Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Before I get to my post on Kant and modern science, I want to take a little diversion.

I must be far too blog curious. I recently followed a link from “Inside Catholic” to a group blog entitled “Vox Nova.” From my brief perusal of the site, I assumed that it was yet another “Catholic” George Soros front group, but I’m not sure. Perhaps it is not professional enough to be that. The blog comprises various grad students at various points in their journey before attaining terminal degrees. They run a mostly political blog, but they have some contributors with a bit of theological training and seem to be inspired to some degree by recent trends in theology which claim to theologize politics rather than letting politics dictate theology. Many of the proponents of these new trends in theology are not very consistent in their claim (think John Milbank), and the Vox Nova crowd seems similarly inconsistent. They give the impression that they are theologically orthodox and above the fray of political reductionism in theology. Even so, they are clearly prone to proof-texting voices from the tradition to support political positions or theological programs that are inherently destructive of Church unity.

As a case in point, one of the contributors, when I got there, had just given a favorable review of a recent book by Rosemary Radford Ruether. The title of Ruether’s book is quite boring, and the content as described by the blogger in question seems even less interesting, however enthusiastic he may have been about it. There is no need to delve into the particulars of this clearly ephemeral and provincial book. It is Ruether in what she represents and her overarching theological program that is the important issue. The blogger described Ruether’s approach to theology as a much needed alternative to the theological imperialism of bloggers who claim that the only authentic theological voice in the Church today is Pope Ratzinger. His post struck me as being rather smarmy. Of course, smarminess is typical of grad students who have not yet had to face in a personal manner learned opposition to their points of view: although, admittedly, as most professors are committed socialists, this particular grad student may never face such a personal challenge. In his follow-up comments, he contemptously described liturgical traditionalists and “Ratzingerian” bloggers as being prone to support “death dealing,” right-wing, fascist politics. With the bemusement of an aspiring grad-school sociologist, he contemplated the prospect of studying this connection of liturgical traditionalism and political evil.

Of course, such political confusions do not in fact accompany most liturgical traditionalists or Ratzingerians. This is certainly true of those whom I have met, and, as someone who has served in an editorial capacity for a scholarly journal committed to such issues, I’ve met quite a few of these people. Moreover, it should be needless to say that fascism is mostly a phenomenon of the left not the right. So, what of the propensity of anti-traditionalist theologians to support death-dealing leftist politics? Also sociologically interesting, no? I felt compelled to point out this obvious fact in the combox at “Vox Nova.” Of course, I have yet to meet a socialist who will admit to it, and the comments following mine on the blog post in question illustrate continued, obstinate, disingenuous reticence in this regard. I was even accused of being a political reductionist myself by these strange people for pointing out the deadly fact of socialism, nationalist or internationalist, in history! The (Pol) pot is always on the lookout to call the kettle black! Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro et. al. are ever vigilant to see the speck in General Franco’s eye!

Be that as it may, what I want to discuss is Rosemary Ruether, and the duplicity that attends those who, like the blogger at ”Vox Nova,” see her as exemplary in giving another side of the theological story to Pope Ratzinger’s presumably authoritarian Roman position. It is necessary to put it bluntly: Ruether’s position on most, if not all, theological issues is in violent opposition to Apostolic Tradition and cannot be accepted as a viable alternative, or complementary theology, to that of Ratzinger, or JP II, or any other pope, saint, doctor of the Church, patristic theologian, or scholastic figure who is a legitimate keeper and expositor of the Tradition. Ruether has spent a career trying to undermine essential dogmas of the Church, teachings essential to the fabric of God’s revelation, indeed, flowing from the very heart of God’s Eternal Word. She is radically opposed to the nuptial mystery of creation, which is the central scriptural image of the God-world relationship and which symbolizes a concrete ontology that has been brought out in the Augustinian tradition and recovered in the twentieth century. Her rejection of the all-male priesthood, of sacramental marriage, of the traditional family, and of the nuptial meaning of the procreative act are all signs of this. She proposes a reimaging of the Trinity that in fact does away with the Triune God. She thinks of the Church as first and foremost a social and historical construct, a free association of bourgeois humanity. It is not, for her, divinely instituted, with a structured hierarchy whose ministerial priesthood was willed by Christ, in accordance with divine Wisdom, to have the special privilege of shepherding, sanctifying, and teaching the flock. The Church is not the Mystical Body of Christ for her, in any sense that sees it in its essential bearing as the continued corporeal, mysterious presence of the Logos made flesh. Henri de Lubac was correct to point out the social character of the Mystical Body of Christ, but this does not do away with the fact that the Church is an organism with an authoritative form set by Christ (its Head) in continuance with his incarnate mission on earth. Moreover, she rejects the salvific uniqueness and universality of revelation in Christ. She does not accept that Christ alone is the Logos made flesh, the historical Jesus alone a divine person and not a human person. There’s no need to discuss Matthias Scheeben on this last point, who said that Christ could be called a human person if by that we refer strictly to his integral human personality and not to his ontological subjectivity. Ruether lacks Scheeben’s subtlety and so cannot make such a distinction. And, needless to say, her rejection of the unifying mission of Peter stems from a gross misinterpretation of Vatican II. Theologically speaking, it should go without saying that Vatican II must exist in a literal continuity with Vatican I, and all other councils, if Catholicism is to have any objective meaning whatsoever. Some commentor at Vox Nova actually tried to argue that poor John Henry Newman, based on one letter that he had written, rejected the special authority of the papacy as defined by Vatican I! Again: proof-texting without proving a point or even understanding it.

So, how is Ruether’s theological project at all salutary for the Church? It is no mere “political reductionism” to see that it is fatally flawed. She represents a theological program that undermines truth, and in undermining truth is destructive of the unity of the Church. Her individualist, nominalist vision of Church progress is not progress at all but annihilation. Hers is not a complementary theological vision to that of Pope Ratzinger but a sundering of the Mystical Body of Christ.

Of course, there is quite a problem with those who, like this grad student at “Vox Nova,” claim to respect the Pope and yet who argue in essence that blog opposition to the likes of Ruether is generally nothing more than a form of irrational, narrow-minded, politically-motivated ultramontanism propagated by those who just aren’t well-read. The Vox Nova blogger essentially claims that Ratzinger, like JP II before him, is hailed by other bloggers simply because he is conceived of as the voice of authority from on high.

To put it mildly, that is all bunk. “Ratzingerian” bloggers love Ratzinger, as they did JP II, because he is such a powerful and trenchant defender and expositor of Apostolic Tradition, whereas Ruether and her ilk seek, like ravenous packhounds, to tear apart Tradition into shreds!

So, by all means, “Ratzingerian” bloggers, stay bold, stay firm, you have chosen the better path over the grad students out there who would seek to undermine you with quotations drawn from Pavel Florensky, or Serge Bulgakov, or Ruether, or whomever else they’ve managed to read passages from or books by in their graduate courses that week, or in their preparations for a course paper or master’s thesis.