GUIDE TO SEPTEMBER ISSUE

Divorce, Annulment & Communion

David Bentley Hart

An Orthodox theologian on the controversy sill rocking the Roman Catholic Church

The one thing that tradition cannot tolerate is ambiguity, But alas, history is nothing but ambiguity, and the actual historical record is rarely the traditionalist friend. The Church Fathers tended to treat marriage as little more than a civil institution, a natural fact rather than a sacred vocation. They treated it as a moral discipline rather than a theological topic. They took a pragmatic approach to fre­quent dissolution of marriages and remarriage. They regarded both as sinful in some sense but not the equivalent of apostasy Basil the Great (330-379) apparently first estab­lished a penitential discipline for remarried la­ity: a second marriage after divorce or bereave­ment required one to two years of abstinence from the Eucharist; a third marriage from three to five years. Council in Trullo (692) allowed a man aban­doned by his wife to remarry without any pen­ance. If he was at fault, seven years of penance and abstinence from Eucharist but not required to dissolve his second marriage

The New Testament record read in Greek accounts for this ambiguity. We translate as divorce various words which mean writ of separation, dissolution, release, and send­ing away. Difficult to say what these meant in terms of law and custom at the time. When Christ speaks about divorce he is dealing with a precise part of Mosaic law. Only the husband could divorce a wife, possibly condemning here to penury and prostitution. . Through much of the Middle Ages the whole issue of wedlock certified by the church mostly concerned the aristocracy, inasmuch as mar­riage was chiefly a matter of property, inheri­tance, and politics When one looks at it closely in the light of both empirical facts and abstract principles of the matter, the distinction between divorce and annulment is specious all the way down

Standing in the Light

The clandestine correspondence of
Helmuth and Ferya von Moltke

These are excerpts from a book. Hemulth is thirty seven and his wife Freya is thirty three when the story starts in September 1944. He­multh has been in Gestapo custody for nearly nine months. He and a circle of friends had been conspiring about how a post Hitler Germany should be established. These were disguised as weekend parties. In the process of investigating the after­math of the plot to assassinate Hitler this group had been discovered. Hemulth was set to be tried in a people’s court. His death was almost certain. Fortunately the Protestant prison chaplain was sympathetic; he smuggled letters between them.

Freda to Helmuth But please, when you die, it must be in the certainty that apart from God I belong to you.. Quality is what counts... Your life seems beau­tiful and complete to me. You’ll die for some­thing worth dying for. Helmuth to Freda I feel that I have had so much in life that I have no right to make more demands but I don’t feel as though I’m the harvest calling for the grim reaper.

Can the Chinampas Survive?

Pollution and urban sprawl threaten Mexico City’s ‘floating gardens’

Joseph Sorrentino

The chinamperia is an ancient agricultural system of man-made islands, chinampas. They were built in the shallow lakes of the Basin of Mexico. Some of these were in use five thousand years ago. The ones that are still farmed are between twelve hundred and two thousand years old.

The farmers use agricultural techniques that are as old as the islands. The land is so fertile that there are four to five crops a years. Farmers are farming the same land as their fathers, and grand­fathers even though they are barely above subsistence.

However the demand for water by the expanding population has lower the water table. Many of the canals that connect the islands have dried up Large parts of the metropolis are sinking because the Mexico City Aquifer has been emptied; this likely made the devastating earthquake of Septem­ber 2017 While theoretically the situation could be reversed it is very unlikely politically. 

Boot Camp for Nuns

The harsh discipline and surprising tenderness

Sr. Helen Prejean

This is a delightful chapter from her new book, told from the perspective of an adolescent girl. At the same time we know enough about Prejean life that we can see innocence, naiveté, irony and even satire.

I used to think that poor people were happier than most of us. There minds aren’t screwed up with conflicted philosophical notions about the meaning of life. They just live.

Here at the mother-house all the servants are black... We novices work right alongside them, cutting up vegetables and peeling potatoes.

One day as the river of consciousness deep­ens, I will radically change my way of thinking about all this. But not until I burst out of my cocoon of privilege. It is going to take a while

 

 Hope Against Hype

James T. Kloppenberg

How should democracies deal with irreconcilable differences

Unlike European nations with traditions of a single established religion, the United States has separated church and state from the outset. Unlike European nations that routed citizenship in blood or soil, we (eventually) became willing to accept birthright citizenship. it is well established that Americans are more divided over political and cultural issues today than they have ever been since the 1850s the decade that culminated in the Civil War Springs proposes that we reevaluate our long for resolution of our problems and consider instead the positive role that persistent conflict can play in democracy. Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society is a serious provocative analysis of the roots of our divisions and an ambitious proposal for how such conflicts might be productively re-framed. Springs observes that the ideal of liberal pluralism aims to suppress conflict rather than resolving it.

Springs holds out King’s approach as exemplary. What he call “healthy conflict” is (1) oriented by the pursuit of justice; (2) marked by a practical, goal oriented sensibility about the dimensions of power inscribed in the conflict; and (3) motivated by respect for the humanity of one’s opponents (thus grounding hope for eventual reconciliation), even when their actions must be denounced and resisted because the produce, or sustain, evil conditions. Obama in Audacity of Hope writes: “I am reminded that deliberations and the constitutional order may sometimes be the luxury of the powerful, and that it has sometimes been the cranks, the zealots, the prophets, the agitators, and the unreasonable –in other words, the absolutists- that have fought for a new order.”