When fundamentalism reduces God to a house pet - Mother Angelica - Column

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 29, 1993 by Jim Sheehan

I have for some time wanted to write to express my deep sadness over Mother Angelica's rigidity and legalism, which project the image of an unhappy, frightened woman. Wbat finally got me to do it was her astonishing one-woman show following World Youth Day in Denver.

I sat there, slack-jawed with amazement at the sight of her spewing more - to use Archbishop Rembert Weakland's word - vitriol than I have ever heard from someone who styles herself a religious and shares the common Christian call to reconciliation and healing.

The arrogance, which came across as clearly and unambiguously as her rage, came close to frightening me as I realized the power Mother Angelica has to harm the Roman Catholic Church via television.

Every word, every expression on her face reinforced an image of one in deep spiritual pain herself, and of one in deepest denial of that pain - preferring, it seems, to use the part of our church that has honestly and courageously taken Vatican II to its heart as a scapegoat for everything that does not conform itself to her personal demands and needs.

But the brush Angelica used in her unchristian smearing tarred her instead. Far from being convincing, she reminded us of the church long gone - the church of "investment" spirituality that for centuries diminished and at times even blasphemed the God revealed to us in Jesus. Even her anger is a parody of the Jesus who cleansed the temple of the moneychangers. His zeal was without self-righteousness. Hers is without compassion.

I laughed out loud in front of the TV when she attempted to backpedal by telling "us" that she really does love us!

I was reminded of the old Latin saw, "Nemo dat quod non habet" (No one can give what he/she does not have.) Since the god at whose shrine she chooses to worship is so clearly without love, compassion, understanding, gentleness and acceptance, it stands to reason that she is without them as well.

However, Angelica is correct in her basic premise that our church is in deep trouble and the trouble is from within. But it isn't in any postconciliar "liberalism" or demystification or situationalism or disrespect for God. It resides, instead, in the kind of fundamentalism she espouses, a fundamentalism that reduces God to a zombie house pet, trot, ted out and worshiped because "he" doesn't challenge us to real conversion and he speaks only when and what he is allowed by his keepers.

To paraphrase the title of Bishop John Robinson's powerful book, published during the prophecy-filled years of the Second Vatican Council, "her god is too small." And not one I would choose to spend five seconds with, let alone an eternity. Eternity with the god she preaches is, rather, one of the most horrific images of hell I could conjure.

But Angelica will go on, passing judgment, canonizing form and law over essence and Spirit. And there will always be an audience for her, sadly, because there are a lot of frightened, damaged folks, more than willing to be manipulated into the darkness she wants to convince them is light.

It is ironic that she who sports the garb of a community that uses the name St. Clare (clare means light), is actually betraying St. Clare's memory and example by choosing to spread darkness and fear instead.

In the 16 years of my priesthood, in the varied places and ministries to which God has called me, I have, thank God, come to understand that ultimately love really will cast out fear and hate. So, I will continue my own halting and at times painful struggle to allow the God of Jesus to love me, as God so desperately wants to do. And, to whatever extent I can, to embody what I am coming to know as God's tremendous peace and acceptance of us, just exactly as we are, sinful and sinning.

As my Alcoholics Anonymous recovery program insists so correctly, just a day at a time. An encounter at a time. An event at a time. All in the hope that the reign of our shamelessly-in-love-with-us God is breaking on us even as we try to discredit God. Or even kill God all over again with that tragic need in us to be always "right".

My anger with Angelica is long since spent. I believe that the God who loves us equally with passion and abandon will eventually gather us both into bliss. In the meantime, and with every hope that God's mysterious grace is bringing the church through a dying that will end in real "church" the like of which we can't even imagine on our most hopeful days, I pray for both of us,

I pray for the gift of being able to celebrate, not suppress our diversity. And then for the often messy gift of forgiveness of ourselves and others, which is the only way to the love that makes our Jesus real, visible and available "over the counter" to the people we think of as "the masses," but which God sees one heart and spirit and struggle at a time.

Fr. Jim Sheehan is pastor of St. Joseph Parish, Ashland, Kan.