By W. Nicholas Knisely

Pope Benedict has just finished his first visit (as Pope) to the United States. It’s not surprising that many of his statements tended to confuse the people covering the event. The Pope, a former theology professor, shares a trait with the present Archbishop of Canterbury; he speaks in paragraphs, not in sound bites. (And he won’t simplify concepts so that they are easily digestible by the evening newsreaders.) But it wasn’t something that the Pope said, it was something that our President claimed the Pope had said that sent me off on a week’s worth of research and thinking. During a television interview on the eve of the visit, the President expressed his gratitude for the Pope’s teaching that "there's right and wrong in life, that moral relativism has a danger of un-dermining the capacity to have more hopeful and free societies." The President’s statement elicited a flurry of articles and online conversations about how relativism might actually achieve the destruction of society. But the problem is, near as I can tell, the President got the Pope’s thinking just about dead wrong.

I was particularly interested in the question of the proper role of relativism because of my training prior to studying for the priesthood. Part of my studies were spent in theoretical physics (in a small branch of general relativity theory actually) and I’ve been teaching a course on the philosophy of physics for the past six years or so. As part of all that I’ve been digging into the philosophical underpinnings of both classical and quantum physics and trying to see how we might connect the work being done there with the way we as a Church talk about God (literally: Theology).

One of the most important breakthroughs in classical physics in the past century came about as a result of Albert Einstein’s willingness to take the philosophical ideas of Ernst Mach seriously. Mach argued, in effect, that “reality” was ultimately determined by a person’s own observations. Einstein used the idea to construct his postulate of relativity which states that one reference frame’s observation is equally true as another’s even if they contradict, because the laws of physics must be the same for all. There are a couple of shelves worth of books involved in unpacking the statement, but the upshot is that no one observer can really claim priority over another one, even if they contradict each other. In effect, each person’s experience of the world around them is equally valid to another’s. While this was not a universally accepted idea in physics until the second half of the twentieth century (Hitler and Stalin claimed the idea that there was no absolute truth in Science to be preposterous and a result of deviant and Jewish thinking) the concept was repeatedly confirmed in experiment after experiment and is now broadly accepted in the physical sciences.

But a deeper question remains. Given that relativity is experimentally verified in the physical world, how should it be used in the realm of ideas? Do we want to argue that because relativity is a characteristic of physical reality, that it must also be a characteristic of morality? Should it be a fundamental characteristic of theology as well? (If that’s true, then much of the scholasticism of Reformation and Counterreformation theology is automatically overturned.) Benedict, back when he was known as Cardinal Ratzinger, tried to answer these questions. There’s a lovely summary of his thinking available online titled “Relativism, The Central Problem for Faith Today” that walks us through his objections. Apparently the President’s people based the President’s remarks on the title of the essay and not the actual text.

Pope Benedict’s critique of relativism shows that he’s not simply rejecting relativity in a sort of modern versus post-modern reactionary way as the President’s words seem to imply. What the Pope does instead is to look carefully at how various theologians have used relativistic and subjectivist philosophical systems. His critique centers on the observation that the move to reject the very existence of absolutes takes us to a place we don’t want to go. (It essentially forces us to reject any special quality to the revelation of God in the person of Jesus.) But Benedict recognizes the possibility that while ultimate truth exists, it is unknowable by human beings except in approximation.

Painting with a very broad brush, in technical terms the Pope is arguing that Positivism cannot be proven and is even poisonous to theology, and he’s willing at least to enter-tain the principles of PostPositivism (and some of its specific children) as a way of continuing a conversation between science, theology and philosophy. I don’t have space in this essay to unpack fully the meaning of each of the terms above, but a little googling and an afternoon’s worth of reading and all will become moderately clear.

The Pope thus is landing in the same place where most scientists are these days, in post-positivism. Post-positivists admit the impossibility of being able to make statements of fact in an absolutely true way, but still attempt to express truth in a way that is “good enough” for a given purpose. These good-enough expressions come with the caveat that they might be different (pluriform) in different contexts. Post-positivism instead cautions that all attempts to describe truth are ultimately limited and incomplete, but that the attempt should be made. It is not the same as the idea of philosophical relativity which says that there is no unique truth at all, and all claims to truth are equally valid. It’s an important distinction because the implications of a fully relativistic world view take us down roads we know from experience we should not travel.

But keep in mind that while Benedict cautions against the implications of relativism, he doesn’t attempt to solve the problem the way the President’s quote would implies. He does not embrace absolutism as a corrective to the dangers of relativism. Here is Benedict’s key point on the subject in the essay I reference above: “I am of the opinion that neo-Scholastic rationalism failed which, with reason totally in-dependent from the faith, tried to reconstruct the pre-ambula fidei with pure rational cer-tainty.” Benedict goes on to argue that truth can only be approached by means of a path that uses faith and philosophy in a respectful dialogue and that attempting to rely on one or the other is to make a fundamental mistake.

Why does this matter? Look how badly the majority of people have understood the point that the Pope was making. In effect they are force-fitting what he did say into a structure of modernity that they want him to support even while he is explicitly rejecting it. Why do they do this? The idea that there are no fully knowable moral absolutes is not easily accepted by most people. If science and philosophy won’t give us the absolutes we desire then we turn to religion for them, as is what seems to have happened here. The problem is that the absolutes are not readily available in religion either, at least according to Benedict.

This missing of the point is just another example of how desperately people want neat and easy answers to complex and difficult questions. The President’s people got the Pope wrong. They did so because they wanted to be able to say that we are right and others are wrong. (The press got the Pope wrong because they apparently relied on the President’s writers to do their work for them.) But it’s not just the President’s speech writers who chase after the mirage of absolutes. We all want to know for certain what God wants us to do. The problem is that what we want and what the universe gives us are often different. To quote Westley in “The Princess Bride”, we must all “get used to disappointment.” Instead we need to recognize that the best we do is to muddle through, trying to do the best we can and trusting desperately in God’s mercy revealed to us in Jesus. Somehow I think free societies will manage to survive as well.

The Very Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely is Dean of Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix Ariz. He serves as Chair of the Standing Commission on Episcopal Church Communication, is active in ecumenical works and was originally trained as an astronomer before he was ordained. His blog is Entangled States.

By Sara McGinley

All I heard was my husband, Aron’s, side of the conversation.

“Yes. Yes. We’re all fine. I’ve been home for an hour. A bridge? Whoa.”

Then.

“Sara get over here. Look at this. This is so weird.”

Aron has been known from time to time to scream with urgency that I need to come see something, that I need to drop everything and respond to whatever it is he is doing.

More than once in the first year of our marriage I dropped everything and went running only to find out that Aron was calling me to read an interesting article or hear about a new idea he had.

Certainly these were important things. But did I need to leave the washing machine running with the lid open for that?

So last night, despite the fact that he sounded truly worried and was racing to the television I did one last thing. I put the kid’s milk in the refrigerator. And walked slowly over to the television where he sat with our two kids.

They were talking about the dark cloud that billowed into the sky when the bridge that is just over a mile from our house fell.

The bridge. The bridge we drove over just the day before with both kids strapped in the back seat. The bridge we drive on regularly was sitting in the Mississippi River. And it had just fallen. And it had fallen during rush hour.

I was full of questions.

Did we know anyone on the bridge?

Could anyone live through something like that?

What made this happen?

And why?

And then my three year old started doing what he does best and what he has done more than anything else for the past week.

He asked why.

Why is that bridge broken?

Why is that train squooshed under the bridge?

Why is that truck ripped?

Why is a school bus on that bridge?

Meanwhile I was pushing redial over and over on my cell phone because I couldn’t get through to my sisters.

Sometimes I got a busy signal. Sometimes a message that the network was busy. Sometimes the call didn’t go through at all. Over and over I called. Just wanting to be sure they were okay.

And our son kept asking why.

Had Aron known what we were going to find on TV last night he probably wouldn’t have let the kids see it. It’s a lot for a 3 year old to take in.

Since he did see it we were honest. We answered his questions.

We told him the bridge broke and we didn’t know why. We told him that the cars were on the bridge because they were driving on it when it broke, that people were in the water because they fell off the bridge.

When we finally brought him to bed he said he was nervous about the bridge and he and Aron talked about it for a while. And then our son, Eliot, said he was ready to sleep and he did.

While the kids slept we got a hold of our families who were all fine. We heard from friends across the country via email wanting to know if we were okay.

This morning when our son woke up he wanted to know more about the bridge.

He asked and asked and asked questions.

And Aron and I decided to just let him ask and ask until he was done asking and that we’d just keep answering as honestly and simply as possible.

After he asked more about his beloved cars and buses and trains and construction equipment he asked about the people.

He asked if people were sad when the bridge fell.

We said we thought they were.

And the questions paused for a moment.

He pointed to the bridge on his train set and said that bridge falls down and people don’t cry.

Then he said.

And I’m not making this up.

“Maybe people poop on bridge.”

And he giggled.

And I looked at him and then looked at Aron.

And Aron said, yeah Eliot, some people probably did poop when the bridge fell.

He didn’t ask why about that. He seemed content with the story.

Later we looked at some pictures and I told him a lot of people called and emailed to make sure we were okay.

I told him a lot of people love us and like having us around.

He didn’t ask why about that either.

He seemed content with that story too.

Sara McGinley, priest's wife and mother of two, writes the blog Sara McGinley, where you can find other news on Wednesday's bridge collapse in Minnesota. Episcopal News Service's coverage of the bridge collapse is here.

By Susan Fawcett

For good or ill, the parish I serve is becoming skilled in a particular kind of hospitality: high-profile funerals. A few years ago, before I began working here, the parish opened its doors to hold a funeral for a young woman whose kidnap and brutal murder got top billing on every major news network. With television-news trucks, reporters, and cameras swarming the perimeter, a church that seats 350 on a good day welcomed swarms of people who came to mourn an untimely (and much publicized) death. I doubt the parish realized how that funeral was preparing them for another.

The recent tragedy at Virginia Tech hit hard four hours away in Northern Virginia. Many of our parishioners had only one or two degrees of separation from the victims. And indeed, one young woman who died was from our town. She was a vibrant young woman, a student who was only weeks away from graduating. Through various connections—a family friend who also happened to be an Episcopal priest, and neighbors who comforted them in the first hours after they got the awful news—her family was led to our parish, and the rector offered to officiate at the service.

In the days that followed, it became clear that this would be no ‘normal’ funeral. Significant crowds were expected, various protesters [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/18/national/main2699800.shtml] threatened to picket, and the press was already on patrol. In a Sunday sermon, the rector asked for volunteers to help with the preparations, and by Tuesday so many calls came in that we had to start turning people away. By the afternoon before the service, there were more cookies and brownies in our parish hall than you could have fed to an army of middle-schoolers. The ‘simple reception’ we had offered began to turn into a luncheon as people brought sandwiches, cheese, meat trays, crackers, and finger foods, so much that it barely fit in the parish kitchen. We turned away offers from local restaurants to cater the event, because there was simply no more room for food.

There was no lack of human help, either. Volunteers swarmed the church for two full days, coordinating the offerings of food, the arrangement of extra chairs, setting up a tent for overflow seating, checking the sound system, preparing for the police, rescue, and press corps. Parishioners in orange vests arranged the parking on our front lawn, and parishioners in suits served as ushers. We were ready, or as ready as we were going to be.

And the people came. Over a thousand of them, including several buses full of students from Virginia Tech. They found their seats. The funeral unfolded, the way liturgies do, and it was both poignant and beautiful.

The parish provided this family a fine funeral.

That is not my point.

My point is that after the funeral, when most of the attendees had spoken to the family and had eaten and had done what people do after funerals (which is often strangely similar to what people do at family reunions), I saw parishioners still working. They packed up boxes of leftover brownies to send with the college students. They sent leftover bottled water and sandwiches and cookies to a local soup kitchen. They put away the chairs and picked up dropped bulletins. A young man vacuumed the sanctuary. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary; the same kinds of things that happen after any Sunday morning or parish supper. Just bigger, and more.

Being the church for a family that had none, assuaging our own grief and fear with the liturgies and rituals we’ve done over and over again: these people were not making heroic efforts. They did what they do every week, every month, in the regular routine of being a church. And yet the effect of their work was overwhelming, an incredible statement of compassion and hospitality to our grieving neighbors.

This is where God shows up, people. This is the church at its best. At this funeral, no one debated about sex or property disputes. At this funeral, I’m guessing that none of the parishioners, nor any of the family members of the deceased, would have cared whether or not the Anglican Communion existed as a formal structure or as a network of relationships. At this funeral, this parish was God’s people, the body of Christ: the Church.

Thanks be to God.

The Reverend Susan Daughtry Fawcett keeps the blog This Passage. She serves a parish in the Diocese of Virginia, and supports the work of the General Convention publication The Center Aisle.

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