I finally have some time to get back to blogging. I'm just having a hard time readjusting to my usual reality. I decided to catch up on all things Catholic and Anglican before I posted this morning. This meant World Youth Day and the Lambeth conference, but I found myself floundering around, unable to get my head around the fact that the topics which are front and center in Christianity are all matters of legalistic thinking whose various interpretations can only cause disunity. Where as I had just spent four days wrapped in an entirely different world view and way of thinking, this jarring difference kept coloring my reading.
As I read the various articles I kept thinking where's the love? It's hard to find. You can glimpse it in the faces of the pilgrims in Sydney, but not in the faces of Cardinal Pell and Archbishop Rowan Williams. These are two faces which are starting to reflect the stress of their particular situations.
Cardinal Pell's publicity problems with his handling of the Australian sexual abuse crisis is getting worse. http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/07/abuse-victims-dad-to-confront-pope-pell.html The Foster's story is heart wrenching, and the legal battle they had to fight with the Melbourne Diocese to get any real meaningful compensation took eight years and ended in an out of court settlement. Mr. Foster is going very public with his family's story because he feels way too many victims are not in the position he was to wage such a long and costly battle for justice. The Church's strategy has been to force people to take compensation the Church determines is equitable, with the price being the victim's silence. This effectively keeps victims separated from each other, unable to compare notes, unable to tell their stories, unable to bond with other victims. The benefit to the Church is obvious, smaller payouts, no scrutiny, no publicity and all the leverage in the world with regards to the victims. Oh, by the way, in the Towards Healing process victims are not allowed their own legal representation nor are they allowed to be accompanied by any advocates of any sort---especially the sort represented by Broken Rites, Australia's version of SNAP. It's a cushy deal for the Church supported by secular law. Mr. Foster hopes the publicity he can generate will force an end to this cushy deal.
Archbishop Rowan Williams on the other hand, has a different set of legal issues. His involve bishops of all kinds. Gay bishops, women bishops, schismatic bishops of the right and left, and the Catholic Bishop of Rome. It appears the Benedict XVI will not welcome the dissenting Anglican Catholics with open arms. He is supporting Rowan William's efforts to keep the Anglican communion more or less in tact. He says he does not want Catholicism to contribute to the break up of a sister denomination.
It's more likely he doesn't want to import Anglican problems into the body of the Roman Catholic Church, whose apparent unity is a carefully maintained artificial construct held in place by the centralized speaking authority of the Vatican. Unlike the situation with Rowan Williams, the Vatican still controls most of the dialogue and dutiful Catholic bishops will react en masse against the rare courageous upstart like Australian Bishop Geoffrey Robinson.
In Rowan Williams case, he's not dealing with a rare courageous individual, but with whole constituencies. Rumor has it the American Episcopal Church is set to consecrate upwards of half a dozen more gay bishops right after the Lambeth conference. It appears the other Bishop Robinson will no longer be an isolated rare case. He will be part of a statement, albeit a statement quite the opposite of the entire GAFCON contingency. No wonder Rowan Williams looks a little stressed. The only love he's getting is coming from his friend in Rome.
And speaking of his friend in Rome, currently in an Opus Dei compound in Australia, Benedict is getting his love from 150,000 screaming youthful pilgrims and one small kitten named Bella. The Vatican press people are denying the kitten story. Apparently Popes aren't allowed to be thought of as pet persons. I guess they're supposed to be beyond such unlofty attachments. Inciting the Catholic youth of the world to a kind of mass hysteria is more papal. Personally I prefer the kitten story to the mass hysteria.
In any event, all the above quite literally saddens me. Leon Secatero is talking about setting the calendar for the next 500 years in a quantum matrix of hope and peace, and the representatives of the world's 1 billion Christians are mired in gender, sexual abuse, and sexual orientation quagmires. 1 billion people is a lot of quantum matrix. Catholics would call this quantum matrix the Mystical Body of Christ. It looks to me like the leaders of the quantum matrix called the Mystical Body of Christ need to get their collective acts together on issues of sex and power. Until they do Peace and Hope are out of their reach and the Christian contribution to the other spiritual systems which will participate in the setting of Leon's calendar will be crippled.
It's no accident that right now in both Australia and England the two largest Christian denominations are being forced to deal with their respective demons in the context of their biggest world events. The Holy Spirit is moving with gale force through courageous individuals in the spotlight of massive press coverage. Leon Secatero would say all one needs is one corn seed and when planted in the right soil the ears of corn from that one seed can nourish the future survival of a tribe. The Navajo never travel any where without at least one corn seed in their pocket, because you just never know. It looks to me like there are some seeds starting to sprout in Australia and England. Apparently the Holy Spirit doesn't travel without her seeds as well, and She knows exactly where to plant them.
Tomorrow I'll go into more detail about what Leon taught on the weekend. I'll give you a bit of a teaser. In Leon's teachings he frequently mentions metaphysics. What he means by this is that the Navajo spiritual system is also their science and vice versa. The Navajo have understood this quantum physics thing a long time, for centuries and centuries, and not only that, they have actively worked with the principles of quantum physics to consciously bend reality. The calendar that Leon speaks of is not a metaphor. It's the use of time to set the prevailing consciousness of the future. Until tomorrow.
