[Oe List ...] ST Thursday OpEd FYI

[Paul]

I am glad you are hopeful about Pope Francis, and if he appoints a dozen women to key positions in the Curie we will pay close attention. Paul
Sent from my iPhone

On 21 Mar 2013, at 00:31, Jaime R Vergara <svesjaime at aol.com> wrote:

> 
> El Papa Francisco de Argentina
>  
> Cardinal Jorge Mario Borgoglio is at home in many places on both sides of Andes where many Italians congregate in numbers from Lima to Sao Paolo.  He is the new Pope of Roman Catholic Christendom, hailed as originating from geography way off the shadows of the southern Alps though the genes evidently originated from the same wellsprings of yonder Romans.
>  
> Habemus Papam was false alarm in satirist New Yorker Borowitz’ account after the fifth ballot as cardinals allegedly shoveled incriminating papers into the furnace in deference to a new Pope who should not be saddled with all evidence of indiscretions by his predecessors.   The levity was appropriate as Rome tries to distance itself from the soot on its hands, especially after the watch of former Cardinal Ratzinger the Hitler youth storm-trooper, most recently resigned Pope Benedict XVI.
>  
> Pope John XXIII who attempted to open the windows of the stale Basilica that shrouded the Magisterium drew us to the arcane universe of Christian theology. The spirit of the Vatican II Council was short-lived, not unlike the Prague Spring before the Russian military hardware rumbled down the cobblestones.
>  
> I was raised in Reformation Christianity brought by Protestant Evangelicals into the shores of Pea Eye after WWII.  Given an inquisitive bent from the scientific ethos, I was not too enamored with the blatant superstition and fake piety of my institutional Church, so a shaking of the foundations of a stodgy cathedral of medieval thought came as welcomed news.
>  
> Superstition in an Other World beyond as an object of Christian hope came into sharp question from the pastoral voices of Barth and Bultmann, Tillich and Bonhoeffer, the Niebuhr brothers and Europe’s existentialists who focused on the here-and-now.  Coming out of the influence of Calvin, Luther, and Wesley, I was at home with reforms.
>  
> We took on the panoramic view of two millennia, from the Augustine’s confessions, through Francis of Assissi’s meanderings, to the heights of Tomas de Aquino’s flights, on to the militant resolve of Ignatius de Loyola.  The tableau blossomed with Malachi Martin and Andrew Greeley, and we took seriously the pedagogy of Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, and Marshall MacLuhan, awed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s vision of the Cosmic Christ and Gustavo Guttierrez’ political liberation motif.
>  
> Vatican Spring took its toll as Karl Rahner, Hans Kung, and Edward Schillebeecks retreated to the sounds of silence.  Interfaith dialogue did not go far even with Newman, Nouwen, and Merton.  Matthew Fox anglicized the frock, and if we hope for another Pope Joan (13th century), we need to become conversant with the works of Mary Daly and Elizabeth Fiorenza!  (An inquiring colleague who asked who our papal candidate was at the onset of the election heard me say: “They do not allow Nuns on the list, yet!”)
>  
> We stopped over Buenas Aires from Rio to Santiago in ’79, just before Brazil enacted its Amnesty program to shield military atrocities from prosecution, and a few hours before General Pinochet of Chile got a diplomatic slap on the face when Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines canceled his stopover in Manila after a visit in Fiji on his way to China.
>  
> Being one of the rare non-Aryan persons in the airport at the time, and with the goose-stepping security all over the place reminiscent of films of the Wehrmacht, we had pimples of anxiety as we could not wait to get out of the place.  The last time I had such feelings was when I was thrown against the wall on the westside of Chicago for walking a white girl to the station.
>  
> Members of the Interpol in Santiago were more jovial.   They said:  “Who would be stupid enough to come to Santiago on a Philippine passport hours after el Presidente’s trip is canceled by Manila’s absence of spine?”  T’was me, and I am not generally that innocent!  Happily, the village I went to a few hours out of the city was a stronghold of the assassinated Allende, so I became an instant hero to the anti-Pinochet crowd, instead.
>  
> This is all to say that Pope Francis ascends a pathway rich with tradition that can be embraced.  We became familiar with Pedro Arrupe’s Jesuits while perusing Aquinas Summa.  We had been friendly to Jesuits since, appreciating their work in Micronesia.  It was not long after Gary Bradley, S.J. in Saipan gave up the ghost while lifting the elements of the Eucharist that I surrendered my institutional ghost as well.
>  
> Arrupe, a Spanish athlete and medical practitioner before he took the vows, was one of eight Jesuit priests within the A-bomb zone when it dropped in Hiroshima.  He and his Order brothers survived and turned the splendid chapel into an emergency haven dealing with the medical and psychological needs of the survivors.
>  
> We recall Pope Francis first act after the election.  He returned to the Cardinals’ hotel on the bus instead of taking the Papal limousine that would have been perfectly his purview.  Not unlike Lee Kuan Yew’s style while guiding the helms of Singapore living in a two-room apartment rather than a palace or a mansion, Pope Francis’ in Buenos Aires followed his saint’s style sans the opulence of a Prince of the Church characterized elsewhere.
>  
> Hey, we can say Amen with feelings, again!
> 
>  j'aime la vie
> 
> Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate.  In all, 
> Celebrate!
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