THE REFORMATION THEN

Approximately 500 years ago a religious revolution occurred on the European continent. It was launched on German soil in the town of Wittenberg by an Augustinian monk and theologian named Martin Luther. This Reformation, as it came to be called, was heard around the European world. Like any great historical event, many forces combined to make the consequent break with Rome occur. But among the most significant forces were the following:
1. The invention of the printing press
This technological achievement effectively democratized knowledge and the power knowledge and information brings with it. The Reformation was the religious response to the printing press invention – the first book printed was the Bible after all. It made the dissemination of the Bible in the vernacular available to national groups and individuals as never before. This invention effectively launched the modern era of scholarship and textual analysis that we call the Enlightenment. Modern science and widespread education followed.
2. The rise of the nation state
The nation state eagerly accepted Martin Luther’s break with the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman church that legitimized that empire and held it together. Nationalism motivated the rapid invasion of conquered lands and peoples and the accumulation of riches taken from the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Pacific Islands and Asia. Booty in the form of slaves as well as gold, silver and other riches were carted off to Europe.
3. The corruption of the Roman Catholic Church in the highest places
Defective theology, the selling of indulgences combined with simony, nepotism and greed ruled the popes and their fiefdoms. Great anger and resentment was stirred by those peoples who were taxed for such purposes and shared nothing from the money and privileges that accrued. It was difficult to see any resemblance between a corrupt papacy and Jesus the founder of Christianity. Apocalyptic slogans of Rome as “anti-Christ” and Rome as “whore of Babylon” captured the popular imagination.
4. The rise of an educated elite
Martin Luther was among those who could read and translate Biblical languages. This made for an intellectual empowerment that could not be matched by mere repetition of dogmatic shibboleths that doctrinaire churchmen repeated ad nauseam.

THE REFORMATION NOW

In 2005, an analogous situation prevails but with added dimensions of seriousness. Among these is the peril that the human species faces along with the thousands of other species that are going extinct on the planet. It is an extinction spasm not witnessed on the Earth for 65 million years. The last time such a spasm occurred was when the dinosaurs disappeared.
Human knowledge and technology are the most significant cause of this extinction spasm today. Isn’t this another way of saying that religion is not doing its task? That religion is powerful in the wrong ways and powerless about the right ways? The population explosion of the human race, the growing canyon of divide between the haves and have-nots, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, cry out for attention. So too do the rights of minorities be they women, people of colour, tribal and indigenous people or gay and lesbian people.
Among today’s issues that parallel the Reformation movement of the sixteenth century are the following:
1. The electronic revolution of the 1960s
This launched what we now call the post-modern era of the computer chip, internet, email and mobile phones. Instantaneous global communication has profound political and religious implications. Just as the printing press helped distribute knowledge, information and therefore power with an amazing rapidity and on a global grid, these inventions effectively launched a postmodern civilization beginning in the sixties.
2. The waning of the nation-states and the rise of multinational corporations
They are the sole rival of the United Nations which they effectively skewer, ignore and malign (witness President Bush’s designee to the UN who wants to “cut 10 stories” out of the building itself). The end of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet empire left only one empire standing, that being the United States, whose growth in power exacerbates the hatred and resentment toward it worldwide. The sharp contrast between rich nations (1⁄3 in population) and poor nations (2⁄3 in population) also characterizes our world. Studies show that if all the people on the planet lived the lifestyles of North Americans and Europeans, we would need four planets. Clearly things are not sustainable as they are.
3. The corruption and ineffectiveness of Western religion
This is becoming increasingly patent for all to see. The Protestant Era has long since ceased to exist and Protestantism finds itself in an extremely tired state with its churches effectively empty in most northern countries and little energy apparent except the arousal that happens when people are invited to hate gay clergy.
And, of course, there is the political involvement of rabid fundamentalists and preachers of a contemporary apocalypse who actually want a nuclear war to occur, preferably in Israel, so that Jesus can return on a cloud and take his chosen ones to heaven. In the US these people are determined to obscure the long-held law of separation of church and state and politicians willing to sell their souls to get elected are busy obliging.
Meanwhile, in spite of television’s fawning at the made-for-television theater of the papacy and its unending effort to build a cult of personality around a papal figure to increase its viewership, Roman Catholicism has hit a new low in it spotty history – one matched only by the corrupt papacies of the Borgias in Martin Luther’s time.
One proof of this is the pedophile clergy being coddled by the hierarchy such as Cardinal Law (since given a plum assignment of a fourth century basilica in Rome). He defended such priests while Cardinal Ratzinger was expelling prophetic priests and theologians who were leaders of liberation movements of the poor and the oppressed be they women, peasants, defenders of the rainforest, or persons seeking democracy in Central and South America.
By persecuting theologians and shutting down theological inquiry and institutions of learning, the highest prelates of the Roman Church have deliberately and purposely replaced theology with ideology and created a generation of cardinals and bishops who take oaths of loyalty and who march lockstep to orders from the top without passing them through their own consciences. It is loyalty not intellectual acumen or moral courage, that has recommended them to the positions of authority they are in. The issues of pedophile and clerical abuse, of hierarchal complicity in the same, of the role of women, of gay and lesbian rights, these are not allowed to be addressed by such prelates. Instead of leaders, we are given sycophants. Any papacy has to be skewed that canonizes a man who praised Hitler, namely the fascist priest and founder of Opus Dei, Rev. Josemaria Escriva.
It is time to tell the truth. “Even the rocks shall shout out,” declared the historical Jesus. So too, at this low period in Catholic history, it is time to tell the truth and let our moral outrage speak. The church has been hijacked by those committed to a preferential option for the rich and the powerful. Does one determine to take it back? Or just move on?
4. An awakened scholarship
Just as 500 years ago new scholarship was unleashed to buttress a deeper understanding of Scriptures and early church history, so today significant scholarship including archeological findings and the rediscovery of ancient texts and a 200 year old quest for the “historical Jesus” and women’s theology and history has gifted us with much that is new and substantive about what we know of the words, the person and the teaching of Jesus and the early Christian community. And about Paul as well. Mixing these findings into our awareness of the origins of Christianity will be part of this study.
What is the good news in all this? That we can start anew. That a New Reformation for a new millennium is upon us. We can let the current papacy run the Vatican museum and St. Peter’s basilica for the beautiful museum it is. But for the rest of us, we can let religion go and begin to get serious about spiritual practice, drawing on and not neglecting the riches of the Roman Churches’ mystics and prophets of past and present and working in interfaith activism and spiritual practice with those of other faith traditions.
It is time to choose and get on with many tasks that await us today. The sustainability of our species and the planet as we know it is at stake. Issues of resisting empire, condoms in a time of AIDS, birth control in a time of population explosion, distribution of the world’s goods, clean and renewable energy, community life, elimination of poverty, defence of minorities including gays and lesbians – all these call to us. Deep ecumenism and interfaith are strong areas where Christians and others can renew their spiritual roots. But the number one obstacle to interfaith, as the Dalai Lama has observed, is “a bad relationship with one’s own faith tradition.” The “punitive father” religionists harbour a bad relationship with their own faith tradition. They know original sin but not original blessing. They cannot participate in interfaith. And very often, as in the case of Cardinal Ratzinger who has criticized Buddhism, Hinduism, Protestantism, Native traditions and goddess religions, they do not want to. But the divine wisdom tradition has always been about interfaith.
Matthew Fox will be in Vancouver for a number of events. Science, Mysticism and Faith: The Cosmic Christ in post-Modern Times, July 4 – 8, 8:30 – 11:30 am at the VST. A free public lecture July 5, 7:30 pm at the Canadian Memorial United church. Earth Revival: A Cosmic Mass, July 7, doors open 7:15 pm, Christ Church Cathedral. For more info call VST 604-822-9815
www.vst.edu or www.cosmicmass.ca
Fox’s 95 theses are at www.matthewfox.org