The Art of Magisterium: a New Way of Making Sense of the Faith Gerard Mannion Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA Part I: The Magisterial Climate of Post-Vatican II Who or What is Magisterium? Times The Social Construction of Ecclesial Reality • Our ways of perceiving and understanding social entities • Yet, again, there have been especially influential The Subject-Object Debate - Discerning a problem.... give rise to practices and wider worldviews that can come ways of understanding and exercising magisterium to dominate the actual life of that social entity and the people within it. So such effects can be negative and which have caused discord and division, which have • Time, Space and Magisterium: positive alike and to varying degrees. Whatever even contributed to obstacles being placed in the theological explanations of the church we choose to way of the furtherance of the gospel mission and, Who? What: emphasize and privilege, it is also undeniably a social • Pope Francis tells us that judged on the whole, have not served the life of the The Faith, God’s Self-communication entity. and human responses to it church in those times well. ‘Memory is a dimension of our • Just as with wider conceptions and understandings of the church and its mission, so, also have there been • Differing ways of understanding magisterium impact faith…’. Pope Francis, Evangelii differing ways of understanding and indeed practicing ecclesial being in differing ways and to differing ecclesial teaching authority, i.e., magisterium, Gaudium, §13. throughout the long story of the church that have degrees. In recent decades, the church went through a become prominent and pervasive. period of its long story where the understanding and • We Need a ‘Long-Range • As with the wider ecclesiological visions, sometimes these exercise of magisterium was a veritable battleground. have given great life and energy to the church and • In the present pontificate, with reform and pastoral Perspective’ on Teaching with furthered and enhanced its living out of the gospel priorities, as well as social justice coming to the fore of ‘If there are things which should mission. The practice of the art of teaching-with-authority – Authority missional priorities, and with the church finally being not be questioned, there are also a means of bringing the faith alive, of emphasizing, explicating and underlining its God-given treasures and told to practice what its preaches both from and things that must be questioned’ • Magisterium has History riches, as well as of transmitting its transformative power within Rome, this is an opportune moment to explore Yves Congar, ‘Magisterium, throughout communities far and wide, has known many how we might look at magisterium in a very different Theologians, the Faithful and the wonderful exponents in the long story of the community called church way. Faith’, Doctrine and Life 31 (1981),

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Three important keys to understanding Part II: Magisterium is a Moral Issue church authority: Clarifications… A Question of What not Whom The Crux of the Problem: Magisterium and Structural Social Sin • The subject of magisterium is the ‘who’, the object of • Rather than a collective noun, Magisterium, like tradition itself, • Ethics and Contemporary Ecclesiology • Yet … The modern and contemporary conceptions of magisterium being the ‘what’, and the art of magisterium the magisterium are, in themselves, ways of reading the should be understood more as a process, a good habit, a story of the church and its teaching. virtuous undertaking. An art form….. how and the means by which the ‘who’ serve the ‘what’. • The church’s moral and social teaching cannot be • They are, albeit limited and problematic, hermeneutical • This involves a multitude of actors, including all the People of separated off from its governance, structures and frameworks of interpreting Christianity – its beliefs and practice alike. • Lose the definite article: ‘before the nineteenth century it never God – sensus fidelium processes of authority and canon law • The story and teachings of the church from the New meant precisely what we call the magisterium’ - Yves Congar • Groundwork for a Moral Theological Analysis of Testament onward make it clear that the values, virtues Magisterium and principles by which Christians strive to live and form – Systemic Issues for Moral Analysis: • A working definition…. communities must relate to every aspect of how they • A process that must, by necessity, involve the wider church as • Institutional morality opposed to a restricted group of officeholders in particular • Magisterium is first and foremost about that process of trying form and shape and facilitate those communities • Ethical analysis of authority, governance and accountability positions of authority. to discern, make sense of, explain anew for differing times and • Exploring Ecclesial Vices and Ecclesial Virtues • Normative understanding and exercise of magisterium contexts and to work out the most appropriate responses to prevalent across much of church in recent decades has • (again in differing times and places) the gracious revelation of been one that polarises. • John L. McKenzie SJ: ‘the Catholic Church Such authority itself only comes from the wider church and is is never further from Christlikeness and the • It forces people to align themselves at the respective held by such officeholders in trust the God of love. gospel than when it exercises opposite ends of the ecclesial spectrum on a whole its magisterium’ 4 5 range of issues 6 The Conversion of Magisterium: New Horizons for Lessons for Ecclesiology from the Catholic Social Part III: A Social Vision of Magisterium the Church Tradition • • • Change the social imaginary and we The Art of Magisterium: Principles for Collective Witness: Embracing The Virtue of Dissent Discerning an Alternative Understanding [Ecumenical] Pluralism in Magisteria - • Principles of… change the church. What is often termed dissent might be simply the litmus test of the true • and Exercise of Magisterium for Our Need for Ecumenical Discernment and authoritative status of particular teaching interpretations It begins when we look at things Times Practice in Magisterium differently – metanoia – and so perceive “Loyal dissent” is an ecclesial virtue that steers between two extremes magisterium in a different way. • These times call for magisterium to move • Baptism is recognized as valid across • Collegiality Recognizing the provisionality of much church teaching because of the in the direction of a virtuous as opposed Christian churches; sharing in Christ’s need to engage in various processes of dialogue and discernment and to • A way more resonant with earlier times in the church. to a vicious (literally ‘vice-like’) circle. threefold office comes about through understand that the shared journey toward the truth baptism: it follows that such a sharing • More resonant with the witness and • Co-responsibility Dissent can be a necessary, positive, and, indeed, loyal stance to adapt in • Drawing on resources of Catholic equally has ecumenical implications. relation to certain church authorities and teachings. It is, then, part of example offered by the gospel itself. tradition in the areas of social teaching, • Internal Roman Catholic debates on tradition itself. • Truly authoritative teaching is that which is moral theology, and canon law. magisterium therefore have further Reception must remain a fundamental part of the processes of existentially liberating and empowering. ecumenical implications and vice-versa – • Subsidiarity magisterium ecumenical discourse and practice in • Teaching authority emerges out of that • A call to return to being a ‘teaching church relation to doctrinal teaching authority can • tradition and stands in direct relation to it. offer much to internal divisions and Charles E. Curran: that learns’ disputes within Roman Catholicism. • Participation • Catholic social teaching offers important lessons and models for Catholic ecclesiology • A church that learns especially from its own • Subordination of authority to justice and truth failings and mistakes.

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CONTACT: Gerard Mannion, DPhil., Amaturo Professor in Catholic Studies, Department of Theology, Georgetown University, 37th and O Streets, Washington, DC 20057-1135 Email: [email protected]