Timothy Radcliffe – Telling the Truth (3) SUSAN SOUTHALL

On Tuesday the 16^th of April Susan Southall conducted a Spiritual Reading Group in the Carmelite Library on the English Dominican Timothy Radcliffe. Here are some other quotes from his writing collected by Susan in preparation for the session.

Quotes from The Dominican Way Edited by Lucette Verboven London, Continuum, 2011 (DW) and I Call You Friends. London, Continuum, 2001 (CF)

In some orders, the young were warned against ‘particular friendships. One must try to love everyone equally and have no favourites. But as a young friar, I was taught that the greater danger was to have particular enemies! We become loving people, able to talk about the God who is love, because we have learned to love in particular. Friendship nourishes our mission because we preach the eternal, equal friendship that is the very life of God. (DW 2)

… the goal he has set himself. ‘To meet all my brothers and sisters worldwide and give them time to speak what is in their minds and hearts.’ (DW 6)

Teaching a moral vision doesn’t mean going around telling people what is allowed and what is forbidden. It is inviting people to discover the light of the Gospels, their fundamental hunger for the good. (DW 8)

The great enslavement of Africans beginning in the seventeenth century, turning them into commodities to be exported, like cattle, to America, was symptomatic of a deep crisis which touched every country in the West. Putting people on the labour market where they must sell themselves seems to be part of the cultural crisis of our times. If we see everything as for sale, how can we be aware of the God who is the giver of all good things? (DW 11)

When I arrived here, I walked down this corridor and saw all these paintings, and my heart dropped. All these important people, all these famous names! It was a very depressing first ten minutes, and then I discovered the wonderful liberty of realizing that I don’t know who most of these people are. Most of these earlier Masters did what they had to do and were forgotten. And that will be the same for me. Thanks to God. (DW 14-15)

(Timothy) put together a team of amazing diversity and communicated his enthusiasm and freedom. I remember the very early intuition he had about the internet as a place of preaching. Today it has become evident. Timothy has this grace of new ideas and he is very free…When you are elected to such an important position, people often think you have to adjust to the people in power. Timothy enjoyed good relationships with the Vatican, but he was not submissive. He was a friar, a preacher, a theologian, and in some ways his theology is quite traditional — he studied Thomas Aquinas — but he has the capacity to reach people on the margins. (Jean-Jaques Pérennès) (DW 20)

Henri Burin des Roziers defends the Amazonian peasants against large landowners in Brazil, at risk of his life. He had a price of 30,000 pounds on his head when he received a letter from Timothy Radcliffe, saying “these fazenderios won’t hesitate to use any lie to discredit someone! But don’t lose faith, your brothers all over the world are with you. We are very proud of everything you do for the rights of the peasants.” (DW 67)

Margaret Ormond was part of a movement to establish international connections among Dominican sisters. Without this, ‘we wouldn’t have easily known about the Dominican congregations in other countries who might have been in trouble, as the Iraqi sisters were during the first invasion in Iraq. thanks to the initiative of Timothy Radcliffe, we were invited to Santa Sabina, the worldwide headquarters of the Order, in Rome in 1995.’ Sisters came from all over the world to form a movement (Dominican Sisters International) so that no group would be left alone, especially during wars and struggles. (DW 81)

Although he is very shy about his aristocratic roots, I am allowed a glimpse of what that kind of upbringing meant 60 years ago. The whole family was dressed formally for dinner which took place in an atmosphere of ritual courtesy. I get the impression of his childhood as if plucked from an English period novel, inhabited by lords and ladies. But the story he tells me takes an unexpected turn. When his father’s firm closed down, he was so concerned about his former employees that he paid them their full wages until each one of them found a new job. It practically ruined the family, but it shows in what kind of environment young Timothy was raised. (DW 101-l02)

(What is your identity?)  Well, much of my life has been about losing identity. My family comes from Yorkshire. About 30 years ago, the old family home, Rudding Park, was sold and is now a luxury hotel and golf course. I was sad when it was sold because we had been there for almost 200 years, but we had to let it go. When I joined the Order I had to, in a sense, let go of that rather exclusive identity to discover a new broader one, as the brother of all sorts of people in the Order, and gain a new sense of being British. When I went to Rome and travelled all around the world, I had to discover a new identity again, with brothers and sisters in every country of the planet. In Christ, I am on the way to finding myself as a member of the whole human family, and identity that is not defined over anyone! A full sense of who we are always lies in the future. (DW 104)

I think that one gradually loses images of God. When I was a child, I thought God had a nice white beard and sat on a throne. I was wrong! As a young friar, I thought God was a very powerful person. Again, I had to lose that image. This is called the via negativa. It’s like kissing somebody: the closer you get, the less you see. When you do kiss somebody, you don’t see anything at all! In the spiritual life, you let go one image after another until you see nothing. (DW 106)

But you can’t understand sexuality by looking at rules. You have to understand the beauty of sexuality. The best starting point is the Last Supper, where Jesus says, “This is my body and I give it to you.” At the heart of sexual ethics, two people say to each other, “I give myself to you.”  This makes you very vulnerable. Jesus put Himself in the disciples’ hands, vulnerable to whatever they would so to Him. And one of them betrayed Him, another denied Him, and most of the rest ran away. So if you give your body to another, then that means vulnerability, as well as generosity and fidelity. Jesus gave Himself to us forever.” (DW 109)

Christianity has often tried to resist (dualism) but sometimes failed. One of the fascinating things about Thomas Aquinas, for example, is his insistence on the complete unity of body and soul. Aquinas had an extraordinary vision of the radical unity of the human person. (DW 110)

The belief in the Trinity is one of the most exciting down-to-earth beliefs there is. It principally looks at two things. In Jesus Christ, we don’t meet a theory about God or a messenger from God, but God in person. God is present to us with a human face. The second thing is that in the Trinity we find a love that is equal, without domination or manipulation. It’s a love that lifts us into equality. We don’t often love one another as equals. We may have a condescending, patronizing love or we may love somebody as a wonderful hero above us. What we see in the Trinity is that true love brings us towards equality. (DW 111)

Dominique Pire: To dialogue means to look beyond the boundaries of one’s conviction for the duration of the dialogue so as to share the heart and spirit of the other, without abandoning any part of one’s self in order to understand, judge and appreciate the real goodness and usefulness present in the thoughts, feelings and actions of the other. One must really feel oneself with the other. It therefore requires one to bracket off one’s self for a moment, who we are and what we think, so as to understand and appreciate the other positively without necessarily sharing the other’s point of view. In this there is a profound renunciation of self. (DW 119)

Katarina Pajchel, physicist:  It is the combination of being able to study, pray and preach that makes the Dominican Order unique. In dialogue with my community, we saw that there was indeed space and understanding for this combination so that my work could also include physics. I was touched by one of the Dominican mottos: Contemplare et contemplate aliis tradere, meaning ‘Contemplate and hand on the fruits of your contemplation.” The dynamics of passing on what you have learned caught me…I am inspired by Simon Tugwell… When I read his book The Way of the Preacher, I thought, ‘This is how I want to live!’ As a witness… As Dominicans, we pass on the things we have learned, not as teachers from above or by giving ready-made answers, but by accompanying people  and being honest. (DW 128)

It was important to me that the Order had a positive attitude towards art. I was confirmed in my vocation by Brother de Menasce, who told me it was possible to be both priest and painter. He said, ‘God respects what he endows on somebody. Keep going. Pray to Fra Angelico.’ (DW 159)

Silence is very important. We Dominicans even say that silence is the father of preachers. It is our maxim. Also when I paint there is a lot of space — space that is not empty, but full. (DW 161)

Monasteries are often criticized for being useless places. But Pope Benedict XVI has compared monasteries to the green lungs of a city — beneficial to all even if people don’t know they exist. And Timothy Radcliffe adds that your lives are completely useless and that’s exactly the purpose! (DW 183)

{Breda Carroll} The very fact that the monastery exists is a preaching in itself… The greatest preaching is to make people think about God. (DW 184)

(Dominic) entrusted the nuns to the care of the friars and for the past 800 years there has been this close bond between the nuns and the friars who provide them with spiritual and intellectual formation. All the recent masters of the Order — Brother Damien, Brother Timothy, Brother Carlos — have been wonderful to the nuns. (DW184)

Brother Carlos and Brother Timothy have worked very hard to bring back that contemplative dimension, as there is always a tendency to become overactive. The nuns’ way of life is a constant reminder of the contemplative dimension of the Order. (DW 185)

He tells me about his Great Uncle Dick, a Benedictine uncle known as Dom John Lane Fox, who had served as a military chaplain to the British forces during the First World War. At the end of each day in battle in Northern France, he risked his life to bring back the dead and wounded left in no man’s land. Perhaps that is what Timothy himself is doing; recovering the wounded of our world from their no man’s land of war, hunger and inequality and trying to pull them out of there. (DW202)

Baptism is the great sacrament through which you share in Christ’s death and resurrection. But its importance is often forgotten because we think that baptism is like getting vaccinated. I have just been to the Sudan and was vaccinated against all sorts of diseases like rabies and meningitis. But being baptized into the life of God is the most important sacrament you could ever have… Would it be arrogant for parents to teach their children English rather than leaving them to choose what language to learn? (DW 203)

We are more aware that baptism is not just a private thing for parents and their children. Through baptism you are brought into the community of the Church. I am very lucky to be one of six siblings, but I really have millions, billions of brothers and sisters by baptism. (DW 204)

It is no coincidence that St. Dominic founded the Order in a pub, because there is no preaching without listening! When I became a university chaplain, I was convinced that I would be a wonderful preacher. But I discovered that the students were bored stiff by my sermons. Here I was, a young preacher who didn’t know how to preach! So, I invited the students to go to a pub with me after evening Mass on Sunday and asked them to tell me what was wrong with my preaching, and they did! I discovered that I had to listen before I spoke…If you preach at people, and think you’ve got the truth all wrapped up, then you are arrogant and ineffective as well. (DW 209)

You have to find your own voice. Each of us is a word of God, but a different word of God. The word of God has passed through your own individual humanity, which means you must speak as the person you are, and say only what you believe to be true, not because you’re expected to say it. (DW 209)

Now, some people become ideologically conservative or ideologically progressive… When it becomes ideological, you’ll say, ‘I have truth wrapped up.’ But no one can own the truth. That is an arrogance. God is always beyond our concepts. (DW 210)

Many people in the Church are grieving a loss. Until you understand their pain, you won’t be able to talk to them. Many traditionalists mourn the death of the old Church they loved… liberals… are mourning the loss of the progressive Church they thought was coming.  So we have to resist these categories, we have to be countercultural. The split in the Church between  traditionalists and progressives is a sign that we are not being countercultural, but that we have accepted the values of society instead. (DW 211)

The important question is not, ‘Is it progressive or is it conservative?’ The important question is, ‘Is it true?’ How do you know? Because you study, you think, you pray, and you talk. You study the Gospels, you study the tradition, you pray for illumination, you argue with people and you hope you will learn. (DW 211)

Jesus was always a man of conversation… You constantly see Jesus engaging in conversation. Fundamental to the mission of the Church, to the pursuit of truth, is that we converse… the word in English for a sermon is “homily”, which is Greek for ‘conversation.’ (DW 212)

I think the role of the contemplative nuns in the preaching of the Order is very important. In the early days of the Order, the preachers stayed with them. When St. Dominic went to Rome, he lived with the nuns until the brethren started making too much noise coming back late at night. Then the nuns were relived, I think, when the brethren found their own place to live!... Besides, the very life of the nuns is preaching. We are always tempted to think that we are valuable because of what we achieve. These nuns preach to us because they show human life is valuable in itself. They witness to the absolute priority of God. (DW 215)

We must bear in mind that the renewal of the Church has often come through the laity. Who are the three great patron saints of Europe? St. Benedict, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Catherine of Siena. And what do they have in common? None of them were ordained. S we must have confidence in the vitality of lay people. (DW 216)

But preaching is not only done just through words. There is a long line of Dominicans, starting with Fra Angelico, who have preached through art… Another side of Dominic’s preaching was expressed through his compassion… Being close to those who suffer is something deeply inscribed in our tradition…. I believe that our mission should always encompass these two elements, the word and compassion. When we speak, our message should always be compassionate. And our acts of compassion should always be a preaching, the proclamation of a word. (CF 63-64)

Dominic preached the God who was made flesh, who becomes one of us, human.  The preacher must be human to preach this human God. We learn to be human in our families. We are taught humanity by our parents, siblings, aunts and uncles. And so an Order devoted to preaching a God who embraces our humanity needs to be a family that forms us as human preachers also; an Order which is exclusively male and celibate might not do that well. We need to be a community that includes women, married people, lay men and women, with their wisdom and experience… Today it’s a major priority for the Order to reflect on our common mission with the contemplative nuns, the Sisters and the lay people: how can we together be preachers of the Gospel? (CF 64-65)

The question I am most concerned with, talking about our Dominican Sisters, is how to respond to the desire of many sisters to be fully our partners in preaching. By preaching, I don’t mean only communicating information about God. It is sharing a word of life. It is hard to offer a word of life if we exclude women, who play such an important role in the transmission of life… The purpose of preaching is also to break down barriers, the barriers that keep us apart from one another. In a way, this includes the barriers that separate men from women. (CF67)

Should you leave magnificent convents such as Santa Maria Novella in Florence in order to devote greater efforts to Asia or to street children?

You ask what we should close. I think the first question we need to ask is what we should open. Let’s first do something new and then see what, as a consequence, we must give up. You mention the example of Santa Maria Novella, that wonderful priory in Florence, filled with Renaissance frescoes. It is true that we cannot let ourselves become museum keepers for tourists. But surely we can find ways of preaching the Gospel through the beauty of such places. Beauty too can be a revelation of God. So I do not believe that we should give up all the monuments of the past. To take a modern example, I love the convent of L’Arblresle, near Lyons, designed in the 1950’s by Le Corbusier. Every year thousands of architects come to visit it. It’s a place that preaches. (CF 76)

What does ‘making disciples’ mean? It can sound like an indoctrination. But the Greek word is mathetes, which means ‘student’. A disciple, in the sense in which Christ used the term, is not someone who stops thinking. It is someone who is hungry to learn. Making disciples, it seems to me, is inviting people to search for the truth of God together. (CF 92)

The very essence of medieval teaching was the quaestio disputata, literally the ‘question disputed.’ Subsequently, with the Enlightenment, there was a shift in the understanding of what it means to think, and it came to be seen as an essentially solitary act… This view is mistaken. We are not essentially solitary beings. We exist only in relationship to others, and this applies just as much to the activity of thinking. It is a social activity: we are initiated into discussion, learning to share ideas, to listen, to argue. Of course, from time to time we need to retire and reflect alone. But that’s only one aspect of thinking, not the essence of it. To teach people how to think for themselves, you really have to teach them how to think with others. (CF 101-2)

…one must not put fundamental doctrines, such as the resurrection and divinity of Christ, on the same level as questions that are not of the same order. Our basic convictions are expressed first of all in the Creed. Together with the sacraments they make up the core of our faith. All other aspects of teaching should be placed in relationship to them. Karl Rahner used to say that we should ask about every item of the Church’s teaching what it taught us about Christ. In that sense all these questions you mention are not crucial. (CF 112-113)

The dynamic of debate consists in looking for a truth large enough to include what is true in both points of view. (CF 114)

Let us imagine that one of my Dominican brethren seems to deny the resurrection of Christ. The Order’s reaction would be to open a dialogue with him. The first stage would consist in verifying whether he actually holds the position which is attributed to him. Very often, when a theologian finds a new way of expressing a truth, he is accused of denying it, while he is simply using terms to state it that we are not used to. To pursue the hypothesis: it appears, after this first stage, that this friar really is denying the resurrection. Is that the end? No, I need to understand why. Perhaps his position contains a right intuition that he has not succeeded in integrating into the Church’s doctrinal framework. Perhaps he is opposed to this teaching because he has a mistaken understanding of it. Together, we need to examine how to resolve these difficulties, taking all the time needed, with no use of threats. But … what if, at the end of the day, that friar’s position still cannot be reconciled with the Church’s teaching? If we get to that point, then we have to be clear and face the consequences with him. But I can tell you that, after so many years holding office in the Order, I have never yet reached that point. (CF 115)

Perhaps we have lost a certain conception of God, as a very affectionate invisible person, in order to rediscover God as the mystery that is at the heart of our existence and that gives us our existence at every moment. (CF 124)

Being a ‘friar preacher’ does not mean only that we are preachers, but that we live in communities of preachers, that we listen to one another preach the Word of God. People in love need to hear their beloved saying ‘I love you.” Those who are preachers also need to hear the simplest truths proclaimed to them, beginning with ‘God loves you.’ When I travel around the Order, Provincials often want me to preach non-stop. I have to insist that I need to listen to my brethren preaching and to receive the word of life from them. (CF 124)

…I have been helped to face death by being with many my brethren at the time of their deaths, and seem them face death calmly, with serenity. Our tradition is to sing the Salve Regina with the brethren as they face death, and that is beautiful. Sometimes the way a brother dies is his last gift to the community, which gives us all hope. (CF 125)

The glory of God is shown in a void, an empty space in your lives. I will suggest three aspects of the monastic life which open this void and make a space for God. First of all, your lives are for no particular purpose. Secondly, in that they lead nowhere, and finally because they are lives of humility. Each of these aspects of the monastic life opens us a space for God… The most obvious fact about monks is that you do not do anything in particular. You are monks, who follow the rule of Benedict… God is disclosed as the invisible centre of our lives when we do not try to give any other justification for who we are. (CF 148-149)

There was an English Dominican called Bede Jarrett, who was Provincial for many years: a famous preacher, a prolific writer of books. But he never appeared to do anything. If you went to see him, then I am told that he was usually doing nothing. If you asked him what he was doing, then I am told that he usually replied: ‘Waiting to see if anyone came.’ He perfected the art of doing much while appearing to do little. Most of us, including myself, do the opposite… (CF 151)

…Hans Ulrich von Balthasar, received his earliest education at Engelberg, a Benedictine school famous for its musical tradition. Balthasar talks of the ‘self-evidence’ of beauty, ‘its intrinsic authority.’ You cannot argue with beauty’s summons or dismiss it… And if beauty is truly the revelation of the good and the true, as St. Thomas Aquinas believed, then perhaps part of the vocation of the Church is to be a place of the revelation of true beauty…So once again it is the singing of the liturgy that discloses the meaning of our lives. St. Thomas said that beauty in music was essentially linked to temperantia. Nothing should ever be in excess… And Thomas thought that the temperate life kept us young and beautiful. (CF 152-153)

Once again we find God disclosed in a void, an emptiness, and this time at the centre of the community, the hollow space which is kept for God. We have to make a home for the Word to come and dwell among us, a space for God to be. As long as we are competing for the centre, then there is no space for God. So then humility is not me despising myself and thinking that I am awful; it is hollowing out the heart of the community, to make a space where the Word can pitch his tent. (CF 161)

And so it is utterly right that at the centre of your life should be singing. For it is in this singing that we show forth God’s bringing of everything to be. And you sing that Word of God, through which all is made. Here we can see a beauty which is more than just pleasing. It is the beauty which celebrates that we are made and remade. At the centre of our created selves God has made his home and his throne. (CF 164)

But also we need the humility of those who know that we know so little. As Thomas Aquinas said, of God we know nothing… We must learn humility in the face of the other person’s beliefs. They may be wrong in many ways, but they have something to teach us. Thomas remains a permanent inspiration for us Dominicans because he had a perfect balance of confidence and humility. He could write the Summa Theologica claim that all that he had written was as straw. The mystery dissolves all arrogance. (CF 170-171)

To live that tension well, between proclamation and dialogue, I believe that the missionary needs a spirituality of truthfulness and a life of contemplation. (CF 203)

In the first place we all have the authority to preach because we have all been baptized… Each of us also has a unique authority because of who we are and the gifts that we have been given. Each of us has a word to proclaim which is given to no-one else. God is in our lives, as married and as single people, as parents and as children. Out of these human experiences of love – its triumphs and failures – we have a word to speak of the God who is love. We also have authority because of our skills and knowledge… I went to a meeting… in Brazil, of members of the Dominican Family who are lawyers. They had their special authority as lawyers, to address issues of justice and peace in the continent. (CF 220)

We preach the Word which has become flesh, and the Word of God can become flesh in all that we are, and not just in what we say… the Word also becomes visible in poetry and painting, in music and dancing. Every skill gives us a way of propagating the Word. For example, Hilary Pepler, a famous lay Dominican and printer, wrote that “the work of the printer, as all work, should be done for the glory of God. The work of the printer is to multiply the written word; hence the printer serves the maker of words, and the maker of words serves – or should serve – the Word which becomes Flesh.” (CF 223)

For us preachers, all words matter. All our words can offer life to other people, or death. The vocation of all members of the Dominican Family is to offer words that give life… Becoming a preacher is more than learning to speak about God. It is discovering the art of praising and blessing all that is good. (CF 226-227)

People long to be told what is the meaning of their lives, as long as it is by anyone other than a Christian preacher. The shops are filled with books about the occult, witchcraft, astrology, visitors from outer space, eastern religion. But this hunger for knowledge is divorced from the process of thinking, arguing, speculating…I would say that a fundamental challenge, if we are to be preachers, is to heal the rift between thought and belief. (CF 239-241)

Our technological culture, the culture of the market that now dominates the whole world, is deeply marked by fatalism. It is a fatalism that challenges us when we would speak a liberating and transforming word. The so-called ‘free world’ is marked by a deep unfreedom. (CF 245)

To have convincing authority we must share the journeys of people, enter their fears, be touched by their disappointments, their questions, their failures and doubts. Often we speak about people: about women, about the poor and the immigrants, about the divorced, those who have abortions, about prisoners, people with AIDS, homosexuals, drug addicts. But our words for Christ will not have real authority unless we, in a sense, give authority to their experience, enter their homes, receive their hospitality, learn their language, eat their bread, accept from what they have to offer. People will misunderstand and accuse us of being mixed up with the wrong people. But there is a good precedent for that. (CF 255-256)

In particular I wish to suggest that a fundamentalist reading of scripture relies upon a modern understanding of time… It has been said that since the Enlightenment we have lived in ‘homogeneous, empty time’, to use the phrase of Walter Benjamin. It is the time of physics. It took the invention of the modern mechanical clock with its ‘verge and foliot escapement’ before we could perceive time in this way. There was an intimate link... between a technological development and the eventual formulation of Newton’s definition of time: ‘Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external.’ (CF 300-302)

(In antiquity) it was of vital importance to possess the right and true calendar. There was no possibility of participating in the celestial liturgy if one was a day out. The Sabbath rest was a sharing in the rest of the heavenly court… If one’s perception of time is shaped by the recurrence of the festivals and the revolutions of the stars, then the time structure of one’s stories will be both repetitive and sequential. (CF 303-304)

The true eyewitness is the one who participates in the events of redemption rather than the mythical, impassive and uninvolved bystander… There could no more be homogeneous and empty space than homogeneous and empty time. A neutral geography was as unimaginable as a history told from no one’s point of view. A map of the world is a picture of God’s will and at its centre is Jerusalem, the world’s navel, and at the centre of Jerusalem the holy mountain, with the Temple, a microcosm of the Universe. Events which had the same meaning must have occurred in the same place. (CF 307-308)

When we ask whether we must believe that a scriptural text is true, literally true, often we mean…What would the unprejudiced eye have spotted?... our eyewitnesses could not have imagined that the stance of disengagement gives one any privileged access to what ‘really’ is happening. Such a belief depends upon the assumption that a particular scientific culture offers the proper paradigm of all true knowledge… It is, of course, an illusion to imagine that such a perspective upon the world is free of prejudice or preconception. It is deeply related to a particular economic and political system…So perceptions of time and space are never innocent. (CF 311-312)