In the Shadow of Brother Roger
As Congregations Dwindle the Churches Baulk.....
Some lives, a very few in this day and age, have a completeness, a profound purpose and transcendent sweetness about them that at their close one can only give thanks that such a person walked this earth. Such a man was Swiss-born Protestant theologian, Brother Roger Schutz, founder and head of the Taizé community in Eastern France, who was fatally stabbed and throat cut by a schizophrenic Romanian woman named Luminita while at prayer and who bled to death before a horrified congregation of 2,500 young people. He was 90 years old. The new Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Orthodox Patriarchs, spiritual leaders and heads of state from all over the world expressed shock at the crime and paid tribute to the life of Brother Roger.
What was it that was so extraordinary about this man, and why were the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury so in awe of him? What spiritual manna did Brother Roger have to offer people everywhere that so eludes the Roman Catholic church, not to mention the Episcopalian, Orthodox, Lutheran and other established Protestant churches? How is that when the cathedrals, churches and chapels of Europe stand empty and the continent is avowedly secular, shunning the religiosity of America, hundreds of thousands of people young and old, but mostly young, of all denominations, not only Christian, flocked to Taizé every year to worship?
Attack Cardinals Unleashed
At a time when a hardline Cardinal Ratzinger is morphing into Good Pope Ben and yet his attack cardinals attempt to roll back the church’s acceptance of evolution, while holding a forward line on birth control, abortion, women as priests, married priests, gay priests, syncretism, relativism and so on..... and on....., with the whole authoritarian structure being ever more seen as irrelevant, it seems strange that great prelates should miss the import of Brother Roger’s simple message. Actually, I don’t believe for one minute they do. Pope or Guru, you don’t get to be the head of a major spiritual corporation by being stupid. So why doesn’t the Pope and the other denominational bosses just do what Brother Roger did and fill their churches again? What is so threatening about Brother Roger’s message and mission?
The answer is not just its simplicity or ecumenalism, nor the order’s good work and example among the poor. It is not even the music and silence that makes up the worship of the Divine at Taizé, though that is integral. The secret, if secret it be, is that no one is telling you how to pray, what to believe, or how to conduct your private life. Brother Roger once offered the simple explanation that the community’s purpose was to love and be loved, to forgive and be forgiven. Such simplicity coupled with its freedom from dogma is obviously seen as deeply threatening to organised religion. Why else are committed Christians like palaeontologist and Jesuit Fr. Teilhard de Chardin forbidden to attend scientific conferences or to publish his work until after his death, Fr. Matthew Fox, an American Dominican, silenced and then driven from the Church to become an Anglican, or so-called Freedom Theology in Latin America ruthlessly curbed and sundry progressive Dutch churchmen silenced or ousted? Leading the charge on all this centralisation of authority was none other than the now Good Pope Ben. And still, when the chips are down the Pope insists that his way is The Way, all else is error.
Essentially, organised religion does not trust and cannot abide its members following their own conscience and seeking God in their own way. Rather, It would prefer to see a much scaled down church of the obedient faithful, thus preserving its perquisites, power and authority, albeit diminished in numbers. The field is thus left open to the over simplications of a burgeoning Christian fundamentalism and evangelicanism, while a more nuanced post-Christian culture struggles to find its own way into the divine Mystery through Cosmic Theology, self-discovery, depth psychology, New Ageism, Oriental religions and throwbacks to shamanism, paganism and nature cults. And who but a Pope or other relgious capo di capo is to say this is wrong....
Memory of Music Fled.....
It seems a story from another world. One Summer day in 1940 Roger Schutz rode East from Geneva on his bicycle some 70 miles into thewooded hills and valleys of la France profonde where he came to a halt in the secluded valley of Taizé. Here he was asked to stay by a woman who said the villagers were lonely. Despite the proximity of the ruins of the once great abbey of Cluny, where the hills are still haunted by what the poet Shelley described as the “memory of music fled”, no priest had dwelled there since the Revolution. Brother Roger bought an abandoned house and for two years he brought a pattern of organised prayer and song to the neighbourhood, while aiding escaping Jews on their way to Switzerland. Tipped off that the Gestapo was about to raid the house he fled to Switzerland only to return assoon as he could in 1944 in the wake of the retreating German army.
In 1949 Roger Schutz and some friends took monastic vows and by 1952 he had established a monastic order at Taizé committed to material and spiritual sharing, to celibacy and to a great simplicity of life. Today there are but 120 brothers, Catholics and Protestants from various backgrounds and over 25 countries, some remaining at Taizé while others have gone out into the world, living with the poor in the teeming slums of Manila, Calcutta and Latin America.
Since the late 1950’s word of Taizé leaked out and thousands of young people started to make their way there and today over 100,000 people every year make the pilgrimage to Taizé to take part in its prayers and chants, its meditative style of worship and its music, all of which have found their way into churches, religious gatherings and worship the world over.
Brother Roger seldom granted interviews and nothing of the cult attached to his person. While commonly seen to be a man of remarkable sweetness, his vision was very clear. He kept out of theological wrangles, was resolutely ecumenical and quickly disbanded branches of his order who countenanced violence on behalf of the oppressed. He was the instrument of creation, it was the music, the silence and the light that brought the people. As such his order and its influence can only continue to spread its message of peace, love and reconciliation.
Cluniac Message Redux?
How curious it is that Brother Roger’s vision and passing should take place in the same valley as the great abbey of Cluny, founded some 1,000 years earlier. Through the 11th and 12th centuries the Cluniac message spread throughout Christendom as a shining beacon of light, offering a compelling alternative of peace and civility in the face of aristocratic savagery and feudal oppression. Today, as it becomes manifest to more and more people that our spiritual search lies within, not outside ourselves, and the path is self-knowledge, the less relevant do ecclesiastical power structures become. Taizé, and groupings like it are a return to the Cosmic Theology of the Cluniac heyday with its acceptance of the feminine principle and are powerful and positive pointers of the way forward for both the alienated and questing souls of our modern world.
And Luminita? That Lady of Light, what of her?
Now in the hands of the French police not much is known and little is being said. She appeared quite rational at the time of her apprehension and is reported to have said she didn’t mean to kill Brother Roger, she “just wanted to attract his attention......” .
I have the distinct feeling that there is some pattern, some final message in such a dramatic end to such a long and well spent life, but quite what that is has me totally flummoxed. God, as they say, moves in mysterious ways. And so it is.
