Henri de Lubac, S.J. (1896-1991), in an undated photo.
Rome Newsroom, Apr 1, 2023 / 09:00 am (CNA).
French bishops have voted to open the sainthood cause of 20th-century theologian Henri de Lubac.
The French bishops’ conference announced on March 31 that the opening of de Lubac’s cause for beatification was approved during the bishops’ plenary assembly in Lourdes.
De Lubac is considered by many to be one of the most important theologians of the 20th century. The French Jesuit priest was a leading thinker in the ressourcement school of thought that encouraged a return to the writings of the Church Fathers in Catholic theology. He also founded the Communio journal together with Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar.
Some of his best-known books are “The Splendor of the Church,” “The Christian Faith,” “Catholicisme,” “The Drama of Atheist Humanism,” and “The Motherhood of the Church.”
Born on Feb. 20, 1896, in the northern French city of Cambrai, de Lubac grew up in a traditionally Catholic family with five siblings. After his family moved to Lyon, de Lubac studied at a Jesuit school before making the decision to enter the Jesuit order in 1913.
His novitiate studies in England were interrupted by World War I the following year when he was drafted into the French army. He served in the army from 1914 to 1919, sustaining a head injury that caused him pain for the rest of his life.
De Lubac was ordained a priest in 1927 and began teaching theology at the Catholic University of Lyon.
During World War II, he resisted the ideologies of Nazism and anti-Semitism. He co-founded Sources Chrétiennes, a collection of patristic texts published in Greek or Latin with a French translation.
In 1950, de Lubac was banned from teaching at his Catholic university for a period of eight years. He continued to write and was named a member of the Institut de France in 1958.
Pope John XXIII appointed de Lubac as a member of the Second Vatican Council’s preparatory commission in 1959. De Lubac later participated in the council as a peritus, or theological expert, his writings are seen as having been influential in the texts that emerged from the council.
Pope John Paul II named De Lubac a cardinal in 1983 at the age of 86. He died five years later in Paris on Sept. 4, 1991.
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CNA Staff, Sep 26, 2020 / 06:01 am (CNA).- Catholic leaders in Russia are expressing concern about a bill that would restrict the ability of Russian religious ministers who receive religious education abroad to teach or preach in Russia.
The bill calls for “recertification” in Russian educational institutions of pastors and “personnel of religious organisations” who have received religious education abroad, ostensibly with the goal of preventing the spread of “extremist ideology” from abroad, the Barnabas Fund reports.
The bill was proposed in the Federal Assembly and approved for first reading Sept. 22, but the reading has been postponed.
Father Kirill Gorbunov, vicar general for the Archdiocese of the Mother of God at Moscow, told RIA Novosti, according to Asia News, that priests ministering from Russia who were educated elsewhere should be informed about the history, culture and religious traditions of Russia, and should not disseminate extremist ideas in their preaching.
However, he said it is the Church’s responsibility to regulate this, not the state’s— and the Catholic Church has no tolerance for extremist ideas, he said.
The attempt by the Kremlin to regulate what is being taught to religious leaders “does not provide for effective solutions, rather it would lead to inextricable contradictions.”
In addition to Catholics, Russsian Buddhists typically study abroad as part of their formation, Asia News reported.
The bill comes amid several years of deteriorating religious freedom in Russia.
In 2016, Russian president Vladimir Putin approved a new set of laws that would restrict evangelization and missionary activity to officially registered Church buildings and worship areas.
Anti-terrorism measures, catalyzed by the 2002 Federal Law on Countering Extremist Activity, have given Russian police powers to disrupt private worship services, to arrest and detain individuals handing out unapproved religious materials, and to outlay any publish preaching without prior approval from Russian authorities.
In 2017, the country’s Supreme Court banned Jehovah’s Witnesses as an extremist group. Judges ordered the closure of the ecclesial community’s Russian headquarters and almost 400 local chapters, and the seizure of its property.
As of August 2020, over a thousand homes have been searched, nearly 400 Jehovah’s Witnesses have been charged, a few dozen convicted, and ten are currently serving time, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom reports.
Before Communism came to Russia, a majority of the country’s citizens were Eastern Orthodox Christians. During the reign of communism, the government attempted to destroy the Church by blowing up buildings and killing priests, religious sisters, and anyone who resisted them.
Once the government gained control of the Russian Orthodox Church, they appointed their own agents as hierarchy, who would then turn people in who came to the Church seeking baptism.
The seeds of distrust planted at that time still run deep, and the Russian Orthodox Church maintains its ties to the government today.
On Sept. 16, USCIRF held a virtual hearing on the state of religious freedom in Russia and Central Asia, warning that “vague and problematic” definitions of “extremism” in Russian law give the authorities wide latitude to interfere in the religious sphere.
“What’s the Eucharist?” Kent Shi, a 25-year-old Harvard graduate student, asked that question when he attended eucharistic adoration for the first time. The answer put him on a path to conversion. / Julia Monaco | CNA
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Apr 16, 2022 / 09:03 am (CNA).
One convert’s journey to Catholicism began with an invitation to an ice-cream social.
Another says he instantly believed in the Real Presence the moment someone explained what the round object was that everyone was staring at during eucharistic adoration.
For a third, the poems of T.S. Eliot — and a seemingly random encounter with a priest on a public street — led to deeper questions about truth and faith.
Their paths differed but led them to the same destination: St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they are among 31 people set to be fully initiated into the Catholic Church during the Easter vigil Mass on Saturday, April 16.
That number of initiates is a record high for St. Paul’s, a nearly century-old Romanesque-style brick church whose bell tower looms over Harvard Square.
A scheduling backlog caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is partly responsible for the size of this year’s group of catechumens (non-baptized) and candidates (baptized non-Catholics.) But Father Patrick J. Fiorillo, the parochial vicar at St. Paul’s, believes there’s more to it than that.
“There’s definitely a significant segment of people who started thinking more deeply about their lives and faith during COVID-19,” Fiorillo said. “So, coming out of Covid has given them the occasion to take the next step and move forward.”
Fiorillo is the undergraduate chaplain for the Harvard Catholic Center, a chaplaincy based at St. Paul’s for undergraduate and graduate students at Harvard University and other academic institutions in the area. This year, 17 of the 31 initiates are Harvard students.
“Everybody assumes that, because this is the Harvard Catholic Center, that everybody here is very smart and therefore has a very highly intellectual orientation towards their faith,” Fiorillo told CNA.
“That is definitely true of some people. But I would say the majority are not here because of intellectually thinking their way into the faith. Some are. But the majority are just kind of ordinary life circumstances, just seeking, questioning the ways of the world, and just trying to get in touch with this desire on their heart for something more,” he said.
Fiorillo says welcoming converts into the Church at the Easter vigil is one of the highlights of his ministry.
“It’s an honor. It gives me hope just seeing all this new life and new faith here. So much in one place,” he said.
“When I tell other people about it, it gives them hope to hear that many young people are still converting to Catholicism, and they’re doing it in a place as secular as Cambridge.”
Prior to the Easter vigil, CNA spoke with five of St. Paul’s newest converts. Here are their stories:
‘This is what I’ve been looking for’
Katie Cabrera, a 19-year-old Harvard freshman, told CNA that she was excited to experience the “transformative power of Christ through his body and blood” at Mass for the first time at the Easter vigil.
A native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, she said she was baptized as a child and comes from a family of Dominican immigrants. Her father, who grew up in an extremely impoverished area, lacked a formal education, but always kept the traditions of the Catholic faith close to him in order to persevere in difficult times.
Her father’s love for her and his Catholic faith deeply inspired Cabrera, and served as an anchor for her faith throughout her life.
Growing up, however, Cabrera attended a non-denominational church with her mother. Because she felt the church’s teachings lacked an emphasis on God’s love and mercy, Cabrera eventually left.
“Even though I Ieft, I always knew that I believed in God,” Cabrera said. “So, I was at a place where I felt kind of lost, because I always had that faith, but I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“There was a void that existed in my heart,” says Katie Cabrera, a Harvard undergraduate student. She discovered what was missing when she started to get involved with the Harvard Catholic Center. Courtesy of Katie Cabrera
After she arrived at Harvard, she accepted a friend’s invitation to attend an ice-cream social at the Harvard Catholic Center — “and that was like, sort of, how it all started,” she told CNA.
Once she was added to the email list for the center’s events, she felt a “calling” that she “really wanted to officially become Catholic” after many difficult years without a faith community.
Catholic doctrine about the sacraments was no hurdle for Cabrera, as she credits Fiorillo with explaining the faith well.
“There was a void that existed in my heart,” she said. “As soon as Father Patrick started teaching about marriage and family, theology of the body, and the sacraments, I was like, ‘This is what I’ve been looking for my whole life.’”
‘What’s the Eucharist?’
“What is that thing on the thing?”
Kent Shi laughs when he recalls how perplexed he was the first time he attended eucharistic adoration at St. Mary’s of the Assumption in Cambridge.
Someone helpfully explained that what Shi was looking at was the Eucharist displayed inside a monstrance.
“What’s the Eucharist?” he wanted to know.
For many non-Catholics considering entering the Catholic Church, the Real Presence can be a major obstacle. But Kent Shi, a Harvard graduate student, says that once the Eucharist was explained to him, he instantly believed. Julia Monaco | CNA
For many non-Catholics considering entering the Catholic Church, the Real Presence can be a major obstacle.
Not Shi. He says that once the Eucharist was explained to him that day, he instantly believed.
Shi, 25, told CNA that he considered himself an agnostic for most of his life, meaning he neither believed nor disbelieved in God.
Between his first and second years as a graduate student in Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, however, he accepted Christ and started attending services at a Presbyterian church.
One day in the summer of 2021, a crucifix outside St. Paul’s that Shi says he “must have passed multiple times a week for months and never noticed” caught his eye, and deeply moved him.
Shortly after, he accepted a friend’s invitation to attend eucharistic adoration at St. Mary’s even though he “didn’t know what adoration meant.” Unaware of what he was about to walk into, Shi asked a friend what the dress code was for adoration. His friend replied, “Respectful.”
And so, respectfully dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks, Shi sat in the front row with his friend, only a few feet from the monstrance. That’s when the questions began.
It wasn’t long after that encounter that Shi began attending Mass at St. Paul’s and the parish’s RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) program. Shi asked CNA readers to pray for him and his fellow RCIA classmates.
“There’s a lot of prodigal sons and daughters here, so we would very much appreciate that,” he said, “especially me.”
Poetry and art opened the door
For Loren Brown, choosing to attend a secular university like Harvard proved to be “providential.”
The 25-year-old junior from La Center, Washington, said he comes from a “lapsed” Catholic family and wasn’t baptized.
He didn’t think much about the faith until the spring semester of his freshman year, when, he says, Catholic friends of his “began to question my lack of commitment to faith.”
Later, when students were sent home to take classes virtually due to the pandemic, he had time to reflect and began to read some of the books they’d recommended to him. The poetry of T.S. Eliot (his favorite set of poems being “Four Quartets”) and the “Confessions” by St. Augustine, in particular, “pulled me towards the faith,” he said.
Brown describes his conversion as a “gradual process” which backed him into a “logical corner.” But a chance meeting with a priest also played a pivotal role.
One day in the summer of 2021 while walking back to his dormitory he encountered a man wearing a priestly collar outside St. Paul’s Church on busy Mount Auburn Street.
It was Father George Salzmann, O.S.F.S., graduate chaplain of the Harvard Catholic Center.
“He asked me how I was doing, what I was studying, and we immediately found a common interest in St. Augustine,” Brown told CNA.
“You know, there’s this great window of St. Augustine inside St. Paul’s and you should come see it,” Brown remembers the gregarious priest telling him. Salzmann wound up giving Brown a brief tour of the church, which was completed in 1923.
Harvard undergraduate student Loren Brown describes his conversion to Catholicism as a “gradual process” which backed him into a “logical corner.” But a chance meeting with a priest also played a pivotal role. Courtesy of Loren Brown
The next week, Brown found himself sitting in a pew for his first Sunday Mass at St. Paul’s. He hasn’t missed a Sunday since, a routine that ultimately led him to join the RCIA program that fall.
Brown says he now realizes that coming to Harvard was about more than majoring in education.
“What I wanted out of Harvard has completely changed,” he said. “Instead of an education that prepares me for a job or a career, I want one that forms me as a moral being and a human.”
‘I can’t do this alone. Please help me.’
Verena Kaynig-Fittkau, 42, is a German immigrant who came to the U.S. 10 years ago with her husband to do her post-doctoral research in biomedical image processing at Harvard’s engineering school.
The couple settled in Cambridge, where they had their first child. Two subsequent pregnancies ended in miscarriage, however. That second loss was overwhelming for Kaynig-Fittkau, who says she was raised as a “secular Lutheran” without any strong faith.
“It broke me and a lot of my pride and made me realize that I can’t do things by myself,” she told CNA.
She found herself on knees one Thanksgiving, pleading with God. “I can’t do this alone,” she said. “Please help me.”
She says God answered her prayer by introducing her to another mother, who she met at a playground. She was a Christian who later invited Kaynig-Fittkau to attend services at a Presbyterian church in Somerville, Massachusetts.
In that church, there was a lot of emphasis on “faith alone,” she said. But Kaynig-Fittkau, who now works for Adobe and is the mother of two girls, kept questioning if her faith was deep enough.
A YouTube video about the Eucharist by Father Mike Schmitz sent Verena Kaynig-Fittkau on a path toward converting to Catholicism. Courtesy of Verena Kaynig-Fittkau
Then one day she stumbled upon a YouTube video titled “The hour that will change your life,” in which Father Mike Schmitz, a Catholic priest from the Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota, known for his “Bible in a Year” podcast, speaks about the Eucharist.
Intrigued, she began watching similar videos by other Catholic speakers, including Father Casey Cole, O.F.M., Bishop Robert Barron, Matt Fradd, and Scott Hahn, each of whom drew her closer and closer to the Catholic faith.
Familiar with St. Paul’s from her days as a Harvard researcher and lecturer, she decided to attend Mass there one day, and made an appointment before she left to meet with Fiorillo.
When they met, Fiorillo answered all of her questions from what she calls “a list of Protestant problems with Catholicism.” She entered the RCIA program three weeks later.
Recalling her first experience attending eucharistic adoration, she said it felt “utterly weird” to be worshiping what she describes as “this golden sun.”
A conversation with a local Jesuit priest helped her better understand the Eucharist, however. Now she finds that spending time before the Blessed Sacrament is “amazing.”
“I am really, really, really excited for the Easter vigil,” Kaynig-Fittkau said. “I can’t wait, I have a big smile on my face just thinking about it.”
The rosary brought him peace
Another catechumen at St. Paul’s this year is Kyle Richard, 37, who lives in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston and works in a technology startup company downtown.
Although he grew up in a culturally Catholic hub in Louisiana, his parents left the Catholic faith and joined a Full Gospel church. Richard said he found the church “intimidating,” which led him eventually to leave Christianity altogether.
When Richard was in his mid-twenties, his father battled pancreatic cancer. Before he died, he expressed a wish to rejoin the Catholic Church. He never did confess his sins to a priest or receive the Anointing of the Sick, Richard recalls sadly. But years later, his non-believing son would remember his father’s yearning to return to the Church.
“I kind of filed that away for a while, but I never really let it go,” he said.
While Kyle Richard’s father was dying from pancreatic cancer, he returned to the Catholic faith, which made a lasting impression on his non-believing son. Courtesy of Kyle Richard
Initially, Richard moved even farther away from the Church. He said he became an atheist who thought that Christianity was simply “something that people used to just soothe themselves.”
Years later, while going through a divorce, he had a change of heart.
Feeling he ought to give Christianity “a fair shot,” he began saying the rosary in hopes of settling his anxiety. The prayer brought him peace, and became a gateway to the Catholic faith.
Before long, he was reading the Bible on the Vatican’s website, downloading prayer apps, and meditating on scripture.
A Google search brought him to St. Paul’s. Joining the RCIA program, he feels, was a continuation of his father’s expressed desire on his deathbed more than a decade ago.
“I think he would be proud, especially because he was born on April 16th and that is the date of the Easter vigil,” he said.
From Wikipedia, we learn that, “just before and during the conciliar years, with the blessing of his order, de Lubac also began to write and publish books and articles in defense of the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, his older friend and fellow Jesuit, who had died in 1955.”
Regarding the theo-poetry of Chardin, some nuance does appear in de Lubac’s “The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin” (1962 in French, then 1967 in English, and Image in 1968). For example, in Chapter 9 (fn. 84):
“From [a letter dated 1919] is derived Pere Teilhard’s bold, if sometimes oversimplified [!], synthesis between Christianity and evolution. At the same time he rejects any Concordism between science and religion [not quite the same as the Faith!], which are ‘two different meridians on the mental sphere’; what he wishes to establish between them is a ’coherence,’ for ‘these two different meridians must necessarily meet somewhere at a pole or common vision.’” [Then, 1955], ‘Christ, by giving direction to the world, makes evolution possible.’”
Where Chardin sought harmony between religion and science—and which de Lubac celebrates—he then imposes “[converging] meridians on the mental sphere” of “co-herence” where others—still with lesser and finite human minds—see con-fusion. Too bad some enthusiasts in collars folded Chardin’s water-colored theo-poetry into the Council Documents, here and there….
Although the author of some forty books, de Lubac apparently never was awarded a doctorate in anything. A very good sign! Too many Jesuits (and others) devolve into their sometimes-mutant academic credentials and, therefore, only rarely achieve sainthood (said to me by a Catholic Jesuit!).
So, as for de Lubac, a great and even saintly gift to the real, perennial and universal Catholic Church! Probably unlike the harmonized co-herence/con-fusion of the evolutionary, “expert,” Jesuitical and synodal “synthesis”?
And at the risk of being dismissed as only an uncredentialed dabbler in lofty matters, may yours truly at least ask whether the clue to emptying churches is to be found in a one-liner de Lubac offers about de Chardin? Was de Chardin’s thought-world less about cosmic evolution than about something else which now applies to latter-generation apostles of the “spirit of Vatican II”….
De Lubac notes de Chardin’s “own mystical sense, sharpened by his contacts with the East. He hoped for a universal confrontation of such clarity that it would illuminate for the minds of all men in all parts of the world the ‘essence of Christianity” (“The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin,” Image 1968, Ch. 20, p. 271).
“Sharpened? Clarity? Essence of Christianity”?
Is the embedded contradiction (a signpost of Western “clarity”—contradictions and not wraparound “convergence”?) the Teilhardian presupposition that contradictions, themselves, are really only cerebral counterpoints–that like Yin and Yang the Western understanding that black and white and even good and evil (!) can be heightened and then harmonized without confusion or rejection of either? That “evil” is mostly a counterpoint and not the negation (!) of the “good”?
That what are only countervailing positions can be heightened and “fused” without loss of either? That the “natural” and the “supernatural” and creature (lower case) and Creator are not categorically different as under the curiously-backward Western notion of “TRANSCENDENCE”? That the “abstract” is only a position within what is evolutionary and “concrete”? That doctrinal orthodoxy is to be retained but reconceptualized as the forerunner of open-ended (so to speak) pastoral praxis? That “time is greater than space”?
While an exaggerated dualism between nature and grace has crept into later Western thought (as de Chardin tries to correct and as de Lubac shows), might we at least wonder at the limits (there are limits?) to the ideological and even Teilhardian optimism tucked into parts of Gaudium et Spes? And, as imposed by the harmonizing word games of synodal “experts,” on ecclesiology and morality (new counterpoints to our unenlightened Western moral absolutes)?
Yet another attempt to provide credence to the deconstructionist Jesuit machine and the mid-century council. Its the “lets pretend” school of that 20th century ended well for Roman Catholicism. Anyone who defends the indefensible Chardin requires analysis but not from the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
De Lubac was a notable contributor to 20th century theological enterprise but I am unaware of his heroic virtue. His marginal orthodoxy would appear to tank the thought of canonization but in the current climate, compared to what is presently transpiring he might well get the hat.
“de Lubac writes, ‘[I]f God had wanted . . . he could have not called this being that he gave us to see him.’ In other words, God could have created intellectual beings without calling them to the beatific vision” (S H Kirby). Thanks for the reference. A difficult issue.
Pius XII in defense of God’s freedom [HG] seems to base his teaching on God’s omnipotence. Consequently, it might be asked, Why would he create us in his own image, one that reflects the divine nature and whose teleological end would find its perfection in that end, the beatific vision?
Perhaps de Lubac’s orthodox position that grace cannot be intrinsic to the order of nature answers the question of God’s freedom. Grace is a pure gift. Man must willfully participate in its reception despite the inscribed knowledge [in man’s heart]. A question remains, whether omnipotence as preserved in HG, a seeming disruption of the ordering of nature – is required to defend that freedom? It seems that while HG is correctly stated from a logical human perspective does it fully reflect the infinite good of the divinity to order all things to their natural end? That is, that the omission of grace required to meet that end seems a disruption of the good.
For example, a related question. If grace were omitted man would be unable to consistently follow the natural law within [inscribed on his heart]. He would commit offenses to the law and to God. If grace were gifted to him that grace would include precipitant knowledge of God. Might we answer this by saying that God could omit that grace if he wished, although he would not? Which it appears how de Lubac responds.
Part of Section 26 of Humani generis DISAPPROVES this: “Some also question whether angels are personal beings, and whether matter and spirit differ essentially. Others destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order, since God, they say, cannot create intellectual beings without ordering and calling them to the beatific vision.”
Thinking EXTRA-TERRESTRIALLY, left open is the possibility of multiple “intelligent” lifeforms—some technically capable of space travel to planet earth (?)—but not gifted with access to the Beatific Vision. This divine option leaves very much intact our partial understanding of the still unique Incarnation on planet earth as an astonishlingly gifted event for our human race—fallen and gifted.
Pope St. John Paul II proposed a distinctive “ONTOLOGICAL LEAP” from more than the fictional pure nature into gratuitous grace—sometimes fatally or cunningly mistranslated (cross-dressed?) as only an “evolutionary” leap (“Message on Evolution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.” Oct. 1996).
Of course, there could be OTHER theological possibilities about the order of nature which leave the sure Deposit of Faith unmolested. (a) Perhaps Redemption is multiple across space and time and, still, ONE DIVINE ACTION just as every Mass around the world is the unbloody renewal and extension of the SINGULAR self-donation and immolation on Calvary, while also “numerically distinct”? Or with Blessed Duns Scotus, (b) might the Second Person of the Triune One have become incarnate here (and even elsewhere?) ABSENT our particular fallen-ness and consequent need for salvation history, this by the overflowing of divine charity which includes, but is not limited to our historical, debilitating and universal need for transcendent damage control?
Now, an ANALOGY (not a blurring) with what is known of the physical universe: We learn of “particle entanglement” whereby the physics of Quantum Mechanics is now adjusted to recognize that a particle in one galaxy can affect another particle across “space” and “time” in another galaxy at the other end of the universe—simultaneously !!! (that is, at the same “time”!). As if the extensions of space and time do not even exist apart from particles and by themselves except in our humanly finite imaginations.
On such riddles, and at the theological level (there are “levels”?), ST. AUGUSTINE devotes an entire chapter of his “Confessions” to space and time, in which he says such as this: “Perhaps it might properly be said that there are three times, the present of thing past, the present of things present, and the present of things future. These three are in the soul, but elsewhere I do not see them [….] In what space, then, do we measure passing time? [….] My mind is on fire to understand this most intricate riddle” (Book 11, ch. 20-22).
Indeed! And perhaps Pope Francis was a bit too generous and hasty to say that he “would baptize a Martian.” Even Galileo might pause…
If we understand ordering and calling them to the beatific vision, as if achieving that end were inevitable, such as De Chardin suggests then HG is correct. However, that there actually is a supernatural gratuitous order confirms that one must exist, since such an order is concomitant with God exclusively in relation to Man.
Otherwise, I’m not concerned with the possibility of intelligent aliens created in God’s image without the possibility of knowing God.
Insofar as time and Augustine’s fascination with this riddle, Einstein thought that the idea of time is an illusion. Einstein realized time as the measurement of moving bodies in space, time can only be measured within the enclosure of some other independent system of coordinates, another time frame. As such, we must venture into infinity. And as such, the notion of enduring time measurable by coordinates becomes irrelevant outside of movement.
As all is created by the immovable pure dynamism that is God, a pure act of existence, all that transpires in our time frame already is complete and known by God from eternity – which means outside of the concept of time.
Time is relevant for us who are in this moment of realizing our eternal relationship with God. A God who in our experiential frame of understanding graciously gives us sequence of understanding and opportunity for a comprehensive willful decision. This diagram speaks to the gratuitous nature of the supernatural order and its necessary relation to the physical order of Man.
Thanks for the link to Kirby’s essay, Carl. Her “De Lubac stresses that a supernatural end does not make human nature supernatural”, is a very important distinction ultimately, between the Catholic “infused” justification versus the Reformed “extrinsic”.
Westminster’s “Covenant of Works” would make beatitude obtainable within man’s nature had he not sinned, rather than pure gift elevating man’s nature to its supernatural end.
1. Lubac’s life work in the Church could be said to be validated because Pope John Paul II so frequently based his teaching on Lubac, and because he so often praised Lubac.
2. But, to me, Pope John Paul II had about 30 years as supreme authority in the Church to end the chaos, rebellion, confusion, despair, blasphemy, disrespect, irreverence, irrelevance, etc., that has taken over practically the whole Church since the Vatican II Council. But this harmful mess rages on just as it did 50 years ago.
3. So, I cannot praise Lubac or John Paul II. To me, they either were one of the causes (unintentionally) of all this suffering caused by the Vatican II inspired priests and bishops, or, they weren’t a cause–but still they failed to stop it.
4. Whoever ends this madness and suffering, and who doesn’t just spend their time to writing brilliant theological “masterpieces” and receiving awards and honors, that’s who I will praise.
5. Doesn’t this make sense? Don’t the slaves suffering in Egypt actually need to be led away from their nightmare? Isn’t talk cheap?
6. Who’s going to save us? Who’s going to be our Moses?
I recommend that you read the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul’s epistles to, say, the Corinthians and the Galatians, and then spend some time lecturing the Apostles for their failures…
1. I have a lot to learn. A lot to repent of. I appreciate the reminders.
2. I know that those Scriptures tell of the time that St. Paul told St. Peter to his face that he (St. Peter) was misleading the faithful.
3. But did any of the Apostles ever issue documents that led to a sixty year period of darkness, lostness, confusion, indifferentism, and rebellion in the Church?
4. I guess there are those who say that the Church has had many periods of widespread theological and pastoral disunity, disarray, rebellion, confusion, indifferentism, etc., and that the 60 year period of such darkness that commenced right after the Vatican II Council is nothing new or unique, and furthermore that this period of darkness cannot be blamed on the great, holy, and innocent popes, bishops, and theologians who shaped the content of the documents of this Council.
5. I guess I differ on both counts:
6. I am with those who see this 60 year period of darkness as being unprecedented in Church history.
7. And I am with those who don’t see the Church’s priority being the safeguarding the hallowed reputation of certain past popes.
8. To me, the priority is the Glory of God and the Salvation of Souls.
9. Pope Pius X was once famous. He was canonized. Churches and schools were named in his honor. Now no one hardly talks or writes about Pope Pius X anymore.
10. I think we could get to that point with the popes associated with the Vatican II Council–the point at which no one talks about them anymore.
11. Preservation of the personality cults (sorry, I know that’s a strong and sharp phrase, but doesn’t it actually apply in some cases?) of certain popes is unimportant. Jesus is King, Lord, and High Priest.
12. The spiritual, mental, and social welfare of the people of the Church, and those who may come into the Church, is really all that matters.
13. The Catholic people are suffering, and have been suffering horribly and uniquely in the last 60 years. Huge numbers are no longer even practicing the Faith. Teenage Catholics fall away at an alarming rate. Catholic World Report does a magnificent job in chronicling this ongoing period of darkness. We can also all see these this suffering in local parishes, and among our friends and family.
14. Must we not put love of God and love of neighbor above all things, and urge those with responsibility to make the corrections necessary, no matter whose golden reputation may be tarnished?
15. Isn’t that St. Paul did when he publicly upbraided St. Peter for misleading the faithful?
Yo, Gus, as one among many who share your distress, methinks however that your long litany of real woe is still too short! Why not add another informative private revelation #16: “When it’s cloudy outside it’s hard to see the sun.”
As for your #6 and #11, is it really a “personality cult” to celebrate actual thought and writings that clarify what others would confuse in the Documents?
A cheap shot, but nevertheless, and yes (as you lament), these times really are UNPRECEDENTED. In the litany of “bad popes” of yesteryear, it was their politics, policies and private lasciviousness which scandalized–the concubines, and offspring, and one even named a cardinal, and such. The formal teaching of the Church (you note today’s “theological and pastoral disunity, disarray, rebellion, confusion, indifferentism”) was untouched. Unless, of course, we consider that by the 4th Century St. Augustine could catalogue some 88 heresies…
But we have your record-breaking 60 years of darkness. Well, even after the clarifying (!) Council of Nicaea, ARIANISM festered at least another 55 years until the reign of Theodosius, a period when up to 80% of the bishops languished in Arianism, and about which St. Jerome later summarized thusly: “The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian.” True, 55 years isn’t your 60 years, but hey, it’s close enough and strands of Arianism are still around.
Besides the heresies, we also have two grand SCHISMS and a genuine folk hero or personality cult. The East-West Schism with the Orthodox is formally dated as beginning in A.D. 1054–so 969 years and counting. And then there’s the more recent Western Schism of three popes (rather, one pope and two pretenders, but disagreement as to which was which), runnning from A.D. 1378 to 1417, a paltry 39 years, but still a full generation of confusion and disarray.
And as for PERSONALITY CULTS, partly influenced by some of the Christian heresies catalogued by Augustine (especially Monophysitism and Nestorianism), we have the non-Trinitarian monotheism (another story!) of the “prophet” Muhammad and Islam, dating from A.D. 622–or now 1,401 years and counting.
So, an APPEAL here—in our time of marinating and layered confusion and betrayal—for anyone to cross-dress St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI as nothing more than the beneficiaries of a “personality cult” is a bit lame—and another part of the problem.
From Wikipedia, we learn that, “just before and during the conciliar years, with the blessing of his order, de Lubac also began to write and publish books and articles in defense of the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, his older friend and fellow Jesuit, who had died in 1955.”
Regarding the theo-poetry of Chardin, some nuance does appear in de Lubac’s “The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin” (1962 in French, then 1967 in English, and Image in 1968). For example, in Chapter 9 (fn. 84):
“From [a letter dated 1919] is derived Pere Teilhard’s bold, if sometimes oversimplified [!], synthesis between Christianity and evolution. At the same time he rejects any Concordism between science and religion [not quite the same as the Faith!], which are ‘two different meridians on the mental sphere’; what he wishes to establish between them is a ’coherence,’ for ‘these two different meridians must necessarily meet somewhere at a pole or common vision.’” [Then, 1955], ‘Christ, by giving direction to the world, makes evolution possible.’”
Where Chardin sought harmony between religion and science—and which de Lubac celebrates—he then imposes “[converging] meridians on the mental sphere” of “co-herence” where others—still with lesser and finite human minds—see con-fusion. Too bad some enthusiasts in collars folded Chardin’s water-colored theo-poetry into the Council Documents, here and there….
Although the author of some forty books, de Lubac apparently never was awarded a doctorate in anything. A very good sign! Too many Jesuits (and others) devolve into their sometimes-mutant academic credentials and, therefore, only rarely achieve sainthood (said to me by a Catholic Jesuit!).
So, as for de Lubac, a great and even saintly gift to the real, perennial and universal Catholic Church! Probably unlike the harmonized co-herence/con-fusion of the evolutionary, “expert,” Jesuitical and synodal “synthesis”?
Are you enjoying the surrounding “Noosphere” as seen by the geologist/evolutionist Teilhard?? Some say that it’s really the internet!!
Meanwhile their churches continue to decline.
Yes to your comment…
And at the risk of being dismissed as only an uncredentialed dabbler in lofty matters, may yours truly at least ask whether the clue to emptying churches is to be found in a one-liner de Lubac offers about de Chardin? Was de Chardin’s thought-world less about cosmic evolution than about something else which now applies to latter-generation apostles of the “spirit of Vatican II”….
De Lubac notes de Chardin’s “own mystical sense, sharpened by his contacts with the East. He hoped for a universal confrontation of such clarity that it would illuminate for the minds of all men in all parts of the world the ‘essence of Christianity” (“The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin,” Image 1968, Ch. 20, p. 271).
“Sharpened? Clarity? Essence of Christianity”?
Is the embedded contradiction (a signpost of Western “clarity”—contradictions and not wraparound “convergence”?) the Teilhardian presupposition that contradictions, themselves, are really only cerebral counterpoints–that like Yin and Yang the Western understanding that black and white and even good and evil (!) can be heightened and then harmonized without confusion or rejection of either? That “evil” is mostly a counterpoint and not the negation (!) of the “good”?
That what are only countervailing positions can be heightened and “fused” without loss of either? That the “natural” and the “supernatural” and creature (lower case) and Creator are not categorically different as under the curiously-backward Western notion of “TRANSCENDENCE”? That the “abstract” is only a position within what is evolutionary and “concrete”? That doctrinal orthodoxy is to be retained but reconceptualized as the forerunner of open-ended (so to speak) pastoral praxis? That “time is greater than space”?
While an exaggerated dualism between nature and grace has crept into later Western thought (as de Chardin tries to correct and as de Lubac shows), might we at least wonder at the limits (there are limits?) to the ideological and even Teilhardian optimism tucked into parts of Gaudium et Spes? And, as imposed by the harmonizing word games of synodal “experts,” on ecclesiology and morality (new counterpoints to our unenlightened Western moral absolutes)?
And particularly as signaled by Cardinal Hollerich? On his own Chardin-like “contacts with the East,” see comments by ever-so-humble yours truly in response to his own one-liner: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/03/07/pope-francis-adds-hollerich-and-four-other-cardinals-to-his-council-of-advisers/
So, yes, the churches continue to decline—because what, exactly, is “the essence of Christianity?” Not convergence, but conversion?
Yet another attempt to provide credence to the deconstructionist Jesuit machine and the mid-century council. Its the “lets pretend” school of that 20th century ended well for Roman Catholicism. Anyone who defends the indefensible Chardin requires analysis but not from the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
De Lubac was a notable contributor to 20th century theological enterprise but I am unaware of his heroic virtue. His marginal orthodoxy would appear to tank the thought of canonization but in the current climate, compared to what is presently transpiring he might well get the hat.
Why was this priest banned from teaching in 1950? Something to be considered perhaps.
For some little known facts about de Lubac, contra many myths/falsehoods about him, see the recent essay “7 Persistent Myths About Henri de Lubac’s Theology” by Sara Hulse Kirby.
“de Lubac writes, ‘[I]f God had wanted . . . he could have not called this being that he gave us to see him.’ In other words, God could have created intellectual beings without calling them to the beatific vision” (S H Kirby). Thanks for the reference. A difficult issue.
Pius XII in defense of God’s freedom [HG] seems to base his teaching on God’s omnipotence. Consequently, it might be asked, Why would he create us in his own image, one that reflects the divine nature and whose teleological end would find its perfection in that end, the beatific vision?
Perhaps de Lubac’s orthodox position that grace cannot be intrinsic to the order of nature answers the question of God’s freedom. Grace is a pure gift. Man must willfully participate in its reception despite the inscribed knowledge [in man’s heart]. A question remains, whether omnipotence as preserved in HG, a seeming disruption of the ordering of nature – is required to defend that freedom? It seems that while HG is correctly stated from a logical human perspective does it fully reflect the infinite good of the divinity to order all things to their natural end? That is, that the omission of grace required to meet that end seems a disruption of the good.
For example, a related question. If grace were omitted man would be unable to consistently follow the natural law within [inscribed on his heart]. He would commit offenses to the law and to God. If grace were gifted to him that grace would include precipitant knowledge of God. Might we answer this by saying that God could omit that grace if he wished, although he would not? Which it appears how de Lubac responds.
Part of Section 26 of Humani generis DISAPPROVES this: “Some also question whether angels are personal beings, and whether matter and spirit differ essentially. Others destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order, since God, they say, cannot create intellectual beings without ordering and calling them to the beatific vision.”
Thinking EXTRA-TERRESTRIALLY, left open is the possibility of multiple “intelligent” lifeforms—some technically capable of space travel to planet earth (?)—but not gifted with access to the Beatific Vision. This divine option leaves very much intact our partial understanding of the still unique Incarnation on planet earth as an astonishlingly gifted event for our human race—fallen and gifted.
Pope St. John Paul II proposed a distinctive “ONTOLOGICAL LEAP” from more than the fictional pure nature into gratuitous grace—sometimes fatally or cunningly mistranslated (cross-dressed?) as only an “evolutionary” leap (“Message on Evolution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.” Oct. 1996).
Of course, there could be OTHER theological possibilities about the order of nature which leave the sure Deposit of Faith unmolested. (a) Perhaps Redemption is multiple across space and time and, still, ONE DIVINE ACTION just as every Mass around the world is the unbloody renewal and extension of the SINGULAR self-donation and immolation on Calvary, while also “numerically distinct”? Or with Blessed Duns Scotus, (b) might the Second Person of the Triune One have become incarnate here (and even elsewhere?) ABSENT our particular fallen-ness and consequent need for salvation history, this by the overflowing of divine charity which includes, but is not limited to our historical, debilitating and universal need for transcendent damage control?
Now, an ANALOGY (not a blurring) with what is known of the physical universe: We learn of “particle entanglement” whereby the physics of Quantum Mechanics is now adjusted to recognize that a particle in one galaxy can affect another particle across “space” and “time” in another galaxy at the other end of the universe—simultaneously !!! (that is, at the same “time”!). As if the extensions of space and time do not even exist apart from particles and by themselves except in our humanly finite imaginations.
On such riddles, and at the theological level (there are “levels”?), ST. AUGUSTINE devotes an entire chapter of his “Confessions” to space and time, in which he says such as this: “Perhaps it might properly be said that there are three times, the present of thing past, the present of things present, and the present of things future. These three are in the soul, but elsewhere I do not see them [….] In what space, then, do we measure passing time? [….] My mind is on fire to understand this most intricate riddle” (Book 11, ch. 20-22).
Indeed! And perhaps Pope Francis was a bit too generous and hasty to say that he “would baptize a Martian.” Even Galileo might pause…
If we understand ordering and calling them to the beatific vision, as if achieving that end were inevitable, such as De Chardin suggests then HG is correct. However, that there actually is a supernatural gratuitous order confirms that one must exist, since such an order is concomitant with God exclusively in relation to Man.
Otherwise, I’m not concerned with the possibility of intelligent aliens created in God’s image without the possibility of knowing God.
Insofar as time and Augustine’s fascination with this riddle, Einstein thought that the idea of time is an illusion. Einstein realized time as the measurement of moving bodies in space, time can only be measured within the enclosure of some other independent system of coordinates, another time frame. As such, we must venture into infinity. And as such, the notion of enduring time measurable by coordinates becomes irrelevant outside of movement.
As all is created by the immovable pure dynamism that is God, a pure act of existence, all that transpires in our time frame already is complete and known by God from eternity – which means outside of the concept of time.
Time is relevant for us who are in this moment of realizing our eternal relationship with God. A God who in our experiential frame of understanding graciously gives us sequence of understanding and opportunity for a comprehensive willful decision. This diagram speaks to the gratuitous nature of the supernatural order and its necessary relation to the physical order of Man.
Valuable citation — illuminating. Thank you.
Thanks for the link to Kirby’s essay, Carl. Her “De Lubac stresses that a supernatural end does not make human nature supernatural”, is a very important distinction ultimately, between the Catholic “infused” justification versus the Reformed “extrinsic”.
Westminster’s “Covenant of Works” would make beatitude obtainable within man’s nature had he not sinned, rather than pure gift elevating man’s nature to its supernatural end.
1. Lubac’s life work in the Church could be said to be validated because Pope John Paul II so frequently based his teaching on Lubac, and because he so often praised Lubac.
2. But, to me, Pope John Paul II had about 30 years as supreme authority in the Church to end the chaos, rebellion, confusion, despair, blasphemy, disrespect, irreverence, irrelevance, etc., that has taken over practically the whole Church since the Vatican II Council. But this harmful mess rages on just as it did 50 years ago.
3. So, I cannot praise Lubac or John Paul II. To me, they either were one of the causes (unintentionally) of all this suffering caused by the Vatican II inspired priests and bishops, or, they weren’t a cause–but still they failed to stop it.
4. Whoever ends this madness and suffering, and who doesn’t just spend their time to writing brilliant theological “masterpieces” and receiving awards and honors, that’s who I will praise.
5. Doesn’t this make sense? Don’t the slaves suffering in Egypt actually need to be led away from their nightmare? Isn’t talk cheap?
6. Who’s going to save us? Who’s going to be our Moses?
I recommend that you read the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul’s epistles to, say, the Corinthians and the Galatians, and then spend some time lecturing the Apostles for their failures…
1. I have a lot to learn. A lot to repent of. I appreciate the reminders.
2. I know that those Scriptures tell of the time that St. Paul told St. Peter to his face that he (St. Peter) was misleading the faithful.
3. But did any of the Apostles ever issue documents that led to a sixty year period of darkness, lostness, confusion, indifferentism, and rebellion in the Church?
4. I guess there are those who say that the Church has had many periods of widespread theological and pastoral disunity, disarray, rebellion, confusion, indifferentism, etc., and that the 60 year period of such darkness that commenced right after the Vatican II Council is nothing new or unique, and furthermore that this period of darkness cannot be blamed on the great, holy, and innocent popes, bishops, and theologians who shaped the content of the documents of this Council.
5. I guess I differ on both counts:
6. I am with those who see this 60 year period of darkness as being unprecedented in Church history.
7. And I am with those who don’t see the Church’s priority being the safeguarding the hallowed reputation of certain past popes.
8. To me, the priority is the Glory of God and the Salvation of Souls.
9. Pope Pius X was once famous. He was canonized. Churches and schools were named in his honor. Now no one hardly talks or writes about Pope Pius X anymore.
10. I think we could get to that point with the popes associated with the Vatican II Council–the point at which no one talks about them anymore.
11. Preservation of the personality cults (sorry, I know that’s a strong and sharp phrase, but doesn’t it actually apply in some cases?) of certain popes is unimportant. Jesus is King, Lord, and High Priest.
12. The spiritual, mental, and social welfare of the people of the Church, and those who may come into the Church, is really all that matters.
13. The Catholic people are suffering, and have been suffering horribly and uniquely in the last 60 years. Huge numbers are no longer even practicing the Faith. Teenage Catholics fall away at an alarming rate. Catholic World Report does a magnificent job in chronicling this ongoing period of darkness. We can also all see these this suffering in local parishes, and among our friends and family.
14. Must we not put love of God and love of neighbor above all things, and urge those with responsibility to make the corrections necessary, no matter whose golden reputation may be tarnished?
15. Isn’t that St. Paul did when he publicly upbraided St. Peter for misleading the faithful?
Yo, Gus, as one among many who share your distress, methinks however that your long litany of real woe is still too short! Why not add another informative private revelation #16: “When it’s cloudy outside it’s hard to see the sun.”
As for your #6 and #11, is it really a “personality cult” to celebrate actual thought and writings that clarify what others would confuse in the Documents?
A cheap shot, but nevertheless, and yes (as you lament), these times really are UNPRECEDENTED. In the litany of “bad popes” of yesteryear, it was their politics, policies and private lasciviousness which scandalized–the concubines, and offspring, and one even named a cardinal, and such. The formal teaching of the Church (you note today’s “theological and pastoral disunity, disarray, rebellion, confusion, indifferentism”) was untouched. Unless, of course, we consider that by the 4th Century St. Augustine could catalogue some 88 heresies…
But we have your record-breaking 60 years of darkness. Well, even after the clarifying (!) Council of Nicaea, ARIANISM festered at least another 55 years until the reign of Theodosius, a period when up to 80% of the bishops languished in Arianism, and about which St. Jerome later summarized thusly: “The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian.” True, 55 years isn’t your 60 years, but hey, it’s close enough and strands of Arianism are still around.
Besides the heresies, we also have two grand SCHISMS and a genuine folk hero or personality cult. The East-West Schism with the Orthodox is formally dated as beginning in A.D. 1054–so 969 years and counting. And then there’s the more recent Western Schism of three popes (rather, one pope and two pretenders, but disagreement as to which was which), runnning from A.D. 1378 to 1417, a paltry 39 years, but still a full generation of confusion and disarray.
And as for PERSONALITY CULTS, partly influenced by some of the Christian heresies catalogued by Augustine (especially Monophysitism and Nestorianism), we have the non-Trinitarian monotheism (another story!) of the “prophet” Muhammad and Islam, dating from A.D. 622–or now 1,401 years and counting.
So, an APPEAL here—in our time of marinating and layered confusion and betrayal—for anyone to cross-dress St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI as nothing more than the beneficiaries of a “personality cult” is a bit lame—and another part of the problem.
So it seems to yours truly.