David Young to me
"It is well and good to talk about the authentic council. What remains is the "actual" council. What actually happened? 99% of clergy and lay are living and moved by the "actual" council, not the authentic council. It is from that point that engagement with Vatican II is needed. Not an interpretation of texts no one consults. Right?"
Dear David,
I am in Indiana now and away from my books. However, I would say that 99% of the clergy and lay are living and moved by a spirit of the Council that is false. And as I recall, Ratzinger remarking in "The Ratzinger Report" that the Council has not been read, that the texts were buried under a pile of false interpretations, and that the only way to get at the real Council is to go to the texts and read and study them. As I also recall, Benedict took a hard shot at this in his December 22, 2005 Address to the Roman Curia. I put it below in full. However, before I post it, let me hasten to add that the texts have to be read, and there has to be "a broadening of reason" and a "new trajectory of thought" (as Benedict has been saying intensively since 2006 and particularly in "Caritas in Veritate") which is basically relation as prayer, service, work as giftedness. Basically, if there is no self-transcendence and struggle for holiness, there will be no discovery of the authentic spirit of the Council which is contained in the texts.
Here's Benedict's text:
"The question arises: Why has the implementation of the Council, in large parts of the Church, thus far been so difficult?
Well, it all depends on the correct interpretation of the Council or - as we would say today - on its proper hermeneutics, the correct key to its interpretation and application. The problems in its implementation arose from the fact that two contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarrelled with each other. One caused confusion, the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit.
On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call "a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture"; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the "hermeneutic of reform", of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.
The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.
These innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the Council, and starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move ahead. Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council's deepest intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague.
In a word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim.
The nature of a Council as such is therefore basically misunderstood. In this way, it is considered as a sort of constituent [read: parliamentary assembly cobbling together disparate human opinions to be boiled down to a consensus and signed by the pope] that eliminates an old constitution and creates a new one. However, the Constituent Assembly needs a mandator and then confirmation by the mandator, in other words, the people the constitution must serve. The Fathers had no such mandate and no one had ever given them one; nor could anyone have given them one because the essential constitution of the Church comes from the Lord and was given to us so that we might attain eternal life and, starting from this perspective, be able to illuminate life in time and time itself.
Through the Sacrament they have received, Bishops are stewards of the Lord's gift. They are "stewards of the mysteries of God" (I Cor 4: 1); as such, they must be found to be "faithful" and "wise" (cf. Lk 12: 41-48). This requires them to administer the Lord's gift in the right way, so that it is not left concealed in some hiding place but bears fruit, and the Lord may end by saying to the administrator: "Since you were dependable in a small matter I will put you in charge of larger affairs" (cf. Mt 25: 14-30; Lk 19: 11-27).
These Gospel parables express the dynamic of fidelity required in the Lord's service; and through them it becomes clear that, as in a Council, the dynamic and fidelity must converge.
The hermeneutic of discontinuity is countered by the hermeneutic of reform, as it was presented first by Pope John XXIII in his Speech inaugurating the Council on 11 October 1962 and later by Pope Paul VI in his Discourse for the Council's conclusion on 7 December 1965.
Here I shall cite only John XXIII's well-known words, which unequivocally express this hermeneutic when he says that the Council wishes "to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion". And he continues: "Our duty is not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with antiquity, but to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which our era demands of us...". It is necessary that "adherence to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness..." be presented in "faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which, however, should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another...", retaining the same meaning and message (The Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, S.J., p. 715).
It is clear that this commitment to expressing a specific truth in a new way demands new thinking on this truth and a new and vital relationship with it; it is also clear that new words can only develop if they come from an informed understanding of the truth expressed, and on the other hand, that a reflection on faith also requires that this faith be lived. In this regard, the programme that Pope John XXIII proposed was extremely demanding, indeed, just as the synthesis of fidelity and dynamic is demanding.
However, wherever this interpretation guided the implementation of the Council, new life developed and new fruit ripened. Forty years after the Council, we can show that the positive is far greater and livelier than it appeared to be in the turbulent years around 1968. Today, we see that although the good seed developed slowly, it is nonetheless growing; and our deep gratitude for the work done by the Council is likewise growing.
In his Discourse closing the Council, Paul VI pointed out a further specific reason why a hermeneutic of discontinuity can seem convincing.
In the great dispute about man which marks the modern epoch, the Council had to focus in particular on the theme of anthropology. It had to question the relationship between the Church and her faith on the one hand, and man and the contemporary world on the other (cf. ibid.). The question becomes even clearer if, instead of the generic term "contemporary world", we opt for another that is more precise: the Council had to determine in a new way the relationship between the Church and the modern era.
This relationship had a somewhat stormy beginning with the Galileo case. It was then totally interrupted when Kant described "religion within pure reason" and when, in the radical phase of the French Revolution, an image of the State and the human being that practically no longer wanted to allow the Church any room was disseminated.
In the 19th century under Pius IX, the clash between the Church's faith and a radical liberalism and the natural sciences, which also claimed to embrace with their knowledge the whole of reality to its limit, stubbornly proposing to make the "hypothesis of God" superfluous, had elicited from the Church a bitter and radical condemnation of this spirit of the modern age. Thus, it seemed that there was no longer any milieu open to a positive and fruitful understanding, and the rejection by those who felt they were the representatives of the modern era was also drastic.
In the meantime, however, the modern age had also experienced developments. People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution.
The natural sciences were beginning to reflect more and more clearly their own limitations imposed by their own method, which, despite achieving great things, was nevertheless unable to grasp the global nature of reality.
So it was that both parties were gradually beginning to open up to each other. In the period between the two World Wars and especially after the Second World War, Catholic statesmen demonstrated that a modern secular State could exist that was not neutral regarding values but alive, drawing from the great ethical sources opened by Christianity.
Catholic social doctrine, as it gradually developed, became an important model between radical liberalism and the Marxist theory of the State. The natural sciences, which without reservation professed a method of their own to which God was barred access, realized ever more clearly that this method did not include the whole of reality. Hence, they once again opened their doors to God, knowing that reality is greater than the naturalistic method and all that it can encompass.
It might be said that three circles of questions had formed which then, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, were expecting an answer. First of all, the relationship between faith and modern science had to be redefined. Furthermore, this did not only concern the natural sciences but also historical science for, in a certain school, the historical-critical method claimed to have the last word on the interpretation of the Bible and, demanding total exclusivity for its interpretation of Sacred Scripture, was opposed to important points in the interpretation elaborated by the faith of the Church.
Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.
Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.
These are all subjects of great importance - they were the great themes of the second part of the Council - on which it is impossible to reflect more broadly in this context. It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance.
It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within. On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change.
Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge.
It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only through the process of conviction.
The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt 22: 21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient Church naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tm 2: 2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.
The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one's own faith - a profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God's grace in freedom of conscience. A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith. She desires to transmit the gift of the truth that exists for one and all.
At the same time, she assures peoples and their Governments that she does not wish to destroy their identity and culture by doing so, but to give them, on the contrary, a response which, in their innermost depths, they are waiting for - a response with which the multiplicity of cultures is not lost but instead unity between men and women increases and thus also peace between peoples.
The Second Vatican Council, with its new definition of the relationship between the faith of the Church and certain essential elements of modern thought, has reviewed or even corrected certain historical decisions, but in this apparent discontinuity it has actually preserved and deepened her inmost nature and true identity.
The Church, both before and after the Council, was and is the same Church, one, holy, catholic and apostolic, journeying on through time; she continues "her pilgrimage amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God", proclaiming the death of the Lord until he comes (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 8).
Those who expected that with this fundamental "yes" to the modern era all tensions would be dispelled and that the "openness towards the world" accordingly achieved would transform everything into pure harmony, had underestimated the inner tensions as well as the contradictions inherent in the modern epoch.
They had underestimated the perilous frailty of human nature which has been a threat to human progress in all the periods of history and in every historical constellation. These dangers, with the new possibilities and new power of man over matter and over himself, did not disappear but instead acquired new dimensions: a look at the history of the present day shows this clearly.
In our time too, the Church remains a "sign that will be opposed" (Lk 2: 34) - not without reason did Pope John Paul II, then still a Cardinal, give this title to the theme for the Spiritual Exercises he preached in 1976 to Pope Paul VI and the Roman Curia. The Council could not have intended to abolish the Gospel's opposition to human dangers and errors.
On the contrary, it was certainly the Council's intention to overcome erroneous or superfluous contradictions in order to present to our world the requirement of the Gospel in its full greatness and purity.
The steps the Council took towards the modern era which had rather vaguely been presented as "openness to the world", belong in short to the perennial problem of the relationship between faith and reason that is re-emerging in ever new forms. The situation that the Council had to face can certainly be compared to events of previous epochs.
In his First Letter, St Peter urged Christians always to be ready to give an answer (apo-logia) to anyone who asked them for the logos, the reason for their faith (cf. 3: 15).
This meant that biblical faith had to be discussed and come into contact with Greek culture and learn to recognize through interpretation the separating line but also the convergence and the affinity between them in the one reason, given by God.
When, in the 13th century through the Jewish and Arab philosophers, Aristotelian thought came into contact with Medieval Christianity formed in the Platonic tradition and faith and reason risked entering an irreconcilable contradiction, it was above all St Thomas Aquinas who mediated the new encounter between faith and Aristotelian philosophy, thereby setting faith in a positive relationship with the form of reason prevalent in his time. There is no doubt that the wearing dispute between modern reason and the Christian faith, which had begun negatively with the Galileo case, went through many phases, but with the Second Vatican Council the time came when broad new thinking was required.
Its content was certainly only roughly traced in the conciliar texts, but this determined its essential direction, so that the dialogue between reason and faith, particularly important today, found its bearings on the basis of the Second Vatican Council.
This dialogue must now be developed with great openmindedness but also with that clear discernment that the world rightly expects of us in this very moment. Thus, today we can look with gratitude at the Second Vatican Council: if we interpret and implement it guided by a right hermeneutic, it can be and can become increasingly powerful for the ever necessary renewal of the Church.”
Monday, August 31, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
More On Weigel, Vatican II and Continuity
As Weigel Does Not "Understand" Person as Relation, He is Blind to the Continuity
I return to Weigel’s critique of “Caritas in Veritate” because as it stands it trivializes the text to the point that the average person who might be sensitive enough to read the encyclical, will tend not to. And, as I mentioned yesterday, Joseph Ratzinger insisted that the only way to retrieve the Council is be reading the texts of the Council. In brief, as Benedict mentioned in his curial address of December 22, 2005: “Well, it all depends on the correct interpretation of the Council or - as we would say today - on its proper hermeneutics, the correct key to its interpretation and application. The problems in its implementation arose from the fact that two contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarrelled with each other. One caused confusion, the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit.
On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call "a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture"; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the "hermeneutic of reform", of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.
The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.
These innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the Council, and starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move ahead. Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council's deepest intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague.
In a word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim.
The nature of a Council as such is therefore basically misunderstood.
I judge this to be a masterful statement about the tragedy of misinterpretation concerning Vatican II. And I judge that it fits perfectly as the critique of Weigel’s critique. Let’s review Weigel again. He says “the proponents of Populorum Progressio (the 1967 social encyclical of Paul VI that Caritas in Veritate commemorates) would seem to be promoting a ‘hermeneutics of rupture’ when they claim that the tradition of Catholic social doctrine began anew with Populorum Progressio –a claim that at least some passages in Caritas in Veritate can be interpreted to support.” The ambiguity of this last sentence is then used to propose an alternative that would clearly be a “hermeneutic of rupture:” “Are there two Catholic social-doctrine traditions (one stemming from Leo XIII’s 1891 masterwork, Rerum Novarum, and a post-conciliar one beginning from Populorum Progressio), or is there one?”
If you say there is only one social-doctrine tradition that is clearly favored to be from the “masterwork, Rerum Novarum,” then you must dismiss Populorum Progressio as a derivative creation of Vatican II, which is really the point of attack. Weigel pointedly dogmatized: “the claim that the Catholic Church reinvented itself at
But this is precisely the point of Vatican II, the realism of the Word of God, the entire first chapter of “Caritas…” which is on “Populorum Progressio” and the total thrust of “Caritas….” What is really real and not an abstract ideology is the existing human person, made in the image of the Divine Persons Who are constitutively Relations, whose actions must be formed in this relationality that is self-gift.
Continuity
If we are going to talk continuity in doctrine and Tradition, then let’s rehearse the meaning of Revelation and Faith. Joseph Ratzinger propounded in his habilitation thesis that “‘revelation’ is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself [the Person of Christ], not to the objectified result of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of ‘revelation.’ Where there is not one t o perceive ‘revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definitions, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it…. If [then] Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down. And this again means that there can be no such thing as pure sola scriptura…”[1]
The Church hears the Word of God which dwells in her and takes flesh from her. She can do this only by reciprocating the act of self-gift that is revelation (that is the Person of Christ) by the act of self-gift that is faith. By that resonating act, the Word is assimilated. The Church speaks the assimilate Word that is the Person of Christ in the written word of Scripture and the Magisterium. To hear the Word that is Christ, then, one must not only hear the word-text of the Magisterium but the Person-Word of the Revelation behind the text.
For continuity, one must hear both the word and the Word. The Person-Word can only be heard in prayer while mulling over the word-text. And the, it is not reaching a logical conclusion by reasoning, but receives an experience of the Word as gift of the Spirit. This means that the Word of God in the text is not reducible to the cosmic meaning of words. Their meaning always is the Person of Christ in both Old and New Testaments. Hence, the use of words like “quotas of gratuitousness and communion” refer to the relationality that the human person is called to achieve in the interpersonal space of the market.
We can conclude, then, that it is not reaching a logical conclusion by reasoning that we achieve continuity of concepts, but receiving the gift of the Spirit- an experience - whereby we have a continuity of consciousness. There occurs an experience of Christ and a consciousness beyond concepts. This alone is Benedict’s meaning of the “hermeneutic of continuity.”
He who only hears words but does not experience the Word by self-gift in prayer will see discontinuity in the wording of the Second Vatican Council. Even the use of the word “pastoral” will move such a one to trivialize the immense doctrinal horizon that is contained therein and which is in perfect continuity of, say, a Council of Nicea which would seem to be, indeed, “obscure” by saying that the Father and the Son, distinct and irreducible as Persons, are “one in Being.” This, I submit, is the state of the case of George Weigel in his perception of “Caritas in Veritate.”
How important is this point? I judge it to be immense because Weigel’s critique is the state of the hearing Church writ small. Vatican II has not been understood because it has not been reads, and it has not been read because the “spirit” of the Council, broadcast early on by an elite inspired by the Bologna School,[2] have pre-empted reading the text. Hence, Joseph Ratzinger insisted on the return to the texts and the ascetical conditions required for their proper hermeneutic.
In this light, it seems imperative to revisit Weigel’s assessment of “Of Social Concern,” Centesimus Annus” and all of the Magisterial writings he has critiqued.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
George Weigel's Critique of "Caritas in Veritate" as Hermeneutic of Rupture."
“On a second, third, and even fourth reading, Caritas in Veritate remains a complex and sometimes obscure document, in which many intellectual influences are clearly at work. As such, it seems likely to generate continued debate, which will have to address at least these questions:
“Throughout his pontificate, and in Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI has been at pains to stress the continuity of Catholic life and thought before and after the Second Vatican Council: what he terms a “hermeneutics of continuity,” as distinguished from a “hermeneutics of rupture.” Or, in lay language, the claim that the Catholic Church reinvented itself at Vatican II is simply wrong. Yet the proponents of Populorum Progressio (the 1967 social encyclical of Paul VI that Caritas in Veritate commemorates) would seem to be promoting a “hermeneutics of rupture” when they claim that the tradition of Catholic social doctrine began anew with Populorum Progressio — a claim that at least some passages in Caritas in Veritate can be interpreted to support. This raises a very important question: Are there two Catholic social-doctrine traditions (one stemming from Leo XIII’s 1891 masterwork, Rerum Novarum, and a post-conciliar one beginning from Populorum Progressio), or is there one? This is not a merely theoretical argument, for the implications of the “two traditions” claim are considerable, especially in light of the fact that the Populorum Progressio “tradition” is the less disciplined of the two in closely identifying specific public policy recommendations with points of theological principle. Thus Benedict XVI’s entire effort to get the Catholic Church thinking of itself as a communion of believers in essential continuity over time is now back on the table of debate, because of the suggestion that something different in kind began, at least in terms of social doctrine, with Populorum Progressio.”[1]
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
What is most interesting in the critique that Weigel is directing at Benedict’s “Caritas in Veritate” is its explosiveness in bringing out what has been long buried in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Karol Wojtyla, a Council Father and Cardinal of Krakow before becoming John Paul II, wrote a catechism of sorts for his diocese, Krakow, pointing out exactly what he understood the “enrichment of faith” that the Council intended to effect.
That “enrichment” consisted in a change of perspective on the content of the Catholic Faith. He remarked: “If we study the conciliar magisterium as a whole, we find that the Pastors of the Church were not so much concerned to answer questions like ‘What should men believe?,’ ‘What is the real meaning of this or that truth of faith?,’ and so on, but rather to answer the more complex question: ‘What does it mean to be a believer, a Catholic and a member of the Church?’”[2] Wojtyla quotes the Conciliar document Dei Verbum[3] to the effect that the Church is constantly developing its experience of the Person of Jesus Christ, and constantly growing in its “consciousness” of Christ. This consciousness, upon reflection (most times in crisis with heresy), becomes conceptual and emerges as a “development of doctrine.”[4]
Perhaps the clearest way to state this is to proclaim that the “Object/Subject” of faith is the Person of Jesus Christ Who is the revelation of the Father.[5] This being so, Josef Ratzinger writes, “then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down.”[6] It also means that one knows revelation (the Person of Christ), not primarily by concepts, but by the experience of becoming the Person of Christ and becoming conscious of this divinization in oneself. Ratzinger prefaced the above with this: “‘revelation is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this act [the concept]. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of ‘revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive ‘revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it.”[7] This is why prayer as the act of transcending the self is the sine qua non essential condition of being “like” Him Who is nothing but relation to the Father, and as enfleshed lives out Who He is as prayer.
For there to be continuity in the faith as experiential knowledge of the Person of Jesus Christ as experienced from the beginning - and growing in that experience – the Second Vatican Council proclaimed itself to be a “pastoral council.” Wojtyla wrote: “The question ‘What does it mean to be a believing member of the Church?’ is indeed difficult and complex, because it not only presupposes the truth of faith and pure doctrine, but also calls for that truth to be situated in the human consciousness and calls for a definition of the attitude, or rather the many attitudes, that go to make the individual a believing member of the Church. This would seem to be the main respect in which the Conciliar magisterium has a pastoral character, corresponding to the pastoral purpose for which it was called. A ‘purely’ doctrinal Council would have concentrated on defining the precise meaning of the truths of faith, whereas a pastor Council proclaims, recalls or clarifies truths for the primary purpose of giving Christians a life-style, a way of thinking and acting.”[8] And that “attitude” and “life-style” is the relationality of self-gift. In a word, if the Church continued down the road of offering concepts of truth and not the experience of being the Truth, she would not have been in continuity with the faith of the Fathers of the Church from the beginning.
“Populorum Progressio [henceforth PP],” published a scant two years after the end of the Council, carried this change in perspective from “object” to “subject” that was at the root of the Council. To understand this, it is imperative to read #10-20 again and again. Weigel’s complaint about PP is meaningless in even a casual read of those numbers. For example, his claim that there was a “hermeneutic of rupture” by “proponents of Populorum Progressio” who claimed that “Catholic social doctrine began anew” with the encyclical, flies directly against the expressed text of Benedict XVI: “The link between Populorum Progressio and the Second Vatican Council does not mean that Paul VI’s social magisterium marked a break with that of previous Popes, because the Council constitutes a deeper exploration of this magisterium within the continuity of the Church’s life. In this sense, clarity is not served by certain abstract subdivisions of the Church’s social doctrine, which apply categories to Papal social teaching that are extraneous to it.”[9] And then Weigel launches a direct broadside against “Caritas in Veritate” by insinuating with a cunning: “Are there two Catholic social-doctrine traditions (one stemming from Leo XIII’s 1891 masterwork, Rerum Novarum, and a post-conciliar one beginning from Populorum Progressio), or is there one?”
That there be two would undermine the one Christ as Singular Subject of Revelation. That there be one, then the PP as close progeny of Vatican II would have to be dismissed since Weigel stated at the outset that “the claim that the Catholic Church reinvented itself at
Benedict’s Pre-emptive Rejection of Weigel’s Critique
“The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.
“These innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the Council, and starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move ahead. Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council's deepest intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague.
“In a word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim.
“The nature of a Council as such is therefore basically misunderstood. In this way, it is considered as a sort of constituent that eliminates an old constitution and creates a new one. However, the Constituent Assembly needs a mandator and then confirmation by the mandator, in other words, the people the constitution must serve. The Fathers had no such mandate and no one had ever given them one; nor could anyone have given them one because the essential constitution of the Church comes from the Lord and was given to us so that we might attain eternal life and, starting from this perspective, be able to illuminate life in time and time itself.[11]
Conclusion:
There is an enhanced continuity of the experience of the revealing Person of Jesus Christ precisely because of the shift in the Second Vatican Council from first order abstraction (objectified “truths) to a second order where there is the experience and consciousness of the Subject as self-transcending. The continuity is the Person-Subject, not the concepts, and this precisely because the experience of the self in transcendence is beyond conceptual categories. This was basically the conclusion of the thesis of John Paul II on the meaning of faith in
Rev. Robert A. Connor
robertaconnor@gmail.com
[1] Weigel, National Review, July 13, 2009
[2] K. Wojtyla, “Sources of Renewal,” Harper and Row (1979) 17,
[3] “Thus, as the centuries go by, the Church is always advancing towards the plenitude of divine truth, until eventually the words of God are fulfilled in her,” Dei Verbum 8.
[4] John Henry Newman, “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine,” Image Books (1960).
[5] Jn. 1, 18. “No one has at any time seen God. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him.”
[6] J. Ratzinger, “Milestones, Memoirs 1927-1977,” Ignatius (1997) 108.
[7] Ibid 107,
[8] K. Wojtyla, “Sources of Renewal,” op. cit 17-18.
[9] “Caritas in Veritate #12.
[10] Sandro Magister, Blog: “Chiesa” June 22, 2005.
[11] Address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005:
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Note on Weigel and the "Hermeneutic of Rupture"
Note: Weigel is accusing Benedict of exercising a “hermeneutic of rupture” with “Caritas” because he is siding with “Populorum Progressio” as beginning anew with the Social Doctrine of the Church: “the proponents of Populorum Progression (the 1967 social encyclical of Paul VI that Caritas in Veritate commemorates) would seem to be promoting a ‘hermeneutics of rupture’ when they claim that the tradition of Catholic social doctrine began anew with P.P. – a claim that at least some passages in Caritas in Veritate can be interpreted to support.”
Basically Weigel is accusing the development of doctrine that took place in Vatican II – that was the passage from an epistemology of object to one of subject and the rereading of the entire doctrine of the Church in terms of the subject – of being the “hermeneutic of rupture.” Please consider this point. What is at stake is the very meaning of the Council that has not been understood as of yet. Consult, if you will, Karol Wojtyla’s Sources of Renewal on precisely this point. What was it that really took place in
I quote again his July 13th piece from National Review below:
“Throughout his pontificate, and in Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI has been at pains to stress the continuity of Catholic life and thought before and after the Second
The Core of "Caritas in Veritate:" The Sanctification of Work
“A secret, an open secret: these world crises are crises of saints.God wants a handful of men ‘of his own’ in every human activity. And then… ‘pax Christi in regno Christi – the peace of Christ in the
* * * * * * * * * * * *
John Paul II in Centesimus Annus spoke of three (3) “subjects” and two (2) “logics:”
The subjects are the market, the state and the working person (“civil society”).
The logics are 1st order: Objects, and 2nd order: subjects (persons).
The market is a logic of objects. Roughly, we can say that the market is a contractual exchange, in a dynamic of supply and demand, available to mathematic symbolization and deterministic in nature as an abstraction. It is presupposed that the market is morally neutral working deterministically as supply and functions with a logic of objects.
And again: “Economic life undoubtedly requires contracts, in order to regulate relations of exchange between goods of equivalent value. But it also needs just laws and forms of redistribution governed by politics, and what is more, it needs works redolent of the spirit of gift. The economy in the global era seems to privilege the former logic, that of contractual exchange, but directly or indirectly it also demonstrates its need for the other two: political logic, and the logic of the unconditional gift.”[3]
Real development takes place in a living, organic and internal way. The human person cannot be said to develop merely by the extrinsic addition of “things” or social extrinsics. The human person develops by an interior dynamic of self-determination that is revealed as well as experiential. It is a development of the whole being as person. It is ontological and free by an autonomous act of self determination always preceded by an act of affirmative love, but it Grace, be it human. Wojtyla is dry here, but it is a philosophic rendering of the magisterial statement of Christian anthropology. It is a revolutionary “redefining” of the human person as “Caritas in Veritate” called for: “a metaphysical interpretation of the ‘humanum’ in which relationality is an essential element” (54).
OntologicalThe developmentof the economy demands the ontological development of the person. This takes place as image of the Divine Persons in the exercise of freedom
Existential Christian Anthropology
The Anthropology of Gaudium et Spes #24: (John Paul II): “If we wish to accentuate fully the truth concerning the human person brought out by Gaudium et Spes [#24], we must once again look to the personal structure of self-determination.”[7] Wojtyla explains: “I believe… that, with the aid of the comprehensive experience of the human being and human action [joy, sadness, good, evil, guilt, peace], we can more fully apprehend the dynamism of the will and in this way come closer to the complete view handed down by St. Thomas. It is precisely the reality of self-determination that brings this to light. Self-determination reveals that what takes place in an act of will is not just an active directing of the subject toward a value. Something more takes place as well: when I am directed by an act of will toward a particular value, I myself not only determine this directing, but through it I simultaneously determine myself as well. The concept of self-determination involves more than just the concept of efficacy: I am not only the efficient cause of my acts, but through them I am also in some sense the ‘creator of myself.’ Action accompanies becoming; moreover, action is organically linked to become. Self-determination, therefore, and not just the efficacy of the personal self, explains the reality of moral values: it explains the reality that by by my actions I become ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ and that then I am also ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as a human being…
“Human beings not only determine their own activity but also determine themselves in terms of a most essential quality. Self-determination thus corresponds to the becoming of a human being as a human being. Through self-determination, the human being becomes increasingly more of a ‘someone’ in the ethical sense, although in the ontological sense the human being is a ‘someone’ from the very beginning.”[8]
Holiness/Development is to Achieved Precisely in the Exercise of Work: Vocation: “In reality, institutions by themselves are not enough, because integral human development is primarily a vocation, and therefore it involves a free assumption of responsibility in solidarity on the part of everyone. Moreover, such development requires a transcendent vision of the person, it needs God: without him, development is either denied, or entrusted exclusively to man, who falls into the trap of thinking he can bring about his own salvation, and ends up promoting a dehumanized form of development. Only through an encounter with God are we able to see in the other something more than just another creature[17], to recognize the divine image in the other, thus truly coming to discover him or her and to mature in a love that “becomes concern and care for the other.”[9]
“Integral Human Development:”
Newest Weigel Critique:[10] The real pique of Weigel is the universal call to holiness in the world of work and the mysterious (non-rationalistic) of the terms of development as relationality as “being more.”
Weigel accuses “Caritas in Veritate” of 1) promoting a “hermeneutics of rupture,” and 2) being “obscure.” The “hermeneutic of rupture” was confronted by Benedict XVI on December 22, 2005.[11] It is a theme developed by the
This notion of the person as gift and gratuitousness, and not the individual acting out the market in self-interest is considered “obscure.” And it is “obscure” in the order of conceptual thought, but not for reason.[15] However, it involves another experiential level of knowing, “consciousness,”[16] whereby the self experiences itself as relation and gift. Benedict is insisting on this “broadening of reason” in order to live in the real world existentially after the demise of the ideologies of Communism and Liberal Capitalism. He is offering not a third way between objects, but a new way of the subject who finds self by sincere gift of self” (Gaudium et Spes #24).
Response: Benedict’s whole thrust in #53 is to paraphrase Gaudium et Spes #24. He asks for “a new trajectory of thinking” that will work in this different dimension of the working person, and that it embraces the personalist realities of “subsidiarity” (capital and freedom: both redefined on a higher level) and “solidarity” (the social dimension).
Major Texts: “He is not called Father with reference to himself but only in relation to the Son; seen by himself he is simply God.’ Here the decisive point comes beautifully to light. ‘Father’ is purely a concept of relationship. Only in being for the other is he Father; in his own being in himself he is simply God. Person is the pure relation of being related, nothing else. Relationship is not something extra added to the person, as it is with us; it only exists at all as relatedness.
“Expressed in the imagery of Christian tradition, this means that the first Person does not beget the Son as if the act of begetting were subsequent to the finished Person; it is the act of begetting, of giving oneself, of streaming forth. It is identical with the act of self-giving. Only as this act is it person… In this idea of relatedness in word and love, independent of the concept of substance and not to be classified among the ‘accidents,’ Christian thought discovered the kernel of the concept of person, which describes something other and infinitely more than the mere idea of the ‘individual.’ Let us listen once again to
The Two “Logics” in Work:
Doing Something (Object); Becoming “Somebody”(Subject: Christ)
The Dynamic of Human Work is Christology
“Work” in Caritas in Veritate:
“The continuing hegemony of the binary model of market-plus-State has accustomed us to think only in terms of the private business leader of a capitalistic bent on the one hand, and the State director on the other. In reality, business has to be understood in an articulated way. There are a number of reasons, of a meta-economic kind, for saying this. Business activity has a human significance, prior to its professional one. It is present in all work, understood as a personal action, an “actus personae”, which is why every worker should have the chance to make his contribution knowing that in some way “he is working ‘for himself'”]. With good reason, Paul VI taught that “everyone who works is a creator”[18]
“Man has to subdue the earth and dominate it, because as a the ‘image of God’ he is a person, that is to say, a subjective being capable of acting in a planned and rational way, capable of deciding about himself, and with a tendency to self-realization.
“As a person, man is therefore the subject of work. As a person he works, he performs various actions belonging to the work process: independently of their objective content, these actions must all serve to realize his humanity, to fulfill the calling to be a person that is his by reason of his very humanity…
“And so this ‘dominion’ spoken of in the biblical text being meditated upon here refers not only to the objective dimension of work but at the same time introduces us to an understanding of its subjective dimension. Understood as a process whereby man and the human race subdue the earth, work corresponds to this basic biblical concept only when throughout the process man manifests himself and confirms himself as the one who dominates.’ This dominion, in a certain sense, refers to the subjective dimension even more than to the objective one: this dimension conditions the very ethical nature of work. In fact there is no doubt that human work has an ethical value of it is own, which clearly and directly remains linked to the fact that the one who carries it out is a person, a conscious and free subject, that is to say, a subject that decides about himself.”[19]
Subsidiarity and Solidarity are Resonating Dimensions of the Working Person
This is the approximation of living out the Trinitarian reality in the global community. “The principle of subsidiarity must remain closely linked to the principle of solidarity and vice versa, since the former without the latter gives way to social privatism, while the latter without the former gives way to paternalist social assistance that is demeaning to those in need. This general rule must also be taken broadly into consideration when addressing issues concerning international development aid. Such aid, whatever the donors' intentions, can sometimes lock people into a state of dependence and even foster situations of localized oppression and exploitation in the receiving country.”[20]
Big Picture Persons are images of the divine Persons Who are pure relations of self-gift. The human person is created image. Therefore, the human person must – as a result of being loved – master self, in order to get possession of self, so as to be able to make the gift of self and achieve the reality of who they are images. Gaudium et Spes #24 describes the resonation that takes place between self activation and self gift (“find self by gift of self”). They are called “subsidiarity” and “solidarity.” In a state of ideological abstraction they have taken the form of liberal capitalism (the separation of capital from labor) and socialism (the denial of the autonomy of the worker). They are both determinisms. Communism is evident that one knows he has lost freedom when he is run over by a tank. Liberal Capitalism is less evident.
Ratzinger wrote in 1985: “Although this position admits the freedom of individual businessmen, and to that extent can be called liberal, it is in fact deterministic in its core. It presupposes that the free play of market forces can operate in one direction only, given the constitution of man and the world, namely, toward the self-regulation of supply and demand, and toward economic efficiency and progress.” He continued: “This determinism, in which man is completely controlled by the binding laws of the market while believing he acts in freedom from them, includes yet another and perhaps even more astounding presupposition, namely, that the natural laws of the market are in essence good… and necessarily work for the good whatever may be true of the morality of individuals. These two presuppositions are not entirely false, as the successes of the market economy illustrate. But neither are they universally applicable and correct…”
The existential realism that the Church proposes is the working person as “finding self” by the “sincere gift of self.”
Giftedness is not a giveaway of objects, but an attitude of giving self to another by means of creative service.
Example: “Every time I think about the future of Hollister and the growth that’s sure to come, I’m drawn to a wonderful moment out of the past. And in recalling the story, you will see the inspiration behind my vision today.
“Soon after I became President, I was having breakfast with Mr. and Mrs. John Schneider. Mrs. Schneider was concerned about the future of Hollister employees, that growth and large size might lead to impersonal treatment of people. So she gave me a book titled “Small is Beautiful,” which eloquently expresses the value of individuals and the need for organization of humane size.
Mr. Schneider and I discussed this situation with her at some length, explaining that some continuous growth was necessary for the well being of the Company. But we assured her that the philosophy of management caring about its employees was fixed in Mr. Schneider’s principles of doing business as stated in Mr. Schneider’s Trust.
In 1977, I wrote in the Hollister Highlights:
“All employees at Hollister should and can enjoy what they’re doing. The working environment should be an enjoyable one, with a feeling and sense of belonging.”
In the process of developing my Vision this past year, it became clear to me that this statement doesn’t go far enough. That the concern Mrs. Schneider raised needed to be addressed.
My Vision is based on the assumption that we have ‘lived’ our Mission Statement and have achieved our strategic business objectives. After we’ve done this, Hollister will be larger and more complex than it is today. But, as explained to Mrs. Schneider, our growth will be a result of being successful and not an end in itself.
Hollister of the future will be in the healthcare industry developing, manufacturing and selling medical products. But that is not our business. Our business is to serve customers, both inside and outside. Developing, manufacturing and selling medical products are the activities we engage in in order to serve.
We do not exist to make a profit. This is not an end, but a means by which we can continue as a strong, independently owned company.
Our business purpose is to serve our customers and the community as a whole. We’ll serve them with products that are innovative and more efficacious than those offered by our competitors. Quality is delivery of increasingly higher levels of service to our customers.
Hollister will also be more personal as a working environment because all associates will be serving one another in a way that creates a sense of community similar to the sense of family that existed when Mr. Schneider was running a smaller company.
Companies use all kinds of phrases like these to refer to their employees. ‘Our employees are our most important asset,’ ‘Our people make the difference,’ and ‘It’s not chairs, tables, or machines that give me problems, it’s people.’
These references view people the wrong way. We can’t look at people as assets of units of production. Such a view fails to see, as Mrs. Schneider always has, the unique individual that has a dignity and an intrinsic value, independent of the work they do.
My vision now should make t clear to all that work is not an occupation, but a vocation… not a necessary chore for making a living, but an opportunity for personal development and fulfillment.
As I see it, Hollister associates are person in relationships of service to one another. They’re all untied in a common cause, each contributes his or her indispensable work, well done, so that the individual efforts add up to a collective world-class result.
Hollister is thus a community of persons who in various ways are endeavoring to satisfy their basic needs and who form a particular group at the service of society.
At Stake
The Universal Call to Holiness in the World:
“By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will They live in the world, that is, they are engaged in each and every work and business of the earth and in the ordinary circumatances of social and family life which, as it were constitute their very existence. There they are called by God that, being led by the spirit to the Gospel, they mat contribute to the sanctification of the world, as from within like leaven, by fulfilling their own particular duties….It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things…”[21]
“You must realize now, more clearly than ever, that God is calling you to serve him in and from the ordinary, secular, and civil activities of human life. He waits for us everyday, in the laboratory, in the operating theater, in the army barracks, in the university chair, in the factory, in the workshop, in the fields, in the home, and in all the immense panorama of work. Understand this well: there is something holy, something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.”[22]
[1] The Way #301.
[2] Caritas in Veritate” #37.
[3] Ibid #36.
[4] Ibid 37.
[5] Ibid 39.
[6] Ibid 53.
[7] Karol Wojtyla, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination” Person and Community, Lang (1993) 194.
[8] Ibid. 191.
[9] C in V. #11.
[10] National Review, “Charity in Truth, The
[11] Google “Benedict XVI December 22, 2005” or my blog today.
[12] “The vocation to progress [development] drives us to ‘do more, know more and have more in order to be more.’ But herein lies the problem: what does it mean ‘ to be more?’… “In promoting development, the Christian, the Christian faith does not rely on privilege or positions of power, nor even on the merits of Christians… but only on Christ to whom every authentic vocation to integral human development must be directed. The Gospel is fundamental for development, because…Christ…fully reveals humanity to itself’ (GS #22)
[13] “Caritas in Veritate” #53.
[14] K. Wojtyla, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” Person and Community, Lang (1993) 214.
[15] Brennan: “I shall argue that the tendency to identify self-interest with rationality is mistaken – and that it represents a serious oversimplification of, for example, Adam Smith’s view of human nature. It was, after all, Smith’s Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, that first set modern-day economists down this road with its famous statement that ‘it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.’ What most economists fail to remember, however, is that Smith was Professor not of Economics (there was no such thing in those days), but of Moral Philosophy at the
[16] “In order to interpret the human being in the context of lived experience, the aspect of consciousness must be introduced into the analysis of human existence. The human being is then given to us not merely as a being defined according to species, but as a concrete self [“I”], a self-experiencing subject. If we pause here, this being discloses the structures that determine it as a concrete self. The disclosure of these structures constituting the human self need in no way signify a break with reduction and the species definition of the human being – rather , it signifies the kind of methodological operation that may be described as pausing at the irreducible. We should pause in the process of reduction, which leads us in the direction of understanding the human being in the world (a cosmological type of understanding), in order to understand the human being inwardly. This latter type of understanding may be called personalistic;” Karol Wojtyla, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” Person and Community Lang (1993) 213.
[17] Introduction to Christianity, Ignatius (1990) 131-132.
[18] Caritas in Veritate #41.
[19] John Paul II, “Laborem Exercens,” #6.
[20] Caritas in Veritate #58.
[21]
[22]
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