Tissa Balasuriya

http://shawjonathan.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/mary-and-human-liberation/

Father Tissa Balasuriya is a Sri Lankan scholar and liberation theologian. The essay at the heart of this book – the ‘text’ of the subtitle – first appeared as a special double issue of the journal, Logos, published by the Centre for Society and Religion which Balasuriya founded in 1971. It scrutinises Catholic doctrines, dogmas and devotions related to Mary the mother of Jesus, and puts the case for an approach to Mary more in keeping with a liberatory version of Christianity. ‘From a Catholic perspective,’ he writes, ‘the sources of Christian theology are the Bible and tradition. Both of these should be subject to critical evaluation.’ Given that most Catholic doctrine has been developed by celibate European men, it needs to be approached with ‘a hermeneutics of suspicion’: one needs to ask constantly whether particular formulations and interpretations are influenced by self interest and limitations of that group – whether they might not be contaminated by male domination, by colonialism, by taking Western culture’s assumptions and practices to be universally human.

The pale, most pure, most holy virgin of traditional Catholic devotion here becomes a mature working class woman who joined her son’s dangerous and deeply principled challenge to the oppressive order of their day. W are encouraged to stop thinking of Mary primarily in terms of her miraculous reproductive history, and to focus on the song attributed to her, the Magnificat, which talks of psychological, political and economic revolution. There's a powerful argument in support of the ordination of women

That was the ‘text’. The ‘story’ is another matter altogether. In 1994 the Catholic Bishops of Sri Lanka issued a statement warning Catholics not to read the essay, and shortly after that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), under the leadership of Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict 16) weighed in with ‘Observations’ pointing out a large number of deficiencies and errors in the essay (in this kind of writing, deficiencies and errors if defended are heresies – the kind of thing that used to get people burned alive). Both those documents are included in this book, along with Balasuriya’s careful, thorough, mostly civil and at times enraged responses. It makes shocking reading. It looks to me as if the thing that really stung the bishops and the Vatican was Balasuriya’s daring to challenge the Eurocentricism and male domination of the Church authorities, because the conversation moved quickly away from the text itself to a demand that Balasuriya sign a statement of belief that was especially tailored to him. To cut a long story short, Balasuriya refused to sign off on something that no other Catholic is required to subscribe to, and in 1997 he was excommunicated with no right of appeal. (According to Wikipedia the excommunication was rescinded a year later, after this book was published, when Balasuriya signed a different, more generally acknowledged statement.)

If the current crop of militant atheists were seriously interested in anything beyond grandstanding and stirring up conflict, they would do well to engage with thinkers like Tissa Balasuriya. They wouldn’t reach agreement, but they might discover the possibility of mutual respect, and much common ground.… (mais)