FOUNDATIONS in ECCLESIOLOGY I Joseph A
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I \ I ~ , .. ,I I I I I FOUNDATIONS I IN ECCLESIOLOGY I I I I I I I I Joseph A. Komonchak I I I '. I I I I I I FOUNDATIONS IN ECCLESIOLOGY I Joseph A. Komonchak I I I I I I I Supplementary Issue of the Lonergan Workshop Journal I Volume 11 Fred Lawrence, editor I • \ I 1../ I I I, I I I I I I I I I I I I I Copyright © 1995 Boston College I I Printed in the United States of America I on acid-free paper I I ,I I I I EDITORIAL NOTE I Joseph A. Komonchak belongs to a generation of Catholic theologians formed in what was essentially the pre-Vatican II system I of seminary education. This system combined the very forces of renewal that made the Council possible with the drawbacks of I closedness and downright aridity that made Pope John XXIII's fresh air necessary. If he was exposed to much in the seminary and church that needed reform, he also had the opportunity to have solid scholars I teaching him, such as Myles M. Bourke for scripture, in his New York diocesan seminary, and equally respectable men like Rene Latourelle and Juan Alfaro in Rome, not to mention the person who exerted the I most influence upon him, Bernard Lonergan. In one of the most trenchant passages he ever ,wrote Lonergan I said: The breakdown of classical culture and, at least in our day, I the manifest comprehensiveness and exclusiveness of modern culture confront Catholic philosophy and Catholic theology with the gravest problems, impose upon them mountainous tasks, I invite them to Herculean labors. ... Classical culture cannot· be jettisoned without being replaced, and what replaces it c~nnot but run counter to classical expectations. There is bound to be I formed a solid right that is determined to live in a world that no longer exists. There is bound to be formed a scattered left, captivated by now this, now that new possibility. But what will I count is a perhaps not numerous center, big enough to be at home in both the old and the new, painstaking enough to work out one by one the transitions to be made, strong enough to I refuse half-measures and insist on complete solutions even though it has to wait. I There is a widely shared conviction among respected theologians that Joseph A. Komonchak belongs to Lonergan's "perhaps not I numerous center." I would like to stress that whereas today anyone starting out in theology who desires to be "big enough to be at home in both the old and the new" has to go to out of his or her way to attain I any deep knowledge of the old, Komonchak's generation was lucky I I III I I enough to experience the old and the new in a single life-span. Before then the seminary student of the post-1815 Roman Catholic regime so brilliantly adumbrated in Komonchak's historical studies would have I had to go to extraordinary lengths in order to "be at home in the new." This is what Komonchak's heroes did - people like John Courtney I Murray and Bernard Lonergan on this continent, and Henri de Lubac, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Yves Con gar, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, and the Joseph Ratzinger who was a I very influential peritus at Vatican II in Europe. These theologians embodied the 'perhaps not numerous center' during his formative I period, and he spent years understanding, assimilating, and emulating their achievements in his own work. Among the group of philosophically inclined American theologians I formed by Lonergan, including people like John Dunne, Ben F. Meyer, David Burrell, David Tracy, Matthew Lamb, and Robert Doran (to I name but a few), only Joseph Komonchak took up the challenge implied in Lonergan's statement in the Epilogue to Insight about the need for a contemporary "treatise on the concrete universal that is I mankind in the concrete and cumulative consequences of the acceptance or rejection of the message the Gospel (473)." Komonchak I was preoccupied with the question of a systematic theology of the church long before doing his doctoral dissertation tracing John Henry Newman's changing views of the church. Yet the dissertation'gives us I a clue to a major characteristic of Komonchak's cast of mind. Besides being a tough-minded systematic thinker, Komonchak is equally if not I more gifted as a historian. This is evidenced in his articles and lectures devoted to discovering what happened to the church's life and theology at the Second Vatican Council. I Needless to say, the vast historical work needed for adequate ecclesiology today makes tip no small portion of the ('mountainous I tasks" and "Herculean labors" indicated by Lonergan in the earlier citation above. Ironically perhaps, Komonchak'stalent and penchant for history together with his conscientious awareness of the immense I historical background demanded for a historically minded ecclesiology have set up the risk that his unique work in the systematic theology of I the church might be prevented from seeing the light, of day. Nevertheless, an adequate contemporary ecclesiology must also confront the perhaps even more challenging 'grave problems' that I pertain to the functional specialty Foundations. It is no accident that I IV I I I . :E{omonchak has chosen to give this collection the title Foundations in , Ecclesiology. I Many readers will recall that foundational theology thematizes the horizon within which theological discourse in doctrines, I systematics, and communications makes sense. On top of articulating the basic orientation of one's theological horizon as provided by religious, moral, and intellectual conversion, foundational theology is I concerned with working out the general and special categories that condition the theologians' horizon as they do doctrines and I systematics. Thus, Komonchak's articles linking Lonergan and the task of ecclesiology and his essays on ecclesiology and the human sciences are engaged in discovering the general and special categories I needed for a theology of the church. His St. Michael's Lectures both further elaborate and begin to apply those general and special I categories to a systematic account of church. Anyone confused or overwhelmed by their awareness of the complexities attending a genuinely conte~porary ecclesiology will find I immeasurable help and solace in this collection of writings. One would be hard pressed to find a clearer or deeper contribution towards an explanatory theology of the church, to use a favorite phrase borrowed I by Lonergan from Ortega y Gasset, 'on the level of our times.' The Lonergan Workshop is enormously privileged and proud to publish I such seminal work by the church's finest ecclesiologist since Con gar. The four first chapters have appeared in print before: I 1. "History and Social Theory in Ecclesiology," Lonergan Workshop, vol. 2 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press 1981) 1-53. I We are grateful for permission to reprint: 2. "Lonergan and the Tasks of Ecclesiology," in Creativity and Method: I Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 1981) 265-273. I 3. "Ecclesiology and Social Theory: A Methodological Essay," The Thomist 45 (1981) 262-283. 4. "The Church," in Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the I Theology of Bernard Lonergan (New York: Paulist Press 1988) 222- I 236. I v I I I We also thank Kevin McGinley, SJ, Director of the St. Michael's Institute at Gonzaga University for permission to publish "Part II: Some Foundations for Ecclesiology." I Finally, our deepest thanks to Anne O'Donnell for all she has done to get these articles into print as a Supplementary Issue of Lonergan Workshop. I Fred Lawrence I Boston College I I I I I I I I I I I I I VI I ·..•.··1 I I PREFACE I The essays collected in this volume concentrate on questions of method in ecclesiology and approach them from a perspective heavily I influenced by the thought of Bernard Lonergan. Colleagues and students have suggested the usefulness of gathering them in one place I and I am grateful to Fred Lawrence for providing a place for them in the supplementary volumes of the Lonergan Workshop. I began teaching ecclesiology at St. Joseph's Seminary, I Dunwoodie, in the fall of 1967. It took me some time to grasp what the real questions in the area were and more time still to begin to grope >1 towards a critical method for addressing them. My studies under Father Lonergan in Rome had given me some idea of what a real theological question is and some sense of how to go about answering it. I But questions vary with the area under consideration, and questions arose in ecclesiology that Lonergan himself had not explicitly addressed. Similarly, the critical sophistication of the different I theological disciplines varied considerably, and in the late 1960s .by this criterion ecclesiology did not rank high. Everyone knew that one I couldn't do ecclesiology as the authors of the manuals had done it Vatican II had pretty well shattered the old paradigm - but there was little agreement about what was to take its place. I Over several years I became convinced that one of the chief challenges was to bridge the gap between the lofty theological I language which the Council had restored to the center of ecclesiology and the concrete reality of the Church as realized in communities of believers. Were 'People of God,' 'Body of Christ: 'Temple of the Holy I Spirit' concepts the ecclesiologist must deal with simply because the Scriptures and tradition require it, or did they also describe I dimensions which one could identify and help others to identify in the concrete reality of the Church? When the Council declared that the Church is a single complex reality composed of a divine and a human.