Wednesday, September 12, 2007
ESCRIVA TAUGHT JUDAISM
From the website dedicated to Josemaria Escriva, a quotation from his writing:
“Be imitators of God, ... cooperating humbly but fervently in the divine purpose of mending what is broken, of saving what is lost, of bringing back to order what sinful man has put out of order, of leading to its goal what has gone astray, of re-establishing the divine balance of all creation.
That is a good description of Tikkun Olam, a Jewish concept derived from Lurianic Kabbalah and proposing a cosmology incompatible with Roman Catholicism.
From My Jewish Learning, the entry for Tikkun Olam:
TIKKUN OLAM (REPAIRING THE WORLD)
Overview: Tikkun Olam
"Tikkun olam" (literally, "world repair") has come to connote social action and the pursuit of social justice. The phrase has origins in classical rabbinic literature and in Lurianic kabbalah, a major strand of Jewish mysticism originating with the work of the 16th-century kabbalist Isaac Luria.
The term "mipnei tikkun ha-olam" (perhaps best translated in this context as "in the interest of public policy") is used in the Mishnah (the body of classical rabbinic teachings codified circa 200 C.E.). There, it refers to social policy legislation providing extra protection to those potentially at a disadvantage--governing, for example, just conditions for the writing of divorce decrees and for the freeing of slaves.
In reference to individual acts of repair, the phrase "tikkun olam" figures prominently in the Lurianic account of creation and its implications: God contracted the divine self to make room for creation. Divine light became contained in special vessels, or kelim, some of which shattered and scattered. While most of the light returned to its divine source, some light attached itself to the broken shards. These shards constitute evil and are the basis for the material world; their trapped sparks of light give them power.
The first man, Adam, was intended to restore the divine sparks through mystical exercises, but his sin interfered. As a result, good and evil remained thoroughly mixed in the created world, and human souls (previously contained within Adam's) also became imprisoned within the shards.
The "repair," that is needed, therefore, is two-fold: the gathering of light and of souls, to be achieved by human beings through the contemplative performance of religious acts. The goal of such repair, which can only be effected by humans, is to separate what is holy from the created world, thus depriving the physical world of its very existence—and causing all things return to a world before disaster within the Godhead and before human sin, thus ending history.
Cardinal O'Malley has taken up the cause in an address to the Boston Jewish community May 10, 2006, at the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center.
The cardinal had said in his address that he had always liked “the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam.
“As Catholics, we speak of repairing the world in terms of the social gospel, of building a civilization of love. I hope that we can do this together. Working together, we can address the social problems of our community and the world. Illiteracy, hunger, war, must be eliminated. Such goals can be achieved only if we are working together to repair the world, he said”
Tikkun Olam has baggage that Catholics cannot fit into our theology of creation and redemption. We do not save ourselves. We are dependent upon redemption. Unlike the Jewish social gospel of Tikkun Olam, the Christian gospel preaches salvation through Jesus Christ. How, then, can Cardinal O'Malley like "the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam"?
Rabbi Isaac Luria, composer of the Lurianic Kabbalah, lived from 1534 to 1572. His life significantly pre-dates any conception of the social gospel in Christianity. Has the Kabalistic concept of repair of the world filtered into Christianity through modernism?
In America the Christian world adopted the social gospel via the vision of Walter Rauschenbush who died in 1917.
According to one writer, political correctness is derivative of the social gospel. In an article that originally appeared in News World Communications, Inc., Paul Gottfried, professor of the humanities at Elizabethtown College, argues that "political correctness has been too quickly embraced by the Christian Church in North America." He writes:
The liberal Protestantism described above has been a bridge between traditional religious belief and the establishment of PC as a civic religion. This docile, widespread acceptance of social guilt amounts to an act of faith, mimicking the acceptance of original sin and the need for a lifetime of repentance. In the new version of Christian faith, it no longer is acceptable to question the enduring culpability of victimizers or the received narratives concerning designated victims. Such undue skepticism is equivalent to blasphemy and in England and Canada may result in the miscreant's being criminally prosecuted for hate speech.
The hardening of PC into pseudo-religious dogma can be seen in the defense of the new moral consciousness by University of Virginia professor of philosophy Richard Rorty. This descendent of Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbush, in his book Advancing our Country, defends the cause of "protecting those who have been humiliated." The politically correct is raised by Rorty into a vision of spiritual grandeur that leads away from the sadism of the past. In his description, coercive social engineering becomes synonymous with conversion and moral progress. Though a self-described agnostic, Rorty appeals to the idealism many associate with PC. It is not simply lethargy but straying religiosity that lies behind the new political orthodoxy.
Born of liberalism, it is into secularism that the social gospel ultimately leads. Once we conclude that we can repair the world ourselves, what need have we of Christ? Is it any wonder that Judaism discovered this concept much earlier than Christianity? They had no Christ to need, and now we note that within Judaism today, the majority of genetic Jews are secular. The trend is progressing apace within Christianity as well.
Yet despite this dangerous precedent, we see Pope Benedict espousing this same mantra:
Pope Benedict XVI voiced "sadness and repentance" as he paid solemn tribute Friday to the victims of the Nazi Holocaust at the start of a three-day visit to Austria.
Shortly after his arrival in Vienna, the pope made a brief stop at Judenplatz (Jews' Square) which is home to a monument to the 60,000 Austrian Jews killed during World War II. ...
"It is time to express our sadness, our repentance and our friendship towards the Jews," Benedict XVI had said earlier on the plane while flying into Vienna from Rome.
It is easy to forget that Pope Benedict is a liberal who appears traditional only because conservative thinking has caught up with him, not because he has changed his stripes. Whether he is correct or not, whether he is being led by the Holy Spirit or merely acting on his own conclusions, his position on Judaism is not traditional Catholicism.
Christian and Jewish cosmologies are not compatible. Christians do not believe in reincarnation. We do not believe that man can save himself. We do not believe that man is in charge of repairing the world. To believe this is to dispense with Jesus Christ as Judaism demonstrates.
Pope Benedict and Cardinal O'Malley cannot go around making the sorts of statements we see here and remain credible in claiming that secularism is the menace of Western society. A basic principle of logic is the law of non-contradiction. We can admire Jewish efforts on behalf of the less fortunate without embracing Jewish theology in the process. We can claim our own doctrine of "love your enemies" in the service of preventing persecution. We do not need to embrace the theology of other faiths. If embarrassment over the Holocaust or a desire to be politically correct is leading our shepherds to abandon Christ, we must either convince them to redirect their thinking or abandon them to their own foolishness.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
