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Holy Europe: Brother Roger Roger Louis Schutz-Marsauche, the founder and prior of the ecumenical community of Taize, was born in 1915 in the town of Provence in the Swiss Jura. His father, a Protestant minister of the Lutheran tradition, was very conscious of the divisions between Protestant and Catholic. His maternal grandmother, whom he remembers as having a powerful gift of hospitality, often attended Mass and even received Holy Communion. While pursuing his advanced studies, his parents chose to lodge Roger with a Catholic rather than a Protestant family because the Catholic family was in need of income from the rent. In 1941, awakened by the atrocities of the Second World War and his experience of affliction (le malheur), Brother Roger shared a sympathy for suffering France with Simone Weil, whom he considered a spiritual mentor. The defeat of France awoke powerful sympathy. If a house could be found there . . . it would offer a possible way of assisting some of those most discouraged—those deprived of a livelihood—and it would be a place of silence and work. (The Spirituality of Taize, by Patrick J. Burke). Deep quiet was what first drew Roger Schutz to Taize in the wooded hills and valleys of la France profonde. This last corner had not always been so silent. Ten minutes away lay the ruins of the great Benedictine abbey of Cluny, that had once been full of melody and chant sung to the glory of God. (It is interesting to note that the title of Brother Roger’s theology thesis was The Ideal of Monastic Life before St. Benedict and its Conformity with the Gospel.) But while trying to found an order whose religious life was based profoundly on the principles of music and silence, the clamor of war and refugees dominated Taize. In its first years, the house was mostly a hostel where Jews were hidden, offered soup and bed, and smuggled to safety across the border to Switzerland. From these humble beginnings sprang an extraordinary Christian revival. On the day Brother Roger was murdered by a deranged woman (August 16, 2005, aged 90), 2,500 people were in the Taize church. More than 100,000 visitors now come each year, so many that they stay in tents on the surrounding slopes. The order itself has 120 monks, some in the monastery and some, as Brother Roger always wanted, living with the poor in the world, in the slums of Kolkata, Manila, Mexico City, and New York. Taize prayer groups meet on every continent. Yet his monastery has never recruited, advertised, or sold itself. It has never been—he insisted it should never be—a “movement.” Outward harmony depends finally upon an inward harmony between our own hearts and the originating spirit that is the life of all creatures, a spirit as near us as our flesh and yet forever beyond the measurements of movements. The word “community” is the key to understanding the spirituality of Taize. Brother Roger has entitled the published version of his rule The Parable of Community. A parable speaks, it conveys a truth; it presents an example that illustrates a general principle—but above all Taize seeks to offer us tangible “images” steeped in the realities of life in the real world. The Cross of Taize, an icon from the Orthodox Church, is placed flat on the floor of the Church of Reconciliation and touched by all present as a gesture which tries to bring home very clearly that Christ still suffers in the downtrodden and victims of injustice in the world today. The music, which involves Christians from all sects in a resolutely ecumenical community, resonates in simple melodic phrases while harmonizing diverse languages in basic Latin mantras until it becomes a meditation interspersed with spells of silence, then continuing through prayers in what Brother Roger calls a “pillar of fire,” culminating in the song, Christus resurrexit. There is hope for humankind, there exists the real possibility for change through love, reconciliation and forgiveness, and there is, in the words of Brother Roger, “a life we never dared hope for.” There is much space for searching, but little for dogmatism, ideology or competing theologies. All life on earth is intimately interwoven, a single sacred reality. As part of a sacred community of life, those at Taize try to discern and live in harmony with the natural rhythms of our planet, the “music of the spheres.” Listening rather than preaching is the essence of Taize. Scripture and the Psalms must be internalized so that we let Christ pray silently within us. “Keep inner silence always, and you will dwell in Christ.” The struggle for liberation must first begin in the human heart. If in our hearts there is bitterness, fear, and resentment, then these will be in our societies also. Love your neighbor as yourself. A radical notion, since Jesus in all his teachings makes it very clear who the neighbor is: the poor person, the sick person, the naked person, the hungry person, the imprisoned. In his Rule, Brother Roger exhorts everyone to “be filled with the Spirit of the Beatitudes: Joy, simplicity and mercy.” At the very heart of Christ’s message is peace and reconciliation. “You have heard it said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, ‘Do not resist an evildoer.’ If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” On and on and on—a call for nothing less than a radical, voluntary, and effective reordering of power relationships, based on the principle of love. While the brothers at Taize acknowledge the importance of the struggle for peace and justice in a world of power relationships, their search for hope and meaning is enkindled through prayer, silence, and fellowship with people from different cultures and traditions. It has occurred to the French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, in an essay in The New Left Review entitled “Holy Europe,” that perhaps the “secular humanists” ironically have co-opted the teachings of Jesus Christ to ameliorate social and economic relations, so that, absent the “magical answers of religion,” people might just get around to solving their problems and strengthening their communities in a more straightforward way. Children and families are protected, education is free for all (which includes religious instruction), prisoners are rehabilitated (in Germany they receive two weeks vacation to reintegrate with communities), people dramatically cut back on carbon emissions, and they voluntarily live in smaller homes and take public transit. European countries give seventeen times more aid to poor countries than the U.S.A., and they make sure everyone has health care. The Green Party in Germany pursues the practice of Zivilmacht or tranquil power to reconcile nations and peoples through diplomatic conflict resolution. Andrew Bacevich in The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, observes how, given their numbers and political clout, the Christian right (both Protestant and Catholic) cancels out the views of those who oppose war. The result was ironic: in the developed world’s most devoutly Christian country, Christian witness against war and against the dangers of militarism became less effective than in countries thoroughly and probably irreversibly secularized (p. 146). Still, in Europe the “mystery of Taize” continues to attract thousands upon thousands of apparently alienated souls of the modern age into a space searching for the “Risen Lord Jesus” through contemplation and prayer. There is also a missionary dimension to the Community of Taize. In New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, the brothers try to breathe charity into what one of them called the catacombs of “The Holy American Empire.” They have joined the Catholic Workers in performance of personal works of mercy, while supporting the resistance to social forces that give rise to such a need for charity. The Brothers of Taize have been present at the Servant Leadership School in Washington, D.C., a group that has ties to the Church of the Savior. It is a longstanding ecumenical congregation located about a mile from the White House that practices works of mercy and rescue in programs ranging from low-income housing to literacy tutoring. Coleman McCarthy tells us that “few parishes in Washington take the Christian Gospel as seriously.” For Brother Roger, like Dorothy Day and Stanley Hauerwas, who is active with the Servant Leadership School, Christ-centered beliefs and the logic of the Sermon on the Mount lead to an uncompromising commitment to non-violence. In an article in The Progressive (April 2003) by Coleman McCarthy entitled “I’m a pacifist because I’m a violent son of a bitch. A profile of Stanley Hauerwas,” Hauerwas writes about the upsurge of religious conservatism: While appearing to be a resurgence of traditional religious conviction, some of these movements in fact give evidence of the loss of religious substance in our culture and in ourselves. Christianity is defended not so much because it is true, but because it reinforces the “American Way of Life.” Such movements are thus unable to contemplate that there may be irresolvable tensions between being Christian and being a good American. In America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, Anatole Lieven, in his chapter, “Fundamentalists and Great Fears,” points out a painting of George Bush at prayer in the oval office by an American patriotic artist. At his side are Lincoln and Washington, each also praying, and each with a hand on Bush’s shoulders. According to Bob Woodward, ‘The President was casting his vision and that of the country in the grand vision of God’s master plan” (America, p. 129). From the viewpoint of the parable of Taize, it would be hard to see how this picture avoids idolatry. But Vice-President Dick Cheney assures us in a Christmas card circulated in 2003: “And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without His aid.” (from Molly Ivins, “Cheney’s Card: The Empire Strikes Back,” Washington Post, Dec 30, 2003; see also Saving Christianity From Empire, by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, an Assistant Professor of Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. All royalties from this book are being donated to the Nonviolent Peace Force.) Finally, what might best sum up the spirit of Taize and Brother Roger is a letter, “Walking in Prison Shoes,” by a Maryknoll nun, Sr. Lil Mattingly, who is serving six months in prison in Danbury, Connecticut, for illegally entering Fort Benning while protesting the School of the Americas. Almost every day there can be a crisis: arguments, fights, and mutilations, “potential disaster living, based on fear, humiliation, control, and punishment.” However, attempts are made to modify tensions, and one woman spent days thinking about peace and wrote a poem: Peace by prayer Network Connection: People
Lobbying for Social Justice, David Graham David, a member of CPF, did graduate studies in European
History at the University of Wisconsin. |