March • April 2008 • Volume 40 • Number 2 Body and Soul – Rediscovering Catholic Orthodoxy AND SYNTHESIS NEW PROMOTING A Editorial Aquinas on the Subsistent Soul Kevin Flannery The Soul: Aquinas contra some Thomists et al REASON Francis Selman The Goodness of the Human Body Jeffrey Kirby OF Our regular features Diagnosis The soul and Pullman’s influence: The Truth Will Set You Free FAITH FAITH Shared shock at episcopal teaching: Comment on the Comments Prospects for heterodoxy: Notes from across the Atlantic Debate The value of discussing God and the soul: Road from Regensburg The nature of science: Cutting Edge Letting go of catholicity at a Catholic hospital: Other Angles Also Price: £4 Reviewing Newman: Bishop Philip Boyce Post-modernism: Margeurite Peeters and Letters Fit for Mission? What next?: William Oddie, James Arthur and the Editor www.faith.org.uk MAY PRICE INCREASE Due to further increases in costs regrettably annual faith we will be increasing the basic subscription rate to £25 and the cover price to £4.50 for the May summer session issue. Other rates will increase accordingly. We hope you will still find our full, frank and quality content very good value for money. Thank you for your continued support of our apostolate. Catholicism a new synthesis by Edward Holloway Monday 4th to Friday 8th August 2008 Pope John Paul II gave the blueprint for at Woldingham School catechetical renewal with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Catholicism: A New Synthesis Four days of lectures, discussion seeks to show why such teaching makes perfect and seminars around a particular theme, sense in a world which has come of age in in a relaxed holiday environment, scientific understanding. It offers a way out of with daily Mass and prayer. the current intellectual crisis, a way which is both modern and orthodox. FREEPOST, Faith Magazine contact: Ann McCallion Tel: 0141 945 0393 £5 REIGATE RH2 0BR email: [email protected] 503pp No need for a stamp if posted in the UK fuller details on www.faith.org.uk Editor Hugh MacKenzie St. Mary Magdalen’s, Clergy House, Peter Avenue, Willesden Green, London NW10 2DD March • April 2008 • Volume 40 • Number 2 Tel 020 8451 6720 [email protected] CONTENTS Editorial Board Body And Soul – Rediscovering Catholic Orthodoxy 2 David Barrett, Timothy Finigan, Editorial Andrea Fraile, Roger Nesbitt, Christina Read, Dominic Rolls, The Incorruptibility Of The Subsistent Soul According To Thomas Aquinas 8 Luiz Ruscillo, Mark Vickers. Fr Kevin L. Flannery Book Reviews On The Soul: Aquinas Contra Modern English Christians 14 William Massie, Fr Francis Selman 187 Pickering Road, Hull, HU4 6TD The Goodness of the Human Body 20 [email protected] Fr Jeffrey Kirby Pastoral Forum: The Truth Will Set You Free 26 Advertising Manager Scott Deeley Protecting the young from Pullman’s view of human nature St Paul’s, 16 Birdston Rd, Letters 28 Milton of Campsie Stirlingshire G66 8BU To the Editor [email protected] Comment on the Comments 30 Dr William Oddie on positive and negative amazement at Fit for Mission? Subscriptions and Faith-Keyway Trust The Road from Regensburg 32 Publications Office Catholics continue to downplay “Soul and God” discussion; etc. Paul Butcher 16a off Coniston Way, Sunday by Sunday 35 Reigate RH2 0LN Our sermon suggestions Tel 01737 770016 Fax 01737 770016 Book Reviews 38 [email protected] Bishop Philip Boyce recommends a study of Newman and his contribution to the faith in the 19th century which is a useful introduction and more; Dom Augustine Holmes recommends some accessible but profound Lenten reading; Eric Hester recommends a UK £22/year, study guide on the Catholic faith for use by parish groups, GCSE RE students, Sixth Form Europe (inc.Eire) £25/year general RE students, home schoolers, in short just about every one; Dora Nash is broadly Surface Mail overseas £24/year encouraged by a discussion of the Catholic vision of marriage as bold and honest while Air Mail overseas £29/year expressing some reservations; Professor James Arthur praises the Bishop of Lancaster’s document on Catholic education but wonders how aspiration can be turned into policy. Single copies £4.50 inc. p&p, Bulk orders £3 plus p&p Notes from across the Atlantic 41 Student rate £15/year Fr Richard John Neuhaus on Clinton’s strange electoral kids; etc. Cutting Edge 43 Davies, Popper and Holloway’s middle way Faith Online 44 Our regular guide to the web Published by the Faith-Keyway Other Angles Trust registered charity No. 278314 In the image of God He made us: Roger Peck 7 Printed by Tudor Printing Postmodernity contra African tradition: Marguerite A. Peeters 12 01772 633098 ISSN 1356-126X A Catholic hospital starts to give up on unborn children 18 Sacramental knowing: An alternative to Heythrop’s proposal: Dudley Plunkett 24 faith Body And Soul – Rediscovering Catholic Orthodoxy The Renewal of Doctrinal Education “Yet you have made him little n December, Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue of Lancaster issued a document - Fit For less than God ... you have IMission? Schools - which sets out with doctrinal clarity and pastoral concern the Catholic given him dominion over principles and standards he expects the Catholic schools in his diocese to follow. Please God, it will gradually bring about real change and revival of Catholic education in that the work of your hands” diocese and beyond. Ps (8: 5-6) Some commentators have picked up on certain practical outcomes specified in the document, such as the instruction to display crucifixes in all Catholic classrooms, encouragement of the Rosary, regular Confession and Eucharistic devotion in Catholic schools. These are important provisions to be sure, but they are not recommended in a vacuum. The core of this document is about the renewal of religious education along with wholehearted commitment to ongoing conversion through the sacramental life, personal prayer and Christian action. Bishop “POD”, as he is affectionately known by his domestic church, sets out the essential topics which must be addressed in any presentation of the Catholic faith as follows: • God and Creation • The Spiritual Person • Sin and Redemption • The Divinity of Jesus Christ • The Church • Eternal Life in Christ. Catechesis on the Soul Essential f these six themes, it is arguably the second that is most likely to be neglected, BODY AND SOUL – ORTHODOXY CATHOLIC REDISCOVERING Osimply because teachers and catechists are likely to be particularly ill informed and ill equipped to explain the Church’s teaching on this vital point. Lest anyone doubt that it is a vital point of Catholic teaching, under the heading The Spiritual Person, the “The theology and philosophy Lancaster document gives the following quote from the Catechism: of Edward Holloway stands alone as a contemporary “The Christian vision of the human person made in the image of God with a spiritual soul synthesis which on the one as well as a body is of central importance. The soul, the seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material, can have its origin only in God (CCC 363)”. hand rejects any dialectical tension at the heart of being Could the average Catholic teacher in the UK give a reasoned account of the teaching and at the same time upholds that each of us has “a spiritual soul as well as a body”, and that the soul is “irreducible to the real distinction between the merely material”, to our scientifically aware but deeply secularised young people? matter and spirit”. Are most of them even aware that that this teaching is “of central importance”? If not, they can hardly be blamed for their ignorance. Over recent decades the overwhelmingly dominant view in Catholic academic and educational circles has been [2] MARCH/APRIL 2008 faith heavily weighted against the traditional account of body and soul. that they can potentially be, and are actually separated at death. In fact any form of “dualism” with regard to the constitution of human nature has frequently been sneered at as philosophically It has been common in recent years for scripture scholars to tell dated and theologically distasteful. Later in this issue Fr Francis us that the idea of the separation of body and soul after death – Selman provides some significant examples of this. indeed that any systematic distinction between body and soul – was alien to the Hebrew vision of the Old Testament. Not only We have often remarked on the widespread influence of Teilhard is this untrue to the carefully nuanced, symbolic text of Genesis, de Chardin and Karl Rahner, both of whom portray matter and it is a blatant contradiction of more explicitly developed doctrine spirit as twin, dialectical, aspects of a common universal energy found in the book of Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth), “Then shall the and metaphysical category. It has to be said too that, for all dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return unto the beauty and depth of much of his theology, Hans Urs von God who gave it” (Qoh 12:7). It is true that death as we know it Balthasar holds much the same philosophical presumption on was not God’s intention for human beings. Death in this manner this point, although he is less systematic in applying it throughout is a result of the Fall which will eventually be reversed. But the his works. The theology and philosophy of Edward Holloway fact remains that the soul is immortal by nature and endures stands alone as a contemporary synthesis which on the one while the body decays into dissolution. hand rejects any dialectical tension at the heart of being and at the same time upholds the real distinction between matter and That the souls of the just enjoy the Beatific Vision while yet spirit.