God at the Ritz - Being or Nothingness?

Intriguing but too long video i/v with Christian Mystic Priest & former physicist Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete - so edited transcipt below!!




A FULL LIFE

We are all trying to figure out what it means to be alive and to deal with the circumstances of our lives in two ways, in a satisfactory way, and in a responsible way. Certain questions keep coming back.

I say where can I find justice, where is beauty, and what is true? These are needs of the human heart and I find traces of them here and there, but is there a source of them? I do not know, so I search for it. I want a beauty that does not end, a justice that does not have to be fought for again and again, but can be lived. So I demand a reasonableness that corresponds to my heart, and I want more.

Life is a passion and as it tastes what it is looking for it gets stronger and wants more. This is what I call religion. It is the impetus that drives humanity. The sexual quest is one of the first expressions of the religious quest.

Just lust is not sex however, it is possession and power. Both the sexual quest and the religious quest generate culture, and the religious quest is broader.

TAKING MEASUREMENTS

See the existential questions do not pertain to science. I don't want my scientists to sit around asking about the 'Why' of the universe. Because the results of science should be measurable, and that is fine, but that cannot apply to ALL of our experiences of life. When you say 'I', what does that 'I' stand for? There is one I that can be explained in terms of brain functions, but there are other experiences for which the brain function explanation is inadequate. Obviously it is there! But it is not exhausted by a scientific explanation, and taking science out of its realm is a violation of scientific rules.

Darwinism is true, within its scope, but if it is the only question you are asking, then you are depriving yourself of a human experience. In Darwinism, beautiful stuff is discovered for sure, but the price is to exclude certain things from the enquiry. As long as we are aware of the exclusion, that is fine, but when you take life and treat it the same way - by ignoring what has been excluded from the enquiry, that is a tragic narrowing.

REAL AND IDEAL

Darwinism, or creationism or any 'ism as an ideology that accounts for all human experiences and as a proposal for organising your life in all its dimensions, I cannot accept. Science accounts for everything within its own sphere only. Sooner or later, the Darwinians in their own lives do not act as if Dawinism explains everything, as if there is no inherent meaning in the universe. So scientific reasoning is a form of reasoning. Without it, you do not abandon reason, you expand your form of reasoning.

In the same way, I say there is meaning in the universe. But if that faith proposal I make rules out a scientific discovery that makes sense in is own terms, then I am prepared to abandon it as absurd. The question is, do explanations correspond to my experience of life?

SHUT UP!

I embrace that which accounts for the experience of my heart, but do it in a reasonable way. The Church cannot get away with saying: "This is it and shut up." It has to invite you to verify it.

In order to find out what the words: 'Jesus is the son of God' mean, I have to explore, to ask, to question. If at any one time I have put the matter down and said: 'No more questioning', then I am at the level of the Mystery itself, and that is self-defeating.

So there are two types of understanding - comprehension and certainty. It is the teaching of the church that the doctrines and the dogmas are signposts, not the reality. But striking with reality always launches you. As you react to the circumstances that determine where you are, you fall back. You may crash or run out of energy, but I would say the religious impulse, the desire for the infinite, is the impulse making science possible. I will not say anything unless I have verified it. Does it make sense? I have to decide every day whether I believe what I believe.

Any contact we have with Reality will launch us in a quest for meaning and purpose.

SIN BIN

You can see this progress interrupted many times, by a total collapse, and many steps back. The whole Bible too can be seen as an educational process like this. In it, there is the hurtling of babies against the wall, the using of women as property, and there are certain things which you just don't say anymore. God is educating our ideas of God, and so he has to use whatever ideas are there. What is being educated is our freedom, and so you have to work with what you have.

God has to purify our idea of God, but there is another direction, which is opposite to this direction. It is the direction towards selfishness and pride, lived out in my relations with people and with nature. Even the name of God is used in this direction. In the name of God, the more I know of God, the more intolerant I become.

God works through us, through our reason, our minds and heart. The Bible is a divine inspiration, but it is not dictated. It is a concrete people with a history of understanding of the mystery and of reaction to the mystery. At any one time the people are advanced, or they are behind. There are many theologies of God in the Bible, it is like a scrapbook. But what they all have in common is the history of a people, and now we can look back and see if there is any direction in the sensitivity of a people, as time passes.

THE PARTICULAR versus THE UNIVERSAL

Today we see a particular revelation to one person or people, and an openness to all manifestations of the human search, as contradictory. This is valid and understandable and it should be. In concrete cases, certain actions are proposed that are not actions which open us but which narrow us and our sensitivities, so then that privileged revelation should be rejected as intolerant.

But, on the other hand, the way people progress is always very concrete. A teacher comes, he is ahead of the people, like a Martin Luther King. This seems to be the way human beings are educated and live together. In science, economics, ethics, politics, and because no-one is an expert this method of preference and election and particularity in this way does not worry me. It is not necessarily conflicting with humanity.

THE GREAT LIZARD

I believe Jesus to be THE saviour of humanity, but, I am assuming this is all somehow originating in the Reality which I call the Mystery. It is behind the human heart, wherever the human heart is. This Mystery is what unites us.

Even if you are a criminal, you are responding to the needs of the human heart. This is what we have in common. And the religious proposal says that at the heart of it all, at the origin of this, is this great Mystery which unites us, which you can call God, the Creator, or the Great Lizard, whatever you want to call it -- it is this Reality which educates us.

And what does God reveal? He reveals himself.

(SUPER)NATURAL SELECTION

But when you reveal yourself, you have to work with what is there, through personal interests, and so on. So this God follows this educational method of selecting all of these people. And as a Christian, and this is what makes me a Christian, I come to believe that the concretisation of all of this, at one point in time, and the manifestation of this Mystery, not just the manifestation of any other teacher of the Mystery -- as authentic as they may all be -- but OF THE MYSTERY ITSELF, is the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

And this is what I hold, but this does not close me...

...I do not say that those who do not accept Jesus are damned or excluded, of course not, because the purpose of Jesus is precisely to move us to the next stage, which is all embracing. And so I read the Bible in its context and I will tell St Paul, OK I say Yes to anything, but what do you mean by: "You must believe in the Son of God."?

A Buddhist or an atheist may get to heaven faster than I do. Even St Thomas Aquinas would say a person has to follow his (OR HER) conscience.

Be honest to your heart. It is not the morality that gets you to heaven. It is not because the atheist does good things.

IF THEY ACCEPT IT, FINE

It is the heart that is important. This is very important. A Christian can fulfil every moral law there is and still end up in Hell - that is the doctrine of the Church. It is not what you do, it is your stand with respect to other-ness. It is your ability to respond in a way that gives of yourself. It does not even have to be formulated in the mind. Being is Love in the Mystery of the Trinity. That is what it means.

And a truth that inspires you to do violence, is not truth. You are being guided by something else, something horrible which is the other energy, whatever you want to call it, satanic or original sin, or whatever. It is a distortion of the truth. In the fourth Eucharistic prayer, we pray for those who seek God with a sincere heart, as much as we pray for the Church. I do not think I am being a liberal Catholic, this is just the doctrine of the Church. The word catholic means universal, and I don't think that there is a conflict between the particular and the universal.

The particularism itself will move in that direction because it is the dynamics of Love. Love's very particularisation broadens it. As a follower of Christ and believing he and only he is the centre of the universe, I do not find this particularity in any way conflicting with my desire to be open to every manifestation of humanity. If I come with any threat, or suggestion of powerfully imposing this or its consequences, I am against that. The purpose of Christ is universal. I just rejoice and follow what I have discovered. I offer it to the people. If they accept it, fine, but if they do not, they are not my enemies.

BUT GO TO THE MOVIES

I would like all to believe in Christ, but what salvation comes can come without someone knowing it, because what it requires is not moral achievement but purity of heart. I do not love humanity because I love Christ. I love Christ because I love humanity. In spite of its horrors, and all its negative challenges, I turn to Christ because Christ makes sense of all this, so I say yes. It corresponds to the desires of my heart. If it didn't, I would be out of my mind to continue with it, that is crazy, like a self-hatred.

So in the country we have people who are non-believers, Buddhists, Jews, whatever, but I say be faithful to your atheism, see where it leads you. I have total confidence that it will lead to the Mystery, because we are structured that way.

We do have to talk about these things - but we are not made to talk about them all the time. And in the end, you have to go to the movies.