..=..=. -==== :=-:= ====== - -= == -==- '"="= == =- -== -=-== == -= '= == -= .=..::::=. =--==--=":.:-= =-=== - = ====-.:'- ~ ==-=;: !:-=- =si !~1i)i !Ii!i~= s Ii) :Si!lllli-f:l li;tEi!10filj ~§~~ii~§~i ~~~! i-i=~§~~ 1 n~!li=l!ijr~§ COMMUNICATING A DANGEROUS MEMORY COMMUNICATING A DANGEROUS MEMORY Soundings in Political Theology edited by Fred Lawrence Supplementary Issue of the Lonergan Workshop Journal Volume 6 Fred Lawrence, editor Scholars Press Atlanta, Georgia COMMUNICATING A DANGEROUS MEMORY Soundings in Political Theology edited by Fred Lawrence © 1987 Boston College Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Communicating a dangerous memory. 1. Christianity and politics--Congresses. 2. Lonergan, Bernard J. F .--Congresses. I. Lawrence, Fred. II. Lonergan workshop, V. 6 (Supplement) BR115.P7C615 1987 261.7 87-9442 ISBN 1-55540-135-X (alk. paper) Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper EDITOR'S NOTE Our two-day symposium on Communicating Dangerous Memory was inspired by the semester-long presence as Visiting Lecturer at Boston College of Johann Baptist Metz. As he made so abundantly clear in his lecture and seminar courses, narrative and memory, especially the dangerous memory of Jesus Christ crucified and risen, have been central to his attempts to work out a new practical and political paradigm for theology. We thought it would be a good idea to share the excitement and vividness of Metz's teaching time here with participants at one of the Lonergan Workshop's mini-sessions. Baptist Metz indicated that he would prefer to do this in a collaborative way, so that three of the articles in this volume come from that occasion. We at Boston College are fortunate to have as part of our perma­ nent staff one who has surely devoted decades of productive existence precisely to communicating the dangerous memory of the suffering and risen One, Sebastian Moore. So we thought it fitting that Sebastian contribute a sliver of his prolific and profound meditation upon our dying and rising with Christ to this symposium. The remaining speakers besides Baptist Metz were Matthew Lamb and I. We had agreed to cast our presentations in the mold of reflections upon our own dangerous memories. Matthew Lamb, surely the most well­ known student of Metz here in the United States, gave a talk recalling his own sharing in Metz's envisioning of an integrally interdisciplinary university that included theology as an organ of critical reflection in the Church. Since Metz's withdrawal from practical engagement with establishing a Catholic faculty at the interdisciplinary university at Bielefeld, this dimension of the task of theology in a political para­ digm has vanished from the forefront of his thinking--which Baptist Metz admitted with regret in his response to Matthew. Thus, his talk was a salutory and provacative reminder that the political paradigm's emphasis upon the narrative modes of emanicipatory anamnesis in no way implies a dedifferentiation on the part of the theologian, but quite the contrary. Unfortunately, Matthew Lamb's talk--which Gregory Baum called the v vi Lawrence clearest and most passionate he'd ever heard Matthew deliver--is not contained in this volume. But the tenor and implications of his com- ments may be found both in the immediate documentation of his collabora­ tion with Metz during his German sojourn, History, Method, and Theology, and in his more recent Solidarity with Victims. My own talk is a recollection of my biographical involvement with political theology, and of how several strands of experience have a possibility of integration on the basis of what turn out to be the quite practical and political implications of Lonergan's work. Johann Baptist Metz's talk, so kindly transcribed for us by his graduate assistant for that semester, J. Michael Stebbins, begins with a moving narrative of Baptist's own biographical way to the breakthrough from Rahner's paradigm to his political one. It then elaborates the specifically apocalyptic orientation that Metz sees as characteristic of the new paradigm. This volume opens with the first annual George Link Jr. Lecture, delivered in October 1986 to mark the opening of our Boston College Lonergan Center. The lecturer, most appropriately, was Frederick Crowe, long friend and mentor to students of Lonergan's thought. We are grate­ ful both to the Link Foundation for sponsoring this lecture, and to Fred Crowe for sharing his observsations on a very timely topic. The other articles in this volume come not directly from the symposium with Johann Baptist Metz, but from other Lonergan Workshops. I have decided to include them here because they demonstrate the relevance of Lonergan's orientation to political and liberation theol­ ogy/philosophy in a way that is not just theoretical and programmatic, but altogether concrete. The piece by Patrick Byrne of Boston College's Philosohy Depart­ ment and Richard Carroll Keeley, Director of the PULSE Program at BC, arises from their collaborative efforts to help students reflect con­ cretely on values in relation to the good of order in cities like Boston. Perhaps no one shares Lonergan's nose for the concrete as much as Jane Jacobs, an author he esteemed most highly; and Byrne and Keeley avail themselves of her insights into the concrete in reflecting on the Editor's Note vii relationship between horizon and orientation and the architectural con­ ditioning of human spaces and times. The bulk of this volume is taken up by the report of John Boyd Turner on the development project with which he was involved in the Philippines. It is an unusual gift to have on hand a person who is not an academic, who has been practically engaged in social transformation, and whose outlook has been profoundly affected by method in Lonergan's sense. As you will see, John's reflections take more the shape of soudings than of final and summary conclusions. We have accomodated ourselves to the extraordinary length of John's article both because their value lies in the interplay between theoretical and the concrete; and because, as Abby Warburg said of works of art, "The love of God resides in the details." Our thanks go out to Michael Stebbins and Matthew Mullane for transcribing and reading proof, to Nancy Woodhouse and Sheila Kilcullen for wordprocessing, and to our manuscript and layout editor, Charles Refling. January, 1987 FRED LAWRENCE CON TEN T S Editor's Notes v "'I'he Role of a Catholic University in the Modern World" - An Update Frederick E. Crowe, S.J. Dangerous Memory and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed Fred Lawrence 17 Communicating a Dangerous Memory J. B. Metz 37 The Communication of a Dangerous Memory Sebastian Moore 55 LeCorbusier's Finger and Jacobs's Thought: The Loss and Recovery of the Subject in the City Patrick H. Byrne Richard Carroll Keeley 63 Lonergan's Practical Political Transformative Understanding: The Example of Development in the Philippine Province of Northern Samar John Boyd Turner 109 ix -THE ROLE OF A CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY IN THE MODERN WORLD--- AN UPDATE Frederick E. Crowe, S.J. Lonergan Research Institute of Regis College A lecture series instituted in honor of Bernard Lonergan need hardly justify the choice of Catholic universities as the first topic to be treated, for Lonergan's whole career was dedicated to the university ideal in Catholic studies. Even when his work was carried on in a semi­ nary milieu, it was designed to meet rigorous university standards and to raise seminary studies to the highest academic level. Some explanation is needed, however, for the particular form of the title I chose. The main phrase is in quotation marks, the reference here being to an article Lonergan wrote many years ago in the Montreal Relations on "The Role of a Catholic University in the Modern World" (Lonergan, 1951). If I take the present occasion to try to update that article, I can claim a measure of justification in a simple accident of history. We are approaching the thirtieth anniversary of Lonergan's great work, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Lonergan, 1957a) and Boston College is already laying plans to celebrate the event in its annual workshop next June. Now it was during his work on Insight that Lonergan wrote "The Role of a Catholic University." The article was in many ways an epitome of the book and an index of its long-range purpose. It seemed to me therefore that, as Lonergan's article anticipated his book, I might use this lecture to update the thesis of the article and thus anticipate the anniversary that Boston College proposes to cele­ brate. Naturally I look to Lonergan himself for help in this ambitious enterprise: the updating will be more his than mine. And I find help in a second monumental work he wrote: Method in Theology (Lonergan, 1972), which followed Insight fifteen years later. I would say, in a single- 2 Crowe sentence summary of those two works that, where Insight set forth the dynamism of human spirit in a structured set of operations, Method used that operational structure to create an organon for human development-­ human development in its broadest scope: not just in theology, but in the whole range of the human enterprise, including therefore the enter­ prise of academe and in particular of the Catholic university. So much for an introduction to my topic: now to the topic itself. It is a large one, a very large one indeed. I shall have to resort to various limitations as I proceed, but at least I can get quickly to the nub of my argument by putting it in the form of a thesis. The thesis is twofold: first, the Catholic university is a specialized learning arm of a learning church set in the midst of a learning human race; and, sec­ ondly, it is just in this sadly neglected learning function of the race, of the church, of the university, that Lonergan's work can make a momen­ tous contribution.