L’Osservatore Romano did not like Avatar, some suspected due to alleged pantheism. But the philosophy therein was not really pantheism, but can be more accurately described as panentheism (as my friend Dr George Zachariah of the Mar Thoma Church taught): finding God in everything; finding the image of the divine in everyone. I would have to struggle if I had to deny this as Christian.

[...] Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries [...]

– Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The scene was indicative, where the scientist Dr Grace Augustine presented her results about the synaptic nature of the biosphere on the planet Pandora, and the businessman Parker Selfridge dismissed her thus: ‘what have you been smoking!’ Science is only accepted when it conveniently serves the imperial–rationalist exploitation: at all other times it is dismissed. As Dr Lawson pointed out (and echoed by the Reverend Dick Wolff), this has been going on in the climate-change debate: ‘If you are a committed free market fundamentalist, you will never accept the climate change facts, as they are incompatible with your ideology.’

I will be going to the Conference of the Green Party of England and Wales this Saturday; expecting Green hugs.

I wonder if His Holiness consults his successor Cardinal Levada in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith before making such comments? And also Cardinal Kasper of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, who will have to do the damage control afterwards?

The Conference of the Methodist Church (in Blackpool) and the General Synod of the Church of England (in York) also met in the same week. This year, we all met in different cities in the north of England. When will we all meet together?

In the same week, I was prompted to read Charta Œcumenica signed in 2001 by Cardinal Vlk, president of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences and Metropolitan Jérémie, president of the Conference of European Churches.

Then on Thursday of the same week, our minister Susan Durber presented to Churches Together in Central Oxford the document The Nature and Mission of the Church, from the Faith and Order Standing Commission (of which she is a member) at the World Council of Churches.

In the same week, I was also prompted to read the revised Directory on Mixed Marriages promulgated by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (1990), which referred to the motu proprio Matrimonia mixta. Who is/are the “bishop/s” in the “domestic church”? (See, for example, Lumen Gentium at 11.)

Ut unum sint!

Recently, this term is again in the news. Derek Wall, a Principal Speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales, and a practicing Zen Buddhist, recently said that the Pope must show solidarity with the poor, with reference to the Vatican’s notification on the works of El Salvadorian theologian Jon Sobrino.

Yesterday, our minister Susan Durber preached at Saint Columba’s saying:

Whatever you say about Jesus – it’s clear that he believed that God blesses the poor, that the rich have some hard thinking to do, and that those who are poor have plenty to teach the rest of the world about what it means to know God. There’s a theologian from Latin America called Jon Sobrino who says, ‘When the church has taken the poor seriously it has then become truly apostolic.’ If the faith the apostles’ shared was founded on Jesus’ teaching then it would have to be a faith that took the poor seriously. It’s often said in the church in Latin America – that ‘the poor evangelise us’ – and of course it makes me wonder why the ‘us’ of the church are not themselves ‘the poor’ but I think I know what they mean. The Jesus we know from the New Testament was one who said over and over again, in so many different ways, that the poor often know the truth about the real fundamentals of life and the rich are so often deceived. This is a real challenge to us of course who, mostly if not all, by definition, live the life of the rich.

A few dozen members of the Catholic Worker movement staged a protest in front of the University of Notre Dame’s administration building today, saying the university’s ROTC program contradicts Catholic teaching.

“It saddens us that one of the preeminent universities is training warriors,” said the Rev. Ben Jimenez, a Catholic priest from Cleveland.

An appropriate quotation from the pope (Feb 18, 2007):

Why does Jesus ask us to love our very enemies, that is, ask a love that exceeds human capacities? What is certain is that Christ’s proposal is realistic, because it takes into account that in the world there is too much violence, too much injustice, and that this situation cannot be overcome without positing more love, more kindness. This “more” comes from God: It is his mercy that has become flesh in Jesus and that alone can redress the balance of the world from evil to good, beginning from that small and decisive “world” which is man’s heart.

This page of the Gospel is rightly considered the “magna carta” of Christian nonviolence; it does not consist in surrendering to evil — as claims a false interpretation of “turn the other cheek” (Luke 6:29) — but in responding to evil with good. (Romans 12:17-21), and thus breaking the chain of injustice. It is thus understood that nonviolence, for Christians, is not mere tactical behavior but a person’s way of being, the attitude of one who is convinced of God’s love and power, who is not afraid to confront evil with the weapons of love and truth alone. Loving the enemy is the nucleus of the “Christian revolution,” a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power. The revolution of love, a love that does not base itself definitively in human resources, but in the gift of God, that is obtained only and unreservedly in his merciful goodness. Herein lies the novelty of the Gospel, which changes the world without making noise. Herein lies the heroism of the “little ones,” who believe in the love of God and spread it even at the cost of life.

Emphasis added.

See also: Father Michael Bafaro’s address to the Worcester March 24 antiwar rally.

The close connection between these two ecologies [the “human” and the “social”] can be understood from the increasingly serious problem of energy supplies. In recent years, new nations have entered enthusiastically into industrial production, thereby increasing their energy needs. This has led to an unprecedented race for available resources. Meanwhile, some parts of the planet remain backward and development is effectively blocked, partly because of the rise in energy prices. What will happen to those peoples? What kind of development or non-development will be imposed on them by the scarcity of energy supplies? What injustices and conflicts will be provoked by the race for energy sources? And what will be the reaction of those who are excluded from this race? These are questions that show how respect for nature is closely linked to the need to establish, between individuals and between nations, relationships that are attentive to the dignity of the person and capable of satisfying his or her authentic needs. The destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use, and the violent hoarding of the earth’s resources cause grievances, conflicts and wars, precisely because they are the consequences of an inhumane concept of development. Indeed, if development were limited to the technical-economic aspect, obscuring the moral-religious dimension, it would not be an integral human development, but a one-sided distortion which would end up by unleashing man’s destructive capacities.

Our brother HAH Bartholomew I, the “Green Patriarch”, has a page “Ecological Activities” on his website. During a recent meeting of officers of the World Council of Churches, he “referred to the ecological initiatives and activities of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and to his recent trip to Brazil within the framework of the 6th International Inter-religious Ecological Symposium, which had as its theme the protection of the Amazon river”.

Here is the official website of the recent historic meeting of the two brothers mentioned above.

But I wanted to point you to Mike Griffin’s comments on the speech, and especially the pope’s treatment of violence:

George Weigel and Richard John Neuhaus seem increasingly perplexed by the growing pacifism of the Holy See. First they tried to dismiss John Paul the Great as a kindly old man who, of course, wants peace but really should stick to religion and let the U.S. exercise “prudential” warcraft. But now comes along Benedict, the one who in a May 2, 2003 Zenit interview said that “we should be asking whether it is still licit to speak of the very existence of a ‘just war’.”

And again in last week’s Regensburg speech, the pope rejects the very basis for violence. It is not rational. One way of putting the pope’s point is that the authentic commands of God are reasonable, even if faith is needed to penetrate their depths. And, of course, to see what the Father commands, we turn to the Son who shows us the face of the Father. In that turn, to Jesus Christ, we have full clarity. Christ offers a way of nonviolent, sacrificial love of friends and enemies. Period. No wiggle room for building nukes—whether it is Muslim Iran or Christian America-—or using violence to further principles.

Andrew Sullivan:

One thing you can say about Jesus: he didn’t kill anyone, however bloodthirsty his subsequent followers might have been.