INFALLIBILITY
For the last ten years or so, I've been a member of a SemNet listserve for former seminarians of St. Joseph's Mountain View (destroyed in the Loma Prieta earthquake) and St. Patricks's in Menlo Park -- minor and major diocesan seminaries respectively of California's Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Most of us are laity, some are clerics, maybe even a bishop of two. And then there are a smattering of the outlaw likes of moi -- a Green RadicalMiddle RainbowFamily Paleohippie Practitioner-of -Earth-based-Spirituality. I read what they post and send them the occasional poem.
Friendships made 50 years ago tie me, my class and my upper classmates together. And one SemNeti is a priest I knew as an assistant pastor when my father Vincenzo Bontempi was altar boy director in our suburban parish near St. Joe's in Mountain View. He's so saintly and beloved still that my 8th Grade parochial school buddies and I have an annual luncheon with him on his birthday in East Palo Alto, where he's served selflessly since the Sixties and is now, in his nineties, retired -- Father John Coleman.
While I'm no longer under the influence of Christian doctrines, dogmas and belief systems, I do respect the bonds of friendships that tie the SemNeti together -- if not to the Church, at least to our shared history as once baptized Catholics and California priests-in-training.
So when I saw this dream that one SemNeti shared the other day, it inspired a poem. First the dream and then the poem.
"...reminded me of a dream I once had, that some future pope sat on the chair of Peter and announced, in his most solemn and magisterial voice, that he was not really infallible, even when he solemnly defined something. For a moment everyone was aghast. “How can you say that?” they screamed. “That can’t be true!” “Exactly,” he replied, “now that I’ve said it, it can't be true that I am infallible. Or to put it another way, brothers and sisters, no person or institution can infallibly declare himself or itself infallible. And if and when anyone did, that only proves they must have been fallible.” There was a silence, and then people thought about it for a while, the sheer absurd circularity of it, wondered why they never saw the logical impossibility of it before, shrugged, and went on with their lives. And when the dust settled, nothing really valuable had been lost, and something really valuable had been gained. Institutional humility before the mystery of God. And then I woke up."
Thanks, Anonynous. It's hard not to recognize the dysfunctionality of the Church, as much I loved it once and love many of its adherents still.
ReplyDeleteThe clearly absurd curcularity of it!
ReplyDeleteAll those holes, coming full circle.
Truly. Love all those holes coming full circle.
DeleteHi Art, as a very waffling Catholic myself, great message, and pretty good poem too.
ReplyDeleteJimmy A.
thanks, Jimmy. waffling Catholic, that's a new for me. like a pancake you poke holes in, right?
DeleteAh but the tintinabulations continue to lure this Poe boy back to the magic found here and there in our background. Was serving mass for a priest I had never met til that day back in Brooklynin the 1950s, and something was “off” about him as he said the Latin and Greek. I hadn’t talked to him beforehand, and there was no homily to give me a clue what was up. But after mass in the sacristy, we bowed to a crucifix, said “prosit,” and he pulled out a five-dollar bill, gave it to me, and said thank you for serving mass on the anniversary of the death of my mother. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteThe magic. Yeah, Nick. There seemed to be this aura of magic around the Church when we were lads: Latin & Greek rituals, incense, fabulous stories ... Saying "prosit" to the crucifix after mass -- not something we learned in our parish ... I never remember ever getting a tip for being an altar boy. Just one of my cohorts who tried to get tipsy on the sacristy's sweet wine.
ReplyDelete