Catholics for a Changing Church

The Catholic Bishops in England and Wales are recommending that all Catholics make a special effort during the Year of Faith to study the four Constitutions which they describe as the Pillars of the Council

Their website gives the following introduction and invitation

The 'Year of Faith' will begin on 11 October 2012, the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. The documents of the Council offer very important teaching in support of the Church’s ongoing mission.

It is suggested that you read and study four Constitutions described as the ‘pillars of the Council’.

These Constitutions are:

I. Lumen Gentium - on the Church

II. Sacrosanctum Concilium - on the Sacred liturgy

III. Dei Verbum - on Divine Revelation

IV. Gaudium et Spes - on the Church in the Modern World

One of the repeated themes of Pope Benedict’s writings has been the importance of reading and interpreting the documents of Vatican II in the right way, using what he describes as the ‘right hermeneutic’, or interpretation.

The use of a correct interpretive approach is essential to reaching a proper understanding of the Truth in Scripture and in the teaching documents of the Church. This correct approach is sometimes called a ‘hermeneutic of continuity’. This may sound a little complicated, but in simplicity it affirms that a Catholic can only properly understand a Christian teaching if he or she takes into account what both Scripture and the Magisterium have said on a subject. Any understanding which fastens on what Scripture says to the exclusion of the Magisterium (the teaching authority of the Church) or which fastens on this or that statement of the Magisterium in preference to others may be incorrect.

Downloads

Documents of the Second Vatican Council

The Bible

Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Magisterium of the Church(from the Catechism of the Catholic Church)

85 "The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ."⁴⁷ This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.

86 "Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith."⁴⁸

A parish in the Midlands has already got started.

21st Century Kick-off

Some historians like to search for an event at the beginning of a century which serves as the signature of what the century meant. If I were looking for a signature event which marked the history of the 20^th century I would pick the genocide in Armenia. This preceded the hecatomb in the trenches of France and the later violence of Stalinist Russia. A decade later we witnessed the holocausts in Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then we saw the killing fields of Cambodia, the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and the horrors of Rwanda and Burundi. 9/11 occurred—from one point of view—to stop the sanctions imposed by this country and the US on Iraq which provoked the deaths of more than 500,000 Iraqi children.

Larry W. Hurtado, God in New Testament Theology, Abingdon 2010, 152pp,£13.99 (available from Alban Books)

God, who died in the holocausts and war trenches of the 20^th century, was resurrected in the early 21^st century by militant atheism. If they had left him in his grave, I am sure hardly anyone would have bothered. But here he is again, out and about, in seminars and debates and on the sides of buses. Archbishops Anglican and Catholic, singing from the same hymn sheet, could not have done it so effectively.

For a while God was a hot topic. Now she is once again under the floorboards. But not for the seeker, the believer, the nostalgic ex-believer, nor for people like the author Julian Barnes who once said he did not believe in God, but that he missed him. God is gone but the Spirit still haunts.

Larry Hurtado is Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at the University of Edinburgh. He has written in a clear and accessible way a brief study of the God of the New Testament. Studies of God in the New Testament are scarce. The NT does not give an orderly exposition of God. Rather its references are according to the occasion or determined by the point a NT writer wants to make.

An interesting criticism is voiced when some scholars assert that the NT studies are excessively “Christo-centric”. This is due to the post-Reformation emphasis on the God who acts in our favour, the Deus pro nobis, and who does so through Jesus Christ. I too sometimes think that we have fallen into a certain “christolatry” due, I suspect, to the hijacking of the image of Christ the High Priest by the ordained clergy.

Our author gives us five chapters which include God in the New Testament, the God of Jesus Christ and God the Holy Spirit. Hurtado notes that despite notable differences in discourse about God in the various writers, there is a notable coherence among them in key matters.

The most obvious example of coherence is the use of the term ‘Father’ to refer to God. Matthew is the most frequent among the Synoptics and John even more frequent. However, Matthew uses the term to underline that God is Father for Jesus and his followers. John uses the term to support his Christological emphasis on Jesus as the unique Son of God. The Book of Revelation views God as the “one who sits on the throne”, the all-powerful cosmic ruler.

I most enjoyed the chapter on the Spirit and God. I made the point above that our church indulges in a certain degree of “Christolatry”. It can seem at times that Christ is the only person of the Holy Trinity. Over the centuries we have forgotten that the risen Christ has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is through the Holy Spirit that the Church lives, that it celebrates the Eucharist, that it preaches the Word, that it is sent (missioned) to the world for the life of the world—not to build up the church. That Spirit is a spirit of life and of faith. By Faith, the Spirit’s gift, we know ourselves loved by God. Therein lays the source of living water that wells up from each of us as we strive to maintain and deepen that relationship with the living Christ.

I learned a lot from Professor Hurtado and can recommend this book to all our readers.

Frank Regan

September 2011