An Open Letter to Hans Küng

Originally posted May 18th 2011

This post is a response to Fr. Küng's open letter to the Bishops of the Roman Church published in the Irish Times [reposted in full on Orate Fratres]. The cover of Time was on June 7th, 2010 issue. It took me more than a few hundred words to say half the message of this graphic.

 

Dear Father Küng:

 

I want to tell you how much I appreciate your stand against the thousand-year-old tradition of priestly celibacy in the Latin rite. I admire both its eloquence and urgency.

 

However, I would be uncomfortable if you were to take the lead in the effort to reverse this policy of mandatory celibacy.

 

It is not that I don’t find your arguments cogent. They are.

 

It is not that I disagree with your overall assessment that the insistence on papal infallibility is a huge blunder. It was and will continue to be. I admire your conduct after you were disciplined for arguing against the declaration of Vatican I and refused to back down.

 

It is not that I disagree with your analysis that the insulation of the priestly class has resulted in a massively dysfunctional organization that relies on secrecy, manipulation, and force to preserve its power. The current crisis has demonstrated that beyond any shadow of a doubt.

 

It is not, as some may argue, that you might appear to have an ax to grind with the current leadership, Benedict and his Curia. You have never denied that you do, but have always maintained an admirable level of civility. Too many revolutionary leaders have stepped out of prison and sounded the call to arms when the political winds change.

 

It is not that you might appear to be fanning the winds of scandal. The world is dong it; the press is doing it; religious leaders of other churches are doing it; rank and file members of the Latin rite are doing it; the elite leadership in Rome themselves are doing it through their defensive, strident, and often just plain stupid pronouncements.

 

If the Latin rite's leadership in Rome refuses to take responsibility, no one can force them to. No one can force them to do anything. They have insulated themselves against any outside moral force. Even if we could tell them how to resolve the untenable situation they have created—if those who have been gravely injured and those who are rising up in indignation could agree on a remedy—that would still only satisfy those groups. It might be a good first step, but it does not address the root problem.

 

It is the failed leadership itself that has to decide what they must do to take responsibility for the crisis. As far as I can see, the only solution is for them to make themselves accountable to the Teaching of Jesus. What they’ve done so far has not measured up. They will use their authority to claim that it does. Their professional class, priests and lay people in their employ, will claim that it does, but so far, public reaction indicates that few people believe them. I don't believe them. Please keep pointing to the failure of their argument.

 

In 1517 when Luther nailed 95 good reasons why the papal Ponzi scheme devised to finance the grandiose rebuilding of the mother church of the Latin rite was not in accord with the Teaching of the Gospel, the revolt that ensued was not just about money. Luther unleashed a complete reexamination of the Christian life: how to live a good life, your “works," and what constitutes sin and failure when faith counts on the Gift of God’s grace and forgiveness.

 

So far, the public debate, the accusations and recriminations, the posturing have all been about the role of the church’s leadership in a cover-up. The fact that the crimes themselves touch human sexuality at its core is only spoken of very carefully and obliquely. No one yet dares examine the perversion of Church teaching on sexuality. Luther began a revolution in the way humans were able to view their relationship with the transcendent. I hope to see a powerful movement that will free us from the tyranny of onerous teachings on sexuality that are steeped in denial and negativity.

 

Hans Küng by David Levine

And that is why I hope that you, Father Küng, do not assume the leadership in ending the 1000-year-old celibate stranglehold on Latin rite.

 

Let a whole new generation of powerful, thoughtful, skillful, faithful Christian leaders emerge. Let them begin to analyze the structures of our economic and political systems and find ways to make every voice heard, especially the ones that Jesus loved, the poor and disenfranchised. Let men and women assume equal leadership roles in the church so that every person who asks for grace, blessing and forgiveness is welcomed. Let them envision a new spirituality of sex so that every man and woman can enjoy its mystery, grace, and wonder in love and freedom. And that might be only a small beginning of the list of their accomplishments. Our God is generosity and love.

 

There are some who think that the role of religion in our 21st century lives is far less powerful than 500 years ago, and this crisis will fade away. I hope it doesn’t. If it does, we will lose an opportunity to find God once again in our lives.

 

The early followers of Jesus were very clear about one teaching: the Kingdom of God is at hand. And when it didn’t appear in any recognizable way, they transformed their hope, looked for the Kingdom with fresh eyes, and took action. They realized that this process itself was as endless and as boundless as the love they saw in Christ Jesus. They began to see the Kingdom wherever and whenever it appeared, and they made it appear when only they could envision It. That place is always right here. That moment is always right now.

 

 

For another article by Fr. Küng, go to http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/apr/01/why-celibacy-should-be-abolished/

Notes on Jesuit Zen Adepts & other Christian Zen Masters

Jesuits enter the Zen hall

Father Enomiya-LaSalle, S.J. is buried in Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945, he was walking only eight miles from the epicenter of the atomic explosion that destroyed the city. He survived. He also was a Zen student for the remaining 45 years of his life, attaining fluency with the practice of zazen and a mastery of the koans that was fully recognized by his teacher, Yamada Koun Zenshin. He wrote about his long experience with the practice, and led many fellow Jesuits into the sphere of zazen, including Pedro Arrupe who was his superior in Japan and Ignatius’s successor as the General of the Society during the time that I was a Jesuit.

My friend and teacher, David Weinstein Roshi, was a student of Yamada Roshi during Father LaSalle’s last years, and often saw him coming and going at the zendo in Kamakura. He worked with his teacher almost until the day he died. David told me this story. One morning after zazen, after Yamada had finished seeing students who were working on a koan, he was standing next to Yamada as LaSalle was leaving. Yamada turned to David and said, “There is the man who taught me how to apply the koans in my life.”

After reading Xavier’s letters to Ignatius describing his encounter with Ninjitsu it seemed inevitable that some Jesuits would eventually enter a Zen hall, and with the discipline learned from their training under the Spiritual Exercises, some would complete their koan training and teach Zen.

I begin my acknowledgement of Jesuit and other Christian Zen Masters with Fr. LaSalle. His example and teaching influenced most of these men and one woman who became Zen teachers in their own right. I cannot even guess where their Zen practice will lead, but I hope that their work will open and enrich the spiritual lives of many people.

Fr. Hugo Enomiya-LaSalle, S.J., Roshi (dec. 1990)

Fr. William Thomas Hand, S.J. (dec. 2005)
Fr. Willigis Jäger, O.S.B., Roshi (dec. 2020)
Bro. Tom Marshall, S.J. (dec. 2010)
Fr. Bill Johnson, S.J. (dec. 2010)
Fr. Pat Hawk, CSsR, Roshi (dec. 2012)
Fr. Kakichi Kadowaki, S.J., Roshi (dec. 2017)
Fr. Niklaus Brantschen, S.J., Roshi
Ruben Habito, (former Jesuit), Roshi
Bro. Kevin Hunt, OCSO, Trappist, Sensei
Rev. James Ismael Ford, UU Minister, Roshi
Fr. Robert Jinsen Kennedy, S.J., Roshi

Sr. Elaine MacInnes, Our Lady’s Missionaries, Roshi
Rev. David Parks-Ramage, UCC, Roshi
Fr. Ama Samy, S.J., Roshi.


December 12th, 2008
Further Notes on Jesuit Zen Adepts

Not including the name of Fr. William Johnston in my article original “Buddha, S.J.” was a major oversight on my part that will be corrected. Morgan Zo Callaghan and I have yet to approve the final galley proof for Intimate Meanderings, and besides, at least with regard to Zen study, nothing is ever really final.

And a special thanks to Paul Kelly. I was very moved by these few sentences from his email which was forwarded to me: ¨Twenty years later, I was led to Zen practice by his best book, to me, at least: The Still Point. We corresponded by long distance airmail -- it was 1974 -- and he helped me begin Zen practice by simple, yet detailed instructions, and his own prayers on my behalf. All by mail. As each one of his books came out, I bought it, read it, kept it in a special place on my little library shelves. I owe him much.” This reminds me of many stories that I heard about Bob Aitken over the years. Students would write to all the Zen Centers in the US asking for guidance and, time after time, student after student, Bob was the only head of a practice center who responded, and usually with a personal letter, not a mimeographed application for a practice period. The encounter with Zen, though it may begin with reading, at least from my point of view, takes place outside books, in real human contact.

I have been trying to figure out how Johnston escaped my notice. First of all, I began formal practice about 20 years ago, not as a Jesuit or even a believer—in fact quite the opposite. Once inside the zendo, I began asking questions, both about the practice and its history. To my astonishment, the most recommended, and by far the most complete, thorough, sympathetic, accessible and scholarly work was the three-volume history of Zen Buddhism by Fr. Heinrich Dumoulin, another Jesuit from Sophia. (Phil Whalen called him Douggie DeMoulin, as if he were an old friend. Even as Phil was going blind, when I asked him a question, he would often point in the direction of a shelf in his extensive library and say, Douggie has something to say about that, go look in the second volume -- on the second shelf of the third cabinet, Chapter 5, page 279, that will be the right hand page, the third paragraph from the bottom. And damned if he wasn’t right on most of the time).

All this to say, my discovery of the Jesuit-Zen connection came from my narrow Zen point of view, and I studied, read priest practitioners who had connections to the Zen teachers I worked with. I tended to stay away from those who set out to make connections between Zen meditation and Christian prayer. There was a definite anti-Christian stance in some American Zen circles, a reaction against the Church of our fathers, and to some degree this prejudice is still in place. The first book that I read that made that connection for me, and one in which I felt the power of Zen, was Fr. Kadowaki’s Zen and the Bible. Kadowaki linked his realizations working with certain koans to stories from the Gospel of Jesus, especially stories and sayings that he connected with the themes from the 4 weeks of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: the Kingdom, the Three Classes of Men, and the Three Degrees of Humility. He opened my inquiry into what was happening among Christians who practiced Zen.

There are at least two other Jesuits I neglected, besides Johnston, whose work I am unfamiliar with. Fr. deMello has been mentioned many times by some in a group of former Jesuits and Jesuits, the Compañeros. I have at least 2 of his books in my library that I have only skimmed. And then there is Dan O’Hanlon whom I met when I was a JSTB. It was only after his tragic death that I discovered how respected he was in Zen circles. In a conversation with Sonja Fenne Margulies, a dharma heir of Kobin Chino Roshi, she spoke about Dan with such love and respect that I regretted not having gotten to know him better when I was up on holy hill of the GTU.

And finally, I feel now that the Zen-Jesuit connection is not just a one-way street—that it is not just what Zen can contribute to the prayer life of Christians. Christian practice has something tangible to offer a Zen student. I want to tell a story about what may have been the first Mass said in a zendo. I have heard that Fr. LaSalle said Mass during retreats in Japan, Fr. Kennedy said Mass at ZCLA, but before that, in 1991, my friend, Fr. Joe Devlin, S.J., of the New England Province said Mass in the zendo at the Hartford Street Center.

I had asked Joe to come by and say mass for the Catholic men in the AIDS Hospice. It was a Saturday evening. He was due to arrive at 5 or so, and I was scrambling, assembling a few basics, bread and wine, and a tablecloth for the dining room table. Issan, who was at the time in the final stages of HIV disease came downstairs in his bathrobe, He asked when Joe was due to arrive and see what I was doing. After I explained, he said, “Mass will be in the zendo,” and took over directing me in all the preparations with the same care that he would have given to a full-blown Zen ritual. He went back upstairs and came down dressed in his Zen robes, and greeted Joe at the door with a hug and kiss, thanking him for coming and telling him that Mass would be in our chapel, the zendo, and I would get him anything he needed.

Issan and 5 or 6 of us sat in meditation posture on cushions while Joe improvised the Liturgy, beginning with the rite of confession and forgiveness. When it came time to read from the New Testament, Joe took a small white, well-worn Bible out of a pocket in his jacket, and told us that his mother had told him that the following story contained all the essentials for a Christian life. Then he read Luke 11, the parable of the Good Samaritan. Issan sat giving his entire attention to Joe and the Mass, but I couldn’t get a read on how he was reacting. The next day, I found out that he had fallen in love with Luke's parable, and Joe.

Sunday mornings were the usual community gathering of the Hartford Street community, and Issan began to talk about Fr. Joe and the liturgy. He turned to me and asked, “What was the little white book that he read from?” Startled, I said that was the New Testament. “Oh,” said Issan, “it must have been in Latin when I heard it as an altar boy—or something, but it was exactly how we should lead our lives as Buddhists.” He then said that during the Mass he had the experience of really being forgiven and that the experience had allowed him to feel such peace with his early religious training. Joe and I had dinner the night before he flew back to Boston. I told him about what Issan had said. A few days later, the small New Testament that had been in jacket for years arrived in an envelope addressed to Issan. He would die 6 months later, and, during one of our last meetings, asked me to thank Joe again for the zendo mass after he was gone. I did. And that New Testament which passed from the pocket of Joe’s jacket to Issan’s room at Hartford Street is now on my altar.

I’ve included some of their books in the Christian-Zen Bibliography.

Old wyves tales, covered bridges & the best 19th century structural technology

Old wyves tales, covered bridges & the best 19th century structural technology

In our rush to solve whatever crisis is in our face, we can trample over people, neglect our own best instincts, or craft solutions worse than the problem that consumes us. I have come to believe that human conversation requires a protected passage over the deep ravines and dangerous waters of our own thoughts before we find the way through.

I also sense that solutions already exist, that they don’t have to be entirely invented, but, in our panic – yes that’s a strong word – we have lost  sight of them. Then a friend’s evocative description of a trip through the dazzling New Hampshire foliage of early October inspired me! Of course, the path of our thoughts needs the safety of covered bridges.

I became obsessive in my search for anything about covered bridges. 

In 1909, the Oxford city fathers bridged Logic Lane, a short alley that carried the name from the 1300’s. As you will see from the picture, it is reminiscent of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, but the Logical Bridge has more of a ring to it and, to my mind, might lead to a living solution, not the gallows.

I found examples of bridges dating from the 14th century, as well as more proximate ancestors of the New England design from Germany. I discovered the 1852 Philippi Covered Bridge across Tygart Valley River that is still part of the US Highway system and, according to legend, the site of a secret meeting between Lincoln and Jefferson to discuss the terms of surrender before the end of the Civil War.

Now onto old wives' tales. Familiar with New England seasons, town squares, bright maples and covered bridges, I am a sucker for almost any romantic notion that can be suggested, especially when the fantasy is confirmed by a heart stopping experience.

Very early one morning in the late fall of 1965, before Highway 89 was finished, I was speeding back to Hanover New Hampshire from Boston. Somewhere between Concord and Lebanon, I lost the road: a sudden cold snap coupled with the moisture of a slight rain, the bridge came up before I had time to adjust my speed. The car spun 180 degrees and slid 200 feet horizontally, never touching a guard rail. It was an eternal second before I reached the other side, gently nudging the car forward into a shallow drainage ditch with what speed remained.

From that time until this morning, I believed that the purpose of the covered bridge was to save speeding fools like me - the surface temperature of the suspended roadway cooled more quickly than the ground! And with no town plows to spread sand and chemicals, a quaint roof might have saved me if luck had not been in my corner and the road had not been deserted!

This morning I began to explore why those tight-fisted old Yankees wasted all that money on fancy roofs that might have saved me if I were driving my mother’s 1962 Ford station wagon on winter roads at a dangerous speed in the early to mid 19th century, the highpoint for covered bridge construction.

So why a covered bridge? The structural strength of a rectangular box is far stronger than any one of its surfaces suspended between two points. This allowed for study bridges for transportation and trade using heavy timbers; steel I beams were not available before the Civil War. Hell, I should have known Yankees only care for income producing projects.

My love of words drove me to the dictionary to see if I could discover the roots of “a time, place, or means of connection or transition” - the second meaning of bridge. I discovered a hidden link, a reference to god language! Violà.

Middle English brigge, from Old English brycg; akin to Old High German brucka bridge, Old Church Slavic bruvuno beam.

There it is! When building bridges, raise high the church beam! Who can pronounce, bruvuno? I say sing it! (Bridge also means a musical passage linking two sections of a composition). Trust in God and love for one another are like a covered bridge.

In this first post, I have tried to lay out a few of the things that I will try to do in the future: I want to look at the way that we have framed the questions, the puzzles that face us; then, try to distinguish fantasy, nostalgia, and illogic in the conversation; and finally, see where we lost the road. That might be just the first step to finding our way. Let's see.

This is a conversation. Hopefully there will be more than one person talking. That is not a conversation. At best that’s is a monologue, but rant might also apply. Let’s dream of bridges and talk to one another.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Originally posted April 28th, 2010

“Very early I learned to value and respect words, and I also uncovered a passion for reaching my own conclusions.”

When I started to consider the origin of my values, a memory of my kindergarten teacher began to emerge. I struggle for real memories of early age, but this much is clear--she was a wiry woman with a tight bun who seemed a hundred years old, and, at least from the taste of decades-old feelings, someone who did not like children.

She ran her kindergarten in an upper room at the Methodist church that stood at the base of the triangular New England town green in Nichols. Her fixed ideas were shaped by the way Yankee families held that children should behave from time immemorial, or at least as far back as the 400 odd years since our religious fanatic forbearers fled Europe, and childrearing was fundamentally religion. My guess is that she had no love for Dr. Montessori who was, after all, a Catholic.

She was one of the elder “Misses” in town, who, along with the two spinsters who ran the library, always stood for us children as a clear demarcation between our families and single women who obviously preferred the company of their own sex. We were told that because spinsters were just not lucky enough to find husbands, they were forced into a world of loneliness and the company of other women. This we learned by listening to the disdain in the pauses between sentences of our parents’ conversations.

My own experience has lightened any ill will that I might have carried through the years, and perhaps even added a touch of magic to the story that I am going to tell.

I did not want to nap when were told in a voice that did not beckon negotiation: “Put your heads down on the desk.” I would defiantly look up and examine her, and another woman, her enforcer, who were clearly happy to be relieved from having to entertain, occupy or educate their charges. Several times my mother chastised me for not following instructions—she had been warned that I was very “willful”. My response to my mother was probably a complaint, setting the tone for a long battle in our relationship. I would bet the farm that her response was “That is the way things are. Some things are unchangeable and, besides, you are in no position to think for yourself.” So of course, I began to think for myself even if it was entirely reactive.

But there is one memory that comes back to me. It has even appeared in my dreams. I call it the “blue redbird.” We had coloring books that had rudimentary, inelegant, drawings of things-to-be named in the world, mothers and fathers, doctors, siblings and pets, houses and gardens, flowers and birds. The white spaces inside the outlines were labeled with names and colors. On command, in unison, we all opened to a prescribed page, scrambled for the crayons heaped in a pile on a low table in the center of the room, and began filling in the spaces neatly and correctly. Sometimes I would read the labels and oftentimes, not. My coloring was meticulous and colorful. I never had colors bleed from a shirt or cat. I was also very aware of the colors, even at the expense of labels. One day I was carefully coloring a bluebird red. I think it was the woman enforcer who looked over my shoulder and motioned for Frau Dominatrix to come and examine a bird that had been designated blue—clearly.

“Ken that is not a redbird. Can’t you read?”

“Of course I can read, but there are almost no redbirds in Nichols.’

“That was to be a blue-bird. You never going to go anywhere or make something of yourself unless you read and then carefully follow instructions.”

“But I want a redbird!”

“Hush. You have made a very serious mistake. I am going to have a word with your mother.”

I began to cry. And now everyone had turned to look at the boy who wasn’t man enough to hold back his tears.

When my mother arrived in the white station wagon to pick us up, very likely unhappy at the prospect of her two hours in the car with three preschoolers, she was not pleased to hear that I could not read nor follow instructions. She certainly didn’t comfort me. The martinet reflected her own theories of child rearing almost exactly. The kindergarten “Miss” had humiliated me and that meant one less thing that she would have to correct—with any luck.

Why do I consider this an event to be appreciated? I learned that words themselves have consequences and that definitions cannot be assigned arbitrarily. Language was not a child’s game. Language was powerful. It could also become a tool for enforcement.

Rigid language stifled creativity. The blue bird that I had created was far more handsome than the red would have been. The person who had made the drawings of the alleged red bird was inept. The outline of its shape matched the blue birds that gathered on the big nut trees in our side yard. The sting forced me to notice their shapes and coloring with more attention and care.

But I am still left with a crying five-year-old boy with the unwanted attention of fifteen other five-year olds staring at him with fear in their eyes. The cruelty of adults is not entirely a learned behavior, but five-year old kids are perhaps more malleable than adults. Perhaps.

And finally, as a testimony to Creativity, a few words from the poet laureate:

THE PROBLEM OF DESCRIBING COLOR
by Robert Hass

If I said—remembering in summer,

The cardinal’s sudden smudge of red

In the bare gray winter woods—

If I said, red ribbon on the cocked straw hat

Of the girl with pooched-out lips

Dangling a wiry lapdog

In the painting by Renoir—

If I said fire, if I said blood welling from a cut—

Or flecks of poppy in the tar-grass scented summer air

On a wind-struck hillside outside Fano—

If I said, her one earring tugging at her silky lobe,

If she tells fortunes with a deck of fallen leaves

Until it comes out right—

Rouged nipple, mouth—

(How could you not love a woman

Who cheats at the Tarot?)

Red, I said. Sudden, red.

[Our Nichols Methodist Church is not pictured, but looked very much like the one that I found in Google images although the main door was set at an angle facing Longhill Road.]