The Franciscan friar and spiritual writer Richard Rohr discusses his new book, his recent illnesses and the prospects for reform in the Catholic Church

Jon Sweeney: For those who have been reading you devotedly for many years, how does your new book fit in your body of work?

Richard Rohr: The Universal Christ is essentially my scriptural and spiritual attempt to reground the Christian message where it first started and flourished, if we are to believe the hymns in Colossians 1, Ephesians 1, the Prologue to John’s Gospel, 1 John 1, 1 Peter 1, and Hebrews 1. Yes, there are lots of ones there, which already says a lot about how our Gospel was first read and how foundational this revelation was meant to be.

However, unfortunately, an understanding of Christ as universal was appreciated and developed more in the Eastern Churches and among the Eastern “Fathers” than it was in the West, which was always more individualistic. After the one holy, undivided Church “divided” in 1054, the Western Church largely lost this corporate, social, and historical understanding of the Gospel, and, with it, our very notion of the Christ.