Bodies of Christ in Seas of Change
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Bodies of Christ in Seas of Change The Relationship between Ecclesiology, Politics and Practice in the Conditioning of Twentieth Century Roman Catholic Responses to Violence Submitted by Matthew John Paul Tan BA (Hons)/LLB A Thesis Submitted in Total Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of a Doctorate in Theology School of Theology Faculty of Theology and Philosophy Australian Catholic University Research Services Macauley Campus PO Box 456 Virginia QLD 4014 Australia Submitted 1st Sept 2009 2 Thesis Abstract This thesis examines how Christian interpretation is shaped by, and also shapes, the political contexts within which the Church is situated. The ecclesial identification of, and response to, sites of political violence serves as this thesis‟ primary point of reference. It argues that ecclesiology, the imaging of the Church as the Body of Christ, constitutes the central node that shapes the Church's reading of the political signs of the times generated by other social bodies. Because the central investigation necessarily implicates both theology and social theory, this thesis begins by identifying frameworks of sociopolitical analysis that properly correlate the two fields. It will critique approaches shaped by the assumptions of Modern social science, whose obsession with autonomous and strategic self- maximization, together with what is only scientifically verifiable, lead to a deliberate a priori exclusion of “irrational” religion. It will also critique seemingly “postmodern” analyses that betray lingering Modern influences, and argue for a more thoroughgoing postmodernism in which individuals, communities, materiality and transcendence operate harmoniously with one another. It will then employ Graham Ward's cultural hermeneutics as the framework that not only exhibits this thoroughgoing postmodernism, but also engages all aspects of this thesis‟ inquiry. Through the lens of Ward‟s cultural hermeneutics, this thesis will show how ecclesiology emerges from practical engagements between the Church as a social configuration with other social configurations. It will explain the implication of corporeal practices and the imagination in the formation of such configurations, or social imaginaries. It will then demonstrate how the recruitment of bodies into communal practices in turn either weaken or strengthen one imaginary vis a vis another. However, in the course of these shifts in corporeal configurations around the Church, the thesis will also show how ecclesiologies themselves will slowly lose their persuasive power. This creates with the Church a need for communal reconfiguration to facilitate a reading of the contemporary signs of the times. The next four chapters outline how political change grounded in overlapping corporeal and communal practices conditioned three twentieth century Roman Catholic ecclesiological archetypes: 3 the "Perfect Society", "Mystical Body" and "Nuptial Communion". This analysis will take place by reference to four key historical episodes: the European liberal and industrial revolutions, the age of the dictators in Germany and Italy, post-war Latin America and late-Soviet Poland. In each episode, this thesis will show how the image of the Body of Christ became conditioned by a specific combination of practices operating within political, intellectual and ecclesial sites of power. It will also outline how that image in turn conditioned the practices that engaged the sites of political violence, and show how and why each image, and the practices that sprung from it, eventually desiccated. The thesis concludes with a critical reflection, via a set of thematic constants, on the implications of the historical data for ecclesiology and the Church‟s evangelical mission in light of its contemporary context. Focal points include the need for ecclesial vigilance in light of the imaging of the Body of Christ by reference to non-Christian contexts, attention to the recruitment of bodies as evangelical practices, the ubiquity of deference to authority and the stubborn allure of defining the political realm by reference to statecraft. It will then look to contemporary processes of "descularisation" and the increasing recognition of the salience of ritual and show how desire and liturgy can act as avenues for the emergence of new forms of ecclesial politics, where credible claims of the Gospel can be advanced without being beholden to the distortions that proceed from the assumptions inherent in Modern cultural forms. 4 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 6 2. Social Theory and Transcendence: Antagonisms and Correlations 18 3. Bodies of Christ: Ecclesiology and Cultural Hermeneutics 36 4. The Perfect Society and the Age of Revolution 72 5. The Mystical Body and the Totalitarian State 118 6. The “Church of the Poor” at the Economic Periphery 171 7. Nuptial Communion and Polish Communism 221 8. Conclusion: Constants and Prospects 269 9. Bibliography 292 5 1 Introduction Framing the Question This thesis examines Christian interpretation in light of political contexts. Fundamentally, it is concerned with the way in which the latter shapes the former, and with the manner in which resulting Christian interpretations feed back into political transformations. In elaborating on this process, the first point of embarkation would be the apparent tension that exists within the Church‟s mission to both extend Christ‟s “light of revelation to the gentiles”,1 and “read the signs of the times”.2 The Second Vatican Council noted that the Church, while claiming its place as the “guide…on the journey towards eternal beatitude”,3 is simultaneously journeying as an “exile on earth”4. Given this apparent contradiction, many questions arise pertaining to the Church‟s competence to judge the world while fulfilling its task of “reading the signs of the times” that circulate within the world. Nowhere is this questioning more intense than in the political realm, the reading of which forms the central focal point of this thesis. Because of the great investment of social capital into the political realm as the privileged site of social change and well being, its integrity is guarded jealously against any unwelcome intrusion. In a post-9/11 context, the persona non grata of choice is what many term 1 Luke 2:32 2 Matthew 16:3 3 Paul VI, Lumen Gentium (1964), 21 http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen- gentium_en.html. This document will hereinafter be cited as “LG”. 4 Ibid., 49 6 “religion”, in particular the Christian religion and its communicator, the Church. A particular line of questioning casts doubt over the Church‟s ability to be more competent than other political players in judging sociopolitical processes, however theologically charged that judgment might be, considering that the Church is just as embedded in those same sociopolitical processes as all other political players. If the Church is indeed embedded in these political processes, and if these processes no longer look to Christian sources for legitimation, then the Church would be engaged battles for influence with all other sociopolitical forms. While revelation by its very nature transcends the world, the contemporary Church as the site of revelation cannot be conceived outside the aforementioned battles, but must be thought of as emerging out of them.5 The fact that the Church is in the world, however, gives rise to questions concerning whether any Christian theological judgment would merely reflect the influences of the context within which the Church is situated. This in turn leads to doubt concerning the uniqueness of the Church‟s contributions, and the ability of the Church to change inequitable sociopolitical developments, the most prominent of these being the ubiquity of violence. At its inception, the concern of this project was not so much the well-worn debate about whether violence or peace necessarily emerge from religious sources, but how religious actors formulate responses to violence when it occurs. In its current form, the issue of responses to violence still figures highly. This however is secondary to the consideration of just how the Church arrives at such responses, and why those responses differ in different places and times. This thesis takes its cue from the observations by Stanley Fish, who doubts the ready accessibility of evidence to establish the veracity of any claim or conclusion. This point is important because responses to violence come after receiving the evidence of a violent situation. However, says Fish, such evidence does not exist independently, but rather emerges from interpretations, which are borne out by an immersion into a socially generated web of “assumptions…that produce the field of inquiry in the context of which…something can appear as evidence”.6 Perceiving evidence of violence, as 5 Terry Veling, Living in the Margins: Intentional Communities and the Art of Interpretation (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 30. 6 Stanley Fish, "God Talk, Part 2," The New York Times (2009) 7 well as responding to it, requires first an immersion in interpretive strategies borne out by regimes of knowledge that are socially constituted.7 With Fish, this thesis argues that analyzing the Church‟s responses to violence proceeds on an understanding that the Church, though it is the prefigurement of the heavenly Jerusalem, is nonetheless a socially constituted, situated and conditioned regime of knowledge. Christians as members of this configuration will find themselves immersed