A few days ago the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued the Doctrinal Note on Some Aspects of Evangelization. The Holy Father approved this Doctrinal Note on October 6. The official English text of the Doctrinal Note is HERE.
May I suggest that the Doctrinal Note is a most useful source of direction for Catholics who are called, through their baptism, to evangelize the world—often a place much in need of evangelization. It there is any doubt about this claim, the CDF begins the Doctrinal Note by reminding us of the Johannine command to the Apostles: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). But this duty of being sent is not just that of the Apostles and their successors; as the CDF reminds us, it is the duty of everyone to evangelize so that every person may hear the Good News and fulfill personal destiny, which ends in union with God.
The particular challenge to those of us disciples who are involved with the law—as developers and promoters of Catholic legal theory; as teachers; as practitioners; as citizens of two cities—is succinctly captured by this passage in the Doctrinal Note:
Therefore, human freedom is both a resource and a challenge offered to man by God who has created him: an offer directed to the human person’s capacity to know and to love what is good and true. Nothing puts in play human freedom like the search for the good and the true, by inviting it to a kind of commitment which involves fundamental aspects of life. (N. 4)
Lawyers and law teachers often speak about and advocate on behalf of human freedom. This passage just quoted provides valuable insight into the duties of those disciples entrusted with the duty of teaching about authentic human freedom. As the Doctrinal Note further states, it is not an interference with the freedom of others to propose to them the truth which God has revealed and which the Church teaches on the matters that intersect every person’s life. The text, moreover, notes that personalism and individualism, when they remain the source of “truth” for one as the famous dictum from Planned Parenthood v. Casey suggests, misdirect the person from coming to know and embrace the truth about human existence. As the Doctrinal Note states:
Spiritual individualism, on the other hand, isolates a person, hindering him from opening in trust to others—so as both to receive and to bestow the abundant goods which nourish his freedom—and jeopardizes the right to manifest one’s own convictions and opinions in society. (N. 5)
The benefits of evangelization, furthermore, assist all who are encountered by its activity in the world. Evangelization not only enriches the evangelized but also those who do the evangelizing. (N. 6). Indeed, “it is also an enrichment for… the entire Church.” As the Doctrinal Note indicates, the primary motivation for evangelization is “the love of Christ” whom we celebrate during this holy season of Advent and Christmas. (N. 8) He is the one who came to save not just some but all. So, it is our duty to evangelize, to teach in His name without fear or intimidation by others so that all may come to know Him. In this regard, is it not possible to eschew the safe greeting of “happy holidays!” and substitute the following: “may Christ’s peace and the blessings of this season be with you”? As the Doctrinal Note points out:
The Christian spirit has always been animated by a passion to lead all humanity to Christ in the Church. The incorporation of new members into the Church is not the expansion of a power-group, but rather entrance into the network of friendship with Christ which connects heaven and earth, different continents and ages. It is entrance into the gift of communion with Christ, which is “new life” enlivened by charity and the commitment to justice. The Church is the instrument, “the seed and the beginning” of the Kingdom of God; she is not a political utopia. She is already the presence of God in history and she carries in herself the true future, the definitive future in which God will be “all in all”; she is a necessary presence, because only God can bring authentic peace and justice to the world. The Kingdom of God is not—as some maintain today—a generic reality above all religious experiences and traditions, to which they tend as a universal and indistinct communion of all those who seek God, but it is, before all else, a person with a name and a face: Jesus of Nazareth, the image of the unseen God. Therefore, every free movement of the human heart towards God and towards his kingdom cannot but by its very nature lead to Christ and be oriented towards entrance into his Church, the efficacious sign of that Kingdom. (N. 9)
The Doctrinal Note continues by challenging the disciple, who is called to evangelized, not to be paralyzed by inaction prompted by the kind of respect fro religious freedom of the other that makes the disciple “indifferent towards truth and goodness. Indeed, love impels the followers of Christ to proclaim to all the truth which saves.” (N. 10) Evangelization is not simply achieved by public proclamation of the Gospel nor only through works that have public significance; evangelization to which we are called also necessitates personal witness to whomever we meet, which is, as the Doctrinal Note reminds us, a most effective means of spreading the Gospel. (N. 11) This may be easier said than done, but may we take consolation knowing that the Holy Spirit is ever present to fortify us in this calling should we be humble enough to ask God for assistance. To all my friends at MOJ and its readers, I wish you and your loved ones Christ’s peace, and may the blessings of this holy season be with you! RJA sj
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
"The Catholic Church is sometimes reproached with being an 'authoritarian Church," as if the authority -- that is, the right to be listened to -- that she exercises on her faithful in seeing to the preservation of revealed truth and Christian morality were to result in fostering authoritarian trends in the sphere of civil life and activities. May I be allowed to say that those who make such reproaches lack both in theological and historical insight.
"They lack in historical insight because . . .
"They lack in theological insight, for they do not see that the authority of the Church in her own spiritual sphere is nothing else than her bondage to God and to her mission . . . ."
"Be it noted, furthermore, that, as a matter of fact, no government is less authoritarian than the government of the Catholic Church. It governs without police force and physical coercion . . . "
Thus Jacques Maritain (Man and the State [1951], 184-85): Surely a voice to be studied in any serious pursuit of CST. I commend the entire passage to your attention, just in case you're done with your Christmas shopping. As almost every reader of this blog knows, no (lay) mind was more influential than Maritain's in the shaping of the Second Vatican Council's social teaching. Maritain was a major intellectual and spiritual force at work in the Council. Why, then, does Maritain's respect for the Church and her authority sound so alien to so many of us?
The general repudiation of the *concept* of the natural law (and its demands) would occasion a deep sorrow for Maritain who, more than any other (I'm aware of), taught the Church (and others) that the body politic should be lay (not sacral) but bound by (inter alia) the natural law. No scare-quotes around natural law -- not for the pope, the Council, or the faithful.
Can the "Cathlolic legal theory" project survive the scare-quoting of "natural law" that one so often encounters even on this blog? I doubt it. "Human dignity" and confected "natural rights" are, I fear, too weak a fallback reed, at least for purposes of resisting the real evils that Maritain and the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council were clear-sighted about. But if one comes to the discussion table sure -- or even able to be "sure" -- that the Church's definiton of, say, marriage is wrong . . .
The Church proposes.
Uruguay OKs Gay Unions In Latin American First
New York Times
Dec. 18, 2007
MONTEVIDEO (Reuters) - Uruguay's Congress legalized civil
unions for homosexual couples on Tuesday in the first
nationwide law of its kind in Latin America.
Under the new law, gay and straight couples will be
eligible to form civil unions after living together for five
years. They will have rights similar to those granted to
married couples on such matters as inheritance, pensions and
child custody.
Uruguay's Senate passed the bill unanimously after the
lower house approved it last month, a congressional spokesman
said. The country's center-left president is expected to sign
it into law.
Several cities, including Buenos Aires and Mexico City,
already have gay civil union laws on the books. Uruguay's law
would be the first nationwide measure in Latin America, which
is home to about half the world's Roman Catholics.
In Uruguay, couples must register their relationship with
authorities to gain the cohabitation rights, and they will also
be able to formalize the end of a union.
Gay marriage remains illegal in Uruguay, a small South
American country known for its secular streak.
The Catholic Church has said its opposition to gay marriage
is non-negotiable and Catholic politicians have a moral duty to
oppose it.
Earlier this year in Colombia, a group of senators shot
down a landmark gay rights bill at the last minute, using a
procedural vote to back away from the measure.
Thanks to Rob for his posting on the Hutchens article. Rob poses a sensible question about how does the theist, the Christian explain to the secularist that Earth is only a “first creation” rather than a “final thing.” It seems that the secularist would not hear this just from religious believers. After all, the scientific community has explained that our Sun will one day enter a phase in its development where it will extinguish Earth and most likely the outer planets in the Solar System. This strikes me as another (and secular) way of translating the point that Earth is not a “final thing.” We probably will have to wait some time for this to happen, but science has spoken that Earth’s future is limited in time; therefore, the reality that Earth is not a “final thing” should be easily accessible even to the most die-hard secularist. But of course theists, including Christian Catholics, have also relied on secular science to reinforce Church teachings on other matters too, e.g., abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and human sexuality, just to mention a few topics that frequently appear in current day political debates. RJA sj
Growing up, I sang a hymn with the opening line, "This world is not my home I'm just passing through." We don't hear that sentiment much anymore in conversations about Christian stewardship and the environment, but it undoubtedly still shapes many Christians' hesitation about fully embracing the climate change struggle. Writing in the New Atlantis (HT: Touchstone), S.M. Hutchens explains:
The principal difference in the horizons against which orthodox Christianity and earth-piety work is that the earth as it presently exists is the eschatological telos of the latter’s vision, while for the former it is subsumed under the more general category of Creation. The concept of Creation carries with it belief in the biblical God as its Creator, and thus acquires subordination to a purpose in which it exists not as the end of a vision, as it must be to non-theists who believe in no other home, but a means to the accomplishment of a divine purpose that transcends and shall eventually subsume it.
Here, then, is the first inescapable offense Christianity gives to earth-piety: the earth as we know it empirically is not a final thing but a first creation. The second offense is that Christianity’s principal reason for the earth’s existence is to serve the cause of human redemption, to be defined and carried out not by what seems reasonable to man, but the purpose and method of God. The earth is presented to the faith as sacramental, and as sacrament its end is to be consumed so that a second and higher Creation may come. Its end is as the end of man who has been made from and returns to its dust, who must pass away so the Second and Eternal Man can arise to take his place in a new heaven and earth, the old having passed away. It is difficult to exaggerate the breadth and depth of the chasm that exists between biblical religion and earth-piety.
Most (all?) MoJ-ers believe that faith is relevant to political deliberations regarding the common good. But does the passage quoted above suggest that faith's relevance is not all-encompassing? The Christian belief in the earth as a "first creation," rather than as a "final thing," seems practically impossible to translate into secularly accessible terms. Is this an example of a belief that is, in the Christian's exercise of prudential judgment, best left at home when entering the public / political sphere? (Perhaps another example is leaving biblical prophecies about the nation of Israel out of our public deliberations about foreign policy?) And if I'm correct, do we leave these teachings out of our political conversations because of the degree of Christian uncertainty regarding the timing of these events (the divinely ordained end of the earth as we know it; the realization of prophecies regarding Israel), or is there a reason derived from the substance of the teachings that separates them from biblical teachings about the sanctity of life, sexual morality, etc.?
