army Reservist and a senior; he confessed that to his consternation and horror he no longer saw a target at the end of his rifle sights, he saw a person.

 

I let it be known as widely as I can that I am available for counseling. I write guest editorials for the student paper suggesting the problems involved in volunteering for war, any war, and offer help. I keep files documenting the anti-war stance taken by various religions advising conscience versus war, and I have ready many Internet sites for reference. If the student wants to pursue a CO (conscientious objector) stand, I help her/him to work out a personal philosophy. With their permission, I begin a file for each, to attest to the fact that this person has expressed conscience problems at this or that date—as evidence for later military tribunals. I will attach in an appendix below an example of a personal philosophy of conscientious objection.

 

You ask: how do I experience my teaching as engaging peace and justice? I see my academic vocation as an extension of my priestly one; it is a ministry. Specifically literature, it has always seemed to me, pursues clarification of the human situation in all its aspects. The great writers of the novel, poetry, and drama are the philosophers and theologians of their times; they deal with what it is to have integrity. At both USF and Long Beach I have taught the course “Religious Dimensions of Contemporary Literature.” In surveying writers of middle to late 20th century one finds that they powerfully critique questions of war and peace, justice and evil. My current “Bible as Literature” course offers a rather direct application. I find, for instance, that the prophets are especially fixated on justice; a few were in their own way conscientious objectors. Happily the section on the prophets comes at the same time in November as the annual protest against the Pentagon’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. I confess to the class that I am myself compelled by the prophetic urge to speak and act against militarism, war, torture, and assassination which all are personified in this SOA as arm of the US foreign policy. And I describe my other protests, arrests, and my three days in the LA County jail.

 

You ask what I identify as the "most worthy cause(s)" for peace and justice today? This, it seems to me, is to be found in the gospel as read by Liberation Theology. As a critique of systemic evil, LT is astounding and compelling. It points out that a real war is at all times and everywhere in progress by the rich against the poor, wealth and power against justice. Profit becomes a ruthless agent of devastating deprivations. NAFTA and CAFTA, in outstanding instances, wipe out the agricultural world of small farmers by dumping subsidized grain on their markets and by expropriating land in huge tracts for mechanized agribusiness farming. Globalization at present is the corporate world, blind to the victims, squeezing life from developing countries.

 

Activism Begun at the University of San Francisco 

 

MZC: Broph, I want to revisit an earlier conversation we had a while ago and learn from your work as an anti-war activist, first as a Jesuit priest as well as a father and esteemed friend of many of us. Would you tell us how you became an activist Jesuit priest at the University of San Francisco?

 

RB: Returning to San Francisco after graduate school in 1965 and being assigned to USF was one of the highs of my life. San Francisco was my home. It was where my parents lived. I had attended and then taught at St. Ignatius High on Stanyan Street, just below the university 1953 to 1955. I had lived there all my non-Jesuit life. I knew so many in the city, had taught at least some of them. USF hospitality was warm, and I felt privileged from the first. Mine was a fifth-floor room in Xavier Hall overlooking the Golden Gate. I had access to the whole city by three trolley lines heading west to the beach, east to downtown. Two blocks away, Golden Gate Park stretched to the Beach. The Cursillo weekends with the students, organized by Fr. Gerry Phelan, almost immediately immersed me with students—more deeply than anything anywhere I had ever experienced. Together in these especially, we underwent sacramental immersion gathering, praying, and eating together. Those weekends were not political, but they opened the heart, they moved beyond the institutional, they seeded the community. Later the homily at daily Eucharist that I celebrated in Phelan Hall, dormitory and cafeteria, at 5:00 pm, overflowed into the dining room. Eating with the students was a further immersion. I got to know most of the student population, at least the many boarders.

 

I was brought into the total university early. I had a faculty office in the very middle of campus, upstairs from a student cafeteria/snack bar, within a few steps from classrooms, library, student dormitories, and gymnasium. The English department was small and congenial. Classrooms were always full and enthusiastic.

 

The student paper, the Foghorn, was from liberal to radical. I found friends on the staff and began to write for them, pieces on art exhibitions, campus culture, city life, moral and social issues. When no Jesuit would answer an appeal to join the “Committee for Religion and the Homosexual” at neighboring Glide Memorial Church, I volunteered. When no Jesuit could be found to be faculty advisor for the new Black Student Union, I accepted. When the lay faculty called a press conference to condemn the bombing of Cambodia, I stood with them. When “Urban Renewal” leveled the Black ghetto in the center of San Francisco, heartlessly leaving many of the residents homeless, in order to build a new “Japan Town,” tall residences for retirees, and a multi-million-dollar Catholic Cathedral, I spoke against it. I felt these were challenges to the Christian discernment and a priori the place of the Catholic/Jesuit clergy.

 

Your question was: Whence the USF prophetic activism? It had all begun in graduate school, early 1960s, on a weekday afternoon in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I was in doctoral studies. I was attacked by a furious local citizen for picketing in Roman collar the town’s “Whites Only” prestigious restaurant. The threatened violence was so traumatic (it was though that moment was framed into my mind forever) that I found myself questioning everything in the political spectrum. I had totally misjudged reality all of my life. I began to participate in marches (it turned out against the local bishop’s decree for clergy and religious). From there I moved to my first teaching assignment at USF, where I was visited by a Carolina student friend who was a bombardier in the Air Force. When I asked him his duties, he described leveling towns and villages in Vietnam. His justification was: “As long as they shoot at us it is my duty to bomb them.” A logic so skewed drove me to look beyond the current religious rant about saving the world from godless Communism to considerations of conscience regarding war. And it made me look at our USF ROTC officer-factory in a different light. Then my close student friend, Tom Sandborn, took me on a walk to explain to me the direction his newly converted Catholicism was taking him. He opened to me the world of committed non-violence. He was being refused graduation because he could not in conscience take the required ROTC courses. At that point I joined several in suing the Federal government to allow Catholics to use their religious convictions to claim conscientious objection just as Quakers, Brethren, Jehovah Witnesses. Once one begins in these directions, there is no turning back.

 

As for the morality of cooperation in war, there has been a gigantic leap in the Church’s theology of war conscience in the last forty years. When I was at USF in late 1960’s, the administration refused to allow draft counseling on campus; evidently no Jesuit was to offer it. That despite the fact that Catholic students were going to federal prison (one spending time on Terminal Island, Long Beach) or fleeing to Canada. Back home, pastors were telling conscience-stricken youth that there was no Catholic tradition of war-resistance. This information was false and suggested culpable ignorance. The Just-War theory was accepted, but the United States presumably would not engage in an unjust war. And defense of one’s country under any circumstances was a duty. No matter that for the first three centuries, Christianity embraced non-violence as Jesus’ way, as God’s will. It was only with 4th century Emperor Constantine, when Christianity was embraced and became the state religion, that Ambrose and Augustine had to work out a theory that would protect the empire by “necessary violence”; thence the Just-War tradition. Wars were blessed ever after. Yet, although some Catholic traditions did oppose wars, instance being the Catholic Worker, the main-line presumption was to support wars even when both sides involved Catholics. Yes, in 1963 came Pope John XXIII Peace on Earth followed by the Second Vatican Council’s urging nations to provide for those conscience-harried in time of war. In our time both Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and the Catholic bishops of the United States have judged the present Iraq war unjust. Ironically none of this has been promulgated, preached, or taught. Catholic conscientious objectors have been conspicuously few. Which is another story. Catholic chaplains are notoriously absent in discussions of the morality of wars they oversee. Are they thus chosen and self-chosen for their ministry without confronting key questions. How do they help form the consciences of their men and women? Do they urge them each day to pray for those whom they will kill or maim? How do they settle their vocation with Matthew’s picture of Jesus at the Last Judgment 25.31:“As often as you do it to the least of my brethren you do it to me”?

 

KI: You describe yourself in the USF days as though ending as a desperate rebel. Did you feel isolated? You do suggest there were like minds. Who were they, and what kinds of conversations did you have, if any? Whence came the strength to stand up against the community, the presumed authority of a united, conservative, stance from the old guard. Though younger, I was in the Society in 1966 and was very active in protesting the war, and took a lot of flack from those who were "older and wiser." But somehow I never felt moved to leave at that time. I did have support from some pretty liberal superiors in New England, and the NE Jesuit community in general was probably a bit more liberal than the Californians. At least we thought so. There was a pretty large solid coterie of young anti-war Jesuit activists, inspired by Dan Berrigan whom we knew. He was close, active and very visible to all of us. The superiors could not hide him away, though I suspect that many tried, urged on by Cardinal Spellman.

 

RB: I never once experienced a “liberal superior” in the Society. Never once. In those times, at least in California, we did not talk to superiors as fellow Jesuits to be questioned and challenged. I certainly did not do it. “Grace of Office” was a wall. In all this I make no judgment on the Society overall or elsewhere. I experienced the California Province as conservative and reactionary. And in the end I presumed that there was nowhere else to go.

 

In most things I felt alone. Gene Schallert was supportive but waging his own battles. Some nights I would lie on his bed and wait for him to show up so I could talk for a few minutes about my thoughts and current crises. Jim Straukamp was with me on many things, on the Eucharist, ahead of me. But I had no Jesuit confidants on peace and justice issues. Can you imagine a campus in which it was okay to refuse graduation to conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War? As I recall, no one in my time, no Jesuit in California openly objected to the Vietnam War. No one spoke of conscientious objection. I had to learn that from students, with one of whom I am weekly still in touch. Tom Sandborn burned his draft card and fled to Canada. Dan Berrigan was a complete isolate, a pariah when coming to California. I don’t know of any community that welcomed him. Certainly not USF.

 

The Last Turning Point 

 

KI: There is a story that you tell about the treatment of your student at USF, his making campus a poster of Camus’s vilification of the Church’s silence during the Nazi horrors, the student court’s guilty verdict, the Jesuits’ 

..satisfaction, was this the actual event that broke the camel's back, when you knew there was not place for you in the Society? Your language is not that decisive: "Anyway at this time, I decided..."

 

RB: On campus in spring of 1968, the cause célèbre was a nocturnal lettering of passages from an “Address to the Dominicans” by Albert Camus, who in 1948 had accused the Church, with all its fantastic capacity for authoritative teaching and prophetic voice, of being silent during the Nazi occupation of France. Camus had been part of the underground Resistance, made up mostly of agnostics, confronting each day’s heinous crimes against humanity in powerlessness but defiance, attempting, as he said, to keep at least one more child from extinction. The text was being used in my “Religious Themes in Contemporary Literature” class.

 

USF was into new construction and Phelan Hall was surrounded by an eight-foot plywood wall. One of my students in the dark of night wrote out sections from Camus’ indictment on that wall. The Jesuit community was outraged; these scurrilous words were attacking their “holy mother the Church.” The student was caught and punished by the student court, a condemnation supported by the Jesuits. So, of course, I argued and advocated for my student and for the doubts and rejections that were surging during this time against the Vietnam War. I challenged the idea of ROTC training at a Jesuit university, training officers to feed this (in the minds of many of us) immoral war. I felt and do today the desire to support students who want to refuse going into military service as “conscientious objectors.” I made this option known to my students.

 

During the last days of my tenure at USF, a Jesuit administrator met me one evening in the hall of the Jesuit residence and came out with this immortal line: “Bob, if we let them question their country [and Church?], they will question everything.” This Jesuit friend was denying what a university is supposed to be all about. I knew that he was sincere. And that he was abysmally wrong. That the university was behind him, as were the Jesuit community. Clearly I did not belong.

 

But the “turning point” wasn’t one thing but cumulative. I reached a place where things added up in that spring 1968. I was a leper for the Jesuit community, denounced, avoided, but never addressed. More substantially decisive, I’d say, was my subpoenaed appearance in court for the defense during the “Love Book” obscenity trial. A Presbyterian minister from the Haight-Ashbury district four blocks east of campus was so impressed by the students at our Sunday student liturgy that she invited me to visit a coffee house she and a Methodist minister had opened for the homeless. Complicating that invitation was an added request that I sit in on a panel discussing a book of poetry being locally prosecuted for obscenity. My contribution was that I thought the “Love Book” poem was highly erotic, offensive to some sensitivities, not something for a captive audience, but not pornographic; in fact, could be judged a “paean to human heterosexual love.” At that a “plainclothes” person from the audience arose and said to the panel: ”You are all under arrest; Father Brophy, would you care to withdraw your last statement.” I refused and he backed down, perhaps not wanting to arrest a Jesuit faculty member from USF. But another bridge was crossed and burned.

 

I will never know whether he was truly from the SF Police Department, but I wrote an editorial the next day for the student paper, detailing the event and describing USF as a circle of wagons shutting out the real world’s concerns, in this instance police harassment going on across the park at a Height bookstore. My editorial was reprinted by the American Civil Liberties Union bulletin without my knowledge or consent, and I was served a subpoena to appear in court for the defense of the clerks who had sold the book to the police. An informer, possibly the police chief who was the brother-in-law of my dean, alerted the administration. Called in by USF president Father Dullea, S.J., I explained what had happened and my decision in conscience to appear. He said my involvement and the prospect of court appearance did not sit well with USF benefactors. He then commanded me not to go within three blocks of the courthouse. I replied that his edict hit deep into my sense of integrity and conscience. He told me I had three days to think it over. I don’t know how he intended to fix the subpoena downtown. That is another matter. I appeared in court, was interrogated by the prosecution through morning and afternoon sessions; subsequently another Jesuit was sent to give testimony to contradict me. No Jesuit, including Fr. Dullea, further communicated with me. But the Rubicon was crossed.

 

In the community “wreck” room I was confronted and abused by Frank Marion, a sweet person, head of a philosophy department that at the time was wrestling with the fact that one of its members had declared himself an atheist. He saw me as an outsider, a fame-monger, publicity-hound, and most un-Jesuit of all. My friend Gene Schallert, a classmate of Frank, stood there and said nothing. It was that insane year of assassinations, when in his death some campus Jesuits openly dishonored and slandered Martin Luther King, when the renewed hope in a Kennedy was snuffed in a hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

 

Anyway, yes, at this time, I decided to leave the Jesuits, being an un-reformable, somewhat desperate rebel.

 

Is there a lesson in all this? Had I become a cog in the process of change? I’m afraid not. Ironically I would be no problem at the current 2008 USF that has as president a Liberation theologian, Stephen Privett, S.J., has a Peace Center headed by a world-renowned director, Stephen Zunes, publishes a peace periodical, sends students to Central and South America to witness and work for justice issues. But I see no connection, no role I filled. I wrote to the California provincial and to Pedro Arrupe, the Jesuit general, informing them of my disillusionment and imminent choice to leave. Gene Schallert told me afterward that Fr. Arrupe was saddened by my letter. He didn’t elaborate. I don’t see myself as a martyr toward bringing those changes. They happened ten or so years later because of an avalanche of other forces. I have admiration for the current Society of Jesus. It is at the cutting-edge for Gospel Justice issues. Where would I be if all this change had come sooner? That’s another’s lifetime

 

Church and Fascism, Conservatism 

 

KI: You use the term "all its fantastic capacity" (Camus reference) to describe the power of the Church that was not turned to defeat, or at least discredit, fascism. Of course, that was also the situation in Spain where the preponderance of the hierarchy in the Church actually supported Franco. Do you see something in the organization of the Roman Church that gives a huge weight to conservatism, even fascism, even when it is clearly not in tune with the Jesus Teaching? I suppose that is a position I have come to, especially watching the Vatican close down the great opening of Vatican II. It made me a liberationist in my theology. Any comments about your thinking in the late 60's?

 

RB: At the time, I found the Church abysmally intractable, untrue to itself. Though we did experience exceptions in John XXIII and the Vatican Council in the 60s, these were obstructed, especially by Pope John Paul II. Yes, the hierarchical church still appears to be a typical conservative, very human organization intent on damage control, wrapped in sometimes brute, unconditioned power, in many ways corrupt because the power is exercised absolutely. Its modernity is more typical in Pope John Paul II, who will be judged a criminal by many on account of his cold-bloodedly crushing of Latin American Liberation Theology and replacing bishops—those who cared for the poor, deplored dictators and elite-rule, and embraced an option for the poor—with Opus Dei prelates who side with the rich and powerful and do not see justice as a concern. An irony is that the Church has a most revolutionary and lyrical teaching on social issues, war and peace, commutative and distributive justice, human rights, common good, living wage, rights of unions, wealth distribution, and dangers of Capitalism. But these are never preached, too seldom applied. Typical also is its current dealing with everything from recycling pedophiles to declaring gays unnatural, its dealing with women’s place in the priesthood, forbidding contraception, second marriage, condoms for spouses of those with AIDS. Most often egregiously unpastoral, comfortable with power for its own sake, fearing to admit mistakes or missteps, reflecting little humanity, little mercy, allowing few exceptions; intent on keeping an “infallible” system, the hierarchical church becomes in parody an Old Boys' Club. In all its purple head-to-toe garb, pomp, and arcane rituals one finds little holiness, little humility, or even concern because hierarchical loyalties are not to me, you, or us but to their system, to keep it in its every case unquestioned. The lay world at present has no voice, no constitutional rights. They are serfs. Have you ever thought to write to Rome? Write to Santa Claus.

 

In this latest case of molestation-cover-up, an admission of guilt would/could be healing for all. Stonewalling involves a claim that bishops, cardinals, and pope are the Church not just a skewed, long-outmoded hierarchical structure; they are unresponsive, immune to questions, hostile to challenges. If the Church is to live, the sharing of power might be a first step—as for the acknowledgment of fault. I suspect Vatican and bishops are following lawyers' advice: Admit nothing lest you lose your episcopal palaces, and you lose the loyalty and support of lock-step Opus Dei among whom you are, in all, God speaking and ruling.

 

Bible as Literature: Genres 

 

MZC: Broph, you teach a course at the university, "The Bible as Literature,” beginning with Genesis 1-11, as Myth. What do you convey in your teaching to the students? What kind of questions do your students ask you? How is Literature related to Myth? How do you do the trick of presenting Creation to your students, creation myth as a spiritually rich "deep truth-bearing genre, the dramatizing of a belief system, a creed as told in a story"?

 

KI: I just read this quote from an email of yours: "One Catholic priest in Orange County I am told (don't know his name) tells his class for converts: 'The Bible is entirely true, and some of it really happened.'" I have heard that there is convincing evidence that the entire Exodus story was made from whole cloth during the Babylonian exile, by I think P (Priest editor). And yet we never, never hear about things like this in the popular press. Instead we get pious documentaries on PBS about following in Moses footsteps or the like? Is there some kind of censorship going on? It can't be conscious? (In my view it is kind of cultural myopia.)

 

RB: There is cowardice in not updating the faithful on Bible interpretation; it is true, a kind of pusillanimity, and a fear of undermining faith. But adults can be taught, though it has to be gradual and heart-felt. I teach the Bible as an anthology of genres: myth (story embodying a belief system), fable, legend, epic, covenant, legal and holiness codes, cycle stories, proto-history, oracle, diatribe, vision, allegory, poetic prayer, cautionary tales, revisionist history, melodrama, proverb and diatribe, verse-drama, and so forth. What one seeks is the meaning, the revelation of each pericope. For instance, Genesis 1-11 is a credo in story form (we believe in one god, transcendent and immanent, holy, ethical, forming mankind in his image, creating good and allowing evil, caring but just, forgiving but confrontive; the medium is myth (Greek for “story”) turning upside down the polytheistic myths surrounding Israel by using the same story elements (clay potter, tree, serpent, flood, tower) in a new way. Adam and Eve are metaphors of disobedience and infidelity, but no one, not the 1992 New Catholic Catechism, for instance, will breathe such a sentence. We thus ask the wrong questions, listen with prejudiced, preprogrammed ears. We are left as children hugging our stories and oblivious of the meaning they really carry. We want an historic Samaritan with wife and children rather than an extended metaphor demanding that we love and care for our enemies as ourselves, all of them. The result of this prolonged silence and its ignorance is often disastrous for faith. Every year I have five to ten fallen-away Catholic students in class who have not been taught to see beyond fairy stories.

 

Scholar—Teacher—Activist—with Jeffers as Guru

 

MZC: Broph, you're a scholar, teacher and activist. How do they relate and complement each other? What projects are calling you, first as a scholar, second as a teacher and third as an activist? And finally, would you say how your appreciation of Robinson Jeffers affects your life? How did you get into his literature? I remember once when we were at a meeting with Bob Holstein at Verbum Dei High School in Watts and you offered to teach the high school boys Robinson Jeffers. I've wondered how Jeffers has captivated you.

RB: Jeffers entered my life almost by chance or was it providence. For my doctoral dissertation I had begun working on the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. In the summer of 1962, I was back in California and making a retreat at the then School of Theology, Alma College. In a break from the Exercises, I wandered through the library and looking up to the shelves on American literature, among the poets, I spied the volume Selected Poems of Robinson Jeffers and took it down from the shelf recalling that one of my North Carolina professors had done something of a parody of Jeffers in my first year of studies. He assigned Jeffers’ two most difficult lyrics—“Night” and “Apology for Bad Dreams,”—probably because he himself did not understand them, and then proceeded to give synopses of Jeffers’ long narratives. I was later to think that if anyone had only summaries of Aeschylus and Euripides, he might think that the two playwrights should be in a psychiatric ward—for their fixation on incest, murder, and perverse fate.

 

My take on Jeffers was quite different; I found him one of the most religious writers of the century. He was obsessed with questions on the nature of God, depth of prayer, meaning of beauty, perversity of mankind, extent of the universe, the beginning and the end. To the consternation of my professor, I found religious awe and austere asceticism in each poem. Here was a man who was obsessed with ultimate questions. He found different answers from mine, but the focus was there. He was a challenge that grabbed, struck deep. He was a determinist and pessimist as regards to mankind, seeing humans as blasphemous, myopic, obsessed with themselves, perverse in their wars and their oblivious destruction of environment. I carried him with me into my growing activism. He was a pessimist and determinist; I argue with him though dead since 1962. He has a saying for me, confronting my activism: “Go out into the Seal Beach surf, hold up your hand for ten minutes, and then come back and tell me how many waves you have stopped.” He has kept me honest. He was a mystic; he prayed daily with poems. That was what counted.

 

I loved to take students on camping weekends to Jeffers Country stretching from Carmel to Big Sur. We went in convoys of five or so cars, launching out from Long Beach at 5:00 am, putting up tents at Big Sur at 11:00, searching through the fantastic stone house and tower he built solely with his own hands in Carmel at 1:00, reading poems to each other from the time we started. Then Point Lobos and down the coast stopping at each turnout to read more poems composed at those spots. It turned out to be the highlight of each student’s college years. I found that the two other persons working on RJ were Catholics, the monk Brother Antoninus and the daily communicant Ann Ridgeway.

To read one of Broph's own poems inspired by Jeffers, Redondo Beach, "Click on Poems that I Love."