Ambivalent heritage?
Garyey, John
abortion? He rightly called upon the church to teach by example; but even short of restrictive legislation, isn't there more a prominent Democratic like Cuomo could do to move his party away...
...Monasticism comes close to our affection for the idea of "simple living" - - but if a monk talks about angels or demons people begin getring itchy...
...but even short of restrictive legislation, isn't there more a prominent Democratic like Cuomo could do to move his party away from its one-sided stance on this issue...
...Angels, demons, and miracles do not...
...But Wilhelm's attitude, balanced as it tries to be, is marked by a distance from traditional understanding - - a distance which,it could be argued, is inevitable for many of us...
...For another, we do not like risking unfairness to Professor Sheehan, who may have reason to see himself the victim of the old tough-cop-nice-cop routine: " y o u ' r e a slippery fellow and don't know what you're talking about," says Officer Greeley and bangs Sheehan one over the noggin with his nightstick...
...I do, anyway, have the feeling that many writers accept a more or less secular distance between themselves and the tradition which is theirs as a heritage, but not necessarily a heritage which has led them to view it from within...
...There is a modern attitude Commonweal: 518 which regards the whole of the Christian tradition at arm's length, as if our own perceptions were not as limited by our time as our ancestors' perceptions were limited by theirs...
...What Orthodoxy has meant, in both the Eastern and Western churches, is a faith that, despite those limitations, it is possible to discern a continuity, and not only a continuity which can be traced by intellectual historians, but which can be found as living in the faith and the prayers of the people...
...While Mr...
...A pity...
...What is too easy here is, first of all, the assumption that our ancestors lived in a time o f " simpler religious belief...
...Perhaps Scripture simply presupposes angels and devils as part of the biblical milieu, rather than affirming their actual existence as part of God's revelation...
...Not knowing anything about the real place of angels or demons, we know that they are the products of a credulous age...
...Cuomo's talk, delivered as a Catholic to a Catholic audience...
...That is the problem of determining what the sources of Catholic orthodoxy should be...
...From this point of view, the ordinary teaching authority of Rome is to be accepted as if it were infallible, even if it is not...
...Of several minds: John Gamey AMBIVALENT HERITAGE...
...A look at the history of doctrine shows its inadequacies from a doctrinal point of view, and it will not be accepted in practice by the majority of the laity, the clergy, and (I would suspect) the episcopacy...
...But the liberal theological response is not necessarily the best answer to the CUF extreme...
...On theother hand, this mere beginning has already run to roughly twenty-five thousand words in these pages...
...Cuomo on the particulars of abortion legislation will heed the example of one who has moved a public debate beyond slogans, fingerpointing, and electioneering...
...So David Tracy concludes his latest contribution to the discussion on "The End of Catholicism...
...It is "hard to d i s m i s s . . , totally" this possibility...
...Zoroastrianism speaks with profound moral authority about the need for justice...
...For the moment, we find his description of the "liberal consensus" in Catholic theology accurate in about as limited a sense as it is accurate to describe Moby Dick as a book about a white whale...
...JOHN GARVEY 5 October 1984: 519...
...But Sheehan will get his day in court...
...Contrary to the impression sometimes given in any controversy, the differences here are not among individuals suffering from any intellectual defects but among individuals willing to confront tough problems over which even equally thoughtful and competent thinkers can part company...
...But the fact is that from the time of the earliest ecumenical councils until the relatively recent past, the bishop was seen as the guardian of orthodoxy, and the work of councils was to show that what the church confessed with one voice in its creeds was consistent with the prayer and worship and professed belief of Christians back to the time of the Apostles...
...T HE CHRIST AMONG US controversy has done us all a favor, by revealing a problem which needs to be dealt with more carefully and sensitively than it has been to date...
...I f history makes the simplicities of Catholics United for the Faith hard to sustain, the way in which Christians have regarded tradition should make some of their opponents more humble...
...and where Rome has spoken - - even where it has not made its teaching a matter of faith by declaring it to be said ex cathedra -- there can be no more discussion or speculation...
...There is also the clean cut between the idea of personal evil and the existence of something or someone which feeds on destruction, as if" our own sins have an origin which is merely personal, a quirky and entirely personal origin (and therefore one which doesn't require much radical help...
...He has two books - - one on Karl Rahner and one on the origins of Christianity about to appear...
...To assume that a secular point of view is correct - - that is to say, a perspective which can ignore or put into second place the meaning which particular teachings have in fact had for a community over two thousand years - - is to make tradition not a living language, but something already dead and fossilized...
...Certainly those may provide occasions for carrying on the discussion...
...in fact we are amazed at the enlightenment of our ancestors, who despite their belief were able to grasp the importance of topics which really mattered...
...We feel obliged to call a halt - - at least for the time being...
...To take a topic which makes most contemporaries uncomfortable - - the existence of angels - - it can be said that one of the liberal objections to it has been the fact that other religions (especially Zoroastrianism and Hinduism) believed in angels and demons...
...On the other side, there is a vague direction which finds the idea of orthodoxy itself intolerable...
...The governor has set a precedent for some bishop(s) to distinguish as clearly as he did the distinction between adherence to moral teachings and acceptance of particular political measures proposed by the teachers...
...While we don't know how it could have been avoided, such a narrow purview distorts the issues a bit, however unintentionally...
...We could be missing something which matters very much...
...However, there is something too easy in this passage from Christ Among Us which deals with angels and devils: "Today, theology is restudying the whole question of angels and devils...
...Ah, you're a fine Heidegger scholar, Tom," says Detective Tracy with a smile, "Don't you think it's time to come home...
...Because other aspects of that age accord with what we would like to believe (because what we would like to believe is what makes us feel most at home with ourselves and our ideas about the way the universe is supposed to work), we do not criticize them...
...And it could be an anxiety about this, a sense of this missing dimension, [ which leads some people to think that the Catholics United for the Faith may have something going for them...
...Cuomo made clear his belief that abortion is a life and death issue, placing it among other life and death issues, we wished he had been stronger in his statements...
...It could be that there is something in the habit of contemporary thought which does not appreciate something previous generations and other cultures could appreciate...
...I think they are looking for certainty, which is not at all the same thing as wisdom...
...First of all, monasticism, contemplation, and an incrediblY sophisticated psychology are all features of Buddhism...
...Secularism, in the words of the late Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann, is " a lie about the world...
...BEYOND THE CATECHISM CONTROVERSY W HAT SHOULD AN adult catechism be like...
...Tracy is right...
...and here we come to a sort of unwritten "therefore...
...The arrogance of this attitude ought to be apparent...
...They always have...
...Here I reveal myself as a neotraditionalist...
...None of these things is rejected - - they all fit into a view of the world most of us find comfortable...
...How should it regard tradition and orthodoxy...
...For one thing, amid the sparks of this controversy, real light has been shed...
...These were questions that I raised at the end of my last column on the controversy surrounding Christ Among Us and the criticism of that book put forward by Catholics United for the Faith...
...in the most traditional settings angels bad to tell people "be not afraid," and demons were never comfortable figures,~like garden gnomes...
...From CUF's point of view, of course, there can be no ambivalence: whatever comes from Rome is absolutely to be accepted...
...Now it is true that the authority of bishops can be abused, and the attempt to place all of the episcopal authority finally in the lap of Rome doesn't work, historically, if what you want is consistent orthodoxy...
...We hope he does, and when he does, we suspect it will be done with depth as well as brio...
...We are not running out of interest, only out of space...
...We hope that both those who agree and those who disagree with Mr...
...We find disconcerting his tendency to launch his own distinctly post-Christian agnosticism from the basis of his sympathetic exposition and even defense of Catholic thinking (most recently of liberation theology) when in fact his position requires a definite"leap" of its own, which - - so far - - he has not explained or defended...
...Finally, we regret the almost built-in "Catholicizing" effect of Mr...
...What I am about to say amounts to an intuitive and less than complete response to much of what I find in contemporary theology and biblical scholarship, and no doubt all sorts of counterexamples will spring to the minds of people who are better-read in these areas than I am...
...Can it never be ambivalent...
...I have met priests who do not believe in the Resurrection except in an allegorical sense, and priests who believe that the Mass is a memorial of Christ's presence rather than a present realization of it...
...A distance which can allow a believer to judge something which has been for generations of believers a lively and present belief with the detachment which might be expected of an anthropologist is a secular distance...
...Nor does the existence of angels and devils seem to bea part of the strictly dogmatic teaching of the church . . . . Also, in a time of simpler religious belief, the devil became for some a convenient, excusing cause of their own sins...
...A recent article in the National Catholic Reporter spoke with approval of a suggestion that the Creed might be dropped from the Mass to make things a bit easier for doubtful people...
...As a whole, we hope the governor's labor may prove to be as fruitful as it was painstaking...
...And yet it is hard to dismiss totally the reality of an evil, superhuman intelligence, so firmly rooted is it in the long tradition and liturgy of the church, and in the experience and literature of many cultures...
...I must say that in the century which includes the murder of so many millions I am glad that it is not easy to dismiss it totally...
...t THE END IS NEAR "The conversation has just begun...
...Therefore, they must be the products of superstition, or merely cultural artifacts...
...A reverent approach to the body and a non-puritanical approach to sexuality can be found in Hinduism...
...originally provoked by an article by Thomas Sheehan...
...The CUF approach will not work...
...Our thanks to them all for their contributions...
Vol. 111 • October 1984 • No. 17
