Posted on 10/14/2020 12:07:37 PM PDT by ebb tide
A few days after its publication, the encyclical “Fratelli tutti” has already been shelved, given the absence in it of the slightest hint of innovation in comparison with the previous and well-known addresses of Pope Francis on the same issues.
But what if precisely this rambling Franciscan homily on "fraternity" were to give birth to a "different Christianity,” in which "Jesus were nothing but a man?”
This is the very serious "dilemma" in which the philosopher Salvatore Natoli sees the Church plunged today, with the pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
Natoli writes and argues this in a book by a variety of commentators on “Fratelli tutti,” edited by the bishop and theologian Bruno Forte, released today in Rome and Italy.
The scholars called to comment on the encyclical are of the first order in their respective fields: the biblical scholar Piero Stefani, the Hebraist Massimo Giuliani, the Islamologist Massimo Campanini, the historian of Christianity Roberto Rusconi, the medievalist Chiara Frugoni, the historian of education Fulvio De Giorgi, the epistemologist Mauro Ceruti, the pedagogist Pier Cesare Rivoltella, the poet and writer Arnoldo Mosca Mondadori.
Natoli is one of the leading Italian philosophers. He declares himself a nonbeliever, but his training and interests have always focused his attention on the border between faith and reason, bent on what is happening in the Catholic Church.
In December of 2009, when in Rome the committee for the “cultural project” of the Italian Church, headed by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, organized an impressive international conference on the crucial theme: “God today. With him or without him changes everything,” Natoli was one of the three philosophers invited to speak, together with the German Robert Spaemann and the Englishman Roger Scruton.
That conference was not a muster of juxtaposed opinions, but aimed straight at what for then-pope Benedict XVI was the “overriding priority” more than ever before, at a time "when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel.”
That is, the priority - as the pope had written that same year in his March 10 letter to the bishops - “of making God present in this world and giving men access to God. Not to any sort of god, but to that God who spoke on Sinai, to that God whose face we recognize in love driven to the very end, in Jesus crucified and risen.”
There is no trace of this dramatic urgency in the 130 pages of “Fratelli tutti.”
But let’s leave the judgment to the philosopher Natoli, in this eruptive excerpt from his commentary on the encyclical.
*
"WHAT IF JESUS WERE NOTHING BUT A MAN?"
by Salvatore Natoli
Modernity has strenuously debated the existence of God; just think of the evaluation of the proofs of God’s existence from Descartes to Kant: can it be demonstrated, can it not be demonstrated? Well, the conflict over the existence of God clearly demonstrated that God was the central question of that culture, both for the deniers and for those who upheld him. It was the dominant theme, one could not be silent about it.
But at a certain point God vanished, he no longer constituted a problem because he was no longer seen as necessary. Today, reasoning about the existence of God is a problem that nobody has, not even Christians. What characterizes Christianity more and more is the dimension of “caritas,” and less and less that of Transcendence. “Fratelli tutti,” it appears to me, demonstrates this at every turn. And this is a great dilemma within Christianity, which Pope Francis presents “in actu exercito.” Transcendence is not denied, but is increasingly ignored. There is no need for explicit denial if the matter becomes irrelevant.
"Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum" is a statement - taken from the Roman Missal - ever more marginal in the Christian vocabulary. Advancing in the company of men - an expression that summarizes “Fratelli tutti” (cf. no. 113) - has always been present, but was simply a step toward a much more radical outcome: definitive redemption from suffering and death. One dimension supported the other.
But today we can see a singular shift: Christianity is increasingly and simply turning into “Christus caritas.” Isn't this the Christ of “Fratelli tutti”? A Christ who not by chance - see paragraphs. 1-2 and 286 - has the face of Francis of Assisi, the Christian saint who speaks most to believers of other religions and to nonbelievers.
Is this move - I ask Christians - reversible or irreversible? What if Francis - I dare to conjecture - were the last pope of the Roman Catholic tradition, and a different Christianity were being born? A Christianity that has justice and mercy at its center, and less and less the resurrection of the flesh. Fellowship in suffering is not the same thing as ultimate deliverance from evil. The Christian promise was: “there will be no more pain or death, there will be no more evil”; while now Christianity seems to assume that suffering will always accompany men and that being Christian means supporting one another. I emphasize this aspect of the encyclical because to me it seems entirely in keeping with the nobler aims of secular modernity, albeit in terms of altruism and solidarity and without any reference to a definitive redemption, otherwise known as “salvation.” [...]
I do not know how much importance Christians still attach to faith in the advent of a world without pain and death, and moreover - to me this seemed decisive - in a settling of the score by which men will be compensated for all pain suffered. But I say more: how much do they still believe in a blessed eternity, in an eternal present where there will be nothing more to wait for, but the past will be completely redeemed? [...]
In any case, those who are Christians care a great deal about "Christus caritas.” “Ubi caritas et amor, ibi Deus est. Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor”(again from the Roman Missal): this is all to the good for men. What if Christ were by no means God incarnate but instead the incarnation represented the beginning of the death of God? What if Jesus were nothing but a man who nonetheless showed men that only in their mutual self-giving do they have the possibility of becoming “gods,” albeit in the manner of Spinoza: "homo homini Deus"? No longer, therefore, “you come down from the stars,” but rather "supporting one another" in order to dwell happily on the earth.
The promise of a definitive liberation from pain and death may be only a myth, but in any case it is not in the power of those whom the Greeks called “mortals.” Mutual aid, on the contrary, is in men’s power and Christianity, recognized and adopted in the form of the good Samaritan, can truly make us fully human. If this is the case, as Benedetto Croce would say we cannot help but call ourselves Christians. This is a dilemma that I as a nonbeliever pose to believers, to Catholics.
In fact, as a nonbeliever, I am in perfect agreement, word for word, with what the encyclical says in the second chapter, commenting on the parable of the good Samaritan. This is what we need to be doing! From this point of view, Jesus expresses something men are able to do. But rising from the dead is something only God can do, supposing there is one.
————
(sm) "What if Francis were the last pope of the Roman Catholic tradition, and a different Christianity were being born?" This question from the philosopher Salvatore Natoli coincides with the one that the historian Roberto Pertici set as the title of his important contribution on Settimo Cielo:
> The End of “Roman Catholicism”?
The philosopher and the historian, from their respective corners of observation, have grasped in the pontificate of Francis the beginning of the same momentous pivot. A convergence not to be underestimated.
.
Ping
Then that ‘Christianity’ is dead, because Christianity hinges on the Resurrection.
So if the alternatives are "Be Christian and almost certainly go to Hell" or "Don't be Christian and hope to Hell there is no Hell" then I can see why so many are choosing the latter.
Roman Catholicism may die, but Christianity will live on!
The early Church became the Roman Empire II and has struggled with its dual identity as a pastoral faith and a rich, authoritarian empire for almost 2000 years. Popes have been worldly or saintly and now, with Red Francis at the helm, it lurches radically leftward, concerned less about the Kingdom of Heaven and more about transforming the World into a heaven on Earth.
Now, the Church becomes just another Rainbow gathering. Worship of Gaia, the destruction of individual liberty and the establishment of a One World Government is the path ahead and the destination.
It is doomed to failure.
Never. Jesus Christ said so.
You are correct. I shouldn’t allow my pessimism, disappointment and anger make me forget that.
Despair is a sin; hope is a virtue.
I am a sinner.
We all are.
And since it is being asked if Jesus were but a man, they can all be brothers together - in hell.
If there is no Fatherhood of God, then there can be no brotherhood of men.
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