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Featured Article
Oct
16
The unfortunate state of theology today seems to me to consist in no small measure in the fact that it lacks the necessary courage to engage the whole intellect. Yet it fails to do so its only alternative is either to proclain the incomprohensible or to adapt itself to the prevailing view. But in that case information about Christianity becomes a personal evasion that does not, it is true, do justice to the Christian Faith but at least enables the theologian in question to pose as an intelligent colleague with whom one can carry on an intelligent conversation.
In the long run, not much progress can be made in this way by which the theologians attempt to save their skin by risking the anathema of all Church history. For what value has the “intelligence” of an individual theologian when the matter about which he speaks has thus far been treated unintelligibly? If theology is to have any meaning beyond the self-affirmation of the theologian, the first prerequisite is that the personal intelligence of its representatives must not be flaunted but that the theologian must, above all and, as it were, as his primary concern, give straightforward information about what the Faith teaches, for without that there will be no theology.
That is by no means a contradiction of what has been said above: the Faith needs intellect if it is to be understood and practiced. But it needs, above all, an intellect that will not only be productive but will also be able to understand what is proper to it. It needs an intellect that hears. That is why the beginning of all theology is to give hearing its rightful place and to accept the teaching of the Faith exactly as it is given, even if this ruins counter to our expectations at a given moment. The great moments of intellect always come from a source we had not foreseen.
From: Das Heil des menschen, pp. 40-41
Oct
15
We are witnessing today a kind of meditation in which religion becomes a drug. Its object is to find, not an answer to truth, but a liberation from the burden and misery of each individual existence. Its object is to leave behind what is unbearable and burdensome in the reality of every day and to experience the allure of nothingness, the heightened nature of the unreal. Although the primary goal of such meditation is extinction of the I, liberation from the I, such religiosity is extremely egotistic.
It is not an entering into the challenge of a relationship but the letting-oneself-fall into the enjoyment of the infinite. This illusory path of liberation leads only to illusion, but illusion is not freedom. The freedom of Teresa [of Avila] - the freedom of one who had surrendered herself to the dialogue of love and made it the logos of her life - has a different aspect. It manifests itself in Teresa in the two fundamental questions of her century: the question about the certainty of salvation and the question about work.
From: Interpretation - Kontemplation - Akion, pp.12-13
Oct
13
The Church believes that human language is capable of expressing truth and that the human spirit is capable of recognizing and accepting truth. By reason of this conviction, the Church has made her own the heritage of Israel and of Greek Philosophy. In doing so, she has established her special place in the religious history of humanity.
For the great Eastern religions are, precisely on this point, of a different mind; they are convinced that every human word is basically an analogy and can often be exchanged for and replaced by another word. Consequently, the contemporary religious philosophy of India is of the opinion that one can, with equal validity, say Christ instead of Krishna, or Krishna instead of Christ - everything is but a symbol.
The notion that it is ultimately a matter of indifference whether I employ this word or that, whether I follow this tradition or that, has today penetrated deeply into the spirit of the Western world. Truth seems, moreover, to be unattainable, and to imagine that the Christian Faith is true in its very essence - that it is truth - is repugnant to us; it seems to us too much like Western arrogance. But if that were the case, then all our actions would be mere illusions. Then our worship would also be false - we would be creatures without truth. But where truth is lacking, every standard can be altered and one is fundamentally free to do the opposite - the rejection of truth is the real core of the crisis.
And where truth is no longer fundamental to us, then even the finest communal solidarity is no longer binding because it is, in the last analysis, without foundation. To what extent do we base our lives on the apparently so humble, but in reality so arrogant, word of Pilate: “What, then, is truth?”
From: Ordinariatskorrespondenz, no.1, January 3, 1980
Oct
10
At the beginning of the New Testament stands a man, the man Jesus, who emerges from the history of mankind. In his genealogy, Matthew carefully traces the transition from the long and bewildering history recorded in the Old Testament to the new reality that begins with Jesus Christ…We might well ask: What kind of history must it have been that at last truly created the “space”, the prerequisite, for the Incarnation of God! What kind of men must they have been who endured the last lap of that journey? What integrity and maturity of spirit must have been attained at the point at which this great transformation of humanity and of the world would be accomplished! But if we approach the text with this kind of expectation we shall be disappointed.
The history into which Jesus enters is a quite ordinary history, marked by all the scandals and ignominy that are inherent in humanity, all the advances and good beginnings, but also all the sinfulness and baseness - a totally human history!… We may ask: Is this the context into which the Son of God could be born? Holy Scripture answers: Yes. But all this is meant as a sign for us. The Incarnation of God does not result from an ascent on the part of the human race but from a descent on the part of God.
The ascent of mankind: the attempt to bring God forth by one’s own efforts and to attain the status of superman - long ago in paradise this attempt failed utterly. One who wants to become God by his own efforts, who reaches arbitrarily for the stars, always ends by destroying himself… What matters os obedience, humility in the face of God’s word. “If they have faith, a small child, or an overburdened laborer, can take precedence over the great ascetics” (J. Danielou), because salvation does not come from man’s greatness but from God’s gracious mercy.
From: Dogma und Verkundigung, pp. 317ff.
Oct
9
The holy Evangelist Matthew begins his account of the Good News of Jesus Christ with the words: The Book of the Genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. He traces the human ancestry of this man Jesus and attempts to establish his place in human history. He reveals the facts of this life that did not simply fall from heaven but grew on the tree of history that begins with the two great roots, namely, Abraham and David.
Because Matthew depicts Jesus, the man, his symbol as evangelist is the Son of man: the New Testament begins with man, just as the Old Testament begins with the mysterious soliloquy of the Creator: “Let us make man in our own image and likeness.” A man stands at the beginning of the New Testament and recalls to us the nocturnal vision in which Daniel sees four beasts arise out of the sea: images of the powers and forces of this world, of the kingdoms that share dominion over this world and determine the course of history.
Then, as a counter-movement to the emergence of the beasts from the sea, he sees a man come down from heaven: an image of the holy people, of the holy power of humanity amid the inhuman powers that come from the deep…Matthew’s genealogy is thus a witness to the fidelity of God, who fulfilled the promise made to Abraham that he would be the bearer of a blessing for all humanity. The entire genealogy, with all its aberrations and all its ups and downs, is a shining testimony to the fidelity of God, who kept his word despite all of humanity’s failures and unworthiness.
From: Dogma und Verkundigung, pp. 317-18
Oct
8
The Eucharist is the heart and center of our worshipping life, but in order to be this center it must have a many-layered whole in which to live. Eucharist presupposes Baptism; it presupposes continual recourse to the sacrament of penance. The Holy Father has emphasized this most strongly in his encyclical “Redemptoris Hominis”. The first element of the Good News, he stresses, was “Repent!” “The Christ who invites us to the eucharistic meal is always the same Christ who exhorts us to penance, continually sayong ‘Repent!’” (IV, 20).
Where penance disappears, the Eucharist is no longer discerned and, as the Lord’s Eucharist, is destroyed. But Eucharist also presupposes marriage and ordination, the social and the public structure of the Church. It presupposes personal prayer, family prayer, and the paraliturgical prayer of the parish community. I would just like to mention two of the richest and deepest prayers of Christendom, prayers which are able to draw us again and again into the vast river of eucharistic prayer: the Stations of the Cross and the Rosary. One of the reasons why, nowadays, we are so discountenanced by the appeal of Asiatic or apparently Asiatic religious practices is that we have forgotten these forms of prayer.
The Rosary does not call for intense conscious efforts which would render it impossible but invites us to enter into the rhythm of quiet, peaceably bringing us peace and giving a name to this quietness: Jesus, the blessed fruit of the womb of Mary. Mary, who cherished the living Word in the recollected quiet of her heart and thus was priveleged to become the Mother of the incarnate Word, is the abiding pattern for all genuine worship, the Star which illuminated even a dark heaven and shows us the way. May she, the Mother of the Church, intercede for us so that we may be enabled to fulfill more and more the Church’s highest task: the glorification of the living God, from whom comes mankind’s salvation.
From” The Feast of Faith, pp. 52-53
Oct
7
In his last words on this earth, the Crucified One says to his mother: “Woman, behold your son” and to the disciple: “Behold your mother.” These words are the document on which the Church is founded, or, let us say, one of the fundamental statements in the document in which Jesus founded the Church and established his covenant with her. They make clear the meaning of “Church” and the manner in which God established his covenant, the new Covenant, with us.
He does this above all by laying claim to Mary’s Yes in a new and more general and even greater context. Her first Yes was to the Son that God willed to bestow on her and to the will of God that required her total and mysterious acquiescence to his incomprehensible and great design. But now, in the hour of the Cross, in the hour of Jesus Christ, she must say her Yes anew and in an even greater dimension. It is now a Yes to a new and different son, who becomes, through her, the same Son. It is a Yes in this new Son to all the sons and daughters that will be hers throughout all history. It is a Yes to whatever he may ask her to do for them throughout all history.
The Church has her foundation in this Yes of Mary that reaches into all history. And vice-versa: the Lord founded the Church by the very fact of giving his mother to the disciple. He gives us a mother, his mother. It is only in this gift that we understand what the Church is. The Church is not a machine, a collection of bureaucrats, of administrators, of events. This is the Church: that we are called into the family of Jesus Christ and so into a community of love with him.
From: Roman homilies, Sept. 18, 1985
Oct
6
There is a passion of suspicions, the animosity of which is far from which the spirit of the Gospel. There is an obsession with the letter that regards the liturgy of the Church as invalid and thus puts itself outside the Church. It is forgotten here that the validity of the liturgy depends primarily, not on specific words, but on the community of the Church; under the pretext of Catholicism, the very principle of Catholicism is denied, and, to a large extent, custom is substituted for truth.
In an intermediate space that is full of uncertainty, but, at the same time, full of honest effort and full of hope, are to be found those movements in which are expressed the indestructible longing for what is is primarily religious, for the nearness of the divine: the movements toward meditation and the Pentecostal movements, both of which are laden with ambiguities and dangers, but both of which are also full of possibilities for good.
Finally, there are a number of specifically ecclesial movements that promise new possibilities: Focolare, Cursillo, Communione e Liberazione, Catechumenate movements, and new forms of communities. Here there is apparent a search for a center that will give the lie to the diagnosis that religion is dead and that will open ways of living a new life built on faith that will testify anew to the inexhaustible fruitfulness of the faith of the Church…Whether or not the Council becomes a positive force in the history of the Church depends only indirectly on texts and organization; the crucial question is whether there are individuals - saints - who, by their personal willingness, which cannot be forced, are ready to effect something new and living.
From: Principles of Catholic Theology, p.377
Oct
3
The fight about crucifixes in the schools, being waged nowadays in Poland, and having been waged by our parents at the time of the Third Reich in Germany, is clearly symptomatic in character. For those parents in Poland - as it did for our parents back then - the cross in the schools symbolizes a last measure of freedom, and they do not want to be deprived of it by their totalitarian government. It represents the assurane of a humaneness whose eradication they see as the arrogant claim of absolute sovereignty over everyone, a sovereignty that no longer is bounded by the standards of the cross and therefore knows no bounds at all anymore. They fight for the public recognition of Christianity, and in doing so they fight for our common humane foundations and humane standards, indispensable also for the secular state.
If we no longer have the resolve to understand and defend such symbols as indispensable, then we make Christianity itself dispensable, while the nation as such does not gain greater pluralism and freedom; it rather loses its foundations. A nation needs public symbols of its constituent ideas. Even holidays as the public recognition of special times are part of this. Here lies the reason why Christianity must uphold those public symbols of its humaneness. But, of course, it can uphold them only if they are supported by the power of manifest convictions.
This is the challenge for us. If we lack conviction, and if we cannot convince others, we lose all claim to public recognition. We ourselves would then be dispensable and should admit as much. But our own lack of conviction will deprive society of things objectively indispensable to it: the spiritual foundation of its humaneness and its freedom. The only power that will gain Christianity its public recognition is ultimately the power of its intrinsic truth
Sep
26
Intrinsic to the basic structure of the act of faith is incorporation into the Church, the common situs of that which binds together and that which is bound. In Romans 6:17, for instance, this act of faith is defined as the process by which an individual submits himself to one particular creed and, in doing so, performs an act of obedience that comes from the heart, that is, from the center of his whole being.
This presumes that, in her catechesis, the Church proclaims and lives a particular creed which, on the one hand, is the essential foundation of her community and, on the other, is sustained by this community. To become a Christian is to enter into this one particular creed, into the communal form of faith. The inner bond between the community itself and this creed is expressed by the fact that acceptance into the community has the form of sacrament: Baptism and catechesis are inseparable. Entering into the community of faith means entering into a community of life and vice versa.
As part of the sacrament, this basic catechesis is not subject to the will of the Church. It is the mark of her identity, without which she is nothing, but which can, nevertheless, exist only in her communal life…The Apostle (John) opposed to the arrogance of an intellectual elite the the unsurpassability of simple and of the insight it bestows. The model of enlightened reason cannot assimilate the structure of faith. That is our problem today. But faith, for its part, is comprehensive enough to assimilate the intellectual offer of the Enlightenment and give it a task that is meaningful also for faith. That is our opportunity. We must make the effort to accept it.
See: Principles of Catholic Theology, pp.329-31
