Two Sides of the Same Coin

 

Once upon a time, in a lefty-galaxy far away, there was a Jesuit priest named John Dear. He had entered the Society of Jesus in the early 1980's and was passionately active for the cause of social justice and peaceful non-violence. His civil-disobedience for causes of nuclear disarmament, war, and the umbrella of injustice at large landed him in prison over seventy five times. As part of the Plowshares disarmament movement (taking from the scripture in Isaiah that "they shall beat their swords into plowshares"), they would break into government military bases and hammer on the warheads as an act of imperial defiance. Jesus said "love your enemies," and from their vantage point, militarism was in violation of this command and demanded a response. 

As Dear's personal mission of "peace and non-violent ministry" grew more all-encompassing and active, he seemed to see everything through the lends of non-violence everywhere. Jesus was not just the crucified Savior, but the "Non-Violent Jesus." According to an article in CNA, 

"The priest believes that to follow Jesus means “to work to end killing and poverty, and to promote peace, love, and nonviolence, and justice, as he teaches in the Sermon on the Mount.” 

“Was Jesus violence or nonviolent?” he asked. “If he's nonviolent, then we have to be nonviolent, or we're not like him; we're not following him, and it's all a big game.” 

To shed light on this kind of subtle idolatry the priest espouses, the article adds,

Fr. Dear acknowledged that “ultimately, you could say that what happened to me is a question of theology. I'm arguing that Jesus and God are nonviolent,” he said, while “the bishops and the Jesuit leaders” hold to theories which allow for war and violence under certain circumstances.

The source who spoke with CNA said that one can suspect that Fr. Dear “has a very unique take on nonviolence, on who Christ is,” and “obsesses that Jesus is all about nothing but the notion of peace, and, as far as I can tell, the peace that the world gives; not the dynamic peace of Christ.”

The source characterized Fr. Dear as “taking something that is a truth, and trying to turn it into all truth…he's really gotten into this particular subculture” rooted in the late 1960s and the vision of Fr. Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit who protested against the Vietnam war and destroyed draft files.

In 2012, Dear was dismissed from the Society of Jesus for “obstinately disobedient to the lawful order of Superiors in a grave matter." He “was duly informed ... that his failure to obey the command that he return to the specified house of the Order by a specified date would be cause for his dismissal from the Society of Jesus.” Dear announced his dismissal publicly in a blog post at the National Catholic Register in January of 2013, and said he would not return to his community.

Why, you might ask, am I wasting time and ink writing about a SJW activist priest no one outside of NCR world has heard of or cares about, who has had his faculties removed almost ten years ago? He was admittedly "passionate and outspoken," and the mission/ministry he had prioritized had put him at odds with his Superior who was forced to 'reign him in' so to speak. 

His followers involved in the lay-it-on-the-line peace activism of the 1990's Pax Christi era must have surely felt it was an injustice that someone so passionate and committed to the cause of Christian non-violent pacifism was being unjustly canned by the establishment Superior General. "If only there were more John Dear, SJs, in the world...we might have peace and true non-violence." 

I remember reading one of Dear's books I found in our library at the Catholic Worker (see: "I Was A Lefty Catholic And Other Tales"), so his name at least was familiar. I thought at the time, even as someone who "wanted peace, so was working for justice," that he had kind of made an idol of this non-violent Jesus, seeing everything through this particular lens. 

Passion and commitment are not bad things, but obviously need to be channeled and tempered by virtue and, as a religious, obedience ("one of the hardest vows," a Benedictine priest told me once, "even harder than chastity.") The hammering-on-warheads-protest thing was not my cup of tea--I was serving the poor in the streets, but this kind of political activism viz-a-viz Liberation Theology just wasn't my thing. Obviously, for this particular SJWSJ, it didn't end well. Or maybe it freed him up to do what he felt he couldn't as a Jesuit.

So again, why am I writing about it? I don't know, it just feels...like I've been here before. Like it's just one side of the same coin, just being flipped in a different ideological hemisphere. If you've been following the Catholic news the past few days, I imagine you'll be able to read between the lines and see what I'm inferring. Same issues, just different lenses and factions. 

Don't get me wrong--I'm rooting for good orthodox priests. I'm not sure John Dear was a good priest, or if he was, he "lost his way," as was noted in the CNA article. It's not easy being a priest. It's not easy being a bishop or Superior either. What is easy is posting what 'side' you're on concerning whatever the issue of the day is. Things tend to heat up quickly when you're a passionate and outspoken priest, president, or pundit, and especially when you have a following by virtue of the good and laudable things you have done to serve them.  

I'm at the point in my own faith walk, though, where it has become a little easier to sit back and let the dust settle before making judgments on things, if I even get around to that. It can help to have all the information to do so, and that isn't always possible 'in the moment.' I don't even have to have an opinion or stance (thank goodness!). The coin will fall where it will, when it stops spinning and lands. Heads or tails....sometimes it just feels like two sides of the same coin.