The Church in Pluralist Society: Social and Political Roles
172
The Church in Pluralist Society: Social and Political Roles
172eBook
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Overview
Vatican II opened new pathways to engagement with societies shaped by modernity. Its project could be read as an attempt to interpret the stance of the church in relation to the whole project of modernity. The fundamental presumption of this collection of essays is that it is timely, indeed imperative, to keep alive the question of the church's self-understanding in its journey alongside "the complex, often rebellious, always restless mind of the modern world." Cornelius J. Casey and Fáinche Ryan have assembled some of the most prominent commentators on ecclesiastical and social-political engagements from the fields of theology, political philosophy, social theory, and cultural criticism. The contributors present differing perspectives on the role of the church. Some argue that pluralism is here to stay. Others point out that the liberal pluralism of contemporary society is aggressively powered by global corporate consumerism. This book, with its variety of voices, explores these issues largely from within the Catholic tradition. The role of the church in a pluralist society is a narrative that is being written by many people at many different levels of the church.
Contributors: J. Bryan Hehir, Terry Eagleton, Patrick J. Deneen, Hans Joas, William T. Cavanaugh, Massimo Faggioli, Fáinche Ryan, Patrick Riordan, and Cornelius J. Casey
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780268106430 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Notre Dame Press |
| Publication date: | 11/30/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 172 |
| File size: | 384 KB |
About the Author
Cornelius J. Casey was the inaugural director of the Loyola Institute, Trinity College Dublin.
Fáinche Ryan is the director of the Loyola Institute, Trinity College Dublin. She is author and editor of a number of books, including The Eucharist: What Do We Believe?
Cornelius J. Casey was the inaugural director of the Loyola Institute, Trinity College Dublin.
Fáinche Ryan is the director of the Loyola Institute, Trinity College Dublin. She is author and editor of a number of books, including The Eucharist: What Do We Believe?
Read an Excerpt
Fashioning the world anew is what the church-world question is about. To fulfill this task the other two resources of Catholic thought are needed. The church-state question emerged only slightly later than the church- world encounter. As the early Christian community took shape in the context of the Roman Empire, tension and conflict seemed inevitable. The problem lay in the way each entity, empire and church, defined its identity. Rome, the dominant political force in the ancient world, was solidly tied to the classical idea that the polis was the supreme political and legal authority in its expansive territory. Other aspects of society, the family, the economy, and religion, were to be subordinated to the polis. This conception touched the lives of individuals and families directly; it involved military service for the empire and also emperor worship. The church, based on the understanding of its identity—including the dictum that “we must obey God rather than men”—brought two claims against the scope of the emperor’s authority and legitimacy. The first was a claim of conscience; the early church was convinced that dictates of the state were subject to review by the higher wisdom they found in the Word of God. To make the claim was dangerous; for many it meant martyrdom. But it posed an alternative voice for one community of Roman citizens, and this was profoundly destabilizing for the state. The second claim was an assertion of the public identity of the church. It claimed public space within the empire because it under- stood its origin, destiny, and mission to be derived independently of the state. The classical statement of the claim to independence and public identity was Pope Gelasius’s letter to the emperor Anastasius, defining the “two swords” theory of political and spiritual authority. Unlike the theological discourse on the church-world question, best exemplified in Augustine’s City of God, that on church and state quickly took the form of institutional and legal arguments, rooted in theological premises to Church-World and Church-State 5 be sure but focused on line-drawing issues of legitimacy and authority and law. While the church-world question has been about the theological- moral imperatives defining the mission and ministry of the church, the church-state agenda had two principal topics: first, how church and state should collaborate in the service of a common constituency, the person who is both citizen and Christian; and second, how to defend the church’s existence, and freedom to function, when the state has assumed a hos- tile or dominating posture. From the empire to the medieval common- wealth to the modern state, church-state issues have remained central for Catholicism. Both the church-state and church-world questions have had a longer history than what has come to be called in the past century Catholic social teaching. Dating from the pontificate of Leo XIII (1878–1903) through Pope Francis (2013– ), the era of social teaching has drawn on the deeper categories of Catholic theology and jurisprudence and developed a distinctive style. The style has been shaped by the papacy; the social teaching is broader than the papal teaching but has found its principal expression in a stream of papal encyclicals and addresses. Over the course of the past 125 years these papal letters to the church and the world manifest two characteristics: an expanding scope of subject matter and a changing mode of discourse. The social tradition began focused on the plight of nations addressing social justice and socioeconomic issues; this focus consumed the first half century of the encyclical tradition. In the next seventy-five years both the issues addressed and the level of analysis changed substantially. The level of analysis moved beyond the nation-state and has increasingly addressed the international system in the forms it has assumed since the end of World War II. This broader horizon includes nuclear weapons and modern warfare, human rights (including the right to religious freedom), international social justice, and—most recently—the environment. In expanding its range, post–Vatican II social teaching has increasingly moved from the principally philosophical style of analysis and expression (using natural law as its method) to a mix of philosophical and theological ideas and discourse. This more evangelical style has both deepened the analysis within the ecclesial community and narrowed its audience to some degree. The discussion of which categories should shape the church’s address to the world is an ongoing, useful one in Catholicism today.
(Excerpted from chapter 1)
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Church-World and Church-State: The Journey since Vatican II by J. Bryan Hehir
2. Against Pluralism by Terry Eagleton
3. Hegemonic Liberalism and the End of Pluralism by Patrick J. Deneen
4. The Church in a World of Options by Hans Joas
5. The Church’s Place in a Consumer Society: The Hegemony of Optionality by William T. Cavanaugh
6. The Established Church Dilemma by Massimo Faggioli
7. “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine”: The Twenty-First Century by Fáinche Ryan
8. The Secular Is Not Scary by Patrick Riordan, SJ
Epilogue by Cornelius J. Casey
Contributors
Index