CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Christian Co.cerns Logansport, Ind. To the Editors: My compliments to the drafters of the Chicago Declaration of Christian Concern and to Commonweal for presenting the...
...Perhaps...
...Many of us have experienced this kind of intuitive sensitivity in at least one relationship, but Jesus's life indicates that his intuitive knowledge or awareness was inordinately accurate for all ,men and women to a degree not possessed by ordinary humans...
...To the Editors: My compliments to the drafters of the Chicago Declaration of Christian Concern and to Commonweal for presenting the symposium on this important paper [Feb...
...The way of love is open to all mankind and the love that frees us from self-concern is extended to all mankind through the loving actions of t.heir fellowmen, made poss~le by God's gift of the capacity and freedom to love to all mankind...
...To the Editors: After reacting Herbert McCabe's article, "Is the Incarnation a Myth...
...Based on present-day understanding of how necessary being loved is to (Continued on page 285) Commonweal: 259 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 259) free us from the self-concern that leads to aggression and prevents us from loving and how important it is for love to answer our needs in order to free us from self-concern, may I suggest that Jesus's uniqueness lies in his extraordinary intuitive sensitivity to the .feelings of others and to the kind of loving action necessary to free them from their need for self-concern...
...Perhaps the explanation is simply that Mary, as the source of Jesus's belief ,in his divine mission, in a sense challenged Jesus to prove his powers to himself i,n a situation that could not harm others, regardless of the o~tcome, which was not tree of the Dcvirs challenges...
...pened on the way to the action...
...and when man chose not to love, God ~icked one group and gave them commandments to guide them to avoid aggression and choose love...
...Perhaps to be Christian, all ~ve really need to understand about the incarnation is that God's pevfoct loving was miraculously embodied in Jesus to give us a living, tangible, human example of the potential for love God created in all of us when he created mankind Commonweal: 285 in His image, a potential we fail to achieve in life because, like Eve, our doubts of God's' loving concern for us prevent us from overcoming our selfconcern...
...God speaks to all mankind through mankind's sensitivity to the needs of others, some sometimes more effectively than throcgh the Judea-Christian tradition as it has sometimes been interpreted and applied by its foUowexs...
...This =approach to the incarnation is based on the view of a creating God of love: a God who created mankind with the capacity to love and the freedom to choose to love or not to love...
...But this special guidance does not mean that God has spoken only through the Judea-Christian tradition...
...cholars offer varying exptanatious for the fact that Jesus obeyed Mary's request toturn water into wine at the wedding feast, performing his first public miracle for a seemingly superficial reason .because Mary requested it...
...I was frustrated 'but presumed tha~ was caused by (a) the media's zeroing in on what they considered "hot" items, namely optional cefibaoy and women's ministry or (.b) possibly skewing of the results by more sophisticated parishes...
...The big stories that came out of Detroit carried nothing that reflected the needs of .the laity that I had heard discussed on a local or state level...
...Simplistic...
...Mar...
...The final step in the Listening Process, I presumed, was the Detroit Call to Action, but a funny thing hap...
...BILL MCTAGGART Incarnation Myths Wausau, Wis...
...Perhaps it is in this sense that Jesus frees us from sin...
...MARILYN KRAMER...
...Oh, gamesmanship, where is thy sting...
...I can't say that I feel betrayed, since that ~vord implies a deliberate plot to thwart justice, but frankly, I would almost prefer ,betrayal to the state of being ignored...
...But it is a potential that Jesus's firm conviction of his unique relationship with God, a conviction given .him by Mary's account of his virginal conception, enabled him to fulfill completely to the point of giving his life that all mankind might believe in God's loving concern, and through his resurrection believe in Jesus as the .fully human image of God's love, an /rouge in which all mankind was created...
...Such perfect loving effectively frees us from the self-concern that prevents us from obeying God's command to love and leads us to aggression or sin...
...This Process was to hear and define the needs and concerns of the laity...
...In the Fall of 1975 I participated in the Listening Process in the Diocesan Council and as a chairman at the parish level...
...And when the purpose of his commandments was being distorted by legalistic interpretations that threatened to tlnvart God's guidance, God sent Jesus to guide thorn by example to the way of love...
...The Chicago Declaration shares and illumines my concern...
...In Marah of 1976 I attended the follow-up Indiana Catholic Con~exence at Notre Dame as a consultant...
...1], i,n rebuttal to the .book, The Myth of God Incarnate, I can't heSp but wonder if theologians don't make things unnecessarily complicated...
...Perhaps this is how faith in Jesns's love for us supported by the loving actions of his followers can save us all from sin...
Vol. 105 • April 1978 • No. 9
