The worlds of theology and rock are mourning the loss of giants of their respective crafts this holiday season. Dutch Dominican theologian Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx passed away from natural causes at the age of 95 on December 23. And Athens, Georgia singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt passed away on Christmas Day following an intentional overdose of prescription drugs. Paralyzed since 1983, Chesnutt was reportedly increasingly concerned about having inadequate health insurance as he faced necessary operations.

Filmmaker, producer, and friend of Chesnutt Jem Cohen commented, “This is not a story of a rock star being on heroin or even drinking themselves down. The real story here is about someone who struggled against amazingly difficult odds for many years and managed to transcend those odds with almost unparalleled productivity and creativity and power in his work.”

“Unparalleled productivity and creativity and power” are appropriate words to describe the lives of both Chesnutt and Schillebeeckx, and it is not difficult to be awestruck and deeply thankful for the gifts they gave to their respective worlds.

Thank you, Edward and Vic. Sweetness follows.

Michael Iafrate
Morgantown, West Virginia

Or more precisely, are theologians who work theologically with popular music helping to create and inhabit a “court of the gentiles” for those participants in the cultures of secular music who do not belong actively to churches?

In a recent address (brought to my attention by my Fordham colleague, Fr. Claudio Burgaleta), the bishop of Rome, Benedict XVI, remarked on the importance for “the Church” to establish a new “court of the gentiles,” as a way of inviting in those who search for God but cannot commit to the God proclaimed by Christians. I could not help but wonder whether Rock and Theology and similar theological engagements with contemporary secular(izing) cultures are a contribution toward such a symbolic “court.” Some of our contributors and readers might indeed defend such an interpretation, on the grounds that we are so intent on thinking through the ways that Christian churches can interact with popular cultures.

Indeed, there is much to endorse about the idea of fostering such a “court,” through various practical-symbolic actions that churches could take to welcome a full array of those who cannot fully “believe.” Among the strongest benefits would be that of direct encounter with the “others” of “the Church.” In that encounter might lie mutual deepening, clarification, and courage for committing to reality – among both those in the “court” and those further on “inside.”

Among the problematic elements of such a call are the naïve repetition of a kind of replacement or supersessionist mentality, in which the Catholic use of the Bible simply takes over and cancels any distinctive Jewish meanings pertaining to the ancient “court of the Gentiles.” In this recent address, as so often in the theological tradition, “Temple” (or its “interior”) effectively becomes “Church,” and “Gentiles” become non-Christians or those not fully Christian. Apparently we are not yet fully within an era when such embarrassing and hurtful theological moves can be seen for what they are: clearly out of bounds theologically, and harmful to the public credibility of Catholic ideas. Moreover (but not unrelated), reviving this idea is tantamount to saying to contemporary society that those who cannot believe Catholic teaching ought to move to the back of the bus: show up symbolically to this select and demarcated “space” where you can say what you must say, witness to your own actions and beliefs, but your witness will never echo into the holy of holies. In that way, it is like the confessional box of which I write in my most recent book: that ironic but telling Catholic space in which one can speak frankly, but demurely. One can express one’s convictions and hesitations, be open about God, but that frankness will not be read back onto the church’s own “self-understanding.” The telling of truths cannot become part of the inner contestation of “Truth” itself. In other words, and to put it simply, a “court of the gentiles” seems evidence of that peculiar kind of Catholic thinking that manages to be both creative and patronizing at the same time.

We would open up more practical and theoretical possibilities by opening up the ways in which God, approached as “the Unknown,” remains “Unknown” even to those who get past the velvet rope and bustle in and out of the inner sanctum.

What kind of therapy would this require for the theologically-minded who feel the urge to write Christian theology that usurps Jewish worlds or teaches itself to forget that it too is stuck mercifully with the “Unknown”? We could begin by asking that any time these urges, which have deep roots in theological tradition, arise, we ask why we think we need to repeat this dangerous game, recite again these tired divisions of labor.

In this way might we construct conditions for the new “dialogue with those for whom religion is something foreign,” to which Benedict’s recent address strikingly, and most welcomely, commits itself.

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, United States