If I have ever read the following statement from Dietrich Bonhöffer, I’ve long since forgotten it:
“Only the person who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chants.”
I think Bonhöffer captures an extremely important insight here—an insight into the fundamental difference between easy and cheap grace, and the cost of discipleship that flows from one or the other concept.
“Only the person who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chants”: this is going to become my new mantra, as I listen to Catholic centrists blather on about the distinction between doctrine and ethics.
As if we can possibly appropriate (and even understand) the significance of any doctrinal affirmation without recourse to its ethical significance.
As if we can listen to morally bankrupt church leaders defining “true” doctrine while belying everything core doctrines mean through their corrupt behavior.
As if the truth of doctrinal statements is not defined in part by how those statements are received by those to whom they’re proclaimed—and therefore by their practical (i.e., ethical) significance in the lives of lay believers.
“Only the person who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chants.” There is no doctrine apart from ethics, no pathway to authentic doctrine that does not slog through the difficult terrain of ethics.
I understand why centrist powerbrokers keep trying to make the deceptive distinction between doctrine and ethics: it’s to protect the center, to assure its dominance and control.
But this is an illicit move in a religious tradition whose core symbols are all about the ethical: about love and inclusion, rather than hate and exclusion. About a crucified one whose broken body is the supreme locus of all doctrinal and ethical reflection: one whose broken body embodied love and inclusion rather than hate and exclusion. So that all doctrinal reflection is necessarily embodied, first and foremost, for followers of the crucified one: necessarily ethical first and foremost.
“Only the person who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chants.”
As if we can possibly appropriate (and even understand) the significance of any doctrinal affirmation without recourse to its ethical significance.
As if we can listen to morally bankrupt church leaders defining “true” doctrine while belying everything core doctrines mean through their corrupt behavior.
As if the truth of doctrinal statements is not defined in part by how those statements are received by those to whom they’re proclaimed—and therefore by their practical (i.e., ethical) significance in the lives of lay believers.
“Only the person who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chants.” There is no doctrine apart from ethics, no pathway to authentic doctrine that does not slog through the difficult terrain of ethics.
I understand why centrist powerbrokers keep trying to make the deceptive distinction between doctrine and ethics: it’s to protect the center, to assure its dominance and control.
But this is an illicit move in a religious tradition whose core symbols are all about the ethical: about love and inclusion, rather than hate and exclusion. About a crucified one whose broken body is the supreme locus of all doctrinal and ethical reflection: one whose broken body embodied love and inclusion rather than hate and exclusion. So that all doctrinal reflection is necessarily embodied, first and foremost, for followers of the crucified one: necessarily ethical first and foremost.
“Only the person who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chants.”
