Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Edward Oakes has a post up at First Things about Rene Girard. There has been much talk about Girard at First Things lately, as Oakes himself notes, but as well at National Review, where Peter Robinson has an interview up (but which I was unable to find in a quick search). It has inspired me to post a stinging criticism of Girard’s theory of the origin of religious sacrifice taken from Louis Bouyer (Cosmos: The World and the Glory of God, 1988, p. 238, n. 14). In explaining the tenor of the following quotation, I should point out that Bouyer had a strong aversion to theories of the necessary evolution of a religionless Christianity, such as one could find in Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, and he seems to have seen Girard as a proponent of this sort of thinking. In other words, anathema to him were those who think that Christianity is necessarily secularizing and that Christ’s sacrifice put an end to religion.  Also, he had a strong aversion to annihilationist theories of sacrifice. Sacrifice, he held, is divine self-gift to humanity in which we are ourselves incorporated and made fully self-gift, and it is consummated in the sacred meal, wherein our being comes to fulfillment. Sacrifice is not consummated in the putting to death of a sacrificial victim. The sacred meal is the fundamental activity of man, and the pre-Christian religions pre-figured the Christian Eucharist in this regard, without ever having had access to a truly efficacious communion with deity:

The ideas developed by Rene Girard on the nature of sacrifice have recently created a considerable stir in learned circles. But his brilliant speculations overlook virtually all the contributions made in the last hundred years on this undeniably fundamental aspect of religion. Which may be why he considers supremely indicative of the meaning of sacrifice the apotropaic rites now recognized by all specialists as never having been looked upon as sacrifices by those who practiced these rituals. Quite simply, scapegoats and all variations on the theme, far from ever being considered as sacrifices to God, were always sent to the devil! On the materiality of sacrifices — the necessary starting point before any attempt to unravel their meaning — one may refer to works such as R.K. Yerkes’s Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religions and in Primitive Judaism. This kind of factual study inevitably leads to a firm conclusion: it is not the killing which determines sacrifice, even when the victim is put to death, which is far from always being the case (see in this respect E.O. James, Origins of Sacrifice, London, 1953, pp. 256 ff.). Neither is its nature established by the oblation to the divinity. Instead, a sacrifice is a meal, but a meal considered as sacred because the divinity partakes of it, whether the sacrifice is exlusively intended for the deity (as in the holocaust), whether priests alone also take part (as in the Hebrew sacrifices for the expiation of sins), or finally whether the entire people participate with them, as in the sacrifice of communion. Or indeed in the Passover, and this seems to have been a characteristic of the very earliest sacrifices, in which all is consumed by the participants, with no role clearly reserved for the divinity.

This explains why, in the most ancient mythic expression of their significance, sacrifices are far from appearing as tremulous attempts of terrified humans to placate a bloodthirsty divinity through some kind of ritual murder. Instead, the gods themselves, acting either directly or through kings deemed to embody or represent them, are the initiators of sacrifices, and thereby show themselves as the quintessential benefactors of mankind, and more particularly the sources of human life in that which maintains it (nourishment) and produces it (sexuality). The idea of sacrifice as a ritual murder is nothing but the fabrication of self-styled scholars, who thus prove that they belong with the pathetic dupes who persist in taking seriously the alleged Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Many of those who are commenting upon B16’s latest Encyclical bring little value to the discussion because they have not read the document or they cannot see beyond their particular ideology in order to competently engage the Pope’s thought.  One such example is a particularly obtuse commentary by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland and daughter of RFK.

Kennedy does not seem to have read the Encyclical upon which she comments and neither is she able to extricate herself from her radically dissenting ideology in order to put together any coherent thoughts.  She uses the events of  BO’s audience with B16 with the Encyclical as renewed opportunities to lambaste the Church for her teachings on…what else… those issues dealing with sex and the human person.

Kennedy presents an ironically ignorant essay due at least in part, to these two shortfalls.   She goes so far as to say that BO better represents the views of American Catholics than does B16 (more on that later).  So why comment upon such screed?  Well, her op ed serves as an example of the long road ahead in trying to bring Catholic politicians to use their intellects for a change and so to seriously engage the teachings of the Church.

Kennedy seems to recognize that the title of the Encyclical means truth in love but she does not seem to appreciate that the Pope is directly addressing the issues that she raises.  In her comments, Kennedy uses the same tired canards to attack the Church’s teaching on abortion, same sex attraction disorder, artificial contraception and women’s ordination that have been thrown out for all too many years now.  Of course, she unabashedly rejects all of these teachings.

Kennedy does not even bother to address the argument that Benedict puts forth in the Encyclical that love without truth is not love at all.  Perhaps she is not even aware that he has made such an argument.  Instead, she simply asserts, without any supporting logic, that the Church’s teaching demonstrates a lack of love.  She also asserts, again without demonstrating, that the only reason for the Church’s teaching in these areas is due to a fear of losing power.  She never seriously considers that her understanding of love and truth may be seriously deficient.  The same could be said of her understanding of the interrelationship between the two.

It is ironic that she makes a claim for truth in love without making an obvious argument for the truth of her position.  What she does do is to make a reference to polls of US Catholics on certain issues, the results of which she claims contradicts the “positions of the Pope.”  Her argument is based upon a not very well thought out assumption that the Pope is supposed to represent the “values” of some constituency, here US Catholics.  She doesn’t even address the Church’s 2000 year old teaching that the Holy Father’s role is rather to lead all Catholics in truth.

It is perhaps this contemporary political mindset that Kennedy impresses upon the Church that keeps her stuck in obtuse diatribe in which she is never able to rise to the level of basic argumentation.  Kennedy does not seem to understand that she assumes an indefensible definition of truth. Truth is not the higher percentage number response to a question (an all too often leading question at that) that some pollster is able to squeeze out of the few who answer their phones and the fewer still who will answer the pollsters’ questions.  Neither is love to be equated with the particular position for which you receive affirmation from the group that you identify with.

Again, Kennedy is quite ironic in her rather arrogant assertion of those things that BO has to teach B16.  She says that “respectful disagreement and the willingness to recognize [sic] differences” are two of these lessons.  Here she is referring to Church teaching on the killing of innocent unborn (and those born after a failed abortion) and the promotion of the rupture of the social fabric of society by the redefinition of marriage and the family that BO promotes and still he was so graciously willing to go to UND anyway…imagine that for a politician.  Apparently, Kennedy has not herself learned that same lesson as she does not respectfully disagree with the Church but accuses her leaders of cowardice and ignorance.  She is not willing to “recognize” (rather, tolerate)  the differences between her worldly views and the teachings of the Church which the Magisterium upholds.  Rather, she demands that the consistent 2000 year old, infallible teachings of the Church be changed to fit her personal world view.

A final example of Kennedy’s tortuous thinking are the two times she refers to Church teaching in order to support her position.  The first is her reference to the latest Encyclical which she claims that it gives credence to BO’s policies and to “progressive politics writ large.”  She mentions it again, when she asserts that Notre Dame’s giving an honorary degree to BO was simply that school’s highlighting of “the best of Catholic teaching” applied to politics.  She embraces Catholic teaching when she is able to twist it to fit her secular world view and rejects it when she is not.  She does not even try to provide an argument that justifies how she can both embrace and reject teachingz which come from the same source.  If she is writing off the authority of the Church then why even bother noting when there is apparent agreement?  If she recognizes the authority of the Church, then what is her justification for the selective dissent?

The new Encyclical, if one reads it with an open mind and an open heart, can and must transform the way we think about the world and the way that our current public and private organizations, institutions, and structures operate.   There are many who are spilling much ink and/or electrons writing about it but few have read it.  Fewer still have allowed themselves to read it as it was written without projecting their own ideologies upon it.  This does not bode well for expectations of progress with these dissenting politicians.  Kennedy is proof positive of the old addage that you can lead a horse to water . . .

I have been slowly making my way through B16’s new Encyclical and have been simultaneously keeping track of what many are saying about it.   I am not finished with it yet, but as with others I feel compelled to provide some initial thoughts.  I should like to take (I have been conversing with someone from the UK recently) George Weigel’s comments in NRO as a point of discussion.  I have had a great deal of respect for George Weigel’s insights and viewpoints ever since I read his Witness to Hope.  Often, I think he is right on.  Other times, I think that he can allow his neo-conservative politico-economic outlook to unduly color his analyses of Church issues.  I think that his analysis of Benedict’s latest encyclical falls squarely in the latter category.

He begins by suggesting that inter-curial machinations demand that one approach the Encyclical with a hermeneutic of suspicion leading to a source-critical reading of the text.  This seems to me, all too reminiscent of dissenting scholars’ approach to Church teaching and so it gives me pause at the outset.  I don’t know, Weigel may very well have inside information (in contrast to his implication that it is just a set of suspicions) that justifies his wariness.  For myself, I find the document to be seamlessly coherent.  I believe that what accounts for this difference is the politico-economic biases to which I would argue that he succumbs.

This is what I mean.  Weigel seems to have an allergic reaction to certain phrases such as “wealth redistribution.”  It is true that this is a favorite phrase of many socialists but one must recognize that B16 has accepted the use of the term for his Encyclical.  Clearly Benedict is thoroughly Catholic and in full agreement with Rerum novarum.  Unlike many revisionists, he does not distance himself from any of Leo XIII’s or subsequent pope’s criticisms of socialism (that I have seen any way). However, this does not mean that this phrase is not his.  Rather, one must read it in the context of Benedict’s references to the need for sharing wealth through gratuitousness.  He states that gratuitousness is in contrast to “the logic of public obligation, imposed by State law” (39).  In other words, when Benedict talks of wealth redistribution, he is not talking of technical solutions to problems of povery so much as he is discussing the needs of anthropology at the macro level.  This is why I would argue that Weigel’s complaint that the Encyclical does not give sufficient attention to wealth generation is unwarranted.

For Weigel, the discussion of gratuitousness and gift seems to be “clotted and muddled.”  If one presupposes that the Encyclical is interwoven with two opposing streams of thought then one will not be likely to look for clarifying explanations throughout the text.  This seems to be the problem with Weigel’s take on the “gift” discussion.  He recognizes that it might be the Communio school’s anthropology but seems to dismiss that possibility because he finds the language so “clotted and muddled.” Perhaps he does not recognize that this anthropology is more ubiquitous among Communio scholars that just JPII.  However, if one does recognize that B16 is in fact employing the vision of the human person as an individual who has the task of perfecting himself after the manner of the divine archetype, which is a total self-gift of self to others in relationships, the entire logic of the Encyclical becomes clear (at least as far as I have so far read).

Weigel and others seem to be worried that Benedict is implying a prudential judgment of the priority of wealth sharing over wealth production.  Benedict is doing nothing of the sort.  Again, he is instructing about a socio-economic necessity deriving from an anthropology that undergtands man is created after the image of total Self-gift.  His point is that for an authentic economic structure that promotes the integral human fulfillment of all of its members, the economic structure must be one which promotes all freely giving of themselves for the common, the greater good.

He is true to his word; he provides no technical solutions to such a great challenge.  However his comments in paragraph 39 (see above) and other places show that this structure has to be one promoting the free giving of individuals and societies at all levels.   In other words, this cannot be achieved through State compulsion.  That is not to say that there is no place for some level of public obligation.  Benedict is not trying to instruct the reader in the concrete solutions.  He is providing insights into what the human person and society need in order to flourish and to overcome the economic manifestations of the spiritual crisis in which we now find ourselves.

I am sure that I will have more to say later; especially in terms of Benedict’s discussion of what I term the co-principles of subsidiarity and solidarity.  I have an article I am working on that addresses this very point.  However, Hierothee has convinced me that it needs some reworking.  As I settle into a new routine, I hope to take the article back up again.

O.k., I suppose that I am done for now…

As has been my usual refrain of late, I again begin this post with an explanation as to why I have not been posting lately.  It is still due to the recent move and the new job here in San Antonio.  With respect to the move, we are finally getting close to being able to say that we are settled in.  With respect to the job, after one week there is not much to note other than to say: oh boy, there is a lot of work to do before Fall.

Last week while driving home from work I was listening to a program called “El Pistolero ” on a local Spanish language radio station.  The experience was a bit of a déjà vu event but not really.  Normally one has the sense of having experienced the event without knowing why.  In this case, it was clearly because they were discussing the still rumored death of “El Rey de Pop.”  Some 32 years ago, I recall driving to work from football practice in the then Canal Zone and listening to a Panamanian radio station discussing the just announced death of “El Rey de Rock.”  I was surprised in both cases at the interest and effect that an English language entertainer had on another culture.  In both cases it seems, that the “kings”  ubiquitous presence seemed to give them a sense of “power” that made their deaths very difficult to grasp.

This brings to mind a recent event in which I had the opportunity to discuss God’s power.  In a workshop the presenter was discussing the perceptions of power and its affects on others.  A valid enough topic.  However, the way that term “power” was employed caused me some concern.  Now “power” was not explicitly defined.  The various possible definitions were discussed but the precise definition was purposely left amorphous.  Nevertheless, the term was used in the common colloquial sense that suggests that power is the capacity to do what one wills, as one wills.  This sense of power as arbitrary application of force over/against someone or something else certainly corresponds to the arbitrariness associated with modern notions of freedom.  It also is what gave rise to the Hegelian-Marxist-Nietzschean view that conflict is in someway a necessary part of the natural order.  This defective philosophy permeates many aspects of our society.

The temptation to view power as the ability to exercise arbitrarily one’s will is a great danger.  Combined with the suspicion of others motivations, which necessarily comes with such a view, can lead one to view all relationships in terms of whom has the ability to coerce the other person to conform to his wishes.  The accepted pathological diagnosis of such behavior is called borderline personality disorder.  However, this defective way of thinking is omnipresent in politics, in most community organizing movements influenced by Saul Alinsky’s philosophy, in Marxist liberation theology, in radical feminism, in many dissenting organizations within the Catholic Church, and in most post-modern philosophies especially deconstructionism.

This outlook had its western origins, it seems, with an application of such a view of arbitrariness to God.  William of Ockham brought this way of thinking to Christian Europe (some have argued from Islamic voluntarism) with his version of voluntarist nominalism and its corrosive affects have been present in Western thought ever since.  The view that life is a quest for attaining power in order to conform the physical and social order to one’s world view permeates contemporary thinking and sadly, it has made its way in Christian thinking as well.  At its most radical, this world view underlies those liberation theologies which base themselves on Marxian philosophy as suggested above.  However, even those who have attempted to leave Marxism behind, have trouble ridding themselves of thinking in categories shaped by this “power game” albatross.

An example of the this confusion about power applied to God’s power would seem to be author Eric H. F. Law, who proposes a “Gospel Cycle of Living” in his book The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb.  In the book, Law proposes that in order to live the Gospel one must cycle through the powerlessness of the Cross and then “get off the Cross” and choose to act and speak.  The latter “empowerment” mirrors Christ’s resurrection which manifested Jesus’ power while the Cross was a result of His human powerlessness.  We must be in touch with both.  This is a distortion of an underlying truth.

It seems to me that to view the Cross as powerlessness is to mistake the authentic meaning of power and to fall into the “power game” fallacy.  The term “power” arises from the Latin potis, which is the ability to do something.  God is omnipotent.  He has the potency to do everything, but “everything” does not imply an arbitrary potency.  God can only do those things which accord with His nature.  That is not to say that God does do everything He may do.  He chooses to do those things with respect to His creation that are most fitting in accord with His nature.

In terms of the Cross and God’s power, I would argue that one has to consider various facts in order to properly interpret both.  Jesus drew a clear line between rightful authority which is given by God to serve others, and the abuse of authority/power which he says of the pagans who use it to serve themselves.  This is an clear indication that Jesus does not accede to the modern-pagan understanding of power in the arbitrary sense.

In terms of the Cross, Jesus tells His disciples that He chooses to lay down His life, that no one is taking it from Him.  St. Paul indicates that the Cross is the power of God for those who are being saved.  The astute Christian who recognizes the contradiction of the Gospel to the values of the world will be open to understanding how what the world views as weakness and folly is rightly to be understood as authentic power.  The key, I would say, is to go to the very heart of who God is in Himself.  I would argue then that authentic power is inextricably linked to love.

God is love and so love becomes the source of all authentic potency.  Love is the willing of the good of the other for his own sake effected through the total gift of oneself to the other.  The Trinitarian Processions are the theological description of this eternal gift and the Cross is its temporal manifestation par excellence.   The Cross is analogically correlated to the first Procession, the Son’s eternal and total return of Himself to the Father initiative of love.

The reason that the Cross appears to be powerlessness to the world is because love is misunderstood.  Love cannot abide in coercion.  God cannot simultaneously love and coerce the will of another.  This is not to say that God is necessarily compelled by His nature to permit each and every action of one of His volitional creatures.  Nevertheless, it appears to be the case that He usually does so (though we cannot know this for certain).

Love, rather, invites the other into a relationship.  Relationships worthy of the name demand trust and faith in the other.  When one accepts and returns, in trust, an invitation of concern and care for the good of another, the structure of a loving relationship has been established. When creatures respond to God’s initiative of love, in trust and faith, a transforming relationship has been created. God’s love is in this sense, omnipotent love.  It is power to bring life from death but volitional creatures may always choose death.

God does not change.  His offer of love and eternal life is always available.  Man in this life can and do change.  The life giving relationship with God is only possible when we accept God’s initiative of love and thereby, use the grace given in this relationship to cooperate in transforming ourselves into what we need to be.

God’s love is the power to complete His plan using many times uncooperative secondary efficient causes without having to violate the free will of any of them.  The power of God is manifested in the Resurrection for sure but it is similarly manifested in the Cross.  Power is not about being able to have your way for good or ill over against the will of another.  Ultimately, power is about “willingingly” transforming and conforming wills to Love Himself.

Given the earlier discussion, I thought that I would try to clarify somewhat the position of the “Feingoldian” Thomists vis-à-vis Henri de Lubac. I follow in this regard a presentation by Fr. Guy Mansini, a professor of systematic theology at Saint Meinrad Seminary. It is from an article of his for which I do not have the bibliographical information. Nevertheless, I am going to present some aspects of the article, in the hopes that, lacking the bibliographical reference, I do not get into trouble (Update: thanks to reader W., here is the reference: Guy Mansini, “Henri de Lubac, the Natural Desire to See God, and Pure Nature,” 83 no. 1 Gregorianum [2002]: 89-109).

Mansini, in the article in question, lists five theses of de Lubac on the question of the relation of nature and grace:

Thesis One: Attention to the order of pure nature, which began in the 16th century, has had a malign impact on the Church both speculatively and practically. This is so because of the way that the doctrine of pure nature has developed historically. Either a) nature was conceived of in such a way that it needed grace (as with the theologian Baius) or b) it was supernaturalized. This latter way of thinking about pure nature postulated a natural intuition of God or a natural friendship with God; it led to “extrinsicist” accounts of grace, for which it is thought that human nature can have perfect contentment in its own order.

Thesis Two: God has never ordained for man anything more than a supernatural end. There is an intrinsic unity to the economy of salvation, and modern theology was not always sufficiently attentive to this fact.

Thesis Three: Human nature is what it is because it is ordered to a supernatural end, and would not be what it is if it were otherwise ordered.

Thesis Four: The fourth thesis that Mansini presents is complex. It is a thesis in three parts. First, the natural desire to see God must be foremost in our attention in speculative theology, otherwise we do not recognize the unity of the economy of salvation, and we get mixed up on the relationship between philosophical anthropology and theological anthropology, between knowledge and faith, and between philosophy and theology. Second, the natural desire to see God is both sign and effect of our being ordered to possession of beatific vision. Third, because the human “natural desire to see God” is inherently of the supernatural order, it must be understood to be a necessary and absolute ordination and not conditioned – yet, we must not deny that grace is truly gratuitous.

Thesis 5: There follows from theses 1-3 a prohibition: it is useless to consider in the speculative order the condition of our nature aside from its supernatural ordination.

Now, this is all a bit dense, but it is nevertheless a pithy summary of de Lubac’s position. What do the Thomists whom Mansini represents disagree with in these theses? It may surprise some to learn that they do, in fact, agree with theses 1-3. The fourth, multipart thesis is the root of their disagreement. They hold that it articulates an understanding of the expression “natural desire to see God” that is contrary to Thomas’s understanding of this desire. The natural desire to see God would still exist, they claim, even if we had been created outside of the supernatural order. The desire is really natural and is therefore wrongly understood to be absolute, necessary, unconditional, supernatural, etc. Thus, they argue, one must be able to consider the reality of “pure nature,” a nature which, contrary to fact, would have been created outside of the order of the supernatural.

And this, they claim, is not merely a pointless exercise in contra-factual hypotheses. To consider the reality of “pure nature” has important religious significance, even though, historically, some theologians may have indeed fallen into “extrinsicism” in their considerations of it. Why is it religiously valuable to consider pure nature? Mansini himself argues that it enables us to appreciate more greatly the value of God’s elevating grace. Without our supernatural ordination to beatific vision, we would still have a desire to see God, but without the efficacious power to fulfill that desire. We would be in a condition that is aptly described as an “endless end.” We would be in a state where our desire could never be met. The condition that Mansini describes, following Thomas, is akin to that of pagan humanity: for whom it was not even clear that the human soul was immortal, or that the world was created.

Moreover, according to Mansini, there is greater biblical warrant for the position that recognizes the possibility for pure nature than for de Lubac’s: it corresponds to the reality of divine election. Even though the economy of salvation is a unity, still, God calls out a special people to mediate His presence to the world and to form His Church: in absolutizing or supernaturalizing the desire to see God, de Lubac’s position falls short of being able to account for the reality of divine election.

I shall leave it at that.

I apologize if my earlier post and comments confused the issues at hand.

I found this excellent quotation in Frederick Copleston’s A History of Philosophy, volume 2, and thought that I would share it with the rest of the class:

The Thomist distinction between the sciences of dogmatic theology and philosophy, with the accompanying distinction of the modes of procedure to be employed in the two sciences, no doubt evolved inevitably out of the earlier attitude, though, quite apart from that consideration, it obviously enjoys this very great advantage that it corresponds to an actual and real distinction between revelation and the ‘unaided’ reason, between the supernatural and natural spheres. It is at once a safeguard of the doctrine of the supernatural and also of the powers of man in the natural order. Yet the Augustinian attitude on the other hand enjoys this advantage, that it contemplates always man as he is, man in the concrete, for de facto, man has only one final end, a supernatural end, and, as far as actual existence is concerned, there is but man fallen and redeemed: there never has been, is not, and never will be a purely ‘natural man’ without a supernatural vocation and end. If Thomism, without of course neglecting the fact that man in the concrete has but a supernatural end, places emphasis on the distinction between the supernatural and the natural, between faith and reason, Augustinianism, without in the least neglecting the gratuitous character of supernatural faith and grace, always envisages man in the concrete and is primarily interested in his actual relation to God.

…The rigid type of Thomist would, I suppose, maintain that Augustine’s philosophy contains nothing of value which was not much better said by St. Thomas, more clearly delineated and defined; but the fact remains that the Augustinian tradition is not dead even to-day, and it may be that the very incompleteness and lack of systematization in Augustine’s thought, its very ‘suggestiveness’, is a positive help toward the longevity of his tradition, for the ‘Augustinian’ is not faced by a complete system to be accepted, rejected or mutilated: he is faced by an approach, an inspiration, certain basic ideas which are capable of considerable development, so that he can remain perfectly faithful to the Augustinian spirit even though he departs from what the historic Augustine actually said. (p. 49-50)

I found this quotation to be interesting and illuminating for two reasons. First, Copleston sums up in two short paragraphs the issue that was at the heart of Catholic theological debate in the middle of the twentieth century: can man have a natural end, or completion, outside of supernatural grace? Most Thomists said yes, at least speculatively. Man has, they said, no exigency, by nature, for the supernatural. He has, by his own nature, a natural happiness, attainable by the exercise of the natural virtues. Philosophy deals with natural man. Theology deals with man in the order of grace. Theologians influenced by Augustine, such as Henri de Lubac, argued, contrary to this standard Thomist position, that man has only one final completion of his nature, and it is supernatural. There is no such thing as “natural man” outside of the order of grace, and it is a diversion with malevolent consequences to assert the speculative possibility of such a “natural man.” De Lubac argued that, in fact, Augustine’s position on this matter was shared by Thomas himself; the Thomists got Thomas wrong, in other words. Many people have taken de Lubac’s reading of Thomas to be correct – it is the reading of Thomas that is generally shared by theologians in the Communio circles (Communio is, of course, the international journal for which Joseph Ratzinger was a founder).

De Lubac’s reading of Thomas has met a stiff challenge in recent years. A dissertation in Rome by Lawrence Feingold has argued rather convincingly that de Lubac misread Thomas, and many Thomists (such as Romanus Cessario) have argued in support of Feingold’s thesis. I suspect that Feingold is right. But that does not mean that de Lubac’s oeuvre is thereby invalidated, as some would conclude. It means, simply, in my opinion, that de Lubac is firmly in the Augustinian tradition, and probably not a Thomist.

The second thing that I found interesting about Copleston’s quotation was that some of it reads as if it could have been penned by Professor Ratzinger himself. Ratzinger disliked Thomism, at least as it was taught to him, because he thought that it was too rigidly systematic, abstract, and overly speculative. Thomists, in his opinion, did not always deal with “man in the concrete,” whose happiness can come only when, by the grace of God, he attains to beatific vision. Ratzinger, in consequence, has a different understanding of the nature of philosophy than many Thomists. For him, philosophy shows us how to live a good life so that we might die a good death. He has pointed out on more than one occasion that in antiquity it was the task of the philosopher to show us the way to eternal life. None of the philosophers of old could do this, until the Son of Man took on human flesh. This is why, according to Ratzinger, Christ was rightly understood by many in the early Church to be the True Philosopher: Christ showed us how to give perfect obedience to the Father, even unto death.

Philosophy, in this way of understanding it, is not first of all about rational arguments, or about establishing a clarification of abstract concepts. It is first of all about how to live according to the teachings of the Master, Christ Himself, and about how to follow Him, which can be done only by the infusion in the soul of divine grace by the power of the Holy Spirit. Philosophy and theology, then, in this understanding, cannot be as neatly separated as many in the Thomist tradition have thought. In thinking about the relationship of philosophy and theology in this way, Ratzinger shows his Augustinian influence.

Many Thomists, on account of Augustine’s blurring of the lines between philosophy and theology, have taken Augustine to be a vague and metaphorical thinker. But Copleston, himself a Thomist, explains that if the true meaning of Augustine’s way of doing theology is understood, which he shared with all of the great Church Fathers, then their criticism is invalidated:

It is not that Augustine failed to recognize, still less that he denied, the intellect’s power of attaining truth without revelation; it is rather that he regarded the Christian wisdom as one whole, that he tried to penetrate by his understanding the Christian faith and to see the world and human life in the light of Christian wisdom. He knew quite well that rational arguments can be adduced for God’s existence, for example, but it was not so much mere intellectual assent to God’s existence that interested him as the real assent, the positive adhesion of the will to God, and he knew that in the concrete such an adhesion to God requires divine grace. In short, Augustine did not play two parts, the part of the theologian and part of the philosopher who considers the ‘natural man’; he thought rather of man as he is in the concrete, fallen and redeemed mankind, man who is able indeed to attain truth but who is constantly solicited by God’s grace and who requires grace in order to appropriate the truth that saves. (p. 48)

I have recently had the pleasure to read Tracey Rowland’s new book on the Holy Father, Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI.

I hope to do a thorough review of it at some point in the future. But, for now, something struck me quite forcefully while reading it, and that I want to bring up. The Holy Father, who cut his theological teeth on Saint Augustine and Saint Bonaventure, has in the past expressed a connection between the Thomist mode of theologizing and unconcern for the ambience in which the liturgical act is carried out. As everyone knows, Cardinal Ratzinger had been sharply critical of the Lercaro/Bugnini-led implementation of post-conciliar liturgical reform. But how did a certain type of Thomist theologizing contribute to the pragmatism and utilitarianism that marked the reforms implemented by Lercaro and Bugnini?

In chapter 6 of Rowland’s excellent book, we see that Cardinal Ratzinger saw two factors from within the Thomist tradition that contributed to the misdirection of liturgical reform. The first was an over-reliance on the form-matter distinction in sacramental theology. According to Ratzinger, theologians operating from within the Thomist tradition (or the Neo-Scholastic tradition generally) tended to reduce the central core of liturgy to the matter that is the bread and wine of the Eucharist and the form that is the words of institution. Everything else in the liturgy was considered to be a disposable element. Taking this as one’s starting point for liturgical reform, liturgists were free to engage in a process of incessant “updating” of all the other elements of the liturgy – precisely the lamentable situation that the post-conciliar Church has found herself in.

The second problematic aspect of the Thomist tradition in regard to liturgy, according to Ratzinger, has to do with a pragmatic understanding of the role of music in liturgy. This understanding of liturgical music goes back to Thomas himself. It is not just a product of his later followers. In question 91, article 2, of his Summa Theologica, Thomas said that it is justifiable to use music in liturgy because “the minds of the weak are more effectively summoned to piety” by it. Ratzinger (according to Rowland) takes this to mean that, for Thomas, church music has nothing more than a pedagogical function and is subject to the standards of utility: it is reduced to its utilitarian function – it must be a popular form of music and usefulness for instruction. In fact, Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler had used this very notion of Thomas’s to defend the replacement of “sacred music” with “utility music” (folk music, pop music, etc.). Ratzinger, contra the Thomist presupposition of Rahner and Vorgrimler, defends sacred music on p. 118-19 of his Feast of Faith:

The movement of spiritualization in creation is understood properly as bringing creation into the mode of being of the Holy Spirit and its consequent transformation, exemplified in the crucified and resurrected Christ. In this sense, the taking up of music into the liturgy must be its taking up into the Spirit, a transformation which implies both death and resurrection. That is why the Church has had to be critical of all ethnic music; it could not be allowed untransformed into the sanctuary. The cultic music of pagan religions has a different status in human existence from the music which glorifies God in creation. Through rhythm and melody themselves, pagan music often endeavors to elicit ecstasy of the senses, but without elevating the sense into the spirit; on the contrary, it attempts to swallow up the spirit in the senses as a means of release. This imbalance toward the senses recurs in modern popular music: the ‘God found here, the salvation of man identified here, is quite different from the God of the Christian faith. (Quoted by Rowland, p. 132)

In reading Rowland, one gets the sense that, at root, the difference between the Holy Father and the Thomists has to do with placing a different level of importance on the transcendental of beauty. The Holy Father, much like Hans Urs von Balthasar and the entire tradition of Christian Platonism, thinks that beauty, truth, and goodness are coequal with being as such. Many in the Thomist tradition, however, tend to drop beauty from the list of transcendentals. This leads to a certain level of utilitarianism when it comes to considering the role and value of culture and cult in Christian existence.

Interestingly, Rowland, in her concluding chapter, shows that John Paul II and Benedict XVI, for all of their profound sympathies with one another, differ on precisely this issue. John Paul II took a more pragmatic, Thomist view of Christianity in relation to the culture: because beauty did not have the same importance for him as it does for Benedict. Benedict takes a more Augustinian view (I would broaden the category and refer to it as a more “Christian Platonist” view). However, it is important to note that Rowland dismisses dubious attempts by the likes of the American theologian Joseph Komonchak to pit JP II and Benedict XVI against one another precisely on their “Thomism” and “Augustinianism.” Komonchak makes the claim that JP II’s Thomism made him more optimistic toward modern culture, while Ratzinger’s Augustinianism makes him more pessimistic toward modern culture. Rowland rightly points out, in refuting Komonchak, that, on the one hand, JP II condemned the “culture of death,” and, on the other hand, Benedict XVI is open to dialogue with modern culture. Still, there does seem to be a palpable difference between them on the role and value for Christian liturgy and proclamation of modern art and music, and Rowland does not deny it. The difference between them, I would point out, might be illustrated by their respective choices for Master of Pontifical Ceremonies.

So, I come back to the question in the title of this post. Do Thomists make bad liturgists?

A brand new Web site through the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy provides open access to Biblical verses with exegesis from doctors of the Church AND cross reference liturgical texts with commentaries from Church Fathers. The site offers six categories in nine languages in addition to the option of downloading the site’s content. The nine translations of the Bible, including Hebrew and Greek, can be read side-by-side, as can the Eastern and Latin Codes of Canon Law. A down-loadable version allows us to connect Sacred Scripture to the complete works of many Doctors of the Church, Councils, Encyclicals, teachings of the Popes, Catechisms, as well as commentaries from secular literature, etc…

Might want to bookmark this one. Fair warning if you plan to down-load a version onto your hard drive, it’s excruciatingly slow.

Update: E-mail support for documents and articles of interest for Bishops and Priests.

Zenit

That rascal B16 is at it again. Always agitating those secularists. Imagine the nerve of his claiming this for Christianity. You wouldn’t think that he might be saying this because he actually believes it do you?  What if it is true?  Would it still be arrogant to proclaim it, or would it be a moral imperative?

It doesn’t matter. I suspect that if the popular press picks up on this CNA article title of today’s Wednesday audience they will be incensed and attempt to ensure that everyone else is as well.

National Catholic Reporter’s vastly overestimated man on the scene, John Allen, Jr., has a new post up extolling the “heroic” talk that Daniel Finn recently gave to the CTSA, decrying its ghetto-ization into an enclave of liberal theology:

For Allen, Finn’s address was an important battle cry denouncing the polarization in Catholic discourse that has strewn apart the Catholic community in the United States. We have forgotten how to talk to each other, in Allen’s opinion. We no longer carry on conversations as adults and open up ourselves to different points of view. Liberals talk to liberals, conservatives to conservatives, traditionalists to traditionalists, etc. We have become a Church of self-enclosed islands, of ideologues, with no one lending a sympathetic ear to one’s ideological “other.”

Now, there is no doubt that Finn’s address was of some importance. After all, it is heartening to think that heretics might indeed be willing to open themselves up to the living voice of the Magisterium. But here is precisely the problem with Allen’s theologically naïve perspective: heresy is not a legitimate voice of diversity in the Church of God. Allen’s plaintive cry for dialogue suffers from the same fundamental problem that one finds with Cardinal Bernardin’s wretched “Common Ground Initiative”: heresy requires anathematization, not a sympathetic ear, not a pat on the back, not a “we’re all just taking shelter under the One, Big Canopy of the Church.”

There is absolutely no reason to listen to and carry out a dialogue with proponents of womyn priests, or gay marriage, or with those many CTSA biblical scholars who deny the Resurrection as a physical as well as symbolic reality. Indeed, to “dialogue” with such Cretins is to approve implicitly their heretical perspectives as legitimate theological positions. Irenaeus did not “dialogue” with the Gnostikoi, he renounced them vigorously. Athanasius did not sit down and have a beer and a pleasant talk on the divinity of Christ with the Arians, he violently rejected their heresy. Saint Maximus the Confessor pleaded vehemently and unwaveringly with the monoenergists/monothelites to renounce outright their heretical denials of Christ’s humanity, at the cost of his tongue and his life.

And, in fact, the heretics in the Church today are much less theologically subtle than the ancient Gnostikoi, Arians, monothelites (pick your ancient heresy, its proponents were inevitably more intellectually subtle than the cult of CTSA “theologians”). Indeed, if dialogue with heretics were a worthy pursuit, these ancient pseudo-theologians would be much more worthy partners in the conversation than those we have to deal with today.

No, we don’t need more dialogue. We need to call a spade a spade and a heretic a heretic.

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you might be asking yourself what the heck is this guy doing writing about Catholic, or for that matter any, literary matters. This would be an excellent observation. I don’t intend to write about the literary arts per se, rather, on a particular concern associated with the. Some time ago I posted on a book by a Catholic novelist on the issue of chastity.

It was a good book but I had some misgivings about some of the content (actually a quite small part). However, it was very much in line of what you might read from Walker Percy or Flannery O’Connor. There was the use of obscene language and some mild sexual scenes. So what’s my problem?

There are three issues here as I see them. First, there is the issue of purity. Second, we have the matter of material participation in evil. Finally, we have the issue of scandal. I will take them one at a time.

Flannery O’Connor had some misgivings about her style and how it corresponded to her faith but after consulting with her spiritual director, he told her that she did not have the obligation to write for a 15 year old girl. True enough; I suppose that we are guilty here at C-L-S of assuming this as well. However, there ought to be more said about this. While we do not have the obligation to limit everything we write or say to audiences that are not sufficiently mature to deal with certain topics this is not the same as saying we do not have the obligation to attend to the concern of avoiding putting others into the near occasion of sin. We are our brothers’ keepers and must help to guard others’ purity. This is not the same as puritanism.

O.k., so what is the difference between purity and puritanism? Purity is a single minded commitment of the will to be in accord with God and therefore to look upon other human beings in the way that God created them. In other words, purity recognizes that each human person is made in the image of God and created for their own sakes. The person is made body and soul and purity recognizes, therefore, the beauty and goodness of the body and its important role in manifesting the person. It also recognizes the importance and goodness, nay holiness, of marital sexual intercourse. Purity recognizes that the only proper attitude toward a person is love. Others cannot be treated as a means but must always be looked upon as ends in themselves. Thus, no one can be reduced to their physical (or any other) attributes. They cannot be looked upon as a means to pleasure.

Purity also recognizes that we are in a fallen state and that it is a constant struggle to avoid the reduction of the other to a means to an end. This is very often sexual or emotional pleasure, but not always. And so purity recognizes that there are certain things that can lead one to see and treat others as objects. As an example, men are very visual and can be, in varying degrees, visually superficial. Thus, those wishing to be pure must avoid such occasions that would subject them to impure thoughts. While these are often visual, as I will discuss below, words can be powerful occasions for returning one to problematic visual experiences. Women wishing to guard men’s purity will not subject reveal their bodies in such a way as to make themselves the occasion of temptations against purity.

Puritanism, on the other hand, sees the body and even marital sexual intercourse as dirty, as something of a necessary evil. So while the response of someone motivated by puritanism and one motivated by an authentic concern for purity may sometimes externally appear to be the same, it will not be such in all cases because of their different motivations. For example, while respecting purity, the naked human body may be portrayed in art if it is done in such a way as to reveal the whole human person rather than to evoke an erotic response. Puritanism would never allow this to be done.

So now that we have these terms defined, we need to look at what we are doing in literature with words and word images. Words are symbols and have symbolic value. They point to a reality beyond themselves. I suppose that our post-Cartesian mindset has led us to view symbols in a disembodied, even arbitrary manner. A rose by any other name…

There is some truth to the claim of arbitrariness to the assigning of names to things, but this is not universally true. Nor does this fact negate the mediation of the thing symbolized, in a very real way, through its symbol. Symbols are more than just arbitrary signs of something else. We recognize this in our human experience. For example, the way a person’s name can mediate their presence to us in such a way that we actually experience in a certain manner, their presence.

Another example might be the way we react when someone says something kind or hateful to us. Even if we know what they are thinking, the experience of hearing or reading the words gives us the sense that the words have an ontology of their own. We are cut to the quick with hateful words or uplifted in an almost transcendent way with words of affirmation. There is a weightiness to the spoken and written word that goes beyond simple affective or psychological response.

Thus, words and word images can and do mediate to us the object or experience they symbolize, in way that cannot be reduced to the cognitive. That is why words are so powerful and must be used with much care. This brings us to the second issue: material participation in evil.

We must always avoid evil, but there are times when as an unintended side effect of a good act with a good intention, we find that the good done results in bad consequences. Sometimes we find that accepting the unintended consequences is justified by the greater proportion of good that will come from the good act and good intention. The Catholic tradition refers to this as the principle of double effect. Just war teaching relies upon this principle. In the case of using words or word images that might evoke impure responses in others but the intention is to explain circumstances and/or actually counter the effects of such events and words the use of them may be justified. However, we must first recognize that they are evils.

If we look at obscenities, we can see that they usually have to do with the bathroom or the bedroom. Most others tend to reduce the human person to something less than human. Most all have the same goal. They take what is holy or sacred (an act or a human person) and try to reduce it to the profane. Even if they are not always intended in this way by those who use them, that is their etymology. Thus, the use of them is at least a material participation in evil. Formal participation would be actually intending, to some degree, to convey the evil sentiment. Material participation can sometimes be licit and necessary. Formal participation in evil can never be justified.

Therefore, one must recognize the gravity of choosing to use obscene words or word images. It seems to me that literary merit in and of itself cannot be the only consideration. Rather, the gravity of material participation in evil dictates that one must ensure the use of obscene words or word images is an absolute necessity with no other effective way to bring about the good. Furthermore, one can never employ obscenities with the intent that the reader will experience a lurid response and furthermore, the writer must use all his skill to ensure that this is avoided. This would be formal participation and no good result can ever justify it.

The final issue is scandal. There are two aspects to this issue. The first is that which we have been discussing all along. Christian scandal is not what is often meant colloquially by the use of the term, mainly shocking sensibilities. Rather, the Christian meaning can be found in its Greek etymological origin, scandalon, which means a stone upon which one stumbles. In other words, in this context one is guilty of scandal when he causes others to sin or he makes it at least a near temptation. Today, so many have been exposed to pornography that this becomes a dicey issue. It does not take much for some (many?) to be led back to these images impressed forever in their memories. This ought to be taken into consideration, at least in deciding how to craft the use of one’s literary material.

However, something else ought to be considered as well. We are conditioned by our culture with the idea of “adult” humor, content, etc. into a mistaken notion about adult abilities. Now, while it is true that adults do have a greater maturity and therefore, capacity and obligation to master themselves and their responses to exposure to impure, or suggestively so, experiences, we too often naively assume that these exposures have no effect on us. All have varying degrees of self-mastery, but no one can be so confident in themselves that they would unthinkingly expose themselves to impurity. In fact, I would submit that exposure to impurity has a tremendous, cumulative, and perhaps almost imperceptible effect on our thinking and willful responses to temptations against purity. Being an “adult” does not give anyone license to expose himself to impurity with the presumption that their are no negative consequences for so doing. In fact, just the opposite is true. As an adult, one has the obligation to recognize and avoid all temptations against purity.

The other aspect of scandal is that by use of obscenity one can lead his readers to assume that obscene words or word images are “no big deal.” I think that this does happen when, for example, someone reads Walker Percy, knowing that he was a very faithful Catholic and sees his use of obscenities, the reader comes to think that there is nothing wrong with or at least no caution necessary with their use.

This is why you do not see the use of such words here and that we edit out or delete any such use as seems appropriate. Thoughts?

I came across an article on The American Daily called Catholics, Witches and New Age , where the author used the example of a couple of catholic parishes and some orders of nuns co-sponsoring a conference called Earth Spirit Rising – Return to Earth Wisdom as an example to why only solo-scriptura Christians have the confidence of divine revelation avoid this type of infiltrations in their faiths.

It is shameful that areas within Christendom are opening up their gatherings to that which is contrary to God’s Word, especially so when lead by so-called spiritual leaders such as nuns, priests and pastors. Divine judgment in condemnation will settle upon such persons for leading others astray.

Satan has always attempted in every generation to do everything demonically possible to keep persons from discovering the eternal truths in Scripture. Those aware of this must continue to lift up the Bible as the sole divine revelation — complete in itself with no need to detour into alternative means of communicating with the divine.

Those caught up in New Age teachings must be prayed for earnestly by genuine Christian believers. “Other practices such as the enneagram and labyrinths have gained widespread use in Catholic retreat centers.

I agree with his first paragraph, but the mentality of which he professes is actually what has led to a theology of personal preference and this often gives way to relativism.

With all good intentions – some of whom I have a close personal relationship have recently expressed their concerns of an alien paganism in Roswell NM, to which I travel no more than necessary; while others shudder at the thought of their previous celebrations of Easter and Christmas. While they believe they are guided by Scripture and the Holy Spirit as their source of Divine Revelation, in reality they are blindly accepting the traditions and authority of obscure preachers and authors. God love ‘em.

Since Shelray’s post on Richard Sipe and my post on Fr. Doyle’s, Mr. Sipe’s compadre, e-mail in regard to the post, the issue of orthodoxy and charity seem to have become a point of discussion. Now I do not want to appear to be defensive. I will admit that I am sometimes guilty of reacting combatively or emotionally; perhaps more often than I even realize. Shelray’s more recent post was a good reminder to me to be more attentive to my motivations. Nevertheless, there seems to be a confusion about the meaning of charity and an unstated presupposition that those who defend the Magisterium somehow, almost universally, trade charity for truth.

Let us make our distinctions today. What is charity? Charity at root is agape. It is God’s love which means that it is total Self-gift for the sake of the good of the Other. In close connection with this, it is a theological virtue. The term theological denotes the fact that it is a gift of grace. The term virtue means that it is something that is acquired by habit. Thus, it is something that develops and grows by a gift of grace with which the recipient cooperates. This cooperation begins with the human emulation of Trinitarian agape. Man practices charity by an act of the will in which he wills the good of the other for his own sake. He does this concretely through a total gift of himself to God and in various ways, to others for the sake of God and His love. But one cannot give what he does not possess. Thus, authentic charity requires self-mastery which comes about by a virtuous life. That is, a life lived in accord with the cardinal virtues and of course, aided by grace.

O.k. What does this mean for the way we act. Can charity be determined from outward actions? Not infallibly. Jesus’ overturning, in anger, of the money changers’ tables was by definition, an act of charity but it was not from their perspective, a very nice act. Jesus had in mind their own good and the good of others though. That is not to say that we all have license to run around overturning the tables of those needing fraternal correction. After all, we are not Jesus and we do not have the same insight into people’s souls. Nevertheless, a prudent and temperate (two of the cardinal virtues) person can discern that at times that direct confrontation is necessary. However, pragmatically we must admit that it is more often the case that changing hearts begins with relationships of trust than with acts of direct confrontation. That is why I say a prudent and temperate person.

What this does mean is that while one can often intuit care and concern of another from his actions, charity is not equivalent to appearing to be nice. In fact, many times the opposite is the case. One can be nice to someone to whom he ought to be offering charitable correction because he fears conflict, fears rejection, wants to be affirming, or any number of reasons that take priority over a real concern for the person and the welfare of his entire personhood.

So is it the case that most orthodox people care more for the truth than for charity? Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out that one cannot be separated from the other. One cannot have authentic truth without charity. Nor can one have real charity without the truth. The lack of one, diminishes and often destroys the other. Truth is not simply cognitive content but it is an encounter, in some degree, with Truth Himself. Charity is not simply an emotion or a sweet disposition. It is communion with the Trinitarian Communio, in Jesus Christ. If orthodox people present cognitively true propositions out of hateful motivations they cannot communicate the Person of Christ and when doing so will not be successful in transferring the cognitive proposition to the other. When others reject the truth because they do want to be charitable they destroy charity and rather propagate sin and dysfunction.

Truth and Charity have their fullest expression in the Catholic Church. The Church is the People of God, which means a hierarchical structure with authority given to the Pope, bishops and priests, along with the lay faithful. To pose hierarchical authority against communion and love or to undermine the hierarchical authority and trust puts one in opposition to this ecclesiological truth. To try to claim governing authority for the laity is to reject the revealed truth of the Church. To cast aspersions and caricature every faithful bishop and the hierarchy itself as power hungry, secretive, and self interested and to claim celibacy (which is much more than “just a discipline”) is at the root cause of the sex abuse crisis is not simply a distortion of the facts, it is a cause of scandal. Scandal means to cause any little one to sin, to fall away from the Catholic Church and Her spiritual leadership and especially Her Sacraments. This is tantamount to denying them the healing grace they need, and ultimately putting at grave risk, their eternal salvation.

This is what the acts of those such as A. W. Richard Sipe and Fr. Thomas P. Doyle have the effects of doing. Any one who reads Fr. Doyle’s articles (here are a few more for example: here and here) , his merciless attack of the “institutional Church,” and his support for the anti-Catholic organization Voice of the Faithful or Richard Sipe’s Freudian distortions of the meaning of the human person will have little trouble in agreeing that I have described their actions accurately, even if they do not agree with the conclusions. I hopefully have been successful in avoiding intuiting their motivations/intentions. I certainly have not judged, God forbid, the states of their souls. In good conscience, I believe that this post is done with charity.

I have no illusions that this post is going to remedy any problems by its argument. Perhaps it can provide some food for thought and some clarification of the issues. Regardless of how these gentlemen got to the point at which they now stand, they clearly believe that they are in the right. It will take the Holy Spirit to convince them otherwise. I will pray for them and I hope that you will too.

One of Wikipedia’s prominent editors known as Essjay (aka Ryan Jordan), a self-described tenured professor of theology at a private university in the eastern United States, turned out to be a 24 year-old community college dropout. The controversy began when The New Yorker magazine did a profile on Jordan, and when pressed by the reporter, he revealed he was “24 and holds no advanced degrees, and that he was never taught.” As ironic as it may sound, I’m of the belief that Ryan Jordan’s source and method of teaching the Catholic faith via Father’s John Trigilio and Kenneth Brighenti, “Catholicism for Dummies“, is actually less scandalous than what is being taught by some of the enlightened theologians currently teaching in our Catholic universities. More information on this scandal can be read at Wikipedia Watch.

As written in the Florida Catholic:

Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, a Baptist college in Birmingham, Ala., wrote recently that “it is time for evangelicals to recover a fully biblical appreciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in the history of salvation, and to do so precisely as evangelicals.” George’s comments appeared in the December 2003 issue of Christianity Today and in a 2004 collection of essays by various theologians, “Mary: Mother of God”. We may not be able to recite the rosary or kneel down before statues of Mary, but we need not throw her overboard,”.

John Alden Williams, professor emeritus in the humanities of religion at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, is a Catholic historian who has studied Islamic civilization and religion. He and fellow William and Mary professor James A. Bill published “Roman Catholics and Shi’i Muslims” in 2002. It notes that two sections of the Quran, the sacred book of Islam, are devoted to Mary, known there as Maryam. She is recognized as the purified woman chosen to be the mother of the promised Messiah. Islam considers Jesus an important prophet, but not the incarnation of God.

Williams explained in a phone interview that, like Catholics, Shiite Muslims, who are a minority compared to the vastly more numerous Sunni Muslims, believe in intercessory prayer through saints and other holy people. That includes Mary, who is highly revered as a mediatrix between humans and God, or Allah. Sufis, another Islamic sect, also believe in intercession.

Shelray mentioned a while ago about the World Series of Catholic Theologians that Michael and Katerina over at Evangelical Catholicism have put together. Well, they are now down to the semi-finals. I am happy to see that for the most part the voters have distinguished between Catholic theologians who have had the biggest impact on authentic Catholic theology and those Catholic theologians who have had the biggest affect distorting authentic theology (except for the fact that a Liberation theologian has survived to the semi’s).

For some reason, there seemed to be some mild controversy over the fact Fr. Raymond Brown was beat out by Fr. Aidan Nichols. I don’t share the concern. Fr. Nichols is an excellent theologian who I would suggest, has done much for the English speaking world in explicating and developing Balthasar’s thought. In my view, Fr. Brown was a scriptural exegete who limited himself to higher criticism and because of this, at his own peril and ours, sometimes ventured into theological speculation. He seemed to suggest by his work that historical criticism was the only valid approach to biblical exegesis and so he was forever having to defend his work because his conclusions seemed to regularly contradict Church teaching. In his replies he would often say that Scripture does not say something but he believed it because the Church teaches it…a response that often led to further confusion…but I digress…

Any way, go over and vote.

It seems to me quite clear that those people who take a “progressive” stance on issues pertaining to the faith come down, invariably, on the side of things that would lead to the destruction of souls and even to the Church. A case in point is found in a recent article by Sandro Magister.

Magister describes in this article the issues at stake in a forthcoming conference at Verona regarding future pastoral strategies in the Italian Church. Two sides will be well-represented at this conference, according to Magister. On the one side are the faithful who are in line with the pastoral strategy of the last two pontificates. This side recommends a strong, clear message of faith to a world that increasingly lives in opposition to the pronouncements of Christ. On the other side, are those theologians who recommend that the Church open itself to the world in a mission of dialogue, that it listen before it speaks, and that it provide a “prophetic” witness rather than a triumphalistic proclamation of truth.

Aside from the vaguely contradictory notion of providing a “prophetic” witness to a world that one considers one’s teacher, a concrete pastoral recommendation has arisen among these progressives that is quite puzzling indeed. For, it seems, the theological progressives in Italy recommend a rigorist position on infant baptism. That is, they recommend denying baptism to those children whose parents and godparents are considered to be absent of faith. In fact, the denial of baptism in these circumstances has become a widespread practice in the Italian Church. The reasoning behind the practice is stated well by a progressive Catholic layman, Giorgio Campanini:

It seems beyond doubt that we are facing a clear disequilibrium in the administering of the sacraments. An emblematic case is that of the sacrament of baptism, the celebration of which seems to have given much greater emphasis to traditional, ritual, and sometimes almost magical components rather than to the presentation of the faith. To what extent is baptism, as administered today, truly a proclamation, a summons to faith? What has become of the godparents, the hypothetical ‘guarantors’ of the baptized child’s faith, in a widely secularized society like that of today? It must be asked whether the current praxis – that of not denying baptism to anyone, believer or non-believer – is really the most ecclesiastically correct one, and whether baptism can continue to be granted in the future without the catechesis of the parents, relatives, and godparents.

Magister analyzes well the problems inherent in this practice – which Cardinal Camillo Ruini, for many years the leading figure of the Italian bishops’ conference, has described as “pastorally destructive.” Magister points out that the same theological progressives who promote “openness” to the world are, in regard to this practice, theologically rigorist. I would add that it is clear that these “progressive rigorists” have taken on a rather Puritanical notion of Catholic sacraments. They would deny access to the grace of baptism for children whose parents or godparents “lack faith.” Could a more ruinous pastoral strategy be in place?

This brings me to the question that I raise in the title to this post. Whose bidding are these “progressive rigorists” doing? Christ’s or Antichrist’s?

The recent, almost unbelievable, tragedy in Pennsylvania has been copiously covered in the news media. Unfortunately, it is becoming an all too common occurrence. One of the telling things in the coverage is the way that the press seems almost unable to understand the Amish response of forgiveness. The very day that the young girls were killed the community sent representatives to the family of the killer to offer condolences for their loss and assurance of the Amish families’ forgiveness. Half of those at this man’s funeral were from the Amish community.

This does not seem “to compute” to those covering the story. Perhaps this is not surprising since statistics suggest that most of those in the news media, who would be covering the story, are non-believers. However, I wonder how strange it might seem to some of us Christians? Forgiveness, even in the most difficult of circumstances, is a Christian obligation. To deny someone else forgiveness is to deny it to oneself as the Amish have rightly said. This Amish community is presenting an heroic Christian witness and they are making it clear that it is their Christian faith that allows them to overcome more common but less “human” inclinations. This witness raises the perennial question that causes so many to reject belief in a loving God–the existence of evil and suffering.

One of the oft quoted responses from the Amish community is that they make sense of this because they understand it to be God’s will. Even some Christians rebel against this idea because if God wills it, it would seem that God is willing evil. Now, since Amish belief is influenced by Reformed theology it is almost certain that they do not make a distinction between God’s positive will and His permissive will. Thus, it is unlikely that they would be able to address this concern for those who are not willing to accept what is certainly a contradiction between faith and reason. In fact, because of this lack of distinction and for other reasons, a movement began at the beginning of the 20th century with philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called process philosophy. Whitehead and his students began a new theistic system of thought in an attempts to address the problem of suffering with a good God and they did so by rejecting God’s immutability. Whitehead incorporated Darwinian evolutionary theory into his theory about God and envisioned Him, rather than as Immutable Eternal Act, as a process that is conditioned and changed by creation. God is in the process of becoming God.

Some Catholic theologians, especially among the Jesuits (no surprise I suppose) have adopted process thought. Following Whitehead, they reject Church teaching on God’s immutability by claiming this is not a biblical view but the distortion of the biblical God by the incorporation of Greek philosophy into early Christianity. This is, of course, a facile dismissal of Christian tradition that leads most process theologians, in the end, to dismissing the Trinity or at least an orthodox understanding of the Trinity. Recently, some Evangelicals have begun to catch onto some aspects of process thought under the moniker, “openness theology.” Openness theology, among other things, attempts to “excuse” God from association with evil by denying Him omniscience, omnipotence, or some other necessary attribute of divine immutability. Very popular these days is wanting God to suffer in His divinity (for more on this and a good response to process thinking see Fr. Thomas Weinandy’s article) in order to bring Him closer to us.

John Paul the Great warned, in Fides et ratio, of the dangers of rejecting a sound metaphysics (and it is clear he had Thomist metaphysics in mind) in trying to do theology because one is then obligated to create his own on the fly. Philosophy done ad hoc is never self-consistent and so it devolves into incoherence. This is exactly the problem with the philosophies that deny God’s immutability. The problem with denying God immutability, omniscience, or omnipotence is that these are necessary attributes of God. God cannot be God if He changes, if He does not know everything, or does not have complete authority over His creation. Why? Perhaps the truth of creatio ex nihilo, God’s creation out of nothing, can make it clear.

The Greek philosophers recognized that nothing comes from nothing. Anything that is contingent (that is, non-necessary existence) cannot exist without some necessary Source of existence. In fact, anything that can change must have a higher principle of existence that is responsible for giving to the object its capacity to change and that which it can change into. Therefore, if God can change, He must change into something He is not. Where does the “something” come from if it does already exist as part of God? It cannot come from Him or He would already posses it. A god who changes is not necessary being and therefore, He cannot create ex nihilo. In other words, he is not God.

Ironically, contrary to the originators’ intentions, the implications of a changing, suffering god are not the source of comfort or encouragement. If God can change, then there is no guarantee that he will ever overcome evil or even want to. He could change his mind about salvation and leave us all to go to hell as we deserve. He could change his mind about creation, annihilate it, and start over. He would not be Love but the Absolute Will of Islam and Christian voluntarism (which B16 recently criticized). With this type of god, we have no assurance of anything; certainly not salvation and eternal happiness. Our existence could quickly come to an end, we could spend enternity in hell regardless of our faith or good works, or we could spend eternity suffering in heaven if a suffering god turns out to be what it is that our mutable god turns into.

Evil and suffering are difficult to understand, especially when we experience them. This is not surprising since the correct understanding of evil (moral and natural) and suffering are as the privation of some good that ought to be there but is not. Again, this is a logical necessity because concrete existence can only come from God; only He can create out of nothing. God can only create good. Furthermore, God must keep whatever He creates in existence as a continuing act so there is no possibility that a concrete, positive “thing” could be evil in its being because it would require that God cooperate with evil (at least by keeping evil in existence if not creating it). This is another irony of those who reject God’s omniscience or omnipotence because they think that this requires God to cooperate with evil. Logic dictates exactly the opposite. Thus it is to be expected that while we can understand the existence of evil and suffering in the abstract as a necessity of the abuse of free will, when faced with a concrete experience of it we can never understand it. Evil is a privation of the good and, therefore, has no logos, no ratio, no meaning. It is an existential state, not an ontological reality that can be made sense of.

The wisdom of the Cross, as St. Paul teaches (see 1 Cor 17-31), is not a worldly wisdom. Rather, it is the grace of Christ rushing in to replace the good that has been removed through the evil of sin. That is why Paul says that with the Cross of Christ, where sin increased grace abounded all the more (see Rom 5:20). Grace heals the effects of evil because grace restores the communion with the divine nature, lost through sin, that all creation requires for its integrity (cf. 2 Pt 1:4).

This is the wisdom and brilliance of the Cross; God’s power is His Love; it is Himself. The total self gift of Christ in obedience on the Cross has undone the first sin of Adam. Sin and evil now become the catalysts for their own eventual destruction. God does not use evil as though it were some tool. He permits evil so that all have the free will to give themselves totally to Him or reject Him. But He only allows the sin and death that greater good can come from it. Christ calls all Christians to take up our crosses and to cooperate with Him in restoring to the world the harmony that sin destroys.

This is the witness of the Pennsylvania Amish community this last week. Instead of becoming cooperators with evil by wishing harm and vengeance on another of God’s creatures and thereby emptying the Cross of its power, they are showing that Christians must be cooperators with the Cross of Christ by rejoicing in their sufferings for sake of the building up of the Church (see Col 1:24). They show that we must return hate with love and show how Christ conquers the world.

Article by Catholic New Service:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — An Italian exorcist said demonic influence is strong in today’s world, affecting individuals and sometimes entire societies. While it is very rare for a person to be possessed by a demon, history reveals some likely examples — including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, said Pauline Father Gabriele Amorth.

Father Amorth, who works as an exorcist in the Diocese of Rome, made the comments in an interview with Vatican Radio Aug. 27. Father Amorth said every culture in history has shown an awareness of the existence of evil spirits.

With the Bible, he said, these spirits were identified as rebellious angels who “tempt man to evil out of hatred for God.” “The devil can possess not only individuals but also entire groups and populations.

For example, I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed by the devil,” he said. “If one thinks of what was committed by people like Stalin or Hitler, certainly they were possessed by the devil. This is seen in their actions, in their behavior and in the horrors they committed,” he said. “Therefore, society also needs to be defended against the devil,” he said.

Father Amorth said he thought one reason why the devil’s influence was high today is that Christian faith has weakened, replaced in many cases by superstition and an interest in the occult, which he said “open the way to demonic influences.”

He said the church teaches that the devil is a pure spirit; he is not seen, but his effects can be seen, he said. Exorcism, he said, is a prayer made in the name of the church to liberate people stricken by the devil or by his evil influences.

Father Amorth gained notoriety in 2000 when he revealed that Pope John Paul II had performed an impromptu exorcism on a young woman who flew into an apparent rage at the end of a general audience at the Vatican. In 1999, the Vatican issued a revised Rite of Exorcism, cautioning that cases of actual possession by devils were probably very rare.

The church also has emphasized that before an exorcism is performed, it is important to make certain one is dealing with the devil and not a psychological or other illness.

Our friends from when we lived in the DC area were here visiting this weekend. We had a very nice time. The weather was nice and so we decided to go to Springfield for the day on Saturday. As we drove past one church on the way into town, it had a sign out front that said, “If God seems far away, who moved?” One of our friends brought the sign to our attention and it occurred to me that the answer to the question necessitated a sound philosophical foundation. I mentioned that without a proper understanding of God and immutability then one could easily answer this question wrongly. She replied that one of her teachers (she is taking classes at a Catholic theology school in the DC area) told her class that he thought that the worst thing that happened to Christianity was its distortion by Greek philosophy. We did not pursue this issue very far but it did not surprise me. This claim is popular among a host of folks within and outside of Christianity.

This theory that Christianity was corrupted by Greek thought was popularized by Liberal Protestant historian, Adolph von Harnack, in his late 19th century History of Dogma. He claimed that the Early Church Fathers uncritically incorporated Platonist conceptions of God in contradiction to biblical depictions of divinity. This idea was taken up by some such as famed philosopher and progenitor of process philosophy, Alfred North Whitehead and student Charles Hartshorne, to reject God’s immutability. A few years after the last volume of Harnack’s three volume tome appeared, A.M. Fairbain declared that “theology has no falser idea than the impassibility of God” [The Place of Christ in Modern Theology (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893], 483). Since that time it has become widespread in Protestant circles to declare that God can suffer. This has been taken up by many Catholics as well. Now one can say that God suffered, but this requires distinctions.

Jesus Christ certainly really and truly suffered in His Passion and death. Jesus is God and so using what theologians call the communication of idioms we can say that God suffered. However, one cannot say God suffers or changes in any way in His divinity. If one claims that God can change in His divinity one implicitly denies God’s divinity. I will try to avoid a detailed discussion, so here is a quick and dirty summary. God is Being itself. All that exists owes its existence to God. God’s being is perfection itself. If God could change, even from one “emotional” state to another, there would have to be some higher principle than God that would provide the “room” for Him to “move” from one state to another. Thus, that which we call God would not be.

Now there are many people who complain that if God does not react to us and our sin, if He does not suffer when people suffer then He is just a lump and not the God that they want to have. This of course, is a false understanding of divine immutability. Immutability does not mean static. We are so stuck in time that we cannot comprehend eternal existence. However, the mistake those make who think this way, is that they do not recognize that God is the source of time. Change, as we understand it, is very closely associated with time. God is not limited by time; He does not need not change to be eternally active. St. Thomas referred to God as actus purus, Pure Act. He is one, eternal act. Thus, those things that we experience in time that are by their nature associated with change, such as emotions, if they are perfections then they have their origin in divine perfection. However, God is simple perfection and so that which we know as emotions is one way that we can participate in this simple divine perfection. But in God it always was, always is, and always will be. God does not experience emotions as we understand them. However, there is nothing that we experience as suffering in God because suffering is not a perfection.

God cannot suffer in His divinity. This is for the simple reason that suffering is a privation of being. It is non-being. Our experience of suffering comes from a lack of some good. Like evil and sin, there is some privation of good that gives rise to suffering. While some innocently fall into the error of a suffering God due to a faulty metaphysics, often as a misguided way of excusing God for the existence of evil in the world. However, some actually want a suffering/ changing God for other reasons. Many desire a changing God who can learn and evolve with His creation. Thus, He can learn from His “mistakes.” In the Old Testament, God may have outlawed certain things but they no longer need be considered so ’cause God has evolved. If these prohibitions continued into the New Testament, well that is not the last word either. If God suffers when we suffer, then He will find a way to allow us to do things that used to be considered wrong if we can devise an argument for why the prohibition causes us suffering.

Some implications of a suffering, changing God: If He can change, then we have no certainty of His promise of salvation in Christ. If He can change in any way, nothing keeps Him from changing His promise. In fact, even if He did not change His “mind,” there would be no guarantee that He could effect His plan of salvation. He would be subject to the ebb and flow of this higher principle that provided room for His changing. If we think about it for a moment, we do not want a god who can suffer with us; we want a God who can save us. In fact, this is the only philosophically consistent way to understand God. God does not suffer, He does not change; He cannot and will not change. He loves us unchangeably. That is the comfort of truly knowing our God.

If you are interested in a very good summary of the arguments for a suffering God and a solid refutation of them, you ought to take a look at a great book by Fr. Thomas Weinandy called Does God Suffer? Fr. Weinandy is a Capuchin friar who is now the Executive Director of the Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).