Tilburg University Envisioning Futures for the Catholic Church Hellemans, Staf; Jonkers, Peter Publication date: 2018 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in Tilburg University Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Hellemans, S., & Jonkers, P. (2018). Envisioning Futures for the Catholic Church. Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. 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Download date: 27. sep. 2021 Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series VIII, Christian Philosophical Studies 23 Envisioning Futures for the Catholic Church Edited by Staf Hellemans & Peter Jonkers The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Copyright © 2018 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Gibbons Hall B-20 620 Michigan Avenue, NE Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Names: Hellemans, Staf, editor. Title: Envisioning futures for the Catholic Church / edited by Staf Hellemans and Peter Jonkers. Description: first [edition].. | Washington DC : Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2018. | Series: Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series VIII, Christian philosophical studies ; Volume 23 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018019766 | ISBN 9781565183353 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Catholic Church--History--21st century. | Catholic Church--Forecasting. Classification: LCC BX1746 .E58 2018 | DDC 282.09/04--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018019766 Table of Contents Introduction: Reforming the Catholic Church beyond Vatican II 1 Staf Hellemans & Peter Jonkers Part I: Mediating the Christian Message 1. Religion and Individual Personal Fulfillment 29 Tomas Halik 2. Will the Catholic Church Remain Relevant? 41 The Evolution of its Offer After 1800 Staf Hellemans 3. Serving the World through Wisdom: 73 Revitalizing Wisdom Traditions in Christian Faith Peter Jonkers Part II: Theologizing the New Realities 4. Living Catholicity Differently: On Growing into 109 the Plenitudinous Plurality of Catholic Communion in God Paul D. Murray 5. A Less Eurocentric Theology: 159 Advantages, Tasks, and Challenges Johanna Rahner 6. New Theological Practices for the Contemporary 201 Catholic Church Nicholas M. Healy Part III: Restructuring the Church 7. Seven Characteristics of a Future-Proof Parish: 231 The Approach of the Center for Applied Pastoral Research Matthias Sellmann 8. The Running of a Multicultural World Church in 281 Global Times Massimo Faggioli 9. Religious Life: Candlemas Time? 301 Timothy Radcliffe, OP Contributors 331 Index 335 Introduction Reforming the Catholic Church beyond Vatican II1 STAF HELLEMANS & PETER JONKERS In the last decades, the Catholic Church2 in Western societies has changed beyond recognition. It is no longer a powerful ‘encompassing institution’, keeping watch over a ‘faithful flock’, but has become a con- tested minority institution in a turbulent and competitive field. This means that the Catholic Church has to cater to a public since people know that they can always turn away when they lose interest – and this also holds for those who are heavily committed, such as youngsters joining new ec- clesial movements or even the priesthood.3 In this radically new context, at least three fundamental questions crop up: 1) How can the Catholic Church mediate Christ as the ‘light of the nations’ (‘Lumen Gentium’) to today’s world? 2) What (new) orientations can theology and theologians offer in this respect? 3) How can the internal organization of the Church be put to good use, so that it can respond constructively to this new con- text? These three questions define the contents of this book and its ar- rangement. Given that the situation of the Church in Western societies differs substantially from that in the non-Western world, and given that the cultural and religious background of the contributors to this volume is a Western one, these questions will be answered mainly from the per- spective of the Church in the West. That the Church in the West is confronted with a radically new reality is the baseline of this book. It is reflected in two derived considerations. First, though it is legitimate to use the label ‘seekers’ to identify an im- portant religious attitude of today’s people inside as well as outside the churches, one has to keep in mind that the non-active seekers and the reli- giously indifferent constitute the overall majority of the population in many Western countries, and their share is still growing. The spiritual foundation on which the Catholic Church can build its religious offer is, hence, much shakier than many theologians and church leaders think. This 1 The editors wish to thank Erik Buster for his assistance in editing this volume. 2 Throughout the book, ‘church’ written in lowercase will refer to a church or churches in general; ‘Church’ in uppercase will typically, but with a few exceptions refer to the Roman Catholic Church. Word groups with church, such as church leadership, will always be written in lowercase. 3 Staf Hellemans and Peter Jonkers (eds.), A Catholic Minority Church in a World of Seekers (Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philos- ophy, 2015). 2 Staf Hellemans & Peter Jonkers means that a popular view to envision the future of the Church, namely, that the great religions would be able to inspire most people to make the transition from their vague religious and spiritual experiences towards faith in vertical transcendence and to transform their lives accordingly, is overly optimistic, at least as far as Europe is concerned.4 The societal con- text in which the Church has to develop and promote its views and reli- gious offer has become far less receptive to its message. Moreover, the religious field is pluralizing and is also dissolving into a wider sphere of well-being, happiness, and consumption. When people define themselves as ‘religious or spiritual’, they typically refer to an ever-widening sphere of interest in which Christian faith only plays a minor role. This sphere ranges from traditional Christian and non-Christian religions (e.g., Zen- meditation) to so-called new religions and spiritualities, such as yoga, New Age, neo-paganism, fiction-based religion, and to psycho-therapeu- tic techniques, wellness centers, music festivals, etc. Second, and moving to Catholicism proper, most theologians and church leaders still consider the spiritual and intellectual legacy of Vatican II as paradigmatic when it comes to understanding the relations between Church and society in our times. Yet, while Vatican II indeed brought about a major change in the relation of the Church towards the world, marking the start of a fundamentally positive attitude towards contem- porary society, the latter, for its part, appears to be less and less interested in the message of the Church. This evolution has been so pervasive that leading social scientists speak of an ‘exculturation’ of Christian faith, especially in Western Europe.5 Yet, as Danièle Hervieu-Léger also remarked, the end of one specific form of Catholicism does not mean ipso facto the end of Catholicism as such.6 What the societal developments show in all clarity is the urgent need for the Church to find new ways to make its voice heard in the world of today. This is why we asked the theological contributors to this volume 4 For example, Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 2007), p. 510. 5 Danièle Hervieu-Léger states that “the exculturation of Catholicism as a global historical matrix of French culture seems more and more evident.” Yet, many researchers think that this aspect of the French situation is paradigmatic for all West-European countries. See: Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Mapping the Contem- porary Forms of Catholic Religiosity. In: Charles Taylor, José Casanova, George McLean (eds.), Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular Age (Christian Philosophical Studies I) (Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2012), p. 34. More extensively, Idem, Catholicisme, la fin d’un monde (Paris: Bayard, 2003). 6 “La fin d’un monde n’est pas forcément la fin du monde” in Ibid., p. 325. Reforming the Catholic Church beyond Vatican II 3 not to look backwards to Vatican II and its implementation but, rather, to look forward, in particular to analyze some important post-Vatican devel- opments in the Church and the world, and to explore new ideas to engage with them. The Catholic Church only has a future if it finds new ways to relate to the world, no longer from a privileged majority position from which a whole world is led – even if this Catholic world proved to be a subculture – but as a minority group that can only reach people tentatively, with an inspiring offer that can nevertheless be rejected. Furthermore, we – as authors – have to avoid ‘ought’-perspectives that remain in the ab- stract, i.e., perspectives that one-sidedly emphasize either the short- comings of the present in comparison to the past (‘the golden past fallacy’) or the fertile lands of the future that lie ahead if a particular church policy were to be implemented (‘the golden future fallacy’).