The visit to Spain by Pope Leo XIV is generating an avalanche of enthusiastic support and some less openly expressed criticism. For my part, agnostic and believer in the “wisdom of Jesus of Nazareth,” I add myself to a critique from within, a fraternal correction that affects us all by addressing the central nucleus of Christianity. The Mystery of Salvation taught as an explanation of the world and of human life’s trajectory, as a response to the great questions, is rather an evocation and symbolic call, a hope.
For decades, base Christian groups have attempted to be “another voice of the Church,” inspired by closeness to the working world and to life in neighborhoods, that is, by liberation theology that taught us to interpret Jesus “from the perspective of the poor” and not from doctrine. In those writings we addressed ourselves above all to the hierarchy for its involutionism and its compromise with economic and political powers. Being very radical as regards the defense of justice, of human rights, of the environment and of women’s equality, it remained however on the surface of theology. The ecclesial structure was criticized but we did not reach the foundations or presuppositions proper to an ancient cosmovision, which went implicit in those socio-political and moral critiques. Our “critical belonging”—”one foot in and one foot out”—was due to the demands of another system and that urgency monopolized our attention.
The dominant Catholic theology comes from Paul, from the Councils of Nicaea, Chalcedon and Trent, from Saint Augustine and from Scholasticism. It was given new meaning at the Second Vatican Council and immediately buried. It was constructed as a rigid doctrinal system, a succession of great miraculous events such as the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Resurrection understood in strict realism, “to the letter” and sidestepping their symbolic character. Obviously it clashed with science, real life and with projects of justice here on earth. Although it was not always thus and a mystical and compassionate thread accompanied in many and long moments that orthodox and “heretical” doctrinal position.
Today that paradigm has no place even though it is nourished by great love. We ask ourselves which Jesus is the true or referential one, the one of his scant biography, the one of his divinization or the one of his wisdom of life. Why Jesus and not another person. From where and in where to seek the most transcendental interpretation of every human being and how far to go in religious self-criticism.
The Church has lived with cosmovisions that are today surpassed. Revelation and Sacred History were its rigorous explanations and the ultimate foundation of truth. Literalist reading of the Bible was preached, the supremacy of faith over reason, dualistic and supernaturalist vision, theism that objectifies sublimity and unconditionality in an Absolute providential Being, master of our existence. It defended an unquestionable hierarchical conception, sacred, episcopal and papal authority, by inheritance from Jesus Son of God incarnate and consequently, the superiority of religious authority over human rights, etc.
Recent post-religious and post-theist reflections that continue to be inspired by Jesus of Nazareth, advocate for a radical revision: recognizing the symbolic character of religious language, opening itself to science, philosophy and contemporary humanisms and understanding Jesus as a model of humanity rather than as a God. These are reflections that are grounded in the most recent epistemologies and in scientific revolutions concerning matter, energy and information, in the social sciences and in neuroscience and above all in the gaze at the poor and at the barbarism of wars and genocides. And from there they propose symbols of recreation and hope.
Contestatory practices place us on the path toward a universal convention for hope, beyond any religion or ethical or humanist tradition. That could have been the path of Jesus when he used the term “Kingdom.”
Is this the harakiri of Christianity? It is the crucifixion death of the religion prior to Jesus and the resurrection of a new humanity. And this is what I suggest to the papal path in this Spanish stage.
Santiago Villamayor
Religión Digital
Santi Villamayor, now retired, was a worker Jesuit, neighborhood activist and philosophy professor. He was born in Huesca in 1947 into a traditional Catholic family dedicated to flour manufacturing. In 1972 he went to live in the Química neighborhood of Zaragoza, now La Almozara, with other Jesuit companions in the worker mission. Co-founder of the Neighborhood Association and member of neighborhood committees, he actively participated in the struggles for the eradication of the Química and the democratic transition. He was detained in Madrid together with Ana Fraga Iribarne during the Robert Bosch strike. Licentiate in Philosophy, when the transition ended he became involved in the field of education in several institutes in the urban periphery of Zaragoza as a philosophy professor. He is co-author of some philosophy textbooks for upper secondary education.
As a retiree, he continues active “in the background,” wherever called, at the confluence of social movements and left-wing parties. He positions himself on the Christian frontier, what has come to be called the new paradigms of liberation and secularity. His personal time, because free time is everything, he dedicates to repopulating the mountain (his children are three, his books several) and producing renewable energy, almost like Candide in his garden. He promoted the first significant photovoltaic installation of importance in the country, in 2005, and has repopulated more than 40,000 Aleppo pines and cypress trees on the family property.
He usually says that one must be in places even if one does not agree on everything, otherwise we would have already stepped down from the world. He adds that he was born in the Middle Ages and has arrived ex- and post- of almost everything to the century in which even light is dark energy.