Global Catholicism

A book was published today, January 19, 2009, which may open up a discussion among deeper thinkers about the Church than the old crowd hurling "modern relativist" and "old-fashioned medievalist" at each other. Written by Ian Linden, Global Catholicism -- Diversity and Change since Vatican II, is published by Hurst Publishing House, a company one reviewer finds fortunate, because the book is not restricted "within faith communities and familiar religious imprints," but is "placed in the public sphere where it belongs."

It came to my attention in Thinking Faith, the On-line Journal of the British Jesuits, to which I had been led by Jim McCarthy, my fellow New Englander in Companeros, a group of former Jesuits. Today's issue is at: http://www.thinkingfaith.org/index.htm,and it leads off with two articles on this book. One is a book review, a critical one, by Francis Davis, University of Oxford, which serves to frame serious questions about the merits of either the book in question or its author. Thinkingfaith, however, carefully notes that the reviewer's book will appear later this year; it is entitled Globalisation -- Catholic Insights.

The other article, "Thinking about the Council," is by Ian Linden himself, and for one as meagerly prepared for such a book, is at least far more understandable than the review. Both men, who must be competitors locally -- Linden's office is in London -- seem to be grasping for the global stage, each one following Karl Rahner, who fifty years ago presaged "globalisation" by calling it "at the time of the Council a Welt-Kirche -- a World Church"

Ian Linden's article is at: http://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20090119_1.htm.

Francis Davis' book review is at: http://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/BOOK_20090119_1.htm

There has been much written lately and more to come about Vatican Council II. The simplistic judgmental ones say that it destroyed the Catholicism to which we had become accustomed, while their opponents holler back that it was an attempt by serious thinking hierarchs to bring that Church into the 20th and succeeding centuries.

Postings at Companeros, learned journals out there, newspaper articles all over, might be summed up as clearly showing that Church as wallowing in its own failings, adrift and about to founder on shoals of criminal conduct against the helpless, compounded with rigid denials and refusals for accountability from those ostensibly in charge, or, sadly, a relic of a childhood when we all knelt and said the Rosary each night before laying ourselves down to sleep -- praying the Lord, "my soul to keep," sort of a forlorn and sad farewell to a Church we used to know and out of which many are walking to get out quickly. Some who stay are stout in their excommunications of those who leave, and refuse to wave back to the farewells being offered.

And yet, and yet, how many of us have gone beyond the headlines or the titles of articles, or stifled our initial disgust at the conduct of a few or our bewilderment at the behavior of two huge colleges of cardinals and bishops, in lockstep with Rome? How many of us even care, refusing as we do the use of the word "religion" in our preference for a term we find more meaningful, "spirituality?"

John O'Malley, SJ, our preeminent Jesuit historian opened a door a year or so ago with Did Anything Happen at Vatican II?, New York: Continuum, 2008, which he edited by publishing three responses from friends of his in ecclesiology and church history. Just recently, he followed that one up with what has become a very important work, What Happened At Vatican II? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2008. Extremely favorable reviews.

Richard McBrien, Notre Dame's theologian in residence, also saw the big issue and the huge gaps, in a new history, not of the Church, but of Ecclesiology itself. The Church: The Evolution of Catholicism, New York: HarperCollins, 2008.  Very praiseworthy reviews.

And our own Roger Haight, SJ, completed his trilogy masterpiece in Ecclesiology, only to be punished again, this time more severely by being banned from teaching theology "anywhere in the world." Pundits attribute this second execution to Pope Benedict XVI's ungodly fear of "Relativism" stalking a stricken Eurocentric Church, with ancestors in a Greco-Roman world of classicism and a language the rest of the globalist world cannot understand.

As one of the Companeros, I have my own loves and fears, likes and dislikes, which I used to feel so comfortable in -- and often still do -- by a childish faith of not to worry, for I don't have to get all worked up about being "Catholic" as long as I can stay "Jesuit." In an old man's way of thinking and breathing in, breathing out, my loves are local, here, now.

Even as a Jesuit scholastic, Rome meant little to me. Shadowbrook and Weston and Sophia were my life and my love and where all my friends were, too. In Compañeros, that feeling remains, as it had in all the years after leaving the Society, with reading, sticking with a private interpretation of "our way of proceeding," occasional contacts with classmates here and there over the years, and a deep sense of gratitude for what was always to me a temporary vocation inside the Society, to last for the rest of my life, outside.

I have tried to think or feel the same way about "Church," but it doesn't work, for I left the parish and the Church I grew up in the day I joined the Jesuits.

Is that what is meant by Globalisation?

Most of the books mentioned above are in this "Thin Place:" den, library, reading room, thinking place, computer stations. I have read or thumbed or skimmed them, the newer ones having just arrived after Christmas. Know nothing about the two mentioned in today's Thinkingfaith articles.

Taking them and my whole life together, there is that way down deep and very strong conviction that Karl Rahner called it right: Welt-Kirche. What shape, form, style it will take is autochthonous, for each Kirche in the Welt has to be in a certain place with real people talking and laughing and crying in a way all the others understand. They are united with others all over the globe by their very diversity.

Without the learning or the degrees, or even the smarts, I think that the O'Malleys and the Haights and the Dupuis stand side by side with the Rahners. Autochthony and Globalism, as distinct and far apart as they may seem by definition, are in fact synonyms.

This isn't "churchy" stuff. It's "spiritual." Something is happening in the world. People are standing. Thinkers are thinking. Writers are writing. A shift is happening. A Church with deep roots is spreading out without restraint. Boundaries grow thinner and look as if they want to disappear.

A whole bunch of new books are coming out and we are told about them before they begin to appear. A whole bunch of them. Different than those which were complaining and criticizing, digging into the past, ignoring the present, totally unaware of the future. This new bunch is about now and what is yet to come.

Is that what is meant by Globalisation?

If so, we do have hope, do we not?