James Alison Theology

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  • Francisco, a James Alison: “Quiero que camines con plena libertad interior”

    En su libro Sodoma, éxito internacional de ventas, Frédéric Martel revela que hace un par de años el Papa Francisco llamó por teléfono a un destacado sacerdote y teólogo gay a quien le habían prohibido desde el Vaticano enseñar, predicar o presidir los sacramentos. Pedimos al sacerdote que nos diera su versión de los hechos.…

  • ‘This is Pope Francis calling…’

    Canonically, it makes no sense at all, but … he does these things!

  • Clericalism and the Violent Sacred: dipping a Girardian toe in troubled waters

    When Paul urges his listeners to become his imitators in offering himself up as sacrifice, just as Paul imitates Christ; or Peter tells his that they are living stones of the long-awaited New Temple: both take for granted that to be in Christ is a fundamentally priestly form of life.

  • No Armário do Vaticano: poder, homossexualidade e hipocrisia

    Então, o outro sapato finalmente caiu. O véu foi removido daquilo que os franceses chamam, gloriosamente, de “Segredo de Polichinelo” – um segredo que não é segredo, escancarado, pois “todo mundo conhece”, mas para o qual as evidências se fazem esquivas e nunca são realmente procuradas. O meramente anedótico adquire, finalmente, contornos de visibilidade sociológica.…

  • Palestra sobre a obra “No Armário do Vaticano”

    “Por trás da rigidez há sempre qualquer coisa escondida: em numerosos casos, uma vida dupla.” Ao pronunciar estas palavras, o papa Francisco tornou público um segredo que esta investigação vertiginosa explora, pela primeira vez, com grande detalhe. “No Armário do Vaticano” expõe a decadência no coração do Vaticano e na Igreja Católica atual. Um trabalho…

  • James Alison, el sacerdote testigo de la homosexualidad en la Iglesia Católica

    Leer en la web de Vanguardia

  • Stretching Girard’s hypothesis: road marks for a long-term perspective

    What might those who follow the thought of René Girard have to offer to those currently excavating Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe in Turkey?

  • The unexpected shape of forgiveness

    One can, and some do, read Martel’s book as an accusation against the world of systemic mendacity which it reveals. For my part, I read it as one of the events which signal that God’s forgiveness is at last reaching even the hardest-hearted parts of our Church.

  • Bienvenido a mi mundo…! (notas sobre la recepción de un bombazo)

    ¡No hubo manera de evitarlo! Por fin estalló. Se ha arrancado el velo a lo que en Francia se llama, con gracia, un “secret de Polichinelle” – un secreto a voces: algo que todo el mundo sabe, pero con una evidencia fugaz y a lo que tampoco se presta demasiada atención. Lo que era meramente…

  • Welcome to my world… (notes on the reception of a bombshell)

    So, the other shoe has finally dropped. The veil has been removed from what the French rather gloriously call a “secret de Polichinelle” – an open secret: one that “everybody knows” but for which the evidence is both elusive and never really sought. The merely anecdotal is, at last, acquiring the contours of sociological visibility.

  • Los textos “paliza” y las personas gay: dudas más que razonables

    Los textos paliza es una serie de videos hecho por un servidor y algunos amigos. Sentimos la falta de explicaciones en castellano de los textos bíblicos que suelen utilizarse para atacar o confundir a la gente LGBT. Como ya existe mucha erudición acerca de estos textos en inglés y otros idiomas, nos pareció una buena…

  • From the outside in

    A Canadian podcast, Ferment, invited James Alison for a lively conversation. In the producers’ words, James Alison might insist that he is “fairly clearly not an authority, and often just a silly old queen,” but underneath his mirth and modesty lies an exceptional theological depth. America: The Jesuit Review hails this institutional outsider as an authority who “belongs…

  • Creation fulfilled and the Book of Revelation: some questions about order, disorder and the “apocalyptic” genre

    The destruction of the Temple is prophesied, and wars, revolutions, turbulence, plague and famine all foretold. But.. do not allow your heads to be turned by all this, avert your gaze, do not attribute any sort of divine significance to any of this… The real coming of the son of man will be like a…

  • Interdividuals, individuals and fragmented selves: how can mimetic theory help us understand “huiothesia*”?

    Rather than being people who are first ordered, and then fall from order (and so are dis-graced), and then restored to order by forgiveness, understood as a form of pity from on high, we may find it possible to tell another story: we start as those who are not yet ordered, and find ourselves being…

  • Scapegoat: how civilisation harms and how the Cross heals

    It’s a word we’re all familiar with, it’s through the violence of the scapegoating mechanism that civilisations are built. And, it is through the scapegoating mechanism that the cross heals. It’s a fascinating way of understanding the atonement, especially for those of us disillusioned with models of atonement that require a violent God.

  • Nomad podcast

    It’s a word we’re all familiar with, it’s through the violence of the scapegoating mechanism that civilisations are built. And, it is through the scapegoating mechanism that the cross heals. It’s a fascinating way of understanding the atonement, especially for those of us disillusioned with models of atonement that require a violent God.

  • Eucharist: the mystery of the daring Creator

    A radical new way of thinking about the relationship between Creation and the Atonement leads James Alison to consider a framework for the Eucharist in which ‘the Creator and Redeemer is engaged in an act of daring’. Read on Thinking Faith

  • We’re in for a rough ride

    In the clerical closet, dishonesty is functional, honesty is dysfunctional, and the absence or presence of circumspect sexual practice between adult males is irrelevant.

  • Penser la foi chrétienne après René Girard

    Débat entre Bernard Perret et James Alison, le vendredi 25 mai 2018 à l’Espace Bernanos Paris 9ème à propos du livre de Bernard Perret “Penser la foi chrétienne après René Girard”, paru aux Editions Ad Solem. Pour la contribution de James Alison, faites défiler jusqu’à 38:42.

  • Violence: how it forms us and how we can be self-critical about it

    There is a third dimension to Girard’s insight which is of particular interest to theologians. The mechanism described is omnipresent in human society, and depends, in order to work, on those involved not knowing that their blamed one is in fact arbitrarily chosen, or innocent. What is it, then, that has enabled anyone to face…

  • “My sheep hear my voice and I know them”: reflections on language, tone, and teaching in the space between Magister and Magisterium

    What does it mean to be taught by Christ? Genuinely to undergo being taught by him? So that any one of us could say, after reflective consideration “I have learned this or that from Christ”, or others could pick one, or several, of us out and say: “They are who they are because they have…

  • One in Christ: why do LGBTQI people feel excluded by the Churches?

    An audio recording of James Alison and Sarah Bachelard discussing the meaning of homosexuality for today. – Why has a natural human orientation so often been cruelly punished and persecuted by church authorities? Why do churches still split over the issue? A SoundCloud stream (87 minutes) Sarah Bachelard is a theologian, retreat leader and priest in Anglican…

  • Christ Crucified: the power of God and the wisdom of God

    Transcribed by Rev. Karen Hanson from the audio recording of the talk given to the Leeds Church Institute (Leeds, England) in April 2018. Good afternoon. Well, thank you very, very much for having me and thank you for challenging me to come up with something I hope may be useful to talk about. One of the challenges…

  • Scapegoating, violence and the theology of the Cross

    On the Way podcast, episode 9: Scapegoating, Violence and the Theology of the Cross.

  • Reading Scripture and the LGBT question

    How do we begin to understand the ways religion is used to marginalize the LGBTQ+ community? What are thoughtful ways to move out of the binds around faith and a desire to be affirming?

  • ¡Sólo se sorprende quien no haya leído el evangelio! La presencia normal de lo “queer” como desarrollo orgánico de la revelación cristiana

    Conferencia pública en la Universidad Iberoamericana, Lomas de Santa Fe, Ciudad de México, 29.iii.2017 Me acuerdo muy bien donde estaba cuando oí por primera vez la palabra “queer”. Tenía nueve años, y estaba en el dormitorio del internado adonde mis papás me habían enviado a los ocho años. Para aquellos de ustedes que no conocen…

  • “Dios tiene como costumbre escoger lo inadecuado para darle chispa a sus obras”

    James Alison: “Dios tiene como costumbre escoger lo inadecuado para darle chispa a sus obras” (Religión Digital)

  • The role of the Church in encouraging  a greater sense of community

    On 14 December 2016, Trinity Church Wall Street in New York, USA, convened a Trinity Institute Dialogue on the 2016 U.S. presidential election featuring theologian James Alison and Duncan Morrow, Director of Community Engagement at the University of Ulster (Belfast, UK). Given the highly-partisan and divided state of the nation, a question came up about the role of the…

  • Beyond us and them: the practice of faith in a post-election America

    On 14 December 2016, Trinity Church Wall Street in New York, USA, convened a Trinity Institute Dialogue on the 2016 U.S. presidential election featuring theologian James Alison and Duncan Morrow, Director of Community Engagement at the University of Ulster (Belfast, UK). A short answer to the question about the role of the church in encouraging  a greater sense…

  • Oracles, prophets, and dwellers in silence: hints of the “pati divina” in the theology that is being birthed

    This paper, which was originally presented at the First International Congress of Theology Students, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá Colombia, now appears as the Introduction to M. Laird and S. Treflé Hidden (eds.) The Practice of the presence of God: theology as a way of life (New York and London: Routledge 2017) Thank you for inviting…

  • Постижение Иисуса. Доступное введение в христологию

    Джеймса Алисона охватило сильное душевное переживание воскресения Иисуса, и он нашел в себе смелость осмыслить его так, что по сравнению с ним большинство пасхальных проповедей покажутся слабыми и скучными. (Н. Т. Райт, библист)