October 11: Feast of the Theotokos--The Divine Maternity of the Mother of God

In the liturgical calendar for the 1970 Roman Missal, there's an optional memorial today, that of Pope Saint John XXIII. October 11 was chosen as his feast day because that's the date on which he convoked the Second Vatican Council in 1962. But in the liturgical calendar of the 1962 Roman Missal, today is the feast of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, commemorating the decision of the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. that she is indeed the Mother of God, because Jesus is God from God, True God from God, True God and True Man. She is not just the mother of His "human nature"; she is the mother of His Divine Person.

As Saint John Henry Newman remonstrated with his old friend, E.B. Pusey, the Catholic Church believes what she believes about Mary because she believes what she believes about Jesus, rejecting the claims of Arius, Nestorius, and other heretics.

When Pope St. John XXIII convoked the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962, he mentioned this feast as an auspicious date on which to begin an ecumenical council:

Gaudet Mater Ecclesia quod, singulari Divinae Providentiae munere, optatissimus iam dies illuxit, quo, auspice Deipara Virgine, cuius materna dignitas hodie festo ritu recolitur, hic ad Beati Petri sepulcrum Concilium Oecumenicum Vaticanum Secundum sollemniter initium capit.

Here's some background about the Feast of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, from a blog post I submitted to the National Catholic Register a few years ago:

On the Roman Calendar of the 1962 Missal promulgated by Pope St. John XXIII, Oct. 11 is the Feast of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This feast was proclaimed in an encyclical letter issued by Pope Pius XI on Dec. 25, 1931 in celebration of the anniversary of the great Council of Ephesus in 431, 1500 (one thousand, five hundred) years before.

[N.B.: Now, that's 1591 (one thousand, five hundred and ninety-one) years ago.]

Pope Pius XI reigned from 1922, succeeding Pope Benedict XV, and died in 1938, succeeded by Pope Pius XII. In his encyclical, Lux Veritatis, Pope Pius XI celebrated the history of the Council of Ephesus and explained how the doctrine of the Person of Jesus, Divinity Incarnate, was essential to Catholic teaching and devotion about the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Incipit—the first words—of this encyclical Lux Veritatis, refers to the light of truth found in the true understanding of history. One shining truth revealed by history, Pius XI declares, is that God is always with His Church, defending her in the midst of troubles, whether the troubles are from within or from without. He will protect “the integrity of the sacred deposit of Gospel truth.” (paragraph 2) . . .

The heresy of the priest Nestorius was that he “denied that wondrous and substantial union of the two natures which we call hypostatic; and for this reason he asserted that the Only begotten Word of God was not made man but was in human flesh, by indwelling, by good pleasure and by the power of operation.” Nestorius said that Jesus should be called Theophoros, or God-Bearer, like a prophet who had received God’s inspiration. If Jesus was not the Second Person of the Holy Trinity incarnate, with a human nature and human will (and a Divine nature and will), then Mary was not the Mother of God: she was not the Theotokos, but merely the Christotokos, the Mother of the human person Jesus. (pp. 9 and 10)

Please read the rest there.

Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son,
Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,
You take away the sin of the world,
have mercy on us;
You take away the sin of the world,
receive our prayer;
You are seated at the right hand of the Father,
have mercy on us. (from the Gloria, the Angelic Hymn)

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Pope St. John XXIII, pray for us. Amen.

Image Credit (Public Domain): The image adorned with its Canonical crowns and jewel regalia, no longer attached today. The crowns are stored within the treasury department of Saint Peter’s Basilica.

Book Review: Pope Benedict XVI and the Benedict Option

Our Eighth Day Institute (EDI) has worked several times with Rod Dreher, who has also praised the glories of Eighth Day Books here in Wichita. He's the author of The Benedict Option and Live Not By Lies. He appreciates the small community spirit of EDI and our efforts toward "the renewal of culture through faith and learning." Thinking about his encouragement to Christians to nurture our faith and culture in small communities (like our parishes, for example?) led me to purchase and read this book (also recommended by a good friend), published by Wipf & Stock's Pickwick Publications:

How ought the church respond to the rise of a post-Christian secular age? Should it retreat? What is the mission of the church in this context? Joseph Ratzinger's eucharistic ecclesiology provides a model for living the relation between communion and mission, a model that provides a sound image for conceiving of and imagining the church's engagement with modernity and the embodiment of missionary communion. Ratzinger's vision, deeply influenced by St. Benedict's and St. Augustine's responses to the problems of their day, offers a theologically and liturgically grounded vision of missionary communion that transcends politics. In light of our creation by, from, and for the triune God, authentic responses to the present dis-integration of reason and community require the witness and invitation of the church as a community for the world. Ratzinger argues that right worship can and does habituate Christians and equip churches to respond to the existential questions confronting modern persons, many of whom seem partially paralyzed by the anxieties of life without truth and communion. Might the witness of communion for mission lived by the new ecclesial movements, especially the Focolare, offer an example of how Ratzinger's creative minorities can successfully evangelize this secular age?

I am not a theologian; I'm just an adult educated and formed Catholic who admires Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, so I admit I had to look up words and transcribe some Greek, etc. I was interested in Ratzinger's response to the Second Vatican Council and its implementation, especially in his doubts about Gaudium et Spes, which George Weigel also analyzed in his The Irony of Modern Catholic History as being perhaps too optimistic about how the Catholic Church and the modern world of the 1960's could get along together for the common good and evangelization. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI had been there during the meetings of the Second Vatican Council. He based his view of the mission of the Church to evangelize in the Modern World on his theological studies of the doctrines of the Holy Trinity, Christology (the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity), and Ecclesiology and the Eucharist. Brumfield proposes that Pope Benedict thinks that smaller movements, "creative minorities" will do more for the Church's mission of evangelization than relying upon large-scale programs and processes.

Like Alasdair MacIntyre in the oft-quoted conclusion of After Virtue, Pope Benedict XVI looks for another, perhaps not so different, Saint Benedict of Nursia, who will retire from the world to learn the founding principles and the Good News of the Kingdom Jesus preached, and which He told the Apostles to share with the world, and then present the Gospel to the community around him. Really, Pope Benedict is looking for many Benedicts, people like Chiara Lubich of Focolare, or the FOCUS missionaries who train and prepare to go to college and university campuses and evangelize or even re-evangelize the Catholic students, etc.

The structure of the book is that after a historical analysis of the historical and metaphysical situation of the Church before and after the Second Vatican Council and Ratzinger's response to it, first Brumfield explains Ratzinger's/Benedict's theology: Trinitarian, Christological, Ecclesial, Augustinian, Bonaventuran, and Eucharistic, and what that means for evangelization and mission (Parts 1 and 2). Then he examines criticisms of Benedict's theology by Miroslav Volf, Joseph Komonchak, and Mary Ehle, with response and analysis. Finally, Brumfield demonstrates how Chiara Lubich's "creative minority" the Focolare exemplifies Pope Benedict's view of how these small groups, formed in and by the teachings of Jesus and His Church, enriched and strengthened by the Sacraments and then reaching out to the people around them, exemplifying the Love of Christ in practical, meaningful ways (Part 3)

The weakest part of the book for me--revealing thus my weakness--was the section on the criticisms from the three theologians listed above. I don't know their works but trusted Brumfield's presentation of their commentaries. They almost seemed to me to be taking certain teachings out of context and disagreeing with Benedict to disagree--especially when Brumfield responds to them.

I found this a rewarding and challenging book to read.

Table of Contents (with subtitles)

Introduction

Part 1

1. From Metaphysics to Modernity

    1.1 From Metaphysics to Facts, and from Facts to Progress

    1.2 An Anti-Modern Modern Church

    1.3 The Council's Response: Coming Out of the Ghetto

2. Post-Conciliar Crisis and Ratzinger's Response

    2.1 The Controversy of Gaudium et Spes

    2.2 Ratzinger and the Analogy of Being

        2.2.1 Early Influences: Przywara; Sohngen: Bonaventure as Klassiker der Analogia Fidei; The Role of Bonaventure: Ratzinger's Habilitation; Ratzinger in the Festschrift

        2.2.2 Ratzinger's Appraisal of Gaudium et Spes: Post-Conciliar Crisis; Analogia Entis and Analogia Fidei; Logos and Dialogos

        2.2.3 Towards a Life in Communion and for the World

Part 2

3. Being as Relation: Communion in the Trinity

    3.1 The Divine "Communio Personarum"

        3.1.1 The Son of the Father

        3.1.2 The Spirit of Love

    3.2 Person as Relation

        3.2.1 Divine Personhood

        3.2.2 Divine Persons and Human Persons

4. Communio Ecclesiology

    4.1 Origins of the Church

        4.1.1 What the Church is Not

        4.1.2 Jesus and the Church

    4.2 The Church as the Body of Christ

        4.2.1 Communion in the Incarnate Son

        4.2.2 The Eucharist Makes the Church

        4.2.3 Eucharist and Episcopacy

5. Eucharist and Mission

    5.1 Communion and Mission

        5.1.1 Abrahamic Origins

        5.1.2 Gathered around Jesus and Sent by Jesus

        5.1.3 Communion is Missionary

    5.2 Liturgy and Mission in Ratzinger

        5.2.1 Worship in the Old Covenant

        5.2.2 Jesus and the New Worship

    5.3 Becoming Eucharist

Part 3

6. Questions and Critiques

    6.1 [Miroslav] Volf's Critique: The Ecclesiological Implications of Person as Relation

        6.1.1 Volf's Trinitarian Approach

        6.1.2 Volf's Personal Problem

        6.1.3 Volf on Ratzinger's Christological Anthropology

    6.2 [Joseph] Komonchak's Critique

        6.2.1 Komonchak's  Ecclesiological Method

        6.2.2 Komonchak: Local Church and Church Catholic

        6.2.3 Ratzinger's Neglect of the Humanity of the Church

    6.3 [Mary] Ehle's Missiological Critique

        6.3.1 Ehle's Perspective

        6.3.2 Ehle of Ratzinger's Mission of Communion

    6.4 Summary of the Critiques

7. Response and Analysis

    7.1. [Ralph] Del Colle's Trinitarian Response

        7.1.1 The Dominance of the One or the Agency of the Three?

        7.1.2 The Role of the Spirit in Ratzinger's Christology

    7.2 Ratzinger's Intercultural Ecclesiality

        7.2.1 Coming to Terms with "Culture"

        7.2.2 Church: Not a Naked Faith and Not a Classical Cultural Agent

    7.3 An Embodied Communion and a Performance of Caritas

        7.3.1 Ratzinger's Augustianism and Embodied Ecclesiology

        7.3.2 Concrete Love in Ratzinger's Mission of Communion

8. Communion and Mission Made Concrete in the Movements

    8.1 The Need for Concrete Communion

    8.2 Communion and Mission Embodied in the Movements

    8.3 The Example of the Focolare

        8.3.1 Chiara Lubich and the Focolare: Concrete Unity

        8.3.2 Lubich and Ratzinger: Jesus in the Midst as Concrete Communion for Missions: Unity Modeled After the Trinity; The Ecclesiological Dimension of Jesus in Our Midst; Jesus in Our Midst and the Mission of the Church

        8.3.3 The Concrete Effects of a Mission that Flows from Unity: Recognition of the Evangelical Effectiveness of Unity in the Movements; [Living Sacrifice] (in Greek) and the Cry of Jesus Crucified and Forsaken

9. Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Tracey Rowland's Survey of Catholic Theology

Tracey Rowland has written extensively about the theological works of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI. Carl Olson of the Catholic World Report interviewed her about her latest book, Catholic Theology, which I have in my queue to read:

Theologian, professor, and author Tracey Rowland holds two doctorates in theology, one from the Divinity School of Cambridge University (the civil PhD) and one from the John Paul II Institute at the Pontifical Lateran University (the pontifical STD) in addition to degrees in law and philosophy. After studies at the University of Queensland, she lectured in Soviet and Central European Politics at Monash University while completing a Masters degree in contemporary Central European political theory. From 1994-1996 she was a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Law at Griffith University with a focus on jurisprudence and Constitutional and Administrative Law. In 1996 she won a Commonwealth Scholarship to Cambridge University to work on her doctorate. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Notre Dame (Australia), she was the Dean of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne for sixteen years. In 2014 she was appointed to the International Theological Commission and she is currently a member of the ITC's sub-commission on religious freedom.

Her books include Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II (London: Routledge, 2003), Ratzinger's Faith (Oxford University Press, 2008), Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), the recently published Catholic Theology (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), and the forthcoming The Culture of the Incarnation: Essays in Catholic Theology (Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2017). She recently corresponded with Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, about her book Catholic Theology, the various (and often competing) schools of Catholic theology today, the crisis since Vatican II, and why theology is so important.

Please read the rest there.

As I read the interview, I noticed how it really synced up with a presentation at the Spiritual Life Center I'd recently attended, “Vatican II: Continuity or Disruption? Examining the Reception and Interpretation of the Conciliar Documents.” Perhaps the presenter, Father Patrick Reilley, read her book, because he discussed the two basic schools of thought about the Council, represented by the journals Concilium and Communio that Rowland highlights in two chapters of the book and in the interview.

Starting Off the New Year Royally

I am about half way through Robert Royal's A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, published by Ignatius Press:

In this wide-ranging and ambitious volume, Robert Royal, a prominent participant for many years in debates about religion and contemporary life, offers a comprehensive and balanced appraisal of the Catholic intellectual tradition in the twentieth century. The Catholic Church values both Faith and Reason, and Catholicism has given rise to extraordinary ideas and whole schools of remarkable thought, not just in the distant past but throughout the troubled decades of the twentieth century.

Royal presents in a single volume a sweeping but readable account of how Catholic thinking developed in philosophy, theology, Scripture studies, culture, literature, and much more in the twentieth century. This involves great figures, recognized as such both inside and outside the Church, such as Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, Joseph Pieper, Edith Stein, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Romano Guardini, Karl Rahner, Henri du Lubac, Karol Wojtyla, Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar,Charles Peguy, Paul Claudel, George Bernanos, Francois Mauriac, G. K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christopher Dawson, Graham Greene, Sigrid Undset, J. R. R. Tolkien, Czeslaw Milosz, and many more.

Royal argues that without rigorous thought, Catholicism – however welcoming and nourishing it might be – would become something like a doctor with a good bedside manner, but who knows little medicine. It has always been the aspiration of the Catholic tradition to unite emotion and intellect, action and contemplation. But unless we know what the tradition has already produced – especially in the work of the great figures of the recent past – we will not be able to answer the challenges that the modern world poses, or even properly recognize the true questions we face.

This is a reflective, non-polemical work that brings together various strands of Catholic thought in the twentieth century. A comprehensive guide to the recent past - and the future.

So far, I've read the chapters about the Thomist revival encouraged by Pope Leo XIII at the end of the nineteenth century in both philosophy and theology, the impact of the Second Vatican Council, and Royal's profiles and evaluations of Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, Joseph Pieper, Edith Stein, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Romano Guardini, Karl Rahner, Henri du Lubac, Karol Wojtyla, Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and others. I'm starting the two chapters on Scripture studies now, and really looking forward to part two of the book, "Creed and Culture", in which Royal will discuss Charles Peguy, Paul Claudel, George Bernanos, Francois Mauriac, G. K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christopher Dawson, Graham Greene, Sigrid Undset, J. R. R. Tolkien, Czeslaw Milosz, and "many more".

Royal is providing context for my reading list for the past few decades of my life, as, except for the more technical philosophical and theological works, I've been reading--outside of my research on the English Reformation--so many of those authors, especially Romano Guardini, Karol Wojtyla (especially his papal encyclicals and documents as Pope St. John Paul II), Joseph Ratzinger (especially his papal encyclicals and documents as Pope Benedict XVI), Edith Stein, Henri du Lubac, and all those poets, novelists, and historians: Charles Peguy, Paul Claudel, George Bernanos, Francois Mauriac, G. K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christopher Dawson, Graham Greene, Sigrid Undset, J. R. R. Tolkien, etc. 

I wonder if among the many more Royal will discuss Dietrich von Hildebrand, Robert Hugh Benson, or Hilaire Belloc?

New From Father Ian Ker: Newman on Vatican II

Oxford University Press will publish a new book by Father Ian Ker, Newman on Vatican II, this fall (September 28, 2014). This will clearly be an important book, as it addresses one of the most common statements about Blessed John Henry Newman and the Second Vatican Council:

John Henry Newman is often described as "the Father of the Second Vatican Council." He anticipated most of the Council's major documents, as well as being an inspiration to the theologians who were behind them. His writings offer an illuminating commentary both on the teachings of the Council and the way these have been implemented and interpreted in the post-conciliar period. This book is the first sustained attempt to consider what Newman's reaction to Vatican II would have been. As a theologian who on his own admission fought throughout his life against theological liberalism, yet who pioneered many of the themes of the Council in his own day, Newman is best described as a conservative radical who cannot be classed simply as either a conservative or liberal Catholic. At the time of the First Vatican Council, Newman adumbrated in his private letters a mini-theology of Councils, which casts much light on Vatican II and its aftermath.

Noted Newman scholar, Ian Ker, argues that Newman would have greatly welcomed the reforms of the Council, but would have seen them in the light of his theory of doctrinal development, insisting that they must certainly be understood as changes but changes in continuity rather than discontinuity with the Church's tradition and past teachings. He would therefore have endorsed the so-called "hermeneutic of reform in continuity" in regard to Vatican II, a hermeneutic first formulated by Pope Benedict XVI and subsequently confirmed by his successor, Pope Francis, and rejected both "progressive" and ultra-conservative interpretations of the Council as a revolutionary event. Newman believed that what Councils fail to speak of is of great importance, and so a final chapter considers the kind of evangelization -- a topic notably absent from the documents of Vatican II -- Newman thought appropriate in the face of secularization.

Back to Trent with John W. O'Malley, SJ

The  Second Vatican Council has been much in the news, Catholic and mainstream, occasioned by the canonization of the pope who called the Council and the pope who really implemented the Council (John XXIII and John Paul II). When George Weigel wrote on First Things about the canonization of those popes, he commented on the difficulties of implementing the Second Vatican Council;

As everyone who lived through the post-Vatican II years knows, John XXIII’s Council created a lot of turbulence of its own. One reason why, I’m convinced, is that Vatican II, unlike previous ecumenical councils, did not provide authoritative keys to its own proper interpretation. It defined no dogma. It condemned no heresy or heretic(s). It legislated no new canons for the Church’s law, it wrote no creed, it commissioned no catechism. These were the ways previous councils had told the Church, “This is what we mean.” Vatican II did none of that.

The Council of Trent did all all that. From that "Counter-Reformation" Council a new catechism, new statements for reform, decrees on the Sacraments, the crucial doctrine of Justification, etc, gave direction to the Catholic Church for centuries--well, until the Second Vatican Council! In fact, if you compare and contrast the two councils, the usual commentary is that Trent was doctrinal and Vatican II was pastoral. 

John W. O'Malley might disagree about that comment re: Trent: it was both doctrinal and pastoral as it was called both to combat the errors of Luther (and later Calvin) and to reform the Church of abuses and scandals, particularly to improve the care of souls. Thus the three sessions of the Council of Trent focused on both the definition of those doctrines most threatened by Lutherans ideas and the reform of the Church, especially the actions of bishops and parish priests. 

As Harvard University Press describes this 2013 book:

The Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Catholic Church’s attempt to put its house in order in response to the Protestant Reformation, has long been praised and blamed for things it never did. Now, in this first full one-volume history in modern times, John W. O’Malley brings to life the volatile issues that pushed several Holy Roman emperors, kings and queens of France, and five popes—and all of Europe with them—repeatedly to the brink of disaster.

During the council’s eighteen years, war and threat of war among the key players, as well as the Ottoman Turks’ onslaught against Christendom, turned the council into a perilous enterprise. Its leaders declined to make a pronouncement on war against infidels, but Trent’s most glaring and ironic silence was on the authority of the papacy itself. The popes, who reigned as Italian monarchs while serving as pastors, did everything in their power to keep papal reform out of the council’s hands—and their power was considerable. O’Malley shows how the council pursued its contentious parallel agenda of reforming the Church while simultaneously asserting Catholic doctrine.

Like What Happened at Vatican II, O’Malley’s Trent: What Happened at the Council strips mythology from historical truth while providing a clear, concise, and fascinating account of a pivotal episode in Church history. In celebration of the 450th anniversary of the council’s closing, it sets the record straight about the much misunderstood failures and achievements of this critical moment in European history.

O'Malley masterfully narrates the struggle to convene the Council, blocked by papal concerns about conciliarism and the efforts of Francis I of France to thwart the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who urgently wanted the Church to launch a council for the sake of unity throughout his Empire. Francis I, Henry VIII, and the Schmalkaldic League of Lutheran princes wanted the Holy Roman Empire to be weakened from within by religious disunity. Throughout the following chapters that cover the three sessions of Trent, O'Malley keeps the narrative of events and his analysis of the decisions reached/documents issued in balance, providing details about personalities, the different factions, and the results of the theologians's discussions and the bishops' decisions.

I have not read his book about the Second Vatican Council--perhaps I'll look it up too. I checked this book out from the Wichita Public Library. I've read and reviewed his Trent and All That, and I read his Four Cultures of the West (might need to re-read it soon).