Sans sting

I'm sorry to say that I didn't find John Garvey's article on death very helpful. I don't agree that "where death and an afterlife are concerned, most Christians are functionally neo-Platonists." Nor do I agree that in much of our writing and preaching about death there is "an implicit denigration of the body and the flesh."

Catholics look forward to being with their family and their ancestors when they die. They look forward to going home, having a beer with the old gang, going fishing. In my years as a priest, I have observed a vibrant faith unafraid of death due, I believe, to the way the church cultivates a horizon of bright hope, "filled," as Paul says, "with an exultant trust in God." Their faith is that Jesus' death has changed the very nature of dying, and they do a fine job of seeing the reality of death and resurrection in the Scripture and in the liturgies surrounding dying and death.

Garvey writes that "Christianity is not meant to reconcile us with death, but to see it for the horror it is." To that and to his "no one who has loved anyone or anything in life can find the idea of leaving life anything but tragic," I say rubbish! With Paul we view death through the clear lens of a profound and all pervasive hope. Christ has set us free from the law of sin and death. "Death is swallowed up in victory. Death where is your sting?" Garvey seems to want to keep both the law and the sting. Yes, Christ cried out in desperate fear at his dying, but every death since his awesome sacrifice happens in the new creation. As Hebrews says, Jesus' "experience of death should benefit all humanity." We view death not as those before Christ, but through Christ, which makes all the difference.

JACK MORRIS, SJ

Rockaway, Ore.

The author replies:

Having a beer with the old gang? Going fishing? This is the "I'll have my very own pony in heaven" school of thought. The law has nothing to do with it, but the sting always will. There is bad theology at the heart of Pollyanna Christianity, and a confirmation that atheism is right to laugh at pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die. Jesus' agony at Gethsemane means something to us precisely because it is our own. He did not say, "If you would be my followers, forget about the cross.... I've taken care of that." The last words in Mark's Gospel, before a cheerier ending was tacked on, said that the women who went to anoint him "fled ... for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid." They weren't crazy.

JOHN GARVEY

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