Catholic theology yesterday and today: A Thomist’s response to Dr … – Catholic World Report

Undated photo of St. Peter's Basilica during Second Vatican Council. (Lothar Wolleh/Wikipedia)

It was with great interest that I read Dr. Larry Chapps recent column The Progressive Revolutions Continued Control of the Ecclesial Narrative (May 18, 2023). Dr. Chapp and I agree quite substantively on the current issues besetting the Church, as a kind of progressivism has moved into the daylight from the academy and among the clergy and laity more broadly. The desire to be a Church on the move, ultimately in step with the reigning zeitgeist of the contemporary order, risks reinflaming the controversies that beset the Church in the 19th century leading up to the First Vatican Council, and in the early 20th century in the context of the so-called Modernist Crisis.

It is with no small sorrow that I see the counter reaction to this state of affairs now placing the Second Vatican Council in the crosshairs of questioning. As a Ruthenian Catholic, I can list a host of conciliar fruits that have been immensely beneficial for the various Eastern Churches in union with Rome. I have no desire to aid those who look to reject the Council in reaction to the immense issues facing the Church. I understand many traditionalists rage concerning all those who wish to take up anew the project of what Jacques Maritain said was the chronolatrous fatuity of those who are choosing to kneel before the world. Aware of the dated and confrontational nature of the term, he nonetheless did not hesitate, early in The Peasant of the Garonne, to speak of the neo-modernismnot only of liberal Protestants but, more importantly for him, among a kind of immanent apostasy of Catholic thinkers within the Church. It was a situation (then in 1966, in the original French) that he deemed was a virulent fever, compared to which the modernism of Pius Xs time was only a modest hay-fever.

And the fever has raged on. However, sympathetically understanding traditionalist rage is one thing, accepting its anti-Conciliar rejections is another.

I believe, in any case, that Dr. Chapp would agree that Maritains diagnosis was correct. (In Peasant, Maritain shows himself to be deeply reverential in regard to the Council.) Obviously, the language of modernism is immensely fraught. In the mid-1940s, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagranges use of the term in response to the writings of certain theologians, most especially a work by Fr. Henri Bouillard, SJ, and certain privately circulating theological and philosophical papers, enflamed an entire debate which could have been conducted more irenically if the specter of Pascendi dominici gregis and the Anti-Modernist Oath were not so quickly evoked. Even Fr. Garrigou-Lagranges later interventions in this affair have remained mostly unknown, no doubt due to the rhetorically spectacular nature of the term modernism. Thus, we need not use this term, dating from the early 20th century and freighted with all sorts of resonances, nearly all of which serve only to prevent understanding.

What remains true, however, is the fact that our debates today over faith, theology, and the life of the Church remain in basic continuity with the longer arc of history that goes back into the 19th century. Fr. Gerald McCool, SJ, who wrote from a perspective differing from my own, well observed in his Nineteenth Century Scholasticism:

The contemporary debate over theological method is simply another phase in the dialectical movement of Catholic theologys response to the challenge of post-Enlightenment thought from the beginning of the nineteenth century through Vatican I, Aeterni Patris, the Modernist crisis, between-the-wars Thomism, the New Theology controversy, and Vatican II up to the present. To understand where we are in Catholic scientific theology, we must understand where we have come from and how far we have traveled in the course of the last two centuries. The contemporary quest for an adequate method in Catholic theology has a history. The better that history is known, the clearer will be the theologians understanding of his own discipline and his own scientific task.

Now, to bring things back into connection to Dr. Chapps recent article. I completely agree with his concerns, and on the whole with his general outlook concerning the nature of the Second Vatican Council as well as its interpretation during the papacies of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI. However, I should like to register a point of nuance, which I actually think is of assistance in overcoming the progressivist mania of today. In short, I think that it is very important not to present the Council as a kind of definitive victory of Ressourcement theology over scholasticism. I must be very careful, however, with what I mean in this regard, for it is not at all my desire to reinflame fratricidal conflict between Scholastics and Ressourcement theologians.

Obviously, every Council has had its theological winners and losers. And the Second Vatican Council was motivated by the interventions of non-Scholastic and even (faithful) anti-Scholastic voices. But, in order for there to be continuity in the midst of reform from one period of the Church to another, we must have a kind of respect for the orthodox position that came prior to that Council. To present the Ressourcement vein of theology (itself very internally differentiated), even in its Communio form, as the sole theological outlook of the post-conciliar Church risks a kind of condemnation of the whole of post-medieval theology, which would supposedly be nothing more than a rats nest of theological missteps from the time of the high Middle Ages until the mid-20th century.

Interestingly enough, contemporary Thomism sometimes expresses this sort of attitude as well, often treating contemporary scholarly literature with infinitely more respect than the scholastics of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Leonine Revival periods. But, the outlook is also present in certain veins of Communio thinkers, who have at least the propensity to a kind of disdain for Baroque scholasticism and pre-conciliar Thomism, all too often referring to it dismissively as neo-Thomism, despite the fact that the latter term covers over an immense domain of differentiation within this period. (And of course, there were other Scholastic schools in addition to Thomism, which, however, did manage to crowd out the others.)

I fear that unless this divide is not healed, there is no path forward. My recent work with Dr. Jon Kirwan, titled The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Thologie (CUA Press, 2023), is intendedto open a discussion about the possibility of viewing the scholasticism of the pre-Conciliar period as more than a reactionary posture, to see even traditional Thomism as a truly living perspective of theology. I will be the first to admit that such Scholasticism has a kind of totalizing attitude, understandably sounding as though it looked to subsume all things into a single Theological Science, wherein Thomist overlords would graciously dole out roles to various theologians, all as handmaidens in the thousand-year Thomist reign. But, chastened for many decades following upon the Council, and still far from representing the theological mainstream, such a Thomism today stands at a crossroads: shall it offer itself as a reactionary solution to the failures of post-Conciliar theology, or does it wish to live in dialogue with fellow Catholics as a living theological tradition that shares many concerns with the great themes of post-Conciliar theology that are dear to men such as Dr. Chapp? The latter is the only acceptable position for anyone who is ecclesiastically minded.

To this end, I offer a brief list of some themes related to the Council but having rich, organic connections to pre-Conciliar theology. My point is not that the old should replace the new but, rather, that if faithful Catholics were to take seriously people coming from different theological traditionsThomists (even quite strict ones like myself) not presenting themselves as sole alternatives to the current malaise, and Communio theologians not presenting themselves as unqualified victors at the Councilwe would find that contemporary theology would be all the richer. If I personally trumpet the riches of the Scholastic tradition, this is because I have professionally labored in uncovering these riches and wish to present them to the reading public for consideration.

Without being exhaustive, I propose the following examples of points of continuity.

Ecclesiology. The entire theology of the Mystical Body of Christ stands behind the continued developments in Lumen Gentium. Most are aware of the work of Fr. mile Mersch, SJ. However, one cannot underrate the importance of Fr. Sebastian Tromp, SJ, who exercised great influence upon Pius XIIs encyclical Mystici Corporis. (Also, many other works were written on the theology of the Mystical Body of Christ during the first half of the century.) Moreover, there is the profound and massive multi-volume Lglise du verbe incarn of Msgr. (later-Cardinal) Charles Journet. And, much is owed to the insights of certain scholastic thinkers like Fr. Louis Billot, SJ and others who ensured that the Tractatus De Ecclesia was appropriately moved to the context of the Tractatus de Verbo Incarnato and out of the apologetic concerns that overburdened it in many of the manuals of the era. (I hasten to add, however, that Billot is not my Thomistic cup of tea. But credit is due where it is due!)

After the Council, Journet masterfully incorporates the important theme of the Churchs sacramentality into his overall ecclesiological framework. (One finds rich echoes of this in the writings of Fr. Jean-Herv Nicolas, OP who really could be cited in most of these sections below; however, he is a kind of figure overlapping the two eras, so I will not mention him again.)

Christocentrism. Often, Thomism is critiqued for being insufficiently Christocentric. However, as Fr. Dylan Schraeder has masterfully shown in his work on the Salmanticenses, there were important Thomist voices who took quite seriously the challenges raised by the Scotists in this regard. One can find a deep engagement of the Salmanticensess position in someone like Garrigou-Lagrange, as well as in Journets treatment of Christs capital grace. With great spiritual profundity, Bl. Columba Marmion, OSBs spiritual works are arguably the lengthy articulation of a Christ-centered spirituality which is ultimately Thomistically grounded upon the profound Pauline theme of life in Christ.

The fontes revelationis. During the Council, Joseph Ratzinger rightly noted that the language of fontes revelationis was transferred from the earlier scholastic terminology of fons scientiae, that is, the sources of theological science. Many of the 19th and 20th century manuals would treat of the fontes revelationis in their treatises De ecclesia, which were placed at the start of theology, after treatises on revelation and before the treatise(s) on the One and Triune God. There would be two fontes: Scripture and Tradition. The concern, understandably and validly, was to show how the Church proposes the revealed message.

However, such discussions displaced the treatise that was known as De locis theologicis, concerned with the places (loci) from which truths were to be drawn for theological argumentation. This particular treatise was developed from a posthumous work by Melchior Cano, OP (15091560). Its most coherent Thomist treatment dates from the time of the Council on the pen of Fr. Emmanuel Doronzo, O.M.I. in his Theologia dogmatica. And the De locis is related to the topic of positive theology, the pre-conciliar developments of which are excellently presented in the doctoral dissertation by Br. Luke Celestine Salm, F.S.C. (19212009) defended in 1955 at The Catholic University of America. One might also consider consulting the late-19th-century De locis Fr. Jacques-Joachim Berthier, OP, the reforms of studies undertaken by Fr. Ambroise Gardeil, OP, and the German works on Cano by Lang and Hogenmller. (Obviously, in relation to the details of Dei verbum, there are still open questions regarding, for example, the material sufficiency of Scripture. However, the overly-simplified treatment of the two fontes does not reflect the best of the Scholastic discussions of this period.)

Theological assent. Much of the crisis of the post-Conciliar period has been concerned with the Churchs authority, which was rejected so immensely throughout the world. The older articulation of the theological censures plays an important role in understanding the nature of the Churchs authority in various domains. Especially regarding the nature of her definitive authority in non-revealed matters, we still stand in need of a definitive resolution to the question concerning what used to be called ecclesiastical faith (assent given to definitive but non-De fide truths taught by the Church). Many Thomists rejected this notion as an accretion entering later Scholasticism in course of the anti-Jansenist controversies. However, I suspect that a careful revisiting of this topic can at least provide light for how to think of the various levels of assent and, hence, the Churchs authority in teaching.

Development of dogma. The last point about ecclesiastical faith is related to the topic of dogmatic development. On this topic, too many people dismiss neo-scholastics as being fixists without any useful theory of dogmatic development. However, first of all, there is the work of Fr. Marin-Sola, which many view as presenting the magisterial Thomistic position regarding dogmatic development. It is a rich and detailed treatment of the questions involved in this topic. His views were not accepted by all, including by Fr. Reginald Schultes, OP, who taught the history of dogma at the Angelicum in the 1910s and 1920s. Fr. Schultes was very deeply read in the history surrounding the notions of implicit and explicit faith, concerning which he wrote a detailed study in German. His objections to Fr. Marn-Sola appeal to important themes in the history of Western theology addressing the nature of dogmatic development, and in his Introductio ad historia dogmatum, Fr. Schultes in no way shows himself to be a fixist in matters of dogmatic history. He does, however, critique certain (though not all) aspects of Fr. Marn-Solas theory. The debates aroused during this period have a currency that is still illuminating today. (Full disclosure, I am in the midst of translating Fr. Schultess work. I am inclined to think that he does register important critiques of Fr. Marn-Sola.)

Moral and spiritual theology. Very often, Fr. Servais Pinckaers, OP has been credited with overcoming the casuistic legalism of the earlier moral-theological writings penned in the Latin Church. However, as I have shown elsewhere, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange registered nearly identical critiques a generation earlier, and his older confrere Fr. Ambroise Gardeil also lamented the effects of casuistic excess upon moral theology. (Others could be listed.) Also, there was a great flowering of ascetical and mystical theology during this period. Merely in the line of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, one might consider Fr. Juan Arintero, OPs The Mystical Evolution in the Development and Vitality of the Church. Many other examples could be given. The Conciliar texts on the universal call to holiness are unthinkable without considering the immense riches of the pre-Conciliar discussions about the universal call to divinization and mysticism. Much, also, can be drawn from the posthumous writings of Fr. Michel Labourdette, OP, long-time professor of moral theology at the Dominican studium in Toulouse and peritus at Vatican II.

Politics. Even in matters political, there is much of interest. We find ourselves today revisiting all the questions concerning integralism. However, there are, in fact, various kinds of integralism, from what is found in authors like Frs. Billot and Garrigou-Lagrange (and they differ from each other too) to the much more mitigated forms that one finds in Maritain and Cardinal Journet. (The latter wrote a very large volume Exigences chrtiennes en politique.) Moreover, in addition to questions directly related to integralism, how can one fail to mention the critiques of liberalism that one finds in Maritain, not only in his early The Three Reformers but even later on in works such as The Twilight of Civilization. These works contain much, though in a robustly Thomistic language, that one can find in Fr. Henri de Lubacs study of secular humanism. And, also, on political matters, I would be remiss if I did not mention the works of Yves Simon on authority and democratic governmental theory.

In conclusion, I should add that of course, there are many other theological approaches than the two that I have mentioned here. There are many kinds of Thomism; Communio is not a single, united school; and there are many kinds of faithful Catholic thought (in East and West) that cannot be subsumed under these labels. However, there is something emblematic involved in contrasting the great theologians of the Communio approach to the more scholastically-inflected authors I cited above. I wish to draw from the rhetorical strength gained by slightly simplified genealogies, all the while recognizing the limitations of these classifications.

In any event, it is in the interest of the Church that points of continuity between the pre-Conciliar and post-Conciliar Church be acknowledged and even embraced. I do not expect, nor even desire, universal agreement in philosophy and theology in the life of the Church. These domains are always those of debate and discussion. But, what is needed now, in the midst of head-spinning discontinuity, is an appreciation of the continuity of faithful Catholic thought in the 20th century, despite some of its major disagreements and alterations. I hope that in the essentials, Dr. Chapp and others like him can agree with this proposal.

Endnotes:

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Catholic theology yesterday and today: A Thomist's response to Dr ... - Catholic World Report