Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

Liberal Baptists Bashing Catholicism?

Francis Beckwith, writing on the Right Reason blog, posts the following:

Yesterday, June 29, the Baptist Joint Committee hosted a Baptist Unity Rally in Washington, D.C., in which "religious, political and educational leaders...celebrate[d] our Baptist heritage by reading excerpts of [George W.] Truett’s [1920] speech. Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas, Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, William Underwood, Pam Durso, Jeff Haggray, Stan Hastey, Daniel Vestal, Amy Butler, Julie Pennington-Russell, Curt Lucas and Rob Marus are among those...[who] participate[d]." (from BJC website)                             

Because I am familiar with the speech, I was curious as to whether the BJC would have the courage to ask its assigned readers--including two U. S. Congressmen and a Baptist university president--to recite the portions of the speech that are condescendingly and embarrasingly anti-Catholic (which, by the way, can still be found in its entirety on the BJC's website).

Just as I had predicted to a friend in private conservation, the BJC provided to the public a highly-edited, antiseptic, version of the speech.

Read the entire post and see what parts of Truett's speech were left out. A reader left the following comment on the Right Reason blog:

This is incredible! A US congressman celebrating the legacy of Truett, a segregationist. Bear in mind that this is all part of an effort by Bill Underwood, Daniel Vestal, Jimmy Carter, and several other Baptist leftists to gather support for Hillary Clinton. Remember, these are the same people organizing the "Baptist Covenant" next year in Atlanta, which will feature Senator Clinton as one of the main speakers.

Sure enough, the Baptist Joint Committee is part of the "New Baptist Covenant."  Visit the "New Baptist Covenant" website and learn more about how the self-described "authentic and genuine Baptist voice in North America" is working to "promote religious liberty and respect for religious diversity."

More info about that "sub secreto" meeting

Gerard O'Connell of UCANews.com reports:

He moved decisively in that direction late June 27 afternoon when he spoke to cardinals and bishops from 14 countries and seven bishops' conferences at a meeting held sub secreto (under secrecy) in the Vatican. He told them that his Motu Proprio will allow broader use of the missal promulgated by Pope John XXIII, which actually is a revised version of the Pius V Missal of 1570.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the secretary of state, convened the gathering aware that several episcopal conferences strongly oppose reinstating the Tridentine Mass on a wider scale. The cardinal invited representatives of some bishops' conferences and a small number of other bishops who favor the return of the old rite to attend.

Almost half the participants came from Europe: two each from Italy and France, and one each from Germany, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. Also attending were two from the United States, two from Africa and one from Asia. The Asian participant was Cardinal Telesphore Toppo of Ranchi, India, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India.

Though nearly half the world's Catholics live in Latin American, the only representative from that region at the meeting was Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, 77, president of the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei."

The commission, which Pope John Paul II set up in 1988 to reconcile members of the Saint Pius X Society and the pope, strongly advocates reinstating the Pius V Missal, as John XXIII updated and revised it, to foster reconciliation.

The society's founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, went into schism in 1988 by ordaining four members of his society as bishops without papal approval.

Besides getting a copy of the Motu Proprio, participants received a letter Pope Benedict wrote to explain why he is issuing the decree. Some participants admitted it was hard to understand the Motu Proprio because it is in Latin.

And:

All participants expressed their views at the meeting. Some saw the Motu Proprio as an expression of "pastoral charity," or a strong affirmation of "diversity in unity." By the end of the meeting, most indicated their basic acceptance of the text, but a few, like the French, still had reservations.

"As soon as we get the green light for nuptial cohabitation...

... we'll start working to promote an acceptance of non-recipricated acquisition, oppositional truth-utterances, extra-marital conjugal affirmation, and extraordinary property neediness."

That is: stealing, lying, adultery, and coveting.

This inspired by an article by "two respected family ministry researchers" who argue that nuptial cohabitation—also known, in less politically-correct times, as shacking up, living in sin, fornication—is a good and healthy way for people to ease their way into marriage. The article, titled "A Betrothal Proposal," was published in the U.S. Catholic magazine and was authored by Michael J. Lawler and Gail S. Risch, who are researchers at the Center for Marriage and Family at Creighton University, Nebraska, where they also teach theology. Creighton University is, according to its website, "a Catholic and Jesuit comprehensive university" that "is dedicated to the pursuit of truth in all its forms and is guided by the living tradition of the Catholic Church."  The Center's mission page states: "The Center for Marriage and Family stands firmly in this Catholic and Jesuit tradition." Lawler and Risch have either missed the part about being guided by Church teaching and standing firmly in it, or else believe they know better than the Church; in fact, their article makes it clear which it is (quick, take a guess!).

Lawler and Risch toss around some statistics and social research, but the bottom line is quite simple: they believe the Catholic Church should allow fornication ("Fornication is carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman" [CCC 2353]) because, well, everyone else is doing it:

The sharp increase in premarital cohabitation is one of the most fundamental social changes in Western countries today. Between 1960 and 2004, the number of unmarried couples living together in the United States increased tenfold from less than 500,000 to more than 5 million. Cohabitation has become, even for Catholics, more and more a conventional and socially endorsed reality.

Recent focus groups of young Catholic adults on “problematic aspects of church teaching” found that they disagreed with church teaching on premarital sex and cohabitation and do not see a fundamental difference in a loving relationship before and after a wedding. Our experience with young adults leads us to doubt the claim that they are living in sin. It would appear closer to the truth that they are growing, perhaps slowly but nonetheless surely, into grace. ...

Church teaching is sometimes slow to respond to social change and to sift out its beneficial aspects and thus sometimes can appear detached from real experience. That is what young adults tell us and what they also told various focus groups.

We invite the Catholic Church to be a leader, rather than an adversary, in acknowledging and nurturing nuptial cohabiting relationships as just and loving relationships and pathways to grace. We also invite Catholics to be ready to assist cohabiting nuptial couples to discover the presence of God in their lives and to live into that grace throughout their present cohabiting and future married lives.

This, of course, is nonsense, as both Archbishop Elden Francis Curtiss, Archbishop of Omaha, and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver have pointed out in public responses to the article. Archbishop Curtiss stated, in a June 5th letter:

The teaching of the Catholic Church about fornication is clear and unambiguous: it is always objectively a serious sin (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church #1755, #1852, #2353). Couples who live together without marriage do in fact live in sin objectively.

Because the position of the authors is contrary to Church teaching about the intrinsic evil of fornication, I have disassociated the Omaha Archdiocese from the Center for Marriage and Family at Creighton University.

Neither Lawler nor Risch are reliable teachers of Catholic moral theology, and certainly are not spokespeople for the Church regarding human sexuality and sacramental marriage.

The Curt Jester and Rich Leonardi have posted about the story, as have some other Catholic bloggers. But there is more to the story. The CatholicCitizens.org site has a November 8, 2005 article showing that this sly attack on Catholic moral teaching is hardly new to Lawler:

A Catholic theologian who opposes Church teaching on divorce and supports creating a betrothal ceremony for cohabitating couples just led a colloquium to assist US bishops with writing a pastoral letter on marriage.

The colloquium, which ended yesterday (10/25/05), was sponsored by the US Bishops' Committee on Marriage and Family and hosted by the Center for Marriage and Family at Creighton University in Omaha. It featured theologians and social scientist and had as its theme, "Promoting and Sustaining Marriage as a Community of Life and Love." According to a press release, the colloquium was a "major step" toward developing "a pastoral letter on marriage" and was "intended for the current and incoming members and advisors of the Marriage and Family Committee."

The director of Creighton's Center on Marriage and Family, Michael J. Lawler, served as the colloquium's chief facilitator. Lawler is well known for his heterodox views on divorce and cohabitation. A review of Lawler's book, "Marriage and the Catholic Church: Disputed Questions," in the left-of-center Catholic magazine "America", explains Lawler's take on divorce: "The governing agenda is to show how divorce and remarriage can be justified historically, canonically and theologically. Lawler argues that the sacramental character of marriage depends on personal faith. Therefore (contrary to canon law and current official teaching), sacramentality cannot attend the union of two persons, even two baptized persons, who do not intend, or who cease to experience, a mutual love that in faith makes God and Christ present." According to the review, Lawler also "proposes a formal betrothal ceremony to recognize and legitimize [cohabitation] and to provide an opportunity for marriage preparation."

Speaking of former ceremonies, how about one by the USCCB suspending Lawler's ability to teach theology at a Catholic university? I'll happily supply the balloons and cake and a copy of this book for everyone who attends.

In the meantime, let's return to my opening remark, which was fictional in nature but hardly unbelievable. There are, let's propose, people who sometimes practice non-recipricated acquisition but have the intention of someday paying for what they've stol--er, acquired. There are people who speak oppositional truth-utterances, yet have the best intention of someday, at the right time, telling the truth. There are those who seek out extra-marital conjugal affirmation, but commit such acts of spousal-challenged intimacy with the laudable goal of enriching and "spicing up" their marriages. There are some who fall into extraordinary property neediness, but with the intent of merely obtaining what they really need, not what they really want. After all, each of these actions and attitudes are more and more becoming conventional and socially endorsed realities. And I've not even broached same-gendered conjugal-emulating acts, sometimes crassly called homosexuality (or, in specific instances, sodomy). Why stop with shacking up? Let's take this openminded approach to each and every tenet of Catholic moral teaching!

Here, then, would be the goal: to affirm that Catholics can be Catholic without living in a way that is distinctively Catholic. By doing so, it becomes both easier to be Catholic and harder to tell who is Catholic, which breaks down barriers between Catholics and non-Catholics, thus helping both groups feel better about how they live while not making them change how they live. We could enlist the mentoring and life-coaching skills of folks such as John Kerry, Rudy Guiliani, Nancy Pelosi, Fr. Richard McBrien, and others, whose public struggles to be Catholic without being Catholic have been well-documented in recent years (or, in the case of Fr. McBrien, for many decades).

Plenty more could be said, but I'll wrap up with a final word from Archbishop Chaput, drawn from his June 20th column about the U.S. Catholic article:

... I believe in the intelligence and good will of the authors. I also believe that their argument is bafflingly naïve. If the Church, in her reflection on the Gospel, has always taught that sex outside marriage is morally wrong, then for the Church to now bless “nuptial cohabiters” amounts to colluding in sin. Ritualizing a sinful behavior, or calling it a nicer name, does not change its substance. The very last thing we need in a society already awash in confused sexuality is a strategy for accommodating it.

The greatest irony of the U.S. Catholic article comes in a comment by the authors that many young adults “cite confusion about Church teaching because Church leaders send mixed messages about sex, contraception, and divorce/annulment.” I very much agree. And one of the sources of that confusion might be Catholic publications, theologians and researchers who help feed it.

We need more support for marriage in society and the Church, not alternative arrangements. Cohabiting couples deserve the understanding and patience of the Catholic community, but above all they need to hear the Christian truth, persuasively offered, about the nature of marriage, the meaning of their sexuality and the importance of the family. We waste words and time when we focus on anything else.

Official confirmation

From Vatican Information Services:

MEETING DISCUSSES "MOTU PROPRIO" ON USE JOHN XXIII'S MISSAL

VATICAN CITY, JUN 28, 2007 (VIS) - Given below is the text of a communique
released today by the Holy See Press Office concerning Benedict XVI's
forthcoming "Motu Proprio" on the use of the Missal promulgated by Blessed
John XXIII in 1962.

  "Yesterday afternoon in the Vatican, a meeting was held under the
presidency of the Cardinal Secretary of State in which the content and
spirit of the Holy Father's forthcoming 'Motu Proprio' on the use of the
Missal promulgated by John XXIII in 1962 was explained to representatives
from various episcopal conferences. The Holy Father also arrived to greet
those present, spending nearly an hour in deep conversation with them.

  "The publication of the document - which will be accompanied by an
extensive personal letter from the Holy Father to individual bishops - is
expected within a few days, once the document itself has been sent to all
the bishops with an indication of when it will come into effect."

CNS.com has a shorter comparison of the "old" and "new" Masses (ht: Jimmy Akin). A must lengthier and more detailed comparison is made by Dr. Anthony Clark in his March 28, 2007 Ignatius Insight article, "The Latin Mass: Old Rites and New Rites in Today's World."

"God Is The Issue" | Fr. Schall on Ch. 2 of "Jesus of Nazareth"

"God Is The Issue" | The Temptation in the Desert and the Kingdoms of This World | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. on Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth | June 29, 2007        

"The alleged findings of scholarly exegesis have been used to put together the most dreadful books that destroy the figure of Jesus and dismantle faith." -- Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 35.

"Earthly kingdoms remain earthly human kingdoms, and anyone who claims to be able to establish the perfect world is the willing dupe of Satan and plays the world right into his hands." -- Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 44.

I.

Somehow, I find it refreshing to have a Pope who, gentle man that he is, can still alert us to the presence of "most dreadful books" produced by "allegedly scholarly exegesis" and, at the same time, of "willing dupes of Satan," who promise us a "perfect world." I still remember with something of a thrill the first time that I ever fully realized the meaning of the observation that very little about politics is found in the New Testament. The thrill comes with the insight that the New Testament was not designed to be a political treatise or handbook. Though this same Testament speaks rather frequently of "the Kingdom of God," it has significantly little to say about politics. What it does say is that there are "things of Caesar" circumscribed by the "things that are God's."

Why is this important? It is often charged against Christianity that, since it has been around for a couple of thousand years and the world is still full of pain, toil, corruption, and angst, it therefore must be either ineffective or untrue--or both. This is not quite Nietzsche's problem with Christianity. He thought it preached a doctrine fit for patsies and thus practiced by a bunch of weaklings, unworthy of nobility. In fact, as the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church seeks to spell out, if we practice what we are taught in the Gospels, the world will indeed be better--not perfect, but better. On the other hand, the New Testament also warns us that we will be most persecuted precisely when we do practice what Christ teaches, something that seems to be an historic fact, beginning with the Crucifixion.

But why did not God reveal to us everything that we must know and do so that we would just have to follow directions for everything to be fine?

Read the entire article...

Oldies but goodies

Touchstone magazine, one of my favorites, continues to expand its archives. New additions from 1991 include "Muggeridge: A Memoir" by Thomas Howard (IgnatiusInsight author page), which contains these anecdotes:

Muggeridge was taken up enthusiastically by the Evangelicals when he came   to the U.S. in the late seventies, since the word had got out that he had “become   a Christian.” Certainly he had begun to write and speak much about Jesus.   But I found that he was greatly bemused by just what it was that the Evangelicals   fancied he had done. They wanted to hear him say when he had been born   again, and so forth. This puzzled him, since, in his view, he had always been   looking for the truth, and had concluded decades earlier than this that, if   ever anyone in this sad world of ours had spoken the truth, it was Jesus Christ.   He had an almost fathomless nostalgia for God, you might say, all his life;   and when, in his latter years, he decided to identify himself publicly as a   Christian, and to testify to the truth as he believed it to be found in Christ’s   life, death, and resurrection, he felt that this was simply the culmination   of his lifelong quest. But he wasn’t altogether clear as to just what   it was that the Evangelicals had in their minds as to what he had done.

He told me an amusing thing about a remark Mother Teresa made to him which,   I think, may have been one of the catalysts that precipitated him into the Catholic   Church. Being a maverick, he was maintaining to Mother Teresa that he thought   God needed Christians outside the Church as well as inside. “No   he doesn’t,” said the good nun to him tartly. Not long after that,   he made his obedience to the ancient church.

For much about and from Muggeridge, check out the collection of his essays, Seeing Through the Eye, and read an essay from that collection, "Am I A Christian?". Also new to the Touchtone archives is a great essay by Russell Kirk, "The Rarity of the God-Fearing Man":

Politically, the man who does not fear God is prey to the squalid oligarchs; and this is no paradox. What raises up heroes and martyrs is the fear of God. Beside the terror of God’s judgment, the atrocities of the totalist tyrant are pinpricks. A God-intoxicated man, knowing that divine love and divine wrath are but different aspects of a unity, is sustained against the worst this world can do to him; while the goodnatured unambitious man, lacking religion, fearing no ultimate judgment, denying that he is made for eternity, has in him no iron to maintain order and justice and freedom.

Mere enlightened self-interest will submit to any strong evil. In one aspect or another, fear insists upon forcing itself into our lives. If the fear of God is obscured, then obsessive fear of suffering, poverty, and sickness will come to the front; or if a well-cushioned state keeps most of these worries at bay, then the tormenting neuroses of modern man, under the labels of “insecurity” and “anxiety” and “constitutional inferiority,” will be the dominant mode of fear. And these latter forms of fear are the more dismaying, for there are disciplines by which one may diminish one’s fear of God. But to remedy the causes of fear from the troubles of our time is beyond the power of the ordinary individual; and to put the neuroses to sleep, supposing any belief in a transcendent order to be absent, there is only the chilly comfort of the analyst’s couch or the tranquillizing drug.

And an interview with Fr. Paul Quay, S.J. titled "Recovering the Spiritual Sense of the Scriptures". An excerpt:

I think that for Catholics since Vatican II the problem is that there is an enormous emphasis on a sentimentalized, and now psychologized, attitude developed from the view that the New Testament is an adequate statement of all that Christ came to teach us. This fails completely to recognize that our Lord in actual history was speaking to his contemporaries, a people well-prepared. Therefore, he didn’t have to go over the same points again. He taught the first semester through his word in the Old Testament; the Gospel was the second semester. He didn’t have to go back and reteach the first semester.

So, for example, one of the things which the gay rights movement has been pushing is that you have no direct condemnation by Jesus of homosexual activity—at least nothing recorded in the Gospels. Then they make excuses for what is in the Epistles. But the point they ignore is that Jesus didn’t have to speak to this issue. Every Jew knew that homosexual activity was simply outside the range of the Law on any interpretation possible. The same thing goes for many other things. So, I think that Christians today need the Old Testament to get the first semester.

Beyond that, we have lost the spiritual sense of the Scriptures, which has always been something vital to the core doctrine of the Church. Here, the spiritual sense of the Old Testament plays a very important role. From the earliest days it was this sense which separated the Christian from the Jew. The Christians admitted that the Jews knew the Old Testament in its literal sense. There was no argument about Jewish competence to judge the historical/literal sense of these Scriptures. But what made the Christian a Christian was that he could read the Old Testament and every word in it was about Christ and the things which belong to Christ. That is the spiritual sense of the text.

For 1,500 years this was recognized. Then with the Reformation controversies the emphasis began to shift. Luther’s position was basically a late medieval position. He recognized that theological controversies are not settled by arguments based on the spiritual sense, but on the literal. Still, Luther himself accepted the spiritual sense in principle. Calvin, on the other hand, rejected it, as far as I can see, except where the New Testament expressly declares it to be present. Thereafter it became increasingly apparent in the controversies that what was being argued about was the literal meaning of the Scriptures. So, for example, did the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John refer to the Eucharist or not? This was not argued on the spiritual sense, but rather on the basis of what the Greek words of the text, properly understood, said and meant in their literal sense.

I believe that Protestantism has always tended to be caught up in issues arising from the literal. But I would say that it was not until later, about the time of Galileo, that we Catholics became absorbed to such a degree in issues of the literal sense. But from that period on, all controversies, without any exception that I know of, hinged on the literal meaning of the text—for Catholics as well as non-Catholics. Catholics have suffered less, at least until very recently, because the Church’s doctrine had already been derived from the spiritual sense.

Great stuff from the author of the excellent book, The Christian Meaning of Human Sexuality.

Immaculée update

I posted info last week about a re-airing of a December 2006 "60 Minutes" episode about Immaculée, who survived the 1994 massacre in Rwanda against incredible odds, and has gone on to tell her story in a book and on video. The CBS website now confirms that Immaculée will be on the "60 Minutes" program this coming Sunday, July 1.  People should check their local TV listings in various parts of the country. (Is it just me or is it rather funny that another feature on the same edition of "60 Minutes" will be about Russell Crowe and "the difficulty of being a film star". Hmmm....if being a film star is difficult, how to describe what Immaculée and others went through in Rwanda?)

Here is a “web only” video clip of the reporter, Bob Simon, discussing his interview with Immaculée.

Immaculée will also be a guest on EWTN’s "Life on the Rock" program on Thursday, August 23, 2007.

Also, Immaculée’s new personal website which will be up and running any day now.

Finally, a play that was written about Immaculée’s life will be performed at Stanford University from November 1-4, 2007.  Immaculée may speak after one of the performances on Friday, November 2, 2007.

Benedict and the "Old Mass"

Dr. Robert Moynihan, editor of Inside the Vatican, reflects on why Benedict XVI will apparently soon issue a motu proprio allowing wider celebration of the "old Mass":

Some would see the Holy Father’s interest in the old Mass as a matter of cultural taste. His desire for a wider use of the old rite in Latin is seen as something comparable to his interest in classical music. For these people, the issue is often reduced to a question of practicality: the old rite, in Latin, is "impractical" in the 21st century, and so, these people say, it would be unwise to expand its use.

But this is a serious misunderstanding of Benedict’s motivation. He is not concerned with Latin in itself. His respect for the "old Mass" is not a nostalgic cultural attachment to an ancient language. No, Benedict is concerned about the essence of the Mass itself.

And what is that essence? The right worship of God.

Certainly there is something to be said, in practical terms, for the use in a worldwide Church of a single liturgical language. And certainly, Latin is in some ways a good candidate to be that universal language. It was the language of the Empire under which Jesus lived and died. It has been used for almost 20 centuries. And translations could make the language "accessible" to all even today -- and even in times to come.

But that is not the point. It isn’t about the Latin. (And the Latin Mass is, in any case, not the Latin Mass at all; that is a misnomer; it is, rather, "the Latin, Greek and Aramaic Mass," with "Kyrie eleison" in Greek and "Amen" and "Alleluia" in Aramaic.) And those who think Latin is at the core of this matter do not see fully what is at stake here.

And what is at stake is not a trivial matter. If it were, the Pope wouldn’t have given two years of attention to it, or 25 years as a cardinal to stating repeatedly that there needs to be a "reform of the reform." Rather, it is an important matter. In fact, the most important one. For the Mass is celebrated for a single reason: for the Eucharist. And the Eucharist is one thing only: Christ with us. And Christ with us is the sole reason for the Church’s being.

So in dealing with the Mass, the Pope is not dealing with a marginal, a peripheral matter. The liturgy is not a "side issue." It is a central one; indeed, the central one. It is the little matter (and the Orthodox rightly stress this) of... the divinization of man! A reality which brought Padre Pio to tears.

So it is a very important matter. But what is the problem? It seems that Benedict, like many thoughtful believers, is concerned about the fact that the conciliar reform of the liturgy in the 1960s has in some way apparently failed to achieve its chief goal, which was to bring about an even greater reverence for the Eucharist, an even greater participation by the faithful in the mystery of Christ, an even deeper sacramental life within the Church. (That is what the conciliar fathers hoped to accomplish by approving a liturgical reform.)

And if there are in the "old Mass," as many argue, qualities too hastily discarded in the 1960s -- a sense of tradition which made it a bit easier for some to turn their minds toward the eternal, a sense of solemnity which helped some to turn their hearts toward God -- and if that loss can, even if only in part, be made good, if it can be remedied, by a motu proprio allowing the "old Mass" to be celebrated more widely, then it is a work of great import for the Pope to carry out.

If the "old Mass" is merely a "cultural" matter, the fad of a small elite, it will not flourish in any case, and the motu proprio will be a dead letter. But if it is a matter of renewing the Church, and if the dignity and holiness of the old rite strikes the faithful in such a way as to re-kindle in them a sense of that devotion which prepares them to encounter Christ, then allowing the old Mass to be celebrated more widely will be an act worth preparing for with much toil and care.                             

Related IgnatiusInsight.com articles and excerpts:

• The Spirit of the Liturgy page
• How Should We Worship? | Preface to The Organic Development of the Liturgy by Alcuin Reid, O.S.B. | by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• For "Many" or For "All"? | From God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart   of Life | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Foreword to U.M. Lang's Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer   | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Music and Liturgy | From The Spirit of the Liturgy   | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer | From The Spirit of the Liturgy   | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Worshipping at the Feet of the Lord: Pope Benedict XVI and the     Liturgy | Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D.
• The Latin Mass: Old Rites and New Rites in Today's World | Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D.
• Benedict and the Eucharist: On the Apostolic Exhortation, Sacramentum   Caritatis | Carl E. Olson
• The Meaning and Purpose of the Year of the Eucharist | Carl E. Olson
• The Doctrine (and the Defense) of the Eucharist | Carl E. Olson
• Walking   To Heaven Backward | Interview with Father Jonathan Robinson of the   Oratory
• Rite and Liturgy | Denis Crouan, STD
• The Liturgy Lived: The Divinization of Man | Jean Corbon, OP
• The Mass of Vatican II | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
• Liturgy, Catechesis,   and Conversion | Barbara Morgan
• Understanding   The Hierarchy of Truths | Douglas Bushman, STL
• The Eucharist:   Source and Summit of Christian Spirituality | Mark Brumley

Lost in the Seventies

R.R. Reno has a post at First Things about the reactions published in Horizons, (described by Reno as "the journal of the College Theology Society, a clubby American Catholic professional association"), to Fergus Kerr’s new book, Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians: From Chenu to Ratzinger (Blackwell). Like a certain Fr. McBrien, many of the theologians who wrote responses apparently place much weight on being trendy and ideologically correct than being truthful and theologically correct:

Bernard Cooke expresses a similar preoccupation. He regrets that the creative ferment and culture of theological experimentation that defined younger days has been “largely blocked up in recent decades,” in part because of “undue patriarchal domination and clericalism.” The wistfulness is standard fare and should be familiar to anyone who goes to meetings of Catholic theologians. I don’t think Cooke is quite aware of the irony of his affirmation of the ideal of “a theologian who theologizes historically.” After all, he gives the distinct impression of a fly frozen in the amber of the past.

Jeannine Hill Fletcher may not be frozen in the 1970s, but she manifests an even more icy tone. Her review is little more than a denunciation of Kerr’s book as politically incorrect. His crimes are many. Kerr, she asserts, has chosen to write about white, European clerics, and this perpetuates “androcentric discourse.” Kerr fails to focus on the (supposed) fact that feminist theology “changed the way theology is done.” He talks about heterosexual marriage without denouncing its normative role in the tradition.

Yikes. Reading Hill Fletcher I felt as though I had happened upon a memo for the prosecution at a 1930s Soviet show trial. Doesn’t Kerr know that he is duty-bound to undertake ritual critiques of “androcentrism” and “heterosexism” and “clericism” and so forth? Doesn’t Kerr know that writing a history of twentieth-century Catholic theology should not try to inform readers of the crucial mid-century theological debates, but instead needs to erase people from photos and put others in their place so we are fed the “right” views? Isn’t Kerr aware of the de facto quota system: You gotta have women in your story, even if no women theologians played roles in the defining debates leading up to the Second Vatican Council?

It is sad to see how a theologian such as Cooke has meandered so far away from the work he produced in the 1960s, including the excellent book Christian Sacraments and Christian Personality (Image, 1968). There is a lesson to be learned, Reno notes:

But as members of the establishment, they and others too often approach books and ideas as occasions to refight the old battles. Anti-modernism was a centrally important feature of twentieth-century Catholic theology, and, as Kerr testifies, it had a stifling effect. So I find myself appreciative of the generation that made the arguments that convinced the Catholic Church that the oath against modernism was no longer necessary. Nonetheless, it is now 2007, and that episode in theological history, and the Neoscholastic theology that stood behind the ecclesiastical reaction against modernism, needs to be analyzed and understood, as Kerr himself suggests. It should not be treated as a bug-bear to be defeated over and over again with fulminating incantations—which, unfortunately, the liberal Catholic establishment continues to train its members to do. ...

Petrified wood is hard but brittle. The liberal Catholic establishment that presently dominates most American Catholic universities can seem very powerful to those of us who dissent from its dominating ethos. But as the Establishment, it has become so very stupid that I don’t think it has much of a future. So let us now praise (and understand) those learned and courageous and faithful scholars who transformed the world of Catholic theology some thirty and forty, even fifty and sixty, years ago. But let’s also get on with our efforts to make sense out of the Church that this Establishment did so much to form and shape in recent generations.

While so many theologians who came to age (and, often, fame) in the 1960s are stuck in the 1960s and 1970s—that is, have given precedence to the ideological battles of those times, instead of to exploring more deeply the teachings and practices of the Church—there is one theologian who continues to push the envelope and write works that are both timely and timeless while remaining loyal to the Church's teachings, as Fr. D. Vincent Twomey explains:

IgnatiusInsight.com: What is unique or perhaps even surprising about Ratzinger's theological methodology? How does it differ from some of the celebrated Catholic theologians of the 1960s such as Küng and Rahner?
 
Rev. Twomey: What is unique to Ratzinger's theological methodology is, in the first place, its originality and creativity. Despite all the influences I mentioned, Ratzinger retained his distance and so retained his independence as a thinker, even with regard to the great theologians he studied.
 
His methodology is to take as his starting point contemporary developments in society and culture, then he listens to the solutions offered my his fellow theologians before returning to a critical examination of Scripture and Tradition for pointers to a solution. He is not satisfied to analyze a topic, but, having dissected the issue, he then attempts a systematic answer by seeing the topic in the context of theology as a whole. Unlike Küng, who is always in tune with the latest fashion, Ratzinger is not afraid to be unfashionable. Unlike Rahner, who produced a full systematic theology, Ratzinger's theology is fragmentary--filled with brilliant insights into almost every subject of theology and yet not a fixed "system".
 
Using the best findings of academic theology, Ratzinger goes beyond them to create something new and original. He is more than an academic. He is an original thinker, whose scattered writings on a host of subjects are "seminal", awaiting development by others. Finally, unlike either Küng or (especially) Rahner, Ratzinger writes with a clarity and, at times, literary beauty, that never fails to impress.

Read my entire interview with Fr. Twomey, who is author of Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience Of Our Age.

Here it comes! Motu proprio reportedly to be published on July 7th

Gerald Augustinus (who is Austrian) of "The Cafeteria Is Closed" blog has translated and published the following from Kath.net:

OFFICIAL: MOTU PROPRIO on July 7th    

My Austrian friends just emailed me. Kath.net/Die Welt (Klaus Badde) report (my translation:) that the motu proprio liberating the Tridentine Mass for the entire Catholic Church has been given to about 30 bishops from all over the world in the Sala Bologna of the Apostolic Palace by Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone. The bishops had been invited to Rome for that purpose.

At the end of the meeting, in which the motu proprio was introduced together with a letter of explanation by Pope Benedict XVI., Pope Benedict met with the bishops. The document is about three pages long, the accompanying letter about four. From Germany, Cardinal Lehmann (the head of the German bishops conference) had been invited. The circumstances of the procedure make clear that the Pope was very interested to personally inform the bishops, in collegial manner, of the content rather than have them learn about it from the media.

The publication of both documents will take place on July 7th. It emphasizes the unity of the Roman Rite which will consist of an ordinary and an extraordinary form which are supposed to inspire each other. The ordinary/regular form will continue to be the new rite of 1969. The extraordinary form will be the Missal of Bl. John XXIII. of 1962.

    More to come, I'm sure, very soon.