Forgiveness, with Margaret Farley

April 18, 2014 at 11:46 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments
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Last weekend I went down to Cranaleith, the Sisters of Mercy retreat center north of Philadelphia, for a program on Holy Week and forgiveness with Margaret Farley. You perhaps have heard of Farley; she’s the Catholic sister whose book, Just Love, was condemned by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2012. She was also one of the signers of the controversial 1984 New York Times ad which stated that there had been various positions on abortion throughout the history of the Catholic Church. Non-lay signers were forced to recant or be expelled from their orders. Farley was also one of the speakers at the first conference on Catholic women’s ordination in Detroit in 1975, to which the Vatican also did not respond positively (!).

Farley’s two presentations offered a different–or perhaps deeper–perspective on the suffering and death of Jesus than many of us have been hearing this week. (Obviously, what I am saying here is my interpretation of Farley’s words, not her words.) Farley argues that the passion is not primarily about suffering and death, but about relationships, and particularly about forgiving those who do harm. And harm here includes not only interpersonal offenses, but also, but especially, the “exponential explosion” of oppression around the world in our era–destitution, war, genocide, trafficking. Farley describes these acts as attempts at obliteration, like the violence done against Jesus.

But Jesus said, “Father forgive them,” and we too are called to the radical decentering that is forgiveness, even against the worst of crimes. Such radical decentering is quite different from the interpretation of forgiveness that the Church has sometimes marketed–that Jesus authorized the disciples to forgive some sins but not others. The only judgments Jesus made, Farley reminds us, were directed at the righteous and the arrogant; otherwise, he “desired mercy, not sacrifice.” Forgiveness, according to Farley, is also not passivity in the face of abuse, the masochism that some identify with the crucifixion; when those who harm do not stop, sometimes the readiness to forgive is all that’s possible. And resistance to violence and injustice are essential. But God’s forgiveness of humanity for the violent obliteration of Jesus is paradigmatic. Crimes against humanity may even bring about unprecedented cries for forgiveness, unprecedented calls for the healing of relationships.

Farley explored several Holy Week themes that help us better to discern what is asked of us regarding forgiveness.  One is Jesus’ question to James and John, after they rather obliviously ask if he will do whatever they want: “Are you able to drink from the cup that I drink…?” What Jesus asks, Farley suggests, is whether they–and we–are able to enter into the forsakenness of the crucifixion which is also the physical and spiritual forsakenness of all people, not only ourselves. The cup figures all forms of suffering, while the cross on which Jesus was crucified conveys that relationship–God’s with us, and ours with our sisters and brothers–holds even in the face of incalculable violence. Later in her talk, Farley also explored Jesus’ words to the women of Jerusalem on his way to Calvary, “Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.” At the heart of their exchange, Farley suggests, is the oneness of Jesus’ suffering with the suffering of past and future generations; Jesus identifies with creation across time and space. His words call us as well to solidarity with sufferers and to action on their behalf. This is what gives us hope, what enables us to believe that relationships will hold, even in the face of evil. Jesus forgives and so can we.

When I mentioned to some of my friends that I had gone to hear Margaret Farley, and how deeply moved I was by her words, many of them asked the same question: What did she say about the Vatican’s attack on her book? In point of fact, she never referred to it. I guess she had forgiven them.

 

 

 

 

 

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