Richard Rohr - Trinity Church Wall Street

good evening everyone my name is Philip Jackson I'm the vicar here at Trinity Wall Street on behalf of dr. bill love for our rector and the vestry and the congregational council I've been asked to introduce our speaker tonight our guest speaker father Richard Rohr ladies and gentlemen father Richard Rohr Thank You Phil he promised me he'd make it short and he did thank you it's so embarrassing when they go on and on and you all know it's only half true so I get to talk on a subject that really is quite easy to talk on the title we took from a conference we had in Albuquerque last September called the francis factor and that's how in the first publications it said part two or something i don't know this isn't going to be part two it's gonna be part one I think but there I was trying to put together the spiritual genius of Francis of Assisi with the spiritual genius of Pope Francis and so the francis factor was referring of course to both of them I think tonight I'd like to largely concentrate on Pope Francis because quite honestly my admiration of him increases almost day-by-day maybe you heard some of the commentators this was some months ago I think it was on CNN and one commentator said I don't know anybody in all my years of journalism that says something quotable every day and the other one looks at that's true you know every day now they're putting out his his daily homilies from the little masses he has there in Vatican City in this small chapel and even those there's there's no cliches there's no you know I think we all got used to bishops and priests saying predictable things he doesn't he's not predictable at all and of course that's scaring an awful lot of folks but I gave one talk recently where I just asked the question can a Pope also be a prophet and I think that's what we're dealing with I really think he has and if you want to ask me afterwards I fully mean by that year you're free to I think he has the prophetic charism and the prophetic charism is the ability to criticize positively from the inside huh so the Jewish prophets were still Jewish they didn't reject their Jewish religion but they critiqued it in a way that few others were allowed to critique because you can only fittingly criticize anything from the inside it's too easy to throw rocks from the outside and I think that's in some ways why I've gotten away with criticizing Catholicism because if I can put it this way I sort of paid my dues to Catholicism and once they know that you you're talking about the inner experience of the organization or the institution you've sort of earned the right to speak and that increases the older you get this great gift of seniority which Pope Francis certainly enjoys too helps an awful lot it's now generally agreed that when Pope Benedict was elected that Francis was the second in the running and I don't know if it was second vote or third vote I don't know how many there were but he sent word to his own delegation if you want to call it that switch to Benedict I don't need to be Pope and that's precisely what you want in a pope someone who doesn't need to be Pope I think that's what you need in any spiritual leader they don't want the role too much or too bad what I'd like to do is give just a little bit of history that shows his very election was was so unpredictable and unexpected some of you were perhaps familiar with this quote from the English poet William Wordsworth and he's reflecting back in the mid-1800s on the French Revolution in 1789 when he was a young I guess 20 year old boy and this is the quote it's in a poem I can't remember the name of the poem for those of us who were strong in love bliss was it in that dawn to be alive bliss was it in that dawn to be alive but the to be young was very heaven to be young in a time when the world is opening up now those of you of my generation I'm about to turn 73 I maybe we romanticize it too much but that was the 1960s to be young was pure heaven it was like everything was opening up we were allowed to talk about the war like country we had become and we weren't allowed to think that way we were allowed to name that we had become a racist society and you know we happily jumped on board with the civil rights movement and the war against poverty was like things that in the 1950s were totally hidden in the shadow unspeakable were suddenly speakable by the mid to late 60s well the reason I begin with out is I believe that's how we Catholics felt many of us probably not all I'm sure in the mid-1960s when we had this magnificent event called the Second Vatican Council I don't care what denomination you're from if you would go to a bookstore tonight and buy the documents of the Second Vatican Council you would you would say who wrote these this sounds so contemporary this sounds so enlightened so aware so ecumenical so it wasn't just beating the Catholic drum but it was beating the Catholic drum with a little C which you Episcopalians understand and 50 years later those documents still stand any good theologian would be proud to own them as very good statements on the various aspects of Christianity so I enjoyed that pure heaven for a number of years and probably it's the only reason I was able to start the New Jerusalem community in Cincinnati and my early talks were put out on cassette tapes and they used to introduce me as the cassette priest for years I was called the cassette priest but I wouldn't have gotten away with that ten years earlier or 10 years later because even though Vatican 2 was this magnificent opening on to the whole world not just the other Christian denominations but the other religions of the world whenever you have something like the French Revolution whenever freedom is exalted certain as the dawn is Napoleon do you understand something is going to come and push back it's the story of history for those who are at all historians humanity can't handle very much freedom and I think it's no secret I'm not trying to be cruel or unfair but the Magnificent documents of vatican ii and the pope who was still in at that time Paul the sixth we tried to hold it as best he could the immense rebellion that said in the next two popes without any doubt pulled back pulled back pulled back again overly centralized all the decisions in Rome on kind of a new kind of obsession with verbal orthodoxy and liturgical orthodoxy sometimes I'm amazed that I wasn't kicked out but I was fortunate they all had the protection of the Franciscans and that makes sense to let me talk a little bit about that if you're not raised in the Catholic Church there might be a few things that would never have occurred to you and one of them is that the reason this massive institution has survived is because in fact it had a lot of exhaust valves and those exhaust valves were the religious orders Abbot's of benedict and monasteries have the same authority as a bishop even though they weren't bishops provincials are our superiors of sisters communities and friars communities they are their equals to bishops but there's a big difference ours are elected they're not appointed sounds like the episcopal church to some degree yeah well that changes everything in the 70s I was still allowed to give the early seventies retreats to bishops and the provincials and all and I wasn't considered so scary or threatening but already by the early 80s those invitations began to stop because people felt rightly or wrongly I wasn't speaking the party line and the trouble is the party line became more and more what's the word narrow in house language it was all in house language as we circled the wagons around ourselves one of the wonderful quotes that Pope Francis just gave us a few weeks ago when he was addressing the Italian bishops deeply challenging them to change he said this is not just an era of change it's a change of era he is immensely aware that what is happening in the world is larger than life and if the globalization of knowledge the globalization of communications isn't going to change us it already is changing us probably to a degree that we ourselves do not realize where it's going to lead when it comes down to us we cannot have ignorant of one another we cannot believe the myths that maybe you believed about us or we believed about you even though discs of aliens were always our first cousins we we come to your services and we think it looks Catholic to me you know you wonder why we created such distinctions but uh someone said oh I think I said this here Pope Francis is the spiritual equivalent of the falling of the Berlin Wall you know I that's not an exaggeration I don't think you know he's changed the conversation for people who are listening to the conversation The Economist which I think it's a more or less conservative magazine I don't know said calls Pope Francis a turnaround CEO of the oldest and most embedded institution in Western civilization a turnaround CEO of the oldest and most embedded institution in Western civilization in another place I called him a one-man Vatican too so we had Vatican 2 then we pulled back on it for 25 years while not admitting we were pulling back on it sort of like politicians - you say no I'm not but you clearly are but the shadow is not owned well we weren't owning our shadow very well through the 80s and 90s and it's almost as if I'm not saying God caused the pedophilia scandal but it was made to order to Humble the arrogance of our church it was made to order - and not just humble the church as a whole but particularly the clericalism the clerical culture that so many of the bishops and priests we lived inside of but you've got to know and I'm sure you do know because this was said in many magazines that when Pope Francis Jesuit took the name Francis I can remember watching a st. Peter's Square that night and people saying oh he means st. Francis Xavier he's a Jesuit he certainly means st. Francis Xavier and then when he was I says no no I mean Francis of the season now why had no one ever taken the name Francis of Assisi because he's a anti-establishment saint so that's why we have this amazing admixture of the ultimate establishment figure the Pope with Francis who stayed outside the systems of power in every way that he could he would not even accept ordination a lot of Catholics assume Francis was a priest he refused to be ordained a priest because he knew and I know the priest here recognized this the great temptation to to hone your message down to what is acceptable it's it's a great temptation because you'll be promoted by the way Pope Francis calls clericalism clericalism is the church form of patriarchy he calls it the cancer the cancer of the Catholic this this holding of all the power by the celibate males and that it's lasted this long so before he was elected and this makes his election all the more amazing he spoke to the Cardinals and he said the church is sick I don't know how they elected him it's wrapped up in itself it's suffering a kind of theological narcissism all that tells me is helps how bad the situation must really be or whatever report they got before the Conclave that they would elect a man who was that critical of the church before he was elected in his final talk he was trying to assure that he wouldn't be elected by being that critical I've got a whole page of things he said in that talk there's a tension between the center and the periphery we must get out of ourselves and go toward the periphery we must avoid the spiritual disease of the church that is always self-referential he popularized that phrase self-referential when this happens the church becomes sick it's true that accidents can happen when you go out into the street as can happen to any man or woman but if the church itself remains closed into itself self-referential it will quickly grow old and it already has between a church that goes into the streets and gets into an accident and a church that is sick with itself I have no doubt I prefer the first so the quote that you've probably heard is you know I want a church that gets dirty and it smells like the Sheep I guess you're supposed to be the Sheep if you're laya to be but what he's saying is a bad smell isn't something you got to get away from this all these purity codes that low level religion creates is really a pretense of the ego so uh Elton John even calls him a miracle of humility Elton John a miracle of humility in an age of vanity and I think we saw this response when he visited our country in September we're just not used to humility humility is not an American virtue let's be honest about it it isn't we admire grandiosity some of our politicians are making that rather clear huh that it's actually admired to brag and to talk about how wonderful you are and so forth to have someone 180 degrees in the other direction literally is blowing our mind you know how could this happen how did this happen so the Roman Church since its Imperial beginnings in 313 that's the the turning point and which made the the Protestant Reformation inevitable and certain because after 313 becoming much more solidified by 325 when we became the established religion of the Roman Empire church and state were one they were all the same and once we got in bed with war and power and money and our our bishops to this day dress like you know princes in fact we call them princes of the church it's pretty clear who we identified with you know I remember when I studied history and I don't know how he got into French history but the estates-general in France there was the left and the right and our terms left and right to this day come from the estates-general in France and on the right maintaining Authority the status quo the tradition the Oceania regime were guess who all right the nobility and the clergy sat on the right I just gave the staff a little talk about change when you're comfortable you're never for change never why would you be that's why change always has to come from the minorities from those who suffer for those who are excluded that's why we've got to go to the periphery for our own transformation prone enlightenment you can't be too comfortable at the center of anything or you build it basically around yourself on the left in the estates-general in france sap the hoi polloi the people the ordinary folks and I just want to thought already then this was somewhere in college well what did the clergy do it over there with the nobility nothing against nobility maybe some of you are noble but that sure wasn't Jesus position that's pretty obvious it's overwhelmingly obvious some time I want you to go through the four Gospels and take your highlighter maybe it's an old Bible and every passage in the four Gospels that seemed to be critical of the rich or the powerful or the moneyed and complimentary of the poor just highlighted right and you're gonna be amazed where Jesus agenda is going and it's not money per se that's the evil its power as soon as the ego aligns itself with power it cannot see the truth it will be preoccupied as much of our country as right now with its own security to protect what I have and I can disobey any deeper laws of the gospel to protect what I have because that's all I have in a materialistic society is my body my health my prestige or whatever else it might be so once we switch sides in the 4th century the the tangent for the next seventeen hundred years became pretty clear that we were identified with power and money and war and not the suffering of the world even though and here's the irony we kept the logo of the crucified gonna you know it's still hanging usually and it's jeweled now though you see we don't necessarily see the suffering Christ we make it a logo it's pretty and that is pretty I'm not against it you know but to really show a naked bleeding Lou man is a little bit embarrassing and probably a little bit Roman Catholic I suppose but that is our logo that is our message that everything is signed with the cross you cannot separate yourself from human tragedy human failure human suffering or your own without sacrificing your own enlightenment or your own transformation so after saying that I want to also say that it probably was inevitable not trying to let them all off the hook but you know civilization was especially for the them four or five centuries of barbarian invasions we needed order we needed some kind of holding it together do you know at the time of the English Reformation they think there were 5000 monasteries and religious houses in England we basically owned half of the country religion sort of took over we we owned the land there was no tax base because the monks and the nuns and the friars who collected together and with the common purse were able to do such things but unfortunately and this is what st. Francis was critiquing it also aligned us with the moneyed class the landed gentry were much more our donors than the poor so we lost what I'm going to call the touchstone of Orthodoxy what keeps your gospel real is always as Pope Francis says going toward the periphery now let me tell you a little historical thing which I've now checked out from historians who know more than I probably you younger people would not be aware that the the Pope who was Paul the sixth who was in charge at the end of Vatican two he was a very humble man I think and he saw the you huge rebellions setting into place as we throughout the Latin Mass and all the things that the old Catholics had grown used to and here was his strategy very well intended he he knew by being in the council who the Cardinals and bishops were who were fighting reform so in every case he took them out as the head of any commission or any committee but in hopes of holding the church together he left them on the committee yes they were not the chairman anymore but you can document this in every single area those who were downright against the reforms he thought you know he was going to have a team of rivals as Lincoln would have put it let's not punish the opposition let's include the opposition now my nonviolent training would by a large agree with that you know that you don't eliminate your enemies you pull them in and try to make friends but what happened and this is taking over by the mid 70s when the freedom doors blew open in the late 60s and early 70s the forces of resistance little by little set in place and these are the forces that that took over under John Paul the second and Benedict the sixteenth I'm not saying they were bad man I'm sure there holier men than I am but their agenda was rather clear it was to resist this new freedom probably the church never became so centralized since innocence a third in the 13th century as it did under John Paul - I'm not gonna say that's evil but it probably explains in great part why former Catholics I said this to some of you yesterday former Catholics are the second biggest denomination in America they're not really a denomination but you go to almost any church I bet it's true of a third of you in this room oh you'll say oh I was raised Catholic I was raised Catholic I was raised Catholic but the immense dis disillusionment from the clericalism the seemingly abuse seeming abuse of power just became too much for many people so let me give you what I see well not just what I see he says this in his first wasn't encyclical his apostolic exhortation of how on the principal level Pope Francis is trying to tear down the Berlin wall of religion and these are the principles that he says he's going to operate out of what number one people are more important than ideas you've got to know that's revolutionary and that's revolutionary for Protestants too I mean we're all in this thing together and I think one of the blind spots of most Protestantism is the failure to realize that if you are Protestant you're a child of Catholicism right and you can't deny that that's true and you carry our baggage and you carry our luggage and you can't hate your mother not only did we hate our mother but we hated our grandparents the Jewish religion and talked about getting off to a bad start you know anti-semitism and anti-catholicism no wonder they will called I know Anglicans are not called this protesters it's a it's a anti position you understand now we needed that anti position but the trouble is it festered and produced 30,000 protestant denominations worldwide so we're having in this globalization era a recognition that we're all in this together and to just keep Tooting the the Methodist flag or the Lutheran flag early is sort of at this point a waste of time it's just we're all in this together and we got to recognize that we are children of Western Christianity as you know I'm a founder of a Center in New Mexico called the Center for action and contemplation and if you want the old solid contemplative teaching you've got to go to the Eastern Church the eastern fathers and mothers the Western Church was always identified with the Roman Empire with climbing achieving performing the the deep wisdom of the desert fathers and mothers you have to go to orthodoxy to find that so every time every time the church divided I think we lost a major part of Christ by rejecting the previous group or the group we separated from but the first big separation of course was 1054 where isn't it nice the patriarch of Constantinople and the Bishop of Rome mutually excommunicated one another huh talk about a reconciling community you know and basically what happens after 1054 is the two groups almost entirely ignore one another hmm we learn nothing from them we didn't study the eastern fathers they didn't study the Western fathers we both were losers you see and then the second great break of course begins in the 16th century and I want to keep saying it had to happen that's it's the birth of critical thinking but here's the problem when you identify with the oppositional position and opposition and rebellion and what I don't agree with becomes your primary agenda it's a negative stance the gospel is about what you do believe in what you're in love with what you care about it's all embracing the the ego defines itself by constriction the soul defines itself expansion hmm and the Christianity that most of us were given was not an expansive Christianity it was defining ourselves by what we were not we were not Catholic we were not black we were not gay we were not whatever you didn't want to be and that's what your children and grandchildren are recognizing I don't want to be a part of an organization that is largely exclusionary when you begin negative you stay negative so Pope Francis said that his model was going to be st. Francis who who lived what we Franciscans call and I'm going to take a few minutes to define it an alternative Orthodox where we were trained in what we thought was what we called Orthodox theology but here was the difference that our emphasis was always as you see in Pope Francis was always practice life style not defining the Trinity in other more refined ways our defining the hypostatic union or transubstantiation or high-level theology that the ordinary believer has no time for or no interest in so that is what Pope Francis has retrieved the alternative orthodoxy that I'm proud to say I'm not saying we Franciscans always lived it not by any means we became establishment too we started getting ordained here I'm a priest myself and that wasn't what Francis was he he stayed outside of that to maintain his freedom but an emphasis upon orthopraxy you might not be a word you're familiar with you don't need to be but orthodoxy means right belief normally understood orthopraxy is right practice do you actually love the poor do you actually serve your neighbor do you actually care about people who are outside of your own group and to me that's the only test of whether you've had a fennec god experience so back to his principles and I'll read them quickly now because I've somewhat already Illustrated him people are more important than ideas then he added in a later document facts are more important than ideas and what he means by facts are just what is the two-thirds of the world is starving that's a fact and God cares about that fact and he's saying that's more important than endlessly clarifying our theological subtleties secondly he says therefore the bottom is to be sought not the top so we got rid of all of the trappings of luxury and the papal palace and the red shoes and those might seem like little things but they've redefined the papacy as not an imperial role he said all Thrones Cafe draws the chair that the presider sits in is never to be fancy never to be gold when he goes to new country says don't put any gold on me I won't wear it all right that might seem little it's huge it's huge because it's changing sides do you understand to identify with what the crucified Jesus identified with which is the majority of humanity he says that the love of power is the primary demon not of itself gender race religion money or even class all those only become bad insofar as they become power games all of them become and feminism can be another power game you do know that you can be for a liberal cause and now use it to ensconce yourself and we see that of course in Jesus three temptations in the desert you know they're all temptations to the misuse of power and what he's trying to do just like the 12-step program does is get the church to move back to step one it is in my powerlessness that I come to God not in asserting my power so gender and race and religion and money and class are all things thank God we'd begun to critique that if these new Liberation's do not use their power for for the good of the world but just their own enhancement he says it will simply create a new kind of domination he says the purity the seeking of personal purity or doctrinal purity is not just an illusion that an entirely false goal for the individual or for the church itself that appeals to the ego not to the soul to think I am purer than you are if you go through the Gospels you see that every time a purity code is invoked Jesus has nothing to do with it he will not because it's always the attempt of one group to make itself holier-than-thou I do not do this bad thing so I think he's very much following the Gospels but you know this is very embarrassing to say that it's what we Catholics have often been criticized for you do know we didn't read the Bible very much now that isn't entirely our fault most people couldn't read the printing press wasn't invented until the sixteenth century but it did get us off to some bad starts where people could believe all kind of fanciful things and call it the gospel and it was never there and that's why Luther and the other reforms that may you represent we're absolutely essential but then as I keep saying then they got involved in the antagonistic position for itself and that became its own kind of problem another principle he invokes is that bridges are more important than boundaries bridges are more important than boundaries if you look at most of the arguments of religion they're always boundary markers you know always Rhian and conferences couldn't go on for years redefining the boundaries whose inner news out who's a real Episcopalian and who isn't one of the things I admire about your church and I saw it in the magnificent way you celebrated Eucharist here on Sunday is that and correct me if I'm wrong but my Episcopal friends have told me this that that you have defined yourself primarily as a worshiping community not a doctrinal purity community see we Catholics didn't do that he was doctrinal purity that made us in the legalists and ritualists and clerical us is searching for to maintain the true orthodoxy as it were and because we considered ourselves the mother church well certainly we have the pure position maybe maybe not and finally the common good is more important than the endless assertion of individual rights you know where you live in a country that doesn't think that way we've got an endless fight between everybody's individual rights and hardly anybody is voting for the common good what's good for America as a whole even if it means my little white clerical system has to give up some of its privilege some of its power tell me how many people talk that way it's not very many we've made an idol of individual rights to the loss of what is the first principle of Catholic moral theology which is the common good the common good what's good for the whole it's going to take a lot of converting to to bring I think the American mind because we're so grossly individualistic to really transfer to what is good for the whole so they got any scratchings here that might be worth telling you before I open it up we just took it to be seven different times all of which are good but I think the passion of Pope Francis is to again make love the center and the goal and the foundation it's not just the the basis on which we build everything but it's the energy with which we proceed and it's the goal toward which we tend and that's what's given him a worldwide 86% popularity even among Muslims among Jews among Protestants the world still knows an authentic human being and when you see an authentic human being you forget about what religion he is or what what costume he wears or what Title II holds all you recognizes I hope that that love rubs off on me and I'm sure I'm talking about many people right in front of me right now that many of us have come to that place of of moving beyond the usual argumentations of this or that which keep you in the negative mode and I'm sure many of you just desire with whatever remaining years we have to God just make me a loving person and the recognition in our our heart of hearts that that we're all still in kindergarten in the ways of love I know I am and and we have to expose ourselves to situations that every day shout Richard you do not yet know how to love and I hope I'm still hearing that the final days of my life Richard I don't have to succeed at it but I have to know that I am a weak man I am a powerless man I am as Pope Francis says of himself a sinner and from that empty space we find ourselves very open to mercy and to grace and to growth and to freedom so let's just take a little while and you can ask me some questions and you don't have to agree with everything I've said if something I said didn't make any sense Bob here is going to bring the microphone to you please feel free to ask me to expand on it or explain it a little better thank you very much for your invigorating lecture but knowing that we are all in this together as you said I'd like to know if you think Episcopalians needs to adopt more of crash like kindness and passion and could you give some emphasis in respect to where we need to go christ-like kindness and what was the second word used passion passion oh okay well you know I'm in no position to tell the Episcopalians what you should do because I'm not a living part of this community to see where you're missing the mark my sense is from my short time here and four years ago when I was here there seems to be an awful lot of concern for social ministry for caring about people I'm quite happy to see so many people of color here that tells me it must be an inclusive community must be a welcoming community I've met several gay people since I've been here that tells me you must be a welcoming community so you might be farther along than you give yourself credit for but remember we all always fall short in love and you don't want to use that as an excuse not that I heard you doing that as an excuse not to belong to a group because it's not loving enough that's a cop-out you could all do that with your marriages after your first fight couldn't you huh she doesn't know how to love he doesn't know how to love no you stay in there with on love and that's how you learn how to love and you help them to learn too so I would say among those of us from other churches we consider the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Church in England and Canada and Australia to actually be one of the more inclusive churches one of the more social justice oriented churches so give yourself credit where credit is due but that doesn't mean you haven't made mistakes or you don't have room for growth we always always will but please raise your hand if I can bring you the mic well while you're thinking about it may I ask one sure you talked about Francis is both Francis's emphasis on orthopraxy ortho correct rather than orthodoxy and a number of observers has said that Francis actually hasn't changed any doctrines he's practices differently if that's true does doctrine have to catch up at some point or it may be it just doesn't matter you know what we really follower is energy he hasn't changed any formal doctrines you know it's like Jesus said and is it chapter seven of the Sermon on the Mount of Matthew where you know I have not come to take away any of the laws but I want to tell you what they really mean what is the purpose of the law and I feel that Francis is being very true to Jesus in that he's not gonna waste time formally changing what is truly doctrine now if he could last 10 years and I'd love to pray for that maybe he could show that a lot of the things we consider doctrine really aren't there just practices let me give you a common example I remember when I learned in studying systematic theology that the so called doctrine of purgatory where certain people were punished after they died till they got pure enough to be with God or something that was never proclaimed as an official doctrine of the church it was folk religion that came from the bottom and pretty soon everybody sort of believed it and most Catholics including bishops think that's a doctrine it is never was no there's if I had longer to be with you and could give you a systematic course I could list 25 things like that that you perhaps think our doctrines and are not at all Thomas Aquinas who was certainly not a Catholic lightweight he said the actual beliefs of the Catholic Church are very few and he underlined in Latin very few there it isn't a big system of beliefs it's remember Jesus himself says it to love God and love your neighbor includes all of the law and the prophets as well now if I said that without quoting Jesus there be bishops in New York and New Jersey who would be after my tail but thank God I can say well I'm just quoting Jesus but we let Jesus get away with it now we really don't believe Jesus but we we wouldn't dare say that that isn't true so how did how will the Catholic Church carry out the Pope's instructions on climate change and did st. Francis himself have a doctrine of ecology I missed two words in there of what change how will the Catholic Church carry out the Pope's instructions on climate change climate change I'm saying did st. Francis have a doctrine of ecology st. Francis no well certainly st. Francis is the patron of ecology and of course in the 13th century had no idea where this was going to lead but he became the great symbol right in the 13th century when we are moving from an agricultural economy to the beginnings of trade and merchandising and and so forth and his own father as you perhaps know if you know his life was a tradesman Francis illustrates a dramatic protest against that almost as if he saw where it was gonna go so Francis Moore lays the foundation by his love of of creation his animals brother Sun sister moon he just weaves a beautiful vision of the unity of all being it wasn't anthropocentric and he's the only person recorded to have granted subjectivity to animals and elements that he would talk to them as if they had dignity as if they had rights as if they could talk back to him now those you were animal lovers like I am that probably makes a lot of sense but we come from centuries of brutal treatment of the earth and of animals and so to turn this around and to really honor the dignity of every level of creation is going to be a major major transformation of consciousness now it's going to be necessary for our own survival I think but probably and I hate to be so cynical but probably until it's forced on us until the water starts rising in this end of man and you're always on the maps you know this is where the waters gonna rise I don't think we'll take it seriously remember what the ego resists is changed we will find any excuse we can rather than change so I I hope they said he was a major his document laudato si was a major influence at the Paris conference which which is still going on isn't it yeah it's still going on but how do we communicate that urgency to the normal man or woman on the street here I bet it's going to take a catastrophe I bet it is that's the only way we get it when we get whomped on the side of the head now is is the catastrophe gonna be too far down the line and we can't pull it back I think that's our fear that it'll be too late but if you read laudato si and you really should it's a courageous document you know and he certainly got advice from people at many different levels of science and economy and much that he says that's be honest flies in the face of American worldviews and American politics so you probably won't hear a lot of bishops or priests preaching about it because when it comes down to it and I'm speaking of us too I'm not trying to speak of someone else we're more Americans than we are Christians oh yeah we're more Americans than we are Christians and that's what formed our psyche that's the worldview of trickle-down economics and things like that that that we just oh yeah that's got to be true cuz Reagan said it's true and he's he was president you know when Pope Francis just says it's malarkey you know only the rich could believe such silliness nobody else can talk that way except the Pope and get away with it and just speak directly in opposition to some of our attitudes toward refugees toward the economy and toward the earth thank you yes hi Richard I'm I'm gonna ask something I'm more personal right you didn't really get much of an introduction so I would say if I were introducing you I've been I grew up in New York I've been in a lifelong New Yorker I've been a Christian for 60 years and your writings and your talks over the last couple decades have meant more to me than almost no one else so thank you for all for that and for being here I would like to know from your perspective you've really pushed on a lot of things you've really I mean breathing underwater and great themes of st. Paul just my two - a my throat what would you consider your primary legacy your if you were to be remembered for one primary teaching what would you point out to us well you know now this is just what comes to mind now I don't know if I'd say it after an hour of thought but you perhaps sir if you've been listening to me for some time you know I say st. Francis and Teresa bless you or my favorite Saints and the reason they are is because they more than any other Saints have the courage to teach a spirituality of imperfection that we come to God through our wrongness not through our rightness you've got to know that's revolutionary changes everything and why I speak so much of the 12 steps even though I've never been a formal member maybe I should be of a 12-step program is because Bill Wilson got that by the first step I have to admit I am powerless I think that's the gospel pure and simple and that's why we start as the Episcopalians do to start the liturgy with lord have mercy Christ have mercy lord have mercy it's like a public admission that we're all weak and powerless your ticket to being here is not your worthiness it's your unruhe damnit and the ego doesn't like to hear that and this is another thing that Pope Francis is is saying to the bishops and priests that the sacraments are not prizes for the perfect and he says the church should be a field hospital on the edge of the battlefield Wow and that you come here not because you've earned any worthiness or you're better than those people out there on the street you come here because you know you need medicine that's that's the heart of if I can bring back some of that message of Paul's when I'm weak is when I'm strong so this is Paul already too you know but it pretty much got lost between the fourth century and the 14th century there's no it's all no I'm not saying there weren't Saints I'm not saying there weren't holy people I'm not saying there weren't people who went to heaven if you wanna think that way probably people better than I but as a corporate institutional movement we were raised on a spirituality of climbing and perfection how could I be morally worthy and on this forgive me Protestantism did not reform us you did not reform us it was the same thing all over again and Protestantism in many ways became more puritanical than we were in its worst forms more moralistic and legalistic than sometimes we were so that's why I say we're all in this together and that's not waste time pulled poking fingers at one another thank you that was very kind of you one more do you think or I don't mind I enjoy talking yeah curious to know your thoughts about the Pope's 15 ailments about the Curia that he wrote I thought that was such a powerful document and I thought it was unprecedented I related to quite a few of the ailments myself I wonder what your thoughts are about it you know I wish I had it in front of me but she's referring to that was last Christmas wasn't it yeah he got the Curia the royal court all these Cardinals and he frankly reamed them out it's it's it's embarrassing it's embarrassing he exposes their worst sins I'm sure he lost a lot of friends that day and they said my god we elected this guy but if you want a parallel read Matthew 23 so his his speech last Christmas to the Cardinals would be paralleled by what Jesus says about the scribes and the Pharisees you're white and set liquors you don't obey the law yourself and then you put burdens on the lay people that you wouldn't carry yourself you couldn't get much stronger than Jesus and Francis I think being a Pope and a prophet had the courage to talk that way I'm sorry I don't have it here in front of me but thanks for at least mentioning it and I'm sure you can find it online his scathing critique of the Roman clerical system it's pretty devastating I I was interested in what you said about kind of Orthodoxy v orthopraxy I'll try and be really brief I'm from a background about orthodoxy was really important little independent evangelical church very specific ideas about what the atonement is a baptism who goes to heaven the other day from an evangelical Theo yeah yeah they became more concerned with orthodoxy than even we were well I know very interesting but we don't admit it and I haven't could have moved a lot more broad in my head over 30 years but I think it's very easy for all of us who come from that background to retreat to that and feel that secretly that might actually be true and not have the freedom of love it's the biggest thing how do you cure that mm-hmm an easy question there's a number of points I'll make I'll try to make them quickly but I hope sincerely first of all don't hate yourself too much it didn't sound like you were the easiest place to begin is with a container conservative right I began a conservative Catholic boy in Kansas all right this couldn't have gotten much more conservative and in a certain sense I can draw a straight line for my conservative beginnings to the way I talk now because being an insider into that world preoccupied with orthodoxy you start seeing very early that it doesn't hold together that it's filled with deceit and delusion then when I was able to study systematic theology in Scripture then I had the tools to really critique it and so forth so first of all thank God for your evangelical beginnings it's a great place to start you know one of my publishers jossey-bass who put out falling upward an immortal diamond they told me this was two years ago I don't know if it's still true my single biggest demographic that read my books from them at least is young evangelical males not Catholics young evangelical males just eat up some of my stuff because they see that I am scriptural of course you got to prove your credit by being scriptural but I think it's because we came from the same place of a kind of calm the conservatism I grew up with in the 1950s was not angry like it is today it was just we were just pious little naive innocent people who lived in our own ghettos as we all did in Kansas and you didn't know anybody who wasn't Catholic or wasn't white but we had nobody to hate my parents were not racist it was really wonderful that what a loving world I did grow up in but it was still it almost happened by accident because the actual teaching we were given was so narrow was so self-serving all about boundaries not about bridges so I was just lucky that I got my education college in the early 60s theology in the late sixties when the whole thing was blowing open and I had the tools to help me to try to understand that so evangelicalism is an excellent place to start as long as there's enough love in the family and in the community it's not a good place to continue and it's even worse place to stop because because you don't know all that you could be open to you know when when Paul says in Galatians 5 for freedom Christ has set us free what did we we lost Galatians almost entirely you were created for freedom he says you weren't created to obey laws Paul was the apostle of freedom and we made him into a cheap moralist we really did so we're in this place now where all of us together are rediscovering the freedom of the children of God and but now we're not going to waste time like the former Reformation 's did wasting 30 years proving why the previous group is wrong you know or 30 years proving that your childhood Church was wrong yeah you're going to be able to thank you God that I was born in evangelical I thank God I was born Servat of Roman Catholic but I've been exposed to grace and growth that allows me as we say in to transcend but to include you don't rebel against the previous stages you include include include include you don't play the victim you don't make victim of other people when you're outside the victim game and I will stop on this playing the victim and creating victims you're liberated and you don't have to make anybody else the victims so you can be right and wonderful you don't have to put down anybody else and neither do you play the victim for your own power which is half of America I would say when you don't do that you're free the soul is free the mind is free the hardest ring so thank you and forgive me for the things I said poorly or are wrongly I have to trust that grace and goodness will fill in the gaps thank you Richard Rohr I want to let you all know that we are selling copies of eager to love in the back right at that counter right back there and Richard will be signing them right up here if you'd like or if you have another book or a cast or your cheek or something else you'd like him to sign please set up and he'd be happy to thank you all have a great night have a great night thank you for coming [Applause]

Channel: Contemplative Interbeing

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Length: 65min 49sec (3949 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 01 2019