openpolitics.com

After almost 50 years as a priest teaching in many countries, I believe that many if not most people are attracted to religion because they want order in their own lives and in the world. This is not bad; it is a first-half-of-life need and task. But it is simply the warm-up for the real Gospel (see Galatians 3:24). Today even science demonstrates rather convincingly that asymmetry is what breaks the dead patterns and moves all elements, species, and ages forward. Life itself proceeds by the radical asymmetry of life and death: no new forms will form unless the old ones die out.

.. This is how the transgression myth was revealed through the Gospel: Jesus, who is judged—by objective criteria—to be a sinner/offender/failure/transgressor by both high priest and Roman Empire is, in fact, the one who “redeems the world”! Paul repeats this message and calls it the “mystery of the crucified,” which forever discounts both “the Law” (his Jewish religion) and “reason” (Greek philosophy) which at that point were the two great ways to achieve order in their world. Yet these are so deep in our psyche that Christianity went right back to both of them—with a vengeance!

.. The Gospel and the cross say that the only honest and healing order is the acceptance of disorder. This is God’s surprising and scandalous plan.

.. Pope Francis is the first pope I am aware of who has had the insight and courage to say that Divine Love is the only absolute, not law, Scripture, church, or moral behavior. Law and reason can never achieve their own goals perfectly, but love and mercy can and do. “Where are your philosophers now? Where are the scribes?” Paul shouts (1 Corinthians 1:20). Love alone, he says, is the “fulfillment” of the law (Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:14), which of course is what Jesus said (see Matthew 22:40).