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Letter #27, 2017: On "Burying Benedict"

[2017-05-27]
[Engleză]
May 27, 2017, Saturday

Universal or Particular?

The article below, by American Catholic writer Matthew Schmitz, originally published on May 22 (five days ago) in the important American journal of ideas First Things (link), is noteworthy. (The journal calls itself "America's most influential journal of religion and public life.")

It is an interesting and useful, though by no means comprehensive or exhaustive, summary of the theological debate between then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now the 90-year-old Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI) and Cardinal Walter Kasper.

And it explains, briefly and synthetically, how that debate is in some way "reopened" in the current debate over Amoris Laetitia.

So a theological debate that was important for about two years in around the year 2000, 17 years ago, remains important today, 17 years later.

At stake? In a profound way, the identity of the Church.

And that is why this article is worth reading.

The key question the debate around the year 2000 raised -- and continues to raise in 2017 -- is whether the Church, in being "one" and "catholic," can also be, without contradiction, "many" and "particular."

Yes, or no?

To phrase the question in the opposite way: can a Church that becomes "many" and "particular" still be the "one" and "catholic" Church of the Creed.

Or... does such a Church, or Churches, become... something else.

No longer the Church of the Creed.

So it is a quite serious matter.

We know from the Creed that the four attributes of the Church are that she is "one, holy, catholic and apostolic."

And we know that the Church, due to human frailty and human sin, can always "fall away," in one way or another, from these four "characteristics" -- dividing into many denominations rather than remaining "one"; becoming, or wishing to become, profane, idolatrous, or sinful rather than remaining steadfastly and faithfully "holy"; becoming local or national, "particular," rather than remaining universal, "catholic"; and, via new insights and innovative theological arguments, breaking with the apostolic tradition rather than remaining firmly dependent on what the apostles taught, and not on what any other teachers or gurus of subsequent centuries have taught, in this way remaining "apostolic."

One, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

We profess that these are the qualities or characteristics of the true Church.

And the debate between Cardinals Kasper and Ratzinger in about the year 2000 brought into question whether the Church could remain one, and catholic, or whether it could be somehow "multiple," or "many" while still being "one" or "local" and "particular" while still being "catholic."

The article by Schmitz notes that some Catholic theologians in the post-conciliar period (after the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council) had agreed that "doctrine might be universal and unchanging," but went on to argue, nevertheless, that doctrines "could be bent to meet discrete pastoral realities — allowing for a liberal approach, say, in Western Europe and a more conservative one in Africa."

Schmitz writes: "In order to guard against this idea, Pope John Paul II and Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, insisted that the universal Church was 'a reality ontologically and temporally prior to every individual particular Church.'”

So, it was Ratzinger, evidently partly at John Paul's behest, who argued for the "universal Church."

And Cardinal Kasper, a leader of the theological school seeking to "bend" doctrine to meet "discrete pastoral realities," argued for the ontological validity, for the acceptability, of something he called the "particular Church."

Schmitz's article notes that this debate, which seems to deal with abstract theological concepts, actually has an important role to play in other debates which seem to play a more important role in the daily lives of ordinary men and women.

And, in particular, in the matter of marriage, divorce, remarriage, and receiving the sacraments -- the matter which has become so controversial in light of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, issue in April 2016, a little more than one year ago.

Schmitz notes that Ratzinger once wrote: "The basic idea of sacred history is that of gathering together, of uniting human beings in the one body of Christ, the union of human beings and through human beings of all creation with God. There is only one bride, only one body of Christ, not many brides, not many bodies."

The point is that, because the Church is this "bride," the Church is in some way a "nuptial" reality, and likewise, human marriage is in some way a mirror of the relationship between Christ and his bride, the Church.

That is, the debates over the two questions intertwine.

Schmitz writes of the Kasper-Ratzinger debate: "Ratzinger cited 1 Corinthians, where Paul describes the unity of the Church in terms of two sacraments — communion and matrimony. Just as the two become one flesh in marriage, so in the Eucharist the many become one body. 'For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.'”

But then Kasper responded, appealing to "pastoral reality."

Kasper, Schmitz notes, "laments that Ratzinger does not see things his way." Kasper says: “Regrettably, Cardinal Ratzinger has approached the problem of the relationship between the universal church and local churches from a purely abstract and theoretical point of view, without taking into account concrete pastoral situations and experiences.”

Ratzinger argued during the debate with Kasper that Christian baptism is a truly trinitarian event; we are baptized not merely in but into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

We are not made members of one of various local Christian associations, but are united with God, Ratzinger stressed.

For this reason, he argued, “Anyone baptized in the church in Berlin is always at home in the church in Rome or in New York or in Kinshasa or in Bangalore or wherever, as if he or she had been baptized there. He or she does not need to file a change-of-address form; it is one and the same Church.”

And Ratzinger taught in this way during his papacy as Pope Benedict XVI.

Schmitz notes that the theological debate between Ratzinger and Kasper over "universal Church" vs. "particular Church" drew to a close in 2001, and that, after Ratzinger then became Pope in 2005 and up until 2013, when he resigned, he emphasized the ontological importance of the concept of the Church as "universal."

But, Schmidt argues, since the election of Pope Francis in March 2013, and Francis' public praise of the theology of Cardinal Kasper in his very first Angelus address, the pendulum has swung back again in favor the Kasper thesis of adapting doctrine, for pastoral reasons, to the situation of different "particular" Churches.

And for this reason, Schmitz argues, there has been a theological reversal over the past four years which has not been only about marriage, divorce and remarriage, but also about the very fundamental ecclesiological question of whether the Church is "one" and "universal" or "multiple" and "particular."

To bring about this theological reversal, it has been necessary to downplay the theological arguments of Cardinal Ratzinger-Pope Benedict in favor of the "universal" Church, and to revisit Kasper's arguments in favor of the "particular" church.

And that is why Schmitz, or his editors, gives a rather sensationalistic title to his essay: "Burying Benedict."

So here we are... a 17-year-old theological debate of the most "abstract" sort that ends up having a very practical effect; a debate between theologians from about the year 2000 in different journals and magazines which ends up taking on new life 17 years later at the crossroads of many of the most critical theological and pastoral debates of our present time.

For this reason, the article is well worth reading.

Clearly, Schmitz's position is polemical. He is attacking the position of Cardinal Kasper, and, by extension, of Pope Francis. He ends his article by saying: "For better or worse, Francis now seeks to reverse Ratzinger."

But that very phrase "for better or worse," reveals that Schmitz is allowing space for some sort of theological response from the Francis and Kasper camp. Such a response might argue that, in some way, the positions of Ratzinger and Kasper, though seemingly so different, are not in fact incompatible. And that is precisley, it appears, what they have argied.

But is that the case?

That is the question of the moment.

So it is a continuing debate.

With that as a preamble, the publication of this article is a welcome contribution to this continuing debate in the Church, a debate which, arguably, will have to be settled, for the sake of the Church, and to avoid continued confusion among the faithful, with considerably more clarity than up to now, in the months and years ahead...

(continued below)

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Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com

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