The Future of Catholic Theology: A Question

Abstract

The Future of Catholic Theology:A Question Joseph T. Lienhard S.J. One who predicts the future inevitably sees it as an extension of the present; radical innovations and ruptures cannot be foreseen. The railroad barons of the nineteenth century might have anticipated faster coast-to-coast trains; they could not have foreseen that, a century later, most passengers would cross the country through the air. Secretaries in early twentieth-century offices might have looked forward to more efficient typewriters; they could not have foreseen that their successors would sit in front of computer screens. Predicting the future of theology could be just as risky. But theology is not technology; it lives as the continuation of its own past. Revelation ended with the death of the last apostle; no third testament will be discovered and canonized. Tradition will continue to mean what has been handed down and received. And yet theology is carried out by living theologians, who do more than hand on the past: they reflect on the meaning of Scripture and Tradition for their own age, and on the message that the faith can offer that age. Racism, feminism, colonialism, environmentalism, for example, have entered theological reflection only in recent decades, at least as featured topics. In other words, theology is in continuity with its past in a way that other fields are not. I want to read a theologian who has mastered Augustine and Aquinas; I do not want to go to a doctor who follows the teachings of Galen. This essay, which is admittedly impressionistic, will fall into three parts. The first is an overview of Catholic theological eras in the past century and a half, roughly preconciliar, conciliar, and postconciliar. The second is an interpretation of these eras using categories on the meaning of "being" drawn from the work of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. The third presents some thoughts on the present state of theology and the directions it may be taking. [End Page 97] Three Eras of Catholic Theology The "Pian" Century, 1846–1958 As an exercise, reflection on the past century and a half may be enlightening. A helpful starting point is the "Pian century," if "century" is taken a little broadly: from the election of Pius IX in 1846 to the death of Pius XII in 1958. (I lay a certain claim to the era since Pius XII died during my thirty-day retreat as a first-year Jesuit novice.) The era is also bracketed by two ecumenical councils, Vatican I (1869–70) and Vatican II (1962–65). The century may have been the high-water mark of papal authority, although that statement could easily be debated. The tone of much of the century was defensive, stoutly affirming Catholic faith and teaching as a barricade against rationalism, modernism, and historicism. It was the century of the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (1864) against the many errors of his time,1 the decree Lamentabili Sane promulgated under Pius X (1907) against the errors of the Modernists,2 and the encyclical Humani Generis promulgated by Pius XII (1950) against new tendencies in sacred science—that is, theology.3 The Pian century was also a Marian century, bracketed by the definition of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in 18544 and the definition of the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1950.5 Marian piety flourished, encouraged by the apparitions of Mary at Lourdes in France (1858) and Fatima in Portugal (1917). Theology, in that era, was dominated by neo-Scholasticism, encouraged by Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Aeterni Patris,6 which mandated the teaching of Christian philosophy in Catholic schools according to the mind of St. Thomas Aquinas. The characteristics of that century are easy to enumerate: neo-Scholastic theology, taught in Latin in Rome and in most seminaries, often as much Aristotelian as Thomistic, from textbooks written in Latin by [End Page 98] professors at the pontifical universities in Rome; resistance to, and anxiety about, modern culture, exemplified in the Syllabus of Errors and the condemnation of modernism; fear of post-Kantian historicism, especially when applied to the Bible; and the intellectual near-paralysis in biblical studies that...