Chorus of the hemispheres
Lamb, Matthew L.
of God. Through this familiarity with God, persons (men) are raised to a most high dignity. Therefore when the church preaches Christ we (she) announce salvation to everyone (mankind) (cf. II, A,...
...The next synod or council of the Catholic church would then be able to live and model koinonia, consensual partnership, on an international and ecumenical level...
...If the answers to these questions over the coming years and decades are more positive than negative, then we U.S...
...Will post-modernity become an anti-modernity, rejecting those lessons, the way modernity rejected the hard-won insights of its own past...
...it was only eighty-seven years ago that the Vatican similarly warned about "Americanism" confusing the natural and supernatural...
...3 credits available...
...As the second millennium of our Common Era draws to a close, there seems to be no other institutional framework -- whether economic, political, educational, or religious -which is simultaneously so firmly rooted in local communities and neighborhoods, while also having such extensive global networks of cooperation and authority...
...10016 ity, the synod's call for collaboration towards a "civilization of sharing, solidarity, and love" seems eminently sane, rational, and hopeful...
...Does the "salvific love of God for the world" include women...
...And if modernity began with the promise of political freedoms within independent sovereign nation states, it has begun to end as some sovereign nations armed themselves into superpowers, carrying on the old game of empire-building under the new rules of protecting spheres of influence...
...Instead, there is developing a discernment which seeks to foster the good and repent of the evil in the two thousand years of Roman Catholic history...
...Catholic theology and episcopal teaching has to clarify whether my inclusive translation is justified or not...
...The shift from a Eurocentric to a world church coincides with the beginning of the end of the cultural dominance of the modern Western Enlightenment...
...Enlightenment tended to identify domination with established sacralist churches, ignoring or denying the sacred in the process...
...By the year 2000 over 70 percent of Catholics will be living in the so-called third-world countries of the Southern Hemisphere...
...Catholics were always, as Johannes Metz states, slow learners in the school of modernity...
...Catholics aware of their own history...
...It doubted that exchange economies could be just and moral, so it condemned usury for centuries...
...Leader: Stephen Doyle, O.F.M...
...I shall attempt to trace these, sketching a few of the tasks they pose for Catholic practice and theology...
...Africa, Latin America, and Asia are no longer simple missionary appendages to an otherwise European or Western church...
...Then we could wear our red . . . speak the unspeakable, and take our place in the sanctuary...
...If the European wars of religion sealed the bankruptcy of a decadent Christendom and ushered in the modern Western Enlightenment, the Holocaust in Europe sealed the fate of a truncated modern secularist Enlightenment...
...nationalism and patriotism...
...II, A, 2...
...In the midst of this suffering and crisis~however, the synod affirms a profoundly human and Catholic conviction about the intrinsic goodness of creation and redemption: We are not made for death but for life...
...The modern Western Please send the next 6 months of Commonweal to: Name Address City, State, Zip...
...Will faith as a knowledge born of love, as Lonergan so accurately defined it, heal our minds and hearts of the deep-seated propensity to rationalize domination...
...New York, N,Y...
...For the tasks of theology today are enormous...
...Indeed, European Catholicism was heavily identified with counter-Enlightenment and counter-modernity, just as it had been counter-Reformation, a church of second thoughts at best and repressive intolerance at worst...
...far from it...
...Catholic popes and bishops decry abuses of human and civil rights, make their own the language of political freedoms and solidarity with the poor and oppressed, and collaborate to bring about a civilization of sharing, solidarity, and love...
...The revelations of God in Judaism and in Christianity are revelations of the Divine Mystery choosing the poor and the downtrodden, the victims rather than the victors of history...
...Catholics will not have buried the gifts we have received...
...If modernity began with the promise of unlimited growth through industrial exchange economies, it has begun to end with the mounting realization of widespread ecological crises and the physical impossibility of extending modern Western standards of living throughout the globe...
...Dermot Lane, Journey's End: From Christology to Eschatology...
...Our descendants in the twenty-second century will look back at our present wars and arms races between capitalist and Communist superpowers with the "incredulity with which we now look back at the European wars of religion...
...to the only civilization worthy of humanity...
...Dr., Doris Donnelly, History of Christian Spirituality...
...Michael's College, Winooski, Vermont 05404...
...The fourth legacy from Europe is, of course, much older: Western Christianity, with its antagonisms between Catholicism and Protestantism...
...Never before have governments spent so lavishly for the discovery and production of ever more destructive weapons...
...There is a great danger, so evident in the various forms of religious fundamentalism around the globe, that the post-modern development of new forms of culture and civilization will reject wholesale the hard-won lessons of modernity...
...What is required is nothing less than the collaboration of Catholic theology in a radically new, global process of polycentric enlightenment and transformation...
...Something is happening, and theology has a lot of catching up to do...
...with concentrations in Pastoral Ministry and Spirituality, Theology, Scripture, Religious Education...
...Will the specter of possible nuclear winters obliterating any future for humankind on this planet finally lead us to realize how, as Aquinas said, the highest manifestation of power is compassion and not force...
...His most recent book is Solidarity with Victims: Towards a Theology of Social...
...These achieverqents indicated in the past how Catholics could be good Americans...
...Charles Gusmer, The Worship of the Church...
...I I II I I I I Illll FATHER MATTHEW L LAMB is a priest of the archdiocese of Milwaukee and associate professor of systematic theology at Boston College...
...The First Letter of John calls God love...
...I recall a wise monk, Jean Leclercq, shocking the Knights of Malta by reminding them that in global terms the Mediterranean is only a puddle...
...Should we wear some sign, some signal that says, "I am woman -And what my sister endures, I, too, endure...
...Those histories are not denied or rejected...
...Not only has Catholicism flourished, it has wedded the Catholic conviction of the intrinsic relationship between the truths of faith and human reason to some of the best values of the modern Western Enlightenment by creating the largest independent school system in world history, by vigorously supporting labor unions and insisting that any exchange economy must raise the standard of living for all society, and by encouraging active participation by all in political democratic processes...
...Instead it advocates an ecclesiology of koinonia as the "foundation for order in the church...
...i I 31 January 1986:49...
...Richard Asakiewicz, The Mystery of Jesus Christ and His Church...
...Human history on this planet will either begin developing civilizations of sharing, solidarity, and love, or else . . . . i II i i SAINT MICHAEL'S COLLEGE, Graduate Theology and Pastoral Ministry, 25th Anniversary Program (1962-1986), June 30 -- August 8, 1986...
...Red to acknowledge that we are sexual, and, like our sisters of herstory, are still officially barred from the sanctuary because we menstruate...
...Threeweek and six-week courses for credit or audit, certificate or degree (M.A...
...Catholics become deeply committed to a new American experiment in economic justice for all and will their vast educational system encourage genuine excellence and freedom of inquiry...
...What the synod does not mention, and what Catholic theologians must elaborate in careful detail, is how these signs of return to the sacred must avoid repeating the sins of pre-modern sacralism (the use of religious categories to legitimate domination) or modern secularism (the use of secular categories to legitimate domination...
...Commonweal: 46European and North American Catholics no longer constitute the majority of the faithful, as they did in 1900 when they made up over 70 percent of the world's Catholics...
...If modernity began with the promise of science and technology to assure the progressive enhancement of human life on earth, ithas begun to end in the horrors of modern scientific warfare and technological mass death...
...This ecclesiology provides the sacramental foundation for collegiality and co-responsibility, ecumenical partnership and mission to the world, especially "in the service of the poor, the oppressed and the outcast" (cf...
...and, overshadowing all, to "the race for more powerful and terrible arms...
...Anthony Lobo, S.S., Pastoral Counseling and Ministry...
...We are not condemned to divisions and wars, but called to fraternity and peace...
...f 11 Issues of Commonweal for Just $9 o 9 o 9 A Special Trial Offer for New Subscribers Only Send coupon or a facsindle COMMONWEAL,'Z3Z Ave...
...Simultaneously, however, these legacies are becoming differentiated from the cultural dominance of modernity, insofar as ",hey are no longer cast in Western ideologies of automatic progress...
...The living God is hardly Eurocentric...
...hearts and minds, a deepening of genuine faith and prayer, is foundational to such a renewal...
...The world religions can lead the way by practicing religious faith, hope, and love without domination...
...But if the call is not to become an echo in the wilderness, Catholic practice and theology must be profoundly renewed and transformed...
...WE are Church...
...Third-world liberation theologies now experience how strong such a dialectical relationship of religious faith and nationalism can become, how it can be channeled to empowerthe poor and oppressed to seek freedom and selfdetermination...
...II, B, 3...
...Never before in human history have humans slaughtered so many millions of their fellows as in our modern, Western, and enlightened twentieth century...
...In an article in Probe, "We Are Catholics and We Are Feminists," Mary Congo, Marge Goodwin, and Maureen Smith have provided the theological symbology for the selfunderstanding of women-cardinals electing the next pope: What must we do to change this institution which betrays woman who has served so faithfully...
...A genuine and widespread conversion of...
...The recent Vatican warning about liberation theology should not have surprised U.S...
...II, D, 6), the majority of whom are women and children dependent on women...
...Will U.S...
...Brennan Hill, Adult Religious Formation...
...Since the collegium of cardinals does not go back to Jesus nor stand in apostolic succession nor require ordination, no presumed theological obstacle would stand in the way of such a suggestion...
...God did not create humankind for hate and distrust . . . . For there is a path -- and we already see signs of it -- which leads to a civilization of sharing, solidarity, and love...
...Red to acknowledge that we are passionate...
...We propose to work with all of you toward the realization of this civilization of love, which is God's design for humanity as it awaits the coming of the Lord (A Message to the People of God, IV...
...Write: Department of Graduate Theology and Pastoral Ministry, St...
...Catholicism blended with (but was never totally identified with) U.S...
...Their ongoing appropriations of the Gospel and Catholic traditions reflect a dramatic pluralism of cultures and histories, challenging those tendencies to identify the Gospel and Catholicism with Western and European cultural histories...
...Will U.S...
...It felt threatened enough by the emerging empirical sciences to condemn Galileo...
...If, as Karl Rahner stated, Vatican II expressed a shift from a predominantly Eurocentric church to a truly world church, then the synod was a clear indication of how irreversible that shift has become...
...II, A, 3...
...Wilfrid Harrington, O.P., The Synoptic Gospels...
...They advert to economic, racial, political, and religious oppression...
...Pheme Perkins, Pauline Letters and Theology...
...Phone: (802) 655-2000, Ext...
...to "insurmountable debts...
...This shift toward a world church is occurring at a time when the very survival of humankind on this planet requires radical transformation...
...Transformation (Crossroad...
...Rather than rejection and denial, only dialectical discernment is radical enough to contribute towards a genuine civilization of sharing, solidarity, and love...
...Philip Keane, S.S., Foundations of Moral Theology...
...The synodal documents express this sense of crisis...
...Holy Land Trip m August 9-20...
...Catholic faith and spirituality simply refuse to remain bogged down in the limitations and defenses of their European histories...
...Catholics now collaborate with their compatriots who realize that the millennia of empires and superpowers can only lead to a dead end and that, as John Paul II said at Hiroshima, the very survival of the human race depends upon a profound moral and international transformation...
...Of all the world religions, Judaism and Catholic Christianity have perhaps the longest memories of empires and domination...
...Have Christian women entered this consensual partnership with God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit in the church for the salvation/weUbeing of everyone...
...Ecclesially, the church must genuinely institutionalize the diakonia and communion of which the synod speaks...
...II I HEOLOGY AFTER THE SYNOD: BEYOND CULTURE Chorus of the hemispheres I I MATTHEW L. LAMB T HE SYNOD was another manifestation of the profound changes and challenges occurring within both the church and the world...
...Some financial aid is available...
...Empirical sciences and technologies have taken root in the most diverse cultures and educational environments...
...In some ways they were foreshadowed in the previous century by the spread of Catholicism in Canada and the United States...
...Will the memories of those terrible, unspeakable sufferings empower us, as they do Elie Wiesel, to speak truth to power...
...To discern and foster the genuine values of exchange economies, of empirical sciences and technologies, of democracies, requires a genuinely radical critique of domination, and I prefer a full-year subscrlpt/on at $28 1131/86 the fear and violence upon which domination feeds...
...2579...
...Will ecumenism and the dialogue of world religions become a proleptic paradigm for international relations in the future...
...Second, the synod declares "reciprocal dialogue between bishops and theologians" as necessary "for the building up of the faith and its deeper comprehension" (cf...
...Neither denial nor rejection of the past is appropriate...
...In conclusion, I would like to make two practical suggestions: First, as long as the collegium of bishops is restricted to men, the collegium of cardinals should become restricted to women...
...Celebration of the many previous generations of the faithful is as integral to Catholic faith and spirituality as the cemeteries enfolding old village churches...
...1986 Faculty and Courses: Rev...
...The consequence was a truncated, half-hearted enlightenment in which economy became severed from morality, science from wisdom, and politics from friendship and justice...
...Roman Catholicism in the United States has had several centuries of experiencing and appropriating the Gospel and Catholic traditions in a country which, as Henry Steele Commager put it, realized the Enlightenment that Europe only imagined...
...Not aggressive secular but ecclesial feminism raises the most difficult theological issues for the patriarchal hierarchy...
...And we will NOT disappear...
...Canice Connors, O.F.M., Introduction to Pastoral Counseling...
...The Final Report of the synod recognizes this when itspeaks of a growing disenchantment with secularism and the signs of a return to the sacred...
...A first step, as the U.S...
...The word used is agape, the love revealed in the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus and his call that his disciples learn to love those other than themselves, especially their enemies, The irony of history is that we are now in an era in which we are either going to learn to love our enemies, do good to those who have persecuted us, and turn the other cheek -- all those Gospel imperatives which our Enlightenment forefathers like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson dismissed as cowardice and unworthy of "manly virtue" -- or we are very liable not to have much of a future at all in the nuclear age...
...Red to acknowledge that we are angry...
...Also foundational to such a renewed church are what the late Bernard Lonergan called the processes of intellectual and moral conversion...
...Such a permanent reciprocal dialogue between bishops and feminist theologians ought to be instituted on a national and international level in order to foster a deeper comprehension of the church as a discipleship of equals in consensual partnership, in order to acknowledge women as ecclesial and theological subjects in the post-synodal period...
...Neither is the living God a class oppressor, a racist, a sexist, a militarist, nor an industrial polluter...
...The end of the cultural dominance of the modern Western Enlightenment means, in effect, that its secularism is being unmasked as dominative and oppressive, in ways analogous to critiques of pre-modern ecclesiastical authoritarianism...
...The church can collaborate in bringing about a civilization of sharing, solidarity, and love only if it fosters millions of communities of worship, justice, love, and responsible freedom within its own communion...
...The Catholic church in the United States is uniquely and providentially situated to contribute immensely toward both the ecclesial shift from a Eurocentric to a world church, as well as to contribute to the transition from the modern Western Enlightenment towards a new civilization of sharing, solidarity, and love...
...Exchange economies, whether capitalist or socialist, cover the globe, and few are arguing for a return to pre-modern barter systems...
...Catholic bishops indicated in their peace pastoral and the second draft of the economics pastoral, is repentance...
...Then we could wear our r e d . . , and proclaim: It is OUR church...
...Modern atheism, it should be remembered, is European, and is more political than metaphysical in origin...
...Arthur SerrateUi, The Pentateuch...
...In a sense, Europe, in the last four centuries, has given humankind four invaluable, yet ambiguous, legacies, three of which constitute the core of the modern Enlightenment: modern exchange economies, modern sciences and technologies, and modern systems of political democracy...
...In a remarkable statement the synod's report rejects a !'purely hierarchical understanding of the church" but warns: "We cannot replace a false unilateral vision of the church as purely hierarchical with a new sociological conception which is also unilateral" (cf...
...These rather massive developments within Catholicism over the past century were not the result of any well-thoughtout plan or theology...
...Commonweal: 48Can we have exchange economies, empirical sciences and technologies, and political democracies without domination...
...Enlightenment thinkers and activists, from Locke and Hume through Voltaire and Comte to Kant, Hegel, and Marx, would find such behavior on the part of the authorities of the West's oldest institution beyond belief...
...Will this healing extend also to our educational systems, thereby avoiding tendencies to promote knowledge engendered by fear, perverting truth by force...
...Stated boldly and rather oversimply, the Catholic church is the only cohesive international institution with millions upon millions of active members in the first, second, and third worlds...
...The cultural dominance of the modern Western Enlightenment is waning precisely because its legacies are now so taken for granted in a variety of cultural milieus...
...Thomas McCreesh, O.P., Old Testament Introduction...
...Perhaps we should wear.., red . . . . Red to acknowledge courage...
...As for modern secular democracies, they often were mildly (freedom of religion) or militantly (freedom from religion) secularist, depending on the extent to which religious authorities were identified with the repressive regimes against which they revolted...
...Red to acknowledge the blood that flows from us with each birth, with each abortion, with each battering, and with each a s s a u l t . . . Let us cloak ourselves in solidarity with our sisters who are in pain...
...All governments pay at least lip-service to democratic ideals...
...John Lozano, C.M.F., Interpreting Religious Life...
...With modern weapons of mass destruction poised throughout the Northern Hemisphere, with so many intellectual and financial resources spent in weapons research and production, with increasing disparities between the wealthy and the poor, and with third-world starvation juxtaposed to first-world obes31 January 1986:47CELEBRATE THE: NEW...
Vol. 113 • January 1986 • No. 2
