2022/11/14

65. The "Bride" and the Cognitive Distortion

The image of matrimony placed at the foundation for understanding the Church in the Vatican II documents is taken from the Book of Revelation too. As we have discussed, Revelation directs its trainees to the Mass through its training and the formation of the Holy Spirit. The Mass, which brings Jesus' last supper to the "present" and makes real the "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19) once again, is the place where the sign of the "new covenant" (Luke 22:20) made between the Father, who is God, and the Son, who became man, is continued. Here the Church, as "my church" (Matthew 16:18) of Jesus, bears witness to this "new covenant," along with the Apostles who were present at the table of his last supper. That is why the "bride" in Revelation, with one exception, appears after chapter 19, where the Mass opens. Therefore, the "bride" in Revelation refers to this "new covenant" and its sign. That is also true of the "bride" used by John the Baptist as follows: "He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:29-30). John the Baptist, who compared himself to the "friend of the bridegroom," at this time thought of the "steward of the feast" of the scene of the wedding at Cana, found in the same Gospel of John, chapter 2. That is because John the Baptist must have heard the news of Jesus' first sign performed there. The following words, which the steward of the feast said to the bridegroom as he called him, were precisely what John the Baptist intended to say: "Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now" (John 2:10). John the Baptist understood the "good wine" as the "new covenant." So, he continued, "He must increase, but I must decrease." He placed himself on the side of the old covenant. In contrast, the Church, while calling God Father through Jesus Christ, took over the expression of the people who, unable to establish a parent-child bond with God through Solomon, compared the relationship between God and the people to that of a bridegroom and bride, or husband and wife, and imagined the bond of husband and wife to that with God (cf. blog № 59). In the Book of Wisdom, supposedly authored by Solomon, he wrote: "I loved her and sought her from my youth, and I desired to take her for my bride, and I became enamored of her beauty" (Book of Wisdom 8:2). To him, bride meant wisdom. He then "determined to take her to live with me" (Book of Wisdom 8:9). Solomon, when the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Ask what I shall give you" (I Kings 3:5), did not realize the very words of the Lord were the true wisdom. And he loved many foreign women and clung to them, disobeying the word of the Lord and following their gods (cf. I Kings 11:1-10). Solomon, like Adam the first human, was attracted to the mystery of motherhood that women possess (cf. Genesis 3:20) and sought the motherly wisdom that he, as a man, could not have (cf. Song of Songs 3:4,11; 6:9; 8:1,2,5; Book of Wisdom 7:12). Thus, a cognitive distortion occurred in Solomon, who mixed up the wisdom of God with that of men. Song of Songs describes the trading using silver in its final chapter (cf. Song of Songs 8:11-12). It has received the mark of the name of the beast (cf. blog№46).

Maria K. M.

 2022/11/07

64. Paul and Cognitive Distortions Part 2

Let us continue our discussion by examining the following expression from one of the Second Vatican Council texts: "In this way they [priests] profess themselves before men as willing to be dedicated to the office committed to them – namely, to commit themselves faithfully to one man and to show themselves as a chaste virgin for Christ and thus to evoke the mysterious marriage established by Christ, and fully to be manifested in the future, in which the Church has Christ as her only Spouse" (Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, par. 16). This statement is taken from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, where he wrote: "I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ"(2 Corinthians 11:2). These words are a parable used by Paul to admonish the Corinthian community, wary of those whom he called "false apostles" (cf. 2 Corinthians 11:1-15). Behind his concern was his desire to manage to make them fulfil their promise to raise money for Jerusalem. He was clearly preoccupied with the issue. So, first of all, we need to consider Paul's peculiar situation when he wrote these words. Also, the bizarre expression, "betrothed you to one husband to present you as a chaste virgin," is based on the patriarchal thinking of the time, making no sense at all in the present day. It was too easy a choice to incorporate such an expression directly into the most authoritative church documents of the second half of the 20th century bringing the conjugal image into the relationship between Christ and the Church. Marriage is essentially moving towards sexual union for the bridegroom and bride. If we take marriage into the Church teachings as a metaphor for the relationship between Christ and the Church, a sexual bias is inevitable in crucial situations. That is evident from the fact that, regarding the cases of sexual abuse by the priests, the bishops and the fellow priests concerned downplayed the seriousness of the situation and did not take decisive actions even when they became aware of the facts. In addition, the following expressions in the Vatican II documents show that the above-mentioned patriarchal ideology is being carried over even to the present day in the relationship between priests and the laity: "Let them, as fathers in Christ, take care of the faithful whom they have begotten by baptism and their teaching" (Lumen Gentium, par. 28); "The Christian faithful, for their part, should realize their obligations to their priests, and with filial love they should follow them as their pastors and fathers" (Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, par.9); "Thus they [priests] are apt to accept, in a broad sense, paternity in Christ" (Ibid., par. 16). Jesus, who gave Christians the "Lord's Prayer," admonished them saying, "And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven" (Matthew 23:9). Even though born as a man to fulfil the prophecy as Christ, Jesus came to the earth carrying the divine motherhood (cf. blog № 29, № 43). When Jesus compared himself just once to a "bridegroom," he likened his disciples to "wedding guests" (cf. Matthew 9:15). And Jesus specified who the disciples, the "wedding guests," were (cf. Matthew 12:49-50). In the scene of the wedding at Cana, Jesus himself was there as a wedding guest, along with his mother, brothers, and disciples (cf. John 2:1-12). The sign that Jesus performed here, turning water into fine wine, was fulfilled by Mary and Jesus precisely because of their mother-son relationship.

Maria K. M.

 2022/10/31

63. Paul and Cognitive Distortions

Over the last few issues, we have discussed how the Catholic Church of today has understood the Church itself and priests from the perspective of "cognitive distortions." These discussions have been done with some awareness of the Synodal Journey initiative, which is currently underway worldwide. This year also marks the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. So, in this issue, I would like to continue my previous reflections going back to the documents of the Council. First, I would like to take up the expression from Lumen Gentium, which I also introduced in this blog №59: "Christ loves the Church as His bride, having become the model of a man loving his wife as his body" (Lumen Gentium, section 7). This expression is taken from Paul's letter to Ephesians (5:25-28). Here, Paul, while taking a form of a recommendation to husband and wife, attempted to explain the relationship between Christ and the Church by likening it to the relationship between wife and husband, but in the meanwhile, he realized his reasonings did not make sense (cf. Ephesians 5:22-33). When he said, "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24), the word "his father and his mother" must have struck a chord with him. So, Paul abruptly cuts his discourse short, saying, "This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband" (Ephesians 5:32-33). He then quickly shifts the subject to the relationship between children and their fathers (cf. Ephesians 6:1-4). However, the expression in Lumen Gentium applied the relationship between wife and husband directly to the relationship between Christ and the Church. A cognitive distortion has occurred. The relationship between a wife and a husband becomes that of a mother and a father through their child. Unlike that, the relationship between Christ and the Church becomes that of mother and child without any intermediary, according to the following words of Jesus: "Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother" (Matthew 12:49-50). "Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven" signifies not only those who gather around Christ, but also Jesus himself, who said: "For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me" (John 6:38). Christ is the brother, sister and mother of the Church. So, the community of Christians gathered at the Mass consists of the priest, a mother, and the faithful, brothers and sisters as her children. The priest becomes a mother who, in collaboration with the Holy Spirit, asks in the name of Jesus that the bread and wine may become the body and blood of Christ through the Word. The faithful become children who hear the Word through the mother and take and eat the Body of Christ with faith. Therefore, at the last supper, Jesus, who instituted the Eucharist and was about to give birth to the Church on the Cross, said to the Apostles, who were to fulfil the same duty as his: "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples" (John 15:7-8).

Maria K. M.

 2022/10/24

62. Cognitive Distortions

In the last issue, I introduced the memoir by Daniel Pittet, describing the sexual abuse he suffered from a priest during his childhood. He was sexually abused by the priest for the first time when he was nine years old, which lasted for four years. He decided to press charges 20 years later when he discovered he was not the only victim. Research on sexual offences involving child victims is particularly advanced in Europe and America. It has been shown that these sex offenders have distinctive sexual cognitive distortions. Sexual cognitive distortions refer to the specific attitudes and beliefs that promote sexual offending, including acceptance of sexually aggressive behaviour towards the victim, downplaying of its problematic nature and the severity of the damage, and the tendency to attribute responsibility for it to the victim's words and actions and their own psychological state. In the afterword to the memoir mentioned above, we will find a record of the interview with the priest, the perpetrator, conducted by the collaborator in writing this book the year before its publication. Reading what the priest tells here, it is surprising to see in him the above characteristics of a sex offender's sexual cognitive distortions. The fact that in most cases, including the case in this book, the Bishop and the perpetrator's fellow priests downplayed the seriousness of the abuse when they became aware of it and did not take decisive action tells us that these cognitive distortions were to some extent shared among the clergy in the area as a whole. In this light, the cause of the cognitive distortions should be attributed not only to the personal problems of the perpetrators but also their priestly formation process. This year, a person who attended the lifelong vow ceremony at a convent said that she was surprised and felt an ethical discomfort when a priest said in his congratulatory speech, "A priest represents Christ, and you are Christ's bride, so you are also my bride." I have read the "Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests" issued by the Congregation for the Clergy in 1994 by chance, and I realised that these problems come from the fact that priests are formed amid the following expressions. "… the Church, his Body and his Bride, called by his Spouse to be a sign and instrument of redemption"; "Similar to the Bishop, they [the priests] participate in that spousal dimension in relation to the Church. The priest, who 'in the individual local communities of the faithful makes the Bishop present, so to speak, to whom they are united with a faithful and great spirit' must be faithful to the Bride and almost like living icons of Christ the Spouse render fruitful the multi-form donation of Christ to his Church"; "He [the priest] is disposed to give his life for it [the community] … in order to render it, in the image of the Church, Spouse of Christ, always more beautiful … This spousal dimension of the priest as pastor will help him guide his community …" Bringing the conjugal image into the relationship between Christ and the Church in this way and asking a priest to take on the two conflicting roles - that of a husband facing the Church at the same time as being incorporated into the Church, the wife - would potentially create confusion in his identity and cause sexual cognitive distortions. The only time Jesus compared himself to a "bridegroom" is in the dialogue about fasting (cf. Matthew 9:15). So, to make the idea of Jesus here likening his disciples to wedding guests alive, we need fresh wineskins for new wine (cf. Matthew 9:17).

Maria K. M.

 2022/10/17

61. "I AM."

The Catholic Church scandal, sparked by a January 2002 report by the United States newspaper, The Boston Globe, quickly spread around the world, uncovering years of concealment. Its flames show no sign of abating even now, more than 20 years later. Revelation 18 seems as if it prophesied this current state of the Church in the 21st century: "As she glorified herself and played the wanton, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning. Since in her heart she says, 'A queen I sit, I am no widow, mourning I shall never see,' so shall her plagues come in a single day, pestilence and mourning and famine, and she shall be burned with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who judges her" (Revelation 18:7-8). For some time, I have sensed in the cases of sexual abuse by clergy a kind of problem of spirituality coming from the depths of history. Eventually, I encountered the training of Revelation and, while practising it, blindly started writing this blog, encouraged by the angel's words, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near" (Revelation 22:10). In the process, I realised that, unexpectedly, this book is looking at the root of the problems of the contemporary society. I have read a memoir by Daniel Pittet, published in 2017, for which Pope Francis wrote a foreword. It states that around 1968, when he was being sexually abused by a priest, the Church and the state in the area where he lived were united as one, so the Church had immense power, and people lived according to the rules set by the Church. The fact that these spectacular tragedies could be covered up for so long must surely be because of the great power and authority connected to each other. But this is not the only problem. There seems to be a cognitive distortion lurking in these problems. In the Gospel of John, we find the arguments between Jesus and the Jews who believed in him (cf. John 8:31-47). Here, in the presence of Jesus, who speaks to them with truth, it is revealed that the Jews recognised two objects, Abraham and God, as their father at the same time. In addition, they also had a spirituality that viewed God as their spouse while saying God was their father. The Church has inherited this spirituality as a tradition. She calls out to God, "Our Father who art in heaven", and at the same time says that Christ, who gave birth to the Church as God, the true Parent, loves her as his bride (cf. blog № 59). The contradictions and ethical discrepancies here will cause stress over the years, even unconsciously, and eventually, run the risk of causing cognitive distortions. The above arguments between Jesus and the Jews who believed in him ended in a way as follows: "Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.' So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple" (John 8:58-59).

Maria K. M.

[Notice] The expression "God of no information" in № 59 was an error for "the no information of God," which I have already corrected.

 2022/10/10

60. Jerusalem Part 2

Jesus commanded his Disciples, "Seek his kingdom" (Luke 12:31), and assured them that "it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32). As we have discussed, the Holy Spirit provided Christians with three opportunities to fulfil these words. First, to continue the training of daily reciting and hearing the Revelation of John – the worldview of Jesus Christ is infused into the faithful's realm of the unconscious (cf. blog № 36). Second, to attend the Mass – the reading of the Gospels and the Holy Communion strongly affect the senses of the faithful, giving them the experience of union with Jesus that the Apostles had at the Last Supper (cf. blog № 32) and making them realise their role worthy of the name of Christ (cf. blog № 49). Third, to receive the formation of the Holy Spirit – the faithful's realm of consciousness, connected to the no information of God, is nurtured to conform to the Father's providence and is prepared for the third mystery of the Incarnation, in which they collaborate with the Holy Spirit (cf. blog № 38). Thus, the faithful will realise that the Kingdom of God has become of the Christians when they work in concert with the Holy Spirit. These three opportunities correspond to the description of the holy city Jerusalem descending from heaven in Revelation 21. First, "And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (Revelation 21:14) refers to the worldview of Jesus Christ that the twelve Apostles had – the city wall represents the training of Revelation. Second, "The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its breadth" and "its length and breadth and height are equal" (Revelation 21:16) describe the flat expanse of the Mass and its three-dimensional space – the appearance of the city represents the Mass. Third, "And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl" (Revelation 21:21) – the "pearl" alludes to the Holy Eucharist, and so, the gates represent the formation of the Holy Spirit. These coincidences suggest that the holy city of Jerusalem is a prophecy of the Kingdom of God, which will appear when the Holy Spirit and the faithful work together (cf. Revelation 21:9-27). Previously, I wrote that when a Christian who seeks the Kingdom of God lives the daily routine of going to the Mass, the path he follows brings the last supper of Jesus to the 'present' and makes the "remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19) a reality again. It corresponds to the description of the ever-living city in the following 22 chapters: "Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There shall no more be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him; they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. And night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign for ever and ever" (Revelation 22:1-5).

Maria K. M.

 2022/10/03

59. Mystery of Babylon the Great

For Christians who pray "Our Father who art in heaven," it is well-known that God the Creator is the true parent, which the Church has consistently taught. At the same time, however, the traditional idea of likening the marital relationship, represented by the Song of Solomon, to the relationship between Christ and the Church has been carried on as if it were the genetic inheritance of our ancestors. Lumen Gentium, one of the texts of the Second Vatican Council, states: "Christ loves the Church as His bride, having become the model of a man loving his wife as his body" (Lumen Gentium, section 7). It says Christ, who gave birth to the Church as God, the true parent, loves it as his bride. It is hard not to see a contradiction and a feeling of ethical wrongness here. The above expression not only disregards gender differences and women's rights. It would also ignore the following words of Jesus to Philip, who said to him, "Lord, show us the Father" (John 14:8): "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works" (John 14:9-10). In addition, by bringing the image of marriage into the relationship between Christ and the Church, some faithful will seek spiritual union with Christ, just as a bride goes to sexual union with her bridegroom through marriage. Doing that is nothing more than one of the things that people all over the world, even non-Christians, seek: to train themselves aiming for union with a higher being, such as an individually intuited god or the universe; to achieve perfection by experiencing enlightenment; and to seek a good life by maintaining a balance between body and soul. Jesus says, "For all the nations of the world seek these things; and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things shall be yours as well" (Luke 12:30-31). Jesus bequeathed the Word, the Eucharist and the Apostles for the kingdom of God, which is he himself. And the Holy Spirit brings the Bible and the Mass and makes the kingdom of God appear on the earth, collaborating with Christians. Thus, the kingdom of God has become of Christians as Jesus had promised: "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32). A Christian who seeks the kingdom of God, if he decides, can enter into the daily routine of being nourished by the worldview of Jesus Christ and the spirituality of the Holy Spirit, connecting with the no information of God and going to the Mass. When we live this routine, the path we follow there becomes the beginning and the end that brings the last supper of Jesus to the "present" and makes the "remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19) a reality again. The path followed by Peter and John, sent by Jesus to prepare the Passover meal on that day, that is, the path that led them into the city where they met the man carrying a jar of water (the Holy Spirit) and the householder (the Father), appears there (cf. Luke 22:7-20).

Maria K. M.