by Father Lauder

Seventh in a series

In the chapter on theologian Karl Rahner in Father Michael Paul Gallagher’s excellent book, “Faith Maps: Ten Religious Explorers from Newman to Joseph Ratzinger,” Father Gallagher makes clear that Rahner never watered down the faith so that it might appeal more to his 20th century contemporaries. Rather Rahner saw that culture had changed dramatically and that for many people Christian faith no longer spoke to their experience. The German theologian believed that a new approach to faith was necessary.

Discussing Rahner’s view, Father Gallagher writes:  “Talking about God in a merely doctrinal or ‘propositional’ sense was out of touch with what he sensed to be the hungers and needs of the age. It was not a question of watering down faith (as he has sometimes been accused of doing) but of doing justice to possible journeys of faith in a new moment of culture. That meant making each person’s inner adventure a key for making sense of God. Rahner’s approach focuses less on explicit revelation and more on awakening people to a hidden revelation happening in their everyday depths. It would be ‘anthropological’ in the sense of starting ‘from below,’ but without ever making the human a measure for the divine. His work is theological and faith-rooted, because he always interpreted this human scene ‘from above,’ reading it as the theatre of God’s grace.”

I love the expression “the theatre of God’s grace.” What it signifies is that God is actively and lovingly present in every person’s life, not only in the Christian’s life but in the lives of everyone, even the lives of atheists and agnostics. Every person’s life is an adventure in grace, a drama that involves the person but also God. Each of us lives in the theatre of God’s grace. How each of us responds to God’s loving presence in our lives leads either to our salvation or to our loss of a love relationship with God.

Occasionally I have encountered Catholics who are upset when they hear that God is lovingly present in the life of every person. This somehow seems to offend their sense of justice. I think that they are wrong to be offended and wonder if their attitude is based on a misunderstanding of our relationship with God. Their attitude may reveal a feeling that we Catholics deserve God’s love in some way that others do not deserve it. It is almost suggesting that we are the “good guys” and all others are the “bad guys.”

It is crucially important that all of us realize that God’s love for us is pure gift. Perhaps we need to be reminded that God does not love us because we are lovable, but rather we are lovable because God loves us. And we should rejoice that this love extends to everyone. A human person not loved by God is a fiction.

Rahner’s view means that people may be touched by God’s grace without even knowing it. For us to be influenced by God’s grace it is not necessary that we be aware that we are responding to God’s grace. I believe that many times we may be responding to God’s loving presence though we are not explicitly thinking of God when we perform some good action. Whenever there is a genuinely good act, whenever there is an unselfish action, that action is done because of the presence of the Holy Spirit even if the person who does the action does not think of the Holy Spirit while doing the action.

by Father Robert Lauder

READING Father Michael Paul Gallagher’s Faith Maps: Ten Religious Explorers from Newman to Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Paulist Press, 2010, 158 pages, $16.95) has been an enjoyable experience in more ways than one. First it has been enjoyable to become reacquainted with thinkers I have studied previously and to see how Father Gallagher summarizes their thought and which of their insights he chooses to emphasize. It has been even more enjoyable to become better acquainted with thinkers I have heard of but have never had the opportunity to study. Finally it has been enjoyable to discover which thinkers are the original sources of some interesting and challenging ideas that I have previously embraced without knowing their origin.

More than anything, like Father Gallagher, I want to make the insights of some great thinkers accessible to more people. That’s why I am writing this series of columns. Theology is an exciting discipline and in the Church at this moment we need more not less theological knowledge. Reflection on the mysteries of the faith should not be left to only the professional theologian.

Accessible Insights

Each of us to some extent should try to see the implications of our religious faith in our life. Many of us might not have the time, the energy or the educational background to read the scholarly works of some theologians. That is one reason why a book like Faith Maps is so valuable: Father Gallagher makes wonderful insights accessible for us.

One of the insights of John Henry Cardinal Newman that Father Gallagher makes clear is Newman’s insight into imagination. He writes the following about Newman’s notion of imagination:

“The focus is not on pure thinking or some separated version of rationality, but on the process of discovering truth and acting on it. This is what is implied by Newman’s favorite term ‘real.’ The opposite of the real is the notional, indicating an intellectualism remote from the drama of decision and commitment. Here Newman was being courageously counter-cultural. He wanted to unmask the illusion of neutrality that has come to captivate his contemporaries (and ours) as the only credible way to truth. In its place, and somewhat in the spirit of St. Augustine, he explored the more personal drama of our seeking and finding…

“If Newman had lived a century later, he might well have used he term ‘existential’ in place of ‘real’….For him the function of imagination was literally to ‘realise’  faith, in the sense of making God real in a person’s life.” (pp. 14-15)

The key to Newman’s notion of imagination and the importance he gives to it is, I think, that it enables faith to flourish and to deepen. How do I imagine myself as a priest? How does a Catholic imagine himself or herself as a believer? Of course by imagination Newman does not mean the imaginary in the sense of fantasy or wishful thinking. In fact he means almost the opposite. I think for Newman imagination enables faith to become incarnate in a person’s everyday life.

Examples help me to understand the importance that Newman gives to imagination. Suppose I think of being a priest as being someone who was ordained to administer sacraments but whose ministry or apostolate has little if anything to do with his living in this world. This would be a situation in which my imagination should broaden to understand more deeply what it means to be a Christian believer and more deeply what the meaning of priesthood is. If my imagination does that, I may come to see that however I imagine the priesthood, the meaning of being a priest will always be more than and better than anything I can imagine.

Another example would be a member of the Catholic laity whose understanding of the sacrament of baptism focuses completely on entrance into heaven, almost thinking of the sacrament only as a ticket to heaven. That person’s imagination should broaden so that the person can see that the meaning of the sacrament should transform our lives in this world.

Inspired in Different Ways

The broadening and deepening of our faith is a lifelong task for most of us. Each of us may find that the Holy Spirit inspires us in different ways

For example, I have found reading Faith Maps not only intellectually stimulating but inspiring. Whenever I am with my friends I want to talk about the book, about the insights that Father Gallagher offers, about how some of the ideas may be useful to us in trying to spread of the Good News. Someone else reading the book might have a very different reaction. Even if a person liked the book, even thought the book to be theologically and philosophically profound, he or she might not find the book inspiring. The Spirit blows where it will.

by Father Robert Lauder

Second in a Series
READING Faith Maps: Ten Religious Explorers from Newman to Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Paulist Press, 2010, $16.95, pp.158) by Father Michael Paul Gallagher, S.J. has brought back some wonderful memories.

Back in the early 1970s, while I was teaching at what was then Cathedral College of The Immaculate Conception in Douglaston, I was part of a team-taught course. The course was on John Henry Cardinal Newman and the team consisted of the late Fathers Christopher Huntington, James McMahon, and myself.

When we decided to give the course none of us knew a great deal about Newman but we all admired him and wanted to know more about his thought. Our plan was that Father Huntington would handle Newman’s theology, Father McMahon would cover the historical period in which Newman lived and worked, and I was to cover Newman’s philosophy. I recall that one day the three of us, aware that we needed an expert’s help, arranged to have lunch with Father Marty Healy, who had taught dogmatic theology at the major seminary in Huntington, for years. Before he went to Louvain to gain a doctorate in theology, Father Healy had read all the works of Newman. He eventually wrote his doctoral dissertation on the great English cardinal.

Teaching the course was a great experience for me. In all my years of teaching I have only been able to team teach a course three times and each time was a great learning experience for me. Apparently, judging from students’ reactions and evaluations, the courses also were very good learning experiences for them. What I do recall vividly about teaching the Newman course is that I worked very hard on the material. In fact, all three of us did. Much of what we read in and about Newman challenged us.

The Newman course is fresh in my mind now because of Father Gallagher’s excellent essay in Faith Maps. He writes the following:

“The guiding passion of his long life was to make sense of the Christian vision for an age when belief in God seemed in deep trouble. Always alert to the currents of the culture around him, Newman devoted much energy to how we arrive at faith, and he did this in many forms, ranging from sermons to philosophical reflections, and from autobiography to poetry and novels. The originality of his approach has influenced reflection on religious belief ever since and he remains the precursor of what is best in theology of faith during the last century or so. He liked to say that the best evidence for God lies within us, and so he moved the agenda away from external arguments to personal and pre-rational areas of moral and spiritual readiness. Without ever falling into subjectivism, he explored the inner movement of the self towards truth. Indeed the then-Cardinal Ratzinger commented (in 1991) that no theologian since Augustine had paid so much attention to the human subject.”

Three Challenges
Father Gallagher points out that Newman faced three important cultural challenges: a kind of rationalism associated with scientific verification, a liberalism that saw no positive truth in religion and an exaggerated emotionalism that reduced conversion to an emotional experience.

Today there is a popular opinion that only positive science, such as biology, physics and chemistry can reach truth. This seems to be a tenet of the so-called “new atheism.” Of course no intelligent person can be opposed to science but science is one way of knowing and religious faith is another way of knowing.

There is also a popular opinion that religion does not contain any truth but is just a matter of opinion, something like taste in art or literature. The Christian has to insist that the Risen Lord is not just an interesting idea but God’s revelation to the human race.

Though I have not met many people who think that religion is nothing but exaggerated emotionalism but whoever claims that is rejecting Christianity’s claim that the Risen Lord is a person to be encountered and to whom we are called to make a life commitment. Newman insisted that Christian faith should be personal. He was not encouraging any kind of theoretical or merely speculative or abstract judgment about God but rather a personal acceptance of God that led to commitment and action. Newman wanted an assent to God that was real, an assent that changed a person’s life.

Reading Father Gallagher’s essay on Newman has convinced me again that Newman’s insights can help us better understand our own faith and perhaps help others to understand the value of religion.