One Bread, One Body, One Church: Essays on the Ecclesia of Christ Today in Honor of Bernard P. Prusak 9789042944848, 9789042944855, 9042944846

Table of contents :
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_00_CV
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_00_VW
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_01_Minch-Cimorelli
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_02_Danove
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_03_Caponi
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_04_Loya
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_05_Huyghes
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_06_Collins
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_07_Cimorelli
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_08_Schüssler-Fiorenza
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_09_O'reilly-Gindhart
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_10_Prusak
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_11_Doyle
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_12_Temmerman
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_13_Lakeland
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_14_Ross
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_15_Minch
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_16_Bibliography
102459_Prusak_ANL_LXXXI_17_Contributors

Citation preview

One Bread, One Body, One Church Essays on the Ecclesia of Christ Today in Honor of Bernard P. Prusak

Edited by

Christopher Cimorelli and Daniel Minch

PEETERS

ONE BREAD, ONE BODY, ONE CHURCH

ANNUA NUNTIA LOVANIENSIA

LXXXI

One Bread, One Body, One Church

Essays on the Ecclesia of Christ Today in Honor of Bernard P. Prusak

Edited by

Christopher Cimorelli and Daniel Minch

With a Foreword by

Bernard McGinn

PEETERS

LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2021

Cover illustration: “Breaking Bread” © Jennifer Swoyer A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means without written permission from the publisher © Uitgeverij Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium) ISBN 978-90-429-4484-8 eISBN 978-90-429-4485-5 D/2021/0602/66

Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .VII Bernard McGinn Foreword: For Bernard P. Prusak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .IX Daniel Minch and Christopher Cimorelli “How Does the Church Come from Jesus?”: Bernard P. Prusak’s Question and Our Unfinished Theological Task . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Part I Encountering God in History Revelation, Scripture, and Living Traditions Paul L. Danove Constructing Mark’s Anthropology: Relating the Son of Man and Jesus’ Disciples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Francis J. Caponi, OSA Ecclesia ab Abel: Thomistic Reflections on the Origin and Scope of the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Joseph A. Loya, OSA “Upon Us and upon These Offered Gifts”: Ecclesio-epicletic Graces in Byzantine Divine Liturgies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Kevin L. Hughes Ecclesia contemplativa: Saint Bonaventure and the Question of Franciscan Eschatology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Gerald O’Collins, SJ Vatican II and Principles for Discernment and Decision . . . . . . . 97 Christopher Cimorelli “Heralds and Servants”: An Open View of the Magisterium for the Promotion of Christian Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Francis Schüssler Fiorenza La nouvelle théologie’s Political Theology: From de Lubac to Gutiérrez and Ratzinger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

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CONTENTS

Part II Becoming ‘the Community of the Unexpected’ Constructive Ecclesiology and the Future of the Church Mary Catherine O’Reilly-Gindhart Mercy toward Divorced and Civilly Remarried Catholics: A New Way of Pastoral Practice in Amoris laetitia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Bernard G. Prusak Regarding Silence: Ethics and Ecclesiology in Two Recent Controversies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Dennis M. Doyle Bernard P. Prusak’s The Church Unfinished Revisited: Responding to Unanswered Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Ray Temmerman Hope for the Church(es): Young People in an Age of Linguistic Dynamism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Paul Lakeland Grace and Concupiscence: On Being a Holy Church . . . . . . . . . 243 Susan A. Ross The Church as “Spotless Bride”: A Feminist Critique of a Harmful Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Daniel Minch The Church as Society and Body of Christ: Breaking Down Historical and Theological Dependence on Ecclesial Monarchy . . . . 281 Bibliography of Bernard P. Prusak: Works from 1967-2019 . . . . . 303 List of Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Acknowledgements This volume has been a labor of love for us, the editors, to put together in honor of our teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend, Bernard P. Prusak. The period in which this Festschrift was prepared was an extraordinarily difficult one, filled with transitions, milestones, and even major public-health, economic, and social-justice crises. Completing it was a difficult but worthy task, given that it was done in the service of someone whom we greatly admire, and who has touched so many lives. We are extremely grateful to all of our contributors and peer reviewers for all of their hard work in the many stages of preparation and editing. Their essays are truly a fitting tribute to their colleague, and we hope that the volume as a whole does justice to their efforts. We would especially like to thank the series editor of Annua Nuntia Lovaniensia, Anthony Dupont of KU Leuven, for all of his help and patience during this process. We are also extremely grateful to Leo Kenis, editor emeritus of the ANL series, who greenlit the volume and provided us with a great deal of help and encouragement in breaking ground on this project. Thanks also to Peter De Mey, Tony Godzieba, Thomas Knieps, Marty Laird, and Suzanne Toton, for their advice and guidance in helping us to plan and execute the volume. Despite his many commitments, Bernard McGinn kindly contributed a personal Foreword for which we are extremely grateful. Many thanks also to Christiane Alpers, Rhodora ­Beaton, Kyle Bennett, Massimo Faggioli, Julia Feder, Bert Groen, Andrew Meszaros, Paul Murray, Mary Catherine O’Reilly-Gindhart, Todd Salzmann, C. Michael Shea, Geert Van Oyen, Gunda Werner, and Katherine Wrisley Shelby. Special thanks also go to Rita Corstjens for her editorial expertise and wonderful work on the manuscript, as well as to the excellent team at Peeters Press. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the contribution of Jennifer Swoyer, who provided the cover art for this volume with her evocative painting, “Breaking Bread.” The Editors

Foreword For Bernard P. Prusak A lifetime ago (1959-1963), Bernard Prusak and I sat in the ‘Great Hall’ (Aula magna) of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome listening to and trying to absorb some of the theology that helped shape the Second Vatican Council. Great theologians, like Bernard Lonergan, Josef Fuchs, Francis Sullivan, and René Latourelle, were among our teachers, and occasional visiting lectures by figures like Karl Rahner enriched our theological education. The excitement of studying theology in the international atmosphere of Rome and witnessing the opening session of the Council is impossible to forget. The Gregorian theological education, with its classes and its oral exams in Latin, was a challenge, and the ‘hundred thesis system’ (i.e., final exam at the end of four years on one hundred theological theses) is long gone. For all of its antiquarian flavor, the Gregorian education of those days gave us a sense of dealing with theology as a whole, not in bits and pieces, and there were real advantages to this. We were a fortunate generation. After our return from Rome to the United States in 1963, we and our classmates went off in our own directions to lives quite different in most cases from what we had imagined. Both Bernard Prusak and I (the two Bernards in the class) pursued careers in teaching and writing theology over what is now quite a long time. Our contexts, however, were different, so our interactions over the years were not frequent. Nevertheless, it would not be possible for anyone involved with the story of Catholic theology in the United States over the past sixty years not to know of the significance of the role that Bernard Prusak has had, both as a major theologian and as an educator of theologians. Furthermore, Prusak’s contributions as a leading figure both in the Catholic Theological Society of America and the College Theology Society have been exemplary. His many writings, from influential monographs, through ground-breaking articles, to challenging journalistic pieces in Commonweal and other publications, have given him a name both instantly recognizable and widely respected for its clarity, wisdom, and fairness. What is especially striking about this collection of essays about and inspired by Bernard Prusak and his work is that it is not an institutional

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effort, but a labor of love by his students and associates over the decades to pay homage to a master teacher, a faithful friend, and an inspiring theologian. Those of us, who, like Bernard Prusak, have been involved in a lifetime of teaching know that there is no greater reward and solace than the friendship and gratitude of former students. It is something that Bernard Prusak has earned over decades of service, as is fully manifested in this impressive offering of essays. “Ad multos annos,” as we used to sing in Rome those many years ago. Bernard McGinn University of Chicago, Divinity School September 2019

“How Does the Church Come from Jesus?” Bernard P. Prusak’s Question and Our Unfinished Theological Task Daniel Minch and Christopher Cimorelli The Enduring Question in Context: A Personal Reflection How does the church come from Jesus? This was the question that came to us from our teacher, Prof. Dr. Bernard P. Prusak, in the first session of his graduate course on ecclesiology. I recall that the whole group of us, about twelve or so, stared back at him; some opened their mouths and started to answer, but no one could quite form a sentence. The question was repeated again. We weren’t really sure if this was a real question for us to try and answer, or a rhetorical one. Were we playing Guess what’s in the professor’s head? This would have been around 2009 and either shortly before or just after Benedict XVI’s remission of the latae sententiae excommunications of four bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, including the convicted Holocaust-denier Richard Williamson.1 The ‘Williamson affair’ became yet another episode in the pontificate of Benedict that illustrated significant limits to his understanding of wider aspects of world in which he was expected to exercise his pastorship, and seriously implied that no one in the Vatican had thought even to do a simple Google-search on Williamson before allowing him back into communion with Rome. In the spring of 2010 came Hans Küng’s open letter to the bishops, calling Benedict’s papacy one of missed opportunities that sought to return to the pre-Vatican II era. Küng openly accused the pope of participating in the cover-up of sexual abuse by clergy, and he pleaded for the bishops to exercise a ‘Pauline function’ to balance out the Petrine function of the pope.2 These events were not the explicit topic of ­discussion in our classes on ecclesiology, but they were in the 1  Benedict XVI, “Decree Remitting the Excommunication ‘Latae Sententiae’ of the Bishops of The Society of St Pius X,” http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ cbishops/documents/rc_con_cbishops_doc_20090121_remissione-scomunica_en.html. 2  Hans Küng, “Church in Worst Credibility Crisis since Reformation, Theologian Tells Bishops,” The Irish Times (April 16, 2010), https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/ church-in-worst-credibility-crisis-since-reformation-theologian-tells-bishops-1.652950.

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b­ ackground, and were occasionally mentioned. Bernie kept the focus on the texts, and especially the primary texts of the church, from the New Testament texts that dealt with the structure of the local churches and their leadership to the Didache and its warnings against false prophets. The sessions on Vatican II were especially enlightening, in part because they were clearly very personal. He had been there and had lived it. Our teacher had been present at the fourth session of the Council, eventually renting a car and bringing the conciliar documents into Czechoslovakia – part of the Eastern Bloc – where they were mimeographed and distributed to the local churches. He drew the layout of St. Peter’s Basilica on the whiteboard and indicated where the famous coffee bar was located, where all ‘the real action happened’. How does the church come from Jesus? This question was never quite answered directly, but it was sharpened at times by pointing to the concrete history of the church: How does the church of this era come from Jesus? The church of the apostles, of Justin Martyr, Augustine, Bellarmine, and of Möhler? What about that of Cardinals Manning and Newman, two mid-nineteenth-century English Catholics who could not have been more different in their conceptions of ‘the church’ during a crucial period of ecclesial development? Then there was the church of Yves Congar and Alfredo Ottaviani, and of the stoic Pius XII and the enigmatic John XXIII…. This was not easy to answer then, and still remains difficult for us, Bernie’s former students, despite our now being trained ‘professional’ theologians, whatever that may mean. To those of us who studied at Villanova University, especially during his time as department chair, Bernie was the Rock, the Petrine figure who steered the ship. He was our academic advisor, and in fact the first person I ever met associated with theology at Villanova. Both Chris and I were fortunate enough to study as undergraduates at Villanova: myself in Theology and Classical Studies, and Chris in Economics, later moving into theology after being drawn to it by the deep questions that were evoked in him and never definitively answered. Chris’s first semester in graduate studies included Bernie’s course on Christology, an intense exploration of scripture and tradition to understand better the distinction of and linkage between ‘the Jesus of history and Christ of faith’; the course concluded by relating the understanding of Jesus developed to a host of contemporary concerns, including the role of women in the church and ecology. The point was always to enter more deeply into the mystery and pursue our questions, even when they led to more questions. In Bernie, we encountered someone who seemed like he’d already



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been there and to whom we could reliably turn to for guidance. He knew the world and he knew the tradition in a way that, even now, seems to me impossible to grasp for myself. He and other professors – in particular Anthony J. Godzieba, Thomas F. Martin, OSA, Michael J. Scanlon, OSA, and William Desmond – had a hand in sending at least five of us in the early to mid-2000s to Belgium for postgraduate studies at KU ­Leuven. Bernie especially urged me to go abroad and experience more of the world and more of the church, something that I took to heart. His words conveyed his trust in us, and that gave us the confidence to try new things and to let go of old things if they were holding us back. This is also an important part of his ecclesiology, and something we came to learn: the past does not simply stay still, and its meaning is never self-evident. Sometimes, the only way to remain faithful to the past is to change, and that always entails risk. We risk our identity when we dare to change, but without change, our identity will be imperiled anyway. As John Henry Newman put it, “In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”3 Bernard Prusak has been Professor of Theology at Villanova University since 1969. Prior to his career as an academic theologian, he was a seminarian and priest in the diocese of Paterson, New Jersey. He went to Rome in 1959 to study at the Gregorian University. After receiving his STL (sacrae theologiae licentiatus) in 1963, Bernie came home to be ordained as a priest, and then returned to Rome the next year for doctoral studies in canon law at Lateran University. He graduated in 1967 with a JCD (juris canonici doctor) after completing a dissertation entitled The Canonical Concept of Particular Church before and after Vatican II.4 I can say that the distinction and even the interruption of the church ‘before’ and ‘after’ Vatican II would mark his teaching for years to come. He instilled in us the ‘foreignness’ of the church of his childhood, ­something which most of his students never truly experienced, but which 3  John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London: James Toovey, 1845), 39. Newman is reflecting here on the way ideas become manifest in the world, developing as they are realized by persons and communities engaging new contexts, questions, and controversies. There is tremendous risk involved, but such a risk and its consequences are, Newman believes, necessary if an idea like Christianity – delivered by Christ to the Apostles – is not only to be understood and reach its fulfillment, but also to remain in continuity with itself. 4  Bernard P. Prusak, The Canonical Concept of Particular Church before and after Vatican II, Theses ad lauream in iure canonico (Rome: Pontificia Universita Lateranense, 1967).

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was critical for us to understand. As a young priest in Rome at the final session of the Council, he worked as an aide, tasked with “distributing documents and collecting votes and amendments from my assigned section of bishops.”5 This experience was both formative and transformative for Bernie – he is a living witness to one of the most revolutionary moments in the history of the church, which he saw from the inside. The whole world watched as the bishops deliberated, shrouded in the mystery of the church and all of its pageantry and ostentation. Perhaps in contemporary Western society we forget that this was an intense media spectacle. Bernie saw and experienced a church that was learning to become a ‘world church’, as bishops learned something about their own charisms and what it meant to work collegially. New possibilities and pathways for the future were opened and codified into the documents we now know and, hopefully, continue to read, interpret, and apply. Upon his return to the United States after the Council, Bernie took up the work of priestly ministry with the special task of explaining to the faithful what the Council meant for the church and for the Catholic faith. From his courses on the Eucharist, I remember that many people thought that the liturgical reforms meant that Catholics would simply ‘become like the Protestants’, trading Latin for the vernacular, moving the altar, and reversing the direction of the liturgical actions to face the people. He explained the coming changes, however, as a return to or recovery of many of the earliest traditions of the church. His deep knowledge of the Patristic sources would have been of great help here and likely made a remarkable impression on the people whom he addressed. I can attest that when I read the words of Justin Martyr on the eucharistic meal in his Apology, it’s still Bernie’s voice that is in my head saying, “not as ordinary food and drink do we receive them….” The task of explaining the results of the Council brought Bernie in contact with a Benedictine sister, and the two fell in love. In his own words: We became close friends; eventually, we decided that we wanted to live our lives together. I applied for and received a dispensation, and my wife Helen and I were married for forty-one years until her death early this year [2012]. Fortunately, the formal letter or “rescript” of dispensation did not include the stipulation that the recipient not hold a teaching position in a Catholic college or university. I had

 Bernard P. Prusak, “Turning Point: A Theologian Remembers the Council (Fifty Years after Vatican II),” Commonweal 139, no. 16 (September 28, 2012): 20-25. 5



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applied for a teaching position in theology, and was offered one by Villanova University – where I have been teaching since 1969.6

After they married in 1970, Bernie began a new life as a husband, an academic theologian, and later a father. After having been a teacher while serving with the Benedictines, Helen Prusak (née McGonegal) became a guidance counselor at the Academy of Notre Dame in Villanova, Pennsylvania. She later became vice principal there and retired in 2005. They had two children, one of whom, Bernard G. Prusak, is now a scholar in his own right and has provided a contribution to this volume. As an academic theologian, Bernie became involved in the College Theology Society and, together with Rodger Van Allen, founded the journal Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society. Van Allen and Bernie continued as co-editors until 1979, when Van Allen transitioned to Associate Editor. In 1980, Bernie retired from the editorship of Horizons, which has gone on to become perhaps the premier journal in Systematic Theology in the English-speaking world. Bernie continued to publish articles and book chapters, book reviews for Commonweal, and later his well-known monograph, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (2004), which has become an important reference work for students of Catholic ecclesiology. From 2003 until 2012 he served as the Chair of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova, during which time Chris and I were lucky enough to have been advised and mentored by him. His courses on the Eucharist, Ecclesiology, Death and Dying, and Christology were formative for many of us, but he has taught and continues to teach a range of classes that allows him to pass on elements of the tradition to new generations. After battling ALS, Helen Prusak passed away in 2012. This loss was felt by many, but naturally none so deeply as Bernie and his family. As we celebrate him and his life and career, we should also remember his family and those around him who doubtless played no small part in forming the person who has been such an inspiration. In paying tribute to him, we are also honoring them. Daniel Minch Memorial of St. Anthony of Egypt Graz, January 2020

 Prusak, “Turning Point.”

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The Problem of History and Identity in the Church We set out to create this liber amicorum in honor of Bernie Prusak because we wanted to acknowledge how much he and his work have meant to us, both as theologians and as people. We have not prepared it in anticipation of any particular occasion; however, we recently learned of his upcoming retirement at the end of the 2021-2022 academic year, higlighting the timeliness of this publication. The volume is only meant to show our gratitude to him for his mentorship and theological body of work which continue to be a source of guidance and inspiration for us. We wanted to share that opportunity with others, and so we asked a number of Bernie’s friends, colleagues, and former students to contribute. We asked a wide and diverse group of people to contribute in various capacities, first for advice, then as contributors, and later as peer reviewers. Sadly, some people were unable to participate due to time constraints and other obligations despite their sincerest efforts. It is important to note that many of Bernie’s colleagues today were once his students, and, remarkably, there are several generations of those students represented in this volume. We wanted to create a bridge from Bernie’s experience to our own, and to offer different perspectives on the church as it exists and as it has existed. He taught us with great energy and patience, unfolding the mysteries of wide-ranging, complex material to his classes. What was previously impenetrable and arcane for undergraduates became graspable. Not infrequently, he achieved in some of us what great teachers strive to produce: understanding the material well enough to disagree intelligently with almost all of it! One of the most important parts of our theological formation was instilling in us a visceral understanding of the fact that history has not always been the same; the church has changed. He made it possible for those of us born long after Vatican II and the liturgical reforms to enter the foreign land of the church as semper idem, a ‘perfect society’ where “the priest, frequently dressed in black vestments, silently ‘said’ a ‘Low Mass’ for the dead, in Latin, with his back to the people.”7 This was crucial to understand, especially in the context of Benedict’s papacy and the on-going ‘reform of the reform’ of the liturgy. In the papacy of Francis, our ecclesiological context has changed since we were Bernie’s students, and since he wrote down his own reflections on the church during and after Vatican II for Commonweal in 2012. In that piece, he is realistic about the state of the  Prusak, “Turning Point.”

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church. After recounting the expectations and high hopes for change that followed the Council, he went on to convey how those hopes have been dampened and that the spirit of the Council is increasingly difficult to locate. Real, substantial change, in particular, had not materialized and “a new era in which the prospect of a pope calling for aggiornamento in the church is extremely unlikely.” It is our sincerest hope that such a new era is becoming more likely now in the pontificate of Francis, although Francis himself may be more of a transitional figure than a revolutionary one (as many people had expected). Interestingly, this would make him something like the inverse of John XXIII, at least with respect to the initial expectations of their pontificates. Perhaps Francis is more like the voice of one crying out in the desert and preparing the way for the new era to come. All Christians are called to the task of preparation, in an eschatological sense, but some have de facto more responsibility than others. How does the church come from Jesus? This question is, after all, also a question of how the church returns to Jesus. In earlier periods of our history, the question “How does the church come from Jesus?” was considered to be a much clearer and more settled question. It was a question that could be answered from dogmatic conclusions, rather than from historical investigation. After the end of the ‘long nineteenth century’, the search for the church’s origins became intermeshed with the crisis in our contemporary self-understanding. Since the methodological revolutions in Catholic theology that occurred shortly before the Second Vatican Council, the church has been engaged in a hermeneutical process of self-discovery, both ad intra and ad extra. The desire to discover the historical face of the church of Christ reveals the alterity of the past – the foreign land – prompting the reevaluation of who we are today, since that ‘foreign land’ of the past is directly connected to our present. It is precisely the challenges for faith today that lead us to study the past, sustaining our inquiries that simultaneously shape self-understanding.8 The confrontation with the past, as well as our increasingly pluralized contemporary world, has led, in the worst moments, to controversies and condemnations, and in the best moments to cultural and methodological breakthroughs. This volume seeks to bring different disciplines together, not to answer definitively this 8  In consideration of these ideas, cf. the following: Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 23-24; Walter Kasper, The Methods of Dogmatic Theology, trans. John Drury (Glen Rock, NJ: Paulist Press, 1967), 38-41.

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q­ uestion of ‘how’ the church comes from Jesus, but to help us to think together the challenge anew. This task has always been essential to Bernie’s theology. His own work, his ecclesiology, is essentially sacramental.9 Working from the early sources of the Christian tradition, he has identified the community of people, gathered in celebration (eucharisteō, in its verbal form), as the core of the church and what constitutes it as Christ’s Body. In fact, the main problem with the modern juridical conception of the church that he identifies in his work can be stated as follows: namely, it leaves out or marginalizes that sacramental unity, and thereby restricts the possibilities of what it means to be ‘church’. This change in thinking is also a change in identity, since the church which ‘eucharizes’ in celebration as the real body of Christ (corpus verum Christi) has shifted over the centuries. The ninth- and eleventh-century controversies over the ‘reality’ of the Eucharist as the body of Christ indicate that, by this point, ‘eucharist’ definitively refers to the objects of bread and wine, and not the action of the community, and that the active or verbal role is now performed by the priest alone. The church then became the ‘mystical body’ in contrast to the ‘real body’ of Christ, which now referred to the bread and wine themselves. Therefore, “instead of transforming the faithful into the body of Christ through their communion, the seldomreceived Eucharist was transformed into the greatest of the relics by medieval Christians.”10 The Eucharist, as what makes the church, became an end in itself, and, separated from this sacramental imagination, the church was more and more characterized by its visible form and juridical structure. Once the juridical elements came to be the ‘necessary’ and essential aspects of what it means to be ‘church’, a great transformation in ecclesial self-understanding was effected, and this also changed the Christian relationship to Jesus. This central insight about the sacramental nature of the church and its changing ‘density’ throughout history is at the center of Bernie’s work and teaching. This element, combined with the realization both that change is inevitable and necessary to safeguard continuity and that simply returning to an earlier practice will not automatically have the desired effect, must all be balanced together when we attempt to think 9  See Bernard P. Prusak, “Explaining Eucharistic ‘Real Presence’: Moving beyond a Medieval Conundrum,” Theological Studies 75, no. 2 (2014): 231-259; idem, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 184-197, 230-233. 10  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 195.



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of the contemporary church as ‘coming from’ Jesus of Nazareth and, above all, to remain faithful to his life and message. Bernie has exemplified this ‘balancing act’ throughout his academic life and service to the church. Structure and Content of This Volume In this volume, we seek to approach the problem of Catholic self-­ understanding in the light of the past from a ‘synoptic’ methodological perspective. The contours of this volume began to take shape in 2017, at the Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology Conference XI, “Ecclesia semper reformanda: Renewal and Reform beyond Polemics” (2017), which brought together myriad scholars from all over the world to grapple with the issues facing the Christian churches 500 years after the Reformation began. We were struck by how this conference resonated with the ideas and lessons Bernie engaged us with in his classes many years ago, planting seeds that would sprout, grow, and continue to bear fruit. We have asked the contributors to take a ‘constructive’ approach, or to help us build a constructive liber amicorum in the sense that we should be advancing the state of research, rather than merely rehashing the past. We have asked the contributors to use their own research and methodologies to address questions related to the work of Bernie Prusak, and, in particular, the foundational question of this volume: How does the church come from Jesus? Given the challenge of such a question, as well as the practicalities and limits of academic work, we received contributions from several different research areas and theological disciplines. The responses to this question thus involve many approaches, from rhetorical and narrative criticism of the biblical texts, liturgical theology, and theological ethics, to more explicitly ecclesiological studies of historical and systematic aspects implicit in the question. We are grateful for all of these unique chapters, which take on original themes, and we hope that this has helped both to advance the state of the question as well as to give each contributor the chance to reflect on their own work. We present this volume as a ‘synoptic’ approach to Catholic theology, which, like all disciplines, is increasingly fragmented and compartmentalized. It is a worthwhile challenge to ‘see together’ how all of our specializations are aimed at building up the church through critical reflection on our collective past and present; each chapter is thus an expression of the fides quae creditur and fides qua creditur. Bernie’s

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work and research interests form a starting point for many of us, sometimes explicitly, and in other cases the connection is implicit, but still substantial. This volume is divided in two main parts: Part I features contributions from biblical, liturgical and systematic theologians on the identity of the church and what it means to encounter God’s revelation in history. This part includes considerations on the presence of Christ in the world and the formation of the church itself down to the different biblical and liturgical sources, as well as reflections on the meaning and legacy of Vatican II. Part II features chapters that apply the principles of faith to the morally complex, ever-changing world to which the church also belongs in an eschatological sense. For example, contributions include explorations of the concept of mercy as enumerated by Pope Francis in his apostolic exhortation, Amoris laetitia, as well as more systematic considerations of both Prusak’s work and the future of the church. Part I: Encountering God in History: Revelation, Scripture, and Living Traditions begins with a chapter by Paul L. Danove (Villanova University). Danove’s chapter, “Constructing Mark’s Anthropology: Relating the Son of Man and Jesus’ Disciples,” investigates the manner in which repetition within Mark 8:31–9:1, 9:30-41, and 10:32-45 develops the characterizations of the Son of Man and Jesus’ disciples. Danove’s model of semantic and narrative interpretation examines the role of repetition in interpretation. The discussion then develops Mark’s assumed and cultivated beliefs about both the Son of Man and the disciples in order to clarify the contribution of Mark’s ‘Son of Man’ Christology to Mark’s ‘Son of Man’ focused anthropology. This contribution sheds light on the nature of discipleship and its relation to Christ for the Markan community, providing a paradigm for contemporary reflection. Following on Danove’s biblical reflection, Francis J. Caponi (Villanova University) tackles the more systematic question, “When did the Church begin?” In his chapter, “Ecclesia ab Abel: Thomistic Reflections on the Origin and Scope of the Church,” Caponi argues that Catholic theology does not merely point to what might be the most obvious candidates, such as the calling of the Apostles, the Last Supper, and Pentecost. These important moments are themselves the culmination of a long history. Correspondingly, Caponi argues that the question of “Who belongs to the Church?” also has a much wider scope than the obvious and visible church. By considering the theme of the ‘ecclesia ab



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Abel’ as it is developed in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, he explores an ambiguity regarding the origin and scope of the Church which is present in the documents of Vatican II and echoed in Prusak’s work. In revisiting the question, “How exactly should the Spirit’s role in the eucharistic mystery be articulated?” Joseph A. Loya (Villanova University) has offered a chapter entitled, “‘Upon Us and upon These Offered Gifts’: Ecclesio-epicletic Graces in Byzantine Divine Liturgies.” In this liturgical-pneumatological reflection, Loya argues that the epiclesis should be considered in its broader context, wherein it becomes a multifaceted microcosm that illumines fundamental issues of Christology, pneumatology, ecclesiology and sacramental theology. Thus, liturgical theology becomes a nexus point for understanding and engaging with the faith of the church as a whole. Indeed, the theological resonance of studies of the epiclesis necessitates engagement with such theological issues as the roles of faith, the praying assembly, the ordained and universal priesthood, and the Holy Spirit in the realization of the Eucharist, as well as ‘real presence’. In his chapter entitled “Ecclesia contemplativa: Saint Bonaventure and the Question of Franciscan Eschatology,” Kevin L. Hughes (Villanova University) examines the model of the church presented through Franciscan Eschatology. He argues that the theology of Saint Bonaventure offers an angle of approach to the question of history that can incorporate the fertile creativity of Joachim of Fiore, including his radical openness to God. This eschatological vision of a God who “makes all things new” leads to a dynamic, symphonic vision of the church that is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. For Hughes, this Franciscan approach offers an opportunity for contemporary theologians to again dare to take up the question of history in a time of increasing polarization, fracture, and division. Gerald O’Collins (University of Divinity/Jesuit Theological College, Melbourne) has provided a chapter on “Vatican II and Principles for Discernment and Decision.” The Council documents developed a great deal of new teaching, particularly on the nature of the church, religious liberty, relations with other Christians, and relations with the Jewish people. Essentially, it introduced a new paradigm for the relation of the church to the world. O’Collins investigates what principles were at work in guiding the Council’s discernment and decision-making. His chapter argues that the questions faced at Vatican II arose from both inside and from outside of the Catholic Church. Likewise, the Council’s responses were also directed ad intra and ad extra with regard to the church.

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He outlines four principles from within the church and four principles that originate outside of the church’s visible borders. Christopher Cimorelli (National Institute for Newman Studies and Caldwell University), in his chapter, “‘Heralds and Servants’: An Open View of the Magisterium for the Promotion of Christian Unity,” traces how recent difficulties or regressions in Catholic ecumenical theology have their roots in unbalanced notions of the magisterium’s role in doctrinal development, particularly in the lead-up to and aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. Given the ongoing impasse between Catholics and non-Catholics on the issue of the church’s hierarchy, this subject requires further attention. After delineating these difficulties and challenges, Cimorelli explores alternative conceptions of the magisterium’s function in service to the divine Word, including Pope Paul VI’s Evangelii nuntiandi and reflections from Joseph Ratzinger shortly after Vatican II. These other conceptions facilitate a view of the magisterium as inherently ‘open’, one that might facilitate a more positive role for the magisterium in contemporary Catholic ecumenical efforts. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza’s (Harvard Divinity School) chapter, “La nouvelle théologie’s Political Theology: From de Lubac to Gutiérrez and Ratzinger,” examines the influence that Henri de Lubac’s conception of the relationship between nature and grace had on the theological understanding of church and society in the work of two prominent post-conciliar theologians: Gustavo Gutiérrez and Joseph Ratzinger. De Lubac drew the political theological implications from his theology of grace and from his conception of the social nature of Catholicism. Schüssler Fiorenza argues that this directly influenced both Joseph Ratzinger and Gustavo Gutiérrez, particularly their conceptions of the relationship between church and political society. He argues that the differences between the theologians can be seen not only as a result of the influence of de Lubac, but also as diverse attempts to bring his theological insights into new areas and problems in the post-­ Vatican II era. Despite the diversity of approaches in Part I, it can broadly be seen as dealing with the sources and origins of the church’s tradition and the historical encounter with revelation. Part II: Becoming ‘the Community of the Unexpected’: Constructive Ecclesiology and the Future of the Church is not unconcerned with these issues, but the contributions here take a more applicative or future-oriented approach. They are more explicitly ecclesiological in the classical sense, and several engage directly with the work of Bernard Prusak.



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In the first chapter of Part II, “Mercy toward Divorced and Civilly Remarried Catholics: A New Way of Pastoral Practice in Amoris laetitia,” Mary Catherine O’Reilly-Gindhart (University of Glasgow and Cabrini University) examines how the practice of mercy outlined in Amoris laetitia opens the pathway for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to be readmitted to the sacraments. She focuses on the merciful processes of discernment and accompaniment outlined in Amoris laetitia, especially its eighth chapter. O’Reilly-Gindhart first examines how Pope Francis defines mercy before moving to the pastoral practice of mercy for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Similarly, Bernard G. Prusak (King’s College) has provided an interdisciplinary chapter, “Regarding Silence: Ethics and Ecclesiology in Two Recent Controversies.” The controversies are, namely, the reception of the 2016 film Silence and Pope Francis’s own silence in the face of heated criticism regarding his apostolic exhortation, Amoris laetitia. Silence examines the question of whether faith in Christ could ever coherently call for and justify denying Christ. Prusak uses James Martin’s reflections on the film as a starting point, since Martin explicitly calls attention to Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia: “Can we trust that God works through a person’s conscience, and that God helps us discern the right path in complex situations, where the normal rules seem inadequate to the situation?” Prusak examines the phenomenon of ‘silence’ and especially Francis’s response, or lack thereof, to the criticisms posed by certain bishops in reaction to the exhortation. The ecclesiological implications of this discussion are, according to Prusak, directly related to ethical praxis and Francis’s understanding of divine mercy. In 2006, as part of a review symposium in Horizons dedicated to Bernie’s book The Church Unfinished (2004), Dennis M. Doyle (University of Dayton) gave an overview of the book’s main themes. At the time, Doyle raised a few questions at the end of the review that, after some reflection, he later wanted to reformulate. In his contribution to this volume, “Bernard P. Prusak’s The Church Unfinished Revisited: Responding to Unanswered Questions,” he clarifies some of his previous questions in an attempt to overcome the contemporary polarization in Catholic theology. In particular, he addresses the divide between those who acknowledge change and continuity in a way that mainly promotes change, on the one hand, and those who acknowledge change and continuity in a way that mainly resists further changes, on the other. This chapter is meant to clarify both Prusak’s presentation of

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change and continuity and Doyle’s own position, especially with regard to the founding of the church, as well as the possibility of women’s ordination. In Ray Temmerman’s (Interchurch Families International Network) chapter, “Hope for the Church(es): Young People in an Age of Linguistic Dynamism,” he argues that, in order to carry Prusak’s work forward and expand on it, we must understand how people today speak about the church. This is because the language used to talk about the church has changed over the years, as understandings have changed, grown and developed. Temmerman explores these ideas with a historical investigation of the language used regarding the Eucharist. He goes on to argue that young people are particularly well placed to help us learn the developing language and thus to help the churches relate to the world. Paul Lakeland (Fairfield University) addresses the challenge of ‘being the church’ in the world, and especially what it might mean to be a ‘holy’ church. His chapter, “Grace and Concupiscence: On Being a Holy Church,” is very much informed by the insights of Karl Rahner on the church/world relationship. Lakeland’s chapter proceeds in three steps. First, he attempts to lay out what holiness can mean, as well as what it might look like to be a holy church, a church of the saints. This necessarily includes what the word ‘saint’ has meant in the Christian tradition and what it might still mean today. Second, he explores the concept of ‘world’, particularly in relation to the roles of grace and concupiscence. Third, he asks how the holy church and the graced-butconcupiscent world are connected with one another. Prusak himself has been very concerned with the future of the church as a whole, and especially for the roles of laity and women. Reflecting on this legacy, Susan A. Ross (Loyola University Chicago) provides an important contribution with her chapter, “The Church as ‘Spotless Bride’: A Feminist Critique of a Harmful Metaphor.” She begins by noting that Prusak is one of the few male theologians highly attentive to the role of women in Christianity. One of his early essays even provided a valuable resource to scholars and students looking to understand perceptions of women. In her chapter, Ross offers a tentative answer to some of the questions posed in Prusak’s writing on the future of women in the church. The church as a whole – both clergy and laity – must grapple with the ways that the church itself has been feminized, what this means, and what it would take to move forward as a church of genuine equality for women and men. By exploring the metaphor of the church as ‘spotless bride of Christ’, Ross gives a tentative and hopeful response to this challenge.



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In his contribution, “The Church as Society and Body of Christ: Breaking Down Historical and Theological Dependence on Ecclesial Monarchy,” Daniel Minch (University of Graz) begins by exploring some of the historical and theological reasons behind the historical adoption of monarchial sovereignty as the dominant form of Catholic governance. He draws directly on the ecclesiological work done by Prusak, who identifies a key theological reason for the turn toward monarchial government based on the differentiation between sacramental and juridical ecclesiologies. Minch identifies a deficient creation theology and Christology behind the insistence on monarchial sovereignty. He argues that both of these are related to the ecclesiological distinction pointed out by Prusak. This chapter provides a historical-theological critique of the development and absolutization of monarchial sovereignty. Mindful of the adage that it is extraordinarily difficult to return to our teachers and mentors anything like the benefits that we have received from them, we instead must ‘regift’ our blessings, hoping that this volume will allow some of what we have learned from Bernie – as a friend, colleague, mentor, educator and fellow Christian – to be imparted to others. It is certainly in this spirit that his work continues to inspire those who have learned from him. To end on an illustrative note, which we believe is quite telling of Bernie’s impact and character, one of his former students and current colleagues shared with us the following: when he is asked by students what he recommends for their second required theology course at Villanova, he responds, “See what Dr. Prusak is teaching next semester.”

Part I

Encountering God in History Revelation, Scripture, and Living Traditions

Constructing Mark’s Anthropology

Relating the Son of Man and Jesus’ Disciples Paul L. Danove This chapter investigates the manner in which the repetition of words, contexts, and structures in the Gospel of Mark develops characterization within the Gospel. In particular, I will examine Mark 8:31–9:1, 9:30-41, and 10:32-45 in order to show how the Gospel develops and relates the characterizations of the Son of Man and Jesus’ disciples. The introductory discussion considers the role of repetition in characterization, the nature of semantic and narrative frames and their implications for describing the implied reader of Mark, and the rhetorical strategies apparent in characterization. The discussion of characterization distinguishes assumed beliefs from cultivated beliefs about the Son of Man and disciples and then develops the contribution of Mark’s Christology centered on the Son of Man to Mark’s Anthropology centered on Jesus’ disciples. This chapter attempts to establish that the narration of the Gospel of Mark cultivates both a particular Anthropology and model of discipleship that are both grounded in the person and teaching of Jesus. I.  The Semantic and Narrative Rhetoric of Characterization The semantic rhetoric becomes apparent whenever the narration cultivates specialized connotations for particular vocabulary used in characterization. For example, although the verb discuss/dispute (διαλογίζομαι) may connote a positive, negative, or neutral action in general Koine Greek usage, the narration of Mark realizes only the verb’s negative potential by repeatedly contrasting those who ‘discuss’ and their topic of discussion with Jesus and his teachings and actions.1 The scribes 1  Gottlob Schrenk, “διαλογίζομαι,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), vol. 2, 95-96. Various other contributions of repetition to narrative development receive attention in Neil R. Leroux, “Repetition, Progression, and Persuasion in Scripture,” Neotestamentica 29, no. 1 (1995): 8-10; B. M. F. van Iersel, “Locality, Structure, and Meaning in Mark,” Linguistica Biblica 55 (1983): 45-54, Peter J. R ­ abinowitz,

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­ iscussing that Jesus is blaspheming (2:6, 8a, 8b) are countered by Jesus’ d statements and action (2:8-12); the disciples discussing that they have no bread (8:16) are depicted by Jesus as lacking understanding and having a hardened heart (8:17); the disciples discussing who is greatest (9:33-34) are corrected in Jesus’ teaching to the twelve about being last and servant of all (9:35); and the chief priests, scribes, and elders discussing the origins of John’s baptism (11:31) are revealed as lacking faith and fearing the crowd (11:31-32) that esteems Jesus (11:18). More detailed developments become possible when the same vocabulary repeatedly occurs within the same narrative contexts as in the contextual repetition and linkage of ‘twelve’ (δώδεκα), ‘send’ (ἀποστέλλω), ‘proclaim’ (κηρύσσω), and ‘cast out demons’ (δαιμόνια ἐκβάλλω) within 3:13-19 and 6:6b-13.2 Two or more repeated contexts also may appear in the same sequence as in the structural repetition and linkage of passion and resurrection predictions concerning the Son of Man (8:31-32a; 9:3032; 10:32-34), controversies involving disciples of Jesus (8:32b-33; 9:33-34; 10:35-41), and teachings by Jesus (8:34–9:1; 9:35-41; 10:42-45).3 Cultivation of specialized connotations for vocabulary through verbal, contextual, and structural repetition is explained in terms of the evocation and modification of semantic frames that make available to interpreters [1] information about the words accommodated by the frame, [2] relationships among these words and references to other frames containing them, [3] perspectives for evaluating the function of the words, and [4] expectations concerning the content of communication.4 In the Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 53; David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie, Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 47-48; Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading, Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985), 365-440; and Robert C. Tannehill, The Sword of His Mouth (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1975), 39-51. 2  Contextual repetition receives development in Robert Alter, The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 39, who discusses how the near conjunction of ‘womb’, ‘darkness’, ‘light’, and ‘hedge’ in Job 38 evokes the scene of Job 3 where these words similarly were joined to produce a certain effect. 3  Narrative units used in this study are similar to those proposed by Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel: Mark’s World in Literary-Historical Perspective (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1989), 312-313, and B. M. F. van Iersel, Mark: A Reader-Response Commentary, trans. W. H. Bisscheroux, Journal for the Study of the New Testament: Supplement Series 164 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 278-338. 4  Charles J. Fillmore, “The Need for Frame Semantics within Linguistics,” Statistical Methods in Linguistics 12 (1976): 5-29; cf. Teun van Dijk, “Semantic Macro-Structures and Knowledge Frames in Discourse Comprehension,” in Cognitive Processes in



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example of ‘discuss’, its initial occurrence (2:6) evokes pre-existing information, relationships, and perspectives for evaluation but it only realizes specific content and the potential for the verb’s negative interpretation. Repetition then realizes further information, relates this information, imposes negative evaluations on both those who discuss and the topic of discussion, and eventually cultivates an expectation for the continuing use of this negative connotation. Repeated contexts and structures progressively augment this potential for specialized development by relating the semantic frames evoked by different words and realizing for them the same information, relationships, evaluations, and expectations. Thus, repetition functions rhetorically whenever it cultivates content for semantic frames redundantly along specific lines. Repeated vocabulary, contexts, and structures also cultivate content that cannot be explained in terms of semantic frames. For example, the recognition that the prediction / controversy / teaching sequence of Mark 8:31–9:1 is being repeated in 9:30-41 indicates that the narration of 8:31–9:1 has cultivated an abstract conceptual model of this structured sequence and its parts, the relationships among the parts, and perspectives for evaluating their content. The narration of 9:30-41 also has the potential to cultivate an expectation that, should another prediction appear (as in 10:32-34), it will be followed by a further controversy and teaching (as in 10:35-45). Again, the formulation of a coherent portrait of a character, such as the Son of Man, presumes an integrative framework that makes available to interpreters a synthetic organization of the vast array of information about the Son of Man, identifies this character with Jesus and relates this character to other characters in specific ways, evaluates this character positively, and presents expectations for his characterization along specific lines. The cultivation of such abstract and synthetic content is explained in terms of the evocation and modification of narrative frames that accommodate narrative information, relationships, perspectives, and expectations in a manner that parallels the way the semantic frames accommodate semantic content.5 The narrative frame, which may be evoked by Comprehension, ed. Marcel A. Just and Patricia A. Carpenter (Hillsdale, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1977), 3-32. 5  The narrative frame receives development in Menakhem Perry, “Literary Dynamics: How the Order of a Text Creates Its Meaning,” Poetics Today 1, nos. 1-2 (1979): 35-64, 311-361, and Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1979), 20-21, 37. Words and phrases have only a potential to evoke semantic and narrative frames, and their actual evocation

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any repeated context, structure, or character that can be abstracted from the narration, makes available to interpreters not only specifically narrative content, but also the content of semantic frames evoked by the vocabulary that appears in contexts, structures, and characterization.6 Authorial Audience, Narrative Audience, and Rhetorical Strategies Cultivated by Repetition The distinction between the pre-existing content of semantic and narrative frames that are initially evoked by the narration, on the one hand, and the content of semantic and narrative frames cultivated by the narration, on the other, permits a distinction of two constructs of the implied reader: the authorial audience and the narrative audience.7 The authorial audience is the construct of the implied reader for which the pre-existing content of semantic and narrative frames – or, hereafter, pre-existing beliefs – is evoked; and the narrative audience is the construct of the implied reader for which the cultivated content of semantic and narrative frames or cultivated beliefs is evoked.8 As such, the ­authorial audience is characterized by the pre-existing beliefs evoked by depends on a number of extrinsic and intrinsic factors. This study assumes that the frames that receive investigation would be evoked in a close reading of Mark. 6  The evocation of narrative frames receives consideration in Alter, The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age, 112-132. Particular words and phrases that receive extended and specialized narrative development, such as reign of God (βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ), also may evoke narrative frames. 7  The original proposal of these two audiences appears in Peter J. Rabinowitz, “Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences,” Critical Inquiry 4, no. (1974): 121-141. Rabi­ nowitz’s treatment of a third construct of the implied reader, the ideal narrative audience, which arises in the context of unreliable narration (127-128), is omitted; for there is significant consensus that the narrator of Mark is reliable: cf. Robert C. Tannehill, “Disciples in Mark: The Function of a Narrative Role,” Journal of Religion 57, no. 4 (1977): 386-405; Norman R. Petersen, “‘Point of View’ in Mark’s Narrative,” Semeia 12 (1978): 97-121; Robert M. Fowler, Loaves and Fishes: The Function of the Feeding Stories in the Gospel of Mark, Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 54 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), 229; and Rhoads, Dewey, and Michie, Mark as Story, 39. 8  Mieke Bal, “The Laughing Mice or: On Focalization,” Poetics Today 2, no. 2 (1981): 202-210, at 209-210, notes that “the implied author … is not a pragmatic but a semantic category … which we construct from the semantic content of the text.” Bal’s use of ‘semantic’ incorporates elements which this discussion attributes to the narrative rhetoric. Discussion of the authorial audience’s pre-existing beliefs appear in Ernest Best, “Mark’s Readers: A Profile,” in The Four Gospels 1992. Festschrift Frans Neirynck, ed. Frans Van Segbroeck, Christopher M. Tuckett, Gilbert Van Belle, and Joseph Verheyden, Bibliotheca Epheme­ ridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 100 (Leuven: Leuven University Press and Peeters, 1992), 839-855; and B. M. F. van Iersel, “The Reader of Mark as Operator of a System of Connotations,” Semeia 48 (1989): 83-114. Their significance for interpretation is developed



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the narration; and the narrative audience is characterized by the beliefs cultivated by the narration. The proposed descriptions of both the authorial and narrative audiences rely solely on the content of the semantic and narrative frames evoked or cultivated by the narration. These descriptions do not require recourse to particular historical presuppositions or appeals to authorial intent. That is, the narration assumes a construct of its interpreter (authorial audience) and develops and proposes an alternative construct of its interpreter (narrative audience) characterized by the beliefs cultivated by the narration. Repetition functions rhetorically when it cultivates beliefs for the narrative audience either by developing or by undercutting elements of preexisting or previously cultivated beliefs. In this study, repetition that cultivates beliefs that cohere with pre-existing or previously cultivated beliefs is deemed a ‘sophisticating rhetorical strategy’; repetition that cultivates beliefs that contradict pre-existing or previously cultivated beliefs is deemed a ‘deconstructive rhetorical strategy’; and repetition that does not cultivate beliefs along specific lines is deemed a ‘neutral rhetorical strategy’. For example, the repetition of particular common verbs of motion, ‘go’ (πορεύομαι), ‘enter’ (εἰσέρχομαι), and ‘depart’ (ἐξέρχομαι), which cultivates no coherent group of agents of the subjects, no consistent relationships among them, no overarching perspective for evaluating these actions, and no narratively specific expectations for content, is deemed rhetorically neutral. Distinguishing between sophisticating and deconstructive repetition is straightforward when cultivated beliefs either cohere with previously clarified beliefs (sophisticating) or directly contradict previously clarified beliefs (deconstructive). When repetition cultivates content for pre-existing narrative frames whose content has not received prior clarification, however, the study makes recourse to the native characteristics of semantic and narrative frames to assist in distinguishing between strategies. Since frames are inherently resistant to modification, this resistance is assumed to be relatively greater when cultivating content that contradicts pre-existing or previously cultivated beliefs than it is when cultivating coherent content.9 Thus, familiarity with pre-existing content would in Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 157, 177; and in Eco, Role of the Reader, 7-8. 9  According to Perry, “Literary Dynamics,” 37: “The frame serves as a guiding norm in the encounter with the text, as a negative defining principle, so that deviation from it becomes perceptible and requires motivation by another frame or principle.” Cf. Patrick Henry Winston, Artificial Intelligence (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1977), 180.

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permit the sophisticating repetition of coherent content without previous narrative preparation or explanatory warrants. The greater resistance to contradictory content, however, would require that deconstructive repetition receive some narrative preparation to establish a hospitable context for its introduction and warrants to ensure its viability. II.  Pre-existing Beliefs about the Son of Man and Jesus’ Disciples Straightforward narration introduces only limited pre-existing beliefs about the Son of Man, but extensive pre-existing beliefs about Jesus’ disciples. Pre-existing beliefs concern the Son of Man’s present capacity to forgive (ἀφίημι, 2:5, 7; cf. Ps 103:3; Isa 43:25) and determine what is or is not permitted (ἔξεστιν, 2:24) on the Sabbath and his end-time identity and activity as the one who will come (ἔρχομαι, 8:38) in glory.10 In contrast, pre-existing beliefs about the disciples incorporate much of the narrative content concerning the disciples, including the following: a familiarity with Simon, Andrew, James, and John; their initial response of leaving (1:18, 20) work and family to follow (1:18) and go behind (1:20) Jesus; Jesus’ designation of particular disciples as the twelve or apostles who are to proclaim and have authority to cast out demons (3:14-15; cf. 6:7-13); Jesus’ designation of Simon as Peter (3:16); Judas Iscariot’s action of handing over Jesus (3:19); and the disciples’ seeing the risen Jesus (14:28) and proclaiming the gospel (13:10). In no case do pre-existing beliefs directly relate Jesus’ disciples to the Son of Man. III.  The Characterization of the Son of Man Although the narration assumes pre-existing beliefs that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins (2:10) and determine Sabbath regulations (2:28), this vocabulary subsequently is not repeated in the charac Werner Foerster, “ἔξεστιν,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Kittel and Friedrich, trans. Bromiley, vol. 2, 560-661. Foerster interprets the New Testament usage of this verb in terms of the demands of the will of God. Further potential pre-existing beliefs about the Son of Man receive consideration in: John J. Collins, “The Son of Man in First-Century Judaism,” New Testament Studies 38, no. 3 (1992): 448-466; and Thomas B. Slater, “One Like a Son of Man in First-Century ce Judaism,” New Testament Studies 41, no. 2 (1995): 183-198. 10



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terization of the Son of Man. Verbal repetition and repetition of Jesus’ Predictions and Teachings, however, cultivate extensive beliefs about the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity and his end-time identity and activity.11 1. Verbal Repetition Beliefs concerning the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity are cultivated through the repetition of: ‘be handed over’ (παραδίδωμι, 9:31; 10:33a, 33b; 14:21, 41); ‘suffer much’ (πολλὰ πάσχω, 8:31; 9:12); ‘be condemned’ (κατακρίνω) to/as worthy of death (θάνατος, 10:33/14:64); ‘be spat on’ (ἐμπτύω, 10:34; 14:65); ‘be killed’ (ἀποκτείνω, 8:31; 9:31a, 31b; 10:34) or ‘give life’ (ψυχὴν δίδωμι, 10:45): and ‘rise’ (ἀνίστημι, 8:31; 9:9, 31; 10:34).12 These events are governed by ‘necessity’ (δεῖ, 8:31) and ‘fulfill the scriptures’ (9:12/14:21 for πῶς/καθὼς γέγραπται, ‘how/as is it written’).13 Although pre-existing beliefs recognize that Jesus is the Son of Man (2:10) and that Jesus was handed over (3:19) and killed (14:1; cf. 12:6-8), the direct and repeated linkage of these events to the Son of Man is deemed to cultivate discordant beliefs. First, this content does not cohere with pre-existing beliefs, which are limited to the Son of Man’s present capacity to forgive sins and determine Sabbath regulations and his end-time coming in glory.14 Second, the atypical style of 8:31, which asserts the event’s necessity (δεῖ) as a warrant prior to the statement of the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity, seems designed to forestall potential rejection of this content.15

11  Edwin K. Broadhead, Teaching with Authority: Miracles and Christology in the Gospel of Mark, Journal for the Study of the New Testament: Supplement Series 74 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 213-215, reaches similar results through a narrative analysis of miracle stories in Mark. 12  The proposed translations clarify the grammatical relationship of characters to verbs as either subject (active voice) or object (passive voice). 13  The only other designation for Jesus that receives repeated linkage to particular vocabulary, King of the Jews, presents a parallel development through repetition of crucify (σταυρόω, 15:13, 14, 20, 27). 14  E. J. Pryke, Redactional Style in the Marcan Gospel: A Study of Syntax and Vocabulary as Guides to Redaction in Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 17-22, attributes all such statements (8:31; 9:12, 31; 10:33-34, 45; 14:21 [twice], 41) to Marcan redaction. 15  Only in 8:31 and 14:31, which similarly relates Jesus (and Peter) to death (συναποθνῄσκω), does δεῖ appear prior to the entire clause that it governs. Elsewhere it occurs within the clause (9:11; 13:10) or after its content receives clarification (13:7, 14).

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The narration also cultivates beliefs about the Son of Man’s end-time identity and activity through the repetition of ‘come’ (ἔρχομαι, 8:38; 13:26; 14:62), ‘be seen’ (ὁράω, 13:26; 14:62), ‘angels’ (ἄγγελος, 8:38; 13:27), ‘glory’ (δόξα, 8:38; 13:26), ‘power’ (δύναμις, 13:26; 14:62), and ‘clouds’ (νεφέλη, 13:26; 14:62). These cultivated beliefs cohere with previously noted pre-existing beliefs (8:38).16 2. Contextual Repetition of the Predictions Repetition of the Predictions (8:31-2a; 9:30-32; 10:32-34) relates all cultivated beliefs about the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity. The first Prediction relates ‘Son of Man’, ‘be killed’, ‘after three days’, and ‘rise’ to ‘suffer much’ and ‘be necessary’ (8:31). The second Prediction relates this vocabulary to ‘be handed over’ (9:31). The third Prediction repeats ‘be handed over’ (10:33a, 33b) and relates this vocabulary to ‘be condemned’ (10:33), ‘death’ (10:33), ‘be ridiculed’ (10:34), ‘be spat on’ (10:34), and ‘be whipped’ (μαστιγόω, 10:34). Since the latter two Predictions augment the discordant content of the first Prediction with similar content, their repetition is deconstructive and cultivates divergent beliefs. 3. Contextual Repetition of the Teachings Repetition of the Teachings (8:34–9:1; 9:35-41; 10:42-45) relates the endtime identity and activity of the Son of Man who ‘will come’ (ἔρχομαι) in his Father’s glory (8:38) to the near future experience and activity of the Son of Man who ‘came’ (ἔρχομαι) to serve and give his life as a ransom (10:45). Since this repeated context relates pre-existing beliefs about the end-time Son of Man to discordant beliefs about his near future experience and activity, its deconstructive repetition cultivates discordant beliefs about the Son of Man. IV.  The Characterization of Jesus’ Disciples Although the disciples’ positive relationship with Jesus is realized within the narration, their positive relationship with the Son of Man is  The appeal to scriptural precedents in each passage (especially Dan 7:13-14) supports an interpretation of pre-existing familiarity with this content. 16



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­ nrealized at the end of the narration.17 Since the cultivated relationship u between Jesus and his disciples is quite complex, this discussion initially restricts its focus to the consistently positive elements of their relationship, which are cultivated through verbal repetition and the repetition of a single context. The discussion then considers the repetition of a context that highlights negative elements of the disciples’ relationship with Jesus and the repetition of words and a context that establish the potential for their positive relationship with the Son of Man. 1. Jesus and His Disciples: Verbal and Contextual Repetition Only eight repeated words and phrases consistently positively relate Jesus/the disciples. ‘go forth’ (ἀπέρχομαι, 1:35; 6:32, 46; 7:24; 8:13/1:20; 3:13; 6:32); ‘be sent’ (ἀποστέλλω, 9:37; cf. 12:6 for the Beloved Son/3:14; 6:7; 11:1; 14:13); ‘teach’ (διδάσκω, 1:21, 22; 2:13; 4:1, 2; 6:2, 6, 30; 8:31; 9:31; 10:1; 11:17; 12:14, 35; 14:29/6:30); ‘be given to’ (δίδωμι, 11:28/4:11; 6:7, 41; 10:37; 13:11; 14:22; cf. 13:34 for the slaves of the Lord of the Household); ‘cast out demons’ (δαιμόνια ἐκβάλλω, 1:34, 39; 3:22; 7:26/3:15; 6:13); ‘authority’ (ἐξουσία, 1:22, 27; 11:28a, 28b, 29, 33/3:15; 6:7; cf. 13:34 for the slaves of the Lord of the Household); ‘proclaim’ (κηρύσσω, 1:14, 38, 39/3:14; 6:12; 13:10; 14:9); and ‘be handed over’ (παραδίδωμι, 3:9; 14:10, 11, 18, 42, 44; 15:1, 10, 15/13:9, 11, 12). All of these except ‘go forth’, ‘teach’, and ‘be handed over’ are predicated of disciples when Jesus designates them as the twelve (3:13-19), and all except ‘be handed over’ are realized with respect to the twelve when they are sent (6:6b-13, 30-32). This repetition cultivates beliefs that cohere with the authorial audience’s pre-existing beliefs; cultivation of these coherent beliefs about the disciples’ positive relationship with Jesus is realized prior to the cultivation of beliefs about their relationship to the Son of Man in Mark 8:31–9:1, 9:30-41, and 10:32-45. 2. The Son of Man and Jesus’ Disciples The cultivation of beliefs about the disciples’ negative relationship with Jesus and the requirements for their positive relationship with the Son 17  The study of the disciples incorporates specific information about the twelve: cf. Ernest Best, “The Role of the Disciples in Mark,” New Testament Studies 23, no. 4 (1977): 377-401, who concludes that, although Mark distinguishes to a limited extent between the disciples and the twelve, narratively these groups are used similarly.

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of Man occurs through verbal repetition and the contextual repetition of the Controversies and Teachings. Verbal Repetition Only three words consistently positively relate the Son of Man and Jesus’ disciples: ‘death’, ‘be handed over’, and ‘be necessary’.18 All three appear in the Predictions in reference to the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity: ‘death’ (θάνατος, 10:33); ‘hand over’ (παραδίδωμι, 9:31; 10:33a, 33b); and be necessary (δεῖ, 8:31). ‘Death’ (14:64) and ‘being handed over’ (14:21, 41) are realized with respect to Jesus as Son of Man in his passion, and the necessity governing the Son of Man is fulfilled in Jesus’ death and resurrection. All three are also predicated of disciples for the future (‘death’, 9:1; 13:12; ‘hand over’, 13:9, 11, 12; and be necessary, 13:10) but none are realized within the narration. Their straightforward narration, however, indicates pre-existing beliefs that disciples will be handed over to death and fulfill the necessity to proclaim the gospel to all nations. Thus, their sophisticating repetition cultivates coherent beliefs.19 Contextual Repetition of the Controversies The Controversies (8:32b-33; 9:33-34; 10:35-41) present negative content about disciples in their relationship with Jesus. In the first Controversy (8:32b-33), Peter’s rebuke (ἐπιτιμάω) of Jesus attempts to align Jesus with former objects of rebuke, unclean spirits (1:25; 3:12) and the wind (4:39). This conflicts with both pre-existing and previously cultivated beliefs about Jesus and results in Peter’s negative evaluation. Jesus’ rebuke of Peter (8:33) then strengthens Peter’s negative evaluation through the command, ‘go behind me’, which evokes Peter’s (Simon’s) call to discipleship (1:16-20), asserts Peter’s identification with Satan, and explains that the 18  Repetition of come (ἔρχομαι) with both the Son of Man (8:38; 10:45; 13:26; 14:62) and disciples (8:34; 14:16, 38; cf. 1:29; 5:1; 6:53; 8:22; 9:33; 10:46; 11:15, 27; 14:32 for plural verb forms referencing Jesus and disciples together) as subjects is not deemed to cultivate a direct relationship between them. All occurrences with disciples as subject denote physical motion and appear with a goal complement introduced by a prepositional phrase. In contrast, with the end-time Son of Man as subject, the verb is used descriptively with manner complements (8:38; 13:26; 14:62; cf. 11:9 for Jesus and 13:36 for the Lord of the Household) or is qualified by infinitive phrases specifying purpose (10:45; cf. 2:17 for Jesus who comes to call sinners). 19  See Pryke, Redactional Style, 170. Pryke deems the statements in 13:11, 12 to be traditional.



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cause (ὅτι) of this rebuke is not thinking the things of God but the things of human beings. This progression emphasizes Peter’s erroneous thinking. Repetition of the Controversies then relates Peter’s rebuke of Jesus (8:32b), the disciples’ discussion of who is greatest (9:34), James and John’s request (10:35-40), and the ten’s reaction (10:41). This relationship identifies the cause of the latter controversies as similar erroneous thinking, relates the twelve to Peter and Satan, and asserts their need to fulfill their call to discipleship. Contextual repetition of the Controversies is deemed deconstructive, cultivating divergent beliefs about Peter and the disciples. Here, the narrative preparation for the content of the First Controversy extends back to Jesus’ question to the disciples concerning his identity (8:27) and his rebuke (ἐπιτιμάω) of Peter and the disciples (8:30), which is repeated with respect to Peter in the Controversy. Jesus’ designation of Peter as Satan also contradicts his previous designation of Simon as Peter (3:16) and the previous reservation of designations for disciples to contexts of their positive evaluation (3:14-17). Contextual Repetition of the Teachings The Teachings (8:34–9:1; 9:35-41; 10:42-45) respond to the controversies involving Peter and the twelve, are addressed to the disciples and crowd (8:34–9:1) or to the twelve (9:35-41; 10:42-45), and relate statements by Jesus that repeat ‘want’ (θέλω, 8:34, 35; 9:35; 10:43, 44), ‘if someone’ (εἴ τις, 8:34; 9:35), and ‘whoever’ (ὃς ἄν, 8:35a, 35b, 38; 9:37a, 37b, 41; 10:43, 44).20 The first Teaching relates this vocabulary ‘to follow’ (ἀκολουθέω, 8:34a, 34b), ‘save’ (σῴζω, 8:35a, 35b), ‘destroy’ (ἀπόλλυμι, 8:35a, 35b), and ‘life’ (ψυχή, 8:35a, 35b) and grants primary emphasis to ‘want’, which initiates Jesus’ teaching and includes the other words as the content of desire: “If anyone wants to follow…” (8:34) and “whoever wants to save one’s life” (8:35).21 The second Teaching relates being first (πρῶτος, 9:35), last 20  The relationship of the Teachings to the Controversies receives consideration in Geert Van Oyen, “The Vulnerable Authority of the Author of the Gospel of Mark: Re-Reading the Paradoxes,” Biblica 91, no. 2 (2010): 161-186, at 162-173. 21  Albrecht Oepke, “ἀπόλλυμι,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Kittel and Friedrich, trans. Bromiley, vol. 1, 394-396, notes that both connotations of ἀπόλλυμι, ‘destroy’, ‘kill’, or ‘ruin’, and ‘lose’ imply the subject’s complicity in the loss. The verb’s double coordination with save (σῴζω, 8:35 [twice]), which requires an agent as subject, recommends the former connotation in this context. Since ψυχή also may connote ‘self’, destroy life (ψυχὴν ἀπόλλυμι, 8:35 [twice] may develop the implications of denying self in 8:34: cf. Eduard Schweizer, “ψυχή,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Kittel and Friedrich, trans. Bromiley, vol. 9, 637-638, 643.

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(ἔσχατος, 9:35), and servant (διάκονος, 9:35) to the previous vocabulary and continues the primary emphasis on wanting. The third Teaching repeats ‘life’ (10:45) and ‘being first’ (10:44) and ‘servant’ (10:33), relates ‘becoming great’ (μέγας, 10:43) and ‘being slave’ (δοῦλος, 10:44) to the previous vocabulary, and again grants primary emphasis to wanting. The repeated Teachings contribute to the disciples’ characterization in three ways. They address the disciples’ erroneous thinking and acting in the Controversies in a way that clarifies both the source of their negative evaluation and the requirements for their rehabilitation. In the first Teaching, Jesus’ statement, “If anyone wants to follow behind me…,” implicitly recognizes and validates Peter’s desire to follow him prior to (re)defining this as denying oneself, taking up one’s cross and following him (8:34). Jesus then recognizes and validates a disciple’s want to save life before (re)defining this positively as destroying one’s life for the sake of Jesus and the gospel (8:35). In the second Teaching, Jesus recognizes and validates the twelve’s want to be first in the community of disciples before (re)defining this as being last of all and servant of all (9:35).22 In the third Teaching, Jesus responds to James and John, who want to sit at his right and left in his glory (10:35-40), and to the ten, whose umbrage at James and John’s request indicates their similar want (10:41), by recognizing and validating their desire to be great (10:43a) and first (10:44a) before (re)defining these as being servant (10:43b) and slave of all in the community of disciples (10:44b).23 The redefined content of wanting also receives clarification through comparisons and contrasts concerning the thinking and acting required of disciples.24 In the first Teaching, denying oneself, taking up one’s  The relationship between 9:33-34 and 9:35-41 receives investigation in Harry Fleddermann, “The Discipleship Discourse (Mark 9:33-50),” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1981): 57-75, and Frans Neirynck, “The Tradition of the Sayings of Jesus: Mark 9,33-50,” in The Dynamism of Biblical Tradition, ed. Pierre Benoit and Roland E. Murphy, Concilium 20 (New York: Paulist, 1967), 62-74. 23  The negatively evaluated wanting in 8:35 is expressed by the subjunctive of want and an infinitive for its content, to save life; and what James and John want in 10:35-36 is expressed through subjunctive clauses and anaphorically in 10:37 through an imperative. Thus, the negatively evaluated content of wanting appears in a mood that conveys only possibilities. In contrast, the redefined content in each case is in the indicative: ‘whoever will destroy’ (8:35); ‘are you able’ (10:38); ‘we are able’ (10:39); and ‘you will drink … be baptized’ (10:39). This contrast is most apparent in the awkward grammatical coordination of the clauses in 8:35, “Whoever may wish to save one’s life will destroy it, but whoever will destroy one’s life … will save it.” 24  Narry F. Santos, “Jesus’ Paradoxical Teaching in Mark 8:35; 9:35; 10:43-44,” Bibliotheca Sacra 157 (2000): 15-25, details various developments concerning this redefined content. 22



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cross, following Jesus (8:34), and destroying one’s life for the sake of Jesus and the gospel (8:35) are contrasted with being ashamed of Jesus and his words (8:38). In the second Teaching, being last and servant of all (9:35) is compared positively to receiving a child in Jesus’ name (ὄνομα, 9:37) and to giving a drink of water in [Jesus’] name because one is of Christ (9:41) and is contrasted with preventing another from casting out demons in Jesus’ name (9:38-39).25 In the third Teaching, being servant (10:43; cf. 9:35) and slave of all (10:44) is contrasted with lording over and exercising authority over others (10:42) and is compared positively to the Son of Man’s serving (διακονέω, 10:45). The teachings clarify what the disciple must do: deny oneself, take up one’s cross, follow Jesus, destroy one’s life, not act as one ashamed of Jesus and his words, not prevent another’s action in Jesus’ name, receive a child, give a drink, not lord over, not exercise authority over, serve. They clarify what the disciple must be: last of all, servant [of all], slave of all. They also develop who the disciple is in terms of what the disciple does. The Teachings conclude by clarifying the implications for disciples who think and act as Jesus commands. Some will not taste death until they see the reign of God come in power (9:1); one who gives a drink will not destroy one’s reward (9:41); and one who becomes servant and slave of all by implication is among those for whom the Son of Man gives his life (10:45).26 Repetition of the Teachings cultivates coherent beliefs about the disciples. Pre-existing beliefs recognize that the disciple is required to leave livelihood and family (1:16-20), is sent with minimal provisions to act on behalf of the demon-possessed and sick (6:6b-13), is handed over (13:9, 11) for the sake of Jesus (13:9; cf. 8:35), and will possibly be killed (13:12). Thus, the Teachings employ sophisticating repetition to augment these pre-existing beliefs with difficult but coherent content.  This discussion views the disciple as the subject of receive (δέχομαι, 9:37): cf. Vincent Taylor, The Gospel according to St. Mark (London: Macmillan, 1963), 405-406; Joachim Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus, vol. 1, Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament 2 (Zürich: Benziger and Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1978-79), 57; and Rudolf Pesch, Das Markusevangelium (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1984), 105. Interpretation of the disciples as object in Eduard Schweizer, The Good News according to Mark (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1970), 192-193; and Hugh Anderson, The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), 234-255, fails to recognize that all other redefinitions in the teachings identify the disciple as the subjects of verbs. 26  Repetition of the Teachings also identifies the one not destroying (ἀπόλλυμι) one’s reward (9:41) with the one destroying (ἀπόλλυμι) one’s life for the sake of Jesus and the gospel (8:35). 25

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V.  Structural Repetition of the Predictions/Controversies/Teachings Structural repetition of the linked Predictions, Controversies, and Teachings (8:31–9:1; 9:30-41; 10:32-45) relates cultivated beliefs concerning the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity, his end-time identity and activity, and the disciples’ required thinking and acting. Repetition of the Predictions and Teachings relates cultivated beliefs about the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity to his end-time identity and activity in two ways. As previously discussed, the Teachings relate the Son of Man’s coming in his Father’s glory with the holy angels (8:38) and his coming not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many (10:45). The first Prediction and Teaching also relate cultivated beliefs in such a manner that the Son of Man who suffers, is rejected, is killed, and rises (8:31) is precisely the Son of Man who will come in his Father’s glory (8:38). Structural repetition then relates the progressively augmented contradictory content about the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity in the Predictions to his end-time identity and activity in the first Teaching. Repetition of the linked Teachings and Predictions also relates the required thinking and acting of disciples to the near future experience and activity of the Son of Man. This development is grounded in Jesus’ statement: “For whoever is ashamed of me and my words … the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels (8:38).” The first Prediction, Controversy, and Teaching interpret the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity as the content of Jesus’ words, identify Peter’s rejection of this content as an instance of being ashamed of Jesus and his words, and, through the relationship of the coming of the Son of Man (8:38) and of God’s reign (9:1), assert that being ashamed of Jesus and his words precludes one from seeing God’s reign having come in power. Jesus’ words, however, also reference his hard teachings about discipleship (8:34-37). Thus, not being ashamed of Jesus and his words about the Son of Man requires that one wanting to be Jesus’ disciple deny oneself, take up one’s cross, and follow him (8:34), that one wanting to be first (9:35; 10:44) or great (10:43) in the community of disciples become servant (9:35; 10:43) and slave (10:44) on the pattern of the Son of Man who serves (10:45), and that one wanting to save one’s life destroy it (8:35) on the pattern of the Son of Man who gives his life (10:43-45).27 27  The most precise parallel between what the Son of Man does and what the disciple is required to do appears in Jesus’ statement that James and John will drink his cup and be baptized with his baptism (10:38-39). Although this statement does not explicitly



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These considerations indicate that, only by accepting the discordant content about the Son of Man in the Predictions and thinking and acting on the pattern of the Son of Man who serves and gives his life, does the disciple become positively related to and thereby a beneficiary of the Son of Man who comes in glory (8:38). That is, a disciple’s thinking and acting ultimately determine who the end-time Son of Man will be (his identity) and what he will do (his activity) for that disciple. Thus, whereas pre-existing beliefs recognize no direct relationship between Jesus’ disciples and the Son of Man, beliefs about the thinking and acting required of errant disciples are cultivated explicitly in relation to the Son of Man’s necessary suffering, serving, being killed or giving his life, and rising. Repetition of this Structure cultivates coherent beliefs about the disciples but divergent beliefs about the Son of Man. The Teachings recast the very discordant content about the disciples in the Controversies as negative correlates of the proper thinking and acting required of disciples. They also interpret the harsh requirements of such thinking and acting in terms of pre-existing beliefs about the more difficult elements of discipleship, especially when on mission. Thus, the cultivated beliefs augment pre-existing beliefs with difficult but ultimately coherent content. In contrast, both the progressively augmented divergent beliefs about the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity in the Predictions and their relationship to his end-time identity and activity in the first Teaching contradict pre-existing beliefs about the Son of Man. VI.  The Rhetoric of the Characterizations of the Son of Man and Jesus’ Disciples The study of vocabulary indicates that the narration evokes pre-existing beliefs that recognize the Son of Man’s present capacity to forgive sins and determine Sabbath regulations and his end-time activity of coming in glory. Verbal, contextual, and structural repetition cultivates coherent beliefs about the Son of Man’s end-time identity and activity but discordant beliefs about the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity. reference the Son of Man, its situation between Jesus’ prediction (10:33-34) and teaching (10:45) about the Son of Man and Jesus’ subsequent use of cup (ποτήριον, 14:36) interpret this cup and baptism in terms of the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity.

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These discordant beliefs about the Son of Man are constitutive of what may be called a ‘Marcan Son of Man Christology’ that qualifies pre-­ existing Christological beliefs by insisting on the centrality of the necessary suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the Son of Man.28 The narration also evokes positive pre-existing beliefs about those who leave livelihood and family to follow Jesus. Verbal, contextual, and structural repetition then cultivates positive beliefs about the disciples, especially when they are sent by Jesus (3:13-19; 6:6b-13, 30-32), discordant negative beliefs about the thinking and acting of errant disciples (Controversies), and potential positive beliefs about disciples who think and act on the pattern of the near future experience and activity of the Son of Man (Teachings). The discordant cultivated beliefs about the disciples’ errant thinking and improper action and the coherent but difficult cultivated beliefs concerning the thinking and acting required of errant disciples constitute what may be called a ‘Son of Man Focused Anthropology’. Although beliefs about Jesus frequently are placed in the service of cultivating beliefs about the disciples, the Son of Man Christology contributes to constructing the Son of Man Focused Anthropology in three distinctive ways. First, cultivation of most of the beliefs that positively and negatively relate the disciples to Jesus occurs through verbal repetition in which an action or attribute is first predicated of Jesus and then is attributed or denied to the disciples. For example, Jesus proclaims (1:14, 38, 39) and teaches (1:21, 22; 2:13; 4:1, 2; 6:2, 6) prior to the attribution of the same positive actions to the twelve or apostles (3:14 and 28  Discussions of the possible corrective function of the characterization of the Son of Man appear in Theodore J. Weeden, Mark – Traditions in Conflict (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1979), 54-64; Norman Perrin, “The Christology of Mark: A Study in Methodology,” Journal of Religion 51, no. 3 (1971): 173-187; Leander E. Keck, “Mark 3:712 and Mark’s Christology,” Journal of Biblical Literature 84, no. 4 (1965): 341-358; Paul J. Achtemeier, “Gospel Miracle Tradition and Divine Man,” Interpretation 36 (1972): 174-197; and Ralph P. Martin, Mark: Evangelist and Theologian (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1972), 156-162. Critiques of these proposals generally concern their reliance on a ‘divine man’ concept, the apparent positive evaluation of Jesus’ miracles by the narration, and appeals to Mark’s overall theology: cf. Carl R. Holladay, Theios Aner in Hellenistic Judaism: A Critique of the Use of This Category in New Testament Christology, Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 40 (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977); Howard Clark Kee, Miracle in the Early Christian World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 297-299; Jack D. Kingsbury, The Christology of Mark’s Gospel (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1983), 33-44; and William R. Telford, The Theology of the Gospel of Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 160. The present study, in contrast, develops the concept of Mark’s Son of Man Christology exclusively in terms of pre-existing and cultivated beliefs and their development by the semantic and narrative rhetoric of repetition.



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6:30). Alternatively, Jesus’ action of rebuking (1:25; 3:12; 4:39; 8:30, 33; 9:25) always receives positive evaluation, whereas disciples who subsequently rebuke consistently are evaluated negatively (8:32; 10:13, and perhaps 10:48). The contribution of Christological beliefs centered on the near future experience and activity of the Son of Man to the cultivation of beliefs about the thinking and acting required of errant disciples, in contrast, employs not identical words but functionally equivalent actions and attributes. Thus the repeated Teachings positively relate the Son of Man who gives his life as a ransom for many (10:45) and serves (10:45) to the disciple who destroys one’s life for the sake of Jesus and the gospel (8:35) and is servant (9:35; 10:43) or slave (10:44). Second, Jesus’ predications that evoke pre-existing beliefs generally relate specific characters to specific future events; and even his teachings in the discourse of Chapter 13 identify specific circumstances that perseverant disciples will encounter in the future. The repeated Teachings, however, set up only a heuristic that disciples will need to employ in various circumstances to determine their required thinking and acting. Thus, the disciple who wants to be great or first in the community of disciples will need to utilize their experience of Jesus and the content of his teachings to formulate what it means to be servant or slave in specific contexts. Third, cultivated beliefs about the Son of Man’s near future experience and activity and about the thinking and acting required of errant disciples are, to some extent, mutually conditioning. This diverges from cultivated beliefs about Jesus under other designations. For example, the erroneous thinking about the Christ that seems to underlie Jesus’ rebuke of Peter and the disciples in 8:30 is not presented as conditioning who Jesus is or what Jesus does as the Christ. In contrast, the disciple who is ashamed of Jesus and his words determines who the end-time Son of Man will be and what he will do for that disciple (8:38). Since cultivated beliefs about the near future experience and activity of the Son of Man are determinative for the thinking and acting required for a positive relationship with Jesus as the end-time Son of Man, Mark’s Son of Man Christology becomes a constitutive presupposition of Mark’s Son of Man Focused Anthropology. Conclusion The Gospel of Mark as gospel is a narrative communication that invites a response of faith. Within this communication, pre-existing beliefs define the model of the real audience (authorial audience) to which the

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communication is addressed; and cultivated beliefs define an alternative model of the real audience (narrative audience), which this audience is invited to entertain and appropriate. The Son of Man’s characterization functions to correct pre-existing beliefs that do not recognize his necessary suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection. The disciples’ characterization functions to correct pre-existing beliefs that do not recognize the cause of their erroneous thinking and improper acting and the means for their rehabilitation. From the perspective of the narration, the real audience’s pre-existing Anthropology is not able to identify the thinking and acting that place it in opposition to the end-time Son of Man; and its pre-existing Christology does not afford a guide to the thinking and acting required to rectify this situation. The narrative rhetoric encourages the real audience to accept the cultivated corrective beliefs about the Son of Man and the disciples, to recognize its own erroneous thinking and improper acting, and to think and act on the pattern of the Son of Man who serves and gives his life. This alone will secure the real audience’s positive relationship to the end-time Son of Man who will come in glory. I present this article in honor of Dr. Bernard Prusak as an exegetical footnote for his ecclesiological scholarship that situates the origins of the Christian community in the person and teachings of Jesus. In this regard, Dr. Prusak is in the tradition of the writer of the Gospel of Mark who develops his Son of Man Focused Anthropology and its model of discipleship on the basis of Jesus the Son of Man and Jesus’ teachings that assume a future community in which disciples will destroy their lives for the sake of Jesus in their necessary proclamation of the gospel to all nations, and whose first and great ones will be those who are slave and servant of all.

Ecclesia ab Abel

Thomistic Reflections on the Origin and Scope of the Church Francis J. Caponi, OSA In answering the question, “When did the Church begin?” Catholic theology has never accepted a foreshortened genealogy, but insisted that the most obvious candidates – the calling of the Apostles, the Last Supper, Pentecost – are the final panels in a tapestry of considerable length. Correspondingly, “Who belongs to the Church?” has received exceedingly generous estimations. St. Augustine offers an agreeably compact response to both questions, one that could well serve as a précis of patristic reflection: [Our Lord Jesus Christ] is the head of the Church. The Church is the body that belongs to this head. By this we do not mean just the church present in this place, but the Church both here and throughout the whole world; and not the Church of our own day alone, but that which began with Abel and extends to all who will be born and will believe in Christ to the very end, the whole people of the saints who belong to the one city. That city is the body of Christ, and Christ is its head. There the angels are our fellow citizens; but while we are still toiling along on our pilgrimage, they, at home in the city, look forward to our arrival.1

The Second Vatican Council endorses this view, to a certain extent; we could say it temporally inflects this perspective: “Already from the beginning of the world the foreshadowing of the Church took place. It was prepared in a remarkable way throughout the history of the peo Augustine, Exposition of Psalm 90, sermon 2, n. 1; in Expositions of the Psalms, 73–98, trans. Maria Boulding, OSB (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002), 330. See also Origen, The Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies, II.8; trans. R. P. Lawson (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1957), 149-150; Niceta of Remisiana, An Explanation of the Creed (De symbolo), 10, in Niceta of Remisiana: Writings [et al.], trans. Gerald Walsh, SJ, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 7 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1949), 49-50; Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 139; in Sermons, Volume 2: 81–186, trans. Mary Magdeleine Mueller, OSF, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 47 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1964), 276-277. The definitive study of this theme in the Fathers is still Yves Congar, OP, “Ecclesia ab Abel,” in Festschrift für Karl Adam: Abhandlungen über Theo­ logie und Kirche, ed. M. Reding (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1952), 79-108. 1

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ple of Israel and by means of the Old Covenant. In the present era of time the Church was constituted and, by the outpouring of the Spirit, was made manifest.”2 The Council places the sequence foreshadowed3 – prepared4 – constituted5 – manifested6 within the broader narrative of Trinitarian origin7 and heavenly fulfillment: “Coming forth from the eternal Father’s love, founded in time by Christ the Redeemer and made one in the Holy Spirit, the Church has a saving and an eschatological purpose which can be fully attained only in the future world.”8 In connection with all this, the Council appears to invoke the ecclesia ab Abel: “At the end of time it [i.e., the Church] will gloriously achieve completion, when, as is read in the Fathers, all the just, from Adam and ‘from Abel, the just one, to the last of the elect’, will be gathered together with the Father in the universal Church” (LG 2).9 2  Lumen gentium (November 21, 1964), 2 [hereafter cited in text as LG], http://www. vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat‑ii_const_19641121_lumen‑ gentium_en.html. 3  Nostra aetate (October 28, 1965), 4 (hereafter cited in text as NA), http://www. vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat‑ ii_decl_19651028_nostra‑ aetate_en.html. 4  “When on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit filled the disciples of the Lord, it was not so much the beginning of a gift as it was the completion of one already bountifully possessed: because the patriarchs, the prophets, the priests and all the holy men who preceded them were already quickened by the life of the same Spirit … although they did not possess his gifts to the same degree.” St. Leo the Great, Sermon 76.3 (PL 54, 405‑406), cited in NA 1, n. 5; also LG 9. 5  That is, “founded on the Apostles.” LG 19; Ad gentes (December 7, 1965), 1 (hereafter cited in text as AG), http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat‑ii_decree_19651207_ad‑gentes_en.html; Unitatis redintegratio (November 24, 1964), 2 (hereafter cited in text as UR), http://www.vatican.va/archive/ hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat‑ii_decree_19641121_unitatis‑ redintegratio_en.html. 6  “On the day of Pentecost, He came down upon the disciples to remain with them forever (cf. John 14:16). The Church was publicly displayed to the multitude…” (NA 4); “on the very day of Pentecost, when the Church appeared before the world” (Sacrosanc­ tum concilium [December 4, 1963], 6, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html); see also LG 59. 7  “The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, since it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she draws her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father” (AG 2); likewise UR 2. 8  Gaudium et spes (December 7, 1965), 40 (hereafter cited in text as GS), http://www. vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat‑ii_const_19651207_gaudium‑ et‑spes_en.html. 9  Congar was directly responsible for the inclusion of this language. See William Henn, “Yves Congar and Lumen Gentium,” Gregorianum 86, no. 3 (2005): 563-592, at 579-580.



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Bernard Prusak’s The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Cen­ turies, with explicit reference to Lumen gentium 2-5,10 commends a comparable view, of which the author delineates four dimensions: cosmo­ logically, the genesis of the Church is “a dynamic process which began long ago when that self‑giving fullness of Love we call God shared life by creating”;11 anthropologically, Christ and the Church are inseparable from the long ages of prehistorical human development;12 historically, the Church enjoyed an “extended establishment” in Jesus’ life, death, and Resurrection, all of which are incomprehensible apart from Israel;13 and eschatologically, the Church anticipates and foreshadows the fullness of God’s heavenly reign.14 In what follows, my concern is to explore an ambiguity regarding the origin and scope of the Church that is present in the conciliar documents and echoed in Prusak’s work. I will proceed by way of a consideration of the theme of the ecclesia ab Abel as it is developed in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. I.  Ecclesia ab Abel: “The body of the Church is made up of the men who have been from the beginning of the world until its end”15 Thomas Aquinas has a different order of interest than contemporary ecclesiology: “In the matter of the Church, the moderns stress almost exclusively its foundation by Christ in the form of an organized society, whilst St. Thomas concerns himself above all with its inward soul.”16 This is particularly apparent in his development of the theme of the 10  Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 11, 46, 60, 61. 11  Ibid., 11. 12  “The human effort to love and to understand life existed long before there was a Church” (ibid., 15). See also 10, 17, 18, 21, 34, 48. 13  Ibid., 14. 14  Ibid., 296. 15  Thomas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 8, a. 3, resp.: “[C]orpus Ecclesiae constituitur ex hominibus qui fuerunt a principio mundi usque ad finem ipsius.” Latin text and English translations are from Summa Theologiae, 8 vols., ed. John Mortensen and Enrique Alarcón, trans. Laurence Shapcote, OP (Lander, WY: Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012); hereafter cited as ST. Unless otherwise noted, English translations of other works by St. Thomas are my own, based on the Latin texts available on the Corpus Thomisticum website (http://www.corpusthomisticum.org). 16  Yves Congar, OP, “The Idea of the Church in St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 1 (1939): 331-359, at 339, n. 15.

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ecclesia ab Abel,17 which provides a window into the Angelic Doctor’s thinking on important ecclesiological themes. In a series of popular Lenten sermons, Aquinas asserts that the Church “is universal with regard to time. Some have said that the Church will endure for a limited time. But this is false, because the Church began at the time of Abel and will endure until the end of the world….”18 Elsewhere, he employs an anthropological analogy:19 the Church “has her child’s age in Abel, her youthful age in the Patriarchs, her advanced age in the Apostles, and her old age at the end of the world.”20 There is no point in the development of his thinking when St. Thomas holds otherwise – unsurprisingly, given the Scriptural provenance of the theme,21 its patristic witness (especially in Augustine22), and its presence in the liturgy.23

 Why not ecclesia ab Adam? Congar notes (“Ecclesia ab Abel,” 90) that this question is first raised in the twelfth century. Thomas does not take it up, but his consistent calculation of the Church from Abel rather than Adam seemed odd to some. Emile Mersch, SJ, offers a plausible explanation: “The thing that is now the Catholic Church began with Adam. The first to be a member of Christ was Adam, or else Abel, as is said more often, to preserve the parallelism between the two heads of mankind.” See The Theology of the Mystical Body, trans. Cyril Vollert, SJ (St. Louis, MO and London: B. Herder, 1951), 517. 18  Collationes super Credo in Deum (also known as Expositio in Symbolum Apostolo­ rum), art. 9: “[E]st universalis quantum ad tempus. Nam aliqui dixerunt, quod Ecclesia debet durare usque ad certum tempus. Sed hoc est falsum: quia haec Ecclesia incepit a tempore Abel, et durabit usque ad finem saeculi. Matth. ult., ult.: ecce ego vobiscum sum omnibus diebus usque ad consummationem saeculi. Sed post consummationem saeculi remanebit in caelo.” These were preached in the vernacular in Naples, probably during Lent 1273. 19  Super Epistolam B. Pauli ad Hebraeos lectura, cap. 9, lect. 5: “Aetates enim mundi accipiuntur secundum aetates hominis.” However, the ages of the Church do not neatly track the ages of the world, e.g., “tempus incarnationis potest comparari iuventuti humani generis.” ST, III, q. 1, a. 6, ad 1. 20  Lectura super Psalmos, 36, n. 18: “Et haec habet aetatem pueritiae in Abel, juventutis in patriarchis, senectutis in apostolis, senectam in fine mundi.” 21  The Lord himself speaks of “the blood of righteous Abel” (Matt 23:35/Luke 11:51); see also Heb 11:4; 1 John 3:12. All Biblical texts are taken from The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2006). 22  “Augustine views the justification of the righteous of the Old Testament as a justification in ecclesia. They belonged to the current Church in the full sense, and only thereby could they be justified at all.” Joseph Ratzinger, “Beobachtungen zum Kirchenbegriff des Tyconius im Liber regularum,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 2, nos. 1-2 (1956): 173-185, at 178-179. 23  E.g., Scriptum super Sententiis, lib. 4, d. 8, q. 1. a. 2, qa. 2, obj. 6 and ad 6; ST, III, q. 83, a. 4, obj. 8 and ad 8. See John Hennig, “Abel’s Place in the Liturgy,” Theological Studies 7, no. 1 (1946): 130-135. 17

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Thomas employs numerous images for the Church,24 and the following question importunes all of them. How it is possible for men and women before Christ to belong to the Church?25 Both “the mysterious advent of Christ into the pagan soul”26 before Abraham and the ecclesia in Israel which follows demand an accounting. Are Christ and his members “a single mystical person,”27 such that the Church is properly called the mysticum corpus Christi?28 What sense can it make to claim that those who lived before the Incarnation, before the gospels were written and baptism proclaimed, before the Eucharist was celebrated and the episcopacy established, belong to the Church, mystically or otherwise? In what follows, I offer a reading in four points of St. Thomas’s responses to these and related questions. II.  Theological Framework 1. The Witness of Scripture Ever the magister in sacra pagina, St. Thomas’s overarching concern is the comprehension of the facts of salvation revealed in Scripture.29 He takes it as certain that the worthies of Israel, and their pagan forbears30 – that “cloud of witnesses” of which the letter to the Hebrews speaks (12:1) – are saved (e.g., Matt 8:11, 12:41-42; John 8:56; Rom 4:16; Heb 11:13-40). His vital awareness of the place of Jews and pagans within the plan of salvation deeply colors significant areas of his theology: for example, Christ and the Spirit, law and grace, the theological virtues and the sacraments. Eschatology, of course, provides many examples of this influence. For instance, in theologizing about Christ’s decensus ad inferos, 24  George Sabra offers a good account of the various ‘designations of the Church’ in St. Thomas’s works, both primary (e.g., domus, civitas, populus) and occasional (e.g., arca, turris, sponsa). See George Sabra, Thomas Aquinas’ Vision of the Church: Fundamentals of an Ecumenical Ecclesiology (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1987), 34-71. 25  De veritate, q. 29, a. 4, obj. 9: “[M]ulta membra Ecclesiae praecesserunt Christum.” 26  Jean Daniélou, Holy Pagans of the Old Testament, trans. Felix Faber (London: Longmans Green, 1957), 4. 27  De veritate, q. 29, a. 7, ad 11: “Christus et membra eius sunt una persona mystica.” 28  ST, III, q. 48, a. 2, resp. 29  Jean‑Pierre Torrell, OP, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 54-74. 30  De veritate, q. 14, a. 11, ad 5; ST, II-II, q. 2, a. 7, obj. 3.

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Aquinas argues that, although the faithful before Christ must wait for his victory before entering heaven, still they have been freed from both actual and original sin through faith in Christ. The harrowing of hell, therefore, is not for the purpose of their post-mortem justification, but for the relief of their exclusion from the beatific vision.31 2. Christ, Head of the Church The fullest consideration Aquinas gives to the questions surrounding the ecclesia ab Abel, both at the beginning and the end of his career, is in connection with the theme of gratia Christi secundum quod est caput Ecclesiae.32 He develops a Christological account of the Church membership of the iusti, Jewish and pagan, before the Incarnation, centered on “capital grace.” Christ is the source of grace granted to rational creatures, “all the apostles and patriarchs and prophets and just men who have existed, do now exist, and will exist, and even all the angels.”33 The infallible effect of this communication of habitual grace is engraftment into  ST, III, q. 52, a. 5.  Super Sent., lib. 3 d. 13 q. 2 pr.: “Utrum Christus, secundum quod homo, habeat talem gratiam quod sit caput.” Mersch describes the origin of this theme in Lombard’s Sentences, and its subsequent development in Peter of Poitiers, William of Auxerre, and Alexander of Hales, such that by the time of Aquinas, “the treatise on the grace of the Head” was well-established. Emile Mersch, The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body in Scripture and Tradition, trans. John R. Kelly (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing, 1938), 457-458. Likewise, the question of capital grace is where St. Bonaventure also addresses this theme: “Now we come to Christ either through faith or the sacrament of faith. Since faith in Christ is the same in past, present, and future, it follows that Christ’s influencing power must reach all people – those who went before him, those who were his contemporaries, and those who were yet to come.” Breviloquium, IV.5.6; trans. Dominic V. Monti, OFM (Saint Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005), 149. 33  Super Evangelium S. Ioannis, cap. 1, lect. 10: “[O]mnes apostoli, et patriarchae, et prophetae, et iusti, qui fuerunt, sunt et erunt, et etiam omnes Angeli.” From the start to the finish of his professional life, St. Thomas explicitly includes angels in the Church: “Ecclesia una est constituta ex Angelis et hominibus” (Super Sent., lib. 3, d. 13, q. 2, a. 2, qc. 1, s.c. 3); “corpus Ecclesiae mysticum non solum consistit ex hominibus, sed etiam ex Angelis” (ST, III, q. 8, a. 4, resp.). The logic of Aquinas’s position is that if angels are actual members of the Church, then they are so by grace. And Thomas is clear that angels are in need of grace, both to preserve them in sinlessness and to empower them to adhere to God as their final beatitude (ST, I, q. 63, a. 1). The difficulty, though, is in assessing how Jesus Christ enters into the angels’ reception of grace, since they are not in need of the remission of sins which comes to human beings through the incarnate Son. See Jérôme Hamer, The Church Is a Communion, trans. Ronald Mathews (London: Chapman, 1964), 79. The variety of views among Thomists indicates that the question is open. See Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP, Angels and Demons: A Catholic Introduction, trans. Michael J. Miller (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 224-228. 31

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Christ’s body; thus, to receive grace is to belong to Christ, is to belong to his Body, is to belong to the Church.34 A distinction between ‘member of Christ’ and ‘member of the Church’ is unknown to Thomas.35 Granted that membership in Christ does have grades – “Christ is the Head of all men, but diversely”36 – these do not arise from historical divisions, but from differences in the extent to which members actually and potentially enjoy faith, charity, and glory.37 3. Church Membership before and after the Incarnation Is Achieved through Grace and Faith However, although the Spirit and faith are unchanging,38 history is not unimportant, not a neutral medium in which divine love appears outside of the Trinity. Aquinas distinguishes three eras – before the Mosaic law, after the Mosaic law but before Jesus Christ, and after Jesus Christ39 – not on the basis of the object of faith, nor the possibility of faith, but on the mode and primary means provided by God for its realization. Thus, “it was possible at the time of the Law, for the minds of the faithful, to be united by faith to Christ incarnate and crucified; so that they were justified by faith in Christ,”40 and yet, “faith had a different state in the Old and in the New Law: since what they believed as future, we believe as fact.”41 (The implications of this difference for the visible means of grace and faith will be considered below.) Still, the justifying faith of those who came before Jesus Christ was always faith formed by 34  Super Sent., lib. 4, d. 4, q. 2, a. 2, qc. 5, resp.: “[D]e ecclesia effici … est Christo incorporari.” 35  Felix Malmberg, Ein Leib – Ein Geist: Vom Mysterium der Kirche (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1960), 204. As Geiselmann observes, “when God sinks his life into a human soul, he does not create an isolated monad, but places it in a great fellowship of grace, in the civitas coelestis whose king is God Himself, and who embraces heaven and earth.” Josef Rupert Geiselmann, “Christus und die Kirche nach Thomas von Aquin,” Theologische Quartalschrift 107 (1926): 198‑222, and 108 (1927): 233‑255, here at 205 (our translation). 36  ST, III, q. 8, a. 3, resp.: “Christus est caput omnium hominum, sed secundum diversos gradus.” 37  Sabra, Thomas Aquinas’ Vision of the Church, 68. 38  Super II Epistolam B. Pauli ad Corinthios lectura, cap. 4, lect. 4. 39  Super Heb., cap. 11, lect. 2. See J. Mark Armitage, “Aquinas on the Divisions of the Ages: Salvation History in the Summa,” Nova et Vetera (English ed.) 6, no. 2 (2008): 253-270. 40  ST, I-II, q. 103, a. 2, resp.: “Poterat autem mens fidelium, tempore legis, per fidem coniungi Christo incarnato et passo, et ita ex fide Christi iustificabantur.” 41  ST, I-II, q. 107, a. 1, ad 2: “[F]ides habuit alium statum in veteri et in nova lege, nam quod illi credebant futurum, nos credimus factum.”

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love, fides formata caritate.42 It is this ‘living’ faith that makes human beings new creatures united to Christ,43 and this is possible even for the unbaptized.44 Aquinas specifies this faith in various ways (e.g., faith “in Christ”45), but most often he cites Heb 11:6: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” Anyone who believes these two believes all the articles of faith.46 The objective content of faith does not alter with the succeeding states of human history, but the mode in which this content is apprehended does. Aquinas teaches that it can be implicit or explicit.47 After the sin of our first parents, no one can be saved from the liability of original sin except by faith in the mediator; but such faith varies regarding the mode of belief, in accord with the different times and states. Yet, we who have been shown such a great gift must believe more than those who lived before the coming of Christ. Even then, there were some who believed more explicitly, such as the greater ones [patriarchs], and those who on occasion received a special revelation.48 And those who lived under the Law believed more explicitly than those before it: They received sacraments in which Christ was presented as a figure, while it sufficed for those gentiles who were saved that they

42  ST, III, q. 49, a. 1, ad 5: “Fides autem per quam a peccato mundamur, non est fides informis, quae potest esse etiam cum peccato, sed est fides formata per caritatem.” Trent makes this teaching its own in the Decree on Justification, cap. VII: “Faith, unless hope and charity are added to it, neither unites man perfectly with Christ nor makes him a living member of his body.” Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent: Original Text with English Translation, trans. H. J. Schroeder, OP (St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1941). For the Augustinian roots of this reading, see, Robert L. Wilken, “Fides Caritate For­ mata: Faith Formed by Love,” Nova et Vetera (English ed.) 9, no. 4 (2011): 1089-1100. 43  Super Epistolam B. Pauli ad Galatas lectura, cap. 6, lect. 4. 44  Super Sent., lib. 4, d. 4, q. 2, a. 2, qc. 5, resp.: “Sed aliquis habet fidem formatam etiam ante baptismum.” 45  Super Epistolam B. Pauli ad Colossenses lectura, cap. 1, lect. 5: “[E]ven in the Old Testament some were justified by faith in Christ.” Variations include: “faith in the Mediator, by which the fathers of old were justified even as we were” (ST, I-II, q. 98, a. 2, ad 4); “faith in Christ’s Passion” (ST, III, q. 62, a. 6, obj. 1); and faith in “the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion” (ST, II-II, q. 2, a. 7, resp.). 46  Francis Sullivan, SJ, Salvation Outside the Church? Tracing the History of the Cath­ olic Response (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1992), 49. 47  ST, I‑II, q. 106, a. 1, ad 3: “[N]ullus unquam habuit gratiam spiritus sancti nisi per fidem Christi explicitam vel implicitam.” 48  At a number of points, Aquinas refers to the explicit faith of some people in every age who received special assistance, whether prophetic revelation, internal inspiration, or a preacher especially dispatched (as Peter was sent to Cornelius in Acts). See Super Sent., lib. 3, d. 25, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1; De veritate, q. 14, a. 11, ad 1 and 5; ST, II-II, q. 2, a. 7, ad 3.



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believed God to be one who rewards, with a reward that comes only through Christ. Hence they believed implicitly in a mediator.49

This must be parsed carefully, lest contemporary understandings of the nature of implicit faith be read back into Aquinas. For Thomas, implicit faith is impossible without explicit faith.50 Implicit faith is not a matter of unconscious or pre-thematic faith, but of entailed faith;51 that is to say, the believer has explicit faith in God (often through figures52), but does not grasp (or as Rahner would say, cannot ‘thematize’) all the implications contained therein. In this light, the difference between the faith of those living after the Fall but before Christ, and those living after Christ, is not the difference between exclusively implicit faith and completely explicit faith; rather, it is the change in ratio, as it were. After the Incarnation, the faithful53 are expected to hold a greater proportion of truths explicitly.54 49  Super Heb., cap. 1, lect. 2: “Dicendum est quod post peccatum primi parentis, nemo potuit salvari a reatu culpae originalis, nisi per fidem mediatoris; sed ista fides diversificata est quantum ad modum credendi secundum diversitatem temporum et statuum. Nos autem quibus est tantum beneficium exhibitum, magis tenemur credere, quam illi qui fuerunt ante adventum Christi: tunc etiam aliqui magis explicite, sicut maiores, et illi quibus facta fuit aliquando revelatio specialis. Illi etiam, qui sub lege, magis explicite quam ante legem, quia data fuerunt eis aliqua sacramenta, quibus quasi per figuram repraesentabatur Christus; sed gentiles, qui fuerunt salvati, sufficiebat eis, quod crederent Deum esse remuneratorem, quae remuneratio non fit nisi per Christum. Unde implicite credebant in mediatorem.” An example of how St. Thomas makes use of Heb 11:6 is the account he gives of Abraham’s faith in connection with John 8:56 (Super Io., cap. 8, lect. 8). 50  De veritate, q. 14, a. 11, resp.: “[O]mni tempore aliquid explicite credi ab quolibet fideli.” “The logic of the concept of faith is such as to exclude the notion of ‘having faith in someone who is not in some sense known’. In ordinary discourse we speak of ‘implicit’ faith or trust precisely when we wish to describe our dispositions with regard to persons known to us…. The application of the concept of ‘implicit faith’ to the dispositions of persons who are not Christians represents an extension somewhat beyond the logical range of its normal use in theology.” J. A. DiNoia, OP, “Implicit Faith, General Revelation and the State of Non-Christians,” The Thomist 47, no. 2 (1983): 209-241, at 224. 51  Here I follow the excellent account provided by Stephen Bullivant in The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 77-114. 52  ST, I-II, q. 107, a. 3, ad 1. 53  This also varies according to one’s state: Before the Incarnation, “the mystery of Christ was believed explicitly by the learned, but implicitly and under a veil, so to speak, by the simple in the Church” (ST, II-II, q. 2, a. 8, resp.). After the Incarnation, “both learned and simple folk are bound to explicit faith in the mysteries of Christ, chiefly as regards those which are observed throughout the Church, and publicly proclaimed, such as the articles which refer to the Incarnation…. As to other minute points in reference to the articles of the Incarnation, men have been bound to believe them more or less explicitly according to each one’s state and office” (ST, II-II, q. 2, a. 7, resp.); thus, “men of higher degree, whose business it is to teach others, are under obligation to have fuller knowledge of matters of faith, and to believe them more explicitly” (ST, II-II, q. 2, a. 6, resp.). 54  Aquinas distinguishes among [a] articles of faith which must be accepted explicitly by everyone in every age; [b] beliefs that must be held explicitly at all times, but not by

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4. Membership in the Church Always Involves Visibility Both before and after the Mosaic law, “certain fixed sacraments significative of man’s faith in the future coming of Christ”55 were among those external acts which pertain to fides formata caritate. The shape and function of these sacraments changed with the ages, but not their necessity: “whoever worships God must needs worship Him by means of certain fixed things pertaining to external worship.”56 Like faith itself, these sacraments were shaped to the historical states of humankind: “external worship should be in proportion to the internal worship, which consists in faith, hope and charity. Consequently exterior worship had to be subject to variations according to the variations in the internal worship.”57 From Abel to Abraham, these sacraments were less determinate;58 afterwards, through the ceremonial precepts of the Old Law,59 they became fixed – a change demanded by the increase of sin’s power and the commensurate need for clearer communal significations of faith. Finally, the sacraments instituted by Christ differ from all previous everyone; [c] things which must be explicitly believed by everyone, but not in every age; [d] articles of faith which must be believed neither by everyone, nor in every age. See De veritate, q. 14, a. 11, resp. 55  ST, III, q. 61, a. 3, ad 2: “quaedam sacramenta fidei quam habebant de Christo venturo.” 56  ST, I-II, q. 103, a. 1, resp.: “Quicumque autem colit Deum, oportet quod per aliqua determinata eum colat, quae ad exteriorem cultum pertinent.” In fact, Aquinas distinguishes three kinds of precepts in the Old Law: moral precepts, ceremonial precepts, and judicial precepts. In keeping with the theme of this essay, I focus here on the ceremonial precepts, but will have cause further on to bring in the other two. 57  ST, I-II, q. 103, a. 3, resp.: “Exterior autem cultus proportionari debet interiori cultui, qui consistit in fide, spe et caritate. Unde secundum diversitatem interioris cultus, debuit diversificari cultus exterior.” See ST, III, q. 68, a. 1, ad 1, where Thomas uses a grammatical analogy: “faith in a thing already present is manifested by a sign different from that by which it was manifested when that thing was yet in the future: just as we use other parts of the verb, to signify the present, the past, and the future.” 58  ST, I-II, q. 103, a. 1, resp.: “Therefore there were some ceremonies before the Law, but they were not legal ceremonies, because they were not as yet established by legislation.” Prior to the Old Law, forms of worship arose from both [1] natural law and [2] prophetic instinct, which in certain men functioned as a private law, prompting them to worship God in specific ways. Thus, although the offering of sacrifice pertains to the natural law, it does so generically; whereas the forms of sacrifices are established by God or by man, e.g., Noah’s sacrifice of animals, Melchizidek’s sacrifice of bread and wine (ST, II-II, q. 85, a. 1). A number of pre-Mosaic customs (circumcision, priesthood, distinctions among animals) were taken up into the rites of the Old Law. 59  ST, I-II, q. 99, a. 4, resp.



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sacraments inasmuch as the latter signify justifying faith,60 but the former cause such faith. St. Thomas clarifies this in connection with circumcision. Under the Old Law, the effects of circumcision were the same as the effect of baptism under the New Law, viz., the bestowal of grace, and everything which flows from that: forgiveness of sins, the capacity to resist concupiscence and fulfill the precepts of the Law, and the power to obtain glory at the allotted time; in short, membership in the Mystical Body. Baptism bestows this grace in as much as it is the instrument of Christ’s completed Passion, but circumcision bestowed grace as a sign of faith in Christ’s future Passion.61 The Incarnation marked the transition from rites which were the occasion for the gracious justification of the sinner, to sacraments which are a cause of the forgiveness of sins. While the sacraments of the New Law bestow grace more richly than those of the Old Law (or the rites which preceded it), in neither state (nor, for that matter, in beatitude62) does Aquinas advocate the possibility of a faith both formed and invisible: “[B]efore Christ’s coming there was need for some visible signs whereby man might testify to his faith in the future coming of a Savior. And these signs are called sacraments. It is therefore clear that some sacraments were necessary before Christ’s coming.”63 These sacraments before Christ functioned differently, but accomplished the same end: “the 60  ST, III, q. 62, a. 6, resp.: “The sacraments of the Old Law were not endowed with any power by which they conduced to the bestowal of justifying grace: and they merely signified faith by which men were justified.” 61  ST, III, q. 70, a. 4., resp.: “Nam in Baptismo confertur gratia ex virtute ipsius Baptismi, quam habet inquantum est instrumentum passionis Christi iam perfectae. Circumcisio autem conferebat gratiam inquantum erat signum fidei passionis Christi futurae.” 62  ST, III, q. 22, a. 5, ad 1: “The Saints who will be in heaven will not need any further expiation by the priesthood of Christ, but having expiated, they will need consummation through Christ Himself, on Whom their glory depends.” See also ST, I-II, q. 102, a. 1, resp. 63  ST, III, q. 61, a. 3, resp.: “[S]acramenta necessaria sunt ad humanam salutem inquantum sunt quaedam sensibilia signa invisibilium rerum quibus homo sanctificatur. Nullus autem sanctificari potest post peccatum nisi per Christum…. Et ideo oportebat ante Christi adventum esse quaedam signa visibilia quibus homo fidem suam protestaretur de futuro salvatoris adventu. Et huiusmodi signa sacramenta dicuntur. Et sic patet quod ante Christi adventum necesse fuit quaedam sacramenta institui.” Later, Aquinas writes that “before the institution of circumcision, faith alone sufficed for justification” (ST, III, q. 70, a. 3, obj. 2). However, ‘sola fides’ does not mean sine sacramentis. “Now the human mind, in order to be united to God, needs to be guided by the sensible world…. Wherefore in the Divine worship it is necessary to make use of corporeal things, that man’s mind may be aroused thereby, as by signs, to the spiritual acts by means of which he is united to God” (ST, II-II, q. 81, a. 7, resp.).

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ancient Fathers, by observing the legal sacraments, were borne to Christ by the same faith and love whereby we also are borne to Him, and hence the ancient Fathers belong to the same Church as we.”64 The congregation of living faith established by grace, stretching from Abel into eternity,65 is a fundamental idea in Thomas’s thinking on the Church.66 Yet, to a number of Catholic theologians of the last century,67 the inclusion of both iusti and angels appeared to reduce the Church to an essentially mystical essence, at the expense of its visible elements.68 However, it is possible to rebut these objections. The first principle of a response we have just seen: St. Thomas’s clear teaching on the necessity of the visible dimension of the Church. The second principle is the firm subordination of this visible dimension to the invisible dimension of grace. St. Thomas does not regard the Church at any point in history as wholly invisible, nor does his thinking provide for such a possibility. Forms capable of mediating the reception and expression of grace have always been necessary (though they have not always been institutional). Prior to the Incarnation, “the visibility of the Church was made up of everything that disposed mankind to the coming of Christ (prophetic preaching, prefigurative worship, kingship) … and all the works accomplished in uprightness of heart….”69 In the fullness of time, the New Law prescribed and proscribed actions involving the sacramental reception of grace, and those concerning the right use of grace (such as the works of charity).70 The specifics of these visible aspects developed in 64  ST, III, q. 8, a. 3, ad 3: “Et ideo antiqui patres, servando legalia sacramenta, ferebantur in Christum per fidem et dilectionem eandem qua et nos in ipsum ferimur. Et ita patres antiqui pertinebant ad idem corpus Ecclesiae ad quod nos pertinemus.” 65  How can the angels and saints – those for whom “nothing is believed in as lacking, nothing hoped for as being yet to come” (ST, I-II, q. 103, a. 3, resp.) – be counted among the faithful? Again, Aquinas explains the distinction in terms of degree rather than kind. Those who enjoy the beatific vision are those who possess that grace and glory most fully (ST, III, q. 8, a. 4, ad 2) of which faith is an imperfect enjoyment (ST, I-II, q. 62, a. 3, ad 2). “Now the principal object of faith is the First Truth, the sight of which gives the happiness of heaven and takes the place of faith. Consequently, as the angels before their confirmation in grace, and man before sin, did not possess the happiness whereby God is seen in His Essence, it is evident that the knowledge they possessed was not such as to exclude faith” (ST, II-II, q. 5, a. 1, resp.). 66  Sabra, Thomas Aquinas’ Vision of the Church, 175, 177. 67  For example, Albert Mitterer, Geheimnisvoller Leib Christi: Nach St. Thomas von Aquin und nach Papst Pius XII (Vienna: Herold, 1950), 337-344. 68  Jean‑Pierre Torrell, OP, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2, Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 291. 69  Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, OP, Introduction to the Mystery of the Church, trans. Michael J. Miller (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 403. 70  Ibid., 402.



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history, moving from general acts of worship and service, through the rites and concrete obligations of the Old Law, to the sacramental life and discipleship of the New Law.71 Second, Aquinas holds (and the Second Vatican Council agrees72) that in the relationship between the visible and invisible dimensions of the Church, the former is subordinated to the latter.73 Analogically, it is true that invisible is to visible as principle is to secondary, but it is false that invisible is to visible as essential is to accidental.74 While the kingdom of God is chiefly a matter of internal acts, whatever is essential to such acts is also essential in its own way to the kingdom of God.75 The hierarchical relationship of soul and body illustrates this.76 The soul, as the substantial form of the human person, directs, moves, and bestows existence on the body,77 whereas the body serves the soul instrumentally.78 A person is rightly ordered when his reason is subject to God and, as a result, his body is subject to his soul.79 Likewise regarding worship, it is necessary to make use of corporeal things, that man’s mind may be aroused thereby, as by signs, to the spiritual acts by means of which he is united to God. Therefore the internal acts of religion take precedence of the others and belong to religion essentially, while its external acts are secondary, and subordinate to the internal acts.80

71  St. Thomas teaches that the change in sacramental worship from the Old Law to the New is not paralleled by so great a development in the actions which proceed from grace: “[I]t is through human reason that we are directed to works of virtue, for it is the rule of human action…. Wherefore in such matters as these there was no need for any precepts to be given besides the moral precepts of the Law, which proceed from the dictate of reason” (ST, I-II, q. 108, a. 2, ad 1). 72  “It is of the essence of the Church that she be both human and divine, visible and yet invisibly equipped, eager to act and yet intent on contemplation, present in this world and yet not at home in it; and she is all these things in such wise that in her the human is directed [ordinetur] and subordinated [subordinetur] to the divine, the visible likewise to the invisible, action to contemplation, and this present world to that city yet to come, which we seek” (Sacrosanctum concilium 2). 73  “Therefore the internal acts of religion take precedence of the others and belong to religion essentially, while its external acts are secondary, and subordinate to the internal acts” (ST, II‑II, q. 81, a. 7, resp.). 74  De La Soujeole, Introduction to the Mystery of the Church, 398. 75  ST, I-II, q. 108, a. 1, ad 1. 76  ST, I‑II, q. 101, a. 2, resp. and q. 106, a. 1, resp. 77  Quaestiones disputatae De anima, a. 9. 78  ST, III, q. 8, a. 2, resp. 79  ST, I, q. 95, a. 1, resp.: “ratio subdebatur Deo, rationi vero inferiores vires, et animae corpus.” 80  ST, II-II, q. 81, a. 7, resp.: “[I]n divino cultu necesse est aliquibus corporalibus uti, ut eis, quasi signis quibusdam, mens hominis excitetur ad spirituales actus, quibus Deo coniungitur. Et ideo religio habet quidem interiores actus quasi principales et per se ad

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III.  Reflections on The Church Unfinished 1. Ambiguity about the Origin and Scope of the Church To return to my theme, there is an ambiguity in both Lumen gentium and The Church Unfinished regarding the ‘membership status’ of those who lived before Christ, both Jews and pagans. Were they full members of the Church, such that one can say that the Church has existed from the earliest days of humanity? The document’s use of the language of foreshadowing and preparation to characterize our distant forebears presents an uncertain position. It does not use the expression ecclesia ab Abel, but lists him as the first of the iusti who “will be gathered together with the Father in the universal Church.” This leaves it uncertain whether Abel’s is a partial belonging which must await an eschatological completion. Yet, this ambiguity is not present in the sources Lumen gentium references, which teach plainly that the Church existed since Abel. For example, this text from Augustine is cited as support: You are the body of Christ and its members (1 Cor 12:27)[.] All of us together are the members of Christ and his body; not only those of us who are in this place, but throughout the whole world; and not only those of us who are alive at this time, but what shall I say? From Abel the just right up to the end of the world, as long as people beget and are begotten, any of the just who make the passage through this life, all that now – that is, not in this place but in this life – all that are going to be born after us, all constitute the one body of Christ; while they are each individually members of Christ.81

Like the Council, Prusak does not reference the ecclesia ab Abel, but favors the language of remote origin, roots, genesis, dynamic process, and gradual growth. The connection of pagans, Israel, and the Church is given in positive but general terms: “in its relationship to Jesus, the community called Church always stands in relationship both to a long process of human development and to that particular community called the Jewish people, rooted in the faith of Abraham and Sarah.”82 But does religionem pertinentes, exteriores vero actus quasi secundarios, et ad interiores actus ordinatos.” 81  Sermon 341.11. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, vol. III/10, Sermons 341-400: On Liturgical Seasons, trans. Edmund Hill, OP (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1997), 26; cited at LG, chap. 1, n. 2. 82  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 10-11. See also his observations (73-75) on the continuity between Israel and the Church that is betokened by the early disciples’ self-denomination as ekklesia.



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this amount to the claim that the Church, properly speaking, is real before Christ? And why might this question be relevant to Prusak’s reflections? 2. Questions for The Church Unfinished Gaudium et spes observes that “historical studies make it much easier to see things in their mutable and evolutionary aspects” (GS  54). The Church Unfinished can be seen as the application of this insight to ecclesial structures. Prusak’s skill in synthesizing and balancing a wide range of scholarship guides an impressively broad review of Church history, and leads him to conclude that the primary shape and major features of Church leadership were not laid down irrevocably by Christ,83 but arose from a double helix of lawfulness and randomness, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.84 Consonant with this project, the focus of the book lies in the history and theology of the Church of the New Testament and its subsequent development. It is perfectly proper to limit the attention given to developments prior to this. Prusak’s handling of the cosmological, anthropological, and historical dimensions of such ‘pre-history’ is directed primarily to limning an ecclesial pedigree characterized by freedom and flexibility, rather than to exploring questions involved in Church membership. Still, a consideration of some questions connected to the idea of the ecclesia ab Abel and the issues surrounding Church membership could serve as a useful supplement to Prusak’s project. In what follows, I pose several such questions. First, there is the relationship of divine providence and ecclesial structure. The theme of ecclesia ab Abel is intrinsically bound up with a view of salvation history as, in part, the story of God gradually formalizing the means of receiving and using grace.85 Aquinas does not believe that 83  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 11; also 61, 331. Prusak draws support from other directions as well: “[T]he dynamic openness of the Church as institution can also be grounded in an understanding of Church as the sacrament of Jesus – who emptied self and took on the form of a slave (Phil 2:6-8). It is a kenotic, flexible Church that is truly the persisting presence of the Incarnate Word in time and space” (68). 84  Ibid., 5, 9. 85  The question here concerns the existence and status of divinely decreed means of reception and utilization. The vital question of grace and faith beyond these means, under both the Old and New Laws, is not directly pertinent here. Aquinas recognizes that God’s saving power can work beyond the ceremonies of temple and Church, but a proper consideration of Thomas’s interpretation of extra ecclesiam nulla salus, although

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Abel and his faithful descendants enjoyed a membership in the Church which differed in only minor ways from the children of Abraham and the followers of Christ. As seen earlier, the succession of ages brought about true changes in the visible aspects of the Church, and Thomas is clear about the superiority of the New Testament forms over the Old.86 These changes are providential, embodying God’s will for His Church, but not exclusive of free and creative contributions by members of that Church. Aquinas makes a distinction between the divine institution of the rites of reception, and the human discernment which plays a part in the regulation of the acts of grace.87 And since we cannot of ourselves obtain grace, but through Christ alone, hence Christ of Himself instituted the sacraments whereby we obtain grace: viz., Baptism, Eucharist, Orders of the ministers of the New Law, by the institution of the apostles and seventy‑two disciples, Penance, and indissoluble Matrimony. He promised Confirmation through the sending of the Holy Spirit: and we read that by His institution the apostles healed the sick by anointing them with oil (Mk. 6:13). These are the sacraments of the New Law. In the second place there are those external acts which ensue from the promptings of grace: and herein we must observe a difference. For there are some which are necessarily in keeping with, or in opposition to inward grace consisting in faith that works through love. Such external works are prescribed or forbidden in the New Law; thus confession of faith is prescribed, and denial of faith is forbidden…. On the other hand, there are works which are not necessarily opposed to, or in keeping with faith that works through love. Such works are not prescribed or forbidden in the New Law, by virtue of its primitive institution; but have been left by the Lawgiver, i.e., Christ, to the discretion of each

it has obvious connections with my theme, is out of place here. Suffice it to say that, on the one hand, Thomas affirms the teaching: “At no time, not even before the coming of Christ, could men be saved unless they became members of Christ” (ST, III, q. 68, a. 1, resp.). On the other hand, Aquinas regards those justified by living faith before the Incarnation as true members of the Church. Moreover, Aquinas’s exposition of the axiom treats it as intra‑ecclesial: “[I]t censored church members who had separated or were considering separation from unity. In no citation is any application made to groups outside Christendom.” Thomas O’Meara, OP, “The Presence of Grace outside of Evangelization, Baptism, and Church in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas,” in That Others May Know and Love, ed. Michael F. Cusato (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1997), 91-131, at 102. 86  Super Heb., cap. 1, lect. 1. 87  ST, I-II, q. 99, a. 4, resp.: “Now each of these [the moral, ceremonial, and legal precepts of the Old Law] belongs in the abstract to the dictates of the natural law, to which dictates the moral precepts are to be referred: yet each of them has to be deter­ mined by Divine or human law, because naturally known principles are universal, both in speculative and in practical matters.” Emphasis added.

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individual. And so to each one it is free to decide what he should do or avoid; and to each superior, to direct his subjects in such matters as regards what they must do or avoid. Wherefore also in this respect the Gospel is called the law of liberty: since the Old Law decided many points and left few to man to decide as he chose.88

Aquinas finds this distinction in the pages of Scripture, where God Himself writes the Decalogue (Exod 32:16), where God Incarnate institutes the sacraments, and where the early community engages in discernment about specifics (Acts 15, 1 Cor 7:25). The point, then, is not whether there is potential for change; as a matter of historical record, there is. Instead, we must ask what is open to change, what is unrevisable, and what are the criteria by which the Church distinguishes these? Is it possible to read Scripture critically, and still allow that inspiration and revelation provide structural elements that are of divine institution and unrevisable? Is the idea that specific structures of Church leadership are divinely intended and established hopelessly mythological? There is another question in this vein. Would the existence of such structures abrogate human freedom and creativity? Prusak frequently depicts this question as demanding a choice between moderate creativity and extreme inflexibility. For example, “Now the question to ask is, would God create through a process in which humans can choose among a surplus of possibilities for shaping a new future, but then completely predetermine the shape of the Church for all time?”89 Throughout The Church Unfinished, we find the idea of a developing Church squared off against the idea of a Church in which nothing new or unexpected could develop, a Church absolute and complete from the start, explicitly predetermined, entirely self-sufficient, and closed off to any influence from human freedom. These are not the alternatives St. Thomas sees, as his account of the developing structures of the ecclesia ab Abel makes clear. Further, Prusak’s handling of continuity would benefit from clarification. The question of “which dimensions of the ever‑young Church are not predetermined and unchangeable, but have arisen from past decisions that God is patiently expecting us to reconsider,”90 implies the existence of dimensions that are determined and unchangeable. What are these? Prusak speaks of “prejudgments or predispositions  ST, I-II, q. 108, a. 1, resp.  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 331. 90  Ibid., 8. 88

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positively implanted within the tradition by Jesus and sustained by the Spirit,”91 but these result in an exceptionally broad construal of continuity: “Jesus had chosen the Twelve and had left an emphasis on service or ‘pro-existence’, but he did not otherwise predetermine the development of his community.”92 But is it possible – and did Christ intend – “continuity in the Church’s essential nature and mission”93 to be secured through fidelity to general guidelines or trajectories, through structures of sanctification, governance, and instruction of nearly complete malleability? Or rather, is it possible to agree that the early structures of leadership in the Church did involve a complex historical development, but one which resulted in specific structures willed by God and not substantially revisable? For instance, Prusak observes that the Church’s subsequent emphasis on the importance of ordination has little place in the New Testament.94 Even if this is granted, Catholicism has never endorsed a biblicism in which anything that is not clearly defined and established by the undoubted and unique authority of the Scriptures can therefore be considered revisable novelty. Karl Rahner writes: The historical development of a historical structure is not necessarily reversible simply because the development in question is a state which did not always exist. There are one‑way historical processes which are no longer reversible. This is true even if these processes were not necessary, i.e. even when the preceding state was neither a fact nor a necessity which was bound to lead to the state in question.95

Again, this is a general observation, and does not solve the question of criteria for distinguishing reversible and irreversible developments. It does, however, raise the issue of whether the flexible processes of historical development are themselves beyond change, or if they can issue in fixed and unrevisable outcomes.  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 6.  Ibid., 56. 93  Ibid., 4. 94  Ibid., 57. 95  Karl Rahner, “Reflections on the Concept of Jus Divinum in Catholic Thought,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 5, trans. Karl‑H. Kruger (Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1966), 219-243, at 226. Rahner recognizes that this does not relieve theology of the difficult task of correctly applying these categories to concrete history: “[H]ow cautious we must be in assuming that among the principles of the Church’s juridical constitution now in force we shall find it very easy to distinguish between the changeable and unchangeable factors….” “Basic Observations on the Subject of Changeable and Unchangeable Factors in the Church,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 14, trans. David Bourke (New York: Seabury, 1976), 3-23, at 17. 91

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In the matter of Christology, Prusak pushes the open-endedness of ecclesial development even further, moving from the idea that Christ did not determine any binding structures for his Church, to the strong implication that Christ could not have done so. The “christological presuppositions of ecclesiology”96 upon which Prusak’s proposal depends include, on the one hand, Jesus’ possession of an exclusively human intellect, permeated by a pre-thematic ‘Abba experience’ of unique intimacy with the Father; and, on the other hand, exclude any preternatural grasp of past and future by Jesus the man, such as would supposedly be produced by infused knowledge and the beatific vision.97 “Does believing that Jesus is ‘God become human’ require that Jesus as human had to know the entire future? If Jesus knew the entire future, would he have been fully and truly human in the way we understand what it means to be human? … [D]id Jesus know the whole future and consciously intend to found and organize the Church as a hierarchical structure?”98 Again, their all-or-nothing form (‘entire’, ‘whole’) indicates that these are rhetorical questions. Indeed, the principles that guide Prusak’s ‘low ascending’ Christology clearly entail that any statement by Christ which speaks of specific future events can only be the product of a post-resurrection perspective. Finally, and at the risk of sounding like a book reviewer who has more to say about what an author should have included in a book then what is actually there, I think Prusak’s proposals would be well served by some substantial reflections on faith and grace. For example, he speaks of the latter mainly as a transforming relationship with God,99 a view that he contrasts with the “medieval paradigm” in which grace is conceived “as something that can be received, lost, and regained, given to some and withheld from others.”100 Prusak obviously disapproves of this view, but it is not clear whether he thinks anything in it is worth retrieving. Does grace have any ‘thing-like’ properties correlative to its relational nature? Are the categories of ‘means of reception’ and ‘acts of utilization’ without any value? When Paul proclaimed that the grace of God had appeared  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 10.  Prusak’s observations on this score reflect the post-conciliar consensus in which Christ’s human freedom and intellect could not maintain their integrity in the presence of the beatific vision. For a detailed reconsideration of this view, see Simon F. Gaine, OP, Did the Saviour See the Father? Christ, Salvation and the Vision of God (London and New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015). 98  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 39-40. 99  Ibid., 13. 100  Ibid., 153. 96 97

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(Tit 2:11), when he arrived in Antioch and “saw the grace of God” (Acts 11:23), and when the Lord told him “My grace is sufficient for you,” was he not speaking of something which could be identified, gained and lost, shared and obscured? Furthermore, the ecclesia ab Abel rests upon the view that habitual grace invariably unites one with the Body of Christ. Does The Church Unfinished allow for similar lines of thought? A more express account of grace would offer valuable clarification of these points, and others.101 Summarily, it would be difficult for any Catholic theologian to disagree with Prusak’s assessment that “The Church is the lasting presence of God’s self-communication in Jesus.”102 Nor can one gainsay the forcefulness of the analysis presented in The Church Unfinished, which seeks new ways of the realization and proclamation of that presence. The meager reflections offered here are intended to supplement what Prusak has achieved by raising a few points for further consideration, as part of the unfinished project of Catholic ecclesiology.

101  In addition, a fuller account of grace would entail a clearer description of the relationship of nature and grace. Prusak’s statements about this (apparently under the influence of ideas drawn from process theology) lend themselves to a confusion of the two, e.g., “Grace, or a relationship with God, was a gift always offered, and always inviting response, since the very moment of creation” (ibid., 13). But what can this mean, when any rational-material creatures in the universe capable of receiving and responding to that offer only came billions of years after that first moment? 102  Ibid., 195.

“Upon Us and upon These Offered Gifts”

Ecclesio-epicletic Graces in Byzantine Divine Liturgies Joseph A. Loya, OSA Dr. Bernard P. Prusak’s abiding ecumenical interest in Eastern Christian church life – married clergy and liturgy, especially – has long informed the nexus of our academic relationship. In recent recollection we happened to share a quiet side table at a Department social event during which he inquired about the exact location, wording and ecclesial fruits of the epiclesis in Eastern Christian Eucharistic Liturgy. This contribution was composed and submitted as a magnification of that informal little colloquy. In revisiting the epiclesis question, “How exactly should the Spirit’s role in the eucharistic mystery be articulated?” Ann McGowan resurrects J.-M. R. Tillard’s caution against privileging such study unto pneumatological myopia. For the sake of sharp contrast, she juxtaposes Lukas Vischer and Paul Evdokimov’s conviction that the essence and effects of the epiclesis are absolutely crucial for interchurch dialogue.1 Concern through history regarding the Spirit’s role indeed has often devolved at times into astigmatic and injudicious debating of the consecratory vs. non-consecratory action of the Spirit over the gifts of bread and wine. (Point for Tillard.) However, McGowan notes that the ecumenical gravity of the epiclesis was secured by J. H. Mckenna as he pressed to the conclusion that when the epiclesis is considered in its broader context, it becomes a multifaceted microcosm that illumines fundamental issues of Christology, pneumatology, ecclesiology and sacramental theology. Indeed, the theological resonance of concerted treatments of the epiclesis necessitates engagement with such theological issues as the role of faith, of the praying assembly, of the ordained and universal priesthood, and of the Holy Spirit in the realization of the Eucharist, as well as the question of Eucharistic “real presence.”2 Thereon she focuses on developments in the Tradition of 1  Anne McGowan, Eucharistic Epicleses, Ancient and Modern: Speaking of the Spirit in Eucharistic Prayer (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014), 9. 2  Ibid., 9-11.

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the Christian West. This present effort first registers a brief review of Robert Taft’s ‘multifaceted’ commentary on the fruits or graces of the Eucharist in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (CHR) of the Byzantine East; this is followed by a more broadly contextualized commentary on the Holy Spirit’s operation in a second ‘standard’ Byzantine Divine Liturgy – the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great (BAS). The mode of exposition here is informed by David Fagerberg’s conviction that liturgy is not so much an object for theologizing, but rather is – as was the Church itself in the patristic tradition – a theological resource “throwing off theology, like a grinding wheel throws off sparks” as it moves according to its inner dynamic and wordcraft.3 I.  The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (CHR) CHR is of the West Syrian or Antiochian liturgical family within which one also finds the Liturgy of St. James and the Liturgy of the Twelve Apostles.4 CHR is structured in accordance with this liturgical tradition’s order of Preparation for the Anaphora and Profession of Faith, followed by the Anaphora consisting of institution narrative, anamnesis, oblation and hallowing of the gifts through the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them. The Prayer of Preparation, provided in part here, is an accessus ad altare-type Proskomide Prayer that adumbrates the fruits of the Eucharist later explicated in the epiclesis and a pre-Communion collect:5 Lord God almighty … bring us to your holy altar and enable us to offer you these gifts and spiritual sacrifices for our sins and for the faults of the people, and make us worthy to find favor in your sight, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to you, and that the good spirit

3  David Fagerberg, “David Fagerberg on Alexander Schmemann’s Liturgical Theology,” interviewed by Adam Deville, http://easternchristianbooks.blogspot.com/2018/04/ david-fagerberg-on-alexander-schmemanns.html. 4  Paul Meyendorff, “The Role of the Holy Spirit in the Anaphoras of Byzantine St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom,” 1, http://www.allsaints-stl.org/Anaphora%20-%20 Web%20Version%202008.pdf. 5  Robert F. Taft, SJ, “The Fruits of Communion in the Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom,” in Psallendum: Miscellanea di studi in onore del Prof. Jordi Pinell i Pons, O.S.B., ed. Ildebrando Scicolone, Analecta Liturgica 15; Studia Anselmiana 105 (Rome: Abbazia S. Paolo, 1992), 275-302, at 278. The CHR texts that follow are Taft’s translation of the Greek sourced through Frank Edward Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western (Oxford: Clarendon, 1896), 319 and 329-330, a work that is itself sourced in Roman. Biblioth. Barbarin. MS iii, 55 (C.A.D. 800), 1-117, 512, 519.



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of your grace may rest upon us, and upon these present gifts, and upon all your people.

The epiclesis proper is where the Antiochene-type anaphoras traditionally express the ‘why’ of the Eucharist, the purpose for which the Church celebrates it and the benefits she hopes to receive from it.6 Again we offer you this spiritual and unbloody worship and we invoke and pray and beseech [you], send down your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these offered gifts, and make the bread the precious body of your Christ, changing [it – metabalōn]7 by your Holy Spirit, Amen!, and what is in this chalice the precious blood of your Christ, changing [it] by your Holy Spirit, Amen! So that for those who receive [them] them they might be I. for sobriety of soul, II. the forgiveness of sins, III. the communion in your Holy Spirit, IV. fullness of the heavenly Kingdom, V. for filial confidence before you, not unto judgment or damnation.8

Taft teaches the following regarding the fruits of the Eucharist prayed for in CHR: i. Vigilance, or sobriety of soul (nepsis), is a fundamental virtue and a prelude to all contemplation in the earliest strata of Byzantine monastic counsel. In the face of Mateos’s proposal that nepsis actually should be understood in the sense of its homonym that means ‘washing’, the preference is to hold to the form and meaning of the textus receptus.9

 Taft, “The Fruits of Communion,” 285.  Paul Meyendorff discounts the notion that ‘make’ indicates an exact consecratory moment in the Divine Liturgy. In biology the word ‘metabolism’, as derived from metabalōn, is the sum of all of the biochemical reactions occurring in a living organism. It does not refer to one single biochemical reaction or change, but to the whole symphony of biochemistry that gives life to the body. This applies to the Byzantine Liturgies in that the changing of the gifts by the Holy Spirit is a transformation manifested outside of our realm of understanding of time. The proper framing of the notion of the changing of the bread and wine should only be within a whole ‘metabolism of consecration’ which is the sum total of corporate liturgical worship in the Spirit. See Meyendorff, “The Role of the Holy Spirit,” 5-7. 8  Taft teaches the generally agreed upon conviction that the pristine nucleus of the epiclesis had as its object the faithful who were to partake of the consecrated gifts: subsequent to this the petition for the sanctification of the gifts themselves was made more explicit and given pride of place, the Spirit epiclesis itself being an instance of pneumatological maturation and development of the prior Logos/Christocentric understanding to the Eucharistic Mystery. See Taft, “Fruits of Communion,” 295 and 297. 9  Ibid., 287-288. 6 7

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ii. The petition for the remission of sins is to be deemed entirely consistent with conventional patristic insistence on the necessity of worthiness before approaching the chalice to take Communion. iii. Some commentators believe that the communion of the Holy Spirit in 2 Cor 13:13 is a subjective genitive referencing the fellowship of one another engendered by the Holy Spirit (communion in the Spirit being differentiated from communion with the Spirit): howbeit, it is the conviction in both the Byzantine and Syriac traditions that the fullness of the Spirit is received in Communion.10 iv. The phrase, ‘fullness of the kingdom’, is true to the socio-ecclesial dimension essential for any theology of Communion in the earliest Christian tradition. “For what we receive through the eucharist is not merely a heavenly, i.e., future reward, but the life of the kingdom inchoatively present in the ecclesial communion of which the eucharistic messianic banquet is a sacrament … Hence, the communion of the Holy Spirit unites us not only to the life of the Trinity, but also to one another in the Body of Christ which is the Church.”11 v. Filial confidence in God (parrhesia) before the Father is taught by Paul in Rom 8:9-17, Gal 4:3-7, and Rom 8:31–39. (Taft finds it surprising that in CHR this virtue is associated with Communion; in patristic literature the virtue is often treated more as a fruit of baptism, and thus a prerequisite rather than a fruit of Communion.12). Regarding “not judgment or condemnation,” it is the universal teaching of the Church from 1 Cor 11:27-34 that the Eucharist can be received unworthily and thus rendered an object of profanation. The socio-ethical demands of communing render each communicant accountable to the common good of the communal body.13

II.  The Liturgy of St. Basil the Great (BAS) BAS anteceded CHR as the ordinary form for Sundays and feast days according to Constantinopolitan usage. Once CHR was integrated into BAS, they together took on common elements through time. BAS is also of the West Syrian liturgical family, but its particular eucharistic prayer is derived from the Egyptian Anaphora of St. Basil, which is of the Alexandrian family, a fact that belies the common mistaken notion that  Taft, “Fruits of Communion,” 294-295.  Ibid., 297. 12  Ibid., 300. 13  Ibid., 301-302. 10 11



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CHR is simply a condensed version of BAS.14 Through the centuries, the celebration of BAS in churches of the Byzantine Rite became restricted to the following times: • • • • • • • •

All Sundays of the forty-day Great Fast (Lent); Holy and Great Thursday; Holy and Great Saturday; Vigil of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ (December 24), except if the Vigil falls on Saturday or Sunday; Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ (December 25), only when it falls on Sunday or Monday; Circumcision of our Lord Jesus Christ and the feast of Our Holy Father Basil the Great (January 1); Vigil of the Theophany of our Lord Jesus Christ (January 5), except if the Vigil falls on Saturday or Sunday; Theophany of Our Lord Jesus Christ (January 6), only when it falls on Sunday or Monday.15

Paul Meyendorff readily espies a comparatively richer Trinitarian theology and more expansive role for the Holy Spirit in BAS when compared to CHR, attributable to the fact that, when St. Basil originally wrote the text of his Alexandrian anaphora, he was deeply involved in the Pneumatomachian controversy.16 In Nicholas Denysenko’s overview, the arc spanning the anaphora’s introduction through the epiclesis to the reception of Holy Communion breaks open the paradox of sinful people audaciously approaching and entreating an immeasurably gratuitous God, illustrating how the Church’s offering of gifts culminates in God’s embrace of the Church in the divine community of the Trinity.17 1. The Introduction to the Anaphora St. Basil used the term ‘epiclesis’ to describe the whole anaphora prayer, and also for this pre-anaphora Proskomide Prayer.18 Receive us as we draw near your holy altar so that we may be worthy to offer you this spiritual and unbloody sacrifice for our sins and for

 Meyendorff, “The Role of the Holy Spirit,” 2.  The Divine Liturgy of Our Holy Father Basil the Great (Pittsburgh, PA: Byzantine Seminary Press, 2006), 7. 16  Meyendorff, “The Role of the Holy Spirit,” 3. 17  Nicholas Denysenko, “Epiclesis, Descent, and Creation: Liturgy and Life in the Trinity,” Liturgy 30, no. 1 (2015): 24-32, at 30. 18  Marek Ławreszuk, “Invocation of the Holy Spirit in Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom and Saint Basil the Great,” Studia Oecumenica 14 (2014): 195-212, at 205. 14 15

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the people’s failing. Receive it as a fragrant aroma upon your holy, heavenly, and mystical altar, and send down upon us, in return, the grace of your Holy Spirit…19

The anaphora is also prefaced by a kiss of peace (foreshadowing eschatological unanimity20) and Confession of faith that conditions the epiclesis, thus affirming that the Eucharist results from orthodoxy, not vice versa.21 The deacon then summons the faithful to attentive standing ‘in awe’ for what is presently to be offered in the Lord’s peace. The priest turns and blesses the gathered, intoning the Pauline blessing of 2 Cor 13:13: “The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” The faithful respond, “And with your spirit.” The priest bids the lifting up of hearts, to which the faithful respond, “We lift them up to the Lord.” The priest prays the reasons for rendering thanks unto God: O Eternal Being, Master, Lord, God, Father almighty and adorable … you have granted us knowledge of your truth …. [For] our great God, Savior, and Lord Jesus Christ … through whom the Holy Spirit has been revealed: the Spirit of truth, the Gift of filial adoption, the Pledge of our future inheritance,

19  This BAS text and those following are from The Divine Liturgy of Our Holy Father Basil the Great. This edition was prepared for use in the Byzantine Ruthenian Metropolitan of Pittsburgh by the Intereparchial Commission for Sacred Liturgy. The test was translated from the Greek original as found in the Iereatikon (Rome, 1950), compared with the church Slavonic of the Sluzhebnik (Rome, 1952) and with the English translation of the Intereparchial Liturgical Commission of the Metropolia (1976). Revisions were approved by the Council of Hierarches and submitted to the Apostolic See for approval, in accordance with canon 657. The Apostolic See granted approval under protocol number 99/2001, dated March 31, 2001. In accord with canon 167.3, Metropolitan Basil Shott, OFM, in the name of the Council of Hierarchs, promulgated the text on January 6, 2007. 20  Hans-Joachim Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy: Symbolic Structure and Faith Expression (New York: Pueblo, 1986), 47. The introduction to the kiss of peace: “Let us Love one another that with one mind we may profess” (deacon); “The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in essence and undivided” (people). Robert Slesinksy comments: “Clearly this is an evocation that the love that is at one with the Persons of the Holy Trinity in perichoresis, that is, enjoying true reciprocal interiority or being-in-one-another (See Jn 10:30, 14:9-11, 17:21), may also obtain amongst the worshipping faithful…. For her part, the Church as a koinonia of believers is herself an icon of the Holy Trinity, not just potentially, but already now, as so incomparably expressed in that hymn of glorification and thanksgiving that so communicates life in the Church as received in holy communion.” Robert F. Slesinski, A Primer on Church and Eucharist: Eastern Perspectives (Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications, 2007), 67. 21  Radu Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology (New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 200.



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the First-fruits of eternal blessings, the Life-creating Power, the Wellspring of sanctification through whom every rational and intelligent creature is empowered to worship you, and to offer you an unending hymn of praise; for all creation serves you.

Then, just as in the Great Entrance that previously brought the gifts of bread and wine to the altar, the celebrant prayerfully references the angelic choirs: Angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, principalities, virtues, powers, and the many-eyed cherubim praise you. You are surrounded by the six-winged seraphim… singing, shouting, crying aloud, and saying the triumphal hymn:

To which the faithful sing, “Holy, holy, holy….” The priest concludes by once more praising God: We sinners also cry out with these blessed powers, O loving and kind Master, and say: Holy are you; truly, all-holy. Immeasurable is the majesty of your holiness.

2. Anamnesis-Epiclesis The ‘revered works’ are recounted from the time of creation through the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper with the words of institution,22 to which the faithful respond by singing out the anamnesis acclamation, “We praise you, we bless you, we thank you, O Lord, and we pray to you, our God.” The epiclesis is then voiced. Denysenko highlights how the celebrant begins by reminding himself of his own sinfulness and yet is privileged to serve in the sacred space; in this same 22  As to the ‘voice’ in which the priest pronounces the Words of Institution, Bordeianu demarcates the various perspectives among Orthodox theological leading lights: Evdokimov advocates for priests in persona ecclesia and in nomine Christi, but not in persona Christi; Florovsky and Zizioulas taught these plus a priestly in persona ecclesiae, as well; Afanasiev and Schmemann did not favor in persona ecclesiae as a priestly capacity; Staniloae insists on in persona Christi and in persona ecclesiae, but does not insist on in nomine Christi (see section “Ordained Priesthood,” in Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae, 169-177). As to the direction the priest faces during the praying of the anaphora, Bordeianu notes: “When the consecration takes place in the Orthodox Liturgy, both the priest and the congregation face Eastwards, a liturgical gesture that implies their common communion, which is confirmed by the prayer of invocation (epiclesis): ‘send down your Holy Spirit upon us [i.e., the priest and people seen as one] and upon these gifts here presented’” (Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae, 175.)

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vein, the faithful are with the celebrant ascetically standing before God with their sins, faults, weaknesses, addictions, and imperfections in the sight of the Almighty.23 All-holy Master, since you have allowed us sinners and unworthy servants to minister at your holy altar – not because of our righteousness, for we have done nothing good on earth, but because of your mercy and compassion so richly poured out upon us – we have the courage to approach your holy altar. As we offer you the holy body and blood of your Christ in this form, we pray you and beseech you, O Holy of Holies, that, according to your kind favor,  your Holy Spirit may come upon us and upon these gifts here offered;  and bless and sanctify them and show this bread to be truly the precious body of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ, [Deacon: “Amen.”] and this chalice to be truly the precious blood of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ [Deacon: “Amen.”] shed for the life of the world [Deacon: “Amen, amen, amen.”] So that all of us who share this one bread and chalice may be united with one another in the communion of the one Holy Spirit,  and that none of us partake of the holy body and blood of your Christ for judgment or condemnation.

Michael Zheltov avers, in consonance with Meyendorff, that the theology of BAS is more fully contextualized and ‘balanced’ than that of CHR, which has the Father sending down the Holy Spirit, “while in BAS it is the Holy Spirit who is coming and sanctifying the gifts on his own.”24 3. “United with One Another” Nicholas Afanasiev, given his exalted view of ‘laics’, asserts that the ‘us’ upon which the Holy Spirit descends constitutes a body united in the priesthood of Christ, a conviction rooted in his reading of Acts 8:14-17, Hippolytus of Rome’s Apostolic Tradition and the grace of the  Denysenko, “Epiclesis, Descent, and Creation,” 30.  Zheltov considers ‘make’ (CHR) to be more ‘direct’ than ‘show’ (BAS). See Michael Zheltov, “The Moment of Eucharistic Consecration in Byzantine Thought,” in Issues in Eucharistic Praying in East and West, Essays in Liturgical and Theological Analysis, ed. Maxwell E. Johnson (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 263-295, at 270-271. Taft argues that the distinction between ‘make’ (CHR) and ‘show’ (BAS) is of no consequence. See “Ecumenical Scholarship and the Catholic-Orthodox Epiclesis Dispute,” Ostkirchliche Studien 45, nos. 3-4 (1996): 201-226, at 208. 23

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­ onfirmation/Chrismation anointing. He writes of those who pray, worC ship and celebrate: Laics are concelebrants with the bishop and the presbyter, for it is in concelebration that the sacraments are performed. Laics are the bishop’s concelebrants not just because they have an active role in the sacramental ministry but because they, being priests of the most high God, actually celebrate those sacraments. Only with the concelebration of the laics can the bishop or presbyter celebrate those acts. … As a member of the people of God, a laic ministers together with those who preside over him. … Therefore sacramental ministry is not only open to the laics, but the liturgy and the sacraments themselves are celebrated only when the whole people of God celebrate them, i.e., when the presiders together with the people celebrate those acts…. The priesthood belongs to everyone, for it belongs to the Church and thus, everyone ministers when the Church ministers.25

Here Afanasiev overcomes common overly drawn distinctions between royal and ministerial priesthood. Liturgy is Christological – and also essentially Trinitarian, in reflection of the unity of the Divine Persons in the Godhead: in Liturgy the Holy Trinity is most descended to the believers in an anticipation and foretaste of the Trinity’s Kingdom.26 Trinitarian actions are harmonized within a divine economy hallmarked by recognition of the truth that Son and Holy Spirit, without separation or confusion, are the source of the Church’s unity in diversity. According to Bordeianu’s reading, Lossky emphasized the distinctiveness of their economies, with Christ as the foundation to unity and the Holy Spirit serving as guarantor of personal diversity within the gathered community; for Florovsky, the community is unified in being enlivened by sharing of the one Spirit as distinctive members of the one Body of Christ; for Zizioulas, Spirit diversifies and unifies by nature while Christ unifies by personhood.27 Staniloae shed light on these words of St. Basil: “The Spirit holds the members together through the gifts that depend upon each other. All members endowed with various gifts complete the body of Christ and, in the unity of the Spirit, transmit to each other the benefits of these gifts that are necessary to all, causing all to enjoy all gifts.”28 25  Nicholas Afanasiev, The Church of the Holy Spirit, trans. Vitaly Permiakov (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 38. 26  Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae, 105. 27  Ibid., 122-123, 136. 28  Dumitru Staniloae, The Church: Communion in the Holy Spirit, The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology 4 (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press,

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Ever mindful that death is powerless to sever our bonds with those who rest eternally in the Lord’s Presence beyond death, the celebrant then leads the worshiping community into prayerful recollection of the Church Triumphant. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople (715-730 ce), comments in his Mystagogical Catecheses: Then comes the remembrance of those who have fallen asleep in the God of spirits and of all flesh, Who is the Lord of both the dead and the living, and Who rules over those in heaven, on earth, and in the lower regions…. He has been raised from the dead, having become the first-fruit and first-born from the dead (cf. 1 Cor 15:20). He prepared a way for all to the resurrection of the dead and granted rest in eternal and blessed life to those who have fallen asleep in the hope of His resurrection. The souls of Christians are called together to assemble with the prophets, apostles and hierarchs in order to recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the mystical banquet of the Kingdom of Christ. Thereby having come into the unity of the faith and communion of the Spirit through the dispensation of the One who died for us and is sitting at the right hand of the Father, we are no longer on earth but standing by the royal throne of God in heaven, where Christ is, just as He himself says: “Righteous Father, sanctify in your name those whom you gave me, so that where I am, they may be with me”(cf. John 17).29

Denysenko elaborates on the remembrance of the living that immediately follows the remembrance of the dead: the Church asks God to remember those in the deserts and mountains, in dens and caves; those who live in virginity and piety; married couples, infants, youth, old, fainthearted, scattered, wanderers, orphans, widows, captives, the sick, the accused, those in exile, and those who hate us.30 Moreover, the intercessions possess a prophetic and tropological function as they challenge the believer to view the world he or she engages every day as the tangible sign of the divine community, with the underlying admonitions to shed the habits that cause us to approach the altar as redeemed sinners.31 God’s promise of the Holy Spirit should inspire adopting and doing in everyday life what is rehearsed in Liturgy.

1998), 111. The Basil quote is from his “On the Holy Spirit,” in Patrologia Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1857-1886), 32: 181. 29  St. Germanus of Constantinople: On the Divine Liturgy, trans. Paul Meyendorff (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 99-101. 30  Denysenko, “Epiclesis, Descent, and Creation,” 30. 31  Ibid., 31.



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III.  “Communion of the One Holy Spirit” – Spirit as Hypostasis Ecclesial life is supremely marked by deific and deifying personal energism. St. Gregory Palamas, on the workings of the Holy Spirit: The wonderful acts performed through the Lord’s body, which showed Christ as being the only begotten of God in His own hypostasis, united with us in the last days, have come to an end. The acts that show the Holy Spirit in His own hypostasis now begin to be performed, in order that we may know and enter deeply, through meditation, into the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, [a mystery] great and worthy of worship. For the Holy Spirit also worked beforehand. He spoke through the prophets and foretold future things. Later He worked through the disciples by casting out demons and healing diseases. But now He manifested His own hypostasis through tongues of fire. By resting as a hypostasis upon Christ’s disciples and being somehow enthroned in them, He made them the organs of His own p ­ ower.32

Staniloae’s germane theological construction can be blueprinted as follows.33 The Church existed in potential (inchoate) form throughout the economy of salvation from the incarnation of Christ’s Body to the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. The Church in its potentiality truly came to life through the shining of the Spirit through the Body of the Son Who revealed the Holy Spirit as hypostasis. The Holy Spirit’s incomplete transparence in Christ’s body before the Resurrection was conditioned by the terrestrialness of Christ’s body, for the Spirit cannot fully penetrate a body unless that body if fully pneumatized and transparent. After the ascension Christ was also known as God in an increased manner through the Spirit’s full manifestation; that is, Christ reveals Himself fully as a divine hypostasis through the fact that, through Him, the Spirit is revealed as a hypostasis. The Holy Spirit is manifested at Pentecost, showing forth in a more sensible manner. Thus, during Christ’s earthly mission, our relationship with the Holy Spirit was effected only through and in Christ; after Pentecost, it is the relationship with Christ that is effected only through the Holy Spirit, the Lordship of both Christ and the Spirit having been revealed and established. St. Cyril of Alexandria affirmed that the faithful come to possess both the Spirit’s grace and very Self.34  Gregory Palamas, “On Pentecost,” in Patrologia Graeca, 151: 312c.  See Staniloae, The Church: Communion in the Holy Spirit, 2-9, 114. 34  Ibid., 6. After all, the Spirit rested in hypostatic plenitude in the Lord’s ascended body that became transparent to God’s infinite and fully intensive depths in their work for us. As hypostasis, the Spirit makes the presence divine activity felt in all its power. Concomitantly, the Spirit comes, communicated to us from the Person of Christ, to make Christ more evident 32 33

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As hypostasis the Spirit makes Christ more evident as God and Lord, and we have this evidence not because we grasp Christ without his body, but through his very body, which has become fully transparent. Consequently, the Church is essentially connected to the initial descent, and also to the continuous descent of the Spirit as hypostasis in human beings, that “with the Spirit the Church would not have come into being; and if the Church exists, this is the sign of the Spirit within her.”35 Both the Spirit and Christ, who remain in the Church and in the faithful, are not static for the reason that they are not impersonal powers but dynamic Persons: They come and remain to maintain and increase living communion. The Spirit comes from beyond the Church – which is why the Spirit is at once possessed and beseeched to come. She asks because she has, ever strengthened by the Spirit to prayerfully beseech (Rom 8:26). Even in the first coming of the Spirit, the descent par excellence took place over the apostles who continued with one accord in prayer and supplication (Acts 1:14). The Holy Spirit comes and remains in the Mystical Body, exhorting its members to beseech ever more: “Thus the Spirit is present in the whole Church as a unitary and unifying hypostasis, which means that He is also in every member, as that member remains a member of the Church.”36 1. “… that none of us partake of the holy body and blood of your Christ for judgment or condemnation…”37 The Church is constituted of members pneumatized through the cross and the Spirit by the indwelling Christ, in which His presence and glory as a Person and at the same time makes the power of Christ Himself communicable in a more accentuated manner. The Spirit is now penetrating us with full presence because the Lord’s human body – his link to our humanity – was made fully transparent for the divine infinity that is directed to us. (See Staniloae, The Church: Communion in the Holy Spirit, 5). 35  Ibid., 9. Here Staniloae is quoting St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 1 on Holy Pentecost,” in Patrologia Graeca, 50: 450. He also asserts, “The descent of the Holy Spirit is what gives the Church a real existence; it initiates the indwelling of Christ’s deified body in human beings and thereby initiates the Church as well” (ibid., 2). All that is subsequent to the epiclesis affirms, confirms and expresses this truth. 36  Ibid., 114. This conviction is supported by material from ibid., 8 and 9. Only within the entire body of the Church does every member partake of the totality of gifts of the Spirit, shining forth in the Church the holiness and deification of Christ’s body. This helps to understand that the Spirit, as hypostasis of the entire Godhead imparted to the created being, is granted to the Church in her identity as a unique body. Certainly, once present as hypostasis in the Church as a whole, the Spirit works as hypostasis in each member. (See ibid., 112.) 37  John 5:24: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life.”



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becomes transparent (John 7:39; 20:22).38 As such, the Church is the locus where one advances toward resurrection; it is the ‘laboratory’ of the resurrection. Her foremost aspect is eschatological. To be advancing in pneumatization is to be imprinted with the potentiality of resurrection, not only in Christ’s personal Body that dwells within the Church, but also in being a member of the Church, His Mystical Body.39 Staniloae’s systematic extrapolation from Communion-enabling ecclesiological essence to mission to eschatological fulfillment can be parsed as follows:40 i. On the basis of the divine hypostasis and His sacrificial state, Christ wills to gather all by extending Himself in all through the Holy Spirit, who, from Christ’s body, imprints upon all the same sacrificial disposition. ii. It is the Holy Spirit who makes the common working (energies) of the Father, of the Son and of His own proper to the Church community in the totality of its forms and proper to the subjects, in human forms according to their personal specificity. Thus, it is not wrong to attribute the gifts to the Spirit. This gift is not just a working or operation (energeia) of the Spirit, but also the effect of this working (energema) in human nature in cooperation with the receivers of the gift. iii. The Spirit moves the believer toward cooperation and strengthens one to receive and make use of one’s personal gift, developing it through one’s natural disposition and capacities. Consequently, divinized personal charisms are the product of the working divine hypostasis and of the co-working human hypostasis. iv. The Holy Spirit fosters in each a tendency toward unity among all the gifted. v. These gifts are forms in which the members manifest their love toward God and among themselves as individual limitations are surpassed, realizing a continuous progress in the endless unity of love that is strongly connected with holiness. Thus, the Holy Spirit is the wellspring of Love, and as such never ceases to renew and enrich believers. vi. The Spirit’s descent is thus the act of transition from Christ’s saving work in His personal humanity to the extension of this work within other human beings (for He did not come for Himself). He works in them, becoming gifts to and for others in service, adding to established communion a horizontal dimension of ministry to the vertical dimension of sanctification. That is why

 Staniloae, The Church: Communion in the Holy Spirit, 29-30.  Ibid., 28. 40  Ibid., 4, 10, 113-118. 38

39

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it is said of Christ that “the Lamb of God should be broken and shared, broken but not divided.”

According to Patristic witness, the Spirit is incommunicable, but is everywhere present and is firmly established as the immovable identity is poured, given, and sent; the Spirit is communicable to those who are worthy. The Spirit acts in us from within Christ because His body became radiant through the Word’s transparence, the light of God’s infinite power and love shining forth from Christ. Thus, the Liturgy, its texts and actions, especially the reception of the gifts in Communion, teach and capacitate the faithful to behold creation as a transfigured new creation in the Trinity.41 Slesinski summarizes: Personal sanctification is an ecclesial matter … a dimension of communal living, of the life of the Church – of the corporate glorification of Almighty God in thanksgiving and praise that renders his presence a vital agency in the present world as “we know the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:22-23).42

2. Preparation for Communion The reception of Communion is of such solemn consequence that the Church appoints a sequence of preparatory prayers, commencing with the priestly blessing of the faithful: “May the mercies of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ be with all of you.” The faithful respond: “And with your spirit.” Then the deacon bids an ektenia: “Now that we have remembered all the saints [that is, at the end of the anaphora], again and again in peace, let us pray to the Lord.” The first petition addresses the reasons for our offering: that God may receive the Church’s sacrifice, and that He may in return send the Holy Spirit upon its members: “For the precious gifts offered and consecrated, that our God who loves us all may receive them on his holy, heavenly, and mystical altar as an aroma of spiritual fragrance, and send down upon us in return his divine grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit, let us pray….”  Denysenko, “Epiclesis, Descent, and Creation,” 31.  Slesinski, A Primer on Church and Eucharist, 50.

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The concluding petition retrieves epicletic graces in bidding conscious and unbounded commitment to the communion bond: “Asking for unity in the faith and for communion of the Holy Spirit, let us commit ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God,” to which the faithful respond, “To you, O Lord.” A priestly prayer is then offered. In CHR it is a recounting of the gifts of the epiclesis; in BAS it is a request for the provision of divine pedagogy that informs the journey to eternal life. From BAS: God, the God of our salvation, teach us to give you worthy thanks for the bounties you have bestowed and continue to bestow on us. As you have accepted these gifts, O our God, purify us from every defilement of flesh and spirit. Teach us to grow perfect in holiness through fear of you so that, with a pure testimony of our conscience, we may receive a portion of your holy gifts and be united to the holy body and blood of your Christ. Receiving them worthily, may we have Christ living in our hearts and become temples of your Holy Spirit. Especially, O our God, let none of us become guilty nor weakened in soul or body by partaking of these awesome and heavenly mysteries of yours unworthily. Rather, grant, O Lord, that even until our last breath, we may worthily receive a portion of your holy Gifts as a provision for the journey to eternal life, and for an acceptable defense before the fearsome judgement seat of your Christ. Then together with all the saints who have pleased you since time began, may we become partakers of the eternal blessings which you have prepared for those who love you, O Lord. And make us worthy, O Master, that we may with confidence and without condemnation dare call you “Father,” God of heaven and say, “Our Father….”

The celebrant then appends the following: “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and ever and forever.”43 Germanus is unequivocal as to how “daily bread” is to be understood: “It means the bread which is sufficient for our nature and existence. He removes the care for the morrow. The body of Christ is the daily bread, and we pray that we may share in it blamelessly.”44 The priest intones “ta hagia tois hagiois” – translated in both CHR and BAS as “Holy gifts to holy people” – while elevating the consecrated Lamb 43  Taft notes that Byzantine CHR/BAS are unique among eucharistic formularies in that there is no embolism following the Our Father. See Robert Taft, SJ, The Precommunion Rites, The History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom 5, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 261 (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale: 2000), 153. 44  St. Germanus, On the Divine Liturgy, 103.

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(host).45 The placing of a particle of the Lamb into the consecrated wine is accompanied by the words, “The fullness of the Holy Spirit,” followed by the addition of heated water into the chalice, about which Slesinski comments: As each Divine Liturgy is a re-enactment of the sacrificial, paschal meal offered by Christ in the Upper Room to his Father, thus giving inchoate expression to the reality of the Church as his body, so too is each Divine Liturgy a Pentecost in its own right whereby the Church fully comes into her own tutelage of the Paraclete. A further ritual confirmation of the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church occurs with the pouring of the zeon (warm water) into the chalice at this time, when the celebrant declares, “the fervor of faith, full of the Holy Spirit.”46

3. After Communion: A Hymn to the Holy Spirit After Holy Communion has been distributed, the priest blesses the faithful with the chalice containing the Body and Blood of Christ while intoning Psalm 27, verse 9: “Save your people, O God, and bless your inheritance.” The people respond to this blessing with a Vespers hymn of the feast of Pentecost, the content of which is appropriate, given all that has preceded: “We have seen the true light; we have received the heavenly Spirit; we have found the true faith; and we worship the undivided Trinity, for the Trinity has saved us.” The hymns and prayers of this part of the liturgy combine praise of God’s glory with a request for divine assistance and protection, that we may live out our calling as Christians. Most hymns and prayers in Byzantine Rite liturgy are addressed to God the Father, but here, having just received Jesus Christ himself in Holy Communion, the faithful address Him directly in praise, asking that they may be preserved in holiness and enabled to follow the pattern He has shown us: May our mouth be filled with your praise, O Lord, so that we may sing of your glory. For you have deemed us worthy to partake of your holy, divine, immortal, pure, and life-creating mysteries. Keep us in

45  In the course of the deliberations that led to the final approved CHR/BAS translations of the Byzantine-Ruthenian Catholic Liturgical Commission, Serge Keleher published his preference for ‘Holy Things for the holy’ for the following reason: ‘For the holy’ respects the multiple meanings for ‘holy’ – all baptized faithful, one’s personal holiness, the whole sacramental economy of Christ that makes us holy, or simply the faithful present at the particular celebration of the Divine Liturgy at hand. Serge Keleher, Studies on the Byzantine Liturgy (I): The Draft Translation – A Response to the Proposed Recasting of the Byzantine-Ruthenian Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom (Pittsburgh, PA: Stauropegion Press, 2006), 235-236. 46  Slesinski, A Primer on Church and Eucharist, 44.



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your holiness so that all the day long we may live according to your truth. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

The Deacon then calls for a prayer of worthy gratitude: “Arise! Now that we have received the divine, holy, most pure, immortal, heavenly, life-creating, and awesome mysteries of Christ, let us worthily thank the Lord,” to which the faithful respond, “Lord, have mercy.” Then the priest intones a prayer of thanksgiving which repeats and expands upon the hymn that the faithful have just sung: We thank you, O Lord our God, for sharing in your holy, most pure, immortal, and heavenly mysteries which you have given us for the benefit, sanctification, and healing of our souls and bodies. You, O Master of all, grant that the communion of the holy body and blood of your Christ may bring about in us a faith that cannot be confounded, a love that does not pretend, a wisdom that overflows, the healing of our souls and bodies, the defeat of every enemy, the full observance of your commandments, and an acceptable defense before the fearsome judgment seat of your Christ.

The faithful respond, “Amen.” Attention should be paid to how the prayer emphasizes that it is God’s holiness which is to dwell in the faithful; in imitating Christ, we are drawn into the life of God. 4. The Ambon Prayer At one time, this was the point in the Divine Liturgy at which the clergy began their procession out of the Church, with the celebrant stopping at the end of the ambon, or projection toward the back of the Church from the raised walkway parallel to the front of the icon screen (soleas). When not substituted with a feast-specific proper prayer, the common form of this prayer is a small masterpiece of the Byzantine tradition that affirms the ecclesial essence of the liturgical experience in which time is transcended, the heavenly and worldly orders are intertwined, and salvation is accessed as a present reality.47 Lord, blessing those who bless you and sanctifying those who trust in you, save your people and bless your inheritance. Preserve the fullness of your Church, sanctify those who love the beauty of your house, glorify them in return by your divine power, and do not forsake us who hope in you. Grant peace to your world, to your churches, to the priests, to our government, and to all your people.

 Slesinski, A Primer on Church and Eucharist, 49.

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For all generous giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from you, the Father of Lights; and we give glory, thanksgiving, and worship to you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and ever and forever.

Conclusion/“Dismissal” CHR and BAS are both complex consecratory/sanctifying ‘metabolizations’ of interpersonal actions of the ecclesial Body of Christ, founded in the mutual clarification of the Persons of the Son and Holy Spirit, and continuing in the Life of the Holy Trinity. The Church is epicletic by nature, and the Church in constant prayer is uninterrupted epiclesis, no matter if the ontological definitiveness of the faith community at worship is construed as an abiding identity (de Lubac’s vir ecclesiasticus) or as a ‘rhythmic’ identity (Zizioulas’s homo eucharisticus).48 Positive ecumenical capital is generated by way of growing affirmations in the West regarding the epicletic character of the entire Eucharistic Liturgy, thus relegating to the past vacuous argumentation about the exact moment of transformation.49 The Holy Spirit transfigures worshippers and its bread and wine that are partaken as the sacrament of the messianic banquet. Taft is again instructive here: For if “communion in the Holy Spirit” or “the gifts of the Holy Spirit” refers primarily to our union with God via the eucharistic Body of Christ, that communion in the Spirit of God unites us not only to the divine life of the Holy Trinity, but also to one another in the Mystical Body of Christ which is the Church. And that is the “fulness of the kingdom,” not just a future, eschatological reward, but the life of the kingdom inchoatively present to us now in the ecclesial “communion of the saints,” of which the eucharistic messianic banquet is the sacrament.50

48  See Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 273. 49  Bordeianu outlines the felicitous harmony of the views of Staniloae and Walter Kasper regarding the Trinitarian nature of Eucharist Liturgy. See Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae, 102-103. 50  Taft, The Precommunion Rites, 497. Similarly, David Kennedy affirms the vital importance of the epiclesis as an articulation of eucharistic spirituality that witnesses to the eternal and transforming presence of God in this world in which humanity and all creation is being restored. See McGowan, Eucharistic Epicleses, 11.



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The fullness of Church life is directed to the restoration and transformation of the whole of creation in the divine community of the Trinity. Indeed, as Staniloae affirms, “Without the Church Christ’s saving work could not be accomplished.”51 Within the Church Christ “reconciled even those who were unworthy to be reconciled.”52 In and by these truths, Byzantine Christians pray at the beginning of the CHR and BAS Anaphoras: You brought us out of non-existence into being, and again raised us up when we had fallen, and left nothing undone until you brought us to heaven and gave us your kingdom to come.

 Staniloae, The Church: Communion in the Holy Spirit, 2.  John Chrysostom, Homilies IV and V, Col 1: 24-29, The Bible and the Holy Fathers for Orthodox: Daily Scripture Readings and Commentary for Orthodox Christians (Menlo Park, CA: Monastery Books,1990), 451. 51

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Saint Bonaventure and the Question of Franciscan Eschatology Kevin L. Hughes I have had the privilege and pleasure of being both a student and colleague of Bernard P. Prusak. In every class he taught, Bernie sought to offer a glimpse into a hopeful vision of the Church in the future. In Bernie’s historical and pedagogical vision, the Trinitarian God of Love always stood ahead of us, continually opening new possibilities for humans to say ‘yes’ to the freedom God gives to his creatures to grow into the fullness of our created being. In Bernie’s classroom, the seeds of hope were continually sown, and my own interest in Franciscan eschatology bears the imprint of his great pedagogical and scholarly witness. As a colleague, his hopeful vision for the ‘church unfinished’ was always curated and advanced by his prudential care for his fellow faculty members, and I am fortunate to have benefited from that care. I am honored to contribute to this volume dedicated to his life of dedicated service to the church and the academy. “Christ yesterday and today. The beginning and the end. The Alpha and the Omega. All time belongs to him. And all the ages. To him be glory and power. Through every age, and forever. Amen.” This past spring, I sat in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in South Bend, Indiana, craning my neck to try to peer out of the church door to observe this, one of my favorite moments in the liturgical year – the inscription of the Easter candle. As most will know, the Easter candle is marked first with the cross, and then with the Alpha and the Omega, above and below. Each numeral of the current year is inscribed in a quadrant created by the cross. In just these few words, every year, we have a theology of history. The year, each year, is consecrated to Christ by revolving, as it were, around the axis of the cross. Each year is suspended between the beginning and the end, between Alpha and Omega. “All time belongs to him. And all the ages.” The question of Franciscan eschatology, as I have named it in my title, construed most generally, is: What difference does that consecration make? Or, better, what kind of difference can it make? My argument will take some time to unfold in what f­ollows, since, I ­suggest, there have been numerous ‘misrememberings’ of theological history that have to be

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­ nraveled and rewoven. In brief: the theology of Saint Bonaventure, preu cisely because it is focused on and rooted in “Christ yesterday and today, beginning and end, Alpha and Omega,” offers an angle of approach to the question of history that can incorporate the fertile creativity of Joachim of Fiore, with his radical openness to the God who “makes all things new,” within a dynamic, symphonic vision of the church that is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. This symphonic vision offers a rich opportunity for our own generation of theologians to again dare to take up the question of history in an age of fracture and division. I.  Clarifying Terms: Eschatology, History, Apocalyptic Clearly the question(s) I am beginning with is not unique to ‘Franciscan’ eschatology, and some might ask whether, properly speaking, it is eschatological at all. Might this be properly set off and set apart as a question pertaining to the theology of history? And yet, if “we do not have knowledge of a thing unless we know its why, its causes,” and if those causes include formal and final cause, it seems that we cannot know history without considering its order and end, and so any theology of history includes an eschatology.1 But here again, it seems to me, we have to notice a distinction that often obtains in post-scholastic discussions of eschatology. In most traditional late-medieval and modern discussions of eschatology, this theological locus is captured in the “four last things,” namely death, judgment, heaven, and hell. As Joseph Ratzinger says, “[for] centuries eschatology was content to lead a quiet life as the final chapter of theology where it was dubbed, ‘the doctrine of the last things’.”2 This, I think, is the result of scholastic theology’s desire to render sacra doctrina scientific, according to Aristotelian criteria of scientia. If we cannot have proper scientia of contingent facts (of which history is made), then what we might call ‘historical eschatology’ does not quite reach the bar of scientia. So scholastic theology, and the theological tradition that follows from it, does not tend to treat historical eschatology as a topic for s­ystematic

 Aristotle, Physics, 194b, 17-20.  Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, 2nd English ed., trans. Michael Waldstein, with Aidan Nichols (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 1. 1

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reflection.3 But the twentieth century saw a return of historical eschatology to the center stage, with Oscar Cullmann’s powerful rebuke in Christ and Time4 standing as a particularly strong challenge to what he perceived as ‘platonizing’ eschatology, while Catholic scholars such as Jean Daniélou and Henri de Lubac sought to return to the sources in the Church fathers to find a deeper sense of history and the end.5 We may look to them and to Johann Baptist Metz and Joseph Ratzinger himself, among others, as prophets summoning a return to a broader and deeper reflection on history, eschatology, and apocalypticism. But now I have done it. I have mentioned the ‘A’ word. Before I go further, let me take a moment to parse terms. Few areas of theology seem more prone to what I have called ‘terminological anarchy’ than this meeting place of history and eschatology. Often scholars will use ‘apocalyptic’ as an antonym to ‘eschatology’, or as a value-laden term that carries within it a sense of heresy or at least decadence. Let me briefly clarify how I will use these ever-so-charged terms. ‘Apocalypse’ refers in the first instance to a genre of writing that occurs in the Second Temple period and thereafter, characterized by an otherworldly figure revealing a “transcendent reality that is both temporal and spatial.”6 I take ‘eschatology’ to describe that area of Christian teaching concerning the ‘last things’. ‘Apocalyptic eschatology’, then, is one sort of Christian eschatological reflection that carries characteristic features of apocalyptic writing, usually and particularly the temporal dimensions. Some signal characteristics include an apparent dissonance between trust in God’s providence and the experience of persecution, hardship, or failure in the present; there is a sense, then, that this dissonance or tension will build to the point of conflict, sometimes involving representative ‘heroic’ and ‘antiheroic’ figures. Apocalyptic eschatology usually includes an invitation to the reader or hearer to repentance and conversion to the gospel as the tension builds. One last term, ‘­apocalypticism’, would be the 3  It should be noted that this is a formal departure from the tradition that preceded it, wherein ‘death, judgment, heaven, and hell’ were themselves part of a broader discussion of the movement of history and its end. Whether this is good news or bad news for theology depends on one’s point of view. 4  Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History, trans. Floyd V. Filson (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster John Knox, 1964). 5  See, for example, Jean Daniélou, Essai sur le mystère de l’histoire (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1954); in English as The Lord of History: Reflections on the Inner Meaning of History, trans. Nigel Abercrombie (London: Burns and Oates, 1958). 6  John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).

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broader social imaginary that is informed and shaped by apocalyptic eschatology. With all this in mind, I want to suggest a first framing principle for my argument as a whole: Christian faith and culture is, structurally, apocalyptic, in the sense that I have described here. This is not to say that Christian faith is structured or ordered to the unfolding of a particular series of apocalyptic events and/or committed in principle to the predictive work of apocalyptic forecasting this or that sign of the end or mark of the beast. In fact, this sort of predictive apocalypticism has usually been a minority position in Christianity, and it has been critiqued, modified, or refuted, from the New Testament onward.7 Our habitual narrative of earliest Christianity is still shaped, I think, by the narrative of Johannes Weiss, Albert Schweitzer, and Ernst Käsemann: namely, that earliest Christianity was built around imminent apocalyptic expectation – Apocalyptic was the “mother of Christian theology,” according to Käsemann8 – and that the institutions of the church were the result of the failure of the parousia to arrive. This may have some truth, but in practice, it is often the scholarly mask for a Protestant theological suspicion of Catholicism, such that the formation of ecclesial institutions and traditions is already a sign of decadence or a failure of faith. Even further, though, we should not throw out the apocalyptic baby with the imminent predictive bathwater, because earlier Christian thinkers did not. The great Jaroslav Pelikan laid out the typical narrative with his usual irenicism, speaking of a “decisive shift” in the early centuries “from the categories of cosmic drama to those of being, from the Revelation of St. John the Divine to the Council of Nicaea.”9 My study of the history of apocalyptic thinking in the first millennium or so has led me to conclude, in response to Pelikan, that “if the [apocalyptic cosmic] drama was no longer center stage, the set was not struck.”10 Apocalyptic t­ hinking  See Bernard McGinn, “The End of the World and the Beginning of Christendom,” in Apocalypse Theory and the Ends of the World, ed. Malcolm Bull (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 58-89. 8  Ernst Käsemann, “The Beginnings of Christian Theology,” in idem, New Testament Questions of Today, trans. W. J. Montague (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1969), 82-107, at 102. 9  Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 131. 10  Kevin L. Hughes, Constructing Antichrist: Paul, Biblical Commentary, and the Development of Doctrine in the Early Middle Ages (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 249. 7



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persists in Christian thought; it is built into the DNA of the traditions. And, I suggest, to the extent that we ignore it, that we relegate it to the ‘sort of Christianity we’d rather not identify with’, we leave it to the minority position that has always been there, the predictive apocalyptic scapegoating that passes for Christian eschatology. I am indeed calling theologians to take up the burden of apocalyptic eschatology, to sift the wheat from the chaff and not to burn the crop.11 And, with this in mind, I would like to reflect on the question of Franciscan eschatology. I argue that the reception of Joachimist eschatology in the early Franciscan community is worth revisiting. Reduced by modern scholars (understandably, I think, in the shadow of the Third Reich) to a devastating linear history of effects and grave errors, the reception of Joachim among the Franciscans was instead a volatile but fascinating argument about the depths of scriptural interpretation and its relevance to the life of the church in time.12 In this ongoing argument, St. Bonaventure represents the clearest discernment of the grains of wheat – of the potential of ‘symbolism’, or of the ‘spiritual interpretation of Scripture’ rightly understood, to illuminate the presence and work of the Holy Spirit within the church in history. Bonaventure restrains the excesses and errors of certain strains of Joachite thought both by anchoring such speculation in a Christology of Christ the Center and by integrating this thought into a rich texture of symbolic scriptural interpretation. A renewed attention to the orthodox Joachimism of Bonaventure 11  In this, I commend the recent work of Cyril O’Regan, who has made great efforts to reclaim the category of ‘apocalyptic’ in contemporary theology. O’Regan’s scope is not simply on the eschatological, but goes wider to consider a broader sense of the horizon of revelation itself. See Cyril O’Regan, Anatomy of Misremembering: Von Balthasar’s Philosophical Response to Modernity, vol. 1 (New York: Crossroad, 2014), and, in distilled and focused form, his Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic, The Pere Marquette Lecture (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2009). 12  It seems to me that we still live very much in the shadow of the twentieth century, when some of the boldest philosophies or quasi-theologies of history – any number of varieties of Marxist or post-Marxist materialisms, the regnant vision of National Socialism and fascism – funded or underwrote some of the most destructive regimes that history has ever known. Therefore, in the wake of the Second World War, three very powerful and influential genealogical critiques were published, and all three trace the roots of these destructive philosophies to a Christian theology of history, and, specifically, to Joachim of Fiore: Karl Löwith’s Meaning in History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1949); Eric Voegelin’s New Science of Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1952); and Henri de Lubac’s La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Fiore, 2 vols. (Paris: Lethielleux, 1978-1980). All share a similar set of claims, but only de Lubac concedes that “l’histoire de la postérité spirituelle de Joachim est donc aussi bien, et pour une large part, l’histoire des trahisons de sa pensée” (vol. 1, 67).

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of Bagnoregio may prove to be the antidote to, not antecedent of, the destructive ‘misremembering of Christianity’ that issues from Hegel and stands most blatantly revealed in the Nazi regime. II.  Joachim of Fiore Franciscan thinkers in the mid- to late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries took special interest in the apocalyptic theology of history and eschatology of Joachim of Fiore and the host of disciples and imitators that surrounded his texts.13 While this conviction would eventually distill into a distinct community of radical Franciscans we have come to call ‘the Spirituals’, the influence of Joachimist ideas were felt much more widely within the Franciscan community (and within the Dominican community, as well, it must be said) throughout the middle of the thirteenth century. Joachim had predicted that the approaching apocalyptic end would be heralded by the arrival of two orders of ‘spiritual men’, viri spirituales, ‘toward the evening hours of this age’, who would proclaim the gospel against the seductive inducements of the approaching Antichrist. To those watching the ‘signs of the times’ in the early-thirteenth century, the simultaneous arrival and explosive growth of the two great mendicant communities, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, seemed as clear an affirmation of Joachim’s prophetic vision and validation of the importance of these controversial new communities as any could hope for. It is hardly surprising, then, that we see both Dominican and Franciscan thinkers taking up study of Joachim with great enthusiasm, even into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135-1202) was a monk in Calabria in the latetwelfth century.14 He spent much of his life as a Cistercian before eventually forming his own monastic community, the Florensians, who persisted for some time in the boot of Italy after his death. Joachim was known in his lifetime as a prophet, and indeed his meeting with Richard the Lionheart – as the latter was on his way to the Third Crusade –  For more on the reception of Joachim, see Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003). 14  For an introduction to Joachim of Fiore and his theology, see Bernard McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1985). 13

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seems to have solidified his reputation. But Joachim, in his own terms, seemed to care far more for deepening his interpretation of scripture than for public prophecy, and it is above all in his three most significant works that we learn most about him. These works, the Liber concordie, the Expositio in Apocalypsim, and the Psalterium decem chordarum, are the most thorough and influential of his works, and these became the three volumes of the Franciscan enthusiast Gerardo of Borgo San Donino’s Eternal Evangel. Joachim’s thought defies easy summary. He is, of course, most famous for his description of a coming third ‘age of the Holy Spirit’, which would complete the Trinitarian structure of history. It is a mistake to think of this ‘age’ as a new dispensation, or even, really as an ‘age’ at all. Joachim’s term is status, rather than aetas, and, in context, it really is better understood as a kind of ‘disposition’ or state of being. The third status represents a certain social and communal disposition marked by a deepening grasp of what Joachim calls intellectus spi­ ritualis or intelligentia spiritualis. As readers of scripture, we must, like Elijah, “build the altar of the Old Testament and pour out the water of the New Testament, expecting and awaiting the fire of the Holy Spirit to come down upon it.”15 But it does, certainly, have a temporal and progressive dimension. For Joachim, this third status fulfills and completes the prior two, rather than superseding them; it begins with St. Benedict and so is marked by a distinctively monastic character. In scriptural terms, the third status is represented by John, who follows Peter, as at the tomb of Christ. The ‘spiritual men’ he predicted to come represented for him the perfect culmination of this third status, and so awaited the coming of Antichrist and the final conflict that would portend the End. What makes this third status suspicious for most readers is Joachim’s claim that this status will itself be a movement from institutional to spiritual authority, from the clerical to the monastic, following the movement of letter to spirit and of Peter to John. What is quite unclear in Joachim’s own thought, and what has been debated ever since, is whether Joachim imagined the replacement of institution and sacrament by charism and intellectus spiritualis, or rather a deepening of those very institutions and structures by an ever-deeper entering into spiritual understanding, into a deeper and deeper internalization of the Word. In other words, will the pope be replaced by the abbot? Or will the pope, and the church as a whole, become more monastic? For scholars such as  Joachim of Fiore, Liber concordie novi et veteris testamenti (Venice, 1519; reprinted in facsimile, Frankfurt am Main, 1983), f. 7r. 15

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E. Randolph Daniel, Joachim’s vision of the future was not so much a millennialist overturning of the order of the church as it was the anticipated fulfillment of the Gregorian reforms of the generation before him.16 This threefold structure, for which Joachim is most notorious – sometimes represented by the three bars of an ‘Alpha’, – is always complemented in his thought by a twofold structure, a rather traditional division between the Old Law and the New. This twofold structure is represented by a script ‘Omega’, rather in the shape of a ‘w’ (ω), with two symmetric halves, centered in Christ. Around this center, Joachim believed that history unfolded in a pattern of double-sevens, with the sevenfold movement of the Old Testament history mirrored by a sevenfold movement in the New. But the ‘New Testament’ or ‘New Dispensation’ names not only the first few centuries around the life of Christ, but indeed the whole history of the church. Exegetically, this means for Joachim that the pattern of history of the Old Dispensation can be seen to be recapitulated in the New. And it seems clear for Joachim that these concordiae between the two Testaments provide the gifted exegete a certain kind of prophetic power to interpret the present and predict future events. The history of the church, the ‘second seven’, goes roughly like this: the first tempus is the age of prelates, who opposed the ‘synagogue’. The second tempus is the age of martyrs, against the pagans. The third, doctors, against heretics. The fourth, virgins, against Muslims. The fifth is the age of the Roman church, standing in opposition to Babylon. For Joachim, this fifth age is his own tempus, nearing its end, when the sixth seal would be broken and the two orders of viri spirituales will arrive to contend with a double Antichrist – the threat of Saladin or the like from without and a hidden-but to-be-revealed Great Antichrist within the church who will bring heresy. But this dawning sixth age is also the opening up of the third status, the time of a deeper spiritual understanding of scripture, a time in which the church, now the ecclesia spiritualis or the ecclesia contemplativa, can rest and await the Final End. I agree with Daniel and others that Joachim has been often misunderstood. He is better understood as a monastic reformer, in the spirit of Peter Damian and Pope Gregory VII, as a sympathetic admirer and follower of Bernard of Clairvaux. His critique of Peter Lombard’s trinitarian theology was  See the essays collected in E. Randolph Daniel, Abbot Joachim and Joachimism, Variorum Reprint Series (New York: Routledge, 2011). 16



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very much in the spirit of Bernard of Clairvaux’s resistance to the emergent scholastic modes of theological reflection in the persons of Abelard and Gilbert of Porée. Joachim’s worry about the Lombard’s theology was that the scholastic distinction between ‘essence’ and ‘persons’ creates a quaternity. He was wrong about this, and the Fourth Lateran Council determined it so in 1215, but the broader concern it represented about the dialectical reasoning of the scholastic movement was shared widely by monastic authors such as Bernard and William of St. Thierry. His speculations on the ‘third status of the Holy Spirit’ and the ‘spiritual church’ of the future can almost always, when taken in context, be understood in an orthodox way. Joachim, in his own terms, was an imaginative monastic theologian who expected and aimed to describe, through a vast array of overlapping symbols and images, a reformed and transformed Gregorian church. The Reception and Promulgation of Joachimism To say that Joachim has been misunderstood is not to say that his thought is entirely to be recommended. The ambiguities of his pneumatology in relation to the third status may be straightened out through systematic attention to his whole corpus. Yet, there are many significant examples in Joachim’s work of what Cyril O’Regan has referred to as “pneumatological torque,” speaking of a tendency that may distort rather than err outright.17 Similarly, Joachim upheld the exegetical conviction that perception of the concordiae is the fruit of this deepening intellectus spiritualis. Yet, the resonances of concordiae seem to work at what most would describe as the ‘literal’ level of scriptural understanding, applicable between the historia of scripture and the historia of the church in the 17  “In tracing the Hegelian line back to Joachim, Balthasar implies that Joachim is not only the source of an eschatological view of both history and the Trinity, but also of the kind of certainty of the complete disclosure of truth that is enacted in Hegelian philosophy. Arguably, however, Joachim’s actual discourse, as well as his actual interpretation of Revelation is somewhat more complex than Balthasar here allows, who reads Joachim almost exclusively from the point of view of the history of his effects. In particular, it could be argued that in his commitment to symbolism Joachim points – in a way Hegel and his progeny do not – to the essential inadequation between discourse and the divine characteristic of Revelation. Were this to be allowed as even a possible interpretation, then Joachim would occupy a more ambiguous position as a courier of ‘Jewish’ form of apocalyptic and as precursor of Hegelianism: although he could continue to be regarded as a privileged premodern site of pneumatological torque, he could also be read as contesting precisely the kind of sublation of symbol into concept effected in and by the Hegelian system.” Cyril O’Regan, Anatomy of Misremembering, 395.

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world. This exegetical conviction lends itself in specific places to a kind of predictive certainty – for example, in his conviction of the importance of the year 1260 for the fullness of the third status to arrive – which seems to be in tension with his broader symbolic theology. As many have pointed out, Thomas Aquinas’s most significant objection to Joachim’s thought was on exegetical grounds; he rejected the predictive power of Joachim’s method of concordiae. “It is not necessary that individual points [singula] correspond to other individual points…. And the same seems true of the sayings of the Abbot Joachim, who predicted some truths about future events through such conjectures and was deceived in others.”18 These two dimensions of Joachim’s thought, the pneumatological torque in favor of a dawning status of the Holy Spirit and the predictive exegetical promiscuity concerning future events, are precisely the places where disciples and imitators take up and render in more controversial and problematic ways. Soon after the death of Joachim, a pseudo-Joachim Commentary on Jeremiah appears, and it is far more extravagant and far more specific than Joachim about the Third Status. Among these early disciples and imitators were quite a few Franciscans and Dominicans. I will focus on Franciscan authors, but I do think that the Dominicans are worth mentioning, lest this argument be taken up as yet more evidence of the Catholic Game of Thrones contest between mendicant rivals. It should be noted, as well, before we go too much further into this tale, that ‘being apocalyptic’ was not at all what made Joachim and his Franciscan followers suspect. The thirteenth century was an apocalyptic age. Tartar (or Mongol) attacks threatening from the East invited countless speculations that the time of Antichrist was near. The ongoing tensions between pope and emperor generated multiple competing apocalyptic narratives; legends of the ‘Last World Emperor’ and the ‘Angelic Pope’ vied to capture the ecclesial imagination.19 Within the university, certain prominent masters, such as Franciscans David of Augsburg or Thomas of Pavia, expressed reservations, or even contempt, for apocalyptic speculation as such, and in this number we may count Thomas Aquinas, who, according to William of Tocco, “forbade that the book 18  Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, ed. Pierre Mandonnet and Marie Fabien Moos, 4 vols. (Paris: Lethielleux, 1929), IV, d. 43, q. 1, a. 3, qq. 4, sol. II, ad 3. 19  See Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998) for an extensive survey and sample of these various traditions.



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[of Joachim] be read or believed, and nullified its teaching with his own hand.”20 But at the same time, a great deal of the energy behind the antifraternal movement at the University of Paris, above all in the excitable William of St. Amour, came from the conviction that the arrival of the mendicant orders were signs of the false prophecy, “Here is Christ, lo, there is Christ,” that signaled the End. It was not their conviction that they were living in the Last Days that made the Franciscan Joachites suspect. Rather, it was their convictions about the shape of those last days and their own role in them that were found wanting. Most notorious of all, and the source of the first great mendicant Joachite crisis, was Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, who gathered Joachim’s Liber concordie, his Psalterium decem chordarum, and his ­Expositio in Apocalypsim into a single work he called “The Eternal Evangel.” In the Liber introductorius he appended to the volume, Gerard claimed that the third status had arrived and, with its arrival, the Old and New Testament had been abrogated and replaced with these new ‘scriptures’ of Joachim. The claim was flimsy and rather embarrassing to the order, not least because it contradicted explicitly what Joachim had said, within the very works that Gerard proclaimed as the ‘Eternal Evangel’, namely that the Two Testaments would persist until the end of time. But Gerard’s embarrassment implicated his friend, the Minister General John of Parma, and John’s subsequent resignation led to the election of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio to take his place. As my title suggests, I do think that Bonaventure has something like an ‘answer’ to the question of Franciscan eschatology, but I do not think that the paper trail of the problem is clear enough before Bonaventure sits down to write. So I will first turn to the general shape of Bonaventure’s younger contemporary, Peter Olivi, to lay out some of the characteristic elements of these more radical Joachite Franciscans’ sense of history and eschatology, and then turn back to Bonaventure, setting his synthetic approach, his ‘answer’, so to speak, in a broader horizon of the question. Peter Olivi (b. 1248) studied theology in Paris, and it seems that he attended Bonaventure’s Collations on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the spring of 1268.21 He did not remain in Paris to become a master, 20  William of Tocco, Vita S. Thomae Aquinatis, Acta sanctorum (Saint Maximin [Var]: Librairie Saint-Thomas, 1929), Martius 7, 665. 21  A recent fascinating study has recontextualized the relationship between Bonaventure and Olivi, although the points of contact and contestation are not directly relevant to this discussion. See Sylvain Piron, “Olivi and Bonaventure: Paradoxes of Faithfulness,” Franciscan Studies 74 (2016): 1-14.

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however, and he spent the rest of his life lecturing in smaller Franciscan studia in southern France. His Lectura super Apocalypsim is his most significant apocalyptic work, although his apocalyptic sensibility permeates his extant commentaries on Mark and Matthew, as well. As in Joachim, the complexities of Olivi’s thought are difficult to capture in as brief a treatment as I can offer here.22 I will focus only on Olivi’s use of the ‘double seven’ schema we have already seen in Joachim, a schema that for both becomes perhaps the clearest way of mapping the history of the church. Like Joachim, Olivi sees the first tempus of the church as the age of the apostles. The second and third are the ages of the martyrs and doctors, respectively. Olivi’s fourth age is described a bit differently than Joachim. Whereas Joachim had seen the fourth tempus as the time of ‘virgins’ standing in opposition to Islam, Olivi brings the issue home. His fourth tempus is the age of anchorites, who oppose the hypocrites. This change tips Olivi’s hand: for him, the engine that drives the history of the church is the progress of the vita apostolica, the life of spiritual perfection. Olivi’s fifth tempus is an age of decline. It is marked by the triumph of Charlemagne and the Frankish kings, which, for Olivi, signals the compromise of the church’s purity: Drawing away from faithful worship, from the pure love and delights of her Spouse, the Christ of God, she clings to this world, to its delights and its wealth, and so to the Devil. She clings to the kings and magnates, the prelates, and all the other lovers of this world.23

For Olivi, the Church’s compromises in the fifth tempus leave it “infected head to toe, confused, and turned into a new Babylon.”24 But the fifth tempus, says Peter, is beginning to yield to the sixth, the time that began prophetically with Joachim, was established with Francis and his rule, and now is spreading through the preaching of the viri spirituales ( by which Peter means the Franciscans). Just as in the sixth age [of the old covenant], the Judaism of the flesh and the trappings of an earlier age were rejected, and Christ, the new man, came with the new law, the new life, and the cross, so in the sixth age [of the new covenant], the Church of the flesh and the trappings of an earlier age are rejected, and the law and life and cross of Christ will be renewed, and for this reason Francis appeared at its

22  For a recent discussion of Olivi’s apocalyptic thought, see David Burr, “Olivi, Christ’s Three Advents, and the Double Antichrist,” Franciscan Studies 74 (2016): 15-40. 23  Peter Olivi, Lectura super Apocalypsim (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Press, 2016), XV-IXVII.27, 710. 24  Ibid., 72.

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beginning, marked with the wounds of Christ, completely configured to Christ, and crucified with him (concrucifixus).25

This sixth tempus will bring about a culminating conflict between this ‘spiritual’ and ‘contemplative’ church and ‘Babylon’, during which the renewed spiritual church will share, as Francis did, Christ’s cruciform suffering, before the dawn of Sabbath rest. These, of course, are the kinds of things that got Olivi very much in trouble. But one can see some of the outlines of the radical Franciscan reception of Joachim – the sense that, in Francis, something powerful and of theological and historical import has happened, and the sense that the present suffering of the church promises a coming renewal. III. Bonaventure So now, as I turn back the clock a bit from Olivi’s writings to consider Bonaventure’s response to Joachimism, it is important to note that some of these factors are important to him, as well. Unlike his contemporary Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure did not simply oppose the teaching of Joachim on history and on scriptural interpretation; in fact, some might be surprised to see how far he is willing to go in Joachim’s direction. I think this receptivity is due not to a political calculation to continue to keep the proto-spiritual wing of the Franciscan order in the fold, as some have suggested, but rather to a real conviction that, in fact, something of serious theological and even salvific-historical import has happened in the life of Francis of Assisi. Olivi represents the kind of maximal attribution, such that he believes that Francis in the sixth age may ‘share in Jesus’ resurrection’ and return to the church. Olivi does not teach this as a matter of exegesis, but he relates it as a story heard about Brother Leo, one of Francis’s original companions. Bonaventure makes nothing like this claim, but he does consistently connect Francis, at least allegorically – but, I think, more historically – to the ‘Angel of the Sixth Seal’ of Rev 6:12 and perhaps even to the sixth angel of Rev 9:13. The Franciscan community, including Bonaventure, was quite convinced that Francis stood at a junction point in history, at the beginning of something new, or at least radically renewed. Joachimist prophecy spoke to something that he believed to be quite real, and he therefore did not  Peter Olivi, Lectura super Apocalypsim, Prologus, 70.

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cast it aside. Bonaventure’s strategy is, rather, to correct and contextualize elements of Joachimist thought in such a way that the centrality of Christ, the efficacy of the church, and the persistence of the Old and New Testaments are never in doubt. Thomas Aquinas had critiqued Joachim’s exegetical practice of finding concordiae between past and future events, but Bonaventure is surprisingly receptive to it. At the heart of Bonaventure’s Collations on the Six Days,26 he offers seven lectures on the third hexaemeral day, “understanding instructed by the Scriptures.”27 Bonaventure says that this understanding is threefold: the spiritual senses, the sacramental figures, and “the multiform theories that are drawn from them.” (CSD 13.2) The first several lectures cover the traditional fourfold sense (literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical). These are followed by a lecture and a half on the twelve sacramental figures, the symbols of ‘the body of Christ’ and ‘body of Antichrist’ as found in the scriptures, drawn from Tyconius, Augustine, and Gregory the Great. His last category, the ‘infinite heavenly theories’, is signaled by the seeds that spring to life on the third day of creation. Who can know the infinity of seeds, when in a single one are contained forests of forests and thence seeds in infinite number? Likewise out of the Scriptures may be drawn an infinite number of interpretations which none but God can comprehend. For as new seeds come forth from plants, so also from Scriptures come forth new interpretations and new meanings, and thereby are the Sacred Scriptures distinct. (CSD 13.2)

This potentially infinite openness is contrasted with the determinate number of spiritual senses (4) and the determinate number of sacramental figures (12). But he specifies that …the consideration of theories is between the two mirrors of the two cherubim, that is, of the two Testaments that shine forth in each other, that humans may be transformed “from glory to glory.” This germination of seeds gives understanding of diverse theories according to the diverse adaptations of the times, and whoever ignores the times cannot know the seeds. If I do not know from what tree a seed comes, then I cannot know what sort of tree lies within it. And so knowledge of future things depends on knowledge of past things. (CSD 13.3)

26  Bonaventure, Collations on the Six Days of Creation, Illuminations of the Church, trans. Jay M. Hammond III (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Press, 2018). Hereafter cited in text as CSD. 27  Jay M. Hammond’s introduction to his translation of the Collations, cited above, gives ample critical attention to the central role of the ‘third day’ of scriptural understanding in the work as a whole.



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Bonaventure here endorses something like Joachim’s concordiae of scripture, and he immediately turns to apply this to a ‘division of times’. But, instead of cutting directly to Joachim’s ‘double seven’ plan, Bonaventure first summarizes a very traditional Augustinian ‘single-seven’ plan, in which Christ is born on the sixth day, and the seventh day runs concurrently with the sixth. To this he adds a fivefold division according to ‘callings’. Another threefold division, Nature, Law and Grace, follows the five. Only then does Bonaventure turn to something akin to Joachim’s ‘double-seven’ schema. The net effect of this multiplication is to relativize and contextualize any one single account. Bonaventure seems to invite his auditors into a kind of practical wisdom, of discerning elements to match the times. In short, Bonaventure dilutes the capacity of any one or two orders to classify historical epochs of revelation definitively, even as he gives room for such claims to be made … with one exception. Bonaventure adopts the ‘double seven’ schema from Joachim, but he recasts the ‘three status’ order in such a way as to change it utterly. In the Collations in Hexaëmeron, Bonaventure will speak in terms of three ‘times’ or ‘statuses’, but he has them refer to the Seven Days of Creation, which he calls the ‘time of origin’, the Seven Times of the Old Testament, called ‘the time of exemplarity’, and the Seven Times of the New Testament, ‘the time of grace’. In this way, he retains but repurposes Joachimist terminology to remove any possibility of a third covenant or an ‘eternal evangel’. In one sense, Bonaventure reduces the ‘three statuses’ into the double-seven schema, such that the proper center, the pivotpoint in history, remains the Incarnation. In another sense, he makes the three-status structure, rightly understood, an expression of his Dionysian metaphysics, of “emanation, exemplarity, and return” (CSD 1.16), which likewise centers the schema on Christ the Center, the Exemplary Word that is the perfect expression of the fontal fullness of the Father’s self-gift, the same Word that is the Word Incarnate in the center of history. So, when Bonaventure considers the history of the church, the ‘second seven’, he traces the first age from the apostles to Pope Clement, a time of ‘gathering grace’. The second tempus extends from Clement to Pope Silvester (335), the age of martyrs that draws to a close with Constantine. The third tempus runs from Silvester to Leo, the time of the doctors, who refuted heresy. The fourth tempus from Leo to Gregory the Great, Bonaventure calls the time of the law, where canon law, church order, and monastic life are born. The fifth tempus for Bonaventure is the “time of the sublime See,” the time when the Roman pontiff claims his ­rightful

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eminence over the Greek patriarchs. Finally, the sixth tempus, Bonaventure’s own age, is initiated by three related victories: the political triumph and peace of the Church accomplished by Charlemagne, the intellectual triumph of Carolingian scholars’ ‘clarity of doctrine’, and the spiritual triumph of the new mendicant orders’ arrival. And, in fact, this Dionysian reinterpretation of Joachim’s thought becomes the hallmark of Bonaventure’s apocalyptic eschatology, as Joseph Ratzinger demonstrated many years ago.28 As I have argued elsewhere,29 Bonaventure converts Joachimist apocalypticism into a mystical theology. Or, perhaps better, he renders the mystical-theological dimensions of Joachim’s thought – the centrality of ‘intellectus spiritualis’ as a deeper and deeper appropriation of the living Word – more visible and prominent. He deemphasizes the predictive dimensions of Joachite speculation without rejecting a broadly mystical itinerary of the church’s spiritual development in history toward an ecclesia contemplativa. But, perhaps most importantly, Bonaventure is always careful to distinguish (but, importantly, not to separate) this spiritual development from the institutional and sacramental efficacy of the church as such. He makes this distinction explicit through a complex treatment of the church as ordered according to the order of the ninefold Dionysian celestial hierarchy in multiple ways. Bonaventure considers the church to be ordered according to a hierarchy of procession, a hierarchy of ascent (or return), and a hierarchy of practice (CSD 22). The hierarchy of procession follows the development of the church in time: the fundamental orders include patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. This trio is followed by the promoting or stabilizing orders: martyrs, confessors, and virgins. Finally, the ‘consummating’ orders are prelates, masters, and regulars. “The Church was established originally in the first three, it grew in the intermediate three, so thirdly it is fitting that it be ordained in its full universality by the last. … [T]he consummation of the church consists in this, that it be governed according to prelacy, according to demonstration, and according to discipline” (CSD 22.9). But then this hierarchy of procession is complemented by a hierarchy of ascent, and here Bonaventure describes a liturgical order: porters, readers, exorcists, acolytes, subdeacons, deacons, priests, bishops, and patriarchs. And lastly, ­Bonaventure 28  Joseph Ratzinger, The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, trans. Zachary Hayes, OFM (Chicago, IL: Franciscan Press, 1971). 29  Kevin L. Hughes, “Eschatological Union: The Mystical Dimension of History in Joachim of Fiore, Bonaventure, and Peter Olivi,” Collectanea Franciscana 72, no. 1 (2002): 105-143. Reprinted in Greyfriars Review 16, no. 1 (2002).



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describes an order of practice (exercitia). This last category consists of the active, the contemplative, and the mixed vocations in the church. In the active life, we find holy people, holy masters, and holy leaders. The mixed life consists of the ministerial, the sacerdotal, and the pontifical. Finally, the contemplative life consists of the way of supplication, the way of speculation, and the way of elevation. The traditional monastic orders observe the way of supplication. The way of speculation, the Cherubim, are the Dominicans and the Franciscans. And finally, the way of elevation, the Seraphic order, is one we still await. For Bonaventure, Francis was the herald of this order, but his followers are not with him. Francis, thus far, is the one example of one who lives the way of elevation. These multiple and overlapping schemata of hierarchical orders are, in Bonaventure’s vision, like the angels ascending and descending Jacob’s ladder – a dynamic and kaleidoscopic movement of God’s rich work in time and history, impossible to capture in one glance,30 yet all giving expression to the one Exemplar, the Word, namely Christ the center. Conclusion It may be for the reader that this rapid tour of Joachimist and Bonaventurean eschatology is quite dizzying. Clearly much more could be said about each and all of these parts. One of the reasons that the Collations on the Six Days has received relatively less attention than Bonaventure’s other works is that these layers upon layers of hierarchies can seem obscure and absolutely rococo. But, in this instance, let me say that I think this is quite intentional on Bonaventure’s part. He intends quite specifically to embellish and enrich the schemata of division that come from Joachim, from Dionysius, and his other sources. This embellishment seems to us, unaccustomed to Bonaventure’s semiotics, to confuse or obscure.31 But I am convinced that Bonaventure’s intention is not to 30  For Bonaventure’s understanding and use of Dionysian hierarchy, see, among others, Luke Togni, “A Sweet Influence: Saint Bonaventure’s Franciscan Reception of Dionysian Hierarchy,” Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University, 2019; Katherine Wrisley Shelby, “Bonaventure on Grace, Hierarchy, and the Symbol of Jacob’s Ladder,” in Ordo et Sanctitas: The Franciscan Journey in Theology and Hagiography, ed. Michael F. Cusato, Timothy J. Johnson, and Steven J. McMichael (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 207-228. 31  See Christopher Cullen, SJ, “The Semiotic Metaphysics of Bonaventure,” PhD dissertation (Catholic University of America, 2000) and, more recently, David Luy, “Simplicity and Language: Bonaventure’s Semiotic Asymptoticism,” Modern Theology 35, no. 3 (2019): 481-495, for discussion of Bonaventure’s fundamental semiotics.

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obscure but to pluralize and integrate, to place these multiple forms of hierarchical ordering in orchestral arrangement, because the nature and history of the church cannot be told in one storyline alone. In a nutshell, Bonaventure’s eschatology of the growing perfection of the church in history is symphonic. The church, that is, can be the means of salvific grace from the time of Pentecost to final consummation, but it may still, in other respects, continue to develop and be perfected. One symbolic arrangement evokes a particular facet or dimension of the church’s life in time, but that facet is offset or counter-pointed immediately by another. Bonaventure can affirm that, yes, in fact, something decisive and new does happen in the life of Francis of Assisi, but that this novelty does not fundamentally alter the full nature of the church, or the place of the scriptures, or the grace of the sacraments. It is these multiple and layered dimensions of meaning that allow one to speculate about the nature of history and its contemplative end. For Bonaventure, the ecclesia contemplativa that we await cannot be arrived at by any one path, or discovered by any singular genealogy, or known by any one discrete marker. This complex overlay dwells in the middle space between the church as “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Eph 5:27 RSV) and the “human, all too human” Constantinian betrayal of the Grand Inquisitor. The church may stumble, fall, betray, and yet, in the midst of all these failures, give birth to and nurture new and renewed understandings, the ‘multiform theories’ discerned by an intellectus spiritualis of the presence of the Word in our midst. The ecclesia contemplativa is like a subtle theme in the performance of history that emerges in the course of time and is taken up in multiple enigmatic variations,32 all of which anticipate that final consummation when the full chorus of the church and the cosmos will be heard to sing “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Of what use might this chastened retrieval of Joachim and Franciscan eschatology be to us in the present-day church, as we, with our mentor and friend and fellow peregrinus Bernard Prusak, look to the church of the future? It is certainly true that the millennialisms of the twentieth century, whether of Hitler or of Pol Pot, have made us rightly wary of immanent and progressive eschatologies, so the predictive elements of the Joachimist legacy should rightly give us pause. More subtly, the 32  It is an interesting thought experiment to imagine the fullness of the gospel in history according to Bonaventure like Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The enigma, of course, is the primary theme, unknown in itself but at the root of multiple variations. Elgar’s work seems remarkably eschatological.



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­ ost-Hegelian immanentism even in the ‘apocalyptic’ or eschatological p theologies of Metz and Moltmann may still fall prey to this particular mode of optimism. And at the same time, as Robert E. Lerner has shown, the apocalyptic tradition that follows from Joachim, in its scriptural shape and in its openness to historical change, is a place in the Christian tradition that offers a uniquely rich and positive theological argument and ongoing positive role for Judaism in salvation history. In addition, and as we have seen above, Cyril O’Regan has pointed to the richness of the Joachimist tradition that points to the inexhaustibility and, dare one say, indeterminacy of a richly symbolic theology of history.33 If one might discern roots in the Joachimist tradition for the twentieth century’s worst atrocities, one can also find there the seeds of a transformative hope for recognizing the effective and transformative work of the Word in history. If, as I contend, Christian faith is intrinsically apocalyptic – if time and history must necessarily enter into our thought as real theological data, then our choice is not for or against the apocalyptic, but rather which apocalyptic form of thought offers our best way forward. Bonaventure’s deep conviction that history matters, that the ecclesia contemplativa will be marked above all by an open receptivity to the ‘multiform theories’ that are continually disclosed in the scriptures and in the lives of the saints, is an essential corrective to a closed and discrete sense of tradition as the protection of the deposit of faith, while his Christological centering of this openness may preserve it from the worst excesses of ‘pneumatological torque’. Perhaps we need a new ­Bonaventurean receptivity in history that never abandons its deep Christological root, but that also recognizes that …Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.34

33  Robert E. Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). See note 11 above for ­O’Regan’s rich and provocative assessment of a revised reading of Joachim. 34  Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” in Hopkins: Poems and Prose, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 18.

Vatican II and Principles for Discernment and Decision Gerald O’Collins An article by Bernard Prusak, published fifty years after the opening of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), brilliantly evoked his personal experience of and participation in the Council.1 As a young theologian in graduate studies, he witnessed at first hand the conciliar reforms and changes that responded to questions arising within (ad intra) and beyond (ad extra) the Catholic Church. In the sixteen documents it produced, the Council developed much new teaching: for instance, on the nature of the church, religious liberty, relations with other Christians, and relations with the Jewish people. It also mandated specific changes: for instance, the retrieval of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA); the promotion of dialogue with other Christians and with those of other religious faiths or of no such faith at all; and making common cause with all people in advancing the cause of justice and peace. What principles were at work in guiding the Council’s discernment and decision-making? This chapter will argue that, just as the questions faced by Vatican II arose both ad intra and ad extra, so the reasons justifying the responses came both from within and from beyond the Catholic Church. In Vatican II’s sixteen documents, we can detect at least four principles coming from within and four principles coming from beyond.2 My focus will be on the final texts, rather than on their compositional history and subsequent reception.

1  Bernard P. Prusak, “Turning Point: A Theologian Remembers the Council (Fifty Years after Vatican II),” Commonweal 139, no. 16 (September 28, 2012): 20-25. 2  For some very perceptive comments on the first draft of this chapter, I want to thank Dr Ormond Rush (Australian Catholic University, Brisbane).

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I.  Four Principles for Discernment from within the Church 1. The Guidance of the Scriptures Dei verbum (the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, promulgated on November 18, 1965; hereafter DV) begins by describing the Council as “religiously hearing the Word of God and faithfully proclaiming it” (DV 1).3 With an eye on the transmission of divine revelation, the same constitution states that the magisterium “devotedly hears, reverently guards, and faithfully expounds” the Word of God. In short, “the magisterium is not above the Word of God, but serves it” (DV 10). This sets the stage for the final chapter of Dei verbum to observe that the church “has always treated and treats them [the divine Scriptures], together with Sacred Tradition, as the supreme rule of her faith.” Hence, “the entire preaching of the Church, like the Christian religion itself, should be nourished and ruled by Sacred Scripture” (DV 21). This biblical mindset shows through when Dei verbum describes the task of theology: “it [i.e., theology] rests upon the written Word of God, together with Sacred Tradition, as on a permanent foundation, and is most firmly strengthened, and is always rejuvenated by [the Word of God].” Hence, “the study of the Sacred Page should be, as it were, the soul of Sacred Theology” (DV 24). Even if Vatican II did not call “the study of the Scriptures” the “soul” of the magisterium, its appeal to biblical texts implies not only the foundational, strengthening, and nourishing but also the discerning and decisional contribution that the “Sacred Page” should make to the exercise of the teaching office of bishops. Right from the first document, Sacrosanctum concilium (the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, promulgated on December 4, 1963; hereafter SC), the Council Fathers appeal heavily to the Scriptures, quoting them 13 times and referring to them 33 times. For the divine office, Sacrosanctum concilium discerns the pre-conciliar situation as unsatisfactory and mandates a richer selection of Scripture readings (SC 92). Here it completes what it has already prescribed for the celebration of the Eucharist: “the treasures of the Bible are to be opened up more lavishly, so that a 3  I translate the Vatican II documents directly from Sacrosanctum Oecumenicum Concilium Vaticanum II, Constitutiones, Decreta, Declarationes (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1966) – prompted by dissatisfaction with established English translations. See Gerald O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council: Message and Meaning (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014), 27-28; see also n. 16 below.



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richer table of the Word of God may be prepared for the faithful. Thus a more representative part of the Holy Scriptures will be read to the people in the course of a determined number of years” (SC 51). In Sacrosanctum concilium we can spot the Scriptures supporting the discernment of significant changes in teaching that would be taken up by subsequent documents of Vatican II. Let me mention two such changes. First, the constitution quotes 1 Peter to picture the Christian people as being “a royal priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9; see Exod 19:6). This prepares the way for a major biblical theme to be developed in Lumen gentium (the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, promulgated on November 21, 1964; hereafter LG) and other documents: through baptism (all Christians) and through ordination (the relatively few ministers), the faithful all share in Christ’s triple function as priest, prophet, and king/shepherd.4 Second, Sacrosanctum concilium quotes the classic New Testament text about God wanting “all human beings to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). It then refers to Christ appearing as “the Mediator between God and human beings” (1 Tim 2:5), and sums up Christ’s work “redeeming humankind and giving perfect glory to God” (SC 5). The constitution once again (see SC 1) reveals its worldencompassing vision and desire that “all human beings should know the one true God and Jesus Christ whom he had sent” (SC 6). Given this biblically inspired mindset, it is not surprising that Sacrosanctum concilium mandates the restoration of the “prayer of the faithful,” an old tradition that had never been given up in the East but had disappeared in the Roman liturgy, except on Good Friday.5 Recalling in a footnote 1 Tim 2:1-2 – which enjoins a similar form of prayer – Sacrosanctum concilium explains: “by this prayer in which the people are to take part, intercessions are to be made for the holy Church, for those who lead us politically, for those weighed down by various needs, for all human beings and for the salvation of the entire world” (SC 53; emphasis added). Guided by the teaching of 1 Timothy, the liturgy constitution encourages Catholics to worship in solidarity with the entire world and remain actively concerned about the salvation of all people. 4  See O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 40-43, 74-75; and Gerald O’Collins and Michael K. Jones, Jesus Our Priest: A Christian Approach to the Priesthood of Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 149-154, 208-222, 230-238, 272-291. 5  See Gerard Kelly, Lord, Hear Our Prayer: Praying the General Intercessions (Strathfield, NSW: St. Paul’s Publications, 2008), 11-17.

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Thus, Sacrosanctum concilium, discerning in the light of the New Testament the situation ‘beyond’ the Catholic Church, initiates the Council’s outreach to a variety of groups: other Christians (LG  8, 15; the Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis redintegratio; hereafter UR); those of other faiths (LG 16; the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra aetate; hereafter NA); sincere nonbelievers (LG 16); and the whole world (the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes; hereafter GS).6 Moving beyond the liturgy constitution and examples it yields of the Scriptures guiding and supporting new teaching, let us take up three spectacular, further examples – two from Lumen gentium and one from the Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis humanae; hereafter DH), respectively. Albert Outler, a prominent Protestant observer at the Second Vatican Council, called Lumen gentium “the first full-orbed conciliar expression of the doctrine of the Church in Christian history.” He also judged that “the Council intended the Constitution to be the major resource in the renovation and reform of the Catholic Church.”7 We have already noted the significant teaching about all the baptized sharing in Christ’s redemptive role as priest, prophet, and king/shepherd. An even more basic development emerged with Lumen gentium’s trinitarian vision of the church: as the People of God (the Father), the Body of Christ, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. The opening chapter of Lumen gentium ponders the mystery of the church revealed through various New Testament themes that let us glimpse aspects of this mystery: images drawn from sheep farming, the cultivation of olives and vineyards, the construction of buildings, family life, and marriage (LG  6). Then it moves to teaching (taken from St. Paul) about the church as the Body of Christ (LG 7). By dedicating the whole of Chapter 2 (LG 9-17) to “the People of God” (also called “the messianic People of God,” “the new People of God,” “the one People of God,” “the holy People of God,” or simply “the People”), Vatican II compellingly highlights that image for the church and, in one or other of those six forms, uses it fourteen times. The same chapter of Lumen 6  Promulgated on the same day as GS, the Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity (Ad gentes; hereafter AG) encourages dialogue with and respect for the “national and religious traditions” maintained by those of other faiths (AG 11; see 16, 21, 22, 40), as well as “collaboration” with other Christians (AG 41). 7  Albert C. Outler, “A Response,” in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott and Joseph Gallagher (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1965), 102-110, at 102, 106.



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gentium also speaks of the Holy Spirit dwelling in the church as in a temple (LG 9). This prepares the way for ending the chapter on a trinitarian note and calling the church, “the People of God, the Body of the Lord, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit” (LG 17).8 The whole of Chapter 2 is richly biblical, containing twelve quotations from the Scriptures and fifty-three references to them, with six quotations coming from the New Testament epistles and twenty-seven references being made to them. Along with the epistles, the witness to Acts (six references) also remains essential for reflecting on “the People of God.” In proving “the first full-orbed conciliar expression of the Church in Christian history,” Lumen gentium allows itself to be radically guided by the inspired Word of God. The constitution reveals a tireless devotion to the light of the Scriptures. A second area in which we find Lumen gentium guided by the Bible concerns “those who have not yet received the Gospel” but “are ordered (ordinantur) to the People of God for various reasons.”9 Here the Council distinguished between [a] Jews, [b] Muslims, [c] other believers in God, and [d] all those who, through no fault of their own, have not yet come to “an explicit knowledge of God” (LG 16). Let us concentrate on group [a] and the impact of the Scriptures on some new teaching about the Jewish people. In its notorious 1442 Decree for the Copts, the Council of Florence, taking to extremes the principle “outside the Church no salvation,” consigned to damnation not only “pagans but also Jews, heretics, or schismatics.”10 This Council presumed that those who did not accept and follow the message of Christ were in bad faith, and thus excluded from eternal salvation. Vatican II, however, not only avoids this presupposition but also refrains from ever speaking of ‘pagans’, ‘heretics’, and ‘schismatics’. As for Jews, it becomes the first ecumenical Council in the 8  The vision of the church developed a year later in the opening chapter of Ad gentes would be thoroughly biblical and even more emphatically trinitarian (AG  2-9). This trinitarian vision of the origin of missionary activity leads naturally to the three matching images of the goal of that activity when the whole human race “form[s] one people of God [the Father], come[s] together into the one body of Christ, and [is] built up into the temple of the Holy Spirit.” Then “all who share human nature, regenerated in Christ through the Holy Spirit,” will be able to “gaze together on the glory of God [the Father]” (AG 7). 9  Here, Vatican II drew on a specific tradition: the terminology of St. Thomas Aquinas (to which it refers in LG 16, n. 18). See Summa Theologiae, III, q. 8, a. 3, ad 1; see also Gerald O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 30-31. 10  For details, see O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions, 32-33.

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history of Catholic Christianity to talk positively of Jews (and, for that matter, of Muslims).11 Prompted by Pope John XXIII and other notable friends of the Jewish people and horrified by the dreadful crime of the Shoah, the bishops at Vatican II aimed to proscribe anti-Semitism and commence new relations with Jews. They found their major scriptural warrant in classical texts of Paul about God’s irrevocable election of Israel. Lumen gentium selected some of the privileges listed by Rom 9:4-5 to speak of “the people to whom the covenants and promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh.” Then it aligned itself with Paul in stating that “according to the [divine] election, [the Jews] are a people most dear on account of the fathers; for the gifts and calling of God are without regret (Rom 11:28-29)” (LG 16). Before Vatican II, no Council had either cited those two passages from Romans or spoken well of the Jews. In the longer treatment of the Jewish people that appeared a year later in Nostra aetate, the Council once again quotes Rom 9:4-5 (NA 4), and (in a reference to Rom 11:28-29) recalls the use of that verse in Lumen gentium 16 (NA  4, n. 11). Undoubtedly, what Nostra aetate says about Jews is more significant, especially in view of the coming Catholic-Jewish dialogue.12 Nevertheless, the decisive step toward rapprochement has already been taken in Lumen gentium, a step justified by the teaching of the apostle Paul. A second dramatic example of new teaching inspired by the Scriptures came with Dignitatis humanae, which “abandoned the traditional doctrine that ‘error has no rights’ and embraced a more liberal theory based upon the rights of the person, and the individual’s duty to follow his [sic] conscience.”13 Various principles, as we will see, prompted this change. Pope Benedict XVI touched on the ultimate reason when he addressed the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005: Dignitatis humanae  See Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (London: Sheed & Ward and Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990). 12  See John M. Oesterreicher, “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to NonChristian Religions,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, vol. 3 (London: Burns and Oates, 1969), 1-136. On the results of postconciliar interfaith dialogues, see Catholicism and Interreligious Dialogue, ed. James L. Heft (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 13  Basil Mitchell, “The Christian Conscience,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, ed. John McManners (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 602-627, at 602-603. For a magisterial study of the making of Dignitatis humanae, see Silvia Scatena, La fatica della libertà: L’elaborazione dalla dichiarazione “Dignitatis Humanae” sulla libertà umana del Vaticano II (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003). 11



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(DH) had “recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church” by being “in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself.”14 The Declaration on Religious Liberty reached the heart of the matter when it appealed to the revelation mediated through Christ and his apostles and recorded in the New Testament (DH  9-15). Christ always respected the religious freedom of men and women, which meant that their faith should not and could not be coerced. His disciples followed him by maintaining that the human response to God must be free, as well as by asserting their own right to proclaim the good news (DH 9-11). But the church had at times behaved in ways “not in keeping with the spirit of the Gospel and even opposed to it.” It has taken, as Dignitatis humanae confessed, “the course of time” for “the leaven of the Gospel” to establish the conviction that, “in religious matters,” the human person should be free from any “coercion” (DH 12). By retrieving the teaching and practice of Jesus, the declaration showed how Scripture can correct distorted and false traditions: in particular, the long-standing conviction that “error has no rights.” 2. Guidance from Tradition At the General Congregations of the Second Vatican Council, all held in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Book of the Gospels was enthroned each day right through the four sessions.15 This beautiful volume symbolized the presence of the risen Christ and the primary importance of the inspired Word. The particular copy of the Book of the Gospels used throughout Vatican II, a Latin version from the fifteenth century, did not simply contain the text of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It opened with some concordance tables prepared by Eusebius of Caesarea, a letter of St. Jerome, and Jerome’s prologues to the Gospels. A preface by the Venerable Bede accompanied the Gospel of John. All of this suggests how three notable representatives of the Christian tradition received and interpreted the Scriptures. We reflected above on how that the first document promulgated at Vatican II, Sacrosanctum concilium, sets a standard for the later conciliar texts by endorsing the centrality of the Scriptures and the guidance to 14  Benedict XVI, “Interpreting Vatican II: Address to the Roman Curia,” Origins (January 28, 2006): 534-539, at 538. 15  See Romeo de Maio, The Book of the Gospels at the Oecumenical Councils (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1963); this book was also published in French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

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be received from them. The liturgy constitution also includes traditional authorities: twelve quotations, drawn from liturgical texts (seven), the Council of Trent (three), and the fathers of the church (two), as well as ten references, drawn from liturgical texts (two), Trent (two), and the fathers (six). This spread of quotations and references mirrors a long and rich tradition, and shows tradition applying and actualizing the divine revelation normatively recorded and interpreted in the Scriptures. The unity and interplay of Scripture and tradition to which Sacrosanctum concilium witnesses in ‘practice’ is explained in ‘theory’ by the chapter on tradition in Dei verbum (DV 7-10). Where the liturgy constitution speaks of ‘sound’ (SC  4, 22) or ‘venerable’ (DV  24, 89) tradition, Dei verbum cites ‘sacred’ tradition and its functioning with ‘Sacred Scriptures’ (DV 9, 10 [twice], and 24). Christian tradition remains inseparably connected with the Scriptures in their past origin, present function, and future goal: “they flow out from the same divine well-spring [i.e., revelation], come together in some fashion, and move towards the same [eschatological] goal” (DV 9). Far from any sense of “the dead hand of tradition,” Dei verbum emphasizes life and highlights “the living tradition of the whole Church” (DV  12).16 The image of tradition, flowing from the same divine spring (scaturigo) as the Scriptures and uniting with them as they move toward the same goal, suggests a living stream. The constitution speaks of a “life-giving presence” of tradition, “whose riches are poured out (transfunduntur) into the practice and life of the believing and praying Church” (DV 8). All that said, where and how does tradition guide the discerning and decision-making of Vatican II? The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) provides a striking example of an ancient, post-New Testament tradition that fell into abeyance being retrieved by the Council (SC 64-65, 109). A course of preparation for adults who wish to be baptized and enter the Catholic Church, the RCIA was introduced (or rather re-introduced after many centuries) in 1972. The catechumens enrolled in this program are instructed in the faith and obligations of Christians – normally during the six weeks of Lent. At the Easter Vigil, they receive the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist – thus following as adults the traditional order of Christian initiation, one ceremony in 16  Here Dei verbum discreetly paid tribute to the theologians of the Tübingen School who had elaborated the notion of ‘living tradition’. The translation of the Vatican II documents edited by Austin Flannery omitted ‘living’ and rendered the phrase as “the Tradition of the entire Church.” See Vatican Council II, ed. Austin Flannery (Northport, NY: Costello, 1988), 758.



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which the candidates were baptized, confirmed, and received Holy Communion.17 Another example of such discernment and retrieval concerns the ancient tradition of ordaining permanent deacons – that is to say, deacons who would continue to serve as such and not move on to priestly ordination. The Constitution on the Church mandates this change (LG 29). When dealing with the question of religious freedom, we have indicated how decisive the New Testament testimony proves for the discerning and decision-making of Vatican II. Dignitatis humanae adds a further principle by announcing its intention to “examine the sacred tradition and doctrine of the Church, from which it produces new things always consistent (congruentia) with the old” (DH  15). The declaration has already stated its intention “to develop (evolvere) the teaching of the more recent popes about the inviolable rights of the human person and about the juridical regulation of society” (DH 1). A footnote indicating “the teaching of more recent popes” cites prior teaching by John XXIII, Pius XII, Pius XI, and Leo XIII; it pointedly does not enlist any support from Pius IX.18 The “more recent popes” stops at Leo XIII, but cannot include Pius IX. His 1864 Syllabus of Errors excluded public religious freedom. It condemned the proposition that “everyone is free to embrace and profess the religion which by the light of reason one judges to be true.”19 Set over against the less than Christian (and certainly not ‘sacred’) tradition represented by the Syllabus, Dignitatis humanae looks more like a reversal than a development of doctrine.20 The declaration recognizes that, in matters of religious freedom, the church had at times behaved in ways “not in keeping with the Gospel and even opposed to it” (DH 12). But what of traditional teaching that ‘opposed’ 17  See Maxwell E. Johnson, The Rites of Christian Initiation: Their Evolution and Interpretation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999). One should note that participants in RCIA are classified as either catechumens or candidates. Candidates are persons who have (at least) been baptized, but are completing initiation. Here, we focus on catechumens. 18  DH 2, n. 2. 19  Heinrich Denzinger and Peter Hünermann, eds., Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum; Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd edition (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2010), no. 2915. 20  Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger called Dignitatis humanae (along with Nostra aetate and Gaudium et spes) “a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter syllabus.” See Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Mary Frances McCarthy (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1987), 381.

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the Gospel by rejecting freedom in religious matters and did so over many centuries – from Pius IX, back to Pope Innocent IV (who in a 1252 bull, Ad extirpanda, authorized the use of torture to force suspected heretics to ‘confess’ and retract their errors), and earlier. Dignitatis humanae simply ignores such unfortunate teaching, and cites teaching that favors religious freedom proposed by four fathers of the church (from Lactantius to Gregory the Great) and two medieval popes (Clement III and Innocent III).21 When retrieving past traditions, the declaration quietly sets aside teaching now judged to be incompatible with the Gospel. Tradition can supply guidelines for current teaching and behavior. But it persistently calls for discernment, since specific traditions should be reformed or rejected where they oppose the Scriptures and the teaching of Christ. 3. Lex Orandi Lex Credendi In a restrained and almost coded expression, Dei verbum spoke of “the practice and life of the believing and praying Church” (DV 8). Talking of “the believing and praying Church” echoes the axiom of St. Prosper of Aquitaine (d. around 463 ce): “let the law of prayer establish the law of belief (legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi).”22 I would like to draw attention to the way in which this principle operates in the texts of the Second Vatican Council. “The law of praying” developed in the Council’s very first document, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, helps discern and establish “the law of belief” expounded in the subsequent texts. To put this in equivalent language, Sacrosanctum concilium is the hermeneutical key for Vatican II. Massimo Faggioli has championed this view, but I have argued at length that his view needs to be enlarged and nuanced.23 Here, let me select three examples that illustrate Prosper of Aquitaine’s axiom at work in Vatican II’s account of “the law of belief”: the paschal mystery, sacramental language, and the eschatological image of the pilgrim people. Right from its opening chapter, Sacrosanctum concilium highlights the centrality of the paschal mystery, the dying and rising of Christ that was the principal ‘work’ of redemption and gave birth to the church (SC 5). Baptism means being “inserted” into “the paschal mystery of Christ” – that is to say, “dying with him, being buried with him, and rising with  DH 9, n. 7.  See Arno Schilson, “Lex orandi – lex credendi,” in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Walter Kasper et al., vol. 6 (Freiburg: Herder, 1997), 871-872. 23  For details, see O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 57-88. 21

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him,” to receive “the spirit of adoption” (SC 6). Coming together to hear the Scriptures and share in the Eucharist likewise involves “celebrating the paschal mystery” (SC 6). From its origins, the church has dedicated Sunday or “the Lord’s day” to commemorating in a special way “the paschal mystery” (SC 106). All in all, Sacrosanctum concilium speaks of “the paschal mystery” eight times (SC 5, 6 [twice], 61, 104, 106, 107, and 109). The language of “the paschal mystery” that characterizes Sacrosanctum concilium is taken up by the Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church, Christus dominus (promulgated on October 28, 1965); “they [i.e., the bishops] should strive that the Christian faithful know and live the paschal mystery more deeply through the Eucharist” (no. 15). According to the Decree on the Training of Priests (Optatam totius) (also promulgated on October 28, 1965), those preparing for ministerial ordination “should live the paschal mystery in such a way that they will know how to initiate into it the people committed to them” (no. 8). The Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity mandates that the liturgy of Lent “should be restored in such a way as to prepare the hearts of the catechumens to celebrate the paschal mystery, in whose solemn ceremonies they are reborn to Christ through baptism” (AG 14). This progressive initiation for which Vatican II calls is embodied in the RCIA, a Lenten course of preparation introduced in 1972 (see above). Ad gentes references and applies (AG 14) what Sacrosanctum concilium had enjoined two years earlier. Finally, Vatican II’s last document, Gaudium et spes (promulgated on December 7, 1965), envisions the impact of the paschal mystery not only on baptized Christians but also on all human beings. In “struggling against evil,” the Christian does so as “one who, having been made a partner in the paschal mystery, is configured to the death of Christ, and strengthened by hope runs towards the resurrection.” But sharing in the paschal mystery is also a possibility for all those who have not (or have not yet) been baptized: “the Holy Spirit offers to all, in a way known to God, the possibility of being made partners in the paschal mystery” (GS 22). The grace and power of the paschal mystery touch the whole human race. Thus, the paschal mystery, a major theme for the law of praying that shapes Sacrosanctum concilium, becomes a significant theme for “the law of believing” expressed in four subsequent conciliar documents. Here we should not neglect some links with Dei verbum. While this constitution does not introduce as such the term “paschal mystery,” it refers e­ quivalently to “the mystery of our salvation” (DV 15), “the mystery of Christ” (DV 24), and “the Eucharistic mystery” (DV 26). Dei verbum understands Christ’s death and resurrection to “complete and perfect” the divine self-revelation

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(DV 4), even as Sacrosanctum concilium recognizes this death and resurrection to constitute centrally “the work of our redemption” (SC 2) and make possible its liturgical celebration in the Eucharist. The teaching of Sacrosanctum concilium about the paschal mystery, as “the summit towards which the activity of the Church aims and the foundation from which all her strength flows” (SC 10), anticipates the way Dei verbum expounds the same paschal mystery as the completion and perfection of the divine self-revelation. Secondly, when describing how “the faith of those taking part is nourished” and how they offer worship to God, Sacrosanctum concilium highlights the liturgy as word and action. “In the liturgy God speaks to his people [and] Christ is still proclaiming the Gospel,” while “the Church prays, sings, or acts” (SC 33, emphasis added; see SC 24). The constitution calls the Eucharist “the sacred action,” in which all the faithful should participate “consciously, devoutly, and actively” (SC 47). Sacrosanctum concilium distinguishes but never separates word and action: “the two parts” of the Mass, “the liturgy of the word and the eucharistic liturgy are so closely connected with each other that they form one act of worship” (SC 56). Throughout its teaching on liturgical renewal, the constitution employs a sacramental language of word and deed. Subsequent documents of Vatican II use and develop this sacramental language. It is in such terms that Lumen gentium recalls Jesus’ preaching of God’s kingdom: “the kingdom was manifested to human beings in the word, deeds, and presence of Christ” (LG 5). Dei verbum repeatedly applies sacramental language to “the economy of revelation” and “the history of salvation.” The “economy of revelation occurs through deeds and words (gestis verbisque) intrinsically connected with each other, so that the works (opera) performed by God in the history of salvation manifest and corroborate the doctrine and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the works and the mystery they contain” (DV  2). The sacramental language of words and deeds/ actions recurs when Dei verbum describes the divine self-revelation in the Old Testament as happening by “deeds and words (factis et verbis)” (DV  14), and speaks of Christ’s public ministry: he inaugurated “the kingdom of God on earth,” and “by deeds and words (factis et verbis) manifested his Father and himself” (DV 17).24 24  Above and beyond SC, the sacramental language of DV has further precedents in the works of Hermann Schell, St. Hilary of Poitiers, and others: see Gerald O’Collins, Retrieving Fundamental Theology (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1993), 54, 160. On this language entering into DV, see O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 10-12.



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In the passage just cited from Lumen gentium we find Vatican II adding ‘presence’ alongside word and deeds. God’s kingdom was manifested “in the words, deeds, and presence of Christ” (LG 5). Dei verbum also adopts the sacramental language of ‘presence’ when it refers to Christ effecting revelation “by the total presence and manifestation of himself by words and deeds” (DV  4). In a memorable passage, Sacrosanctum concilium has already adverted to the manifold ways in which Christ is ‘present’ in the liturgy (SC 7). Lumen gentium and then Dei verbum take up this liturgical theme and apply it more broadly to Christ’s presence in the history of divine self-revelation. At no point does Dei verbum explicitly receive the liturgical constitution. But, in elaborating the sacramental dynamism of revelation, it does apply the teaching of Sacrosanctum concilium to the self-communication of God in Jesus Christ. This forms a second example of the principle by which the ‘law of praying’ in the liturgical constitution became a ‘law of believing’ in other Vatican II texts. A third and final example concerns eschatology. In its introduction, Sacrosanctum concilium describes the whole church as a ‘pilgrim’ people moving toward a “future city that we seek” (SC  2). Among the general principles that should shape the reform of the liturgy, Sacrosanctum concilium recalls the eschatological hope of Christians: “in the earthly liturgy we share in and have a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem towards which we move as pilgrims.” The constitution adds: “venerating the memory of the saints, we hope for some part and fellowship with them; we await the Saviour, Our Lord Jesus Christ, until he, our life, shall appear and we too shall appear with him in glory” (SC 8; emphasis added). Naturally, Sacrosanctum concilium cites the antiphon from the feast of Corpus Christi about the Eucharist being “the paschal banquet” in which “a pledge of future glory is given to us” (SC 47). The mystery of Christ, unfolded in the liturgical year nourishes “the expectation of blessed hope and the coming of the Lord” (SC 107). Through evoking the ‘law of praying’ on the shape of things to come, Sacrosanctum concilium prepares the way for the ‘law of believing’ about Christian hope to be found in subsequent documents of Vatican II. Lumen gentium dedicates a notable chapter to the “pilgrim people of God” (LG 48-51). The Constitution on the Church in the Modern World ends its first part by expressing hope in Christ, “the Alpha and the Omega,” the beginning and end of all things (GS 45). The whole document concludes with a vivid expectation of the world’s final ­fulfilment through Christ in a “homeland radiant with the glory of the Lord” (GS 93).

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4. Pastoral Experience Right from the outset, pastoral experience proves a fourth guiding principle for the changes and reforms initiated by Vatican II.25 The opening sentence of Sacrosanctum concilium announces the Council’s intention “to nourish day by day the Christian life among the faithful” (SC  1). Along with theological and historical findings, pastoral considerations and experience help discern the liturgical revisions to be introduced (SC 23). Good practice in liturgical life dictates norms: the rites should be simple, brief, and “avoid useless repetitions. They should be accommodated to the faithful’s understanding and generally should not require many explanations” (SC 34). Over and over again, pastoral concerns emerge to support, for instance, omitting duplications and additions that fail to promote “the devout and active participation of the faithful” (SC 50). These concerns call for adaptations to meet present-day needs, including the introduction of the vernacular (SC  62, 63) – or, more accurately, the re-introduction of the vernacular when we recall the Aramaic and Greek in which the earliest Christians celebrated the Eucharist. Pastoral needs and experience clearly affected and guided many of the choices and changes for which Vatican II voted. Two documents flew the pastoral banner in their very titles: the Decree of the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church (Christus dominus) and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes). Significantly, ‘pastoral’ (pastoralis) turns up 133 times in the sixteen documents of Vatican II, with four documents leading the way: Christus dominus 38 times, Ad gentes 20 times, Optatam totius 17 times, and Presbyterorum ordinis (the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests) 17 times. This dominant language points to pastoral experiences and needs as constituting a fourth, major principle informing the discernment of changes and reforms.

25  See Christoph Theobald, “The Principle of Pastorality at Vatican II: Challenges of a Prospective Interpretation of the Council,” in The Legacy of Vatican II, ed. Massimo Faggioli and Andrea Vicini (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2015), 26-37; Christoph Theobald, “The Theological Options of Vatican II: Seeking an ‘Internal’ Principle of Interpretation,” in Vatican II: A Forgotten Future, ed. Alberto Melloni and Christoph Theobald, Concilium 2005, no. 4 (London: SCM Press, 2005), 87-107; Christoph Theobald, La réception du concile Vatican II: Accéder à la source (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2009). Theobald developed his thinking about the principle of ‘pastorality’, in the light of what Pope John XXIII said of the magisterium being “predominantly pastoral in character” (in Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, his speech at the opening of Vatican II).



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“The duty of studying carefully the signs of the times and interpreting them in the light of the Gospel” (GS  4) provides a leitmotif for the Council’s final text, the longest expression of its discernment and decision-making.26 Far from being a merely speculative task, such interpretative reading of the signs of the times aims at detecting and embracing the pastoral opportunities offered by God’s saving revelation in the present history of the church, the human race and the planet earth. Social, cultural and ecological changes, along with other elements of modernity, can point to the divine kingdom present in our world (see Matt 16:4) and suggest appropriate, practical responses. II.  Four Principles of Discernment from Outside the Church 1. Cultures, Customs, and Traditions Among the provisions that Sacrosanctum concilium makes for local churches when translating and adapting the liturgy, this constitution envisages a “more radical adaptation of the liturgy.” In the light of “the traditions and mentality of individual peoples,” this could be “useful and even necessary” (SC 40). The liturgy document wants to “honour and promote the qualities and gifts of various nations and peoples,” and, where appropriate, incorporate those traditions into the liturgy (SC 38). This principle of openness to other traditions is taken up by Lumen gentium and then by Ad gentes. They call for adaptations that include not only the liturgy but also ways of life. First, the Constitution on the Church states what had been accomplished and was continuing to take place. The church “fosters and adopts, insofar as they are good, the abilities, resources, and customs of peoples. In adopting [them], she purifies, strengthens, and elevates [them]” (LG  13). Using equivalent terms, the constitution goes on to say that, through missionary activity, “whatever good is found sown in the hearts and minds of human beings or in the particular rites and cultures of peoples, so far from being lost, is healed, elevated, and consummated for the glory of God” (LG 17). A year later, Ad gentes quoted this principle, word for word, from Lumen gentium by saying: “whatever good is found sown in the hearts 26  On the signs of the times, see Hans-Joachim Sander, “Das singulare Geschichtshandeln Gottes – eine Frage der pluralen Topologie der Zeichen der Zeit,” in Herders Theologisches Kommentar zum Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil, ed. Peter Hünermann and Bernd Jochen Hilberath, vol. 5 (Freiburg: Herder, 2006), 134-144.

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and minds of human beings or in the particular rites and cultures of peoples, so far from being lost, is healed, elevated, and consummated for the glory of God” (GS 9). A later passage in the missionary decree referenced (but without quoting) Lumen gentium 13 by speaking of “the young churches” taking over “all the riches of the nations…. They borrow from the customs and traditions of the peoples, from [their] wisdom and doctrine, from [their] arts and disciplines everything that could contribute to confessing the glory of the Creator, to manifesting the grace of the Saviour, and to the right ordering of Christian life” (AG 22). This led the missionary decree to call on theological experts to be ready to receive from other traditions. The experts should examine “by which ways faith could seek understanding through keeping in mind the philosophy and wisdom of the peoples,” and by what means their “customs, sense of life, and social order” could be put together with divine revelation. All this “will open ways for a more profound adaptation of the whole sphere of Christian life.” Thus, “Christian life will be adapted to the mentality and character of each culture; and particular traditions together with the special qualities of each family of nations, illuminated by the light of the gospel, will be taken up into a Catholic unity” (AG 22). What Vatican II named here ‘adaptation’ overlapped with what would be later called the principle of ‘inculturation’, a new term for the traditional principle of discerning various cultures and indigenizing in them the Christian way of life.27 In its chapter on the proper development of culture, Gaudium et spes deferred to ‘links’ between the message of salvation and various cultures: when revealing himself to his people through to the full self-manifestation in the incarnate Son, God spoke according to the culture proper in different ages. Likewise the Church … has used the resources of different cultures in its preaching to spread and explain the message of Christ to all nations, to examine and understand it more deeply, and to express it better in the liturgical celebration and in various aspects of the life of the faithful. (GS 58)

At the same time, Gaudium et spes insisted that, “so far from being tied exclusively and indissolubly” to any particular culture, the church “can enter into communion with different forms of culture, thereby enriching both herself and the various cultures themselves” (GS 58). 27  The literature on inculturation is vast; for an introduction see Gerard A. Arbuckle, Culture, Inculturation, and Theologians: A Postmodern Critique (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010).



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The final text of Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, thus completed a trajectory initiated by Sacrosanctum concilium about taking account of “the traditions and mentality of individual peoples.” A discerning openness to these cultural and religious traditions of ‘others’ emerged as a prominent principle for the updating and reform of the liturgy and other aspects of Christian life. 2. Cultivated Reason Vatican II clearly recognized how much the church has gained from “progress in the sciences,” understood in the broad sense of scientific disciplines headed by ‘philosophy’ (GS 44). The “findings of secular sciences” and, in particular, of psychology and sociology, can play their role in presenting “the truths of faith.” Here, the constitution echoed (and rendered more concrete) the distinction Pope John XXIII made between the truths of faith and the mode of expressing them when opening the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962.28 Not only history and philosophy, but also modern sciences can shape the expression of the Gospel (GS 62). Hence, Vatican II, when summarizing what preparation for missionary activity entails, recommended collaboration with “scientific institutes” that specialize in “ethnology, linguistics, the history and science of religions, sociology, pastoral skills, and the like” (AG 34). This implied that experts in such disciplines have significant things to contribute when official leaders and others in the Catholic Church discern current situations and decide what forms of teaching and action are called for. In principle, these leaders and others should be open to what such experts have to offer and advise. 3. Dialogue with and Learning from Other Believers Sacrosanctum concilium mandated a set of liturgical reforms that had clear ecumenical significance: more importance assigned to the Scriptures (SC 34, 51); a fresh emphasis on preaching (SC 35, 50); the introduction of the vernacular (SC 54); and communion under both kinds (SC 55). At the outset, the liturgy constitution had listed promoting ‘union’ among all Christians as one of the four related concerns that motivated the whole work of the Council (SC  1). The four liturgical reforms we have just  Acta Apostolicae Sedis 54 (1962): 792.

28

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­ entioned obviously matched the practice of Christian churches that m came into existence through the sixteenth-century Reformation. By introducing these changes for Western Catholics, Vatican II fell into line with cherished liturgical traditions of Anglicans and Protestants. Obviously, many of those who prepared the text of Sacrosanctum concilium and voted for the final text of the Constitution were conscious that what they discerned and decided on involved learning from the fruitful experience of other Christians and facilitating union with them.29 The prayerful openness to other Christians showed up the following year in what Lumen gentium said about churches and ecclesial communities not in union with the Bishop of Rome (LG  8, 15). The associated Decree on Ecumenism, when sketching what the practice of ecumenism should involve, respectfully describes the traditions of the “separated brethren.” By using the language of ‘reformation’ (UR 4, 6), Vatican II showed it was willing to learn this language from the churches that emerged from the sixteenth-century Reformation. In Evangelii gaudium, an exhortation of November 24, 2013, Pope Francis was to go further and speak of “fellow pilgrims” from whom Catholics could learn: for instance, about “the meaning of episcopal collegiality and the experience of synodality.”30 Without saying so explicitly, in Unitatis redintegratio Vatican II reflected principles of ecumenism and showed what it shared with other Christians. The presence in the Council’s ‘aula’ of observers and guests from other churches – 54 in the first session and up to 182 in the fourth and final session – proved much more than a mere act of courteous hospitality. Their comments and advice helped to shape the Decree on Ecumenism and other documents.31 But I limit myself here to what the documents as such say and reveal. The Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christians took this mindset to a wider circle than Christians. It opened with a vision of the one world, in which all human beings share the same origin, deep questions, divine providence, and final destiny (NA  1). The declaration then considered Hinduism, Buddhism (NA 2), Islam (NA 3), and Judaism (NA 4). It exhorted Catholics to take up “dialogue and collaboration” with  On learning from other Christians, see Ormond Rush, “Receptive Ecumenism and Discerning the Sensus Fidelium: Expanding the Categories for a Catholic Reception of Revelation,” Theological Studies 78, no. 3 (2017): 559-572. 30  Evangelii gaudium (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013), art. 244-246. 31  See John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), 23, 33; Mauro Velati, Separati ma Fratelli: Gli osservatori non-cattolici al Vaticano II (1962-1965) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014). 29



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followers of other religions.32 This would involve “recognizing, protecting, and promoting” the “spiritual and moral goods,” as well as “socio-cultural values” of these others (NA  2). But, were Catholics to receive and be guided by some of these “spiritual and moral goods” and “socio-cultural values”? No clear reply was given by Nostra aetate. It was left to Gaudium et spes to recognize in all who believe in God “precious religious and human elements” or “impulses of the Spirit,” which Catholics “should faithfully receive and readily act upon” (GS 92). 4. Dialogue with and Learning from Non-Believers Gaudium et spes also inculcated dialogue with non-believers; from the “outstanding human values” they endorse, Catholics could learn and be guided (GS 92). The recommendation at the close of this constitution belongs with an earlier article on “what the Church receives from the modern world” when it “hears the voices of our times” (GS 44). Vatican II provided a shining example of such hearing and learning from the wider world in the Declaration on Religious Freedom. Noting the widespread ‘desires’ for “the free exercise of religion in society,” the Council declared these desires to be “in conformity with truth and justice” (DH 1). It went on to observe not only that “people of today want to be able to profess their religion in public and in private,” but also that “religious liberty is already declared a civil right in many constitutions and solemnly recognized in international documents” (DH 15). Dignitatis humanae showed here its decision to catch up with the true and just concerns of contemporary human believers, whether or not they believe in God. A readiness to learn from non-believers was already revealed in what Lumen gentium had said about morally upright atheists: “whatever good or truth is found among them is considered by the Church to be a preparation for the Gospel and given by him [the incarnate Word] who enlightens all human beings so that they may at length have life” (LG 16; emphasis added). This implies that, through the lives and words of atheists and agnostics, Christians could identify elements of truth and goodness, coming from Christ the Light and Life of the world. Hence, even if they remain unaware of its source in the living Christ, these (apparent) outsiders can share truth with Christians: for instance, the truth about the right of human beings to enjoy religious liberty in civil society. Many  Pope Paul VI’s 1964 encyclical Ecclesiam suam had already firmly encouraged such dialogue: Acta Apostolicae Sedis 56 (1964): 609-659, at 639-640. 32

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of the details in the teaching of Gaudium et spes about respect for human dignity would be endorsed by upright non-believers and have in fact been promoted by them (GS 27). The same is true of Vatican II’s teaching on social justice and the basic rights of all human beings (GS 29). When at this point in history Catholics and other Christians involve themselves in discerning such matters, it is at their peril that they fail to hear the voices of non-believers. Conclusion This chapter has largely limited itself to examining what we can glean from the final texts of the Council about the principles, found within (ad intra) the church and beyond (ad extra) the church, that guide decisions about teaching (concerned, e.g., with religious liberty) and decisions to be made in practice (e.g., in liturgical reforms). We detected four principles providing guidance ad intra and four ad extra. The inquiry concentrated on examining what might be called the intentio textus ipsius (the intention of the text itself). A further, related study could take up what the authors of the sixteen Vatican II documents intended in the matter of principles guiding their discernment and decision making. This would mean investigating what those bishops and others who worked on the conciliar commissions intended to convey about the principles at work in the texts they composed and then revised (in the light of the criticisms and suggestions coming from the assembled bishops and others). All of this could be studied in the acts of the Council, the (unpublished) records from the commissions (available in a special Vatican archive), in the ‘genetic’ studies of particular documents,33 and other documents. This would be to investigate the ‘authorial intention’ (intentio auctorum) at work through the conscious principles of discernment and decision-making shaping the outcome of Vatican II and its documents. My study of the intentio textus ipsius could direct those who take up research into the intentio auctorum as to where they might begin their research.34 33  See e.g. Riccardo Burigana, La Bibbia nel concilio: La redazione della costituzione “Dei Verbum” del Vaticano II (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998). 34  In Ch. 9 of my Inspiration: Towards a Christian Interpretation of Biblical Inspiration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), I deal at length with the triple ‘intention’, which encompasses not only the intentio auctoris and the intentio textus ipsius but also the intentio legentis (the intention of the reader).

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An Open View of the Magisterium for the Promotion of Christian Unity Christopher Cimorelli This chapter investigates Catholic views of the magisterium and how such perspectives may foster or limit ecumenical efforts, with the goal of bolstering a more dialogical, ‘open’ view of the church’s teaching authority. The chapter is carried out across three sections. Section I delineates the apparent limitations of Catholic ecumenical initiatives post-Vatican II despite some of the enormous strides engendered by the Council, which was largely inclusive and open. Because such limitations are rooted in a particularly Catholic, juridical conception of the magisterium, Section II analyzes this view that was handed on partly through the Council itself, but which especially re-emerged in its wake. Section III affirms that the true function of the magisterium is in service to divine revelation and the community of faith, in view of realizing the covenantal relationship between God and humanity in the present. Because the preservation of revelation is also its proclamation, according to this perspective, the very notion of ‘magisterium’ requires openness and not closure.1 Such an alternative conception will not deny the juridical function of the hierarchical magisterium, but rather situate that function within the broader covenant between the revealing, Triune God who is agapē (1 John 4:8) and humanity. Prioritizing a more open conception of the magisterium could allow members of the Catholic Church to participate more fruitfully in ecumenical efforts, working to realize Christian unity even if full communion is a mark of the eschaton.

1  Cf. Joseph Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition: A Provisional Response,” in Pope Benedict XVI, God’s Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2008), 81-88, at 58. “Proclamation … is by its nature interpretation (explication)….” See Section III below for more information on this work.

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I.  Limitations of Catholic Ecumenical Efforts Despite the Gains of Vatican II Bernard P. Prusak, in recalling his own experience of the Second Vatican Council, describes his surprise at witnessing proceedings that “would bring enormous change to so many aspects of Catholic life and practice.”2 Prusak would himself proceed from the Council, integrating systematic and historical theology in a way that never departed from the sacramental life and nature of the church, understood more broadly than preconciliar treatments of the people of God. One particular fruit of the Second Vatican Council was a more open, dialogical attitude on the part of the Catholic Church – particularly the hierarchy – toward lay members of the church, as well as the world. Prusak recalls “a new sense of openness and hope, grounded in genuine dialogue among Catholic scholars, bishops, and eventually the laity,” and how remarkable it was to see “Orthodox and Protestant observers engaged in lively dialogue with cardinals and bishops in the aisles on either side of St. Peter’s and in the two coffee bars nearby.”3 This openness was facilitated in part by the church’s growing appreciation for historical consciousness and the lived experience of its members, as well as by a sober understanding of the pitfalls of misunderstanding and closure to the ‘other’.4 Consequently, Vatican II features novel statements on non-Christians and non-Catholic Christians. Texts such 2  Bernard P. Prusak, “Turning Point: A Theologian Remembers the Council (Fifty Years after Vatican II),” Commonweal 139, no. 16 (September 28, 2012): 20-25, https:// www.commonwealmagazine.org/turning-point. 3  Ibid. Cf. Mark Schoof, A Survey of Catholic Theology 1800-1970, trans. N. D. Smith (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1970), 235-236. 4  For example, the revelations of the Holocaust prompted ecumenical groups of Christians to reexamine their traditional and liturgical language surrounding Jewish peoples. See Mary C. Boys, “The Christian Bible and the Jews,” in Anselm Academic Study Bible, ed. Carolyn Osiek and Leslie J. Hoppe (Winona, MN: Anselm Academic, 2013), 51-53. While the classical formula, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, was not denied or rescinded at Vatican II, it was shown to be no longer an adequate treatment of those persons and communities outside the formal bounds of Roman Christianity. See the promulgations of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 (chapter 1, par. 3) and the Council of Florence in 1441/2 (Bull Cantate Domino). Heinrich Denzinger and Peter Hünermann, eds., Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum; Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd edition (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2010), nos. 802, 1351. See also Edward Schillebeeckx, “Discontinuities in Christian Dogmas,” in Essays: Ongoing Theological Quests, trans. E. Fitzgerald and P. Tomlinson, Collected Works 11 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 85-109 (esp. 98-99).



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as Nostra aetate (Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to NonChristian Religions), Lumen gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), and Unitatis redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism) are important in this regard.5 For example, NA 2 upholds the idea that (i) authentic ‘rays’ of divine truth are indeed scattered throughout the world, specifically within systems of other religious traditions. Quite important to this argument, however, is the notion that scattered rays find their unity in their divine source.6 LG 16 affirms that (ii) personal fidelity to conscience – understood as the experience of moral responsibility to God and God’s will – legitimately may “attain to eternal salvation.” Lastly, UR (see no. 3) asserts that (iii) a truly Christian “life of grace” – regardless of one’s institutional affiliation – does provide ‘access’ to salvation; such access is affirmed in spite of the wounds to the visible church’s unity and her mission; UR does not, however, deny the teaching that the unity of the church of Christ subsists (subsistit) in the Catholic Church.7 All three ideas indicate an increased consciousness of God’s universal salvific will and legitimate responses to that will beyond confessional or institutional boundaries, while maintaining the centrality of revelation and a strong ecclesiology. Vatican II, then, exemplifies the notion that, as faith searches for understanding of God revealed fully in Christ, established church teaching and doctrinal formulae sometimes require additional statements representative of what the church’s living tradition has gleaned through history.8 One area that required and 5  Nostra aetate (October 28, 1965) (hereafter cited in text as NA), http://www.vatican. va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html; Lumen gentium (November 21, 1964) (hereafter cited in text as LG), http:// www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_ const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html; Unitatis redintegratio (November 21, 1964) (hereafter cited in text as UR), http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_ council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html. Some of the major biblical passages underlying efforts of ecumenism include the following: John 17:21, Eph 4:4-5, and Gal 3:27-28. See UR 2. 6  The following passage is helpful in understanding the change in tone and approach of NA. “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men [sic]. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6), in whom men [sic] may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself [sic]” (no. 2). 7  “We believe that this unity subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose, and we hope that it will continue to increase until the end of time” (UR 4). Cf. LG 8. 8  Newman’s somewhat paradoxical and Romanticist reflections on a ‘great idea’ like Christianity have thus been borne out: namely, that “It changes … in order to remain

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received renewed emphasis and consideration, especially given the conciliar disposition to openness and dialogue, was Christian unity. With respect to the latter idea (iii) from the decree on ecumenism, the sacrament of Baptism has received renewed emphasis in that it truly binds all Christians to the Body of Christ and thus represents at least an opening to pursue Christian unity. This emphasis allows UR to hold that non-Catholic Christians engage in sacred actions, as well as the building up of the church through their proclamation and living out the gifts of the Spirit. They are thus properly called brothers and sisters in Christ, as opposed to heretics or schismatics, pejorative labels that would seem to indicate that current members of non-Catholic churches are themselves to blame for historical separations from the Catholic Church (UR 3). Such pejorative labels were quite common prior to the change in tone and teaching that marked Vatican II, and this shift was not without consequence. For more than a half-century, the Council has indeed paved the way for remarkable strides in ecumenism, generally speaking, and particularly in the Catholic contribution to ecumenical efforts. The Council itself saw the easing of tensions between Catholic and Orthodox churches separated formally in the eleventh century, as well as the lifting of excommunications of leaders in these churches.9 In addition, Vatican II has engendered myriad new dialogues between Catholic and non-Catholic Christians of various denominations. Perhaps most notable among the constructive developments since the Council is the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1997),10 which “was a historic agreement

the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), 40. To be clear, the changes stem from the ‘intercourse’ of ideas with the world and its ‘vicissitudes’. 9  See UR 14-17. Prusak, early in his career, reflected on the steps taken prior, during, and after the Council with respect to Eastern Catholic churches that are in communion with Rome. See Bernard P. Prusak, The Canonical Concept of Particular Church before and after Vatican II, Theses ad Lauream in Iure Canonico (Rome: Pontificia Universita Lateranense, 1967). The Vatican II document Orientalium ecclesiarum was treated in some detail in this study (esp. pp. 100-107). 10  For the full text, commonly affirmed in a 1999 statement, see the following: Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church, “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” in Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Unita Cristiani, http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/dialoghi/sezione-occidentale/luterani/dialogo/documenti-di-dialogo/1999-dichiarazione-congiunta-sulla-dottrinadella-giustificazion/en.html.



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signed by Lutherans and Catholics … effectively resolving one of the key theological conflicts of the Reformation.”11 While such rapprochement regarding the idea of ‘justification by faith’ is cause for hope and celebration, the joint declaration does indicate the ongoing theological divergence in the areas of church governance and hierarchy, including doctrinal teaching authority.12 For example, even if one considers the positive emphasis on Baptism in UR, given that it is the mark of the new covenant joining Christians together the world over, the document nevertheless highlights the nature of this sacrament as a beginning to the life of faith. The life of faith is meant to be lived in full communion with Christ and his body the church, and not merely in a virtual manner.13 UR affirms, For it is only through Christ’s Catholic Church, which is “the allembracing means of salvation,” that [separated brothers and sisters] can benefit fully from the means of salvation. We believe that Our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, in order to establish the one Body of Christ on earth to which all should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the people of God. (3)

One sees in this passage, related to the teachings on subsistence (see LG 8 and UR 4), the Catholic emphasis on its singular church structure and hierarchy to ensure the faithful’s access to the full ‘means of salvation’ according to God’s economy of salvation. This conviction is an ongoing point of contention between Catholic and non-Catholic Christians. To illustrate, in the West, despite the widespread agreement by Christians on the three offices of Christ – as priest, prophet, and king – offices exercised by all the faithful through Baptism to some extent,14 there is less agreement on the manifestation of these offices in the institutional church, in terms of correctly administered sacraments, pure  Department for Theology and Public Witness, “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” The Lutheran World Federation, https://www.lutheranworld.org/jddj. 12  See LWF and CC, “Joint Declaration,” no. 43. On these continuing points of divergence, see also: Richard R. Gaillardetz, “The Groupe des Dombes Document ‘One Teacher’ (2005): Toward a Postconciliar Catholic Reception,” Theological Studies 74, no. 1 (2013): 20-47, at 21, 28, and 31. 13  UR 22. See also the canons of the often overlooked Council of Orange (529 ce) on this point (esp. canon 20 and its conclusion). 14  “The faithful exercise their baptismal priesthood through their participation, each according to his [sic] own vocation, in Christ’s mission as priest, prophet, and king.” Catechism of the Catholic Church, with Modifications from the Editio Typica (New York: Doubleday, 1997), no. 1546. Hereafter, CCC. 11

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teaching, and authority of ecclesiastical office.15 Since the time of the Reformation – one can look to Philip Melanchthon’s Augsburg Confession (1530) on this point – there has been a rupture in views regarding the ecclesiastical office, the church’s hierarchy, and it remains firmly in place despite the ecumenical achievements precipitated by Vatican II.16 In addition to ecumenical limitations stemming from pre-conciliar and conciliar teaching on the church, scholars operating in the area of ecumenical dialogue have signaled concern for potential regression on the part of the Catholic Church moving forward, particularly given more recent interpretations of the Council. For example, in Dominus Iesus (2000) and “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church” (2007), the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) offered interpretations minimizing any changes engendered by LG with respect to non-Catholic Christian churches. Preparatory drafts of LG show a move from the language of “the Church of Christ is the Roman Catholic Church” with a clause, “many elements of sanctification can be found outside its total structure”17 – language found insufficient – to instead, “the one Church of Christ … subsists in the Roman Catholic Church,” with explicit reference to the “many elements of sanctification and of truth … found outside of its visible structure.”18 While such changes, in conjunction with a close reading of LG and the other conciliar documents, would indicate a significant shift in Catholic teaching, Dominus Iesus and especially the “Responses” document assert the following: that the church “continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church”19 and that the “­ Second  See UR 3; CCC, nos. 1591-1593.  Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 43-44. 17  Richard R. Gaillardetz, “The Church of Christ and the Churches: Is the Vatican Retreating from Ecumenism?,” America (August 27–September 3, 2007): 15-17 (esp. 16). 18  LG 8. For more on the fascinating, developing drafts of LG, see: Avery Dulles, “The Church,” in The Documents of Vatican II: All Sixteen Official Texts Promulgated by the Ecumenical Council 1963-1965 Translated from the Latin, ed. Walter M. Abbott, trans. Msgr. Joseph Gallagher (New York: America Press, 1966), 9-13. Gaillardetz has argued that the first minimization of changes facilitated by LG occurred in the CDF response to Leonardo Boff’s book, Church: Charism and Power (1985), where it stated that only one “‘subsistence’ of the true Church exists, whereas outside her visible structure only elementa Ecclesiae – elements of Church – exist.” The word ‘only’ here replaced ‘many’ from LG. See: Gaillardetz, “The Church of Christ and the Churches,” 16; CDF, “Notification on the Book ‘Church: Charism and Power’ by Father Leonardo Boff O.F.M.” (11 March 1985), The Holy See, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19850311_notif-boff_en.html, par. 11. 19  CDF, Dominus Iesus (6 August 2000), The Holy See, http://www.vatican.va/ roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html, no. 16. 15

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Vatican Council neither changed nor intended to change [the Catholic doctrine on the Church].”20 Given that this chapter will make use of Joseph Ratzinger’s early theology to argue for a more open view of the magisterium, it is worth highlighting that he was the prefect of the CDF when Dominus Iesus was published and pope at the time of the “Responses” text. So while tremendous strides in ecumenism have been made in the leadup to and aftermath of Vatican II, Christian disunity persists, frustrating the goals of UR, which acknowledges the significant differences in doctrine and discipline (see UR 3) that continue to exist between Catholics and Protestants. UR holds that “Such division openly contradicts the will of Christ” (UR 1). Even more problematic, these differences themselves are ‘traditional’, being passed from ecclesial generation to generation.21 The last fifty years have thus shown that full communion remains elusive, to the extent that Edward Schillebeeckx, in treating the four traditional marks of the church – namely, that it is to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic – argued that these marks will not be fully realized in the historical church, but in the reign of God. Full communion, then, is perhaps better described as an eschatological promise and perpetual challenge for the entire body of the faithful.22 Yet, even if full communion will only be realized in the fullness of time that marks the eschaton, this does not absolve Christians today from the call to unity. Richard Gaillardetz, in other words, writes: “for those who insist that Christians should view full, visible unity as a strictly eschatological goal, one must ask whether this perspective does not ignore the way eschatology lays claim on Christians in the present moment.”23 The implication here, using the words of Ormond Rush, is that, “in this interim period of separation on the way to full visible communion,”24 positive steps can and should be taken to pursue unity. This chapter responds to that call by investigating notions of the magisterium at root in delimitations of ecumenical dialogue today. 20  CDF, “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church” (29 June 2007), The Holy See, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070629_responsa-quaestiones_ en.html, question no. 1, response. 21  See Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 47. 22  Edward Schillebeeckx, “Towards Democratic Rule of the Church as a Community of God,” in Church: The Human Story of God, trans. J. Bowden, Collected Works 10 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 185-226 (esp. 196) [187-229]. 23  Gaillardetz, “The Groupe des Dombes Document,” 36. 24  Ormond Rush, “Receptive Ecumenism and Discerning the Sensus Fidelium: Expanding the Categories for a Catholic Reception of Revelation,” Theological Studies 78, no. 3 (2017): 559-572, at 565. Rush is here specifically focusing on broadening the Catholic “theological-epistemological category of sensus fidelium.”

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II.  The View of the Magisterium and the Principles Undergirding Its Tasks From the Catholic standpoint, while the entire people of God is possessed of the Holy Spirit from the time of Pentecost forward, it is the living, present teaching authority of the church that guarantees the continuity of faith and fidelity to what God has revealed (i.e., with respect to faith and morals). This teaching authority is comprised of all the bishops together with the bishop of Rome and successor to St. Peter, the pope.25 The magisterium interprets scripture and tradition, which are the principle ‘sources’ of God’s revelation.26 As Christ is the head that unites the Body of Christ, the magisterium, in communion with the pope as the head of the College of Bishops, is the visible teaching authority whose proclamations are binding (to varying degrees) for the faithful, thus providing for ongoing Christian unity as it concerns proper interpretations of the faith. Yet one understandably might wonder how such a view developed historically. While there was a greater degree of unity in the historical, visible body of Christ in its earliest phases, tensions and divisions have undeniably marked the church’s long history. In fact, church history has portrayed and facilitated the emergence and understanding of certain ecclesiological principles, particularly regarding scripture and the interpretation of God’s revelation by an authoritative body. While scripture is the privileged, inspired repository of God’s revelation to humanity, it has always required the interpretation of the living church and her members endowed by the Spirit.27 This is particularly true in times of difficult questions and controversies, the answers to which may vary depending on the biblical texts utilized.28 The period of the early church affirms this perspective and process. For example, Acts 25  See Francis A. Sullivan, Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1983), 24-29. Sullivan does note the developments in the understanding of the term ‘magisterium’ through history (e.g., the teaching authority proper to theologians as described by Aquinas). 26  Dei verbum (November 18, 1965), 9-10 (hereafter cited in text as DV), http://www. vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_deiverbum_en.html. 27  See DV 17-26 (esp. 21 and 23). 28  See John Henry Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908), 51: “…while inquirers and neophytes in the first centuries lawfully used the inspired writings for the purposes of morals and for instruction in the rudiments of the faith, they still might need the teaching of the Church as a key to the collection of passages which related to the mysteries of the Gospel, passages which are obscure from the necessity of combining and receiving them all.” Emphasis added.



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of the Apostles 15:1-12 narrates the controversy surrounding Jewish Law for gentile converts to Christianity. Paul and the apostles, with a statement by Peter,29 decided against mandating such adherence, opting instead to emphasize the granting of the Holy Spirit that had already been given to gentile converts through faith in Christ; thus Baptism would emerge as the mark of the Christian (cf. Acts 10–11:19). Granted, this example involves the interpretation of the scriptures prior to the formulation of the New Testament, but it nevertheless (and precisely) demonstrates a principle in Catholic ecclesiology regarding church leadership as the authorized interpreter of divine revelation, since Christ did not explicitly answer the question on circumcision. In addition, the later Arian crisis saw Christians oftentimes utilizing the same biblical texts (e.g., Col 1:15-23) to argue opposing theologies regarding the divinity of the Logos.30 The fallout from this fourth-century crisis saw the first ecumenical councils of the church held in order to delineate the faith and creed more clearly, as well as the establishment of the scriptural canon.31 An even more relevant example for this inquiry is the events surrounding the proclamations of Chalcedon in 451 ce, which perhaps indicated more clearly the role of the bishop of Rome. Pope Leo’s Christological Tome to Flavian proved to be a unifying force to seemingly entrenched adversaries vigorously debating – on the basis of scripture and tradition – the constitution of Jesus Christ and its Mariological implications.32 Chalcedon was perhaps a critical step in the historical emergence of what Catholic tradition understands as the principle of papal primacy.33 The Catholic perspective thus holds that scripture anticipates and requires the 29  In verse 6, Peter refers to himself, saying: “My brothers, you are well aware that from early days God made his choice among you that through my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the Gospel and believe.” 30  For a thorough study on the Arian crisis, see the important work by Rowan Williams: Arius: Heresy and Tradition, Revised Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001). See also The Christological Controversy, trans. and ed. Richard A. Norris, Jr. (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980), 17-21, 83-101. 31  The Synod/Council of Hippo in 393 ce affirmed (or reaffirmed) the 27 canonical texts of the New Testament. The first historical list of the 27 New Testament texts is attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria in 367. See James C. Okoye, “The Formation of the Bible,” in Anselm Academic Study Bible, ed. Osiek and Hoppe, 13-26, at 25. 32  See Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 226-277 (esp. 256-264). 33  See Newman, Development of Christian Doctrine, 306-308. It is worth noting that alternative interpretations of the ecclesiological principles at play in Chalcedon are certainly possible. Newman interpreted these fifth-century developments as affirming the Catholic view of the Bishop of Rome, concretizing a previously more latent principle.

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interpretation of a living community of faith with an established leadership structure. This principle was evident in the apostolic church (prior to the formation of the New Testament) which experienced liberation from the letter of the Mosaic Law, interpreting scriptures (i.e., the Hebrew Scriptures) on the basis of the Gospel and the Gospel (and later on the New Testament) on the basis of the indwelling of the Spirit.34 Because the indwelling Spirit is foundational to the church’s fidelity to Christ, Catholic self-understanding has consistently emphasized the interpretation of scripture and tradition by the church’s hierarchical teaching authority, comprised of the successors to the apostles who are aided by the Spirit in keeping the church on the path to truth (see John 16:12-15). Moreover, the principles upon which the history of the church proceeded during New Testament controversies and the first ecumenical councils noted above remain true during the time of the church until the Parousia. John Henry Newman, in his reflections on the development of doctrine, articulated the idea that the church operates on and makes manifest the ‘dogmatic principle’. In describing this concept with respect to the early church, he writes, …the Truth, to which [Christians] were to bear witness, had been… definite, and formal, and independent of themselves. Christians were bound to defend and to transmit the faith which they had received, and they received it from the rulers of the Church; and, on the other hand, it was the duty of those rulers to watch over and define this traditionary faith.35

Newman, who would eventually balance out this “moderate ultramontanist” perspective,36 was conscious in writing this text that history sometimes demands the church’s formal response to secure and explicate what has been revealed from corruption and otherwise debilitating challenges; when the situation warrants it, then, the church can respond with 34  For more on this, see James McEvoy, “The Patristic Hermeneutic of Spiritual Freedom and Its Biblical Origins,” in Scriptural Interpretation in the Fathers: Letter and Spirit, ed. Thomas Finan and Vincent Twomey (Portland, OR: Four Courts Press, 1995), 1-25 (esp. 5ff.); Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 53-62. 35  Newman, Development of Christian Doctrine, 341. To be fair, and in context, Newman highlights these characteristics because, without them, the unity of Christians would have dissolved even sooner in history than it did; in other words, the truth to which God’s revelation points is real, not purely subjective, and is a unifying force. Newman elsewhere (p. 325) indicates the imperfection of human language that results from this principle, despite the necessity of binding statements. 36  See Ryan J. Marr, To Be Perfect Is to Have Changed Often: The Development of John Henry Newman’s Ecclesiological Outlook, 1845-1877 (London: Lexington Books and Fortress Academic, 2018), 1-47.



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b­ inding decrees through the operation of the Holy Spirit, who “has made history to be doctrine.”37 Ultimately, it is the church – understood more institutionally and hierarchically in these contexts – possessed of the Holy Spirit that safeguards what was revealed from corruption and error. Newman writes further (and elsewhere) on this topic: Why should God speak, unless He meant to say something? Why should He say it, unless He meant us to hear? Why should we be made to hear if it mattered not whether we accepted it or no [sic]? What the doctrine is, is another and distinct question; but that there is some doctrine revealed, and that it is revealed in order that it may be received, and that it really is revealed … that it is plain in one and the same substantial sense to all who sincerely and suitably seek for it, and that God is better pleased when we hold it than when we do not….38

The contemporary reader can justifiably critique Newman on some of his arguments above, especially regarding the ways in which these particular claims present the ‘independence’ of divine truths from believers, as well as the implicit notion of the church on display. Yet, much of his position remains relevant from the standpoint of Catholic tradition regarding the role of the magisterium in responding to controversies and questions that prove normative for Christian life and faith. In fact, Newman is sometimes referred to as an unofficial ‘father’ of Vatican II, given, among other contributions, his synthesis of revealed religion and historical consciousness, famously explicated in his An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845/1878).39 This work was incredibly influ37  John Henry Newman, “The Indwelling Spirit” (1834), in Parochial and Plain Sermons 2.19 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co.), 227. 38  John Henry Newman, Discussion and Arguments on Various Subjects (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907), 130-131. This section on ‘latitudinarianism’ is originally from the fifth volume of the Tracts for the Times (nos. 83 and 85), published by members of the Oxford Movement in 1838. This 1907 revised edition stems from the published work of 1872. 39  Newman’s influence on Vatican II goes beyond his view of the role of controversies in driving doctrinal development (and the role of church authority in this process). His later theology also dealt extensively with the consultation of the faithful by church leadership, the operation of faith and reason, the role of theology as a regulating principle in the life of the church, and the role of conscience, among other things. It is not surprising that his later thought would balance out the moderate ultramontanist view presented above, especially given his consistent distaste throughout his oeuvre for overly abstract theological arguments divorcing the idea of Christianity and its progress from the people through whom it is realized concretely in history. For more on this point, see John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua Being a History of His Religious Opinions (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908), 265: “It is individuals, not the Holy See, that have taken the initiative, and given the lead to the Catholic mind, in theological inquiry.”

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ential for major figures of Vatican II who articulated a historically-conscious view of Christian faith.40 With respect to the ongoing relevance of Newman’s view, one can look to the CDF document, Mysterium ecclesiae (1973), which offers a similar perspective with slightly more nuance in the area of contextual normativity in doctrinal formulation.41 Regarding Vatican II’s Dei verbum, specifically no. 8, which describes how believers undergo “growth in the understanding of the realities and the words” handed down traditionally – a growth that happens through their own contemplation and study – Mysterium ecclesiae offers the following qualifications, which go beyond what DV itself qualifies in no. 10 (par. 2), as well as the language of subsistence found in LG 8 and UR 4: But by divine institution it is the exclusive task of these pastors alone, the successors of Peter and the other Apostles, to teach the faithful authentically, that is with the authority of Christ shared in different ways; so that the faithful, who may not simply listen to them as experts in Catholic doctrine, must accept their teaching given in Christ’s name, with an assent that is proportionate to the authority that they possess and that they mean to exercise. For this reason the Second Vatican Council, in harmony with the first Vatican Council, teaches that Christ made Peter “a perpetual and visible principle and foundation of the unity of the faith and of communion”; and the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI has declared: “The teaching office of the bishops is for the believer the sign and channel which enable him [sic] to receive and recognize the Word of God.” Thus, however much the Sacred Magisterium avails itself of the contemplation, life and study of the faithful, its office is not reduced merely to ratifying the assent already expressed by the latter; indeed, in the interpretation and explanation of the written or transmitted Word of God, the Magisterium can anticipate or demand their assent. The People of God has particular need of the intervention and assistance of the Magisterium when internal disagreements arise and spread concerning a doctrine that must be believed or held, lest it lose the communion of the one faith in the one Body of the Lord (cf. Eph 4:4, 5).42

40  On this point, see Aidan Nichols, From Newman to Congar (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990). 41  Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mysterium ecclesiae (“In Defense of the Catholic Doctrine on the Church against Certain Errors of the Present Day,” June 24, 1973), The Holy See, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/ documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19730705_mysterium-ecclesiae_en.html. Regarding the normativity of context in the formulation of doctrinal language, see no. 5 (esp. the first three paragraphs). 42  Mysterium ecclesiae 2. Emphasis added.



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In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, then, Mysterium ecclesiae sought to delineate more clearly the role of the magisterium as authentic interpreter of revelation, and whose proclamations demand (hierarchically) the assent of the faithful, clarifying that interpretations of revelation and divine mysteries are not all of equal worth. The magisterium’s teachings possess a valid authority from Christ, who established Peter (and those who occupy his See) as “a perpetual and visible principle and foundation of the unity of faith,” and the teaching authority itself serves as a “sign and channel” enabling believers “to receive and recognize the Word of God.” Having just considered the ecclesiological rationale for the existence and ongoing necessity of the church’s formal teaching authority, it is helpful to delineate more precisely the functions of this teaching authority.43 Traditionally, the teaching authority of the church has two principal tasks: citing the First Vatican Council document, Dei filius (1870), these are “teaching and defending catholic truth and condemning erroneous doctrines.”44 More recently, the CDF has written that, “when the Church makes new pronouncements she intends to confirm or clarify what is in some way contained in Sacred Scripture or in previous expressions of Tradition; but at the same time she usually has the intention of solving certain questions or removing certain errors.”45 Taken together, these passages argue that proclamations of the magisterium teach and defend truth, solve or address questions, and condemn/ remove errors. Yves Congar, writing in and around the Second Vatican Council, argues that the challenges of Protestant denials and Modernism had fostered a clearer understanding of the role and tasks of the magisterium, which “is to ensure the authenticity of the sensus Ecclesiae itself, and to declare, if need be, that certain elements of it have the force of a rule of faith, as a result of the charisms attached to the hierarchical function in the midst of the people of the New Covenant.”46 Congar goes on to discuss the “divine right” of the magisterium, under “the Supreme Pontiff, successor of Peter, who is organically its head.”47  For a comprehensive treatment of this subject, see Sullivan, Magisterium.  Dei filius (“Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith,” April 24, 1870), Introduction to Session III (par. 3), in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. II, ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 805. 45  Mysterium ecclesiae 5. 46  Yves M.-J. Congar, Tradition and Traditions: An Historical and a Theological Essay, trans. Michael Naseby and Thomas Rainborough (London: Burns & Oates, 1966), 106. 47  Ibid. 43

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History certainly fostered a clearer conception of the church’s magisterium and hierarchical privileges, particularly in its relationship to error and in the wake of the Protestant Reformation and its aftermath.48 According to this view, a faithful Christian must accept and assent to the decisions of the church’s sacred teaching authority because such an authority is grounded in the revelation of Christ and God’s economy of salvation: this view is confirmed by scripture, apostolic tradition, and the history of the church. Moreover, it has been reaffirmed in the wake of Vatican II, even with the Council’s opening to the other. One can thus appreciate the difficulty and limits of ecumenical efforts stemming from Catholic ecclesiology in this regard, beyond even the issue of apostolic succession. The very work of the teaching authority gifted with the Holy Spirit is to vouchsafe revelation and the deposit of faith, even providing for the recognition and reception of the Word of God. Those who do not accept the interpretations of the church’s teaching authority, or for whom the teaching authority itself represents corruption, are, from this perspective, in error and separate from the visible church of Christ in which the one church of Christ subsists fully. This notion appears to hold true even considering that such separated persons are not themselves to blame for the historical divisions of Christ’s Body. Ecumenically, this is a significant challenge, given that schisms in the Body of Christ have been interpreted as debilitating wounds since the time of the early church, occasioning even the harshest rhetoric among the baptized.49 Given the portrait to this point, this chapter will now articulate an alternative conception of the magisterium that is more conducive to openness and dialogue as opposed to closure, in the hopes of bolstering the goal of Christian unity, expressed at Vatican II (especially in UR), and which is itself a demand of scripture.

 Regarding “development of doctrinal authority in the Catholic Church” after the Protestant Reformation until Vatican I, see Gaillardetz, “The Groupe des Dombes Document,” 28. 49  On this subject of harsh rhetoric directed at other Christians, and how this related to Christian readings of history, see: Robert A. Markus, “Church History and Early Church Historians,” in The Materials, Sources and Methods of Ecclesiastical History, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), 1-17 (esp. 5-6); cf. Williams, Arius, 1-2. It is interesting to note a related concern within Roman Catholic Christianity today, involving interpretations of Vatican II by ‘tribes’ that often demonize each other for perceived ecclesiological difficulties and conditions. One can think here of the Communio/Concilium divide, SSPX and the minimizing of Vatican II, as well as present-day excoriations between traditionalists and progressives. 48



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III.  The Magisterium as Serving the Word In order to conceive the magisterium and its role in an open, dialogical manner, a useful starting point is the consideration of the primary task of church itself, within which the more limited function of the magisterium is carried out: namely, evangelization. Such an ‘open’ perspective is not an innovation of the more recent church, but is contained in tradition. Once this consideration is undertaken, this section will utilize the thought of Joseph Ratzinger and others to delve into the distinctions between revelation, scripture and the traditional church. More precision in this regard can facilitate a better conception of the magisterium today, one more conducive to ecumenical progress. 1. The Church’s Primary Task Coming from Jesus: Evangelization In his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii nuntiandi (“On Evangelization in the Modern World”), Pope Paul VI reflects at length on evangelization as the central task of the church,50 which, according to scripture, has been commanded by Christ to “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).51 Evangelization thus necessarily involves the encounter between persons and communication of the Gospel. Yet, Paul VI argues for a foundation and prerequisites to the Christian task of preaching. While “The Church is an evangelizer…she begins by being evangelized herself. She is the community of believers, the community of hope lived and communicated, the community of brotherly love, and she needs to listen unceasingly to what she must believe, to her reasons for hoping, to the new commandment of love” (EN 15). The groundwork described above, particularly the ‘listening’ demanded here by Paul VI, should be connected more explicitly to the effect of Christ’s proclamation of the Gospel to those who receive it in faith: namely, metanoia, which he earlier in the document refers to as 50  Pope Paul VI, Evangelii nuntiandi (December 8, 1975) (hereafter cited in text as EN), http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_p-vi_ exh_19751208_evangelii-nuntiandi.html. The elements of evangelization are given in no. 24: “Evangelization, as we have said, is a complex process made up of varied elements: the renewal of humanity, witness, explicit proclamation, inner adherence, entry into the community, acceptance of signs, apostolic initiative. These elements may appear to be contradictory, indeed mutually exclusive. In fact they are complementary and mutually enriching.” 51  The Markan language differs from the Matthean: “Go, therefore, and make [mathēteusate] disciples of all nations….” (Matt 28:19).

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“radical conversion, a profound change of mind and heart” (EN 10).52 The church, as a whole and in her members, then, must constantly renew the life-giving relationship with the Triune God who is love. Consequently, ongoing conversion and liturgical, sacramental life characterized by love are indispensable for faithful, effective evangelization. One notes here the critical importance of listening to what the church has received from God: namely, Christ and the Gospel. An understanding of the role of the magisterium that emphasizes listening, encounter, and communication can legitimately lead to a more open view of the church’s teaching authority. Paul VI writes that there are many elements that constitute evangelization, but proclamation is considered to be a central one, and proclamation is often connected in church documents to the work of the magisterium in authentically interpreting the deposit of faith, teaching truth and countering error.53 In its proclamation of the good news, the church must bear witness to God’s revelation in Christ, the true object of faith that is not to be seen as a possession. All evangelizers, the hierarchy included, are called rather to be “heralds and servants” of revealed truth and ultimately God, who desires, indeed wills the salvation of all persons (EN 78).54 The notion of church leaders, and the magisterium in particular, as servants of the Word of God had recently been affirmed in DV and has been important for ongoing ecumenical dialogue with Protestant Christians.55 DV 10 states: “This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit….” In EN, Paul VI notes that the church is called to pass along the essential truths of faith, but it must do so in and for the present context, which is ever dynamic: “evangelization would not be complete if it did not take account of the unceasing interplay of the Gospel and of [humanity’s] concrete life, both personal and social. This is why evangelization involves an explicit message, adapted to the different situations constantly being realized…” (29). For evangelization to be complete, authentic, and successful, it must actually address the people being encountered in a meaningful way. One can also apply this idea to proclamations of the magisterium meant  Cf. Gaillardetz, “The Groupe des Dombes Document,” 23-24.  See DV 9; Mysterium ecclesiae 4; cf. Dei filius, Introduction to Session III, in Tanner, Decrees, Vol. II, 805. 54  See 1 Tim 2:4. 55  See Gaillardetz, “The Groupe des Dombes Document,” 28. 52 53



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to instruct the faithful: that is, if teaching the truth and countering error are to be efficacious, magisterial proclamations must respond to the situation on the ground, so to speak; serving the Word of God and people of God faithfully should thus be marked by such a method. Church declarations emerging from this approach, then, in line with the position of Nicholas Lash, in his work Easter in Ordinary (1988), should not aim at ending discourse, but rather providing a grammar of faith for the church’s primary work of evangelization.56 In others words, the shepherds of the church – its pastors and teachers – must know their flocks and their concrete circumstances in order to fulfill their task of authentically proclaiming the Word of God, so that the entire people of God may likewise preach the good news through word and deed. In fact, this insight has been acknowledged in the more recent International Theological Commission (ITC) document, “Sensus fidei in the Life of the Church” (2014), which notes that magisterial teachings can potentially be communicated more effectively by the hierarchy if reception meets with difficulty.57 But going beyond the ITC document, one should note that knowledge of the members and flocks that comprise Christ’s Body requires authentic communication and dialogue, which proceeds on the basis of mutual respect and listening prior to speaking. In an essay on apologetics, Peter Kreeft writes, “Only listeners are listened to. Only after your student[s] see … that you care about [them] and [their] ideas will [they] really care about yours. Only after you give [them] two of your life’s most precious commodities, attention and time…will [they] give you [their] attention and … time.”58 Mutual respect and genuine listening are thus indispensable for true dialogue, as Pope John Paul II argued in the early 1980s.59 These notions should be explicitly ­connected 56  See Nicholas Lash, Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 259-260. Cf. Brian D. Robinette, “Christology – ‘Who Do You Say That I Am?’,” in Theological Foundations: Alternate Edition, ed. J. J. Mueller (Winona, MN: Anselm Academic, 2011), 94-98. 57  ITC, “Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church” (2014), The Holy See, http://www. vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_20140610_sensus-fidei_en.html, no. 80. For arguments on the Catholic Church factoring in the sensus fidei of non-Catholic Christians, see Rush, “Receptive Ecumenism and Discerning the Sensus Fidelium,” 559-572 (esp. p. 565 forward). 58  Peter Kreeft, “What’s the Reason for Giving Reasons for Faith?,” in idem, Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1988), 13-23, at 21. 59  John Paul II, “Dialogue for Peace, A Challenge for Our Time” (January 1, 1983), The Holy See, https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/peace/documents/ hf_jp-ii_mes_19821208_xvi-world-day-for-peace.html, no. 6.

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to evangelization, even and especially as it pertains to the magisterium, keeping in mind the particularly Christian conception of the leader as servant and slave of all (Mark 10:43-44), who does not make his/her authority over others felt in a burdensome fashion (Mark 10:42-43). Love is what distinguishes and characterizes the relationships in Christ’s Body (John 15:11-17), because God is love (1 John 4:8) and impartial (Acts 10:34). The more one wishes to approximate the persona Christi, the more one must evince servant leadership in accordance with the gospel message. In the end, the task and authority of the magisterium are primarily pastoral rather than juridical, and there is an integral relationality in this process.60 The church’s work of evangelization is done in service to God revealed fully in Jesus Christ, whose Spirit works through the faithful members of the church who communicate the Gospel to an ever-dynamic world, and who must themselves be continuously evangelized. 2. Ratzinger’s View of Tradition during the Second Vatican Council It is fruitful at this point to consider the view of tradition on display in an essay written by Joseph Ratzinger in 1965, as part of his work with Karl Rahner, Revelation and Tradition.61 The essay is titled, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition: A Provisional Response,” and it is intriguing considering that it was written toward the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, before Ratzinger’s so-called shift in the late 1960s, amid student movements and protests and the Communio/Concilium split following Vatican II. However, as Pope Benedict XVI, he republished this text in the volume God’s Word in 2008, after the CDF publications of Dominus Iesus and the “Responses” document in 2000 and 2007, respectively.62 Arguments developed in this essay could be utilized to approach more fruitfully some of the roadblocks that mark the Catholic approach to ecumenical dialogue today. 60  See ITC, “The Interpretation of Dogma” (1989), B.II.2, The Holy See, http:// www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_1989_interpretazione-dogmi_en.html. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that the juridical or judging function proceeds from the primary pastoral function. Cf. Schoof, A Survery of Catholic Theology 1800-1970, 252-253. It would be intriguing to pursue a synthesis of the juridical and pastoral dimensions of the magisterium, perhaps through the lens of servant leadership as indicated in the Gospels (see Mark 9 and 10 and parallels). 61  Offenbarung und Überlieferung (1965), by Joseph Ratzinger and Karl Rahner, was translated into English in 1966: Revelation and Tradition, trans. W. J. O’Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966). 62  Benedict XVI, God’s Word, 41-90.



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In the essay, Ratzinger begins with a treatment of the divide between Catholics and Protestants, noting that there is an opportunity to take productive steps forward, partly through a theological investigation of church history in and around the Protestant Reformation. He highlights that tradition can be said to exist because there is a non-identity between revelation and scripture, precisely because revelation is that which forms the entire mediation between God and humanity, and which can only be understood when received in faith.63 He writes, “revelation always and only becomes a reality where there is faith…. [T]he person who receives it also is a part of the revelation to a certain degree, for without him [sic] it does not exist.”64 According to this perspective – one quite conscious of the addressees of God’s revelatory activity – revelation, as the whole mediation between God and humanity, is thoroughly relational and communicative. It establishes the covenantal relationship between God and humanity, but only when received in faith, by which greater understanding may ensue. An indication of this idea can be found in the New Testament distinction between the gramma and the pneuma (see 2 Cor 3:6-18) and the self-consciousness of early Christians, who felt freed (see Gal 5:13) by the immediate presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling within individual Christians and the corporate Body of Christ.65 The understanding of ‘scriptures’ was forever altered on the basis of the Christevent and the gift of Pentecost; this ‘revelation’ remains true even when Christians formed the scriptural canon.66 It also indicates a strong ecclesiology and bolsters the notion of a living, present teaching authority that interprets revelation when called to do so. Ratzinger highlights that God’s mediation reached its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, but is not something of the past; it remains living. In reviewing historical developments from the time of the Reformation forward, Ratzinger laments the rise of questions concerning the sufficiency or non-sufficiency of scripture from both Protestant and Catholic circles, precisely because it is “the reality of Christ” alone that is ‘sufficient’ to the faithful, on both an individual and communal basis.67 63  It is logical to affirm in this context that the revelation of Jesus Christ, in his own time and in the New Testament period, went beyond the existing Jewish scriptures, as it continues to go beyond the canonical Bible. 64  Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 52. 65  Ibid., 53-56. Cf. McEvoy, “The Patristic Hermeneutic of Spiritual Freedom,” 1-25. 66  Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 55. 67  Ibid., 56. Cf. Yves M.-J. Congar, “The Middle Ages,” in Tradition and Traditions, trans. Naseby and Rainborough, 86-107 (esp. 90ff.).

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As early Christians longed for the Lord’s return as well as the eschatological kingdom or reign of God, it was the church that was established to proclaim the Gospel, continuing to make Christ present to the world in view of the Lord’s (eventual) coming.68 The ‘surplus’ of the aforementioned non-identity between revelation and scripture was and remains the church’s tradition, or the form of living faith by which believers endeavor to proclaim what God has revealed, in fact ‘realizing’ this revelation continuously.69 This process has taken two principal forms: an interpretation of the Old Testament on the basis of the New Testament, and “the interpretation of the Christ-event itself, on the basis of the” Holy Spirit.70 He writes that, from the beginning of Christianity, “proclamation … is by its very nature interpretation,” and the apostolic church demonstrated the binding nature of such interpretations, which are meant to uphold the covenantal relationship by attending to the present circumstances of the church.71 Ratzinger’s essay is relevant to this investigation in several ways, especially when considering the implications of a more dialogical view of the magisterium for ecumenical efforts. First, like DV 9, it critiques the idea of a false choice between scripture and tradition, defining revelation in a way that accommodates and transcends both of its ‘sources’; disagreements regarding scripture and tradition have been at the heart of Catholic-Protestant divisions for half a millennium. A focus on the fullness of revelation presents potentially fertile ground for ecumenical initiatives, even with an affirmation of the church’s authority to interpret said revelation. Second, the essay highlights the sufficiency of Christ alone (solus Christus), whose body is comprised of all the baptized; one should include here separated brothers and sisters in Christ even if they are not accessing the full “means of salvation.”72 This view also should remind Christians – Catholics and Protestants alike – not to be satisfied with present disunity, but instead to strive for what Christ wills (cf. Phil 3:1216). Third, it emphasizes the idea that magisterial proclamations are in service to the covenantal relationship established and sustained by the Trinitarian God. Such service results from focused attention on the present circumstances facing the church, whose primary task, as we saw above, is evangelization/proclamation. For evangelization to be truly  Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 58-64.  Ibid., 51, 72, 76-87 (esp. 79-80). 70  Ibid., 53-54, 58. 71  Ibid., 58. 72  See UR 3. 68

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effective and truly Christian, it must be grounded in the evangelization of the evangelizers, as well as characterized by a more dialogical, respectful, and loving approach. Ratzinger’s attention to the addressees of God’s activity is thus important, as their response in faith provides revelation with a concrete, traditional form. Revelation is thus not a reality of the distant past,73 but an ongoing mediation that is open and lived, interpreted and communicated on the basis of the indwelling Spirit. Finally, and intriguingly, Ratzinger’s concern for Christian unity led him to plumb the depths of church history and tradition, especially regarding Trent and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Concluding Reflections The preceding analysis has attempted to show that because revelation, as the ongoing mediation between God and humanity that becomes real in faith, is inherently ‘open’ and ‘dialogical’, it becomes possible and appropriate to conceive the magisterium in a similar manner. The teaching authority of the church truly stands at the crossroads of the fides quae creditur and the fides qua creditur, the faith that is believed and the faith by which one believes. In making authoritative decisions that address the present situation of the church, in adding to the explicated deposit of faith, the magisterium must be open to revelation in its fullness and scope: the reality of Christ through the indwelling Spirit. Yet, while scripture and tradition are the primary sources providing the window and access-point to revelation, so to speak, these should not and indeed cannot become divorced from the living, breathing members of Christ’s Body, who by faith provide visible form to God’s revelatory work in particular contexts and manifold ways. The representatives of the church’s hierarchical magisterium, individually and as a collective, then, need to listen truly to the Gospel, undergoing a perpetual conversion that itself inspires outreach and listening to the people of God, broadly conceived, and prior to authoritative judgment. Such listening should factor in all the faithful, in their concrete realities and woundedness. Only then will magisterial proclamations be ‘complete’.

73  This is not to say that public revelation is open and subject to developments that would supersede or undermine that which was revealed fully in Christ and publicly communicated until the death of the last Apostle.

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Such an openness should ideally take into consideration separated brothers and sisters in Christ, as the Second Vatican Council clearly wanted to.74 However, perspectives on the magisterium – including those formulated in response to the significant developments of Vatican II – are often myopic to some degree, focusing solely on the obligations between Catholic Christians and their visible church with its hierarchical structure. Of course, this makes sense given the self-conscious obligation of Catholics to the teaching authority, as well as the distinct ecclesiologies of non-Catholic Christians. Nevertheless, perhaps too little attention is paid in treatments of the magisterium and its obligations to the wounds in Christ’s body, to the separated members that have been baptized into this body. As argued above, the validity of a common Baptism is a powerful starting point to Christian unity, and Vatican II’s departure from past rhetoric has accomplished a great deal in terms of ecumenical efforts.75 In fact, ecumenical theologians like Rush and Gaillardetz have explored possible avenues and already successful models for bolstering ecumenical dialogue that would inform a more ecumenical sensus fidelium.76 Yet, there are and likely will remain significant limitations to achieving unity from the Roman Catholic position and its ecclesiological self-understanding vis-à-vis non-Catholic Christians. This is precisely because a rejection of the magisterium is understood to signal a rejection of God’s economy of salvation and intentions for preserving the deposit of faith from corruption. Moreover, the contemporary and more juridical view of the magisterium developed, in part, in contradistinction to the Protestant Reformation and especially to intellectual and political liberalism after the French Revolution. So, while many of the original theological disputes between Catholics and main-line Protestants have lost their divisive power, the hierarchy as the visible foundation of unity remains to this day a stumbling block for many non-­Catholics. Consequently, authentic ecclesial interpretation and magisterial p­ roclamations,  Prusak, “Turning Point.”  See Schoof, A Survey of Catholic Theology 1800-1970, 235-236. 76  For a history of the Groupe des Dombes, comprised of Catholics and Protestants engaging in remarkably successful ecumenical dialogue over the past 70 years, see Gaillardetz, “The Groupe des Dombes Document,” 20-47. This group has broken some ground in analyzing dogmatic or doctrinal questions and is remarkable for the agreement of its members to always begin with church history prior to treating scripture (see p. 24). For an exploration of ‘receptive ecumenism’ and Catholic warrants “for giving full theological weight to the doctrinal perspectives and practices of other Christians … in terms of a Catholic fundamental theology” (p. 565), see Rush, “Receptive Ecumenism and Discerning the Sensus Fidelium,” 559-572. 74 75



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which are supposed to arise from faithfulness to God and pastoral attention to the faithful, are conceivably achieved without sufficient attention to the whole people of God. If this is the case, then one of the goals of UR (see nos. 1, 24), specifically regarding a pervasive, animating spirit of ecumenism, has been and may remain obstructed. Perhaps somewhat ironically, this chapter developed a more open, dialogical view of the magisterium using the thought of Pope Paul VI and Joseph Ratzinger, along with biblical conceptions of servant leadership and the role of a pastor. An interpretation of Paul VI resulted in a ‘progression’, so to speak, that characterizes authentic evangelization: evangelization of the evangelizers (listening to the Lord and gospel); encountering others and, in the first place, listening respectfully; coming to a genuine knowledge of those encountered; and finally, speaking out of love. Because proclamation is an essential aspect of evangelization, and because proclamation is considered an essential duty of the magisterium, such a progression should be at the very heart of magisterial self-understanding and utterances. The essay by Ratzinger is an illustration of how faith today leads one back to the resources of tradition and church history, opening up new possibilities for the future. In fact, one of his points-of-departure includes the idea that, while the last five-hundred years have seen the hardening of denominational lines and divides between Catholics and Protestants, they have also provided for a critical distance regarding the roots of the crisis.77 His affirmation of scripture and tradition flowing from revelation, understood as the primary reality made manifest in the response of faith and living tradition, is potentially productive today, particularly when combined with a greater focus on evangelization and servant leadership. He fosters an emphasis on the reality of revelation and the sufficiency of Christ alone; such a focus may help to bridge separated Christians despite their significant differences in doctrine and discipline. Vatican II, in its actual proceedings and reception(s), broke new ground for ecumenical efforts seeking dialogue and a greater degree of unity among Christians, but much work remains to be done, likely until the coming of the Lord. Just as views of the hierarchy and magisterium may hinder ecumenical efforts, so too may alternate views promote such initiatives. By responding to the signs of the times and perpetual call for Christian unity, and by combing scripture and tradition, the pilgrim people of God discover new pastures in which to faithfully continue  Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 45-48.

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their task of proclaiming the Gospel and making Christ present “to every creature” (cf. Mark 16:15). Bernard P. Prusak has made such an approach to theology and ecclesial self-understanding a hallmark of his life and work. His explorations of church history, interpretive retrievals, and applications have touched on a host of topics relevant to the subject matter of this chapter. For example, his reflection and analysis on problematic, somewhat ahistorical views of the church’s holiness are germane to views of doctrine, the hierarchy, and the magisterium, and this line could be developed further.78 Moreover, his oeuvre is a testament to the hope of the Second Vatican Council, a confluence of aggiornamento and ressourcement, and the idea that the church is unfinished,79 even as it lives in faithful adherence to the fullness of revelation. The unity of Christians has been and remains a mark of the church and command of Jesus Christ. A critical theological engagement with tradition in view of addressing Christian disunity today may indeed open up new possibilities for Christian ecumenism. Perspectives on the magisterium are merely a part of the overall project, but an important one nonetheless requiring further attention. An open, dialogical perspective grounded in the gospel and servant leadership may help to liberate the Catholic Church today, so that it may better realize the goals of Vatican II, particularly UR, because the Church is neither finished nor united. As “the heralds and servants” of the Gospel, members of the whole pilgrim people of God must listen unceasingly to the will of Christ, including his directive – and inspiration for ecumenical dialogue – that those who believe in him “may all be one” (John 17:21). As Bernie indicated in 2012, commenting on the true ‘turning point’ that was Vatican II: Fifty years after the council, I still believe the church has to face up to new possibilities. It won’t be easy…. The words of the council spoke movingly to so many of us – about joy and hope amid grief and anguish, about solidarity with other believers and with the entire human race and its history, and about the church keeping the freshness of youth. These words and ideas still ring true.80

78  See Bernard P. Prusak, “Theological Considerations—Hermeneutical, Ecclesiological, Eschatological Regarding Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past,” Horizons 32, no. 1 (2005): 136-151. 79  Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004). 80  Prusak, “Turning Point.”

La nouvelle théologie’s Political Theology From de Lubac to Gutiérrez and Ratzinger Francis Schüssler Fiorenza Bernard P. Prusak’s writings have traced the challenges facing the church leading to Vatican II and those following Vatican II. Along with Roger Van Allen, he founded Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society at Villanova University that has served teachers in Catholic colleges and universities throughout North America.1 His scholarship has brought to the fore the challenges that have faced us in the six decades of the implementation of Vatican II amidst the controversies about the direction and reception of the Council.2 His historical work has illuminated the diversity in the history of the church and has prepared us for change and development in the light of the uncertainties following Vatican II. The anniversary of the Council has led to diverse interpretations that have probed the meaning and significance of the Council. This chapter honoring Bernard P. Prusak seeks to examine the influence that Henri de Lubac’s conception of the relation between nature and grace has for an understanding of church and society. De Lubac underscored the social nature of Catholicism. Moreover, he drew the political theological implications from both his theology of grace and his conception of the social nature of Catholicism. I shall argue that his theology influenced both Joseph Ratzinger and Gustavo Gutiérrez on the relation between church and political society. The differences among the three can be seen not only as aspects of the influence of de Lubac, but also as diverse attempts to bring his theological insights into new areas and problems in the post-Vatican II decades. Such an analysis could clarify the distinctiveness of each and show how de Lubac’s view(s) 1  Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004) and his edited volume Raising the Torch of Good News: Catholic Authority and Dialogue with the World, The Annual Publication of the College Theology Society 32 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988). The Henry B. Luce Foundation supported the research for this essay. 2  Giuseppe Alberigo, A Brief History of Vatican II (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006); idem, History of Vatican II, vols. 1 and 5. English edition by Joseph A. Komonchak (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995-2005); idem, et al., The Reception of Vatican II (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1987).

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on nature and grace has influenced their conceptions of the relation between church and society. I.  Against Dichotomies The underlying issues of Vatican II are often interpreted in terms of three abstract dichotomies: ressourcement or reform, conservative or liberal, Augustinian or Thomist. Moreover, the ambiguity of the reception and meaning of the Council is sometimes equated with two different approaches taken by the Council’s participants. On one side were those who viewed the Council as a ressourcement or retrieval of the tradition; on the other were those who approached the problems of the church at Vatican II in terms of reform. Those aiming for a ressourcement saw the Council primarily as a renewal that enabled the retrieval of long forgotten traditions and practices. A prime example of such a ressourcement was la nouvelle théologie’s retrieval of patristic theology, its reinterpretation of Thomas Aquinas in relation to St. Augustine, and its emphasis on the church as a community centered on the Eucharist. The other approach, the reform approach, clamored for renovation in response to the challenges of modernity, calling for a church that would open its windows to the fresh air of modernity and to embrace change rather than to resist it. Despite the reformers’ aggressive agenda, the term ‘reform’ was scarcely used in conciliar texts, perhaps to protect the Council from any comparison to the Protestant Reformation, a comparison that, if made, could be counterproductive and disabling.3 In taking up these challenges of growth and change, many suggested that the church should be looking forward, not backward, realizing that one was stepping into an unknown future.4 The different interpretations of Vatican II are often associated with conflicting views of the role of la nouvelle théologie, as well as the division between Thomist and Augustinian theological directions. In the Thomist corner were Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, and M.-D. Chenu, while the Augustinian tradition was represented by Henri 3  John W. O’Malley, Tradition and Transition: Historical Perspectives on Vatican II (Lima, OH: Academic Renewal, 2002). 4  See Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “Gaudium et spes and Human Rights: The Challenge of a Cosmopolitan World,” in The Church and Human Freedom: Forty Years after Gaudium et Spes, ed. Darlene Weaver (Villanova, PA: Villanova University Press, 2006), 38-65.



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de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.5 In his historical studies of Vatican II, Joseph Komonchak points to the role that the debates about Thomism had within the Council.6 Charles Curran explicitly describes the undercurrents of the Council as such. Many theologians have pointed out that Ratzinger embraced a brand of theological Augustinianism. Such Catholics often understand the two cities of Augustine by identifying the city of God with the church and the human city with the world, thus stressing the opposition between the two. As a result, the church is a small church that sees itself in opposition to the world.7 One can question (as we hope to show later) whether this judgment adequately describes Augustine’s theology or even the contrast between Augustinian and Thomist positions. Nevertheless, Curran is correct in emphasizing that, post-Vatican II, two competing views of the church exist: one stressing opposition to the world, the other representing an openness to modernity. Yet, such contrasts do not adequately depict the complexity and nuances of the differences themselves. Is it legitimate to interpret Vatican II and its reception in terms of the conflict between Augustinianism and Thomism? Is this a correct description of the historical situation during and after the Council? Descriptions of the contrast between Augustinianism and Thomism can be inaccurate in relation to individual positions and, more importantly, the developments in twentieth-century theology. They depict Augustinianism as much more spiritual and otherworldly and as emphasizing faith over reason, the supernatural over the natural, and the church over the world. Thomism is viewed as much more realistic, much more affirmative of both natural reason and law, and, therefore, it can be more engaged in a dialogue with modern philosophy. While these distinctions have some relevance, such a contrast overlooks the nuances of the contribution of la nouvelle théologie: namely, its role in the controversies leading up to Vatican II, its relationship to 5  The inadequacy of this division of theologians into Thomists and Augustinians can be seen from Joseph Ratzinger’s laudatory review of Karl Rahner’s Foundations of Christian Faith in the Theologische Revue, where he points to the Bonaventurian traits of Rahner’s ascent of the human spirit to God. 6  Joseph A. Komonchak, “The Church in Crisis: Pope Benedict’s Theological Vision,” Commonweal 132, no. 11 (June 3, 2005): 11-14. See his scholarly essay, “Thomism and the Second Vatican Council,” in Continuity and Plurality in Catholic Theology, ed. Anthony J. Cernera (Fairfield, CT: Sacred Heart University Press, 1998), 53-73. 7  Charles A. Curran, “From Division to Unity,” The Tablet (April 15, 2006): 22-23, at 22.

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Vatican II, and its significance to the diverse receptions of Vatican II. For example, Ratzinger – like de Lubac – is considered to be Augustinian, even explicitly referencing the influence of de Lubac early in his career. Ratzinger’s eventual election to pope (now Bishop Emeritus of Rome) have made these questions of categorization and interpretation all the more urgent. Is the prevalent understanding of ‘Augustinians versus Thomists’ an adequate way to understand the social and political dimensions of de Lubac and la nouvelle théologie? How does this dynamic relate to Ratzinger and Gutiérrez, as well as von Balthasar and Rahner? Is this understanding an adequate lens through which to interpret the debates within and following Vatican II? II.  A Theological Debate with Cultural and Political Implications One problem with interpreting la nouvelle théologie and its impact on Vatican II is that la nouvelle théologie has sometimes come to be associated with all the reform movements prior to Vatican II. In recent literature, the term has been unjustifiably inflated to include quite distinct and contrasting philosophical and theological movements. It has often with less discrimination included such diverse Thomists as Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain as examples of those close to the movement.8 However, it is preferable to use a narrower lens, one that is more focused but takes all implications and connections into account. This narrow lens views la nouvelle théologie primarily as the theological directions of Henri de Lubac and his Jesuit associates at Fouvrièr-Lyon. It clearly differentiates la nouvelle théologie from the appropriation of historical criticism in twentieth-century Catholic biblical studies and from the movement toward the renewal of Thomism through the existential Thomism represented by Maritain. In regard to the former, de Lubac’s scholarship emphasized the fourfold sense of scripture. In regard to the latter, Maritain’s focus on the natural law for the relation of church and state and the foundation of human rights moves in a different direction than that of de Lubac.9 8  For example, A. N. Williams stresses its diversity in “The Future of the Past: The Contemporary Significance of the Nouvelle Théologie,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7, no. 4 (2005): 347-363. 9  See Jacques Maritain, The Rights of Man and Natural Law (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943).



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Such a narrowly focused view would resist linking la nouvelle théologie with every impulse for reform that accompanied the Second Vatican Council. Nevertheless, the broader aspects of the theological debates, especially their cultural and political implications, need to be examined so that the multiple intertwinements involved in the debate regarding the relationship between nature and grace can come to the fore. Therefore, this chapter proposes to examine Henri de Lubac’s Surnaturel in relation to his political theology, showing how his understanding of Catholicism as social and his delineation of the social mission of the church amounts to a political theology that has influenced Ratzinger and Gutiérrez. Analyzing how Henri de Lubac’s view on the relationship between nature and grace affects his political theology illumines not only the intensity of the controversies surrounding la nouvelle théologie but also the reasons for the ambiguities and diverse, if not contradictory, receptions of his theology. De Lubac himself affirmed the interconnection among the integral relationship between nature and grace, the understanding of Catholicism as social, and the church’s social and political mission. All of these interconnected beliefs were evident in his critique of German National Socialist ideology and the Vichy government (including, of course, the French theologians who supported the Vichy government). De Lubac’s understanding of nature and grace and the social mission of the church complemented his criticism of the ‘political Augustinianism’ that dominated French theology at the time and was embodied in Charles Maurras’s establishment of the political movement known as Action française.10 1. Why Such a Controversy?

La nouvelle théologie, narrowly understood, is primarily associated with the controversy that followed the publication of Henri de Lubac’s Surnaturel: Études historiques (1946), a collection of historical studies.11

In these studies, de Lubac argues that neo-scholastic theology had falsely separated the natural and the supernatural into two separate orders rather than affirming that the goal of the natural is the supernatural. His 10  Some historians see Maurras’s Action française as a prototype and influence on the development of fascism; see Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, Nationaltion Socialism, trans. Leia Vennewitz (New York: New American Library, 1965). 11  A revised edition was published later: Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Études historiques, ed. Michel Sales (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1991).

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­ istorical analyses sought to demonstrate that humans have a natural h desire for God. His argument was rooted in a series of interpretations of the tradition and sought to correct a distorted view of the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. De Lubac’s theses were criticized. Rome withdrew his book from circulation. In 1991, the original book was republished after forty-five years of censure. In that time, Henri de Lubac published a two-volume work that incorporated some material from his earlier work, confronted the criticisms of Surnaturel, and sought to clarify, expand, and (as some claim) modify his positions.12 The debate, viewed narrowly, concerned the gratuity of the supernatural. De Lubac’s critics argued that he appeared to make grace something that God owed humans. In Humani generis, Pope Pius XII attacked the view that grace is owed to humans, a notion that he noted had become popularized in seminaries and theological schools. Pius XII was careful not to name the proponents of the criticized position. The pope’s practice enabled the aforementioned critics to claim that he had indeed attacked de Lubac, even as it also allowed de Lubac to argue that the criticized errors in no way represented what he had advocated. In de Lubac’s defense, however, the narrow focus on the gratuity of the grace of God alone might at first glance give the impression that the pope was primarily interested in ensuring that Augustine’s understanding of the gratuity of divine grace and love – in contrast to an incipient, twentiethcentury Pelagianism – was preserved. The question remains: Why did de Lubac’s theses have such an impact and create such a controversy? In light of the theological trends of the 1950s and 1960s – like the celebration of the secular city and the ‘Death of God’ movement – it can seem remarkable that as late as the 1940s the affirmation that human beings have a natural desire for God caused so much controversy, leading to the withdrawal of a book and the rejection of a theological direction. The debate needs to be placed in its broader cultural and political contexts to understand its contours and implications. 2. Catholicism as Social and Integral Much of the debate surrounding la nouvelle théologie focused on the relationship between nature and grace and the gratuity of grace. Although much of the theological controversy surrounded Surnaturel, Henri de  Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), and Augustinianism and Modern Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969). 12



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Lubac’s breakthrough book, his book, Catholicism, also gives insight into the complexities and implications of his theses.13 In Catholicism, de Lubac argues that the nature-grace relationship impacts the understanding of Catholicism as social. Such a social view of Catholicism has serious implications, not only for his understanding of human nature and the church, but also for the church’s intended social, political mission. Moreover – in the French context of his times – de Lubac opposes the Vichy government, developing a political theology that moves against two fronts. He criticizes socialism, both Marxist Socialism and National Socialism, and he attacks the implementation of anti-Semitic governmental policies in the Vichy government. Just as his critique of atheist humanism was aimed at the ideology underlying Nazism, so too did his treatise on grace and nature have implications for the political and cultural struggles of the day.14 The nouvelle théologie as a theological movement was deeply enmeshed in the political and cultural struggles of the day.15 In Catholicism, de Lubac draws parallels among three issues: the relationship between Christianity and philosophy (at issue in the concept of a Christian philosophy); the church’s mission in relation to social movements and social justice; and the proper relation between the church and state (which, in medieval and neo-scholastic writings, was debated as a question of the indirect power of the church). These issues are distinct yet parallel. Each represents and illustrates the relationship between nature and grace. The notion of a ‘Christian philosophy’ affects the relationship between reason and revelation. It affects issues central to the foundation of theology, such as the possibility of an independent natural theology and the nature of apologetics.16 The social mission of the church is a question of the legitimacy of social 13  Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (London: Burns and Oates, 1950). It was reprinted in 1988 under the same title and with a foreword by Cardinal Ratzinger: (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1988). The subtitle of the French original is Les aspects sociaux du dogme (“The Social Aspects of Dogma”). 14  Henri de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism, trans. Edith M. Riley (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing, 1950). 15  See the important survey by Jürgen Mettepenningen, Nouvelle Théologie – New Theology: Inheritor of Modernism, Precursor to Vatican II (New York: T&T Clark, 2010) and the contribution of Joseph A. Komonchak, “Theology and Culture at Mid-Century: The Example of Henri de Lubac,” Theological Studies 51, no. 4 (1990): 579-602. See also Joseph S. Flipper, Between Apocalypse and Eschaton: History and Eternity in Henri de Lubac (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015). 16  Henri de Lubac, Recherches dans la foi: Trois études sur Origène, Saint Anselme et la philosophie chrétienne (Paris: Beauchesne, 1979).

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and political activity since it deals with the proper relationship between its religious goal and the social and economic order. The way that the church relates to the political order raises similar issues and questions: To what extent is the political order autonomous and independent from the religious order? What is the proper relationship between the religious and the political? De Lubac’s reflections about ‘political theology’ need to be considered in terms of how they illustrate his basic theological orientation and his understanding of nature and grace.17 Although the Augustinian inspiration of his theology is often rightly observed, de Lubac’s critique of the political Augustinianism of the medieval period is, unfortunately, insufficiently taken into account in interpretations of de Lubac’s constructive theology. De Lubac formulates a sharply worded critique against the followers of Giles of Rome as “belated ‘Augustinists’,” for they gave a justification for theocracy with principles borrowed from Averroistic Aristotelianism. “Wishing to defend a Christendom that they no longer understood, they dug its grave.”18 De Lubac certainly does not mince words! De Lubac’s constructive political theology on the Christian relationship to social and political life is embedded in the nuances of his complex use of paradox to interpret the relationship between nature and grace and between the sacred and the profane. For de Lubac, a paradox requires that one correlate what appears disparate and even contradictory. His point is that one has to rediscover the sacred but also to integrate it into our daily life and into our political life.19 This understanding of paradox underlies de Lubac’s understanding of fundamental theology and political theology, as we explain below. The notion of a ‘Christian philosophy’ and the relationship between apologetics and theology were crucial components in the debates regarding nature and grace. The neo-scholastics of the day sharply separated a philosophical thought and an apologetics based upon natural reason from a theology based exclusively upon revelation. Apologetics subscribed to a natural theology, according to the belief that rational demonstrations provided the foundational base of theology. This valorization 17  See the section on ‘political theology’ in dealing with authority of church in temporal matters, as well as with political Augustinianism, in Henri de Lubac, Theological Fragments (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1980), 199-286. 18  Ibid., 281. 19  Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes suivi de Nouveau Paradoxes (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1959), 47. Double edition of 1959.

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of the rational completely separated apologetics from theology proper.20 This division corresponded to the sharp distinction and separation between nature and grace that de Lubac’s work and Christian philosophy sought to overcome. With his specific interpretation of natural law, Maritain was closer to the traditional neo-scholastic position, even maintaining that there was no such thing as a Christian philosophy. In contrast, Étienne Gilson maintained that a Christian philosophy existed in the past, whereas Maurice Blondel suggested that there could be one in the future.21 De Lubac develops his arguments concerning the relationship between nature and grace not only historically, but also conceptually in relation to the notion of Christian philosophy. He thus conceives of the relationship more in terms of a telos than of a present or past reality. The same is true of the relationship between apologetics and theology. A sharp division leads to a theology that is uncritical, sterile, and which cannot make progress. By integrating nature and grace, de Lubac seeks to bring apologetics into theology and theology into apologetics without identifying them. He wants to bring philosophy and theology, as well as apologetics and theology closer together, but he does not want each to lose its identity and distinctiveness. This dual affirmation is at the heart of the paradox that de Lubac seeks to elucidate.22 A continuous theme of de Lubac’s thought is to argue against neoscholasticism that considered Christian revelation so utterly apart as a supernatural order that it was separated from human debates of our time.23 A similar duality and nuance come to the fore in de Lubac’s political theology regarding nature and grace. He makes diverse affirmations that he explicates as fundamental paradoxes, central concepts of thinking, including the complex relationship between nature and grace, as well as church and society. He argues that the fundamental paradox  For a survey of this development, see section IV of Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Foundational Theology: Jesus and the Church (New York: Crossroad, 1984), 251-264. 21  For a description of the relation of de Lubac to Blondel, see the following: Aidan Nichols. “Henri de Lubac: Panorama and Proposal,” New Blackfriars 93, no. 1043 (2011): 1-31, especially 3-8; and Francesca Aran Murphy, “The Influence of Maurice Blondel,” in T&T Clark Companion to Henri de Lubac, ed. Jordan Hillebert (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 57-91. 22  See Dominik Arenz, Paradoxalität als Sakramentalität: Kirche nach der fundamentalen Theologie Henri de Lubacs (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 2016). 23  See Henri de Lubac, At the Service of the Church (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1993), 59. See also his article, “Nature and Grace,” in The Word in History, ed. Patrick Burke (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1966), 24-40. 20

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of the Gospel is that it influences and transforms civilizations, and yet does not identify with or lose itself within any particular civilization. De Lubac elucidates this paradox by turning to non-Catholic communions. For example, Calvinism and Lutheranism are seen as representative of the two contrasting sides of this paradox – Calvinism emphasizing religion as a force for civilization within civilization, and Lutheranism separating religion and civilization. Nevertheless, how he formulates his convictions evidences a certain ambiguity that could lead one to ask whether de Lubac does in fact take a middle position on this issue. He writes: “In general, the law of the relationships between nature and grace is the same everywhere. Grace seizes nature from the inside and, far from lowering it, elevates it to have it serve its end. It is from the interior that faith transforms reason, that the church influences the State.”24 At the same time, in a critical review of Anders Nygren’s classic, Agape and Eros, de Lubac argues that Nygren “never considers the fact that, even though the Christian revelation has radically changed the spiritual attitude on which salvation depends, it has not changed human nature and removed it from its ontological laws as they ensue in the creative act.”25 Note that de Lubac affirms two contrasts: faith and grace can affect a change in nature and yet human nature is not removed from the ontological laws of nature. This is a paradox at the heart of his theology. It is this paradox that influences the distinct and nuanced receptions that one can see in Gustavo Gutiérrez’s liberation theology and Joseph Ratzinger’s somewhat shifting emphases in political theology. III.  De Lubac’s Political Theology De Lubac’s political theology can be seen on a theoretical level as a twofold critique. First, there is a critique of the naturalist trends of modern thought. De Lubac’s critique of naturalism within modern atheism is not merely a philosophical critique of secularist thought or of Marxist philosophy, but also directly a critique of the philosophical underpinnings of National Socialism. He also vehemently criticizes the antiSemitic policies that the German occupation forces were attempting to 24  De Lubac, Theological Fragments, 212. He continues: “The Church is the messenger of Christ, not the guardian of the State. The Church ennobles the State, inspiring it to be a Christian state (one sees in what sense) and in, thus, a more humane one.” Ibid. 25  De Lubac, Theological Fragments, 88. Cf. p. 207, quotes from footnote 551.

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establish in France.26 In addition, he sharply criticizes the support of the Vichy Government by some of his contemporary theologians. They, in turn, were his harshest theological critics and objected to his very refusal to support the Vichy Government.27 De Lubac’s critique of philosophical naturalism is at the heart of his critique of the naturalism of the occupying Nazi party. This political, philosophical and religious conflict provides the context for his polemic against the modern neo-scholastic theology for its dualism and its separation of the natural and supernatural. In his view, this theology seeks to defend the supernatural, but, in so sharply separating the supernatural from the natural, it actually banishes the supernatural, grace, and transcendence from human life.28 The dualistic distinction of the neo-scholastics of his day in reality reinforces the secularism and naturalism that they themselves also lament. While de Lubac criticizes the naturalism of modern philosophy, as well as the dualistic separation of nature and grace within modern scholastic theology, he also takes issue with the widely accepted thesis of ‘political Augustinianism’ that the medievalist historian Arquilliere and his students popularized so successfully that it had become a standard view in the 1940s.29 This notion, according to de Lubac, originated when the Thomist Pierre Mandonnet sought to defend Thomism against the charge that it was unable to distinguish between dogma and science. Mandonnet argued that a theocratic conception of the relation between the spiritual and temporal, between the church and state was present in Western thought from the time of Augustine until the Middle Ages. In his opinion, the introduction of Aristotelian philosophy into the church by Thomas Aquinas and Thomas’s theology allowed more respect for the temporal order in political matters. This Thomistic tendency stood in contrast to Augustine’s tendency to absorb the natural order into the supernatural one, which led him to absorb the natural law of the state  See Henri de Lubac, Christian Resistance to Anti-Semitism: Memories from 19401944 (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1990). 27  See Michael Sutton, Nationalism, Positivism, and Catholicism: The Politics of Charles Maurras 1890-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Alexander Dru, “From the Action Française to the Second Vatican Council: Blondel’s La semaine sociale de Bordeaux,” Downside Review 81 (1963): 226-245; Richard Wolin, Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). 28  De Lubac, Catholicism, 167-168. 29  Henri de Lubac lists among Arquillière’s students, Jean Leclercq, Joseph Lecler, and the Swiss historian G. Schürer who made the expression ‘political Augustinianism’ a standard term. 26

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into supernatural justice and ecclesial law. It is interesting to observe that this very same contrast between Augustine and Thomas is being used to interpret the different agendas and receptions of Vatican II and serves as the dividing line between the progressives and conservatives in the church today. The idea that Thomists allow for independence and governance of the world in a way that Augustinians do not relates directly to the understanding of ‘political Augustinianism’ and Thomism that Henri de Lubac attempts to undermine in the 1940s. Henri de Lubac is severely critical of this thesis of political Augustinianism in many ways. He points out that equating the division of the two cities in Augustine’s The City of God with church and state represents a gross misreading of Augustine. Instead, de Lubac argues that the two cities, Jerusalem and Babylon, constitute two loves, two mystical societies that divide all humans. He reiterates that Augustine had clearly distinguished between the church and the City of God. Moreover, he shows that nowhere in Augustine’s writings does one find any expression of the ‘political Augustinianism’ that emerges in Giles of Rome’s work. Ironically, the most extreme pontifical theocratic statements of the medieval period took place in the fourteenth century, that is, at the high point of Aristotelian exposure in the West. Finally, he challenges the idea that Aristotelianism leads to the recognition of natural law by claiming that one can find within Augustine a conception of natural law; Augustine affirms the legitimacy of even pagan states. In challenging the notion of political Augustinianism, de Lubac also challenges the theocratic view of Giles of Rome. De Lubac maintains that Giles’s interpretation of Augustine in no way represents Augustine; in fact, Giles’s writings contain very few quotes from Augustine’s work, and the few he does include are misinterpreted. De Lubac’s critique of political Augustinianism should be seen in connection with his critique of Action français and his more systematic theological view of the mission of the church. De Lubac argues on two fronts. On the one hand, the separation of nature and grace within modern thought and its correspondence in the neo-Scholastic viewpoint are undue. If one interprets nature as purely profane, and if one accepts society – even modern society – as exclusively secular, then one abstracts from the concrete historical diversity and reality of society. On the other hand, the church’s mission as a spiritual mission entails a relation to the world, and it is precisely in its spiritual mission that the church influences politics. He develops the idea of the church exercising its influence by addressing the human conscience. He also relates a conception of nature to human rights. Ultimately, both fronts enabled de Lubac to



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develop a distinctive political theology with an understanding of the mission of the church in social and political affairs that did not amount to a ‘political Augustinianism’, but which sought to counter both the advocacy of a sharp dualism between church and state, as well as an identity between the two. The Hovering Paradox In short, a careful analysis of Henri de Lubac’s political theology shows that it cannot be placed within the simple grid of an Augustinianism versus Thomism. Nor can such a grid provide the categories for interpreting the reception of Vatican II and the division into the liberals (Thomists) and conservatives (Augustinians). Although many of the early critics of de Lubac were neo-Thomists, it was quite clear that he was offering a vision of Thomas’s theology that was quite distinctive. Moreover, it was clear that de Lubac’s position could be characterized as moving or hovering or floating between two points. De Lubac wanted the church to be deeply involved in social and political life, and yet he was critical of the political Augustinianism represented by Charles Maurras and Action français. His understanding of the relationship between nature and grace was such that he wanted them to be integrally related so that grace was integrally relation not only to nature, but to the cosmos. De Lubac was sympathetic (but with reservations) to the anthropocentrism and cosmocentricism of Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary view and Christocentric telos. At the same time, he acknowledged a distinction between grace and nature. De Lubac’s notion of paradox is central to his understanding of nature and grace, as well as his political theology on the relationship between church and society. One critic derides his approach as placing two contradictory statements side by side and calling it a paradox. John Milbank critically writes that “de Lubac’s paradox looks less like a paradox than irresolvable aporia.”30 Milbank even suggests that it is not clear how de Lubac is able “to avoid dissolving his aporetic paradox”31 into two 30  John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 11. 31  Ibid., 34-35. In his earlier work, Milbank criticizes Karl Rahner as naturalizing the supernatural, and de Lubac as supernaturalizing nature. He overlooks Rahner’s emphasis on God’s freedom in a special calling that entails a historical existential rather than an essentializing one. He also overlooks the fact that de Lubac’s understanding of paradox seeks to overcome and criticize the very negative characterization that Milbank applies to him. See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory Beyond Secular Reason (London: Blackwell, 1990), 207.

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c­ ontradictory affirmations. Milbank uses the static term ‘suspended middle’ to characterize de Lubac. Milbank’s critics have observed that this phrase unfortunately presents de Lubac’s view as static rather than dynamic. More importantly, it overlooks the ‘correlational’ aspects of de Lubac’s understanding of paradox.32 The relationship between correlation and paradox is central to the dynamic of de Lubac’s fundamental theology and is the basis of his Christology, ecclesiology, sacramental theology, and political theology.33 De Lubac’s uses and discussions of paradox attest to its centrality.34 Von Balthasar has characterized de Lubac’s theology with the phrases ‘floating’ and ‘hovering’ paradox.35 The notion of a paradox that hovers ahead and before much more accurately describes his theology than that of ‘suspended middle’. In de Lubac’s view, paradoxes are characteristic of the Christian faith to the extent that its vision and mysteries are beyond the depth of the human mind. Faith enables believers to simultaneously embrace several truths that can exist in harmony even if they appear to stand in contrast with one another. He quotes Blaise Pascal’s Pensées to the effect that many truths of faith and morals fit together even though they appear contradictory. However, for de Lubac, it is central to correlate them with one another and place them in a proper perspective that balances them in relation to one another. De Lubac uses paradox to avoid both separation and union. The natural and supernatural are neither separate as two separate orders, nor are they united into one. He criticizes both naturalism and dualism. 32  Philip McCosker, “Middle Muddle? The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate Concerning the Supernatural,” Reviews in Religion and Theology 13 (2006): 362-370, and the review by Georges Chantrane, in Bulletin de l’Association Internationale Cardinal Henri de Lubac 8 (2006): 47-62. 33  Jean-Pierre Wagner, La théologie fondamentale selon Henri de Lubac (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1997), especially 201-265. See also Philippe Genester, Humanisme et Lumière du Christ chez Henri de Lubac (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2016). 34  See Vitor Franco Gomes, Le paradoxe du désir de Dieu: Étude sur le rapport de l’homme à Dieu selon Henri de Lubac (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2005); Janet Haggerty, The Centrality of Paradox in the Work of Henry de Lubac SJ (New York, 1987 unpublished Fordham thesis, University of Minnesota); and Nicola Ciola, Paradosso e mistero in Henri de Lubac, Corona Lateranensis 28 (Rome: Libreria editrice della Pontifica Universita Lateranense, 1980). 35  The French version of von Balthasar’s book on de Lubac uses the term ‘centre flottant’ whereas the German ‘schewebende Mitte’. Milbank, however, use the terms ‘suspended middle’ in the title of his treatment of de Lubac. However, it has been noted that this phrase turns de Lubac’s moving and dynamic conception into something static. Milbank’s interpretation of both de Lubac and Thomas Aquinas has been in many ways challenged along with his interpretation of Karl Rahner and Gustavo Guttiérrez.

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However, the notion of parodox is developed in his later writings to bring Christology, ecclesiology, and sacramental theology together. Christian faith refers to the body of Christ, which can be understood as the physical body of Jesus. The church is also understood as the body of Christ, and the church assembles in the Eucharistic celebration and reception of the body of Christ under the forms of bread and wine. This paradox is at the heart of the church’s sacramental life. De Lubac insisted on the paradoxical nature of the church’s relation to the political order.36 On the one hand, he was aware that Augustine’s position could be interpreted as undermining the natural order and role of government in the political order. De Lubac criticized Arquillière’s Augustinianism for absorbing the natural order into the supernatural order that would lead him to “absorb the natural law of the State into supernatural justice and ecclesial law.”37 On the other hand, he was aware of the paradox of the church that has a distinctive transcendent goal, and yet is incarnate within the world. He develops the paradoxicality of the church’s political mission through an understanding of a paradoxicality of the church’s sacramentality.38 De Lubac’s view of Catholicism as social, and his interpretation of the political role of the church, in a way exemplifies the social character of Catholicism that lies at the heart of his political theology. His vision has influenced Gutiérrez in his interpretation of Vatican II and his development of liberation theology. In addition, it has also influenced the political theology of Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, though not without change and development that was partly due to the confrontation with political theology. IV.  La nouvelle théologie and Gutiérrez’s Theology of Liberation The influence of Henri de Lubac and la nouvelle théologie upon Gustavo Gutiérrez, who studied in France at Lyon, is present in the theological bases of his advocacy of liberation theology. After an empirical  In his later writings referring to the political and liberation theologies post-Vatican II, he points to the importance of a paradoxical relationship between the church and political society. 37  De Lubac, Theological Fragments, 256. 38  See Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956), especially chapters 5 on the church and the world and chapter 6 on the sacrament of Christ. 36

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description of the Latin American situation, Gutiérrez begins his theological analysis with an appeal to la nouvelle théologie. He underscores de Lubac’s affirmation of the integration of grace and nature and points out that the antithesis between the temporal and the spiritual, as well as between the profane and the sacred, rests upon a dualistic separation of the natural from the supernatural. Explicitly following de Lubac’s historical and systematic analysis, Gutiérrez emphasizes that the concern for preserving the gratuity of grace and the supernatural order led to a complete separation of human nature from the divine.39 There was no innate desire for God, and human nature was simply passive. This opinion is based in Cajetan rather than in Thomas. De Lubac’s rediscovery of Thomas’s affirmation of the innate desire for God provides a theological vision that is the very opposite of the position advocated by Cajetan and the neo-scholastics, for it advances the view of a single orientation to salvation. Gutiérrez notes that “these developments have manifested themselves in the gradual forsaking of such expressions as supernatural end, supernatural vocation, and supernatural order and in the very increasing use of the term integral.”40 He points to Gustave Martelet for highlighting the use of the term ‘integral’ in the Second Vatican Council, especially in the text Gaudium et spes, which speaks both of integral vocations and integral developments.41 Gutiérrez takes this basic orientation and not only applies it to the church and its social mission, but also makes it the basis for social and political action. The separation between nature and grace becomes translated into a distinction of planes within the church, with the hierarchy responsible for the Gospel and the layperson for the world; this position was articulated forcefully in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catholic thought. The elucidation of an independent social ethics, the movement of Catholic Action in France, and Yves Congar’s theological understanding of the role of lay people in the church are all examples of this development.42 Gutiérrez’s critique of the distinctions of planes is both a critique of a division within the church, as well as within theology and ethics. Gutíerrez then extends this critique of the distinction of planes to a prevalent view of the application of Catholic social doctrine. The ecclesiological view making the layperson primarily responsible for the 39  Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1973), 68-72. 40  Ibid., 71. 41  Ibid., 72. 42  Yves Congar, Lay People in the Church (London: Geoffrey, 1959).



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world also contends that such lay responsibility is mainly articulated through a rational social ethics based on reason and natural law that is accessible to all. In this view, the church’s social mission in the world is mainly the responsibility of laypersons; and the church’s political mission is based upon a social and political ethics open to public rational discussion.43 For this reason, Gutiérrez disagrees with Maritain’s approach to the relationship between the church and the state that accentuates the role of natural law. Taking into account the situation of the church after the French Revolution, Maritain sought to develop a political philosophy that would seek to build a human society based upon justice and human rights. Its meaning would not directly flow from religious belief, but would acknowledge the autonomy of the worldly sphere. It is in this sphere that the laity and Catholic Action groups should have their primary influence.44 Nevertheless, in developing his own constructive proposal, Gutiérrez seeks to avoid the distinction of planes, as if they were only juxtaposed and unrelated. Therefore, Gutiérrez argues: “to assert that there is a direct, immediate relationship between faith and political action encourages one to seek from faith norms and criteria for particular political options.”45 Gutiérrez’s position shows its indebtedness to de Lubac’s critique of the dualistic separation of nature and grace, and it leads him to criticize not only the distinction of planes, but also a position of political ethics that does not see a direct relationship between faith and political action. He thus clearly distinquishes his view from Maritain’s political philosophy, which, while representing an advance over French Catholicism’s pre-revolutionary union of church and state, ends up separating the Gospel and political action. Just as de Lubac disagrees with Maritain’s affirmation of the autonomy of philosophy and his rejection of the notion of a Christian philosophy, so too does Gutiérrez disagree with Maritain’s political ethics for its affirmation of its autonomy and independence. Gutiérrez shares de Lubac’s critique of political Augustinianism, but at the same time is also critical of a Thomist position that acknowledges the natural as an independent sphere. De Lubac had sought to maintain and to correlate two contrary positions. One can see that Gutiérrez’s 43  Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “Foundational Theology as Political and Sacramental Public Theology,” Louvain Studies 39, no. 2 (2015-16): 121-140. 44  Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 57. 45  Ibid., 236.

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theology can be viewed as a development of de Lubac’s nuanced theology seeking to maintain both the interrelation and the tension between nature and grace, Christian faith and political life. The hovering paradox of reality that floats ahead of theology features this tension. Both de Lubac and Gutiérrez seek to do justice to the tension of this paradox.46 V.  Ratzinger’s Political Theology and la nouvelle théologie Ratzinger’s political theology is often seen primarily in relation to four events that have received considerable public attention. First, as the Archbishop of Munich, he exercised his veto right to prevent the appointment of Johann Baptist Metz as professor of fundamental theology in the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Munich. Since Metz had articulated the program of political theology, Ratzinger’s veto was seen primarily as exemplifying his critique of political theology.47 Second, as Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), he issued two instructions on liberation theology and took actions to censure or to remove certain Latin American liberation theologians (e.g., his actions against the Brazilian Leonard Boff and Sri Lankan Tissa Balasuriya). Although these actions gave the impression of a total opposition to Latin American liberation theology, he clearly differentiated among them.48 Third, his letter to the American bishops during the 2004 American presidential election was popularly seen as a Vatican intervention against John Kerry, a pro-choice Roman Catholic layperson, and in favor of George W. Bush. Although each of these 46  Gustavo Gutiérrez, The God of Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991) and We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003). For the application in relation to other fields, see Paul Farmer and Gustavo Gutiérrez, In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), and also Daniel G. Groody and Gustavo Gutiérrez, eds., The Preferential Option for the Poor beyond Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013). 47  A major issue is whether Ratzinger has correctly understood Metz’s political theology. Ratzinger criticizes the emphasis on orthopraxis, and yet his own view of orthopraxis is very close to Metz’s conception. See Ratzinger in Heinz Schümann, Joseph Ratzinger, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, Principles of Christian Morality (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1986), and compare pp. 43-44 and 70-73. Based on the German text, Schümann, Ratzinger, von Balthasar, Prinzipien Christlicher Moral (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1975). 48  As Benedict XVI, he appointed Gerhard Ludwig Müller to the CDF; Müller had co-authored a book with Gutiérrez. See Gustavo Gutiérrez and Gerhard Ludwig Müller, On the Side of the Poor: The Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015).



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actions is significant, they are open to interpretation and do not give a clear-cut indication of Ratzinger’s philosophical and theological vision. Fourth, as Pope Benedict XVI, he had the opportunity to address the United Nations, and, following the path initiated by Pope John XXIII, he addressed the topic of human rights.49 Ratzinger’s profile becomes clearer when placed within the context of our interpretation of Henri de Lubac’s political theology and of Gustavo Gutiérrez’s liberation theology as a development from la nouvelle théologie. Ratzinger’s views on the relation between Christian faith and political practice show a certain consistency, and yet, from his early to later statements, a significant development is evident. To some extent, Ratzinger’s development and transitions emerge out of his criticisms of liberation theo­ logy and his attempt to deal with contemporary pluralism within democratic and human-rights culture. The influence of la nouvelle théologie remains, but the paradox of the relationship between church and society, theology and reason, leads him to emphasize the nature of these relationships differently as a theologian and later as head of the CDF and pope. 1. Ratzinger’s Political Theology The distinctiveness of Ratzinger’s early theological views can be profiled within the context of la nouvelle théologie and Henri de Lubac’s critiques of political Augustinianism, National Socialism and Marxism. In autobiographical statements, Ratzinger explicitly recounts his enthusiasm for la nouvelle théologie when he first read Henri de Lubac’s Catholicism as a doctoral student. Moreover, the habilitation he wrote under Gottlieb Söhngen on Bonaventure was initially rejected by Michael Schmaus, who, in Ratzinger’s opinion, displayed an inadequate knowledge and appreciation of la nouvelle théologie.50 In addition, just as de 49  See Benedict XVI, “Meeting with the Members of the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization: Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI” (April 18, 2008), http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2008/april/documents/hf_benxvi_spe_20080418_un-visit.html, and Mary Ann Glendon, “Justice and Human Rights: Reflections on the Address of Pope Benedict to the UN,” The European Journal of International Law 19, no. 5 (2008): 925-930. 50  Joseph Ratzinger. Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977 (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1998), 97-114. He also notes that his distance to Schmaus made him closer to Karl Rahner, whose theology Schmaus also rejected. For Ratzinger’s praise of Söhngen, see Joseph Ratzinger, “Gottlieb Söhngen,” Christ in der Gegenwart 19 (1967): 182-183. Ratzinger had to eliminate sections of his habilitation to get Schmaus’s approval; for the details, see Hansjürgen Verweyen, Joseph Ratzinger – Bendikt XVI: Die Entwicklung seines Denkens (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007), 24-26.

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Lubac had advocated the importance of recovering the profound meaning of the church as a ‘fraternal community’, so too did Ratzinger underscore the church in terms of Christian brotherliness.51 (Their mutual advocacy of a communio ecclesiology unfortunately, from today’s perspective, uses the masculine terminology of brotherhood.) Just as de Lubac argues for an emphasis on the church as the Body of Christ in the post-Vatican II period, so too does Ratzinger.52 In Principles of Christian of Morality, Ratzinger is concerned with working out what is distinctively Christian.53 He is concerned with emphasizing the distinctive gestalt of Christian morality. Even though elements of the Ten Commandments are present in the surrounding cultures, one has to grasp their specificity with their intrinsic link to holiness and to a specific view of the divine. One understands them in relation to God’s holiness and its impact on liturgical life, and this understanding is present in the recasting of them in the Sermon on the Mount. A similar link is apparent in the understanding of what it means to be a Christian, wherein the link between the understanding of God and the moral idea takes place in a Christian context, entailing fellowship with Christ and a willingness to take on martyrdom for the sake of goodness. Ratzinger explicitly refrains from getting into a discussion about deontological norms or the categorical imperative because of what he sees as “as the real problem,” which “lies in the abstract neutrality of the concept of reason.”54 At this time, he is not critical of reason or natural theology and upholds the notion of analogy. However, he does criticize Medieval scholastic theology for using Aristotle’s notion of natural law that, on one the hand, found its way into a conception of the profane state or, on the other hand, was loaded with ‘Christian ballast’ in a way that could not be accepted by a profane state.55 The basic thrust of Ratzinger’s argument mirrors the view of la nouvelle théologie and its critique of the separation of nature and grace. Ratz51  De Lubac’s ideas in this regard can be seen in lectures in the 1940s. See Henri de Lubac, Theology in History (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius 1996), 301. See also Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, 2nd ed. (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1993). 52  Ratzinger expresses the importance of the Body of Christ over the People of God in looking back at his doctoral dissertation on Augustine. 53  Schümann, Ratzinger, and von Balthasar, Principles of Christian Morality. 54  Ibid., 65-66, n. 13. 55  Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “A Christian Orientation in a Pluralistic Democracy?,” in id. Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Essays in Ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 213.

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inger resonates in part with de Lubac’s critique of political ­Augustinianism by underscoring the meaning of Augustine’s distinction between the two cities. Ratzinger highlights that the city of God cannot become or be identified with an empirical state, as some of the medieval Augustinians thought.56 We will attempt to show that Ratzinger will amplify this earlier critique against an abstract-neutral concept of reason by appropriating the critical theory of the Frankfurt School – especially as espoused in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment57 – and contemporary Roman Catholic political theorists in Germany such as Robert Spaemann and Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenforde. Furthermore, Ratzinger’s apprehension of the danger of religious political ideologies colors his distinctive viewpoint. 2. Shifts in Ratzinger’s Political Theology Ratzinger’s political theology receives greater definition from his twofold assessment of liberation theology. In assessing the reception of Vatican II, ten years after the Council, Ratzinger points to two particular receptions: the European, characterized by the Dutch Catechism, and the Latin American, exemplified by liberation theology. The European reception underscores the process of modernization and secularization as the main challenge facing the church. This appropriation of the Council takes place within the framework of a liberal theology that seeks to accommodate modernization and secularization, even to the point of surrendering elements of the long-standing tradition. The Latin American liberation theological reception stands in sharp contrast. It perceives that European modernization is linked with exploitation and underscores that the problem of secularization is specific to the European countries. The problems of Latin America are quite different. Hence, it can appeal to the influence of the church and Gospel in its critique of societal concerns. In his theological explanation of the anthropological defense of the instruction on liberation theology,58 Ratzinger writes, Because the practice of faith remains open to reason on the basis of the word of God, it is capable of development with the progress of human history, which in turn always presupposes this practice on the

 Ratzinger, “A Christian Orientation in a Pluralistic Democracy?,” 212-213.  Max Horheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Herder and Herder, 1960). 58  Joseph Ratzinger, “Freedom and Liberation: The Anthropological Vision of the 1986 Instruction Libertatis Conscientia,” in id., Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 255-278. 56 57

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basis of the core of the liberating innovation, the Christian exodus. Catholic social teaching is the scientific and scholarly development of these guidelines which result from the unshakeable foundations of the faith and its continuing experiences with the practice of history.59

The conclusion of Ratzinger’s defense notes that his critics have attacked the instruction for its reliance on ethics. These critics make several assumptions and raise several questions. They conceive of ethics as primarily individualistic rather than social. The Marxist critics assume that the social-historical analyses rather than “ethical analysis are scientific.” Ratzinger argues against these assumptions. He points to the difficulty of appropriating the biblical account of the Exodus and directly applying it to theology in the way that he thinks liberation theology does. What is central to Ratzinger’s critique is the role of ethics. Yet, he expresses it in a dialectical and nuanced manner. “What always applies is that p ­ olitics is not the sphere of theology but of ethics, which admittedly can only be given a rational basis in theology.”60 Here, Ratzinger makes a twofold paradoxical point. On the one hand, the sphere of politics is ethics. One does not move directly from theology to politics, but must apply theology to politics via ethics. Christian theology and political statecraft are not identical such that they cannot be distinguished from one another. On the other hand, he maintains that “ethics does not provide its own rational foundation.”61 If we examine Ratzinger’s writings in this regard in comparison with Gutiérrez, it becomes clear that Ratzinger is becoming increasingly concerned about the importance of ethics and the importance of human rights. He fears religious ideology and the direct transition from religion to political practice, elements he ascribes to liberation theology. Leaving aside whether this correctly interprets Gutiérrez’s theology, it is clear that Ratzinger’s response to liberation theology leads him to affirm much more strongly the role of ethics in mediating between theology and practice. While he still maintains the close relationship between theology and ethics,seeking to integrate the ethical into the Christian message, he also underscores the importance of ethics as the mediating point between the Gospel message and political practice. While such a nuanced shift is observable, one needs to note its limits by examining Ratzinger’s overall theological vision. One author contrasts Ratzinger with Milbank’s i­ntegralism, arguing that  Ratzinger, “Freedom and Liberation,” 271.  Ratzinger, “A Christian Orientation in a Pluralistic Democracy?,” 216. 61  Ibid., 217. 59

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­ atzinger sees “the church as indirectly relating to the political order, R principally through witnessing to the natural law.”62 While this argument obviously points to important difference(s), it should also take into account how the even later Ratzinger still maintains the importance of Christian faith and tradition upon reason and history. One of his complaints against the European Union’s constitution is that it does not adequately acknowledge some of its roots in its Christian heritage. 3. Dialectic of the Enlightenment and Democratic Pluralism Ratzinger’s appropriation of the dialectic elaborated by the Frankfurt School (Adorno and Horkheimer) is significant because it enables him to further his early critique of the neutrality of abstract reason. The Enlightenment sought to advance rationality through its critique of superstition and mythology. Ironically, in so doing, the Enlightenment advanced a specific conception of knowledge as absolute that itself became a myth. The dialectic of the Enlightenment suggests that the Enlightenment, if made absolute, leads to the very opposite of itself. Ratzinger extends this critique with the critique advanced by Wolfgang Böckenforde, a wellknown Roman Catholic political philosopher and jurist in Germany, who maintains that the modern liberal and secularized state rests upon presuppositions that it cannot independently justify. This means that there is an element in the political life of a democracy that is indispensable for a democratic state but “not native to the political field.” One problem with democracy is the relationship between the majority and the minority and the fact that the majority can always repress a minority. In societies that experience religious, ethnic, and racial strife, there is an ever-present possibility that the majority will repress minorities and discriminate against them. It is for this reason that rights have become so important within the contemporary world. The affirmation of rights suggests a value that is beyond electoral choice, as well as norms that can defie the preferences of the majority. Consequently, Ratzinger inquires about the basis of those fundamental values that are not subordinate or subject to the power of the majority, asking what a minority can appeal to in the face of majoritarian power within a democracy. In doing so, Ratzinger is raising an issue that is highly debated within modern democratic theory. While Richard Rorty, the North American  Peter Samuel Kucer, Truth and Politics: A Theological Comparison of Joseph Ratzinger and John Milbank (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014), 265. 62

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pragmatist, argues in his reaction to John Dewey that democracy has priority over philosophy, others indebted to Kantian and natural-law traditions seek to establish the validity of rights and their ability to counterbalance democratic majoritarianism. In his dialogue with Jürgen Habermas in The Dialectics of Secularization,63 Ratzinger discusses the basis of those fundamental values that overpower the division between majority and minority, in order to highlight the importance of transcendence. Just as the affirmation of that which transcends knowledge prevents knowledge from establishing itself as an absolute – and thereby from becoming an ideology and mythology – what transcends democracy prevents the democratic majority from becoming a tyrannical majority that fails the democratic ideal. What transcends mere knowledge allows knowledge to be knowledge; what transcends democracy allows democracy to be democracy. Ratzinger develops his critique in a way that is similar to de Lubac’s critique of the positivism of naturalism. Whereas de Lubac affirms the interrelation between the natural and supernatural in order to affirm the natural and to critique the ideological, Ratzinger makes a similar point with historical arguments. The values of modern European society and its democratic constitution rest on values that Europe inherited from antiquity and Christianity. In Ratzinger’s view, denying this inheritance fails to take into account the very transcendence that guarantees these values. De Lubac has emphasized the concrete natural order as an historical order, arguing that the concrete natural order is related to the supernatural, so that the interpretation of the concrete-historical natural order as purely natural or as secular overlooks this concrete-historical fashion. In current times, the interpretation of modernity as purely secular, though often affirmed, has been challenged theoretically and historically.64 In this context, one should interpret the paradox that de Lubac underscores. De Lubac affirms human dignity in the concrete order that is both natural and graced. A secular interpretation of human nature and human society does not adequately interpret either human nature or 63  Joseph Ratzinger and Jürgen Habermas, The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2007). 64  See Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “Political Theology and Postsecularity,” in Routledge Handbook of Postsecularity, ed. Justin Beaumont (London: Routledge, 2019). See also: Justin Beaumont, ed., Exploring the Postsecular: The Religious, the Political, and the Urban (Leiden: Brill, 2010); his earlier edited volume, Postsecular Cities: Space, Theory and Practice (London: Continuum, 2011); and Thomas Dienberger, Thomas Eggensperger, and Ulrich Engel, eds., Säkulare Frömmigkeit: Theologische Beiträge zu Säkularisierung und Individualisierung (Münster: Aschendorff, 2013).

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society. Ratzinger argues in a similar fashion that the very values that the modern democratic European world embraces, with its emphasis on the dignity of humanity, have their roots in Christianity. He criticizes the secular formulations of the constitution that do not acknowledge this historical background. 4. Ratzinger and De Lubac In relating de Lubac and Ratzinger, one has to keep in mind the different contexts. Henri de Lubac is immediately facing the crisis of the Nazi occupation of France and the support of the Vichy government. Therefore, he criticizes the naturalism of the philosophical ideology underlying German National Socialism, arguing that the dualistic separation of nature and grace in modern scholastic theology is inadequate to deal with the Nazi challenge. At the same time, his critique of “political Augustinianism” is directed not only against its interpretation of Augustine, but also against the theological support of the Vichy government. Nevertheless, de Lubac sees a strong role for the church’s authority in society insofar as it is spiritual. He writes: “Since the supernatural is not separated from nature, and the spiritual is always mixed with the temporal, the church has eminent authority – always in proportion to the spiritual element present – over everything, without having to step out of her role.”65 In writings as pope, Ratzinger is dealing much more with secularism, relativism and pluralism than National Socialism. Ratzinger emphasizes the need for affirmations of truth. In the relation to liberation theology, just as de Lubac argues that Augustinianism does not eliminate appeals to the natural, Ratzinger wants to make sure that ethics has its proper role. Nevertheless, he wants to make sure that when the European Constitution speaks of rights, it should acknowledge the heritage from Europe’s religious past and Christian tradition. The social nature of the church as a community is vital for de Lubac in his interpretation of Catholicism. It is from this perspective that he argues for the social and political mission of the church. De Lubac argues that the spiritual nature of the church influences the political order. Gutiérrez argues that the church derives from the Gospel message its directive and orientation for political action. Ratzinger emphasizes the church as cultural element, and at the same time, he also calls for a political ethics.  De Lubac, Theological Fragments, 214-215.

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Conclusion In short, this chapter has argued against several common assumptions and interpretations concerning Vatican II, la nouvelle théologie, and their various receptions. First, it has sought to show that the popular theological interpretation of the reception of Vatican II – in terms of the difference between the Thomists, representing the progressives, and Augustinians, as the conservatives – overlooks the complexities of Henri de Lubac’s theology and fails to consider the nuances of the reception of la nouvelle théologie by Gustavo Gutiérrez and Joseph Ratzinger. Second, any interpretation of de Lubac’s development of la nouvelle théologie needs to take into account not only the theological context, but also the political context of de Lubac’s critique of National Socialism and the policies of the German occupation. Taking this context into account shows that his interpretation of Thomas Aquinas in the light of the Greek Fathers and Augustine sought to appropriate the integrated view of nature and grace as a means of combating the naturalistic atheism of the National Socialist ideology. It also points at the same time to the importance of de Lubac’s critique of ‘political Augustinianism’ as a critique of Action française, as well as a critique of theological support for the Vichy government. De Lubac’s historical studies show the inadequacy of the appeal to Augustine and bolster the parallelism between his critique of political Augustinianism and of Action française. Third, the notion of paradox was central to de Lubac’s theology. He understood paradox as involving the affirmation of doctrines that, on the surface, appeared to contradict each another, but yet could be harmonized with one another. Because his theological position sought to affirm both sides in paradoxical tension, room was left for receptions which might privilege one theological vision to the detriment of another. His own position could best be described as paradox hovering ahead of complex realities and disparate polarities. Fourth, de Lubac’s student, Gustavo Gutiérrez, appeals to the notion of integration rather than separation in order to criticize the distinction of planes by which the hierarchy was responsible for the Gospel and the laity for the world, as well as a rational social ethic that developed the criteria for political action. This distinction leads to the restriction of action in the world to laity (Congar) and the development of a social ethics based upon an independent ethic (Maritain). Gutiérrez, by contrast, underscores the integration between nature and grace that de Lubac also affirmed. Moreover, Gutiérrez sought to affirm the more



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direct involvement of the whole community in political action, developing the criteria for such actions from the Christian Gospel and its eschatological proclamation. In the period after the emergence of German political theology and Latin American liberation theology, he expressed a concern that they preserve the distinction and interrelation that is contained in his understanding of the relation between the sacred and the profane. Gerhard Müller has co-authored a volume with Gutiérrez that seeks to clarify the issue.66 Fifth, although the Augustinianism of Ratzinger is emphasized because of his early writings on Augustine and Bonaventure, his indebtedness to de Lubac, particularly de Lubac’s critique of political Augustiniansim, is evident. In comparing Ratzinger and Gutiérrez, it is quite clear that Ratzinger is concerned about the inadequacy of moving directly from religious affirmations to political action; he emphasizes the importance of a political ethic and criticizes the dangers of religious ideology. It was the service of Henri de Lubac to show that stereotypes of Thomism and Augustinianism are inadequate, and Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) does likewise while seeking to maintain a theological vision that hovers ahead of the complexities of reality.

66  Gerhard Müller concludes in On the Side of the Poor: “When liberation theology is set in relation to the theologies of de Lubac and Rahner, questions about it and objections to it are resolved.” Gutiérrez and Müller, On the Side of the Poor, 72.

Part II

Becoming ‘the Community of the Unexpected’ Constructive Ecclesiology and the Future of the Church

Mercy toward Divorced and Civilly Remarried Catholics A New Way of Pastoral Practice in Amoris laetitia Mary Catherine O’Reilly-Gindhart The papacy of Pope Francis has become synonymous with the word mercy. Since his election in 2013, Pope Francis has steered the Catholic Church in a more inclusive pastoral direction for persons in ‘irregular situations’, specifically divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia, published on March 19, 2016, has transformed the Catholic pastoral approach to persons in irregular situations.1 The response and reception has been overwhelmingly positive by many theologians, clerics and Catholics across the world.2 However, there has also been criticism concerning how to interpret individual pastoral situations in Amoris laetitia. This critical concern led four cardinals to publish a letter of doubt which called for Pope Francis to clarify immediately his pastoral guidelines for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics and their possible admission to the Sacrament of the Eucharist, among other concerns. This ‘doubt’ in Pope Francis’s theological application of pastoral guidelines is known by many as the dubia document. Pope Francis did not offer a response to the document, leading some to believe that his silence was a response in itself. Questions still remain concerning how to interpret and apply guidelines of Amoris laetitia in dioceses across the global Catholic Church. This is an issue that is not going away anytime soon. Through this Apostolic ­Exhortation, Pope Francis demonstrates that the church should no longer speak of 1  This Apostolic Exhortation came after what is known as Relatio finalis, or The Final Report of the Synod of Bishops to the Holy Father, Pope Francis, which was published in October 2015 after conversations at both the 2014 Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops and in 2015 at the Fourteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/ rc_synod_doc_20151026_relazione-finale-xiv-assemblea_en.html. 2  Pope Francis, Amoris laetitia (March 19, 2016), https://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/ francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_ amoris-laetitia_en.pdf. Given my extensive citing of Amoris laetitia in this chapter, I will utilize parenthetical citations for it in most instances to facilitate a better reading experience.

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the abstract category of persons.3 To clarify, this is to say that a person can no longer be objectively judged by their conformity to a general rule that is valid in every case, regardless of circumstances.4 As Pope Francis says in section 301 of Amoris laetitia, “Hence it is can no longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace.”5 The publication of Amoris laetitia offers a new pastoral solution to persons in what Relatio Finalis refers to as irregular situations, namely involving those who are cohabitating, divorced or remarried.6 The new pastoral solution offered in Amoris laetitia offers these persons in irregular situations the possibility of admission to the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. As this Festschrift honors the academic achievements of Dr. Bernard Prusak, who devoted his life to instructing his students to question and seek understanding, I believe that a discussion on the pastoral change brought forth through Amoris laetitia is a dynamic way to celebrate his life and legacy. Therefore, in this article I will examine how the new pastoral solution – what I have named the practice of mercy outlined in Amoris laetitia – opens the pathway for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to be admitted to the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. I will focus on the merciful process of discernment and accompaniment outlined in Amoris laetitia, particularly its pivotal eighth chapter. Concretely, I will first examine Pope Francis’s definition and understanding of mercy itself. Second, I will begin delineating the pastoral practice of mercy for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Third, I will analyze conscience and the process of merciful accompaniment articulated by the pope. Fourth, and lastly, I will examine potential issues involved in the application of Amoris laetitia and the concrete task of accompaniment investigated earlier. The result of this process will be a more precise understanding of how Amoris laetitia opens a new way for the church to welcome and minister to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Because the theme of this Festschrift prompts us as theologians to ask 3  Antonio Spadaro, SJ, “Discernment as the Landscape: Notes on the Italian Reception of Amoris Laetitia,” in Amoris Laetitia: A New Momentum for Moral Formation and Pastoral Practice, ed. Grant Gallicho and James F. Keenan, SJ (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2018), at 117. 4  Ibid. 5  Pope Francis, Angelus (March 17, 2013), http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/ angelus/2013/documents/papa-francesco_angelus_20130317.html. 6  Julie Hanlon Rubio, “The Newness of Amoris Laetitia: Mercy and Truth, Truth and Mercy,” in Amoris Laetitia, ed. Gallicho and Keenan, 61-69, at 62.



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ourselves, “How does the Church come from Jesus?” I believe that an analysis of the practice of mercy in Amoris laetitia is helpful in attempting to answer this most relevant question in the Catholic Church today. Hereafter, I will refer to Amoris laetitia as AL. I.  Mercy in Chapter VIII of AL Chapter VIII of AL establishes new pastoral options for assisting Catholics through mercy. Although AL does not change official church doctrine or teaching, chapter VIII offers a new pastoral method to care for people in irregular situations, emphasizing a response characterized by sensitivity, empathy and integrity. Through the publication of AL, the Catholic Church has potentially welcomed certain marginalized and discriminated groups of Catholics and Christians who have been treated as an ‘other’, especially divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. In chapter VIII of AL there is a new presentation of pastoral care which offers a new solution.7 I have called this new pastoral solution the practice of mercy. In order to fully understand the practice of mercy in AL, it is essential to first define the word ‘mercy’ as Pope Francis uses it. Pope Francis defines mercy as the opening of a person’s heart to unfortunate circumstances.8 In his book, The Name of God is Mercy, he defines mercy in the following manner: “Etymologically, ‘mercy’ derives from misericordis, which means opening one’s heart to wretchedness. And straight away we go to the Lord: mercy is the divine attitude which embraces, it is God’s giving himself to us, accepting us and bowing to forgive.”9 This definition of mercy helps theologians understand the intention of Pope Francis’s arguments in AL. His pastoral approach to the practice of mercy is first outlined in chapter VIII, in the section, “The Discernment of ‘Irregular’ Situations.” Here, Pope Francis not only continues to define the church’s approach to the practice of mercy, but also offers a way for pastoral counseling and guidance in these sensitive situations. His arguments here are also helpful for understanding mercy in 7  I would like to point out in Amoris laetitia 199, Pope Francis remarks on the need for new pastoral methods raised by the synod. This can be possibly seen as the basis of development of pastoral practice outlined in Chapter VIII. 8  Pope Francis, The Name of God Is Mercy (London: Bluebird, 2016), 6. 9  Ibid.

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general, as well as the church’s approach to the practice or way of mercy in particular. Here I would like to reiterate something I sought to make clear to the whole Church, lest we take the wrong path: “There are two ways of thinking which recur throughout the Church’s history: casting off and reinstating. The Church’s way, from the time of the Council of Jerusalem, has always always [sic] been the way of Jesus, the way of mercy and reinstatement … The way of the Church is not to condemn anyone for ever; it is to pour out the balm of God’s mercy on all those who ask for it with a sincere heart … For true charity is always unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous.” Consequently, there is a need “to avoid judgements which do not take into account the complexity of various situations” and “to be attentive, by necessity, to how people experience distress because of their condition.” (AL 296)

There is a distinction here between mercy and charity/caritas. Although these virtues are similar, they are not identical. Mercy is the actualized form of caritas. Mercy is the practice of charity.10 Pope Francis is clear that mercy is the way of the church. Mercy is not for the few, but all. As with charity, mercy is not conditional. Pope Francis urges the church not to judge complex situations and instead remain attentive to these persons in their situations. The pope continues to outline the importance of mercy, especially for persons in irregular situations by examining the need to reach everyone, instead of the few. He says, “It is a matter of reaching out to everyone, of needing to help each person find his or her proper way of participating in the ecclesial community and thus to experience being touched by an ‘unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous’ mercy” (AL 297). This poignant statement allows all Catholics reading AL to know that everyone should be embraced with mercy. Mercy, like charity, cannot be gained by merit; instead, it is gratuitous in character, offered to all concrete persons living in particular situations. This is the mercy of the church and the message of Jesus,11 and mercy cannot be denied to anyone a priori (AL 300). These statements on mercy by Pope Francis precede the outline for the practice of mercy and help demonstrate the strong presence of tone and importance of mercy in chapter VIII, which focuses on welcoming and integrating persons in irregular situations back into the church community. 10  Lumen gentium (November 21, 1964), 11 (hereafter cited in text as LG), http:// www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_ 19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html. 11  Cf. Luke 18:9-14.



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II.  Divorced and Civilly remarried Catholics and the Practice of Mercy The discussion concerning divorced and civilly remarried Catholics in AL refer to those who have contracted a second marriage outside of the church without a declaration of nullity or ‘annulment’.12 Without an annulment, divorced and civilly remarried Catholics are, by church teaching and doctrine, unable to receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist, as outlined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 1650.13 This is due to the church’s teaching on sacramental marriage, annulment and adultery. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is always available to these persons, but only if there is an intention of repentance and conversion of heart to the commitment of living in complete continence.14 The practice of mercy in AL offers divorced and civilly remarried Catholics the opportunity to be welcomed back into the church’s sacramental life even if the aforementioned condition of perpetual continence is not met (AL 300). This action involves the gracious accompaniment and discernment of a parish priest and without judgment or an obligatory request for an annulment (AL 305). AL thus offers a new possibility to receive the sacraments for Catholics who cannot or do not wish to obtain a declaration of nullity by the church for various reasons.15 In what follows, I will examine and outline the pastoral practice of mercy in order to illustrate how this new practice assists these Catholics in [re-]admission to the church community and sacraments. The practice of mercy is above all, an act of compassion (AL 27-28). In the section “Discernment of ‘Irregular’ Situations,” Pope Francis is clear that the divorced and civilly remarried cannot be condemned by the church forever. Mercy is the way forward for these persons. Following the quote above (AL 297) which defines mercy and charity as unmerited,  “Annulment,” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, http://www.usccb. org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/marriage/annulment/index.cfm. 13  “The Sacrament of Matrimony,” Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1650, http:// www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a7.htm. 14  Ibid. 15  See AL 304-305, and see footnote 351. Also see the Argentinian Bishops’ letter to Pope Francis (September 5, 2016), “Criterios básicos para la aplicación del capítulo VIII de Amoris laetitia” along with the response by Pope Francis (September 5, 2016), “Carta del Santo Padre Francisco a los Obispos de la Región Pastoral de Buenos Aires en Respuesta al Documento, ‘Criterios básicos para la aplicación del capítulo VIII de ­Amoris laetitia’,” http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/es/letters/2016/documents/ papa-francesco_20160905_regione-pastorale-buenos-aires.html. 12

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unconditional and gratuitous, Pope Francis further elaborates on how mercy toward all persons is rooted in the Gospel. He writes, “No one can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel! Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves” (AL 297). The pope’s intention of mercy toward divorced and civilly remarried Catholics echoes the practice of mercy for all in the church. It is in this same section that the practice of mercy for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics is identified by Pope Francis. First, Francis makes clear what this process does not entail. Persons in irregular situations are still called to listen to the Gospel and are called to conversion. Therefore, persons who objectively ‘flaunt sin’ or try to substitute their own ideals for Christian norms are not truly part of the process of practicing mercy. Pope Francis remains clear that church teaching has not changed. This is one of the many reasons theologians and others are critical of AL. Despite this affirmation, the pastoral response by parish communities and the parish priest has indeed changed with this exhortation. There is a commitment in AL to church teaching and mercy. Divorced and civilly remarried Catholics should not be abandoned or cast out by the church for their complex situations and varying circumstances. Pope Francis is adamant when he writes, Yet even for that person there can be some way of taking part in the life of community, whether in social service, prayer meetings or another way that his or her own initiative, together with the discernment of the parish priest, may suggest. As for the way of dealing with different “irregular” situations, the Synod Fathers reached a general consensus, which I support: “In considering a pastoral approach towards people who have contracted a civil marriage, who are divorced and remarried, or simply living together, the Church has the responsibility of helping them understand the divine pedagogy of grace in their lives and offering them assistance so they can reach the fullness of God’s plan for them,” something which is always possible by the power of the Holy Spirit. (AL 297)

Here Pope Francis is offering divorced and civilly remarried Catholics a way to take part in their parish community through the process of accompaniment and discernment. He states that it is the responsibility of the church to help and offer the teaching of the divine pedagogy of grace. In turn, this accompaniment and discernment that follows along with an understanding of God’s grace in their lives will help divorced and civilly remarried Catholics reach the fullness of God’s plan for them. This offers divorced and civilly remarried Catholics a way to learn about



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their own situations alongside the teaching of the church, while also offering accompaniment with compassion and understanding. In a powerful statement, he reiterates the understanding that nothing is impossible with the power of the Holy Spirit. The implication here is that the admission of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics into church life and the sacraments is possible. Pope Francis’s statements, concerning the beauty of God’s grace and duty of the church community for the discernment of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, illustrate the church’s merciful approach in AL. The pope continues in the following section (no. 298), in which he writes, The divorced who have entered a new union, for example, can find themselves in a variety of situations, which should not be pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid classifications leaving no room for a suitable personal and pastoral discernment. One thing is a second union consolidated over time, with new children, proven fidelity, generous self giving, Christian commitment, a consciousness of its irregularity and of the great difficulty of going back without feeling in conscience that one would fall into new sins. (AL 298)

Pope Francis promotes a church of mercy and forgiveness, not judgement. He insists that using church doctrines as “stones to throw at people’s lives” (AL 305) leaves insufficient space to grow in personal and pastoral discernment. The situations in which divorced and civilly remarried Catholics find themselves living in are individually unique. Pope Francis suggests that these second unions over time may come to hold elements which are quite positive including proven fidelity, plentiful self-giving, along with the nurturing and education of existing children and/or the blessing of new children. The pope continues, arguing, The Church acknowledges situations “where, for serious reasons, such as the children’s upbringing, a man and woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate.” There are also the cases of those who made every effort to save their first marriage and were unjustly abandoned, or of “those who have entered into a second union for the sake of the children’s upbringing, and are sometimes subjectively certain in conscience that their previous and irreparably broken marriage had never been valid.” Another thing is a new union arising from a recent divorce, with all the suffering and confusion which this entails for children and entire families, or the case of someone who has consistently failed in his obligations to the family. It must remain clear that this is not the ideal which the Gospel proposes for marriage and the family. The Synod Fathers stated that the discernment of pastors must always take place “by adequately distinguishing,” with an approach which “carefully discerns situations.” We know that no “easy recipes” exist. (AL 298)

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Pope Francis understands that persons who are divorced and civilly remarried cannot always separate from their new married partner to fulfill the church’s teaching on admission to the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist, due to many factors. With the new pastoral solution of the practice of mercy presented in AL divorced and civilly remarried Catholics (depending on their unique situation), no longer have to separate from their current spouses to gain admission to the sacraments. Pope Francis also comments on the situations of divorced persons who have been unjustly abandoned in their first marriage and who have entered new civil unions which have helped the upbringing of their children (AL 298). The pope is clear that these situations that divorced and civilly remarried Catholics find themselves living in are not representative of sacramental ideals, but are the reality for a significant number of believers. Therefore, this reality for many Catholic families must be addressed pastorally by the church, which needs to discern carefully and respectfully these situations on a case-by-case basis. In other words, a one-size-fits-all approach is neither appropriate nor just. Established church teaching in this regard is no longer adequate to the complex reality of believers or the signs of the times. Development in practice and teaching is thus warranted, in line with the insights and approach of Vatican II.16 Pope Francis continues delineating the practice of mercy, alluding to its potential application. In the following section Pope Francis writes, I am in agreement with the many Synod Fathers who observed that “the baptized who are divorced and civilly remarried need to be more fully integrated into Christian communities in the variety of ways possible, while avoiding any occasion of scandal. The logic of integration is the key to their pastoral care, a care which would allow them not only to realize that they belong to the Church as the body of Christ, but also to know that they can have a joyful and fruitful experience in it….” (AL 299)

Integration for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics in these sensitive and personal situations through pastoral care is important to Pope Francis. These Catholic families should not be alienated from the church; instead, they are to be valued and seen as part of the church. Through this pastoral care of discernment and accompaniment, Pope Francis advocates a flexibility instead of rigidness when dealing with these 16  Cf. Gaudium et spes (December 7, 1965), 1, 4 (hereafter cited in text as GS), http:// www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudiumet-spes_en.html; LG 16, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/ documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html.



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s­ensitive situations. In section 300 of AL, Francis notes that there is no new set of general rules that come from this pastoral practice to integrate divorced and civilly remarried families. Instead the pope encourages merciful discernment. He says, What is possible is simply a renewed encouragement to undertake a responsible personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases, one which would recognize that, since “the degree of responsibility is not equal in all cases,” the consequences or effects of a rule need not necessarily always be the same. Priests have the duty to “accompany [the divorced and remarried] in helping them to understand their situation according to the teaching of the Church and the guidelines of the bishop. Useful in this process is an examination of conscience through moments of reflection and repentance. The divorced and remarried should ask themselves: how did they act towards their children when the conjugal union entered into crisis; whether or not they made attempts at reconciliation; what has become of the abandoned party; what consequences the new relationship has on the rest of the family and the community of the faithful; and what example is being set for young people who are preparing for marriage. A sincere reflection can strengthen trust in the mercy of God which is not denied anyone.” (AL 300)17

This is a significant statement by Pope Francis in AL on the practice of mercy. Pope Francis states that, due to the particular circumstances that divorced and civilly remarried Catholics are in, the pastoral consequences of situations deviating from church teaching should not be determined prior to merciful discernment, since responsibility varies depending on the case. The priest’s task is to accompany each individual person and family through their own discernment, as part of determining the application of church teaching to their unique situation. III.  Conscience and the Process of Merciful Accompaniment and Discernment In the section, “Mitigating Factors in Pastoral Discernment” of chapter VIII in AL, Pope Francis offers his guidance on the merciful accompaniment and discernment for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. He says, “Hence, it can no longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of 17  See footnote 336 in AL; cf. Evangelii gaudium (November 24, 2013), http://www. vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html, 44 and 47.

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sanctifying grace” (AL 301). This statement emphasizes the pope’s position for the merciful pastoral approach of the practice of mercy. With the publication of AL, it is no longer acceptable for the church to presuppose the state of mortal sin for all persons living in irregular situations. This is the first time the Catholic Church has made such a defining statement. The section continues to elaborate on the responsibility tied to particular circumstances, as well as the personal experience and discernment of the consciences of persons in irregular situations (AL 304-306).18 The aspect and role of conscience in discernment and accompaniment is a very important topic within AL for such persons. Pope Francis writes, “Pastoral discernment, while taking into account a person’s properly formed conscience, must take responsibility for these situations. Even the consequences of actions taken are not necessarily the same in all cases” (AL 302). Believers are called to properly form their consciences while being counseled and accompanied by their parish priests, with all parties being attentive to particular circumstances. Pope Francis continues to elaborate on the relationship between conscience and discernment in section 303: Recognizing the influence of such concrete factors, we can add that individual con- science needs to be better incorporated into the Church’s praxis in certain situations which do not objectively embody our understanding of marriage. Naturally, every effort should be made to encourage the development of an enlightened conscience, formed and guided by the responsible and serious discernment of one’s pastor, and to encourage an ever greater trust in God’s grace. Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal. In any event, let us recall that this discernment is dynamic; it must remain ever open to new stages of growth and to new decisions which can enable the ideal to be more fully realized. (AL 303)

An individual’s conscience is central to discernment. The pope implores that every effort should be made in forming a person’s ­conscience. In addition, every effort should be made by a person’s parish priest to help 18  For context see, Timothy Radcliffe, OP, “How Can we ‘Make Room for the Consciences of the Faithful’?,” in A Point of No Return? Amoris Laetitia on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage, ed. Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi, INTAMS Studies on Marriage and Family 2 (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2017), 65-73. Also see Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler, “Amoris Laetitia and the Development of Catholic Theological Ethics: A Reflection,” ibid., 30-44.



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each person and family gain an even greater understanding of and trust in God’s grace. As Martin M. Lintner writes, First of all, Pope Francis overcomes a deep skeptical attitude towards the competence of the conscience of the faithful which has characterized the Church’s position in past papacies. In AL conscience has a significant role. The issue of conscience runs like a red thread through the whole document … The basic notion of conscience is that of a subjective competence able to recognize how to realize, as far as possible, the objective moral standards in a concrete situation with its complexity, limitations, and conditions.19

The recovery of this rich tradition of conscience could be the theological rationale for AL, helping to realize further the goals set forth in Gaudium et spes regarding an accurate discernment of the signs of the times. Lintner explains that conscience consists of both the subjective and objective understanding of moral standards. Conscience is examined as a complex moral sense. Conscience has a subjective competence which can recognize that, although there are objective moral standards, there are complex situations which have limits and conditions. All of these determining factors have influence on a person’s ability to make decisions, and these factors may also affect a person’s current moral situation. The distinction between objective and subjective in relation to conscience and church teaching involves two models or methods. Theologians Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler argue that the first method involves people like Archbishop Emeritus Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, and Catholic philosophers John Finnis and Germain Grisez, who claim that the role and function of the subjective conscience is merely to conform to the objective magisterial norms.20 The other method, one favored by Salzman and Lawler, concerns the view of theologians like Josef Fuchs and Norbert Rigali. This view holds that the formation of conscience is guided by objective teachings, known, understood and applied by the knowing subject. Salzman and Lawler write, Moral truth is not something that objectively exists in itself over against the moral subject but something to be discerned by the knowing moral subject as existing in myself, that is within the moral subject. Moral truth is knowledge within the knowing subject of the ­interrelationship

19  Martin M. Lintner, “Divorce and Remarriage: A Reading of Amoris Laetitia from a Theological-Ethical Perspective,” in A Point of No Return?, ed. Knieps-Port le Roi, 123-140, at 139. 20  Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler, “Amoris Laetitia: Towards a Methodological and Anthropological Integration of Catholic Social and Sexual Ethics,” Theological Studies 79, no. 3 (2018): 634-652, at 646.

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between the moral object and the moral subject; moral truth exists only in the moral subject.21

Salzman and Lawler’s explanation of the objective and subjective distinction helps to further illuminate Pope Francis’s defense of the relative importance of the moral subject and a person’s conscience.22 Lintner’s examination of conscience offers a detailed understanding of Francis’s grasp on the human reality of the complex irregular situations. In Amoris laetitia we find basically an existential-ethical notion of conscience. It is seen first of all as [a] place of encounter and dialogue with God and, as such, moral subjects in fidelity to their conscience are capable of responding as best as they can to God’s will amid their limitations and of carrying out their own discernment in complex situations (cf. AL 37).23

Lintner’s examination is helpful for delineating the role of a person’s conscience with discernment. Discernment of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics is the keystone (along with accompaniment) in the process of the practice of mercy for admission to the sacraments. A person’s life is comprised of a myriad of decisions which delineate their current moral state or situation. A person can only respond to the best of their ability to the moral situations and limitations that are present in their life. Lintner believes that a person’s fidelity to their conscience encompasses these complex situations and limitations.24 Therefore, a person’s conscience in discernment operates from their particular situation in response to truth, not from mere conformity to an objective, abstract moral ideal. Other theologians have also contributed to the conversation on conscience and the pastoral implications of the relationship between conscience and discernment (AL 297). Timothy Radcliff’s examination on the role of conscience in AL is helpful for illustrating a two-fold relationship of both conscience and discernment. He says, The conscience of the faithful works in this discernment in two ways. First of all, the people of God do indeed seem to be summoning us to show a profound welcome to those who are divorced and ­remarried.

21  Ibid., 647. Emphasis original. Cf. Josef Fuchs, Christian Morality: The Word Becomes Flesh, trans. Brian McNeil (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1987), 125. Cf. also Norbert Rigali, “The Unity of Moral and Pastoral Truth,” Chicago Studies 25, no. 3 (1986): 224-232, at 225. 22  Salzman and Lawler, “Amoris Laetitia: Towards a Methodological and Anthropological Integration,” 647. 23  Lintner, “Divorce and Remarriage,” 133. 24  Ibid.



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Pope Francis learned in the barrios of Buenos Aires just how difficult it is for many people today even to marry in the first place, and how hard are the pressures on marriage everywhere. Even the most holy people can find that they are in mess. There must be a way forward. Secondly, we must help the faithful to form good and true consciences. As the encyclical says, “We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them.” (AL 37). The community of the Church will be strong if she raises individuals with strong consciences. If the faithful lose the courage to hearken to the voice of the Lord speaking in their hearts, then the whole Church will be weakened. But this listening means daring to hear what the pastors of the Church say, what the Word of God in the scriptures says, what the saints and the thinkers say. When we do this, then we hear the quiet whisper of the Lord summoning us to freedom and God’s own joy.25

For Radcliff the connection between the conscience of the faithful and discernment are intertwined. First, he points out how the faithful are summoning the church and each other toward the welcoming of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Second, he remarks that the church must help the faithful form good consciences. This action requires listening, and not only on the part of the laity. In fact, such listening is conceived in a dynamic fashion, involving laity and pastors, who also listen to scripture and church teaching. In AL, Pope Francis calls upon the church community to help form the consciences of the faithful, not to replace them. These actions are all part of the process of discernment, and furthermore the practice of mercy. IV. Applying AL: the Concrete Task of Accompaniment In the next section of chapter VIII, entitled “Rules and Discernment,” Pope Francis treats how the practice of mercy can be understood or realized in the task of accompaniment. He writes, “For this reason, a pastor cannot feel that it is enough to simply apply moral laws to those living in ‘irregular’ situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives” (AL 305). Pope Francis asks priests not to judge and condemn the person asking for assistance in their pastoral journey. Instead, priests are to use compassion and mercy in accompaniment and discernment. Although mercy is unconditional, mercy is not to be understood as “a free pass” for a person to be admitted to the sacraments without repentance  Radcliff, “How Can we ‘Make Room for the Consciences of the Faithful’?,” 72-73.

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(AL 297). There is a further two-fold understanding of discernment in AL. This two-fold understanding concerns both truth and mercy. Pope Francis explores this relationship in discussing God’s limitless mercy (AL 311). The teaching of the Church’s truth in church doctrine, along with mercy in AL, must be understood together with respect to discernment and accompaniment. As stated previously, the publication of AL  does not change church teaching or doctrine, but instead changes the pastoral acceptance and integration of persons in irregular situations. Julie Hanlon Rubio remarks on the tendency of Catholic thinkers to focus only on one of these elements in their appraisal of AL. “Catholic responses to AL diverge on the question of what Catholic laypeople need: truth or mercy.”26 She remarks on AL’s concern of both truth and mercy, and discusses how both play an important role in understanding how to interpret this important Apostolic Exhortation. She continues, Amoris Laetitia is more complex than these debates allow. The newness of AL for the laity – especially those in second marriages – lies not only in mercy but also in truth, in a strong vision of marriage as a deeply personal, lifelong, outward-facing union of two imperfect but committed people. The challenge of receiving AL will be discerning how mercy and truth fit together.27

Rubio’s statements on mercy and truth offer a reflection on the pastoral practice and discernment that is necessary for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Pope Francis emphasizes this discernment in section 305 of AL, in which he remarks on the conditions and mitigating factors of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics and their particular situations. The pope’s remarks concern a footnote which has become famous for this practice of mercy. Pope Francis writes, Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end. Discernment must help to find possible ways of responding to God and growing in the midst of limits. By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God. Let us remember that “a small step, in the midst of great human limitations, can be more pleasing to God than

 Hanlon Rubio, “The Newness of Amoris Laetitia,” 61-62.  Ibid., 62.

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a life which appears outwardly in order, but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties.” The practical pastoral care of ministers and of communities must not fail to embrace this reality. (AL 305)28

In offering a new pastoral practice for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, Pope Francis again acknowledges that all irregular situations are unique and should not be preemptively judged. The pope recognizes the conditions and mitigating factors which can lead Catholics into these situations, and therefore states that all situations cannot be objectively judged in the same manner. Through the practice of mercy, Pope Francis upholds a pastoral discernment and accompaniment that individually assess and deal with the subjective conditions and factors which have contributed to each divorce and civilly remarried Catholic’s predicament. Footnote 351, which coincides with this passage in AL, promulgates the possibility for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to be admitted into the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist. The beginning of footnote 351 says, “In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments” (AL 305, n. 351). In the same footnote Pope Francis remarks that the confessional should not be a torture chamber, but instead an encounter with God’s mercy. The last part of footnote 351 reads, “I would also point out that the Eucharist ‘is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak’.” These arguments have been discussed and received both positively and critically by the Catholic community. Here in footnote 351, many theologians and priests acknowledge the possibility for the sacramental admission for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics into Reconciliation and Eucharist. Lintner summarizes the importance of AL for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics in a concise way. He says, “Amoris Laetitia has indeed opened up new possibilities in the discipline concerning reception of the sacraments by the divorced and remarried. According to Amoris laetitia, the church does not categorically further exclude them from the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist, even without strictly demanding sexual abstinence.”29 Sexual abstinence is no longer an absolute pre-requisite for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to regain access to the sacraments. This is the pastoral change which 28  See AL, n. 351, which has received immense attention for the proposed pastoral application and admission for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to enter the sacraments. 29  Lintner, “Divorce and Remarriage,” 138-139.

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separates AL from all other papal documents and church teachings set before it. To explain this pastoral change, it’s important to examine footnote 351 of section 305. Footnote 351 in AL is a key to understanding the new pastoral solution which the practice of mercy offers to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. This footnote is what has challenged and changed contemporary pastoral practice for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to gain admission to the sacraments. James F. Keenan offers a helpful unpacking of this footnote and the relevance to the current discussion from past and current practice in the Catholic Church. In his article, “Receiving Amoris Laetitia,” he writes, At the press conference that launched the exhortation, Cardinal Schönborn was asked how to square Pope John Paul II’s refusal to permit divorced and remarried Catholics to approach the Eucharist unless after penance they agreed to live in “complete continence” with arguably the most significant papal footnote in contemporary history, wherein Pope Francis implicitly permits the help of the Eucharist for particular instances of those living in an “objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such.” Harkening to John Henry Cardinal Newman, Schönborn explained that it was “an organic development of doctrine,” insisting that just as Pope John Paul II advanced teaching in Familiaris Consortio on the very same matter, so had Pope Francis. Schönborn suggested that one might even say that this new development was in some way “implicit” in Familiaris Consortio 84, which looked at three different situations concerning divorced and remarried. Could not Francis allow for the engagement of other questions? The cardinal added, “There is continuity in teaching here, but there is also something really new. There’s a real development [of doctrine], not a rupture.”30

Schönborn, who serves as the Archbishop of Vienna, is very supportive of the new pastoral practice set forth in AL. Quoting Schönborn’s statement on footnote 351, in conjunction with and reference to Familiaris Consortio, Keenan illustrates how AL offers something new in terms of pastoral practice for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Before AL was published, divorced and civilly remarried Catholics did not have the papal endorsement of a pastoral option for discernment and 30  James F. Keenan, “Receiving Amoris Laetitia,” Theological Studies 78, no 1 (2017): 193-212, at 199. See Gerard O’Connell, “Pope Francis’ Exhortation on the Family an ‘Organic Development of Doctrine’,” America (April 8, 2016), https://www.americamagazine. org/faith/2016/04/08/amoris-laetitia-represents-organic-development-doctrine-not-rupture?utm_content=buffer63f58&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_ campaign=buffer.



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a­ccompaniment through mercy as promulgated in AL.31 This is the immense difference between AL and any other document, teaching, or statement by the Catholic Church. Pope Francis’s publication of AL offers a new merciful option for parishes to make use of, accompanying their members living in irregular situations and seeking to discern their participation in the church. In the final section of chapter VIII, entitled “The Logic of Pastoral Mercy,” Pope Francis discusses further how mercy and practicing mercy in irregular pastoral situations are understood. In this section, Pope Francis does not refer directly to the situation of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics; however, this section does serve for a better understanding of how the practice of mercy is to be realized. He says, At the same time, from our awareness of the weight of mitigating circumstances – psychological, historical and even biological – it follows that “without detracting from the evangelical ideal, there is a need to accompany with mercy and patience the eventual stages of personal growth as these progressively appear,” making room for “the Lord’s mercy, which spurs us on to do our best.” (AL 308)

Pope Francis advocates for accompaniment with mercy and patience in dealing with irregular situations. AL may not offer a set of rules or guidelines which shape how exactly the practice of mercy is to be instilled throughout parishes and dioceses across the world, but this flexibility allows a personal and independent evaluation of irregular situations on a case-by-case basis. Pope Francis removes a black-and-white, objective stance on how to pastorally care for and respond to persons. On this topic, he writes, “Discernment must help to find possible ways of responding to God and growing in the midst of limits. By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God” (AL 305). The pastoral way of mercy for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics is not black and white; instead it is grey. This grey area allows for a case-by-case basis to accompany and discern with Catholic families who exercise their conscience in navigating back into the church and possibly to admission to the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. Pope Francis writes, “We cannot forget that ‘mercy is not only the working of the Father; it becomes a criterion for knowing who his true children are. In a word, we are called to show mercy because  See O’Connell, “Pope Francis’ Exhortation on the Family an ‘Organic Development of Doctrine’.” 31

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mercy was first shown to us’” (AL 310). The pope’s words resonate with the message of mercy for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. The pope continues the discussion on mercy in chapter VIII in the secondto-last paragraph of the chapter. He argues, We put so many conditions on mercy that we empty it of its concrete meaning and real significance. That is the worst way of watering down the Gospel. It is true, for example, that mercy does not exclude justice and truth, but first and foremost we have to say that mercy is the fullness of justice and the most radiant manifestation of God’s truth. For this reason, we should always consider “inadequate any theological conception which in the end puts in doubt the omnipotence of God and, especially, his mercy.” (AL 311)32

In these final remarks on mercy in chapter VIII, Pope Francis is vibrantly clear on the future pastoral action of the church concerning the irregular situations of its members, including divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Mercy, justice and truth must be understood alongside each other in discernment and accompaniment. No human power can limit God’s mercy. Mercy is freely offered and experienced as unconditional. It is in this practice of mercy that divorced and civilly remarried Catholics may be welcomed back into the church with the possibility of admission to the sacraments, even without an annulment or perpetual continence. AL offers a monumental pastoral application of mercy in the lives of so many families who represent the Catholic Church. However, the criticism of the Pope’s ambiguous process or guidelines for such discernment and accompaniment has also grown. The procedure for how to methodically approach discernment and accompaniment is left open to individual bishops and dioceses around the world. Therefore, it is without concrete guidelines that the church offers divorced and civilly remarried Catholics the possibility of personal and pastoral discernment and accompaniment with a priest in a unique journey back into the church. Conclusion The publication of AL has paved a new way for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics in the Church through mercy. I have identified and named this new pastoral practice the practice of mercy. The practice of 32  See International Theological Commission, The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die without Being Baptized (April 19, 2007), http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html, 2.



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mercy is a tool which priests in parishes across the world can use to assist in the discernment and accompaniment for Catholics to be re-admitted to the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. The role of conscience outlined by Pope Francis is a vital part of the discernment and accompaniment process for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. It is important to understand the great achievement and theological development evident in Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation, AL. Sexual abstinence or an annulment is no longer an absolute pre-requisite for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to gain admission to the sacraments. Mercy, which guides discernment and accompaniment, meets the person in their current state, not in an abstract or objective moral state. AL’s pastoral inclusion welcomes and invites Catholics in irregular situations from all over the world to discern with their parish priest and community in a new way. An annulment is no longer an obstacle for these Catholics who cannot or will not obtain one for various reasons. Divorced and civilly remarried Catholics are no longer “cast off” pastorally from the sacraments; instead they are welcomed with mercy (AL 296).

Regarding Silence

Ethics and Ecclesiology in Two Recent Controversies Bernard G. Prusak There is relatively little in the work of Bernard P. Prusak on the ethical controversies roiling the life of the Roman Catholic Church over the last fifty-plus years. He does discuss, in the epilogue to his book The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries, the question of “a future for women in the Church,” in particular whether women may be ordained to the priesthood despite recent Vatican declarations to the contrary;1 and a recent paper entitled “Ontologized Inequality in the Church: Deconstructing the Hierarchical Strategy” states forthrightly that The teaching that the Church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood has not been developed through dialogue and discussion [among the world’s bishops]. Rather, it has been declared by edict and buttressed by canonical sanctions. It has been affirmed to be God’s plan for the Church without serious consideration of the socio-cultural forces that shaped the patriarchal structures of times past.2

Critical consideration of the status and treatment of women in the church appears elsewhere in Prusak’s work, too,3 but it is noteworthy that The Church Unfinished, which concludes by looking beyond

1  Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 337-341. 2  Bernard P. Prusak, “Ontologized Inequality in the Church: Deconstructing the Hierarchical Strategy,” in Wir teilen diesen Traum: Theologinnen und Theologen aus aller Welt argumentieren ‘Pro Pope Francis’, ed. Paul M. Zulehner and Tomáš Halík (Ostfildern: Patmos Verlag, 2019), e-book. 3  See “Woman: Seductive Siren and Source of Sin? Pseudepigraphal Myth and Christian Origins” in Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 89-116, and Bernard P. Prusak, “Turning Point: A Theologian Remembers the Council (Fifty Years after Vatican II),” Commonweal (September 28, 2012): 20-25, at 24. The 1974 paper concludes: “It would be unfortunate if theologians in some Christian communities justified a full ministerial role for women only with hindsight, when society absolutely required it, rather than assume the initiative in undoing the prejudice that their historical predecessors established so deeply in the cultural psyche” (107).

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­ atican II to “the possibilities of a new future,”4 does not include any V discussion of the controversy over contraception that has loomed over the church since the publication of Humanae vitae in 1968.5 Prusak is not, of course, a theological ethicist, but the controversy over contraception is not simply an ethical controversy. Instead, it raises questions about the authority of papal teaching when it appears to conflict with the sensus fidelium, what ought to be the role of the laity in informing that teaching, and Catholics’ rights of conscience to believe and act otherwise – in brief, questions that are ethical and ecclesiological at once. Proverbs tells us that “discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you” (2:11). As a married priest whose dispensation rescript, he has reflected, “Fortunately … did not include the stipulation that [he] not hold a teaching position in a Catholic college or university,” Prusak was well-advised to be discreet in the very conservative Philadelphia archdiocese where he began teaching, at Villanova University, in 1969.6 Yet his relative silence over ethical controversies in the life of the church – for example, he has not commented in print on the clergy sexual abuse scandal, or on whether divorced and remarried Catholics without annulments might be permitted to receive the Eucharist – does not mean that his work in ecclesiology is irrelevant to those controversies. To the contrary, Prusak’s consistent attention to what he terms “the christological presuppositions of ecclesiology” suggests that the church’s ethical-cum-ecclesiological controversies should be considered in the same light and depth.7 Just as “one may … ask,” as Prusak does, “how the Catholic Church of today, in all its complexity, is related to the intentions of Jesus,” one may search out how the intentions of Jesus bear on the controversies that beset the church that in some “complex manner” comes from him.8 As Prusak notes, “It is true that we cannot really reconstruct the historical Jesus.” But he goes on to affirm that we nonetheless should examine “what ‘words and acts’ [of Jesus] had special impact upon the tradition” in order to ensure that its subsequent development is true to what he initiated.9  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 341.  See, however, his “Review of John T. Noonan, Jr., A Church That Can and Cannot Change,” American Catholic Studies 117 (2006): 69-72. 6  Prusak, “Turning Point,” 25. Compare, on Prusak’s discretion, Paul Lakeland’s contribution to the symposium on The Church Unfinished, Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society 33, no. 2 (2006): 338-342. 7  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 10. 8  Ibid., 9. 9  Bernard P. Prusak, “‘The Son of Man Came Eating and Drinking’: An Overview of Christological Perspectives on the Incarnation,” in Who Do People Say I Am? 4 5



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The present chapter proposes to examine two recent controversies against this backdrop. The controversies are related, and it is probably the case that one of the two became a controversy only because of the other. Both regard silence. Martin Scorsese’s film Silence was released in late December 2016 to critical acclaim and public indifference, grossing not quite $24 million against a reported budget of $46 million.10 The film is based on the Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel of the same title, published in English in 1969 in a translation by the Irish Jesuit William Johnston.11 Before the release of Scorsese’s film, there was renewed critical interest in Endo’s novel,12 and at the time of the release discussions of the novel and film alike proliferated in Catholic publications and online forums.13 Scorsese’s 1988 film of Nikos Kazantzakis’s 1955 novel, The Last Temptation of Christ, had provoked an uproar upon its release; a far-right Catholic group even bombed a cinema in Paris where the film was playing. By contrast, the controversy over Silence – controversy number 1 – was much more muted, turning not on Jesus’ sexuality, but on whether faith in Christ could ever coherently call for and justify denying Christ and, thereby, apparently breaking from the church. The context that made answers to that esoteric question controversial was the uproar – controversy number 2 – over Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, released April 2016 following the 2014 and 2015 synods on the family in Rome. In September 2016, four retired cardinals, all identified with traditionalist movements in the church and antagonistic to Francis, had sent him five dubia or doubts, raising questions about chapter 8 of Amoris laetitia, in particular whether it was to be understood as reversing, in several instances, “the teaching of St. John Paul II’s [1993] encyclical Veritatis Splendor … Proceedings of Villanova University Theology Institute, ed. Francis A. Eigo (Villanova, PA: Villanova University Press, 1980), 1-45, at 38. See also The Church Unfinished, 64, on the question of what continuity with Jesus requires. 10  For the numbers, see imdb.com. 11  See the conversation between Johnston and Endo conducted in 1990 and published under the title, “Endo and Johnston Talk of Buddhism and Christianity,” America (November 19, 1994): 18-20, available online at www.americamagazine.org under the title, “From the Archives: Shusaku Endo Discusses Faith with His Jesuit Translator.” 12  See Mark W. Dennis and Darren J. N. Middleton, eds., Approaching Silence: New Perspectives on Shusaku Endo’s Classic Novel (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), with an afterword by Martin Scorsese. 13  See James Martin, SJ, “Martin Scorsese Discusses His Faith, His Struggles, His Films and ‘Silence’,” America (December 6, 2016), available online at www.americamagazine.org, and Rand Richards Cooper, “An Interview with Martin Scorsese: Faith, Film, and ‘Silence’,” Commonweal (December 15, 2016), available online at www.commonwealmagazine.org.

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based on sacred Scripture and the Tradition of the Church.” 14 An American pundit and ally of the cardinals comments, “But Francis chose not to answer, and declined to authorize a response from the [Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith] as well.”15 Rather willfully interpreting the Pope’s “sovereign decision [not to respond] as an invitation to continue the reflection and the discussion,” the cardinals then published the dubia in November 2016.16 Yet, “from Francis himself, and from most of the world’s uneasy, watchful bishops,” the same pundit waxes, “there was still only silence.”17 In January 2017, the Jesuit James Martin, who had served Scorsese as a consultant on Silence, reflected that Some of the discussion surrounding the movie may … reflect the debates going on inside the church today about Pope Francis’ emphasis [in Amoris laetitia] on “discernment” for people facing complicated situations, where a black-and-white approach seems inadequate. A Jesuit friend felt the essential question the movie poses is: Can we trust that God works through a person’s conscience, and that God helps us discern the right path in complex situations, where the normal rules seem inadequate to the situation?18

This reflection was restated, in unfriendly and tendentious terms, as follows: The implication here is that there are effectively two levels in Christian morality – one for ordinary circumstances and one for more complex cases, cases in which the moral law seems cruel or the consequences of persisting in the ordinary sort of virtue [seem] particularly impossible to live with. Under those circumstances, the higher law of mercy kicks in: What would be wrong under the normal, everyday sort of rules becomes for those who are working on a higher level not just understandable but what Jesus wants. It might be something as extreme as an act of apostasy [as in Silence], or as commonplace as receiving communion after a second marriage [as contemplated in Amoris laetitia]. But in either case, where the moral law seems to impose too much, Jesus does not want you to suffer

14  See “Full Text and Explanatory Notes of Cardinals’ Questions on ‘Amoris Laetitia’,” National Catholic Register (November 14, 2016), available online at www.ncregister. com. The authors of the dubia are Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra, and Joachim Meisner. 15  Ross Douthat, To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018), 143. 16  See “Full Text and Explanatory Notes.” 17  Douthat, To Change the Church, 145. 18  James Martin, SJ, “Fr. James Martin Answers 5 Common Questions about ‘Silence’,” America (January 18, 2017), available online at www.americamagazine.org.



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i­ndefinitely. He wants to take the weight of the impossible choice, for his yoke is easy and his burden light.19

As the tone of that restatement – and especially its last two sentences – suggests, the reader is not supposed to nod in agreement, unless it is agreement over the scandalous heresy of “theories now current in the Vatican,” which we are told further “The Jesuits from the era in which Scorsese’s Silence is set, the men who either died for the faith or apostatized only under the most horrible of torture, would not recognize….”20 Let us postpone judgment one way or the other. If we can look beyond the polemics and proliferating accusations of heresy,21 the controversies over Amoris laetitia and Silence raise substantive ethical and ecclesiological questions – questions that, like those raised by Humanae vitae, are ethical and ecclesiological at once. To begin with, what does fidelity to Jesus require in the circumstances under consideration? According to a scholar of East Asian literature and culture, commenting on Endo’s Silence, to believe that “it is possible to stay in a relationship with [Christ] while … severing oneself from the Catholic Church,” as the act of apostasy does, “presumes a Protestant ecclesiology” that no longer understands the church as Christ’s mystical body.22 Whatever we are to make of that claim – in its context, the discussion of ecclesiology, Catholic or Protestant, goes no further – it illustrates the interweaving of ethics and ecclesiology that this chapter takes as its theme. I.  Doubts about the Dubia Let us examine first the cardinals’ dubia. How do ethics and ecclesiology intersect here, and how might Jesus’ words and acts bear on this controversy? The dubia concern sections 300-305 in chapter 8 of Amoris laetitia. Here are the three dubia (the second, fourth, and fifth) that invoke Veritatis splendor and raise questions of ethical theory. To quote: • After the publication of the post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia (304), does one still need to regard as valid the teaching of St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor, 79, based on sacred

 Douthat, To Change the Church, 174-175.  Ibid., 181. 21  See further the “Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church” (April 2019), available online at ncregister.com. 22  Kevin M. Doak, “Before Silence: Stumbling along with Rodrigues and Kichijiro,” in Approaching Silence, ed. Dennis and Middleton, 3-23, at 10. 19

20

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Scripture and on the Tradition of the Church, on the existence of absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts and that are binding without exceptions? • After the affirmations of Amoris Laetitia (302) on “circumstances which mitigate moral responsibility,” does one still need to regard as valid the teaching of St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor, 81, based on sacred Scripture and on the Tradition of the Church, according to which “circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act ‘subjectively’ good or defensible as a choice”?23 • After Amoris Laetitia (303), does one still need to regard as valid the teaching of St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor, 56, based on sacred Scripture and on the Tradition of the Church, that excludes a creative interpretation of the role of conscience and that emphasizes that conscience can never be authorized to legitimate exceptions to absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts by virtue of their object?24

And here are the corresponding passages in Amoris laetitia. Quoting again (citations omitted): • 304. It is reductive simply to consider whether or not an individual’s actions correspond to a general law or rule, because that is not enough to discern and ensure full fidelity to God in the concrete life of a human being…. It is true that general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations….25 • 302. [In light of the many factors or circumstances that, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, mitigate moral responsibility] a negative judgment about an objective situation does not imply a judgment about the imputability or culpability of the person involved. On the basis of these convictions, I consider very fitting what many Synod Fathers wanted to affirm: “Under certain circumstances people find it very difficult to act differently. Therefore, while upholding a general rule, it is necessary to recognize that responsibility with respect to certain actions or decisions is not the same in all cases….”

23  See Pope John Paul II, Veritatis splendor (August 6, 1993), 81 (hereafter cited in text as VS), http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_ enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html. 24  “Full Text and Explanatory Notes.” 25  I omit here Pope Francis’s quotation of Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 94, a. 4. See, for discussion of the Pope’s interpretation of Aquinas here, Kevin L. Flannery, SJ, “Rule of Law and the Virtue of Justice: Plato’s Crito and a Pair of Later Moral Issues,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 90 (2016): 1-19, at 10-11.



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• 303. Recognizing the influence of [factors that mitigate moral responsibility], we can add that individual conscience needs to be better incorporated into the Church’s praxis in certain situations which do not objectively embody our understanding of marriage. Naturally, every effort should be made to encourage the development of an enlightened conscience, formed and guided by the responsible and serious discernment of one’s pastor, and to encourage an ever greater trust in God’s grace. Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal. In any event, let us recall that this discernment is dynamic; it must remain ever open to new stages of growth and to new decisions which can enable the ideal to be more fully realized.26

One can understand why the cardinals’ dubia may have vexed Pope Francis and led him to choose not to respond. Does section 304 deny “the existence of absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts and that are binding without exceptions” (which Veritatis splendor affirms in sections 79-80)? It is a starting point of Catholic ethical thought that some acts can never be anything other than evil or base.27 They are, in other words, wrong in themselves, never to be made right or good by circumstances or consequences. And so they should not be done.28 Aristotle gives the examples of adultery, stealing, and murder: “There is … never any possibility of getting anything right about them, but one always goes astray, nor is there doing anything well or not well about such things [say] by committing adultery with the right woman and when and in the way one ought, but simply doing any of these 26  Pope Francis, Amoris laetitia (March 19, 2016), 304, 302, 303 (hereafter cited in text as AL), https://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en.pdf. The Latin text has been published in Acta Apostolicae Sedis 108, no. 4 (2016): 311-446. 27  I draw here from my Catholic Moral Philosophy in Practice and Theory: An Introduction (New York: Paulist Press, 2016), 46. 28  It is worth noting, however, both that calling an act intrinsically evil “does not, by itself, say anything about the comparative gravity (or seriousness) of the act” and that recognizing that an act is intrinsically evil “does not necessarily mean that it is a grave evil.” See Cathleen Kaveny, “Intrinsic Evil and Political Responsibility: Is the Concept of Intrinsic Evil Helpful to the Catholic Voter?,” in Voting and Holiness: Catholic Perspectives on Political Participation, ed. Nicholas P. Cafardi (New York: Paulist Press, 2012), 126-134, at 127 and 129.

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things is to go wrong.”29 It is hard to see section 304 of Amoris laetitia as suggesting that, to use the same example, adultery might be permissible in some circumstances. What section 304 does suggest is that a general rule or principle might not quite match up with, and so might not quite apply to, a situation at hand, even despite appearances to the contrary. These are situations in which, it has been recognized from Plato and Aristotle to Aquinas, epieikeia or “reasonableness” is needed to “correct” the legally just, which is to say to ensure that a law, rule, or principle is properly applied, taking into account both the intention of the law or lawgiver and the circumstances that make application of the law, rule, or principle inappropriate as it is formulated.30 With respect to section 302 of Amoris laetitia, it is again difficult to see the text as denying what Veritatis splendor affirms, in this instance that “circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act ‘subjectively’ good or defensible as a choice” (VS 81). Amoris laetitia focuses here on “the imputability or culpability of the person involved.” Veritatis splendor itself affirms, likewise in section 81, that “a good intention or particular circumstances can diminish [the] evil” of intrinsically evil acts. The encyclical goes on to say that intention or circumstances “cannot remove” this evil, but then the apostolic exhortation, too, does not claim that the “objective situation” is changed by intention or circumstances. Invincible ignorance or extreme duress, for example, does serve as a defense against culpability, but this does not lead us to think that the act in question should be commended as what a virtuous person, not acting under invincible ignorance or extreme duress, would choose to do. If there is a text here that needs clarification, it is Veritatis splendor, inasmuch as it appears to fail to recognize that an act for which a person is not culpable is precisely “defensible as a choice” under the circumstances, but only under the circumstances. Finally, the point of section 303 of Amoris laetitia appears to be, not that a person may be permitted “to do in practice and in good conscience what is qualified as intrinsically evil by the moral law,” as section 56 of Veritatis splendor denies, but that God speaks to us, through conscience, even within the enveloping sinfulness of our world and lives. Accordingly, through examination of conscience, a person may come to recognize that 29  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2002), bk. 2, ch. 6, p. 30, 1107a. 30  See Flannery, “Rule of Law and the Virtue of Justice,” 9-11.



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God’s grace and mercy are alive within her life and are calling her, “amid the concrete complexity of [her] limits,” to make “new decisions” with what Pope Francis calls “a certain moral security.” In light of the Gospel, this claim really should not be surprising, though there is certainly reason to consider the reality of which it speaks amazing. So much for the dubia. Reflection on the first of the three quoted above, however, does raise an interesting and substantive question. In brief, does it make sense to say that a person who is divorced and remarried commits adultery against his first spouse when having sexual relations with his new spouse?31 Is ‘adultery’ the correct description for what the divorced and remarried person is doing here? Each sexual act in the second marriage might be seen as an ongoing and accumulating betrayal of the first marriage (in a word, adultery even years later), or the first marriage might be considered dissolved by the divorce and all the more the second marriage, with the consequence that it would make no sense to describe the sexual acts of the second marriage as adultery.32 If there is reason, as there appears to be, to wonder whether the general rule against adultery properly applies to such a situation, then the Roman Catholic, and the Roman Catholic Church, must consider closely Jesus’ teaching regarding divorce and remarriage, since after all Jesus, as the Word made flesh, is the supreme lawgiver for the church.33 The principal question to ask is: What was the purpose of Jesus’ prohibition of divorce and remarriage? To address this question, we can discern both from the relevant scriptural passages and what, more generally, Jesus revealed to us about the nature of God.34 Here, Cardinal Walter Kasper’s work on mercy, so close to the heart of Pope Francis, becomes crucial.35 If mercy is “the essence of the Gospel and the key to Christian life” – the subtitle of Kasper’s book Mercy – and even “the fulfillment of justice” and the very “expression of [God’s] divine essence,”36 perhaps  I paraphrase here Cathleen Kaveny, Ethics at the Edges of Law: Christian Moralists and American Legal Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), chapter 8, “Second Chances and Statutes of Limitations: Engaging Walter Kasper,” 191-212, at 198. 32  I again paraphrase Kaveny, Ethics at the Edges of Law, 206. 33  Ibid. 34  Ibid., 207. See, for an excellent discussion of the scriptural passages and their interpretation in the church’s early centuries, David Bentley Hart, “Divorce, Annulment, and Communion,” Commonweal (September, 2019): 24-29. 35  Compare Francis’s bull Misericordiae vultus (April 11, 2015), which the exhortation Gaudete et exsultate (March 19, 2018) reiterates. 36  Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life, trans. William Madges (New York: Paulist Press, 2014), 23, 51. 31

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there is a good argument to be made that the parties to a failed first marriage should be able to repent of the harms that they did to one another “and move on to fulfill the new responsibilities of their second marriage” with the help of the sacrament of the Eucharist,37 as the muchdiscussed note 351 in section 305 of Amoris laetitia suggests. Others, especially Cathleen Kaveny, from whom the last two paragraphs draw liberally, have developed such an argument already; readers should go to her for it. Though he no doubt has his reasons, it might be wished that Pope Francis would break his silence vis-à-vis the dubia and speak more forthrightly than Amoris laetitia does. Yet it could be that a reason for his reticence is his ecclesiology. As other have noted, a central paradox of Francis’s papacy is that he is using its power to try to decentralize power. What some decry as unholy chaos – the divorced and remarried may receive the Eucharist freely in San Diego, under the guidance of a priest-confessor in Rome and Buenos Aires, but only with annulments in Philadelphia and Krakow!38 – Francis seems to want to encourage. Prusak notes that “The words of Vatican II,” in such documents as Lumen gentium (1964) and Christus dominus (1965), “reveal a restored appreciation of the local church.” He goes on to remark, writing early in the papacy of John Paul II, that “Whether such is the case in practice may be open to question.”39 Pope Francis seems to want to put the ancient “theology of the local church,” as Prusak calls it, into practice. On this understanding, “Catholicity is unity in diversity,”40 and that unity is rooted in and effected by participation in the Eucharist rather than citizenship, so to speak, in a universal juridical organization, headed by the pope, called the Roman Catholic Church – the Corpus Christi juridicum that, as Prusak observes, many came to see as “the essential aspect of the Church” over the course of the second millennium.41 There is a clear problem, however, with allowing diversity in the criteria for reception of the Eucharist: if the unity of the church is rooted in and effected by participation in the Eucharist, when some are welcomed to the table of the Lord here, but not there, diversity undermines  Kaveny, Ethics at the Edges of Law, 210.  See Douthat, To Change the Church, 135. 39  Bernard P. Prusak, “The Theology of the Local Church in Historical Development,” in Proceedings of the Catholic Theology Association of America Annual Convention, vol. 35 (Bronx, NY: Catholic Theological Society of America, 1980), 287-308, at 308. 40  Ibid. 41  Ibid., 307. See also 296-297 and compare The Church Unfinished, 230-232. 37 38



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unity – which is just when the church needs Peter to intervene. Perhaps Pope Francis, holding as he does that “time is greater than space,” is playing here a long game, trusting that “initiating processes” will prove more successful than “possessing spaces” (i.e., occupying all positions of power and thereby seeking to eliminate all opposition).42 In the meantime, the church, as the body of Christ, must bear its wounds through its pilgrim journey on earth. The field hospital, as Francis presents the church,43 needs healing itself. II.  From Silence to Silence and Back Again The controversy over Endo’s novel and Scorsese’s film played out within the context of the controversy over Amoris laetitia. Accordingly, here again ethics and ecclesiology intersect, and here again it makes sense to consider the bearing of Jesus’ words and acts. The historical period in which Silence is set was a time of trauma for the church in Japan. Christian missionaries, notably Francis Xavier, one of the founders of the Jesuits, arrived in Japan in 1549. Nurtured by, among others, a supply of Portuguese Jesuits, the numbers of Japanese Christians grew rapidly, to an estimated 150,000 by 1579, 200,000 by 1591, and 300,000 by 1614, in a total population of about twenty million.44 That same year, however, the Japanese shogunate, which had at last unified Japan at the beginning of the seventeenth century, ordered all missionaries out of the country and outlawed the practice of Christianity, a decision that had been foreshadowed by the crucifixion of twenty-six Japanese and European Christians in Nagasaki in 1597. A ruthless and brutal persecution began with the goal of eliminating Christianity from Japan. (The shogunate feared Christianization as a forerunner to colonization.45) Christians who refused to apostatize, often by stepping on a fumie or image of Jesus or Mary, were tortured and 42  Pope Francis, Evangelii gaudium (November 24, 2013), 223, http://w2.vatican.va/ content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html. See also 49, 95. 43  See Pope Francis, “A Big Heart Open to God,” interview by Antonio Spadaro, SJ, trans. Massimo Faggioli et al., America (September 30, 2013): 15-38, at 24. 44  See William Johnston, “Translator’s Preface” to Shusaku Endo, Silence, trans. William Johnston (New York: Taplinger, 1969), vii-xviii, at viii, ix, x. 45  See Charles R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1951), 308, on “[t]he potential menace of a Christian ‘fifth column’.”

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e­ xecuted in increasingly painful and prolonged ways, including suspension upside down, with a slit cut in the temple or forehead, in a pit filled with excrement and other filth.46 After the edict of expulsion, most European missionaries departed for China and Manila, but a number went underground.47 No European missionaries were executed until 1617,48 and it was not until 1626 that they were regularly hunted down.49 Further, not one apostatized until 1633, but it was an important figure who finally succumbed under the torture of ‘the pit’: Christovao Ferreira, a Portuguese Jesuit who, as the Jesuit vice-provincial for Japan, was the acknowledged leader of the mission.50 In 1634, his successor as vice-provincial ‘atoned’ for his apostasy by dying in the pit,51 but from that point the record is mixed, with some missionaries triumphantly dying as martyrs, others apostatizing under torture. One who apostatized was the Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Chiara, who entered Japan in 1643. Like Ferreira, after his apostasy Chiara was given a Japanese name and wife and made to testify against Christianity, admitting for example that, according to it, killing is not murder when the killer is a Christian and the victim a heathen.52 Though Chiara recanted his apostasy and Chinese sailors claimed that Ferreira did as well,53 church authorities in Europe had seen enough and stopped sending missionaries to Japan. Silence opens against this historical background: “News reached the Church in Rome. Christovao Ferreria … had apostatized.”54 Ferreira figures as an important character in Endo’s novel (as he does in Scorsese’s film), and the novel’s protagonist, Sebastian Rodrigues, is based on Chiara, though Endo makes Rodrigues a Portuguese Jesuit, among other discrepancies with the historical record. In the novel, Rodrigues and two other Portuguese Jesuits, all former students of Ferreira, cannot believe that “their much admired teacher…, faced with the possibility of a glorious martyrdom, had grovelled like a dog before the infidel,”55 and so  See Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 353; Johnston, “Translator’s Preface,” xii; and Doris Yu, “‘Silence’: The True Story of the Jesuits in Japan,” December 22, 2016, available online at www.jesuits.org. Yu’s article is accompanied by images of fumie. 47  See Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 327-328. 48  Ibid., 332. 49  Ibid., 343. 50  Ibid., 390. 51  Ibid. 52  Ibid., 394. 53  Johnston, “Translator’s Preface,” xiii. 54  Endo, Silence, 3. 55  Ibid., 8. 46



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they seek and eventually receive permission to go to Japan in order to investigate what had really happened, secure in the faith that they would not apostatize themselves. One of the three becomes sick and has to cut his journey short, but Rodrigues and the other Jesuit, Francisco Garrpe, make it under cover of night to Japan, under the care of a Japanese man they met in Macao, the very untrustworthy Kichijiro. It does not take long before Rodrigues and Garrpe regret having come to Japan. Through Kichijiro, they meet with and minister to a small Christian community, who hide the priests in a hut in the hills outside the village. Emboldened by this initial success, Rodrigues even journeys to a second Christian community, where he stays a week, baptizing children, hearing confessions, and saying the Mass. But the priests are soon betrayed: an unnamed informer tells the authorities that there are Christians in the village, and the authorities instruct the villagers to send three men to the magistrate’s headquarters in Nagasaki for questioning. There, following the advice of Rodrigues, all three trample on a fumie of the Virgin and Child, but the authorities then require that they also spit on a crucifix and declare the Virgin Mary a whore. Kichijiro, whom the villagers had suspected as the informer and selected as one of the three to send to Nagasaki, spits on the crucifix and blasphemes Mary, so is set free. The other two refuse and are taken back to the village, where they suffer an agonizing martyrdom, witnessed from afar by Rodrigues and Garrpe. Shaken, the priests decide to flee separately, on the grounds that “one priest remaining in this country has the same significance as a single candle burning in the catacombs.”56 As that quotation suggests, though the priests are shaken, in particular by the silence of God while the villagers suffered and died, their self-regard remains high. Rodrigues tells himself: “You and Garrpe are probably the only priests in this whole country. If you die, the Japanese church dies with you. You and Garrpe must live, no matter how great the injustices and sufferings that this life entails.”57 Shortly after fleeing, Rodrigues again encounters Kichijiro, who shortly thereafter betrays him again: Rodrigues is taken into custody and imprisoned, with a number of Japanese Christians, outside Nagasaki. Garrpe, too, is captured, but Rodrigues never learns how and the two never reunite. Instead, Rodrigues watches from afar as Garrpe is martyred with three Japanese Christians. Rodrigues’s own trial follows his first encounter with Ferreira, who is living under guard in Nagasaki.  Endo, Silence, 61.  Ibid., 72.

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After this encounter, Rodrigues expects to be tortured in the pit, and tortured he was, but not as he had expected. Not far from his cell, within earshot, three Japanese Christians are subject to the pit. Ferreira is brought to see Rodrigues and to lead him to apostatize. If he does, the three will be spared. Ferreira tells Rodrigues that “A priest ought to live in imitation of Christ” and that, if he were here, Christ would apostatize for the three Japanese Christians.58 Taking a broken Rodrigues by the shoulder, Ferreira says further that “You are now going to perform the most painful act of love that has ever been performed”:59 Rodrigues is going to trample on a fumie of the face of Christ, a face that Rodrigues has contemplated throughout the novel. And so Rodrigues does: The priest raises his foot. In it he feels a dull, heavy pain. This is no mere formality. He will now trample on what he has considered the most beautiful thing in his life, on what he has believed most pure, on what is filled with the ideals and the dreams of man. How his foot aches. And then the Christ in bronze speaks to the priest: “Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.”60

The text goes on: “The priest placed his foot on the fumie. Dawn broke. And far in the distance a cock crew,”61 as one did after Peter thrice denied Jesus (Mark 14:72; Matt 26:74; Luke 22:60; John 18:27). What are we to make of this moment? Some commentators deny that the voice could be Christ’s and claim that it must be interpreted as “the voice of Satan tempting Rodrigues to imagine that by betraying his Lord he will be serving him.”62 For “it is not Christ who leads one into sin.”63 Others, including Scorsese, see Rodrigues as here “giving up his faith to gain his faith.”64 From this point of view, Rodrigues’s apostasy is an expression of “the self-effacing ethic of the cross.”65 The novel does not end with Rodrigues’s apostasy. In its aftermath, Rodrigues himself wonders “if all this talk about love is not, after all, just  Endo, Silence, 169.  Ibid., 170. 60  Ibid., 171. 61  Ibid. 62  Daniel McInerney, “The Sinister Theology of Endo’s Silence,” The Catholic Thing (July 14, 2014), available online at www.thecatholicthing.org. Compare Doak, “Before Silence,” 10-11. 63  Doak, “Before Silence,” 12. 64  Scorsese, interview with Rand Richards Cooper. 65  Mark Bosco, SJ, “Charting Endo’s Literary Aesthetic,” in Approaching Silence, ed. Dennis and Middleton, 77-92, at 89. 58

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an excuse to justify my weakness,”66 and Inoue, the magistrate who is Rodrigues’s diabolical tormentor, later suggests to Rodrigues that Christ could not have told him to trample on the fumie: “[I]sn’t this just your self-deception? just a cloak of your weakness? I, Inoue, cannot believe that these are truly Christian words.”67 Yet Rodrigues holds onto his faith, which was somehow vouchsafed for him by an experience “he could not understand,” namely, “the tremendous onrush of joy that came over him,” paradoxically, at the moment he trampled on what was most precious to him.68 The novel ends with Rodrigues affirming that “Our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of him.”69 Scorsese ends his film with a similar affirmation: in Rodrigues’s Buddhist funeral rite, as the body is about to be consumed by flames, we see that Rodrigues holds in his hands a rudimentary crucifix, secretly placed there by his Japanese wife, who we are invited to speculate has perhaps converted to Christianity through her relationship with him. Though Endo wrote a novel rather than a tome of theology, it seems right to say that the novel’s ending gestures toward a theology of the cross. Reflection on Rodrigues’s torture suggests how. Torture, the philosopher David Sussman has argued, “forces its victim into the position of colluding against himself through his own affects and emotions, so that he experiences himself as simultaneously powerless and yet actively complicit in his own violation.”70 In the pit, for example, the victim’s own body is enlisted against him: its pain is the instrument of “a kind of self-betrayal,” raising the unanswerable question for the victim who is broken by torture whether he was broken against his will, or whether, heeding his body’s voiceless, insistent demand that the pain cease, he himself willed release from the pain out of weakness.71 Sussman notes that it is not surprising, against this background, that “victims of torture typically suffer a kind of profound alienation from their own affective and emotional lives,” which after all have been turned against them, made to collude with the will of their tormentor.72 Rodrigues’s story shows that it is not only the body that is  Endo, Silence, 175.  Ibid., 187. 68  Ibid., 190. 69  Ibid., 191. 70  David Sussman, “What’s Wrong with Torture?,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 33 (2005): 1-33, at 4. 71  Ibid., 21-22. 72  Ibid., 24, n. 33. 66 67

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vulnerable to the manipulations of torture. Deeply-held beliefs and loves are likewise vulnerable. When Ferreira, doing Inoue’s will, tells Rodrigues that “A priest ought to live in imitation of Christ” and that Christ would apostatize for the Japanese Christians, what else is Ferreira doing but turning Rodrigues’s Christianity against itself, mobilizing his faith to deny his faith? No wonder Rodrigues is broken. As the theologian William Cavanaugh observes, Rodrigues suffers a crucifixion of the soul, sacrificing his moral integrity for his moral integrity, or in Scorsese’s formulation his faith for his faith.73 And the cock crows to mark his betrayal, which is of himself just as much as it is of Christ. Yet it is significant that Endo has Rodrigues testify to an experience “he could not understand,” that “tremendous onrush of joy that came over him” at the moment he trampled on the fumie. And God speaks to him, not only in the confused moment before he tramples on the fumie, but according to Rodrigues in the life that he goes on to live. Rodrigues is not crushed by his crucifixion, but experiences a resurgence of life in and through it. He is, we might say, resurrected from the dead, as the remainder of the novel suggests. God’s mercy catches him up. It appears that God truly is a God not of the dead, but of the living (Mark 12:27; Matt 22:32; Luke 20:38).74 Some commentators find Endo’s implicit theology of the cross intolerable; one terms it “sinister.”75 If apostasy is an intrinsic evil, which is to say that there is never any possibility of getting it right, say by committing it when and in the way one ought (as Aristotle says there is no possibility of doing with adultery), Endo does appear to have a lot of explaining to do. Further, there seems to be little point in disputing that Rodrigues does commit apostasy: that is the ‘object’ of his act, whatever his ulterior intention (such as saving others from suffering),76 and Pope 73  William T. Cavanaugh, “The God of Silence: Shusaku Endo’s Reading of the Passion,” Commonweal (March 13, 1998): 10-12, at 12. 74  See Kasper, Mercy, 55-56. 75  McInerney, “The Sinister Theology of Endo’s Silence.” 76  See further my Catholic Moral Philosophy in Practice and Theory, 59-63, arguing that it is a mistake to reduce the object of an act to what is physically done – John Paul II is right in Veritatis splendor that “the object of a given moral act” is not just “a process or an event of the merely physical order” (78) – but it is equally a mistake to reduce the object of an act to what the agent proposes to do, as if the specification of the object depended solely on the agent’s purpose. I disagree here with advocates of the so-called new natural law, such as Christopher Tollefsen in his paper, “Is a Purely First Person Account of Human Action Defensible?,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (2006): 441-460. See also Steven J. Jensen, “Getting Inside the Acting Person,” International Philosophical Quarterly 50 (2010): 461-471.



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John Paul II speaks for the Catholic tradition when he claims, in a passage in Veritatis splendor quoted by the authors of the dubia, that “intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act ‘subjectively’ good” (VS 81).77 But is Endo trying to suggest that apostasy is ethically permissible? Is he making an ethical argument that Rodrigues did no wrong, or at least that his choice was defensible in the circumstances? That seems to be a misreading of the text – an imposition motivated, perhaps, by the surrounding controversy over Amoris laetitia. As another commentator observes, “At no point does Endo condone or equate apostasy with the ‘new normal’. Rather, he concentrates on an understanding of Christian faith marked by suffering and divine mercy.”78 From this point of view, the focus belongs not on what Rodrigues did, but on what God does for him. What Rodrigues experiences after his act of apostasy is overwhelming, overflowing mercy. This reading of the novel has ecclesiological implications of its own. If God’s mercy is so indomitable, repeatedly creating new space for renewed life79 – if God, as Prusak writes, “is most essentially a fullness which gives itself away, empties itself, but always has just as much to give”80 – what ecclesiology could be adequate to God’s church? How to understand the church if the church is to be the sacrament of Christ and what Christ reveals about God is that? The answer certainly is not what Prusak calls, in a paper on the relations between Rome and the Eastern Churches with which it is in communion, “a Western ecclesiology which is greatly concerned with regulation and control.”81 Whatever else there is to say about Endo’s theology of the cross, it must scandalize those who 77  As an aside, the so-called principle of double effect does not speak against this claim. To recall, the ‘object’ of the action with secondary, unintended effects must not itself be evil. In other words, as James J. Murphy, SJ, has noted, “the evil effect must not arise from the act-type but only from the act-token taking place in a particular context.” See his paper “The Principle of Double Effect: Act-Types and Intentions,” International Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2013): 189-205, at 201. 78  M. Antoni J. Ucerler, SJ, “Martin Scorsese Brings ‘Silence’ to the Big Screen: A Story of Faith and Betrayal in 17th-Century Japan,” HuffPost (December 25, 2016), available online at www.huffingtonpost.com. 79  Kasper, Mercy, 45. 80  Bernard P. Prusak, “Changing Concepts of God and Their Repercussions in Christology,” in Does ]esus Make a Difference? Proceedings of the College Theology Society, ed. Thomas M. McFadden (New York: Seabury Press, 1974), 56-78, at 70. See also The Church Unfinished, 11. 81  Bernard P. Prusak, “The Roman Patriarch and the Eastern Churches: The Question of Autonomy in Communion, Part Two,” American Ecclesiastical Review 166, no. 10 (1972): 687-697, at 694. Part One appeared in American Ecclesiastical Review 166, no. 9 (1972): 627-643.

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make good standing in the eyes of the Catholic Church a necessary condition of a relationship with Christ.82 For Endo, God’s mercy is wilder and more creative. If there is a lesson here for the controversy over Amoris laetitia, it is admonitory: Beware of presuming to separate, in biblical imagery, the tares and the wheat (Matt 13:24-30)! This lesson’s implications for practices and policies require time to discern and implement, as Pope Francis might want to reiterate, with his dedication to the principle that “time is greater than space.” Jesus, of course, repeatedly welcomed outcasts and sinners, from lepers to tax collectors to prostitutes. These figure among Jesus’ “‘words and acts’ [that] had special impact upon the tradition,” to quote Prusak again,83 and that must then guide its development. The upshot is that, while Jesus’ yoke may be easy, it evidently keeps the church on a rigorous path. For mercy is an exacting discipline. Consider, in conclusion, another striking example: the mercy Jesus extends to a woman caught unambiguously in the act of adultery (John 8:3-11).84 After silencing her accusers with his own silent scribbling on the ground and his invitation that those without sin throw the first stone, he does not condemn her, but tells her to go and sin no more. Mercy evidently does not mean: ‘anything goes’. It calls for conversion. But note that it also does not mean condemnation, despite what Leviticus and Deuteronomy prescribe in the circumstances. Against the letter of the law, Jesus’ mercy is an invitation to new life. Pope Francis’s accusers are greatly concerned with regulation and control. Imagine them bringing before him a woman or a man who is divorced and remarried without an annulment. She or he desires to participate in the Eucharist. What does mercy enjoin?

82  Compare Doak, “Before Silence,” 10. See Endo, Silence, 191: “No doubt his fellow priests would condemn his act [of hearing Kichijiro’s confession and granting him absolution] as sacrilege; but even if he was betraying them, he was not betraying his Lord.” 83  Prusak, “The Son of Man Came Eating and Drinking,” 38. See also The Church Unfinished, 23-28, on Jesus’ inclusion of the excluded. 84  It has long been questioned whether this story belongs properly in John. It does not appear in all manuscripts of John, and it appears in some manuscripts of Luke after 21:38.

Bernard P. Prusak’s The Church Unfinished Revisited Responding to Unanswered Questions Dennis M. Doyle In 2004, Bernard P. Prusak published a book, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries, which focused on the theme of change in the church, especially in regard to how the church has been understood throughout the centuries.1 I have used this book in my undergraduate teaching and found it to be a valuable educational tool. Prusak demonstrated and documented how ecclesial self-understanding has changed as new situations and challenges arose. The study of the church’s past, he claimed, is the study of people who kept the church alive by adapting and improvising. The thematic trajectory of the book builds toward the conclusion that history shows that church leaders faced with new situations and challenges today can make appropriate changes. In 2006, as part of a review symposium in Horizons, I gave an overview of the main themes of the book.2 I also raised a few questions at the end of my review. I can see in retrospect that my questions were expressed in a confusing manner that did not reflect my true concerns. Prusak responded to my questions rather dismissively. This chapter gives me the opportunity to do three things. First, I can elaborate on the nature of my questions and the specific language used in their formulation. Second, and using some of the positions that I address in the classroom concerning the founding of the church and the ordination of women, I can clarify and deepen the concerns that I had intended to raise at that time in a more extended manner and with a different tone. Third, and in conclusion, I can try to address my own questions and concerns in the light of the preceding analysis and the church today. But first I will offer a few remarks on change and development in the life of the church. 1  Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004). 2  Dennis M. Doyle, Susan K. Wood, Paul Lakeland, Francine Cardman, and Bernard P. Prusak, “Review Symposium: The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries,” Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society 33, no. 2 (2006): 333-353.

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Prusak’s book addressed relevant ecclesiological issues. Questions concerning how Christians might think of themselves as ‘church’ and as coming ‘from Jesus’ have played a central role in the often-polarized debates that have characterized discussions among Catholic theologians in the long wake of the Second Vatican Council.3 Such questions are often connected with discussion of change within the church. There were changes in the liturgy, the status of lay people, appreciating the modern world, valuing diverse cultures, ecumenical attitudes, and the degree of acceptance toward other world religions. In the midst of so many changes, how can churches claim continuity with the person and work of Jesus Christ? Most Catholic theologians today accept some version of the concept of doctrinal development. There are still debates, however, concerning the meaning of ‘development’ and how far the concept might be taken.4 In other words, even though most theologians acknowledge that significant changes in church doctrine, practice, and self-understanding have occurred and will continue to occur, resistance to change remains a major issue in theological debate today. Some raise questions concerning which church structures can be considered de jure divino, that is, of divine origin.5 Others sound alarms about whether, in the midst of so many changes, the focus on Christ has been damaged or lost and replaced by secular concerns. I.  Unanswered Questions from a Book Review In my review of Prusak’s The Church Unfinished, I had offered muchdeserved, high praise. In conclusion, in accordance with my charge as the lead-off reviewer, I briefly raised a few questions: I ask Professor Prusak if I am correct to interpret him as implying that those who are reluctant to make bold new decisions are either afraid of change or ignorant of history. Are there some Catholics who neither fear change nor ignore history but who would still oppose his

3  See Massimo Faggioli, Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2012). 4  Two significant works that address doctrinal development are John E. Thiel, Senses of Tradition: Continuity and Development in Christian Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) and Terrence W. Tilley, Inventing Catholic Tradition, reprint edn. (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011). 5  Susan K. Wood, “Continuity and Change in Roman Catholic Ecclesiology,” Ecclesiology 7, no. 2 (2011): 147-172, at 148.

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emphasis on newness and the liberal agenda it implies? By putting so much effort into counseling the fearful and enlightening the ignorant, does he avoid wrestling with alternative historical narratives and counter-arguments of intelligent scholars who offer a more negative assessment of the state of modern culture and the need to adapt to it?6

Although Prusak strongly endorsed the accuracy of the overview of his book that I had previously given, he directly denied the implications of the closing questions that I had raised: In response, I wish to affirm that my book nowhere claims to counsel the fearful or enlighten the ignorant. It is my hope that a book that takes seriously the sweep of Christian history and tradition can resist being labeled as simply having a liberal agenda. The irenicism of my book, noted by reviewers in this and other journals, intended to leave room for and invite consideration and discussion. The call for openness to newness and possibility in the future of the church is not the expression of “a liberal agenda”; it arises out of my hope and love for the church.7

Prusak went on to deny that his book advocates adaptation to contemporary culture. Looking back now fifteen years later, I have, to say the least, mixed feelings about the way in which I had phrased my questions. I was trying to get at something, but I see now that what I wrote could easily be interpreted as a kind of attack. Such had not been my intention. Although my questions probably sounded to some as though they were coming from a traditionalist griping about change in the church, I was actually speaking as someone who considers himself to be a centrist whose main enemy is polarization. My own experience and analysis of church polarization reflects a US Catholic context, and my pet peeves at the time were not particularly aimed at Prusak but constituted a general complaint that scholars at all points on the spectrum seemed to avoid two things: (1) clearly placing and contextualizing their own positions within the reasonable range of existing scholarly positions, and (2) trying to engage explicitly and even as sympathetically as possible the positions of those with whom they disagree. When teaching ecclesiology classes, I had found that the authors I assigned representing contrasting viewpoints argued for their positions without a lot of deep comparison and contrast with other views. It was  Doyle, “Review Symposium,” 335.  Prusak, “Review Symposium,” 350.

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probably unrealistic of me to think that the situation should be otherwise. Perhaps it is the job of teachers to motivate their students to think critically and to engage in such comparisons and contrasts of ideas themselves. I was concerned, though, that authors are very good at selling their own point of view to students who lack the ability on their own to sort out where that author might stand in relation to contrary positions on the subject. Many scholars reject the language of centrist, right, left, conservative, liberal, traditional, etc. There are good reasons to do so. These categories are of a political origin, and can become misleading when they are applied uncritically in an ecclesial context. Also, very few people fit easily into one box, and so the use of such labels is often inaccurate. Moreover, the factors that underlie suppositions about what is contained in any box are quite numerous and complex; for someone to explain what they actually mean by their labels could require pages of explanation. My unspecified use of the label ‘liberal’ was fair game for Prusak to interpret as implying a modern bias against tradition and thus for him reasonably to deny that it could possibly apply to him. My apologies! If Prusak would accept any label at all, it would probably and rightfully be ‘centrist’, and an irenic centrist at that. I myself do not completely reject the use of labels and the image of a spectrum of positions. I believe that identifying a spectrum of positions – or, in this case, alternative rival positions – helps to fight against polarization by offering a range of options. Speaking of polarization is itself fraught with peril, especially when it ignores how many scholars strive to carve out more complex approaches that take seriously a wide scope of issues. Unfortunately, though, polarization is a phenomenon in today’s world, and the use of categories and labels serve a purpose. One must tread carefully when using such categories and be willing to make many qualifications and adjustments. Often the use of such terms becomes part of a manipulative shell game. Under which shell can the true center be found? As Richard McBrien wrote some years ago, in Catholic debates the center-left is often more truly centrist than the center-right.8 In my judgment, the polarization in Catholic theology today divides those who acknowledge change and continuity in a way that mainly promotes change from those who acknowledge change and continuity in a way that mainly resists further changes. These groups can loosely be called the left and the right. In that regard, Prusak is clearly on the left.  Richard P. McBrien, “Conflict in the Church: Redefining the Center,” America 167 (August 22, 1992): 78-81. 8



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In pointing that out, it is not my intention to be evaluative, only descriptive. Nor do I intend to deny that, when viewed against the background of other frames of reference, Prusak can be seen to be developing complex positions that address a wide scope of issues. A more appropriate theological way to describe Prusak’s approach would be to say that, in line with Vatican II, he is trying to achieve aggiornamento, and that his main path to aggiornamento is by way of ressourcement. In The Church Unfinished, when Prusak argues passionately that ecclesial change does and should continue to occur, his arguments ring in my ears as hymns of praise to divinely created freedom. He depicts those who are willing to change as those who make risky and bold decisions in accordance with human freedom and divine providence. He argues that a study of history will give one the knowledge that change is a constitutive dimension of tradition. In my review, I did not say that Prusak himself explicitly claimed to counsel the fearful and the ignorant. I was trying to assert that by so vigorously presenting the side of change as the side of the bold and the open-minded, he seemed to be implying that those resistant to change are, well, not the bold and the open-minded. I still do not like the way I phrased my remarks. I do not really think it would have been appropriate for Prusak to label explicitly his implied intellectual opponents in such a manner. To do so would have been less than irenic. What I was trying to say, as a college teacher, is that I had wished that Prusak would have presented more explicitly and engaged more deeply (while still respectfully) the positions and arguments of those who oppose his views. At that time, I was thinking especially of his overall position on the relationship between Jesus and the church as well as his support for further discussion regarding the ministry of women. In retrospect, I can see that Prusak did address those who hold opposing positons in a way that any professional theologian who focuses on ecclesiology would immediately recognize. In what follows, I will comparatively examine some of the positions that I address in my classroom concerning the founding of the church as well as the ordination of women to the priesthood.9 Then I will offer my own personal response to the questions that I had posed to Prusak in my book review. 9  I specify ‘ordination to the priesthood’ here in order to distinguish this question from ordination of women to the diaconate, a matter which is now being studied by a Vatican commission. For more on the topic, see Phyllis Zagano, ed., Women Deacons? Essays with Answers (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press/Michael Glazier, 2016).

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II.  Navigating Positions on the Founding of the Church and Ordination of Women 1. Boff, the CDF, and the Founding of the Church Prusak’s positions on the founding of the church have some points of overlap with the positions expressed by Leonardo Boff that had been censured by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) when led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.10 In Church: Charism and Power, Boff had laid out two clear alternatives: …one, more dogmatic, affirms the presence of the Church in the proclamation of the Kingdom and in Jesus’ dealings with the Twelve, such that it claims a certain continuity that overcomes the gap created by his death and the destruction of the first communities. The other trend, based on exegetical studies and with a more historical vision, tends to affirm that Jesus did not have in mind the Church as institution but rather that it evolved after the resurrection, particularly as part of the process of de-eschatologization.11

Perhaps ironically, Boff listed Ratzinger, Hans Küng, and himself as examples of theologians who follow the second alternative. Boff, who had studied under Ratzinger in Germany, was probably thinking of Ratzinger’s work prior to 1970. Both the CDF (when headed by Ratzinger) and Ratzinger as a private theologian have labeled Boff’s approach as a form of “ecclesiological relativism.” Ratzinger explained that ecclesiological relativism is: …the view that the “historical Jesus” himself did not think about a Church at all, still less found one. The concrete structure of the Church is said not to have developed until after the Resurrection, in the process of ridding Christianity of eschatology, through the more immediate sociological requirements of institutionalization….12

10  Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Notification on the Book, Church: Charism and Power, by Father Leonardo Boff, OFM” (March 11, 1985), http://www. vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19850311_notifboff_en.html. 11  Leonardo Boff, Church: Charism and Power, trans. John W. Diercksmeier (New York: Crossroad, 1985), 74. 12  Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “The Ecclesiology of the Constitution, Lumen Gentium,” in idem, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2005), 123-152, at 145.



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Both the CDF and Ratzinger saw the ‘relativism’ of Boff’s view as a logical consequence of his position that the church that Christ founded ‘subsists in’ a variety of Christian churches, not only the Catholic Church. What is at stake here, for Ratzinger, is precisely the question of what it means to say that the Catholic Church is fundamentally related to God. Where Boff saw a legitimate dialectic between Catholic and Protestant expressions of Christianity, Ratzinger emphasized that it is the Catholic Church that comes from God, is currently connected with God, and, as the seed of the kingdom of God, is eschatologically oriented toward God. Ratzinger acknowledges that elements of the church exist outside the confines of the Catholic Church, but adds that divisions within the church result from sin and present a paradox of a deficiency that cannot fully be explained by rational logic. According to Ratzinger, the Catholic Church is gifted with an essential unity and fullness that other churches and ecclesial communities lack. The church that Christ founded ‘subsists in’ the Catholic Church in a unique way that cannot be replicated elsewhere. There can be no fuller unity resulting from a dialectic between Catholic and Protestant manifestations of Christianity. For Ratzinger, differences regarding this ecumenical question are rooted in the yet deeper issue of the relationship between Jesus and the church. Although Ratzinger does not fully articulate all aspects of his own stance, one can deduce from his arguments that he rejects the dichotomy of the two alternatives presented by Boff. He proceeds as if one does not have to choose between one view that is more dogmatic and another view that is more historically oriented. As will be seen in the next subsection dealing with the ordination of women to the priesthood, Ratzinger does not blanketly reject historical-critical perspectives regarding Scripture and the early church, but he also notes that such perspectives themselves contain a strong speculative element. He rejects the notion that an existing scholarly consensus rules out any theological considerations regarding some degree of continuity between the intentions of Jesus and what actually developed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, even when it comes to institutional structures and concrete practices. 2. Prusak’s Distinct Position Relative to Boff and the CDF Prusak clearly distinguishes his own position on the relationship between Jesus and the church from that of Boff. He focuses on Boff’s view of the church as the sacrament of the Holy Spirit, not the s­acrament of the

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Incarnate Word.13 Boff held that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Risen, pneumatic Christ, the cosmic Christ. He made a strong distinction between the cosmic Christ and Jesus as the incarnate Word. With this distinction, Boff placed a particular emphasis on the disconnection between Jesus and the actual structures of the church that emerged postresurrection from the decisions of disciples under the guidance of the Holy Spirt as they faced new situations. In contrast, Prusak affirms the role of the Holy Spirit, but, in addition, he himself stresses that the church remains the sacrament of Jesus, the Incarnate Word: …the dynamic openness of the Church as institution can also be grounded in an understanding of Church as sacrament of Jesus – who emptied self and took on the form of a slave (Phil 2:6-8). It is a kenotic, flexible Church that is truly the persisting presence of the Incarnate Word in time and space. For if the humanity of Jesus was not a masquerade or a disguise, but the self-disclosure of the Word in a full human freedom, then it seems appropriate that the Word who “became” human has always been open to the need for change and adaptation within history. … The Church is likewise a sacrament in its humanity. Its limited and time-conditioned human ministry, open to the unexpected, continues the “way” of that Jesus who was an effective sign of God’s love in the struggle of human life.14

This difference between Prusak and Boff surfaces in their positions concerning whether and which church structures and practices can be considered de jure divino, that is, of divine origin, of divine law, things that cannot be discarded or fundamentally changed. Boff’s position seems to rule out the possibility that any institutional structures can truly be de jure divino. Catholicism develops various forms of mediation that have both identity and nonidentity with Christianity. However, Catholicism becomes pathological when it absolutizes the identity of these mediations and casts out the critical thinking that keeps alive the nonidentity.15 Prusak, in contrast, treats de jure divino in a more circumspect manner. He explains that Lumen gentium and Dei verbum treated the exact manner of divine institution as an open question, the latter document distinguishing between the words and deeds of Jesus and later post-­ resurrection developments.16 He acknowledges the appropriateness of 13  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 67. See also Leonardo Boff, Ecclesiogenesis: The Base Communities Reinvent the Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986), 58; Boff, Church: Charism and Power, 146-152. 14  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 68. 15  Boff, Church: Charism and Power, 84-86. 16  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 284.

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holding that the development of the mono-episkopos and the petrine ministry of the Bishop of Rome were “of God.”17 He asks further, however, whether there can still be new developments that are ‘of God’? In this sense, prior structural developments can be considered to be ‘of God’, but not in a way that rules out the possibility of significant new developments. Prusak advocates that contemporary church leaders and theologians should be careful about what they consider to be of divine origin and thus unchangeable: We must ask which dimensions of the ever-young Church are not predetermined and unchangeable, but have arisen from past decisions that God is patiently expecting us to reconsider. To that end, this book puts the present period of the Church in vast historical context.18

Prusak argues that current church leaders, by making needed changes, will stand in continuity with their predecessors, especially those in the early Christian centuries who, informed by the Holy Spirit, had to make decisions to guide the church through previously uncharted territory. Together with the Holy Spirit, they co-create the future. Prusak’s differences with Boff represent important theological points of qualification. Prusak avoids the radical dialecticalism that would render any talk at all of de jure divino as superfluous. Prusak’s distinctions express his own way of avoiding a strict dichotomy between the person of Christ and the Spirit-informed decisions that guided the development of the early church structures. Still, I am struck, in comparison with Ratzinger and the CDF, by how deep are the similarities between Prusak and Boff when it comes to the founding of the church. Both Prusak and Boff disconnect such structures from the conscious intentions of the historical Jesus. They both see the development of such structures as a post-Resurrection phenomenon. They both emphasize that the apostles had to make decisions in response to new situations as they arose. It is also true, and important to emphasize, that neither of them reduces the question of the founding of particular church structures to a merely sociological issue. They both treat the relationship between Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the decisions of apostles as first of all a theological matter. When it comes to Ratzinger and Prusak, I am also struck by how, despite their obvious differences, they are addressing the same basic set of questions. How can we think of ourselves as ‘church’ and as ‘from  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 64.  Ibid., 8.

17 18

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Jesus’? How and why does eschatology provide a key perspective for understanding the church? No matter what Prusak’s intentions were, The Church Unfinished can used in the classroom as providing an alternative view to the one being promoted by the CDF (and Ratzinger) at that time. This point is no more evident than in their contrasting approaches to the ordination of women to the priesthood. 3. The CDF and John Paul II on the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood Although John Paul II had declared that the ordination of women to the priesthood should not be considered an open question, Prusak predicted that the issue will continue to be debated and questioned by theologians. He rightly presents the main argument given by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and John Paul II as their denial that they have the authority to make the change.19 He adds: “The perspectives developed in this book suggest that a crucial element of that ongoing discussion should be an eschatological view of the Church open to the possibilities of a new future.”20 I have no complaints about the accuracy of what Prusak says. Prusak states that the main argument offered by the magisterium is that they cannot change the established church teaching. When it came to teaching in the classroom, however, I needed to flesh out for my students more about the Vatican’s position on ordaining women, including stated and possibly unstated reasons for their opposition to a change concerning the ordination of women to the priesthood, and then to draw out how specific positions taken by Prusak offer a stark alternative. What Prusak does not raise explicitly is the official claim that a male-only priesthood may have been intended by Christ. The basic claim put forth in the 1976 CDF document, Inter insigniores, is that the church does not have the authority to change the substance of the sacraments as they have been established by Christ. The CDF claimed that male-only ordination represents the intention of Jesus as carried on in an unbroken tradition. They address and refute a wide number 19  Prusak’s citations in The Church Unfinished, 340, are to Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Inter insigniores (1976), John Paul II, Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994), and Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Responsum ad Propositum Dubium Concerning the Teaching Contained in “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis,” all of which are now accessible at www.vatican.va. 20  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 341.



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of counter-arguments, but always with the supposition that the burden of proof lies with those who want the change. For example, they write: It has been claimed in particular that the attitude of Jesus and the Apostles is explained by the influence of their milieu and their times. It is said that, if Jesus did not entrust to women and not even to his Mother a ministry assimilating them to the Twelve, this was because historical circumstances did not permit him to do so. No one however has ever proved – and it is clearly impossible to prove – that this attitude is inspired only by social and cultural reasons. (4)

The CDF argues that Jesus often interacted with women in ways that broke with the conventions of his time. There is no evidence, says the CDF, to support that in his choice of a male-only Twelve Jesus either was acting as a person of his time or that he chose not to include women for the purpose of accommodating a patriarchal culture. In other words, since the claim that Jesus was influenced by his cultural milieu in his selection of a male-only Twelve cannot be proven, and since counterarguments that favor the position that Jesus was not so influenced can be offered, the side that carries the burden of proof loses. This ‘burden of proof’ argument is a crucial element of the CDF’s case. Regarding male-only ordination, they write: “It is not a question here of bringing forward a demonstrative argument, but of clarifying this teaching by an analogy of faith” (5). The analogy made is to the sacramental principle of the importance of natural resemblance in symbolism, such that it is appropriate that the one who represents Christ be a man. The document goes on to name and refute a number of objections that can be raised against this analogy. All they think they are obligated to show, however, is that the counter-arguments do not count as proof, and that alternative perspectives that support church teaching can be offered. The closing argument of the CDF is an appeal to authority: “In the final analysis it is the Church through the voice of the Magisterium, that, in these various domains, decides what can change and what must remain immutable. When she judges she cannot accept certain changes, it is because she knows she is bound by Christ’s manner of acting” (4). Paradoxically, the appeal to authority in this argument boils down to the claim that church officials do not have the authority to make this change. They make the case that Christ probably did intend a male-only priesthood and that no one can prove otherwise. All other arguments put forth by the CDF build upon this claim to lack authority because Jesus probably intended what became the

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a­ ge-old practice. One might label this as an argument of the irrefutability of the claim that the practice might possibly be de jure divino. Most of their other supportive arguments are simply refutations of potential counter-arguments. The only reasons given for Jesus’ intention are that he likely thought that he, as a man, is more appropriately represented by a man and that a difference in roles in no way implied a difference in spiritual equality as persons. In his 1988 encyclical Mulieris dignitatem, Pope John Paul II adds the speculation that, in regard to the nuptial meaning of the Mass, perhaps Christ intended to symbolize the relationship between himself as the Bridegroom and the church as the Bride (26-29). But the underlying argument remains that church leaders do not have the authority to change a substantial practice that in their judgment was probably instituted intentionally by Christ. As I interpret it, the official position is that male-only ordination is probably de jure divino because it was probably intended by Christ; no one can prove otherwise; the burden of proof lies with those who want to make the change. In his brief 1994 apostolic letter, Ordinatio sacerdotalis, John Paul II expressed his thinking in a way that came just short of qualifying as an infallible decree: “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful” (4). It is my judgment, as well as that of many others, that John Paul II wanted to shut down present-day conversation on this highly divisive issue without limiting the possibilities of what another pope might say in the relatively distant future. 4. Prusak’s Irenic Approach Counter-arguments to the CDF’s focus on Jesus’ intentions can be gathered from various places in The Church Unfinished. Prusak relies upon a majority consensus in contemporary biblical studies to suggest that, although Jesus gathered a distinctive community that would later continue his vision (73), he had not intended to found a religious community distinct from Israel (74, 78). There were many things that Jesus never specified. Jesus’ meal fellowship broke through boundaries of class and stratification (86). The New Testament does not directly tell us who presided at the Eucharist in the early church. Guidelines for ordination did not emerge until the third century (107). The treatment of ‘divine institution’ [de jure divino] of offices and ministries in Vatican II’s



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Lumen gentium leaves open the question of what might be traceable to the historical Jesus, which says Prusak, “was wise given that Lumen gentium was promulgated before the conclusion of the debates about the Constitution on Revelation, with its distinction between the deeds and words of Jesus and postresurrection developments” (284). Prusak thus suggests that linking certain church structures and practices directly with the intentions of Jesus is not intellectually credible in the light of contemporary academic perspectives. And even if one could make an argument that a male-only priesthood in the early centuries could be understood as being ‘of God’, such would not rule out the possibility of bold new decisions in our present time also being ‘of God’. Prusak’s position stands in contrast with the CDF’s assertion that, in the light of what is (debatably) an unbroken tradition, it is possible that Jesus did intend a male-only priesthood, that the burden of proof lies with those who want to make a change, and that therefore no change is possible. Prusak, more so than Boff, acknowledges the authoritative importance of tradition while still encouraging what he judges to be needed developments. For Prusak, a major change in a church teaching could represent the continued guidance of the Holy Spirit and simultaneously be an expression of the church as sacrament of Christ. By questioning any link between the personal intentions of Jesus and the development of particular ecclesial structures and practices, Prusak does explicitly put forward an argument that can be used to challenge official positions concerning the ordination of women to the priesthood. In my classroom, Prusak’s The Church Unfinished offered an alternative view that pointed in a different direction from that indicated by official church teaching concerning the ordination of women to the priesthood. Comparatively speaking, the book expressed a position that acknowledges both continuity and change, but, for practical reasons at this time, emphasized more the need for change. Church authorities claimed that they do not have the authority to make certain changes. Prusak has demonstrated, argued, and urged over the course of the entire book that church leaders do indeed have the authority to make bold changes in response to new situations. His history of ecclesiology has made this point clear. Any professional ecclesiologist can see this. The majority of my students, however, needed help in seeing this point. They also needed help in learning more about the official positions and arguments of the CDF and John Paul II. In retrospect, I can see that, for Prusak himself to have engaged more deeply the official

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positions and to be more explicit concerning how his own approach offers an alternative, could have been interpreted by professional theologians and church leaders as being overly aggressive and anti-irenic. It has been a long-standing practice of Catholic theologians to offer alternative visions while avoiding direct polemical engagement in public. In the years before the Second Vatican Council, theologians wrote essays that on the surface expressed lavish praise for Pius XII’s 1943 Mystici corporis while subtly criticizing it and offering alternative views. That was how Catholic theologians in those days expressed loyalty while eventually making change happen. Prusak, in contrast, is openly critical of positions expressed by John Paul II, Ratzinger, and the CDF, but he is not overly detailed or specific in his actual engagement with them. Nor does he trumpet the fact that his theological method represents a challenging alternative in a comprehensive manner. To do so would be judged aggressive. Refraining from doing so is considered to be irenic. Rather than making a battle out of it, it’s better to lay out one’s own alternative position on its own terms in a convincing manner. Such is a reasonable and intelligent approach. I believe, however, that in our present time, in order to overcome polarization, all of us on all parts of the spectrum ultimately need to engage the perspectives of others deeply and respectfully. Doing so often involves conflict. It is rarely the case that one side is completely correct and the other side is completely wrong. But it is often the case that one side is much more correct than the other side. Prusak’s The Church Unfinished is an excellent work. I can see now that the questions that I raised once upon a time did not do a good job of expressing what I had wanted to say. I respect Prusak’s irenic approach. And, in retrospect, I am grateful that he left me many things to clarify in my role as a teacher. III.  Addressing My Own Questions from the Book Review I will now try to address the questions that I raised at the end of my review of The Church Unfinished as if they were posed not to Prusak but to me as a college teacher covering the CDF, Ratzinger, Boff, and other perspectives over the course of a semester. In order to avoid my previous mistake of attributing my own interpretation of Prusak to Prusak’s own intentions, I will, like a reader-response critic, rely on how I personally received and interpreted Prusak’s themes and positions.



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On the one hand, I think it is possible that the official position concerning the ordination of women to the priesthood does reflect a resistance to change which is linked at least partially to fear and to denial. Popes and curial congregations do have a two-thousand-year-old tradition to guard. Recognizing and implementing needed changes is not the easiest thing to do. On the other hand, I do not think that John Paul II and Ratzinger as the head of the CDF can be said generally to lack courage or boldness. Directly engaging their positions needs to go far beyond psychologizing. Additionally, I do not think that these church officials are ignorant concerning the dynamic interrelationship between change and continuity when it comes to the theology and history of the church. Although there are traditionalists who oppose any kind of change whatsoever, the CDF, Ratzinger, and John Paul II in general had been open to some change, but came to think that after the Council too many changes had come too fast in compliance with a culture that manifested a forgetfulness of God and that lacked respect for the centrality of Christ. These church leaders and scholars acknowledged change and continuity on a theoretical level, but in a way that, for practical reasons at that time, resisted further changes. Opposing the ordination of women to the priesthood became one of their central concerns. Their specific argument was not that no changes could occur, but rather that THIS change cannot occur because, when neither side is able to prove its case, it should be accepted on a practical level that the established teaching is de jure divino. John Paul II, obviously in an intentional manner, came short of making an infallible declaration on this matter from the chair of Peter. When read in this light, the arguments against the ordination of women to the priesthood can be interpreted as intending to close the discussion for the foreseeable future. If there was fear at the root of this decision, it was likely a fear that ordaining women at that time would lead to schism in a global church that includes many peoples of traditional societies and cultures in which well-defined sex-role differentiation remains a deeply entrenched norm. There also remain legitimate, universally human questions concerning whether some forms of sex-role differentiation – when applied in a sensitive and differentiated manner that avoids stereotyping and is open to exceptions – could not be culturally desirable. Vive la différence! Can such a thing be said in a non-oppressive, inclusive, and even liberating way? In other words, even if one disagrees with the official position on ordaining women to the priesthood, can one find even a small kernel inside that one might be able to value, even if in a qualified manner?

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The official position offers an alternative narrative to the one put forth by those more deeply grounded in the majority consensus among biblical scholars who place a greater weight upon historical-critical methods. This official narrative presupposes that the majority consensus itself is highly speculative. It acknowledges that for the most part one cannot prove either way the intentions of Jesus. Yet it still emphasizes a fundamental continuity between the ecclesial structures that emerged in the early centuries and the intentionality of Jesus. Underlying this narrative is the old Catholic logic that what emerged had been guided by the Holy Spirit and therefore represents the will of Christ. There is also in this story a hint of a high Christology that leaves room for the resurrected Christ to be able to continue to instruct his disciples. Yet, any talk about what Jesus might have in fact intended is acknowledged to be speculative. Is there a path beyond polarization? There is an old joke that the Vatican document that changes the official position concerning artificial birth control will begin, “As the Church has always taught.” I think that any intellectual breakthrough concerning the ordination of women to the priesthood will represent not the defeat of one narrative by the other, but rather a higher synthesis that will deeply include elements of both. Prusak moves somewhat in this direction with his insistence that the church remains the sacrament of Christ. He also makes a significant contribution with his argument that what can be appreciated as ‘of God’ in one cultural epoch does not preclude a new development from being ‘of God’ in a significantly different cultural epoch. At this point, though, in my judgment, the overall situation remains a tale of two stories. On a practical level, if changes take place they will begin regionally. Pope Francis speaks of decentralization. It is unlikely, however, that Pope Francis himself will allow for developments that stand in direct contradiction to the declarations of his immediate predecessors. In this regard, much will depend upon the movement of the Holy Spirit among future church leaders as well as the entire People of God in the times to come. Prusak’s historical and eschatological ecclesial vision can help explain how certain significant changes to come need not be facilely dismissed as departures from church tradition. Indeed, they may very well be required by it.

Hope for the Church(es)

Young People in an Age of Linguistic Dynamism Ray Temmerman Dr. Bernard P. Prusak has devoted much of his theological work to the subject of the church: for example, what it is, where it is, how it and its work are to be understood. If his work is to be appropriately celebrated, there must surely be a focus on where the church is today, and how it might be understood. In this chapter, I will argue that, if this is to be done, we who wish to carry Prusak’s work forward and expand on it must know how people speak today of the church. This is because, as I will demonstrate through a historical exploration of the language used regarding Eucharist, the language used to talk about the church has changed over the years, as understandings have changed, grown and developed. I will further argue that young people are particularly well placed to help us learn the developing language and to help the church(es) relate to the world; there is a particular subset within this group that can help us learn the language that can lead the church to the healing of disunity. I.  Change and Growth: Locating the Church As humans, we experience something of reality. We interpret that experience within a framework of our language and understanding. But both understanding and language change and develop over time; hence, our interpretation of reality also changes. Frameworks of an earlier era can enhance and expand on present interpretations, but if we insist always on interpreting reality through the framework we have always known – that is, without allowing for the development of language and understanding, as well as learning to use that new language to speak of reality – we will become walking museum pieces, able to point to where the church was, but not where the church is, or will be. It is here that young people become our hope for locating and understanding the church. They, more than anyone, are on that cusp between language as it was, and language as it will be. Allow me to give a personal example.

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As a child of Belgian immigrants to Canada, Flemish was the language initially spoken in our home, with English following quickly behind. When, in 1970, I first traveled to Belgium, I found that, within a day or two, I easily spoke the language of the towns from which my ancestors came. From time to time, however, it became evident that I was using words and understandings that my cousins were aware of, but which they no longer used, and which were no longer applicable. They were speaking the language of today; I was speaking the language of 1910, when my parents and grandparents emigrated. I now faced a choice. I could attempt to persuade them that my language and understanding were the correct ones to be applied to reality, or I could learn their language and understanding. The former was an academic exercise, beneficial and even enjoyable for those interested in museums and archives. The latter was a way of holding a conversation in which minds and hearts can be nourished, lives (theirs and mine) changed. It is with that choice in mind that we now turn to the task of speaking about and locating the church. While we will include other developments in language, we will focus in particular on the Eucharist. In part, that is because human beings “eat nothing that is unmarked by the social situation of which language is the instrument.”1 How we interpret our experience of eucharistic eating is determined to a great extent by the language we use in speaking about it. It is also because the Eucharist is a prime example of how changes in language alter the way we interpret its reality. We will then go on to analyze three specific areas, each being a subset of the previous, where new languages are being developed and can be learned. 1. Sacraments “By definition, sacraments cause what they signify and signify what they cause.”2 Or, as that oft-repeated statement says, “The Church makes the Eucharist, and the Eucharist makes the Church.”3 Where the Eucharist is, then, the church must also be, both making and being made by it. That appears self-evident. But we must also ask, what do we mean by 1  Ghislain Lafont, Eucharist: The Meal and the Word, ed. Jeremy O’Driscoll, OSB (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2008), 23. 2  Jeffrey Vanderwilt, “Eucharistic Sharing and the Catholic Church,” Liturgy 20, no. 4 (2005): 47-55, at 51. 3  Henri de Lubac, cited in Chito Arevalo, The Eucharist and the Church (Congregation for the Clergy, 2002), http://www.clerus.org/clerus/dati/2002-03/25-999999/06saiien.html.



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‘Eucharist’? It is here that an awareness of changes and development in language and understanding over centuries can point our way to a future understanding. In Latin, we speak of ‘sacramentum et res’. The ‘sacramentum’ or mystery is the action, the sign. The ‘res’ we know to be the fruit of the sacrament, the reality which it brings about. Yet ‘res’ literally means ‘thing’. It is valuable to remember this. As with all reality, we cannot help but talk about it, yet we must remember that this reality is also beyond the capacity of all language to define it, to encapsulate it. Being beyond the capacity of even the most all-encompassing language, we can and must be open to talking about the reality in new ways and languages in our attempts to understand it, as well as share it with others. In short, we have new interpretations of reality because new experiences have led to new understandings, with new language being developed to speak about that reality as experienced. That language, in turn, becomes the instrument for interpretation. We can see some of that development in scripture. 2. Language Development As Joseph A. Fitzmyer observes, “In the OT Hebrew bāśār, ‘flesh’, carried the connotation not only of ‘body’ (see Ezek 11.19; 36.26; Ps 63.2; Job 4.15), but even of ‘person’ or ‘self’ (Num 16.22; 27.16; Isa 40.5-6; Ps 145.21).”4 We also see the Aramaic word biśrî for body (Mk 14.22; Lk 22.19b) and the Aramaic dĕmî (Mk 14.24) or bidmî (Lk 22.20) for ‘my blood’.5 Whichever words are used, one becomes aware that we are dealing with something beyond the merely physical. There was an understanding that blood and life were synonymous. When the blood was gone from the body, life was gone. The connection was obvious and easy. In the Greek of the New Testament, the term sōma, used in 1 Corinthians and the Synoptic Gospels, probably has to be understood not merely in the sense of ‘body’, but even of ‘self’, a sense found elsewhere in the New Testament (1 Cor 9:27, 13:3; Rom 12:1; Phil 1:20) and also 4  Joseph A. Fitzmyer, SJ, The Gospel according to Luke (X–XXIV): Introduction, Translation, and Notes, Anchor Bible 28a (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 1399-1400, cited in Bernard P. Prusak, “Explaining Eucharistic ‘Real Presence’: Moving beyond a Medieval Conundrum,” Theological Studies 75, no. 2 (2014): 231-259, at 234. 5  Prusak, “Explaining Eucharistic ‘Real Presence’,” 234.

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in classical and Hellenistic Greek.6 Today we know that the body and the self are not synonymous. Our language and understanding has changed. We now know that while the body is necessary if the self is to have earthly expression, the self is more than the body. Similarly, we now know that blood, while necessary for animal life, is not itself life. As with the body and self, our understanding of what blood is and does has also changed. The earlier understanding leads to philosophical and ethical dilemmas, for example, regarding blood transfusions: Are we infusing the life of one person into that of another? Knowing what we know today, we face no such quandary: we know that when we have a blood transfusion, we are simply infusing a necessary life-supporting liquid, not the life itself. As a further example, Bernard Prusak makes a very legitimate point about the term ‘person’, saying that “Jesus used the term ‘body’ to express what we intend to express when we use the term ‘self’ or ‘person’.”7 In a footnote on the subject, he writes, It is important to keep in mind that the concept of ‘person’, so familiar to us, was not operative in the NT. Our concept presupposes the development that followed Boethius’s definition of person – about 500 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection – as “an individual [and thus, incommunicable] substance of a rational nature” (Boethius, Liber de persona et duabus naturis contra Eutychen et Nestorium 3 [PL 64 1343]).8

Once again, we have an example of the development of language, the use of a term that was unknown, then became known, and is today commonplace – though its understanding today may well differ from that of Boethius, with his focus on substance. This development did not render earlier understandings null and void (they remain fully valid within their context), but provided new ways of speaking about, and new ways of interpreting, that which is experienced. II.  The Eucharist and the Church Words such as body, blood, self, and person all become caught up in the term ‘eucharist’. Having looked at the development in understanding of these terms, it now becomes necessary to look at eucharist itself, in order  Prusak, “Explaining Eucharistic ‘Real Presence’,” 234.  Ibid. 8  Ibid., n. 18. 6 7



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to see how our understanding and language surrounding it has changed over time. 1. The Early Church As Joseph Martos has indicated, “The noun ευχαριστια appears nowhere in the New Testament as the name of a Christian ritual. Instead, forms of the verb ευχαριστειν are used to express the giving of thanks, especially over food.”9 Eucharist, in the days of the early church, was understood as something one does. Prusak shows that “[i]n the earliest centuries, the Eucharist was a celebration in which the entire assembly was actively involved.”10 People gathered as what we might call a ‘eucharisting’ community, a community that gathered, not ‘to receive the Eucharist’, but ‘to eucharist’. There is a physical dimension to expressing this, as well. For example, in Canada the bishops chose, in the English-language liturgy introduced in 2011, to have us remain standing after Communion. The result is that, instead of retreating to our individual acts of piety, we kinesthetically indicate that we are involved in a common meal, and continue that involvement until all have eaten. As Gerard Kelly states, “It is not simply a matter of getting the ritual gestures right; it is rather a matter of the ritual gestures being indicative of a reality beyond the liturgical assembly.”11 This in no way suggests that people who gathered in the early church to eucharist did not believe that they received Christ. Rather, receiving Christ present was part and parcel of the God-given fruit of eucharisting, of giving thanks. 2. Later Developments Translating the Bible into Latin brought about a significant change. The word, Eucharist, was transliterated, and thereby incorporated into Latin as a loan word – and it took the form of a noun, morphing in meaning. The Greek word had meant thanksgiving and it referred to what Christians did when they worshiped. Now the Latin word became a proper noun – the Eucharist, also the Blessed Eucharist or the Most

9  Joseph Martos, Deconstructing Catholic Theology and Reconstructing Catholic Ritual (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications/Wipf and Stock, 2015), 78. 10  Bernard P. Prusak, “Liturgy as Essential Lynchpin for a Hermeneutic of Vatican II,” Louvain Studies 38, no. 2 (2014): 126-148, at ‘Abstract’. 11  Gerard Kelly, “Intercommunion and Eucharistic Hospitality,” in The Eucharist: Faith and Worship, ed. Margaret Press (Sydney: St. Paul’s Publications, 2001), 109-127, at 117.

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Holy Eucharist – and it referred to the consecrated elements that were offered to God and distributed to the faithful during the mass.12

There was still a sense of action, but the action was now relegated to the person with priestly powers, with the baptized standing by, watching. Active participation by the baptized deteriorated over time. This did not happen immediately. Indeed, it took centuries., but it happened. “After the Eucharistic controversies of the eleventh century, believers wanted to see the Eucharist, but seldom received it. They no longer became what they received, the Body of Christ.”13 As Ghislain Lafont says, “Jesus said ‘take and eat’. But there was no taking anymore, and scarcely any eating. The sacrament as such was reduced to nearly nothing for the sake of a content that was all but cut off from it.” Writing about this change, Lafont goes on to say that, “From the Baroque period … down to our own times, all the realism of the Eucharist was centered not on the act of eating but on the real presence of Christ in that which was eaten.”14 Note how, even today, we tend to think of Eucharist in noun form: that is, when we speak about ‘the Eucharist’, we refer predominantly to the consecrated elements, understood to be Christ himself under the appearance of bread and wine. And we capitalize the term, because we are referring to a divine person, not a liturgical action.15 This has led to some mysterious twists, painfully experienced by many interchurch couples. Such couples can be defined as follows: An interchurch family includes a husband and wife who come from two different church traditions (often a Roman Catholic married to a Christian of another communion). Both of them retain their original church membership, but so far as they are able they are committed to live, worship and participate in their spouse’s church also.16

There is more to this definition, but the rest of it will be taken up below. Such couples will often find the non-Catholic spouse welcome to actively join in worship by way of the liturgy, including the Eucharistic prayer – i.e., ‘eucharisting’ – but then not welcome to receive ‘the Eucharist’.  Martos, Deconstructing Catholic Theology, 164.  Prusak, “Liturgy as Essential Lynchpin,” ‘Abstract’. 14  Lafont, Eucharist, 12. 15  Cf. Joseph Martos, Honest Rituals, Honest Sacraments: Letting Go of Doctrines and Celebrating What’s Real (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications/Wipf and Stock, 2017), 140. 16  Interchurch Families and Christian Unity: Rome 2003 (Interchurch Families International Network, 2003), B,1, http://www.interchurchfamilies.org/confer/rome2003/ documents/roma2003_en.pdf. 12 13



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The later transliterated Latin noun thus takes precedence over the earlier, scriptural verb. The language of the eucharist/Eucharist/Mass changed in other ways, too. While from the very first it had been called a sacrifice, the word used was thusia, an act of offering, usually to a god, and commonly associated with a fellowship meal. The thanksgiving/eucharistic meal could be seen in that way. As Martos points out, “the purity of the sacrifice regards the ritual readiness of the participants, not the quality of the offering. … The confession of faults and reconciliation with one another ensures that the participants are ritually pure.”17 What happened over time is important: Centuries later, when the full meal had evolved into a symbolic meal of bread and wine, the concept of sacrifice was still applied to Christian worship, but the meaning shifted. Instead of the emphasis being placed on the sacred meal, it was put on the sacred food, which was also called a sacrifice. The Greek thusia was translated into the Latin sacrificium, literally something made sacred. The sacred food, in the minds of Christians who had never attended a pagan sacrifice, was the body and blood of Christ.18

3. Into the Middle Ages From offerings to God through a fellowship meal celebrated by ritually pure people, we moved to Christ being the pure sacrifice. Once again, we have changes and developments in language, such that a new way of thinking and understanding arose. This was the language and understanding that the schoolmen of the Middle Ages inherited. As priests, they considered themselves as joining to the sacrifice of Christ. In the Middle Ages, too, a new understanding was developing in response to questions about what happens in the Eucharist. If we were receiving Christ, should we refer to what was happening as substitution,19 consubstantiation,20 or (eventually) transubstantiation?21  Martos, Deconstructing Catholic Theology, 111.  Martos, Honest Rituals, Honest Sacraments, 141. 19  The bread and wine is removed, replaced by God with the body and blood of Christ, while allowing the appearances to remain the same. 20  With con, meaning with, combined with substantia, a noun referring to the thing/ reality in question, i.e., the body and blood of Christ was added to the bread and wine, with no change in the original substantia taking place. 21  Trans meaning from-to, or across, combined with substantia, once again a noun referring to the thing in question. This was different from a substantial change, where both the thing/reality and the way it appears to the senses change. In transubstantiation, 17 18

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There were a­rguments against the first two, though consubstantiation enjoyed favor until the sixteenth century. Transubstantiation gained favor with Aquinas and the Aristotelians who, as Martos points out, were aware that something happened in the Eucharist, something changed in their presence, giving them an experience of the real presence of Christ, even if they did not yet have the words to explain it. They eventually developed that language from the works of Aristotle. And so, transubstantiation became an apt way (even if not the only way) to speak about Eucharist.22 Yet, we must remember, “for more than half of the Church’s lifetime it did not know the word transubstantiation.”23 Here again, a development in understanding led to a development in language, which led, in turn, to a new way of interpreting reality. Once again, we have an example of the development of language and the use of a term that was unknown, then became known, and is today commonplace – though the understanding of substance and substantial today may well differ from that of Boethius. In Aristotelian understanding, a substantia was a thing-in-itself; today, it is predominantly understood in adverbial or adjectival form. For example, this item is substantially different from that one, or perhaps one item or body of work is more substantial than another. Another example can be found in the Latin form of dismissal at the end of the liturgy. This came to be ‘ite, missa est’, which translates literally as: ‘Go, it is sent’. That may have referred to the sending of the elements to those who were unable to attend due to illness or age. It could also have referred to the fact that the liturgy was ended, and we were now sent out into the world. The exact meaning of the words seems to have been lost in time. Regardless, ecclesial language began to speak of the liturgical action as the missa, the Mass. As Martos has compellingly demonstrated, such language – used to speak about sacraments in general, and Eucharist in particular – was in common use and intelligible for some 750 years, until the middle of the twentieth century. What he also demonstrates is that it is no longer the language in use today, and it is no longer intelligible. The language of Aristotle and the Scholastics has given way to a contemporary language that ranges from similar words with different understandings and one thing/reality becomes another thing/reality, though the accidents, what appears to the senses, remain the same. 22  Cf. Martos, Honest Rituals, Honest Sacraments, 64-68. 23  Gerard Kelly, “The Eucharistic Doctrine of Transubstantiation,” in The Eucharist: Faith and Worship, ed. Press, 56-74, at 66.



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nuances, through to entirely different words that speak about experiences of the realities, perhaps casting new light and new understanding on those ancient rituals and realities. 4. Language, Theology, and Ecclesiology A key indicator that the church in recent times is recognizing the need for new language to speak about contemporary realities is found in the document Nostra aetate from the Second Vatican Council, promulgated in 1965.24 First drafted to speak only of relations between Catholics and Jews, by the time of publication it had broadened its scope, including reference to Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. An example of the change that it brought about can be found in the difference between prayers before and after its publication. As Maureen Fielder points out, whereas before 1960 and the Council, the prayer of the church was “Let us pray also for the faithless Jews,” we now were called to pray for the Jews as “the first to hear the word of God that they may continue to grow in the love of God’s name and in faithfulness to God’s covenant.”25 Tom Roberts, editor of the National Catholic Reporter, says, “since the Second Vatican Council document Nostra Aetate, things have shifted rather dramatically. That document was the unassailable sign to the Catholic community and the world beyond that the church could come to a new understanding of long-held ‘truths’.”26 In line with new understandings, Raymond Moloney speaks of three benchmarks in the process of scriptural development, including “the progressive elimination of historical details; the setting of phrases in parallel; [and] the explicitation of the implicit.”27 The same process can be seen to take place in theological and ecclesiological development, as well. Quoting J. Jungmann, Moloney writes, The great change which occurred in liturgical practice, the greatest perhaps in the whole course of the history of the Mass [emphasis added],

24  Nostra aetate (October 28, 1965), 2, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html. 25  Maureen Fielder, “Nostra Aetate Proves That Change Is Possible,” National Catholic Reporter (26 October, 2015), https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/ nostra-aetate-proves-change-possible. 26  Tom Roberts, “NCR Connections: New Series Explores How Jews Appreciate Catholic Tradition,” National Catholic Reporter (26 November, 2018), https://www. ncronline.org/news/opinion/ncr-connections/ncr-connections-new-series-explores-how-jewsappreciate-catholic?utm_source=nov_+26+connections_3+views&utm_campaign=cc_122017&utm_medium=email. 27  Raymond Moloney, The Eucharist (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), 20.

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was the abandonment of the meal as a setting for the Mass. … [T]he supper character of the Christian assembly could and did disappear, and the celebration became in truth a Eucharistic celebration. This change had occurred already at the end of the first century.28

Pointing to the Eucharist as sacrifice, Moloney argues, “Sacrifice is an elusive notion. … [N]o acceptable definition has ever been able to establish itself. … Sacrifice seems to be one of those primal notions of the human mind which apparently we can grasp and implement long before being able to put it into words.”29 We are conversant with the term ‘sacrifice’, usually understanding it as a giving-up of something of value. There is, however, another way of seeing ‘sacrifice’. What happens if we consider that the root of sacrifice is sacrum facere, that is, ‘making holy’? Might we then come away with a very different understanding of sacrifice? Might we then say that God sent God’s Son to make humans, the earth, and indeed the entire universe holy – with his death being the consequence of our responsorial action, and ultimately the means whereby Christ makes all holy? The way we speak about reality is an indicator of how we interpret reality, and indeed even contributes to that interpretation. Moloney presents three forms of language to express the presence of Christ in the Eucharist: namely identity, change, and presence. He goes on to say that “the expression ‘the Real Presence’ is so familiar to us today that it is difficult to realize that, strictly speaking, it comes into use, in this precise way, only from the Middle Ages on.”30 Once again, we had a change in language, thought and understanding, albeit some 750 years ago. On limiting admission to the Eucharist, Moloney writes, Throughout the history of the sacrament, admission to the Eucharist has never been indiscriminate. Already John 6 implies that the Eucharist is for believers. St Paul wished to refuse the sacrament to those who do not examine themselves and discern the body. The Didache withholds it from the unreconciled. According to St Justin it is only for those who believe, have been baptized, and live according to the gospel.31

Moloney refers also to marriage in the same vein, arguing that, “in the case of either sacrament (i.e. Eucharist and marriage), one can falsify the sign by anticipating the union in a sinful way.”32 I wholeheartedly agree. 28  Josef A. Jungmann, The Early Liturgy: To the Time of Gregory the Great (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1960), 37-38, cited in Moloney, The Eucharist, 79. 29 Moloney, The Eucharist, 24. 30 Ibid., 55. 31 Ibid., 202. 32 Ibid., 203.



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Yet my agreement leads me to ask: In the case of reception of the sacrament of the Eucharist by a Catholic person and that person’s spouse of another Christian tradition, in what way is the sign sinfully anticipated and therefore falsified, such that the person of another Christian tradition is not to be made welcome? The words of the Lutheran theologian Paul A. Schreck accurately describe our present situation: “Invariably, we have shared together in the readings; they have been interpreted in gospel preaching; we turn to the liturgy of the Table and I am ready to eat but cannot.”33 People who defend this closed communion draw their stance from 1 Cor 11:23-29, wherein Paul warns of the dangers of eating and drinking unworthily. As Schreck says, “Pastoral concern for the souls of nonmembers is therefore said to be the basis for exclusion from the Table.”34 In short, it is to protect people that the choice is made not to feed them! In this area as with others, there has been some change in understanding within the church. A concrete example of such change is given in the fact that, prior to Vatican II, “the Roman Catholic church did not speak of the Christian denominations that resulted from the Reformation as churches; but in the Second Vatican Council these groups were spoken of as ‘churches or ecclesial communities’, a change that seems to have theological implications.”35 The theologians who made that statement then continued, recognizing that the issue of ‘apostolic succession’, hitherto seen as applying solely to episcopal consecration, actually had a broader remit – that is, “despite the lack of episcopal succession, the Lutheran church by its devotion to gospel, creed, and sacrament has preserved a form of doctrinal apostolicity.”36 For the theologians, this change in language connotes a change in understanding, with important ecclesiological ramifications: In fact, we see no persuasive reason to deny the possibility of the Roman Catholic church recognizing the validity of this Ministry. Accordingly we ask the authorities of the Roman Catholic church whether the ecumenical urgency flowing from Christ’s will for unity may not dictate that the Roman Catholic church recognize the

33  Paul A. Schreck, “Eating and Drinking Judgment: The Sacrament of Unity as a Sign and Source of Division,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 42, no. 4 (2007): 608-618, at 609. 34  Ibid., 610. 35  Paul C. Empie and T. Austin Murphy, eds., Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue IV: Eucharist and Ministry (New York: USA National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation, 1970), 24; cited in Schreck, “Eating and Drinking Judgment,” 614. 36  Ibid.

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v­ alidity of the Lutheran Ministry and, correspondingly, the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the eucharistic celebrations of the Lutheran churches.37

The Second Vatican Council, in its statement Unitatis redintegratio, indicated that all “who believe in Christ and have been truly baptized are in communion with the Catholic Church even though this communion is imperfect.”38 These two aspects of communion have at times been spoken of as ‘real, yet imperfect’, a phrase taken up in various forms in various places.39 This phraseology connotes a particular understanding of the reality of ecclesial unity, with the emphasis falling on imperfection. If (and, I believe, when) the day comes that we speak instead of ‘imperfect, yet real’ communion, we will have reached a new stage in realizing the unity which joins estranged communities. The words will be exactly the same, but the changed order will connote a new emphasis, and a new understanding. Within interconfessional dialogues we have also seen changes in language, which connote a change in theological and ecclesiological thinking, even if that thinking has not yet become fully accepted throughout the body of Christ. As Michael Fahey states: Authorities in several churches remain unwilling to permit canonical adjustments to allow for eucharistic sharing, even when agreed doctrinal positions regarding the eucharist, the nature of ordination, the effects of baptism, etc., illustrate that what were considered churchdividing issues are in fact different theological emphases that do not of themselves warrant denial of eucharistic hospitality.40

Prusak, in an abstract of his 2014 article in Louvain Studies, writes, “Vatican II’s Constitution on the Liturgy finally recovered a foundational doctrine – that the full and active participation of the baptized is essential to the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist, which actualizes the universal Church in and through the assembly in a particular locale.”41  Schreck, “Eating and Drinking Judgment,” 614.  Unitatis redintegratio (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1964), 3. 39  The Gift of Authority (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998), 6. See also Tod Brown, Full Communion: The Catholic Understanding (Paulist Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations Office, 2002), http://www.tomryancsp.org/full.htm. Also John Paul II, John Paul II on Imperfect Communion with Other Christian Communities, https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/quotes/john-paul-ii-on-imperfect-communion-with-other-christiancommunities. 40  Michael Fahey, “Shifts in Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant Ecclesiology from 1965 to 2006,” Ecclesiology 4 (2008): 134-147, at 141. 41  Prusak, “Liturgy as Essential Lynchpin,” ‘Abstract’. 37 38



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This is important, given that we are seeing new languages emerge in other parts – in other particular locales – of the world. Once a Eurocentric church, we are now coming to recognize that in fact the church is global, with the voices and languages of Asians, Africans, women, and indigenous peoples beginning to be heard and taken seriously. III.  Approaching New Language(s) How are we to approach the new languages that speak about eucharistic reality? The gospel reading from the Feast of the Holy Family offers an example. Here, we find it said of Jesus that “all who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers” (Luke 2:47). Clearly he must have told the listeners something, yet we learn only that “they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46, emphasis added). It can be inferred from this passage that the truly important thing for the people with whom Jesus spent time was to be asked about their experience, be allowed to talk about it in their own language, their own words. From that experience, they came to know him as one with understanding and answers. Similarly, in the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), it is only after the disciples have been invited to speak about their experience, to give voice to the language they use as they interpret and question the events, that Jesus enhances their understanding through the use of ancient texts and language. Where are we to look to find the new language, expressing understanding, that will help us interpret reality and discover the presence of the church? Two specific passages offer a clear indication. The first is from the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men [sic] of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.”42 The experiences of the realities of the world are points of connection, for we have those experiences in common, even if we may interpret them, and speak about them, in different ways. They are, therefore, places where we may learn from each other of the riches of God.  Gaudium et spes (December 7, 1965), 1, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. 42

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The second can be found in the words of John Paul II in Familiaris consortio: “The Christian family constitutes a specific revelation and realization of ecclesial communion, and for this reason too it can and should be called ‘the domestic church’.”43 Our mind clings to the last part of the statement, that of being a domestic church; much has been written on the subject. Yet we forget that the first part of the sentence is as important, namely that Christian families constitute a specific revelation and realization of ecclesial communion. It is in the experiences and languages of contemporary Christian families that we can discover where the church is, and how it is lived. IV.  Three Points of Revelation and Realization I therefore propose three specific areas of Christian family life as points of revelation and realization of ecclesial communion, that is, of the location and activity of the church. The first and most obvious is that of faithful Christian families throughout the world, be they European, American, African, Asian, mixed race, indigenous or otherwise. Living in a secular world, they still gather as people of God to eucharist, to give thanks, and receive Christ the living God. The languages (for there may well be several) they develop and use, often within a secular context, to speak of their experience of sacrament and of mystery, offer a revelation of their realization of ecclesial communion, and hence become a focal point for discovering and expressing where the church is. Within Christian families, there is a further subset that may afford a great gift for learning new languages, new interpretations. This subset includes Christian families in which the spouses come from different Christian traditions. We have already seen a partial definition of such families. As Pope John Paul II said while speaking to interchurch families at York, UK, 1982, “You live in your marriage the hopes and the difficulties of the path to Christian unity.”44 Each spouse in these families brings to their marriage, their ‘domestic church’, a ‘pearl of great price’, namely that spouse’s experience of a faithful God, and the language used to speak of that experience. Because they participate as much as possible in their  John Paul II, Familiaris consortio (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1981), 21.  Ruth Reardon, “Interchurch Families: Witness to Christian Unity” (Interchurch Families International Network, 2010), http://www.interchurchfamilies.org/index.php/ other-articles/2010/interchurch-families-witness-to-christian-unity.html. 43

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spouse’s church while remaining also faithful to their own ecclesial and linguistic expression of faith, they learn to receive from their spouse that person’s language of faith. One spouse may bring a language that was intelligible over centuries (whether or not it still is) and share that with the other spouse, who may well live and interpret reality through language that is far more contemporary, and with different interpretation. Such spouses carry both traditions, and both languages, within the one coupled person that is formed of their marriage.45 As such, they have experience of bridging ecclesial/sacramental languages, of learning from each other different interpretations of reality, and the words each uses to speak about that reality. In the process, they enhance the development of new languages to help each other understand, together building the unity of their marriage – and the growing unity of their churches. We can look also to the children of interchurch families. Such families speak of their responsibility toward their children as follows: “If they have children, as parents they exercise a joint responsibility under God for their religious and spiritual upbringing, and they teach them by word and example to appreciate both their Christian traditions.”46 The result is that, while their parents carry two traditions and languages within their marriage, the children learn, as if by osmosis, to carry both within the same body. Conversant with the language traditions of both their parents, they have their own experiences of eucharistic reality, and they develop their own contemporary language to speak about that reality. As such, they may have something to say to move us forward on the journey to Christian unity. In this, we must bear in mind the words of Francis Sullivan, who states, “The unity which is the goal of the ecumenical movement may have to be different from the unity that exists in any present church.”47 Related to this idea, we can say that the language we presently use, and have used for centuries, may itself be inadequate to the task, even though it may make its own contribution. 45  Cf. Ruth Reardon, “Interchurch Marriage: Towards a Spirituality” (Interchurch Families International Network, 2017), http://www.interchurchfamilies.org/index.php/ other-articles/2010-forward/interchurch-marriages-towards-a-spirituality-2017.html; first published in Aldegonde Brenninkmeijer-Werhan, ed., Marriage – Constancy and Change in Togetherness (Munster: LIT Verlag, 2017). 46  Interchurch Families and Christian Unity: Rome 2003 (Interchurch Families International Network, 2004), B,1, http://www.interchurchfamilies.org/confer/rome2003/ documents/roma2003_en.pdf. 47  Francis A. Sullivan, “Faith and Order: The Nature and Purpose of the Church,” Ecumenical Trends 32 (2003): 145-152, at 149; cited in George Hunsinger, The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 208.

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V.  A Source for Hope We have been on a journey of discovery of language and understanding, and of changes in those. We come finally to that group of people through whom we can hope to have the greatest opportunity to locate the church, as it is today, and as it will be in the future. It is with the young, be they of one tradition only, or of interchurch families. Each offers specific gifts. It has been about fifty-five years since we saw the church enter a new era, a new connection with reality, through the work of Vatican II. The children of the earlier era (people like me), still steeped in the language of the previous centuries, have grown up and had children of their own, and in many cases grandchildren. Their children, and especially their grandchildren, have, by and large, grown up in a world with different words and understandings. Because of migration, be it due to wars, famine, or simple economic realities, they come in touch with people of different languages, different cultures, and different experiences. In addition, they are in touch with different technological realities, developing languages to express those realities. In short, they are in touch with the world in the language of today. It is to such people, the young of today, that we must now turn. This is not merely because they are at home with social media, more technologically adept, and/or have more energy than us, all of which might in any case be true. Rather, it is because they hold the keys to a different language, one with and through which the church may make itself known, realizing the kingdom of God in the world today. That will require, on the part of we who are older, a capacity to listen and learn, rather than tell and teach. Within that group, we must turn also to the children of interchurch families in particular. In such interchurch children, we may find new languages of faith, new understandings of timeless realities, which will enlighten our churches, enabling them to take the next steps toward the unity for which Christ prayed. Such children experience within themselves the intimate connection of estranged ecclesial communities, personally reconciling those estrangements even while their communities are not yet able to realize that reconciliation. In their experience, their reconciliation, we have the possibility of rediscovering the presence of the church, across peoples and Christian traditions. Listening to and learning from the experiences and languages of others – especially the young – before sharing our own is not an easy task, but it is a necessary one. It demands a time of relationship, of ­responsibly



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living on the margins between different parts of the same body. As Philip A. Rolnick argues, “The reality of a relationship, its ‘betweenness’, must be enacted, actually lived, just as the reality of a statement hangs in abeyance, awaiting its assertion by a responsible knower.”48 If what we believe of the sacraments, and of faith, is real and true, then we who are older members of the church can accept the challenge to converse in an atmosphere of receptive learning with young people of today. This would then allow all of us, the old and young, across all seeming lines of demarcation, to come to know by experience that the Good News of God, lived in the church, is ever real, ever true, ever ancient, ever new.

48  Philip A. Rolnick, Analogical Possibilities: How Words Refer to God (Atlanta, GA: The American Academy of Religion, 1993), 165, cited in Schreck, “Eating and Drinking Judgment,” 617.

Grace and Concupiscence On Being a Holy Church Paul Lakeland “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” (St. Augustine) “For the young man [in Matthew 19], the question is not so much about rules to be followed, but about the full meaning of life. This is in fact the aspiration at the heart of every human decision and action, the quiet searching and interior prompting which sets freedom in motion. This question is ultimately an appeal to the absolute Good which attracts us and beckons us; it is the echo of a call from God who is the origin and goal of man’s life.” (John Paul II, Veritatis splendor 7)

My own more recent work has attempted what I have called ‘inductive’ ecclesiology or ‘ecclesiology from below’, which attends to the shape of the church as perceived at the grassroots, in the local worshiping community and, above all, in the ranks of the laity. While my approach is more anecdotal than ethnographic, I have on the whole ignored the advice given to me over fifteen years ago in Dallas, Texas, by a distinguished American Baptist minister, when I told him of my interest in ‘the liberation of the laity’. He sighed deeply, leaning over to me and putting a friendly hand on my forearm. “Paul,” he said, “never trust the laity.” But because I have taken to heart Robert Schreiter’s conviction that all theology is local theology, I find myself trying to avoid issues of the global church, not always successfully, and attending to particularity, especially the parish in the American Catholic Church. This American and Catholic cast will show to a degree in the conversation partners I favor here and the social and cultural issues that arise, though I am convinced that the general argument has much wider applicability. I take a second and related cue from Rowan Williams, who once wrote that theology is “talking about people who pray,” which itself sounds like a license for putting ecclesiology at the head of the theological sub-specialties. And yet, like all the branches of theology, it needs to be very humble. Williams is also well-known for his claim that one of theology’s principal tasks is to guard religious language against its tendency to make

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totalizing statements. I shall try to follow his advice to the theologian to be modest in their claims, tentative in their conclusions and, above all, prayerful in their methods.1 The issue for discussion here is the challenge of being the church in our world, indeed of being a holy church. I will do this in three steps. First, we will need to think a little bit about what holiness means, what it might mean to be a holy church, a church of the saints, indeed, what the word ‘saint’ has meant in the Christian tradition and what it might mean today. Second, we shall want to explore a little the concept of ‘world’. This is where grace and concupiscence come into play in a major way. Then, thirdly, we will need to ask how the holy church and the graced-but-concupiscent world are connected. The whole paper is informed above all by the insights of Karl Rahner on the church/world relationship, and the later sections have benefited significantly, as you will see, by the work of James Davison Hunter. But if I may be permitted a short text as my inspiration, it will be the words of my currently favorite Christian thinker, the twentieth-century Dominican theologian, Yves Congar. “Final salvation,” he wrote, “will be achieved by a wonderful refloating of our earthly vessel, rather than by a transfer of the survivors to another ship wholly built by God.”2 In this chapter I move toward an answer to the question, what might be our role in God’s wonderful refloating of our earthly vessel? Before we launch into our inquiry, it might be a good idea to say a little about possible meanings of the word ‘church’. Congar always advised care in reading, and presumably, writing the word. It is vital, he thought, to understand the right relationship between hierarchy and authority on the one hand and the Christian community on the other, and so it is. I recently received an email out of the blue from an irate Catholic taking me to task for saying in a newspaper interview that the sexual-abuse scandal “was the fault of individuals, not of the Church.” She thought that it was wrong of me to let the bishops off the hook. I replied that the church I referred to was not the bishops but all of us, the whole faithful people. I should have taken more care writing and she should have taken more care reading. Not that one can simply juxtapose hierarchy and community, but – to quote Congar again – it is important 1  See especially Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000). 2  Yves Congar, Lay People in the Church: A Study for a Theology of Laity, rev. ed., trans. Donald Attwater (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics Inc., 1965), 92.



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to see that “Christianity must be posited first, and then the fact of authority in it.”3 This was the reason that the Second Vatican Council’s great central document on the church, Lumen gentium, discussed the People of God before it turned to hierarchy. So, while ‘church’ usually brings to the minds of most people either the building in which the faithful gather or the overarching institutional structure, ‘the Christian community of faith’ is its more fundamental meaning, and hence the one we will largely employ in what follows. I.  Holiness and ‘the Saints’ Defining ‘holiness’ is an altogether more complex challenge, but one which begins by sidelining the moral connotations that have accrued to the term. The root meaning of ‘holy’ is not ‘virtuous’ but ‘set apart’, in this instance set apart for the service of God, as in the phrase, ‘this is holy ground’.4 So holiness is not something to which we aspire so much as a characteristic imposed upon us from without. Perhaps it is a sharing by analogy in the awful holiness of God described by Rudolf Otto. To be holy is not primarily to be a good person, still less to be someone who is sinless, but to have been chosen and set apart for the service of God. Human holiness is the condition of having been chosen and set apart for the service of God. Hence, if and when we use the term ‘holy’ to describe the church, it is not to be understood as a claim to greater moral virtue or goodness than those who are not accounted ‘holy’, but to have been called to do something particular in God’s service. Holiness, in other words, is intrinsically connected to mission. When we are called in baptism, we are not called into virtuous life but into a life of service. We may or may not be more virtuous or more sinful than our neighbors, but that is of no account. What counts is our response to the call.

3  Yves Congar, Priest and Layman, trans. P. J. Hepburne-Scott (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1967), 260. 4  The Oxford English Dictionary discusses the complexity of finding a root behind the Christian determination of the meaning, but settles for “kept or regarded as inviolate from ordinary use, and appropriated or set apart for religious use.” Hans Küng is surer than the OED, referring back to the Hebrew kadad meaning “a separation and a cutting-off.” See Hans Küng, The Church, trans. Ray Ockenden (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), 324-325.

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When we understand holiness in this way it is easier to see what the New Testament means by constantly referring to the Christian community as ‘the saints’ or ‘the saints who are in’ this or that place. The use of the term is not a claim to moral superiority or the conspicuous virtue of the members of the community, but rather a simple designation as ‘a people set apart’. As Karl Rahner has written, response to the call even by those who are conventionally described as saints in the church’s designation, does not mean that their lives were without backsliding.5 Only God is good and only Jesus is sinless, but we are called and hence – if we respond – holy. Even the other use of the term, ‘the saints’, to designate those who are in heaven – including the ‘official’ saints whom the church formally recognizes as already being in heaven – has more to do with the permanence of their being set apart in eternity than constituting a claim for their virtue. The prize they have all won, official and unofficial alike, is not for conspicuous moral probity but for fidelity to mission. There is a sense, of course, in which the distinction between moral probity and fidelity to mission is a false distinction. If the mission to which we are called is one of being the sacramental presence of the love of God in Christ for the world, of being the leaven in the mass or the lamp on the lampstand, then it is hard to imagine that moral failing will make that leaven rise better or the lamp give more light. Evidently, to be good and to be loving are more or less the same thing, though only love frees us from the law. However, we cannot abandon the distinction between moral probity and fidelity. Indeed, we need to insist on it, at least to the degree that we can assert that virtue is not the exclusive possession of the community of faith and that the faithful are not sinless. Both these claims are more or less self-evident. Goodness without faith is entirely possible in our world, evident all around us among those who do not believe, and fidelity to the call to mission can certainly coexist with lapses in virtue. All this being said we need to probe a little further the distinction just made between virtue and holiness understood to be primarily a matter of fidelity to mission. Let me put the issue in the form of a question.  For example, in Karl Rahner, “Why and How Can We Venerate the Saints?,” in idem, Theological Investigations, vol. 8 (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 2-23, at 6-8. The 23 volumes of Theological Investigations have been published by various publishers in the UK and the US: Seabury, Crossroad, and Darton, Longman & Todd all published the entire series at one time or another. The Crossroad editions were published between 1982 and 1991. Subsequent references to Theological Investigations will simply reference the volume number. 5



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Is the term, holiness, and the classification of the holy ones as ‘the saints’ necessarily exclusionary, or is there a way of reading the terminology that is more inclusive if not finally universalist? Quite a lot hangs on whatever conclusions we might come to here, in particular the precise configuration of the church/world relationship and, in consequence, how we think of mission. If the holiness of the saints sets the church apart from the world, the concomitant image of mission will be of reaching out into the world that we are not a part of in order to draw others into the communion of saints. If the holiness of the saints, on the other hand, sets the church apart for the world, then the image of mission may be more one of an embrace in which the worldliness of the world is affirmed, not overwhelmed. The former inevitably thinks in terms of a holy church and a sinful world. The latter leans toward collapsing this distinction, seeing both church and world as simultaneously graced and sinful. In other words, mission that embraces the world with the love of God, rather than mission that trawls for souls and rescues them from the world and into the church, cannot contrast holy and sinful. Holiness in human beings and in the church seen as a human institution is a posture toward a world at once graced and sinful. That holiness, being set apart for a purpose, is the call to mission, is a truth of which we can catch a glimpse in the murky waters or rarified air of trinitarian theology, a place where theologians, like angels, should fear to tread. With trepidation, then, here follow just a few trinitarian thoughts. When scripture tells us that ‘God alone is holy’, it is speaking not of an attribute of God but of the nature of God. To say that God alone is holy adds nothing to the statement that God is love. The holiness that is the love of the trinitarian relations immanently is at one and the same time the mission of the trinitarian relations economically. When the Word proceeds from the Father and when the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, these processions are a sending forth on mission. Just so, when we are called into the divine life through the church, our setting apart in the ekklesia is our calling into mission. There is no participation in the church that is not in principle a calling to mission, because there can be no sharing in Christ, who is missioned by the Father, that is not a sharing in his mission. Jesus’ words to his disciples in John’s Gospel, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you” (15:9), are paralleled to “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (20:21). ‘Being conformed to Christ’ or ‘becoming like Christ’ are empty pious phrases if the missionary character of that approximation to the Lord is overlooked. And as for the virtue/fidelity relationship, one might

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see the task of the Christian to be to let love show through her/his fidelity, while the non-believer may hopefully grow in love toward some sense, however inchoate, of the meaning of faith. While love, fidelity and holiness are one in God, for us their expression and the balance between them are lifelong tasks. The capacity to think of mission as some sort of holy embrace of the world only becomes possible with the advent of the world as world. When world and church are one and the merely worldly is a residue concept, it is not possible to ask about dialogue or interaction and unimaginable that the church should embrace the world. That world is there to be overcome. But once the world comes into its own, once it is understood to be world qua world, without benefit of or control or interference by the church, then dialogue (and confrontation) becomes possible. This possibility is the contribution of the Renaissance and Enlightenment to the fullness of understanding of the church, and arguably not an insight that it was within the capacity of the church qua church to arrive at. And if this realization became available to the church some centuries ago, it is really only in the last century of the church’s life that the penny dropped, that the light went on. We can easily trace the growing realization of the irreducible reality of the world in the history of ecclesiological models. From perfect society to Mystical Body, from Mystical Body to People of God, indeed from People of God to the British United Reform Church’s ‘whole-body ecclesiology’, and now perhaps beyond even that to ‘an ecclesiology of all the saints’, we see the Christian community kitting itself out for mission to a world that is a place of God’s grace. This secular world will not go away and the church itself, collectively and individually among its members, is ineluctably involved in it. Not of the world, but in it and for it. At the same time as we recognize this ‘irreducible difference’ between church and world we also have to affirm a relation. They are seriously interconnected, not only because Christians live in the same world as everyone else and the church is both a divine mystery and an earthly reality in a secular world, but because church and world are products of God’s created will, both good, both graced and sinful. From the perspective of the church, of course, its mission to embrace but not smother the world distinguishes how it understands this relationship, while the secular world may at best see church and world as parallel realities if not actually adversaries. But as Congar wrote so beautifully, from a spiritual point of view the church and the world do not exist side by side, but rather intertwined: “They are not like two crowned sovereigns looking



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sideways at one another as they sit on the same dais; they are much more like the Good Samaritan holding in his arms the half-dead man, whom he will not leave because he has been sent to help him.”6 As we survey the recent history of ecclesiological models for their growing openness to the world as world, we can also discern a developing understanding of holiness and ‘the saints’. While the classical ecclesiology of the church as ‘a perfect society’ does not of course imply moral perfection so much as structural integrity – a perfect society is one which possesses all the structural requirements to be accounted whole – it certainly offers us a model of the church entirely focused upon the visible. The church is the historical institution, its members are those who can be seen going in and out of church, at least on a Sunday, obeying the lawful leaders of the church and participating in the sacraments. While this picture does not necessarily exclude those outside the church from salvation, it clearly implies that ‘the saints’ would be found wholly within it. As early as the mid-nineteenth century, Pius IX warned against assuming that those outside the church are necessarily outside the realm of salvation. “We must hold fast in the Faith that nobody outside the Apostolic Roman Church can be saved,” he wrote, for “she is the only ark of salvation and everyone who does not enter it must perish in the flood.” But he continued somewhat mysteriously, “we must hold fast just as firmly to the truth that in the eyes of the Lord no one who lives in invincible ignorance of the true religion is stricken with this guilt.”7 Even the Council Fathers at Vatican II did not go a long way beyond the letter of this position, saying on the one hand that “the Church is necessary for salvation” and that the one true Church of Christ “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church, while also being clear that the only class of human beings in danger of final damnation are those Catholics who have formally abjured the faith.8 The difference of tone, on the other hand, is evident in the degree to which they spell out in detail the many groups for whom the grace of God is a living and saving reality, even if they are unaware that it is the grace of God that moves them. The distance is 6  From The Wide World My Parish, quoted in Yves Congar, Yves Congar: Essential Writings, ed. Paul Lakeland, Modern Spiritual Masters Series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010), 64. 7  Pope Pius IX, Singulari quidem (March 17, 1856), http://w2.vatican.va/content/ pius-ix/it/documents/enciclica-singulari-quidem-17-marzo-1856.html. Quoted by Rahner in Theological Investigations, vol. 2, 38-39. 8  Lumen gentium (November 21, 1964) (hereafter cited in text as LG), http://www. vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_ lumen-gentium_en.html, 14.

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that between Pius IX’s recognition on the one hand that no one can be guilty of something they cannot help and the Council’s claim, on the other, that people of all religious traditions and none have opportunities to respond to the grace of God in their own lives and in their own ways. And, indeed, is this so far from the comment attributed to St. Augustine that “there are some God has whom the Church does not have, and some the Church has whom God does not have”?9 The freedom of Vatican II to approach so generously the question of salvation is a product of the conscious preference for the image of People of God to guide their ecclesiological reflections. Employing the Hebrew notion of the qahal Yahweh inevitably associates the election of a people, whether Israel, “the first to be called the People of God,” or the Christian ekklesia understood as the eschatological people of God, with an orientation to the world beyond the church. Israel is God’s elect for a purpose, just as the Church of Christ is called together for a missionary purpose. Israel is to be “a light to the nations.” To repeat an earlier comment, the words of Jesus in John’s Gospel, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” consciously parallel those other words, “as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.” ‘Sending’ or ‘being sent’ and ‘loving’ or ‘being loved’ seem curiously related. As Congar suggested, being sent into the world is being sent to embrace the victims. It is this set of ideas that inspires the Council to say that to the People of God “belong, or are related in different ways: the catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all of humankind, called by God’s grace to salvation” (LG 13). And this invites a radical question with which this section of the chapter will end, though we will return to it later: Is the term saint to be extended beyond the Christian confines, and would that mean that holiness might be a characteristic of world religions other than Christianity? Or, even with such an irenic posture towards the possibility of universal salvation, must ‘saint’ and ‘holy’ be preserved for intra-Christian explications? II.  Concupiscence and the Secular Lumen gentium’s adoption of something like Karl Rahner’s understanding of how salvation is accessible to those of any religion and none opens up the larger question of a theology of the world. Evidently in some of the Council documents we encounter references to the goodness of the  Quoted by Karl Rahner, “Mission and Grace,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 1, 51.

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world, to the place of divine grace at work in the world, and indeed to the importance of the dialogue between the church and the world in which both can, in their different ways, teach the other truths that independently they might not come to recognize (LG  13-16). At the same time, it is a mistake simply to juxtapose church and world. Gaudium et spes is after all known as the pastoral constitution “on the Church in the world of today,” not ‘and’ the world of today, and the solidarity between church and world is evident in the famous opening words: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.” The identification is obvious, since Christians are “a community composed of men” and women. They have “welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for every man” and woman. “[T]his community realizes that it is truly linked with mankind [sic] and its history by the deepest of bonds.”10 The ‘deepest of bonds’ that unites church and world is most surely located in the common humanity of Christians and others. We are all human, which is to say we are all sons and daughters of God. We are all called to eternal life with God, to lives lived out in self-transcendent love patterned on the love of Christ even if we do not know it to be so, and to participation in the paschal mystery of death and new life. But today we are all, Christians as much as others, called in the context of lives that are lived in a secular and pluralistic world beyond the imagination of earlier centuries. Vatican II in fact calls lay Christians fundamentally ‘secular’, that is, destined to live out their apostolic calling in and as secular people. The church as a whole, too, is both a divine mystery and a secular reality. And so, if we are to be a holy church today, it must be somehow in and for the secular world that is part and parcel of what it is to be a human being today. One useful way to relate and yet also somehow hold separate the church and the world can be found in the particular slant that Karl Rahner gives to the idea of ‘concupiscence’. Whereas the overwhelming tendency of the Christian tradition has been to think of concupiscence as ‘disordered desire’ or even simply as ‘sin’, Rahner would consider this to be an over-simplification. Concupiscence is not so much disordered desire as it is unordered desire. In other words, the desire that marks 10  Gaudium et spes (December 7, 1965) (hereafter cited in text as GS), http://www. vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_ gaudium-et-spes_en.html, 1.

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concupiscence is part of the human condition, neither good nor bad in itself, but simply the human appetite or drive toward the satisfaction of its desires, some of which are perfectly good or at least reasonable, and some of which may not be so. Because concupiscence in this sense is just part of being human, it is possessed by Christians and others alike, and by more virtuous and more sinful Christians in roughly equal measure. Concupiscence is in itself morally neutral; how concupiscence plays a part in our lives is another matter, however. A more technical exposition of the brief summary of the idea of concupiscence I have just outlined is to be found in a number of places in Rahner’s Theological Investigations.11 Rahner’s position is that concupiscence as natural desire cannot simply be considered sinful, since we have natural desires for good objects as well as bad, and indeed that our desires are not simply movements of nature but also of spirit, since they come from the whole person. Just as we can have desire for a good natural objective, so we can have desire for a bad ‘spiritual’ object. The human being as person strives for an integrity that will make the spontaneous desires into free choices, which, in other words, will unite sensible and spiritual as truly human, free acts. But this is never entirely successful. The human person “undergoes the resistance of the nature given prior to freedom,” writes Rahner, “and never wholly succeeds in making all that man is into the reality and the expression of all that he comprehends himself to be in the core of his person.”12 The ideal, continues Rahner, is the man of the heart or the ‘collected’ man of German mysticism, “the man, that is, whose whole activity is an exhaustive expression of his innermost center and his innermost vital decision, and who therefore remains ‘collected’ in this innermost center without being dispersed in anything alien to this decision.”13 As we might say in a colloquialism that goes right to Rahner’s point, the person of integrity is the one who ‘has got it all together’. But such a person in all her or his perfection does not exist. This saint is an ideal toward which to strive. Rahner’s Jesuit contemporary (both born in 1904) Bernard Lonergan writes essentially of the same process when he describes religious or affective conversion as ‘a being grasped by love’. Like Lonergan, Rahner sees integrity as a gift, given originally to Adam, lost by 11  See especially “The Theological Concept of Concupiscentia,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 1, 347-382; “Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbour and the Love of God,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 6, 231-252; and “Theological Reflections on the Problem of Secularization,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 10, 318-348. 12  Theological Investigations, vol. 1, 369. 13  Ibid., 374.



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Adam in a bad decision, and ever after realized imperfectly in the free act of the whole person. Rahner returns to this idea of concupiscence in a number of essays on the topic of ‘Church and world’ written around the time of the Second Vatican Council. His discussion of ‘gnoseological concupiscence’ helps clarify how believing Christians can live one life, as a Christian in the world, not two, as a Christian and a person of the world.14 Rahner’s discussion of ‘gnoseological’ rather than moral concupiscence occurs in the context of a phenomenology of secular life. These essays are suffused with a sense of the ambiguity of contemporary life and the impossibility of grasping reality in the way in which it might have been possible in the past. In times gone by, human beings could more or less know what there was to know, says Rahner, and Christians lived in a situation in which, precisely because what there was to know was so accessible, the church itself was able to comprehend the whole of what there was to know within its theological outlook. In those putatively simpler times, the Christian lived simultaneously within the Christian Church and the Christian world, at least in principle and, in very many places, in practice, too. “In former times,” writes Rahner in a 1971 essay on the relationship between faith and doctrine, “one’s task was to pass from a well-integrated, well-ordered world of knowledge on to the inconceivable mystery.” But today, “it is a disordered world of knowledge which cries out for that light which can only be that eternal light which does not yet shine upon any man here below.”15 Of course, the historical progression from an ordered to a disordered world of knowledge is not wholly negative. To some degree it may be a matter of disintegration, but it is also a product of the genuine complexity and ambiguity of knowledge today. At any rate, all 14  Rahner discusses this critical idea in a number of places. He first addresses it head-on in “The Theological Concept of Concupiscentia,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 1, 347-382. A very helpful summary of its meaning and implications can be found in the essay, “The Faith of the Christian and the Doctrine of the Church,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 14, 24-46, esp. 34-36. It is more extensively applied to the Church/ world relationship in “Theological Reflections on the Problem of Secularization,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 10, 318-348. For reasons of space we prescind here from the technical discussion of concupiscentia (Begeierlichkeit) laid out in the first reference above, and both challenged and estimated in many subsequent discussions. See especially J. P. Kenny, “The Problem of Concupiscence: A Recent Theory of Professor Karl Rahner,” The Australian Catholic Record 29 (1952): 290-304 and idem, “The Problem of Concupiscence: A Recent Theory of Professor Karl Rahner,” The Australian Catholic Record 30 (1953): 23-32; and Mario Ferrugia, “Karl Rahner on Concupiscence: Between Aquinas and Heidegger,” Gregorianum 86, no. 2 (2005): 330-356. 15  Theological Investigations, vol. 14, 35.

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human beings, Christians included, struggle with the character of finite knowledge, which is “no longer capable of being reduced to a complete synthesis,” and “which is anti-ideological in character.” Secular knowledge proceeds from sources different from those employed in the official teaching of the church and “is no longer capable of being fully synthesized … with the message of revelation to us regarded as an interpretation of this same human life.” The modern Catholic, Rahner adds, “has to recognize and unreservedly endure this pluralism in his intellectual life, painful and perilous though it may often seem.”16 In determining the appropriate role of the church as a historical actor relative to this secular, pluralistic, concupiscent and non-integrated world, there are two tendencies to be avoided. Indeed, in certain places, Rahner calls them two “heresies.”17 The positive relationship of the church and the secular world cannot be either the effort to impose the teachings of the church as a kind of blueprint or ethical template upon the secular world, a position that Rahner calls “integrism,” nor can it be the opposite, “a mere negative withdrawal and the exercise of a critical function towards the world on the part of the Church,”18 a perspective that Rahner in some places labels “esotericism.”19 Integrism is evident in all over-intrusive efforts to impose Christian ethical positions in pluralistic societies, such as my own U.S. Catholic hierarchy is intent upon, perhaps following the example of white fundamentalist ‘family-values’ evangelicalism with a distinctively Republican cast. Esotericism, on the other hand, is alive and well in what James Davison Hunter has aptly labeled the ‘neo-Anabaptist’ stance of, for example, the work of Stanley Hauerwas, and perhaps also in efforts by Catholic politicians, especially in the United States where these things seem to matter more than elsewhere both to bishops and to the electorate, to insist that their faith and their professional responsibilities in no way impinge upon one another.20 The history of the church/world relationship, argues Rahner, is one of “the Church’s growing self-discovery” and of “the increasing ­emancipation  Theological Investigations, vol. 14, 36.  See especially Karl Rahner, “Church and World,” in Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, vol. 1, ed. Karl Rahner, Cornelius Ernst, and Kevin Smyth (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), 346-357. 18  And explicitly not to be identified with the integrism of anti-Modernism. 19  In the Sacramentum mundi article (see note 17), 350-351. 20  James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 164166. See, for example, the work of Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1989). 16 17



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of the world into its own secular nature.” Integrism fails to let this happen and thus retains a sense that “all earthly action in the history of the world is nothing but the putting into practice of the principles taught, expounded and applied by the Church.” But, says Rahner, “this tacit assumption of integrism is false,” because “it is not possible wholly to derive from the principles of natural law and the gospel the human action which ought to be done here and now, although of course all action must respect those principles.”21 The question of how the church is appropriately present in the secular world brings us directly to the issue of how the lay Christian is holy today, how the apostolic responsibilities of the laity are to be fulfilled, since, to quote Rahner one more time, “the Church as an official Church … is not the immediate or proper subject for realizing in the concrete the humanization of the world.” The church, he says, “must be ready to declare that she is not qualified in this respect.”22 If the church is set apart for the service of God, the individual members of the church, in virtue of their baptismal priesthood, are set apart for the service of God in the secular world, indeed as a part of it. How then, are we to be the church in and for the world? What must be our share in the “wonderful refloating of this earthly vessel”? III.  On Being a Holy Church The church’s apostolic presence in the world is not an add-on to the work of the church; it is the work of the church. Baptism, as Vatican II said so clearly, is our entry into mission. The baptismal priesthood that all share, even those who proceed to ordained ministry, is directed toward fulfilling the mandate to ‘go preach the gospel to all nations’. In this sense, it is as true to say that baptism makes the church as it is to say that the Eucharist makes the church. The Eucharist makes the church in the sense that, in the sacramental sharing in the one sacrifice of Christ, God’s holy people are sanctified for mission as a priestly, prophetic and servant community of faith. But baptism makes the church in the sense that it is through the sacrament of baptism that the people have entered into an essentially missionary community. Within this baptismal priesthood there are some who are set aside by ordination for the leadership  Rahner, “Church and World,” 349-350.  Theological Investigations, vol. 14, 312.

21

22

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of the local church, first the bishop and then his college of priests, but the vast majority of baptized Christians is consecrated by that baptism to mission in the secular world. They are the ones who are in the vanguard of the church’s mission and, in this sense alone, hierarchical ministers are support-staff in the mission of the church, leading and teaching and sanctifying the whole priestly people of worldly apostles. To be a holy church in today’s world cannot be measured either by the inner life of the church or by its apostolic mission and ministry alone, but only by the health of the relationship between the two. This was the wisdom of Rahner’s effort to argue for middle ground between the two heresies of integrism and esotericism. The church is not here to impose itself upon secular society, nor is it its mission to stand aloof from the world. Whether we call it the proclamation of the Gospel or the humanization of the world, it is the same divine mission entrusted to the church, to be the leaven in the mass or the lamp on the lampstand or the salt which gives savor to the food. Each of these images places the onus on the church. If the leaven isn’t causing the dough to rise or the lamp isn’t giving adequate light or the salt has lost its savor, you don’t blame the flour or the ill-lit world or the meat with little flavor. And that would seem to suggest that a holy church will be an effective church. If we live in a time when the church is less effective in mission, it is to ourselves we should look for the solution. We cannot blame the world. Like Christ, whose disciples Christians are, we need to have compassion on the multitude who are like sheep without a shepherd. We have to be very careful to embrace the victim, not just to walk by on the other side of the road. A recent book by James Davison Hunter explores how the Christian Church is and should be present to today’s world.23 Hunter’s argument proceeds in three steps. First, he reviews the whole range of current efforts by Christians to change the world, focusing (not surprisingly) on evangelical movements, but by no means excluding Catholic voices. He concludes that all such efforts are wasted: because they simply do not work, because they misconstrue the Christian mandate to be co-creators in God’s work of making and remaking the world, because they pay too much attention to politics and too little to culture, and because the 23  See note 20 above. Hunter, long-known for his writings on the ‘culture wars’, is the Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. His website contains useful short summaries of the argument of the book, chapter by chapter (http://jamesdavisonhunter.com/to-change-the-world/chapter-abstracts/).



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naiveté of their understandings of how social change occurs has condemned them to their contemporary irrelevance. Second, he calls for a re-thinking of the nature of power and for “post-political witness” in the world. Finally, he develops a case for what he calls a “theology of faithful presence.” Overall, like Rahner, he is looking for an ecclesial location between the aggressive effort to make the Christian vision of things a template for secular society and the retreat from the world into a kind of neo-Anabaptist peaceable kingdom. Hunter imagines a Christian Church in which individuals and their communities of faith engage in “the practice of faithful presence,” which “generates relationships and institutions that are fundamentally covenantal in character, the ends of which are the fostering of meaning, purpose, truth, beauty, belonging, and fairness – not just for Christians but for everyone.” It is not difficult for a Catholic to see in Hunter’s analysis a close parallel to the models of church as sacrament, as prophet and as communion, or to find echoes of those haunting opening words of Gaudium et spes, that “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men [sic] of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ” (GS 1). But it is to Hunter’s credit that his vision avoids the Council’s tendency to objectify the church over against the world. The church shares the lot of modern human beings because the church is composed of modern human beings, as enmeshed in the concupiscence of the world as they are in the light of Christ. Being a holy church today is not a matter of standing over against the world or of absorbing it. Finding the holy ground between these two extremes requires balancing three imperatives. First, the Christian Church frees its baptized members to love the world for the sake of the Gospel and to act in the world in the power of the Spirit, authorized by their baptism itself and not by church leadership. This is adult lay Christianity. Second, the church structures a believing community gathered around the Eucharist, which is itself a politeia given over to the values of the Reign of God, but for the sake of the world of which it is inescapably a part. Third, Christians, who are at home in the secular world as they are at home in the church, find and actualize in the sinful world – as they find and actualize within themselves – the grace of God at work independently of the church. We are in danger of radically misconceiving our responsibilities to the work of the church in the world when we as a church insert ourselves into political controversy. The heresy of integrism against which Rahner warned – and which is an ever-present temptation

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for the church when it faces what it takes to be an antagonistic world – is not wrong solely because it falsely assumes that the world needs a Christian template laid upon it, to replace worldly error with inspired truth. It is also wrong because it meddles with the workings of divine grace in the power of the Spirit within the secular world. Here one has to wonder if Hunter realizes just how Catholic his proposal really is. To exclude the church as church from direct intervention in secular politics does not silence Christians so much as commission them. In virtue of baptism, what Vatican II called the ‘essentially secular’ nature of the laity has to issue in forceful interventions in the secular world. ‘Embracing the victim’ may be at least as much a matter of pressing for structural change in society as direct action on behalf of a particular wounded individual. This vision can only be implemented if baptized Christians are not thought of as so many foot soldiers in a salvation strategy devised by High Command. Baptism does not make Christians into foot soldiers simply ‘taking orders’. It includes all Christians in a priestly people, called to be prophetic (to teach the world) and to be ‘kingly’ (to serve the world). The institutional church is there to aid in this task that baptism has brought upon us, and it would be foolish to ignore the advice it has to offer and the instruction that it has to give. But in the last analysis, Christians act in the world through the guiding power of the Holy Spirit who guides us, in the light of conscience, knowing full well the dangers of sinfulness and the power of grace. That a baptized Christian acts in the world in his or her apostolic, missionary role by virtue of baptism, and not by direct commission of the institutional church, is well-attested in the tradition. The lengthiest discussion of this complex point is to be found in Yves Congar’s efforts to explain the relationship between the ministry of the individual Christian ex spiritu and the formally mandated organizations of Catholic Action, a very important lay movement in mid-twentieth century continental Europe. While his purpose is to confirm the benefits of Catholic Action, he insists that it would be wrong “to forget that it is the organization of an already living apostleship, one grounded in the deepest realities of Christian life.”24 “In this context,” writes Congar, “every faithful Christian can and ought to adopt the magnificent saying of John 24  Congar, Lay People in the Church, 368. See also Augustine, “Tractates on the Gospel of John,” in St. Augustine: Homilies on the Gospel of John; Homilies on the First Epistle of John; Soliloquies, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series 7, trans. John Gibb, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1888), 51.13, 286-287; and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 72.



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Wesley, ‘I look upon all the world as my parish’.”25 So if the church is at work in the world in and through the apostolic activity of all the faithful, the overwhelming majority of whom are laity, the nature of the individual’s relationship to ecclesiastical authority depends upon what is at issue. Individual Christians have no direct role in formulating basic doctrines or proclaiming fundamental ethical principles, though they can surely try to re-express them in ways their fellow-citizens might grasp. But they have the starring roles in the evangelical process of simply being the face of Christ in culture and civil society, a task which means that every day, in all that they do, they are willy-nilly interpreting Christian faith in a secular world. This is only possible in the power of the Spirit. The practical implications of such a view of the church change the way in which the church acts in the world. All baptized Christians, but lay Christians perhaps more than the ordained, share the concupiscent world with every other human being. This concupiscent yet gracious world is the place where the work of building up God’s love in and for the world takes place. This is what Rahner means by the humanization of the world, where a more traditional Christian might have referred to it as ‘pre-evangelization’ or ‘preparation for the Gospel’. Rahner would, I think, reject the distinction, and I would go along with him. Wherever the world is becoming more truly and deeply human, with all that this means about concern for others and the care of the world which is our home, there evangelization is truly taking place. The love of God for the world is being actualized, even when it is not being directly preached. But then if this is truly the case, surely this means that the holiness of Christians, understood as their fidelity to mission in grace and concupiscence, is somehow matched by those of other religions and none. The lay Christian is a worldly apostle, sent into the world. The human being of integrity who is not a Christian is found in the world, struggling in like manner to those who are sent. If the church is the community called together and set apart by God for mission, then there is also surely little doubt that there are many individuals outside the church who are somehow set apart – if not called together – for much the same mission of humanization. How else do we make sense of the great holy people of other religious traditions and the great human beings of none? If they are doing God’s work, then they are surely among God’s holy people. To be a holy church, in the final analysis, is about getting the balance right between the centripetal and the centrifugal forces in Christianity.  Congar, Lay People in the Church, 366.

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All Christian churches, maybe even all religions, possess both in different measures. Centripetal forces are those which encourage the members of the church to look inwards, toward what it is that unites them as a people. For Christians in more sacramental traditions, with a strong focus on the Eucharist, the temptation to be too centripetal is very strong. For more evangelical Christians, with the Bible as their center, fearlessly proclaiming the gospel may unbalance them in the opposite direction. The extravagance of ritual can overwhelm the missionary impulse, while the urge to convert can leave little room for the quiet contemplation of the God whose gift everything is. But the opposite is also true; the evangelicals have preserved for the whole body of the faithful the reality of solid Christian fellowship (their centripetal moment), while the more Catholic traditions have found theological avenues to explore the links between the secular world and the community of faith (their centrifugal dimension). The search for integrity in a concupiscent world is already being in the grace of God. And here, sharing with those of any faith and none, the church is holy.

The Church as “Spotless Bride”

A Feminist Critique of a Harmful Metaphor Susan A. Ross For at least the last forty-five years, Bernard Prusak has been one of the rare male theologians highly attentive to the role of women in Christianity. His 1974 essay in the collection Religion and Sexism, “Woman: Seductive Siren and Source of Sin?” provided a very early and valuable resource to scholars and students looking to understand perceptions of women, how women have played significant roles in the church and how, in turn, the church hierarchy has understood women.1 One of his more recent works, The Church Unfinished, which continues this line of inquiry, ends in a brief Epilogue put in the form of a question: “A Future for Women in the Church?”2 In this essay, I will attempt to offer a tentative answer to both questions posed in his writing by arguing that the church as a whole (that is, both clergy and laity) needs to grapple with the ways that the church itself has been feminized, what this means, and what it would take to move forward as a church of genuine equality for women and men. I write this in the wake of the 2018 revelations of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s preying on seminarians, the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report, and the names of priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors released by a number of dioceses and provinces of religious orders. This is also following the October 2018 Synod on the Family, where women were excluded from having any vote in the deliberations, while nonordained male religious were given voting status.3 The scandal of clergy sex abuse, devastating as it is to victims and their families, is also a scandal of clericalism which elevates the clergy above 1  Bernard P. Prusak, “Woman: Seductive Siren and Source of Sin? Pseudepigraphal Myth and Christian Origins,” in Religion and Sexism: Images of Women in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 89-116. 2  Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004). 3  Colleen Dulle, “Why Can’t Women Vote at the Synod on Young People?,” America(October 10,2018),https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/10/10/why-cant-women-votesynod-young-people.

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the laity, especially the feminine laity. The elevated state of clerics and the feminization of the laity is the concern of this chapter. Many women, including this writer, have found themselves asking the same question Prusak asked in 2004: “Is there any future for women in the church?” But the question can be extended to ask: “Is there any future for a greater role for laity in the church?” If there is to be a future that is different from the present, one essential step to take is to challenge the feminine nature attributed to the church and all that is associated with it. There are significant connections between the ways that women and the laity have been described and understood. Both are seen as feminine and in need of male leadership. These characterizations make it all the more difficult to imagine ways of more fully incorporating their voices in church structure and governance. This essay will proceed in the following steps: first, I will review the ways that the spousal language in both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament have been interpreted by feminist scholars. I will show how the language of Israel and, later, of the church – exhibiting a ‘bridal’ character in relation to God – although having ancient roots, is deeply problematic. Second, I will examine the language used in and for the church in such places as the Catechism of the Catholic Church and in recent theology to show how femininity is reinforced not only intellectually but also affectively. I will also take a brief look at Pope Francis’s comments on women. What these examples reveal is that the feminization of the people results not only in structures of unequal power, but also in attitudes and actions that are potentially and actually harmful to women as well as to the laity. I will then suggest alternative language that not only avoids these pitfalls but also suggests a more robust sense of empowerment for women and the laity. I.  Israel and the Church as Bride Spousal language for the human-divine relationship has a long history in religion. In the ancient near east, the gods and goddesses modeled marital relationships for human beings, and their union was thought to ensure the fertility of the crops. While the Hebrew scriptures repeatedly inveigh against the worship of the divinities of the Israelites’ Canaanite neighbors, the religious practices of ancient Israel reveal the persistence of the people’s continued devotion to a variety of gods and goddesses. To what extent Israelite religion can be said to be truly monotheistic is a question that I am not equipped to answer. But the place of spousal



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language and the use of the marriage metaphor to convey a message about the people’s relationship to the divine is a topic that has received increased critical attention in recent years. There are some scholars who see the marriage metaphor as a positive one, some of whom will be discussed in the next section. There is a long tradition for this language with deep roots in ancient religions. But feminist scholars are suspicious of the ways that this metaphor has been used to portray Israel as the faithless wife or even the harlot and to justify its punishment as what is due to a wife who cheats on her faithful husband. Renita Weems’s Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets is a thoughtful yet scathing treatment of the use of the marriage metaphor in Hosea, Ezekiel and Jeremiah and its effect not only in the past but also in the present.4 Weems emphasizes the power of metaphor in the prophetic use of marital imagery: The enduring benefit of convincing audiences to see the relationship between Israel and God as a marriage was that the prophets could exploit what was sure to be a range of widely held, deeply felt attitudes about marriage to shape their audience’s thinking about God’s claim upon Israel. What better way of personifying that claim than by using as an analogy a human relationship where issues of power, propriety, property, and purity were profoundly at stake?5

The relationship between Hosea and his wife Gomer, as the prophet tells it, mirrors the relationship between God and Israel. As the story is told, Israel has been unfaithful to God through its practice of idol worship; the prophets’ role is to bring the people back to worship of the one God. To make this relationship come alive, Hosea is told to marry Gomer, a ‘harlot’, and they have three children, all named symbolically (Punishment, Lack of pity, Not my people [Hos 1:4-9]). Gomer is described as an adulteress and Hosea expresses his fury at her actions by humiliating her by stripping her, and revealing ‘her shame’ before her lovers. Although she is unfaithful, Hosea will not abandon her, but his fidelity to her also exacts a high price from her. The story is meant to exemplify God’s fidelity to Israel despite its infidelity to God.

4  Renita J. Weems, Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995). Other books raising questions about the metaphor include Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible (New York: Schocken Books, 2002). See also the classic though dated Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1984). 5  Weems, Battered Love, 13.

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Weems’s exploration of the marriage metaphor in Hosea, Ezekiel and Jeremiah focuses on the ways that marriage is a familiar relationship, one that evokes powerful feelings. As she notes, “…audiences must care about the social picture the metaphor is capturing.”6 More than images of, say, a vine or a flock of sheep, the metaphor of marriage taps into deep feelings and attitudes about relationships between men and women. In this relationship, men are the injured ones in power, and women symbolize the unfaithful and sinful wife Israel. So the metaphor becomes more than ‘just a metaphor’: it draws on the actual dynamics in marital relationships, a world where, as Weems observes, a woman could be forced to marry her rapist, a woman’s activity had the potential to bring shame on her husband and family, and where a woman’s body needed above all to be controlled.7 Weems further observes that “the image of the subdued wife and the conquering husband is a familiar scene in Western literature,” and, I would add, also in popular cultural portrayals such as films.8 Think of the scene in the classic film Gone with the Wind (1939), when Rhett Butler forcibly carries his wife Scarlett to bed after a fight, and where, in the following scene, she is portrayed with a knowing smile on her face. Other, more recent examples could include Latin American telenovelas, vampire stories, Disney films, and HBO’s Game of Thrones.9 As Weems notes, “Metaphors matter, finally, because they teach us how to imagine what has previously remained unimaginable.”10 To be sure, not every portrayal of marriage in the Hebrew scriptures is violent or demeaning to women. There are the complicated relationships of such couples as Abraham and Sarah (where Abraham lies to the Egyptians about Sarah being his wife), Jacob and Rebecca (where Jacob was forced to marry Rebecca’s sister Leah first), or David and Bathsheba (whose relationship was based on the murder of Bathsheba’s first husband Uriah, and where even the prophet Nathan portrays Bathsheba as poor Uriah’s property). There is also that of Ruth and Boaz, where Ruth initiates their sexual relationship. We can also look at the relationship of the (unmarried) couple in the Song of Songs, where the woman has a voice  Weems, Battered Love, 24.  Ibid., 8, 59-60, 87-88. 8  Ibid., 89. 9  For an insightful article, see Julie Beck, “When Pop Culture Sells Dangerous Myths about Romance,” The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/ archive/2018/01/when-pop-culture-sells-dangerous-myths-about-romance/549749/?fbclid=IwAR1nbxpilyGXbcv7bbO-NmEpxnieyH9xmZRktRosxRzxW_PtCYcDD5_OgVs; I am grateful to Karen Ross and other colleagues for their suggestions. 10  Weems, Battered Love, 109. 6 7



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and where the relationship suggests joyful mutuality. Nevertheless, ancient Israel was undeniably a patriarchal society, where a woman’s worth was often dependent on her ability to bear children (preferably sons), and where her potential infidelity posed a threat to the stability of Israelite society. The marriage metaphor was a powerful way of portraying the relationship between Israel and God, but it also played on real human relationships where male control and female submission was unquestioned. There are, of course, other women who take on the role of the judge or warrior (Judith, Deborah, Esther), but they are exceptions. Although his topic was the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical literature of ancient Israel and early Christianity, Bernard Prusak came to a similar conclusion about the consequences of the ways that women were depicted in variations of the stories of the origin of evil. He observes that the ancient authors “explained the de facto existence of evil by indicting woman as its source, and thereby also had both a theological explanation and the justification for maintaining the cultural facts of male dominance and female subservience.”11 Here again, women are the means through which the most negative dimensions of human behavior are portrayed. The connection between metaphors and actual practices is further reinforced here through familiar images of untrustworthy and irresponsible women. The marriage metaphor found renewed life in early Christianity. Although its Pauline authorship is debated, the letter to the Ephesians has canonical status and draws on the language of marriage to model relationships within the early Christian community. Here, the spousal language is used to describe a different relationship: that of the spotless bride and her bridegroom Christ. In her article, “The Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:22-23): A Problematic Wedding?,” Carolyn Osiek argues that this passage establishes the church as the successor to Israel as God’s lover and concludes that “As long as the marriage metaphor is in play, gender symbolism is fixed.”12 As in the marriage metaphor in the Hebrew prophets, the woman becomes the symbol of the people, but in this case, the woman is not the harlot but the ‘spotless bride’. The bridal language of Ephesians also has a different context than that of Hosea. Rather than the problematic relationship of faithful husband and unfaithful wife, the Ephesians text  Prusak, “Woman: Seductive Siren,” 97.  Carolyn L. Osiek, “The Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:22-23): A Problematic Wedding?,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 32, no. 1 (2002): 29-39, at 38. 11

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is concerned with household relationships in the early Christian community.13 Osiek argues that this text serves as a way of understanding the “formation of proper relationships within the household as microcosm of the church….”14 In addition, a concern for purity emerges in the text, and Osiek notes that its association with Baptism would have been obvious to the early Christian communities. As with the adulterous wife in the First Testament prophetic texts, the significance of female chastity and purity is not only relevant to the family structure, but also to civil symbolism. Here, Osiek quotes Margaret MacDonald: “As in Paul’s letters … there is the idea in Ephesians 5.21-33 that union with a pure female body has symbolic importance in expressing the nature of the separation from a past way of life. As a reflection of the holy and unblemished church, the pure bride stands in contrast to the evil world outside.”15 Female chastity is identified with orthodoxy and the analogous relationship of husband to wife and Christ to the church is firmly established. Two issues are in play here: one is the domination/submission relationship of husband and wife. The second is the importance of purity on the part of the wife. The hierarchical relationship of submission in this passage is often explained, and even excused, by the point that mutual submission is the point, as in Eph 5:21: “Defer to one another out of reverence for Christ.” But Osiek notes that, “In spite of the exhortation to mutual submission in 5:21, however, here submission is a ‘woman thing’. Wives are not to obey, as are children and slaves; the terminology is different.”16 The husband is the ‘head’ of the wife as Christ is ‘head’ of the church. And as Osiek further observes, “the term used for submission carries connotations of respectful rather than servile yielding, but very definitely of inferior subject to authoritative superior.”17 The point is that the church has a relationship of subjection to Christ, as the bride does to her husband. Here again, the feminine character of the church is underscored. 13  Colossians 3 is also concerned with family relationships, but the spousal metaphor is not used in that text. 14  Osiek, “The Bride of Christ,” 30-31. 15  Margaret Y. MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the Hysterical Woman (Cambridge, New York, and Oakleigh, VI: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 230-231; see also Stephen Francis Miletic, “One Flesh”: Eph. 5.22-24, 5.31: Marriage and the New Creation, Analecta Biblica 115 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1988); both referenced by Osiek. 16  Osiek, “The Bride of Christ,” 31. 17  Ibid., 32.



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Osiek’s critique of this use of language is complex, delving into the ways that echoes of the traditional Jewish ritual bath before marriage are evoked, how the ‘shy, pure’ virgin bride is presented to her presumably more experienced husband, and how ‘headship’ is used to describe Christ’s relationship to his church. Her central point is that this symbolism is still maintained as justification for the all-male priesthood and for ecclesial gender relations in the present.18 Her conclusion is worth quoting at length: I would argue that casting the church as feminine, and above all as bride of Christ, far from enhancing the dignity of women, has in fact done harm to perception of the capacity of women to image the divine, and thus of women’s fundamental human and Christian dignity. It does no good to affirm the full dignity and equality of women with men if our language, our imagery, and our metaphors continue to perpetuate inequality.19

I would underscore here the power of language and metaphor to shape both thinking and feeling and the pervasiveness of this metaphor in much of the language of the church. In this case, words have real power. II.  Contemporary Catholicism and the Church as Bride Does contemporary language for the church “continue to perpetuate inequality”? One logical place to explore the language used for the church is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism is considered to be one of, if not the most, authoritative texts for church teaching. Within the Catechism, the church itself is considered under the discussion of the section of the Nicene Creed: “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church.”20 The section on the church begins by considering “Names and Images of the Church” (751). Beginning with the Greek root of the Latin term ecclesia, the Catechism first describes the church as the assembly of the people. The section then goes on to list other terms that are used to describe the church: People of God, sheepfold, cultivated field, building of God, Jerusalem (the holy city). This list of terms is very much in  See especially Osiek, “The Bride of Christ,” 34-35.  Ibid., 38-39. 20  The full text of the English translation of the Catechism is available at http://www. vatican.va/archive/eng0015/__p26.htm. 18

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accord with the way that the church is described in Lumen gentium, Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.21 The list of terms, however, culminates with this familiar language: The Church, further, which is called “that Jerusalem which is above” and “our mother,” is described as the spotless spouse of the spotless lamb. It is she whom Christ “loved and for whom he delivered himself up that he might sanctify her.” It is she whom he unites to himself by an unbreakable alliance, and whom he constantly “nourishes and cherishes.” (757; cf. LG 6)

Throughout the entire section on the church, the pronoun used for the church is always feminine: “We begin our investigation of the Church’s mystery by meditating on her origin in the Holy Trinity’s plan and her progressive realization in history” (758; emphasis added). It is interesting to note that the language for humanity is ‘man’, as one finds in language referring to the fact that “God calls all men” (759). It is important to recall here that in the process of translating the Latin text of the Catechism into English, the first version used ‘inclusive’ language, avoiding references to all of humanity as ‘men’ by including ‘sisters’ when ‘brothers’ were mentioned and by referring to ‘humanity’ and ‘people’ instead of ‘man’. This inclusivity, however, proved to be objectionable and unacceptable to many, and after protests were made to the Vatican, the entire Catechism was re-translated using the traditional ‘generic man’ for humanity and exclusively male language for God.22 The description of the church in the Catechism continues with more feminine references to the church: • “As Eve was formed from the sleeping Adam’s side, so the Church was born from the pierced heart of Christ hanging on the Cross.” (766) • “As the ‘convocation’ of all men for salvation, the Church in her very nature is missionary, sent by Christ to all the nations to make disciples of them.” (767)

21  Lumen gentium (November 21, 1964), 5-6 (hereafter cited as LG), http://www. vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-­ gentium_en.html. 22  There are articles available online that describe the controversy over inclusive/ exclusive language in the Catechism. See, for example, https://www.ewtn.com/library/ catechsm/cchism.htm, which argues that “Occasionally the almost maniacal concern which is evident to avoid generic language at all costs can lead to actual distortions and misstatements of Christian revelation and essential Catholic doctrine.” Also see https:// www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=2623, which refers to ‘ideological feminist theory’ and argues that the use of inclusive language will lead to continued demands for ‘priestesses’.



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• “So that she can fulfill her mission, the Holy Spirit ‘bestows…’.” (768) • “Here below she knows that she is in exile far from the Lord….” (769)

The Catechism then goes on to flesh out some of the traditional metaphors for the church: People of God, Body of Christ, Temple of the Holy Spirit (781-795). Then, in section 796, the language of “Bride of Christ” is reintroduced within the section on the “Body of Christ.” Here, Christ is described as the “bridegroom” and “The Church is the spotless bride of the spotless Lamb.” In the light of Osiek’s critique of the conjunction of headship and bride language, it is interesting to note the footnote references to Ephesians 5. Later, in the section that explains that “The Church is Holy,” there are more references to Ephesians 5 and to the church as bride: “This is because Christ, the Son of God, who with the Father and the Spirit is hailed as ‘alone holy’, loved the Church as his Bride” (823). And in the section on “Christ’s Faithful – Hierarchy, Laity, Consecrated Life,” “The virgin” is described as “an eschatological image of this heavenly Bride of Christ and of the life to come” (923). The timing of the Catechism and the controversies surrounding its translation are significant. The Catechism was officially promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1992. Just four years earlier in 1988, John Paul issued his encyclical Mulieris dignitatem, “On the Dignity and Vocation of Woman.”23 This document was in many ways a response to the global women’s movement that emerged in the 1960s through the 1980s, the ordination of women in many Protestant denominations beginning in the 1950s, as well as the ultimately unsuccessful efforts of the U.S. Catholic Bishops to write a pastoral letter on women’s concerns.24 In Mulieris, John Paul pays special attention to the spousal dynamic between men and women and how it applies to the church. In his interpretation of the way that Jesus related to women, John Paul notes: “Christ’s attitude toward women serves as a model of what the Letter to the Ephesians 23  Pope John Paul II, Mulieris dignitatem “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women” (August 15, 1988) (hereafter cited in text as MD), http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/ en/apost_letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19880815_mulieris-dignitatem.html. 24  See, for example, “Excerpts from Draft Pastoral Letter on Women by Catholic Bishops,” https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/12/us/excerpts-from-draft-pastoral-letteron-women-by-catholic-bishops-in-us.html. The story here is complex, with multiple drafts of the letter, which was finally tabled in 1992. It is interesting that when one consults the USCCB’s web page on “Women’s Concerns” there is no mention at all of these efforts of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

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expresses with the concept of ‘bridegroom’. Precisely because Christ’s divine love is the love of a bridegroom, it is the model and pattern of all human love, men’s love in particular.”25 Supporters of this position emphasize the connection between the marriage metaphor and the church. Donald Keefe, for example, in response to questions about the ordination of women, writes, If it be true that masculinity and femininity are thus sacramental, and that all human existence is engaged in this signing, it must follow that the only paradigms by which the mystery, the meaning, of masculinity and femininity may be approached are those provided by the marital relationship between Christ and his Church, between the Head and the Body, a polarity intrinsic to the New Covenant, to the New Creation, to the imaging of God.26

One of the major modern theological advocates for understanding the church as bride is the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (19051988). In his multi-volume work The Glory of the Lord, as well as in his other writings, Balthasar repeatedly turns to Mary and the ‘Marian principle’ as central to the nature of the church.27 Balthasar also bases his understanding on Ephesians 5, arguing – contrary to scholarly consensus – that Paul was the actual author of the letter.28 As his interpreter W. T. Dickens puts it, “In Mary, and only in her, the Church is at once the immaculate mother of Christ as well as his spotless bride.”29 Mary best exemplifies the receptive dimension of the church. Similarly, in the 1976 Vatican statement on the question of the ordination of women, Inter insigniores, Christ is described as “The Bridegroom and Head of the Church.” As bridegroom, the document notes, Jesus is necessarily a male.30 These examples make clear that the ‘bridal’ language for the church is alive and well in the twentieth and twenty first centuries, and the  MD, 25.  Donald J. Keefe, “Sacramental Sexuality and the Ordination of Women,” Communio 5 (1978): 228-251. Emphasis added. 27  Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Vol. 1: Seeing the Form, trans. Erasmo Levia-Merikakis, ed. Joseph Fessio, SJ and John Riches (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press and New York: Crossroad, 1982), especially “The Marian Experience of God,” 338-342. 28  See W. T. Dickens, Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics: A Model for Post-Critical Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 303, n. 16. 29  Ibid., 208. 30  Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Inter Insigniores (October 15, 1976), http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_ cfaith_doc_19761015_inter-insigniores_en.html, esp. 2, 5. 25

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strong resistance to inclusive language in the Catechism, as well as other efforts to be more inclusive in liturgical language, make it clear that the gendered language for the church and for humanity are not ‘mere words’. Some years ago, Richard John Neuhaus, a convert to Catholicism from Lutheranism, declared that inclusive language was ‘heretical’ and that any effort to make liturgical language more inclusive should be dismissed as the work of ‘zealots’.31 It is worth noting the debates that erupted with the publication of The Inclusive Language Lectionary and with arguments for changing liturgical language from primarily father-oriented images for God, such as in the ‘Our Father’, to how humanity should be referred to, and whether or not to include the language of ‘Mother’ as well as ‘Father’ when mentioning the divine.32 The point I am making in this essay is related, although not identical, to that larger debate; challenging language that is both ancient and familiar to the ears of the faithful risks much. Yet the perpetuation of the language of ‘spotless bride’ for the church evokes the innocent and virginal young woman in relation to the man who possesses both the experience and the responsibility to be her superior and caretaker. To be sinless, innocent, and receptive is far more characteristic of a child than of an adult woman preparing to undertake a lifelong commitment to another person. And as a model for the church, this metaphor is troubling not only for its conception of women, but also for the way that the laity is characterized. It may also suggest the strong reluctance to admit the sinfulness of the church itself.33 A few more recent examples come from Pope Francis. On his return flight from World Youth Day in 2016, Pope Francis was asked about the role of women in the church. This was, in part, his response: A Church without women is like the Apostolic College without Mary. The role of women in the Church is not only maternity, the mother of the family, but it’s stronger: it is, in fact, the icon of the Virgin, of Our Lady, the one who helps the Church grow! But think that Our

 Richard John Neuhaus, “In the Beauty of Holiness,” First Things 75 (August-September, 1997): 74. 32  There are a number of reviews of The Inclusive Language Lectionary available online. Of another text, Ronald D. Witherup’s A Liturgist’s Guide to Inclusive Language, one reviewer writes: “To those who continue to think the discussion is ‘much ado about nothing,” he argues that “inclusive language is not the passing fancy of Church-destroying radicals, but a necessary exercise in human liberation.” See Kurt Stasiak’s review in Worship 71, no. 3 (1997): 281-282. See also James L. Empereur, “The Exclusivity of Inclusive Language,” Liturgical Ministry 1 (1992): 118-125. 33  I am indebted to William George for this observation. Brian P. Flanagan’s book, Stumbling in Holiness: Sin and Sanctity in the Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2019), is a thorough study of this issue. 31

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Lady is more important than the Apostles! She is more important! The Church is feminine: she is Church, she is spouse, she is Mother. But women in the Church, not only must … I don’t know how it’s said in Italian … a woman’s role in the Church must not end only as mother, as worker, limited. No! It’s something else!

And in response to a question from a journalist on that flight, Pope Francis responded, “I would like to explain a bit what I said on the participation of women in the Church. It can’t be limited to being altar servers or presidents of Caritas, catechists…. No! It must be more, but profoundly more!”34 In the six years since Pope Francis’s election, he has called for a ‘more incisive’ presence for women in the church,35 appointed women theologians to the International Theological Commission, and established a commission to study (again) the question of the ordination of women as deacons.36 Yet, in his 2014 remarks about the appointment of women theologians to the ITC, Pope Francis commented that “…women [theologians] are the strawberry on the cake.”37 For many women, including this writer, Pope Francis has been in many ways a breath of fresh air in the church with his concern for the poor, his likening of the church to a ‘field hospital’, his profound gestures of solidarity with migrants and refugees and his concern with the ecological crisis. His disarming greeting to the crowds in St. Peter’s Square upon his election and his insistence on living in the guest house rather than the papal apartments have endeared him to many, although it has also alienated some of his conservative critics. But his tone-deafness to women’s concerns for a voice with actual power in the church has also been frustrating: his insistence that the question of ordination is ‘closed’, that the power of a parish priest really belongs to the housekeeper, his comparison of Europe to a ‘grandmother who is no longer fertile and vibrant’. It is clear that 34  “Pope Francis said, ‘Mary Was More Important than the Apostles, Bishops, Deacons and Priests’,” https://www.jkmi.com/pope-francis-said-mary-was-more-important-thanthe-apostles-than-bishops-deacons-and-priests. 35  Joshua J. McElwee, “Pope Calls Again for ‘Incisive’ Women’s Presence in Church,” National Catholic Reporter (February 7, 2015), https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/ pope-calls-again-incisive-womens-presence-church-offers-no-specifics. 36  Peter Feuerherd, “Members of Papal Commission on Women’s Diaconate Make First Public Comments, National Catholic Reporter (January 7, 2019), https://www. ncronline.org/news/parish/members-papal-commission-womens-diaconate-make-firstpublic-comments. 37  Hanna Roberts, “Women Theologians are the ‘Strawberry on Cake’, Says Pope,” The Tablet (December 11, 2014), https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/1508/-womentheologians-are-the-strawberry-on-the-cake-says-pope.



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Francis’s agenda is focused on the most economically and socially marginalized in the world – refugees, the devastated earth, the poor – and that the church’s priority should be focused on ministering to those who have the least. To be sure, women and children constitute the majority of the marginalized, but the issue of marginalization because of gender is not addressed. While disappointing, there is also something revelatory in Francis’s comments. That is to say, they are based in commonly assumed ideas and images of women’s maternal yet also virginal qualities: a paradoxical combination that sees women not as real human beings who lead complex lives but as idealized icons. III.  The Femininity of the Church and the Role of the Laity In the years since the revelations of clergy sex abuse first came into wide public view, there have been repeated calls for greater lay participation in church governance.38 Many people have argued that if married people had had a more significant role in the governance of parishes and dioceses, there would have been much greater concern for victims, primarily children and adolescents, rather than for the reputation (and finances) of the priest or the church. Joseph Imesch, the late bishop of Joliet, Illinois, was asked by an attorney in 1995 in a deposition about a priest who had been accused of molesting a child in another diocese, but who was nevertheless brought into his diocese. “If you had a child,” the lawyer recalled asking the bishop during the deposition for a civil suit, “wouldn’t you be concerned that the priest they were saying mass with had been convicted of sexually molesting children?” Replied Imesch, “I don’t have any children.”39

Imesch’s failure of empathy and imagination speaks for itself. In March 2003, a conference on the ecclesiological issues raised by the clergy sex abuse crisis was held at Yale University.40 The volume of essays 38  See, for example Dennis Sadowski, “Prominent Catholics See larger Role for Laity in Church’s Abuse Response,” National Catholic Reporter (August 28, 2018), https:// www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/prominent-catholics-see-larger-role-laitychurchs-abuse-response. 39  Todd Lighty and David Heinzmann, “Joliet Bishop at Center of Crisis,” Chicago Tribune (May 16, 2002), https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2002-05-160205160369-story.html. 40  Francis Oakley and Bruce Russet, eds., Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church (New York: Continuum, 2004).

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from the conference focuses on the past, present, and possible future of church structures. The essays are telling in their review of past traditions and the ways that the hierarchical structures of the present church have been normalized and accepted as ‘given’. For example, Bishop Donald W. Wuerl’s introductory comments describe the Catholic Church as a “divinely established reality,” and that “the hierarchy and the apostolic tradition are intrinsic to the church.”41 His pronouns for the church are also feminine. To be fair, Wuerl calls for the need to include the laity in parish and diocesan councils, to share financial reports with the laity, and in general for greater openness on the part of the clergy. Nevertheless, some of his assumptions are worth questioning. Wuerl’s resignation in January 2019 due to his apparent complicity in the coverup of sexual abuse by clergy does not add much to his reputation. In his response to Wuerl, journalist Peter Steinfels expressed his discomfort with some of Wuerl’s comments: There is something more than a little disconcerting about the swift move from Jesus’ “constitution” of the church to its contemporary manifestation, complete with references in a single sentence to the Gospel, magisterial teaching on faith and morals, and canon law, followed in the next sentence by a reference to the “structure of the faith and order that is essential to the church.”42

The subsequent essays in the volume offer a rich picture of the historical development of ecclesial governing structures. Francine Cardman, a historian of early Christianity, notes the need to “recogniz[e] the ‘mythic’ narrative of ecclesial origins” so as to allow for “a more accurate picture of the complexity and diversity of the Catholic Church.”43 Francis Oakley, a historian, observes that the “tired liturgical refrain” that “the church is not a democracy … is almost always deployed in an attempt to vindicate highly authoritarian ecclesial structures….”44 Canon lawyer John Beal’s comments are particularly appropriate for this essay: “In a 41  Most Reverend Donald W. Wuerl, “Reflections on Governance and Accountability in the Church,” in Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church, ed. Oakley and Russet, 13-23, at 13. 42  Peter Steinfels, “Necessary but not Sufficient: A Response to Bishop Wuerl’s Reflections,” in Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church, ed. Oakley and Russet, 25-29, at 26. 43  Francine Cardman, “Myth, History, and the Beginnings of the Church,” in Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church, ed. Oakley and Russet, 33-48, at 47. 44  Francis Oakley, “Constitutionalism in the Church?” in Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church, ed. Oakley and Russet, 76-87, at 80-81.



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church structured as a society of unequals, no one is more unequal than lay people.”45 He elaborates on this point: …lay people are primarily passive recipients of clerical ministrations…. [T]he church … has not yet reached the point where lay people can be respected and treated as intelligent and talented adults with something to contribute to the edification of the church itself.46

And in his essay, historian John T. McGreevey “highlight[s] the inability of the last generation of Catholic leaders to separate authority within the church from gender, and the devastating consequences for Catholic credibility.”47 I should note that McGreevey is not arguing the specific point that I am attempting to make, that is, that the historical feminization of the church has resulted in a feminized, passive, and powerless laity. But the implication is nevertheless there. He notes the fact that, in the last fifty years, women’s roles have changed so that it is now expected that women will earn advanced degrees and work outside the home; his point is that the failure on the part of the hierarchy to acknowledge the changing roles of women has resulted in a “deepening alienation of Catholic women from a church hierarchy seen as distant and unsympathetic….”48 My point in referring to the clergy sex abuse crisis in relation to the role of the laity is not to argue that laity are any less likely to abuse children; in fact, most cases of abuse actually occur in families.49 It is rather that the subordinate and submissive role of laity as set out in official church policy makes it more difficult for laity to have a voice in church issues, and less likely that laity will confront clergy – or, when they do, that their voices will not be taken seriously, as the recent example of complaints about Bishop Michael Bransfield of West Virginia show.50 45  John Beal, “It Shall Not Be So among You! Crisis in the Church, Crisis in Church Law,” in Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church, ed. Oakley and Russet, 88-102, at 92. 46  Ibid., 93. 47  John T. McGreevey, “The Sex Abuse Crisis: The View from Recent History,” in Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church, ed. Oakley and Russet, 136-142, at 141. 48  Ibid. 49  See the report in Psychology Today, “Separating Facts about Clergy Abuse from Fiction,” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-the-right-thing/201808/ separating-facts-about-clergy-abuse-fiction. 50  See Robert O’Harrow, Jr. and Shawn Boburg, “Warnings about West Virginia Bishop went unheeded as he doled out cash gifts to Catholic leaders,” Washington Post (July 3, 2019), https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/warnings-about-wvabishop-went-unheeded-as-he-doled-out-cash-gifts-tocatholic-leaders-/2019/07/03/7efa27f4-8d4c-11e9-b162-8f6f41ec3c04_story.html?utm_term=.b7d9578a5607.

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No doubt there are many more examples of the “complex and diverse” history of the church and the possibilities for church structures and governance that would be inclusive of the wisdom of laity.51 As Bernard Prusak himself writes in The Church Unfinished, the Vatican II decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church “…affirms that the Church is not truly established, nor fully living, nor a perfect sign of Christ among humans, unless there is a mature, active laity working with the hierarchy…. [T]he gospel cannot be inculturated into the lives of people by a hierarchy acting alone.”52 It is beyond the scope of this essay to determine the nature of the laity’s role in a church that may have learned something valuable from the failures of the sex abuse crisis. It is troubling, however, to read the essays from a 2003 conference on the crisis and realize that almost nothing has changed in the seventeen years since then. In conclusion, let me focus on two issues that arise out of these considerations: the need both to critically examine metaphors and to recognize the competence of the laity. It goes without saying that we cannot live without using metaphors.53 As biblical scholars, linguists, and literary theorists would argue, language without metaphors would lack vividness, nuance, humor, or the power of emotion. It is, in fact, nearly impossible to describe the place of metaphors without metaphors! But metaphors are not ‘just words’, but ways of construing reality that have the power to shape our thinking and action. Recall Osiek’s conclusion to her essay on Ephesians 5: “It does no good to affirm the full dignity and equality of women with men if our language, our imagery, and our metaphors continue to perpetuate inequality.”54 My point is that this inequality is not only women’s inequality with men, but also the laity’s inequality with the hierarchy. As long as the church is seen as the ‘spotless Bride’ of the ‘spotless Lamb’, the laity will be identified with the feminine bride and, as we have already seen, the clergy with Christ, the ‘spotless Lamb’. Recall as well 51  For just a few examples, see Richard Gaillardetz, An Unfinished Council: Vatican II, Pope Francis, and the Renewal of Catholicism (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015); Richard Gaillardetz and Edward Hanhnenberg, eds., A Church with Open Doors: Catholic Ecclesiology for the Third Millennium (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015); Bradford E. Hinze, Prophetic Obedience: Ecclesiology for a Dialogical Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016); Flanagan, Stumbling in Holiness, n. 33 above. 52  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 298. 53  See, e.g., George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multidisciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny, with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello, SJ (Toronto and Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1975). 54  Osiek, “The Bride of Christ,” 38-39.



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how this language is used in Inter insigniores as a further reason to rule out the ordination of women.55 So there is a need for appropriate metaphors for the church, the hierarchy, and the laity that can do justice both to the tradition and to the contemporary situation. We could go back to Lumen gentium, which itself refers to the use of metaphors in communicating the meaning of the community.56 The language of ‘people of God’ and ‘body of Christ’ offer images that convey both community and unity. In considering the language that is used for the church, those with the power of shaping the words need to be attentive to the associations and images that are conveyed. A related point is recognition of the competence of the laity, particularly lay theologians. It is important to note that the immense growth in the numbers of lay theologians is a relatively new phenomenon. Before the mid-1960s, Catholic theologians were nearly all clergy, trained to teach in seminaries. There were some lay Catholic theologians who, because they were excluded from the then-all-clerical Catholic Theological Society of America until the late 1960s, formed the Association of Catholic College Teachers in 1955, later renamed the College Theology Society. But over the past fifty years, the face of the Catholic theologian has changed. There are women and men, parents, men and women religious in addition to clergy. In addition, many Catholic lay people who are not professional theologians are well-educated, informed, and knowledgeable about how organizations work. The picture of the laity as ‘spotless, innocent, and receptive’ is no longer adequate, if it ever really was. The too-easy identification of clergy with Christ and the laity with a silent and receptive woman – in fact, an inadequate picture of Mary57 – has led to the crisis the church faces in the present. The difficult relationship between Catholic bishops and theologians is one example of how the laity is excluded from having a genuine voice in the church. Particularly during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, theologians were silenced and/or sent away for re-­education (Ivone Gebara), called in for questioning (Edward Schillebeeckx), removed  See n. 27 above.  See LG 6: “In the old Testament the revelation of the Kingdom is often conveyed by means of metaphors. In the same way the inner nature of the Church is now made known to us in different images taken either from tending sheep or cultivating the land, from building or even from family life and betrothals, the images receive preparatory shaping in the books of the Prophets.” 57  See Elizabeth A. Johnson, Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints (New York: Continuum, 2003). 55

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from pontifical faculties (Charles Curran and Roger Haight), challenged by the US Bishops (Elizabeth Johnson), or placed under investigation by the Vatican (Margaret Farley). It is worth noting that all of these theologians were either clergy or members of religious communities whose superiors were ultimately responsible to the Vatican. More recently, some lay theologians have been strongly criticized (Michael Lawler and Todd Salzman) but the ability of the hierarchy to affect their employment is hindered by US universities’ traditional honoring of academic freedom. My own experience of four years of meetings with the Committee on Doctrine of the USCCB while in the presidential line of the Catholic Theological Society of America made clear the discomfort, if not sometimes even contempt, that some members of that committee held for Catholic theologians. In 2018 and 2019, requests made by CTSA Presidents to meet with the Committee on Doctrine went unanswered. The fact that many theologians today are better educated in theology than many bishops speaks volumes about the fears and concerns on the part of the hierarchy about the potential power of theologians. Under the pontificate of Francis, relationships have somewhat improved, as investigations have slowed or stopped, and some bishops – some of them appointed by Francis – welcome the contributions of theologians. But there is still much that could be done to attend to the work of lay Catholic theologians as genuine contributions to the church. Increased efforts to listen to the laity in some dioceses have promise for greater collaboration between clergy and laity, such as the synod on Amoris laetita in San Diego.58 My point here is the need to recognize the laity as competent and mature adults who have knowledge and skills that can make significant contributions to the church. Here again, the language of ‘spotless bride’ is decidedly inappropriate. Conclusion While my aim in this essay has been to criticize the use of the bridal/ spousal metaphor for the church, I should note that it would be a mistake to eliminate all gendered metaphors for the church or for God.59 58  See https://www.sdcatholic.org/office-for/family-life-and-spirituality/ synod-on-the-family/. 59  I am especially appreciative of Brian P. Flanagan’s sensitive treatment of this issue in Stumbling in Holiness, n. 33 above, esp. 159-165, where he also discusses the language of casta meretrix (chaste whore).



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As I note above, we rely on metaphors to communicate effectively. There are a number of feminist theologians who have suggested a different set of metaphors for God, such as Sallie McFague’s “Mother, Lover, Friend,” and Elizabeth Johnson’s Sophia-God. We could also note that the way mothers are sometimes portrayed in scriptures is of active caring (mother hen, woman looking for a lost coin), of mothers who fight fiercely for their children. Similarly, virgins, while too often understood only as ‘pure’ and ‘chaste’, are in fact women who do not rely on men for their identity. The choice of religious life for women, over two thousand years of Christianity, is often a choice for agency, education, time for prayer, active ministry to those in need, and not a simple receptivity to a more powerful man. Another point to make is a recognition of dependence on the part of all humanity. While laity are too often seen as totally dependent on the clergy, all human beings are dependent in various ways.60 Clergy are dependent on their congregations, their brother clergy for understanding and support, on their bishops not only for their authority, but also their inspiration (in the best of cases) for leadership. A reliance on outdated images and metaphors not only for laity and clergy, but also for God, Mary, Christ and the saints, is long overdue for an overhaul. Bernard Prusak closes The Church Unfinished by recalling Psalm 104:30, where it “prayerfully acknowledges that God’s Spirit is sent forth to renew the face of the land.”61 It is time to listen to where the Spirit is moving in the present: in the voices of the whole church, women and laity, clergy and bishops, and to conceive of this new church in language that is inspirational, powerful, and respectful of the full humanity of all its members.

60  See, for example, Sandra Sullivan-Dunbar, Human Dependency and Christian Ethics, New Studies in Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 61  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 336.

The Church as Society and Body of Christ

Breaking Down Historical and Theological Dependence on Ecclesial Monarchy Daniel Minch A major part of the contemporary crisis facing the church, of which the sex-abuse crisis is sadly only a symptom, is an increasingly urgent crisis of authority. In the (post-)modern world, the Roman Catholic Church has been exceptional in holding fast to pre-modern paradigms of authority and governance. The church, and particularly the Roman Catholic Church, is not a democracy – as the old cliché goes. In fact, the church was explicitly hostile even to the idea of civil democracies until well into the nineteenth century. I do not think, however, that this hostility – whether directed at civil society as in the past, or more recently at suggestions to democratize ecclesial structures – is theologically well grounded, nor do I believe that the church must remain an immutable anachronism among other institutions. In light of the revelations about systemtic sexual abuse in the church, Marcin Lisak argues that the ongoing abuse crisis demands “far more transparent, accountable institutions, individual accountability of leaders, and a sort of democratic (bottomup)” control of the church in order to enforce accountability.1 While the church should not necessarily be a representative democracy, it may be possible for official ecclesial structures to become more ‘democratic’ and hopefully more representative, open, and accountable to the whole People of God. Such structural accountability would go a long way toward alleviating the crisis of authority in the eyes of the world and many of the faithful. Should such a change take place, it must be justified and grounded both historically and theologically. The institutional church, in its contemporary form, has relied too heavily on the principle of ‘monarchial sovereignty’ inherited from past historical-political forms, and we have largely undervalued an inherently sacramental understanding of church 1  Marcin Lisak, “Democratisation of a Hierarchical Religion: The Roman Catholic Church in the Time of a Credibility Crisis Caused by Sexual Abuse Misconduct,” Studia Religiologica 45, no. 1 (2012): 7-19, at 19.

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and authority. Yves Congar famously argued that the church is “not a pyramid whose passive base receives everything from the apex.”2 At the very least, the historical-theological record of the church in the past two millennia does not a priori rule out a more democratic, representative, and accountable church. This would entail both embracing certain aspects of the church’s own sacramental character and adapting them to the current situation, rather than relying on historically-conditioned structures that have for too long been considered as ‘absolute’ and ‘divinely ordained’. While many authors have questioned the identification of ecclesial authority with hierarchical monarchy, Luca Badini Confalonieri has forcefully argued that hierarchy and democracy are not incompatible and that a move toward democratic authority does not undermine the church’s nature. He points to three main arguments for the reliance on monarchial sovereignty in the church: an argument from scripture, an argument from logic that pairs with a functionalist justification, and a theological-ontological argument from the order of the universe.3 Badini Confalonieri believes that the logical-functionalist argument used by Aquinas, Cajetan, and many others has historically been the most persuasive as the justification for ecclesial monarchy.4 He explores this issue quite thoroughly, but his thesis also leads him to neglect somewhat the theological arguments for monarchical sovereignty and against democracy, and especially the extent to which theological and historical reasoning has been intertwined. In order to arrive at a place where we can advocate for a more representative church, we must first examine and effectively critique the monarchial sovereignty that characterizes the present-day hierarchy. We must critique the theological basis for clinging to this form of governance with help from theo-political and historical argumentation. Here, I will begin by exploring some of the historical and theological reasons behind the historical adoption of monarchial sovereignty in relation to Catholic authority. This process was, of course, part of the historical evolution of the church itself. With each passing era, the church ­necessarily changed to meet the needs of the times. For this task, I will 2  Yves Congar, “Pneumatology Today,” The American Ecclesiastical Review 167, no. 7 (1967): 435-449, at 443. 3  Luca Badini Confalonieri, Democracy in the Christian Church: An Historical, Theological and Political Case, Ecclesiological Investigations 16 (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 50-53. 4  Ibid., 55.



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draw on the ecclesiological work done by Bernard P. Prusak. Prusak gives attention to the diversity of early systems of governance, especially in the early church. Most importantly, he identifies a key theological reason for the turn toward monarchial government based on the differentiation between a sacramentally based ecclesiology and a juridical one. I will situate Prusak’s work within the wider framework of the debate on ecclesial governance, in particular the theo-ontological argument from order identified by Badini Confalonieri. Prusak provides a key insight that should be more fully emphasized in contemporary debates about the nature of authority in the church. In my analysis, I will point to what I see as a deficient creation theology and Christology behind the insistence on monarchial sovereignty. Both of these are intimately related to the ecclesiological distinction delineated by Prusak. This contribution will not argue directly for a ‘democratic church’ or the reinstatement of past forms of repsresentative governance, such as synodality or direct election of bishops. Rather, I will present a historical-theological critique of the development and absolutization of monarchial sovereignty. This is meant to prepare the way for a more substantive theological argument for democratized eccelsial structures. This approach is necessary because any argument for a more representative church that is based solely or primarily on sociological, practical, or historical arguments will inevitably fall into the same contradictions as the historical adoption and absolutization of monarchy. I.  The Model of Ecclesial and Civil Authority – Monarchial Sovereignty As a constitution for governance, the New Testament is far from ideal. The Gospel of Mark firmly embeds the teachings on authority in the ‘way section’ of the Gospel, which contrasts earthly authority with what is demanded of good disciples. All of the Synoptic Gospels feature Jesus directly correcting the apostles’ expectations about power (Mark 10:3545; Matt 20:20-28; Luke 22:24-27), making their leadership a form of service, even to the point of accepting that authority is a form of slavery (Mark 10:44). They must be prepared to do the kind of work normally performed by women and slaves (diakoneō; Mark 10:43-45). While the Synoptics also retain the proclamation of Jesus as the anointed one of God (christos), a title that Jesus does not reject, the author of Mark does not allow Jesus to accept it without qualification. Bernard Prusak has

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pointed out that the historical core of the story “may very well be found in verses [29] and 33” of chapter 8: “you are the Messiah” and “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”5 The Catholic Church has long looked to Matthew’s version of this pericope for the foundation of its authority, its mandate, and even elements of its structure (Matt 16:18-19; cf. Luke 22:32; John 21:15-19), but I have to wonder what the church would be like today if it was the Markan Jesus’ reproach of Peter (Mark 8:33) that crowned St. Peter’s dome, rather than the Matthean Jesus’.6 1. Development and Domination in the Historical Church The emergence of the church as an ‘assembly of God’ that occurred after Jesus’ death and resurrection began as a collection of house-gatherings as described by Paul, and idealized by the author of Luke-Acts.7 These gatherings likely shared Paul’s ‘body of the Lord’ ecclesiology and elements of the Maranatha Christology that was characteristic of some early communities.8 An analysis of the forms of early church governance reveal a plurality of structures, some dependent on figures like Peter, or James the brother of the Lord who presided over the elders (presbyteroi) in Jerusalem.9 Some communities were more broadly ‘apostolic’, or emphasized charismatic qualities of certain teachers (as in Corinth), or featured a “college of overseers and deacons” (e.g., Philippi).10 The second and third generations of believers created more formal structures, including collegial structures in the form of elders (presbyteroi) and overseers (episkopoi). Local decision-making often took the form of public debate regarding internal matters within the local churches. Both the Didache and 1 Clement speak directly about the election of leaders by the whole community, even though the communities that produced each respective 5  Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 36. 6  This was a hypothetical question often posed by the late Thomas F. Martin, OSA, in his lectures at Villanova University on the history of the early church. 7  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 76-78. 8  Raymond Brown briefly outlines the diversity of early communities in the following: Raymond E. Brown, SS, “New Testament Background for the Concept of Local Church,” in Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America Annual Convention, vol. 36 (Bronx, NY: Catholic Theological Society of America, 1981), 9-12. 9  Bernard P. Prusak, “The Theology of the Local Church in Historical Development,” in Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America Annual Convention, vol. 35 (Bronx, NY: Catholic Theological Society of America, 1980), 287-308, at 289. 10  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 93-107; idem, “Theology of the Local Church,” 289.



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document were very different.11 As the local churches became enmeshed in more formalized regional networks, public debate gave way to conciliar-style meetings of regional representatives patterned on the parliamentary procedures of the Roman Senate, which “had become widespread in the civil administration of the entire Roman Empire.”12 No community, or ekklēsia (assembly), was isolated. Moreover, “koinōnia grounded in table fellowship and the Eucharist of a local ekklēsia opened it out beyond itself.”13 In the second century, itinerant preachers and prophets began to lose their influence, and the monoepiskopos gained more and more prominence, at least in Asia Minor, locating the unity of the church in the person of the bishop and the one Eucharist celebrated by him or by his delegates.14 As the monoepiskopos became a widespread model, Irenaeus and Tertullian used the concept of the direct succession of the bishops from the apostles to establish a criterion of orthodoxy against gnostics and other heretical movements. The empire-wide persecution by Decius in 250 ce led to questions about who could be readmitted to the church after having ‘lapsed’ in their faith. Here, Cyprian of Carthage famously argued that, after doing penance, the lapsed Christians could “be readmitted only through the imposition of their bishop’s hand (Ep. 16.2).”15 He identified the bishop with the local church so closely that the terms become almost synonymous.16 The universal church itself is a ‘communion of churches’, whose unity is founded on the unity of the bishops.17 Cyprian had, in fact, identified the unique position of ‘the chair of Peter’ as a source of authority, but, crucially, he associated this with all legitimate bishops, and not only with that of Rome – Cyprian himself was “the ‘successor of Peter’ in Carthage.”18 Despite their authority, the ancient episkopoi were not authoritarian figures in the modern sense.19 They were very often directly chosen 11  Leonard Swidler, “Dēmo-Kratiá, The Rule of the People of God, or Consensus Fidelium,” in Authority in the Church, ed. Piet F. Fransen, Annua Nuntia Lovaniensia 26 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1983), 221-243, at 232-233. 12  Badini Confalonieri, Democracy in the Christian Church, 23-24. 13  Prusak, “Theology of the Local Church,” 289. 14  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 113-119; Francis X. Glimm, Joseph M.-F. Marique, SJ, and Gerald G. Walsh, SJ, trans., The Apostolic Fathers, 4th ed., The Fathers of the Church 1 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1969). 15  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 126-127. 16  Prusak, “Theology of the Local Church,” 291. 17  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 127. 18  John Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions: The Church, 450-680 ad, Church History 2 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989), 60-61. 19  Swidler, “Dēmo-Kratiá or Consensus Fidelium,” 230.

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by their communities, or ‘elected’ in indirect but representative ways that involved the consultation of other bishops and the advice and consent of the people and clergy of the local church that they went on to govern. The principle of consent governed the election of bishops, just as it was normative in the Hellenistic Roman Empire.20 The development of the episcopacy led to a situation in which the most important cities of the empire also served as influential episcopal sees. In the transition from house-churches modeled on the Pharisaic synagogues to an ‘imperial church’, Christianity adopted the structures and forms of the surrounding culture, including the cursus honorum authoritarian structure of the Western Empire, and later the courtly structure of the East. As early as the late-first century, a definitive theological Hellenization had begun to take place, which was continued in Justin Martyr’s elaboration of the Platonistic concept of the logos as the principle of creation and source of all life in the universe. Such a cosmocentric view of creation proved to be just as crucial to the politics of the church in subsequent centuries as it was to its developing theology. Late Antiquity saw the rise of ecumenical councils as an expression of the unity of the church within a Mediterranean world that was slowly coming apart. Rome had been a de facto power center for the church, especially for settling doctrinal disputes, but prior to Chalcedon in 451 ce, attempts to establish the view of the universal church “as a single centralized body under the power of the bishop of Rome” had been unsuccessful.21 While Nicaea recognized the significance of four patriarchates, with Rome as ‘first’ in honor among the others based on its association with Peter and Paul, Constantinople I (381 ce) attempted to insert Constantinople, the ‘new Rome’, in second place without apostolic credentials – an explicit acknowledgement of the significance of secular governance.22 Chalcedon later confirmed and strengthened this decision, overriding objections from Rome and from Leo the Great.23 With the collapse of the Western Empire in 476 ce, the Latin Church stood to inherit the administrative responsibility for much of European  Badini Confalonieri, Democracy in the Christian Church, 24.  Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, 58-59. 22  Ibid., 179-184; Bernard P. Prusak, “The Roman Patriarch and the Eastern Churches: The Question of Autonomy in Communion, Part One,” The American Ecclesiastical Review 166, no. 9 (1972): 627-643, at 631. 23  Francine Cardman, “Myth, History, and the Beginnings of the Church,” in Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church, ed. Francis Oakley and Bruce M. Russett (New York: Continuum, 2004), 33-48, at 42; Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 132, 146. 20 21



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society. Pope Gregory I began to speak of three ‘orders’ of people within the church, just as there had been three orders in Roman society: “the rectors or preachers, the continent, and the married.”24 The administration of wealth and exercise of authority went with a kind of mythical legitimation for this new ‘worldly’ power that claimed Pope Sylvester had received rightful temporal authority over part of Italy from Constantine, and that the pope had crowned Constantine in his capacity as the divinely appointed bishop of Rome. This became the precedent for popes crowning the Holy Roman emperors, thus wedding the church and its various organs to the emerging feudal societies of Europe. Meanwhile, bishops continued to be elected, in some representative form by the clergy and laity, until the twelfth century, with papal appointment only becoming standard in 1363.25 The marriage of worldly responsibility to ecclesial structures necessarily helped to influence how those structures evolved and, above all, what it meant to be ‘church’. In fact, for most of the church’s history, including the early modern period and even until the mid-nineteenth century, “the analogy with political society was taken for granted, with all its momentous consequences concerning the use of political philosophy for diagnosing as well as offering prognoses to the problems of church organization.”26 This included canon law, which emerged “as a discipline in its own right with Gratian’s Decretum in the twelfth century until the nineteenth century, [and] it developed in constant interaction with the secular systems of law and patterns of government in which it was immersed.”27 After the Council of Trent, the post-Reformation ecclesiology propounded by Robert Bellarmine helped to establish the vision of the church as ‘perfect society’, which, like other ‘kingdoms’, is constituted as a juridical person possessed of the means of administration in worldly and spiritual matters. To quote Prusak: Although some of its components had medieval roots (in the Gregorian reform and in the political categories used by Aquinas), the concept of Church as “perfect society” grew out of the Counter-Reformation’s efforts to defend the Catholic system (of papacy, priesthood, sacraments, saints, etc.) and its tendency to conceive the Church

 Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 181.  Swidler, “Dēmo-Kratiá or Consensus Fidelium,” 233; Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 217. 26  Badini Confalonieri, Democracy in the Christian Church, 41. 27  John P. Beal, “Something There Is That Doesn’t Love a Law: Canon Law and Its Discontents,” in The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity, ed. Michael James Lacey and Francis Oakley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 135-154, at 139. 24 25

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along the lines of the absolutist states of the time: as a pyramidal society organized under the pope as monarch (with his curia and cardinals), and the bishops.28

The synodal, representative, and conciliar structures of antiquity, the semicentralized feudal structures of the medieval period, and even the conciliarist ecclesiology of the Council of Constance (1414-1418) were gradually absorbed, adapted, and transformed by the model of the early-modern nation-state, hierarchically ordered under an absolute monarch in the person of the pope. This was solidified in the modern era at the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), which restored the Papal States in Italy. The secular powers confirmed the pope’s worldly authority, but in doing so they also raised tensions between the Austrian Empire and the Italian states. In Italy, anti-Austrian sentiment evolved into a desire for Italian unification, eventually leading to the end of the pope’s temporal powers.29 The First Vatican Council ironically marked the end of the pope’s worldly authority, while also endorsing the ultramontane view of the church as a hierarchical monarchy, after decades of debate especially concerning the issue of papal infallibility. Ultramontanism had first emerged as a reaction against theological movements which reflected different ecclesiologies, especially Gallicanism in France, but also Jansenism and Febronianism in Germany, as well as Josephism in Austria.30 Aggressive forms of Ultramontanism, however, began to take a more political character after the French Revolution and especially the conquest of much of Europe by Napoleon. Pius VII had become a symbol of resistance against Napoleon and modernity, as well as a guarantor of Catholic identity.31 Proponents of organized Ultramontanism began to argue that “the papacy was not merely the center and guarantor of the church’s unity [as argued by Bellarmine] but the source of it.”32 As papal infallibility gained traction  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 248.  John W. O’Malley, Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), 17-19. 30  These movements were also motivated by national interests, especially Gallicanism and Josephism, which were “used to provide cover and justification for the illegitimate extension of French and Austrian [respectively] state control over the church.” Francis Oakley argues that Vatican I succeeded in countering these statist ideologies. See Francis Oakley, “History and the Return of the Repressed in Catholic Modernity: The Dilemma Posed by Constance,” in The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity, ed. Lacey and Oakley, 29-56, at 37. 31  Ulrich L. Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016), 214-219. 32  O’Malley, Vatican I, 62. 28

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as a topic, so also did a more authoritarian view of the church and papacy as a remedy against the ‘errors’ of liberal governments. The Ultramontanists looked to political philosophy rather than theology for their primary justification and inspiration, drawing on the model of absolute monarchy from the Ancien Régime to justify a monarchial church.33 This became much more explicit once Pius IX issued his Syllabus errorum in 1864, which had the effect of provoking ridicule from secular governments; such ridicule, in turn, produced a more urgent feeling of oppression amongst Catholics, causing many to rally around the figure of the pope and his authority. Thus, in the run up to Vatican I, liberal Catholics were already alienated from the conversation, which set the stage for the declaration of papal infallibility in Pastor aeternus and ever-increasing centralization of the church on the model of a modern absolute monarchy.34 The ‘modern’ nature of this centralization was exemplified by the codification of canon law in 1917 into one Code, against the previous tradition. This had the effect of reducing “the influence of custom as expressed by Christian communities and by local ecclesiastical judges,” while simultaneously emphasizing the juridical character of the church.35 Despite their ‘modern’ form, “the social imaginary that provides the background against which canon law is played is not modern but baroque.”36 This is true of both the 1917 and 1983 Codes, which are closer to pre-Enlightenment, eighteenth-century secular models than they are to liberal nineteenth- or twentieth-century bodies of law.37 Thus, in the church’s transition to modernity, it adopted modern elements in some areas – such as centralization and bureaucratization – without following liberal societies in shifting away from absolutism. Rather, elements of modern statecraft were used to justify and reinforce a theological-monarchial absolutism in ecclesiastical authority. 2. The Church as Sacrament, the Church as Juridical Society As ‘authority’ in the church became more and more centralized and clericalized, there was also a change in the justification for such an exer Badini Confalonieri, Democracy in the Christian Church, 42.  O’Malley, Vatican I, 104-107. 35  Robert Ombres, OP, “What Future for the Laity? Law and History,” in Governance and Authority in the Roman Catholic Church: Beginning a Conversation, ed. Noel Timms and Kenneth Wilson (London: SPCK, 2000), 91-102, at 92. 36  Beal, “Canon Law and Its Discontents,” 141. 37  Ibid., 147. 33

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cise of power. Prusak argues that, long before Vatican I, a corner had already been turned in the thirteenth century when the source of the church’s unity shifted from the Eucharist to its juridical power.38 This is especially interesting because it would mean that the church’s turn toward absolutism stems from ecclesiological-sacramental problems rather than purely functional or logical arguments on the nature of authority. The medieval theological controversies over the Eucharist yielded very concrete ecclesial results, and ultimately changed the way that ‘the church’ conceived of itself as ‘church’.39 The term ‘real body of Christ’ (corpus verum Christi) began to be used as a designation for the Eucharist instead of the church in order to emphasize the ‘realism’ of the Eucharistic elements. The ecclesiological use of ‘real body’ was then “supplanted by a sociological concept of the Church as the corpus christianum.”40 Likewise, the term ‘mystical body’ (corpus mysticum) had previously been used for the Eucharist, but was now applied to the church, which then took on explicitly juridical dimensions. ‘Mystical body’ was thought to be too vague and misleading as a descriptor for the Eucharist, whose reality as Christ’s body needed to be maintained. This is exemplified in the first oath imposed on Berengar of Tours, which emphasized a naïve physicalism and the Eucharist as Christ’s real (veritas) body.41 When understood in contrast to ‘real’, the term ‘mystical’ theoretically undermined the doctrine of real presence, and so the ‘reality’ of the Eucharist had to be reinforced. The effect of this change was that the unity of the church was no longer seen relative to the celebration of the Eucharist as a sacramental mystery. Rather, the church was unified as a ‘mystical body’ that stretched across natural and political borders. This, in turn, had the effect of splitting ‘the power of Orders’ from the ‘power of jurisdiction’ – the former empowered a priest to ‘confect’ the Eucharist, while the latter empowered the bishops to unify and govern the church under the pope.42 The power of governance was no longer essentially related to the community gathered around the one Eucharist, but was a separate function. This is also an early example of appealing to ‘the church as mystery’ in order to justify authoritarian consolidation. In  Prusak, “Theology of the Local Church,” 297.  See Bernard P. Prusak, “Explaining Eucharistic ‘Real Presence’: Moving beyond a Medieval Conundrum,” Theological Studies 75, no. 2 (2014): 231-259, at 241-249. 40  Prusak, “Theology of the Local Church,” 297. 41  Prusak, “Explaining Eucharistic ‘Real Presence’,” 246. 42  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 230. 38

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Scholastic theology, priests were subjected to the jurisdiction of bishops who were “anointed or consecrated to rule.”43 Thomas Aquinas went further, arguing that “the bishops received their jurisdiction from the pope” because the pope determined where and over whom the bishops could exercise their authority.44 The sharp shift to a juridical ecclesiology went hand in hand with the emphasis on a hierarchical distribution of jurisdiction from the pope down to the bishops. Vatican I went on to define Petrine primacy in terms of jurisdiction, analogous to political absolutism. It was no longer enough to claim that the bishops were successors to the apostles, with the successor to Peter being first in dignity. Rather, the pope was a divinely appointed sovereign, Christ’s agent on earth. The road from the medieval scholastics to Vatican I includes centuries of disagreement over the authority of the pope vis-à-vis that of the bishops and ecumenical councils, occasionally punctuated by maximalist readings of papal authority – such as those of Boniface VIII and Torquemada – and ‘conciliar’ approaches, like that of the Council of Constance.45 After the Reformation, there was increased emphasis on the church as “an organization established by Christ, in which the Spirit was the guarantor of authority.”46 The pope himself was seen to possess divine authority which he delegated to others, and this view contributed to the increasing centralization of bureaucratic authority up until the declaration of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council.47 In the confrontation with modernity, first in the Enlightenment and then in the democratic and social revolutions of the nineteenth century, it is well known that the church reacted strongly and harshly against what it perceived as hostile rationalist and atheistic powers of ‘the world’. In the Syllabus errorum and Pius X’s ‘little syllabus’, Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), democratic ideals were condemned, just as the historical-critical method was also condemned along with notions like ‘development’ or ‘evolution’ of tradition and doctrine. This disregard for nonmonarchial forms of governance may partially explain why no lay representatives participated directly at Vatican I – a major break with

 Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 231.  Ibid. 45  Ibid., 233-241. 46  Ibid., 248. 47  Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden, Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx 10 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 197 [198-199]. 43

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the past tradition of ecumenical councils.48 In addition, the church no longer spoke of ‘the traditions’, as it had at Trent, but now of a single Tradition, which was directly counter to the bourgeois belief in ‘progress’.49 Pius IX and Pius X even rejected the view that the church had come into being through some process of development, declaring its structure and institutions to be explicitly mandated by Christ.50 By embracing both a weaponized theology in the form of neo-scholasticism and the ‘perfect society’ ecclesiology of early modernity, the church in the nineteenth century campaigned directly against the new liberal states, their democratic reforms, and the notion that areas of life such as scientific inquiry or governance should be separate from church authority. By identifying with absolute monarchial sovereignty, the church closed the door to recognizing any authority other than its own, arguing that “democratic governance hinders subjection to God’s revelation.”51 From our contemporary vantage point, this is difficult to understand, but it is important to note that similar arguments continue to be used to justify the authoritarian structure of the hierarchical church, both overtly and covertly affirming the idea that authoritarianism, invested with divine power, is always right.52 The juridical view of ecclesial unity stems from a theological argument about the nature of the church and the Eucharist, but once accepted, this juridical, top-down understanding of unity has a reciprocal connection to metaphysics and Christology. II.  Governance and Sovereignty As we have seen, the church’s trend toward authoritarianism in the modern age has historical, legal, ideological, and theological foundations. Greco-Roman structures of governance were hierarchical but also included representative elements in debating issues and choosing (and rejecting) leaders; feudal structures were hierarchical, but these were more decentralized and therefore also included representative elements; the post-Tridentine church increased the tendency toward discipline, obedience, and control of sacramental and religious life (including the  O’Malley, Vatican I, 112-114.  Schillebeeckx, Church, 200 [202]. 50  Ibid., 199 [201]. 51  Ibid., 217 [219]. 52  Ibid., 217 [219]. 48

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establishment of formal seminary systems and the strict regulation of priestly formation and life). The reaction against modernity further hardened attitudes on those themes in order to guarantee the unity and indefectibility of the church and combat what was seen as a hostile world. The theological impetus for maintaining this structure is, I believe, equally important – in some places driven by historical events, and in others theology was itself the motivating factor. 1. Metaphysics, Order, and Sovereignty The first layer of the problem of authority is one of metaphysics, and particularly Neoplatonic metaphysics. Already in the second century, Justin Martyr and Aristedes of Athens defended Christianity by appealing to Greek philosophy; Middle Platonism provided a synthesis of peripatetic and Platonistic philosophy and was later utilized by Origen. Justin, in particular, appealed to God as the ‘unmoved mover’ “to emphasize the Father’s total transcendence, while affirming that the Word and the Spirit had become immanent within creation.”53 The introduction of this concept helped to shape the ‘classical’ concept of God in Christian thought, “which specified God’s perfection primarily in terms of omnipotence and omniscience,” or God’s absolute mastery over all areas of creation.54 This also influenced the Neoplatonic framework used by Augustine, which itself constitutes a large part of his theological legacy. Through the early-medieval ‘Augustinian synthesis’, the interpreters of Augustine bequeathed to the Western church a metaphysical worldview indelibly marked by the hierarchical ordering of being in the descent from the One, which many closely identified with the Father. Regarding the Holy Spirit, the Augustinian synthesis instrumentalized its work, portraying it “chiefly … as a basis to guarantee the acts of the ecclesial institution.”55 The medieval reception of PseudoDionysius’s mystical theology helped to wed the ontological hierarchy to the earthly ecclesial hierarchy – something that filtered into the liturgical and courtly structures of the East, and that legitimated the ecclesial use of temporal power in the West. In such a participatory system, God is Being, a primary substance, in/from which all individual beings participate, descend, and therefore draw their existence. Each ‘order’ of  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 324.  Ibid., 324-325. 55  Congar, “Pneumatology Today,” 438. 53

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being is a species of divinely ordained creation that holds its own unique place in the cosmos. The universe “is a descending hierarchy of mediating causal powers, with lower levels being contingent on the higher ones for their being, continuing existence, and perfection.”56 Social relations, especially the patriarchal-hierarchical social relations of the pre-modern world can be readily legitimated by such a system: like the universe, the ecclesia is a divinely ordered hierarchy. Pope Boniface VIII’s Unam sanctam (1302) makes this point forcefully with an explicit citation of Dionysius in order to subordinate secular authorities to ecclesiastical power.57 In the modern period, this ‘vertical’ ordering of the world merged with the natural theology of the Enlightenment, making the divine hierarchy something that is both natural according to the eternal laws of the universe, and demonstrable through reason. The emerging neo-scholastic synthesis of the nineteenth century argued that any reasonable person could deduce both the existence of God and the proper place of humanity in the chain of being from the light of natural reason. Human social relations, therefore, needed to conform to specific medieval patterns in order to reflect the rational, objective reality of God’s truth. Inherent in this problem is the question of sovereignty. Ancient systems of imperial governance relied, to some extent, on the divine selection and approval of rulers, and this myth was carried into the modern world by the absolute monarchs of nation states and by the philosophical legitimation of monarchial sovereignty in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan: the ruler as a ‘mortall god’. For Hobbes, however, authority originates from the delegation of sovereignty to the sovereign from the people.58 In the twentieth century, Carl Schmitt identified the sovereign as Christological type, the unity of transcendence and immanence, in whom the idea of the state is directly represented.59 The church, however, rejected the Hobbesian model of delegation of authority. In contrast, the theo Badini Confalonieri, Democracy in the Christian Church, 52.  Boniface VIII, “The Bull Unam Sanctam (1302),” in A Source Book of Mediaeval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the German Invasions to the Renaissance, ed. Frederic Austin Ogg (New York, Cincinnati, OH, and Chicago, IL: Ameri­can Book Company, 1908), 387-388. 58  Badini Confalonieri, Democracy in the Christian Church, 159. This is consistent with the ancient principle that authority presupposes the consent of the governed. This was also true of the ancient and medieval church, and a bishop was not to be set over a community that would not accept him. See Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 216-217. 59  See Giorgio Agamben, Stasis: Civil War as a Political Paradigm, Meridian Crossing Aesthetics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015). 56 57



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political typology was strengthened and given a m ­ etaphysical framework. Here, authority and delegation come from ‘above’. This was particularly evident in the ‘Pius era’ of the papacy: “a Christian could really do nothing by himself (i.e., on the basis of his baptism in the Spirit) unless this had been granted by the highest church authority.”60 All authority and grace was assumed to enter the church through the pope to be distributed downward. Just as for Neoplatonism – according to which all beings share imperfectly in the being of the One, leading to gradations of reality where physical-historical experience can be said to be ‘less real’ than the spiritual realities – so also are the members of the church ranked in orders of perfection, authority, and holiness. For such a metaphysics, all things are directly dependent on the source of all Being, without which they have no existence or essence. For a church that holds strictly to such a metaphysics, there is no source of ‘being church’ other than the hierarchy and ultimately the pope from whom grace and authority emanate, and who, as an even more direct Christological type, is head of the Mystical Body. 2. Theo-Politics and Faith in Creation As a theo-political framework, the hierarchical, cosmocentric model is certainly familiar, and easy to conceptualize and implement: the sovereign acts as God’s representative, wielding power and delegating it to others who dispense that power through acts of administration. This is the essence of modern political economy as well. Edward Schillebeeckx, however, believes that even the ecclesiastical form of this model relies on a deficient Christology.61 If Christ proclaimed the Rule of God and the church emerged historically from that proclamation, as Alfred Loisy famously posited, then the administration of the economy of salvation in the world is itself dependent on God’s activity. By deemphasizing Christ as the head of ‘his own Mystical Body’, and switching the metaphor of the church from the human body to that of a ‘juridical body’, the sacramental aspects of the church are also obscured.62 Here, the pope becomes the head of ‘the mystical body of the church’ (corpus Ecclesiae mysticum), collapsing the Christological and Pneumatological aspects of the church into the one sociological model of sovereignty via an appeal  Schillebeeckx, Church, 225 [226].  Ibid., 197 [198]. 62  Prusak, “Theology of the Local Church,” 297. 60 61

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to juridical authority. There are two major theological difficulties with such an authoritarian ecclesiology that stem from an underlying dogmatic concern. First, the ontological-juridical view presupposes a vision of creation counter to what Christianity proclaims. Creation is by its very definition ‘not-God’; it is not a lower grade of divinity, nor secretly run by divine fiat other than the imperative ‘let there be something rather than nothing’. Following a more Thomistic understanding of the doctrine, creation is made to be inherently good, and it is a separate reality in which God has placed a certain trust.63 This trust is manifested in the autonomy of creation as free in-and-for-itself. This autonomy extends to creatures who, in being vested with freedom, must also take a measure of responsibility for the world in which they find themselves. There is no perfectly predetermined ‘human nature’, since, as a historical and free being, humanity is always deciding what it is and will be. God acts in history and creation through secondary causes, allowing God’s freely created finite reality to be and become itself.64 Second, if a rigid version of the participatory metaphysical framework is extended to ecclesial and social power structures as a part of ‘nature’, then a pyramidal, authoritarian structure looks necessary: the monarch becomes essential to mediate grace, jurisdiction, and power. To step outside of that structure, as liberal societies did in modernity, would be to violate the very laws of creation and nature … unless such a view of nature and grace is itself a historically contingent and ideological one. This view can be deconstructed both from the perspective of our faith in creation and its freedom, and from a sacramental perspective. Christians have their mandate as Christians not through participation in a hierarchy or juridical society, but from their baptism – the People of God is primarily sacramental, not juridical.65 Further, a principally juridical conception of the church limits the working of grace to its visible forms of dispensation by ordained delegates of the pope’s authority. For this reason, Schillebeeckx argued that this ecclesiology “forgot the blow63  Philip Kennedy, “God and Creation,” in The Praxis of the Reign of God: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Mary Catherine Hilkert and Robert J. Schreiter, 2nd ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 37-58, at 43. 64  See Thomas F. O’Meara, “The Dignity of Being a Cause,” Open Theology 4, no. 1 (2018): 186-191. 65  Lumen gentium (November 21, 1964) 11, 14 (hereafter cited in text as LG), http:// www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumengentium_en.html.



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ing of the Spirit over the lowermost levels of the church and in practice annexed the role of the Holy Spirit through the ministerial succession exclusively for the hierarchy.”66 This ‘metaphysical’ version of hierarchy has been disputed theologically, and it was abrogated in many ways by Vatican II. However, even if this is no longer the official ecclesiology of the church, as it was in the ‘Pius era’, such an understanding of authority is still in force, notably in canon law, which acts as a kind of “applied ecclesiology.”67 Prusak’s identification of the Eucharistic roots of this controversy is significant here, since a juridical ecclesiology, especially in its contemporary form, reflects its presuppositions in canon law. In contrast to modern ‘liberal’ legal systems, the “immediate purpose of canon law … is not to construct a just ecclesial society but to conserve and foster the existing one.”68 The ecclesial society presupposed by the law, and thus what is put into practice, is more ‘baroque’ and authoritarian than modern. By ‘applying’ this vision ecclesiologically, the preconceived roles and distinctions inherent in pre- and early-modern concepts of society are ontologized and continue to be expressed in the church. This is very much evident in the continued exercise of authority: “all lines of accountability point upward in canon law, only hierarchical superiors are competent to judge whether their subordinates have adequately fulfilled the obligations of their offices or abused their powers.”69 This is evident in the words of Monsignor James Molloy, former Assistant Vicar for Administration in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1988-1994. It was Molloy’s job to take statements from alleged victims of abuse and from accused clergy in order to prepare a report for Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua. Molloy knew about the practice of moving abusers from parish to parish, but he did not question the judgment of his superiors. He presumed Bevilacqua, as both a civil and canon lawyer, knew better. Furthermore, “as the archbishop he was entitled to a presumption on my part (as his subordinate of goodwill) that he was doing the right things as best he knew how. He was, by his office, entitled to a commitment of reverential trust on my part.”70  Schillebeeckx, Church, 197 [198].  Ombres, “What Future for the Laity?,” 92. 68  Beal, “Canon Law and Its Discontents,” 141. 69  Ibid., 150. 70  Quoted in: Michael Newall, “Shining Light on a Cover-up: A Priest and a Prosecutor Detail How It Happened,” National Catholic Reporter (April 28, 2006), http:// natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006b/042806/042806a.php. This included Bevilacqua ordering Molloy to shred a list of thirty-five abusive priests in 1994. Molloy destroyed 66 67

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3. The Kingship and Presence of Christ Ultimately, faith in creation and the sacramental character of the church rest on a more fundamental dogmatic problem: Christology. Too often we fail to conceptualize Christ as ‘divine in a human way, and human in a divine way’, or as ‘concentrated creation, creation as God wishes it to be’ – both of which are images famously used by Schillebeeckx. More often than not, our image has been a specific version of Christ the King patterned on both cultural ideas (and misconceptions) about the absolute authority of kings, as well as the conflation of this model with the omnipotence and omniscience of God – divine characteristics that earthly kings worked very hard to project to their subjects. However, the kingship of Christ is, as the New Testament makes very clear, not an earthly kingship predicated on the exercise of hierarchical power or claims to be either a living god or a direct instrument of God’s power. The reversal of apostolic expectations concerning the exercise of power also applied to Jesus, who subverted all expectations of a Davidic royal messiah or a priestly messiah. The Markan Jesus’ identification as the messiah is followed immediately by the rejection of Peter’s messianic expectations (Mark 8:29-33). This problem extends to both our conception of authority as ‘monarchial’ and to the Christian participation in the threefold office of Christ. From their baptism, the laity share in “the priestly, prophetical, and kingly functions of Christ” (LG 31). Lay people now participate to varying degrees in preaching and ministry (the priestly and prophetic offices of Christ), but the royal function remains especially difficult, as it is linked directly to the power of governance.71 This ‘royal’ or governing function is practically and legally restricted to the clergy. Such a restricted Christological view of sovereignty has historically paired well with monarchy, since it locates all of the powers of governance within the one person – a person who stands in for Christ and utilizes his authority. This is important to keep in mind when examining papal authority, especially when the title ‘Vicar of Christ’ is invoked. ‘Vicar of Christ’ was first applied to Christian emperors, and later used sacramentally by all bishops, but it came to “designate the universal jurisdiction of the pope” thanks to Innocent III (1198-1216), who would only be called the vicar of Christ, and not ‘vicar of Peter’ or of another human being.72 This title reveals a juridical conception of the church four copies, but secretly preserved one and recorded both the order and the destruction in a memorandum. 71  Ombres, “What Future for the Laity?,” 98. 72  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 214-215.



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and of papal authority – the pope is head of the church by taking up Christ’s kingship, which imposes a historically contingent and narrow understanding of ‘kingship’ on Christ’s office. Theologically and cosmologically, the Father and Son are essentially absent, and the pope acts in Christ’s place, while the Spirit confirms and authorizes his actions as a ruler. I believe that the focus on monarchial sovereignty and authority reveals both a narrow Christology and a deficient Pneumatology. As Yves Congar has argued: “The Holy Spirit cannot be separated from Christ, for it is the Holy Spirit who gives reality to the events which characterize Christ’s work.”73 A monarchial Christology has, in a sense, functioned to the exclusion of a genuine Trinitarian conception of authority and the human person by reducing the Spirit to a guarantor of existing authority. Theological monarchy likewise conflates the exercise of authority with the foundation of that authority. This is a matter of how Christ is present in the church. A centralized, monarchial-juridical church sees Christ in the person who exercises that power, and this has to do with the ‘location’ of Christ, which was an issue central to the original medieval debates on the Eucharist, wherein Christ was not seen to be personally present in the sacrament. He was present through his divinity and then represented in the priest who makes him truly present by confecting the Eucharist. This model lends itself easily to centralization and ontologization. The ruler is the guarantor of unity; this was the primary argument for papal monarchy in the nineteenth century.74 According to this model, Christ is substantially absent except in the Eucharist, allowing a pope or bishop to exercise the royal, executive function on Christ’s behalf. This is especially evident if the ‘real’ body of Christ can only be found in the Eucharist, while the mystical body has a visible head in the pope. A different, more sacramental model of authority begins from the Eucharist as the sign and cause of the church’s unity. Christ as the head of the church is never absent, since he is personally present in the Eucharist and in the celebrating community gathered around the bishop or his representative. The bishop celebrates the Eucharist, which is placed at the center of the church’s identity: “the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the  Congar, “Pneumatology Today,” 445.  See Joseph Wilhelm, D.D. and Thomas B. Scannell, D.D., eds., A Manual of Catholic Theology Based on Scheeben’s Dogmatik, 3rd ed., vol. II (London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trübner and Co. and New York, Cincinnati, OH, and Chicago, IL: Benziger Bros., 1908), 348. 73

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font from which all her power flows.”75 All power, unity, grace, and authority comes, not from the monarch of the juridical church flowing downstream to delegates below, but from the Eucharist in and through the celebration of the local, particular church. This was recognized in principle at Vatican II through the primacy of the Eucharistic liturgy (SC 10-11). “Lumen Gentium likewise restores the bond between Eucharist and Church,” meaning that the local church is not just an extension of the universal church, dependent on it for its existence.76 Rather, the universal church is “a communion of particular churches, sharing their goods in mutual concern, having their diversity protected by the primacy of Rome.”77 The sacramental view of the church speaks against ontological hierarchy, and likewise against monarchial sovereignty. The bishop has an essential connection to the community that he represents, and it is important that Lumen gentium explicitly recognized that the offices (munera) of the bishop come “through ordination, and not from the pope.”78 The bishop receives that authority from Christ, and exercises it in relation to the college of bishops with the pope at the head of the college. Priests are likewise empowered by Christ through their ordination, not merely as delegates of the bishop.79 Even within the local church, the bishop is hardly an absolute monarch with unchecked authority; the definition of Lumen gentium should effectively reunite the ‘power of Orders’ to that of jurisdiction, meaning that the celebration of the Eucharist with the local community is intrinsically tied to the power of the bishop to lead that community. In this we find a double principle of decentralization and the possibility of greater representation within the official hierarchy: bishops are not directly dependent on the pope, while bishops are dependent on their communities for their authority insofar as their jurisdiction is directly connected to the celebration of the Eucharist. 75  Sacrosanctum concilium (December 4, 1963) 10 (hereafter cited in text as SC), http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_ 19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html. 76  Prusak, “Theology of the Local Church,” 307. 77  Ibid., 307-308. 78  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 285. Cf. Joseph Wilhelm, D.D. and Thomas B. Scannell, D.D., eds., A Manual of Catholic Theology Based on Scheeben’s Dogmatik, 4th ed., vol. I (London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trübner and Co. and New York, Cincinnati, OH, and Chicago, IL: Benziger Bros., 1909), 39: The capacity to ‘witness’ comes to the bishop directly from Christ, but “the other Bishops are appointed to a particular see by the Chief Bishop, and receive their jurisdiction from him.” 79  David McLoughlin, “Authority as Service in Communion,” in Governance and Authority in the Roman Catholic Church, ed. Timms and Wilson, 123-136, at 128.



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Conclusion As Avery Dulles affirms, “Only the Church as a society enjoys the divine promise of indefectibility.”80 This point is particularly important in an age when neoliberalism exalts the individual above all else. The question for us is, ‘what kind of society?’ We cannot simply embrace economic individualism, but it seems untenable that the church can remain an essentially monarchial and juridical society that absolutizes the institutional unity. The justifications for the latter are increasingly incredible. Nothing has highlighted the deference to sovereignty more than the sex-abuse crisis and the frustratingly poor responses to it by the hierarchy. The unwillingness of the bishops to accept oversight or accountability is a major failure of a system designed for another age. Inherent in this is the implicit trust and deference to authority that almost guarantees that leaders go unchecked and their judgments unquestioned. A more representative and transparent approach to church governance is needed if the church is to have a future in the modern world. Such an approach may still be hierarchically ordered (cf. LG 8) without being absolutist or monarchial. All modern democratic societies are also ‘hierarchical’ in structure, with differing levels of local, regional, and national governance. In rejecting democratic forms of governance wholesale, the church evinced a serious failure of imagination – instead of looking to the traditions and to the sacramental character of the church for workable models and possibilities that could be recontextualized in a new era, we have instead the symbolic retreat behind medieval battlements. In many ways, it was not only Pius IX who became a ‘prisoner of the Vatican’. We underestimate what democracy is and can mean, partially because we, sometimes correctly, do not have much faith in civil authority, and partially because we have not allowed ourselves to think beyond existing structures. There may be other forms of democracy out there that we have not imagined, because we have so closely identified ‘the church’ with an authoritarian hierarchy, and ‘authority’ with the image of a single monarch sitting on a literal throne. In 1989, Edward Schillebeeckx observed that, despite the proliferation of parish councils, regional synods, bishops’ conferences, and similar structures after Vatican II, these attempts at democratization were 80  Avery Dulles, “The Magisterium and Authority in the Church,” in Theology in Revolution, ed. George Devine, The Annual Publication of the College Theology Society (New York: Alba House, 1970), 29-45, at 35.

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drained of their efficacy from above.81 Prusak has likewise outlined the ways in which the post-Vatican II hierarchy undermined and eroded attempts at a Eucharistic, communion-based ecclesiology, included more democratic forms.82 This has occurred through narrowing the interpretation of Lumen gentium and other conciliar documents, a process which already began with the explanatory note appended to Lumen gentium during the Council’s ‘Black Week’ in 1964. It set the pattern for an ontologization of the universal church, reinforcing the metaphysicaljuridical view of church authority as something that comes from above, rather than as having an inherently communal dimension.83 By arguing that democratic forms and principles are incompatible with Christian governance in se, the church comes dangerously close to endorsing the position that ‘authoritarian governance is always correct’. The contemporary crisis of Western liberal democracy, however, should warn us away from merely adopting outdated or secular forms of governance. If the church is to be democratic, then it is not enough to simply leave behind or abolish monarchial sovereignty and adopt parliamentarian forms. If democratic, then the church cannot be like other democracies. Our challenge today is to balance the concerns of tradition and of the legitimate unity of the whole church with the rights of individuals and the need for accountability: Only then does hierarchy become a ‘holy rule’ which is no longer a rule but service: the eschatological token of the kingdom or rule of God in our history – although this rule as service can never be found in its fullness in a historical form, either inside or outside the church.84

The ‘people of God’ is inherently communitarian, and as the image of God, humanity is not based exclusively on images of the Father, Jesus of Nazareth, or Christ the King. As an image of God, human beings – and therefore human communities – are an image of the Triune, communitarian God, and the church in particular is “a communion in the image of the Trinity.”85

 Edward Schillebeeckx, Een democratische kerk: Bazuinlezing 1989 (Utrecht: De Bazuin, 1989), 5-6. 82  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 302-307. 83  See: Norbert Lüdecke and Georg Bier, Das römisch-katholische Kirchenrecht: Eine Einführung (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2012), 100-103. 84  Schillebeeckx, Church, 221 [222-223]. 85  Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 311. Cf. Schillebeeckx, Church, 221-222 [223-224]. 81

Bibliography of Bernard P. Prusak Works from 1967-2019 Monographs The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries. New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004. The Canonical Concept of Particular Church before and after Vatican II, ­Theses ad lauream in iure canonico. Rome: Pontificia Universita Lateranense, 1967. As Editor Raising the Torch of Good News: Catholic Authority and Dialogue with the World, The Annual Publication of the College Theology Society 32 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988). Co-Founder, Co-Editor and then Editor of Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society from 1973-1980. Articles “Explaining Eucharistic ‘Real Presence’: Moving beyond a Medieval Conundrum,” Theological Studies 75, no. 2 (2014): 231-259 (Received College Theology Society Award for Best Article Published in Theology in 2014 at the CTS Annual Conference on May 30, 2015, at the University of Portland, OR). “Liturgy as Essential Lynchpin for a Hermeneutic of Vatican II,” Louvain Studies 38, no. 2 (2014): 126-148. “Reconsidering the Quest Boundaries in Response to N. T. Wright: Schillebeeckx’s Jesus as Dawning Third Quest?,” Louvain Studies 32, nos. 1-2 (2007): 134-152. “Author’s Response,” in “Review Symposium, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries,” Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society 33, no. 2 (2006): 345-353 (whole symposium: 333-353). “Theological Considerations – Hermeneutical, Ecclesiological, Eschatological Regarding Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past,” Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society 32, no. 1 (2005): 136-151. “Review Article: Studies in Patristic Christology, edited by Thomas Finan and Vincent Twomey (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998), 245 pages, £35,” Augustinian Studies 32, no. 2 (2001): 266-278. “Beyond Silence and Denial: Death and Dying Reconsidered. Four Perspectives – IV,” Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society 27, no. 2 (2000): 371-374. “Bodily Resurrection in Catholic Perspectives,” Theological Studies 61, no. 1 (2000): 64-105. “Jews and the Death of Jesus in Post-Vatican II Christologies,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 28, no. 4 (1991): 581-625.

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“Hospitality Extended or Denied: Κοινωνία Incarnate from Jesus to Augustine,” The Jurist 36, nos. 1-2 (1976): 89-126 (Received 1977 College Theology Society Award for Best Article Published in Theology by a member of the society in 1976). “Editorial: ‘Feminism and the CTS’,” Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society 3, no. 1 (1976): 83-84. “Heaven and Hell: Eschatological Symbols of Existential Protest,” Cross Currents 24, no. 4 (1975): 475-491. “Abstract of ‘Changing Concepts of God and Their Repercussions in Christology’,” Process Studies 4, no. 3 (Fall, 1974): 229-230. “The Roman Patriarch and the Eastern Churches: The Question of Autonomy in Communion, Part One,” The American Ecclesiastical Review 166, no. 9 (1972): 627-643. “The Roman Patriarch and the Eastern Churches: The Question of Autonomy in Communion, Part Two,” American Ecclesiastical Review 166, no. 10 (1972): 687-697. Chapters in Edited Volumes and Proceedings “Resurrection of the Person,” in T&T Clark Handbook of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Stephan van Erp and Daniel Minch (London: T&T Clark, 2019), 312-325. “Ontologized Inequality in the Church: Deconstructing the Hierarchical Strategy,” in Wir teilen diesen Traum: Theologinnen und Theologen aus aller Welt argumentieren ‘Pro Pope Francis’, ed. Paul M. Zulehner and Tomáš Halík (Ostfildern: Patmos, 2019), e-book: 15 pages beginning at 68% marker. “Vatican I: Papal Primacy within a Juridical Model of Church,” in Primacy in the Church: The Office of Primate and the Authority of Councils, vol. 2, ed. John Chryssavgis (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Press, 2016), 647-667. (Volumes correlated with the Council of Orthodox Bishops in Cyprus, 2016.) “The Ecumenical Household as Domestic Church? Ecclesial Threat or Pastoral Challenge and Even Resource?,” in Being One at Home: Interchurch Families as Domestic Churches, ed. Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi and Ray Temmerman (Zurich: LIT, 2015), 155-173. “An Eschatological Ecclesiology – Open to the Future and Possibility: Crucial Prerequisite for Ecumenical Rapprochement,” in Believing in Community: Ecumenical Reflections on the Church, ed. Peter De Mey, Pieter De Witte, and Gerard Mannion, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 261 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 241-255. “The Ecumenical Household as Domestic Church? Ecclesial Threat or Pastoral Challenge and Even Resource?,” in The Household of God and Local Households: Revisiting the Domestic Church, ed. Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi, Gerard Mannion, and Peter De Mey, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 254 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 315-334. “Newness amid Continuity in the Future of the Church: God’s Will and Human Agency Guided by the Spirit,” in Comparative Ecclesiology: Critical Investigations, ed. Gerard Mannion, Ecclesiological Investigations 3 (London: T&T Clark International, 2008), 151-166. “Reconsidering the Relationship of Sin and Death,” in Religions of the Book, ed. Gerard S. Sloyan, The Annual Publication of the College Theology Society 38 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996), 95-118.



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“Credibility in a World Church,” in Raising the Torch of Good News: Catholic Authority and Dialogue with the World, The Annual Publication of the College Theology Society 32 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), vii-xi. “The Theology of the Local Church in Historical Development,” in Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America Annual Convention, vol. 35 (Bronx, NY: Catholic Theological Society of America, 1980), 287-308. “The Son of Man Came Eating and Drinking: An Overview of Christological Perspectives on the Incarnation,” in Who Do People Say I Am? Proceedings of Villanova University Theology Institute, ed. Francis A. Eigo (Villanova, PA: Villanova University Press, 1980), 1-45. “Immortality,” in Encyclopedic Dictionary of Religion, ed. Paul Kevin Meagher, Thomas C. O’Brien, and Consuelo Maria Aherne (Washington, DC: Corpus Publications, 1979), 1777-1778 “Soul, Human (Origin of),” in Encyclopedic Dictionary of Religion, ed. Paul Kevin Meagher, Thomas C. O’Brien, and Consuelo Maria Aherne (Washington, DC: Corpus Publications, 1979), 3354-3355. “Soul-Body Relationship,” in Encyclopedic Dictionary of Religion, ed. Paul Kevin Meagher, Thomas C. O’Brien, and Consuelo Maria Aherne (Washington, DC: Corpus Publications, 1979), 3355-3356. “Use the Other Door; Stand at the End of the Line: A Patristic Perspective,” in Women Priests: A Catholic Commentary on the Vatican Declaration, ed. Leonard and Arlene Swidler (New York and Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1977), 81-84. “Changing Concepts of God and Their Repercussions in Christology,” in Does Jesus Make a Difference? Proceedings of the College Theology Society, ed. Thomas McFadden (New York: Seabury Press, 1974), 56-78. “Woman: Seductive Siren and Source of Sin? Pseudepigraphal Myth and Christian Origins,” in Religion and Sexism: Images of Women in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 89-116. “Toward a Theology of Vulnerability: The Liberating Embrace of the Human Condition,” in A World More Human, A Church More Christian, ed. George Devine (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1973), 9-26. “A Poly-Structured Church: Primitive Reality and Present Option,” in That They May Live: Theological Reflections on the Quality of Life, ed. George Devine (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1972), 245-265. Recent Book Reviews (since 2000) “This Is My Body: Review of Eucharist as Meaning: Critical Metaphysics and Contemporary Sacramental Theology, by Joseph C. Mudd (Liturgical Press, 2014),” America: The National Catholic Review 212, no. 10 (March 23, 2015): 34-36. “First Things: Review of Rekindling the Christic Imagination: Theological Meditations for the New Evangelization, by Robert P. Imbelli (Liturgical Press, 2014),” Commonweal 141, no. 13 (August 15, 2014): 34-35. “When Popes Were Papas: Review of A History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present, by John W. O’Malley, SJ (Sheed & Ward/Rowman & Littlefield, 2011),” Commonweal 139, no. 12 (June 15, 2012): 26-28.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BERNARD P. PRUSAK

“Santo Subito? Review of The End and the Beginning Pope John Paul II – The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy, by George Weigel (Doubleday, 2010),” Commonweal 138, no. 6 (March 25, 2011): 29-30. “New Directions: Review of Church: Living Communion, by Paul Lakeland (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009),” America: The National Catholic Biweekly (February 1-8, 2010): 25-27. “Review of People of Bread: Rediscovering Ecclesiology, by Wolfgang Vondey (Paulist Press, 2008),” Theological Studies 70, no. 4 (2009): 955-957. “Review of Electing Our Bishops: How the Catholic Church Should Choose Its Leaders, by Joseph F. O’Callaghan (Rowman and Littlefield/Sheed and Ward, 2007),” American Catholic Studies 120, no. 2 (Summer, 2009): 76-78. “A Change Some Don’t Believe In: Review of What Happened at Vatican II, by John W. O’Malley (Harvard University Press, 2010),” Commonweal 136, no. 4 (February 27, 2009): 28-29. “What Lasts: Review of Deep Rhythm and the Riddle of Eternal Life, by John S. Dunne (University of Notre Dame Press, 2008),” Commonweal 135, no. 15 (September 12, 2008): 36-37. “Solution Postponed: Review of Freeing Celibacy, by Donald Cozzens (Liturgical Press, 2008); The Struggle for Celibacy: The Culture of Catholic Seminary Life, by Paul Stanosz (Crossroad, 2006); Tested in Every Way: The Catholic Priesthood in Today’s Church, by Christopher Ruddy (Crossroad, 2007),” Commonweal 134, no. 8 (April 20, 2007): 29-30. “Review of A Church That Can and Cannot Change, by John T. Noonan, Jr. (University of Notre Dame Press, 2005),” American Catholic Studies 117, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 69-72. “Ratzinger Was Right: Review of History of Vatican II, vol. 4, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A. Komonchak (Orbis Books/Peeters, 2004),” Commonweal 132, no. 4 (February 25, 2005): 26-28. “Review: Messiah and the Throne: Jewish Merkabah Mysticism and Early Christian Exaltation Discourse, by Timo Eskola, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe 142 (Mohr Siebeck, 2001),” Theological Studies 64, no. 2 (2003): 405-407. “Body and Soul: Resurrection: Review of Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments, ed. Ted Peters et al. (Eerdmans, 2002),” Commonweal 130, no. 7 (April 11, 2003): 26-28. “Review: Studien zur Entfaltung der altkirchlichen Theologie der Auferstehung, by Katharina Schneider, Hereditas: Studien zur Alten Kirchengeschichte 14 (Borengässer, 1999),” Theological Studies 61, no. 3 (2000): 552-553. Magazine and Periodical Articles “Turning Point: A Theologian Remembers the Council (Fifty Years after Vatican II),” Commonweal 139, no. 16 (September 28, 2012): 20-25. “The Old Rite Returns: Getting the History Right,” Commonweal 134, no. 14 (August 17, 2007): 16-19.

List of Contributors Fr. Francis J. Caponi, OSA is a native of Philadelphia. He teaches systematic theology at Villanova University in the Honors Program. He authored the chapter on Karl Rahner in Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions (Baker Academic, 2008). E-mail: [email protected] Christopher Cimorelli is Director of the National Institute for Newman Studies (Pennsylvania, USA) and Associate Editor of the Newman Studies Jounal. He was previously chair of the Dept. of Theology and Philosophy at Caldwell University (New Jersey, USA), where he still teaches. He is the author of John Henry Newman’s Theology of History: Historical Consciousness, Theological ‘Imaginaries’, and the Development of Tradition (Peeters Press, 2017). E-mail: [email protected] Paul L. Danove is Professor of New Testament Studies at Villanova University, Villanova, PA (USA) and the author of Theology of the Gospel of Mark: A Semantic, Narrative, and Rhetorical Study of the Characterization of God (T&T Clark, 2019). E-mail: [email protected] Dennis M. Doyle is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton where he specializes in ecclesiology. His most recent book is The Catholic Church in a Changing World (Anselm, 2019). E-mail: [email protected] Francis Schüssler Fiorenza is Charles Stillman Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of Foundational Theology (Crossroads, 1984) and co-editor of Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives (Fortress Press, 2nd edition, 2011). E-mail: [email protected] Kevin L. Hughes is Professor of Historical Theology in the Department of Theology & Religious Studies and the Department of Humanities at Villanova University. He is the author of Constructing Antichrist: Paul, Biblical Commentary, and the Development of Doctrine in the Early Middle Ages (CUA Press, 2014). E-mail: [email protected] Paul Lakeland is the Aloysius P. Kelley, S.J. Professor of Catholic Studies and Director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield University in

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­ onnecticut. He is the author most recently of The Wounded Angel: Fiction and C the Religious Imagination (Liturgical Press, 2017), which won the College Theology Society Award for the best theology book of 2018. E-mail: [email protected] Joseph A. Loya, OSA, is Associate Professor and Russian Area Studies Program Director, Villanova University. He is the author of “‘For, Not of, the CPC’: Christians Associated for Relations with Eastern Europe (CAREE) as a Study in Soft Power Peace Advocacy,” in North American Churches and the Cold War (Eerdmans, 2018). E-mail: [email protected] Bernard McGinn is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology and of the History of Christianity at the University of Chicago. He is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. McGinn has written extensively in the areas of the history of apocalyptic thought and, most recently, in the areas of spirituality and mysticism. His current long-range project is a seven-volume history of Christian mysticism in the West under the general title The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. The most recent volume is: Mysticism in the Golden Age of Spain (1500-1650) (Herder & Herder, 2019). E-mail: [email protected] Daniel Minch is Assistant Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Graz. He is part of the Institute of Systematic Theology and Liturgical Studies at the Faculty of Catholic Theology. Minch is the author of: Eschatological Hermeneutics: The Theological Core of Experience and Our Hope for Salvation, T&T Clark Studies in Edward Schillebeeckx (T&T Clark, 2018). E-mail: [email protected] Gerald O’Collins, SJ is Professor Emeritus of the Gregorian University (Rome), and currently research fellow of the University of Divinity and writer-in-residence at the Jesuit Theological College (both Melbourne). He has authored or co-authored 74 books; most recently, he is the author of The Beauty of Jesus Christ: Filling out a Scheme of St Augustine (Oxford University Press, 2020). E-mail: [email protected] Mary Catherine O’Reilly-Gindhart is a doctoral candidate at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. She is a faculty member in the Department of Religious Studies at Cabrini University. She also holds a certificate in genetics from Harvard Medical School. O’Reilly-Gindhart has published in the field of Christian Ethics and is currently working on research in Catholic sexual ethics. E-mail: [email protected]



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Bernard G. Prusak is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the McGowan Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. His research focuses on moral and social philosophy, with special attention in recent years to moral formation and conceptions of conscience. His books include Catholic Moral Philosophy in Practice and Theory: An Introduction (Paulist Press, 2016). E-mail: [email protected] Susan A. Ross is Professor Emerita of Theology at Loyola University Chicago, where she taught for over thirty years and served as department chair. She is a past President of the Catholic Theological Society of America. Ross is the author of Anthropology: Seeking Light and Beauty (Liturgical Press, 2012). E-mail: [email protected] Ray Temmerman (Catholic) and his wife Fenella (Anglican) are active members of the Interchurch Families International Network (IFIN). Worshiping together in both their churches, their unity in faith brings awareness and healing of estrangement to the Body of Christ. Ray is co-editor of Being One at Home: Interchurch Families as Domestic Church (LIT, 2015). E-mail: [email protected]

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