蜜芽传媒

Yesterday we learned that the Vatican has launched a Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women. It appears to be another indication of Pope Francis鈥� willingness to respond directly to tough questions facing contemporary Christian faith.

Pope Francis speaks with a global Christian voice: intuitively, you don鈥檛 have to be Catholic to appreciate the significance of such a commission.
This commission will tackle important internal issues with which Catholics alone are equipped to deal. But for me, it raises wider questions for Christian faith in its proximity to culture.

Across all Christian traditions, our attitude to women鈥檚 ministry is an example of the tensions between the church and the culture in which we live. For the church, it鈥檚 a theological debate. For the wider world it鈥檚 a straightforward matter of gender equality and human rights.

But this is what it means to have a 鈥榣iving faith鈥�. It is faith responding to questions about our cultural norms. And that鈥檚 how it should be.
Jesus was a man of many questions. For example, in Caesarea Philippi, a 1st century nursery of cultural and religious plurality, Jesus asked his followers, 鈥淲hat are people saying about me? Who do they think I am?鈥� It was an illustration of his consistent interaction with Society. He wants to know what people around him make of him and his message.

The question was a prelude to the most profound and complex statement about Jesus and the Church in Christian tradition. 鈥淵ou are the Christ, the Son of the living God鈥� was Peter鈥檚 inspired response.

On that basis, Jesus promised to build an unstoppable Church.
The theologian, Richard Niebuhr鈥檚 seminal work, Christ and Culture helped many of us to appreciate, that living faith involves this symbiotic relationship with culture. A relationship in which Christian faith contributes to conversations about morality, family, government and what it means to be human.

And in doing so, the Church occasionally challenges the premise on which some of our cultural questions are based. It knows too, that faith will be tested and taunted about its viability, and its responses to matters of justice in the present world.

The contribution of faith is not always the offerings of indisputable certainties.

It's the recognition that life is best lived, when we have firm foundations from which to face the important questions presented to us today.

First broadcast 4 August 2016

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