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May 2012
EDITORIAL 2 Ashley Beck and Tony Schmitz
DIACONAL SPIRITUALITY 4
A Deacon’s Ongoing Conversion: Pushing Against the Garish Age James Keating
THEOLOGY & HISTORY OF THE DIACONATE 8 12
Blessed Alcuin, Deacon Petroc Willey Women Deacons and Sacramental Symbolism: A Response to Sara Butler Gary Macy, William Ditewig, Phyllis Zagano
DIAKONIA OF THE ALTAR 23
The Liturgical Role of the Deacon and“The New Missal” Davy Gibbons
DIAKONIA OF CARITAS 26
Teachers and Witnesses – Thinking about the New Evangelization Stephen Bullivant
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Catholic Social Teaching and Europe: Some Recent Intiatives Ashley Beck
DIAKONIA OF THE WORD 33
Philip F. Esler’s ‘Sex, Wives, and Warriors: Reading Biblical Narratives with its Ancient Audience’
Contents
Issue 8
Tom O’Loughlin 34
Homily in honour of St. John Ogilvie Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB
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Deacons and the Euro II Cyril Durbin Why is the Old Testament so bloodthirsty and full of myths? How does the Christian interpret Old Testament History? Mgr Paul Watson
DIACONAL FORMATION 37
Mapping the Diaconate in the diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam – A reflection Dr Stan Baars & Prof. Dr Bart J. Koet
DOCUMENTATION 54
International Theological Commission Chapter IV: The Sacramentality of the Diaconate Tony Schmitz
BOOK REVIEWS 57 Ashley Beck & Tony Schmitz
FORTHCOMING EVENTS 60
Mumbai – Frankfurt – Velehrad: New Stations on the Way of the International Diaconate Centre (IDC) A report from the President of NDC Klaus Kießling
DIACONAL
eview The Deacon
Published November & May each year by: International Diaconate Centre – North European Circle (IDC-NEC) 77 University Road, Aberdeen, AB24 3DR, Scotland. Tel: 01224 481810 (from outside UK: +44 1224 481810) A Charitable Company Registered in England In association with The Pastoral Review, The Tablet Publishing Company Ltd, 1 King Street Cloisters, Clifton Walk, London W6 0GY, UK. Website www.idc-nec.org Board of the IDC–NEC Tony Schmitz (Chair), Ashley Beck, Göran Fäldt, Justin Harkin, Nelleke Wijngaards-Serrarens, Wim Tobé, John Traynor, Benas Ulevicius, Guy Vermaerke, Paul Wennekes, Leo McNicholas Editors Tony Schmitz tony.schmitz@gmail.com Ashley Beck ashleybeck88@hotmail.com Contributions are welcome from readers. Please send material to the editors at the e-mail addresses above. For style details please consult the website of The Pastoral Review www.thepastoralreview.org/style.shtml Editorial consultants Dr John N Collins Australia Rt Revd Gerard de Korte Netherlands Revd Dr William Ditewig USA Revd Prof Dr Michael Hayes Ireland Revd Prof Bart Koet Netherlands Rt Revd Vincent Logan Scotland Most Revd Sigitas Tamkevicius Lithuania Advertisement manager Sandra Townsley Tel: 01463 831133 (from outside UK: +44 1463 831133) sedstown@aol.com Designer James Chasteauneuf © The Tablet Publishing Company Limited ISSN 1759-1902 Subscriptions and membership of IDC-NEC IDC-NEC, Barclays Bank, Account No. 33875717 Sort Code: 20-91-48 IBAN GB89 BARC 2091 4833 8757 17 SWIFTBIC BARCGB22 1 year = £15 / 20 euros (or equivalent in other currencies) By post: IDC-NEC, 77 University Road, Aberdeen AB24 3DR, UK Online: www.idc-nec.org (main currencies)
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t the time you receive this issue of the New Diaconal Review the Church in Ireland will be nearing the end of preparations for the 50th International Eucharistic Congress which will take place in Dublin from 10th to 17th June. Some of you may be able to get to the events, or may have family members who will, but for the whole Church in northern Europe this is an important event. As it happens the priest who is organising the congress, Fr Kevin Doran, is also the priest who has played a very big part in the restoration of the permanent diaconate in Ireland, at least since the beginning of the century, and some of you will have met him at international conferences. Men are now in formation all over Ireland and will be ordained soon. Please pray for Fr Kevin, for the Church in Ireland, for those who will be the country’s first deacons and for the congress itself. Eucharistic congresses exist to deepen the faithful’s understanding and appreciation of the Eucharist, which is at the heart of our faith as Catholics. Traditionally they take place in June at the same time as the feast of Corpus Christi (this year 7th or 10th June); in many places this is also the time of year when children in our parishes make their first Holy Communion (which of course makes it hard to get to Dublin). Details of what is happening can be found at www.iec2012.ie; in addition to the main events in the city, there is an important theological symposium at Maynooth the week before. Don’t see all this simply as ‘an Irish thing’ – it’s relevant to all of us, and modern communications enable all of us to remain in touch with what will be going on. Events like this help to break down national barriers (which is why they are called ‘international’) and strengthen our Catholic identity. The deacon’s ministry of the Eucharist is fundamental to his identity and his sacramental ministry. His preaching of God’s Word, and his service of the poor and the oppressed, both need to be rooted in what happens at the altar
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and the Eucharist where he stands, and from which he administers the chalice of the Lord to the faithful. The Church is insistent that deacons should have a distinctive Eucharistic spirituality which is suited to their ecclesial vocation – that is, it should not be the same as the Eucharistic spiritualities of priests or laypeople. This means that it needs to be developed, especially as not much is written about it: you are the people who have to live out this spirituality. As magisterial documents make clear this should be rooted in (where possible) daily Mass, prayer before the Reserved Sacrament, and the celebration (now ‘proper’ to the deacon) of Exposition and Benediction. In the last case, for example, deacons may have the opportunity to increase the opportunities for this in our parishes and take the initiative in celebrating this. The deacon’s Eucharistic devotion should lead him in a particular way to go further and see the face of his Eucharistic Lord in the faces of the poor and the suffering of the world. One who in the last century saw clearly the link between devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and unconditional love for the poor was the American Catholic Dorothy Day. It was very important for her to go to daily Mass, wherever she was living, and she spent hours praying in front of the Tabernacle. She once wrote: If the heart is clear, a warm sunshiny day brings joy and health to the body. We do not think of the sun, we feel the warmth of the sun all about us, we feel it in the air, we see it reflected in people’s faces, we can feel buds bursting on the trees in the parks. It is like that to sit in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament in church. We do nothing, we don’t think, or we have distractions, perhaps. The memory and understanding are feeble, but our good will has brought us there – our will to love and to be loved. Christ there in the tabernacle, in His humanity and divinity, is like the sun acting upon us, healing us of our infirmities. We
bathe ourselves in this sunlight which warms and heals us, Lord, take away my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh, a warm heart that beats with thy love.’ 1
Learned deacons and fraternal debates In this issue we include an article by Petroc Willey on the extraordinary contribution made to Western civilization and culture by the Blessed Deacon Alcuin. Under the same rubric, the Theology and History of the Diaconate, we publish a response by three North American theologians to Professor Sara Butler’s article in our May 2011 issue on the subject of Women Deacons and Sacramental Symbolism. This fraternal debate will continue in our next issue with a response to a response that Sara Butler is already preparing.
Repelling Marcion and resisting the new totalitarianism The last century saw the rise of a new form of new form of Marcionism, partly fed by anti-Semitism. Paul Watson reminds us of the Christological relecture of the Old Testament and of how the central insights of Henri de Lubac, perhaps the greatest of the ressourcement theologians, still remain to be fully absorbed into the mainstream. In a thoughtful homily Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB reflects on our faith’s setting us free of the new and ever greater intolerance of secularism’s morality. We also review important new books, on the Old Testament and on the English Spiritual Tradition; draw attention to recent initiatives on Catholic Social Teaching and Europe; print an interesting review of the diaconate in Haarlem-Amsterdam; publish an update from the President of the International Diaconate Centre that includes an invitation to the next International Study Conference to
1 Catholic Worker April 1935, in David Scott, Praying in the Presence of Our Lord with Dorothy Day (Huntingdon: Our Sunday Visitor 2002), pp, 31-32. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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Ashley Beck and Tony Schmitz
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James Keating
Faith and conversion Faith reveals that God wants to initiate conversion within His ministers. “Repent and believe” (Mk 1:15). God leads His deacons away from sin and toward healing. The healing flows from God’s own being, spilling out from the Father’s love for the Son and the Son’s love for the Father and lifting us up into that same love in and through Christ. In this way the deacon becomes a new son, as do all who believe. The Trinity is love and wants to lead the whole Church to share in the life of this very same love. This divine love is paradoxically attracted to sin. God wants to come to deacons in their isolation and heal them by way of holy communion with the sacred. Clerics house the wounds, and God brings the salve. Or, do ministers think they can heal their own ontological and spiritual illnesses? Can they save themselves from continually choosing what is harmful to spiritual and moral happiness? The saints tell us no, and they tell us no because they tried to heal the pain of the human condition by first choosing sin instead of abandoning themselves in trust to the Trinitarian mystery. The converted lives of the saints indicate the road that all ministers must take: “After all you have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God”(Col 3:3).
Why is Conversion so Vital to a Deacon’s Ministry? The deacon does not bring the sacraments with him into the secular culture on his evangelical journey, except for one: the sacrament of Holy Orders that he received 4
and is becoming. Due to this “poverty” within his call (he brings “nothing”—no absolution, no healing ointment, no celebration of the Eucharist, etc.), it becomes all the more urgent for the deacon to tend to his own ongoing conversion. A large part of diaconal ministry entails bearing the fruit of his own painful conversion to the people, fruit built upon the grace of ordination. Since God is love, God is never idle, so God always loves us, always calls to deacons from within the grace of ordination. This call took on flesh in Christ, whose Spirit now continues to call to men deep within their consciences and from within the cry of those in need. The awe-inspiring beauty of this Mystery of God wanting men to receive His love is that Christ enables deacons to receive Him. His giving of Himself in self donation within the Paschal Mystery makes men able to receive Him. Deacons are invited to pause and behold this mystery everyday so that they might be converted by His grace, leaving behind all that will prohibit them from permanently ordering their lives to the servant mysteries of Christ. This conversion benefits the deacon, of course, but ultimately even his own personal conversion is at the service of the Church. One is becoming holy because the Church, Christ’s Bride, needs to experience Christ loving Her, loving Her in Her own wounds. And it is the deacon who tends these wounds in Christ’s own name.
Beholding the Beauty of God To pause and behold the mystery of Christ’s love, then, ushers deacons into
New Diaconal Review Issue 8
Ongoing Conversion: Against the Garish Age Love’s most profound language: silent gazing. Such a seeing is not a lustful taking but a contemplative beholding. When we behold someone, we are affected by the other’s integrity; when we leer with lust, we take possession and use. God’s beauty is such that it refuses to be taken and used; God’s coming and God’s beauty is such that He beguiles us, fascinates us, and makes us want to become worthy to be in His presence. The result and power of such beholding is even seen in Jesus’ enemies, evidenced in Pilate’s reticence to condemn him (Lk 23:4, “I find no guilt in this man”). Falling in love with another human is only a shadow of the depth of transformation wrought by God’s Holy Spirit when a person yields to God’s own beauty. And God, beauty itself, enters men most deeply at silent levels of receiving, too deep to adequately utter. Nevertheless believers know when God has arrived. Affectively those with faith know something has shifted in them, and they will never be the same. God’s eyes reach the eyes of our heart and change them. Leading and serving by example in silent prayer, the deacon gazes upon the face of God, Christ, who is the emblem of His love for all, and the deacon lets it change him (see Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, 12). How does one receive this Presence within? How does one stay receiving at such a level of communion with the indwelling Spirit? The deacon must humbly and persistently surrender to the Spirit all of his thoughts, feelings, and desires. Satan has no power over the humble, because the humble live in truth, and the truth is Christ. Only those who rationalize and hide their sins from
God invite alienation from the Holy Spirit and communion with the father of lies. Who would hide in such a way? It would be the deacon who loves his sins more than the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Men cannot love holiness by nature. This is true not because one is not personally good enough, smart enough, or strong enough to so love. Men are incapable of doing so because of the original wound, the original weakness with which all are born. What is this wound? Men are weak before sin. Men naturally like sin more than love. Humans are wounded with sin, meaning that it is easier for us to choose evil than to choose truth and love. Only Christ can enter and heal this wound from within. His mystery enters us in silence and transforms our affections so that over time we come to know virtue as sweet and sin as bitter. If deacons believe this, then transitory emotions will not discourage them because they will base their ongoing conversions upon the reality of the objective content of Christ’s promises (Mt 28:20). No matter what doubts they harbor or turbulent feelings they embody, deacons believe Christ is always giving Himself to them, purifying them and aligning their wills with His own. If they believe this, then they can always turn ever so slightly within and gaze upon His face and receive anew a share in His servant mysteries. God revealed himself as Christ ministered to all those in need. In a sense God was saying, “See how I love?” God moved toward humanity in love. The drama of the deacon’s spiritual life is summed up this way: “How will I respond to such a love?” “How ought one live who has been so loved?”
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Deaconal Spirituality
Deacon James Keating Ph.D. is the Director of Theological Formation at the Institute for Priestly Formation, Creighton University, Omaha Nebraska, USA and also the Director of the Archdiocese of Omaha’s Diaconate Programme
A Deacon’s Pushing
Listening and Bearing Fruit The work of conversion is the work of the divine voice, not a human voice. God’s voice is an event of change. When heard, it always bears fruit. Deacons must seek God’s voice and listen so that they can be changed by it. Clerics must also pray that their voices echo the sound of Christ’s own love and service, assisting in the change of other persons’ lives. God’s voice speaking within calls deacons back to their senses and leads them out to behold His face, the face that always gazes upon the Father in love. The Spirit will see the deacon through to the end if he trusts in God’s own indwelling presence. The Spirit rushes to any sinner to heal, but first a man must be courageous enough to name the sickness. The cause of the sickness is clear: it is a choice to never be denied a desire. This curse is powerful: “May you always get what you want!” In so living a desirenever-denied, deacons are given meaninglessness and emptiness, because they have ruled their lives by unpurified desire rather than the truth. For a conversion to last it must be affectively connected to this truth: time and/or death takes all from a man except that which bonds him to God. What is the foundation of a deacon’s identity? What is it that he would grieve losing? What would threaten his happiness, stability, inner peace? These are the things the deacon must name and explore with his spiritual director. The goal is to become a simple man, as St. Francis de Sales once noted: “If I could come back again and live my life over again I would have fewer desires.” The key desire to cultivate is to want to be acted upon by God, to simply seek His company. This is not unusual or self-centered; it is both a way to deepen communion with God and a way to prepare a man for mission. St. Francis turned his back on 6
what was once sweet (making money) toward what was once bitter (care for the poor, the lepers), so much so that his entire conversion can be summed up as the bitter becoming sweet and the sweet becoming bitter. He became occupied with God and what God is occupied with: the needy.
Personal Conversions serve our Ministries During a man’s life, however, he can become occupied with many other realities and appear to lose interest in communion with God. This can be a form of acedia, a spiritual listlessness born of nostalgia for what might have been had he not been chosen for the vocation he now has. Sometimes people mistakenly think that an inability to delight in God means one has to endure their vocation. Instead, such a lack of delight signals to a man that he has to go deeper into his vocation not broader afield. St. Teresa of Avila wondered why those who wish to serve the Lord can oftentimes feel no affection for spiritual things: “Why do those who serve God and desire to serve God abandon [prayer]?” Our ongoing conversions are not simply to bolster our communion with God but in fact form part of our ministry, our gift to the Church, in that our conversions carry hope to the poor. If we truly know Christ, then we can preach with conviction, serve with joy. This kind of man is needed badly in a culture that eschews the very communion that leads to and sustains one in a moral and spiritual conversion. Scottish author John Buchan described the “coming of a too garish age, when life would be lived in the glare of neon lamps and the spirit would have no solitude.” Here is what Buchan wrote about such a culture: In such a (nightmare) world everyone would have leisure. But everyone would
New Diaconal Review Issue 8
A Deacon’s Ongoing Conversion: Pushing Against the Garish Age – James Keating
be restless, for there would be no spiritual disciplines in life. ... It would be a feverish, bustling world, self-satisfied and yet malcontent, and under the mask of a riotous life there would be death at the heart. In the perpetual hurry of life there would be no chance of quiet for the soul. ... In such a bagman’s paradise, where life would be rationalized and padded with every material comfort, there would be little satisfaction for the immortal part of man. In modernity, nothing has been more public in its consequences than large segments of Western society privately turning away from God, or considering God irrelevant, or declaring God dead. Dostoyevsky reminded us in The Brothers Karamazov that “if God does not exist, everything is permissible.” We are now seeing “everything.” We see the damage that moral relativism and skepticism can wreak on human lives.
The deacon, out of love for the Church, ought not to shrink back from his own spiritual conversion. In this suffering he battles against “the garish age” and pushes against it. He does not wish to ignore it or join the culture of distraction that marks this passing age. Today people suffer from disconnectedness, loneliness, and a lack of real communion. Healing such, in cooperation with grace, is found in the effort of a deacon to become “a man of communion.” God is calling for the deacon to repent and believe, to go beyond the mind he now possesses to a mind that is possessed by the servant mysteries of Christ. May this call be heeded by courageous deacons today. May their own moral and spiritual conversions constitute a large measure of their service to the Church. ■
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Deaconal Spirituality
A Deacon’s Ongoing Conversion: Pushing Against the Garish Age – James Keating
Dr Petroc Willey
Alcuin, Deacon
Dr Petroc Willey is the Dean of Graduate Research at the Maryvale Institute and the Editor of the catechetical journal, ‘The Sower’.
‘The most learned man of the age’ It may be that one of the reasons that Blessed Alcuin1 is not well-known is that he belongs to that little-studied period in Western European and Christian history, the so-called ‘Dark Ages’, the time between the collapse of the classical Roman civilization and the Christendom of the High Middle Ages. It was indeed a period marked by shifting political allegiances and turbulent change, in contrast to the relative stability of the Byzantine Christian civilization. But for all that it can also be seen as a period witnessing the struggling emergence of a new, Christian conception of society. Lewis Mumford, in his Condition of Man, characterised the period of the fifth and sixth centuries in the following way: ‘One by one, the old classic lamps went out; one by one, the new tapers of the Church were lighted.’ During the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, the tapers were being lit all over Western Europe, one of the brightest being lit by that remarkable deacon and founder of Western monasticism, Benedict. The century during which Alcuin lived was the following, the eighth, which marked the beginning of the Carolingian renaissance. Here, at last, with the ascendency of the Frankish kingdom and the crowning of
Charlemagne by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800 AD, was a steadying of the flame, a holding of patterns of life sufficient for the transmission of the Faith in Western Europe to take place more strategically. And the person to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude at this point in European history, who worked patiently, prayerfully and confidently to support this renaissance and enable it to take root, is Blessed Alcuin, deacon, ‘the most learned man of the age’.2 In the closing pages of his work, After Virtue, the Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, tracing the stages towards our present collapse into relativism, asks whether our contemporary ‘dark age’, when the barbarians are already well within the gates, does not need a new Benedict.3 And we might add: perhaps a new Alcuin as well, who can also point us towards some important lessons as we work for a new evangelisation of Europe.
Long-term transformation Alcuin (c 735-804 AD), a Yorkshireman, dedicated himself to education. He was director of the Christian school at York for fifteen years, and was then invited by Charlemagne to direct the Palace School at Aachen. Finally, during his last years, he was Abbot of St Martin’s at Tours, where he set to work building up a monastic school.4
1 His cult has never been formally confirmed, although a number of martyrologies list him as beatus. 2 The judgement of the royal biographer, Einhard, in his life of Charlemagne, Vita Karoli magni, trans. L.Thorpe, Two Lives of Charlemagne, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1969, 25. 3 See After Virtue, London: Duckworth 1985, p.263. 4 For Alcuin’s life and for a discussion of sources, especially his collections of letters, see Donald A Bullough, Alcuin: achievement and reputation, Leiden: Brill 2004. (Note also the caution in Rosamond McKitterick’s review in Catholic Historical Review, Ap.2005, Vol.91, 2, pp.350-354).
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Schooling was his passion, schooling for both children and adults. The need for there to be centres where one could experience a deep, lasting, authentic Christian education was his deepest conviction. He gave his life for this, and in giving his energy for this cause, provided the Christian Carolingian renaissance with long-lasting springs for the transformation of culture. Alcuin knew that the successful transmission of the Faith takes time. In a precarious and troubled world he chose to set in place long-term plans for the embedding of a Christian culture. There were no quick fixes proposed by Alcuin. With this approach we can see him especially as a
... the virtue of hope enabling him to act decisively in the present because of his confidence that God is Lord and master of the future
man of hope, the virtue of hope enabling him to act decisively in the present because of his confidence that God is Lord and master of the future. He did not live to see all the fruits of his work, for although many shoots of learning were emerging into the sunlight during his lifetime, the greatest flowering of all that he had planted would be in the High Middle Ages, three centuries later. One can draw a direct line between his religious and cultural initiatives – the reform of writing; the training of copyists; the patient stocking of libraries; his support for a curriculum that integrated classical with Christian culture5 – and the eventual use of the fine library at Monte Cassino by Thomas Aquinas!
Conserver and transmitter Commentators agree that Alcuin was primarily a conserver. ‘Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost’ (Jn 6:12). But he was no obscurantist. There was no retreat into the past desired or sought. Alcuin wanted to conserve, to preserve – not only the works of the Christian Fathers and commentators, but also the cultural heritage of the ancient Greco-Roman world – precisely because the riches of the past were to be handed
5 Alcuin fostered schools of learning combining classical education, based on the seven liberal arts – the trivium and the quadrivium – with a study of the Scriptures and the Fathers. He was a preserver and transmitter, intent on fostering the best of classical and Christian education and bringing it into a synthesis, with the liberal arts serving the higher knowledge and interpretation of Christian doctrine. He desired a new Academy, a new Athens, more beautiful because now ennobled by the teaching of Christ (see Epist. IV, p.279, and the discussion in Pierre Riché, Écoles et Enseignement dans le Haut Moyen Age, (3rd Ed), Paris: Picard Éditeur 1999, pp.115-118. The debates concerning the appropriateness or otherwise of such a combination are traced from the sixth century until Alcuin’s time in Pierre Riché’s classic study, Education and Culture in the Barbarian West Sixth Through Eighth Centuries, trans J.Contreni, University of South Carolina Press 1976. See especially pp.79-99. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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Theology & History of the Diaconate
Blessed
on to new generations. And so he collected, for example, sayings of the Fathers on various books of the Scriptures as convenient summaries of commentary. He has been described as the ‘greatest cultural transmitter’ of his time.6
...to guard and present better the precious deposit of Christian doctrine in order to make it more accessible... The inseparable connection between conservation and transmission is summed up, of course, in the opening lines of Fidei Depositum, the Apostolic Constitution introducing the Catechism of the Catholic Church: ‘Guarding the Deposit of the faith is the mission which the Lord entrusted to his Church...’, and again, referring to the purpose of the Second Vatican Council, ‘...to guard and present better the precious deposit of Christian doctrine in order to make it more accessible...’. Alcuin wanted to guard and conserve precisely in order to make the Christian faith accessible to the peoples of his time. Alcuin set the example himself, and his own motto was Disce ut doceas, ‘learn in order to teach’. He set the example of lifelong learning. His own life displayed a love of learning that was infectious,7 and it is a testimony to the evident importance he placed on learning in his own life that Charlemagne, his queen Luitgard, and his children, themselves became pupils in Alcuin’s school.
Blessed Alcuin, Deacon – Dr Petroc Willey
Apprenticeship
Church. Learning was always rooted in liturgical grace and in
Alcuin knew that the transmission of culture is essentially a matter of apprenticeship. The General Directory for Catechesis notes that one of the difficulties being faced in catechesis today is that too few understand that the transmission of the faith involves a serious, sustained apprenticeship in the Christian life and faith (see GDC 30).
Learning for all In an age when books were rare and precious, the deacon Alcuin set himself to building libraries. He knew that books and resources are vital as supporting tools for handing on the Faith, and they come alive in the hands of the master, of the one who can hand on the Faith because he himself lives it. He travelled to Europe several times in order to collect books for his library in York (a library that was to suffer the sad fate of being burnt by Vikings). He was a man unusually attentive to both the joys of scholarship and learning, and also the practical exigencies involved in the
An apprenticeship conception of transmission implies in the first place a personal handing on of the faith. Joseph Ratzinger, emphasises this point in his introduction to the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in which he explains that the Compendium is written in dialogue form because it suggests the deepening conversation that can take place between master and pupil. The transmission of the faith is always from life to life, from person to person.
All of God’s people were to benefit from an intelligent transmission of the faith. Under the guidance of the central Palace School, centres for education were set up regionally and locally
Alcuin combined a love of learning with a love for those whom he taught – his life
The transmission of the faith is always from life to life, from person to person was marked by countless friendships springing from a shared commitment to learning. And the shared life of these friends was a deeply liturgical one. Alcuin himself was prominent in the liturgical reforms of the period, drawing up the Sacramentary for use in the whole kingdom and thus enabling uniformity in respect of the liturgy in the Western
And learning was not just to be for the privileged. All of God’s people were to benefit from an intelligent transmission of the faith. Under the guidance of the central Palace School, centres for education were set up regionally and locally. The education of the clergy was the priority and bishops were required to ascertain how far their clergy were taking advantage of the educational opportunities provided for them. Under Alcuin’s guiding hand, Charlemagne even proposed a universal primary education system. Alcuin himself knew the importance of being able to employ different styles in order to reach a variety of audiences. For example, he wrote two versions of the life of St Willibrod – one in verse for those who were educated, and a second in prose. He also composed a homily based on St Willibrod’s life that could be preached to the people.9 The aim was always the same: that everyone should be able, according to their capacity and background, to be able to hear and to receive the saving Gospel. Blessed Alcuin, pray for us.
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creation of books, from the provision of vellum and quills, to the establishing and training of scribes and copyists, to questions concerning the readability of texts.8 He was concerned with accuracy and care in transmission. He worked tirelessly, for example, to provide an authentic version 8 It is to Alcuin and the Carolingian renaissance that we owe the alphabet in lower case, as well as regular spaces between words and paragraphs. He also concerned himself with introducing standardisation in punctuation. On his work De orthographia see the work of M.Roger, L’enseignement des lettres classique d’Ausone à Alcuin: introduction à l’histoire de l’écoles carolingiennes, Paris 1905, pp.346f. 9 See Pierre Riché, Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne, p.202.
6 So Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1976, p.160 7 One of Alcuin’s letters record that the discussions and learning continued at table and even in the bath. Alcuin, Epist. IV, p.420, cited in Pierre Riché, Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne, trans J.A.McNamara, University of Pennsylvania Press 1978, p.206.
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of the Vulgate which by then existed in countless variant forms due to copyist errors.
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Theology & History of the Diaconate
Blessed Alcuin, Deacon – Dr Petroc Willey
Gary Macy, William Ditewig, Phyllis Zagano
Women Deacons and
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A Response to Sara Butler
grace of orders, should be returned to official and sacramental participation in the diakonia of the word, the liturgy, and charity. Women can be sacramentally ordained as deacons?
he widespread interest in the restoration of women to the diaconate in the Roman Catholic Church has created a discussion on several levels. In 2002, the International Theological Commission (ITC) completed a 72-page study document on the diaconate which addressed, in part, the question of women deacons,1 the result of work by more than one quinquennium of the ITC. Decades earlier, in the early 1970s, Pope Paul VI reportedly asked whether, since the diaconate as a permanent order was to be restored to the Roman Catholic Church, women could be admitted. Cipriano Vagaggini, a member of the ITC at the time and an expert in Eastern liturgy, took up the question, viewing it through the lens of liturgical history. In short, he determined that women were ordained deacons and could be ordained again.2
I The Use of Historical Sources
Vagaggini’s conclusion becomes our starting point: women deacons, granted the
Dr. Butler calls on three historical sources that seem to argue that women chosen for a ministry called the diaconate held a posi-
Dr. Sara Butler, author of “Women Deacons and Sacramental Symbolism” in the New Diaconal Review, thinks not.3 Her argument rests in historical sources, in her analysis of the diaconate, and in her analysis of the symbolism of the sacrament of order. Her analysis of sacramental symbolism follows her argument against the ordination of women as priests. As such, it does not apply to the diaconate. Our response here discusses three distinct areas: (I) Dr. Butler’s use of historical sources; (II) Her analysis of sacramental symbolism in the renewed diaconate; (III) Her presentation of a “feminine typology for the ministry of women.”4
1 The International Theological Commission document has been published in French (“Le diaconat: Évolution et perspectives,” La documentation catholique 23 [January 19, 2003]: 58–107) and Italian (“Il Diaconato: Evoluzione e Prospettive,” La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 1 [2003], pp. 253–336). An unofficial English translation was published in London under the title “From the Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles” by The Catholic Truth Society in 2003. The official French-language document is posted on the Vatican Web site. Cf. also the fresh, corrected and more complete translation of this research document by Tony Schmitz in this and the previous seven issues of the New Diaconal Review. 2 Cipriano Vagaggini, “L’ordinazione delle diaconesse nella tradizione greca e bizantina,” Orientalia christiana periodica, 40 (1974): 149-89. 3 Sara Butler, “Women Deacons and Sacramental Symbolism”, New Diaconal Review (6) 38-49. 4 Ibid. pp. 45-49
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tion quite different from male deacons. The three sources she uses are the writings of St. Epiphanius, the Didascalia apostolorum (The Teaching of the Apostles), and the Constitutiones apostolorum (The Constitutions of the Apostles). The oldest of these works, the Didascalia, dates from the first half of the third century. The Apostolic Constitutions copied and expanded upon the Didascalia and was probably written between 375 and 380. Both of these works come from Syria. Dr.
Greek Orthodox Church and the Armenian Orthodox Church both accept this witness as an important part of their traditions, and yet have decided to resume ordaining women to the diaconate Butler’s third source is the writings of St. Epiphanius, who spent much of his life in Palestine and eventually became a bishop in Cyprus. He wrote his most famous work against heresies between 374 and 377 B.C. The argument in all three works is basically the same: Jesus did not choose
women to preach, baptize or, Epiphanius adds, to be priests despite the fact that Jesus had women disciples and even his own holy mother to choose for such tasks. Three points should be made here concerning these sources. First, their argument is clearly opposed to the ministry of women, as Dr. Butler rightly points out. However, secondly, they are really only one source, the Didascalia. Both the Constitutiones and Epiphanius simply copied this older source. As Dr. Butler says, “Epiphanius, who was collecting the traditional arguments against heresies… is simply repeating the sort of reasoning that is already found in the Church Orders.”5 Finally, these sources are from the Eastern traditions. This final point is important because the Greek Orthodox Church and the Armenian Orthodox Church both accept this witness as an important part of their traditions, and yet have decided to resume ordaining women to the diaconate. In short, these churches do not find that a single source is sufficient to dismiss an ancient practice.6 However, Dr. Butler does not rely on the Didascalia alone. She also points out that Didascalia, the Constitutiones, and the eighth century ordination rites for women deacons from the Eastern Church all have separate rites for the ordination of men and of women. From these historical sources Dr. Butler concludes that the men and women were ordained to separate
5 Butler, “Women Deacons,” 44. 6 Phyllis Zagano, “Ecumenical Questions on Women and Church” in Church and Religious ‘Other’: Essays on Truth, Unity and Diversity, ed. Gerard Mannion [Ecclesiological Investigations Series] (London and New York: T. & T. Clark/Continuum, 2008) 23-40. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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Theology & History of the Diaconate
Gary Macy is the John Nobili, SJ Professor and Chair of Theology at Santa Clara University, California; Deacon William T. Ditewig is Director of Faith Formation, Diaconate, and Pastoral Planning for the Diocese of Monterey, California and Dean’s Executive Professor of Theology at Santa Clara University; Phyllis Zagano is Senior Research Associate-in-
Sacramental Symbolism:
orders and the order of women deacons was never intended to be the same as or equal to that of men. Dr. Butler is quite correct in pointing out that there are separate, although similar, rites used in the East for the ordination of men and of women. However, once again, this historical data did not convince its most direct descendants – the Greek or Armenian Churches – that women should not be ordained deacons. Unfortunately, Dr. Butler does not present Western sources. Surely, for the discussion regarding the return of women to the diaconate in the Roman Catholic Church, it would be useful to use Western, not Eastern, witnesses to the ordination of women to the diaconate in the past. When such sources are used, the picture is more mixed. Separate rites for men and women exist in the West as well, although again they are quite similar. Further, in at least two instances, the rites are explicitly the same. The earliest rituals in the West for the ordination of a woman deacon come from the eighth-century liturgical book of Bishop Egbert of York.7 The book contains separate rites for the ordination of men and women deacons, but also separately a single prayer for the ordaining of either a male or a female deacon, “Give heed, O Lord,” which appears in the middle of the ordination rite for a deacon.8 The impression given by this prayer is that the ordination rite for a male deacon is the same as that used for a female deacon. This single prayer for ordaining either a male or female deacon will appear often in rituals for both male and female deacons and
constitutes the most frequent prayer of consecration for this office. The ninth-century Gregorian sacramentary gives precisely the same prayer for the making of a female deacon as does the pontifical of Egbert: “Give heed, O Lord.”9 The prayer appears again in the same sacramentary as an alternate prayer in the ceremony for the ordaining of a deacon. In this case, the prayer for the ordination of a woman deacon appears separately from the ordination rite for a male deacon. As no complete ceremony is given for the ordination of a woman deacon, it appears
... the historical sources cannot be decisive here in answering the question whether women should be ordained as deacons in the West as women are in the East the same ritual was used for the ordaining of a male deacon and of a woman deacon. There would be no reason to repeat the entire ritual for both offices unless they were different. Only the ordination prayer would need to be included as a separate item, as indeed it is. So, the Western historical evidence for the ordination of a woman as deacon leaves open the possibility that some women deacons at some times in Western Christian history were ordained in the same cere-
7 On this work, see Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 53-4, 91, 100-101. The entire text appears in Appendix 1, pp. 186-7. 8 The book contains three ordination rites for deacons: an ordination rite for male deacons, an ordination rite for female deacons and a separate prayer, “Give heed, O Lord,” that is labeled as a prayer for the ordination of a male or female deacon.” 9 Macy, Hidden History, 54-5, 101. The entire text is given in Appendix 1, pp. 187-8.
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mony as men deacons. There are also numerous Western sources referring to legitimately and validly ordained women deacons.10 In summary then, the Eastern sources used by Dr. Butler are not considered definitive arguments against the ordination of women in their own traditions, and Western sources are at best mixed in their acceptance of women deacons. In any event, the historical sources cannot be decisive here in answering the question whether women should be ordained as deacons in the West as women are in the East.
II Sacramental Symbolism and the Renewed Diaconate In her New Diaconal Review article, Dr. Butler does an admirable job of tracing the distinction made by the Holy See between the question of the possibility of ordaining women to the sacerdotal orders of presbyterate and episcopate and the quite different question of the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate. Such is a critical distinction, one which we have also emphasized in our own work on this subject. However, how one approaches this distinction can lead to quite different conclusions. Dr. Butler chooses to turn to the ITC’s interesting, if not definitive, 2002 study document on the diaconate. However, she references not the document itself, but published comments of the Secretary to the Commission, who reported in a subsequent “Clarification” that two important indications had emerged from the Commission’s work that would “tend
to exclude” the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate.11 Such a “tendency” is not a rejection, nor has any official source affirmed this “tendency” in subsequent official documents. Neither has any contemporary definitive teaching on the question ever been proposed by the Church. We know that early ecumenical councils allowed for the ordination of women to the diaconate, while local councils later sought to curb the practice.12 In fact, turning to the ITC research document itself, one finds that a “tendency” to exclude the possibility of the diaconal ordination of women is not explicit in the text, which Dr. Butler quotes in part and which states: With regard to the ordination of women to the diaconate, it should be noted that two important indications emerge from what has been said up to this point: (1) The deaconesses mentioned in the tradition of the ancient church – as evidenced by the rite of institution and the functions they exercised – were not purely and simply equivalent to the deacons; (2) The unity of the sacrament Holy Orders, in the clear distinction between the ministries of the Bishop and the Priests on the one hand and the Diaconal ministry on the other, is strongly underlined by ecclesial tradition, especially in the teaching of the magisterium. In the light of these elements which have
10 Macy, Hidden History, esp. 94-104. 11 George Cottier, “Clarification on ITC Study on the Diaconate” L’Osservatore Romano (30 October 2002) 12. 12 Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451). Chalcedon lowered the minimum age for the ordination of women deacons from 60 to 40. Ordained Women in the Early Church: A Documentary History, Ed. and tr. by Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, pp. 121-123. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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been set out in the present historico-theological research document, it pertains to the ministry of discernment which the Lord established in his Church to pronounce authoritatively on this question.13 Far from tending to exclude the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate, these conclusions of the ITC may actually support it.
ITC itself recognizes the distinctiveness of the permanent diaconate, and concludes that the question of ordaining women to the diaconate remains open to the discernment of the Church Having already examined Dr. Butler’s point on women deacons in the historical evidence, we turn now to her summary of the unity of the sacrament of Holy Orders. The ITC’s careful reference to the unity of the sacrament of Holy Orders is actually described by the sacrament’s very internal diversity of participation. This “diversityin-unity” can be understood not as excluding the possibility of ordaining women as deacons, but rather as ground for including them. A disciplinary example from cur-
rent practice is illustrative. Today, men who would not be admitted to the presbyterate (in particular the vast majority of married deacons) are admitted to the diaconate. Such is possible precisely because they are being ordained into the (permanent) diaconate, and not into a temporary exercise of diaconate while en route to eventual ordination as presbyters. In general, a married man in the Latin Church cannot be ordained a “transitional” deacon because he could not be ordained to the presbyterate.14 The socalled “permanent” diaconate is regulated by different standards, while it still participates in the one sacrament of Holy Orders. The ITC itself recognizes the distinctiveness of the permanent diaconate, and concludes that the question of ordaining women to the diaconate remains open to the discernment of the Church, which may render a definitive teaching. Proceeding into her argument, Dr. Butler seems to agree strongly with the ITC’s first concluding comment, that the women deacons described in the various patristic sources the ITC evaluated “were not purely and simply equivalent” to male deacons. She finds this lack of “equivalence” further evidenced by her understanding that there were separate ordinations of men and women as deacons. However, even if completely true, having separate ordination rites is not necessarily significant because there can be many reasons for ordaining
13 International Theological Commission, From the Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books 2003), 109. 14 Such is the general norm in the Latin Church, not in the Eastern Churches, or in the case of former ministers who enter into full communion with the Catholic Church and are subsequently ordained deacon and presbyter under either the Pastoral Provision of 1980 or the provisions of Anglicanorum Coetibus or other local arrangements. Eastern bishops may ordain married men within their own territories. The exception would be Syro-Malabar Catholic, Syrian Catholic and Coptic Catholic (except converts from Orthodoxy) priests, who must be celibate.
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persons separately. For example, today many bishops will ordain permanent deacons in one ceremony and transitional deacons in another. No one would argue that the two groups are sacramentally different. Both belong to the one Order of Deacons. Therefore, if some or even all ancient deacons – men and women – were ordained in separate ceremonies, such would not in and of itself be sacramentally dispositive, especially since we cannot know the reasons possibly at issue in those ancient ordinations. Any conclusions drawn would be contingent and hypothetical. Furthermore, it cannot be concluded from the highly selective and regional historical sources Butler presents that “the ordination rites for men and women deacons differ because their subjects differ by sex.”15 She thereby posits that different genders eventuate different results – one sacramental (or at least pre-sacramental) and the other not. While such may have been true in some locations at particular times, Dr. Butler’s sweeping generalization is not sustainable, since it also argues on behalf of distinct roles for the male and female deacons. In some instances, again, this would be correct. But, for example, would one say that a male deacon was not to be responsible for the care of widows, female orphans, or other women in need? The ministry of the deacon, historically and contemporaneously, goes far beyond participation at the initiation or healing rites in which prudence and appropriateness would indicate a preference for a minister of the same gender.
Ultimately, examples from the Tradition can only take us so far. History alone is not dispositive, nor are we necessarily bound by that history in all its great diversity. When the bishops of the Second Vatican Council considered the contemporary renewal of the diaconate, they deliberately
When the bishops of the Second Vatican Council considered the contemporary renewal of the diaconate, they deliberately refrained from speaking of “restoring” the ancient diaconate, which was a proposal made at the Council of Trent refrained from speaking of “restoring” the ancient diaconate, which was a proposal made at the Council of Trent.16 Rather, the bishops chose to speak of an ancient order reinvigorated to meet the needs of the contemporary Church. They grounded their work not in typology, but in an examination of grace: the graces given by the Holy Spirit to the entire Church, and the sacramental graces which ought to be extended to those who exercise diakonia in the Church’s name.17 Previously, Dr. Butler has correctly stressed the magisterium’s strong distinction between what she terms “the ‘fundamental reasons’ for regarding the tradition of not ordaining women as priests as bind-
15 Butler, “Women Deacons,” 44. For Butler, differentiation by gender seems to signify different matter and different events. 16 See, for example, Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, actorum, epistularum, tractatuum nova collection, Goerresian Society, ed., 13 vols. (Freiburg, 1901-), 9:601. 17 See, for example, the interventions made by Cardinal Döpfner of Munich-Freising and Cardinal Suenens of Malines-Brussels, Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Vaticani II (Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1970), II/II, 227-30; 317-19. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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ing from the ‘theological arguments’ proposed to show why this is ‘fitting’ or meaningful.” Dr. Butler continued: “This distinction – between the ‘fundamental reasons’ and the ‘theological arguments’ – is crucial.”18 While many commentators devote considerable attention to the theological arguments, ignoring or dismissing the validity of the ‘fundamental reasons’, Dr. Butler observes, “these ‘fundamental reasons’ have a real priority over the ‘theological arguments.’” 19 Therefore, before turning our attention to the theological symbolism suggested by Dr. Butler in her New Diaconal Review article, we ought first examine the underlying ‘fundamental reasons’ presented against the ordination of women as priests to determine if they apply to the diaconate. Because Dr. Butler’s previous writings centre on the ministerial priesthood, but the current question being debated concerns the diaconate, we examine these ‘fundamental reasons’ analogically to demonstrate how they are not applicable to the question of ordaining women as deacons. Writing in 2007 and citing Inter insigniores, Dr. Butler summarized the ‘fundamental reasons’ against ordaining women to priesthood in four steps: First, there is the constant tradition itself, universal in East and West, and quick to suppress innovations, of conferring priestly ordination only on men. Second, according to this tradition the reservation of priestly ordination to men represents
fidelity to the will of Christ, made known by his choice of men (and not women) to belong to the Twelve. Third, the tradition is confirmed by the practice of the apostolic Church, which, following the Lord’s example continued to choose only men for the ministry by a laying on of hands. And fourth, this practice has always been recognized as normative in the Church.20 Do these ‘fundamental reasons’ apply to the possibility of women deacons? While deacons are sacramentally ordained, they are not part of the ministerial priesthood, as affirmed in several documents of the Holy See.21 Therefore, arguments against ordaining women as priests cannot be applied uncritically to the question of ordaining women to the diaconate. Dr. Butler’s first point states that the constant tradition of the Church throughout the Tradition is that women were not ordained as priests. However, many women were considered ordained as deacons by their communities. Such is part of the documented historical record. Her second point states that the restriction of the priestly office to men “represents fidelity to the will of Christ.” Does the evidence of the Tradition reflect the mind of Christ? If women have been ordained as deacons in the Tradition of the Church, would this not indicate that the Church was acting with the mind of Christ, permitting us to be open to the possibility again today? Her third point, that “the tradition is con-
18 Sara Butler, “Women’s Ordination: Is It Still An Issue?”presentation given at St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, NY, 7 March 2007. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 See, for example, the two 1998 documents from the Holy See: the Congregation for Catholic Education’s Basic Norms for the Formation of Permanent Deacons issued jointly with the Congregation for Clergy’s Directory for the Ministry and Life of Permanent Deacons (February, 1998).
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firmed by the practice of the Apostolic Church” would seem to support the notion that both men and women are eligible to serve as deacons, and that this continues to follow the mind of Christ. Her fourth point concerns the normality of practice throughout the Tradition. While this can be more easily applied to priesthood, the historical diversity of expression the Order of Deacons suggests that the diaconate has been the most malleable of all the orders of ministry, able to adapt itself to the needs of the Church in different places and times. Again, it must be underscored that Dr.
The question should not be, “How can women be admitted to the Order of Deacons,” but rather, “How can women not be admitted to the Order of Deacons”? Butler’s ‘fundamental reasons’ were originally presented to address the question of the ordination of women to the ministerial priesthood. We use them here by way of analogy, since the fundamental distinction between participation in the sacerdotal orders of bishops and presbyters on the one hand, and the participation in the diaconal order of deacons on the other, must be maintained. The analogy, however, can help us respect the unity within the diversity of sacramental ordination, while the responses to the analogy can help us respect the diversity within the unity of that sacrament. Only then might we begin to develop a particular diaconal symbology
to express those fundamental truths. The real question remains: in (and for) today’s Church, can women be ordained to the Order of Deacons? Just as the nature and ministry of bishops and presbyters is no longer understood in precisely the same types, theologies and pastoral praxes of the past, neither is the diaconate. The question should not be, “How can women be admitted to the Order of Deacons,” but rather, “How can women not be admitted to the Order of Deacons”?
III A Feminine Typology for Women Deacons As we have noted, it appears that for her New Diaconal Review article Dr. Butler has taken her published argument against the ordination of women as priests and applied it to the question of the sacramental ordination of women as deacons.22 While Dr. Butler’s earlier work focuses solely on the question of women as priests, and depends heavily on her elucidation of the so-called “argument from authority” (Jesus chose male apostles and the Church is bound by that choice), in her earlier work she also attempts to restore the abandoned “iconic argument,” which reduces to a physicalism uniformly discarded by both theologians and the magisterium. In 1976, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a Declaration on the Question of Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (Inter insigniores) (October 15, 1976). Some years later John Paul II’s apostolic letter On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone (Ordinatio sacerdotalis) (May 22, 1994) appeared. While each relies on the argument from authority, the latter document discards the “iconic argument.” Further, as Dr. Butler points out in the arti-
22 Sara Butler, The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teachings of the Church (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2007). New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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cle to which we are responding, each document leaves the question of women as deacons aside. Later discussion, including that of the 2002 ITC document, presents the deacon as imaging Christ-servant, and acting in persona Christi servi. Finally, as Butler reports, in 2009 Benedict XVI codified what was already present in the
the individual ordained to the diaconate is ordained to act in persona Christi servi – in the person of Christ the servant Catechism of the Catholic Church: priests and bishops are ordained to act in the person of Christ, the head of the Church; deacons are ordained to serve the people of God in and through the liturgy, the Word, and charity.23 Butler has unnecessarily twinned the ordination of women as priests and the ordination of women as deacons. What is necessary to restore the tradition of ordaining women as deacons could be a recognition of and acceptance of the “argument from authority” (Jesus chose male apostles) present in both the 1976 document and the 1994 documents. The fact that all persons are, essentially and substantially, icons of Christ is rooted in the Gospels and the subsequent developments of biblical theology. Through ordination, individuals are more clearly config-
ured to Christ through the grace of orders. Whether women are impended from Holy Orders by natural or ecclesial law (or both) is at the heart of the discussion. The theology of Holy Orders includes not only what the person “is”, but also how the person can act. It is the determination of the Church that a woman cannot act in persona Christi Capitis Ecclesiae – in the person of Christ, head of the Church – and it is a legal determination reflecting developed theology. The legal determination renders the attempted ordination of a woman as priest invalid, for the ordaining bishop must intend to do as the Church does in performing this sacrament, and one cannot both intend to do as the Church does and simultaneously do what the Church does not do. However, the individual ordained to the diaconate is ordained to act in persona Christi servi – in the person of Christ the servant. Women are most clearly icons of Christ in their many roles of service to the Church, yet their service is not a direct extension of the sacramental ministry of the diocesan bishop, as is that of the ordained.24 Dr. Butler gives two “typologies” for the ministry of women: the Holy Spirit and Mary, the Mother of Christ. For her typology of the woman deacon as the Holy Spirit, she depends on a single source, the Didiscalia as it is known and apparently copied. She concludes that because the woman deacon (in this section of the Didiscalia) is seen as a mediator – much like the Holy Spirit – between the women of the church and the bishop (or priest, presumably the pastor), therefore male
23 Phyllis Zagano, “Inching Towards a Yes?” The Tablet (January 9, 2010) 10-11. According to Butler, “The ITC document (94-95) assumes that the unicity of Holy Orders implies the capacity to act in persona Christi capitis,” and asked: “Does this change affect its argument?”(p. 43) We answer in the affirmative. 24 The possible exceptions are witnessing marriage and solemnly baptizing, which bishops can delegate to lay persons with proper derogation.
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and female deacons had (at that time) distinct complementary roles.25 What Dr. Butler terms “the second feminine type of the woman deacon” is Mary, the mother of Jesus. Butler quotes (without attribution) the Eastern ordination prayer for a woman deacon: “Holy and Omnipotent Lord, through the birth of your Only Son our God from a Virgin according to the flesh, you have sanctified the female sex. You grant not only to men, but also to women the grace and coming of your Holy Spirit ... .”26 Dr. Butler argues that this Eastern ordination prayer “clearly implies” (her words) Mary’s cooperation with God’s plan and leads to the woman deacon also cooperating with God’s plan, thereby having a fruitful ministry. She here ignores the perhaps clearer implication of the prayer: that God’s coming into history through “the female sex” granted equal status upon women.
Butler here launches into a discussion of women as priests, in the midst of discussion women as deacons. On the following page, Dr. Butler states “The availability and holiness of Jesus’ women disciples demonstrates that his failure to choose them for this ministry (emphasis added) is not
Jesus’ choice understood as relating to priesthood is irrelevant. In fact, Jesus chose no one for the “diaconate,” the development of which Tradition traces to the apostles’ calling the first Seven to serve (Acts 6:1-6)
However, Dr. Butler simultaneously argues for Mary as the type for the woman who is a deacon in that Mary accompanies Jesus through his ministry in the Gospels. She points out that Mary is accorded preferred status among them and repeats the argument “Given her dignity, it might have been expected that the Lord would have called his Mother to belong to the Twelve....”27 Dr.
based on some deficiency on their part as women.”28 Yet her comments are not about the diaconate, but about priesthood. Jesus’ choice understood as relating to priesthood is irrelevant. In fact, Jesus chose no one for the “diaconate,” the development of which Tradition traces to the apostles’ calling the first Seven to serve (Acts 6:1-6).
25 Butler, “Women Deacons,” pp. 46-47. An alternate translation reads in full: “Holy and almighty God, who through the birth of your only-begotten Son and our God from the Virgin according to the flesh sanctified the female, and not to men alone but also to women bestowed grace and the advent of your Holy Spirit; now, Lord, look upon this your servant and call her to the work of your diaconate, and send down upon her the abundant gift of your Holy Spirit; keep her in orthodox faith, in blameless conduct, always fulfilling her ministry according to your pleasure; because to you is due all glory and honor.” The prayer is invoked by the bishop “and she bows her head and he pays his hand on her head, and making three crosses, he prays thus.” Paul F. Bradshaw, Ordination Rites of the Ancient Churches of East and West. New York: Pueblo, 1990. 137-138. 26 Butler, p. 47. 27 Butler, p. 47. 28 Butler, p. 48. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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Women Deacons and Sacramental Symbolism: A Response to Sara Butler – Gary Macy, William Ditewig, Phyllis Zagano
Women Deacons and Sacramental Symbolism: A Response to Sara Butler – Gary Macy, William Ditewig, Phyllis Zagano
David Gibbons
The Liturgical Role of the Deacon
We find her analysis of the sacramental symbolism of the renewed diaconate heavily dependent upon her analysis of the sacramental symbolism of the priesthood, and therefore not applicable. We find her presentation of what she calls a “feminine typology for the ministry of women” dependent on limited sources diaconate...”,29 and notes that Phoebe has the same prominence in ordination prayers for women as Stephen has for men deacons. However, somehow Dr. Butler concludes that because of what she calls “current debate regarding the relevance of the iconic argument”30 the emphasis on naming only female models for women’s ministry precludes their being included in the dia-
conate as an ordained order of ministry. Therefore, she advises a “fourth order” of women deacons to be installed (not ordained) by the bishop, perhaps mirroring the hundreds of institutes of religious life of diocesan right. Such of course denies the nature of the historical diaconate of women, entered through the sacramental laying on of hands as evidenced by early ordination prayers, and denies a large part of the Tradition of the church’s ministry by women.
Conclusion We have presented our response in three distinct areas: (I) Dr. Butler’s use of historical sources; (II) Her analysis of sacramental symbolism in the renewed diaconate; (III) Her presentation of a “feminine typology for the ministry of women.” In sum, we question Dr. Butler’s selective use of what most scholars view as a single historical source, and that being an Eastern source, to argue against the historicity of women deacons. We find her analysis of the sacramental symbolism of the renewed diaconate heavily dependent upon her analysis of the sacramental symbolism of the priesthood, and therefore not applicable. We find her presentation of what she calls a “feminine typology for the ministry of women” dependent on limited sources. We are grateful for Dr. Butler’s entry into the rapidly growing academic discussion on the restoration of women to the diaconate, and we welcome future opportunities to continue in dialogue. ■
29 Butler, p. 49, citing Codex Barbarini gr. 336 as translated by John Wijngaards. 30 Butler, p. 49.
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“The New Missal” and
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eacons, along with everyone else, will by now be getting used to the new translation in the Roman Missal 20111. Some of the changes specifically concern Deacons, and here there is good news and bad news! The good news is that Deacons are explicitly mentioned in the General Instruction and in the rubrics much more than before. Hitherto Deacons and those responsible for their formation have complained that Deacons have seemed to be invisible in the official texts containing liturgical rules. Now the penny appears to have dropped, some forty years after the restoration of the permanent Diaconate, and the role of the Deacon is more frequently mentioned. The bad news is that many of the changes, particularly in Holy Week, affect Deacons significantly. Any Deacon who did not practise the new Exsultet before the Easter Vigil and tried to sight read it, for example, is likely to have had a heart attack!
Liturgical law The liturgical law of the Church, which is far and away the largest body of Church law, is contained in many places, but for our purposes the two main sources are the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (found at the beginning of the Roman Missal 2011) and the various rubrics contained in the rite of Mass itself. The General Instruction is part of the Missal and contains theological background as well as general regulations, and if Deacons have
Fr David Gibbons, Director of the Centre for Catholic Formation in the Archdiocese of Southwark, examines how the Deacon is affected by the new edition of the Roman Missal. not done so it would help them to study it carefully. The rubrics contain precise instructions at particular points during Mass.
The Deacon at Mass § 94 of the General Instruction clearly sets out the importance of the Deacon at Mass: “After the Priest, the Deacon, in virtue of the sacred Ordination he has received, holds first place among those who minister in the Eucharistic Celebration”. It then lists his duties at Mass. There is a new emphasis on the antiquity of the Diaconal Order; otherwise the one new function in the list of duties is “preparing the Altar”. There is more information about the role of the Deacon at Mass in §§ 172 – 186. Little of this is new exactly, but these sections do contain more detail than before, and clarify what is particular to the Deacon rather than the Priest or a lay minister. Perhaps this has been influenced by De Ordinatione Diaconorum (1990). One suspects that as well as Deacons themselves many Priests would do well to study precisely what a Deacon is instructed to do at Mass! Notice (§ 177) that it is usually the Deacon who announces the intentions at the Prayer of the Faithful, and that he must now do so at the Ambo. What is new is that the Deacon “normally remains kneeling” between the epiclesis and the showing of the chalice (§179) in the Eucharistic Prayer. The word normally
1 The convention in liturgical circles is that Missals are specified by language and date. Thus, Roman Missal 2011 refers to the English language Missal we are now using; Missale Romanum 2002 refers to the third edition of the original, Latin Missal which it translates. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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Diaconia of the Altar
In her article, Dr. Butler recalls that women were not chosen as apostles, and lists some of the works of women as known through the Gospels. In so doing, she gives less credence to some very important scriptural evidence regarding women in ministry that retroactively can be viewed as diaconal in nature. In fact, the only person in scripture with the actual title “deacon” is Phoebe, deacon (not deaconess) of the church at Cenchraeae. Dr. Butler does acknowledge that Phoebe is more than mentioned in ordination prayers: “...as you have granted to Phoebe the grace of your
suggests that in practice if a Deacon cannot easily kneel he should remain standing. At the Sign of Peace (§ 181; cf§ 154), the Deacon receives the sign from the Priest, and passes it on to those near him; it is not a free for all. The Sign is, after all, a symbolic gesture to one’s neighbour expressing peace, communion, and charity. Moreover, Christ is present on the Altar at this point, and care must be taken not to turn one’s back on Him during this time. As before, the Deacon must receive Holy Communion under both kinds, but the new Instruction (§182) instructs him at the completion of Holy Communion to consume immediately all that remains of the Blood of Christ; do not plan to drive or operate heavy machinery for some time after Mass! However, he may be assisted by other Deacons or Priests. In the Concluding Rites, besides the new forms of the Dismissal (which all Deacons will by now know off by heart) if the Celebrant gives a Solemn Blessing or Prayer over the People, the Deacon now says “Bow down for the Blessing”.
Holy Week and the Sacred Triduum On Palm Sunday (now known as ‘Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord’), before the Procession Deacons should remember to greet the people and announce the Palm Gospel as at all Masses. The Deacon is now explicitly included in the Procession, carrying the Book of Gospels after the cross and candles (that is, before any concelebrants). If the Procession is a long one, common sense would suggest that the Deacon may only be able to carry the Book of Gospels in a raised manner at the beginning and once inside the Church. There is no change in the reading of the Passion, which is done by a Deacon, without candles, incense, greeting or signing of the book. 24
On Palm Sunday and the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week – as has been reintroduced during Lent – a Prayer over the People replaces the simple Blessing. This ancient Lenten prayer is meant to strengthen the people as they leave Church to re-enter the world. If the Celebrant uses this, the Deacon instructs the people to bow, as noted above. At the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, Priests renew their Priestly Promises. There is a temptation to include a similar rite for Deacons, but this is wholly inappro-
At the Easter Vigil, the Deacon leads the Procession with the Paschal Candle and now sings ‘The Light of Christ’. This is a significant correction, the Missale Romanum actually praises the candle. This is more than simply a more accurate translation priate. It is far better to hold a separate Liturgy for this at some other time in the year, if the Bishop and his Deacons want to do it, as is the practice in the Archdiocese of Southwark. The Feast of St Stephen, protoDeacon, would seem to be very symbolic but perhaps not very convenient. One small change in the Mass of the Lord’s Supper (p 344) is that at Holy Communion a Deacon or other ministers may be entrusted with the Eucharist to take to the sick at home. In the previous Roman Missal, in the rubrics for the Transfer of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Deacons were not mentioned; in the new Missal they may assist the Priest in placing the ciborium in the tabernacle (p 345). Presumably the Deacon either takes the
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The Liturgical Role of the Deacon and “The New Missal” – David Gibbons
sacrament to the sick after Holy Communion, or stays and assists at the Transfer, but not both. On Good Friday there is a major change for the Deacon. In the Solemn Intercessions, previously the Priest sang both the introduction and the prayer each time. Now the Deacon (or if not a lay minister) stands at the Ambo and sings the introduction; after the silence the Priest then sings the Prayer. This mirrors the customary structure of the Prayer of the Faithful, in which the Deacon addresses the people
Deacons need to rehearse thoroughly the new version of the Exsultet, as the new Exsultet is more complex linguistically and musically with instructions about what to pray for, while the Priest addresses God directly. This is a major re-ordering of this important part of the Rite, but I have seen little advance warning or explanation of it, and it will have caught many people off guard. The Veneration of the Cross is now called the Adoration of the Holy Cross. There is a choice of two forms of the Showing of the Cross, and it is appropriate that the Deacon carries the Cross in either form. The Deacon’s chant is slightly changed, but the people now respond ‘Come, let us adore’. After the Adoration, it is the Deacon who should place the cross at the Altar. At Holy Communion, the Deacon (wearing a Humeral Veil) fetches the Reserved Sacrament by the shortest route.
At the Easter Vigil, the Deacon leads the Procession with the Paschal Candle and now sings ‘The Light of Christ’. This is a significant correction: the 1971 Missal changed this to veneration of Christ, but the Missale Romanum actually praises the candle. This is more than simply a more accurate translation. Deacons (unless they are professional opera singers!) need to rehearse thoroughly the new version of the Easter Proclamation (Exsultet), as the new Exsultet is more complex linguistically and musically. Musically simpler versions are available2. Incensing the book and the candle first is no longer optional.
Summary The third edition of the Roman Missal, apart the retranslations of the texts with which we are becoming familiar, contains some changes which Deacons need to note: ● good celebration, which requires good preparation by all ministers, is emphasised; ● the role of the Deacon is much more explicit and clear; ● in general there is much greater precision in defining the functions and roles of the Ordained as distinct from lay ministers; ● much more music is given, with the manifest steer that singing the texts is the first choice where possible; ● it is in Holy Week especially that Deacons need to pay close attention to the changes. ■
2 Visit www.romanmissal.org.uk. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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Diaconia of the Altar
The Liturgical Role of the Deacon and “The New Missal” – David Gibbons
Stephen Bullivant
Teachers and Witnesses –
F
amously, Pope Paul VI wrote in his 1975 apostolic exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses” (#41). This intimate link between living out and proclaiming has, of course, a long history within the Christian tradition and is most obviously manifest in the witness of the Church’s saints and (especially) martyrs. A long history does not, however, mean that it is outdated. Something that is old is not thereby precluded from being, or being made, new. Beginning with Pope Paul VI (whom we’ll be coming back to), recent popes have called all Catholics, singly and collectively, to what Blessed John Paul II has christened a “new evangelization.” While this is undoubtedly a rich and complex concept – and one which can, in the final analysis, only really be understood through undertaking it – its central idea is simple to grasp. It is not a first evangelization of those who have never heard the gospel but is rather a “new evangelization of those peoples who have already heard Christ proclaimed” (Redemptoris missio, #30). For instance, Western Europe (where I live) was among those regions suc26
This was first published in October 2011: Volume 22, Issue 4 of Catechetical Leader
cessfully evangelized in the first centuries of Christian mission. Yet today, Christian belief, practice, and self-confidence here are towards the tail end of a decades-long decline. Quite apart from the growth of other religious traditions, the numbers of Europeans who regard themselves as atheists, agnostics, or simply “nonreligious” are demonstrably on the rise. Furthermore, even though large numbers of people still consider themselves to be Christians, levels of orthodox Christian belief and evidence of
... even though large numbers of people still consider themselves to be Christians, evidence of Christian practice are not only low, but continue to fall Christian practice are not only low, but continue to fall. Clearly, one cannot approach this situation (which I am, of course, painting with very broad brushstrokes) with the mindset and methods suited to a “traditional” mission territory. One is addressing not people who have never heard of Christ or his church, but people who have, at least to their minds, already heard enough (if not, indeed, too much!) In many cases, one is addressing people who have been baptized, confirmed, and first communicated, who have perhaps been educated in Catholic schools and universities, or have married in Catholic churches; they may (or, increasingly, may not) bring their own children to be baptized. The very fact that such people exist in historically Christian countries and are in
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urgent need of evangelization implies a serious breakdown of our transmitting of the faith and of our retaining the faithful. Clearly, then, the new evangelization, and the new – and ever changing! – socio-cultural situations which motivate it, raise a huge number of complex and challenging questions for the church. We have barely begun to formulate what these questions even are; as yet, we are far from having any definite answers to them. (Encouragingly, the 2012 Synod of Bishops is taking as its theme “The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith.” Its detailed lineamenta, or preparatory document, may profitably be read and pondered online.1) The new evangelization, if it is to be successful, requires us both to understand our multiple, overlapping cultures (including those based primarily in cyberspace) in which we find ourselves and to have the skills and confidence to engage with them afresh. To do this we should, moreover, make full – but critical – use of the social sciences. This is especially true given the growing numbers of sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and social historians exploring atheism, indifference, nonreligion, and related topics, especially in Europe and North America.2
The new evangelIzatIon’s bIggest challenge? By way of demonstrating the importance of these resources for thinking about (and ultimately doing) the new evangelization, I wish
to focus here on one particular issue – one that is, I believe, absolutely fundamental to the ultimate success or failure of the project as a whole. Paradoxically, the socio-cultural situation facing the new evangelization (at least in Europe and America) is not, in fact, one primarily caused by a failure of mission – if by mission, we mean a form of outreach to those “outside.” Rather, as I have mentioned, Catholicism’s ailing fortunes in much of Europe, as well as the apparent beginnings of its decline in North America, stem largely from a failure to retain those brought up within the church. To put it fairly bluntly, if we do not fix this, then the new evangelization is doomed from the start. It would, indeed, be like giving someone a blood transfusion without first stemming their hemorrhaging arteries. In the United States, for example, two reports published in 2008 are revealing. Firstly, the Pew Forum’s “Religious Landscape Survey,”3 based on interviews with a sample of 35,000 individuals, found that while 31.4% of Americans were brought up as Catholics, only 23.9% would today describe themselves as such. (This figure would, moreover, be much smaller were it not for immigration.) Bear in mind also that people tend to identify as belonging to religious groups long after they have ceased to adhere to them in practice or belief in any meaningful way. That is to say, within the 23.9% of Catholics, there is a large proportion whose affiliation extends little further than answering “Catholic” when asked
1. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod /documents/rc_synod_doc_20110202_ lineamenta-xiii-assembly_en.html. 2. See, most notably, the work of the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network (nsrn.co.uk). 3. Available online: http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religiouslandscape-study-full.pdf. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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Stephen Bullivant is Lecturer in Theology at St. Mary’s Uni- versity College. He finished his PhD, on Catholic theology and contemporary atheism, at Oxford University in 2009. In June 2010, he received the Catherine Mowry LaCugna Award for New Scholars from the Catholic Theological Society of America. He has two books forthcoming with Oxford University Press: The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology, and The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (coedited with Michael Ruse). Contact him at bullivants@smuc.ac.uk.
Thinking about the New Evangelization
“What is your religion?” by pollsters.4 That said, in terms of evangelization, American Catholics are clearly doing something right: according to the Pew report, one in every 40 Americans is a Catholic convert (that is, 2.6% of the United States population identify as a Catholic, despite not having been brought up as one). However, this is massively offset by the fact that fully one in ten of the American population are Catholic “deconverts” (that is, 10.1% of the U.S. population were brought up as Catholics but no longer identify as such). To put it a bit roughly, for every one person who completes the RCIA – and over whom we are right to rejoice – four people become so alienated from the church as to no longer even call themselves a Catholic. Secondly, data from the 2008 “American Religious Identification Survey,” based on responses from almost 55,000 households, showed that fully 15% of the U.S. population answer the question “What is your religion, if any?” with “none,” “atheist,” “agnostic,” “secular,” or “humanist.”5 The proportion of such “religious nones” in the U.S. population has almost doubled since 1990, when the figure was 8%. Of America’s estimated 34 million religiously unaffiliated adults, 24% identified as “Catholic” at the age of 12 (so just over eight million people). In total, 68% of current religious nones identified as belonging to a religious group when aged 12. Of these, 35% are former Catholics. Statistics from Britain tell a somewhat different, though no more encouraging, story. According to the 2009 British Social Attitudes Survey, when asked “Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?” slight-
ly over half of respondents (50.6%) answered “no.” The combined Christian responses totaled 42%. Only 8.6% of Britons described themselves as Catholic – the lowest percentage since the survey began in 1983. 13.2%, however, claim to have been brought up as Catholics. Ignoring the effects of immigration, that equates to one in every three British Catholics having abandoned not only practice and belief but the name itself. Evidently then, in Britain and the United States (and no doubt elsewhere too), we are dealing with a failure of transmission and retention. This failure is, moreover, both one of the main contributing factors to the need for a new evangelization and is arguably the greatest single barrier to its success. Addressing this issue ought, therefore, to be an integral part of the church’s strategy. As Blessed Pope John Paul II wrote in Redemptoris missio: “the boundaries between pastoral care of the faithful, new evangelization and specific missionary activity are not clearly definable, and it is unthinkable to create barriers between them or to put them into watertight compartments” (#34).
Practice what you preach Now there are undoubtedly many and complicated reasons for this failure of transmission and retention. However, recent data and hypotheses from a number of quarters single out one factor in particular: practice. Research by Alasdair Crockett and David Voas, for example, suggests that a major predictor of the inheritability of religious practice, belief, and affiliation is the example of one’s own parents.6 Their analysis of sixty years’
4. See also Robert D. Putnam and Dave E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), pp. 138-41. 5. See Barry Kosmin, Ariela Keysar, Ryan Cragun, and Juhem NavarroRivera, American Nones: The Profile of the Non Religion Population: A Report Based on the American Religious Identification Survey 2008 (Hartford, CT: Trinity College, 2009). Available online: http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/reports/NONES_08.pdf. 6. Alasdair Crockett and David Voas, “Generations of decline: Religious change in twentiethcentury Britain,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 45/4, 567-584.
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Teachers and Witnesses – Thinking about the New Evangelization – Stephen Bullivant
... children with two parents who don’t attend church regularly have only a one in forty chance of becoming regularly attending adults themselves. For children with one regularly-attending parent, this raises to a chance of slightly over one in five worth of British statistics showed that children with two parents who don’t attend church regularly have only a one in forty chance of becoming regularly attending adults themselves. For children with one regularly-attending parent, this raises to a chance of slightly over one in five. Children with two regularly-attending parents, however, have slightly under a one in two chance of becoming once-a-month-ormore attenders later in life. Such data receive general reinforcement from other sources. Bruce Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer’s study of members of American atheist groups found that “most of these atheists had little or no religious training during childhood....About 30 percent of the sample had at least one atheist or agnostic parent, and many other future atheists come from parents who apparently believed in God but otherwise had very little interest in religion.”7 Furthermore, the Oxford anthropologist Jon Lanman’s cross-cultural work has highlighted the significance of a perceived disjunct between parents’ professed religious beliefs and their actual low levels of practice in the formation of nonbelievers. He adds, “many non-theists name hypocrisy as an important element in their rejection of religious practice and [religious] beliefs in general.”8
The Canadian evolutionary psychologist Joe Henrich has recently proposed the theory of what he calls “credibility enhancing displays,” or CREDs.9 The basic notion here is that, for interesting evolutionary reasons, human beings are biased towards believing ideas if the one proposing it is seen to live out the “costly” implications of it. Such “costs” may include such things as time, effort, social standing, money, and health. To put it very simply: if I just tell my friends that it’s important to give a significant proportion of one’s disposable income to charity, they are probably unlikely to do it. However, if the telling is accompanied by their seeing me actually giving my money to charity on a regular basis, i.e., by my living out the “costly implications” of my professed beliefs (or, in Henrich’s jargon, by performing a “CRED”), then they are far more likely to be persuaded by the idea and thus to do it themselves. English is, of course, littered with folksy phrases and clichés illustrating this idea: “Walk the walk; don’t just talk the talk,” “Practice what you preach,” “Put your money where your mouth is,” “Put up or shut up.”10 There is also a considerable body of experimental data supporting the general principle. Young children, for example, are far more likely to eat something from a stranger presented as food if the stranger eats some first. They also have far fewer difficulties in believing in certain types of invisible entities as germs where there is an elaborate set of corroborating practices built around them (the ritual of washing one’s hands before eating, throwing food away if it’s been on the floor, etc.) than they have in
7. Bruce E. Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer, Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America’s Nonbelievers (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books), p. 42. 8. Jonathan Lanman, ‘“Walking the Walk”: How fewer religious displays in one generation leads to increased non-theism in the next’, Journal of Contemporary Religion (forthcoming). 9. Joseph Henrich, “The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion: credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution,” Evolution and Human Behaviour 30, pp. 11-28. 10. Again, see Lamman’s article cited above. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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Teachers and Witnesses – Thinking about the New Evangelization – Stephen Bullivant
believing in things they have merely been told about, such as unicorns or mermaids. Significantly, Henrich relates his general idea to the transmission of religious beliefs and practices. He points, among other things, to the emphasis placed on heroic individuals as models to be held up to believers; to the tendency of religious leaders to undertake certain “heroic” vows (not least poverty, chastity, and obedience); to the well-documented significance of martyrdoms – an extreme case of a CRED – for strengthening and spreading religious belief systems (“the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,” as the early Latin theologian Tertullian observed). All of these, Henrich argues, are examples of “costly dis-
Doing certain things because of what we believe strengthens not only our own beliefs, but those of others around us plays” enhancing the credibility of the doctrines espoused and thus rendering them more likely to persuade. Again, the idea here is not so much that the presence of CREDs guarantees the adoption of the beliefs which they support, but rather that, without them, they are a very hard sell indeed. Let us recall again Pope Paul VI’s observation: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses” (EN, #41). This is well borne out by the data presented above. At least within the family, those who practice what they profess have a far higher probability of transmitting the faith to the next generation – though this is an (almost) necessary, rather than a sufficient, condition. Practicing one’s Catholi-
cism does not guarantee that it will be passed on, though not practicing almost guarantees that it will not be.
ThInkIng about the new evangelIzatIon Let us return now to the new evangelization. In the first place, we may stress again the importance of practicing our faith. Doing certain things because of what we believe strengthens not only our own beliefs, but those of others around us. As we have seen, this is true especially in the home, but the point applies more broadly. Note that CREDs need not be instances of martyrdom or extreme self-denial (though these are, indeed, especially efficacious ones). Faithfully attending Mass each Sunday is a CRED – that is, an instance of our practice conforming to the beliefs we profess to hold. (As a speculative aside, it may be that the Catholic Church’s continued insistence on the Sunday obligation is at least part of the reason why, in Britain for example, the decline in religious practice and belief has been slower among Catholics than it has among Anglicans, where no such formal obligation exists). Other CREDs would include such things as pilgrimages, vigils, devotions, lenten penances, practicing the works of mercy, abstaining from meat on Fridays, and attending Mass on holy days of obligation: all things we do, or used to do, on the basis of what we believe. Two very recent announcements from the Bishops Conference of England and Wales are encouraging in this light: the reinstitution of an obligation to fast from meat on Fridays11 and the consideration of reinstating a number of holy days of obligation, which have been translated to the nearest Sunday.12 While I do not mean to say that such obligations should be undertaken in order to
11. See: http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/content/download/8391/57604/file/ plenary-resolutionsmay2011.pdf. 12. See: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2011/05/18/bishops-consider-reinstating-some-holydays/.
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Teachers and Witnesses – Thinking about the New Evangelization – Stephen Bullivant
“make a show of it,” i.e., to present a CRED to the world – we ought not to be naive about their indirect benefits. There is, of course, a tension here between “parading one’s piety in front of men, as the hypocrites do,” and “hiding one’s lamp underneath a basket.” (The same applies, of course, to the public wearing of ashes on Ash Wednesday – a CRED in itself, though again, that is not, and should not be, the reason for doing it.) Secondly, a strong case can be made on socialscientific grounds – and indeed, on several others – for a reemphasizing of saints and martyrs. It is, of course, these heroic (and very human) individuals who, through striving to, in Dorothy Day’s phrase, “live as though the Truth were true,” are our best examples of both witnesses and teachers. A saintly life is a CRED par excellence. And we may once again recall Pope Paul VI’s comment: “if [a modern person] does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” Once again, being a witness doesn’t guarantee that one is listened to, but rather without witness, one is almost guaranteed no meaningful hearing at all. The witness of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, Blessed Chiara Badano, the servant of God Dorothy Day – all models eminently suited to the present-day – is arguably a far more powerful evangelistic tool than any amount of apologetics (which is not to deny the importance and necessity of apologetics). This is especially true given our present situation, in which examples of Catholics who have failed – all too often catastrophically – to live their lives in accordance with the ideals they profess, are widely known. Of course, it is not enough for teachers simply to point to saints as “vicarious” witnesses. Instead, they – we – must go further. As such, John Paul II and Benedict XVI are right to remind us that we are all called to be “the saints of the third millennium.” Just as the histories of the first evangelizations of Europe and North America are littered with the names of
saints (all of whom, I expect, rather surprised themselves), so too must future histories of the new evangelization be.
Treasures new and old To sum up very briefly: what I have tried to do in this article is show how the social sciences might be of service to Catholics as we think more deeply about the new evangelization. The task ahead is formidable, and we must use all the tools at our disposal if we are to succeed. To do this, I have focused on a single issue, sketching both a diagnosis (failure of transmission), and a potential, if very partial, remedy (a renewed emphasis on practice). In both cases, I have supported my judgements and arguments with reference to recent research emerging from the fields of sociology, cognitive anthropology, and evolutionary psychology. At the same time, however, I am well aware that the real heart of what I have been arguing is nothing fundamentally novel. The bells and whistles of the most new-fangled research have added not one jot or tittle to my refrain: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” When we think of the new evangelization, perhaps our minds leap immediately to the “new” – to such things as iPhone apps, Facebook, Twitter, and the like. And evangelistic presence in these new social media is undoubtedly important; they are pervasive hallmarks of the cultures where we are both bringing and seeking to keep the gospel. (And the social sciences have much to teach us here, too.) But they should not distract us from other familiar but fundamental aspects of the task ahead. Even more urgent is the retention of those who are already Catholics and to re-emphasize the traditional practices of regular Mass going, Friday abstinence, holy days of obligation, the works of mercy, and the cult of the saints. Such things are not less important for the new evangelization simply because they are old. ■
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Teachers and Witnesses – Thinking about the New Evangelization – Stephen Bullivant
Thomas O’Loughlin
Catholic Social Teaching and Europe:
Book review
Some Recent Deacons should be up to date with recent activities and publications relating to social teaching – here we look briefly at two European initiatives. Fr Ashley Beck is a co-editor of the New Diaconal Review
A European Community of Solidarity and Responsibility COMECE is the umbrella body for all the Episcopal Conferences in Europe, based in Brussels, under the presidency of the Bishop of Rotterdam – its website, www.comece.org, gives a comprehensive picture of how for many years it has supported the Catholic Church in Europe. In January it organized a conference at which a new document was launched, A European Community of Solidarity and Responsibility. It is a reflection, from the standpoint of Catholic teaching, on the concept of the ‘social market economy’ now enshrined in the Lisbon treaty. It is important that the current crisis in the eurozone, particularly the sufferings being experienced by the people of Greece, should not cause us to lose faith in the European ideal and the extent to which this is rooted in the teachings of the Church; so we have a particular responsibility to make documents of this kind known to ordinary European Catholics (there was very little coverage in the British Catholic press). The preface says, ‘The Catholic Bishops, on whose behalf the Bishops of COMECE are monitoring the European unification process, feel closely bound to the work of European unification. The significance of the work needs, however, to be communicated afresh to Europe’s citizens today.’ The purpose of this document is to reaffirm the ‘cultural bases’ of the concept of the social market economy. There are four: (i) ‘free and voluntary initiatives to promote welfare for the process of social cohesion’; (ii) the social market 32
Intiatives must be efficient; (iii) it should have a ‘social policy’, rooted in the concepts of solidarity and subsidiarity, particularly with reference to those in need; (iv) it must be ecological – we should redefine our relationship with nature and show moderation. These characteristics are all looked at in detail. This whole approach is a far cry from the dead-end and insular policies in so many member states (particularly Britain); the document is well worth reading and can easily be downloaded from the website.
The European Sunday Alliance Early in 2011 COMECE helped to set up the European Sunday Alliance, a network of national Sunday alliances, trade unions, civil society organizations and religious communities. In the spirit of the letter Dies Domini, written in 1998 by Blessed John Paul II, it makes this call at the beginning of its founding statement: ‘A work-free Sunday and decent working hours are of paramount importance for citizens throughout Europe.’ In many parts of Europe (certainly most of the UK) was have got used to what seems to be the inevitable erosion of the traditional day of rest, largely because of greed and the socalled ‘free market’; in other parts of Europe, such as Germany, attempts to change it are more recent. This is a very important initiative and deacons should familiarise themselves with it – details on ■ www.europeansundayalliance.eu
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Sex, Wives, and Warriors: Reading Biblical Narratives with its Ancient Audience Author: Philip F. Esler ISBN:978-1-60899-829-6 Date: 2011 Price: £29.00 Publisher: Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon, USA It is a truism that ‘one can only understand a text in its context’ – and this is demonstrated by the number of times that those quoted on some matter or another defend themselves with the appeal: ‘I was quoted out of context!’ That said, when it comes to the Christian scriptures, a.k.a. ‘the bible’, this principle of ‘text in context,’ though upheld in the lecture room, usually goes out the window. The portion of the text that is used is judged solely as a gobbit of information that might as well have been written yesterday. ‘Ah,’ you now reeply, ‘that is true – but only of biblcal fundamentalists; we Catholics take a far more wholistic view of the scriptures!’ I wish to heaven that were true, but consider these questions: (1) Do you read the Old Testament passage every Sunday? (2) If you use all three readings every Sunday, but for some pastoral reason had to drop one, which would it be? (3) Can you list the books that would be entitled to the label ‘Christian scriptures’ and would you place a book like 2 Chronicles in that list? It is very common for preachers to simply ignore the Old Testament without recognising that it formed the scriptures of the first Christians, and so is as much Christian Scripture as any of the Gospels – without those books we lack the religious context of those who were the first disciples, ministers – deacons, and preachers. Likewise, when we read those Old Testament texts we think of as much more ‘difficult’ than the New Testament,
and so rarely engage with them in any depth and so do not respect their context. This lack of engagement with texts that we read in public, and must read if we are to appreciate the New Testament, is one of the major problems facing preaching today, and, sadly, there are very few books that can help the average preacher / minister to get a handle on them. Now consider this book by Esler! With a sexy title that will make everyone else who writes on interpretation envious, he has provided a most readable and reliable introduction to a handful of the key figures that come up in Old Testament stories: warriors like David, kings like Saul, and women like Judith – whom I introduce to students as the original James Bond Woman! He places these figures both in their narrative context – understanding good stories as good stories – and in the context of their society – how they lived, what they valued, and how their world was
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Fr Ashley Beck
radically different to our own. Let’s take the example of the mythiocal figure of Judith. Here we have the ideal woman, she is everywoman for she comes not from some great place but from ‘Bethulia’ (to be located 3 miles north of Ambridge just off Coronation Street) and she single-handledly, by her womanly guile kills the enemy of God’s people, escapes, delivers them from that enemy, and spends the rest of her life as a pious widow. Some parts of the story – and the Book of Judith is one of the most carefully written stories in the whole of our Catholic scriptures – are simply enjoyable (the plot), others seems repulsive in our society (the assassination) although we watch similar plots on TV all the time), but other parts are there for our edification (e.g. her personal prayer life is identical to that prescribed for early Christians in the Didache). Indeed, this woman was a ‘type’ of the redeemer of Israel for the early Church – so a study of her story helps us to appreciate how early disciples viewed Jesus as a redeemer of the people! Yet, when was the last time you read her story? Have you ever used this wonderful and exciting story in teaching? If you haven’t used it, then you are missing a trick – and Philip Esler’s book will act as your introduction. In short, given that everyone charged with giving homilies is to base them on the lectionary, and the lectionary gives a high place to that part of the Christian scripture called the Old Testament, then this book is essential reading for everyone so charged! Thomas O’Loughlin is Professor of Historical Theology Department of Theology and Religious Studies University of Nottingham, UK
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Homily in
honour of
St. John
Ogilvie
St. Thomas, Keith, 10 March 2012 St John Ogilvie was a son of this diocese of Aberdeen and born within the bounds of this parish of Keith, and it is always good to honour him. He was so ‘tempered and true’. How can we not admire a man like this? He was indeed a ‘sword of supple steel’ in the hand of the Lord; a burning torch, John the Baptist-like; suffering atrociously at the hands of his captors, but retaining his spirit and mind and argumentative feistiness unconquered to the end. It seems to me, too, that he is a man of continuing significance. And a name for that significance is freedom. John Ogilvie was a free man, free at many levels, free in his mind, free in his heart, free in spirit. And he died for freedom. He was perhaps the freest man in Scotland in 1615. And it’s his freedom, I suggest, that is worth celebrating, and worth aspiring to. And when in three years’ time we reach the 4th centenary of his martyrdom, this significance will not be less.
John Ogilvie in view and say some things about freedom – even if only in a sketchy, preliminary way. Why was St John Ogilvie sentenced to death on 10 March 1615? Not because he was a priest, not because he had celebrated Mass or converted Protestants, but for high treason. He was sentenced to death because he refused to consent to a 17th c. form of totalitarianism. In the Middle Ages, Western Europe had seen itself as a kind of Christian commonwealth. Then, as the Middle Ages waned, there arose the centralised nation state. With it, there sometimes came a separation from Catholic unity, as in this island both north and south of the border. Often too it entailed a claim on the part of rulers, princes, monarchs to a total, spiritual and temporal, jurisdiction over their subjects, including therefore their consciences and beliefs.
Do you remember the phrase, ‘This is a free country’? It was something of a throwaway line in discussion, a given, ending argument. It meant that in Britain we enjoyed – and had fought for – freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of belief. The other day an English lawyer pointed out that the phrase seems to have faded away. I was struck by this. He seems to me right. We don’t hear it nowadays. Is it because we sense deep down that this freedom is being eroded?
In the Anglo-Scottish context of the early 17th c., it was precisely this that St John resisted. His ‘treason’ was to deny the spiritual jurisdiction of the king, James VI and I. And he denied this because he believed in and upheld the spiritual primacy of the Pope. And from this belief he drew his freedom. In his mind, the King, the State, was going beyond its natural competence, and usurping an authority which belonged elsewhere – with the Pope and the Church. There are two things here, then: the refusal of a totalitarianism, and the grounds of that refusal.
Be that as it may, I’d like just to keep St
To take the first. Every society tends to be
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exclusive and illiberal. This is true, paradoxically, even of our liberal, democratic, multicultural society. Every society naturally tends to cohere around a collection of beliefs and values. Every society requires or entails a moral consensus. Every society through its legislature, judiciary and executive, through its education system and the media (to the degree it has these things) will then tend to convey and impose, even coercively, this consensus. This is not of itself something evil, but it is a reality. And it is a reality today, in our own society. To my mind, it’s too facile to say that our society was, up to the 1950s and 1960s, broadly based on a Christian moral consensus, and is now based on no morality at all. That is something humanly impossible. It’s true that our society can give an impression of moral illiteracy, not to say chaos. But even such a society has, in fact, the ingredients of a moral consensus. What is happening, surely, is that our society is shifting its bases more and more to another morality than the broadly Judaeo-Christian one that hitherto underpinned it. This morality is by no means wholly consistent or ‘finished’. But it is real. Nor is it simply misguided or un-Christian. Would that things were so simple! But undoubtedly – and here’s the great irony of a tolerant society – it tends to be intolerant and exclusive, and be it covertly or overtly, to make a total claim upon its members, individually and collectively. This is clear, for example, in the contemporary demand for the recognition of samesex marriage. This is not driven by any real practical need. Its engine is a moral philos-
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Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB
Homily in honour of St. John Ogilvie – Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB
‘Little children, keep yourselves from idols’ (1 Jn 5:21). ‘For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Gal 5:1). Issues come and go. The flash-points vary. What remains true through all the vicissitudes is society’s tendency to demand everything of those who belong to it, and, conversely, that among the many freedoms Christ always offers his people is the freedom from the idolatry of society, of any dominant philosophy, any ruling consensus. No society can ever have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Every society, at some point, will want to impose a lie. And it is then that the witnesses to freedom must step forth, cost them what it may. And so to the second point: where can we find this freedom,? ‘The truth will set you free’, says the Lord (Jn 8:32). And again, ‘My word is truth’. For St John it was Jesus’ word to Peter at Caesarea Philippi that gave him his freedom: ‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ (Mt 16:19). The authority to determine the content of the faith and govern the Church did not belong to any king, but to the successors of St. Peter. In 36
and beyond the particular issue, what gave John Ogilvie his inner, intellectual freedom from the totalitarianism of his day was his allegiance to the Word of God conveyed in the Tradition and Scripture of the Church. And so it will be for us. There is a very practical corollary here. If we wish to maintain and develop our freedom, if we’re to be all Christ calls us to be, if we are to be really useful to the society in which we live, we will do well to know Scripture, the Gospels, the Creed, the great doctrines of the Church, the teachings of the recent Popes, better than we do. This is no time for mental laziness. We will do well to study, read and pray. This will strengthen us. It will clear our minds. It will enable us to see, judge and act as thoughtful Christians. It will make us free. This is why, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Vatican II, that the Holy Father has called for a Year of Faith, beginning in October this year. One of its emphases is on the knowledge of the faith. He has said to young people that they need to know their faith better than their parents. How else retain our freedom among the new crypto-totalitarianisms in which we live? For it is the truth that makes us free. ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit’ (Jn 12:24). It yields a rich harvest. These words apply to John Ogilvie. In the communion of saints, St John is still fruitful. And we will be his harvest if we allow God’s word, found in the faith the Church and the Popes transmit, to set us free, to make us children of God and not the slaves of fashion – because this is the choice before us. St. John Ogilvie, pray for us!
New Diaconal Review Issue 8
■
to the Editors
Dear Editors,
2nd Nov 2011
That Fr. Ashley Beck believes in the concept of the single currency is entirely his affair but for him to say that “deacons should be arguing for this” is surely a step too far. Many of us do not believe in the single currency and his argument is far from persuading us otherwise. As Fr. Beck alludes to in his article for it to be successful would require a unity of political and fiscal policies across those states concerned. In other words; it would require a United States of Europe. Putting aside the improbability of such an event I would like to know why he thinks his idea is so deserving of support. If one looks at the huge countries around the world which operate with a single currency and are, at least in theory, united politically and fiscally for example China, India or the U.S.A. one will not find anything approaching the type of Social Justice to which most would wish to aspire. In each of
R
A number of readers have asked for this new feature. Until now we have never had enough space, but we do appreciate a response from our readers and look forward to fraternal debates. But please be brief. the examples the poor remain abysmally poor, the rich remain obscenely rich, and the access to the necessary means of survival, health, education and so on are still, for many, merely pipe dreams. Finally; where does Fr. Beck see the Church’s teaching of ‘subsidiarity’ fitting in with his united Europe? Pity the Review doesn’t have a letters page. Yours faithfully, Cyril Durbin (Deacon)
The
DIACONAL
eview
Inviting Authors New Diaconal Review welcomes readers to submit articles with a view to publication ● They should be in keeping with the journal's aims, and mindful of pastoral implications. Ideas or topics for articles can be emailed to the editors... Tony Schmitz tony.schmitz@gmail.com or Ashley Beck ashleybeck88@hotmail.com who are happy to comment on their suitability and advise about word length. ● Guidelines for house-style can be found at The Pastoral Review website, www.thepastoralreview.org under 'Contact us'.
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ophy: a certain view of the human person and sexuality and the ethical and social imperatives that seem to flow from that. Just as John Ogilvie could not uncritically swallow the Stuart view of royal power, so neither can we this philosophy. But my immediate point is simply this: that such a view, such a new consensus, will naturally tend not to tolerate dissent. It will be like King James, who followed the Ogilvie case closely, and was clear that he could not accept this Jesuit’s dissent. It will demand at least a metaphorical ‘Oath of Allegiance’, just as St John’s judges wanted him to subscribe to a literal one. Every society tends to want the whole of us.
Letters
Mgr Paul Watson
Mgr Paul Watson is the Director of Maryvale Institute and a regular contributor to the New Diaconate Review
The Old Testament – Do we need it?
let has been laid down. Do we have any rational answer?
Do we still have a good reason for reading the Old Testament and taking it seriously? There are many who are asking that question today, not least even among Catholic Christians. How many of us would admit to feeling at least a little, if not extremely, uncomfortable on some Sunday mornings at Mass when the reader stands and reads a particularly bloodthirsty account, from the Old Testament, of a battle between the Israelites and the Philistines or a rather unsavoury description of incest between Biblical characters. When the reader declares on finishing, “The Word of the Lord”, our response of “Thanks be to God” is not always enthusiastic. Here we begin to touch upon the difficulty many experience with regard to the Old Testament. The well-known author of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, has expressed the difficulty is a particularly explicit way. He states: “There are two ways in which scripture might be a source of morals or rules for living. One is by direct instruction, for example, through the 10 Commandments, which are the subject of such bitter contention in the culture wars of America’s boob-docks. The other is by example: God, or some other biblical character might serve as – to use the contemporary jargon – a role model. Both scriptural routes, if followed through religiously (the adverb is used in its metaphorical sense but with an eye to its origin), encourage a system of morals which any civilised modern person, whether religious or not, would find – I can put it no more gently – obnoxious” (The God Delusion, p.269). Well, there you have it – the gaunt38
There is a way in which the argument can sound persuasive. If we are looking to the Bible as the source of morals or rules for living, it is hard to answer Dawkins’ criticism. There are so many examples, in the Old Testament especially, that we would really not want to hold up as basis for our morality. The problem is compounded by the fact that on a good number of occasions it appears that it is God who commanded the actions which could be described as “obnoxious”. Slaughtering wholesale, sacrificing your son, condemning to death for seemingly trivial offences are among the categories of actions approved or even demanded by God. The objection raised against the Old Testament is by no means a modern phenomenon. Even St Augustine, at first, had great difficulties. In the second century, a man named Marcion said that the Christian Church should stop reading and using the Old Testament. He declared that the God of the Old Testament was really a different God from the God of the New Testament, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. His objection has echoes even down to our own times.
Scripture contains God’s Revelation Although Marcion’s view may still have some currency today, in fact, the Christian Church roundly rejected his view and stated that the God of Israel, the God of the Old Testament is one and the same as the God and Father of Jesus Christ. But how would we defend that view today?
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bloodthirsty and full of myths? Christian interpret History? God reveals Himself in History The Catholic position is that God has revealed Himself by entering into human history. Supremely, this action of God is most perfectly manifested in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Son of the Father, the Son of God. He is also described in John’s Gospel as the Word, who from the beginning was with God and was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. But God’s entry into human history did not begin with the Incarnation of His Son. The Old Testament witnesses to two other ways in which God has involved Himself in human history. In the first place, God is responsible for history itself, because it was God who created human beings and all things, although Israel was quite late in coming to the realisation that their God was also the Creator. This implied that human beings could know God through knowing themselves as part of His creation. In the second place, because human beings had seriously damaged themselves through sin, God entered the history of a particular nation, that of Israel, for the purpose of revealing Himself anew and of rescuing humanity from its fallen state. This history culminates in the birth, the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ Our defence of the Old Testament begins not simply with the text of the Bible but really with the actual history, the actual events and persons who make up the history of Israel. Clearly, we do rely on the Old Testament text to tell us of this history, but God’s revelation occurred in the events themselves. The scriptures are a written testimony and therefore contain that revelation.
Nevertheless, how we are to read and understand that revelation really depends on understanding the primacy of history.
How do we interpret Old Testament history? The unique feature within this whole history is that the people of Israel saw their lives being shaped and moulded by the God who had revealed Himself to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. This was their fundamental insight. There were particular elements of the call of these “fathers” or “patriarchs” of Israel that revealed a true encounter with the divine. Moreover, these divine encounters were unique in that God revealed Himself as a transcendent being (“I am who I am”), and also later as Creator, and yet was inviting this people into a covenant relationship. Within this covenant, God was gradually to make known His plan to establish an everlasting relationship with the whole human race, when He would send someone – a Messiah – whose actions would free, not only Israel, but the whole of humanity from its sinful condition and prepare them for an eternal destiny with God.
The Old Testament is not one book but many In speaking about the history of Israel and in establishing the principle that God revealed Himself primarily in the events of Israel’s history, we have not yet accounted for the Old Testament as we have it in our Bibles. For the Old Testament is not a straightforward book of history. Certainly, it is a testimony to Israel’s history, but there is a sense in which it also belongs to and is a part of that unfolding history. The Old Testament is not one book but over 40 books – not all or even most of which are recording history.
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Why is the Old Testament so How does the Old Testament
Many books deals with Israel’s laws; others are the sayings and writings of prophets; and there are also books, described as the Wisdom literature which contain Songs or Psalms, proverbs, poetry and a long reflection on the problem of suffering (Job). The totality represent the whole history of Israel in the very broadest sense. The individual books themselves belong to different periods of Israel’s history and serve to illustrate what Israel was thinking, at that particular time, about itself and about God.
Re-interpreting the past A key concept that is essential for us to understand if we are really going to appreciate the nature of the Old Testament is the notion of the “re-reading or re-interpreting of history”. As their history progressed and new events occurred, Israel had the habit of looking back at its own past and seeing new dimensions of meaning and also of revelation of God that had not been seen before. Certain cataclysmic events such as the Exile in Babylon provoked a major reinterpretation of Israel’s past. Before the Exile, Israel was rather proud of its glory days when the Kingdom was strong. After the Exile, they were able to look back and recognise the seeds of their infidelity to the Covenant with God that eventually led to a great rupture, and led Jeremiah, for example, to say that the Covenant had more or less come to an end, and that the only hope lay in the promise of a new covenant. Such language would have been unthinkable in the previous generations. This process of re-reading or re-interpreting history led to the concept that the events of Israel’s history had levels and depths of meaning that were not necessarily seen at any one time. Later events enabled them to see earlier events in a new light. Indeed, later events sometimes made clear that what they had thought was revelation in the past was, at best, only provisional and at worst, was only permitted by God because at the time they could not see things any dif40
ferently. An example of this, is the different readings of the period of history which we might call the conquest of Canaan. This was the period when the descendents of those who had been liberated from Egypt began to settle in the new (promised) land. This is the period of many of the battles and bloodthirstiness with which we are so uncomfortable. At that time, Israel saw their God quite simply as a God of war, who assisted them in their battles. Herbert Butterfield, the great historian, said that the real meaning of a “myth” is a recognition of a pattern in history. There is some truth in the pattern, even though it does not cover the whole story, or indeed be something that those actually experiencing the events would have perceived at the time. He identifies various such patterns in Old Testament history – the notion of God’s providence and judgement, the notion of Israel surviving through a Remnant; and the concept of the Suffering Servant, who suffers vicariously for the sake of others – this was the way that Israel began to come to terms with all suffering. The notion of God’s providence and judgement (exemplified in the accounts of battles, in which Israel was the bloodthirsty victor) was radically modified by the notion of the Suffering Servant, where Israel herself was the one suffering, sometimes innocently.
Revelation becomes more refined At time and history progressed, Israel’s concept of God became more refined and they began to understand God as a transcendent being, but unlike the Greek ideas of transcendence, God was not thought or revealed to be simply distant and remote – inaccessible. On the contrary, the all-holy, all-mighty, transcendent God ahs made Himself accessible to Israel. The prophets and Wisdom writers express this accessibility in the most intimate of language (eg. the Song of Songs is a sort of love-poem between God and Israel; the prophet Hosea speaks of God wooing Israel during the wilderness years after the Exodus). Such understanding of
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Why is the Old Testament so bloodthirsty and full of myths? How does the Christian interpret Old Testament History? – Mgr Paul Watson
God is a long way from the God of war of the conquest battles. It is also represents a growing maturing in Israel’s faith. Does this mean that the earlier presentation of God as a God of war was simply false? The answer is No! It is more nuanced than that. True revelation was taking place, but the revelation was partial, even provisional. Some elements of the earlier revelation simply had to give way to deeper and more nuanced revelation later. Looking back Israel was able to see in its earlier rather simplistic faith, the seeds of the later, more mature faith, and in its simplistic anthropomorphic idea of God, the seeds of truth about God which would has only become clearer later. The apparent war-like nature of God remains in the texts, but is later realised to be a simplistic representation of the deeper sense of the providential care of God. When Israel herself underwent severe sufferings, as in the Exile in Babylon, she had to plumb the depths of her faith to discover a new a deeper sense of the providence of God. The genius of Israel, and the lesson for us too, was that in all the glories and cataclysms of their history, they held on to their belief in God’s providence and promise, and they also saw that the highest norms for truly human behaviour were precisely those outlined in the ten commandments, in spite of the fact that their history frequently showed them to be unfaithful or disobedient to these norms.
God is both immanent and transcendent From all that we have said here, two important characteristics of the Old Testament begin to emerge. While we affirm the uniqueness of Israel’s history as a history in which God participated and through which, therefore, God was revealing Himself, at the same time that history and that revelation was always progressive and provisional. No one moment of Israel’s history gave a complete or final picture of God. We might consider for a moment a modern example of a similar process. During the Second World War, English men and women would listen
to the News broadcasts about the progress of the war. After D Day there were great celebrations and a great sense of victory – of right over might. Later still, when we read the war poems of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sasoon, a rather different picture emerges. None of the snapshots told the whole story. In the various books of the Old Testament, the picture that emerged is that of the mystery of God. Within that mystery, God is revealed to be immanent in history (close and actively involved), and yet, God is also progressively revealed as transcendent (beyond the anthropomorphisms that were characteristic of the panoply of gods in other religions, who shared the same faults and weaknesses as human beings – warlike, promiscuous, jealous etc). We have to remember that Israel’s faith and its concept of God emerged out of the context of surrounding religions and inevitably shared many of the features of other religions. Ultimately, it was God’s involvement in their history that gradually purified their faith and refined it. History itself, was the means by which God brought about this purification and refinement. As we have indicated, successive events in their history led to the reinterpretation of the past and of the truth about God contained in the past. The record of this process remains with us even today in the books that make up the Old Testament. Whenever we listen to or read a passage from the Old Testament, it is important to realise that we are hearing only a brief snapshot of God’s involvement with Israel – a snapshot from a particular moment in time. While it contains truth and revelation, it cannot be the whole truth. This provisional and progressive character of the Old Testament leaves us with one remaining question. Is there a new event which might be final and decisive; an event which will fully reveal God and also which will provide a way of re-reading or re-interpreting the whole history of Israel (in all of its elements) in the Old Testament? The answer is Yes! The new event which will
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Why is the Old Testament so bloodthirsty and full of myths? How does the Christian interpret Old Testament History? – Mgr Paul Watson
shed new light over the whole Old Testament is the advent of the person of Jesus Christ, his birth, life, death and resurrection.
Christ in the Bible The Catechism invites us to “be attentive to the content and unity of the whole Scripture” (CCC.112). Later paragraphs (CCC.128-130) amplify this sentence further and quote a saying of St Augustine – “the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New”. These two sentences, no doubt familiar to us all, contain an extraordinary profundity, into which perhaps their very familiarity can sometimes prevent us from delving. Perhaps we pass over them thinking that we already understand that Jesus fulfils the Old Testament, and that the Old Testament is a type or a preparation for Christ.
Christ transforms the Old Testament Among modern authors, perhaps no-one has helped to unearth the depths of the unity of the Old and New Testaments more than Henri de Lubac, especially in his masterful study “Medieval Exegesis”. Drawing upon the insights of countless Fathers of the Church and Medieval saints and scholars, de Lubac shows that the unity of the two Testaments is not just a simple fact of history – that Jesus fulfils prophecies of the Old Testament. Using Patristic and Medieval commentaries on such incidents from the Gospels as the Marriage Feast of Cana and the Transfiguration, he shows that the historical Fact of Jesus has a transforming, indeed transfiguring effect, upon the whole of the Old Testament. As many commentators declared, Jesus changes the water of the letter of the Old Testament into the wine of the Spirit. In his Gospel, Luke is the only evangelist to record that Moses and Elijah are also transfigured. The implication is that in the presence of Jesus, and because of the presence of Jesus, the whole Old Testament is transfigured. The events, the laws, the 42
persons, the wisdom and the cultic sacrifices and festivals are transformed from the letter, which contain partial and progressive revelation of God and call for a response of faith and obedience to God, and become, in the transforming presence of Jesus, charged with a new and definitive significance. They all – events, laws, sacrifices, persons – become prophecy; they become prophecy of Jesus himself. As Jesus is revealed in the events of his life, he also gives new meaning to everything in the Old Testament. At the Transfiguration Moses the law-giver becomes himself prophecy. Pope Benedict’s book (Jesus of Nazareth) begins with this very truth. Moses is a prophecy of Jesus in that he is the one who prefigures the One who knows God “face to face”. Elijah the prophet, also becomes prophecy at the Transfiguration – prophecy which prefigures the One who will bring down the divine fire from heaven. The difference between Elijah and Jesus is that the divine fire that Elijah called down was a fire which consumed and destroyed, while the divine fire brought by Jesus is the fire of divine love and compassion (or “mercy” as it is described in the Magnificat). After the Transfiguration, the disciples invite Jesus to call down (Elijah’s?) fire from heaven upon the Samaritan town. Jesus refuses, then, a little later in the Gospel, speaks of the Good Samaritan who is “filled with compassion (divine fire)”.
The Old Testament becomes the “clothing” of Christ – the letter containing the spirit There is something very profound going on in the Scriptures between the Old and New Testaments. There is a real sense in which with the coming of Christ something radically new has happened. We might think of it in the following way. The Second Person of the Trinity took to himself our humanity and thereby transformed humanity, making of it the vehicle, the instrument of communication of his own divine person. In a way that is comparable, Christ has also taken to himself
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Why is the Old Testament so bloodthirsty and full of myths? How does the Christian interpret Old Testament History? – Mgr Paul Watson
the history of the Old Testament. He has, as it were, clothed himself with the Old Testament, so that it has now become the vehicle, the instrument of communication, of revelation, of his own divine person. Just as humanity had a meaning, before the Incarnation – humanity, being in the image and likeness of God, already possessed something of a revelation of God – so also the history of the Old Testament had a meaning, a meaning that communicated something of the divine nature and the divine plan of salvation, because it was a history in which God himself participated.. However, after the Incarnation, the humanity of Jesus became what humanity was not before – the
The Old Testament is transformed from being history – the history of Israel – to becoming the very history of Christ. It is, as it were, the very humanity of Christ with which the divine person is clothed very sacramental sign making present the divine second person of the Trinity. After the crucifixion and death of Christ, the Old Testament – equally or should we say, analogously? – became the sacramental sign, revealing and containing the divine presence of the Son of God. The Old Testament is transformed from being history – the history of Israel – to becoming the very history of Christ. It is, as it were, the very humanity of Christ with which the divine person is clothed. This is what was meant by the letter of Sacred Scripture becoming spirit. Once Christ has come, the Old Testament cannot remain simply as the Letter of Scripture. If we continue to see and read the OT simply as the letter (or in its literal sense), then it actually becomes a “dead letter” or “the let-
ter that kills”. In Christ, the OT can now be seen as the letter that has been transfigured into spirit. Perhaps we can now say that once Christ has taken the OT to himself, it really is no longer the Old Testament. It becomes in fact the New Testament, the new Covenant. We read the Old Testament now as part of the New. It is the outer clothing of Christ, and just as every word, action, gesture of the historical Jesus reveals the divine person, so too every element of the Old Testament reveals the person of Christ. It was in this way that the Fathers of the Church and the spiritual writers of the Middle Ages read and interpreted the Old Testament. In the opinion of De Lubac, this was entirely correct (even though, he acknowledges that there were perhaps some unwarranted interpretations that were really more fanciful than being truly rooted in this Christological understanding of the unity of the two Testaments). The minister of the Word must be one for whom this disclosure of the unity of the Old and New Testaments in Jesus has become a reality. We are not to be like those who read the Old Testament with a veil covering our minds – as Paul declares in 2 Cor 3. Rather, Paul says, “when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed”. For us too, in the Cross of Jesus, there is an opening of our minds and hearts. “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord (presumably, as we read the Old Testament), are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another;” (2 Cor 3:18). Like St Paul himself, our conversion is not simply a conversion to Jesus, but also a conversion to the spiritual reading of the Old Testament – to seeing Christ revealed in every page. “for this comes from the Lord, who is the spirit” (2 Cor 3:18).
The Senses of Scripture The Catechism states that “Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God’s plan, of which Christ Jesus is the centre and heart,
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Diaconia of the Word
Why is the Old Testament so bloodthirsty and full of myths? How does the Christian interpret Old Testament History? – Mgr Paul Watson
open since his Passover” (CCC. 112). The ancient tradition of the four senses of Scripture remains a gateway into the disclosure of Christ within the whole Bible. The following paragraphs in the Catechism (115119) list and briefly describe these senses – the literal sense and the spiritual sense, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. Once again, de Lubac’s great work is an invaluable resource for us. “Medieval Exegesis” is now available in English translation, as is also de Lubac’s preliminary work “History and Spirit: the exegesis of Scripture according to Origen”. Both works are rich in their exposition of the spiritual senses.
The Allegorical Sense The Catechism says simply: “We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognising their significance in Christ …”. Beneath this simple sentence is a way of understanding the whole Old Testament. For there is little in the New Testament – the Gospels, the Letters and the book of Revelation – that has not already taken up Old Testament themes, images, persons and events, and interpreted them according to their Christological significance. At the heart of this process is the very mystery of the Cross. As Pope Benedict as remarked: how was it that anyone could interpret, what was at first seen only as a criminal’s death for the scandalous charge of blasphemy, in terms of the holiest event in Israel’s liturgy – the Day of Atonement, when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies with the blood of sacrifice? His answer is that Jesus himself, notably at the Last Supper, gave his death this interpretation. His death turned the cult of the Temple into the shadow or type of the reality of Jesus’ passing through the veil. Throughout the New Testament, the authors have described the events of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection in Old Testament terms. We can say, therefore that the literal sense 44
of the New Testament is the allegorisation or spiritual sense of the Old.
The Moral Sense A key insight in de Lubac’s writings is that there are two levels of Moral Sense in the Scriptures – evident throughout the tradition of the Church. There is a simple level – related to the literal reading of Scripture. This is the simple moral virtue that we can find throughout the Bible incarnated in the various characters of Scripture: for example, the faith and obedience of Abraham, the meekness of Moses, the humility of David, the fortitude of Joshua and the Judges, the wisdom of Solomon and Daniel etc. In the New Testament, all of the moral virtues are perfectly manifested in Jesus, and also seen in Mary and those commended by Jesus – the faith of Jairus, the friends of the paralytic etc. There is moral teaching also in the ten commandments and in the Prophetic and Wisdom Literature generally, as also in the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament letters. But de Lubac identifies also in the Tradition what he calls a “mystical” moral meaning. By this he means that by virtue of our being united to Christ by charity, the virtues prefigured in the Old Testament and perfectly present in Christ are being actualised again today within each Christian soul. This is not the result of moral exhortation, but of being conformed to the image and likeness of Christ himself. To reiterate Paul’s words: “we … are being conformed to his likeness, from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). It is a work of the Spirit to make a reality in us, those very realities, especially the virtues, which were first revealed in Israel and perfected in Jesus. Once again, the Liturgy is the primary location for this interior transformation. Thus, for example, it is one thing to read the parable of the Good Samaritan as a simple story conveying the exhortation to be kind to our neighbour; it is something else
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Why is the Old Testament so bloodthirsty and full of myths? How does the Christian interpret Old Testament History? – Mgr Paul Watson
entirely to recognise that Christ himself is the Good Samaritan, filled with divine compassion, who rescues fallen humanity from its descent towards death – and with that recognition to begin ourselves to be conformed to Christ, the Good Samaritan. This conformity is accomplished through reading the Scripture passage in Luke, first of all, in its literal sense – the literal sense (Luke’s intention and also Christ’s) involves a spiritual or allegorical reading of Isaiah 1:1-6. And then, reading the passage in its “mystical” moral sense – by which we are being conformed to his likeness. Conformity to the likeness of Christ – the result of interiorising the Christological meaning of Scripture – has two essential ele-
The first is that of becoming a new creation in Christ – of putting on Christ, a daily appropriation of our Baptism. The second essential element is the putting to death with Christ of our old fallen nature, or our Adam nature, the old creation ments. The first is that of becoming a new creation in Christ – of putting on Christ, a daily appropriation of our Baptism. The second essential element is the putting to death with Christ of our old fallen nature, or our Adam nature, the old creation. As St Paul states in Romans 6 – “Did you not know that when you were baptised you died with Christ ….. Therefore, consider yourselves dead to sin”. It is precisely this “considering” that is the daily interiorisation. As is also the “considering” of ourselves as “alive to God in Christ”. To be alive to God in Christ is to be conformed to Christ for this is the only way into the Father’s presence. This mystical moral sense is really an aspect of the Christological or allegorical sense and is dependant on first seeing and understanding the Christological sense. When it comes to reading the Old Testament in its “mysti-
cal” moral sense, we begin to recognise hidden in the life of the people of Israel and their struggles the very struggle between the old and the new creation, which is our own daily battle. Thus we can read the battles and the death-dealing in the history of Israel as revealing mystically the deeper reality of the death of the old creation so that the new creation can be manifested. We begin to see how the whole of spiritual theology – the theology of the spiritual life emerged from the Moral Sense of Scripture.
The Anagogical Sense This follows from what was said about the Moral Sense. The interiorisation of Christ’s virtues – understood in the Tradition as a “communicatio idiomatum” (communication of idioms) between Christ and the individual soul – is a temporal project. We are gradually being conformed, day by day as our lives progress. However, there is a sense also in which Christ himself is an image and a prefigurement of the “Totus Christus” in heaven. The “Totus Christus” is the whole Christ – head and members – as He shall come to be in the parousia. The Anagogical sense is also mystical, in that our contemplation of Christ in Scripture (Old and New Testaments) lifts us into a glimpse of the heavenly reality – the whole Christ final and perfected. Many key themes of the Bible, especially Marriage and Bridal themes, Jerusalem, the Temple, the Promised Land, Israel and, of course, Christ Himself, become doorways – in the broadest sense, sacramental signs, of the heavenly reality, which is the goal for which we long and look for in hope. While the Moral sense is essentially temporal, revealing the progressive transformation into the likeness of Christ, the Anagogical sense is a-temporal. The Anagogical sense is closely related to the practice of contemplation. It is a matter of being lifted into the mystery of the final heavenly reality – when Christ will be all in all. ■
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Diaconia of the Word
Why is the Old Testament so bloodthirsty and full of myths? How does the Christian interpret Old Testament History? – Mgr Paul Watson
Dr Stan Baars & Prof. Dr Bart J. Koet
Mapping the Diaconate in the diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam –
Introduction
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The Second Vatican Council prompted the rediscovery and restoration of the third ministerial office in the Roman Catholic Church, that of the deacon, as a distinct ministry. In early Christianity, the diaconate was from the beginning of the structuring of the Church a distinct ministry and it remained so for centuries. One has simply to note such examples as St Lawrence, St Adelbert, founder of a Benedictine monastery in our diocese, Alcuin, the minister (diakonos!) of Charlemagne, St Francis and Geert de Grote, a famous Dutch spiritual leader. From the very beginning the diaconate was related to the bishop. It is already possible to see the first stage of this relation in 1 Tim 3 (see also e.g. Didache 15,1 and 1 Clement 44,2). It is interesting to note that it was the Bishop of Rome who persevered in retaining deacons as his special collaborators. Right up until the nineteenth century we find a number of cardinal-deacons as members of the papal administration. Because the last cardinal-deacon who was not ordained as a priest, Teodolfo Mertel, died on the 11th of July in 1899 at the age of 93, it seemed as if the twentieth century was to become the first century without the diaconate as a distinct and permanent ministry. But Providence had other plans because further historical developments demonstrated the opposite. Within a time span of just seventy years, the twentieth century presented the return of the diaconate as a distinct ministry. However, it was not without debate that the Council voted for this restoration. So it came as no surprise that
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Dr Stan Baars, coordinator of the deanery of Haarlem; coach and coordinator on the Diocesan Seminary De Tiltenberg. Prof. Dr Bart J. Koet teaches EarlyChristian Literature at the Faculty of Catholic Theology (Tilburg University) and Old Testament (De Tiltenberg). the actual implementation of the permanent diaconate took some time. This was certainly the case in our own diocese, the Dutch Diocese of HaarlemAmsterdam. Begun in a modest way, the diaconate nowadays enjoys a greater reputation. In the first thirty years after Vatican II deacons numbered just ten, whilst today a total of forty-five have been ordained to the permanent diaconate. It is especially to the credit of the present bishop, Mgr. Dr. J. Punt, that so many faithful men (or should we say viri probati?) have been called to this ministry which is nearly two millennia old, but at the same time very much up to date. It seemed appropriate and even necessary to give some attention to the way this ancient ministry was revived. Thus last spring the Haarlem-Amsterdam circle of deacons took the initiative of carrying out a survey of the well-being of its own members. The initiators of this research were specifically curious about the background of the respondents (thirty-two out of a a total of then forty-two deacons) – their calling, their spirituality, their theological education and their view of the diaconate as it finds itself in our diocese and our presentday society. With their enthusiastic response to the questionnaire which was sent to the deacons’ homes the investigation was not complete. In a second phase of the inquiry they enjoyed a discussion of the first phase results and the recommendations in “quality control” panels consisting
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Diaconal Formation
A reflection
of these same deacons. The third and last phase of this investigation will entail a wellfounded deliberation with the staff of the diocese and (last but not least) the bishop and his auxiliary bishop, in order to seek a possible implementation of the reformulated recommendations. It is obvious that with a group of people such as this, of different ages, schooling and professions, it is not simple to distill a single uniform concept. It was not, however, difficult to relate the different remarks made by respondents to the type of education they had enjoyed. The authors of this article are not responsible for the opinions expressed, but try to present a comprehensive line of thought to the reader.
First results Educational background A short description of the educational background of the Haarlem deacons presented data that were both interesting and simultaneously very surprising. What struck the investigators most was the conclusion that in this diocese, the opposite to what is sometimes thought and heard – namely, that deacons have a low level of education – is not the case. Nearly all the responding deacons had a high level of education,
mostly in the ‘people-oriented’ fields. Some had studied at university level in social faculties, some in medical schools, some in teaching, in history and industrial psychology, and some were academic theologians. Their former or present professional positions (therapist or social worker, teacher, school manager, professor, IT technician, medical personnel, insurance agent, as well as quite a few who were already employed in some pastoral or theological capacity) evidenced a level of superior training.1
Work context climate Although Vatican II saw the three munera in relation to liturgy, scripture (the Word) and caritas2, quite often deacons are specifically required to carry out, professionally or voluntarily, social service work. The background of this supposition is that deacons are frequently related to the German notion of Diakonie. However the relation between the Greek word diakonia and lowly service is more than questionable.3 It is interesting to observe that the deacons in our diocese seem to accord better with model of the diaconate according to Vatican II than to the diaconate as based solely on a social service model.
in a liturgical and pastoral context. Their involvement was much less in social service work, catechetical or parish-organisational matters. It is true, however, that one deacon functions as the chancellor of the bishop, one as coordinator of the Deanery of Haarlem, two are working as chaplains in the armed forces and others as prison chaplains. At the same time there is a substantial number of deacons who should like to give special attention to the socially deprived. Regarding the work climate, the survey made clear that it was felt by quite a few respondents that the acceptance of the deacons as co-workers in ministry was not always appreciated by their fellow workers who were professionals in the pastoral field – priests and pastoral workers – for differing reasons. On the other hand, deacons found that many church volunteers and
... lack of formal structuring in relation to the tasks of deacons betrays the informality of church organisation
Most of our colleagues worked particularly
1 The deacons have in their midst three professors and three other Ph D’s. Nearly half of the deacons have a Masters degree or its equivalent. 2 See Lumen Gentium 29: “Gratia etenim sacramentali roborati, in Diaconia liturgiae, verbi et caritatis Populo Dei, in communione cum Episcopo eiusque presbyterio, inserviunt”. For the deacon and his relation to Scriptures, see Dei Verbum 25: `Therefore, all the clergy must hold fast to the Sacred Scriptures through diligent sacred reading and careful study, especially the priests of Christ and others, such as deacons and catechists who are legitimately active in the ministry of the word`. 3 See among others the studies of John N. Collins, Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources (Oxford University Press) Oxford, 1990 [pb reprint, OUP 2010] and Anni Hentschel, Diakonia im Neuen Testament: Studien der Semantik unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Rolle von Frauen, (Wunt, 2 Reihe, 226) Tübingen, 2007 and B.J. Koet. “Diakonie is nicht nur Armenfürsorge. Neuere exegetische Erkenntnisse zum Verständnis von Diakonie” in: M. Sander-Gaiser, C. Gramszow, H. Liepold, (eds.) Lernen wäre eine prima Alternative. Religionspädagogik in theologischer und erziehungswissenschaftlicher Perspektive, (Fs. Helmut Hanisch, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig, 2008) 303-318.
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common parishioners show a much greater enthusiasm for deacons, certainly in those cases where the deacon had the opportunity to demonstrate his value and professionalism.4 Many respondents made remarks about the absence of an agreement document specifying the work to be carried out. This lack of formal structuring in relation to the tasks of deacons betrays the informality of church organisation. Some of the respondents had nobody whatsoever to turn to for guidance or coaching. Without this sort of
leadership a deacon has to find his own way in a sometimes complex environment. Again, earlier education, training and professional experience resulted in the respondents feeling that in executing their day-to-day affairs they were able to carry out successfully a difficult job.
Theological schooling The above mentioned incongruity might have its origin in the abundance of work the deacons have to do in running their parishes as well as in the type of theological formation most of them received. The deacons do differ in the theological education they have received, and it is clear that there is a relationship between their theological formation and their conception of the diaconate. Because of the very broad spectrum of different studies it is difficult to offer more conclusive remarks. We have to note that the diaconate in the sixties and the seventies was not really promoted. Only since the beginning of this millennium has it been possible to prepare for the diaconate at the diocesan seminary (formerly Willibrordhuis, now De Tiltenberg). In the eighties and nineties the few men who wanted to become deacons went to the diaconal school of the Archdiocese of Utrecht (Dijnselburg). There are also still quite a few deacons who studied theology at one of the (former) faculties of Roman Catholic Divinity in the Netherlands. Some of these were there as students in the sixties and seventies while others were there in the nineties. Some of these were ordained after many years working as laymen in different theological contexts. While the training centre of the archdiocese strove to form “diaconal” deacons in the sense of the German Diakonie, it is clear that the seminary of the Diocese of
4 We have also to note that both the bishop and the auxiliary bishop promote good relations with the deacons. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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Diaconal Formation
Mapping the Diaconate in the diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam – A reflection – Dr Stan Baars & Prof. Dr Bart J. Koet
Haarlem-Amsterdam was more in favour of the diaconal formation according to the three munera of Lumen Gentium 29. Sometimes the difference in conception of diaconate is reflected in the interviews. The different backgrounds reveal themselves in the different replies of the respondents. The “Dijnselburg” deacons valued a greater social service work embodiment of their diaconate and some of those deacons who had had an academic education in divinity appreciated the input of the humanities.
and transformed into “demonstrable indicators”. With these indicators teachers and students are able to acquire a precise view of what is desirable in order to become a good priest, deacon or catechist, in terms both of academic formation and of acquiring the skills to apply this knowledge pastorally. Other qualities relate to evangelizing, hermeneutical, educational, liturgical, pastoral, communication, organisational and reflective competencies. The last competence has to do with someone’s pastoral qualities and skills.
It is worthwhile noting that in regard to their formation in the diocesan programme many respondents described their formation as qualitatively strong in respect of the liturgy, of spiritual growth, and of develop-
Gatherings of permanent learning
The formation programme has been set up as an Higher Institute of Religious Studies, which has only recently been approved. Candidates for the diaconate are nowadays encouraged to obtain at least the bachelor of divinity degree ment into a “man of God” as well as pastorally. The formation programme has been set up as an Higher Institute of Religious Studies, which has only recently been approved. Candidates for the diaconate are nowadays encouraged to obtain at least the bachelor of divinity degree. The management of the formation programme – also on the basis of the results of the survey – is already setting about a programme of improvement in which the desired qualities of their students are being described
In our diocese there are several opportunities for deacons to meet each other for further learning, spiritual growth, theological reflection and fraternal gathering i.e. the so called “Willibrord lectures” and the circle of deacons.
Willibrord lectures The respondents were very positive about the monthly (“Willibrord”)5 lectures, organised by the seminary, where church folk of all kinds talk about their work in an academic fashion. Subjects discussed, among others, are occupational stress, psychological trauma, organisational change in the church, Jewish traditions and their influence on Catholic liturgy, the identity of the present-day deacon and his origin in the early Christian church, the social task of the church and the relation between faith and scientific knowledge (fides et ratio). Quite a few of the respondents stated that a possible lack of academic foundation experienced earlier during their diaconal studies was more or less compensated for this way. Hereby the seminary proves, since its foundation twelve years ago, to be an institute that genuinely seeks to improve and enhance ministerial life.
5 Named after the patron-saint of the Netherlands; Willibrord was an Anglo-Saxon monk from Northumbria, “the apostle of the Frisians”, who started the (re-) convertion of the Northern Netherlands; born 657, died 738 A.D.; buried in Echternach (Luxembourg).
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Mapping the Diaconate in the diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam – A reflection – Dr Stan Baars & Prof. Dr Bart J. Koet
Circle of deacons The “De Tiltenberg” seminary is not the only productive source of training and schooling. The deacons in our diocese also meet each other six times a year and discuss items of professional interest. One of our deacons, Rob Mascini, was for some years president of the IDZ6 and in that capacity he shared some of his experiences with us in regard to the discussions about the ministry of the diaconate. The circle also asked one of its members, the scriptural scholar Bart Koet, co-author of this article, to read with them, regularly, the original sources of the diaconate.7 The background of this request had to do with a certain timidity about their identity as a
... a whole hour of our gettogether was devoted to the New Testament (e.g. Acts 6 and Luke 10). We also read sources like 1 Clem. 42, the Didache, the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch and the ancient text of the Liturgy of St Lawrence deacon. The main object of this return to scriptural and patristic sources arises out of the following idea: it was hoped that the potential conflict between the deacon’s identity as a social worker and an identity which was more liturgically orientated and rooted could be overcome. So it became quite common that a whole hour of our get-
together was devoted to the New Testament (e.g. Acts 6 and Luke 10). We also read sources like 1 Clem. 42, the Didache, the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch and the ancient text of the Liturgy of St Lawrence. A remarkable number of responses to the survey made it clear that the reading of these texts8 together, under the guidance of Koet and almost always in the presence of the auxiliary bishop, strengthened the deacons in their diaconal and spiritual identity. Koet wrote several exegetical articles on diakonia in the NT. He is inspired by the work of the Australian John N Collins, who on the basis of his philological research argues that the diaconate does not designate some sort of servile work but that the deacon is a sort of liaison officer (our interpretation). Once one recognises that model, the Patristic texts provide a much clearer view of the deacon as an ambassador and as the official who is the connection between the bishop and the people as regards matters of liturgy, the interpretation of the Gospel and current affairs. This model of the deacon as an intermediary inspired many respondents in shaping their own diaconal identity. They are the ones, who in the name of the bishop, connect ecclesial wisdom with the daily affairs of the man and woman in the street. At the same time deacons are the eyes and ears of the bishop and in this way are able to bring social questions and needs to the attention of the church.
Recommendations The recommendations of our inquiry to date require further discussion with bish-
6 Internationales Diakonatszentrum. This Centre has its seat in the German diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. 7 He was also one of the organizers of a conference on the sources of the diaconate: see B.J.Koet, “International Conference on the Sources of the Diaconate: How it Came about and How it Turned out: a First Report”, in: New Diaconal Review, (IDC-NEC) no. 3, November 2009, 29-33; see also V. Grossi - P. Van Geest- B.J. Koet, (eds.), Diakonia, Diaconiae Diaconato. XXXVIII Incontro di studiosi dell’ antichita cristiana. Roma, 7-9 maggio, 2009, Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 117, Roma, 2010. 8 Some participants even did this with the original Greek and Latin texts. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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Mapping the Diaconate in the diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam – A reflection – Dr Stan Baars & Prof. Dr Bart J. Koet
op, auxiliary bishop and diocesan personnel for a fruitful and effective implementation. By the same token it is also desirable that the ideas and suggestions offered in this investigation, be compared with the thought in relevant Vatican documents as the Ratio Fundamentalis9 and the Directorium10. The provisional recommendations, as a result of our inquiry, cover respectively the fields of episcopal commissioning, appointment, job description, theological formation, the circle of deacons and diaconal identity.
Episcopal commission, appointment and job description Most respondents advocated a more professional and clearer type of management in the direction of their own activities. At the same time the deacon should be given enough discretion to execute worthwhile activities in the catechetical and charitable field. This plea for a more lucid and discretionary job-description should be expressed in the specific way the bishop’s commission is spelt out on paper. The impression should be avoided that deacons are to be seen as a type of “pseudo-priest” or “priestsubstitute”.
Theological formation As far as the formation of deacons is concerned, it was suggested that it was necessary to have a better overview of what sort of education the diaconal candidates had already received and what experience they had already acquired before they entered the formation programme. For that reason, one respondent advocated a more individually shaped formation, geared to each student according to his needs. One has to
note, however, that in such a development, the process of learning together could be endangered. As far as the five-year follow-up course after ordination is concerned, the respondents proposed a much more logical sequence between the different subjects. These should be related to the student’s education before ordination and the respondents declared themselves to be in favour of strengthening their diaconal identity. Organisational (Church-) change and restating the missionary dimension of the Church are also subjects to which
... respondents declared themselves to be in favour of strengthening their diaconal identity. Organisational (Church-) change and restating the missionary dimension of the Church are also subjects to which attention should be paid attention should be paid. Moreover, a case by case reflection on the deacon’s daily affairs and societal needs in his work environment was welcomed during the follow up course. Examples of this would be the management of volunteers, the up to date organisation and management of diverse charity projects such as night shelters, socalled “food banks”, social centres and adequate co-operation with institutions of professional social and therapeutic work.
9 Ratio Fundamentalis institutionis diaconorum permanentium; particularly the sections 9, 70, 74, 79, 81 and 86. 10 Directorium pro ministerio et vita diaconorium permanentium; particularly the sections 8, 26, 40, 41, 43 and 70
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The respondents also sought intellectual input to enable them to enter adequately into local debates about a just and good society.11
Circle of deacons Quite a few respondents pleaded for something that sounds quite logical and thus perhaps appealed to them: a well-thoughtthrough adjustment between the educational activities proferred by the seminary and those offered by the circle of deacons. They also wanted more focus on case-studies and the exchange of personal, workrelated, experiences during their
One views the deacon as operating at the cutting edge of Church and society, and less as a solely liturgical official, although the present situation in our diocese calls for some deacons to conduct themselves as such “liturgists” deliberations in their circle. Though the aspirations of the respondents are high, these deacons want even more. They also want to discuss topics such as societal needs and the answers to these given by the Church. Moreover they are interested in developing an adequate personnel policy. In particular, the relationship between priests and deacons, they said, demands better structuring. A substantial number of the respondents spoke of their desire to continue the communal reading of the rel-
evant scriptural, patristic and theological literature as a way of reflecting on diaconal identity.
Position and identity These, according to the view of the respondents, were considered to be the most important topics. Many participants in our inquiry took the trouble to give very elaborate and detailed answers on this topic. One feels that a thorough study of the mission, tasks and position of the deacon in the early church can benefit the present-day search for a clearer and more solid position of today’s deacon: in a managerial position in the Church, as chaplain in prisons, the armed forces, police and hospitals and as a pastoral community worker in charity projects. One views the deacon as operating at the cutting edge of Church and society, and less as a solely liturgical official, although the present situation in our diocese calls for some deacons to conduct themselves as such “liturgists”. It is clear that there is ample room for new thinking. It is definitely agreeable to observe that there is a lot of positive energy among the deacons, among the responsible officers of the diocesan seminary and amongst the bishops. To strive for a more distinctive position requires the study of biblical and historical literature. In that way the circle of deacons can initiate a well-grounded debate with priests and last, but not least, with the bishop and auxiliary bishop about future roles and missions.12 ■
11 We would like to mention that quite a few of the deacons are related to the work of the seminary. Some of them teach while others are involved in coaching. 12 We thank Mgr. Dr. Jan Hendriks for his comments on this article. New Diaconal Review Issue 8
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Diaconal Formation
Mapping the Diaconate in the diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam – A reflection – Dr Stan Baars & Prof. Dr Bart J. Koet
Tony Schimtz
International Theological Commission:
The
sacramentality of the Diaconate
The NDR presents the next instalment of a fresh and complete translation of the International Theological Commission’s important research document Le Diaconat: Évolution et Perspectives, Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 2003. Deacon Tony Schmitz is Director of Studies of the national diaconate formation programme for the Diaconate Commission of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland and co-editor of the New Diaconal Review. What follows is the next part of Chapter Four.
2. Sacramentality called into question
c) priestly ordination confers a power ad posse and not ad licere, in such a way that the ordained (priest) is actually empowered to do something that he was not able to do before ordination; the diaconate, to the contrary, extends the capacity to render licit something that he was able to do before, but only illicitly and that is the reason why conferring the diaconate could have been regarded as a being instituted or delegated to perform certain specified offices;
Durandus of Saint-Pourçain († 1334) represents a doctrinal line that will recur intermittently until the present day, according to which only the ordination to the priesthood is a “sacrament”. The other orders, diaconate included, are only “sacramentals”.1 The reasons for his position were as follows:
d) the unity of the Sacrament of Order and the evaluation of the priesthood as a fullness of the Sacrament also requires this, since otherwise it would be difficult to preserve the meaning of what St. Thomas had to say on the oneness and the unicity of the Sacrament of Order; 2
a) the distinction, in respect of the Eucharist, between the power to consecrate, exclusively proper to the sacerdotal order (and thus to be considered as a sacrament) and the preparatory actions that were proper to other orders (and thus to be regarded as mere sacramentals); b) just as with Baptism, there is a “potestas ad suscipiendum sacramenta” so it is that only priesthood confers a “potestas ordinis ad conficiendum vel conferendum ea”, a power not accorded any of the orders below priesthood, not even the diaconate;
e) the distinction between sacramentum and sacramentalia did not, however, prevent Durandus from maintaining that each order imprints a “character”. He distinguished in turn between a deputatio which had its origin in God himself rendering the respective order a sacramentum (the sacerdotal order) and an ecclesiastical deputatio, instituted by the Church, which accounted for the fact that those respective orders (all the other orders) are only sacramentalia. In this sense, it can be said that the diaconate imprints a character; the doubt or the debate concerned the
1 With regard to the episcopate, he tends to assert that “ordo and sacramentum, non quidem praecise distinctum a sacerdotio simplici, sed est unum sacramentum cum ipso, sicut perfectum and imperfectum.” Durandus of Saint-Porçain, Super Sententia Comm. libri quatuor, Paris, 1550, lib. d24 IV q6. 2 Ibidem . q2 for what is said in a), b), c) and d).
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moment when this imprinting occurs, because for some it happened “in traditione libri evangeliorum” (an opinion denied by Durandus) whilst others held that happened “in impositione manuum” (the opinion he appears to have endorsed himself).3
3. The Teaching of the Council of Trent (1563) The Council of Trent wanted to make a dogmatic definition of Holy Order as a Sacrament. The direction of its doctrinal affirmations can leave us in no doubt on this score. However, it is not clear to what extent the sacramentality of the diaconate
... the diaconate is also conceived of as helping to exercise and to serve the priesthood. (It is silent on help.) Furthermore, diaconate appears as a stage on the way to reaching priesthood (there being no explicit reference to a permanent diaconate) should be included in this dogmatic definition. It has remained a controverted question right up to the present day, although the number of those who raise the question is very small. Accordingly we need to interpret Trent’s affirmations. Confronted with the denials of the Reformers, Trent decreed the existence of a hierarchia in Ecclesia ordinatione divina (which led to the rejection of the assertion according to which “omnes christianos
promiscue Novi Testamenti sacerdotes esse”) and Trent also decreed the existence of a hierarchia ecclesiastica (which implies a the distinction between the different degrees within the one Sacrament of Order). 4 Any explicit references by Trent to the diaconate are to be found set within the general context of the theology of the Sacrament of Order. It is not entirely certain, however, that the Tridentine dogmatic decrees on the sacramentality and on the sacramental character of the priesthood (to which the Council refers explicitly) also entails an intention on the part of the Council to define dogmatically sacramentality of the diaconate. According to Trent there are explicit references to deacons in the New Testament, but they could not be said that they had been instituted directly by Christ our Saviour. In accordance with the approach to the other orders, the diaconate is also conceived of as helping to exercise “dignius and maiore cum veneratione ministerium tam sancti sacerdotii” and to serve “ex officio” the priesthood. (It is silent on help “ad ministerium episcopi”.) Furthermore, diaconate appears as a stage on the way to reaching priesthood (there being no explicit reference to a permanent diaconate).5 When Trent decreed dogmatically that ordo or sacra ordinatio is “vere sacramentum”,6 there was no explicit mention of the 3 4 5 6
Ibidem . q3 Cf DS 1767. 1776. Cf DS 1765. 1772. Cf DS 1766. 1773.
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Diaconal Formation
From the twelfth to the twentieth century
International Theological Commission: The sacramentality of the Diaconate – Tony Schmitz
Ashley Beck
diaconate, it being included among the ordines ministrorum.7 Accordingly if one applies the dogmatic definition of sacramentality to the diaconate also, one should perhaps do the same for the other ordines ministrorum, but this seems excessive and unjustified. We can say something similar with respect to the doctrine on the “sacramental character”.8 Taking into account the expressions employed by the Council, there can be no doubt that Trent was referring explicitly and directly to the NT “sacerdotes”, in order to distinguish them quite clearly from “the laity”. There is no direct or indirect reference made to “deacons”; it would seem difficult therefore to see in this Tridentine text any intention of establishing as dogma the doctrine of character for the diaconate. Canon 6 of the Council (“si quis dixerit in Ecclesia catholica non esse hierarchiam, divina ordinatione institutam, quae constat ex episcopis, presbyteris and ministris, a.s.”)9 deserves special attention because of the difficulties of the correct interpretation of the meaning of the word ministris: deacons? or deacons and other ministers? or all of the other orders? Right up until the day before its approval (on 14th July, 1563), the text of Canon 6 read: “et aliis ministris”. That day, taking account of the petitions of a Spanish group, the phrase used (aliis ministris) was changed, by eliminating the term aliis. But the scope of the change and the reasons for it are not very clear.10 How then should we interpret the term ministris and their inclusion in the hierarchia? For some interpreters, the elimination of aliis meant that the dividing line within the ecclesiastical hierarchy should be marked out as between sacerdotes (bishops and presbyters), on the one hand, and ministri, on the other; suppressing aliis would emphasize once again that bishops and the presbyters are not “nudi ministri”, but “sacerdotes Novi Testamenti”. In the 56
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light of its earlier formulations, the history of the text would seem to suggest a broader understanding of ministri, a term which would include “diaconos caeterosque ministros” and would thus correspond to a tripartite division of the hierarchy (“praecipue episcopi, deinde praesbyteri, diaconi et alii
... the dogmatic consequences concerning their sacramentality and their inclusion in the hierarchy will differ, according to whether the term ministri refers only to deacons or if it also includes the other orders ministri”). But we must not forget that, according to other authors, the suppression of the term aliis amounted to the exclusion of the subdiaconate and the other minor orders from the hierarchy “divina ordinatione instituta”, an expression whose interpretation was not, in its turn, devoid of polemical interpretation.11 _ In conclusion, whether we give an exclusive or inclusive interpretation of the word ministri, it cannot be doubted that deacons are included in the term. But the dogmatic consequences concerning their sacramentality and their inclusion in the hierarchy will differ, according to whether the term ministri refers only to deacons or if it also includes the other orders. ■ 7 Cf DS 1765. 8 Cf DS 1767. 1774. 9 Cf DS 1776. 10 Cf CT III, 682s. 686. 690; VII/II, 603. 643. 11 Cf KJ Becker, Wesen und nach dem Vollmachten of Priestertums Lehramt (QD 47), Freiburg 1970, 19-156; J. Freitag, Sacramentum Ordinis aus dem Konzil von Trient. Ausgeblendeter Dissens und erreichter Konsens, Innsbruck 1991, 218ff.
Firmly I Believe and Truly – The Spiritual Tradition of Catholic England 1483-1999 Editors: John Saward, John Morrill and Michael Tomko ISBN: 978-0-19-929122-9 Price £35 Publisher: Oxford University Press Year: 2011 John Morrill is a deacon of the diocese of East Anglia and a Professor of History at Cambridge – he is also part of the Diaconate formation team for the diocese; Fr John Saward is priest-in-charge of the parish of St Gregory St Augustine in Oxford and Michael Tomko is Professor of Literature at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. This book is an anthology of spiritual writing from English Catholics from William Caxton to Basil Hume. It is material that has been printed from people in their ‘Catholic lifetimes’ (that is, not thing converts might have written before coming into the Church. In any substantial anthology selection principles are always difficult. The work is divided into three historical parts – the first covers the period from the late Middle Ages until the deposition of King James II in 1688; the second the years of the late penal period until the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850; and the final the modern period until the end of the twentieth century, coinciding with Cardinal Hume’s death. The most welcome thing about the collection is that the extracts are substantial, and these give the reader a very good picture of a writer’s range of writing and spirituality. Naturally they include well-known passages, but attention is also given to writings which are less well known; much of what is covered is not easy to acquire elsewhere. Another good feature is that a lot of effort has gone
into including substantial writings by women – so in the first section we have extracts from Margaret Beufort and James II’s first wife Anne Hyde, as well as the better known Mary Ward; and in the third section space is given to authors such as Alice Meynell, Dame Laurentia McLachlan and Cecily Hallack. Overall care has been taken to ensure that the selection is not ‘over-clerical’, and there is also a good balance between prose and poetry. There are concise introductions to each writer. This is a rich and very engaging collection and the authors are to be congratulated; Archbishop Vincent Nichols puts it well in his foreward when he describes the writers as ‘part of a symphony of faith and life’. Hopefully Oxford will bring out a paperback edition soon. Every reviewer’s dream, when assessing a book of this quality, is to find small factual errors. The first is in the introduction to St Robert Southwell (p. 152), where we are told that ‘The Burning Babe’ is set to music by Britten in the Ceremony of Carols – sadly this is not so; what Britten set was ‘This Little Babe’, a different poem (‘The Burning Babe’ was set to music by the rock musician Sting). Secondly, the introduction to Monsignor Ronald Knox states that ‘after theological studies at St Edmund’s, Ware, he was ordained to the priesthood...’ Not so: he was told by Cardinal Bourne to devise his own formation programme, while staying at the London Oratory, and did not go to Ware to teach until after ordination. When people talk about the new Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, there is frequent reference made to ‘Anglican patrimony’. This outstanding book gives a beautiful picture, by contrast, of English Catholic patrimony; and two of the editors are converts.
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Reviews
Book reviews
Tony Schmitz
Book reviews
Book reviews
Techniques of Icon and Wall Painting: Egg Tempera, Fresco, Secco Author: Aidan Hart ISBN: 9780852442159 Price: £40 Publisher: Gracewing Date: 2011 “The unspeakable and prodigious fire hidden in the essence of things, as in a bush, is the fire of divine love and the dazzling brilliance of God’s beauty inside everything.” So St Maximus the Confessor. This is the world that the icon attempts to depict, a world seen not only with the eyes of the body but also with the eye of the heart and icons at their best do so better than any other art form, East or West, because they inhabit the world redeemed, the space opened out, by the Resurrection. This must be the most comprehensive book to date in English or probably in any language on the actual techniques of icon painting (or, more accurately the liturgical art of ‘icon writing’ and wall painting. It is illustrated with over 450 colour photos and 180 drawings, including principally the very fine icons written by the author, Colin Hart who has lived as a professional iconographer since 1984, having served his apprenticeship as it were in in Britain, Russia and on Mount Athos in Greece where he lived for three years. In 2009 he founded the Diploma in Icon and Wall Painting for the Prince’s School of Traditional Art. (The Foreword is contributed by the Prince of Wales.) The handsome volume is as much a source of pleasure and inspiration for the general reader as it is a technical manual for the icon writer/painter. It sets artistic practice in the context of the Church’s
spirituality and liturgy, with chapters on the theology and history of icons, on the role and symbolism of the iconostasis, and the principles behind the positioning of wall paintings and icons within churches.1 This long-needed treatise is sure to remain the standard text-book and manual – for both professionals and beginners – for many years to come. If you are initially put off by the price, rest assured that once you see the quality of it you will have expected to have cost double its price.
1 For the Western Rite churches, see also the fine essay by Sr Petra Clare, The Iconography of the Western Rite: Introducing Icons into Catholic Churches – a User’s Guide, in A GARLAND OF SILVER edited by Tony Schmitz, Ogilvie Press, 2002, pp. 236–255, especially the section on Model of a Catholic church interior AD 2022 – a guided tour, pp 247–255. Sister Petra Clare’s Sancti Angeli Scete and courses in the Diocese of Aberdeen is the only other centre in the United Kingdom referenced and commended by Hart: www.sanctiangeli.org/
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Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth Century Catholic Theology Editors: Gabriel Flynn & Paul Murray ISBN: 9780199552870 Price: £65 Publisher: Oxford University Press Date: 2012 This is a very fine book indeed and one of the most impressive examples of the modern category of “theological handbooks” to be published by Oxford University Press in recent years. Anyone with even a passing interest in Catholic theology will have heard of the work of key figures such as the Jesuits Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou, the Dominican Yves Congar, the Oratorian Louis Bouyer or the exemplary Swiss ressourcement theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar. Most with a more serious interest will have read more or less deeply in one or other of them. But few will be aware of the variegated links between them and how they were viewed by theologians who could not be labelled as ressourcement scholars, such as Etienne Gilson (see fascinating article by Francesca Murphy) or the great Fribourg theologian, Charles Journet, who was decidedly not one of them and who was sceptical both of their methods and critical of many of the views of the protagonists (essay by John Saward). In fact, I recall a friend who studied at Fribourg under Journet recounting how the professor, in his deep, slow, Genevan-French voice, pronounced somewhat loftily this verdict on his Swiss colleague from Basle: Oui, c’est le meilleur des Allemands. Nevertheless this founder of the journal Nova et Vetera was willing to commend these nouveaux théologiens whenever he perceived the truth of their insights, and
wrote to his friend Maritain: ‘people like Father de Lubac … are more with us than against us.’ This solid volume provides both a historical and a theological analysis of the achievements of the renowned generation of theologians whose influence pervaded French theology and society in the period 1930 to 1960, and beyond and also considers how the principal exponents of ressourcement, inspired a renaissance in twentiethcentury Catholic theology and initiated a movement for renewal that contributed to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. It assesses the origins and historical development of the biblical, liturgical, and patristic ressourcement in France, Germany, and Belgium, and offers fresh insights into the thought of the movement’s leading scholars and the fierce controversies that erupted within the Jesuit and Dominican orders and between leading ressourcement theologians and the Vatican. The volume also contributes to the elucidation of the complex question of terminology, the interpretation of which still engenders controversy in discussions of ressourcement and nouvelle théologie. It concludes with reflections on how the most important movement in twentieth-century Roman Catholic theology continues to impact on contemporary society and on Catholic and Protestant theological enquiry in the new millennium. Not the least interesting essay (by Lewis Ayres, Patricia Kelly and Thomas Humphries) is on Ratzinger/ Benedict XVI as a ‘second-generation ressourcement theologian who was influenced through the works of the first generation figures. Certainly throughout his career he has regarded de Lubac as an authority especially in respect of the direction of postconciliar exegesis. ■
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Reviews
Tony Schmitz
Mumbai – Frankfurt –
Velehrad:
New Stations on the Way
of the International Diaconate Centre (IDC)
A report from the President of NDC Klaus Kießling
T
he next assembly of delegates of our IDC will take place in Mumbai, India, in September 2012. My first trip to Mumbai in 2010 transported me from a traditionally Christian culture into a religious world of extreme diversity, with only a 2.3% minority of Christians, among whom members of the Catholic Church form the strongest group.
Mumbai: The Church in a culturally and religiously plural world The population of India comprises at least 80% Hindus, 13% Muslims and 1.6% Sikhs. Belief in reincarnation is widespread, but this should not be confused with the notion usually found in the West of an individual reincarnation. The idea of individual reincarnation is tied to the traditionally anthropic culture of the West, but it is quite foreign to the karmic tradition of the East, in which the world is a network of relationships that are not limited to those between human beings. For this reason, one finds in India sacred rivers, sacred mountains, sacred trees, and sacred animals. By no means should the various Indian spiritualities be seen as simple negations of the world: although they recognize suffering and emphasize the transitory character of all things, at the same time, they hold out hope for a world in which suffering and transitoriness will be overcome. They rely on an experience that is thoroughly grounded in time but is not exhausted by time: they look forward to a fullness of time, to “tempiternity“. Conversions to Christianity occur mainly among the aboriginal tribals (adivasi), among former Hindus of the lower castes, 60
and among dalits, the so-called “untouchables”, all of whom hope to escape the discrimination, under which women in particular suffer. Systematically female pregnancies are aborted, because daughters are regarded as inferior to sons and marrying them off entails enormous expenditures for a family. Thus, for every 1000 male babies, only 933 female babies are born – that in India, the largest democracy in the world. In this connection, the Catholic Church, despite its minority role, already enjoys a strong presence in India, mostly through its schools and other educational activities as well as through its hospitals and other charitable activities. In the future, the deacons can make their specific contribution especially in this area – in a multi-cultural and
... the Catholic Church, despite its minority role, already enjoys a strong presence in India, mostly through its schools and other educational activities as well as through its hospitals and other charitable activities. In the future, the deacons can make their specific contribution especially in this area
New Diaconal Review Issue 8
multi-religious situation, in which religion gives vision to the culture, and the culture gives expression to religion. Who is a deacon in India? In North and South America there are some 24,276 deacons and in Europe 11.628. In Africa, in co-operation with the International Diaconate Centre, a network has come into being that numbers some 379 deacons. Australia and Oceania report 268 deacons. By contrast, all of Asia until now counts only 143 deacons. India, here, plays a special role, because the Catholic Bishops‘ Conference of India (CBCI), comprising 164 dioceses, is one of the largest episcopal conferences in the world. In March 2010, Oswald Cardinal Gracias was elected its president. He governs the diocese of Mumbai, which is the only Indian diocese that, since the Vatican Council, has restored the diaconate. The first ordination took place there in 2006, a second in 2009. Without exception, all of these deacons and all of the candidates currently undergoing training took part in the ongoing Pro Diakonia project of the IDC. In a series of individual portraits, their views will be cited as far as possible in original quotations in the next issue of our journal Diaconia Christi 47 (2012/1).
Frankfurt: Internationalisation and Regionalisation of the IDC... The Board of the IDC convened in Frankfurt during March 2012, in order to come up with suggestions on possible changes of the by-laws and election procedure through an intensive exchange of opinions with Montserrat Martínez and Andreas
Weiß, the latter being our consultant on legal matters. We will discuss these suggestions during the announced meeting in Mumbai this year. I am confident that this will help us make important steps towards the further internationalisation and regionalisation of our Centre.
… and appointment of Tony Schmitz as advisor of the IDC I would also like to make an important announcement of a personal nature. Tony Schmitz was compelled to step down as a delegate, for family related reasons. While we fully understand his motivation for taking such a step we, the IDC Board, are less willing to deprive ourselves of his wisdom, advice and prudent commitment. We are grateful to him and his wife that he has accepted to stay connected to the IDC in an advisory capacity.
Velehrad: International Studies Conference in 2013 This text shall not end without the announcement of our next International Studies Conference: “Intercultural Diakonia”. I would like to extend a cordial invitation for you all to come to the Moravian city of Velehrad from June 13 – June 16, 2013. For further information please see www.idz-drs.de/english/studienkonferenz2013.html. The conference venue will be easily accessible and we will also provide coaches which will take the participants directly from Vienna airport to the conference. Welcome to Velehrad! ■
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Forthcoming Events
Klaus Kießling