On Satan & Catholic liberals

...For some time now the leading intellectuals in both camps have been raising serious questions about the most fundamental ideological tenets of their respective traditions -- whether those be surplus value or the dictatorship of the proletariat on the one hand (cf...

...Unfortunately, until there are changes in court rulings (or at least housing authority administrative rulings), and there is some legislative facilitation, such solutions are significantly hampered in Chicago...

...I pose this dilemma not out of disrespect for Jesus or Chris- tian faith, but simply to draw attention to one of the major gains of liberal Catholic theology over the last three decades: the realization that Christianity cannot and need not trace its origins directly back to Jesus but only to Jesus' disciples...

...What may finally happen to the Catholic church or Chris- tianity is, in the long run, a trivial question...

...It is instructive to bracket Chalcedon for a moment and to consider this Jesus, the quite human prophet from Galilee whom Father Walter Kasper, in his impeccably orthodox Jesus the Christ (Paulist, 1977), describes under the title "The Earthly Jesus" (pp...

...We ought to avoid the implication that salvation demands the achievement of the full potentiality for wealth and the exploitation of nature which seems to lie within the grasp of contemporary Western civilization...

...Her crisis is comparable to a similar one in contemporary Marxism...

...His book, Karl Rahner: The Philosophical Foundations, is forthcoming from Ohio University Press...

...Another solution, distinct from but connected with the f'wst one, is to assert that Christian faith knows more about who Jesus really was than scientific history can ascertain...

...We trivialize him when we say that he is too naive for our sophisticated world, or that his simple village wisdom cannot speak to our complex world and the complex mess we have made of it...

...although in spite of problems at the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), and a lack of experience, there seems to be an administration that cares...

...Second are older buildings constructed from 1880 to 1940, frequently three to five stories high...

...What we need...

...He would almost certainly flunk the courses in christology that are taught in Catholic seminaries, and therefore, even though he sup-posedly instituted Holy Orders, could not be ordained a priest...

...25:40...

...Though he was only one person, he had both a divine and a human nature, each with a distinct intellect...

...A good many are in Black neighborhoods where population growth resulted in a batch of new schools from 1950 to 1970 and then declined, when areas lost much of their population through fires, severe housing deterioration and abandonment...

...FUERST & SAM MANCUS.9 N EITHER CONVENTIONAL public housing nor government subsidized housing is having much success in the United States under the current national administration nor did it under its immediate predecessors...

...Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly, cited by Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte...

...This is so ironic that it calls for adding a page to Dostoyev- ski's "Grand Inquisitor": The church, citing St...

...but on the other hand no one can prove (and no believer would want to) that Jesus actually was the divine savior that Christianity eventually took him to be...

...But, unlike the faithless historian, the believing Christian supposedly knows that the real Jesus actually was the ontological Son of God and some- how was aware of that fact...

...The essay that I published in the New York Review of Books (June 14) and that evoked the responses of David Tracy and Andrew M. Greeley in Commonweal (August 10) dealt with this foundational crisis in Catholic Christianity...

...But for that, something more than angelic liberalism is required: a dose of the post-liberal devil...

...Sec- ondly, we should avoid trivializing Jesus...

...Simultaneously, with this housing problem, there has been a nationwide decline in birth rates, plus enough population change to cause many elementary and some high school clos- ings...

...On the one hand we can establish with a high degree of historical certitude that the church did not concoct christology out of absolutely noth- ing...

...That is, there is no demonstrable, necessary continuity between Jesus of Nazareth's self-understanding while he was alive and the christologies which believers created to interpret him after he was dead...

...In any case, those who want to sail with Simon have their course already charted for them...

...I would have thought that according to its own teachings the church was meant to pass away, that Christianity was made to dissolve, and that the sole purpose of theology was to help people leave the church with a good conscience...

...In the case of Marxism it is as though Communist intellectu- als were finally beginning to pay attention to Karl Marx's disclaimer before the First International: "Moi, je ne suis pas marxiste...

...Faith provides the believer with no more infor- mation about the real Jesus than normal historical experience does...

...We trivialize I A RESPONSE TO DAVID TRACY Jesus when we say that without the understanding made possi- ble by modem theology (nothing personal intended for David Tracy) or modem sociological analysis (nothing personal in- tended for Andrew Greeley) or modem historical and critical analysis (perhaps something personal intended for me) the New Testament, written without these things, says nothing meaningful to the moral and social problems of contemporary men and women...

...Both these "newer" and older schools provide real oppor- tunities for rehabilitation into livable housing...

...Christian believers do not have "more" data or "higher" facts at their disposal...

...Today, at the dawn of her third millennium, the Catholic church, like the rest of Christianity, is facing a much deeper crisis, one in fact that cuts to the very foundations of what she is...

...Today the point is not, as it was in Cardinal d'Ailly's time, to save Catholic Christianity at all costs, but rather to find out what it left unseen and unsaid, even if that entails letting Christianity die, as Jesus did...

...it is a claim of faith...

...They are like the eerie moans and murmurs that windowpanes in San Francisco make during those frozen few seconds before an earthquake rips upward from the depths...

...That is, the founda- tional crisis within Catholic Christianity has a lot to do with the fact that, as far as one can humanly discern, Jesus went to his death without knowing(or wishing) that his followers would soon declare him the founder and titular head of Christianity, not to mention the consubstantial Son of God...

...Traditional theolo- gians (though their tribe is decreasing) solve the problem by asserting that their Savior was quite literally of two minds about himself...

...But one man's poison can be another man's meat...

...In any case, Cardinal d'Ail- ly's words, adapted to the new situation, can have an even greater meaning for us todajr than they did for the Council Fathers five-and-a-half centuries ago...

...J.s...

...But Chris- tians go further and assert that something dramatic happened not just to Jesus' reputation but principally to Jesus himself: he actually was raised from the dead and now reigns as God in heaven...

...But this solution is illusory, and I am quite sure that, despite appearances, David Tracy cannot possibly be proposing it in his response...

...It is that basic Christian creed of which the two parts are tautologi- cal: "We believe (1) in Jesus' Christ (2) with Simon Peter...

...Now, on the basis of the information available to believer and nonbeliever alike, Jesus of Nazareth --the one who actually lived and died -- was clearly not much of a Christian, certainly not a good Catholic, and apparently quite oblivious to his alleged status as the divine Son of God...

...and even if his human self-understanding was not immediately aware of his full divine nature, he did know, in his Chalcedo- nian divine mind, who and what he really was...

...Accord- ing to this thesis, historical research gives us only the "histori- cal" Jesus (it would be better to say: the historiographical Jesus) that is, only those aspects of him that are available via historico-critical method --but not the real Jesus who actually lived two millennia ago...

...Schools re- maining unoccupied for too long deteriorate and are van-dalized...

...I I I :and other such problems are, of course, important in them- selves, but at best they are only surface tremors, symptoms of something that lies deeper...

...the French Communist Party's 22rid Congress in 1976) or the Resurrection and divinity of Jesus on the other...

...This problem, if it is one, is hardly new to Christian theol- ogy, and easy answers are ready to hand...

...First, there are schools built since 1950, usually one or two stories high with many large windows, reasonably high ceil- ings, and all the safety precautions that cities can impose...

...Believers argue that the post-mortem enhancement of Jesus' reputation, from failed prophet to divine cosmocrator, was not pure invention but the church's gradual realization of what Jesus had always been...

...These schools vary greatly in their state of repair, depending on their location, the care they have received, and how long they have been closed...

...M EANWHILE THOSE who, for whatever reasons, choose not to go home to Peter might still want to consider the simple but powerful message of the Kingdom of God that was preached by the Jesus who died and remains dead: that God's future has become present (Luke 11:20), that religion has disappeared into mercy (Matt...

...But the truth of the matter seems to lie somewhere between invention and discovery...

...But such a task requires a fundamental suspicion of the Christian tradition more than a fundamental trust in it...

...Experience throughout the country suggests that these closed schools can provide housing --even public housing --for elderly persons or small families...

...And in the case of Catholicism it is as if her leading theologians were at last taking seriously Jesus' rejoinder to the religious establishment when they asked him if he were the Christ:" You have said so" (Matt...

...JOHN L. McKENZIE Claremont, California On Satan & Catholic liberals II I THOMAS SHEEHAN "Only the devil in person can now save the Catholic church, and you ask for angels...

...SAM MANCUSO is adjunct professor of history and government at Joliet Junior College and the College of St...

...FUERSTi$ assistant director of urban studies at Loyola University of Chicago...

...These buildings are often in "recently" developed outlying areas which have matured and where birth rates have declined leaving fewer children in the neighborhood and many half- empty classrooms...

...In the interest of rescuing that church, the cardinal was beseeching the assembled fathers not to be too harsh on certain members of the hierarchy who, despite their unsavory morals, just might be able to see the Bark of Peter through the rough seas ahead...

...It is only a particular hermeneutical principle and situation --a historically relative "form" or "asfactor" --in terms of which Christians interpret (with no demonstrable advantage) the same data and information that are available to everyone else...

...65-121), the same man to whom Father Edward Schillebeeckx devotes over two-hundred pages in his Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (Crossroad, 1979...

...Many of these buildings are in usable physical condition...

...These I I THOMAS SHEEHAN iS a professor of philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago...

...Today the church herself (or at least Cardinal Ratzinger) might condemn him for not believing he was...

...It has been estimated that in the last few years there have been from 7,000 to 10,000 school closings...

...And no matter how much these Marxist and Christian "liberals" proclaim their loyalty to their respective traditions, both Moscow and the Vatican seem intent on condemning these efforts as a new and very dangerous trahison des clercs...

...The in-between truth is that the early christologies were an extension and enhancement of what Simon and the original disciples believed that Jesus had been and had done, whether or not that belief con'e21 September 1984:499 formulation) of Christian faith...

...Today in Chicago, this seems to be doubly true...

...W HAT WOULD happen if this Jesus, as reconstructed by these and other Catholic theologians, were to show up on earth today exactly as he was before and join the Roman Catholic church that claims to be founded by him...

...That is, the body of Christian doctrine is simply one of many possible (and equally valid) interpretations of the uni- versally available empirical data, whether that be data about the world or oneself or Jesus of Nazareth...

...The foundational crisis in contemporary Catholicism is neither reducible to nor the sum total of such surface conflicts and problems as the dramatic decline in religious vocations and church attendance in the developed countries, or the open defiance of Vatican pronouncements on certain moral ques- tions, or the near revolt of women against Pope Wotyla's refusal to let them assume a greater role in the church...

...He would probably be unable to pass the simple catechism tests that parochial school children take about him and therefore, even though he'had instituted the Holy Eucharist, would not be allowed to make his First Communion...

...During the last fifteen years, since the Gautreanx decision, Commonweal: 502...

...Many of these older schools are of particular interest for redevelopment since they are in" conservation" neighbor- hoods and are either in a stage of arrested development or a process of gentrification...

...Mark's Gos- pel (14:64), says that the Sanhedrin condemned Jesus to death for claiming to be the Christ, the Son Of GOd...

...The essay was centered on the question of Jesus' alleged Resurrection from Commonweal: 498 the dead (none of the Commonweal respondents has chosen to discuss that matter) and also touched on the discrepancy be- tween what Jesus of Nazareth apparently thought he was (a special but very human prophet) and what orthodox Catholic believers now take him to be (the divine Son of God, eternally consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit...

...The housing needs of low and moderate income families are prodigious in a period of 9 percent unemployment, still very high inflation, a stalled housing industry, and a federal gov- ernment that thinks we have no significant housing shortage...

...9:13), and that eschatology has been dissolved into the tasks of justice and compassion (Matt...

...rather, they experience the same data as everyone else but interpret them in a different way...

...That much is historical fact, observable by anyone who studies the documents...

...26:64...

...W HEN Cardinal d'Ailly spoke those words at the Council of Constance in 1420, the church to which he was referring was reeling from the Avignon papacy and the Western Schism and was hurtling downhill towards the Protes- tant Reformation...

...These "closed" schools are of two types...

...to do today is not to correct and reform the tradition so much as (in Heidegger's sense of the term) to "destroy" it and retrieve what it has concealed...

...His disciples soon came to believe that he was alive in heaven and eventually proclaimed him as the equal of GOd himself...

...There is no doubt that something dramatic happened to Jesus' reputation after he died...

...One of the biggest problems faced by local housing authorities is finding sites for public housing that can be acquired without commu- nity objection...

...Most of them are very solidly built...

...What Christians call "revelation" is not a content, a supernatural body of higher information that is given over to the faithful while being kept hidden from nonbelievers...

...On the contrary, all the available evidence points towards discontinuity...

...A TEXTBOOK SOLUTION New houses from schoolhouses J.S...

...And perhaps the point is not to salvage Catholicism or Christianity but to let go of them so that one can discover what they were supposed to be about...

...Francis in Joliet...

...a substantial number are on the Register of Historical Properties...

...But that, of course, is not an observable historical fact...

...Today the church is facing a crisis at the level of the foundations, not the surface, a crisis in fundamental theory rather than day-to-day practice...

...And if he were simply to go about preaching as he once did in Galilee, he would run a considerable risk that, given the Vatican's current feelings about orthodoxy, the Sacred Con- gregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would declare him a heretic (or at least bar him from a chair in Catholic theology) for not believing that he himself was God...