September 28, 2023
Your Holiness,
Greetings! I hope that this finds Your Holiness well. I eagerly await release of Laudate Deum and am pleased to report that this servant of Your Holiness has promoted that release in an essay entitled “Math anxiety is killing us,” published in my local paper. My work is a small contribution toward the intentions of Your Holiness, but I think that the essay possesses a useful man-bites-dog quality. Moreover, that its author seeks to further the intentions of Your Holiness is evidence that Your Holiness is truly functioning as a pontifex, having built a bridge even to the remote and sparsely populated island of this servant of Your Holiness. I am grateful that Your Holiness possesses the courage to build bridges to regions that some of the servants of Your Holiness would call nowhere.
I am also pleased to tender my contribution to the Synod, which I have posted at https://www.godispoor.org/reunion. As might be inferred from the title, Reunion, the contents may prove conducive to further bridge-building, with the goal of preserving humanity and a million other species endangered by our own, a primary intention of Your Holiness, in the understanding of this servant of Your Holiness.
This servant of Your Holiness has some understanding of the constraints on the time of Your Holiness and of whichever servant of Your Holiness first reads this message. Therefore, I suggest beginning with Book 4 of Reunion, to get an idea of practical benefits that might be derived from reading further. To motivate reading Reunion at all, here are two ideas that reflect part of what the work offers in making the message of the Gospels clear to an audience the Church may be missing and to relate that message to the current crisis of life on Earth.
The statement by Jesus that He was the Son of Man can mean many things, including something quite consistent with my own pantheism. Another interpretation I find fascinating, but can’t recall having heard, is that Jesus was satirizing Augustus, who had taken the title Son of the Divine. The title Jesus gave Himself is apt ridicule of the god-king play, the mixing of religion and politics. The actual Son of God calling Himself the Son of Man can be interpreted as inherently a poke at the title of Augustus, but with an adult audience, the joke can be taken even further. “Son of Man” sounds very much like “son of a thousand fathers.”
There is great wisdom to be learned here: The political leader who justifies his actions by invoking the approval of God or gods debases divinity for evanescent temporal advantage. Religious leaders whose political advice to their followers is, shall we say, too granular, likewise invite ridicule of God or gods. This servant of Your Holiness notes that Augustus was called pontifex maximus, among many other titles.
To me, the Gospels cry out for an end to god-kings. My own country, the United States, might soon fall into the pitch-dark chasm of god-kingery, and the Church is currently helping to push us over the edge. Your Holiness will have noted this fact, along with the reality that the result would conflict sharply with those intentions of Your Holiness that I expect Laudate Deum to advance.
The second idea is that the Church may be looking at the Trinity from too far away to gain its full benefits. My maternal grandmother, who helped to raise me, would tell me that a painting should never be seen from too close. There is wisdom in looking from sufficient distance to see the idea the artist wished to convey, but there is also wisdom, occasionally, in looking from close enough to see how the artist conveyed it.
Likewise, families seen from a distance usually seem harmonious, but fathers and sons occasionally disagree in ways that are noticeable on closer inspection. Applying this idea to the Trinity yields results in Reunion that I find to be of great promise. I used one result to address the crisis in Catholicism and reported my findings in a letter to the editor of my local paper: https://www.pressreader.com/article/281767043807093. Perhaps the model I use to understand the evil actions of good men in management positions will prove helpful to Your Holiness.
In fact, my intention is to be of as much service as possible. I trust that my ideas will bear no fruit if they displease Our Lord, as Your Holiness terms what I understand as emergent large-scale structure in human affairs and the common good.
Speaking of fruit, eventually my fig trees will be bare. Luckily, I have no followers to feed, but I am faced with the delightful conundrum of keeping, and potentially horrifying need to keep, body and soul together. Should Your Holiness, or anyone else reading these words, find my work of value and their own wallet slightly heavy, gratuities are gratefully accepted at https://ko-fi.com/proudfatherofnone.
I am deeply grateful for any time Your Holiness spends with my ideas. I hope that they will prove beneficial. Your Holiness has my thanks, as well, for all that Your Holiness does for the common good of life on Earth. In particular, I found the work of Your Holiness in The Letter to have been better than perfect, and deeply moving, besides.
Yours in God, regardless of models of God,
James
P.S. Should Your Holiness find it awkward to give financial support to avant-garde lay theology but still like to reward the servant of Your Holiness, I am eager, for personal reasons, to hear the outcome of the cause for canonization of His Excellency, the Venerable Fulton J. Sheen.
P.P.S. The name of my ko-fi page indicates that Your Holiness and I may differ strongly on at least one point. I have a degree of faith that Your Holiness, personally, could understand me as a person. An important benefit of the ideas in Reunion might lie in helping Your Holiness to help the followers of Your Holiness to understand the value of a person like me and of insects and of wolves. I know that Your Holiness agrees with this servant of Your Holiness that greater respect for poor people and wildlife are key to human survival, as they are to justice. This is the principal reason I stand ready to serve Your Holiness further.
Next: Book 1