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How are Catholics in the United States receiving
the Catechism of the Catholic Church? Has the response been warm
or frosty? The answers to these questions will determine to a large
extent the genuine pastoral unfolding of the often neglected or
distorted teaching of the documents of Vatican II and indeed shape the
theological literacy of the Catholic faithful. In the face of criticisms
directed against the Catechism, we need to find a framework in which
questions of magisterial teaching, the local church, inculturation and
Apostolic Tradition can be integrated and studied. I believe that such a
context exists in the concept of "reception," which has
received serious scholarly attention since Vatican II, in large part
because it serves to explain the impact of an ecumenical council upon
the church throughout the world. We can apply its implications to
different views of the Catechism.
I. The Meaning of "Reception"
A recent article on the meaning of reception
distinguishes between its classical understanding as the acceptance by
local churches of the teaching of a Council and, in more contemporary
usage, an ecumenical consensus arrived at through dialogue between
churches.[1] Ironically, each of the uses of the term has application to
the Catechism. Its introduction into the experience of the Church in the
United States is illustrative of the first sense of
"reception" as the response of a local church to the ordinary
papal magisterium of the universal Church. While the direct textual and
thematic links between Vatican II, the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the
Catechism is apparent, the transmission of these texts (and the
realities they describe) is not so apparent. An intense Romanophobic
stance on the part of some has diluted, indeed distorted, the meaning of
these historic documents and the sensus fidei which they
authentically embody.
Current controversies also bring into play
considerations that are virtually ecumenical, the more contemporary
focus of "reception," for the perspectives of the Catechism
and American catechetical presuppositions differ markedly, almost to the
point where the respective positions amount to an "ecumenical"
dialogue—two visions of church struggling to
understand the other. It sometimes appears that theological critiques
emanating from Western democracies propose a media-generated consensus
fidelium rather than an interiorized sensus fidei in their
response to authoritative ecclesial texts. The sociological starting
point inevitably places a document in an "ecumenical" context
that highlights differences and puts issues into an adversarial rather
than integrative light.
This article will argue that the painstaking
drafting and promulgation of the Catechism constitute a legitimate,
authentic and indispensable "reception" of Vatican II. That is
to say, its existence and teaching uniquely fulfill, in a substantive
and not merely symbolic way, the magisterial identity of the Second
Vatican Council. In proposing this argument, we will examine and
critique alternative views which hold that the Catechism is (a) in some
way unrelated to Vatican II, (b) of minor significance, or (c) a flawed
document in discontinuity with the Council.
Few contemporary theologians have spent as much
time as Avery Dulles, S.J. in studying the ground-breaking text of Dei
Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. In an essay
on tradition as a theological source, Dulles points out that Dei
Verbum speaks for the most part of "tradition" in the
singular, whereas Trent, stressing the importance of objective content,
had spoken of "traditions." Demonstrating his awareness of the
interaction of history and doctrine, Dulles attaches importance to the
historical means or modalities of "traditioning." Dulles,
along with scholars such as Aidan Nichols and Jaroslav Pelikan, reminds
us of the critical importance of historical deeds and decisions
connected with the transmission of doctrinal formulas.[2] Expressions of
belief are not merely academic abstractions but an essential part of the
life and fabric of faith of the Universal Church:
The Constitution on Divine Revelation . . . insists
on the nonverbal elements in tradition: Christ communicates the gospel
not by his words alone but also by his dealings with others and his
behavior (DV 7). The apostles transmit the gospel not only by
preaching but also by examples and ordinances (institutiones,
ibid.).[3]
Obstacles thwart transmission
Just as the owner of an automobile should be
greatly alarmed with any transmission problem, so too the prospect of
obstacles that thwart the transmission of a vital text can only trouble
a Church historically determined to connect liturgy and belief, doctrine
and life.
Led by Yves Congar, O.P., recent efforts to specify
more precisely the nonverbal or historical means of transmitting
apostolic tradition have underscored the importance of
"reception." Congar has described it as "the process by
means of which a church (body) truly takes over as its own a resolution
that it did not originate in regard to its self [sic], and acknowledges
the measure it promulgates as a rule applicable to its own
life."[4]
By way of example, Congar examined the historical
setting of liturgical changes to determine whether reception, non-reception,
or something between these two poles, occurred. Congar cites the
replacement of the "Gallican" rites in France in the
nineteenth century by the Roman liturgy as a legitimate instance of
reception but, in contrast, believes that the manner of substitution of
the Roman liturgy for the Mozarabic liturgy in Spain used by Pope
Gregory VII does not provide an instance of genuine
"reception."[5]
A vital link with Vatican II Congar affirms the
importance of reception at the Second Vatican Council:
That the concept of reception is still valid was
shown adequately by Vatican II in its envisaging a collegial initiative
emanating from the bishops, which could be a 'verus actus collegialis'
only if the pope approved it 'vel libere recipiat.' . . . This text
speaks of the reception of the privilege of the bishop of Rome that
Vatican II so firmly reaffirmed and to which history bears adequate
witness. It constitutes an authentic statement regarding reception since
it is a matter of consent (by means of judgment) by one church body to a
resolution put forward by others. Apart from this, law as at present
knows no case of reception (so far as I am aware) other than acceptance
by the pope, and, after him, by the world episcopate, of new bishops of
the Eastern rite elected to their patriarchate after a mere 'nihil
obstat' from Rome, but neither named nor confirmed by the Holy See.[6]
One can readily find internal confirmation in the
pages of the Catechism of its vital link with Vatican II. Hundreds of
references to the documents of Vatican II are cited. These citations
abound on each page, serving not as "proof-texts" but as the
warp and woof of the Catechism. The Catechism is indebted for its themes
to Vatican II to such an extent that it is no overstatement to say that
there could not be a Catechism without the preceding Council.
This phenomenon is hardly without precedent when we
recall that the Roman Catechism emerged as the direct legacy of
the Council of Trent. It exercised an enormous impact upon the life of
the Church in the era of the Counter-Reformation.
There are some surely who would concede to their
dismay that the Roman Catechism did in fact incorporate the
debates, decisions, texts, and expressions of Trent into the liturgy and
catechesis of the Church. Such critics, lamenting what they would
consider the polemical hard edges of the Roman Catechism, would
invoke the second meaning of "reception" cited above, namely,
ecumenical consensus, and argue that the Roman Catechism delayed
or prevented real reception from occurring insofar as it precluded a
genuine dialogue with Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and the other Reformers.
But such an approach which attaches more weight to
denominational debate than to the unfolding of apostolic teaching within
the ambit of the Catholic communion does not situate the center of
magisterial teaching in the matrix of papacy and council but seeks in a
quixotic fashion for a hypothetical "consensus" to emerge from
the mix of contrary views. In effect, consensus replaces communion. In
suggesting that truth emerges from the clash of opposites rather than
from the organic development of theology at the service of faith, such
an ecclesiology is indebted far more to Hegel than to the Holy Spirit.
It is true that dialogue with other points of view has a long and
distinguished pedigree in the history of theology, not least of which
are the varied responses to cultural currents found in patristic
writings. But it ought not to be overlooked that an ecumenical council
is itself a powerful dialogue with many perspectives. Trent did not
merely "react" to Luther but attempted to find terms, methods
and pastoral approaches that could validate its understanding of the
Catholic heritage, including, of course, Apostolic Tradition. Not to
permit a Council to implement and apply the fruit of extensive
reflection and spirited discussion clearly sacrifices the historical
integrity of the council on the altar of ideology. Genuine ecumenism is
served best by allowing each tradition to unpack its own
self-understanding. The Roman Catechism was in a sense the
indispensable pastoral corollary of Trent, even as the Catechism of
the Catholic Church constitutes the irreplaceable pastoral corollary
of Vatican II. Notwithstanding the anxiety of its critics, its existence
and promulgation demonstrate the development of doctrine identified by
John Henry Newman, considered by many to be a precursor of Vatican II.
This is not to suggest that the theological opus
of a Council can be considered monolithic; the historical accounts of
Trent by Hubert Jedin and contemporary accounts of different
perspectives document amply the presence of a healthy plurality of
approaches. Nevertheless, the documents that emerge from conciliar
debate represent not so much human consensus and political compromise
but a theological synthesis, a genuine gift of the Holy Spirit,
illuminating and directing the universal Church. We see in history the
genuine Paradosis of the Paraclete, the development of monuments
of tradition which contextualize the questions of a particular age.
Is the Catechism. marked by any explicit or even
implicit rejection of the teaching of Vatican II? Assuredly not! The
indebtedness of the Catechism to the Council is not merely citational
but substantive: an ecclesiology of communion, a renewed sense of
sacrament, a moral theology which stresses virtue and beatitude, an
examination of prayer as public, mystical and intimately personal. Any
purported clash with or diminution of the Council implicitly starts from
the flawed premise that a disembodied "spirit" of Vatican II
captured the Zeitgeist of the 1960s pop culture, a venture in
revolution rather than renewal.
The kind of development recognized by Newman in his
classic work has as its hallmark continuity, not rupture. It would
appear that those who might criticize the Catechism as in some way at
odds with Vatican II have an impossible burden of proof to meet when a
continuity of participants, themes, texts, and texture links Council
with Catechism.
II. The Reception of the Catechism: Damming with
Feints of Praise
The sense of published responses to the
<Catechism> by individuals long associated with what might be
called "the catechetical establishment" have ranged from
serious caveats to shrill alarms. One can see a weather reporter
pointing grimly to the arrival of a wintry blast of dangerous storm
patterns on the weather map. Some have suggested that the Catechism not
be distributed widely to the faithful, that it is not designed for
classroom use, that it is only a set of guidelines and certainly not a
text to be read at home, that it is only a framework for adaptation and
not the result of the adaptation, that it represents merely one
ecclesiology among many rather than the fruit of the Council. We are
told far more about what the Catechism is not, than what it is,
what we are not to do, than what we might do. At this point we
are ready to put on a trench coat and flee for the hurricane shelter.
What ecclesiology explains such a chilly reception?
It would appear that many voices connected with the catechetical
establishment are concerned that the Catechism proceeds along a
different path than do their products and efforts since the Council.
From a human standpoint one can understand the reluctance to take a
second look at one's efforts, but mounting evidence testifies to the
generic illiteracy of youngsters on matters of the greatest importance.
To charge that such illiteracy exists is not to attack anyone, least of
all individuals in search of fundamental truths or writers of textbooks
seeking to address the problem. But a problem there is. A financial
advisor who neglects to inform a client when bank records indicate
bankruptcy is incompetent. A catechetical establishment that will not
face up to failures of method and pedagogy is comparable to the S &
L industry which too long denied the existence of failed financial
institutions.
Two additional points should be made about the
"knowledge deficit" on the part of many Catholics. First,
secular scholars have recognized that, for different reasons, students
have not learned essential lessons about cultural literacy. In his Dictionary
of Cultural Literacy, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. began the task of alerting
students at different levels of instruction about foundational concepts
of culture. So the statement that Catholic students are unfamiliar with
their faith is not an isolated datum nor in any way an attribution of
bad faith to catechists but a frank acknowledgement of a phenomenon
already confirmed by scholars in many disciplines.
Second, to say that Catholic students do not know
their faith is not to charge them with being stupid. Students cannot be
blamed for what they were never taught. At a time when former Secretary
of Education William Bennett's The Book of Virtues has become a
best-seller, one would be hard pressed to find a Catholic high school
student who could identify the cardinal virtues. Ironically, CCD
students, hectored on how to feel but neglected on how to think, can
find in the Catholic tradition on the virtues a splendid contribution to
the unity of head and heart so essential to real education. Our
students, like the rest of us, are selectively educated. They have
learned, or will be forced to learn, far more about high-tech gadgetry
than preceding generations. But how they translate that knowledge into
wise choices should be the concern of catechists. It is indeed the
concern of the Pope.
Think of a patient going under the frightening MRI
tube in a hospital. The patient knows nothing of what the doctors and
technicians are observing but the images resonated provide a detailed,
3-D picture of the inner workings of the patient's metabolism! On one
side, there is highly detailed information, on the other side, there is
a lack of awareness, if not fear. Do we not find some troubling
analogies in our catechetical landscape today? The
"implementation" of the Catechism should not be
permitted to dam up a potent source of Catholic thought. It should be
permitted to flow without constraint into the minds, hearts and souls of
the faithful. Anything that impedes the flow of this historic text into
the lifeblood of the Church in America smacks of either elitism or
gnosticism, neither a desirable option.
III. Immunizing the Catechism through
Superficial Adaptation
Even the harshest critic of the Catechism must
concede that in some sense it is a spiritual good. (It is painful even
to be forced to extract such a concession for a reality of profound
richness, an inexhaustible treasure of truths and goods which flow from
an enriched Catholic tradition.) But we can at least start with that
modest premise and move to an urgent conclusion: the Catechism must not
be given a minimalist response of polite indifference or condescending,
benign neglect.
The historical possibilities of such a nonresponse
are sketched in the insights of another essay on reception in history:
Reception as an ecclesiological reality implies the
formation of a corporate openness which takes place through bearers of
reception who may be juridical or nonjuridical authorities. When a
significant spiritual good is newly introduced into a global perception
of the life of faith and thereby begins to affect the practice of the
faith, a new synthesis of understanding and practice of the faith is
initiated. Since this threatens the equilibrium of the community's
self-understanding, it may cause a serious negative reaction in some
quarters. Elsewhere, the good may be immunized by a superficial
adaptation. Examples of these alternative reactions can be illustrated
from the history of the early general councils of the church or from the
way in which Vatican II's teaching has been 'received' or 'rejected'
within segments of the Roman Catholic Church.[7]
Will there be a "corporate openness" to
the Catechism? How energetic and enthusiastic have been our local
"bearers of reception"? The warning signs are already apparent
that the Catechism is viewed in some quarters as a source of
disequilibrium. It may very well threaten the self-understanding of some
within the catechetical establishment who are sincerely but wrongly
convinced that the papacy of John Paul II is a problem. The substitution
of a private agenda, no matter how idealistic or well-motivated, for
that of authentic church teaching can simply not be allowed to happen.
If Catholics in the United States are "immunized" against the
enormous spiritual good which the Catechism represents, it means that
even more generations of young Catholics, struggling with issues of
increasing complexity, will be denied a vital resource in their efforts
to know what it means to be Catholic and what it is that God expects of
them.
Let us critique two positions which would
minimalize or even repudiate the impact of the Catechism. First, it is
argued by some that non-reception, namely, pastoral indifference or
nonobservance, invalidates the teaching. Here the time frame of
reception is important. It took more than fifty-six years for the Nicene
creed to be "received" into the universal Church. Half a
century of "synods, excommunications, exiles, and imperial
interventions and violence" (Congar's phrase) characterized the
initial "non-reception" of Nicaea. Moreover, Congar carefully
notes that the level of acceptance subsequent to a Council, its
reception, does not confer authenticity upon the conciliar teaching:
In this respect, reception is no more than the
extension or prolongation of the conciliar process: it is associated
with the same essential 'conciliarity' of the Church.... It is not
reception which bestows their legitimacy upon a conciliar decision and
an authentic decree: they obtain their legitimation and their obligatory
value from the authorities who have supported them.[8]
Congar's scholarship removes the claim of some that
pastoral opposition or dissent to magisterial teaching thereby
constitutes a non-reception and nullifies the validity of the teaching.
(Applied to sexual ethics, this spurious argument, advanced by
dissenters to Humanae Vitae, is exploded by the epistemological
reality that sinful conduct, far from invalidating moral precepts, is
precisely the reason why moral precepts exist. The prevalence of violent
crime does not invalidate moral precepts against violent crime.)
A second argument advanced against the Catechism is
that it fails to account for cultural differences between the American
experience and the Roman teaching. In response to this invocation of
inculturation, a cover, it seems, for doctrinal divergence, we can make
several observations: (1) no culture enjoys absolute status as the
clearest path to living the Gospel; (2) even secular philosophers are
increasingly critical of the fragmentation, loss of vision flowing from
a common good, tribal balkanization and consumer-driven narcissism of
the American cultural scene; (3) the positive features of the American
culture, such as the flourishing of democracy, do not negate or
circumscribe the mandate of the Church, given by Christ, to proclaim the
Gospel and hard truths traceable to Gospel teaching. The Gospel is best
grasped when its sharp edges are shown to be manifestly counter-cultural.
The neuralgic reaction to the Catechism by some actually illustrates
that the Catechism has not allowed the Gospel or Tradition to be
domesticated.
In the last analysis, our concerns are not so much
with the canonical, pastoral and magisterial authenticity of the
Catechism, for its authority, promulgated with unimpeachable historical
precedent and world-wide input, is self-evident and beyond reasonable
cavil. Our concerns must be rather with the education and formation of
generations of believers, present and future. The Catechism is not a
handgun to be kept out of the reach of the innocent, safely locked away
in a steel vault, but an oasis of truth flowing back to the streams of
apostolic witness to the Lord of history. If I may paraphrase a famous
riposte about the meaning of the Church as Mother and Teacher,
Reception, si, Rejection, no!
ENDNOTES
1 Thomas P. Rausch, S.J., s.v.
"Reception," The New Dictionary of Theology. See also
Thomas P. Rausch, S.J., "Reception Past and Present," Theological
Studies 47 (1986) 497-508.
2 See Aidan Nichols O.P., The Shape of Catholic
Theology (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1991) and
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the
Development of Doctrine (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
1989) 5 Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since 1700).
3 Avery Dulles, S.J., The Craft of Theology:
From Symbol to System (New York: Crossroad, 1992), p. 95.
4 Yves Congar, "Reception as an
Ecclesiological Reality," in Giuseppi Alberigo and Anton Weiler (ed
s .), Election and Consensus in the Church, Concilium 77 (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1972) 43-68, at 45. This article is a condensed
translation by John Griffiths of "La 'Reception' comme realite
ecclesiologique," Revue des sciences et theologiques 56
(1992), 370-403.
5 Ibid., p. 55.
6 Ibid., p. 45. Congar cites Lumen Gentium
22 and Christus Dominus 4 as texts which illustrate and clarify
the meaning of "reception."
7 Edward J. Kilmartin, "Reception in History:
An Ecclesiological Phenomenon and its Significance," Journal of
Ecumenical Studies 21 (1984): 34-54, at 37.
8 Congar, p. 64.
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