Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

A story is making the rounds that Barack Obama made reference, during the campaign, to the importance of the medieval monk Joachim of Fiore, whom he apparently said was “a master of contemporary civilization.” Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Pontifical Household, responding to these glowing references by the president to Joachim, has dismissed Obama’s references by denouncing Joachim as heretical. To speak of Joachim, whose theology was one of the sources of Marxism, as a heretic is indeed appropriate, as his writings (unlike those of, say, Von Balthasar) have been condemned by papal decree.

It stands to reason that Barack would speak glowingly of one of his spiritual forerunners, though one wonders who among Barack’s entourage dug up the name of Joachim. Barack is a technocrat, not an intellectual or a scholar. There is no reason to think that he has much grasp of the genealogy of his own ideas. Surely there must have been some liberation theologian out there who suggested bringing up the name, in order that Barack might continue his ruse of belonging to the Christian heritage.

But it is quite intriguing that the medieval monk’s name should come up before the journalistic class at this time. Barack Obama is still accorded the status of deity on much of the world stage, though that will probably diminish as events turn for the worse. Still, Obama’s glorified, secular messianism stands in stark contrast to the crucifying mission of Peter, carried out in the person of Benedict XVI, who is suffering slings and arrows from all quarters, and most of all from within the very Church that it is his divine mandate to shepherd.

We may not be in a final apocalyptic age, awaiting the imminent final battle of Good and Evil. But we seem very well to be in an age that is a type of the final apocalypse, a type of the final revelation or inbreaking of the Kingdom of God in the Second and Glorious coming of Christ. We seem to be in the midst of epochal transformation. Even academes, secular and Christian postmodernists alike, have been telling us something along these lines for decades. Either way, though, whether the transformation be definitive or exemplary, the Church will emerge from the ashes of a dead secularism.

Joachim’s vision is the precursor to the vision of Barack Obama, wherein history is seen as a movement of immanent spirit, transformed into a mythos of secular progress.

Benedict XVI’s vision, by contrast, has been, from the very beginning of his theological career, oriented to the overcoming of Joachim’s distortion of history as coming to a culmination without Christ and the Church. Few people realize that Benedict’s doctoral dissertation on Saint Augustine, and his habilitation thesis on Saint Bonaventure, were both repudiations of Joachimism, with its propensity to degenerate into secular messianism. The Marxist influence on Christian theology was being felt even when Benedict was a student, and he delved into the historical sources that might enable him to combat the influence. These studies by Benedict form the basis for his important book on eschatology, which he has called the most thoroughly researched treatise that he has ever written, and for his encyclical “Spe Salvi.”

Benedict XVI and Barack Obama are starkly contrasting figures: they could not be moreso. Benedict stands for a vision of history that sees all things in their relationship to Christ. He is a theologian par excellence of divine grace, of the Mystical Body of Christ, and of two cities. He knows well the lessons of the twentieth century, the grandchild of the French Revolution (itself a remote godchild of Joachim), the most violent century in human history. He knows that there can be no hope and no future without the grace of Christ, poured out through the sacraments of His Church, and faith in what He has revealed to us.

Barack Obama stands for a vision of history that absorbs Christ into dialectical process, that absorbs the divine nature into man, that extols the delusory progress of seemingly untethered human freedom, where freedom is misconstrued as “choice.” There is little reason to wonder why Hans Kung could wistfully express in public that he would rather have Barack Obama as pope than Benedict XVI. How many Catholics view Obama’s voice as more authoritative than Benedict XVI’s?

Benedict’s papacy represents a definitive overcoming of Joachim’s dialectical distortion of God’s work in history. Barack Obama’s presidency represents perhaps a last, violent, clinging to or grasping at the Joachimite vision. Barack has the capacity to plunge us, perhaps unwittingly, back into the genocidal barbarism of the twentieth century, if he is not careful. Why should not a return to twentieth century Marxian ideas on the economic, social, and political order not lead to the same brutalizing outcomes?

Pray for the Holy Father!