THE UNEASY ALLIANCE RECONCEIVED: CATHOLIC THEOLOGICAL METHOD, MODERNITY, and POSTMODERNITY DAVID TRACY University of Chicago Divinity School
Theological Studies 50 (1989) THE UNEASY ALLIANCE RECONCEIVED: CATHOLIC THEOLOGICAL METHOD, MODERNITY, AND POSTMODERNITY DAVID TRACY University of Chicago Divinity School VERY GREAT religion, Friedrich von Hügel once observed, is comprised E of three fundamental elements: the mystical, the institutional, and the intellectual.1 Only when all three are flourishing may the religion itself be said to flourish. However limited the applicability of Hügel's observations may be for other religious traditions, it remains, I believe, the most fruitful hypothesis for understanding the Roman Catholic tradition. THE UNEASY ALLIANCE More exactly, Roman Catholicism is comprised of three elements which tend to clash at times and harmonize at other times. The first element, the mystical, may more exactly be named the religious element. The forms of Catholic piety, myth, ritual, liturgy, religious orders and move ments, symbols of popular culture and elite cultures alike are those realities that anthropologists and historians of religion have taught us all to observe in new ways. Indeed, if Catholic studies are to flourish in the multidisciplinary modern academy, it will happen only when we not only possess the more familiar philosophical, theological, social-scientific, and historical studies of the Catholic religious element, but also encourage anthropologists and historians of religion to discern the forms, the interrelationships, and the history of the entire symbolic religious life of Catholic Christianity. We still await the Clifford Geertz to write Cathol icism Observed in different cultures, or the Wendy Doniger to illuminate the great myths and symbols of Mexican, Polish, Italian, and Irish forms of Catholic life, or the Claude Lévi-Strauss to study the mythemes and binary oppositions typical of a characteristically Catholic analogical Friedrich von Hügel, The Mystical Element in Religion (2 vols.; New York: Dutton, 1923).
[Show full text]