Last year I wrote a post summarizing the focus of Lent and providing a few links to resources. You can find my summary here, and I will provide several more links. I pray this helps you use this time as a time of conversion via prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Pax
Blog Reflections
Fr. Dwight Longenecker via Fr. Steve Leak
Lenten retreat with daily Scriptural reflections by Dominican priests over at Godzdogz
Lenten Meditations
Random Lenten Blog posts
Prayer
Daily Audio podcasts of Liturgy of the Hours
Lenten overview with prayers
Hymns for the Liturgical Year
Sacred and Classical Music
Church Links
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' resources and links
VATICAN/POPE
Lent 2009, including stations, music, and papal homilies
Lent 2008
Lent 2007
Lent 2006
Lent 2005, Pope John Paul II's last Lent
Lent 2004
Lent 2003
Lent 2002
Lent 2001
Have a blessed and holy Lent
Peace!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Lenten Resources
Friday, February 20, 2009
From around the web....
1. Excellent Lenten Reflection
Jennifer at Conversion Diary has posted a reflection on her first reading of Pontius Pilate's role in the Passion of Christ which focuses on our tendency to rationalize sin out of fear of losing favor with the "Emperor," whomever that may be for us in our lives. She writes:
It is always helpful and humbling to recognize ourselves so clearly in the sins and motivations of those whom we so often demonize. Pilate recognized Jesus was a good man and did not want to sentence him, but he placed his own well-being and desires above truth and goodness. Am I willing to take up my cross and follow Christ? Am I willing imitate Jesus' sacrifical love of Christ? Or am I merely a good guy with good intentions who tends to flake out when things get tough?
I knew that the threat of losing favor with the Emperor would be more than a person like Pilate could take. I knew it would be the last straw, the spark to ignite the rationalizing and denial that would clear the way for proceeding with evil. I knew it because, at that moment, I recognized somewhere within myself my own disturbingly strong desire to be "friends with the Emperor." My "Emperor" was something different than Pilate's, of course: his was an actual man who had the power to make all Pilate's wildest dreams of riches and success come true; mine was a symbolic Emperor comprised of all my desires for things like comfort and pleasure and money and control and success and acclaim, an Emperor whose friendship I sought over doing the right thing on at least a daily basis.
...
And, as I realized only later, Pilate's all-to-familiar actions 2,000 years ago are not as different in severity from mine as I might have liked to tell myself, because they both led directly to Jesus' death on the Cross.
2. Benedict XVI and Nancy Pelosi
On Wednesday Pope Benedict met with pro-choice Catholic Nancy Pelosi.
His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.H/T to Rocco Palmo
This has caused some interesting conversation. Some are citing the lack of photo-op and the Pope's using the meeting for a teachable moment as evidence of his stern condemnation of Pelosi. However there is no real evidence to support such a view. On the hand, some are criticizing the Pope and Pelosi's bishop for failing to discipline her by witholding the Eucharist from her.
In light of this there has been an interesting conversation in the comments over at Vox-Nova regarding Canon 915 which reads:
Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or the declaration of a penalty as well as others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to communion.Should it be enforced by bishops and the Pope more frequently and forcefully for those Catholic politicians who persist in voting pro-choice? The argument may be summed up thusly:
St. Paul tells us that anyone who eats the body of the Lord unworthily eats condemnation upon himself.
A loving pastor would not want his sheep to engage in self-condemnation, desecration of the Blessed Sacrament, or scandal to the faithful.
Canon 915 tells that those who persist in grave sin should not be permitted to receive the Eucharist.
Catholic politicians who public support and vote for pro-choice policies are engaging, in objective, if not subjective, grave sin.
Therefore why would the successors of the Apostles choose not discipline Pelosi, Biden, and other pro-choice Catholics accordingly?
Do the Pope and Bishops disagree with canon law? Are they ignoring canon 915? Is it not mortally sinful to vote for pro-choice policies? If not, why is canon 915 in the canon law at all? What is the relationship between canon law and its application by the Church's pastors.
Others will argue that the Church's understanding of law is unlike that which most Americans have. We tend to view law and that which is to be interpreted literally and enforced in a black and white manner. On the hand, from the ecclesial perspective canon laws are more like guidelines which must and can only be properly interpreted by those ordained with the pastoral responsiblity and charism of doing so for their flocks.
What do you think?
3. Vulnerability
Veronica over at Making Gumbo has a great post on Jesus' vulnerability, which reminded me of Balthsar's concept of God's omnipotent powerlessness. The Father all-powerfully empties himself entirely into the Son in kenotic Love. In thanksgiving (eucharist) for the Father's gift of self, the Son wills to give himself to the Father's will. Thus the Son omnipotently becomes powerless in incarnation as an infant, as a criminal on the cross, and as a dead man in the descent.
Nevertheless, as a new dad my son's vulnerability reminded me of Jesus' vulnerability as an infant, but more than that, in choosing to conceive a child my wife have made a choice of sacrifical love to be powerless to our son. We are slaves to his will. When he is hungry, tired, gassy, or upset for whatever reason, we free and lovingly stop everything we are doing to attend to him.
Life is beautiful. I pray that my wife and child and our love may teach me to love and Christ loved so that i may be more willing to make myself vulnerable out of love to them and to my neighbor and even to my enemy. God knows I have a long way to go.
Peace to all.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Thesis Thoughts 4: RAHNER’S CHRISTOLOGY/SOTERIOLOGY
Before we move on to directly examine what Rahner has to say about salvation for non-Christians, we must consider his Christology and Soteriology more generally speaking. As a Christian, and more specifically as a Jesuit priest, Rahner firmly believes that Jesus is the savior of the world, but, as Ratzinger explains, the problem is for Rahner that of “the dichotomy between the particularity of Christian history and its claim to the whole being man. Can a particular history justly claim to be salvation not just for a particular historical period but for man precisely qua man?”[1] Marshall identifies two possible approaches for answering this dichotomy. The first approach focuses on the Jesus’ life, passion, death, and resurrection as that which makes him meaningful and significant for salvation generally speaking. In other words it is an appeal to the particularity of Jesus in his historical situation rather than an appeal which demonstrates how Jesus fulfills some general criteria for universal salvific significance, which is precisely what the second approach attempts to exhibit. Proponents of the second approach believe that one must first show that anything can be significant for the salvation of all, and until that is shown to be credible, belief in Jesus as the savior must be in-credible.[2]
Rahner, following Kant, Schleiermacher and Transcendentalism, chooses the second approach. He believes that before one can reasonably believe in a universal savior one must determine the general criteria necessary for there to be an absolute savior and then must demonstrate that a particular person or entity, in this case Jesus Christ, fulfills the criteria. Rahner writes: “how can he [Jesus], the concrete one, in his historical-concrete reality, which is not at all generally valid, be a norm for me?”[3]
In addition to his philosophical allegiances, Rahner chooses the second approach because of his understanding of the problem of apologetics. He rightly believes that Christians have a responsibility to preach the gospel, that is, the Good News of Jesus’ salvation, to the world, but recognizes that the modern world, due to modernity and some of the developments of the Enlightenment, finds this message harder to believe than earlier generations did.[4] Rahner believed this was because the kinds of things said by Christians, specifically in the tradition of the Neo-scholasticism of his time, are found to be in-credible by modern people; the teachings of the faith were presented in way that modern people had difficulty relating to.
Kilby explains Rahner’s perspective: for Rahner “what we need is to get away from a propositionalist system of theology so that we can relate Christian doctrines to what we experience in the depths of our being.”[5] [6]Therefore, according to Rahner, the presentation of the doctrines of the Faith must be adapted to the philosophy and perspectives of the day, redolent of the anthropological turn following the Enlightenment. Here, it seems, Pope Benedict XVI would disagree with him. Rahner believes the problem is on the side of the presentation of the information, the content of the faith. However, in Spe Salvi Pope Benedict XVI explains that the faith must not be merely informative, but performative;[7] more important than the delivering of the information is the evangelical witness of performing, of living, the faith.[8]
Regardless of his reasons, Rahner chooses to follow Kant and Schleiermacher in Transcendental approach and Marechal by incorporating the thought of Aquinas in an attempt to solve the apparent paradox between Jesus’ particularity as a 1st Century Jew from Nazareth and his supposed significance as the absolute savior. In following the second approach, the Transcendental approach, Rahner will make an anthropological turn; much of his system will thus start with man. Thus, Marshall elucidates Rahner’s goal:
If the goal of a transcendental Christology is to show how Jesus Christ can be significant for salvation, the method of transcendental Christology is to show that an absolute savior can be significant for salvation, can be that kind of reality. Once this established, it must indicate the way in which absolute savior can be asserted of Jesus, and the goal would then be achieved.[9]
As we have discussed above, for Rahner, all people, in their essence, anticipate the unsurpassable self-communication of God,[10] which is made possible by the supernatural existential, but for them to receive this very real self-revelation as communication, it must occur historically and categorically. This requires that the a priori transcendental experience of man be mediated historically as human freedom is mediated categorically. Thus, in Rahner’s system, the absolute savior must be a historical individual who freely and unconditionally accepts God’s self-offer, while not only pointing to, but actually being God’s self-communication. Thus, Rahner’s system demands a sort of Hypostatic Union in order for there to be an absolute savior, and, because the absolute savior is one of us, he must merely be the prime example of what we are oriented towards. He elucidates, “The incarnation of God is therefore the unique, supreme, case of the total actualization of human reality, which consists of the fact that man is in so far as he surrenders himself.”[11] Therefore, “The concrete human essence (wesen) is nothing other than a potential obedentialis for hypostatic union,”[12] and accordingly, Rahner can axiomatically claim, “anthropology is defective Christology.”[13] In light of this, Marshall rightly asks how any of us can be satisfied with anything less than hypostatic union is that is what we are ordered towards?[14]
Rahner has shown than man has an a priori orientation or dynamism toward transcendence. A transcendent openness can only open towards the Absolute Horizon of being. Therefore, the telos of the world, or mankind at the least, is in receiving God’s self-communication, in fulfilling this potential for reception of God’s grace.[15] Because man is not merely spiritual, but physical as well, this self-communication must take place historically and spatio-temporally. It must be a real event with a permanent beginning.[16] Thus, for Rahner, “we give the title of Savior simply to that historical person who, coming in space and time, signifies that beginning of God’s absolute communication of himself which inaugurates the self-communication for all men as something happening irrevocably and which shows this to be happening.”[17] It is not necessary that the historical advent of the Savior mark the beginning of God’s self-revelation, but it must be the irrevocable and absolute form and climax of the communication. However, in addition to the historical advent of God’s absolute self-communication in the Savior, in order for the Savior to be the universally significant for all men, he must be “the object of a radical orientation of our whole being, on account of which such a reality is capable of affecting [mankind] as a whole.”[18]
Perhaps we should summarize what we have thus far discussed. A being can only be absolute savior if mankind is dynamically oriented toward it. We see in the essence of man the supernatural existential, the preparation for the offer of God’s self-communication as grace, that transcendent openness to the Absolute Horizon. Thus, only God, the Horizon, can be our savior. The savior must be the real pledge of God, must actually be God’s self-communication, and this communication must be historical. In the absolute savior, God be must enter into history, and he must do so as one of us so that we can fully receive this communication.
We can now see how Rahner’s system has led to recognition of Jesus as the absolute savior of the world. Jesus is the divine Son of God. He is the eternal Logos, the Word of God, God’s self-communication, enfleshed. In the Hypostatic Union the Word of God has become one of us to fully reveal himself to us. Although he may only contact a portion of us in his historicity and particularity, because we are transcendentally a priori oriented to receive this self-communication as grace, all men, even those who have no contact with this “consummation of human reality at the hands of God, towards which all person are oriented in grace”[19], can receive this new salvific grace of Christ in their transcendence. He can be significant, efficacious for their salvation as the historical fulfillment of the pledge made by God in the supernatural existential, the openness to receiving him.
Marshall attempts to critique Rahner’s transcendental Christology. He is critical not of Rahner’s execution, which he finds to be masterful, but of the problem inherent in applying the transcendental method to Christ. Marshall believes that Rahner’s system forces him to make implications which result in the loss of particularity of Christ, which, Marshall admits, even Rahner says is unacceptable. In this regard, Marshall references Rahner as having said that the Catholic faith is indissolubly bound up with Jesus of Nazareth and that when Jesus becomes only one among several exemplary persons, we are no longer dealing with Christianity.[20] Nevertheless, Marshall describes Rahner’s definition of what is necessary for something to be an absolute savior, “any reality/person can be significant for salvation only because and in so far as we are oriented toward it by our very nature; only by falling within the scope of this transcendental orientation can any reality affect us as a whole and so be genuinely saving”[21], and adds that Jesus cannot possibly fulfill this criterion.
We are not and cannot be, oriented in this way toward Jesus Christ; he himself can in no we be derived or deduced from our transcendental orientation and its content. Therefore, Jesus is not and cannot be significant for salvation…Since he, as a particular person, cannot be significant for salvation, he cannot be the absolute savior, according to Rahner’s logic.[22]
Thus, Marshall believes that Rahner’s transcendental method forces into choosing between two alternatives. On the one hand, Marshall argues that Rahner can argue that Jesus fulfills the general criteria he has set forth for being generally significant for salvation, but this requires Rahner to let go of Jesus’ particular as emphasized by the Christian faith because it has nothing to do with significance for salvation. On the other hand, Marshall explains, Rahner can uphold the importance of Jesus’ particularity as the faith does, emphasizing his being a first century Jew who fulfills the specifically Jewish prophecies for the Messiah, his poverty, his miracles, his death, etc. while recognizing that Jesus, in his particularity, does not fulfill the general criteria for being the absolute savior. [23]
However, despite Marshall’s sharp intellect, we must conclude that his critique is flawed and incorrect. We could argue, as some critics do, that Rahner’s transcendental method puts Christianity on a slippery slope which may relativize Christ’s unicity, but we cannot say it is incompatible with Christianity. The deficiency in Marshall’s critique appears to be that he forgotten about the Hypostatic Union. Jesus is fully God and fully man. In his divinity he fulfills the general criteria for being significant for salvation. In his humanity we can honor his particular place in human history. Jesus of Nazareth is the divine Logos. He is the son of Mary and the Son of God. He is a man who lived near Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago, and he is the absolute savior of the world.
[1]Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 163.
[2] Marshall, 19.
[3] Karl Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, Vol. 15, 234; emphasis added: “wie kann er, der Konkrete, in seiner gar nicht allgemeingültigen, sondern in seiner geschichtlich-konkreten Wirklichkeit für mich eine Norm sein?”
[4] Marshall, 19.
[5] Kilby, 263.
[6] Note that here Balthasar and Rahner differ as well. “For Balthasar, neo-scholasticism was inadequate because it was dry as dust and reductive, because it fialed to bring out, indeed it positively obscured, the reality and beauty of the thing presented, the object of revelation.” (Kilby, 263).
[7] Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, par. 2.
[8] Here Benedict is reminiscent of Balthasar and his emphasis on the Cross and martyrdom as witnessing to the faith.
[9] Marshall, 28.
[10] Ibid., 34.
[11] Ibid., 110; Rahner’s emphases; translation slightly altered.
[12] Ibid., 36
[13]Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations Volume I: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, (New York, New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1973), 122.
[14] Marshall, 36.
[15] McCool, 167.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid., 168.
[18] Marshall, 33-34.
[19] Ibid., 34.
[20] Ibid.,53.
[21] Ibid., 56.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid., 57.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
A blessing, a blessing from the Lord! or Unto us a child is born
Announcing the birth of JB's and AB's first child, John Paul Joseph.
After a completely natural labor he was born via water-birth in a birth center at 4:40 Thursday morn. He weighed 7 lbs was 20 inches long.
Mom, Dad, and Baby are all tired, but doing well and celebrating the goodness of God.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Whose Church?
Those of you not from the New Orleans area may not have heard, but there has been some serious drama in the Archdiocese of New Orleans lately.
In April of 08, Archbishop Hughes unveiled a plan to close some parishes and consolidate others in order to help the Archdiocese cope with millions of dollars in losses from Hurricance Katrina, fewer parishioners post-Katrina, and an aging and shinking clergy.
From the start people were not shy about expressing their unhappiness with the changes.
After churches which had been scheduled for closure (and consolidation with other parishes) were closed in October, parishioners immediately moved to occupy the churches in what they called vigils, although media coverage and parishioners interviewed made it seem more like a prolonged protest.
More than two months later the churches were still being illegally occupied by former parishioners, who had barred the doors closed and refused to allow representatives of the Archdiocese into the church.
As a result, police were eventually sent to the churches to clear out the trespassers. The Archdiocese had this to say about the incident (quote lengthy, but I felt obligated to post the whole thing, since no one in the media was) :
My thoughts on the fiasco...Around 10 am this morning, representatives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans entered the occupied buildings at both the former Our Lady of Good Counsel on Louisiana Ave. and the former St. Henry on General Pershing in Uptown New Orleans. They were accompanied by members of the New Orleans Police Department at the request of the Archbishop. The occupants were first asked to leave the buildings voluntarily. Then they were told that if they did not leave on their own, they would receive a summons and if they would not leave at that point would then be arrested.
It was necessary for the police to break-in to Our Lady of Good Counsel because those inside refused entrance to either archdiocesan representatives or the police. Two occupants at Our Lady of Good Counsel received a summons and two were formally arrested. At St. Henry Church, the occupants allowed representatives and police to enter. Only one parishioner received a summons. There were no arrests. In both instances, the buildings were then secured.
It has always been the intention of the archdiocese to bring these vigils to a peaceful conclusion. This forced closure involving the NOPD is the result of the actions of protestors at the former parishes. This decision was made reluctantly after exploring every possible alternative, including multiple attempts to persuade the people to leave the building on their own. These initiatives are unfortunate but made necessary now to ensure the safety of the people and security of the buildings.
As already reported, attempts were made at both the former Our Lady of Good Counsel and the former St. Henry buildings early morning on Saturday, January 3, 2009 to peacefully bring these occupations peacefully to a close. At St. Henry, those keeping vigil refused to leave despite multiple requests. At Our Lady of Good Counsel, the occupant left allowing officials first to search the building and then to move to secure the building. It was discovered later that day that protestors had regained access to the former church building and bolts placed in doors had been removed.
On Monday, January 5, 2009, archdiocesan representatives attempted to make a routine inspection at Our Lady of Good Counsel and were denied access to the buildings. Protestors refused archdiocesan personnel entry and barricaded the doors preventing entry. At the former church building at St. Henry, archdiocesan representatives entered for their inspections, but later that afternoon, it was discovered that occupants there had locked the doors to the church building to prevent entry to anyone beyond those allowed in from the inside. These actions forced the difficult decision to bring these occupations to a close to be made
It is our hope that the Catholic community may now heal and move forward together. Our prayers are withl those experiencing anger and sadness at losing their home parishes. We pray that they may find peace and a spiritual home in their new parish. As we begin the new year, we must all work to center our faith on the Eucharist and to move forward as one community in Christ.
I am in no position to judge the prudence or correctness of Archbishop Hughes' decisions on which churches to close, which to merge, etc. Many of the parishioners of St. Henry's and Our Lady of Good Counsel did not give the Archbishop the benefit of the doubt. For months we have heard TV interviews, people on radio call-in shows, etc. condemning the decisions and actions of the Archbishop for unjustly or unfairly closing down "my church."
This is another example of Catholics being more American than Catholic. These people have been infected by individualism. Hello! We are "Catholic." The word means "universal." This is not your church. This is the Church of Jesus Christ. Archbishop Hughes is a successor of the apostles and the rightful authority over the property you claim to be "your church." You don't have to agree with his decision, but with a little humility and obedience, you should be able to respectfully submit to it.
Sigh. Sorry for the rant.
Edit: I should add that I am saddened that arrests were made, although no charges were pressed, but I am frustrated at the attitudes I've seen over the past few months.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Pope quotes
Recent thoughts from Pope Benedict XVI
I. On the violence in Gaza
"Once again I would repeat that military options are no solution and that violence, wherever it comes from and whatever form it takes, must be firmly condemned. I express my hope that, with the decisive commitment of the international community, the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip will be re-established -- an indispensable condition for restoring acceptable living conditions to the population -- and that negotiations for peace will resume, with the rejection of hatred, acts of provocation and the use of arms."
[emphasis my own]
Seems pretty clear to me. Violence bad. Justince good. Peace requires mercy and forgiveness.
II. On the rights of Emigrants
"the needs of emigrants need to be taken into consideration by legislation which would make it easier to reunite families, reconciling the legitimate requirements of security with those of inviolable respect for the person."
III. Fighting Poverty to Build Peace
"It is towards the poor, the all too many poor people on our planet, that I would like to turn my attention today, taking up my Message for the World Day of Peace, devoted this year to the theme: "Fighting Poverty To Build Peace"...
To build peace, we need to give new hope to the poor. How can we not think of so many individuals and families hard pressed by the difficulties and uncertainties which the current financial and economic crisis has provoked on a global scale? How can we not mention the food crisis and global warming, which make it even more difficult for those living in some of the poorest parts of the planet to have access to nutrition and water? There is an urgent need to adopt an effective strategy to fight hunger and to promote local agricultural development, all the more so since the number of the poor is increasing even within the rich countries....
Acts of discrimination and the very grave attacks directed at thousands of Christians in this past year show to what extent it is not merely material poverty, but also moral poverty, which damages peace. Such abuses, in fact, are rooted in moral poverty....
I also express my hope that, in the Western world, prejudice or hostility against Christians will not be cultivated simply because, on certain questions, their voice causes disquiet. For their part, may the disciples of Christ, in the face of such adversity, not lose heart: witness to the Gospel is always a "sign of contradiction" vis-à-vis "the spirit of the world"! If the trials and tribulations are painful, the constant presence of Christ is a powerful source of strength. Christ’s Gospel is a saving message meant for all; that is why it cannot be confined to the private sphere, but must be proclaimed from the rooftops, to the ends of the earth."
Thesis Thoughts 3: Rahner's Theological Anthropology
more thesis thoughts which are still somewhat rough, especially the footnotes, but have at it.
RAHNER’S THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
The Supernatural Existential
Rahner’s first two works were primarily philosophical in nature. Spirit of the World, his doctoral dissertation, is a philosophical conversation with Heidegger coming from the perspective of Kant’s transcendentalism accompanied by the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Rahner’s other seminal philosophical work, Hearers of the Word, continues with groundwork he laid out in Spirit of the World and proposes new solutions to problems he perceived in the theological explanations and presentations of his time. This primarily had to do with his discomfort with the relationship between nature and grace as explicated by scholastic neo-Thomism.
All grace was seen as the grace of Christ, but was ontologically grounded in God’s redemptive will. In other words, there was no inherent relationship between the offer and reception of grace and the reception of God’s self-communication through the Incarnate Son.1 McCool explains, “[Rahner’s] theological anthropology enabled him to see that, contrary to the manuals' purely entitative understanding of grace, grace must have a perceptible effect on human consciousness,”2 all human consciousness regardless of whether a person had been exposed to the Gospel or not.
In this regard, we must keep in mind Rahner’s appreciation of and affiliation with Transcendental Thomism. He feels impelled to offer an explanation of how Christ can be the universal savior. Rahner proceeds to develop a system which will identify in man the possibility of receiving salvation and present Jesus as the realization of that possibility. For something to be universally salvific for mankind, man must be a priori oriented to it; it must be capable of affecting mankind as a whole.3 As we have said above, following his Transcendental method, in order for Rahner to remain consistent with his system and hold that Christianity is true and that divine revelation has occurred, he must show that it is generally credible to believe in revelation; he must show that man has a capacity to receive revelation. Rahner explains,
If we start from ourselves, God’s revelation cannot be validated either in its actuality, or in its necessity, or in its inner nature. … It remains questionable (at least for the time being) whether and in what sense we can discover in ourselves something like a “power of hearing” for an eventual revelation of God, before we have in fact heard it, and have thus found out that we are capable of hearing it.4
Nevertheless, Rahner argues that man is essentially a “hearer of the word” and develops a theological anthropology which views man ontologically and essentially as such. Ratzinger explains, “The paradox of the being man is that he can find the ‘universal’ in himself only in tension with the ‘particular’, with a history that comes from without, so that man can be described and postulated, as it were, a priori¸as the receiver of a revelation history, as a “hearer of the word.”5 6
Thus, Rahner sees in man an ontological dynamism and openness towards the Ultimate Horizon of Being, God.7 Knowing that God desires all men to be saved and therefore that He offers salvific grace to all men, Rahner reasons that God has created man with the capacity to receive grace and to perceive it precisely as grace.8 Rahner proposes that God creates a creature, man, that he could love, that could “receive this Love which is God himself” and receive it for what it is, “the unexpected unexacted gift.”9 This ability to receive God’s self-gift must be an intrinsic part of the makeup of man.
This 'potency' is what is inmost and most authentic in him, the centre and root of what he is absolutely. He must have it always: for even one of the damned, who has turned away from this Love and made himself incapable of receiving this Love, must still be really able to experience this Love (which being scorned now burns like fire) as that to which he is ordained in the ground of his concrete being; he must consequently always remain what he was created as: the burning longing for God himself in the immediacy of his own threefold life. The capacity for the God of self-bestowing personal Love is the central and abiding existential of man as he really is.10
Rahner refer to this as the “supernatural existential.” McCool explains, “God's real offer of his grace produces a "supernatural existential" in the human soul. This "existential" is a permanent modification of the human spirit which transforms its natural dynamism into an ontological drive to the God of grace and glory.”11 Rahner intended his supernatural existential to unify nature and grace which had become too distinct and separate in neo-scholasticism. Thus on top of man’s theoretical pure nature is added the supernatural existential, this transcendent potential or openness to receiving grace prior to the actual offer of divine grace and revelation.12 Klaus Riesenhuber further clarifies, “This is only a way of saying that man’s nature must be spirit, in the sense of unlimited transcendental openness to unrestricted being. What is called man’s “obediential potency” to receive revelation is not some competence coordinated with various others, but is his spiritual nature itself.”13 Riesenhuber explains that here Rahner follows Marechal by formulating in a new way Aquinas’ “natural desire of the beatific vision.”14
We can now begin to see, with a preliminary and still blurry vision, how Rahner’s theological anthropology will attempt to posit Christ’s universal significance for salvation, for, following the Christ event, the grace of which also extent in to past times prior to Christ, the supernatural existential places all men, not merely those who have had historical contact with Jesus or his followers, in a new and improved condition.
[The unbaptized man] exists in a different situation because of the ‘objective redemption,’ which is a real and basic moment in the ‘subjective’ salvation situation of every man…because of the ‘supernatural existential,’ because of God’s continual offer of the grace for supernatural salvific acts, his situation is other than it would be if it were determined only by his ‘nature’ and by original sin.15
But how is it that Jesus’ salvific grace is offered to and accepted by those who have had no contact with Christianity? What is the effect of this offer and acceptance? What of those who have had contact with Christianity? Can they accept the grace while rejecting the Christianity that has been offered to them?
Transcendental and Categorial
We shall explore Rahner’s answers to the above questions shortly, but before we do so, we must examine how his theological anthropology sets the stage for his response.
Having posited the supernatural existential in man, Rahner continues the development of his system by discussing his technical terms “transcendental” and “categorial.” Rahner explains what he means by “transcendental” fairly clearly. In “a ‘transcendental experience,’ that is an experience of the unlimited openness of the spirit to being as such, there is on the subjective side of all knowledge a knowledge of God that is real although implicit, that is, not necessarily objectified.”16 In other words, the transcendental aspect of man is a realization of the supernatural existential. God gives man this openness to receive his revelation as grace. A transcendental experience is one in which man receives this grace and responds to it positively, but without consciously identifying it as God’s offer of Christ’s salvific grace.
Unfortunately, Rahner never explicitly clarifies the ontological status or precise meaning of his “categorial,” however, we can surmise it’s approximate meaning from its juxtapositions with the “transcendental.” Marshall attempts to approximate Rahner’s meaning as follows:
‘Categorial’ simply means ‘what can be put into categories.’ … More precisely (since for Rahner the transcendental too can, at least indirectly, be evoked in language), the ‘categorial’ is circumscribed in space and time; in this sense human words, the sacraments, the church and Scripture can all be called ‘something categorial.’ Rahner is especially given to contrasting transcendental with ‘historical,’ where ‘historical’ has the broad meaning of ‘spatio-temporal,’ and so is equivalent to categorial.”17
The problem of determining the precise meaning and ontological status of the “categorial,” is compounded by the reality that the debates and difficulties over understanding how God’s grace can work to save non-Christians take place specifically in the categorical and historical circumstances of each generation. Thus, a man can transcendentally be in a positive relationship to God regardless of whether or not he has received and accepted the Gospel as communicated categorically in the historical categories of the Christian faith. This begs of the questions of the importance of the categorical presentation of the faith. Is it not relativized by the emphasis of the transcendental revelation?
Even with this rather long-winded explanation, the precise status and import of the categorical remains vague and elusive. It should become somewhat more clear once we apply it practically using Rahner’s system and theory of “anonymous” or implicit Christians or Christianity, for which the “transcendental” and “categorical” are vital.
1 McCool, Rahner Reader 173.
2 McCool, 174.
3 Marshall, Christology Conflict, 33.
4 Rahner, Hearers of the Word, 5; Rahner’s emphasis.
5 Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 163.
6 Hearers of the Word is the title of one of Rahner’s earliest philosophical works and, according to Balthasar, Marshall, Oakes, McCool, etc. lays the foundation for the rest of his thought……fill in with more detail!!!!!
7 McCool, 174. [SeeRahner (Theological Investigations, vol. IV, p166-69, 174-84 for more quotes and info]
8 Rahner, Theological investigations, vol 1, 300-302…quoted in McCool 185.
9 Rahner, Karl, Theological Investigations, vol I, p300-02, 310-315. (McCool 186)
10 Rahner, Karl, Theological Investigations, vol I, p300-02, 310-315. (McCool 187)
11 McCool, 185.
12 McCool 188 = Rahner, Karl, Theological Investigations, vol I, p300-02, 310-315. (McCool 188)
13 Riesenhuber, 165.
14 Riesenhuber, 166.
15 Rahner, Implicit Christianity, 44.
16 Rahner, Karl. "Implicit Christianity." Theology Digest. Sesquicentennial Issue (1968), 49-50.
Monday, December 15, 2008
On the Bioethics Front...
In the past week, two fairly noteworthy documents have been released...
1. Dignitas Personae
The CDF released an update to Donum Vitae entitled Dignitas Personae. A summary and a Q and A have also been released. The document focuses primarily on beginning of life issues and reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization. The document also addresses several new issues and technologies which had not yet been formally discussed by the Magisterium. The Q&A doc explains:Some very new issues are discussed here for the first time. Some proposed methods for altering the technique for human cloning so it will produce embryonic stem cells but not an embryo (e.g., “altered nuclear transfer”) are judged to require more study and clarification before they could ethically be applied to humans, as one would have to be certain that a new human being is never created and then destroyed by the procedure. (These cautions do not apply to an even newer technique, using genetic or chemical factors to reprogram ordinary adult cells directly into “induced pluripotent stem cells” with the versatility of embryonic stem cells. This clearly does not use an egg or create an embryo, and has not raised objections from Catholic theologians.) Proposals for “adoption” of abandoned or unwanted frozen embryos are also found to pose problems, because the Church opposes use of the gametes or bodies of others who are outside the marital covenant for reproduction. The document raises cautions or problems about these new issues but does not formally make a definitive judgment against them. The document also goes into far more detail than past documents in raising moral concerns about use of “germ-line” genetic engineering in human beings, for treatments and especially for supposed “enhancement” or tailoring of human characteristics.Despite all the cautions, the CDF attempts to emphasize that the Church's overall attitude toward bioethical research is a positive one, provided that the dignity of the human person is always respected and made a top priority of all research. The document explains:
Behind every “no” in the difficult task of discerning between good and evil, there shines a great “yes” to the recognition of the dignity and inalienable value of every single and unique human being called into existence.Interesting stuff. I only wish they had addressed end of life issues. Important and difficult questions remain, but an update to Donum Vitae was needed and is helpful.
2. The Dignity of Chimeras
For those of you who may not know, a chimera is some sort of hybrid animal, in this case, part-human part-something else. Chimeras have for the most part been creatures of fantasy and sci-fi... up until now. Crazy stuff!The British Parliament has drafted a Human Tissue and Embryo Bill. One of the issues addressed in the bill is chimeras. If the bill is passed, "the creation of animal-human embryos - created by injecting animal cells or DNA into human embryos or human cells into animal eggs" - will now be legal. Wow! Another instance of scientists using the dangerous philosophical approach of "let's see what we can do" rather than asking "should we even be doing this." This could potentially be very dangerous stuff, which is why the bill mandates that if a scientist chooses to create chimeras, the part-human/part-animal hybrids must be destroyed within two weeks.
This is where the Scottish Catholic Bishops' Conference stepped in. Now if you read about the bishops' statement on a secular news site, you will probably only hear that the bishops said that the chimeras must be treated with dignity, their right-to-life must be respected, mothers whose eggs are used to create chimeras must be given the right to bring their child to term, etc. Predictably, that's not an entirely accurate representation of what the Scottish bishops had to say.
First they called for the bill to be rejected by Parliament saying that creating human hybrid creatures is horrific and breaks a moral boundary which is not to be crossed. Only after denouncing the bill in toto and calling the creation of chimeras alarming and horrific did they proceed to add that if a chimera were created, "it should not be a crime to transfer them, or other human embryos, to the body of the woman providing the ovum, in cases where a human ovum has been used to create them" and "Such a woman is the genetic mother, or partial mother, of the embryo; should she have a change of heart and wish to carry her child to term,
she should not be prevented from doing so." The bishops conclude "at very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings and should be treated accordingly."
This makes sense to me. The bishops are right to be alarmed to call for the denunciation of this "research." However, we cannot know whether or not these hybrids would be persons or not. In order to play it safe and prevent ourselves from murdering innocent persons with intrinsic dignity and an inherent right-to-life, we must allow (and demand!?) that they be taken to term and treated as any other person once they are created.
Sigh... God help us!
More coverage here and here.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
From around the Blogosphere and such
Greetings!
It's been too long since I've posted, and I still don't have the time or focus to put together anything original or intelligent. Nevertheless, what follows are some stories or thoughts which have caught my eye recently. Let me know what you think.
On the Peace and Nonviolence Front...
Catholic Lt Col at Gitmo chooses the Cross over the Flag
Darrel Vandeveld is a devout Catholic. Not so long ago he was also a military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. However, what he saw and experienced there struck him as immoral and un-American. His well-formed Catholic conscience was not comfortable. He emailed Fr. John Dear, a peace activist, and after much mental anguish chose to quit the US military. Watch the BBC's interview here and read more here
US Torture policies in Iraq have lead to the Deaths of countless Americans
Matthew Alexander was an interrogator for a special ops task force in Iraq in 2006. Other people in his position chose to torture alleged and/or known terrorists to attempt to get what they wanted. Alexander refused, and in an article titled "I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq" for the Washington Post he writes:
Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there's the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.
Read the entire article here.
The FDA: What were they thinking?
This is Silly: Prescription Handguns!??
According to their website, the mission of the FDA is as follows:
The FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation. The FDA is also responsible for advancing the public health by helping to speed innovations that make medicines and foods more effective, safer, and more affordable; and helping the public get the accurate, science-based information they need to use medicines and foods to improve their health.
If that's the case, why are they approving a miniaturized thumb-triggered handgun as something which can be prescribed? What!? Oh! In the near future it may be covered by Medicare. Ladies and Gentleman, your tax dollars hard at work!
More here.
This is dangerous and reprehensible: Gardasil - Bad for women (a shocker I know)
Remember how Gardasil was supposed to help prevent much of cervical cancer? Forgetting for a moment that you shouldn't have to be vaccinated for a disease caused by STDs, because... you know... your free will, chastity, abstinence, the moral life, etc. Forget about all that. Generally speaking a drug might be considered a good thing if it can prevent a large portion of the population from getting a deadly form of cancer. Well, as it turns out, Gardasil may actually make things worse.
Natural News reporter Mike Adams has uncovered some interesting facts about this vaccine. The FDA has been aware since 2003 that Human Papillloma Virus [1] does not cause cervical cancer. The Gardasil vaccine is unable to eradicate HPV virus from women who have been exposed to HPV (nearly all sexually active women). This makes vaccinating all young women in Texas against HPV virus a very questionable decision.
To make matters even worse it has now been learned that vaccinating women with Gardasil may actually increase the risk that those women harboring a benign cervical HPV viral infection have a 44.6 percent increased risk of having their benign HPV infection converted into a precancerous state by the HPV vaccine administration. Thus women vaccinated with Gardasil not only receive no benefit those who were sexually active before the vaccine administration have become at increased risk for developing cervical cancer.
Read the entire article here.
Hat tip to feminine-genius.
Anyone have any thoughts on any of this? Let me know.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Thesis Thoughts 2 - Rahner's Philosophical Background
For my Master's thesis I will be researching and writing on the debate between Karl Rahner and Hans urs von Balthasar regarding their conceptions of Christology and the salvation of non-Christians. I shall attempt to post summaries of research, random quotes and the like on a somewhat regular basis. Please feel free to share your own thoughts, ideas, questions, sources, etc.
Before diving more directly into the thought of Karl Rahner or Hans Urs von Baltashar and their soteriologies, we would be imprudent to ignore the historical and philosophical situations to which they are responding and in which they are living. If Plato lived today the manner in which he communicated his genius would certainly be quite different that it actually was. The same could be said of Nietzsche have lived in pre-Christian times. Therefore we must consider Rahner’s philosophical sitz im leben before attempting to grasp his system.
For most of the middle ages and up until the 17th Century most people in the Western world saw Jesus Christ as the universal redeemer. In other words, their world view suggested that whatever could be said to be universally or generally meaningful or significant for humanity must in way relate to Christ (Marshall 2). However, Deistic thought countered that Christian presumption, reasoning that for something to universally valid and meaningful, it must also be universally and generally available to everyone. At this time the world was realizing that knowledge of Jesus was not, or had not been, readily available to all people, specifically those living in the Americas. (Marshall 3-4)
Many Christians embraced this Deistic critique while attempting to maintain the universal meaningfulness of the historical Jesus. John Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christianity is a prime example of such an attempt. German Christians made the most profound attempts at finding a middle ground between these two assumptions: that of Jesus’ universal significance, and that of the necessity of universally availability of that which is said to be significant. They attempted to reinterpret the heart of Christianity, which saw Jesus as the unique historical redeemer, in such a way as to maintain the concrete notion of the Christian understanding of redemption while dissolving the “indissoluble bond to Jesus” (Marshall 4). [It is because of this new understanding of redemption that Marx can posit a world in which man is redeemed on his own merits with a Christ figure.]
Thus, Kant enters the scene with his transcendental approach and states that “the unique redeemer is an ideal of perfection, a moral archetype for which we need no empirical example, since the archetype ‘is to be sought nowhere but in our own reason.’”(Marshall 5), leading to Schleiermacher, who offers the most profound and powerful statement of the coalescence of the new deistic assumptions with redemption as posited by Christianity.
Schleiermacher develops a general criterion for redemption – the relative domination of a universal God-consciousness (‘feeling of absolute dependence’) in all experience. All people can experience the need for God in their dependence. (Marshall 6). He argues that the Christian concept of redemption exemplifies the most clear coherence with this criterion. Ever since, transcendentalists, Rahner included, have adopted Schleiermacher’s general approach and method while modifying the criterion necessary for a meaningful understand of redemption which generally available to all of humanity.
At this point, before jumping into Rahner we must consider a couple other thinkers who are especially relevant to any discussion of Rahner and Balthasar and who critiqued and revised some the thought of those mentioned above.
Joseph Marechal, a Jesuit priest from Belgium, critiqued Kant for failing to account for the dynamism of the human intellect since objective knowledge can only be obtained from categorical judgment of speculative reason. (McCool xiv). Marechal attempted to remedy Kant’s transcendental approach to make it cohere with the foundations of St. Thomas Aquinas’ thought. “Marechal believed that the transcendental method could be extended beyond epistemology and could be used to ground a general metaphysics whose form and structure would resemble the metaphysics of St. Thomas” (McCool xvi). Rahner, following Marechal, becomes the most influential proponent of Transcendental Thomism. However, he attempts to improve upon Marechal’s approach by developing a self-grounding metaphysics rather relying on epistemology and by putting more emphasis on the conscious of the human person.
Around the same time, a Protestant theologian by the name of Karl Barth is heavily critiquing Schleiermacher and his method. “Barth saw Schleiermacher as adapting to modernity where he should have resisted it, and distorting theology by moving its center from God and God’s revelation to man” (Kilby 257). Barth was especially critical of the anthropological turn taken by Schleiermacher and others as well as of the notion of having a anthropological or transcendent system on which to rely. Barth countered, “I have no Christological principle and no Christological method. Rather in each individual theological question I seek to orientate myself afresh…not on a Christological dogma but on Jesus Christ himself)” (quoted in Marshall 116).
To a certain extent, Balthasar will take a quasi-Barthian approach. His critique of Rahner vaguely parallels Barth’s critique of Schleiermacher, and his Christology attempted to be Christocentric, like Barth, rather than anthropocentric, like Rahner and the other transcendental Thomists.
In our next post we shall look explicitly at Rahner’s philosophical system and transcendental method.
Sources
Kilby, Karen. “Balthasar and Karl Rahner.”
Marshall, Bruce. Christology in Conflict: the identity of a Savior in Rahner and Barth. NY: Basil Blackwell Inc., 1987.
Rahner, Karl. Rahner Reader. Ed. McCool, Gerald. London: Darton,Longman & Todd Ltd, 1975.