Month: March 2007

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Benedict can't be heard in England

This was the week that the leadership of the Catholic Church in England and Wales disgraced itself. Pope Benedict XVI issued one of the most significant documents written by a pontiff for many years â?? and the English bishopsâ?? â??communications networkâ?? effectively killed the story.

Real anger is building up in the parishes over the bishopsâ?? behaviour, which led to the document â?? Sacramentum Caritatis – a historic, 60-page statement on the Eucharist and the Liturgy â?? receiving minimal coverage in most secular newspapers.

Why did the Bishops of England and Wales keep silent? Inevitably, conspiracy theories are already forming, suggesting that they didnâ??t like the contents of the document. And Iâ??m sure that some of them didnâ??t. Pope Benedict calls for all new priests to be trained to say the new rite of Mass in Latin â?? he has yet to pronounce on the future of the Old Rite â?? and for a return to Gregorian chant. He also seems to shut the door on the prospect of married priests. Not the sort of thing that the English Churchâ??s right-on employees like to promulgate.

But those are side issues. The real point of Sacramentum Caritatis (Sacrament of Love) was its fabulously lucid and intellectually daring synthesis of Catholic teaching on the centre of the Churchâ??s life â?? the Eucharist, or Holy Communion. Reading the exhortation, I was awestruck by the quality of Benedictâ??s thinking: this is the most intellectually gifted pope for centuries.

Damian Thompson Shameful silencing of the Pope

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All blogged up

We are near the end of term at last. We have all had some virus which has slowed things right down.

I was about to give up on Wednesday’s paper for Heythrop, but in the last twenty-four hours managed to write something on Williams and O’Donovan on secularism which seemed to go all right. A reasonably-sized group, most in their fifties, their questions expressing the apparently unchanged English Catholic assumption that the ‘Church’ is a vast oppressive institution. I forget how surprised people are when you talk about the Church as the act of God and act of love, or indeed about society as created by love. I have not managed to write anything on Benedict on secularity, secularism and reason, which was what I first intended that paper to be.

I got the ‘Theology of John Zizioulas’ proofs back to Ashgate with index and Liviu’s bibliography; its cover uses the one reasonable photo of the man I got last year and all in all it looks OK.

So, this weekend, intercessions, evensong and sermon. My cough is going to make us all wish we had changed the rota. Then a short paper on Zizioulas on bishop and ecumenism for the STT, then the Spaemann review and we have another go at setting this Deep Church seminar on its feet. Then the Eschatology paper. Then Easter and new baby. Then the Dogmatics lectures. Those are the edited highlights from me. I am catching up on email now, I promise.

So you Londoners, I hope you will come to the next Deep Church session, and that you will book your place at the big theology-in-London event of the year, the Colin Gunton day conference in September

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Christus totus in capite et in corpore

36. The “subject” of the liturgy’s intrinsic beauty is Christ himself, risen and glorified in the Holy Spirit, who includes the Church in his work. Here we can recall an evocative phrase of Saint Augustine which strikingly describes this dynamic of faith proper to the Eucharist. The great Bishop of Hippo, speaking specifically of the eucharistic mystery, stresses the fact that Christ assimilates us to himself: “The bread you see on the altar, sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. The chalice, or rather, what the chalice contains, sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ. In these signs, Christ the Lord willed to entrust to us his body and the blood which he shed for the forgiveness of our sins. If you have received them properly, you yourselves are what you have received.” Consequently, “not only have we become Christians, we have become Christ himself.” We can thus contemplate God’s mysterious work, which brings about a profound unity between ourselves and the Lord Jesus: “one should not believe that Christ is in the head but not in the body; rather he is complete in the head and in the body.”

Apostolic Exhortation SACRAMENTUM CARITATIS on the Eucharist as the source and summit of the church’s life and mission

Is that it? One quote from Augustine, offered without further development? I want to be taught, not tantalised.

Ah well, you can’t re-state the basics too often, so I am grateful.

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A Christian theological perspective on beauty

St Andrew’s Institute for Theology, Imagination & the Arts is holding a conference on

THE OFFENCE OF BEAUTY –
What can a theological perspective on beauty offer to the arts today?
 3-5 September, 2007

Speakers include:

Bernard Beatty (Liverpool)
Professor Jeremy Begbie (St Andrews)
Dr Carol Harrison (Durham)
Professor Trevor Hart (St Andrews)
Professor Robert Jenson (Princeton)
Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff (Yale)

The colloquium takes place at a time of considerable and growing interest in the intersections of theology, beauty and the arts. Its particular concern is with the concept of beauty, and what a Christian theological perspective on beauty might have to offer to the arts today.

In recent decades, among those who practise, think and write about the arts, the notion of beauty has often come under deep suspicion. For many who have not dismissed it as irrelevant, it has even become a matter of offence.

For some, beauty is an offence against truth, a lie in the midst of a world that is so obviously not beautiful. The quest for beauty in the arts is the quest for an illusory consolation, signalling a primal human urge for order in a world we cannot bear to admit is destined for futility.

The pursuit of beauty has also been seen as an offence against goodness. In the hands of the comfortable and powerful, the love of beauty – in the arts as much as anywhere else – is a luxury that can easily muffle the howl of those who know little or no beauty, distracting us from our obligations to those in need. Or, from the other side, beauty dulls the oppressed to the injustice of their predicament.

Beauty is also distrusted insofar as it is assumed to ‘harmonise away’ the evilness of evil. In particular, there has been a distrust of theories of beauty in which the notions of balance, symmetry and equivalence predominate, where evil’s irrational, intrusive quality is suppressed, where it is subsumed into a harmonious metaphysics of necessity and seen as part of the necessary balance of things. Art, it is said, must never collude with such schemes.

Undoubtedly, the Church and Christian theologians have been as responsible as any others for generating and encouraging these suspicions. The question arises, however: can there be a theological perspective on beauty that takes these suspicions seriously, while at the same time refusing to set aside the notion of beauty altogether? More particularly: in what ways can attending to the triune God of Jesus Christ, and this God’s gracious, reconciling, self-revealing activity in and for the world, inform and transform our conceptions of beauty? In this light, are there ways in which it might be quite legitimate to speak of the ‘offence’ of beauty – especially in relation to the ‘scandal’ at the heart of the Christian faith, the vindication of the crucified Jesus? And – the focused concern of this colloquium – what might such theological construals of beauty imply about the way we practise, interpret and enjoy the arts in the twenty-first century?

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Ecclesia de Eucharistia Vivit

The Church lives from the Eucharist. (John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, §1 â??the Church lives from the Eucharistâ??) The Holy Fatherâ??s announcement that the Synod of Bishops to be held in October 2005 will reflect on the Eucharist follows from his recent Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia. Already the Society has organised an international colloquium on this Encyclical, held at Heythrop College in early February 2004, with participants from many European institutions and from North America. This in turn builds upon the fidelity to the Eucharist which the Society has always sought to promote, beginning with the Conference in Cambridge in 2002 Ite Missa Est: Transubstantiation and Living Eucharist.

As part of our mission to promote the intellectual apostolate, and of supportive cooperation with the Hierarchy, we propose a three- year research project on the Holy Eucharist, the fruits of which will be made available to the Bishops of England and Wales as a gift, and as a sign of the vitality of theological life in these countries.

We propose a two-stepped research project, arising out of our initial colloquium. The first step will be an examination of the Eucharist with special reference to England and Wales, the fruits of which will be compiled into a research report and presented to the Bishops of English and Welsh dioceses who will attend the Synod. The second step will be the development of that report in response to the Apostolic Exhortation which the Holy Father will publish after the Synod, with final versions of the various contributions, and made available for publication, we would hope, by a reputable theological press. In addition it is hoped that the extension of the colloquium until 2007 will result in a variety of further studies on various aspects of the Eucharist and the Sacred Liturgy of the Church: theological, philosophical, historical, æsthetic, musicological, pastoral, and ecumenical.

The colloquium will take as its point of departure the statement of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, §10 â??at one and the same, the Liturgy is the pinnacle towards which the activity of the Church is directed, and the source from which all its strength emanatesâ??.

It will seek to examine by study in whatever appropriate areas, how and to what extent this is true with particular reference to the situation in England and Wales. It will also attend to how the desire of the Council has been carried out, that this truth be effected Sacrosanctum Concilium, §1 â??better to accommodate the requirements of our timesâ?? under the various disciplinary headings above.

The project will keep in view the reflections of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the sacred liturgy, that thought be given and a means be found, â??to overcome the boundless superiority of the [philosophical] subject and to recognise once more that a relationship with the Logos, who is from the beginning, saves the subject, that is the person, and at the same time puts us into a true relation of communality which is ultimately grounded in the Trinitarian lifeâ?? (The Spirit of the Liturgy).

Society of St. Catherine of Siena Ecclesia de Eucharistia Vivit Research Project to be Undertaken in the Years 2004â??2007

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Reductive visions of man hinder dialogue

10. Thus there is an urgent need, even within the framework of current international difficulties and tensions, for a commitment to a human ecology that can favour the growth of the â??tree of peaceâ??. For this to happen, we must be guided by a vision of the person untainted by ideological and cultural prejudices or by political and economic interests which can instil hatred and violence. It is understandable that visions of man will vary from culture to culture. Yet what cannot be admitted is the cultivation of anthropological conceptions that contain the seeds of hostility and violence. Equally unacceptable are conceptions of God that would encourage intolerance and recourse to violence against others. This is a point which must be clearly reaffirmed: war in God’s name is never acceptable! When a certain notion of God is at the origin of criminal acts, it is a sign that that notion has already become an ideology.

11. Today, however, peace is not only threatened by the conflict between reductive visions of man, in other words, between ideologies. It is also threatened by indifference as to what constitutes man’s true nature. Many of our contemporaries actually deny the existence of a specific human nature and thus open the door to the most extravagant interpretations of what essentially constitutes a human being. Here too clarity is necessary: a â??weakâ?? vision of the person, which would leave room for every conception, even the most bizarre, only apparently favours peace. In reality, it hinders authentic dialogue and opens the way to authoritarian impositions, ultimately leaving the person defenceless and, as a result, easy prey to oppression and violence.

Pope Benedict XVI Message for the World Day of Peace

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There can be no laws restricting freedom of belief

If you want to know before your friends do what may well be one of the major questions of the 21st century, keep your eye on two new documents. The first is the Berlin Declaration to be released by E.U. President Angela Merkel within the month. The second is the Brussels Declaration, a statement by prominent European academicians, community leaders, and national and European politicians, which disagrees with the tenets included in the Berlin Declaration and which has already been released in response to it.

The Brussels Declaration makes two points: First, that the ideal environment for all religions is not the theocratic state — the state that defines itself as identified by some single religion — but the secular state. Secondly, the Brussels Declaration points out that secularism and atheism are not synonyms. The secular state, the document argues, is not anti-religion. It is not atheistic. It is, instead, anti-establishmentarianism. It identifies itself with no particular religion and so it privileges no single religion. As a result, the document declares, it protects the right of all religions to practice without recrimination.

Joan Chittister Christian, Secular or Something Else Entirely
 and see Secular values for Europe

Here is a little from the Brussel Declaration:

Freedom of Religion or Belief

For many people, their religion or belief is a profoundly important part of their life and of their personal identity. There can be no laws restricting freedom of belief, but freedom of religion does not extend to practices which could harm the rights of others. Freedom of religion includes the right to change oneâ??s religion or belief, or to reject religion entirely.

Europeans are free to practise their religion in any way they choose provided their practice conforms to the law.

There is no conflict between freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief. Attempts to outlaw defamation of religion are misplaced. It is the believer not the belief that needs protection. People and property are already protected by law. Religions and beliefs per se need no other protection and all demands for such protection should be rejected. Defamation of religious believers should be treated in the same manner as defamation of anyone else.

No institution should be immune from criticism. The right to question any belief and to freely express oneâ??s views on any matter is a human right. Human beings have human rights, religions, beliefs and ideas do not.

In the words of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, â??Problems arise when authorities try to use religion for their own ends, or when religions try to abuse the state for the purpose of achieving their objectivesâ??.

State Neutrality in Matters of Religion and Belief

No religion or belief should suffer discrimination compared to any other, nor should any religion or belief be especially privileged, for to privilege one is to discriminate against all others.

State neutrality in matters of religion is the only means by which the rights of all, believers and non-believers alike, can be protected. The neutrality of the state therefore needs to be constitutionally guaranteed.

State neutrality does not free religious groups from their obligation to abide by the law. Incitement to violence, for example, cannot be permitted on the grounds of religious freedom.

Those who seek to reintroduce religious privilege into public life frequently but wrongly equate the secular state with an atheist state, but secularism is not atheism. The secular state is neutral in matters of religion and belief, favouring none and discriminating against none. Only the secular state can guarantee the equal treatment of all citizens.

Democrats, of whatever religious persuasion, have fought to defend the secular state. Many religious are among the most stalwart defenders of secularism because they understand the danger of allowing religious privilege and discrimination to enter government and public life.

A Secular Vision for Europe

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Christian communion is the practice of sending apostles

John Zizioulas believes ecumenism, conciliarity and the Eucharist belong to the very being of the Church. The bishop is intrinsic to ecumenism. Zizioulas’ account of the relation of the particular and universal, one and many, demonstrates that the relationships of the bishop and his congregation, and of the local and the worldwide Church, are essentially Christology.

Only in Christ is the Church one. Unity is not a matter of one writ running through a unified jurisdiction. The unity of the Church is the act of God. Every congregation and Christian participates in Christ’s eucharistic reception of the Church as the gift of God. We participate in his act through reception: ‘churches exist as One Church in and through constantly receiving one another as sister Churches.’ Each congregation participates in the one Church as it reaches out to all other churches: this reaching out is not an extra, for each congregation receives its very being from all others. (Zizioulas ‘The Theological Problem of Reception’, One in Christ, 21, 1985).

Since each Christian community is formed and disciplined by Christ, who comes to it from outside, no community can be under its own authority. It must willingly receive its leadership from all other congregations, as it were. Each church must receive its overseer as the gift of the whole Church. Bishops are apostles. Christian communion is the practice of sending apostles, their teaching and discipline, to and from all other parts of the Church. Conciliarity is the practice of communion and the event of love by which we participate in the life Christ, who is in one society with the Father.

Some have asked whether stress on the bishop endangers prospects for ecumenism with churches without a hierarchical tradition. But the churches with explicit (episcopal) oversight may encourage other (non-episcopal) churches to receive this discipline along with every other gift of the Church catholic, and look for some gift or lesson from them in return.

It is only in the act of receiving from, and giving to, other churches that any church is part of the Body. It is not the case that a church first has being, and then enters relationships with other churches. ‘Being is a gift, not a self-subsistent and self-explicable reality. As a gift, being presupposes the Other – there is no gift without a giver’ (Communion and Otherness p.88). This reception is made complete by the public ‘Amen’ of the people.

Christ calls us to receive all whom he calls to his eucharist. We have to take them all from him, refusing none, for only with them do we become members of Christ. In the eucharist we pray for those who are not yet present, and the whole Christ, and our own very being, waits for them.

Yet the Church already participates in the unity and plurality of the whole Christ. The petitions of Christ’s people in the eucharist make each locality present to God. All other communities and cultures fail to sustain the real otherness of their members; because they represent less than the whole truth, they will not last. Without the Church making its offering from every part of the world, the diversity and indeed existence of the world are in doubt. ‘The Church, as sign and image of the eschatological community, continues to portray in history the genuine ethos of otherness… the Church is the place where … the fear of the Other is replaced in the Eucharist… by the acceptance of the Other qua Other… (Zizioulas Communion and Otherness p.88).

The bishop represents the catholicity of the Church in one person. Together with him the congregation is the geographic and historic catholicity of the Church in that place. In the eucharist we already participate in that future complete assembly, yet every eucharist and ecumenical gathering, being only partial, looks ahead to the assembly of the whole Church.

Just as there is no plurality without unity, so there is no communion without order and authority. Primacy enables communion, but equally communion enables and affirms primacy. Zizioulas asks whether the Western Church assumes that, of unity and communion, one must be prior to the other: the Roman Church assumes hierarchy is prior, while Protestant churches assume communion is prior, though these two positions have been represented in the Roman Church by Ratzinger and Kasper.

Zizioulas suggests that Rome does not represent the unity of the many churches by nature, but that Rome may receive its authority from the whole Church. It could only be the free act of every church that appointed one bishop to the chair in the assembly of bishops. His authority makes their council an ordered communion, but he receives his authority from them. If the Amen of the Church affirms this role for Rome, Rome’s priority would be an act of the whole Church.

Ecumenism involves reconciliation through repentance and mutual service. It does not come at the expense of truth, or of those forthright exchanges of view through which real plurality and particularity are established. Zizioulas’ is a thoroughly theological account of ecumenism, but it allows plenty of opportunity for each church to initiate the practicalities of exchanging gifts, personnel and instruction, with churches even of ostensibly incompatible forms of churchmanship. Reaching out to other churches is not an extra, for in the long run we are not Church without them. His discussion of bishop, council and eucharist, make Zizioulas’ a very significant ecumenical proposal.

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Thomas the master of faith and reason

A quite special place in this long development [longo itinere] belongs to Saint Thomas, not only because of what he taught [ob ea quae in eius doctrina continentur] but also because of the dialogue which he undertook with the Arab and Jewish thought of his time. In an age when Christian thinkers were rediscovering the treasures of ancient philosophy, and more particularly of Aristotle, Thomas had the great merit of giving pride of place to the harmony which exists between faith and reason. Both the light of reason and the light of faith come from God, he argued; hence there can be no contradiction between them.

More radically, Thomas recognized that nature, philosophy’s proper concern, could contribute to the understanding of divine Revelation. Faith therefore has no fear of reason, but seeks it out and has trust in it. Just as grace builds on nature and brings it to fulfillment, so faith builds upon and perfects reason. Illumined by faith, reason is set free from the fragility and limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin and finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the Triune God. Although he made much of the supernatural character of faith, the Angelic Doctor did not overlook the importance of its reasonableness; indeed he was able to plumb the depths and explain the meaning of this reasonableness. Faith is in a sense an â??exercise of thoughtâ??; and human reason is neither annulled nor debased in assenting to the contents of faith, which are in any case attained by way of free and informed choice.

This is why the Church has been justified in consistently proposing Saint Thomas as a master of thought and a model of the right way to do theology. In this connection, I would recall what my Predecessor, the Servant of God Paul VI, wrote on the occasion of the seventh centenary of the death of the Angelic Doctor: â??Without doubt, Thomas possessed supremely the courage of the truth, a freedom of spirit in confronting new problems, the intellectual honesty of those who allow Christianity to be contaminated neither by secular philosophy nor by a prejudiced rejection of it. He passed therefore into the history of Christian thought as a pioneer of the new path of philosophy and universal culture. The key point and almost the kernel of the solution which, with all the brilliance of his prophetic intuition, he gave to the new encounter of faith and reason was a reconciliation between the secularity of the world and the radicality of the Gospel, thus avoiding the unnatural tendency to negate the world and its values while at the same time keeping faith with the supreme and inexorable demands of the supernatural order.â??

John Paul II Fides et Ratio 43.

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Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar

The first of The Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar consultations took place in Cheltenham in April 1998. The theme for this meeting was the crisis in biblical interpretation and the sort of answers to it being proposed by advocates of speech act theory such as Anthony Thiselton, Nicholas Wolterstorff and Kevin Vanhoozer, all of whom were present. We were not agreed at this consultation whether speech act theory has the resources to take biblical interpretation forward, but it became clear that any attempt to renew biblical interpretation in the academy would require a process with multiple consultations to address the key areas we thought required attention.

Thus was born The Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar, a ten year project based in Theology and Religious Studies at The University of Gloucestershire, where it is headed up by Craig Bartholomew. The Seminar is a partnership project between British and Foreign Bible Society and The University of Gloucestershire. Its ambitious aim is to facilitate a renewal of biblical interpretation in the academy that will help reopen the Book for our cultures.

The Seminar is thus academic. It recognises the fundamental importance of opening the Book at all levels in our cultures but the Seminar itself is an academic initiative, aimed firstly at biblical interpretation in the academy. The Seminar is interdisciplinary. Meir Sternberg rightly notes that biblical studies is at the intersection of the humanities, and The Seminar is based on the understanding that at this intersection interdisciplinary insight is required if biblical studies is to be saved from some of its isolation and fragmentation, and for new ways forward to be forged. It has been a delight at our consultations to find philosophers rubbing shoulders with educationalists and theologians, and missiologists working with literary scholars to renew biblical interpretation.

The Seminar is Christian. Modernity has marginalised faith in the great public areas of culture but this is a travesty of a Christian perspective in which faith relates to the whole of life. The Seminar is ecumenical and has a wide range of Christian perspectives represented within it. However, it is a rule of The Seminar that faith is not to be excluded from the consultative process that forms the heart of The Seminar. We have been asked about Jewish and other faiths being involved, and we are keen that such dialogue should emerge. However, we have judged it important to keep The Seminar’s Christian character intact at this stage so that the interdisciplinary and faith dynamics have time to be nurtured.

The Seminar is communal. The modern academy is deeply individualistic. But we recognise that a renewal of biblical interpretation will require communal work. And a great aspect of The Seminar is the emerging sense of community amongst Christian scholars of diverse disciplines.


Background: The Ethos of SAHS