Jesus' Open Table Inspires Inclusive Eucharistic Celebrations Today in Communities Led by Women Priests- "All People Are To Be Included as Equals in the Community of God's People"

My Response: In our international Roman Catholic Women Priests Movement we invite all God's people to gather as equals- including those on the margins of our Church- to celebrate Eucharist. All are welcome not just those who obey the rules. Bridget Mary Meehan ARCWP, https://arcwp.org, sofiabmm@aol.com

When we reflect on the central meaning of the Eucharist, we look to "Jesus’ own apparent joy in sharing meals with people of the Galilean countryside. The open table of Jesus’ public life challenged the discriminatory social code of honor and shame which denied the Jewish peasantry the right to share meals with members of other social classes. By embracing an open table, Jesus taught a seminal truth of the Reign of God: all people are to be included as equals in the community of God’s people. The Eucharist can mean no less for us today." 

(Robert C. Wild (2004), Sacred Presence, 138)

Meals are the most frequent settings for Gospel stories. They range from informal picnics on hillsides to banquets given by dignitaries. They introduce us to some of the most of diverse and colorful of Gospel characters: a woman with long hair who washes Jesus’ feet, a little boy who has loaves and fishes hidden in the folds of his robe, and a short man, named Zacchaeus, who is about to have an unexpected dinner guest. Meals transport us from the wedding in Cana to a quiet dinner at a little house in Emmaus. They invited us to a party for a prodigal and let a share of a Passover supper with a carpenter’s son.

Meals also function as a context for the central themes of the Gospels– abundance, forgiveness, respect, compassion, love. Here, as the center-piece of Luke’s Gospel, the dinner at the Pharisees house brings all of these topics together in a lesson about who is welcome at our tables.

This theme of inclusivity is one of the benchmark of Jesus’ teaching. Everyone ought to have a place at the table, especially those who have been marginalized. Obviously, this includes many who do not qualify for the guest list–people who have been relegated to the back roads and slums of the towns. When we give a luncheon, we need to make sure that no one who wants to be there is left out. Inclusivity is a Gospel mandate. It is not separate from Sabbath observance, but essential part of it. (Fran Ferder & John Heagle (2002), Tender Fires, 159-160)

The great challenge today is to convert the sacred bread into real bread, the liturgical peace into political peace, the worship of the Creator into reference for the Creation, the Christian praying community into an authentic human fellowship. It is risky to celebrate Eucharist. We may have to leave it unfinished, having gone first to give back to the poor what belongs to them. (Raimundo Panikkar, 197

Young Catholics Stay to Fight for Church Reform in Wake of Scandals" Sep 4, 2018 by Heidi Schlumpf

https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/young-catholics-stay-fight-church-reform-wake-scandals

"While working as a camp counselor this summer, Alicia Biel cut back on checking social media. But now that 19-year-old sophomore is back to school, she has caught up on the Catholic news she missed these past months. And she is angry.

"When you tell people you're Catholic, the first thing they say is, 'What about the sex scandals?' " said Biel, a student at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. "I can defend the Catholic faith, but I can't defend the Catholic Church right now. It's hard."

Biel was 4 years old when the sex abuse crisis erupted in Boston, so she has never known a church untainted by this scandal. But this summer's news — about former Washington archbishop Theodore McCarrick; from the Pennsylvania grand jury report; and, now, of unproven allegations of cover-up against the current pope — have put the issue front and center for her and for many young Catholics.

With surveys that show increasing numbers of young people leaving the church, it would seem these recent revelations would be prompting an even greater exodus. But, surprisingly, young Catholics who spoke to NCR are not giving up.

Instead, inspired by a post-Vatican II ecclesiology, they are planning to stay and fight for reform of the power structures that allowed abuse to happen and that protected church leaders who tried to cover it up.

At Alvernia University in Reading, Pennsylvania — located in the Allentown Diocese, one of the six dioceses covered in the report — a service of healing was among the back-to-school events planned on campus. Four priests named by the grand jury had been part-time adjuncts at the school in the 1960s and 1980s, although no victims from the school have come forward yet.

Julianne Wallace (Alvernia University)

Julianne Wallace, assistant to the president for mission* at Alvernia, reached out to student leaders even before classes started, to check in and see how they were processing the horrific details about clerical abuse in the state. When she asked them if this deterred them from wanting to be Catholic, they emphatically said no.

One student told her: "Yes, I'm going to be at church on Sunday. That's where I've always been." The student agreed the institutional church had acted unjustly, but wanted to stay and try to work for change.

That's not to say that young Catholics are not upset, Wallace and other young Catholics said. They are, but many of them are funneling their anger into action.

Last weekend, Catholics in seven cities across the country gatheredfor demonstrations or public prayer services against sexual abuse and cover-up. While the events attracted participants of all ages, the organizer was a 32-year-old from Chicago.

Adrienne Alexander started a Facebook page called "Catholics for Action" after going to Mass for the feast of the Assumption Aug. 15, the day after the grand jury report's release, and hearing nothing about it from the priest at the parish (not her home church).

Adrienne Alexander (723x1000).jpg

Adrienne Alexander (Provided photo)

"I felt very strongly that it was important for people outside the church to see that Catholics who sit in the pews every Sunday are not OK with this," said Alexander. "And I wanted the bishops to see that we make up the church. I was very disappointed by their first response."

Alexander was a junior in high school in Georgia when the crisis was centered in Boston in 2002. "I feel more ownership at this point in my life," she said, noting that, as a young African-American woman, she is the only one among her friends still connected to institutional religion "It's almost countercultural that I go to church every Sunday."

Yet, what the current scandal is not about, for most young people, is homosexuality. Biel said she has noticed that older Catholics are focused on homosexuality and gay priests when talking about McCarrick or details of abuse by clergy in Pennsylvania.

"I think we should be focusing on that these were nonconsensual rapes, not on homosexuality," she said.

The use of the more explicit terms like "rape" and "molestation" is more common among younger people who have grown up with "safe environment" training and have been influenced by the #MeToomovement, Biel believes. "We're not going to try to sugarcoat it by calling it 'abuse,' " she said.

In fact, young people's opposition to the church's teaching about homosexuality is one reason that some of them leave the church, according to a survey on disaffiliation released in January by St. Mary's Press and the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University.

The sex abuse crisis — surprisingly — is not a major reason so-called "nones" would choose that as their answer to a question about religious affiliation, said John Vitek, president and CEO of St. Mary's Press.

"When we asked adult leaders why they think young people disaffiliate, they often guess that clergy sex abuse would be a top issue, but it's not," Vitek said. "In fact, only about 2 percent of young people we surveyed articulated that."

But young former Catholics do mention "moral failures" or injustices in the church, Vitek said, which could include bishops covering up sexual crimes by clergy.

And disaffiliation often happens after an accumulation of things that erode trust in the institution, which may explain why this summer's news is the last straw for some older Catholics, and less so for younger ones, Vitek said. "While it may not cause someone to walk away today, it causes them to wonder if this is the community they want to be associated with," he said.

Timothy O'Malley, who teaches at the University of Notre Dame, agrees that while the sex abuse crisis may precipitate formal leaving for some, those Catholics were "on the margins" and perhaps not practicing anyway, sometimes because of disagreements over church teachings on sexuality, marriage and divorce.

In fact, of the 150 students in his course on the sacrament of marriage this fall, only one mentioned in a required "theological biography" that he had doubts about the church related to the present crisis.

Although admittedly a nonrepresentative sample, O'Malley's students appear committed to the church. "They seem to love the Eucharist. They are looking for a spiritual tradition to guide their lives," O'Malley, director of Notre Dame's Center for Liturgy, said in an email interview with NCR. "Even those who struggle with the church's teaching on homosexuality still want guidance from the theological richness of the church."

O'Malley was one of 43 signers of "An Open Letter from Young Catholics" published by the conservative journal First Things after McCarrick was removed from the College of Cardinals. That letter stressed dismay over and called for an independent investigation of sexually active priests, sexual assault of seminarians, and even "drug-fueled orgies in Vatican apartments."

annie selak crop.jpg

Annie Selak (Flickr/Bill Selak, CC BY-ND 2.0)

Later, a group of young theologians organized another statement — eventually signed by more than 5,000 Catholics of all ages — calling for the mass resignation of all U.S. bishops, in light of the McCarrick allegations and those in the Pennsylvania grand jury report.

Annie Selak, a theology doctoral candidate at Boston College, signed that statement, which was conceived of and shared widely on social media, where many young Catholics gravitate.

For Selak, the Pennsylvania report was a "breaking point," not because it was new, but precisely because it signaled to her that the church doesn't seem to have changed.

"My entire life in the church has been marked by sexual abuse and cover-up," said Selak, noting that the priest who baptized her was charged with 38 counts of molestation and eventually committed suicide.

"That's part of why the younger generation is having a different response: not because it's new information, but because it's the only story of the church we've known," she said.

But as 35-year-old Selak prepares for the baptism of her first child in about month, she realizes that younger Catholics who stay are seeing this moment as a "call to action."

"Younger people are asking what we can do to make sure this isn't the church," she said. "There has to be more to the church than this."

[Heidi Schlumpf is NCR national correspondent. Her email address is hschlumpf@ncronline.org. Follow her on Twitter @HeidiSchlumpf.]

"Early Christianity: A Changing Religion" by Richard Rohr

Saint Catherine's Monastery, built between 548-565
 near the town of Saint Catherine, the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt.

"Much of what Jesus taught seems to have been followed closely during the first several hundred years after his death and resurrection. As long as Jesus’ followers were on the bottom and the edge of empire, as long as they shared the rejected and betrayed status of Jesus, they could grasp his teaching more readily. Values like non-participation in war, simple living, inclusivity, and love of enemies could be more easily understood when Christians were gathering secretly in the catacombs, when their faith was untouched by empire, rationalization, and compromise.


Several writings illustrate this early commitment to Jesus’ teachings on simplicity and generosity. For example, the Didache, compiled around 90 CE, says: “Share all things with your brother, and do not say that they are your own. For if you are sharers in what is imperishable, how much more in things which perish!” [1]


The last great formal persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire ended in 311 CE. In 313, Constantine (c. 272-337) legalized Christianity. It became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380. After this structural change, Christianity increasingly accepted, and even defended, the dominant social order, especially concerning money and war. Morality became individualized and largely focused on sexuality. The church slowly lost its free and alternative vantage point. Texts written in the hundred years preceding 313 show it was unthinkable that a Christian would fight in the army, as the army was killing Christians. By the year 400, the entire army had become Christian, and they were now killing the “pagans.”


Before 313, the church was on the bottom of society, which is the privileged vantage point for understanding the liberating power of Gospel for both the individual and for society. Within the space of a few decades, the church moved from the bottom to the top, literally from the catacombs to the basilicas.The Roman basilicas were large buildings for court and other public assembly, and they became Christian worship spaces.


When the Christian church became the established religion of the empire, it started reading the Gospel from the position of maintaining power and social order instead of experiencing the profound power of powerlessness that Jesus revealed. In a sense, Christianity almost became a different religion!


The failing Roman Empire needed an emperor, and Jesus was used to fill the power gap. In effect, we Christians took Jesus out of the Trinity and made him into God on a throne. An imperial system needs law and order and clear belonging systems more than it wants mercy, meekness, or transformation. Much of Jesus’ teaching about simple living, nonviolence, inclusivity, and love of enemies became incomprehensible. Relationship—the shape of God as Trinity—was no longer as important. Christianity’s view of God changed: the Father became angry and distant, Jesus was reduced to an organizing principle, and for all practical and dynamic purposes, the Holy Spirit was forgotten. "


Gateway to Presence:
If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.





[1] Didache 4:8. See Tony Jones, The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community (Paraclete Press: 2009), 23. More about the Didache is available at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html.


Adapted from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer (Paulist Press: 2014), 48-51; and
Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2008), 100.


Image credit: Saint Catherine's Monastery (detail), built between 548-565 near the town of Saint Catherine, the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt.

"Death in the Church: Is New Life Ahead?" Ilia Delio OSF , Highly Recommended

http://www.omegacenter.info/death-in-church-new-life-ahead/

The recent disclosure of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and the extent of depravity reported in the news is symptomatic of a Church in crisis. It is no longer acceptable for the Pope simply to issue a public apology nor is it sufficient for any group merely to reflect on what has happened by issuing position statements. The Church has a deep structural problem which is entirely bound to ancient metaphysical and philosophical principles, not to mention imperial politics, that at this point require either a radical decision towards a new ecclesial structure or accept the possibility of a major schism. The rock-solid Church has crushed human souls and twisted authority into deceit. The male-dominated Christ center no longer holds and there is simply no solution or comforting words that can placate the extensive damage to fragile human lives that has taken place over the past decades. The evidence of abuse brought to light in the Catholic Church is simply unfathomable.


The church has a deep structural problem…

There is something profoundly intransigent about the structure of the Church. It is not that Church structures have caused the abuse but they have masked predators hiding as priests in a closed caste system of clerical elitism. The resurgence of abuse points to something deeply amiss if not embedded in Church culture. “Culture” is a complex term that encompasses the set of operative meanings and values. Church culture is based on operative principles of hierarchy, patriarchy, careerism, and the notorious notion of priestly consecration as becoming “ontologically changed.” The hierarchical pecking order from priest to Pope has entailed obeisance in the quest for a higher position on the ladder of ecclesiastical success. Clericalism is a type of corporate ladder-climbing and no different from the quest for power in the world of major corporations. Corporate power, like ecclesial power, is marked by the dominant male, akin to the evolutionary hunter who is “red in tooth and claw”; the priest-hunter can be cunningly deceptive at achieving his desired goal.

How did we get here? If the Church is founded on the Good News of Jesus Christ, how did it become so radically disconnected from the itinerant preacher from Nazareth?

Structure concerns relationships and the types of relationships that comprise Church structure are based on outdated philosophical notions of nature, gender, and personhood. Structures do not themselves cause abuse but they can abet and, or, cloak mental illness, predators, and criminals disguised as priests. The disguise is actually embedded in the dysfunction of the structure itself. Walled in a fortress of ontological superiority bestowed upon by priestly consecration, one could effectively live a dual life insofar as one’s brain can cognitively dissociate between abusive behavior and priestly function. The dissociative brain is not quite schizophrenic or a split brain but is actually more deceptive because it can capture certain ideas and repeat them (such as abusive behavior is normal) while operating on another level of priestly ministry.


Dissociative behavior can be reinforced by certain philosophical principles and the Church has clung to a number of outdated philosophical principles. Two principles in particular that can create a porous structure of abuse are:


1) The Ontology of Being, that is, the notion that the priest is on a higher level of being and thus closer to God. This misguided notion stems from the way hierarchy developed in the Church. The hierarchical structure that presently defines the Church can be dated back to the fifth century when the mystical writer, Pseudo-Dionysius composed his treatise on the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. Dionysius introduced the term “hierarchy” to connote sacred order among the many different classes of people that comprise the church. The Dionysian notion of hierarchy was meant to reflect the many ways God shines through creation but the term was corrupted in the Middle Ages by William of Saint Amour who used the Dionysian hierarchy to reject Franciscan Friars as teachers at the University of Paris, a role William claimed that duly belonged to clerical priests and not those of religious orders. Hence the notion of hierarchy as a ladder of ontological distinctions (for example, priests are of higher being than laity) was a medieval construct that became entrenched in the mind of the laity.


2) A second philosophical flaw is the platonic notion of the body as inferior to the life of the spirit giving rise to several different outrageously flawed ideas, including the notion that women are intellectually inferior to men and the source of sin; that sex and sexuality are inferior qualities of human personhood and need to be closely monitored, as these can easily lead to sin; that the corruptible body needs to be disciplined and subjugated to the spirit. David Noble The Religion of Technology and A World Without Women) provides convincing historical evidence to support his thesis that the principal aim of Christianity, like science, is to restore the fallen male Adam to divine likeness. His thesis is based on the myth that Adam was created before Eve and thus received the breadth of life directly from God; hence Adam is the true image of God and Eve is a weak imitation. Eve is the reason Adam lost his divine likeness along with his immortality, his share in divine knowledge, and his divinely ordained dominion over nature (the “fall”). Because Eve was the problem, she cannot be part of the solution. John Scotus Erigena in the 9th century claimed that at the resurrection sex will be abolished and nature will be made one–only man–as if he had never sinned.


It is no secret that even the best theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, held that women do not have fully formed intellects, an idea that can be traced back to the philosophy of Aristotle. It is unfortunate that Pope Leo XIII in his 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris wedded the Church to the theology of Thomas Aquinas thus making Thomas’s theology the official theology of the Catholic Church. By doing so, the Church adopted the Thomistic-Aristotelian metaphysical framework based on matter and form, substance and essence. Thomas Aquinas was a brilliant 13thcentury theologian who contributed to the Church a vast corpus of theological insights; however, by making his doctrine official teaching, the Church turned a deaf ear to modern science and to other theological ideas, such as the Scotistic notion of primacy of Christ.
…the foundations of theology remain out of sync with nature…


Although the Catholic Church has supported modern science reflected by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, it has not adopted the principle scientific shifts of modern biology, evolution, or quantum physics, despite the fact that these areas are pillars of modern science. As a result, the official theology of the Church is based on the ancient cosmology of Ptolemy and the medieval Thomistic-Aristotelian metaphysical synthesis. Even the most recent report of the International Theological Commission omits science entirely from the task of theology today. As a result, the foundations of theology remain out of sync with nature; the understanding of the human person is outmoded in many respects; and the core doctrines of creation, salvation, and redemption are based on outdated cosmological principles.


Despite the turn to the historical subject in Vatican II, the cosmological framework for official Catholic theology is the pre-Copernican, geocentric Ptolemaic universe. It is not surprising that the Ptolemaic cosmos blended nicely with Newton’s universe, allowing the Church to maintain a static inert framework of substance and form. Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopalian priest, compares the institutional Church to Newton’s world, a vast machine made of parts and obeying fundamental laws, a world, she indicates, that can be easily controlled and manipulated. In her book The Luminous Web, she writes:


“Human beings were so charmed by the illusion of control Newton’s metaphor offered that we began to see ourselves as machines too. Believing that Newton told us the truth about how the world works, we modeled our institutions on atomistic principles. You are you and I am I. If each of us will do our parts, then the big machine should keep on humming. If a part breaks down, it can always be removed, cleaned, fixed, and replaced. There is no mystery to a machine, after all. According to Newton’s instruction manual, it is perfectly predictable. If something stops working, any reasonably competent mechanic should be able to locate the defective part and set things right again. . . . Our “God view” came to resemble our worldview. In this century, even much of our practical theology has also become mechanical and atomistic. Walk into many churches and you will hear God described as a being who behaves almost as predictably as Newton’s universe. Say you believe in God and you will be saved. Sin against God and you will be condemned. Say you are sorry and you will be forgiven. Obey the law and you will be blessed.”


Newton’s world was a closed system. A closed system views organizations as relatively independent of environmental influences; problems are resolved internally with little consideration of the external environment. Without any new input of energy, a closed system will eventually wear down and dissipate. Open systems on the other hand can migrate into new patterns of behavior because the system interacts with the environment; closed systems are rigid and largely impenetrable while open systems are chaotic and far from equilibrium. The Church is a closed system. Rules, fixed order, dogmatic formulas, unyielding laws, patriarchy, authority, and obedience under pain of judgment and death, all have rendered the Church impervious to evolution and to the radical interconnectivity that marks all levels of nature. A closed institutional system in an evolutionary world is bound to die out unless new energy can be put into the system, or the system itself undergoes radical transformation to an open system.


The turning point for the Church’s retrenchment from science can be marked by the Galileo affair in 1633 when Cardinal Bellarmine rejected Galileo’s confirmation of the Copernican heliocentric system, stating that acceptance of heliocentrism was contrary to Scripture. Although Pope John Paul II apologized on behalf of Galileo in 1984, by mid 20th century the Church had not accepted Big Bang cosmology or evolution as fundamental to doing theology.


While Vatican II is lauded for its progress, this Council is no exception to the Church’s outdated stance with regard to modern science. Although John XXIII opened the Church doors to the modern world and human history, he did not acknowledge Big History insofar as all history begins with the Big Bang. Alfred North Whitehead wrote in 1925: “When we consider what religion is for mankind, and what science is, it is no exaggeration to say that the future course of history depends upon the decision of this generation as to the relations between them” (Whitehead 1925). Ralph Burhoe, the visionary behind the journal Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion, said that the discoveries of twentieth-century science, born from the creative human spirit in search of understanding, have far out-paced the ancient myths of world religions causing “people everywhere to lose credence or faith in the models or myths as formulated in their traditional religions” (Burhoe and Tapp, Zygon 1966: 4-5). He wrote that if religions are to be regenerated, they would have to be credible in terms of this age of science, a point highly consonant with the vision of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.


Can We Rebuild?


While the reconciliation of science and religion may seem pedantic and marginal to the abuse crisis, it is perhaps the most fundamental work that lies before the Church and world today. Without bringing science and religion into a new integrative relationship, there is no real basis on which to construct a new philosophical understanding of theological truths or of human personhood. All the apologies in the world and all the position papers carefully written will not make an iota of a difference to the “substance abuse” that marks the Church. Unless fundamental levels of consciousness change, we cannot attract a new reality.


In this respect, academic theology is as much to blame for the abuse crisis as the hierarchy itself, insofar as the academy of Catholic theology perpetuates a substance ontology and remains essentially entrenched in ancient philosophies and cosmologies. In theology departments, one can teach a course on Science and Religion as a particular area of interest but “yoking” Science and Religion is not necessary to doing theology in the 21st century, nor has the academic field of Science and Religion impacted the pedagogies of either science or religion. Teilhard de Chardin was adamant that the philosophical shifts brought about by modern physics and biology demand conceptual and pedagogical shifts in science and religion. “Evolution is a general condition,” he wrote, “to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must submit and satisfy from now on in order to be conceivable and true” The Human Phenomenon, Teilhard de Chardin 1999, 152, emphasis added).


Science has greatly shifted our understanding of nature including human nature, biological nature, and physical nature so that every aspect of theological doctrine must be reevaluated in light of evolution and modern physics. Every seminary curriculum should include Big Bang cosmology, evolution, quantum physics, neuroscience, depth psychology, and systems thinking. Incorporating science into seminary education will not preclude abusers but over time the formation of new structural systems that are more consonant with nature as cooperative interdependent systems might allow for greater transparency, interdependency, and accountability.


To accept modern science as part of theological education and development of church doctrine is to recognize the full inclusion of women in the community of biological life. The inability to accept women as fully capable intellectual beings has been a real stumbling block for the Church and, in our postmodern age, the exclusion of women from all forms of leadership and service is no longer acceptable. Systemic reorganization as well as scientifically-literate theological education must include women at all levels of formation. There is no adequate theological argument for excluding women from Holy Orders except the well-worn “image of God” argument which, in light of modern science, is incredible. Ordaining women priests might help save the Church from implosion.


Towards a New Future?


The Church needs a new direction, one pointing not upwards but forward, not towards “heaven above” but a new future of healthy relationships. Beatrice Bruteau describes a shift in consciousness from a domination paradigm to what she calls a “Holy Thursday” paradigm, marked by mutuality, service, and Christian love. To be “in Christ,” she writes, “is to enter into Holy Thursday by experiencing some death and resurrection, letting an old modality of consciousness die, and seeing a new one rise to life. It is to abandon thinking of oneself only terms of categories and abstractions and seeing oneself as a transcendent center of energy that lives in God and in one’s neighbors–because this is where Christ lives, in God and in us.” We need to come to terms with the fact that Christianity is less an historical religion than a religion of the future. In Jesus God’s self-communication to creation explodes into history. God evolves the universe and brings it to its completion through the instrumentality of human beings. Jesus is the climax of that long development whereby the world becomes aware of itself and comes into the direct presence of God. What we see in Jesus is that the future of the material universe is linked to the future of the human community insofar as human agency affects biocentric life in its relation to ultimate fulfillment in God.
The Church needs a new direction, one pointing not upwards but forward…


We fragile, vulnerable humans are “cooperative co-creators” and it does make a difference how we live our lives. Our participation in the mystery of Divine Love, incarnate and hidden in the brokenness of our world, lies at the basis of a healing world. The shocking news of the abuse crisis crushes our hearts, but know too that God’s heart is broken; that the body of Christ is crucified over and over again, for when one member is abused the whole Body is abused. But our faith must remain unshaken. Christ is risen from the dead; the final word is not death but Life. We will rise from these ashes but we cannot stand still nor can we turn back. Our hands are now put to the plow and we must forge a new path ahead. The Church will be born anew, for God is doing new things.






 Ilia Delio, OSF is the founder and visionary behind the Omega Center. She is a Franciscan Sister of Washington DC, respected academic and theologian, and author of numerous books and articles. She is an internationally sought-after presenter, speaking on the intersection of Science and Religion, with particular interests in evolution, physics, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. You can find Ilia’s upcoming events calendar here.