One Jew’s View of the Papal Election

Summary:

The excitement that accompanied the papal election speaks to the power of the office to inspire the faithful. At the same time, we cannot overlook this hierarchical structure of authority that demands total doctrinal obedience. The impact of this structure is most evident in the current clash between the Vatican and the Leadership Council of Women Religious, essentially the leadership of Catholic sisters in the United States. Yet, in a post-modern world, the Jewish Community should also reexamine the structures of power and authority that define Jewish thought and practice as these have evolved over 2-3,000 years. The leveling of authority and the personal autonomy that modernism and post-modernism offer are challenges to develop an approach to Jewish life and practice that emerges out of the life of the covenant community—a covenant community that is engaged in creating Torah.



One can only marvel at the way in which the entire world seemed utterly riveted as 115 mostly old men gathered in an ancient monument in Rome to pick one of their own to be God’s representative on earth on behalf of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. Watching TV video footage of the heartfelt joy that brought many gathered in St. Peter’s square to tears when the white smoke appeared even before the name of the new Pope was announced speaks to the power of the office to inspire the faithful. Yet, even among Catholics—and certainly among non-Catholics—there is a growing skepticism toward a hierarchy of celibate (at least theoretically) men, mostly elderly, who can appoint an infallible leader to translate God’s will on earth and to determine the ultimate relationship between the human and the divine.

Perhaps the most glaring example of the impact this all-male hierarchy has on religious expression is the publically aired tension between Vatican officials and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), described on their website as “an association of the leaders of congregations of Catholic women religious in the United States,” that is, the woman whom most of us refer to as nuns. Last year, the Vatican appointed an American archbishop, Cardinal William Levada, to investigate the group amid charges that the women were diverging from official Catholic doctrine. Levada was working under the aegis of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which, according to the Vatican website, was “[f]ounded in 1542 by Pope Paul III” and “was originally called the Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition as its duty was to defend the Church from heresy.” In simple terms, the same church organ that carried out the Inquisition in the 16^th century was charged with investigating the nuns.

On April 18, 2012, the CDF issued its “assessment” (http://www.usccb.org/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=55544), noting that its

“primary concern is the doctrine of the faith that has been revealed by God in Jesus Christ, presented in written form in the divinely inspired Scriptures, and handed on in the Apostolic Tradition under the guidance of the Church’s Magisterium.”

Among other complaints directed at the LCWR, the assessment points out that

“occasional public statements by the LCWR that disagree with or challenge positions taken by the Bishops, who are the Church’s authentic teachers of faith and

morals, are not compatible with its purpose.”

But the CDF is just one element of a vast Vatican bureaucracy which The New York Times recently characterized as “an ancient monarchy in which the pope is treated like a king, branches of the hierarchy are run like medieval fiefs and supplicants vie for access and influence” [“Vatican’s Bureaucracy Tests Even the Infallible,” The New York Times, March 19, 2013].

For better or worse, the dearth of political power within the Jewish community over the past 2,000 years has allowed Jews to avoid the extremes of human power and doctrinal authority that the Catholic Church projects among its flock. But there is an important lesson for the Jewish community in the way in which doctrinal authority in a post-modern world tends to alienate people not only from the “church”—the organized religious community—but, in some instances, from any quest for a relationship with God.

Virtually an entire industry has surfaced devoted to defining what is called “post-modernism” and how this cultural phenomenon plays out in terms of human thought and behavior. One clear trend that emerges has come to be labeled “the sovereign self,” a desire for personal autonomy and self-fulfillment. Post-modern people define themselves far less in terms of ethnic identity and far more in terms of individual personal connection. There is a move away from institutional loyalties and authority in favor of a sense of community expressed in terms of shared values and meaning.

Post-modernism is often criticized for what may seem to be a kind of narcissism and self-indulgence. But it is, in fact, a natural outgrowth of modernity. Four hundred years of the scientific revolution have taught us that, indeed, we do possess a certain autonomy in terms of our ability to determine our own environment and our own destiny. We can come to understand what is happening in our world and in the universe through observation and the faculty of our rational minds independent of divine revelation. The Enlightenment has taught us that the self is sovereign, that individuals are empowered in “the pursuit of happiness.”

In this regard, I would suggest that the true enemy is doctrine—the notion that the religious follower must subscribe to a certain set of beliefs and/or adhere to a certain set of practices and behaviors. These beliefs and practices are determined by the divine commander who revealed them to the religious founder who then conveyed them to other religious leaders who become the basis of ongoing religious authority. This is clearly articulated in the introduction to Pirkei Avot, a tractate of the Mishnah promulgated at the beginning of the 3^rd century. Torah is delivered to Moses and then transmitted to Joshua and so forth until we get to what are known as “the men of the Great Assembly.” These men then become the precursors of our ancient rabbis and thus the precursors of our contemporary rabbis, who now assume the authority to promulgate and interpret God’s commandments as contained in God’s Torah. There seems to be a certain echo of the CDF’s language regarding the Church’s authority over the nuns.

I would repeat that doctrine is the greatest barrier to religion in our post-modern world. People who have been raised and educated with the understanding that knowledge is gained through observation, experimentation and the resources of the rational mind simply cannot accept a pre-modern concept of divine revelation—that knowledge of the cosmos and of the world is gained through a direct divine intervention transmitted to a prophet. But even more important is the Enlightenment commitment to the value of the individual and how that informs a rejection of authority in determining a relationship to the divine. If God is revealed in the world, each of us is capable of receiving that revelation and establishing a response that will bring us into relationship with the divine. Yes, there are people, past and present, who have unique qualities of inspiration that open them more fully to divine revelation—in the same way that artists and poets are more fully open to the depth of meaning in the world. But that is insight that we can draw upon; not authority to determine our thought or behavior. It is not commandment.

That being said, I would suggest that we begin by being honest about the nature of our sacred writings. Torah, Bible, Rabbinic Literature, classical and medieval codes and commentaries are sacred not because of any divine origin. God is not a published author. These are human documents, reflecting not only a vision of the divine and of the human community’s proper response to that vision, but also the unique contemporary historical, social, political and theological circumstances in which these documents arose. These texts become sacred inasmuch as they provide a community of worshippers—or even an individual worshipper—insight into the cosmic meaning, purpose and significance of their lives and facilitate the participation of the worshipper in a divine/human relationship. It is the religious community and the individual worshipper who make a text sacred, not God.

What this perspective on sacred scripture actually entails is a more intense focus on what Rabbi Irving Greenberg in his book, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, describes as human responsibility in the divine/human relationship, and it is precisely this human responsibility—this human autonomy—that continues to be emblematic of the modern and post-modern ethos. I would suggest, moreover, that this human responsibility and autonomy is at the heart of classical rabbinic Judaism and, indeed, increasingly animates Jewish thought in the modern world.

Jewish tradition projects an understanding of Torah as a human phenomenon in terms of the rabbinic concept of torah she-be’al pe, “oral Torah,” literally, “Torah that proceeds from the mouth.” We’ve been taught that the sources of Halakhah, the classic rabbinic texts—Mishnah and Talmud—are known as the oral Torah, the Oral Law. Jewish tradition understands that this Oral Torah was also transmitted at Sinai; that it contains the commentary—the explication, interpretation and application of the written Torah, the torah she-bikhtav.

Yet, there is something much more profound about an idea of “oral Torah” than simply the mode of transmission. There are several discussions in rabbinic literature about the significance of the oral nature of this Torah. One of these appears in a Talmudic tractate known as Gittin, which insists that Halakhah is not to be written, but must be transmitted as part of the oral dialectical tradition. Halakhah emerges in discussion, conversation.

Frankly, since the publication of the Mishnah, we Jews have abandoned the notion of an oral Torah, and what we may have gained in clarity that a written text provides we have lost in terms of the organic nature of an oral tradition. We have lost the vitality of what Solomon Schechter called—ironically in this context— “catholic Israel,” namely, a religious tradition that emerges from the broad community of committed, engaged Jews intent on bringing the divine presence into our personal and communal lives. An oral tradition requires that each generation and each individual not simply go to the text to find the answer. An oral tradition demands that each generation and each individual participate in creating the text. An oral tradition grows out of the life of the covenant community—a covenant community that is engaged in creating Torah.

The lesson for Jews that emerges from the election of Pope Francis is that we, too, must reexamine the ancient/medieval authority of a fixed text enforced by a top down hierarchy of rabbinic authority and return to the original ideal of a relationship to God facilitated by a set of beliefs and practices that emerge from the sacred community of believers intent on forging and fashioning that relationship.