My name is Joseph Codsi. I am 90 years old. I had an interesting life.
I was born in Damascus, Syria, in 1933, to a Christian family. My dad was Armenian Catholic and my mom Melkite Catholic. Confused? All you need to know is that the Orthodox Churches had Catholic branches that were in communion with Rome. When we went to my dad’s church, two languages were used during mass, Armenian and Arabic. When we went to my mom’s church, Arabic and Greek were used. When I became a Jesuit priest, I made sure I could say mass in those two rites. But when I was in Europe or America, I followed the Roman ritual.
My mom went to boarding school in Beirut. She was prejudiced against Damascus schools. So, she prevailed over my Damascus-educated dad who did not share her prejudices, to send me and my younger brother, Pierre, to boarding school in Beirut. I was eleven and he was ten. The French Jesuits had been in Beirut for a long time. They had a school and a university named after Saint Joseph. They attracted students from faraway places in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East. After three years of boarding school, my dad decided to move to Beirut. He would not sell the house in Damascus, because he was planning to go back there. But he died in Beirut, and Lebanon became our new country.
*
The French government was anti-clerical in France but used the French religious schools overseas as a way of spreading French culture. There were rumors that some Jesuit priests worked secretly for the French government. But I never had any reliable information about that even after I had joined the Order. The fact remains that there was a highly unholy copulation between State and Church. I witnessed that just after I had arrived in Beirut. The school year was inaugurated by a high mass that was attended by the Muslim Prime Minister, the French diplomatic corps, and some high-ranking French military. They all arrived in a military parade. The streets were sanded to make it easier for the French horses to march. This is when I saw one of the Senegalese soldiers of the Légion Étrangère relieving himself against the wall of the majestic Librarie Orientale.
No such things could have been seen in Syria, even when it was under French mandate. The unholy association of secular France with the Lebanese Christians was one of the wonders of those mythical days.
*
French schools overseas enjoyed a special privilege. Young men who had to serve in the armed forces could avoid this obligation and opt to teach for two years in overseas French schools. The Jesuits took advantage of this privilege. Every year new recruits would arrive and replace those who were leaving. This injected new blood in our school and kept us in touch with what was going on in France. We liked those newcomers. They were young, eager to discover the Middle East, and visit archeological sites in Lebanon and Syria. They organized for us camping trips that could take three or four days. This is how I became acquainted with the past that had shaped the present. In 1950 and 1951, eight-week trips were organized during the summer vacation to a choice of European countries. In those days, regular sea lines connected the Mediterranean ports. We used to sail from Beirut to Marseille, in France, and return from Naples. In 1950, we spent most of the time in France, and then we went back through Switzerland and Italy. In 1951, we went up North to Danmark, Sweden, Norway, Holland, and Belgium.
Those trips were educational. They were meant to introduce us to social institutions that did not exist in Lebanon. During the first trip, we were introduced to juvenile delinquency in France and to social services that are available to factory workers. This is how I worked for two weeks as a camp counselor for delinquent boys, and another two weeks in a cookie factory in Grenoble. On the second trip, we were introduced to farmers cooperatives in Denmark, and to forestry in Sweeden. I also worked for two weeks in a beer factory in Brussels.
*
My introduction to the human services that existed in Europe was responsible for my sudden decision to join the Jesuit Order. I felt a desire to serve. I spent 18 years in the Order. Those were extremely enriching years. One of the first things that I discovered during my first year of study in France was that my French writing was correct but dull. I needed to be more personal and more original. But it took me a long time to become more inventive. This was when I became critical of what we were supposed to take for granted in the theological field, and especially in the interpretation of the New Testament. My evolution was slow. I became free after I quit the Jesuit Order. For a long time, marriage life kept me busy. When I settled down in Seattle, I felt free to go back to my critical approach to the Gospel.
When I was a Jesuit, I was not free to criticize the Church. I had to distance myself from the Church to do what needed to be done. For 18 years I familiarized myself with the traditional teaching of the Church. I became free to criticize that teaching after I quit the Church. From this personal experience I conclude that one cannot serve two masters at the same time, faith, and critique of the faith. Now I have the advantage of having been an insider with a deep understanding of the Christian faith, and having become an outsider who feels free to say that faith is based on basic human needs but is mostly the product of fantastic dreams and visions that are mistaken for divine revelation.
*
I have followed the traditional curriculum in France. One year of Latin, Greek, and French writing, three years of philosophy and four years of theology. This was combined with summer language studies in England, Germany, and Italy.
I spent four years in the Middle East learning the Armenian language. Three years in Aleppo, Syria, where I was teaching French and Arabic at an Armenian school. And one year in Beirut. I was supposed to teach Armenian studies at Saint Joseph University. But this was not meant to be.
I came to America when I was about to quit the Jesuit Order. This precipitated my decision because I discovered here a very conservative Catholic Church compared to Western Europe.
*
I met my future wife in Connecticut. We had two children, Mike, and Renee. I am now retired in Seattle, and free to do what interests me.
*
I have written a trilogy in which I studied the gospels of Mark and John. The Gospel of Mark deserves special attention. In its overt discourse, it stresses the Christian identity of Jesus. But in a covert discourse, it reveals that the memory of crucial events was repressed and suppressed, because it would have rendered the faith in Jesus Christ, Son of God, untenable.
*