Pope Benedict, God is asking the same question to you, too

So Pope Benedict visited Auschwitz and was inspired to pray:

“Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?” Benedict, one of the Church’s leading theologians, said humans could not “peer into God’s mysterious plan” to understand such evil, but only “cry out humbly yet insistently to God—rouse yourself! Do not forget mankind, your creature!” (as reported by MSNBC)

Well, Benny, I think you're suffering from the syndrome we like to call the "I sent two boats and a helicopter syndrome." You know that old joke? A man is warned that severe floods are coming and that he should evacuate his home. He refuses to evacuate, saying, "I've always trusted in God and I know that God will save me." Sure enough, torrential rains and floods follow and the man finds himself confined to the second floor of his home. Several Coast Guard boats arrive to rescue him, but the man decides to remain in his home, saying, "God will save me." The waters rise, he's stuck atop his roof, and a helicopter tries to save him, but he refuses the help again. He dies. When he gets to heaven, he angrily asks God, "Why didn't you save me?" and God responds, "Well, I sent two boats and a helicopter!"

When a man who was part of the Hitler Youth Movement as a teenager asks God, "Where were you? Why were you silent?" there's nothing to say but, "Pope Benedict, where were YOU? Why were you silent?" I am sure the Pope would describe himself as an instrument of God in the world, and yet his prayer at Auschwitz is evidence that he doesn't really consider himself to be one. He seems to prefer waiting around for a miracle to confronting the fact that God acts through us and needs us to bring morality into the world.

As one of my amazing New Haven mentors always says, "God has no hands but ours."

Pope Benedict is a powerful man. He has political influence, money, and resources aplenty. He has the ability to do more to aid the oppressed and the suffering than most of us. However, if his idea of helping people is to pray, then that's really frightening. How many lives could he save if his theology involved a more active role for human beings in creating a just world?

But maybe the Catholic Church is too busy with other things . . .
. . . like managing spin about the DaVinci Codes.

After seeing the movie last night (I read the book a year or two ago) I was dissappointed to see that Sony Pictures had obviously added in some lines to placate establishment Church types. (At the end of the movie, Langdon asks Sophie: "What would a real descendent of Jesus do: destroy faith, or renew it?" I expected her to pull back her sleeve to reveal a WWJD bracelet.)

Be that as it may, I decided that establishment religion (not just the Church) should be scared by this book and movie, because while The Da Vinci Codes is fictional on one level, it's completely true on another. The Priory of Sion, secret ancient conspiracies to protect Jesus' descendants, etc.-- that's an entertaining fiction. The idea that establishment religion has systematically tried to eradicate representations of God as female / goddess imagery (and when they couldn't be eradicated, co-opted those symbol sets into a masculine-dominated paradigm) is true. While spawning another legion of Holy Grail seekers is useless, perhaps it's a positive step to provide alternative pathways for women who struggle to identify with God or create a relationship with God due to the masculine imagery promulgated by mainstream religion. So instead of being reactionary and denying that the book has any truth to it, could churches and synagogues use this as an opportunity to explore female God symbolism and language? This may be a chance to discuss gender and God, a chance to confront the fact that although I warrant most religious people would agree that God has no gender, our dominant paradigm for God is a masculine one? No, of course not. But it's nice to dream.

Fun fact: The British judge who wrote the copyright-infringement decision about The Da Vinci Codes actually included a coded puzzle in his opinion. Cool, no?