Spin-Off of an Addendum: Beyond Theism; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Death of God™

I wasn't expecting my brain to generate all this material, but my addendum to my post of a few days ago has itself generated a spin-off as a section that I originally included as part of that post has grown in my mind over the past day to the point of needing its own post.

Originally, my last post had section where after discussing Von Balthasar's image of the "pillaged Church" (I also called it the "Giving Tree" Church) I pointed out that Žižek goes even further and suggests that, basically, we really do have to undergo the "death of God" and that Christianity is something like "the religion of atheism," but that it will involve sacrificing the form to save the substance (of universal spiritual liberation or love or whatever): "That is the ultimate heroic gesture that awaits Christianity: in order to save its treasure, it has to sacrifice itself–like Christ, who had to die so that Christianity could emerge." 

Though I myself am no atheist, I do think there is a wisdom here nonetheless. I think lately, due to experiences of my own, I've been realizing more and more that God can be made into an idol too (we'll call it God™). That theism in the traditional sense can really just be the "other side of the coin" of atheism. That to propose God(™) as this thought-stopping capstone ending all thought, who "closes the system" by acting as the final unmoving anchoring point of meaning...can be extremely problematic, and that this sort of Absolutism easily devolves into fundamentalism and a certain type of totalitarianism. The Warrior God™ of All-Consuming Submission being often just the meme of ultimate oppression and suffocation.

And yet, I think, this is how many theists think of God and His function in their metaphysics. He is the Supreme Being or Transcendent Signifier, but in a way that implies that, basically, He is just one Being among all the others (albeit the highest one), one signifier among others (albeit the grounding one.) God then becomes this rigid sort of final monad or something like that.

However, I think this goes back to what I've said before about how in Eastern Christian theology, God is spoken of as "hyper-being" beyond Being. That is to say, God's essence is beyond all duality, all categories, beyond even the being/non-being duality. Beyond even the God/Not-God duality. This, I think, is Meister Eckhart's distinction between "God" and "the Godhead" (which is actually very Postmodern).

When I say that God(™) in this system can become an idol too, what I mean is that if we try to "essentialize" God as the "Being" part to the exclusion of the "non-Being" part, or even objectify Him as the "God" part as opposed to the "Not-God" part ("part" being a very imprecise term here!) then we are trying to contain Him and in the process make an idol. By confusing The Divinity for Divinity (in other words, confusing the hypostases for the ousia) we risk making an idol out of "The."

There are some creatures in Dr. Who known as the "Weeping Angels." They move around quickly and invisibly until they are observed, at which point they become "quantum locked" and stuck in stone form. This idea is based on the concept from quantum mechanics of super-imposed wave-functions. How mathematical models basically describe a universe that is probabilistic, not deterministic, and so which "version" of the wave-function actually "collapses" can ultimately only be defined as the one we observe (whether our observation "caused" it or not, depending on the interpretation). Shroedinger's Cat can be alive or dead, but our definitive observation "quantum locks" it in one state or the other as "real," our observation, our consciousness, being the only factor that differentiates the "actual" from the merely "potential" or "possible." But of course, God is "pure act," so who are we to exclude anything that God "might be but isn't" or anything like that?

Of course, God™ who can be an idol...is not simply different from "the real God." In fact, He is in some sense the Real God, but the Real God abstracted from and kept separate from the Unreal God (because divinity can't be "quantum locked" in one category or the other). So God™ is not merely some falsehood we must smash to get to the "real God." God™ is rather more like the mask that God (or Godhead) uses to appear to human beings or rather, perhaps, one that we projected onto Him in our weakness or finitude.

And yet, if we are to "get through" to Godhead, this mask God(™) must die. He(™) is (or can be) an idol that must be smashed, and also (as I discussed above) a sort of totalitarian oppression. He(™) must be dissolved like the God at the end of the Golden Compass books. Yes, Christianity must accept the death of this God(™), in fact that's the message all the crucifixes of the world seem to cry out. Of course, when I speak of "death" here, I don't mean atheism. Like I said, atheism and theism are just two sides of the same coin, and atheism (especially as popularly conceived) sets up its own idol in the form of simply a god-shaped Void. Rather, the "death" I'm talking about is (to go back to that Eastern theology) not simply replacing an image of God-Being with an image of God-Not-Being, but recognizing that God is "both and/or neither." I mean God(head) "breaking free" from that objectification into just one of the "quantum states," to escape that sort of determination and become something like "undeconstructability." (Caputo speaks of this in his "weak theology.")

To refer again to the quote I used in the post the other day: "the divine identity cannot be a straightforward sameness or self-equivalence," and yet I feel like God™ the idol is just that: God (or, rather, human concept of God) reduced to straight-forward self-equivalence, and all the rigidity that imposes on the system that "terminates" with Him™. However, what the modern world is realizing sociologically is something that Christians should have realized 2000 years ago: that God is dead. This was revealed to us on the Cross, but as that Williams/Von Balthasar quote makes clear, this could only be, could only effect salvation, effect that transformation of human consciousness if it was revealing something that was always inherent to God's essence: that He is not a straightforward self-equivalence, and that if we worship the God-Who-Is-God to the exclusion of the God-Who-Is-Not-God, we are locking Him in stone, like a Weeping Angel, and then He™ is an idol to be smashed. The modern world is no longer accepting this sort of "God as the keystone which locks the arch in place" in terms of organizing a hegemony of desire and truth in society...and maybe that's a very good thing, because that use of God makes Him into God™.

That God™ is a monster. I realized that in the past year but, unfortunately, was still under the impression that He™ is to be worshiped. This is not an unreasonable error, however. Because, as I said above, it's not as if this idol is "not really God." Like I said, He is the Real God, but the Real God objectified to the exclusion of the Unreal God. So our attitude here must be extremely nuanced and complex. We shouldn't hate the Real God, but to avoid idolization we also have to realize His Death.  

Maybe it's like the constitutional monarchy that keeps the symbols of hierarchy to represent the authority which is now realized democratically...and really always in actuality was anyway, inasmuch as popular acceptance/agreement was "secretly" the source of authority all along. (As opposed to a Revolutionary government which tries to found its authority, ultimately impossibly, on the very overthrowing of Authority itself).

With the rise of pluralism/secularism, we are realizing this sociologically now, I think, this Death of God(™). We are getting rid of totalizing ideological systems which enforce any God's place "upon the throne" with coercion (mentally/spiritually speaking). With this comes disenchantment, but also genuine freedom and love and grace. And yet, this is also something that I think will continue being a process in each life. Even with sociological progress, it is to be expected that most people are going to start out knowing God as simply self-equivalent; many would likely find the things I'm saying here impossibly subtle (and probably quite scandalous).

And like Osiris, His bones, the fragments of His broken body, lie all over the world, in every church, in every work of religious art, wherever the sacred is encountered even out in the profane in the world like that tantalizing "scent of the Beloved" that Von Balthasar describes the Bride smelling in the streets. These fragments are the "clues" that the kenotic God, in His self-emptying self-abnegation, leaves us to recognize that beyond the smashed idol-mask there is, in the very smashing into such shards, still Godhead.

Anyway, that all probably sounds like mystical rambling, but it's the best I can do right now to express these realizations...

Addendum: Pontifex Means Bridge-Builder; or, A Church of Seekers

This is just an addendum to my post of a couple days ago, fleshing out some of the specific implications of that the vision I presented there, and general random thoughts spun off from that. I'm really not intending to update this blog much anymore, but a month or so ago when I was in transition, I promised readers I would flesh out these thoughts regarding the evolution of my philosophy and attitudes (I'm also supposed to do a post on my new outlook for interpreting morality/virtue ethics, but I feel I have to be delicate with that one...) and perhaps it's most honest before I disappear entirely to show where my mind and soul are headed. But this post is going to be very scattered.

In terms of my thoughts about pluralism and inter-communion the other day, I had the idea that one major implication of this might be: letting the Ordinariate (for Anglicans) remain in communion with other Anglo-Catholic groups (ie, who aren't part of the Ordinariate or in communion with Rome) even while the Ordinariate itself remains in communion with Rome. The idea would basically be like the Eastern Catholics I mentioned in their dealings with local Orthodox churches. The Ordinariate Anglicans would accept all of Rome's dogmas, all her "essentials" personally, and so could be in communion with Rome. But I don't think it should be forced to see Rome's essentials for communion as essential for communion with themselves. So, for example, they submit to re-ordination and such so that they're meeting Rome's minimum definitions of sacramental validity, etc. But they could perhaps, among themselves, still recognize the ministry of Anglo-Catholic priests even who haven't come into communion with Rome. So they would be in communion with both, even though Rome and the Anglicans would not be "directly" in communion with each other.

So, like the Eastern Catholic churches to the Orthodox, the Ordinariate could serve as a sort of "bridge" to the Anglicans with the "overlapping horizons of communion" I discussed. Maybe Rome and the Anglicans aren't "friends" directly. But if they have a "mutual friend," then in a certain sense the system is still "open," the Christian community is still meaningfully unified in a very real sense. Isn't this what a bishop is supposed to do as a pontifex? To build bridges? And especially the Pope in his Ministry of Unity? If Rome can be in communion with the Ordinariate, who in turn is allowed to be in communion with other Anglo-Catholic groups, who in turn might be in communion with mainline Anglicanism, who in turn are in communion (I believe) with certain Lutheran groups...well, then the Christian community is still connected by these overlapping horizons of communion.

Anglicanism already does this, of course, with its "big tent." Liberal American Episcopalian and traditional African churches within the communion are basically diametrically opposed to each other, and yet both are in communion with the Church of England which tries to act as a mediator (and, possibly, could serve as a "mutual friend" even if those two later lost communion). I also think of the situation within Eastern Orthodoxy where, for example, the ROCOR was not in communion with Moscow for many years, and yet there were other Orthodox churches that they both were still in communion with, so the church as a whole was not ruptured. 

Within Catholicism, one might think of the spectrum on "traditionalist questions." A Liberal might consider an issue (let's say, "religious liberty") to be practically dogma. They don't consider the Vatican "heretical," because the Vatican does accept religious liberty. But the Vatican, in turn, can accept a group like the FSSP that has many members who don't believe in it, because neither thinks this question is "dogmatic" or "essential" but a matter of prudential judgment. The FSSP, in turn, may find alliance with some of the more moderate SSPXers, for example. These do see "religious liberty" as downright heresy, but as long as the FSSPers themselves don't hold it personally, they're fine in the SSPXer's eyes. A similar approach might be shown in the case of how certain Feeneyite groups were reconciled; they were allowed to keep their position on baptism as long as they recognized that the Vatican position was not heresy (who in turn recognized that their opinion wasn't either). Presumably, more radical groups that do think it's heresy (and are thus not in communion with Rome) might nevertheless accept the reconciled Feeneyites who do share their opinion (albeit, not holding it as essential) but who nevertheless have made their peace with Rome.

The only "issues" arises when some group becomes fundamentalist by trying to adopt a "recursive" policy something along the lines of "any contact with an unclean person makes you unclean." So, for example, some radical trad types not only think the Vatican is heretical for holding religious liberty, but think the FSSP is totally tainted as well for having any intercourse with the Vatican, and think any SSPXers who ever attend or look favorably on the FSSP to also be totally tainted because the "contagion" spreads like that (even though the SSPXers they're anathemizing like this ironically do agree that the Vatican's position is heresy!) 

Of course, excommunication never worked like this; even in the days of "excommunication vitandi," the excommunication imposed on the person who dared to have contact with a vitandi was not, itself, an excommunication vitandi, but a more minor form (tolerati) that did allow for contact with Christians (as you can imagine, if contact with a vitandi resulted in also becoming a vitandi, a sort of "creeping" excommunication would have become a major issue). So a vitandi could talk to a tolerati, who could in turn talk to Christians, so the "lines of communication" were still open in that way, even if the vitandi could not directly speak to Christians in good standing.

Though: I now think that "heresy" and "excommunication" and "orthodoxy" and "dogma" are all more useful as sociological/political categories than as theological ones...

Of course, implementing this vision would require a shift in policy in Rome's part away from fundamentalism. But a shift that I think would be rather minor given the state of things on the ground in many of the Eastern Catholic churches already vis a vis the Orthodox. Rome would merely need to say, "Churches in communion with Rome must meet Rome's minimum. But those churches, as long as they personally meet our minimum, can have lower minimums for communion with themselves." This would require empowering sui juris churches to decide their own status of communion, however, more like it is with the autcephalous churches among the Orthodox, however. Rome might be very frightened of doing this.

And yet, sometimes it feels like they already do. Although the CDF officially argued that the "anaphora of Addai and Mari" was valid, which was a rather scandalous decision in the West, I now think that maybe we should interpret that instruction more like a statement that: "The Chaldean Catholic Church must include the words of institution in order to meet Rome's minimum standards for validity and communion with us. However, they themselves are free to recognize as valid the anaphora as it stands, without those words, in the Assyrian church and to not make this a communion breaking issue among the Chaldeans, even though it is for communion with Rome directly." Subtle, I know. Most people thinking in terms of absolutism probably have trouble thinking according to this model. But I trust my readers are not "most people."

And I look at Taize. I now am very supportive of such ecumenical efforts. Efforts that seek not an ecumenism of "conversion to Catholicism" of Christians standing together even in our different horizons of truth, even in our irreconcilable differences. What if their was a community with a "continuum" or "spectrum" of chapels of different groups. Catholics, then the Ordinariate, then Anglo-Catholic, Mainline Anglican, Church of Scotland, Presbyterian, Reformed. Each group, each "chapel," would be able to keep communion with the one to its right and the one to its left, and so even though the Catholics and the Presbyterians would not share communion directly, the "chain of overlap" would keep the two connected nonetheless.

This works on the level of World Religions too, even. I mean, an atheist can accept an agnostic can accept some sort of deist can accept a pantheist can accept a neopagan can accept a Hindu can accept a Buddhists can accept a Taoist can accept a Confuscianism. And I tend to agree with Ricci that Confuscianism and Christianity are not mutually exclusive. And then from the more liberal Christians to Unitarians and Bahai to Islam and Judaism, etc,

This I think this is how we should envision the Church and the World, rather than as isolated "islands" of belief-systems. It is also how I think we should hold beliefs in our own head: not as a closed system but as an open system like this. Not that we don't believe our own truth is the Truth. We don't give up our horizons and our belief in truth, but we accept that everyone's horizons overlap in an open system. We still all believe someone is right and someone is wrong, but our truths are nevertheless not radically incommensurable, is my point, at least not when humanity is considered as a Whole.

Which once again reminds me of that Von Balthasar quote I used in my last post: "She enters into the world and becomes for the world one religion among others, one community among others, one doctrine and truth among others- just as Christ became one man among others, outwardly indistinguishable from them." We know that She is "the center of the bullseye" by faith, yes. But we must also recognized that, like in cosmology, there isn't really any "privileged perspective." From their own perspective, every planet is the "center" of the universe, so it's understandable that they would think of themselves as the center of the bullseye too. We know we "really" are by the eye of faith only. This should prevent all triumphalistic (and patently absurd, in the world of modern pluralism) claims that Catholicism is "obviously" true, or imputations of malice or ill-will to those who sincerely don't believe.

Some have suggested that the Church must, in fact, be torn up like Shel Sylverstein's "The Giving Tree" for the sake of the world. I like that image. Von Balthasar also talked about something like this in Razing the Bastions: "In this way the love of the Church has been moved out of her, tragically and utterly irremediably, often still recognizable in the pieces of her lying about in front of her doors. But the more they become dissolved in the world, the more unrecognizable they become. Finally, they will be concealed in the elements of the cosmos. What a strangely new meaning for the Bride Church take on those words, once the object of so much commentary, from the Song of Songs: curremus in odorem unguentorum tuorum, now that the invisible fragrences of the Beloved now are scattered in the most worldly parts of the world and suddenly accost the unperceiving Bride as she hastens through uncharted places after the invisible One. The extrapolated awareness effected through the felix culpa of the wounds inflicted has created an indissoluble solidarity with the separated brethren, and through them the world."

Basically, it would be the Church emptying herself, and "taking the form of a servant" to actively defend the "free market" on truth. And of course, that assumes there is a real truth everyone is seeking, and She believe She's it, ultimately. But it also implies allowing real competition among ideas without coercion or maintaining an artificially/force-sustained monopoly. In fact, it implies helping people in their own journey, wherever they are, without any sort of pressure or agenda. Blessed Mother Theresa got a lot of flack from certain trads and conservatives for it, but now I understand how right she was when she said, "“We never try to convert those who receive [aid from Missionaries of Charity] to Christianity but in our work we bear witness to the love of God’s presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this better men — simply better — we will be satisfied. It matters to the individual what church he belongs to. If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life — his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation.”

It is really only by defending this sort of open market of competing ideas, or by encouraging "seekers" wherever the Spirit leads them that we really are defending Truth and conscience on a more radical level. I don't think the 'decline' of religion is not leading inevitably to atheism. That's where the "progressive" narrative gets things wrong. Rather, it's like if Coke had a monopoly, and then suddenly competition was allowed. You'd see Coke's share shrink, and Pepsi's grow, yes of course. But that would not indicate the eventual triumph of a Pepsi monopoly in the end, as if one monopoly always replaces another. Rather, in a free market, an "equilibrium" would be reached with some Pepsi market-share and some Coke, dynamically fluctuating. Likewise, I think the rise of Atheism (alongside a million other spiritual systems) doesn't mean Christianity or religion will ever disappear, just that we'll all be in a market in flux. But it definitely doesn't mean any other system will ever get the monopoly again as if one universal Totalizing System is destined to be replaced by another. Rather it will be a state of dynamic pluralism (I hope) in this secular age. And while that might disenchant or disembed things, it may be a higher testament to conscience and truth, and the Church's "emptying herself" should be in accepting this and knowing that God is really with Her in the very weakness and poverty, instead of seeking the power of the monopoly of Christendom.

I think the wisest priests or rabbis say things like "How can we help you, here and now? Yes, our teachings are there in the books, for everyone to see. Consider them if you feel the inclination. But maybe I can help you figure out what you value and where would be the best place for you right now. Even if it isn't with us." People like stores that, when they don't have what you need, point you to another. Ironically, I think a lot more people would consider the Church if, instead of pushing her own agenda, she was also the "Church of Seekers" and totally didn't "insist upon Herself" or on any notion of Triumph for God other than the Triumph He chose for Himself: to die on a cross. Not that we'd give up our own beliefs, but that there would be evangelization would be entirely through love and not through argument or apologetics or proselytization. This is the "weak God" who is a persuasive call rather than a demanding claim.

This is something I very much respect in liberal protestant Christianity. And yes, it sort of "sacrifices itself" in the process, because it doesn't have as much cache, then, in terms of identity politics. But so what? I'd rather we spend ourselves to death helping people honestly seek and letting them spread their own wings spiritually and trusting that the Spirit is at work in their lives even in mysterious ways.

Pluralism, Communion, Open versus Closed (Fundamentalist) Systems, and the Dangers of the Latter

I've been thinking a lot lately about pluralism. Religious mainly, of course, but also in general. Specifically, I have been (in light of certain recent ideological evolutions of my own) grappling with the idea of how to reconcile pluralism with exclusive truth claims. This has always been an issue I've wrestled with, and at one point followed one sort of logic regarding the question to a very bad (fundamentalist) place. In a piece like this, I am trying in some measure to do intellectual penance for the damage of the past.

And yet the "paradox of tolerance" is true; if you adopt a system that is "tolerant of everything except intolerance" then that isn't really useful, since so many systems of belief in the world do make exclusive or intolerant truth claims, and expecting them to give those up or to adopt your relativism...is not really respecting them in their integrity. It just becomes a new dogmatism, a "dogmatism of non-dogmatism." You basically wind up saying, "I can be 'in communion with' [not necessarily in the ecclesiological sense] anyone...as long as they too are willing to be in communion with anyone."

This is sort of the Unitarian Universalist approach, and while I highly respect and sympathize with them...it's always also seemed sort of naive and wishy-washy. It doesn't really lead to peace, because it does become its own sort of exclusive claim excluding other exclusive claims, albeit as a negation, a Void. I once accused some brilliant partners in debate of replacing God with this Void, thus rendering their own religion or god (and everyone else's) something like merely a Patron Saint, but not the final transcendent Truth or Good (which role was taken, instead, by the claim of an absence of one). 

This critique of that sort of attempt at pluralism (however good-hearted it may be, and I do believe it is) still stands. A claim of "no metanarratives" can itself easily become a metanarrative, and often does. If you believe in pluralism, your own belief in pluralism would (without further qualification) seemingly just become one more idea standing alongside others in the Marketplace of Ideas and thus not really accomplish anything (as competition only makes sense between actual concrete competing visions; the "meta-idea of the competition itself" cannot really compete as a player if you imagine it as the stage). But if you try to require it as a sort of metabelief for everyone as a condition of competition, then that itself has become a non-pluralistic dogma and rigged the competition, since many people do not want or hold such a metabelief; if we all have to support the free market of ideas in order to participate in it, how is this market truly free? A pluralism that is truly pluralistic cannot without contradiction exclude the idea of its own negation or destruction (the American model of democracy understands this better than others, perhaps; "free speech" has to include calls to abolish free speech!)

On the surface, this seems a contradictory impossibility. Surely the one thing an idea cannot admit is its own negation? Surely the one truth-claim that even the most open of systems cannot admit...is the destruction, the closing, of that very system itself? And yet, in my heart of hearts, I knew there must be some way to square this circle. I didn't know how to put it into words, but I have become convinced that there must be some way to think outside the box and cut that Gordian knot by attacking the very premises. I had vague notions in my head that it must have something to do with the Eastern Christian idea of God as "hyper-being" (that is to say, beyond even the Being/Non-Being duality), and I knew (in my groping in the dark) that I saw inspiration (if imperfect) for such a model in the Anglican "big tent" approach to their communion and the way they've held people together in various controversies. I knew it would have something to do with Von Balthasar's idea (in Razing the Bastions, a work I now consider very important for myself) about the Church that "when she enters into the world and becomes for the world one religion among others, one community among others, one doctrine and truth among others- just as Christ became one man among others, outwardly indistinguishable from them- her truth comes into a communism with all the forms of worldly truth: with the experiential truth of all branches of knowledge, and with the wisdom-systems of the world which attempt conclusive statements about the being of the world and its truth."

And yet what does this concretely look like in our praxis and attitudes? Is it possible to hold to a pluralism without "intolerance of intolerance" (which is thus not truly tolerance) or without requiring (of ourselves or others) renouncing exclusive truth claims (which only results in the paradox of renouncing that very renunciation itself!) I now think it definitely is possible.

To answer the question of how we can do this coherently, we must probe first the question of what exactly is the essence of the "fundamentalism" that we rightly see as in opposition to the sort of openness we desire. What makes a system closed in this bad sense? As explained above, it can't be merely the fact that it makes exclusive truth claims, or else any attempt to not be fundamentalist will be self-defeating (and, besides containing their own sort of "dogmatism of non-dogmatism," such relativist systems usually come out very hippy-dippy and wishy-washy; ineffectual to accomplish anything with conviction or substance other than their own politically correct totalitarianism). 

But if there is nothing wrong in itself with proposing an exclusive truth claim, nor even with saying that you consider such a belief as essential for "ideological communion" with oneself...where can we locate the sort of "fundamentalism" that rightly concerns so many of us (especially readers of this blog) on the gut level when we read the rabid identity-politicking rhetoric over at Fr Z, which seems so eager for a new Inquisition to bring ideological purity to the community, or see the Vatican's authoritarianism becoming more strident about conforming? To many of us, there seems to be such a profound violence in those approaches on the spiritual and mental and emotional levels. But what characterizes this sort of violent belief from valid beliefs?

Now, it's one thing to say, "It's our job to proclaim this truth we believe we have" and to expect public toeing of that line from official representatives you've hired specifically to promote it, or from people claiming to operate under the banner of your authority. And, for better or worse, it is their right and prerogative (and perhaps even their duty in conscience) to say that certain things are essential for being in communion with them, if that is what they really believe. But I suppose the problem starts with the hierarchy identifying itself as the voice of "the Catholic Church" (as opposed to just the voice of themselves) and being apparently baffled when other people try to claim a Catholic identity. It's like they're saying, "We're Coca-Cola. If you want to sell other sodas, fine, but you can't claim to be Coke, you need to make your own brand."

But the Church is not a corporation. This is the tension between the Institutional Church and the Church as a whole which it sometimes seems like they still don't get even when they pay lip service to the abstract distinction. It is one thing to say you speak for yourselves (and for whomever recognizes you); it is quite another to claim to speak for a group. That doesn't mean it's impossible or wrong, especially when the group in question is by-definition the one that is in communion with yourself, but it's certainly different than speaking for yourself.  

It is, I think, this attempt to police the community identity by a subset that, more than anything, is so harmful. It's one thing to say, "This is what we believe is the truth, and we believe we speak for God" or to believe such claims. It's quite another to try to enforce a "closed" group identity when really the borders of any identity are permeable and necessarily transcend any sub-set or claim of authority within a group.

It's like, can you imagine if some people tried to set up a "High Council of Gays" (or any other identity) that claimed for itself the right to say who was really Gay or part of the Gay community (as opposed to just homosexual; if you understand the difference) and who wasn't based on whether they accepted certain philosophical premises or practices. It would be absurd. They might claim their philosophy was right, that they spoke for truth, even that they were deputized by the goddess Herself, and that if you wanted to be "in communion with" them specifically and attend their events or get the benefits of their group membership that you have to agree. But to try to claim they had a monopoly on the identity would just be ridiculous. Other homosexuals would likely continue identifying with those elements of Gay that they felt comfortable with, continue using the label, and continue socializing with other Gays. Some Gays in communion with the official Council would shun "heterodox" Gays, but others would be more tolerant or latitudinarian and say, "Even though I agree personally with the Gay High Council, I'm not going to say other people aren't Gay just because they don't" and so the boundaries of the community/identity would remain permeable or along a spectrum rather than closed.

In reality, I did recently see something like this happening regarding a debate I witnessed about a topic. One poster identified with a Conservative interpretation of a position. It was asked whether this was, in fact, acceptable for members of a certain school of thought. Some members of that school of a more moderate stripe said, "It's not what I believe, but yes it meets the minimum essentials." Other more radical types said, "No, it doesn't meet our 'orthodoxy' so it's not." However, ultimately I saw this meant the identity-boundary was permeable because the Radicals recognized the Moderates and the Moderates recognized the Conservative. Even though the Radicals didn't recognize the Conservative, the Moderates formed a "bridge" in terms of identity, which prevented a "closed loop" from forming. If A recognizes B and B recognizes C, then even if A doesn't recognize C, the identity or community remains "open" rather than "closed."

In general, that's how identity works. Identity in any group has three factors: self-identification, group recognition, and the "official" or "objective" criteria. But you only need two out of the three for identity to hold. So, for example, with Race. There is self-identification, group recognition, and then the "objective" feature like certain ancestry, skin tone, or physical features. But, you only need two of the three to make a credible claim of the identity. If someone recognizably black said they were Black, the fact that some (even many) Blacks tried to say "No, you're not" for whatever reason (maybe they don't like his politics) wouldn't invalidate his identification (and, besides, others in the group would likely accept it). Likewise, if someone recognizably Black tried to say, "I'm not Black!!" this would be a delusion if most Blacks said "Yes you are" (a similar delusional phenomenon occurs among the "SSA" homosexuals who try to disavow being "gay," I think). Finally, if someone wasn't recognizably Black on the "objective" level, but identified as such and the others recognized them as such...then this person, too, cannot have their identity questioned, because no one has any right or standing to question it at that point (since outsiders don't get to define the group they're not a part of; at most they could recognize the person as White, leading to the interesting phenomenon of someone being both Black and White by different criteria! Which also, by the way, proves that Race is a social construct and thus doesn't admit of mutual exclusivity.)

The same is true of "Christianity," which is something the hierarchy has already had to concede. Originally at the Reformation, the Catholic hierarchy tried to similarly limit "Christian" identity. Obedience to them was essential to Christianity, anyone who wasn't couldn't even be called Christian. Eventually this attempt to "contain" or monopolize the identity fell apart. First, because these groups didn't care what they said. They said, "We don't believe that obedience to you is essential to be 'Christian.' In fact, we claim to be the true Christians. We believe in Christ, after all." Second, because later in history, even some Catholics started to agree.

In other words, there were Catholics holding to a "closed orthodoxy" who wouldn't recognize anyone but those holding their beliefs as Christian, who saw those beliefs as essential. But there also came to be a "bridge" in the form of "openly orthodox" Catholics who personally met the "essentials" that the "closed orthodox" demanded, and thus had their recognition, but who also did not personally believe these things were in fact essentials, and so recognized the Protestants or whatever as also meeting the minimal definition of Christian.

So there was no "closed" mutual-recognition-society, because some of those recognized by the attempted-closed-circle in turn recognized people beyond it. Today, "Christian" identity is largely recognized as existing validly outside the visible church institution (even if it is still thought to "subsist in" that institution uniquely or exclusively by those who dictate the "official" criteria). But now, having conceded "Christian" cannot be "contained," it is simply "Catholic" which is the label the fundamentalists are trying to "close."  

The problem I see today is that there is a miscognition recarding the "two out of the three" criterion for validly claiming an identity. It seems fundamentalists (on both the conservative and liberal sides) have tried to collapse the "objective criteria" feature into the "group recognition" factor, leading to some bizarre outcomes. On the one hand, as I mentioned, this seems to have something to do with the strange phenomenon of homosexuals who think they can honestly deny that they are Gay just because they try to unilaterally refuse the identity/social construction into this category (even though they have the "objective" feature, which is the attractions, and are thus recognized by the rest of the Gay group as one of our own for that very reason). On the other hand, we see fundamentalist Christians and Catholics trying to "burn the bridges" and thus, if we're not careful, they might actually succeed at creating a "closed identity." (And I don't think it's odd that I keep using Gay as an example, given that, as in response to my "coming out" post, so many conservative Catholics seem to have a great desire to assert that Catholic identity and Gay identity are incompatible, mutually exclusive, a very demonstrative case I think.)

In other words, I think the essential problem is: they're trying to make dogma "recursive." It's not just that you have to believe their truth-claims to be in communion with them (which is fair enough, their prerogative), it's that you have to believe that you have to believe it. It's not enough to believe all their essentials personally, it seems now like they're trying to say that you also have to believe that they are, in fact, essentials. It's not just that you have to meet their essentials for communion with them anymore. It's that they've made it one of their essentials that to be in communion with them, it's not enough just to personally share their first-order essentials, but you also must believe (on the meta/second-order level) that holding those same things is, in turn, essential for communion with you too. Thus trying to "close off" the system or identity.
 
Of course, this sort of "recursion" becomes hard to defend/sustain epistemologically, and leads to an "infinite regress of dogmas." That the Immaculate Conception is true may be a dogma we must believe to be in communion with Rome. Fine. But is the fact that "the Immaculate Conception is a dogma," itself a dogma? And is the fact that the-dogma-that-"it-is-a-dogma" is a dogma...also itself a dogma? And is the fact that the-dogma-that-the-dogma-that-"it-is-a-dogma"-is-a-dogma is a dogma...also a dogma??  

Obviously this becomes unwieldy as an epistemology (this recursion becomes a problem with all "closed systems" and leads to a fundamentalism which is spiritual death; trust me, I've been there). And it isn't even enforced in the Church, thank god. For example, I've heard several Eastern Catholic hierarchs say something along the line of "We accept the doctrine of papal infallibility, we personally believe it, so we meet the standards of Rome's dogma and for communion with them, we meet their essentials. But what we nevertheless do not believe is that this belief of ours is a dogma for us. We believe it personally, yes, but we do not believe it is itself essential for communion with us."

And so some of these even consider themselves also in communion with some of the more moderate Orthodox who don't personally hold to papal infallibility, but who accept that it could be a valid "theologumenon." And these more moderate Orthodox (because they don't personally hold that idea) are in turn acceptable to those more radical Orthodox who believe holding papal infallibility is totally anathema even as a theologumenon. So there is a "continuum" of positions, with people or groups who personally hold to one group's essentials, but simultaneously won't say they're essential for them, thus acting as the "bridges" in a sort of "overlapping circles of communion." Openness is actually maintained, because A and B are in communion, B and C are in communion, C and D are in communion. Even though A and B are not directly in communion with D, and C is not directly in communion with A either. So the dichotomy of "open versus closed" communion sort of breaks down. There seems to be a phenomenon here of communion that is both limited to those sharing essentials (and thus "closed communion") that the communion is at the same time "open" in the sense that there is still a chain of "mutual friends" rather than strictly closed embattlements, based on the fact that people or groups can agree on a position (and thus be personally in communion) while also disagreeing on whether that position is essential (and thus have personally different standards for communion).

I think this model of "open webs of overlapping communion" based on the distinction between holding a teaching personally and holding a teaching as essential...is the only realistic way forward for Christian unity, and indeed human unity, as long as the "bridges" can be maintained, and as long as those of us who want to be bridge-builders maintain (for ourselves, at least) a concept of unity that remains "open" in this way rather than "closed." That doesn't mean we can't have our own exclusive truth claims or even standards for what is essential for ideological communion with us, our own "dogmas"...as long as we do not let dogma become "recursive" (ie, dogmatizing the fact that something is a dogma; saying that the fact that something is an essential for communion...is itself an essential for communion). I think "recursive dogma" is how the evil of "dogmatism" should be defined or understood.

This maintenance of bridges is, I think, really the only thing "ecumenism" can or should ever hope to be or accomplish. It may lead, in its own time, to full corporate communion with other groups (personally, I hope very much for full communion one day with the Orthodox, and think it could be possible to hammer out the differences there in a substantial sense). But with many other people or groups that might never occur this side of the eschaton. Yet if we can maintain a system where A recognizes B, and B recognizes C, even when A and C don't recognize each other, then I think this is great, and what Christian "open" unity is supposed to look like (and blessed are the "B"s in that formula!) We don't give up our own exclusive truth claims or even our "closed communion" towards people who don't meet our essentials, but we recognize that there may be mediating individuals or groups who meet our essentials and yet don't hold them as essentials and who can, thus, in turn, be in communion with others whom we ourselves can't be directly, and so keep the system as a whole interdependent and "open."

In a more general sense beyond just the ecclesiological, I think this is how Pluralism and Exclusive Truth Claims (as all truth claims of any substance ultimately are) can ultimately be reconciled without sacrificing either. It's fine to say something is essential to sharing our identity or ideology, to "being right," to make that sort of non-recursively exclusive truth-claim and even fight for it when we think it's important to do so. The problem comes when we say that it is not enough just to share that truth-claim, but additionally say that believing that sharing it is essential...is also an essential, in an attempt to create a "closed" system or community or identity of people who not only agree, but whose boundaries of "flexibility" are likewise rigidly identical. That becomes a "recursive" system closed in on itself, a hot-house. And that's very dangerous and unchristian and makes "in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity" impossible.

The fundamentalists do not like this idea of "open unity," of course, they'd totally reject it and continue trying to build their closed systems and excommunicating anyone who doesn't accept their "recursive" dogmatism. And that's fine, that's the beauty of this approach and why I feel it "squares the circle" and eliminates the contradictions laid out at the beginning of this post. For, lo and behold, I don't consider this sort of openness "essential" for ideological communion with me (though I personally hold it)! So (ala Edwin Markham) while they may draw a circle to shut me out, I draw one to take them in, and the system as a whole (even in spite of their attempt at self-enclosure or division of the world into 'us' and 'them') remains open for me by refusing to "return in kind" the division or exclusion! I can't force them to recognize me (as being in essential agreement with them, or as being part of their group) but they can't force me to not recognize them either (This is sort of how the Catholics currently treat the Orthodox: we respect the fact that their communion is closed to us, but officially make our communion open to them; as there's no reason why it needs to be a two-way street.)

Isn't this what Christ teaches us on the Cross? That if our system, can, in fact, accept its own negation as part of that very system, that this is ultimately the power of Resurrection? I'll close with a quote by Rowan Williams (whom I've recently gained immense respect for) that I've shared before, I think, where he's talking about Von Balthasar's theology of Holy Saturday, which I think illustrates this vision of things nicely (rooted, as I hinted at in the beginning of this post, in God being beyond all dualities, even the God/Not-God duality):

God must be such as to make it possible for divine life to live in the heart of its own opposite, for divine life to be victorious simply by ‘sustaining’ itself in hell. But this directs us clearly to the conclusion that the divine identity cannot be a straightforward sameness or self-equivalence. God’s freedom to be God in the centre of what is not God (creation, suffering, hell) must not be grounded in an abstract liberty of the divine will (such a contentless liberty would only divide the divine will from any coherent account of divine consistency and thus personal dependability), but in the character of God’s life. If God can be revealed in the cross, if God can be actively God in hell, God is God in or even as what is other than God (a dead man, a lost soul). Yet that otherness must itself be intrinsic to God, not a self-alienation. If we are serious in regarding God as intrinsically loving, this otherness must be something to do with divine love. Once again, we cannot think of God’s presence in the otherness of death and hell as if God initially lacked something which could be developed only through the process of Jesus’ experience [...] 

But if the otherness within God is true otherness and if it is in no way conditioned from beyond, then it can only be imagined as the action of love and freedom; and an act of love and freedom that causes real otherness to subsist can in turn only be imagined as a self-emptying, a kenosis. Balthasar several times draws on the theological writings of the great Russian thinker Sergii Bulgakov for this language of an eternal kenosis in the life of God which itself then makes possible the kenosis involved in creation: God the Father pours out his divine life without remainder in the Son; his identity is constituted in this act of giving away, which Bulgakov dramatically describes as ‘self-devastation‘ and Balthasar as a ‘divine godlessness’: "In the Father’s love there is an absolute renunciation of any possibility of God being for himself alone, a letting-go of the divine being, and in this sense a (divine) godlessness (a godlessness of love, of course, which cannot be in any way confused with the godlessness found within  this world, although it is also, transcendentally, the ground of the possibility of this worldly godlessness)."

It's Easy If You Try...

Collect and Stational Churches

This is a chart I was sent of the traditional stational churches of Lent (in Latin, but it's easy enough to figure out the familiar Italian names to which they correspond). The list of station churches is easy to find anywhere (and some alterations or additions to this traditional set have been made over the years too).

What is much more interesting is that this chart also gives the ecclesiae collectae where the procession would gather before heading to the stational church on the Lenten ferias (the Sundays would not have had a procession). I have been looking for that information for a long time! (Though it looks like, after I made this post, various wikis were updated with this information!)

As for the stations kept on Ember Days, in Advent, and during Easter, I don't think they generally had collectae except that Schuster notes collect churches for the Ember Wednesday and Friday of Advent (but not the Saturday), which are merely the same as those of the Ember Wednesday and Friday of Lent, but apart from that, no others.

feria iv Cinerum	Collecta ad  S. Anastasiam	Statio ad S. Sabinam
v	Collecta ad S. Nicolaum in Carcere	Statio ad S. Georgium
vj	Collecta ad S. Luciam in Septizonio [1]	Statio ad Ss. Joannem et Paulum
sabbato	Collecta ad  S. Laurentium in Lucina	Statio ad  S. Tryphonem [2]

Dñca I in XLma	Statio ad S. Joannem in Laterano
ij	Collecta ad Ss. Cosmam et Damianum	Statio ad Vincula  S. Petri
iij	Collecta ad S. Nicolaum in Carcere	Statio ad S. Anastasiam
iv	Collecta ad Vincula  S. Petri	Statio ad S. Mariam Majorem
v	Collecta ad S. Agatham in Monasterio	Statio ad S. Laurentium in Panisperna
vj	Collecta ad S. Marcum	Statio ad XII Apostolos
sabbato	Collecta ad S. Mariam in Transpontina	Statio ad S. Petrum

Dñca II in XLma	Statio ad S. Mariam in Domnica
ij	Collecta ad Ss. Cosmam et Damianum	Statio ad S. Clementem
iij	non habetur collecta	Statio ad S. Balbinam
iv	Collecta ad S. Georgium	Statio ad S. Cæciliam
v	Collecta ad  S. Chrysogonum	Statio ad S. Mariam trans Tiberim
vj	Collecta ad S. Agatham in Monasterio [3]	Statio ad S. Vitalem
sabbato	Collecta ad  S. Clementem	Statio ad Ss. Marcellinum et Petrum

Dñca III in XLma	Statio ad S. Laurentium extra Muros
ij	Collecta ad  S. Hadrianum [4]	Statio ad S. Marcum
iij	Collecta ad Ss. Sergium et Bacchum [5]	Statio ad  S. Pudentianam.
iv	Collecta ad S. Balbinam	Statio ad S. Xystum
v	Collecta ad S. Marcum	Statio ad Ss. Cosmam et Damianum
vj	Collecta ad S. Mariam ad Martyres	Statio ad S. Laurentium in Lucina
sabbato	Collecta ad S. Vitalem	Statio ad S. Susannam

Dñca IV in XLma	Statio ad S. Crucem in Jerusalem
ij	Collecta ad  S. Stephanum in Monte Cælio	Statio ad Ss. Quattuor Coronatos
iij	Collecta ad monasterium S. Mariæ domnæ Rosæ [6]	Statio ad S. Laurentium in Damaso
iv	Collecta ad S. Mennam[7]	Statio ad S. Paulum
v	Collecta ad Ss. Quiricum et Julitta	Statio ad Ss. Silvestrum et Martinum
vj	Collecta ad S. Vitum	Statio ad S. Eusebium
sabbato	Collecta ad S. Angelum in piscibus	Statio ad S. Nicolaum in Carcere

Dñca Passionis	Statio ad S. Petrum
ij	Collecta ad  S. Georgium	Statio ad  S. Chrysogonum
iij	non habetur collecta	Statio ad S. Cyriacum [8]
iv	Collecta ad S. Marcum	Statio ad S. Marcellum
v	Collecta ad S. Mariam in via Lata	Statio ad S. Apollinarem
vj	Collecta ad Ss. Joannem et Paulum	Statio ad S. Stephanum in Monte Cælio
sabbato	Collecta ad  S. Petrum [9]	Statio ad S. Joannem ante Portam Latinam

Dñca Palmarum	Collecta ad  S. Silvestrem in Laterano [10]	Statio ad S. Joannem
ij	Collecta ad  S. Balbinam	Statio ad  S. Praxedem
iij	Collecta ad S. Mariam in Porticu	Statio ad S. Priscam
iv	Collecta ad Vincula  S. Petri [11]	Statio ad S. Mariam Majorem
feria v in Cœna	Statio ad S. Joannem in Laterano
feria vj in Parasceve	Statio ad S. Crucem in Jerusalem
sabbato sancto	Statio ad S. Joannem in Laterano

Footnotes:

[1]  Hæc ecclesia sub Sixto Papa V destructa est.
[2]  Hæc ecclesia sub Clemente Papa VIII destructa est, et Statio ad S. Augustinum translata.
[3]  Hæc ecclesia recentius S. Agatha Gothorum nominatur.
[4]  Hæc ecclesia in curia Senatus Romani exstabat, recentius destructa.
[5]  Hæc ecclesia in Foro Romano exstabat prope arcum Severi, recentius destructa.
[6]  Prope S. Catharinam de Funariis
[7]  Hæc ecclesia destructa est; exstabat ad primum milliarium viæ Ostiensis
[8]  Hæc ecclesia sub Innocente Papa X destructa est, et Statio ad S. Mariam in via Lata, ubi Martyris reliquiæ servantur, ab Alexandro VII translata.
[9]  “Ubi Dominus Papa facit eleemosynam,” non erat collecta unde fieret processio ad Stationem.
[10]  Hoc oratorium sub Sixto Papa V destructum est.  Quando Papa Dñcam Palmarum ad S. Petrum celebrabat, collecta ad benedictionem ramorum fiebat ad S. Mariam in Turri, in porticu majore.
[11]  Hodie ante Missam fiebat homilia a dño Papa ad S. Joannem in Laterano.