“The world expects those who claim to adore God to be men and women of peace who are capable of living as brothers and sisters, regardless of ethnic, religious, cultural or ideological differences.” Pope Francis (Ankara, 28 November 2014)
Mary, Mother of the Church faith community promotes honest, respectful and effective relationships with people of all faith communities within our community and the City of Winnipeg. This is done by maintaining and developing relationships and contacts with our local interchurch and interfaith partners. The vision and hope of this service is that the people of our faith community will engage with brothers and sisters of other Christian churches and other faiths on a regular basis. Our prayer is that this engagement will be embraced from a learning perspective resulting in a mutual enrichment of our relationship with our Creator.
“Where books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned also”
Heinrich Heine, German critic and poet (1797-1856)
This quote strikes a chilling chord as Jewish communities and others mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht (‘Night of Broken Glass’), the night of 9 November 1938 when a Nazi rampage caused massive destruction of Jewish communities in Germany and Austria. In the absence of international protest, Kristallnacht marked a critical step in the movement of Nazi policy towards the ‘Final Solution.’
Particularly sobering is that the anniversary of Kristallnacht recalls a specific moment in history when there was still time for people to speak up; a moment which passed all too silently. As the adage goes, evil triumphed because good people did nothing. When I imagine the morning after Kristallnacht, I picture (from eye-witness accounts) Jewish children walking through streets of shattered glass, while others mourn their dead parents, or gape in horror at razed synagogues and incinerated Torah scrolls.
But I also know that for most people in the world the day after Kristallnacht was ‘business as usual.’ A day with enough of one’s own problems to be taking notice of the plight of the Jews ‘over there’.
And I admit that, in a certain sense, I can understand this reaction. After all, the daily tasks of life are difficult, busy, all-consuming. And who am I to think that I can make a difference in complex political events on the other side of the world? Surely they need to be dealt with by somebody more knowledgeable, smarter, wealthier, more powerful than I.
Enter William Cooper: an Indigenous Australian, in his late seventies, living in Melbourne in 1938. In the context of the times, he was hardly the image of power. His Aboriginal identity meant he wasn’t even considered an Australian citizen. Yet when William Cooper woke to the news of Kristallnacht in November 1938 he responded by organizing a protest march. With supporters he walked to the German Consulate and attempted to deliver a petition (which was rejected), decrying the persecution of Jews. His initiative was formally acknowledged at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in December 2010 with the establishment of the Chair for the Study of Resistance during the Holocaust, in tribute to William Cooper.
The William Cooper story has a number of fascinating angles to it, including the sheer nerve of Cooper himself. If an elderly, disenfranchised, Indigenous Australian living in Melbourne in 1938 can take a stand against one of the most murderous regimes in history, then you and I have just been stripped of every excuse to avoid ‘getting involved’ in other people’s problems. I am not suggesting that William Cooper rolled out of bed one day and did something completely out of character. He led a life of activism, campaigning for the rights of Indigenous Australians as well as other oppressed groups. But this only underscores the point: here was a man whose life embodied a commitment to justice, never seeing the reforms for which he strived. Cooper died in 1941.
Each year on 9 November, the anniversary of Kristallnacht calls for attention to our ongoing relationship with the Jewish people. It is a moment when people of every culture and creed can join together to say ‘never again’ to antisemitism and to every form of destruction of human dignity. It is a call to personal responsibility for the human family. For Australians in particular, William Cooper has made it the anniversary to declare: 'no excuses’.
Richard Rohr - Center For Contemplation and Action
Human nature, when it is seeking power, wants either to play the victim or to create victims of others. In fact, the second follows from the first. Once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse or attack—and with impunity! It settles the dust quickly, and it takes away any immediate shame, guilt, or anxiety. In other words, it works—at least for a while.
When we read today’s news, we realize the pattern has not changed much in all of history. Hating, fearing, or diminishing someone else holds us together for some reason. Scapegoating, or the creating of necessary victims, is in our hard wiring. Philosopher René Girard (1923–2015) calls “the scapegoat mechanism” the central pattern for the creation and maintenance of cultures worldwide since the beginning. [1]
The sequence, without being too clever, goes something like this: we compare, we copy, we compete, we conflict, we conspire, we condemn, and we crucify. If we do not recognize some variation of this pattern within ourselves and put an end to it in the early stages, it is almost inevitable. That is why spiritual teachers of any depth will always teach simplicity of lifestyle and freedom from the competitive power game, which is where it all begins. It is probably the only way out of the cycle of violence.
It’s hard for us religious people to hear, but the most persistent violence in human history has been “sacralized violence”—violence that we treated as sacred, but which was, in fact, not. Human beings have found a most effective way to legitimate their instinct toward fear and hatred. They imagine that they are fearing and hating on behalf of something holy and noble: God, religion, truth, morality, their children, or love of country. It takes away all guilt, and one can even think of oneself as representing the moral high ground or being responsible and prudent as a result. It never occurs to most people that they are becoming what they fear and hate.
This week we enter Holy Week, the days leading up to Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection. As long as we deal with the real meaning of evil and sin by some means other than forgiveness and healing, we will keep projecting, fearing, and attacking it over there (“scapegoating’’), instead of “gazing” on it within ourselves and “weeping” over it. The longer we contemplate the cross, the more we recognize our own complicity in and profits made from the sin of others. Forgiveness demands three new simultaneous “seeings”: I must see God in the other; I must access God in myself; and I must experience God in a new way that is larger than an “enforcer.” That is a whole new world seen in three dimensions. The real “3-D”!
[1] The scapegoat concept is a key feature of Girard’s thought, especially in Violence and the Sacred (1972), chapter 4; and The Scapegoat (1982), chapter 3.
Greg and Erina Barrett are active members of Mary, Mother of the Church faith community. Greg is a graduate of the University of Manitoba’s School of Social Work. He has also been involved in conflict resolution work as well work with Italian Seniors at the Centro Caboto Centre.
Currently, his major interest is in bringing people together to learn from each other through ecumenical work. As well as working on the parish level, he works on a voluntary and part time basis with the Archdiocese of St. Boniface as the Coordinator of Interchurch and Interfaith Learning.
Greg sees the purpose of his work to help establish and sustain a mutually meaningful, sincere and consistent dialogue among equals. The goals of this work include:
To seek to create an open and confidential environment in which dialogue partners will share life experiences with each other and how those experiences have shaped their faith.
To seek to create an environment in which dialogue partners can enter into a mutually educative exchange within which they will learn about each other’s faith.
To seek to create an environment in which humility, listening and openness will be key elements resulting in positive and lasting human relationships between the participants in the dialogue.
The vision and hope of this Program is that the people of our faith community will engage with brothers and sisters of other Christian churches and other faiths on a regular basis. Our prayer is that this engagement will be embraced from a learning perspective resulting in a mutual enrichment of our relationship with our Creator.
It is important to note that this vision, this purpose and these goals also have application to the inner life of Mary Mother of the Church faith community itself.
