[324.1] TELLING IT LIKE IT IS

Rowan Williams identifies 'the religious issue' with typical clarity and vigour in a review article in The Tablet, 10 November 2001: “Freud was wrong. The fundamental problem we human beings face is not how to negotiate with the voice and image of the Father, but how to stop ourselves regarding our brothers and sisters as displaced 'fathers'. We have one real Father, the transcendent source of our identity: a father who is not part of the competitive world in which the power of one means the weakness of another. What we must learn is how to live fraternally with human beings. The chief task of human maturing, therefore, is to get beyond ascribing sacred authority to other human beings, with all the rebellion and resentment, the longing to invert existing power relations rather than transform them that this involves, and rediscover the inclusive and hospitably eucharistic love – fraternity, in other words – that allows us to live together without murder. This is precisely what Jesus once and for all makes possible by his teaching, his death and his resurrection. This is the Gospel; this is what the sacraments enact.”

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