A Cardinal’s Take on Church
Unlike our obsession with “new” or “next generation” technologies when it comes to Christianity “new” or “next generation” rarely has many early adopters or early adapters, nor is something “new” or “next generation” ever acceptable without its embrace of orthodox theology. The Emergent movement, the concert worship experience, the mega-church mall, and video screens in the sanctuary are next generation technologies dispensing the old, old, orthodox story about sacrificial atonement, the death of one man to save the know world and the world to come, from an angry, but loving, deity. I’m a skeptic about Emergent Christianity and Church, because the more I learn about it the less I see theological evolution. Rather, it is a different delivery system for orthodox Christianity through a different social lens. Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini served as the Archbishop of Milan and two weeks ago he gave an interview to the Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily, where he noted the “Church was 200 years out of date.” As one about to, in the words of one Disciple minister I know, “claim the promises of his baptism,” Cardinal Martini did not fear the reprisals of his Church and spoke with clarity about what his expression of Christian faith had done to Christianity and to those that profess faith. Cardinal Martini, it seems to me, poses two questions for mainline Protestantism to digest. First, what have we embraced, passively blessed, and where has the Church been co-opted by culture that has “undermined its status as a moral arbiter?” Second, which of the Church’s rituals and theology on which the rituals are based is “200 years out of date?” In the Cardinal’s words, “Why don’t we rouse ourselves? Are we afraid?”
You can find the Corriere della Sera via web search and if you don’t read Italian, I don’t, the Google translation will give you a taste of the Cardinal’s interview. I found the article about Cardinal Martini on Huffington Post’s Religion section. Here is a paragraph or two. click the title to read more.
Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, In final Interview Before Death Says Church ‘200 Years Out Of Date’
Reuters | Sept 1, 2012.“Our culture has aged, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up, our rituals and our cassocks are pompous,” Martini said in the interview published in Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
“The Church must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the pope and the bishops. The paedophilia scandals oblige us to take a journey of transformation,” he said in the interview.