To be catholic or not to be: Is it still the question? catholic identity and religious education today

Horizons

Volumn 25, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 159-180

  Phan, Peter C ^a  

^a CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84894773713     PISSN: 03609669     EISSN: 20508557     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0360966900031133     Document Type: Article

References (79)

1. Diane Winston, “Campuses Are a Bellwether for Society's Religious Revival,” Chronicle of Higher Education (January 16, 1998): A60.
2. Recent publications have taken up the question of Catholic identity, both on the scholarly and popular levels. To be noted are the following: Francis J. Butler, American Catholic Identity (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1994)
3. William V. D'Antonio, et al., Laity: American and Catholic (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1996)
4. James D. Davidson, et al., The Search for Common Ground: What Unites and Divides American Catholics (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1997)
5. Daniel Donovan, Distinctively Catholic: An Exploration of Catholic Identity (New York: Paulist, 1997)
6. Andrew Greeley, The Catholic Myth: The Behavior and Beliefs of American Catholics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990)
7. John A. Grindel, Whither the U.S. Church? (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991)
8. Robert A. Ludwig, Reconstructing Catholicism for a New Generation (New York: Crossroad, 1996)
9. Timothy G. McCarthy, The Catholic Tradition Before and After Vatican II: 1878–1993, rev. ed. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1998)
10. Patrick H. McNamara, Conscience First, Tradition Second: A Study of Young Catholics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992)
11. Richard Rohr and Joseph Martos, Why Be Catholic? Understanding Our Experience and Tradition (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1989)
12. David L. Schindler, Catholicism and Secularization in American Culture (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1990)
13. Paul Wilkes, The Good Enough Catholic: Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Ballantine, 1996)
14. William O'Malley, Why Be Catholic? (New York: Crossroad, 1994)
15. Cassian Yuhaus, ed., The Catholic Church and American Culture: Reciprocity and Challenge (New York: Paulist, 1990). I am grateful to my colleague William Dinges for information on this bibliography.
16. See Hans Küng, The Church, trans. Ray and Rosaleen Ockenden (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), 296–300.
17. See Avery Dulles, The Catholicity of the Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 185.
18. See also his essay “The Meaning of Catholicism: Adventures of an Idea” in his The Reshaping of Catholicism: Current Challenges in the Theology of Church (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 51–74.
19. Catechism of the Catholic Church (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1994), nos. 830–831.
20. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 830.
21. See Richard McBrien, Catholicism (Minneapolis: Winston, 1981), 1171–1184.
22. McBrien makes a distinction between characteristic and distinctive. What is characteristic may also be found in others, but what is distinctive is found in oneself alone. Characteristic of Catholicism is the insistence on the triumph of grace over sin, tradition and continuity, community, sacramentality, and mediation. Distinctive of Catholicism is its teaching on the Petrine office. Also distinctive is the particular configuration of the various characteristics mentioned above (see Catholicism, 722–23).
23. For older works by McBrien on Catholicity, see his Who Is a Catholic? (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1971)
24. Church: The Continuing Quest (New York: Newman, 1970)
25. Do We Need the Church? (New York: Harper & Row, 1969).
26. See Robert Imbelli, “Vatican II: Twenty Years Later,” Commonweal 109/17 (1982): 522–526.
27. See Dulles, The Catholicity of the Church, 30–105.
28. See also his essay “Changing Concepts of Church Membership” in his The Resilient Church: The Necessity and Limits of Adaptation (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), 133–151.
29. Lumen Gentium, no. 14.
30. English translation from Vatican Council II: The Con-ciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1984).
31. For the canons on the identity of the Christian faithful and those fully in communion with the Catholic Church, see canons 204 and 205 and very helpful commentary by James Provost in The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary (New York: Paulist, 1985), 119–129.
32. Lumen Gentium, no. 8.
33. Lumen Gentium, no. 14. The quoted expressions “in body” and “in heart” are taken from Augustine.
34. Andrew Greeley, The Communal Catholic (New York: Seabury, 1976), 9–10.
35. The Communal Catholic, 13–14.
36. I include this long quotation to give the reader a concrete feel of the “communal Catholic.” Greeley himself has given a schematic definition of the communal Catholic: “1. The communal Catholic is loyal to Catholicism. It is his religious self-definition. He will have no other. 2. The communal Catholic is not angry at the ecclesiastical structure. 3. He does not expect to receive important instruction from that structure on any issue, ranging from sexuality to international economics. 4. Nevertheless, he is interested in and fascinated by the Catholic tradition to which he is loyal, and wishes to understand it better. 5. The communal Catholic seeks sacramental ministry from the church at such times in his life when such ministry seems appropriate and necessary-for some, every day, for others, only at rites of passage like baptism, marriage, and death.” Greeley points out that items 1, 3, 5 have been present with American Catholicism almost since its beginning, whereas items 2 and 4 are new and are promising venues for the church to reach communal Catholics (see The Communal Catholic, 181–82).
37. See Andrew M. Greeley and Mary Greeley Durkin, How to Save the Catholic Church (New York: Viking Penguin, 1984), 3–17.
38. See also Andrew Greeley, American Catholics since the Council: An Unauthorized Report (Chicago: St. Thomas More Press, 1985).
39. Andrew Greeley, The Catholic Myth: The Behavior and Beliefs of American Catholics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990), 4.
40. See Andrew Greeley, The Catholic Myth, 90–96.
41. See Greeley and Durkin, How to Save the Catholic Church, 8.
42. Greeley's solutions include: presentation of sex as sacramental experience, understanding woman as analogue of God, a positive assessment of marriage and family as “comic story,” restoration of the parish as “organic community,” revitalization of worship, fostering of popular devotions, and strengthening of Catholic schools. See in particular part 3 of How to Save the Catholic Church, 105–248.
43. This is true also of Protestants. Evaluating the report of the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches (Uppsala, 1968), Avery Dulles writes: “The concept of catholicity in this document may be described as qualitative rather then quantitative. Gone is the traditional stress on geographical extension…. No effort, moreover, is made to exploit catholicity as a visible mark of the true Church” (The Catholicity of the Church, 26).
44. See Lumen Gentium, nos. 15–16.
45. Note that recent studies have shown a tendency in Church members substantially to overreport their religious attendance. See Stanley Presser and Linda Stinson, “Data Collection Mode and Social Desirability Bias in Self-Reported Religious Attendance,” American Sociological Review 63/1 (1998): 137–45. The authors conclude that “[r]espondents in conventional surveys substantially overreport their religious attendance. Apparently, misreporting error is caused mainly by social desirability pressures associated with interviewer-administration. The error can be minimized through either self-administration or asking about time-use” (144–45). I am grateful to Dr. Stinson for drawing my attention to this fact.
46. See Unitatis Redintegratio, nos. 14–24.
47. Unitatis Redintegratio, no. 3, emphasis added.
48. See the structure of Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Congregation for the Clergy authored, General Directory for Catechesis (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 85. The Directory lists four fundamental tasks of catechesis: promoting knowledge of the faith, liturgical celebration, moral formation, and teaching to pray.
49. For a brief discussion of religious education after Vatican II see Gabriel Moran, “Religious Education after Vatican II” in David Efroymson and John Raines, eds., Open Catholicism: The Tradition at Its Best, Essays in Honor of Gerard Sloyan (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 151–66. Moran singles out three elements of religious education: catechetics, worship, and service.
50. I am grateful to my colleague William Dinges for sharing with me the results of the research project which will be published in the near future. According to the survey, religious identity for young adult Catholics is shaped by three basic elements: belief in God's presence in the sacraments, including the “real presence” in the Eucharist; social action to help the poor; and devotion to Mary. Least important are specific moral teachings and specific rules about the priesthood. Patrick H. McNamara, in his 1992 study of young American Catholics, finds that “for the remaining two-thirds, ‘being Catholic’ was simply a matter of choice. Sometimes coming across as choosing specific teachings while rejecting others. This mode of choosing lies at the heart of the contemporary form, for younger Catholics, of Catholic self-identification” (Conscience First, Tradition Second, 158).
51. For recommendations from the conservative side, see George A. Kelly, Keeping the Church Catholic with John Paul II (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1990), 261–285.
52. I prescind here from the possibility and legitimacy of “dissent” from the teaching of the Magisterium in non-infallible teachings. For helpful discussions of this issue, see André Naud, Un Aggiornamento et son éclipse: la liberié de la pensée dans la foi et dans I'Église (Québec: Fides, 1996)
53. Richard R. Gaillardetz, Teaching with Authority: A Theology of the Magisterium in the Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997)
54. Francis A. Sullivan, Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church (New York: Paulist, 1983)
55. Francis A. Sullivan, Creative Fidelity: Weighing and Interpreting Documents of the Magisterium (New York: Paulist, 1996).
56. I am inspired by Karl Rahner's “indirect method” as it is deployed in his Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. William Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1982).
57. See my “Cultural Pluralism and the Unity of the Sciences: Karl Rahner's Transcendental Theology as a Test Case,” Salesianum 51 (1989): 785–809.
58. I am indebted to Cardinal John Henry Newman's An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1973), first published in 1870. Studies on Newman's epistemology are abundant.
59. For recent studies, note the following: Gerard Magill, “Interpreting Moral Doctrine: Newman on Conscience and Law,” Horizons 20/1 (1993): 7–22
60. Jeffrey D. Marlett, “Conversion Methodology and the Case of Cardinal Newman,” Theological Studies 58 (1997): 669–685
61. Linda L. Stinson, Process and Conscience: Toward a Theology of Human Emergence (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986)
62. Gerard Casey, Natural Reason: A Study of the Notions of Inference, Assent, Intuition, and First Principles in the Philosophy of John Henry Cardinal Newman (New York: Peter Lang, 1984).
63. I am in broad agreement with George Lindbeck's view of religion as a cultural-linguistic system, though I think he unduly underestimates the cognitive and expressive dimensions of doctrines. See his The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984).
64. Greeley and Durkin speak of four basic elements of the Catholic heritage: sacramental experience, the analogical imagination, the comic story, and organic community (see How to Save the Catholic Church, 33–102).
65. With regard to the analogical imagination, see also The Catholic Myth, especially chapter 3 (34–64), entitled “Do Catholics Imagine Differently?” Greeley takes the analogical imagination as the root characteristic of Catholics. I agree with Greeley that Catholics tend to imagine “analogously” but I do not think that this is specific of Catholics. The analogical imagination works as powerfully among the Orthodox and the Anglicans, for example, as among Catholics; by the same token, the “dialectical imagination” is no less in use among Catholics than among Protestants. My point is that Catholic identity is formed not by their differences from others as long as these remain superficial but by their deep structures, even though these may be shared extensively by others. This is not an idle point, since it allows Catholics to strengthen and nourish their own identity in a truly ecumenical way. In this way, ecumenical dialogue is not seen as diluting Catholic identity but fortifying it.
66. Newman, Grammar of Assent, 492.
67. For an attempt to understand how the doctrine of the Trinity can confer unity to Christian doctrine, see Peter C. Phan, “Now That I Know How to Teach, What Do I Teach? In Search of the Unity of Faith in Religious Education,” Salesianum 60 (1998): 125–145.
68. See Unitatis Redintegratio, no. 11.
69. Frans Jozef van Beeck, Catholic Identity after Vatican II: Three Types of Faith in the One Church (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1983).
70. Catholic Identity after Vatican II: Three Types of Faith in the One Church, 24–34.
71. Catholic Identity after Vatican II: Three Types of Faith in the One Church, 34–45.
72. Catholic Identity after Vatican II: Three Types of Faith in the One Church, 57, emphasis in original.
73. Catholic Identity after Vatican II: Three Types of Faith in the One Church, 61–71.
74. Daniel Donovan, in his Distinctively Catholic: An Exploration of Catholic Identity, devotes the last chapter to the theme of being a Catholic today. As to what makes a Catholic today, Donovan singles out our common humanity which is shared with others; an affirmation of the presence and action of God in the life and destiny of Jesus; living in the presence of God; participating actively in the life of the church, especially its eucharistic and other sacramental life; giving priority to grace; living the vocation of discipleship; celebrating forgiveness and reconciliation; and practicing the virtue of hope. However, for Donovan, “what is perhaps most distinctive of us as Catholics is our membership in the church with everything that it involves in terms of liturgy and sacraments, of mutual help and support” (210). Richard Rohr and Joseph Martos emphasize tradition as the single most characteristic feature of Roman Catholicism. They also offer very helpful reflections on how one can be Catholic in America today.
75. See their Why Be Catholic? 69–110.
76. For a discussion of the logic of interreligious dialogue that is open to the truths and values of other religions and remains faithful to the claims of one's faith, see Peter C. Phan, “Are There Other ‘Saviors’ for Other People? A Discussion of the Problem of the Universal Significance and Uniqueness of Jesus the Christ” in Peter C. Phan, ed., Christianity and the Wider Ecumenism (New York: Paragon House, 1990), 163–180
77. Peter C. Phan, “The Claim of Uniqueness and Universality in Interreligious Dialogue,” Indian Theological Studies 31/1 (1994): 44–66.
78. For a discussion of the tension between religious pluralism and theology and religious education, see Peter C. Phan, “Multiculturalism, Church, and the University,” Religious Education 90/1 (1994): 8–29
79. Peter C. Phan, “Cultural Diversity: A Blessing or a Curse for Theology and Spirituality?” Louvain Studies 19 (1994): 195–211.