Attacks on Thomism
I: Progressives, 'manualism', and Thomism
Anyone who has any
familiarity with the clerical and intellectual scene in the Catholic
Church will have encountered the received 'progressive' wisdom
concerning Thomism and its role in the Church before the Second Vatican
Council, and concerning the preconciliar state of theology in general.
Its claims and slogans are continually reiterated in theological and
clerical circles, with little change since the era – the first half of
the twentieth century – in which they were first elaborated. Unlike
'progressive' positions on moral questions, this received wisdom has
virtually attained the status of a pseudo-orthodoxy within the Church,
with some of its components being central to 'conservative' Catholicism.
Its acceptance by neoconservatives is indicated by a favourable
presentation of it by Fr. Brian van Hove in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review,1 a
journal that is one of the oldest pillars of conservative Catholicism.
Fr. Van Hove's exposition of this received wisdom takes the form of an
attack on Pius XII's encyclical Humani Generis, an embarrassing
document for neoconservative Catholics. His exposition is a naïve one,
lacking the nuances that would be introduced by a clever apologist for
his outlook, but it is valuable for that very reason. It is the naïve
version of an idea, the simplified and readily accessible one, that gets
widely adopted and that determines events; this fact is known by the
clever apologists, who are aware that the nuances they introduce to
disarm criticism and conceal their intentions will fall by the wayside
once their position has triumphed. Together, these points make up the
ideology that justified the destruction of preconciliar Catholic
theology, and that is an essential underpinning of the progressive
hegemony that now controls the Church. Seeing through this ideology is
crucial to overcoming this hegemony; this article and its two sequels
are devoted to the task of exposing it.
'Manualism'.
An important component
of this ideology is an attack on 'manualism'. This attack claims that
preconciliar Catholic theology largely consisted in 'manualist
theology'. Allegedly, this theology was conveyed in theological manuals,
and suffered from legalism, dogmatism, anti-modernism (presumed to be a
fault), abstraction, and ahistoricism. Read more >>
4 comments:
If only Lagrange's essays against modernism and the nouvelles were available in an English translation. These documents are of extraordinary value, but have been ignored, if not suppressed, for decades in the wake of the council of the nouvelles. To the victor goes the privilege of rewriting history.
Lamont's essay would serve as an admirable introduction to a volume containing Lagrange's several essays in English translation. Given the ideological nature of Catholic publishing these days, it is not likely that an outfit like Ignatius would ever commit such a volume to print, but isn't there someone out there? Angelus, perhaps?
BTW, perhaps the best known of Lagrange's essays on modernism, La nouvelle theologie ou va-t-elle, is available in English translation on the internet:
http://www.traditionalcatholicmass.com/home-m109.html
Thanks, Ralph. Good words. I had a student in an elective class I taught on the philosophical background of Modernism write a first-rate paper comparing this essay by Lagrange with some writings by Maurice Blondel. Most illuminating.
Fr Hunwicke, however, points out that St John XXIII was deliberately mistranslated and distorted. In his opening speech he said that the Faith must always be taught "in eodem sensu..." in the same meaning and signification, which is directly and explicitly anti-modernist.
http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.ca/2015/01/john-lamonts-article.html?m=0
John XXIII's opening address to the council brims with facile optimism. He seemed to believe that a new golden age of wisdom was upon us, and that the probity of men in the mid twentieth century had somehow transcended the hatreds, evils, and squabblings that had embroiled previous generations. All that was needed now was a gentle pastoral "push" from the assembled geniuses of the Church. This is not a matter of one badly translated passage. This is the tone of the entire address, and it is fertile ground for the modernist presumptuousness that dominated V2.
As a result, I can find little with which to disagree in Lamont's judgment that "John XXIII may not have understood the full purport of his words and actions, but this did not diminish their effect as an endorsement of the neomodernist cause."
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