Forgive me - This is one Sunday when I have no friend to meet in a pub, so I suppose my discouragement left me unable to resist quoting that old toast.
The Feast of Christ the King is a great favourite of mine. I can think of easily fifty themes on which a sermon for this feast could be structured... in fact, if my mind gets fully into gear, perhaps I'll compose one and post it later this week. I may not be John Henry Newman, John Wesley, or Benedict XVI, but I can guarantee that whatever sermon I composed would have to be an improvement over the travesty I heard this morning.
Most of the time, I attend churches where there is exceptional music, liturgy, and preaching (well, most of the time. I've never much favoured those of one young curate who always seems to include anecdotes about games he played as a child.) This morning, I was delayed, and ended up paying one of my occasional visits to a local Catholic church. (It shall remain nameless. There are many words of praise I can sing for this parish in other ways, so I am not going to refer to its name lest anyone think the bitter 'meal' of this morning's sermon, which still leaves me with some indigestion, is standard fare - quite the contrary!)
Not having been there recently, I had not known that the parish now had a Tridentine Mass. With Papa Benedict, whose motu proprio was long overdue, I love it, but clearly some people there did not, and many complained, on the way out, that they felt as if they hadn't been to Mass at all. A relatively young priest said the Mass impeccably (if one likes 1962 rubrics... it was a basic 'dialogue Mass,' but the people don't even recite the Credo and Lord's Prayer, and the canon is silent), though I doubt he had yet seen the light of day in 1962. His sermon killed the effect - for my readers to get the picture, it was the sort of sermon I indeed heard in 1962, and which James Joyce immortalised in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He preached entirely about Hell, and indeed read from Alphonsus Liguori's work on the subject, quoting passages about the physical torments of hell, especially for sins of the flesh! (I suppose I'm home free... though I have heard there are ten commandments... and something else about said commandments sealing a covenant, first at Sinai, which foreshadowed one which involved a Church...)
I have some sympathy with the great Alphonsus, of course. In fact, some of his writings on moral theology, which so allow for how one can be deficient in intention, will, or reason, are positively brilliant. Alphonsus, who was bishop of the diocese which neighboured on that of my parents, was dealing with people who had used 'the son of a bitch had it coming to him' as a defence for murder since the days of the Roman Empire - I once heard of a case where one man killed another (this in my parents' day, not Alphonsus') because the guy who was murdered was grandson of a man who'd stolen a piece of cheese from the killer's own grandfather (a cheese merchant.) I suppose that Alphonsus was trying to put a bit of the fear of hell into those in the congregation (not a majority, but surely those who paid for the stained glass windows) who might belatedly be expected to grow a conscience.
For this young priest, I had no sympathy! He kept going on as if Hell were our default location for the next life. Of course, when he mentioned that, with this being the end of the liturgical year, he's going to use Alphonsus' writings for his meditations this week, I could not help but think of how many more suitable writings I can think of to warm up for Advent... (If he's dead set on Alphonsus, how about the humane, pastoral, loving care for penitents?)
Christ is King of all creation... the judge who sends many of us to hell... charming picture... Cosmic redemption, anyone?
It is unfortunate that, in our teaching, sermons, and focus, including in some elements of worship, we have lost the awe which the earliest Christians had for the resurrection - and which was expressed in their liturgy. Just as one example, Martin Luther, who whatever his strengths did illustrate an uncommonly high degree of angst, was totally preoccupied for years with whether his contrition was sufficient. The prayer books, which many read at the Eucharist before the time of any congregational responses, focussed unduly on Jesus' death as a source of forgiveness (to the exclusion of little details like the resurrection, ascension, public ministry as prophet, hidden glory, coming in glory which we await...), and tended to consist of a string of prayers for mercy.
Catholics, for all their reputation for having excessive guilt, are extremely tolerant in doctrine. There is no idea that only Catholics (or Christians) have a chance at eternal joy in God's presence - or that God is a vengeful, or at best indifferent, judge who consigns most of his creation to hell! I've seen far worse in some other varieties of Christian, who seem to think that even baptised believers are headed for a fiery destination if they haven't pronounced the magic words of a second 'born again' formula.
I often wonder, if I were an unbeliever, if 'believe, and behave, and obey on all things, or head for hell' would do anything except get me running in another direction. I would not care to know a God such as that. I'm not denying the wickedness in this world, of course, nor am I minimising the obstacles to union with God inherent in our own sinfulness. (The heinous sins I personally do not consider to be the result of weakness - I'd call them demonic, because they are against even the instincts of our humanity. But note that I am referring to the Hitlers and Pol Pots, not to most of us garden variety Christians.) But our sins hamper the intimacy to which God calls us - and repentance opens us to this intimacy.
I never discourse on Hell! Yet I shall quote a reference from a sermon I heard, also recently, in response to questions about hell, which I greatly prefer. "You can go to hell - if you really insist!"
Presumably my readers would be more interested in the positive side of the afterlife (and may even believe that our life in Christ actually begins right here...), so I'll close with a quote from Papa Benedict. Would that I could write one paragraph of this quality before I die!
"Heaven, therefore, must first and foremost be determined christologically. It is not an extra-historical place into which one goes. Heaven's existence depends upon the fact that Jesus Christ, as God, is man, and makes space for human existence in the existence of God himself...It is by being with Christ that we find the true location of our existence as human beings...Christ is the temple of the final age; he is heaven, the new Jerusalem, he is the cultic space for God...
If heaven depends on being in Christ, then it must involve a co-being with all those who, together, constitute the body of Christ. Heaven is a stranger to isolation. It is the open society of the communion of saints, and in this way the fulfilment of all human communion."
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