No, Virginia, we are not all children of God

"Terrific piece. Terrific," writes our underground correspondent we keep on retainer in an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye. "Also jaw-dropping in the context of a Catholic journal: I can't think of a single Vaticanista who would dare strongly concur with this one. Not even a Pope. They would sooner trip over their robes in public, I'd wager. But wait, Lu is -- of course -- a convert. Perhaps she is a counter-exhibit to the uncomfortable fact of Mark Shea (just kidding, sort of)."

G. Noir was referring, of course, to Rachel Lu's "We Are Not All Children of God" (Crisis Magazine, January 14, 2015), about which the irrepressible Noir continues to muse:

Holy Cow.

This is actually so rudely counter to current theology assumed within the Church that she'd have been safer in terms of media reception if she'd gone straight for "Jesus wasn't necessarily divine nor Mary necessarily a Virgin." Those statements have come to sound less shocking. Just try uttering the various lines in public Catholic quarters and see which seems most shocking to most people! "We aren't all children of God? What, are you founding some new hate group or something?"

Nonetheless, it is an undeniable:

"After all, aren't we all children of God?"

An affirmative YES to that question is hermeneutical key to the entire project of Modernism. As the bumper stickers say, COEXIST and ONE PEOPLE, ONE PLANET. In such a schema, judgement and an honest interpretation of the Bible simply don't make any sense. No matter how many doorstops and happy tracts come from the pens of Germans like Barth, von Balthasar, and Kasper, or how many positive and prolix papal encyclicals come from Rome.

Well. Food for thought.

I do remember asking our resident court metaphysician, Fr. John McDermott, S.J., whether the Biblical references to the "Fatherhood" of God can be understood in any other way than via the analogy of proper proportionality. For example, whereas many Catholics fall into the illusion of thinking that calling God "Father" is simply a metaphor, it is not; because that would mean that while God is similar to a father, as Herod is similar to a fox in his cunning, God is no more a real father than Herod is actually a fox. Fr. McDermott concurred, but with this interesting proviso, that the "Fatherhood" of God obtains only through the Sonship of Jesus Christ for those who are made fellow heirs by adoption and incorporation into His body, the Church. All of which puts the matter in an altogether unforgivingly vivid new light -- a light amplified here by Rachel Lu.