To Think with the Church
On the 81st birthday of Pope Benedict XVI it is not inappropriate to reflect on the ambiguous response of Church to the Call of Vatican II for updating as put forth by a predecessor octogenarian Pope John XXIII.
Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World
SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL, December 7, 1965, Introduction #5
“History itself speeds along on so rapid a course that an individual can scarcely keep abreast of it. The destiny of the human community has become all of a piece, where once the various groups of men had a kind of private history of their own. Thus, the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one. In consequence, there has arisen a new series of problems, a series as important as can be, calling for new efforts of analysis and synthesis.” Joseph Gremillion, “The Gospel of Peace and Justice, Catholic Social Teaching since Pope John”, pg 247, copyright © 1976, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y. 10545
The failure of cultures/ Church to update in critical matters of human knowledge can have persistent and pernicious outcomes (as for example, “Scholasticism’s Unrepented Blunder”, see at http://ncrcafe.org/node/1661); which consequence Vatican II recognized and for which reason called for “new efforts of analysis and synthesis.”
From personal experience, reason knows that personal/ social circumstances evolve “of a piece” and that faith accommodates the necessities of transformation and evolution; which fact of experience identifies precisely why faith and reason are necessary to each other and why we and they change. By the continued updating of faith and reason, the urgencies of social consciousness and moral conscience are accommodated.
The need for updating is urgent and continuing. The Call of Vatican II, however, has been largely unheeded and even sidetracked. Pope Benedict XVI, in urgently asserting the equal partnership of faith and reason, challenges the People Church and individual persons to engage personal intelligence, personal reason, in the pursuit of personal/ social faith-life.
In his 39th McGinley Lecture, “A Life in Theology”, (AMERICA, April 21, 2008, pp 9-12), Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ, writes: “Without in any way comparing myself with Pope Benedict XVI, I feel that I can make his word my own: ‘I have never tried to create a system of my own, an individual theology. What is specific, if you want to call it that, is that I simply want to think in communion with the faith of the Church, and that means above all to think in communion with the great thinkers of faith. The aim is not an isolated theology that I draw out of my own self but one that opens as widely as possible into the common intellectual pathways of faith.’”
(“Salt of the Earth”, 1997, 66)
Pope Benedict, thinking with the Church and Vatican II, calls for each and every Catholic to live a conscionable life whose pathways accommodate as faith and reason necessitate. The mutual expectation of the conscionable Christian/ Catholic, whether pope, cleric, minister or lay person, is to personally “think” and inform individual conscience, and to live in fidelity to conscience and trustfully with one another. Every faithful Catholic is called to “think with the Church” in life’s common journey. We are enjoined personally and individually to live by and to own our consciences, informed by personal reason.
To think with the Church
To think with the Church requires an inner disposition that is a great challenge to modern man! Modern man is profoundly affected by the prevailing mindsets of moral relativism, subjectivism, and radical individualism. Such a modern attitude quickly elevates individual sense of "conscience" to ultimate reality and divine truth - when in fact one might be very far from truth.
Card. Dulles rightly points us away from the pride of self to that humble attitude of mind that allows us to truly listen to the wisdom of the Church, and humbly submit to that wisdom.
A conscience that accommodates to the prevailing winds of popular desire is a poor guide indeed. We need a moral compass that is sensitive to truth.
Thomas
Thomas, I don't think you
Thomas, I don't think you are suggesting (?) that Vatican II and Pope Benedict XVI expect the laity to be blindly obedient to the institutional church (hierarchy), and accept (believe) everything coming from them. The People in their own right are Church no less than hierarchy, and need to use their personally informed intelligence and conscience to the benefit of the Church, and, the hierarchy (may I add?). Not?
Hello Sylvester, Not
Hello Sylvester,
Not "blindly" obedient, no - but faithfully obedient, yes. The Lord instituted a hierarchy - and that design has proved its value with every new (and old, come back again) heresy that has attacked the Truth entrusted to the Church.
I find the Marian and Petrine "dimensions" of the Church as seen by von Balthazar, Ratzinger, John Paul II and others very, very helpful. Next I came across a very prudent and insightful observation by an Abbott, which I'll try to paraphrase:
When the Marian dimension ignores the Petrine, error results. When the Petrine dimension ignores the Marian, sin results. Think about it - very insightful, I think.
The hierarchy is not superior to, but in truth serves the Church (of which the hierarchy is a part, as well). The hierarchy must hold to, be faithful to, in truth serve the whole Church - in particular that "Marian" dimension that draws life in authentic prayer at the feet of Jesus, and His Cross. Indeed the hierarchy - the Petrine dimension - must remain there at His feet as well, as did the Beloved Disciple who so beautifully demonstrates the unity in charity of both of those dimensions.
Conscience must be humbly formed in truth. Too many times I have heard recourse to "conscience" when it was sin, or error, that was being pursued. How we need Truth! Not that which is named truth in the confusion of our times, but eternal truth - confirmed in the natural moral law, confirmed in the revealed divine law, and thus that which flows from the divine eternal law.
Thomas
I suspect it's telling that
I suspect it's telling that you left out the fact that there were women at the foot of the cross. I forgot, women can't represent the Petrine dimension and there for can't 'beautifully demonstrate the unity in charity of both of those dimensions.' Once again women are defective males--good for the Marian dimension, but not the unified. I take great comfort in the fact you've given Mary the same deficient status. I wonder if she does.
colkoch.blogtoolkit.com
Thomas, thank you for
Thomas, thank you for calling attention to Abbot Kodell's message on the "Marian" and "Petrine" dimensions of Church. I rate your comments "4", not for their defense of handicapped clerical culture, but for their contribution to dialog.
Abbot Kodell's message on the Marian and Petrine dimensions of culture are expressive of the "paradigmatic human", namely, of the essential female/ male dimensions of the personal/ social relationships of human nature.
Every individual person, female and male, is female (Marian) and male (Petrine) qualified, as is effective structuring within society of institutional, social groupings, including Church.
Emotional/ rational integrity (faith and reason) is authentic in its (their)codependency, that is, in the reciprocity of mutuality, complementarity and subsidiarity. The interdependency of these is humanly/ divinely fulfilling in the reciprocal harmony of communication (mutual trust), consciousness (intentional complementarity), and conscience (judicious subsidiarity) — in the communitarian likeness of Trinity Godhead.
Male brain and female brain alike are bipolarly structured (and functionsl) in the lobar psychology of humankind's dual nature, i.e., "Marian" (emotional intelligence) and "Petrine" (rational intelligence). In the reciprocal nature of humanity's dual characterization, institutions, but especially Church, find authentic spirituality (theology) and structure (ecclesiology).
Scholastic Philosophy, still relying on the misinformed sexuality of Aristotelian Philosophy, is defective and still obtains in mysogynistic cultures of churches and society. The clerical culture of Church, steeped in patriarchal politics and dominion theology, is blind to its self-advanced defects, and injuries to the human person and nature that derive from them.
Unaware of its own paralysis (RPS, Religious Paralysis Syndrome), Church is radically handicapped in self-understanding (ecclesiology) and function (theology).
The understandings of quantum science and evolutionary nature might yet liberate human consciousness, and Church, from defects of vision and culture. Evolution does "matter", as Vatican II testifies.
Hello again Sylvester, Wow.
Hello again Sylvester,
Wow. What a treatise! My humble response to your expansive commentary is simply this: God designed both the masculine and the feminine human person, with His intention in mind: our vocation into divine, eternal beatitude. I must suggest to you that your analysis does not yet penetrate to the depths that His design deserves.
I also think that the Marian and Petrine dimensions of the Church are not limited to that personal human design - but rather reach beyond that of "merely" the masculine and the feminine expressions of human nature. The Church is Bride of Christ, granted - but that model and analogy does not completely describe the Church, or her place in salvation history, or her vocation as Sacrament to the world.
All of this is a bit afield of the original post, however. There is much that is akin to adolescent rebellion in the ranks of the laity, when dealing with the hierarchy. And no wonder, really - it happens that the hierarchy is at times not above dealing with us "as the rulers of this world" do, in spite of our Lord's clear warning against such. The petrine is called to be as a servant, motivated by love, characterized by humility. We have all encountered counter-examples! I hope we have all encountered true models of servanthood also - I certainly have.
And we the laity are not without fault either. We fail to pray for our priests and bishops as we should, I fear. We do not weep over their faults, nor do we lovingly suffer for them, on their behalf, in Christ, as they deserve.
Thomas
Think with the Church. Of
Think with the Church. Of course. In the image on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel the two fingers are stretching toward each other [I think of it as being on a par with the cross as a symbol of christianity]. It is difficult to say which hand is stretching more. The Church is floating in that sacred space between God and Man. Thinking with the church is important but it is just as inmportant for the church to reach toward the world and think with the world. The world is sacred too.
Hello sevenup, In what sense
Hello sevenup,
In what sense do you say "The world is sacred too"? I hope that you can also say, in a different sense, that the world is fallen and is far from the righteousness of God.
If the world were one in righteousness with God, there would be no need for evangelization - and the church exists to evangelize (Pope Paul VI).
Thomas
Sevenup has made his/her (I
Sevenup has made his/her (I apologize for my ambiguity, sevenup) statement in the "Holy.Holy.Holy" posting, which is very much to the point.
The world is sacred in two
The world is sacred in two ways first it is created by God and secondly by the fact that Jesus came or was sent to touch [to turn on,empower ]the world. He was not sent or did not come to buy it back [Adam and Eve is a myth]. If the universe is created by God and empowered by God then we must treat it as being SACRED and handle it with respect. That same respect applies to our work of co- or sub-creation 'The hairs on your head are counted' maybe even 'the aluminum cans are numbered'.