New Wineskins Spring 2007

Volume II

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Number 1

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SPRING 2007

New WineSkins Jessica Mueller Learning = Change in Behavior Oliver Putz “I Did Not Change, They Did!” Katie Hennessey The Disconnect: Official Catholic Teaching on Sexual Ethics and the Experience of Gay and Lesbian People Matthew S. Monnig, SJ Jihad: Holy War or Inner Struggle?

Jeff Gottlieb Holy Kitsch? The Role of Religious Kitsch in America Patti Keteltas A Hidden Treasure in the Land of Enchantment Sara Schulte Anointing

A Journal of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley

New WineSkins New Wineskins is a collaborative effort of Jesuit and lay students at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. The ideas expressed herein are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.

All articles and materials contained in New Wineskins, the Journal of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, are the intellectual property of the authors and may not be reproduced or used without the written consent of the authors.

Please direct comments, letters to the editor, and student submissions to: wineskinseditor@jstb.edu

Cover Design by Oliver Putz Layout and Typesetting by Many Neighbors

Š Copyright 2007 The Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley

New WineSkins Table of Contents Learning = Change in Behavior

Jessica Mueller analyzes the biblical story of Jacob’s nighttime struggle with

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an unknown figure on the banks of the Jabbok River to discern whether Jacob learned anything from his experience.

“I Did Not Change, They Did!” Joseph Ratzinger, Karl Rahner, and the Second Vatican Council

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Oliver Putz discusses the contributions of two powerhouse German

theologians during and since Vatican II in an effort to determine how and why their theologies diverged.

The Disconnect: Official Catholic Teaching on Sexual Ethics and 31 the Experience of Gay and Lesbian People Katie Hennessey critically engages John Paul II’s theology of complementarity

in order to understand why it fails to resonate with the experience of homosexual persons.

Jihad: Holy War or Inner Struggle?

Matthew S. Monnig, SJ, returns from an immersion trip in Indonesia with

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as many questions as answers regarding the Islamic doctrine of jihad.

Holy Kitsch? The Role of Religious Kitsch in America

Jeff Gottlieb takes a look at Jesus action figures and t-shirts with an eye

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toward unraveling why such objects can function both as important markers of faith and detriments to religious understanding.

A Hidden Treasure in the Land of Enchantment

Patti Keteltas emerges from an intersession journey encounter with

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members of the Brotherhood of Penitentes of New Mexico with new insights into lived faith and 21st century spirituality.

Anointing

Sara Schulte offers a closing poem that lifts up the experience of the reviled but faithful woman who was one of Jesus’s most enigmatic disciples.

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Editor’s Foreword Theological education, like life, could usefully be described as a series of struggles. We are challenged by the imperatives of learning new languages; engaging biblical, magisterial, and scholarly texts in new and insightful ways; acquiring and practicing the skills of ministry and of research; and getting along and becoming a part of a community in a context that for many of us is initially strange and unfamiliar.

All of these struggles will undoubtedly serve us well in the long run, not only for the intrinsic value of the content that we learn from them, but also for the experience of having learned how to deal with and survive the new, the difficult, and the strange. We are learning to incorporate each new experience into ourselves as whole people, becoming transformed more fully into disciples, ministers and teachers in the process.

Each article in this edition of New Wineskins addresses the theme of struggle, opening and closing with meditations on biblical enactments of that theme. For instance, Jacob’s struggles the night before he was reunited with his estranged brother Esau focus our attention on a world where not everything is revealed, including sometimes even the identities of one’s opponents, thereby posing the question: can we learn from an experience which we do not fully understand?

That question can be profitably applied to the theologies of the current and previous popes as we compare these theologies with those of their contemporaries and with lived lay experience.

It is also a good question to ask of journeys into cultures very different from our own in which language is only the first and most obvious barrier, and from which we may return with the same questions with which we left, albeit more nuanced versions of those questions. Closer to home, if we look around our personal and public spaces, we often find expressions of religion that seem to cheapen our faith. Nevertheless, the possibility remains of polyvalent meanings emerging for even the most pedestrian objects.

One of the things we learn again and again at a school of theology is that the questions are often more important than the answers, and we hope that each of these articles will leave you with new questions as well as new insights. For we are not simply readers and writers of theology; we are primarily involved in the lifelong adventure of living our theology in day-today interactions with one another, with our God, and with the world. It is these daily efforts that inform our understanding of who we are, who God is, and how we are to belong to the beloved community.

As you read and consider this new issue of New Wineskins, our prayer is that the struggles of your particular journey will be lightened and illuminated by the company of this dynamic group of faithful thinkers, writers, and ministers.

Bobbi Dykema Katsanis, Editor in Chief

†Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

Editorial Staff

Caroline, Corinna, Tim, Bobbi and Sean Sean Dempsey, SJ, is a member of the California Province of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), and a 2nd-year Master of Divinity student at JSTB. He has previously studied English literature and philosophy, and holds a master’s degree in American Studies. His research interests include American religion, history, and urban ethnography.

Bobbi Dykema Katsanis is a doctoral student in Art and Religion at the GTU. Her research interests include images of the Magdalene and the visual culture of the Reformation. Her poetry has appeared in Ruah, Rock & Sling, Collision, and The Chaffin Journal, and her chapbook The Magdalene’s Notebook appeared in October 2006 from Finishing Line Press. She shares her home with her husband, Jason.

Corinna Guerrero completed her Master of Arts degree in Biblical Languages at the Graduate Theological Union in Spring 2007. She is excited to begin her doctoral research at the GTU in the Fall. Her current area of interest is the Book of Ecclesiastes-- in particular, the significance of how stillbirth/miscarriage language protests the current state of existence as experienced

by Qoheleth, with special consideration regarding how stillbirth/miscarriage language is used to draw in YHWH’s attention and turn that attention to pity.

Tim Manatt, SJ, is a member of the Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus completing his Master of Divinity at JSTB. He has an academic background in history, modern languages, and philosophy. His writing has appeared in the magazines of the California and Wisconsin Provinces, Missions and Jesuit Journeys, as well as in The Journal of the Bronx Historical Society.

Caroline Mbonu is a Nigerian and a member of the Congregation of the Handmaid of the Holy Child Jesus. She is a doctoral student of Interdisciplinary Studies in theology at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. Before coming to Berkeley, Sister Caroline taught business at the University of Uyo and at St. Joseph Major Seminary Ikot Ekpene, Nigeria. She also worked as a Management Accountant at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria. Her scholarly interests include Gender hermeneutics and theologies of African traditions and Religion.

Learning = Change in Behavior

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“Learning = Change in Behavior”

by Jessica Mueller

When I worked for the Latin American Studies Program in San Jose, Costa Rica,

our staff posted these words up on our bulletin boards and plastered them on tshirts. Transformational education meant that “knowing” was not enough; renewed, active engagement in the world ultimately proved whether or not we were learning something. Our staff took advantage of the distinctions we were able to make in Spanish between the verb saber, to know facts and information, and conocer, to know or be familiar with experientially. We entered into the Latin American experience through close encounters (i.e. conocer), rather than standing back at a comfortable distance, learning facts (i.e. saber) that would enable us to control our environment without ever intimately engaging in it. It was the conocer way of intimate knowing that enabled us to truly learn and truly be changed in a way that we could engage our world with liberating, transformative action.

This same equation of true learning can be used in the narrative of Jacob’s struggle at the Jabbok River (Gen. 32:22-32). Does Jacob learn?—i.e. is he changed?

In order to explore these questions, it is imperative to understand who Jacob is when he arrives at the Jabbok.

I. Context The first signs of Jacob’s identity can be discovered in his birth narrative. As the younger of two twins, Jacob comes out of his mother’s womb holding onto Esau’s heel, and is thus named, “heel-grabber” (Gen. 25:24-26). Names in the Hebrew Bible are of importance because they express “something of the fundamental traits, nature, or destiny” of the one being named. Thus, the name “heel-grabber” not only describes the physical circumstances of Jacob’s birth, but also suggests a deceptive nature as well. Not surprisingly, Jacob lives up to his name, and as the younger son, he manages to cheat Esau out of his birthright and blessing (Gen. 25, 27). Through these schemes and manipulations, Jacob earns himself a fuller interpretation of his name as “one

All quotations from the Bible are from the New Revised Standard Version.

Eerdman’s Bible Dictionary, 2nd ed. s.v, “Names and Naming.”

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who supplants,” or one who supersedes Esau, the first-born and rightful recipient of the birthright and blessing (Gen. 27:36).

Fearing Esau’s threat to kill him, Jacob runs from Esau to the land of his mother (Gen. 28:41). There, Jacob ironically becomes the victim of manipulation as Laban deceives him into working 14 years for his wife Up to this point, Jacob has been able to get Rachel (Gen. 29:15-30). However, this is no indication that Jacob himself has changed his his hands on everything he has wanted. character. He reveals his deceptive character again when he manipulates the situation to gain livestock for himself at his uncle Laban’s expense (Gen. 30:25-42). After deceiving Laban to gain wealth and after securing wives and children to continue his lineage, Jacob has only to return to the land of his father to secure his future.

Up to this point, Jacob has been able to get his hands on everything he has wanted. Yet one thing stands before him and the land, which is his greatest promise for security. He must first face Esau. Surely, his last encounter with Esau echoes in his ears, “I hate you. I will kill you!” and the once confident, conniving trickster is overcome with fear and distress (paraphrase Gen. 27:41; 32:7). “If Esau comes to the one company and destroys it, then the company that is left will escape” (Gen. 32:8).

Jacob splits his camp into two with the intension of protecting himself. He frantically prays to God for deliverance, “Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children” (Gen. 32:11). Just in case God did not hear his plea for protection, Jacob anxiously places a large buffer of servants and livestock between himself and Esau, “I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterwards I shall see his face; perhaps he will accept me” (Gen. 32:20).

And this is where we meet Jacob at the Jabbok (Gen. 32:22-32). He has tricked and cheated, deceived and manipulated, and is now coming face to face with the consequences of this identity. As he approaches what he fears to be an encounter with death, he has frantically prayed for deliverance and placed buffers between him and Esau. Jacob camps that night, unsure what the day will bring (Gen. 32:21). Will Esau kill him? Will God deliver him? Will bribery and flattery change Esau’s mind? For all of the praying, planning, and preparing he has done, Jacob cannot know for sure what his end will be. He remains restless, unable to sleep that night (Gen.32:22).

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II. Text: Genesis 37:22-32 22 The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.

Night. Darkness. The opening of the narrative. Without light, figures are barely visible and meaning is shrouded in mystery. It is the perfect setting for Jacob’s mysterious encounter at the Jabbok, where motives and identities are unclear to the reader. This ambiguity is aided by the narrator’s short, incomplete descriptions of the people and events as they begin to unfold. In the previous verse, Jacob camps (Gen. 32:21). Yet without giving a reason, the narrator says that the Without light, figures are barely visible same night Jacob gets up and takes his wives and children across the ford of the Jabbok (v. 22). Does and meaning is shrouded in mystery.

Jacob himself cross? Does he cross and then come back? Where is Jacob’s daughter Dinah who is unaccounted for? (Gen 30:21; 34:1-31).

The narrator does not say. Questions begin to unfold as readers come to understand meaning in the story in the same way that Jacob understands meaning—moving step by step, entering into the mysterious struggle until day breaks and light is shed on the mystery.

Night in the Hebrew Bible is “often associated with danger or calamity.”

Why, then, would Jacob choose the night to cross a river with his wives and children, leaving them on the other side without him? (v.22-23). As the patriarch of the family, Jacob was concerned that God grant him descendents numbering the sands of the sea (Gen. 32:12). Not only that, but he was also aware that Esau was capable of killing them all, including the mothers and the children (Gen. 32:11). Yet Jacob still chooses to leave his family unprotected in the danger of the night. What could have convinced Jacob that his wives and children were expendable that night? Recalling his previous manipulations to gain riches and blessing at the expense of his brother Esau and his uncle Laban, it is not such a surprise that when fear for survival sets in, Jacob is willing to use even his family as a human shield.

24 Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

Now, with all of his possessions and all of his family on the other side of the river Jacob is alone. It is in this solitary state that a man wrestled with him until daybreak (v. 24).

Does this mean that Jacob is really alone? Or is he with a man? Or both? Is Jacob Eerdman’s Bible Dictionary, 2nd ed. s.v, “Night.”

Frolov Serge. “The Other Side of the Jabbok: Genesis 32 As a Fiasco of Patriarchy,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 91 (2000), 41-59.

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himself the man that he wrestled that night? Is the man Esau? Is the man God? Is the man a demonic river-spirit as folklore suggests? Or is he an angel as Hosea assumes (Hosea 12:4-5)? At this point in the narrative, the identity of the man is as obscure as the night setting in which he wrestles.

25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.

The wrestling match reveals more details by the dislocation of Jacob’s hip. That Jacob was physically injured implies that the man, the assailant, was someone other than Jacob.

This was not merely an internal battle, although the physical injury doesn’t exclude the possibility that there were internal struggles as well. However, it can be said with more certainty that the assailant was someone other than Jacob.

The actual identity of the man remains unknown, but looking at what the man does can perhaps give additional clues. While the NRSV translation says that the man “struck” Jacob, the Hebrew verb naga’ is more simply indicates “to touch”. A much less forceful action, naga’ connotes the power to either give or take away holiness. If this connotation for naga’ rings true in this narrative, it may be “the first hint that Jacob’s assailant is not simply human, that Jacob is injured not by a violent physical blow but by a touch that has the supernatural power to cripple him.” While this may eliminate the possibility that Jacob is wrestling with a human (e.g. Esau), it does not reveal whether this supernatural power is divine or demonic, nor does it reveal for what purpose the stranger has chosen to struggle with Jacob.

26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”

In the previous verse, it is hinted that the assailant has supernatural power; however, why then would the assailant be telling Jacob to let him go? What is the nature of these powers that the attacker cannot even release himself from this struggle? How Claus Westermann, Genesis 12-36: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1985), 517.

Frances Manly, “Jacob at the Jabbok: An Exegesis of Genesis 32:22-32.” The Unitarian Universalist Christian.

48 no 1-2 (Spr-Sum 1993), 38.

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could the struggle go until daybreak in the first place, if it were not somehow mutual, especially considering Jacob’s injured hip? Jacob shows his strength in the encounter, but surely if he were struggling with one who had supernatural power, he could not endure so long. Furthermore, why must the assailant leave before daybreak? Is it for Jacob’s benefit or his own that he must leave before light comes? Is he the riverdemon of folklore who cannot be seen by day? Or is he God, wanting to protect Jacob from seeing too much? Mystery prevails for the reader, but as night fades and the day breaks, more is revealed.

Jacob continues to hold on—just as the physical darkness lifts, the good nature of Jacob’s adversary begins to dawn on him. Why else would he so confidently demand a blessing, which demons cannot give? This mutual struggle echoes Jacob’s history of struggles where he manipulated and controlled his opponent to get what he wanted. Once gain, Jacob is taking advantage of his opponent, in this case trying to manipulate his way to a blessing by exploiting his adversary’s need to escape by daylight. Ironically, his opponent who has more power than Jacob does not use his supernatural power to manipulate and control Jacob: it is after all the assailant who asks to be let go. In contrast to Jacob’s attempt to control and manipulate the other, his divine opponent grants Jacob the freedom to participate in the struggle.

27 So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.”

Jacob’s request for a blessing is not granted. Rather than a blessing, he receives a question, “What is your name?” (v. 27).

If the opponent is divine as Jacob has begun to discover, he would already know Jacob’s name and the question would be rhetorical. What effect might this rhetorical question have?

It is important to note that in the Hebrew Bible, “to know the name [of someone]…was to possess a degree of power over its bearer.” God would already have known Jacob’s name and not have needed to gain power over him, for the divine already had more power than Jacob. The question would then serve as an invitation for Jacob both to recognize the reality of God’s power and to confess the identity that leads Allen P. Ross, “Jacob at the Jabbok, Israel at Peniel,” Bibliotheca Sacra, 142 (Oct-Dec 1985), 345.

Eerdman’s Bible Dictionary, 2nd ed. s.v. “Bless, Blessing.”

James King West, Introduction to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1981), 158.

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him to want to manipulate and supplant even God. Recalling the meaning of names in the Hebrew Bible as revealing the essence or character of a person, Jacob, in giving his name would be confessing his “grasping, scheming, and manipulative self.”10 It remains to be seen whether or not this is a true confession involving true repentance, turning the other way.

28 Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God [Elohim] and with humans, and have prevailed.

As Jacob hands over his name he is given a new one. If a change in name also signifies a change in character, then Jacob has handed in his deceiving, supplanting character to become one who “strives with humans and with God and prevails” (v. 28). Or could it be that rather than signifying a transformation in Jacob’s character, “Israel” only describes Jacob’s recent success in struggling with God The act of naming “signals the and predicting his future success when he has to encounter name-giver’s authority over Esau in the morning?11 At this point, it is uncertain either way. that which is named.”

However, what becomes clearer in this act of re-naming is the identity of Jacob’s opponent, who implicitly reveals himself to be God, Elohim, the one who has been striving with Jacob. Furthermore, since the act of naming “signals the name-giver’s authority over that which is named,” God continues to assert that he is more powerful than Jacob.12 As Jacobs comes to know more of his opponent through intimate struggle, he is becoming increasingly aware of his inability to control and supplant him. Yet Jacob still holds on.

29 Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him.

Jacob grips even tighter as he feels his power slipping away. “Please tell me your name” (v. 29). That Jacob wrestles with the divine, Elohim, has already been established (v. 28), but a personal name for the divine has yet to be revealed. It could be in an innocent effort to know the true identity of his opponent that Jacob asks his name.

However, given that the struggle is not over and Jacob still wants his blessing, it is more likely that Jacob has taken yet another grasp at power. By asking for the divine name he would have control over his opponent, and perhaps then he would be able to procure his blessing. Is this a sign that Jacob’s identity as a ‘supplanter’ has not fully been transformed? That the narrator continues to use his old name “Jacob” further suggests this possibility.

10 11 12

Phyllis Trible, “Struggles and Strangers,” Journal of Theology 109 (Sum 2005), 11.

Leander Keck, Ed, New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 567.

“Names and Naming,” Eerdman’s, 946. (bib: 944-946)

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Jacob is denied his request, regardless of his motives in knowing his opponent’s name. God is not willing to release his name for Jacob to control. Instead God asks Jacob a question (the same one that readers wonder), “Why is it that you ask my name?”

Given the significance of revealing names, the question could As soon as God establishes that perhaps have been asked, “Why is it that you want power over Jacob is not in control over me?” This may be a legitimate question, and God may really him, God gives his blessing. want to know. It is more likely, however, that the question is rhetorical—perhaps to cause Jacob to reflect for himself why he wants to know God’s name.13 What kinds of answers would Jacob’s self-reflection lead him towards? What would he become aware of in himself as the daylight approached?

It is at this point that the blessing comes. As soon as God establishes that Jacob is not in control over him, God gives his blessing. If the mutuality of the encounter at any point led Jacob to consider that he was on equal footing with God, or worse, that he could manipulate or supplant God as he has others, God’s refusal to reveal his name assures Jacob otherwise. God’s power has been established in a strangely mutual encounter, in order to make it clear that “the blessing is not extorted out of his weakness, but freely given out of his strength.”14 Jacob is called to struggle, not to manipulate. He has met his match in God. 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”

Once the blessing is given, the struggle seems to end. However, there is no mention of either Jacob or God letting go. Perhaps this suggests an ongoing struggle as Jacob, now Israel, continues to claim his new identity, working out what it means to struggle with God and with humans. The narrator leaves that gap open for interpretation and moves on to etiology in the naming of Peniel, “God’s face.” This is the first time that Jacob can say with conviction (and relief!), aside from the implicit recognition that his opponent was God (v. 28), “It is God with whom I have struggled, and I have not died!” (paraphrase v. 30). This morning exclamation is quite a contrast to the beginning of the dark night when in fear of death, Jacob encountered an unnamed man.

Henry F. Knight, “Meeting Jacob at the Jabbok: Wrestling with a Text—A Midrash on Genesis 32:22-32,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 29 no 3-4 (Sum-Fall 1992), 452.

14 Frances Manly, “Jacob at the Jabbok: An Exegesis of Genesis 32:22-32,” The Unitarian Universalist Christian 48 no 1-2 (Spr-Sum 1993), 41.

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31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket, because he struck Jacob on the hip socket at the thigh muscle.

As the sun rises and the darkness fades, Jacob begins his journey anew. However, he is not without marks from the struggle the night before. What is the meaning of Jacob’s limp? Is it a physical reminder of the struggle that night at the Jabbok? What images will it draw in Jacob’s mind every time he walks and remembers why he limps? What is the limp meant to teach him? Perhaps like the question God posed to Jacob, the limp is a cause for self-reflection.

Although Jacob limps, he still moves forward. He does not sit and rest, nor does he retreat. Jacob had been running away from Esau for much of his life, but now he limps towards him (Gen. 28:41; 32:31). This limping movement towards the face of Esau suggests that the meaning of the limp “will become fully apparent only as Jacob (Israel) goes on to live out what he has become.”15 The story ends with a dietary regulation, most likely from the hand of a different writer who seeks to connect with this story the reason that Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle of animals. However, whether intended or not, Jacob just knows who associating a daily reality to the memory of their patriarch would names him. Or does he? function to institutionalize the memory of Jacob’s struggle with God.16 This memory would be tied specifically to the hip of Jacob, where he suffered the injury in his struggle with God. Just like their patriarch, the nation Israel would have to explore the meaning of the limp for their own self-identity in relationship with God and humans.

III. Reflections So who is Jacob now? Do we fully know his opponent without his name being revealed? And what is the meaning of their encounter? The answers to those questions are found only in relationship, only through a free and intimate encounter with Jacob’s mysterious opponent. The story of God’s re-naming of Jacob is also told in the shorter Priestly narrative of Genesis 35:9-11. In that version, the identity of the divine speaker is clear: “I am God Almighty,” El Shaddai.17 There is no guessing, doubting, deliberating, struggling, scheming, manipulating, humbling, or discovering involved. Jacob just knows who names him. Or does he? Is it enough to be told and 15 16 17

Manly, 42.

Leander Keck, Ed. New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 567.

Steven Molen, “Wrestling with Ambiguity in Gen. 32:22-32,” 26 (Sum 1993), 197.

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know (e.g. saber)? Or does he need to enter into a relationship with the God who is both intimate and mysterious in order to struggle intimately and honestly and truly know (e.g. conocer) and truly be changed?

While Genesis 32:22-32 seems to raise more questions than answers, it ultimately reveals the nature of God’s relationship with Jacob/Israel, and models for Jacob the kind of transformative, intimate relationships he is called to enter into with humans. Once God’s power is Naming Jacob Israel, then, is ultimately an invitation to unquestioned and Jacob has learned that relationships are not about manipulation, but about mutual, free, self-giving struggle, to participate in the encounters, God blesses him. God freely chooses to be in dynamic of a life lived in faith. close relationship with Israel—the name Israel, “one who strives with God,” itself means that God too must be part of the struggle if Jacob’s new identity is to be realized. Recalling God’s request that Jacob let God go, we know also that God gives Jacob the freedom to choose the encounter. Naming Jacob Israel, then, is ultimately an invitation to struggle, to participate in the dynamic of a life lived in faith. As Jacob lives into his true identity as Israel, he is called to embrace and honor the mystery and freedom of another, rather than seek to gain power over another.

So what are we to conclude about Jacob’s identity? Has he learned anything?—i.e. Has he been transformed? If we read on after the struggle, we see that Jacob limps ahead of his family to encounter Esau, bowing seven times before his brother (Gen. 33:3).

We then recall the Jacob before the struggle, who feared for his life and used servants, animals, and even his family to protect himself.

It is a changed Jacob who now places himself between Esau and his family, courageously choosing to expose himself in humility and vulnerability before his brother, who he knows could take his life.

However, Jacob’s courage and humility are met with an intimate embrace (Gen. 33:4), which reminds Jacob of his encounter the night before, “For truly to see your face, [Esau,] is like seeing the face of God” (Gen. 33:10).

Jacob’s struggle with God has taught him something about struggling with humans. His life does not have meaning in running away to get a comfortable distance between him and the other, but in limping towards others in humility to engage in mutual and free relationships. His life does not have meaning in protecting himself from his fears, but in claiming courage and embracing God’s promise of blessing. But that doesn’t mean that he is transformed completely, as verses ahead show that Jacob again lies to his brother who wants to

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journey together (Gen. 33:13). Nonetheless, the invitation to struggle with God and with humans still remains. There is always more mystery to encounter and more meaning to be discovered as Jacob learns to accept the invitation to be transformed through intimacy in relationship. Putting Jacob back into the original equation of true learning, it is clear that Jacob is learning—i.e. Jacob is being transformed.

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Jessica Mueller has just finished her first year of the Master of Divinity program. Prior to coming to JSTB, she worked for the Latin American Studies Program in San Jose, Costa Rica, and for University Ministry at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Currently, she serves as a Resident Minister at the University of San Francisco.

"I Did Not Change, They Did"

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“I Did Not Change; They Did!“

Joseph Ratzinger, Karl Rahner and the Second Vatican Council

by Oliver Putz

ABSTRACT With their participation in the Second Vatican Council, two German theologians have been instrumental in shaping modern Catholicism like few others, namely Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger. Both were collaborators on a wide array of issues in theology and ecclesiology, but their ways were to part after the Council, and according to many observers, one of them, Ratzinger, was to undergo a significant and absolute change of heart. This change of direction does not cease to puzzle Catholics today, which makes it worthwhile to take a closer look at it. If indeed, Ratzinger not so much abandoned as developed further his already existing views, it would be of considerable importance for how we can think of the reception of the Council and its final documents. If, however, Ratzinger did change completely, the question could be what caused this change and how does the conversion affect the Church. By comparing the development of both theologians before, during, and after the Council, the present study wants to hypothesize that Ratzinger did not change as much as became more rigid in his already existing neo-Augustinian ideas, while Rahner probably underwent a far greater change following the Council.

“Si un hombre nunca se contradice, será porque nunca dice nada.“

Miguel de Unamuno

Introduction Ever since in the early days of the first session of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council the participating bishops refused to discuss the schemata presented by the largely curial preparatory commission, it has been the common The notion that the reformers perception that at the Council two monolithic blocs faced off agreed on virtually all issues is in a clash over the future of the Church. According to lore, certainly an oversimplification. the attempts of ultramontanist traditionalists to maintain the status quo failed due to the overwhelming conformity among progressive reformers.

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While there is truth in this, the notion that the reformers agreed on virtually all issues is certainly an oversimplification. The documents of the Council remain notoriously ambiguous, and the fact that the very same decrees have been used to argue often diametrically opposed positions suggests that general agreement on broad issues at the Council did not translate into general accord on every detail. Unanimous votes on either side of the divide easily betray the great diversity of opinions that was present among the 2,500 bishops at Vatican II. The persistent notion of a homogenous front of bishops and theologians trying to lead Catholicism into the (not quite so) new era of modernity against obstinate traditionalists makes it difficult to evaluate postconciliar controversies among former allies at the Council. How is it, one might ask, that previous reformers suddenly reversed course and advocated views worthy of a Cardinal Ottaviani? It is, of course, a truism that the only thing in life that does not change is change itself, but to betray one’s earlier convictions in favor of former adversaries has the bitter aftertaste of selling out. Few have been accused of such an extreme volte-face as often and as bitterly as Joseph Ratzinger, the current Pope Benedict XVI, who participated in the Council as peritus, and has shaped the Catholic Church for the past forty years like few others.

For Benedict, Vatican II certainly marked a turning point in his already stellar career. By the time the Council began, he was 35 years old and had held professorships at two German universities, but it was with the Council that the young theologian attained an international reputation. He quickly became an outspoken supporter of the ressourcement movement and collaborated with those whose names were synonymous with the nouvelle théologie. One name stands out in particular. Karl Rahner, 23-years Benedict’s senior, had already been widely known in Catholic circles when he came to the Council as a peritus. His new approach to theology had been generally well received, but among the predominantly conservative curia it had gained him sufficient animosity to endanger his participation at the Council, if not his entire career. Over the four years of the Council, both theologians emerged as See for example J.L. Allen, Jr., Pope Benedict XVI: A Biography of Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Continuum, 2005).

Some do not see Ratzinger as a proponent of the nouvelle théologie. In fact, he himself today is rather critical of the movement. However, see Francis Schüssler Fiorenza (“From Theologian to Pope: A personal view back, past the public portrayals,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin, 33, No. 2 [2005]), who argues the same point I am making here. On the other hand, according to Herman Häring, Ratzinger adopted some of the important aspects of the nouvelle théologie introduced by Congar, Rahner, Schillebeeckx, or Küng, without ever fully embracing its methods (Cf. Hermann Häring, Theologie und Ideologie bei Joseph Ratzinger [Düsseldorf: Patmos-Verlag, 2001], 30.)

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influential voices, which left their mark on some of the major conciliar documents.

They continued their fruitful cooperation that had begun before the Council and together published a series of milestone articles and books on pressing theological and ecclesiological issues. And yet, while their personal involvement was intricately associated with the aggiornamento theology of Vatican II, their paths in the postconciliar period could not have been more divergent.

To Rahner, the primary objective of all theology after Vatican II was to seek ways of conveying Christianity as meaningful to those who grew up in a world dominated by empirical knowledge. Forever the pastoral theologian and teacher, he pursued his goal in the dialogue with those outside the Church and by reformulating Christian doctrine in his theological writings. Ratzinger, on the other hand, grew increasingly uneasy about what he perceived as a misinterpretation of the Council’s intentions. Concerned that the Church would go too far in accommodating the modern world and thereby jeopardize its true Christian identity, he sought to maintain its original character. He eventually became bishop of Munich, received his cardinal’s hat, and soon after followed Pope John Paul II’s call to the Vatican as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). In this position, which Ratzinger was to hold for over 20 years, he made many unpopular and rather hard-line decisions that surprised the world and those who knew him at Vatican II. The two conspirators for a new Catholicism had drifted apart, and it seemed as if some major change had come over the younger Ratzinger.

Many blame the 1968 student revolts in Germany for this change of heart, a seemingly convincing argument, given the intense anger with which protest erupted then. And yet, it seems surprising that only a few months of upheaval could have posed such a threat to the religious convictions of a man of Benedict, when asked whether his Ratzinger’s caliber. Hans Küng, who in 1966 vigorously participation in the journal Concilium supported and secured Ratzinger’s appointment to the was a sin, replied: “Absolutely not. I did prestigious theology department in Tübingen, saw in not change; they changed.”

Ratzinger’s growing conservatism signs of a lust for power.

Both explanations offer convenient solutions to the enigma that is Joseph Ratzinger, but it is unlikely they altogether do justice to this complex thinker. It is true; Ratzinger rose quickly through the ranks and assumed a powerful position as one of the closest advisors to Pope John Paul II. But can it really be that the historical context and Even Hans Küng was shocked by the intensity and violence of the student protests. Cf. Christ sein (München: Piper, 2004, [1974]), particularly 38 ff.

To be fair, the student demonstrations in Germany did not begin and end in 1968, but like elsewhere in Europe and the United States were the culmination of a process that began in the early 1960s. I will return to this later, but let it suffice to say here that it may very well have taken Ratzinger longer than the summer of 1968 to reach a point of frustration and disenchantment that manifested itself in his increasing rigidity.

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the benevolent acts of the powers that be coincided so perfectly to corrupt Ratzinger completely and transform him into an old-school curial official? Or was Ratzinger perhaps right when, asked by Vittorio Messori whether his participation in the journal Concilium was a sin, he replied: “Absolutely not. I did not change; they changed.”

The present paper revisits the perplexing relationship of Joseph Ratzinger and Karl Rahner to ask specifically whether indeed the former changed radically while the latter remained true to himself. By examining the time before, during and after the Second Vatican Council, it will try to elucidate the evolution of Ratzinger’s thought and will argue that his biography shows far more continuation than is commonly acknowledged. When Ratzinger’s opinions, especially those articulated as the head of the CDF, are being interpreted as signs of conversion, it is most likely out of an overemphasis of the charismatic character of the Council, something that neither Ratzinger nor Rahner thought appropriate before Vatican II. I want to submit the thesis that while both men changed, it was indeed Rahner who underwent the more substantial, yet less surprising, change following the Council. Joseph Ratzinger, on the other hand, hardened by the events around him, increasingly reverted to ever more rigid patristic views he has always held in a genuine effort to save the Church he saw in critical danger of losing its true spirit.

Before the Council When in January of 1959, John XXIII revealed his plan of an ecumenical council to a group of close associates, his proposal was met with utter silence. Curial officials were not the only ones who reacted with a mixture of shock and suspicion. Indeed, the announcement of the Council surprised the entire Church. After the first session had ended, Joseph Ratzinger recalled his lingering hesitations with which he had engaged in the Council: As one looks back trying to recall the events as they unfolded, it must be said that the beginning of the Council was dominated by a certain discomfort, a concern that the whole affair will reduce itself to little more than a confirmation of preconceived decisions, and thus, by disappointing the hopes of many, leaving them without courage, paralyzing the dynamics of the good, and by leaving all the questions the present time is asking of the Church once again unanswered, harm the Church more than benefit it.

V. Messori and J. Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985).

Cf. X. Rynne, Vatican Council II (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2003), 4; P. Hebblethwaite, “John XXIII,” in Modern Catholicism: Vatican II & After, edited by A. Hastings, pp. 27-34 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

J. Ratzinger, Die erste Sitzungperiode des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils. Ein Rückblick (Köln: Verlag T.P. Bachem, 1963). (This and all following translations from the German and Dutch are my own.)

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Karl Rahner was equally doubtful, voicing his apprehensions in a lecture he gave to students in Innsbruck in 1959. Ominously entitled “On the Threatening or Imminent Council,” the lecture was skeptical in tone, particularly regarding the practicality of the Council, its content, and its proclaimed ecumenical nature. “Just imagine,” he said, “how difficult the Council would become when two thousand bishops show up; and once you invite the titular bishops you quickly reach a dimension that is technically unmanageable.”10 Like others before him, Rahner contemplated the possibility of alternative forms that could substitute for the traditional Conciliar structure and nonchalantly suggested using written questionnaires Rahner envisaged Vatican II like those which were used by Pius IX and Pius XII prior to the as a chance for the Church’s decision on the Marian dogma. As far as the unclear content of the self-evaluation of sorts.

Council was concerned, Rahner did not view this as reason for the euphoria that had taken hold of the public. Instead, he hesitated to join speculations and restrained himself to merely pointing out the disconcerting fact that little in this regard was known.11 Finally, while ecumenism was of great importance to him, Rahner was unconvinced that the Council could have the same unifying potential like those of Lyon (1274) or Florence (1438-1445). Alternatively, he envisaged Vatican II as a potential chance for self-evaluation of sorts, which would allow clarifying the position of the Catholic Church in regards to other churches.12 Looking back, it is easily forgotten that it was not only the ultramontanists who responded suspiciously, but also those who would eventually be so instrumental in shaping the Council.

The announcement of the Council instigated a general interest in the theology of councils that led to various systematic and historical treatments prepared by numerous theologians, including Rahner and Ratzinger. In his 1962 essay On the Theology of

Rahner taught at the time in Innsbruck. The lectures were presented in the context of a lecture series held every Friday evening on current issues in theology, called Quastiones quodlibetales. According to J.B. Metz, Rahner used these colloquia to present in every-day examples how the relevance of theology can be made clear very concretely, as in “How do I explain it to the man on the train?” Cf. J.B. Metz, “Widmung und Würdigung.

Karl Rahner, dem Sechzigjährigen,” in Gott in Welt. Festgabe für Karl Rahner, Bd. I., edited by J.B. Metz, W. Kern, A. Darlap, and H. Vorgrimler (Freiburg: Herder, 1964). The lecture on the Council was transcribed by students and can be found in the Karl Rahner-Archiv in Innsbruck. All quotes here are taken from G. Wassilowsky, “Karl Rahners gerechte Erwartungen ans II. Vatikanum (1959, 1962, 1965),” in Zweites Vatikanum – vergessenes Anstöße, gegenwärtige Fortschreibungen, edited by G. Wassilowsky, pp. 31-54 (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 2004).

Wassilowsky, 2004, 33 ff.

10 Wassilowsky, 33.

11 Wassilowsky, 34. Nothing changed in this regard, and three years later Rahner wrote: “It is probably no exaggeration to say that there has never been a Council that – at least for those looking on from the outside – kept its content so shrouded in mystery as this one.” Cf. K. Rahner, “ Zur Theologie des Konzils,” Stimmen der Zeit, 169 (1962): 321-339. The essay was also published in: K. Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, Bd. V, Neuere Schriften (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1962). For an English translation see: “On the Theology of the Council,” in K. Rahner, Investigations V (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), 244-267.

12 Wassilowsky, 2004, 36.

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Councils,13 which he based on the aforementioned Innsbruck lecture, Rahner primarily tried to moderate exaggerated expectations now held by many.14 His assessment of the Council as primarily a governing body that did not represent the Charisms of the Church aimed specifically at relativizing excessive enthusiasm. Any notion of future democratic representation Rahner diffused by pointing out that the Catholic Church is a hierarchically-structured body under the leadership of the episcopate and the pope alike,15 a hierarchy that to him was installed by Jesus himself. As such, Rahner’s position was soundly traditional and in line with magisterial teaching.

But he then went on to investigate the concept of Rahner affirms collegiality vehemently collegiality and its ramifications for the final power in and from that perspective reviews the the Church. Rahner affirmed collegiality vehemently relationship of episcopate and pope. and from that perspective reviewed the relationship of episcopate and pope. For him, neither the notion of the pope as ultimate judicial authority of the Church, nor the inadequate differentiation between the Council and the pope could hold up; following from collegiality the final authority had to lie with the council together with the pope as one body. As such, “the teaching authority does not only rest with the entire episcopate under and with the pope during the course of the council, when both form one body, or with the pope at times when the council is not in session, but rather always and at all times with the entire episcopate under and with the pope, even when the council is not in session.”16 During the Council, this highest collegial governing body of the Church, which has always existed, comes together.17 The reason for this is simple necessity; since the entire episcopate under and with the pope can act perfectly even when the council is not in session, it usually takes a particular reason to call for a council. Exactly this reason, however, was unclear for Rahner, since the content of Vatican II had remained somewhat elusive. Rahner’s essay marks an important understanding of the Council, namely the collegial continuation of the actions undertaken by the episcopate and the pope as the governing office of the Church.

Rahner, 1962. Wassilowsky shows that Rahner presented the lecture repeatedly over the years prior to the Council, which gave him the possibility to improve upon earlier versions. By the time he published his paper, his thought had assumed a very thorough and elaborate state. Cf. Wassilowsky, 2004, 38-39 (footnote 19).

14 H.J. Sieben, Katholische Konzilsidee im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1993); Wassilowsky, 2004, 41. An example of the hopefulness among theologians at the time is H. Küng’s Strukturen der Kirche, in which Küng emphasized the representative nature of the Council. Küng was possibly inspired by numerous historical studies on conciliarism in the 15th century. The Council of Constance as the end of the Great Schism certainly comes to mind. Also, Küng stressed the importance for ecumenism. See: H. Küng, Strukturen der Kirche, Questiones Disputatae 17 (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1962); Sieben, 1993, 258.

15 Rahner, 1962, 280.

16 Rahner, 1962, 281. Emphasis added.

17 Rahner, 1962, 289.

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Ratzinger presented his theology of council in a response to Hans Küng, who in Strukturen der Kirche identified the council with the representation of the Church.18 Ratzinger, like Rahner, advocated collegiality and investigated how it affected the concept of the Council as “representation” of the Church. He elaborated on the notion of infallibility, presenting a position that was very much in line with Vatican I, even though not with the ultramontanist interpretation.19 A pope, therefore, can only speak Accordingly, the infallibility lies not with the pope alone, but infallibly when he says what the rather with the unified body of the entire Church. A pope, entire church accepts as infallible. therefore, can only speak infallibly when he says what the entire Church accepts as infallible. As such, lay people partake in the infallibility of the faith of the entire Church.20 The Council together with the pope constitute the highest judicial body of the Church that convenes whenever needed, which for Ratzinger is the case when the Church is divided on particular issues. Here now, it is the distinct responsibility of the Council to act preventive and protective. He writes later: “The Councils originated with the goal to protect the Church from wrong thoughts (Falschgeist) and out of the necessity for a comparison and unification of traditions, the collective order of the Church, and the need of mutual help in order to achieve proper guidance.”21 The Council is thus an advising and deciding assembly, whereas the entire Church is far more. Charisms, for example, which are essential aspects of the Church, are not part of the Council. It is this difference that makes the Council synedrion and not ekklesia.22 In 1961, Rahner and Ratzinger published Episkopat und Primat together,23 in which they negotiated their theological understanding of the relationship of council and pope. In spite of certain minor but significant differences, the two German theologians generally agreed on the secondary character of the Council.

Meanwhile, their work on the theology of councils brought both theologians to the attention of the two cardinals and members of the preparatory Cf. Sieben, 1993; J. Ratzinger, “Zur Theologie des Konzils,” Catholica, 15 (1961): 292-304.

Cf. F. Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300-1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

20 Ratzinger, 1961, 294.

21 J. Ratzinger, Das neue Volk Gottes. Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (Düsseldorf: , 1969).

22 J. Ratzinger, 1969, 159/160.

23 K. Rahner and J. Ratzinger, Episkopat und Primat (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1961).

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commission, who would eventually take them to Rome as their respective periti.

Ratzinger met Cardinal Joseph Frings in the late 1950s through an old friend and personal secretary of Frings, Hubert Luthe.24 Impressed by a lecture on the theology of the Council which Ratzinger gave at the Catholic academy in Bensberg, Frings asked Ratzinger to read all the schemata for him and suggest improvements. Here, one gets further insight into how Ratzinger perceived the forthcoming council: Of course I felt the schemata left much to be desired, but I found no grounds for a radical rejection as it was called for by many at the Council. Certainly, the biblical and patristic renewal that had characterized the preceding decades had imprinted these blueprints only moderately, making them appear a little rigid and narrow, too close to a theology of the academy, too much the thoughts of scholars and not enough of shepherds. One has to acknowledge, however, that they were absolutely solid and carefully crafted.25

Although this reminiscence was written thirty-two years after Vatican II, one nevertheless gets a sense for how Ratzinger perceived the initial schemata and how he envisioned the future direction of the Council. Quite Both Rahner and Ratzinger saw the obviously he was preoccupied with the integration of the need for adjustment and revisions of results that previous research in biblical exegesis and the the initial schemata of the Council. patristic writings had offered. Aspirations of relating the Church to the world, however, were apparently of lesser importance to him.

At the same time, Cardinal König of Vienna, whom Rahner had first met during the war, asked Rahner to review the schemata critically for him.26 Unlike Ratzinger, Rahner received the schemata far more unsympathetically, even if some of the key issues that concerned him were similar to those that troubled his younger colleague in Bonn. In one of his letters to the cardinal, Rahner wrote: The authors [of these schemata] very likely have never suffered the afflictions of the atheist or the non-Christian, who wants to believe but thinks that he cannot.27

And in another letter: No, these schemata do not do all that they could do; they are elaborations of the leisurely secure who confuse their self-confidence with the firmness of faith… These are the elaborations of good and pious professors… selfless, J. Ratzinger, Aus meinem Leben. Erinnerungen (1927-1977) (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1998).

J. Ratzinger, 1998, 101.

26 Cardinal F. König, “Der Konzilstheologe,” in Karl Rahner. Bilder eines Lebens, edited by P. Imhof and H.Biallowons, 60-64 (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1985); idem. “Erinnerungen an Karl Rahner als Konzilstheologen,” in Karl Rahner in Erinnerungen, edited by A. Raffelt, 149-164 (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1994).

27 König, 1994, 152.

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yet unable to rise to the occasion of the current situation.28

Obviously, both Rahner and Ratzinger saw the need for adjustment and revisions, especially due to the highly intellectual nature and lack of pastoral tone of the schemata, but they differed in their evaluation of what was indeed needed. While for Ratzinger the problem lay with the lack of spiritual leadership, Rahner was deeply worried about those who found their genuine desire for faith simply irreconcilable with the world of today.29 Where Ratzinger in the end saw sound and well-crafted documents, Rahner saw largely well meaning, yet on whole incapable attempts.

The significance of what may seem like negligible differences in focus and possibly wording must not be underestimated; both statements reflect the underlying theologies with which both theologians assessed the preparatory texts and which considerably shaped their participation at the Council. Already in his earliest works, Rahner develops the essence of his transcendental method that combined historical investigation of actual experience with a transcendental reflection on the conditions of its possibility.30 The mere notion that God can be directly experienced, that the experience of everything finite moves us vis-à-vis the infinite horizon of the ultimate mystery that is God, reveals that for Rahner being historical For Rahner being historical and and in the world could not be divorced from being human.31 in the world could not be divorced Ratzinger, on the other hand, early on assumed a rather from being human. world-denying theology that was characterized by a neoplatonic anthropology not much unlike that of his great theological role model and focus of his doctoral research, St. Augustine.32 He wrote his Habilitationsschrift33 on St. Bonaventure, who had not yet undergone the turn to the more world-affirming worldview so characteristic for Albertus Magnus or Thomas Aquinas. It does not surprise then that Ratzinger always returned to point out the importance of patristic

König, 1994, 152 As mentioned above, this for Rahner was the essential problem of theology in the 20th century: “Theological disputes should deal with the one question that is of central importance for all believing Christians today: How can a modern person live and proclaim to the non-Christians in his country an authentic Christianity in such a way that it does not appear to them as a merely formal spiritual museum piece? This is the pressing duty of all confessions.” Interview with John A. O’Brien, Chicago 1964, in Karl Rahner im Gespräch. Band 1: 19641977, edited by P. Imhof and H. Biallowons (München: Kösel-Verlag, 1982), 22.

30 L.J. O’Donovan, S.J. “Preface,” in A World of Grace. An Introduction to the Themes and Foundations of Karl Rahner’s Theology, edited by L.J. O’Donovan, S.J., vii-xiii (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1995); see also O. Muck, “Thomas – Kant – Maréchal: Karl Rahners transzendentale Methode,” in Die philosophischen Quellen der Theologie Karl Rahners. Questiones Disputatae 213, edited by H. Schöndorf, 31-56 (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 2005).

31 K. Rahner, Grundkurs des Glaubens. Einführung in den Begriff des Christentum (Freiburg i. Br: Herder, 1976).

32 M. Fahey, “Joseph Ratzinger als Ekklesiologe und Seelsorger,” Concilium, 17 (1981): 79-85.

33 Admission thesis to the position of professor in Germany.

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theology and the pneumatology of the Eastern Church.34 The neo-scholastic hyperintellectualism that was so characteristic of the Church after Vatican I (and after Leo XIII in particular) was for him, the Augustinian, who sought What does surprise is that Rahner deep spiritual conversion rather than academic persuasion, and Ratzinger collaborated so always suspect. In many ways, he views such explanatory successfully at the council. theology as an unnecessary apologetics behind which the Church “hides instead of trusting the truth that lives in freedom and is in no need of.”35 In light of the fundamental differences between the two philosophical and theological positions what does surprise is that Rahner and Ratzinger collaborated so successfully at the Council.

At the Council Ever since the Middle Ages, councils were inconceivable without the participations of theologians who would function as advisors to the bishops,36 and Vatican II was not to be an exception to the rule. How individual periti exactly shape the trajectory of a council, influence episcopal opinion and the content of final documents is often not at all easy to determine. The historian here must rely entirely on personal accounts of either the periti themselves or other individuals present at the Council.

In Rahner’s case, the analyses by Karl Heinz Neufeld, Günther Wassilowsky and Herbert Vorgrimmler provide excellent insights into his activities not only at the Council, but also during its preparation, as well as of the times when the Council was 37 Ratzinger’s particular not in session. To my knowledge, Ratzinger’s particular contribution to the council still contribution to the Council still awaits detailed investigation, awaits detailed investigation. but some can be reconstructed from his own writings as well as secondary literature on the Council. Here I will focus primarily on (a) Rahner and Ratzinger’s involvement in any work during the Council that indicates their idea of how to relate the Church and the world, and (b) their actual interaction at workgroups or during the time the Council was not in session.

Despite his previous difficulties with the curia and a reluctant reception by Cardinal Ottaviani, Karl Rahner became a member of the theological commission and was actively and significantly involved in the preparation of Lumen gentium, Dei H. Häring, “Eine katholische Theologie? J. Ratzinger, das Trauma von Hans im Glück,” in Katholische Kirche – wohin? Wider den Verrat am Konzil, edited by N. Greinacher und H. Küng, 241-258 (München: Serie Piper, 1986).

35 See quote in Fahey, 1981, 80.

36 R.N. Swanson, Universities, Academics and the Great Schism, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Third Series, Volume 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

37 K.H. Neufeld, Die Brüder Rahner. Eine Biographie (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 2004); G. Wassilowsky, Universales Heilssakrament Kirche. Karl Rahners Beitrag zur Ekklesiologie des II. Vatikanums (Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag, 2001); H Vorgrimmler, Karl Rahner. Gotteserfahrung in Leben und Denken (Primus Verlag, 2004).

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verbum, Gaudium et spes, and Perfectae caritatis.38 But his influence reached further than the theological commission. He gave numerous lectures and could often be found in conversation with theologians and bishops from other committees.39 Certainly, this would not have been possible had it not been for the friendly relationship between bishops and periti that had existed from the very beginning: One could perhaps say that if – not only me – but certain theologians had not been in amicable understanding with the bishops at the onset of the Council, the Council would have taken an entirely different direction than it finally did.40

But aside from the good rapport between bishops and periti, there was also a strictly pragmatic component to this relationship. The bishops challenging the schemata presented by the preparatory commission were in need of alternative texts and theologically sound critiques of the proposed schemata. Consequently, many periti ended up working on alternative texts that could Rahner’s involvement was primarily be presented to the Council fathers. Rahner’s work on in the realm of ecclesiology.

Lumen gentium involved both his activity in the theological commission as well as, perhaps more importantly, conversations with bishops, lectures, and writing of statements Cardinal König would then present in the aula.41 Once he had convinced the German and Austrian bishops of the problematic nature of the schema Depositum fidei, he immediately began to work on responses together with Ratzinger. Often, Rahner would not go to the aula, since he considered the discussions basically a waste of time, and worked on the schemata instead. Of this collaboration with Ratzinger, Rahner writes in his notebook: “I get along well with Ratzinger. And he has a good reputation with Frings.”42 On a whole, Rahner’s involvement was primarily in the realm of ecclesiology.43 He was actively partaking in the shaping of the De Ecclesia schema, tried from the very beginning to get the issue of the deaconate included in the schemata on the Church, advocated an inclusion of Mariology into the conciliar ecclesiology, promoted collegiality and supported a theology of local churches. From September 1963 onwards, König, 1994, 153-154; Wassilowsky, 2001, 98. Yves Congar remembers that the periti were seated at one wall of the room during meetings of the theological commission. There were four microphones, three of which were shared by the periti. According to Congar “Rahner had rented one of them;” more than anyone else he spoke, and if we can trust Congar his contributions were always substantial and helpful. Y. Congar, “Erinnerungen an Karl Rahner auf dem Zweiten Vatikanum,” in Karl Rahner. Bilder eines Lebens, edited by P. Imhof and H. Biallowons, 65-68 (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1985).

39 Like other periti, Rahner was not only working for König alone but also for other German-speaking bishops, which further extended his influence. Cf. Wassilowsky, 2001, 92.

40 K. Rahner, Im Gespräch mit Meinold Krauss (Hamburg: J.F. Steinkopf Verlag, 1991).

41 Neufeld, 2004, 243.

42 Neufeld, 2004, 243.

43 Wassilowsky, 2001, 95.

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he was involved in the work on schemata XIII, the document later to be known as Gaudium et spes.44 According to Cardinal König, Rahner’s particular interest lay with the development of Lumen gentium, but Yves Congar remembered that his influence on Gaudium et spes was of no lesser importance. The schemata had been proposed and affected considerably by the Avantgarde of French theology, and Rahner tried to moderate, in his eyes, an overly optimistic anthropology in the context of a cross theology.45 Nonetheless, his theology remained world affirming and focused on his pastoral concerns of the modern human being in the world.

Like Rahner, Ratzinger was not simply one of the many periti working silently for their respective bishops. Throughout the Council he gave lectures on relevant issues in Rome as well as in Germany when the Council was not in session.

He organized briefing sessions for the Council fathers and Ratzinger must have published a renowned series of commentaries on the Council.46 already made a deep As John Allen wrote, “ Although Ratzinger could not speak on impression on the fathers. the Council floor, he was a public figure in every other way.”47 His involvement, as shown above, also included work on the actual documents, as was the case with the alternative text on revelation, which he prepared together with Rahner. On October 25, 1962, Cardinal Frings met with Cardinals Alfrink, Suenens, Liénart, Döpfner, Siri, and Montini, and asked Ratzinger to introduce to them the suggestions of the German-speaking episcopate.48 Overall the reaction was positive, and Ratzinger must have made already then a deep impression on the fathers, in particular Montini, who later as Paul VI would make Ratzinger the archbishop of Munich and eventually raise him to the status of cardinal. Meanwhile, Ratzinger was no less interested in pastoral questions than Rahner. He was genuinely concerned for the people, but his main interest was not how to bring the Church closer to the world, but rather how to get the world involved with the Christian message. It therefore does not surprise that of all documents of Vatican II, Dei verbum was the one most influenced directly by Ratzinger.

After the Council What makes it so difficult to gauge the Council’s impact on the life of the Church is not 44 45 46

1966).

Wassilowsky, 96.

Wassilowsky, 97.

For an English translation see J. Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press,

Allen, 2005, 55.

Allen, 2005, 55. See also K. Rahner and J. Ratzinger, Offenbarung und Überlieferung. Questinones Disputatae 25 (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1965). Written in 1964 in Rome, the text presents some of the research the two men undertook and that made its way into their text that was distributed among the bishops at the Council and significantly influenced Dei verbum.

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only the ambiguity of the documents and the diverse ways with which their contents have been implemented, but also the sheer volume of texts, lectures, conversations, and letters that were not included in the final documents. As Rahner once said about councils, “it’s like with the production of radium. One has to work through a ton of pitchblende to yield 0.14 grams of radium. And yet, it’s worth it.”49 As we work our way through the pitchblende that is the personal histories and developments of the Council’s major thinkers, it quickly becomes obvious that in one way or another the Council marked a turning point for all of them. Regardless of the ideas with which they came to Rome, virtually all of the participants transformed their views throughout the four years of the Council with its numerous discussions and exchanges. As such, the Council marked a conversion experience possibly for most, if not all who participated in it, including Ratzinger The Council became a conversion and Rahner. Both repeatedly spoke about their experience experience possibly for most, if not at the Council and about what the Council meant for them all, who participated in it. and for the Church. As the results of Vatican II gradually became implemented and the world lived through tumultuous times, their assessments not so much of the Council per se, but of the state of the Church today in light of the Council’s decisions took on different shapes. Only three years after Vatican II had come to a close this difference was quite apparent. What had happened?

It might help to put the question into a historical context. Both theologians were Germans, embedded in a particular social context, equipped with culturally shaped means of assessing a situation and responding to it, and it is crucial to elucidate their particular situation in order to interpret their conclusions. The years after the Council in West Germany like elsewhere in the western hemisphere were characterized by social unrest. But unlike in the US, where students directed their anger primarily against the quickly escalating situation in Southeast Asia, German students faced the altogether different problem of dealing with Germany’s recent history. After World War II, many of the same individuals who had held influential positions of responsibility during the reign of terror of the Hitler regime once again had managed to come into public offices, including chairs at universities.50 The German student movement gained momentum and quickly assumed a more violent character when on K. Rahner, Das Konzil – ein neuer Beginn. Vortrag beim Festakt zum Abschluß des II. Vatikanischen Konzils im Herkulessaal der Residenz in München am 12. Dezember 1965 (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1966).

50 Proclaiming their motto “Unter den Talaren, der Muff von tausend Jahren!” (“Under the robes is the stench of a thousand years!”), students in Germany were pointing fingers at those who once again were in power despite of their Nazi history. One cannot but sympathize with the demonstrators, or grant them a genuine political motivation; but at the same time the conflict at times took on an altogether different character. As Bernhard Schlink has his protagonist Michael Berg muse, the altercation over the Nazi past may very well have been only the expression of a generational conflict. Cf. B. Schlink, Der Vorleser (Zürich: Diogenes, 1995), 161.

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June 2, 1967, at a demonstration against the Shah of Persia on a visit to Berlin, 26-year old Benno Ohnesorg was shot dead by a policeman. From now on, demonstrations were an almost daily event; students boycotted classes and took over lecture halls so that teaching became impossible. For professors used to being respected by their students, the situation was entirely unprecedented and difficult to deal with. Some joined the discussion, trying to either argue their views in opposition to the student demonstrators, others agreed with the content, but not necessarily the means. The turbulence also affected the theology department at the University of Tübingen, where Ratzinger taught at the time.

Herman Häring, a former student at Tübingen, describes the situation as one quickly leading to polarization.51 In a recent article, Ronald Modras makes the case that “student unrest “ at Tübingen should not be confused with the violence that characterized the situations in Paris and Chicago of the same year, and that students who attended Ratzinger’s classes were a far cry from the Maoists that disrupted classes in other departments at Tübingen.52 Nevertheless, the Ratzinger, altogether a more disruptions, blockades of classes and sit-ins surely made an quiet and shy man, withdrew impression. In 1968, theology students initiated a declaration and avoided all conversation. for the freedom of theology that was signed by 1322 students.

One year later, theologians from Tübingen published a letter in which they demanded that bishops were to be elected and their office to be limited to a time period of eight years. The faculty responded differently to the students’ demands. Hans Küng, for example, equally appalled by some of the goals of the protesters as Ratzinger, sought the direct confrontation and engaged in discussions with students from which he emerged with his respect intact. Others, like Ernst Käsemann of the Protestant faculty, dealt with the situation more delicately, and likewise never lost their students’ esteem.53 Ratzinger, altogether a more quiet and shy man, withdrew and avoided all conversation. Instead, he focused on his writing and in 1968 published his most renowned book, Einührung in das Christentum.54 Based on lectures he held in 1967, the book gives an important insight into Ratzinger’s theology as well as in his views on the current situation; already the preface leaves no doubt that the book was to be read in the context of its days. “The question of the actual content and meaning of the Christian faith,” Ratzinger writes, 51 52

12-16.

Häring, 2001, 23ff.

R. Modras, “In his own footsteps. Benedict XVI: from professor to pontiff.” Commonweal, 133, vol. 8 (2006):

Käsemann had his students, who wanted to partake in the generation of the curriculum, teach classes, which unfortunately quickly ended in them running out of intellectual steam. Käsemann had to safe the lectures by once again taking over, often after only ten minutes. Cf. Häring, 2001, 25.

54 J. Ratzinger, Einführung in das Christentum. Vorlesungen über das Apostolische Glaubensbekenntnis (München: Kösel-Verlag, 1968).

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“is today enshrouded in a fog of uncertainty as it has never been before in the history of Christianity.”55 Unlike the witless, who blindly accept all things new for novelty’s sake, those who have watched the development in the Church over the past decade with concern may be reminded of the Grimm Brothers’ tale of “Hans in Luck,” who exchanges the lump of gold he had earned with hard work for increasingly worthless things, until he finally ends up with nothing but a grindstone. Losing that too, Hans finds himself free of any burden and happy. For Ratzinger the euphoria with which Vatican II was received by the faithful is reminiscent of Hans’s happiness; each new interpretation resembles for him a trade in which true Christianity is shortchanged.

And so, the former peritus presents his understanding of Christianity, ready to conserve what those infatuated by change are willing to give away. Hans Küng’s words come to mind: “Joseph Ratzinger is afraid. And like Dostoyevsky’s great inquisitor he fears nothing more than freedom.”56 What makes this book so revealing is that throughout Ratzinger presents an altogether Hellenistic philosophy underlying his theology. In a review, Walter Kasper identified immanent traces of a Greek dualism that run through the entire text like a red thread.57 Ratzinger warns of a new historicism, in which facts rule and only that of which the causes are explained is accepted as knowledge, just as Descartes in his distortion of Aristotle had suggested.58 Inevitably, the turn to scientism followed, Ratzinger argues, and with that a “turn to a reality, in as much as it is doable.”59 Theology, he goes on to say, has tried to respond to this reductionistic historicism by reconstructing faith historically, a move that initially seemed promising but soon collapsed under its own weight and with the dethroning of history by science.60 And so, instead of fact, theology turns to faciendum and conflates faith with political act, as the works of the likes of Moltmann and Metz show.61 Neither fact nor faciendum are for Ratzinger un-Christian; on the contrary, they are part and parcel for every Christian. But, and here the whole depth of his dualism emerges, in the end it is in the act of saying Credo–I believe–that man does neither the one nor the other.62 And this credo can only be spoken on the basis of truth, or else it would be meaningless.

J. Ratzinger, 1968, 9.

H. Küng, “Kardinal Ratzinger, Papst Wojtyla und die Angst vor der Freiheit (1985),” in Katholische Kirche – wohin? Wider den Verrat am Konzil, edited by N. Greinacher und H. Küng, 389-407 (München: Serie Piper, 1986).

57 W. Kasper, “Das Wesen des Christlichen,” Theologische Revue 65 (1969): 182-188.

58 Ratzinger, 1968, 37.

59 Ratzinger, 1968, 40.

60 Ratzinger, 1968, 41, 42.

61 Ratzinger, 1968, 42.

62 Ratzinger, 1968, 43.

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In the end, it is understanding and not knowing that matters, and understanding does not originate with a scientific-technological knowledge, but grows alone from faith.63 From this he concludes: That is why theology as a speaking of God in an understanding, logos fashion (= rational, reasonable and understanding) is a primal mission of Christianity. It is in this fact that the indissoluble right of the Greek in Christianity is grounded. I am convinced that at the deepest level it was no accident that the Christian message in its genesis entered first in the Greek world and here fused with the question of understanding and truth.64

As Hermann Häring points out, here Ratzinger makes Hellenism the touchstone for a Church that becomes universal. But simultaneously this position also makes it very difficult to allow for an inculturation as Vatican II certainly suggested, at least implicitly, and as it has become commonly discussed in the Church.

Truth is not a function Truth is not a function of culture for Ratzinger. As Lieven Boeve writes, of culture for Ratzinger.

“Ratzinger attempts the task to show that there exists a truth that will always remain true regardless of all cultural negotiations, simply because it is true.”65 For some, this somewhat Neo-Platonic position is what characterizes the new Ratzinger and his hardened theological and ecclesiological perspectives. But traces of a fascination with Greek philosophy and its influences on the early Church are evident already in his earlier writing. What frustrated him about the new situation in the Church was less the demonstrating students than an opening towards the world that to him jeopardized true Christian values. Already in 1966, two years before the climax of the student revolts, Ratzinger presents a very dark assessment of the outcome of the Council at the German Katholikentag in Bamberg. He bemoans the tendency of postconciliar developments in liturgy to either be paralyzed by a “certain archaism” or get carried away too far by the spirit of modernization.66 For Karl Rahner, the late 1960s marked an equally important period characterized by an active engagement in the renewal of the Church, which he often pursued in conversation with those outside the Church.67 Through interdisciplinary dialogue he sought new ways of interpreting traditional doctrines in a way that would be reconcilable with insights from other disciplines, and thus become meaningful to atheists and non-Christians. What characterized his approach in those days was an openness of which his biographer writes: Ratzinger, 1968, 51.

Ratzinger, 1968, 51.

65 L. Boeve, “Kerk, theologie en heilswaarheid. De klare visie van Joseph Ratzinger,” Tijdschrift voor Theologie, 33 (1993): 139-165. (Boeve’s emphases.)

66 Fahey, 1981, 81.

67 Neufeld, 2004, 279.

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The openness and vitality at an age where others seek retirement, the courage for new outlines, for further quests, for the expansion into new disciplines and areas he was not even familiar with…, all that earned him admiration and gratitude, since it gave courage at a time when many traditional means of orientation were deteriorating.68

Two publications of this time exemplify this openness to the world. In an article he co-authored with J.B. Metz in 1968, Rahner identifies three major issues the Church has to address after Vatican II.69 First, there is the question of God vis-à-vis atheism in a time of increasing secularization. Second, Rahner sees the developments in Christology as a source of problems, where the right balance between a Christology “from below” and “from above” has to be negotiated. Finally, there is the problem of salvation that could be paraphrased in the question, “Is there for me in my unique and concrete existence a graceful God?” For Metz, however, this constitutes merely an Apologia ad extra; troubled by how contemporary society has largely subscribed to a post-atheistic humanism that hardly asks the question of God anymore, he emphasizes the importance of an Apologia ad intra.70 Rahner agrees, in particular since such an internal apologetics could help prevent the emergence of new heresies in the Church, which to him seems inevitable in any process of renewal.71 Moreover, it would be a means to establish the pluralism in theology and Church life that is urgently needed.72 While he agrees that pluralism is important, and that truth therefore has to be negotiated, Rahner nonetheless holds that certain fallacies must be declared as such. For example, in case of a christology overemphasizing Jesus’ humanness at the price of his divinity the Church has a responsibility to intervene.73 This willingness to continuously negotiate an understanding of God and Church without ever giving in to relativism where anything goes is quite different from Ratzinger’s quest for an absolute and infinite truth.

Neufeld, 2004, 282-283.

K. Rahner and J.B. Metz, in Die Antwort der Theologen. Rahner, Metz, Schoonenberg, Congar, Daniélou, Schillebeeckx zu Hauptproblemen der gegenwärtigen Kirche, by K. Rahner, J.B. Metz, P. Schoonenberg, Y. Congar, J. Daniélou, and E. Schillebeeckx, 9-35 (Düsseldorf: Patmos-Verlag, 1968).

70 Rahner and Metz, 15.

71 Rahner and Metz, 13.

72 Rahner and Metz, 16.

73 Rahner and Metz, 19.

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In the other essay,74 Rahner calls Vatican II the first council of the World Church and investigates the ramifications of such an event. Doubtlessly, this term of the World Church is heavily influenced by the notion of “inculturation,” which for Rahner has become more important than ever after Vatican II. Nothing will reflect this development as much as the liturgy. Eventually, for Rahner, the liturgy would not simply be translated into vernacular from Latin but rather become a local expression of worship shaped by local theologies.75 While the new Christian pluralism that is implied by the documents of the Council may seem like a desperate attempt to accommodate the secular modern world, a restriction from abusing power With Vatican II the Church has is actually in the true nature of the Church, Rahner argues.76 voluntarily and irrevocably It may very well be that some bishops or laypeople will relinquished absolute power in be tempted to force their views of an unchangeable truth favor of an inevitable pluralism on others both inside and outside the Church. But after because this is her true nature.

Vatican II such “clerical-fascistic”77 tendencies to constrain the freedom of the faithful in the name of the one truth held by orthodoxy alone are no longer possible. With the Council the Church has voluntarily and irrevocably relinquished absolute power in favor of an inevitable pluralism because this is her true nature. Rahner acknowledges that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith more often than not responds to change with a defensive theology that “warns and bans.”

“But,” he writes, “the Congregation does not have to be forever what it is now, and so the entire Church will not be driven back behind those limits that were overstepped in Vatican II.”78 Theology will evolve and increasingly transform from an export of European notions into a true world theology, like liberation theology. Such local nonEuropean theologies Rahner does not see as a danger for the task of theology in the Old World; on the contrary, the contemporary situation demands a turn towards those in the West who have abandoned faith, who have grown estranged with Christianity.79 What has to be accepted is that the concerns of the Church are not the same all over the world. Finally, Rahner turns to ecumenism and emphasizes that the Church has come a long way from Augustine’s notion of “massa damnata.”80 Instead, salvation is universal and the grace of God is being offered to free human beings, even if they decide against accepting it. Salvation, so Rahner, prevails.

K. Rahner, “Die bleibende Bedeutung des II. Vatikanischen Konzils,” in Schriften zur Theologie. Band XIV. In Sorge um die Kirche, 303-318 (Zürich: Benziger Verlag, 1980).

75 Rahner, 1980, 305.

76 Rahner, 1980, 306.

77 Rahner, 1980, 307.

78 Rahner, 1980, 309.

79 Rahner, 1980, 310.

80 Rahner, 1980, 314ff.

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Conclusion The present paper set out to investigate the relationship of Karl Rahner and Josef Ratzinger, as well as the infamous change of heart the latter is said to have experienced in the aftermath of Vatican II. It has tried to argue that while Benedict was certainly affected by the Council and the changes it provoked, his later views were not at all essentially different from his views with which he came to the Council. Rahner and Benedict certainly shared many concerns about the meaning of the Council, the role of the episcopate, and a wariness of the hyper-intellectualized theology of neoScholasticism. But in the end, they differed in their views on how the Church should engage with the modern world. After the Council it was these basic differences that determined the opposite trajectories of both men’s subsequent developments. While Rahner emphasized the need of the Church to change towards an opening towards the world and those “who want to believe but thinks that they cannot,” Benedict demanded a return of the Church to the true meaning of Christianity. For Benedict, the way many interpreted the Council was far from the Council’s true intention, namely the restoration of the true Church.

That today their collaboration at the Council is often interpreted as an overall harmonious conformity might be the result of a romanticized view of the Council itself. It is very tempting to see the Holy Spirit at work at the onset of the Council, driving the majority of participants into a unified effort to change the Church from the very beginning. However, neither Rahner nor Ratzinger would have felt comfortable with this view, given that they both viewed the Council as secondary and considered it not the place for the Church’s charisms to be active. When today we try to assess how the Spirit was at work at the Council, we need to execute a certain level of affective historical consciousness and remind ourselves that we do so with the words of the Council fathers in mind, who throughout the Council came to experience what they interpreted as the immanence of the spirit.

Rahner and Ratzinger were two German theologian at Vatican II, and it is this cultural background that predestined them for a particular response to the Council and its questions. It seems that Rahner was quite aware of this particular hermeneutic position, while Benedict to this day insists on the primacy of a Latin, largely Augustinian

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theology. In that regard, Benedict is right; it was not he who changed. What drives his theology is not the same courage and trust so characteristic for Rahner, but rather fear; i.e. that the Church may go into the wrong, more world-oriented direction,81 Ratzinger took harsh steps to maintain the status quo and return to a more spiritually oriented Church. The events of 1968 may have played a somewhat catalytic role, but were certainly not the origin of his postconciliar position.

Rahner on the other hand saw change as part and parcel of any continuous tradition. Consequently, his views on ecclesiology underwent a constant reformulation.

One only has to recall how before the Council, while affirming collegiality, democracy in the Church was absolutely unthinkable for Rahner. Later on, however, he was able to entertain the thought, even if only as a thought, and was far more willing to go beyond anything he had thought possible back in 1962.82 If one of the two men experienced a deep conversion and changed dramatically, I would want to argue it was Rahner. And his road to Damascus was the Second Vatican Council.

After all, I think it unfair to reduce Ratzinger, a theologian of great depth and intelligence, to merely a power-hungry politician. His concerns are genuine and heartfelt. But they are also in contrast to what emerged from the Council that was not an endpoint but, as Rahner insists, a transition into something new. The Council could not foresee what reactions its decisions would foster, and it certainly made it more difficult to negotiate what is “right” and what is “wrong.” But in the end, it has allowed for the Church to step once again into the world and engage actively in the Kingdom.

tt t

Oliver Putz received his Master of Arts degree from JSTB and is currently working on a PhD in systematic and philosophical theology at the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley. His research focuses on the doctrine of the imago Dei vis-à-vis current evolutionary and behavioral biology.

H. Küng, “Kardinal Ratzinger, Papst Wotyla und die Angst vor der Freiheit (1985). In: N. Greinacher and H. Küng (eds.), Katholische Kirche – wohin? Wider den Verrat am Konzil, pp. 389-406. München: Serie Piper, 1986.

82 Ratzinger was unable to follow him here. See: J. Ratzinger and H. Maier, [1970] Demokratie in der Kirche.

Möglichkeiten und Grenzen. Limburg-Kevelaer: Topos Plus Verlagsgemeinschaft, 2000.

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The Disconnect:

Official Catholic Teaching on Sexual Ethics and the Experience of Gay and Lesbian People

by Katie Hennessey

There seems to be a growing disconnect between the institutional church’s

understanding of homosexuality and the experience of gay and lesbian people. My driving purpose in this paper is to determine the cause of this disconnect between official Catholic pronouncements and teaching on sexual ethics and the lives of gay and lesbian people. In researching official Catholic teaching on homosexuality over the past four decades, I noticed two important shifts in the documents on homosexuality that I believe are particularly illuminative of the disconnect: one is a significant change in ethical reasoning that began in the mid-nineteen eighties, the insertion of the concept of complementarity; the other is a change in terms from “orientation,” or simply “homosexual,” to “inclination,” or “persons with a homosexual tendency.”

What these concepts point to is a need for more information from the realm of the human experience of sexuality.

My methodology, then, will begin by looking at the development of the concept of complementarity in official Catholic sexual ethical teaching and the body of teachings from which it arose, John Paul II’s theology of the body. Within these teachings, I will focus my critique on John Paul II’s use of Scripture and the anthropology he derives from it. Next, I will look at the change of terms, noting where and when the shift occurs and why it is problematic. I will finish by looking at how Catholic sexual ethical teaching might better reflect the information gleaned from experience that I see missing in the Church’s analysis. I will do this by looking at how ethicists such as Lisa Sowle Cahill and Margaret Farley have used human experience as a resource for ethical reflection. Cahill and Farley have different approaches to the use of experience as a resource, but both approaches aim at incorporating the experience of women into Catholic ethics. I will draw on their examples to begin looking at how the use of experience as a legitimate resource might inform a better sexual ethic dealing with homosexuality, one that speaks logically to the experience of homosexual people.

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The Concept of Complementarity and the Theology of the Body In 1975, the “Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics” was produced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). This document states that the moral legitimacy of sexual acts lies in their biological ability to procreate.

This ability to procreate is termed the “finality” of the sex act. With this understanding in place, it assesses the moral legitimacy of homosexual acts as follows: “According to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality.” There is no mention of a unitive dimension of sexual acts, nor does any version of the word complementarity appear in the document.

The 1986 document, “On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” the first written specifically on the topic of homosexuality during John Paul II’s papacy, introduces the concept of “complementarity” into its argument about the legitimacy of sex acts.

It says, “Homosexuality is not a complimentary union, able to transmit life, and so it thwarts the call to life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living.” Nowhere does this document speak of the finality of the sex act; that language is replaced with the term complementarity. In 2003, a document entitled, “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons,” defends marriage as morally legitimate only between people of the opposite sex and bases its arguments about the nature of marriage on the biblical accounts of creation, which, it explains, establish the Church’s teaching about the complementarity of the sexes. It concludes that, “Therefore, in the Creator’s plan, sexual complementarity and fruitfulness belong to the very nature of marriage.”

All of this serves to show just how far the Church has come in absorbing the concept of complementarity into official church teaching. The logical next question to ask is, “Where did this concept come from?”

Understanding the recent trajectory of Catholic sexual ethics, particularly the new prominence of the concept Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics” (December 29, 1975), 5.

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” (October 1, 1986), 11.

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons”(June 3, 2003), 1.

CDF, “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons” 2.

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of complementarity, requires that one understand the philosophy and teachings of Pope John Paul II. The thought of this man is pervasive in Catholic moral teachings around sexuality and it is essential for understanding Catholic sexual ethical thought.

John Paul II wrote extensively on sexuality, marriage, and gender in official Church documents, but the most vital source for his understanding of human sexuality is a series of speeches he gave at weekly audiences at the beginning of his pontificate from 1979-1984. These 129 short talks are unique and yet interconnected and consistent.

They also have little official authority, yet the philosophy they espouse infuses many teaching documents that have significant authority.

Addressing the manner in which John Paul II uses Scripture in his theology of the body is of primary importance because he develops his understanding of marriage and sexuality primarily as a reflection on the Scriptures. He focuses almost exclusively on the creation account in Genesis 2 to ground his understanding of humanity, his anthropology, and thus his understanding of human sexuality. While it is appropriate to draw some pieces of wisdom about humanity from the biblical story of Adam and Eve, “John Paul II seems unaware of the dangers of deriving ontological conclusions from selected ancient narrative texts.” He moves directly from what is described variously by critics as a sort of meditative, homiletic, typological, spiritual, personalistic, or allegorical reading of this story, to a specific understanding of human beings that he intends to be understood as normative. There is no evidence in any of his writings of the use of historical-critical biblical scholarship. He never mentions, even in footnotes, any contemporary scholars, nor does he even hint at the fact that there could be another way of reading the passages that he quotes.10 In the place of historical-critical scholarship which might serve to contextualize or relativize the biblical texts, John Paul II relies on a way of interpreting the text that seems, at times, arbitrary and abstract.

What is problematic about John Paul II’s approach to Scripture is, first of all, that it does not appear to be informed by other sources of knowledge, such as the natural and social-scientific data, historical development, and human experience.11 This serves to makes his interpretation seem quite literal. He takes his reading of the Charles E. Curran, The Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 160. Curran here lists the documents that deal specifically with these issues.

Curran, “John Paul II’s Use of Scripture in His Moral Teaching,” in Horizons, 31 (Spring 2004): 127-128.

Luke Timothy Johnson, “A Disembodied ‘Theology of the Body,’” Commonweal, 128, no 2 (2001): 3.

Susan A. Ross, “The Bridegroom and the Bride: The Theological Anthropology of John Paul II and its Relation to the Bible and Homosexuality,” in Sexual Diversity and Catholicism: Toward the Development of Moral Theology, ed. Patricia Beattie Jung and Joseph Coray (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 42 and 51.

Curran, “John Paul II’s Use of Scripture in His Moral Teaching,” 120. Ross, 42.

10 Curran, 120.

11 Curran, 134. Ross, 55.

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text and simply applies it to the contemporary world literally, without taking into account the historical gap between these worlds. A better approach, and one that takes into account this gap, would be an analogical approach to Scripture. In this approach, the reader uses all the critical tools available for understanding the text and the world from which it came, as well as an informed reading of the contemporary situation, to make an analogical leap from the Bible In an analogical approach to Scripture, to an application in our world.12 Such an approach the reader uses all the critical tools to Scripture could allow for a better incorporation available for understanding the text and of contemporary knowledge into our application of the world from which it came. ancient texts without dismissing their authority and importance. It might also serve to make biblically-based assertions, such as the one’s John Paul II makes about human persons, “rhyme” better with human experience.13 Second, by focusing so narrowly and avoiding other sources of knowledge, John Paul II ends up deriving, from one ancient creation story, what all human beings and all human sexuality for all time should look like. In other words, his description of what is human, and what forms human sexuality takes, does not reflect the diversity that most of us actually experience in the world. As Luke Timothy Johnson states it, “What appears in the guise of description serves as prescription: human love and sexuality can appear in only one approved form, with every other way of being either sexual or loving left out altogether.”14 Susan Ross echoes this sentiment when she says that, “With the nuptial metaphor we have a case of a particular ‘type’ or model of relationship between God and humanity, and between human beings and themselves, being carried to the next level as the model for all relationships.”15 Both of these problems with John Paul II’s use of Scripture point to what I will discuss in more detail later, namely, that what is essentially lacking in his analysis is a connection with the rich diversity of human experience.

What John Paul II draws from this reading of Scripture is an anthropology that uses a nuptial metaphor to describe human sexuality. By this I mean that John Paul II understands men and women as existing together like God in relation to humanity, or Christ in relation to the Church, as bridegroom and bride. But, he also sees this William C. Spohn, Go and Do Likewise: Jesus and Ethics (New York: Continuum, 2006), 51. Spohn develops the concept of the analogical imagination for using the New Testament in the moral life but his method could be used for reading the Old Testament as well. See also, Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 298-304, (Hays also advocates for analogy, a term that he uses interchangeably with metaphor), and, Lisa Sowle Cahill, Sex Gender and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 121-165, (Cahill also advocates for this approach to the application of Scripture but she discusses its use specifically in sexual ethics).

13 Spohn, 54-56. Here Spohn describes the function of the analogical imagination as “spotting the rhyme”.

14 Johnson, 3.

15 Ross, 55.

12

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metaphor as manifesting itself physically in sexual difference or gender difference.

As such, he makes frequent reference to the nuptial meaning of the body. So, not only does the nuptial metaphor serve to describe how sexuality For John Paul II, the relationship should be lived out, but also how gender roles should between bride and bridegroom is one play out. For John Paul II, the relationship between bride of gender complementarity. and bridegroom is one of gender complementarity: “that is, sexuality is an intrinsic dimension of the person, there are ‘essential’ characteristics that accompany maleness and femaleness, and these differences ‘complete’ men and women in relationship to each other.”16 What are the “essential” characteristics of maleness and femaleness in this scheme? John Paul II does not go into great detail, but he does designate some broad, general categories of masculinity and femininity. We can also deduce much from how the nuptial metaphor has been used in the tradition. According to how the metaphor is traditionally understood, God is the active member of the pair. God invites us as a groom might propose to the bride. We, the brides, respond to the invitation. While this metaphor can work as one among many ways to help illuminate the divinehuman relationship, it can be harmful when applied as the only metaphor for human relationships, especially when it does so in a strictly gendered manner, as in the way that John Paul II applies it. In one talk entitled, “Man and Woman: A Gift for Each Other,” he states that, “Genesis 2:23-25 enables us to deduce that woman, who is the mystery of creation, ‘is given’ to man by the Creator, is ‘received,’ thanks to original innocence.”17 Therefore, the man, in his human capacity, receives from God what he is given. But John Paul II immediately turns around and puts the man in the role of initiator in relation to the woman. He continues, “At the same time, the acceptance of the woman by the man and the very way of accepting her, become, as it were, a first donation . . .The woman ‘rediscovers herself’ at the same time. This is because she has been accepted and welcomed, and because of the way that she has been received by the man.”18 From this, it is safe to say that one way of understanding the difference between men and women, according to the theology of the body, is to understand the man as initiator, or actor, and the woman as receiver, or acted-on.

Another way to understand essential masculinity and femininity comes out later, when John Paul II gets further into Genesis. In reflecting on Genesis 4:1, he deduces that, “in the knowledge which Genesis 4:1 speaks of, the mystery of Ross, 40.

John Paul II, “Man and Woman: A Gift for Each Other,” from The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997), 71.

18 John Paul II, “Man and Woman: A Gift for Each Other,” from The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997), 71.

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femininity is manifested and revealed completely by means of motherhood...Likewise, the mystery of man’s masculinity, that is, the generative and fatherly meaning of his body, is also thoroughly revealed.”19 Here, men, and even more particularly, women, are understood totally in terms of their ability to procreate, to conceive, and then to parent. This understanding of women and femininity is played out at length in many official writings of John Paul II on the role of women, on Mary, and on the family.20 I will now offer some critique, focusing specifically on how this understanding of human sexuality not only fails to deal adequately with, but can even be damaging to homosexual people. The major problem with using a strictly gendered nuptial metaphor and, consequently, a strictly genderdetermined concept of complementarity to describe humanity and human sexuality, is, first of all, that it takes for granted as stable and God-given, gender categories that have been proven, at least in part, to be socially constructed. The understanding of gender that John Paul II promotes goes beyond understanding gender as determined by genitals to one determined by certain masculine and feminine traits that are part of the psychological, spiritual, and social make-up of individuals.21 Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler, in a recent article in on complementarity, note that, “With the exception of biological motherhood and fatherhood, the ontological claim of gendered psychological traits does not seem to recognize the culturally conditioned and defined nature of gender, and does not adequately reflect the complexity of the human person and relationships.”22 This anthropology also ignores a reality, which certainly includes many people who fit the prescribed mold, but just as certainly includes many who do not. People living in the world today know, as did John Paul II when he gave his talks in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, that some people are not sexually attracted to people of the opposite sex, some people do not marry, some people cannot conceive children, not all women who can conceive are very nurturing, and the list could go on. Some men, as John Paul II suggests, are bold or confident and initiate interaction with women, take John Paul II, “The Mystery of Woman is Revealed in Motherhood,” from The Theology of the Body, 81.

Curran, The Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II, 187-195, and Ross, 42-46, for more detailed treatment of John Paul II’s writing on women and Mary.

21 Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler, “Catholic Sexual Ethics” Complementarity and the Truly Human,” in Theological Studies 67 (September 2006), 637-638.

22 Salzman and Lawler, 639.

19 20

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the role of initiating sexual intercourse, and initiate giving love to a woman, so that she might love in return. Other men, who do not fit as readily into this anthropology, are shy or fearful or humble and wait for women to approach them, allow women to initiate sexual intercourse, feel real wholeness The reality of human relationships and because of love freely given to them by a woman, human sexuality is that give-and-take due to no initiative on their part. The reality of occurs, not because of gender, but often human relationships and human sexuality is that because of personality, or simply because give-and-take occurs, not because of gender, but of what is called for in a given situation. often because of personality, or simply because of what is called for in a given situation. John Paul II “leaves out all of the interesting ways in which human sexuality refuses to be contained within those standard gender designations, not only biologically but also psychologically and spiritually.”23 Most people would concede that complementarity with their partner is important, but they would likely not describe the most important elements of that complementarity in terms of gender or genitalia. Salzman and Lawler argue for what they call “holistic complementarity,” as opposed to the “heterogenital complementarity” that they, as do I, see operating normatively in Catholic sexual ethics. “Holistic complementarity includes orientation, personal, and biological complementarity, and the integration and manifestation of all three in honest, loving, committed sexual acts that facilitate a person’s ability to love God, neighbor, and self in a more profound and holy way.”24 A Shift in Terminology The second piece of evidence pointing to the source of the disconnect is the recent shift in the terms used in official Roman Catholic teaching to describe people with samesex attraction. Before 1975, the category of orientation was not a factor in Catholic sexual ethical teaching. Catholic sexual ethics was completely acts-centered, and it assumed heterosexuality as a constitutive element of being human. Then, in a 1975 document from the CDF entitled, “Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics,” in its treatment of homosexuality, the Magisterium, for the first time, made an important distinction in a statement that reads as follows: Johnson, 3.

Salzman and Lawler, 648. An important question about their conclusion using this description of a holistic complementarity has to do with the fact that it hinges on the Magisterium’s understanding of the category of orientation which is at least in flux, if not disappearing. In recent documents, such as the 2005 Vatican instruction “Concerning the Criteria for Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders” and the USCCB’s 2006 “Ministry to Person’s with a Homosexual Inclination,” the language of orientation has completely disappeared and been replaced with words such as “tendency” and “inclination.”

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A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from false education, from lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.25

The teaching goes on to say that the “second category of subjects,” those whose homosexual tendency is deemed incurable, should be cared for in a pastorally sensitive fashion, though homosexual genital acts remain condemned as they always were. This Vatican document does not use the term orientation, but it does allude to the category of homosexual orientation and indicates that those who fall into that category were not evil in and of themselves. It is homosexual acts that are being condemned, not homosexual people, a newly-recognized group at the time of the document’s promulgation.

A decade later, the CDF issued a new document, the first devoted exclusively to the issue of homosexuality, called, “On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.”

This document, as its title intimates, remains consistent with the 1975 document in its recognition of the category of homosexuality, though it does so in a much more guarded fashion, stating that, “Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.”26 In this document, the CDF states that they are responding to an overly benign interpretation of the 1975 document, and the response appears to be moving back toward a negative view of the homosexual orientation itself. Again, though, the document is written about pastoral care for homosexual persons and thus the category of orientation is still evident.

Yet another decade removed from the monumental distinction between orientation and acts, the teaching body of the U.S. Catholic Church, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, promulgated their pastoral statement on the subject of homosexuality entitled, “Always Our Children: A Pastoral Message to Parents of Homosexual Children and Suggestions for Pastoral Ministers.” In the following excerpt from the document, the USCCB uses the term “orientation” and cites the distinction made in the 1975 CDF document to support its claim: The meaning and implications of the term, “homosexual orientation,” are not universally agreed upon. Church teaching acknowledges a distinction between a homosexual “tendency” which proves to be “transitory” and 25 26

CDF, “Declaration,” 8.

CDF, On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, 3.

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“homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics, 1975, n.8).

In light of this possibility, therefore, it seems appropriate to understand sexual orientation (heterosexual or homosexual) as a fundamental dimension of one’s personality and to recognize its relative stability in a person. A homosexual orientation produces a stronger emotional and sexual attraction toward individuals of the same sex, rather than toward those of the opposite sex. It does not totally rule out interest in, care for and attraction toward members of the opposite sex. Having a homosexual orientation does not necessarily mean a person will engage in homosexual activity.

There seems to be no single cause of a homosexual orientation. A common opinion of experts is that there are multiple factors -- genetic, hormonal, psychological -- that may give rise to it. Generally, homosexual orientation is experienced as a given, not as something freely chosen. By itself, therefore, a homosexual orientation cannot be considered sinful, for morality presumes the freedom to choose.27

This is the most explicit articulation of the category of orientation in a Catholic teaching document. While the U.S. Catholic Bishops are not as authoritative a body as the CDF, its teaching reflects an officially sanctioned translation or articulation of the Vatican teaching. In addition, it is important to note that a decade after the 1986 document, the USCCB does not choose to emphasize the Vatican’s move back toward a negative view of orientation. It is because of this choice, in addition to the fact that they are so explicit in their articulation of the meaning of the term orientation, that it is even more striking when the term and category disappear in more recent teachings.

Another decade later, in back-to-back years, and from a Vatican office and the USCCB respectively, two documents were issued on the topic of homosexuality that reflect the completion of the shift away from the category of orientation. Appropriately, the first to issue a document was the Congregation for Catholic Education (CCE), a Vatican office. The document was entitled “Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders.”28 Throughout this document, the term, “persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies” is used to describe people Always Our Children: A Pastoral Message to Parents of Homosexual Children, Committee on Marriage and Family, NCCB, 1997.

28 Congregation for Catholic Education, “Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders” (August 31, 2005).

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who were once termed simply “homosexual persons,” defined as “homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable,” a state of being considered blameless.29 In this document, in the only place where the distinction between acts and orientation is referenced, priestly candidates that “practice homosexuality” and candidates that present “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” are spoken of interchangeably and both are dissuaded from proceeding toward ordination.30 Therefore, not only is the distinction collapsed, but both acts and tendencies are also condemned equally as regards appropriateness for priestly ordination.

In 2006, the USCCB produced a document titled, “Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care” that followed the Vatican’s lead in its turn from the recognition of the category of orientation. This document repeatedly uses the term “persons with homosexual inclinations,” rather than the Vatican’s “persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies,” and it makes explicit reference to the 1975 distinction. This document attempts to maintain the distinction and even has a section devoted to explaining that homosexual inclination is not itself a sin. Despite this effort, the category of orientation is much less evident than in “Always our Children.” First of all, the word orientation does not appear in this document.

Second, in explaining that homosexual acts are sinful and homosexual tendencies or inclinations are not, the document states that while one is not necessarily morally culpable for the tendency, “The homosexual inclination is objectively disordered, i.e., it is an inclination that predisposes one toward what is truly not good for the human person.”31 In an attempt to cushion this condemnation of homosexual inclinations, the document goes on to explain that heterosexual persons also commonly have disordered sexual inclinations. This is where we see the complete disappearance of the category of orientation. The document clearly indicates that while homosexuality is a tendency or inclination, heterosexual persons have tendencies or inclinations.

Orientation is not a category of being applied to those with same-sex attraction.

29 30 31

CDF, “Declaration.”

CCE, “Instruction,” 8.

CCE, “Instruction,” 23.

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The Source of the Disconnect: Experience Real conversations with a cross-section of laypeople, including heterosexual married people, single people, and homosexual people, would likely tell much about how the strictly gender-determined understanding of complementarity is inadequate, even in describing a relationship that theoretically fits the mold, and that the terms tendency and inclination do not properly describe what is more accurately understood as an orientation. It is important to point out that, although my focus is on how this theology leaves out or damages homosexual people, it also poses a problematic understanding of heterosexual relationships “in that it The strictly gender-determined presents an asymmetrical picture of relationships that understanding of complementarity at best suggests a benevolent paternalism and at worst is inadequate. implies that men’s dominance over women is justified by the Bible and tradition.”32 But the underlying problem with the theology of the body or the Church’s misuse of terms is that it does not reflect what conversations with people might offer: perspectives from human experience. The Catholic theological tradition typically relies on a balanced combination of sources of knowledge for developing ethical teachings: the Bible, tradition, knowledge from the empirical sciences, and human experience.33 What we see in John Paul II’s theology is a rather lopsided emphasis on Scripture as a source of knowledge about humanity. Most strikingly missing in this theology, as I have said, is experience. I say “most striking” because many people read or hear the theology of the body and note that the description of humanity or human sexuality they have just encountered is simply not true. It is not true because it does not adequately describe, for example, how they have experienced their marriage, or how they are gay (and know that they are human) but do not see themselves in the description of the human, or how they cannot conceive of (and therefore do not define) their femininity as essentially maternal. Of course, there are myriad other ways that the theology of the body fails to match the diversity of human experience. This anthropology is narrow and singular while humanity is actually quite broad and diverse. This connection to only a narrow range of human experience is the source of “the disconnect.” Strikingly, there is no real attempt in this theology to include human sources of truth. They are so markedly missing that one might even say that, “the theology proposed tends to exclude human sources of truth.”34 Because Ross, 40.

For my understanding of the sources I draw heavily from Margaret Farley and Lisa Sowle Cahill. While their takes on the sources are similar, they differ in their understanding of the fourth source. Farley sees this source as the testimony of people based on their lives. Cahill names that fourth source as “ ‘normative accounts’ of human experience such as that proposed by natural law ethics.” in “Moral Methodology: A Case Study” in A Challenge to Love: Gay and Lesbian Catholics in the Church. ed. Robert Nugent (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 78-92.

34 Curran, The Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II, 25.

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of this, the theology appears as inadequate, incomplete, and unintelligible to many.

The same can be said of the way the Church’s description of homosexuality meets with the reading of not only homosexual people, but with the co-workers, families, and friends of gay and lesbian people with whom the terms tendency and inclination do not resonate.

What I have said so far has been said by many critics of John Paul II’s theology of the body. There is at least a fairly popular consensus that he has not adequately dealt with human experience.

But it is not enough to say that experience is left out of his ethic.

There is an important debate going on among ethicists as to just how experience should be used in ethics. The task comes down to determining what can be known about human experience, and how this knowledge ought to function in ethics.35 While many are involved in this debate, I will focus on how two of these, Lisa Sowle Cahill and Margaret Farley, are approaching the issue.

Cahill argues that the standard of adequacy for Catholic ethics lies in balancing the four sources of knowledge I mentioned above, which she describes as “mutually correcting.”36 By balance she does not mean that each should have equal voice in all matters but rather that they should all be used, and that they should be more or less emphasized as is appropriate to a given issue or situation. “In fact she argues that today ‘experience’ – that is, descriptive empirical accounts – is the Concrete factors that need to be source requiring emphasis, especially in regard to sexual included in understanding human ethics.”37 While Cahill seems to see human experience as reality are the various contexts in one important piece of a methodological puzzle, Farley which human beings live. sees it as the key to interpreting the traditional sources of knowledge. For Farley, the standard of adequacy for Catholic ethics lies in the ability to interpret the traditional sources, “in accord with fidelity to human reality, concretely defined.”38 Concrete factors that need to be included in understanding human reality are the various contexts in which human beings live and out of which they come to know the moral: their personal, relational, socio-economic, and cultural contexts.39 For both women, experience functions in ethics to incorporate accurate information about “what is” into the description of “what ought to be.”40 This is Susan Secker, “Human Experience and Women’s Experience: Resources for Catholic Ethics,” in Dialogue about Catholic Sexual Teaching, ed. Charles E. Curran and Richard McCormick (New York, Paulist Press, 1993), 578.

36 Secker, 582.

37 Secker, 582.

38 Secker, 583.

39 Secker, 582.

40 Secker, 583.

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precisely what John Paul II does not do, making his reflections seem abstract, rather than concrete. Farley illustrates this inadequacy in her criticism of his document on the family, Familiaris consortio.41 She posits, for example, that the real challenge facing families may not be a “contraceptive mentality,” but rather major and overwhelming economic and social structures that leave people feeling powerless. When the document fails to even mention these factors which are so dominant in people’s actual lives, the consequence is that the teaching appears to be addressing some other reality, and is therefore seen as ineffective and useless.

To establish the “what is” of human experience, both Cahill and Farley argue in favor of using actual reflections of people on their experience.42 They do not suggest that we should take every whim or anecdote as morally credible, but instead seek accounts of real lives that serve to represent a general reality. Cahill, for example, insists that Humanae Vitae presents, “a notion of married reality that seems ‘almost naive.’”43 Farley argues similarly that stories of actual married people might help to determine what moral questions need to be addressed. One important implication of their understanding of the use of human experience in ethical reasoning is that, “empirical examination of human experience (perhaps especially women’s experience) can be expected to qualify the ethical role of biblical and theological texts which were themselves products of socio-cultural presuppositions.”44 Cahill and Farley argue that women’s experience, in particular, might qualify traditional sources because it is an area of experience that was left out of those sources completely. I would add that the experience of homosexual people would act in the same way. Farley plays out this implication in a way that is helpful. She argues that the tradition has either left out dimensions of personhood that are brought to light by women’s experience, or it has falsely characterized them.45 She claims that people have basic understandings of themselves, of their concrete reality, or their personhood, “which are so integral to our self-understanding that to deny them is tantamount to contradicting our own truth.”46 This strikes me as an accurate description of what 41 42 43 44 45 46

Secker, 584-585.

Secker, 585.

Secker, 586.

Secker, 587.

Secker, 587.

Secker, 587.

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happens when a homosexual person is asked to accept teachings such as those presented in the theology of the body. If we are told to accept that the only expression of human sexuality is union with a person of the opposite sex, then we are being told to contradict the truth of our reality, which is that we are only drawn to such union with people of the same sex. Farley boldly asserts that, “Ethical appeals based on a notion of personhood which violates women’s intrinsic self understanding – i.e., our ‘experience’ in this normative sense – cannot be legitimately claimed to have authority, even if such appeals are grounded in Scripture or theological tradition.”47 Again, this insight applies directly to the experience of homosexual people. One can even see the insight played out in the lives of gay and lesbian Catholics.

Catholic sexual ethical teaching Some have internalized the teaching and decided to live has been crafted without a heterosexual lives despite their God-given orientation. holistic, positive, or experiential But many know the teachings and simply ignore them understanding of homosexuality. because it is not speaking to the reality that they know. If the teaching showed evidence of speaking to that reality, it would likely be considered and weighed like many other teachings, even those that are difficult to implement.

But, the fact remains that Catholic sexual ethical teaching has been crafted without a holistic, positive, or experiential understanding of homosexuality or homosexual persons in mind. As such, it is limited and damaging. Refusal to recognize the limited character of such claims violates an adequate notion of homosexual persons’ humanity and perpetuates an objective conception of human reality which is distorted.48 The next logical implication of Farley’s assessment of the effect of women’s experience on Catholic ethical thought is that, “Women’s experience, if taken seriously, would alter the very moral norms that are being brought to bear in particular judgments.”49 Again, this is also true of the experience of homosexual people. A specific discussion of how moral norms might change if this experience were taken seriously is a discussion for another paper, and one that is being taken up by many ethicists and theologians, including Farley.50 In discussing the role of the contemporary experience of gay and lesbian people, in developing an ethics for same-sex relations, Farley points out that we have: [S]ome clear and profound testimonies – written, spoken, visibly lived – to the life enhancing possibilities of same-sex relationships and the integrating Secker, 587-588.

Secker, 588.

49 Secker, 587.

50 Margaret Farley, “An Ethic for Same Sex Relations,” in A Challenge to Love: Gay and Lesbian Catholics in the Church, ed. Robert Nugent (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 93-106. The ideas from this essay are expanded on in Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics (New York: Continuum, 2006) both in terms of the homosexuality question and of a norm for a more general human sexual ethic.

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possibilities of sexual activities within these relationships. We have witness that homosexuality can be a way of embodying human love and sustaining human and Christian friendship. We also have witness that obstacles raised to same-sex relationships and loves can bring deep and unnecessary suffering to the lives of homosexual persons and partnerships.51

From this, and with a thorough conversation about the potential questions raised by the use of experience in ethics, Farley rather modestly concludes, and I concur, that, “Without grounds in scripture, tradition, or any other source of human knowledge for an absolute prohibition of same sex relations, this witness alone is enough to demand of the Christian community that it reflect anew on the norms for homosexual love.”52 We simply know too much about a significant portion of the human community that is homosexual to have a sexual ethic that either ignores the existence of the group, or which completely contradicts their lived experience.

The disconnect between Catholic sexual ethics and the lives of gay and lesbian people which is caused by a lack of attention to human experience needs to be addressed.

I believe that the work of people like Salzman, Lawler, Cahill, and Farley is paving the way for a reevaluation of this limited understanding of human sexuality. Charles Curran conducts a lengthy discussion of the work of John T. Noonan, a theologian who does much work around the topic of the possibility of change in Catholic teaching. He argues that not only can teachings change, but that they must, and gives the following reason: “They might have accurately reflected the assumptions and traditions of an earlier age, but they no longer correspond to present reality.”53 Noonan also determines that it falls to theologians to make sure that our moral norms reflect current reality. I, for my part, hope to be one of those theologians. tt t

Katie Hennessey graduated in the Spring of 2007 from the Graduate Theological Union, with a Master of Arts in Ethics & Social Theory. She will begin her doctoral work at the GTU in the Fall. Her areas of interest include sexual ethics, virtue ethics, moral formation, sociology of morality, use of scripture in ethics, marriage, family, and gay and lesbian issues in Catholic education.

51 52 53

Farley, Just Love, 286.

Farley, 288.

Curran, The Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II, 183.

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Jihad: Holy War or Inner Struggle?

by Matthew S. Monnig, SJ

I do not remember the first time I heard the term “jihad,” but I know that I have always

understood it to mean “holy war,” waged by Muslims against an enemy. I know that I was aware of it during the war waged by Afghanis against the Soviet Union, which also taught me the word “mujahedin,” or “holy warriors.” Fighting against communist invaders was a good thing, but jihad became less attractive as I saw it pursued against Israel over the years. Even more offensive, jihad hit home when I saw it invoked by Osama bin Laden to justify the September 11 attacks and the ongoing war of terror against the United States and even his fellow Muslims.

Being something of an outsider, it was difficult to gauge whether jihad as warfare was an authentic part of Islam or a perversion of it. I knew that some Muslims decried it, yet I read articles and heard news stories that said this view of jihad had wide appeal in the Muslim world, especially with young men. President Bush refers in his speeches to Islam as a religion of peace, and says that terrorism There is tremendous (which often invokes jihad as its justification) is a perversion of this diversity among Muslims. noble religion. But there seemed to be no shortage of suicide bombers in several conflict areas involving Muslims and non-Muslims. What I knew of history did not shed much light, either: military conquest was essential to the early expansion of Islam, and centuries of wars were waged over various lands between Christians and Muslims. Christians referred to these as “crusades,” and have virtually unanimously rejected such a practice. Muslims referred to these wars as “jihad,” but it does not seem to have been universally rejected.

In learning about Islam before, during, and after our theological immersion in Indonesia in January of 2006, it was plain that it is not fair or even possible to make sweeping generalizations of Islam. There is tremendous diversity among Muslims.

There is, for example, the significant split between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the distinctive flavor of Sufi mysticism, the theological concerns of reform movements such as Wahhabism, and Islam’s own theological movements toward modernism.

While there are universal elements of Islam, there are also many different interpretations and perspectives among different groups. Islam does not have a clear central religious authority to interpret and define Muslim doctrine or practice.

Accordingly, different groups within Islam will understand jihad differently.

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A First Look My attention was caught in the pre-trip reading by John Esposito’s treatment of jihad. He said that jihad “refers to the obligation incumbent on all Muslims, as individuals and as a community, to exert themselves to realize God’s will, to lead virtuous lives, and to extend the Islamic community through preaching, education, and so on.” The struggle for the defense of Islam, or holy war, is only a related meaning, he says, and the use of it for aggressive warfare is a misuse of it. This was an attractive image of jihad, an image focused on personal growth in holiness and betterment of the community.

This gentler picture of jihad stayed with me in Indonesia and was reinforced in lectures from Jesuit Father Tom Michel, a scholar of Islam who lectured to us during our visit. He told the story of a kyai, a respected religious teacher, denying that jihad meant “holy war.”

“How can war be holy?” he asked. To illustrate his point, the kyai took Tom Michel to a fish pond in the village that was fed from a stream. Depending on the rainfall, the ponds could either be emptied out or overflow. Someone from the village had to attend the pond day and night to control the water flow and avoid disaster that would affect the whole village. This, said the kyai, is the struggle of jihad.

Jihad: Going Deeper Michel explained in his lecture on Sufism that jihad means effort or struggle. The premise, he said, is that it is not easy to conform life to God’s will. It takes effort, sacrifice, and a deep motivation to allow God to rule our life. Accordingly, there are three aspects to jihad. First, jihad is the “greatest struggle”: to live every aspect of one’s life in conformity with God’s will. Second, it is the struggle to live as persons of faith in modern society. Third, it is the struggle to oppose injustice or oppression. When possible, this should be done without force. When necessary, force and military action can be employed. He said that this last aspect, which is the basis for the notion that there is “holy war” in Islam, is rare both in real life and in history.

John L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, 3rd edition (Oxford, 1998), 93.

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An Inside View Visiting the al-Rislah peasantren in Mlangi provided me with an inside view as to how this “greatest struggle” is lived by devout Muslims. All sixty of the boys and young men at this Islamic boarding school were impressive examples of devout Muslim faith and practice. Taufik was a college graduate trained in engineering, The true meaning of jihad at age thirty one of the oldest and most mature of santri, the term is a struggle against the used for students at the peasentren. He spoke English well, and self, to overcome one’s own combined an intellectual look with true religious fervor and inclinations and needs. devotion. As he showed us around on the day of our arrival, I was somewhat taken aback by the austerity of the conditions. There were no beds.

The santri slept on the bare floor, no mats or blankets. They lived literally on top of each other: with six to eleven santri assigned to small rooms, many had to sleep in the classrooms or other public spaces. Cooking was done in a shed over an open fire.

The diet, only two meals a day, consisted of rice eaten by hand. It struck me as barely sufficient, and indeed the santri were all rail thin. There were but two toilets for the group of sixty, and bathing and washing was done down at the river, a rather disgusting stream filled with trash and sewage. The santri awoke at four in the morning for morning salat (prayer), and all but a few of the young were awake for the optional midnight prayer from 12 midnight to1 a.m.

Taufik, perhaps sensing my shock at this orientation, explained that this was the true meaning of jihad. It is a struggle against the self, to overcome one’s own inclinations and needs. This training, he explained, was meant to enable the santri to be able to live and to deal with even the most difficult circumstance, to enable them to live their faith in light of any hardship. Having conquered their passions and needs, they would be able to submit wholly to God. This was jihad, he said, not war.

I was struck by this notion of jihad as struggle against the self because of its resonance with Christian asceticism. Asceticism has long played a prominent role in Christian spirituality, so it is intriguing that it would find such a counterpart in Islam.

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Jihad as Inner Struggle The notion of jihad as inner struggle is associated with Sufism, the mystical tradition in Islam. In fact, Tom Michel described Sufism as the lifelong jihad against the self. In my own experience of prayer, I have found asceticism in various forms to be essential in growing toward union with God. Diverse Christian spiritual leaders – from the Desert Fathers and Mothers to St. Ignatius Loyola to St. Teresa of Avila – have been unanimous on the importance of this kind of struggle against the self. The Islamic notion of greater jihad resonated strongly with that, and I’ve found myself much enriched by what I’ve learned from this Islamic teaching. The notion of struggle against the self to submit to God resonates with the living the evangelical counsels.

Thus I chose “greater” or “inner” jihad as a topic for this reflection and sought to study it more closely. I found that it was the preferred view of jihad by several experts on Islam. Sachiko Murata and William Chittick say that “‘Holy war’ is a highly misleading and usually inaccurate translation…The basic meaning of the term is ‘struggle.’” They suggest that jihad holds such an important place in Islamic law and life that it can be called a “sixth pillar of Islam.” Their view of jihad places the emphasis on the inner struggle of jihad.

Receptivity toward God’s command requires people to be active toward all the negative tendencies in society and themselves that pull them away from God. In this perspective, submission to God and struggle in his path go together harmoniously, and neither is complete without the other.

In this context, jihad does not consist of extraordinary acts, but simply living out the basic commands of Islam: salat, zakat, fasting, the hajj. They point out that these religious observances are difficult. A person’s laziness and lack of imagination inhibit the Islamic submission to God, an inclination that every Muslim must overcome through jihad.

Reuven Firestone speaks of various types of jihad, most of which have nothing to do with warfare.

“Jihad of the heart” refers to struggle against one’s sinful inclination, while “jihad of the tongue” refers to speaking on behalf of the good and forbidding evil. He points to a hadith (a collection of the sayings, deeds, and Sachiko Murata and William C. Chittick, The Vision of Islam (Paragon House, 1994), 20.

Murata and Chittick 20. The five official pillars of Islam are: 1. Shahada (the profession of faith), 2. Salat ( the daily ritual prayer) 3. Zakat (the poor tax), 4. Saum (the Ramadan fast), and 5. Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca).

Murata and Chittick, 21.

Reuven Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (Oxford, 1999), 17.

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decisions of Mohammed found outside the Qur’an) in which Mohammed says that “The best jihad is [speaking] a word of justice to a tyrannical ruler.” “Jihad of the sword” is but one aspect of a much larger concept.

A Contrasting View However, David Cook looks at the evidence for greater jihad from the Qur’an and the hadith. He concludes that “some Qur’anic verses and certain traditions do appear to allow for construing jihad as a nonviolent activity—or at least as an activity that does not necessarily entail violence.” The strongest grounding for the notion of the greater jihad comes from a hadith which says: A number of fighters came to the Messenger of Allah, and he said: “You have done well in coming from the ‘lesser jihad’ to the ‘greater jihad.’”

They said: “What is the ‘greater jihad’?” He said: “For the servant [of God] to fight his passions.

Another, more authoritative hadith says: “The fighter is one who fights his [lower] soul.” The direct evidence for the greater jihad in the Qu’ran itself is scant.

Cook points to 25:52 which says, “So do not obey the unbelievers and strive (jahidhum) against them with it [the Qur’an] mightily.” This verse, he says, has been universally interpreted to mean that the struggle takes the form of proclamation of the Qu’ran.10 This in fact is the beginning of Cook’s forceful critique of the notion of “greater jihad.”

He begins by pointing out that the “traditions indicating that jihad meant spiritual warfare are entirely absent from any of the official, canonical collections (with the exception of that of al-Tirmidhi, who cites ‘the fighter is one who fights his passions’); they appear most often in the collections of ascetic material or proverbs.”11 That is to say, the most authoritative hadith collections do not contain the greater jihad tradition.

Moreover, Cook traces the historical development of the greater jihad idea, seeing traces but no explicit doctrine in late ninth century moralists, al-Muhasibi and Ibn Abi al-Dunya, and also great silence from other Sufi writers of the period.12 The true beginning of greater jihad, he says, are in the Sufi al-Ghazali (d. 1111), to whose “formulations we owe the success of this doctrine.”13 Even here, though, greater

10 11 12 13

Abu Daud, Sunan, in Firestone, 17.

David Cook, Understanding Jihad (University of California, 2005), 35.

Al-Bayhaqi, Zuhd, 373, quoted in Cook, 35.

Ibn al-Mubarak, Kitab al-jihad, 175, quoted in Cook, 35.

Cook, 34.

Cook, 35.

Cook, 35-36.

Cook, 37.

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jihad is not meant to exclude the jihad of war, but only to complement it. In the next century, Cook cites Spanish mystic Ibn al-‘Arabi who said that “fighters (mujahidin) in the path of God are known for their good deeds and therefore are reinterpreted as those who engage in working for the common good, as well as engaging their passions in battle.”14 In coming to contemporary treatment of jihad, Cook writes with a heavy hand. The basic point, he says, is that “the internal jihad has no reality whatsoever—that it is a theoretical, scholarly construct for which we have little to no practical evidence.”15 There are two groups that are guilty of inventing the notion of greater jihad: Western scholars who want to present Islam in the most innocuous terms possible and Muslim apologists, who rediscovered the internal jihad in the nineteenth century and have been emphasizing it ever since that time as the normative expression of jihad—in defiance of all the religious and historical evidence to the contrary.16

He faults writers, such as John Esposito, for shoddy scholarship, saying: “The flat statement is the refuge of scholars who believe in the essentially irenic nature of jihad, while the footnote is the response of those who do not.”17 Moreover, he says that Esposito is guilty of inverting the priority of jihad in Islam’s early expansion when he says it took place by “preaching, diplomacy, and warfare.”18 Cook accuses Western scholars of ignoring or rewriting the history of jihad, a mistake never made by Muslim scholars. There is a wide Muslim literature on jihad as warfare, but virtually nothing in the history of Islamic law and theology on “greater jihad.” He concludes: It seems to the outside observer a patently apologetic device designed to promote a doctrine that has little historical depth in Islam, is not well attested in the hadith literature, has few practical examples to illustrate precisely how it was practiced, and was adduced in order to overcome a resistance to the acceptance and legitimacy of jihad. The name is nothing more than false advertisement designed to pull the wool over the eyes of the audience.19

This damning critique of the notion of greater jihad could not but give me pause.

I would be out of my depth to try to judge the accuracy of Cook’s historical reading.

14 15 16 17 18 19

Cook, 38.

Cook, 40.

Cook, 40.

Cook, 41.

Cook, 42.

Cook, 47.

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However, I checked his footnotes (recalling Professor Thomas Buckley’s admonition to read with one finger on the footnotes), and he was clearly citing the hadith and other Islamic writings knowledgably. To check his assertion I realized that I wanted jihad that proponents of the “greater jihad” have scant historical to mean something innocuous evidence, I checked the citations and footnotes of those who or even praiseworthy. treated it favorably. I found them noticeably lacking, and generally referring only to the one hadith about the fighters coming to Mohammed— which Cook alone acknowledged was not from one of the hadith collections considered most reliable by Muslims.

This made me question my own motives for being attracted to the notion of “greater jihad.” My motives were noble: looking for what is good in a religion that is foreign to me. The notion of jihad as holy war is something quite repugnant to my sensibilities. Therefore, wanting to see Islam in a good light, I wanted to understand jihad in a way that was less offensive that “holy war” (particularly if that holy war was seen to be directed at least in part against Christians). I realized that I wanted jihad to mean something innocuous or even praiseworthy. Were the writers who advanced the notion of “greater jihad” guilty of the same bias toward a favorable reading of this problematic reading?

These books were written for Western audiences, and it was clear the authors were seeking to educate an audience with a poor image of Islam. I had also noticed a decidedly apologetic flavor is some of their writing.

Cook’s criticisms came to seem plausible indeed.

Cook cited the definition of jihad from the article by E. Tyan in the Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, as the standard scholarly one. In a footnote, Firestone stated that “Much has been written about jihad, but little is unskewed by prejudice, apologetics, or political motives. Perhaps the best introductory article is that by E. Tyan.”20 Tyan’s definition in this article is “in law, according to general doctrine, and in historical tradition, the [jihad] consists of military action with the object of the expansion of Islam and, if need be, of its defence.”21 This notion comes from the “fundamental 20 21

Firestone, 139, n. 18.

E. Tyan, “Djihad,” The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, vol. II, ed. by H.A.R. Gibb (E.J. Brill, 1965), 538.

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principle of the universality of Islam: this religion, along with the temporal power which it implies, ought to embrace to [sic] whole universe, if necessary by force.”22 This jihad is a religious duty and a collective obligation to be engaged in when people have refused to submit to Islam, and continued until the “universal domination of Islam” has been attained. It has both an offensive and defensive character.23 Thus the Encyclopedia of Islam brought me back around to where I had started: the notion of jihad as holy war against non-Muslims. I began to realize that perhaps I was taking part in a question still being debated within Islam, a question on which different groups of Muslims have different positions. Tom Michel certainly knows Islam and embraces the “greater jihad,” as do the Kyai, Taufik, and all the santri at the Mlangi peasantren.

Whatever the role of jihad in the past—and Cook makes it clear that it has developed over time—greater jihad is clearly a viable interpretation for many moderate Muslims today.

Pulling it All Together Perhaps the best interpretation that can be put on the place of “greater jihad” in Islam is that it is a notion that has developed and whose time has come. A. G. Noorani’s treatment of greater jihad at first struck me as blatant cheerleading, A. G. Noorani was actually but further reflection led me to realize that he was actually advancing greater jihad as a advancing greater jihad as a doctrine that had developed. In doctrine that had developed. saying that “many contemporary Muslims emphasize spiritual struggle as ‘the bottom line’ implication of jihad,” he acknowledges that to do so they must discard earlier rules and ideas of jihad “as outdated and inappropriate for the needs of contemporary Muslims.”24 Taking a side in the intra-Muslim debate, he says “the so-called ‘Islamic Jihad’ groups have no right to take this authority to themselves. In addition, their extremist methods that involve violence against the innocent have no basis in Islamic law. In the moderate view jihad is still necessary, but it must now be directed toward two issues: the individual’s struggle for piety, and society’s struggle for justice.”25 Cook would be pleased, for he does not claim that this notion of jihad was present from the beginning, but rather that is a response to changing times. Noorani challenges Muslims to “read the fundamentals propounded in the Qur’an and in the Prophet’s injunctions in the context of the times and to adapt them to the conditions of modern society.”26 Islam certainly has a theological concept 22 23 24 25 26

Tyan, 538.

Tyan, 538-539.

A.G. Noorani, Islam and Jihad: Prejudice versus Reality (Zed Books, 2002) 46.

Noorani, 46.

Noorani, 47.

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of the reinterpretation of law and theology called itjihad that could facilitate just such an adaptation. To investigate how itjihad could be brought to bear on jihad in light of Cook’s historical and textual critique of “higher jihad” is a fascinating topic that is beyond the scope of this article. It would perhaps parallel what we in the Catholic world call the development of doctrine. When complete, such a project of itjihad brought to bear on jihad might well resemble what has occurred in Catholic theology with the development of our modern doctrine of religious freedom.

In the end, I feel much enriched for both the study and the experience that I have been able to bring to the question of the true meaning of jihad. I would certainly like to understand jihad as a struggle against the self, as this is a notion that would offer much to my own spirituality. In fact, I have found myself pondering it quite a bit in recent weeks. But I am not a Muslim, and am not in a position to say that this is the universal or normative view of jihad. There is in fact a diversity of opinions among Muslims as to what jihad is. Many would not accept the priority of “greater jihad,” or would at least hold it in tandem with jihad as holy war. As a Christian and a human being, I sincerely hope that the notion of holy war is one that the world and Muslims in particular, can move beyond. That, however, is a question that ultimately Muslims must decide on for their own tradition. The Mlangi peasantren augurs well for this future: the kyai, Taufik and others clearly wanted us to see that peasantren were places of peace. The notion of jihad being taught there was not war against the West or infidels, but an ascetical struggle against the self, a way of living out the core meaning of Islam: submission to God.

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Matthew Monnig, SJ, is a Jesuit scholastic of the New England Province, finishing his Master of Divinity program and working on an STL in New Testament. He attended the JSTB theological immersion to Indonesia in January 2006. He will be ordained to the priesthood in June, and after a year of pastoral work, will pursue further studies in Scripture.

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Holy Kitsch?

The Role of Religious Kitsch in America

by Jeff Gottlieb “Faith, according to scripture, is ‘the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’. Images of faith, then, are a kind of oxymoron that has been a conundrum to the church for centuries.”

Kitsch entered the vocabulary of American art critics in 1939 through an aspiring

art essayist named Clement Greenberg, who argued that kitsch was “a debased copy of genuine culture that operates through formula, vicarious experience, and faked sensations.” He maintained that the distinction between art and kitsch was that the former contributed to culture while the latter “looted” and “watered down” culture for consumption by the masses. The etymology of the word “kitsch” remains unclear.

Colleen McDannell suggests that German painters in the mid-nineteenth century may have first coined it because they used the English word ‘sketch’ to deride the cheap tourist art bought

by British and American visitors to Munich. The German word kitschen has the sense of ‘to collect rubbish from the street’ and in the Mecklenburg dialect verkitchen meant ‘to make cheap.’

The history of its origin and usage sheds enough light on our understanding of kitsch to expand it beyond the OED definition of “characterized by worthless pretentiousness; the qualities associated with such art or artifacts.”

I wish to explore how religious kitsch in America has two functions: it can cheapen religion; or it can draw people to it and encourage them in their faith. In order to accomplish this objective, first I will define kitsch and how people respond to and view it. In the process, I will show that there are no clear dichotomies regarding how people perceive kitsch. From there I will look at the effects of American consumer culture on religious kitsch and religion, followed by a discussion of how Betty Spackman, A Profound Weakness: Christians and Kitsch (Carlisle: Piquant, 2005), 4.

Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 163.

McDannell, 163.

McDannell, 164-5.

Oxford English Dictionary (1989), s.v. “kitsch.”

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our perceptions of religious kitsch influence our reactions to it, using the work of visual theorist David Morgan. From there I will move to examples of how religious kitsch can either benefit or demean religion.

Origins, Definition, and Classifications As the definition states, kitsch in mainstream society generally does not enjoy high status. McDannell categorizes kitsch by the responses to it, distinguishing “the cultural, aesthetic, and ethical responses to kitsch.” All three of these responses consider kitsch something negative, especially the last two, seeing it as a sub-par art form. In the cultural response kitsch becomes whatever any one The aesthetic response holds group designates it to be, based on their dislike for another’s culture. that “kitsch is an imitation It signifies the lack of worth of an object based on cultural bias. For of something else.” example, a Protestant might think the candles lit by Catholics in veneration of a saint are a worthless gesture, bordering on idolatrous. The aesthetic response holds that “kitsch is an imitation of something else.” Try as it might, but because it lacks a unique creative character, kitsch is regarded as that which does not deserve to be classified as art. In this view, shared by Greenberg, kitsch cannot mimic its way into credibility or gain access to artistic circles. The ethical response slanders kitsch as evil because it deceives people into thinking that “kitsch alone could satisfy fundamental needs” which only true art can fill. This perspective holds that the artistic value of a statuette bought at a dollar store does not even deserve to be compared to that of a Rubens painting, because the statuette cannot, as the Rubens can, quench one’s aesthetic thirst.

These categories help us organize people’s reactions to kitsch, while also providing a framework for understanding what kitsch is and is not. However, they do not tell us why a person has an ethical rather than a cultural response to kitsch or why one person reacts in one way while someone else responds in another. Indeed, there may be a simultaneous interaction of all three responses within an individual.

These three ways of classifying reactions show us that kitsch (or art) still remains in the eye of the beholder. Now that we have looked at what kitsch is and one way in which it can be classified, let us turn to its religious forms.

Religious Kitsch In the process of gathering information about kitsch I conducted interviews with

McDannell, 165.

Cf. McDannell, 165.

McDannell, 165.

McDannell, 165.

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religious and nonreligious people.10 Answers regarding the definition of kitsch varied from “something to make religion more accessible”11 to “cheesy stuff that you could order from a catalog, like t-shirts with a cross or calendars with pictures of Jesus.”12 Another idea was that religious kitsch was anything not specifically made for devotion or prayer but that would give a religious believer a sense of comfort.13 These findings suggest that there is no consensus on the definition of kitsch. In this paper, however, I define religious kitsch as: any inexpensive product intentionally made to associate itself with religion. In saying that a product must ‘associate itself with religion,’ I mean that the product needs to be based on religion. The association may refer to creeds, beliefs, scriptures, documents, figures, groups (e.g., denominations), practices, and/or history.

A modest price is integral to kitsch (religious and non) in that if something were too high priced it might instead be considered fine art. Most kitsch is mass-produced, but there are individual artisans making one-of-a-kind items which are considered kitsch as well.14 A brief list of examples illustrates just how wide-ranging kitsch has become: jewelry, t-shirts, sandals, bumper stickers, candles, crosses, crucifixes, baggage tags, baseball caps, baby clothes, school and office supplies, coffee mugs, socks, bobblehead dolls, golf balls, statuettes, nightlights, breath mints, temporary tattoos, soaps, lip balms, and action figures. It is possible for one to accessorize just about every facet of life with a form of religious kitsch. In fact, it is highly unlikely that the average American, even if they are not religious, has not been confronted with kitsch either in the marketplace or in public. For example, if one has ever seen a silver fish containing the name “Jesus” (also known as an Ichthus) on the back of a car, then one has encountered a contemporary, kitsch version of an ancient Christian symbol. With religious kitsch being so ubiquitous, a further analysis of its functions and interpretations is needed for understanding this facet of our cultural landscape.15

It should be noted that when quotes are not used specifically, I am drawing the main ideas and points, the essence if you will, from those persons interviewed.

11 Naomi Kryske, homemaker, interview by author, 29 November 2006, phone.

12 Amy Voegeli, paralegal, interview by author, 29 November 2006, phone.

13 Jessica Brown, graduate student, interview by author, 27 November 2006, phone.

14 For an example of such kitsch see, Erik Hanson, “Jesus Kitsch, My Lord and Savior,” [blog] killingthebudda. com; available from http://www.killingthebuddha.com/graven_image/kitsch.htm; accessed 14 October, 2006.

15 Due to time and space considerations, this paper will focus only on Christian forms of religious kitsch.

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An Age of Consumption In order to better understand religious kitsch’s place in our culture, it is necessary to first explore the consumerist aspect of America. Consumerism, according to Vincent Miller, “refers simply to the high levels of consumption in advanced capitalist societies and the great significance and importance that it is given in these societies.”16 The economic wealth produced and enjoyed in America has made Thorstein Veblen’s theory of “conspicuous consumption” a reality for a large number of Americans.17 People purchase products that will identify them with a specific group or class of society. Possible now in ways that our grandparents never dreamed of, a majority of people can now own a car and fill their homes with an assortment of material goods.

Miller argues that our society finds its foundation not in producing goods, but in consuming them. He defines consumer societies as “societies in which consumption plays an important role in establishing social identity and solidarity.”18 One example of this solidarity might be the hordes of shoppers who are driven to flood stores the day after Thanksgiving.19 Those who buy religious kitsch participate in consumerist society in terms of the type of religious goods they buy, demonstrating a wish to identify themselves with like others by their purchases.

The zenith of this process comes when a culture is no longer defined by its consumption, but consumes itself. The attitudes toward goods one has been taught by consumer society spread into other facets of life. Miller terms this the commodification of culture. Consumers become increasingly separated from producers in many ways.

This process: results in the liquidation of cultural traditions whereby the elements they comprise (beliefs, symbols, practices, and so on) are abstracted from their traditional contexts and engaged as free-floating signifiers, put to decorative uses far removed from their original references and connections with other beliefs and practices.20

The situation America finds itself in is one in which consumers purchase goods without recognizing the link between them and the traditions they represent.

Religious people should not pretend to be impervious to these cultural trends and happenings. On the contrary, religion is becoming commodified as well: Vincent J. Miller, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture (New York: Continuum International Pub. Group, 2004), 30.

17 Encyclopedia Americana, 1999 International ed., s.v. “Veblen, Thorstein,” by Bilky, Warren J. 18 Miller, 30.

19 This is not an ideal form of solidarity by any means, but it is solidarity nonetheless. Compare shopper turnout with voter turnout and its evident how Americans’ solidarity manifests itself.

20 Miller, 30.

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Those who argue with alarm that the public ‘square’ is naked of religion are surely wrong. Religion is everywhere. What they ought to worry about… is that religion in the marketplace of culture has becomes an ordinary commodity.21

Our consumer society makes it possible for those with no particular religious affiliation to purchase goods associated with any number of Human beings create their religious traditions. For example, Christian bookstores, catalogs, worlds by visual means. and online shopping, which make religious versions of virtually every commodity, allow anyone willing to spend the money a chance to participate without needing to join a church or identify with a spiritual community.22 The Importance of Seeing As one of the five senses, sight, even for those who do not consider themselves ‘visual’, plays a vital role in life. As David Morgan says, “Human beings create their worlds by visual means, in and by virtue of the pictures they fashion, revere, display, purchase, or exchange.”23 This section will explore how the perception of images transforms the images, in the minds of the viewers, into religious images.

The meaning one derives from an image or work is dependent on many factors, one of which is the mode in which it is seen. How an object is perceived largely determines how one will react to it. When dealing with religious kitsch, what makes it “‘religious’ is often not simply its subject matter or the intentions of the person who created it but the use of the image as well as the context of its deployment and interpretation.”24 Viewers have near-complete flexibility in interpreting whether a thing is religious or not; they also have a choice to see it as something either supportive for or antithetical to their faith.

The determining factor in whether religious kitsch will be viewed as positive (beneficial to religion) or negative (inimical to religion) depends on whether or not one imbues the object with what Morgan calls the sacred gaze, which he defines as:25 a term that designates the particular configuration of ideas, attitudes, and customs that informs a religious act of seeing as it occurs within a given R. Laurence Moore, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 256.

22 Cf. Moore, 254.

23 David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 25.

24 The quotation refers to religious images, but part of the purpose of this paper is to show that a piece of religious kitsch can be considered a religious image. Morgan, 55.

25 Morgan, 55.

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cultural and historical setting. A sacred gaze is the manner in which a way of seeing invests an image, a viewer, or an act of viewing with spiritual significance.26

The term may be Morgan’s but the practice is deeply rooted in the history of some religious traditions. Forms of visual piety such as “icon veneration, devotional prayer before an image, and the contemplation of imagined scenes of Christ’s passion, as in the Spiritual Exercises created by Ignatius of Loyola,” remain staple practices in the lives of many religious adherents.27 That these images are viewed with a sacred gaze revamps their meanings, giving them significance for religious life, as well as fostering attitudes and practices that deepen faith.

But how does one move from a non-sacred to a sacred gaze? Drawing on a passage from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun to convey his idea, Morgan says, “images work by demanding a pre-requisite submission of The key is to open oneself the viewer, a willful surrendering to belief in the power of the up as much as possible for image to work its magic on the viewer.”28 For an image to have the image to do what it can. an impact upon the viewer, they must first open up to the image, breaking down barriers and letting go of preconceived passions. In a sense, one must stand bare and allow the image to begin the work of influencing and shaping how it is viewed. But in order to attain this relationship something crucial must come beforehand.

There is a tacit agreement, a compact or a covenant, that a viewer observes when viewing an image in order to be engaged by it, in order to believe what the image reveals or says or means or makes one feel – indeed, in order to believe there is something to believe, some legitimate claim to truth to be affirmed.29

This compact is vital if one is to have any kind of positive experience with an image.

If one does not enter into such an agreement, then they may indeed extract something from the work, but the fullness of experience will be substantially diminished. One can never stand before an image as a tabula rasa, but this does not mean that when one makes a compact with an image to be open to what it has to say, that one will see what one wants to see. Everyone has a history, opinions, attitudes, likes, etc. --we are who we are. The key is to open oneself up as much as possible for the image to do what it can. Once one has entered into this covenant, the image becomes a religious image because the person is opened to perceiving the object as such. Therefore, religious 26 27 28 29

Morgan, 3.

Morgan, 51.

Morgan, 75.

Morgan, 76.

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kitsch, when given the opportunity to speak, can have positive effects on one’s faith as well. What follows is a discussion of how a religious image can function and what role it can play when viewed in this light.

Morgan lists what religious images do for those who perceive them as such.

They can: “order space and time, imagine community, communicate with the divine or transcendent, embody forms of communion with the divine, collaborate with other forms of representation, influence thought and behavior by persuasion or magic” and/ or “displace rival images or ideologies.”30 A religious image can meet any one of these criteria and still have a powerful effect as each function listed above is compelling in its own right.

Morgan notes that were the word divine replaced with civilization, nation, or past, the differences between religious images and nonreligious images would be indiscernible.31 This accounts for the reason why religious kitsch can be such a debatable topic between those of faith and those not, as well as between parties of different, or even the same, faiths. Because it can be confused so easily with mainstream culture, some contend that religious kitsch is nothing more than reprocessed culture with a religious spin designed to trivialize faith, while others argue for religious kitsch’s contribution to their faith journeys. As noted above, how one perceives, reacts to, and thinks about an image completely hinges upon how one enters the viewing relationship with it.

Should one enter into a trust compact, then the work is allowed to channel its meaning and power to the viewer, who, if they wish to further their experience and faith, can invest the image with a sacred gaze, thus making it a religious image beneficial to their faith. As an example of the power of the sacred gaze on an individual’s faith, the quote below describes one man’s experience with the art of Warner Sallman: There is something more about [his] pictures that makes me feel…when I see them that this artist had felt Christ’s presence when he made the images…and you can feel Christ’s presence…conveyed…to you through his images…From the way the hair in the image is highlighted in the back and highlights around the front of the head and face there seems to be a Holy radiance emitted from the image, depicting the qualities mentioned above.32 Morgan, 55.

Morgan, 55.

32 David Morgan, ed., Icons of American Protestantism: The Art of Warner Sallman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 28.

30 31

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How Kitsch Cheapens But not all people have such profound experiences as the one stated above. In fact, the very opposite happens when religious kitsch is consumed improperly and/or seen in a close-minded manner. As Miller argued, when society consumes without regard The commodification of for the traditions and cultures from which the goods themselves culture contains serious come, simple consumer culture turns into the commodification dangers for religion. of culture. When purchases of religious kitsch are made without recognizing the significance of religious traditions within which the goods belong, then the sale of religious kitsch can become injurious to religion.

The commodification of culture contains serious dangers for religion in that when it becomes subject to such cultural practices, then it is simply cheapened and trivialized.

As one blogger has observed, one of the greatest dangers occurs when Christian vendors commodify their own faith: I find though that the mindset in Christian marketing now has taken a rather capitalistic turn: if the market demands it, then we provide it. And that seems to be the source of the problem. It’s not just that all these crappy products are being sold, it’s that they are being bought. The blame is just as much on the consumer, as it is on the providers.33

Rather than becoming tied down in debates about placing of blame on either consumers or producers, it must be emphasized that neither would exist without the other. Were there no demand for such goods, production would cease; were there no suppliers, people would not be able to buy them.

Shameless Pandering One person interviewed echoed a similar opinion in that she thought the methods used to sell religious kitsch cheapen religion. Referencing t-shirts that copy major name-brand logos or use a play on words with their slogans, she said, are guilty of shamelessly pandering to consumer desires.34 Another person interviewed, a self-professed atheist, further solidified the notion of the commodification of religious culture with an example of her own. The only instance, she explained, in which she would purchase religious kitsch was when she intended it as a “gag gift” for another atheist friend or relative.35 While it is clearly within her right to buy what she chooses, it demonstrates Winston’s response to “Jesus Ain’t My Homeboy,” [blog] evangelicaloutpost.com (14 April, 2005); available from http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001282.html; accessed 15 October, 2006.

34 Melissa Behrle, graduate student, interview by author, 30 November 2006, in person.

35 Amy Voegeli, interview by author.

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that religion is vulnerable, even in the hands of the nonreligious (arguably even more so), to being trivialized through the consumption of its kitsch.

Oversimplifaction Others see the cheapening of religion occurring by way of its oversimplification. Tshirts and bumper stickers that offer one-line quips, challenges, or commands cannot do justice to a faith with a complex theology and history. In fact, such things do a disservice to religion because, when taken out of context, they are prone to being misunderstood which can lead to them being perceived as disrespectful.

You can’t condense something that’s as complex as your faith to a bumper sticker…I saw a bumper sticker the other day, it said, ‘Turn or Burn,’ and I thought okay, they want you to investigate the belief in eternal life through Jesus, but the sticker says, ‘Turn or Burn.’ That’s just offensive. There’s nothing to that that’s appealing to a person that doesn’t already agree with you.36

Another dimension of ‘bumper sticker dialogue’ is the breakdown of community.

In reducing themselves to a statement printed on a t-shirt, people are sending their personal message which, because of its individualistic nature, damages communal ties. As McDannell says, Religious objects can serve to unify or confuse as much as they separate groups. They can blur the boundaries as well as strengthen them. They can cause conflict and struggle, as well as defuse tensions.37

Community in society is severely damaged when one group dons phrases (on t-shirts and bumper stickers) that tell another group they must convert because any belief contrary to their own is wrong.

What is considered ‘cool’ There is, however, another level to this phenomenon. today may not, and in Because the messages are on expendable and trendy goods, the fact, probably will not, be messages themselves are seen as transient.38 What is considered ‘cool’ in a few years. ‘cool’ today may not, and in fact, probably will not, be ‘cool’ in a few years. A great example is the WWJD? (What Would Jesus Do?) bracelet that enjoyed enormous popularity in the mid-1990s, but is hardly seen today. Some believe that oversimplifying religious traditions, especially the person of Jesus, not only cheapens religion but poses serious dangers because, “To take the reality of Jesus and reduce him to a gimmick, a toy, a talisman, or a list of dos and don’ts, is a misunderstanding “Religious Kitsch,” [radio broadcast transcript] afcnewsource.org, (4 June, 2006); available from http://www. acfnewsource.org/religion/religious_kitsch.html; accessed 20 October, 2006.

37 McDannell, 65.

38 Melissa Behrle, interview by author.

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with potentially eternal consequences.”39 While one need not believe such ‘eternal consequences’ exist for those purchasing such things, respect for their belief that doing so remains integral for tolerance.

How Kitsch Enhances Shameless pandering and oversimplification are not the only possible perceptions of and responses to religious kitsch. For many Christians, there is a certain value in kitsch: humor, positive cultural identification, evangelism and memory are all positive values with which a piece of religious kitsch may be invested. Moreover, for some, the imperfection of some kitsch heightens its value.

Humor While not all kitsch is designed for this purpose, a popular avenue for some is humor. People who buy things like ‘Wash Away Your Sins’ soap pick up on the intended joke and find it humorous.

People of this group generally express the idea, as one person aptly put it, “Assuming God exists, I don’t think God would want us to be so serious about everything, including our religion.”40 Others echoed the same sentiment, that religious kitsch invites them to have a more playful experience of faith by making them laugh. According to one blogger, the degree of comfort with faith that allows people to be open to the humorous side of it comes when faith is a major part of one’s life. Specifically, “If Jesus is so reverent that we can’t laugh about him, then Jesus isn’t in our everyday lives.”41 Cultural Identification Another way in which religious kitsch may be beneficial to religion comes in the form of cultural identification. As a consumer society, we define ourselves by our purchases and possessions, so it is only natural that Christians do the same. McDannell writes of some that, “Being Christian means to have a Christian life style that includes purchasing goods from a fellow Christian and using those goods.”42 Speaking of a family member’s born-again experience and subsequent act of putting Christian stickers all over her notebooks, Ambra Nykol says, Marshall Allen, “Finally What We’ve All Been Waiting For – The Jesus Action Figure.” [article online] boundlesswebzine.com, (2002); available from http://www.boundless.org/2002_2003/departments/ campus_culture/a0000671.html; accessed 15 October, 2006.

40 Darleen Pryds, graduate professor, interview by author, 28 November 2006, in person.

41 Karen Dalton’s response to “Jesus Ain’t My Homeboy,” [blog] evangelicaloutpost.com, (21 April, 2004); available from http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/000594.html; accessed 15 October, 2006.

42 McDannell, 223.

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Those stickers were an expression of a true reality in her life. It was an external representation of something internal, and I respected it.43

Each generation feels the need to connect with their culture on their own terms and in their own way. The plethora of religious kitsch is one way in which persons of faith can identify with and be a part of their culture and The desire to be separate from pop culture faith. Much of kitsch, like the stickers, is presented as is another need that kitsch meets. an alternative to whatever is popular in contemporary mainstream society. For many evangelical Christians, such items are ways to identify themselves in a hostile society they perceive to be non-Christian.

Evangelism The desire to be separate, ‘holy’ as its users would say, from pop culture is another need that kitsch meets. As mentioned earlier, the religious messages that grace countless t-shirts can be either supportive or offensive both to persons of faith and nonbelievers. As their group name denotes, Evangelicals believe their faith obliges them to share it with others. The drive to evangelize, combined with the need to culturally identify, is exhibited in many fashions with t-shirts being one of the most popular and ubiquitous. Not only is it a matter of pride and cultural identification, but the objects help initiate conversations about faith.44 While some question why such an explosion of religious kitsch does not generate outrage from the devout to defend the integrity of their faith45, one blogger wrote, “Who cares if it’s tacky – it works! People hear the gospel!”46 In fact, evangelization is such a high priority for people from that tradition that many seem not to care who manufactures, markets, or profits from the products, exemplifying the most profane aspects of consumer culture.

Imperfection Religious kitsch can also touch people because of its nature of being seen by some as ‘less than art’. Were the items made “On Behalf of the Jesus Clothing Donners,” [blog] nykola.com. (22 April, 2004); available from http://www.nykola.com/archives/000234.html; accessed 19 October, 2006.

44 One person interviewed has a shirt that says “Lutheran Stud” which prompts many conversations. Kyle Rouze, seminarian, interview by author, 29 November 2006, phone.

45 “What strikes one about the ubiquity of such religious artifacts is how rarely the devout are offended by what they should regard as blatantly obvious assaults on their devotion.” Edward T. Oakes, “Icons and Kitsch,” First Things 111 (March 2001): 42 46 This blogger was not for the idea of evangelization at any cost, but was playing devil’s advocate with himself by imagining, accurately in my opinion, the evangelical perspective. “Paddleball Spirituality,” [blog] nihilfit.blogspot.com, (27 March, 2005); available from http://nihilfit.blogspot.com/2005/03/paddle-ball-spirituality. html; accessed 19 October, 2006.

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professionally or more skillfully, then a connection would not be possible. Erik Hanson writes, Churches, museums, temples do so little to move me just because they are so good, so complete. Their purity is a purity I can never share in. But here at the Bible Walk, I can see artists or monks in all their embarrassing nakedness. I can see their stupid attempts to make sense, to have control, to retain power in this vast world of decay. This touches me in a way that no good kitsch-free art or religion ever could.47

Betty Spackman’s opinion of Christian kitsch, especially in the figure of Jesus, runs along the same lines. She says, Perhaps it is actually the deformed nature of these things that make them so appealing to so many different kinds of people. Perhaps a poor, distorted and fragmented image of God is more accessible and more acceptable to contemporary society. Perhaps religious kitsch best provides a view of the broken, suffering Jesus to a broken, suffering world. In the multiplicity of commercial reproductions, he becomes not one image of unattainable perfection but a myriad images – meeting people at the level of their personal understanding and consoling their pain through storytelling, laughter and charm.48

In a world where nearly everything is mass-produced by people we will never meet, some find comfort in locally-produced kitsch, even though it may not be of high quality or expert craftsmanship. Due to their imperfections or lack of sophistication, it may be easier to enter into a compact with them. In this way, the sacred gaze is more readily applied to transform these objects into kitsch that deepens one’s faith.

Memory Another way religious kitsch can be beneficial to religion is by serving as a reminder directing people to faith. For some, seeing things in their daily lives associated with their faith can bring it to the forefront of their attention. Drinking from a coffee mug or looking at a calendar with a Bible verse on it helps remind people of their faith in times they might not have been thinking of religious matters.49 Having a framed verse written in calligraphy on one’s desk can an inspirational relief by pointing to things more important than the daily run-of-the-mill type activities which cause so much stress.50 Another person I interviewed related a story about how a piece of kitsch was meaningful.

47 48 49 50

Erik Hanson, “Jesus Kitsch, My Lord and Savior.”

Betty Spackman, A Profound Weakness: Christians and Kitsch (Carlisle: Piquant. 2005), 14.

Naomi Kryske, homemaker, interview by author, 29 November 2006, phone.

Kyle Rouze, interview by author.

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My grandma has this tiny porcelain Catholic monk who is holding a beer stein. He’s really fat and cute. It reminders her of her time studying with Franciscan monks.51

A poetic verse conveys the same idea; “I carry a cross in my pocket / A simple reminder to me / Of the fact that I am a Christian / No matter where I may be.”52 Religious kitsch, even in the form of a pocket-sized cross, by way of memory can strengthen one’s faith.

Conclusion Christ, by way of the Incarnation, was himself a combination of the divine and material. Indeed, God created the material world and pronounced it “very good,” and subsequently entered that world in human form. A deity in human form exemplifies that the difference between the sacred and the profane is not so clearly or obviously demarcated. This must be kept in mind when evaluating religious kitsch.

So we end where we began – with definitions. Greenberg held that kitsch was a poor attempt at art and in its failure became something inferior. I contend that when we see religious kitsch as kitsch, then Greenberg is correct, and it is something of a poor man’s art. When religious kitsch is not viewed with a sacred gaze or consumed in the light of the tradition it is tied to, then religion is demeaned by way of oversimplification, mockery, and shameless pandering.

But, when the opposite happens and religious kitsch is viewed with a sacred gaze and purchased cognitively and respectfully aware of its origins, then it benefits religion because it strengthens people’s faith through humor, cultural identification, evangelism, memory, devotion, encouragement, imperfection, and continuity.

By functioning in those ways, religious kitsch becomes more than mere kitsch, because something that brings the transcendent in contact with the ordinary is truly extraordinary. tt t

Jeff Gottlieb is a second year Master of Arts student in the area of Ethics and Social Theory. After finishing undergraduate studies at Texas Christian University, he moved to Yokohama, Japan, to teach English. He has a special affinity for Jesus action figures.

Jessica Brown, interview by author.

Verna Mae Thomas, “Cross in My Pocket,” [poem] catholicsupply.com, available from http://www. catholicsupply.com/existing/prcross.html; accessed 23 November, 2006.

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A Hidden Treasure in the Land of Enchantment

by Patti Keteltas

It is not easy to be from the “old school.” One can often be misunderstood, especially by the young. Yet in New Mexico some very old school principles are engaging the time, energy, and commitment of young men through a lay Catholic brotherhood known as La Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Señor Jesús Nazareno (The Pious Fraternity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the Nazarene), or, more colloquially, the Penitentes.

The Brotherhood of Penitentes was brought to the New World by the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century. Two centuries later, the Brotherhood had become a force in what is today northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Indeed, in 1833, Bishop Zubiria of Durango traveled widely within his diocese to investigate some allegedly objectionable practices of the Brotherhood. For instance, during Holy Week observances, members of the Penitentes flagellated themselves in the moradas, while Passion processions culminated in reenactments of the Crucifixion in which a chosen member was briefly tied to a cross. Through this expression of personal piety—i.e., of taking on the sufferings of Christ—participants strove to cultivate a personal and mystical relationship with Christ. In addition, it was hoped that these practices would symbolically lessen the weight of humankind’s sin and aid members in entering heaven.

Formal approval of the rules of the Brotherhood of Penitentes came in the 1850s from Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy, a French missionary who had assumed the episcopacy after the defeat of Mexico at the hands of the U.S. Nevertheless, Lamy’s decision met with resistance from the recently displaced, now former Mexican bishops. Consequently, it was not until nearly a century later that the Catholic Church officially recognized the Penitentes and brought their governing councils under William Wroth, Images of Penance, Images of Mercy, (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 43.

Larry Frank, “The History and Culture of Colonial New Mexico,” in A Land So Remote: Volume 1, Religious Art of New Mexico, 1780-1907 (Santa Fe: Red Crane Books, 2001), 11.

Morada: A simple adobe structure where members of the Brotherhood assembled during Holy Week for prayer and fasting.

Frank, 11.

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Church sponsorship. In addition, successive bishops in the post-Vatican II era have allowed priests to celebrate Mass in the moradas, while members of the Penitentes have also been trained to lead communal services including the Stations of the Cross and the Rosary on Fridays during Lent in those small communities without a resident priest.

Thus, the Brothers have helped to fill an urgent need within a ‘frontier’ Church—a role which continues to the present day, though now mostly in urban locations.

The practices of the Brotherhood have been handed down through family tradition for centuries. As such, they fulfill some very basic human needs in community life, especially for men, and have contributed to the vitality of the Church in New Mexico.

In this regard, according to social historians Mary Elizabeth and Leon Podles, the rites of initiation into the lay confraternity of the Penitentes bear a striking resemblance to the male puberty rituals of many societies. These typically involve the removal of the boy-child from the safe world of the mother, the nurturing female, and his placement in a dangerous setting where he is likely to experience an encounter with death of some sort. The young man is thus affected in body and soul—“wounded,” as it were—and only by his wounding does he attain to a wisdom and compassion that will enable him to transform his strength and aggressiveness into a self-sacrificing authority.

However, one such as Dr. Charles Carrillo, a practicing member of the Brotherhood, emphasizes the profound spirituality of the Penitentes above and beyond the dimension of male initiation.

Indeed, since he has known men as old as seventy-five to join his local group, Carrillo concludes that the attraction cannot principally be about rites of passage. Rather, the Brotherhood embodies an ancestral faith particular to rural New Mexico whose practices integrate and keep alive various elements of culture—e.g., language (Spanish), food, music, prayers, and rituals. In addition, the Brothers believe that their form of prayer is salvific for themselves and for their families, as well as for

Karen Peterson, “New Faces of the Penitentes,” El Palacio 97:2 (Spring/Summer 1992), 20.

Peterson, 20.

Peterson, 20.

Mary Elizabeth and Leon Podles, “Saint–Makers in the Desert,” America (November 7, 1992), 349.

Podles, 351.

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the community at large and even the world beyond. Most recently, Carrillo’s group has been praying for the U.S. soldiers in Iraq and also for Iraqi citizens.10 The Brotherhood of Penitentes works effectively in New Mexico as a grass roots organization. The small groups are autonomous and intimate. Men are formed into a tight-knit, spiritual community in which the values of respect and order garner paramount importance. The younger men rely on others, especially older men, to teach and guide them, and to whom they can turn for wisdom. Despite the negative connotations of the term, Carrillo says that the Brotherhood is not unlike belonging to a tribe.11 The Brotherhood of Penitentes has endured and flourished to the present day in the midst of a harsh and remote desert world. Like the land itself, the members themselves had to withstand persecutions, such as the attacks of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.12 Yet also like the land around them, a marked simplicity has contributed to the Brotherhood’s survival. For instance, the figures of their beloved santos (saints) adorn the altar in the moradas, each one with its own story and claim on the community. Thus rooted in a simple and lively faith, the Brotherhood of Penitentes offers a healthy alternative to despair and a way to persevere through personal adversity, pain, and suffering.

Perhaps most significantly, the vitality of the Brotherhood also translates into parishes full of men in New Mexico, a phenomenon which motivates an outside observer to say that they must be doing something right!

Potential Application to Other Contexts How can the practical wisdom and cohesiveness of the Brotherhood of Penitentes be replicated and applied to other contexts? For certain, it would seem that there is a lesson to be learned by the larger Catholic Church in the U.S. in terms of how to go about supporting young men. This is particularly relevant to new immigrant Telephone interview with Dr. Charles Carrillo, Santa Fe, New Mexico, January 31, 2007. Carrillo avers to the need for “re-tribalization” of many young men, especially recent immigrants who have not been socialized by male elders.

11 Carrillo telephone interview.

12 Carrillo, telephone interview.

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teenagers, the majority of whom are Catholic, yet who often do not find the role models they desperately need in order to face emotional hardships in the U.S. and to resist the temptations of machismo, addictions, and gangs.

For their part, the Podles have integrated some of the lessons learned from the Brotherhood in the hope of invigorating the liturgical life of their largely upper-middle class parish in Baltimore, Maryland. It all started with the use of a few physical signs of Catholic culture in a simple procession on the Feast of the Epiphany—namely, at the end of Mass, the priest carried a star-shaped monstrance containing the Host through the church followed by children dressed as the Magi while the choir sang “We Three Kings.” The priest proceeded to place the monstrance over the Christ child in the manger scene and gave a solemn Benediction. The physical signs of Catholic culture were abundant: candles; incense; song; movement; vestments. As a result, the Podles noticed an immediate difference in the congregation: people paid close attention to the action; some even wept. After the decision was made to continue incorporating various physical signs in their family Mass, attendance increased—in particular, there were more fathers attending Mass with their wives and children. Conspicuously, however, when a new pastor arrived and things reverted to the way they had been before, a good number of fathers quickly disappeared.

Conclusion It is definitely not easy to be from the “old school.” Indeed, it takes commitment and self-sacrifice. Yet the Brotherhood of Penitentes’ model of intergenerational fellowship, piety, and service might be just what is lacking in the spiritual experience of many young men in the contemporary Church and society. To be sure, lessons of respect, responsibility, and profound worship of Jesus the Savior are making a difference in New Mexico. And it seems like an idea worth exporting from the state whose slogan is the “Land of Enchantment.” tt t

Patricia Keteltas is currently completing the challenging Master of Divinity Program at JSTB. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Patti learned from her father, NYC Police Officer, Francis May, how to accept a challenge. She has passed this wisdom on to her own sons, and expects formation of young people in hope, respect, and responsibility to be a big part of her ministry in the future.

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Anointing Mark 14:3-9

by Sara Schulte Your sadness speaks again to me of death.

Surrounded by the happy sound of friends I watch you, waiting, holding back my breath and hands that want to hold you and caress away the fear, hiding behind the lens of eyes that speak again to me of death.

I pour my whole self out on you. Useless as oil dripping down. But you defend me, as I watch you, holding back my breath from eyebrows raised, proclaiming it a theft of poor. Blinded as your glistening shoulders bend, weighed down with sadness telling us of death.

I watch you, waiting, holding back my breath.

tt t

Sara Schulte has just completed her Master of Divinity degree. She is originally from Nebraska where she attended Creighton University and double majored in Creative Writing and Theology. Prior to her studies at JSTB, Sara worked as a full time volunteer with the Saint Joseph Worker Program in Minneapolis, MN.

Illustration Credits Page 4 Page 5 Page 7 Page 61

Maltby Sykes, Jacob and the Angel, 1948. Lithograph on paper.

Shraga Weil, Jacob and the Angel, 1965. Serigraph.

Henri Lindegaard, Nuit Obscure, 2003.

Werner Sallman, Head of Christ, 1940.

Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley 1735 Le Roy Avenue Berkeley, CA 94709