Believing in Two

 Believing in Two is the title of the September 2021 issue of the magazine Women Church World, published as a supplement to L'Osservatore Romano. This issue seeks to explore spiritual relationships between men and women in the mission of the Church. 

The theme of the issue is introduced in an article entitled Equality:

... in the September edition of Women Church World we are taking a journey to explore great spiritual friendships between men and women. These articles demonstrate that common and co-responsible work, as an inclusive “combination”, has always been fruitful in the life of the Church. In fact, it is often precisely these “couples” who have initiated innovative processes.

The male-female pairings treated in the issue are those of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr ( A double mission in the Church); Romana Guarnieri and Giuseppe de Luca (The "singular friendship"..);St Clare and St Francis (Clare's gift); Raissa and Jacques Maritain (Between Faith and Reason); St Jane Frances de Chantal and St Francis de Sales (The social force of friendship); Armida Barelli and Agostino Gemelli (Culture in action). There is also a discussion of the standing of St Scholastica (in relation to St Benedict) and St Clare (in relation to St Francis), as being independent saints, not just women subordinate in some way to their respective siblings (To be saints without living in the shadow of saints).

In our own times, a defence of the complementarity between male and female is part of the Church's mission with regard to marriage and an authentic understanding of human sexuality. But Believing in Two draws our attention to another aspect of this complementarity, namely its spiritual dimension in terms of charisms in the life of the Church. We should expect to be able to see it in our own experience of life in the Church.

These relationships of the masculine and the feminine reflect the spousal relationship between Christ (masculine) and the Church (who, in the figure of the Virgin Mary, is feminine). There is, therefore, a rich ecclesial and theological theme to be developed from these, and the many other, examples of masculine/feminine complementarity.

Appreciating Paul VI: Part 5

When Pope Benedict XVI announced the Year of Faith that was to begin on 11th October 2012 and end on 24th November 2013, he identified the 20th anniversary of the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council as prompts for the date chosen to open the year. He went on to refer to the Year of Faith that had been celebrated in 1967-68 at the instigation of Pope Paul VI.

My venerable Predecessor the Servant of God Paul VI announced one in 1967, to commemorate the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul on the 19^th centenary of their supreme act of witness. He thought of it as a solemn moment for the whole Church to make “an authentic and sincere profession of the same faith”; moreover, he wanted this to be confirmed in a way that was “individual and collective, free and conscious, inward and outward, humble and frank”. He thought that in this way the whole Church could re-appropriate “exact knowledge of the faith, so as to reinvigorate it, purify it, confirm it, and confess it”. The great upheavals of that year made even more evident the need for a celebration of this kind. It concluded with the Credo of the People of God, intended to show how much the essential content that for centuries has formed the heritage of all believers needs to be confirmed, understood and explored ever anew, so as to bear consistent witness in historical circumstances very different from those of the past.

Pope Paul's Profession of Faith, pronounced solemnly as the homily during Mass in St Peter's Square on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul in 1968 was, and remains, a tremendous gift to the Church. It very quickly came to be known by the title Credo of the People of God, and the full text is well worth reading. There is a "back story" to Paul VI's Credo, one aspect of which Paul VI refers to himself in his introductory paragraphs to the Credo, and the other of which has emerged since.

During the year or so leading up to the proclamation of the Credo, the Holy See engaged in a lengthy dialogue with the authors, or at least the representatives of the authors designated by the Dutch Bishops Conference,  of what was known as the Dutch Catechism. This catechism had the imprimatur of the Dutch Bishops Conference; it was eventually judged to be inadequate as an expression of Catholic faith by a commission of Cardinals appointed by the Holy See to examine it, in dialogue with its authors. At the time, it was the subject of considerable controversy, and it was to the disquiet caused in the Church by this controversy that Paul VI refers in the introduction to the Credo. Mgr Eugene Kevane's book Creed and Catechetics describes this background (pp.61-71 in my 1978 paperback edition); I have not found an on-line account. Mgr Kevane points out that many of the doctrinal difficulties that can be identified in the text of the Dutch Catechism receive a response in the text of the Credo.

The second aspect of the "back story" relates to the formulation of the text itself. According to the account of this article from the magazine 30 Days, it is to Jacques Maritain that we owe a draft that largely became the text proclaimed by Paul VI. Reading the 30 Days article suggests that Maritain experienced a certain charismatic inspiration for his suggestion that Pope Paul should make a profession of faith akin to the great professions of faith of earlier times in the Church. But there is also a more interesting intuition on Maritain's part, and that is the intuition that anathematic condemnations would not be a sufficient way of responding to the situation of the Church at that time. There is a genius in the Credo of the People of God that combines both a clarity and a firmness of teaching with a beauty of expression, an exercise of the Office of the Successor Peter with a regard for the dignity that belongs to all the faithful. Pope Paul explained at the end of his introductory paragraphs (my italics added):

On this day which is chosen to close the Year of Faith, on this feast of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, we have wished to offer to the living God the homage of a profession of faith. And as once at Caesarea Philippi the apostle Peter spoke on behalf of the twelve to make a true confession, beyond human opinions, of Christ as Son of the living God, so today his humble successor, pastor of the Universal Church, raises his voice to give, on behalf of all the People of God, a firm witness to the divine Truth entrusted to the Church to be announced to all nations....

To the glory of God most holy and of our Lord Jesus Christ, trusting in the aid of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, for the profit and edification of the Church, in the name of all the pastors and all the faithful, we now pronounce this profession of faith, in full spiritual communion with you all, beloved brothers and sons.

Even more about dialogue: Jacques Maritain part 2

Continued from yesterday's post.

Jacques Maritain summarises what he sees as the fundamental renewal in the Christian attitude towards non-Christians that should follow Vatican II in the following way:

... the absolute primacy of agape, of brotherly love fully liberated in the soul; in sucha way that the great renewal of attitude of Christians towards non-Christians with which we are concerned here may be described as a kind of epiphany of evangelical love.

But what takes place in the depth of the soul also involves a certain external behaviour and is translated into action, and this leads Jacques Maritain to identify three "zones of behaviour" that follow.

1. In the first zone, the Christian bears witness to his love before men by his life. The Christian can, responding to a call that has been newly perceived in the Gospel, go and hide himself in the midst of the non-Christians that he loves. He has no other purpose than to love them and understand them with love, living among them to share their poverty and suffering. There need not be the least intention to convert them, not even by any sort of "pre-apostolate". One can think here of Madeleine Delbrel's choice to live with her companions in a Communist suburb of Paris. In the language of phases of evangelisation, this might now be called "presence in charity"; it is a kind of Christian presence in which to evangelise explicitly might bring a justifiable charge of "proselytism".

2. In the second zone, the Christian bears witness to his love by action. Jacques Maritain is here thinking of brotherly charity in the areas of, say, relief of poverty, aid to the sick, social and economic aid to underdeveloped countries. He extends this work to include that of intellectuals, who attempt to understand and appreciate the culture and religions typical of non-Christian lands; and argues that, in a reciprocal way, non-Christian scholars could also study Christian topics. It is not that Chrstians would agree with the interpretations offered by non-Christian scholars, but that it would provide a chance for them to widen their horizons. This might be the zone of behaviour that is most readily recognised by the term "dialogue", though I do not think dialogue should be a concept limited to this zone only.

3. The third zone of behaviour is that of the apostolate and of missionary activity. This is "the highest conceivable work of charity", and accords with the command of the Lord to teach all nations. Jacques Maritain points out that, though this is the highest in the order of activity, it does not displace the centrality of agape, of self-giving love which is at the heart of all three zones of behaviour.

It is interesting to see this third zone included. It removes the temptation to replace missionary activity with presence or activity in charity. They each have their respective places in the life of the Christian, but the latter does not replace the former without distorting the content of Christian faith and mission.

Even more on dialogue: Jacques Maritain part 1

A couple of days ago, I followed the link from Fr Tim's post about Jacques Maritain's authorship with regard to the Credo of the People of God to this article. The reference in this article to Jacques Maritain's Peasant of the Garonne prompted me to pull it off my bookshelves earlier today while I had a cup of tea. I alighted on Chapter 4, entitled "Christians and Non-Christians".

Having considered Christians and non-Christians in their common humanity precisely as all being men (sorry, humankind, to update Maritain's vocabulary to contemporary sensitivities), and making the suggestion that this allows the possibility of agreement on practical action for the common good among those who radically disagree on principles, he goes on to consider them as members of Christ:

I am considering them as members of Christ: explicitly and visibly members of Christ if they are Christians (living members if they have grace, "dead" members if they have lost it); members of Christ implicitly and invisibly if being non-Christians they have Christ's grace; potentially and invisibly members of Christ if being similarly non-Christians they do not have Christ's grace....

...in one guise or another and in one way or another, all men (humankind ...), at least potentially, are members of Christ ...

From this, Jacques Maritain argues that we must have an interior conversion in our attitude towards our fellow men that is based on recognising in them the reality of their, at least potential, membership of Christ:

.... it is by reason of this mysterious supernatural reality that men, as divided as they might be in their most profound convictions, can and should look each other in the eyes with respect, and desire a true mutual comprehension, and be ready to help one another sincerely.

And it is the next paragraph that expresses a principle that might be called a principle of dialogue:

How can this happen? By knowing (I am speaking of Christians and Christians know this) that they are all members of Christ, at least potentially, and all called to the life of grace and charity; and by each one presupposing (I am still speaking of Christians) that the other lives in the grace and charity of God. When it comes to non-Christians, they can do this by making an analagous supposition each from his own religious or philosophical standpoint (even if, in the case of the atheist, it is only the perspective of universal human solidarity and the common vocation of mankind).

This approach does, of course, depend on the possibility of the non-Christian making that "analagous supposition", and that this is possible across all other religions and non-religious belief systems.

To see how Jacques Maritain develops more fully a praxis of dialogue, see part 2 ....