Overcoming suffering and sorrow

I follow the example of the Biblical scholars who listened to psychologists to understand emotions before discussing on Emotions from Ben Sira to Paul (Aichhorn, Wolfgang, and Helmut Kronberger. 2012. “The Nature of Emotions. A Psychological Perspective.” In Yearbook 2011. Emotions from Ben Sira to Paul, edited by Renate Egger-Wenzel and Jeremy Corley, 515–525. Berlin: De Gruyter).

Emotions ensure survival and regulate interactions between individuals (ibid. 515). It is very important for understanding emotions, that we assess their communicative structures. Most importantly, emotions “play an essential role in the development of a child’s personality within a mother-child dyad because they form identity” (ibid..). The empirical science of psychology speaks of seven basic emotions, that are fear, anger, happiness, disgust, contempt, sadness, and surprise (ibid. 516). It is too early to criticize that the opposite of happiness and pleasure are not yet mentioned, that are sorrow and suffering. For the moment being, it is important to understand the communicative functions of emotions. Physical responses to emotions are called affects (ibid.). “Facial expressions, gestures, postures, and vocal utterances” express affects, and are recognized by others, and at the same time “induce within others similar emotions (ibid.). This mirroring, or emotional understanding another person, is the basis for empathy, “communicating individuals influence each other through affect (ibid.). When reading a novel, a poem, the activated emotions are like this mirroring function of communication (ibid..). The rhetoric arts of the author of the Letter to the Hebrews are not based on modern empirical science of psychology, nevertheless the empathic rhetoric of the author follows the modern rule, that “things are only committed to long-term memory if they are emotionally important to us” (ibid. 517).

“Primary emotions are formed at the beginning of life and serve to create attachment to caregivers” (ibid.). Affects signal needs and want to others and oneself (ibid.). “The baby’s expressions of emotion are mirrored by the mother, and the mother’s affect mirroring is taken in by the baby. This creates the foundation for emotional identity and affect regulation” (ibid.).

By the end of an infant’s sixth months, the affects “interest, excitement, happiness (which have existed since birth), disgust, sadness, and distress” will have developed (ibid. 519). “Structural affects such as shame, guilt, pride, envy, and jealousy” are only developed “once a clear separation of self-representation and object-representation has occurred” (ibid. 520). “The terrible consequences of failing to relate emotionally to a child can be seen in so-called ‘Still Face’ experiments. In these standardized experiments a mother will play with her infant. All of a sudden, the mother stops smiling for three minutes and shows no facial expression whatsoever. Babies will respond by repeatedly trying to get a reaction out of the mother. For lack of success the baby will respond with dejection, turning away from its mother and will withdraw. The baby denies its need to look at its mother and no longer takes notice of his or her environment. Eventually, the baby will show no emotional expression at all. Such simple experiments lasting three minutes show how depressive withdrawal and unsafe attachment patterns are developed” (ibid.). By contrast, safe attachment provides a high level of positive affects and allows for creation of a balance between positive (e.g., happy) and negative (e.g., distressed) emotions” (ibid. 518).

Psychotherapy often tries to help the patient to get in contact with repressed intrinsic feelings and to create conscious access to these feelings” (ibid. 520). Suffering is a state of sorrow and distress. “Through laughing and crying we express proximity, sociality, and communality. We woo others, we try to appease others or prevent acts of aggression. … The main cause of crying is loss. … Through crying, loss becomes clearly perceptible, and pain becomes overtly present. … Therefore, crying helps us to accept loss as a loss, and at the same time it helps to safeguard our loss. It provides a way toward reorientation without having to deny our loss” (ibid.). Crying helps to integrate the loss into conscience and awareness, that is to accept our loss and continue with living.

It is true, the psychologists affirm that “human emotions are either a pleasant or an unpleasant mental state”, but they shy away speaking of suffering and sorrow (ibid.523). They speak of distressed emotions, of anger, and of “dysfunctional emotional patterns” caused by trauma and leading to “severe mental diseases” (ibid. 524), but they do not speak of suffering.

From a “neurobiological perspective” (ibid. 523), it may seem appropriate to use prima facies empirical terms of science. A term is a description with the help of predicates that are used systematically, coherently and open to falsification or verification. Constructing a term is like an experiment, like a puzzle that puts together predicates to get a picture of a state of affairs, that is a fact and a hypothesis.

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein does not take up the example from Notebooks for explaining how we form sentences. In Notebooks he compares the construction of a sentence to the way a judge views the evidence and constructs the case (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Notebooks 1914–1916. September 29, 1914). In the Tractatus Wittgenstein considers the construction of the structure of a sentence in relation to reality and compares the sentence to a picture. We read in Tractatus 4.01: “The sentence is a picture of reality. The sentence is a model of the reality as we think it is.”  We must not consider the “model of reality as we think it is” exclusively as a hypothesis of natural science that is ready for falsification or affirmation.

Making sense with sentences can be considered as a kind of teaching the listeners a new kind of use of words, a kind of combination of words that not necessarily has been taught to the speaker, but that is rather made up by the speaker. The use of a new combination of words - old words or new words – creates sense. Once again, I turn to the second sentence in Tractatus 4.031: “One can say, instead of, This sentence has such and such a sense, This sentence represents such and such a state of affairs.” The validity of the sense of a sentence is understandability. We understand a language when we can use words in a way that makes sense, and when we can listen and understand the sentences of speakers. In both cases we understand what sense is shown.

I do not know if Aichhorn and Kronberger shy away from using the terms “suffering” and “sorrow” because they suppose that “suffering” and “sorrow” are private affairs. If “suffering” and “sorrow” are private, I do not understand why “pain” should be a public scientific term? The two psychologists affirm that psychotherapy often tries to help the patient to get in contact with repressed intrinsic feelings and to create conscious access to these feelings” (ibid. 520). Why would they want to exclude suffering and sorrow from their vocabulary? Suffering is a conscious state of sorrow and distress.

Wittgenstein rejects the idea that states of consciousness are essentially private because that would require that a person would have to designate a word for each of her or his states of consciousness. But words cannot be introduced into language by a “private ostensive definition,” because the common understanding of a name of a state of consciousness would not be possible (Budd 1989: 16). We use words according to the rules we learned for their use “And hence also ‘obeying a rule‘ is a practice. And to think one is obeying a rule is not to obey a rule. Hence it is not possible to obey a rule ‘privately’: otherwise thinking one was obeying a rule would be the same thing as obeying it” (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2001. Philosophical Investigations. I, paragraph 202. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell).

We all, I suppose, have learned to use the words suffering and sorrow. We have also learned that the opposite of suffering is experiencing pleasure or happiness. We have learned to use the expression “suffering” for example in the context of feeling bodily pain after physical injury. We have learned to use the word “suffering” for expressing the inner pain of negative emotions and painful limitations. We speak of social suffering when women, men and queer are exposed to injustice, violent interpersonal conflicts and crimes.

I want to learn more about the possible descriptions of suffering and turn to the dictionary (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suffering). There I learn that    suffering is the state or experience of one that suffers or experiences pain. Suffering implies conscious endurance of pain or distress. Pain and suffering are synonyms. Other synonyms of suffering are distress, misery, and agony. Misery stresses the unhappiness attending especially sickness, poverty, or loss. “Some people live in misery every day. Agony suggests pain too intense to be borne”, for example being “in agony over the death of their child” (ibid.).

The psychologists Aichhorn and Kronberger assess that psychotherapy often tries to help the patient to get in contact with repressed intrinsic feelings and to create conscious access to these feelings” (Aichhorn and Kronberger. 2011. 520). Having conscious access to my feelings is part of my psychic and social integrity. Another way of speaking of conscious access is speaking of awareness of my feelings.

Psychotherapists like Alice Miller, Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen, and many others, never got tired of stressing the importance for personal integrity of making conscious repressed anger and suffering. Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen (1917-2012), the German psychoanalyst and medical doctor invested her professional career studying and analyzing the incapability of post Nazi Germany to face the atrocities and crimes the Nazis had committed. Starting to accept the historic truth and take responsibility of the Holocaust and of Nazi terror took Germany 30 years, Austria took longer. I learned from Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen (Mitscherlich-Nielsen, Margarete. 2002. “Sinnstiftung mit und ohne Gott.”) that accepting the challenge and doing the remembering, mourning and saying good-bye to my losses remains a lifelong exercise. To say good-bye to losses, small or big, is a lifelong process that one must manage until the moments of the last good-bye.  Pushing away one’s guilt and cooperation in terror and state violence, and not acknowledging historic guilt, leads society to further hate and violence. At the end of her life, the North European academic Mitscherlich-Nielson widened her empathic solidarity with suffering women, men and queer. She claims that the sufferings in our social and cultural contexts are ridiculous compared with the real sufferings of millions of women, men and queer in this world who are condemned to living in inhumane, sickening, and deadly conditions of poverty, violence, and suppression (Mitscherlich-Nielson 2002).

What does a child need? “The child has a primary need from the very beginning of her life to be regarded and respected as the person she really is at any given time. When we speak of ‘the person she really is at any given time,’ we mean emotions, sensations, and their expression from the first day onward. In an atmosphere of respect and tolerance for her feelings, the child, in the phase of separation, will be able to give up symbiosis with the mother and accomplish the steps toward individuation and autonomy” (Miller, Alice. 1979. 7. Revised 2008. London: Virago Press). For thirty years Miller followed her mission as therapist to help and empower hundreds of women, men and queer to search for and to find their self, she writes 2008 in a new introduction to her book. In Switzerland, one of the wealthiest countries of the world, she worked for the poor rich suffering from the consequences of infant trauma in their adult lives. In those thirty years working as a self-searcher and self-empowering therapist she had received thousands of thank-you letters from people who, reading her books, discovered their feelings and emotions that had been buried because of infant trauma.

The experience listening to the physical and psychological harm done to children, leads Miller to assess how to prevent suffering from infant trauma. “Alle children are born to grow, do develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection. For their development, children need the respect and protection of adults who take them seriously, love them, and honestly help them to become oriented in the world. When these vital needs are frustrated and children are, instead, abused for the sake of adults’ needs by being exploited, beaten, punished, taken advantage of, manipulated, neglected, or deceived without the intervention of any witness, then their integrity will be lastingly impaired. The normal reactions to such injury should be anger and pain; since children in this hurtful kind of environment, however, are forbidden to express their anger and since it would be unbearable to experience their pain all alone, they are compelled to suppress their feelings, repress all memory of the trauma, and idealize those guilty of the abuse. … In this regard, knowledge or ignorance on the part of society can be instrumental in either saving or destroying a life. Here lies the great opportunity for relatives, social workers, therapists, teachers, doctors, psychiatrists, officials, and nurses to support the child and to believe him or her” (ibid. 144-46.).

What are the consequences of infant trauma for adults who disassociated from the original cause “their feelings of anger, helplessness, despair, longing, anxiety, and pain”? (ibid. 145). These repressed feelings “will find expression in destructive acts against others (criminal behavior, mass murder) or against themselves (drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, psychic disorders, suicide)” (ibid.).

Since experiencing emotions has to do with consciousness and awareness of emotions, the mental state of suffering gets attention from philosophers. Hans Jonas (1903-1993) is a philosopher, he is not a scientist, but he acquires a certain amount of knowledge of nature to think about life. His end is not science but coping with life and reflecting on his experiences of life.  A German Jew, he fought the Nazi regime, from 1947 to 1949 he fought in the war of Israel’s independence and of the Palestinians’ expulsion. In 1949 he immigrated to Canada and a few years later settled in the United States. At the end of his life, he writes about suffering and Go’d Yahweh and about Auschwitz, where his mother was murdered (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Jonas). Jonas clears philosophically the possibility condition of emotions and feelings. The prime condition for feeling is self-awareness of the feeling and this self-awareness is expressed by language. Feeling is not “the mother-value of all values”, feeling is the capacity of “subjective inwardness” and is a decisive step of life’s evolution (Jonas, Hans. 1992. “The Burden and Blessing of Mortality” In: The Hastings Center Report 22 (1): 34 - 40. http://www.jstor.org/stable3562722. ibid.). It is a question that must be answered by science if and how and when and why “in the earliest self-sustaining cells” a kind of diffused subjectivity was emerging “long before it concentrated in brains” (ibid.). The expression “subject” does not make part of the world of natural science.

Jonas is right to assess “the evolution of consciousness” as an important function in the struggle for survival (Jonas 1992, 37). Jonas trusts “the self-testimony of our subjective inwardness” that is self-consciousness, as being capable of consciously operating “natural selection as means of survival” as an end in itself “and at the same time as a means of survival” for the whole species (ibid.). Qualities of life like emotions, feelings or a peaceful environment are aspects of the end of life in itself and at the same time may serve as an instrument for survival. “The self-rewarding experience of the means in action make the preservation they promote more worthwhile” (ibid.). Jonas dares to claim that “the worth of awareness” for the individual person is not limited by the sad individual and collective fact “that the sum of misery is so much greater than that of happiness” (ibid.). “The very record of suffering mankind teaches us that the partisanship of inwardness for itself invincibly withstands the balancing of pains and pleasures and rebuffs our judging it by this standard” (ibid. 38). I do not know if Jonas is right on this point, but he is right insisting on the importance of “the yes to sentient selfhood” (ibid.).

There are contemporary philosophers I would have never suspected dealing with suffering. Paul Lorenzen (1915–1994) is famous for founding the Erlangen School of Philosophy, for the philosophy of mathematics, science and logical constructivism. Privately he confesses his existential concern and thinking about suffering in a religious context but never published his convictions. In March 1979 Lorenzen presented to a trusted colleague his understanding of a political anthropology (Lorenzen 1979b: 1–25. Cited with permission of the Philosophische Archiv of the University of Constance. All rights reserved). Lorenzen speaks of solidarity as the practice of self-criticism and of the necessity of becoming educated by forming an artistic and religious culture (ibid. 21), because we find the experiences of joy or suffering, of confidence, love and hope today in the irrational and in religion and not in modern technical reason (ibid. 22). As a picture for “unconditioned solidarity that is trans-subjectivity” Lorenzen points at the example of the life of Jesus for his disciples (ibid. 24).

According to Lorenzen, modern technical reason, and perhaps also the science of psychology, are not interested in suffering, confidence, love and hope (ibid. 22). Lorenzen introduced this judgement in the context of the Christian religion and his Protestant background. The aversion of modern science with religion has to be seen in the diametrically contradicting interests of a perverted Christian religion that prescribes their religious followers suffering as the supreme Christian virtue, and modern science, that incessantly researches for therapies to overcome suffering and sorrow. It is understandable that scientific modern medicine rejects oppressive and sickening recipes for pathological Christian suffering. At the same time, it is an irony than scientific medicine’s powerful duty to insulate human beings from anxiety, dread, and terror of physical injury, bodily wastage, mental suffering and death are seen as social realizations that show characteristic features of religion (Vanderpool 2008.ibid. 216).

Claiming with citations from the New Testament that Jesus asked his disciples to give up their self and self-determination for suffering is uninformed and irresponsible Biblical exegesis. I will have to argument that the message of Biblical verses like the last instructions to the apostles in Luke 24, 47–48 consists in taking serious Jesus’ example of overcoming suffering. When he calls the apostles to be witnesses to him in faith, to be witness to his suffering and resurrection and to his proclamation of the forgiveness of sins, he calls for healing and not for suffering. The two psychologists are aware that when reading a novel, a poem, the activated emotions are similar to the mirroring function of communication (Aichhorn and Kronberger. 2011. 516). I will comment integrity enhancing verses from the Passion narrative, based on my experiences of overcoming suffering and sorrow in reading and meditating the Bible.

Jesus was teaching by healing and healing by teaching and Luke writes of Jesus’ way up to Jerusalem, “Now it happened that after this he made his way through towns and villages preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. With him went the Twelve, as well as certain women who had been cured of evil spirits and ailments: Mary surnamed the Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their own resources” (Luke 8, 1-3).

On his way through Galilee up to Jerusalem Jesus was conscientious that in the end he would get killed by the Jewish and Roman authority of Jerusalem, and he was faithful that God will rise him from the dead.

The oldest Gospel, the Gospel of Mark uses as messianic title for Jesus the expression “Son of Go’d”, Christ is the Son of God. We read in the very beginning of the Gospel of Mark, “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1,1. The new Jerusalem Bible).

In Mark 8 Jesus “teaches” his disciples for the first time “that the Son of man was destined to suffer grievously, and to be rejected by the elders and the chief priest and the scribes, and to be put to death, and after three days to rise again” (Mark 8, 31). The disciples did not understand the teaching anyways. We find the parallels of the narrative in Matthew 16, 21-23 and Luke 9, 22.

In the next chapter Mark writes, on “their way through Galilee” Jesus tells his disciples a second time of the Passion and resurrection, “The Son of man will be delivered into the power of men, they will put him to death; and three days after he has been put to death he will rise again” (Mark 9, 30-31). And again, the disciples “did not understand what he said and were afraid to ask him” (Mark 9, 32). The parallels we find in Matthew 17, 22-23 and in Luke 9, 43-45.

In the next chapter of Mark, we read that Jesus and his disciples “were on the road, going up to Jerusalem” (Mark 10, 32). Jesus was telling them, “Now we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man is about to be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the gentiles, who will mock him and spit at him and scourge him and put him to death; and after three days he will rise again” (Mark 10, 33-34). The parallels are in Matthew 20, 17-19 and Luke 18, 32-34.

John writes that Jesus knew about the plot to kill him and that he was to be killed, and his life ended in Jerusalem (John 13, 1). John testifies that Jesus had loved his own, the women, men and queer who followed him the way from Galilee to this celebration of the last supper and John testifies of Jesus’s determination and social choice to love his own till the end at the cross, and John assesses the realization of this love. In John 13, 1-20 we read about “The washing of feet”, and in 13, 21-30 “The treachery of Judas foretold”. I follow Bultmann, that the prayer of Jesus (John 17, 1–26) stands in the context of the last supper John 13, 1–30. It is true, John does not know the Lord’s Supper as do the synoptic Gospels and John does not narrate the Eucharist as the other three Evangelists. The prayer of Jesus should find its place right after John 13, 30.  Since the farewell discourses are to be considered comments on the prayer of Jesus, the farewell discourses and talks follow in John 13, 31–35, John 15 – John 16, 33 and John 13, 36 – John 14, 41 (Bultmann, Rudolf. 1952. Das Evangelium des Johannes. 351-371. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht). (See my Posting „Jesus Christ, healing, caring, and sexual pleasure”).

After John 17, 1-26 John continuous in John 18, 1-11 with “The arrest of Jesus”. John does not tell “Gethsemane” as the Synoptics do before he continuous with “The arrest of Jesus”.

Gethsemane

“They came to a plot of land called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, ‘Stay here while I pray.’ Then he took Peter and James and John with him. And he began to feel terror and anguish. And he said to them, ‘My soul is sorrowful to the point of death. Wait here and stay awake. And going on a little further he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, this hour might pass him by. ‘Abba, Father!’ he said, ‘For you everything is possible, Take this cup away from me. But let it be as you, not I, would have it. ’He came back and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, ‘Simon, are you asleep? Had you not the strength to stay awake one hour? Stay awake and pray not to be put to the test. The spirit is willing enough, but human nature is weak.’ Again, he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And once more he came back and found them sleeping, their eyes were so heavy; and they could find no answer for him. He came back a third time and said to them, ‘You can sleep on now and have your rest. It is all over. The hour has come. Now the Son of man is to be betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up! Let us Go! My betrayer is not far away.’”

                                                                                                                           Mark 14, 32-42

Jesus wanted to pray (Mark 14, 32). He had Peter, James and John with him, “distress ruled him, and he was distressed” (Mark 14, 34). He communicates to the three of them “my soul is sorrowful to the point of death” and asks them to “wait here and stay awake” (Mark 14, 34). I am relieved that The New Jerusalem Bible does not identify Jesus’ speaking of his agony with words of Psalms 42 and 43 that speak of a depression. Many Bible translations reduce Jesus’ agony to a state of depression, they diminish his suffering, they cannot accept that Jesus’ soul, his most inners self-consciousness was suffering tremendously and shaken to the point of breaking. Apparently, even Biblical scholars repress their sufferings and seek comfort in speaking of a depression. The disciples were not able to stay awake anyways. Staying awake at the side of suffering Jesus, giving him support and empathy was not possible for them. And when he came back a second time they were sleeping again and not praying or caring for the shocked soul of Jesus.

Jesus was praying alone. May I say that he was learning to pray? I do not know. I am reading the Gethsemane narratives of Matthew, Mark and Luke as a teaching how to pray rightfully and faithfully. Prayer is not requesting from Go’d to solve one’s problems, even to solve one’s utmost emotional disorganization, distress, angst and agony. Before prayer there is the painful but effective assessment of one’s integrity. Jesus was learning in Gethsemane that he was empowered to stand up to the challenge of agony and death. Yes, first he was trying that Go’d would make possible “this hour might pass him by” (Mark 14, 35). Asking Go’d to relieve him from his agony and angst was a good request in the sense that Jesus was conscientious of his sorrow and the suffering to come, he identifies agony, angst and nearing death. Then he realizes that Go’d would not take away from him suffering, death and all distressing experiences to come, Go’d does not “take this cup away” from Jesus. Jesus acknowledges that he must choose. Either he respects Go’d as the One and Only, and prays “but let it be as you, not I, would have it”, and goes on asking his body and soul to give him the strength, power and integrity to sustain and persevere with his life and mission. Or, he does not trust Go’d, whom he calls father, and does not have faith as the Son of man that he will overcome the Passion and be capable of bearing all the betrayals and suffering that “sinning men” bring on him (Mark 14, 41). Finally, Jesus is capable in Gethsemane to make the free choice to receive his integrity, to stand up and lead his disciples to “get up” and to “go” confronting Judas and “a number of men armed with swords and clubs, sent by the chief priests and the scribes and the elders” (Mark 14, 42-43). In the end Jesus will overcome his sufferings and Go’d will rise him from the dead.

Nowhere in the New Testament Jesus is saying that his faithful should imitate his sufferings. After the first prophecy of Jesus of the Passion in Matthew 16, 21 and Peter’s trying to repress the path of Jesus, we read, “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘if anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16, 24-25). This text of Matthew and the text of Luke in Luke 9, 23-24 almost literally follow the text of Mark 8, 34-35. For Gnilka we may consider the saying as an authentic saying of Jesus, that deals with the life of the faithful follower and her or his attachment to Christ (Gnilka, Joachim. 1978, Das Evangelium nach Markus. II. Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament. Benzinger Verlag. Zürich).

Jesus does not claim to take up his cross, Jesus encourages every follower to take up one’s own cross. Every follower bears his or her cross, the suffering of the faithful woman, man or queer is an individual suffering and it is the individual follower to take the free choice to search for her or his integrity and to get empowered by one's resources for assessing one’s integrity. Once enjoying one’s integrity, the follower of Jesus may make another choice. It is not the choice to suffer until one’s integrity is destroyed, and there is no commandment to renounce one’s freedom and responsibility. Jesus does not encourage to deny one’s integrity and existence, on the contrary. The denial concerns renouncing a part of my resources to serve a sister or brother and thereby enhancing one’s dignity and freedom.

If somebody saves her or his life, she or he will lose it. If somebody loses her or his life, she or he will save it. Is there anybody on earth who never was to die? I think it is common human experience, that we all must die one day. I may accept my death, even for the sake of rescuing somebody else, and die hoping that Go’d will save me. That means, even when renouncing my life for love of another person, I am not renouncing my hope. There is no Christian life without integrity.

To consider making a free choice to give away some of my resources to help and empower a woman, man or queer who is in need, a maximum realization of one’s dignity, is a relatively new idea in the development of humankind. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1787), the Enlightenment philosopher of the social contract and the most attentive theorist of the realization of democracy by the individual person, did not claim that the rule of democratic law was already realized throughout the world or even in Europe (Leher, Stephan, P., 2018. Dignity and Human Rights. Language Philosophy and Social Realizations. 94. New York and London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group). Yet he speaks of the dignity of a self-legislating member of society always in connection with the dignity of every self-legislating member of society. Social realizations of dignity, freedom and justice by Rousseau are seen as social choices that interact with the dignity, freedom and rights of - ideally - all citizens (ibid. 173). (See my Posting “Ethics in Democracy”).

The Codex of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church of 1983 presents an order that is “far from the legal values characteristic for modern society” (Köck, Heribert, Franz. 2018. „Human Rights in the Catholic Church with regard also to the General principle of Equal Treatment and Non-Discrimination“ In Revision of the Codes. An Indian-European Dialogue, edited by Adrian Loretan and Felix Wilfred, 97 - 130. 126. Wien: LIT Verlag). We remember that the modern state under the rule of law - as designed for example by Rousseau in the 18th century - was gradually developed in the 19th century and that the State under the rule of Human Rights law is a very young practice of humanity (Leher, Stephan, P., 2018. 91-97). This is no excuse that the Roman Catholic Church does not accept the Human Rights of the UDHR and does not abide by the rule of Human Rights law (Köck 2018, 120).

Concerning Church government, the Roman Catholic Church violates the right of the faithful to freely take part in the decision-shaping and decision-making in the Church. We need Canon Law that would respect the equal dignity, freedom and rights of all Catholics choosing officeholders, and the participation in legislative and administrative responsibilities and offices (ibid.). The Roman Catholic Church is very much obsessed by the power question and misses the growing frustration and resignation of millions of Catholics who turn away from the institution of the Roman Catholic Church as an absolutist monarchy that does not care to respect the Human Rights of their women, men and queer. Her autocratic structures of absolutist government are incapable of preserving the common good of her members who consequently challenge the legitimacy of this monarchic government and in growing numbers turn away in frustration, anger and growing disinterest from the Roman Catholic Church as an institution.

Who were the first followers of Christ? In Luke 8 we hear from the Twelve and the women. The Greek term for following Jesus as disciple is akolouthein that is to follow. All four Gospels use the term akolouthein for the Twelve, that is for the male disciples. The synoptic Gospels, that are Matthwe, Mark and Luke, use the term akolouthein also for women, because the women were at the Calvary, whereas the male disciples did not have the courage to come near to the cross. Matthew and Mark say of the women that they had followed Jesus from Galilee on (Matthew 27, 55; Mark 15, 41), Luke uses the term sunakolouthein which translates as “to follow along with” (Luke 23, 49). The women were not only testifying the crucification and death of Jesus. Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James and Salome were the first to be told that Jesus had been risen from the dead and that they “must go and tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; that is where you will see him, just as he told you’” (Mark 16, 1-7). “Mary of Magdala and the other Mary” were told the same message by the angel (Matthew 28 1-8) and in Matthew 28, 9-10 they met Jesus resurrected themselves. Luke 24, 1-8 tells the same message of the resurrection of Jesus. In Luke 24, 9-11 Mary of Magdala, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them “told the apostles, but this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense, and they did not believe them”. John says that Maria of Magdala had the first appearance of the Lord (John 20, 11-18).

Women were the first believers that Jesus had been risen from the dead, the apostles did not believe the message the women were announcing them. Who is greater, the one who believes or the one who does not believe? It took some decades, then the faithful men suppressed the faithful women again and for more than two millenniums. In Acts 9, 36 we find for the first and last time in the New Testament the female term for a follower that is a disciple of Jesus, Tabitha is a woman disciple. The Greek uses the female form “mathaetría” and not the masculine “mathaetáes” (Robert C. Tannehill. The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts. A Literary Interpretation. Volume two: The Acts of the Apostles. Augsburg Fortress 1990). In Acts 1, 13-14 the eleven Apostles – Judas had not yet been replaced -, sat in prayer “together with some women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers”. A few verses later, at Pentecost, the women are excluded from addressing the crowd, “Peter stood up with the Eleven and addressed them”, that is “the men of Judaea”, the women were absent, invisible as speakers and as listeners (Acts 2, 1-36). There is patriarchal discrimination of women in the New Testament, but there is no legitimation for women discrimination in the Bible. (See my Posting “Describing the just world of Go’d”).

Sister Mary Luke Tobin (1908–2006), one of fifteen women auditors who got invited to the Second Vatican Council in the fall of 1964 affirms that the Council fathers had not understood “the injustice in the church’s attitude toward and treatment of women” (Tobin, Mary Luke. 1986. “Women in the Church Since Vatican II: From November 1, 1986.” America. The Jesuit Review. November 1). (See my Posting “Women and the government of the Roman Catholic Church”).

Mary Daly (1928–2010), the later radical lesbian feminist, was doing theological graduate studies in Europe and in the fall of 1965, she traveled to Rome to the Second Vatican Council. She was not invited to the Council, so she got herself a press pass and “sat in on proceedings, watching the bishops in their regal white and crimson and the nuns veiled in black who shuffled to receive communion from the princes” (Coblentz, Jessica, and Brianne A. B. Jacobs. 2018. “Mary Daly’s The Church and the Second Sex after Fifty Years of US Catholic Feminist Theology.” Theological Studies 79 (3): 543–565. 545). Daly returned to the United States and in 1968 published The Church and the Second Sex, “one of the first monographs in the field of Catholic feminist theology” (ibid. 543).

In 2018, Coblentz and Jacobs assess that Daly’s critiques of sexism in the church have persisted as major concerns in the US Catholic feminist theology for the last fifty years (ibid. 557–58). Coblentz and Jacobs claim, that the structural factors of women’s oppression in the church as in society have to be considered as intersecting structures; the effects of racism, colonialism, and other oppressions on women’s lives need to be studied in their relation to sexism (ibid. 559). Looking at the Roman Curia that is still dominated by white male Cardinals from Italy, Europe and North America white supremacy must be addressed and dismantled in the Catholic Church as a whole. Feminists across academic disciplines reflecting on individual psychological experience and interfamilial relations, assess the suffering and pain that is inflicted on women. Women’s actual lived experience is suffering, hold the authors. Feminist Catholic theologians are empowered to name the sufferings and pain of women as the real sin in the world (ibid.). Coblentz and Jacobs observe that despite the ill effects of ecclesial patriarchy on growing up girls and women “Catholic feminist theologians have focused on the psychological effect of oppression outside the church rather than tracing these struggles to ecclesial sexism itself” (ibid. 554).

Overcoming suffering is not an academic problem. Academics usually are part of those privileged who are used that their position makes them an authority on the experience of others. Not only academics, but all kinds of privileged people like to dismiss “the words or experiences of people with less privilege and power” (Mikki Kendall. 2020. Hood Feminism. Notes from the women white feminists forgot. 250f. London: Bloomsbury Publishing).

Mikki Kendall describes her overcoming suffering from poverty. After she left her abusive husband, she was on food stamps, had a state-funded medical card, was living in public housing and affirms “I could raise my child in relative comfort and safety” (ibid. 31). “I was lucky: I’m educated. My grammar school and high school curricula prepared me for a college education. I joined the army to pay for my degree” (ibid.). She was poor, “and it wasn’t easy” (ibid. 32). After her bachelor’s degree she went on to work full-time. When she writes the book, she is 44, has “wonderful family, and a career” as successful writer, asked speaker and liked blogger, that she enjoys (ibid.).

What she remembers is hunger, “And crying when I couldn’t afford a Christmas tree. I remember being afraid that I couldn’t make it (ibid.). She writes, “hunger doesn’t have an age limit; there are food-insecure children, food-insecure college students, and food-insecure elders. Some forty-two million Americans are struggling with hunger” (ibid. 33). She documents that eviction rates and the price of food continue to rise, and wages remain stagnant, and she knows that “without a home, individual families suffer and fall further into poverty (ibid.).

She claims that the feminists and the feminist movement “has to be one that not only listens to all women but advocates for their basic needs to be med” (ibid. 37). Fighting for abortion rights and equal pay is not enough when for some women and communities hunger moves into malnutrition (ibid.). She claims that feminist changes will only be possible when “everyone has access to the most basic of needs” (ibid. 46).

She describes the suffering from “patriarchal narratives”, from “white patriarchal messaging” in the marginalized, semi-segregated black communities in inner cities or rural communities (ibid. 69). “Entitlement, intolerance, homophobia, misogyny, aggression, and sexual violence inside and outside marginalized communities are” killing the youth (ibid. 81).

Women in black low-income communities were largely in charge, because white supremacy overly aggressive law enforcement imprisoned their protesting men “or killed with little rhyme and reason” (ibid. 72). Violence is not less inside the community, “Black women face one of the highest rates of intimate partner violence”, Black patriarchy does not heal but generates hypermasculinity and toxic masculinity (ibid. 75). Black and Latin girls must navigate “the projected hyper sexualization of their bodies”, the “assumptions that they are somehow destined to fail”, and “that they perform emotional and social labor at the expense of their own girlhood” (ibid. 76). Where are the programs that “center on what the girls might want or need for themselves” (ibid. 81)?

Kendall is very clear on how to overcome all this suffering of black women and men in their communities: The subjects of feminist change “in Islam, the Black church, or any other community” are the women inside those communities who “are doing the hard and necessary work” (ibid. 83f.). These women do not need the white feminist narratives, “they don’t need white saviors”, and they are tired of “constantly combat the white supremacist patriarchy from the outside while they work inside their communities” (ibid. 84). White feminism is asked “to step back, to wait to be invited in” or not to be invited (ibid.). Kendall insists on the dignity and self-determination of the individual woman, man and queer even, or better, especially when the most basic of needs are concerned. The individual woman, man and queer who is fighting for her or his most basic needs, fights for her or his dignity, freedom and rights. “No one needs a savior to ride in, take over, and decide for them what would be the best approach to solve a problem” (ibid. 255).

Kendall knows from her own fighting that suffering creates anger. She claims solidarity with the fierce fighting not only for the moment, be it procuring the service of a professional or for filing a lawsuit. Kendall pleads to embrace fierce energy across time, and not love it in the moment, “the fiercest warriors need care and kindness” (ibid. 136). Kendall is a realist, she is “always aware that people don’t usually listen to the Black girls like me” (ibid. 248). A first step in the direction of kindness may be the respect for Kendall’s work to deal with the terribly long list of problems that women face in marginalized communities: housing, food insecurity, education, the fight against racism, fight against racial disparities in women’s health, ableism, transmisogyny, and the lack of political recognition for the rights of other people, especially people of color inside the United States. What kind of humanity do we get, if people of color are denied the status of “human beings worthy of protection and support” (ibid. 182)?

There are many academics who listen to the experience of women, men and queer. Scientists assess and interpret the facts from centuries of struggle and fight, successful or failed, and analyze if and how the institutional protection from the power of the state and essential state services were realized by the peoples over time and space. Some of these scientists get awarded prestigious prizes. The 2024 Nobel prize in the economic sciences for Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson is a merited recognition of their research. They “have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity. Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better” (The Prize in Economic Sciences 2024 - Press release - NobelPrize.org). Kendall’s book gives testimony to the institutional polity that 40 and 30 years ago functioned in the US sufficiently to help her to get out of poverty, marginalization and discrimination. She lists the civil right to divorce, food stamps, a state-funded medical card providing basic medical needs, public housing and finally the military offering a job and education opportunities (Kendall 2020. 31).