I attended Gil Bailie's first Emmaus Road Initiative session of the new year at Washington Theological Union. Top flight examination from him ensued on "Why we needed the Incarnation to save us." Sadly, during the question/answer and discussion period that followed, a gal asked Bailie to speak to a concern she felt about his contention that there is no evolution of consciousness.
What took place was a rather one-sided escalation of surly contentiousness (on her part) and a respectful and gentle defense of the Church's teaching about the Incarnation, human fallibility and culture (on Bailie's part). Yours truly tried to make an observation, quoting Our Lord's parable of the Publican and Pharisee who went up to the Temple to pray, but was met with a (probably deserved) disdain for interfering with the mano-a-mano engagement the virago ... excuse me, the lady wanted to continue.
In my Jungian days, I would have labeled Bailie's interlocutor as one caught in an archetypal complex. But now, I see her simply one intent on a Gnostic and decidedly unbiblical, anti-Magisterial, and heretical interpretation of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity ("Cosmic Christ" and other such tripe and piffle) into which some cradle Catholics seem prone to fall.
That Bailie maintained an agreeable and equitable availability with the lady was admirable. That he didn't buckle to her less than gracious diatribe but held the fort for the Magisterium of the Church was one small victory in the culture wars.
5 comments:
Ath, for Gil's future reference, there's a pretty substantial segnment of Fr. Schwager's Banished from Eden that touches on this, actually fairly directly, so there might be a way to channel such interlocutors into MT.
(And just to pre-empt Aramis, yes, I got the book, no, I just skimmed it, and no, I won't be ready to say anything substantive until I read the whole thing and digest (and even then . . .)
I mean, I just got it literally today, and skimmed through about 20 odd pages, randomly selected.
Thanks, Porthos. I need to get a running start at Banished again and finishe it (finally).
There are several approaches to such folk from a MT pov. She seemed scandalized by Gil's shredding her worldview and, presumably, her models (internal mediators) who lent her ontological substantiation. She also seemed hell-bent on simply "winning" - another common means of substantiating and justifying oneself. Thirdly, she reveled in discarding his several attempts to find a common meeting place where they might both agree (hence, my heavy-handed "virago" diction).
Ah well. Our Lord said that scandal was bound to occur.
I am on my 4th time through the book, mainly due to the thickness of my hardhead, however there is so much to Banished from Eden that we should all be digging through its treasures. My wish for ERI and Gil is that somehow Fr. Schwager's genius could be added more directly to the already great material from Girard.
But I already started Christopher West's Theology of the Body Explained. And it's a big book. Banished may have to wait . . .
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