TO BE CATHOLIC OR NOT TO BE: IS IT STILL THE QUESTION? CATHOLIC IDENTITY AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION TODAY
Peter C. Phan
The Catholic University of America
In her research for a project on work and spirituality, Diane Winston asked a recent college graduate about her religious identity and was given the following answer accompanied by an easy laugh: "Methodist, Taoist, Native American, Quaker, Russian Orthodox, and Jew."1
Whether it is an appropriate response to the American situation of increasing religious pluralism or an expression of self-indulgent ‘cotton candy' spirituality, this presumably widespread posture presents a serious challenge to religious educators who are concerned with the issue of religious and even denominational identity.
For Catholic educators, the issue of religious identity is taking on an added note of urgency, both because the new posture seems to reject the traditional belief that Catholic identity is shaped by an explicit adherence to defined doctrines and a faithful observance of prescribed practices and because the Vatican has recently insisted on the necessity of preserving the Catholic identity of Catholic colleges and universities.2
It is interesting to note that of the four marks of the church -- unity, holiness, apostolicity, and catholicity -- only the last has acquired the status of a theological and sociological label to identify a group of Christians, in contradistinction to others such as Anglicans, Orthodox, and Protestants. These latter groups have not of course given up their claim to catholicity; but it is a significant fact that a large, indeed, the largest, group of Christians have self-consciously adopted the word ‘Catholic' to denote their distinctive identity, and had, until recently, made an exclusive claim to it. Of late, however, for reasons that will be made clear shortly, the understanding of what constitutes catholicity and Catholicism, by no means synonymous words, has undergone drastic changes so that questions have been raised as to what it means to be a Catholic today and by implication what Catholic identity is.
In this essay I would like first to examine how the changing meanings of the word ‘Catholic' have created an identity crisis for Roman Catholics. Secondly, I will explore the problems as well as the challenges these permutations pose for the ministry of religious education and catechesis. I will conclude with some suggestions as to how these challenges can be fruitfully met.
Catholic or Not Catholic, How Can One Tell?
The word ‘Catholic,' from the Greek adverb kath' holon, or the later adjective katholikos, usually translated into Latin as universalis or catholicus, means "referring to or directed toward the whole, the general, the universal," as opposed to the partial or the particular. Though never used in the New Testament to describe the church, the term became an official description of the church in the Apostles' Creed and the so-called Nicene Creed.
Hans Küng has helpfully listed the six meanings that have been successively attached to the term ‘catholic': (1) the whole church, in contrast to the local churches, as in Ignatius of Antioch's statement "Where the bishop is, there his people should be, just as, where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" (Smyrn. 8:2); this is the original ecclesiological meaning; (2) the orthodox, doctrinally pure church as opposed to heretical or schismatic or apostate groups; this polemical meaning became popular after the edict of Constantine (312) and that of Theodosius (380); (3) the church spread throughout the whole world (geographical catholicity); (4) the church larger in number than any other (numerical or statistical catholicity); (5) the church that has always existed (temporal or historical catholicity); and (6) the church that is open to all cultures as opposed to ethnically or culturally exclusive (sociological or cultural catholicity).3
More recently, another distinguished ecclesiologist, Avery Dulles, has also studied the various meanings of the term ‘catholic,' with or without an initial capital. In his influential book, The Catholicity of the Church, he enumerates five usages of ‘catholic' to denote: (1) sharing in the universal Christian community which transcends the barriers of time and space, as opposed to sectarian; (2) universal, as opposed to particular or local; (3) true or authentic, as opposed to false or heretical; (4) emphasizing visible continuity in space and time and visible mediation by means of social and institutional structures such as creeds, sacraments, and the historical episcopate, as opposed to Protestant (in this sense, catholic with a capital C); and (5) describing the Catholic Church which is governed by the Bishop of Rome as the successor of Peter. In this sense, ‘Catholic' is often preceded by the word ‘Roman.'4
The Catechism of the Catholic Church takes ‘catholic' to mean ‘universal,' in the sense of ‘according to the totality' or ‘in keeping with the whole.' It explains that the church is catholic for two reasons: first, "because Christ is present in her," and second, "because she has been sent out by Christ on a mission to the whole of the human race." Because of Christ's presence in it, the church possesses "correct and complete confession of faith, full sacramental life, and ordained ministry in apostolic succession,5" and because of Christ's missionary charge, it possesses the character of universality.
Given the variegated meanings of the word ‘catholic,' it is only to be expected that the question of the identity of the Roman Catholic Church in general and of the Roman Catholic in particular, as distinct from other Christians, defies easy and clear-cut answers.
1. One way to get a handle on this issue is to describe philosophically and theologically what is distinctive of Catholicism. Richard McBrien, for instance, suggests that, although the doctrine of the papacy might be regarded as the distinctive element of Roman Catholicism, the Roman Catholic Church is distinguished from the other Christian confessions by the particular configuration of the philosophical position of critical realism (as expounded, e.g., by Bernard Lonergan in opposition to naive realism, empiricism, and idealism) and of the theological focus on sacramentality, mediation, and communion.7
Robert Imbelli offers a similar characterization of Catholicism. According to him, the Catholic Church is distinguished by five foundational sensitivities, namely, to the corporeal, the communal, the universal, the cosmic, and the transformational.8 For both McBrien and Imbelli, the Catholic Church promotes and sustains the creative tension between "both-and" rather than succumbs to the reductionistic "either-or."
Avery Dulles, while expressing agreement with the two theologians mentioned above, goes on to explore four dimensions of catholicity. Catholicity "from above" is God's gift and is grounded in the Triune God's self-communication in the incarnation of the Son and the sanctification of the Holy Spirit. Catholicity "from below" acknowledges the pervasive presence of God's grace in all things despite sin. Whereas the first two dimensions of catholicity may be called qualitative or vertical, the last two refer to its quantitative or horizontal aspects. Catholicity "in breadth" seeks to expand the universality of the church by means of missionary activities. Lastly, catholicity "in length" seeks both to preserve and transform the tradition of the church until the end of time.9
While these theological reflections on catholicity are helpful and indeed profound and must be kept in mind as we discuss the issue of Catholic identity, they cannot be readily translated into a set of criteria to settle the question of who is a Roman Catholic today. The reasons why this is so are several. First, the characteristics alleged to be distinctive of Roman Catholicism are not uniformly understood, not even by Catholic theologians, nor are their actual embodiments in the Catholic Church evaluated in the same way. For instance, with regard to sacramentality and mediation, while there is a near-unanimous consensus that they are distinctive, though not exclusive, of Catholicism, there is no agreement on the kinds of institutional structures (e.g., doctrines, sacraments, and ministries) by which they are actualized in the church. To take an ecumenically sensitive issue, how is the papacy to be exercised so that it functions in fact as an organ for catholicity? Much less is there a common view on which of these structures individual Catholics must minimally accept in order to retain their Catholic identity.
Secondly, it is necessary to distinguish between the question of the distinctiveness of Roman Catholicism and that of the identity of a Roman Catholic. While these two issues are intimately intertwined and must be considered together, the question of the identity of a Roman Catholic is narrower in scope than that of the distinctiveness of the Catholic Church. The latter is of a universal and theological nature, whereas the former, though theological, refers to particular individuals and admits of sociological and even canonical considerations.
Thirdly, while church authorities and theologians can in principle spell out theological and canonical criteria for Catholic identity, it is quite another question whether persons, already baptized into the Catholic Church, either as infants or adults, correctly understand them and fulfill them in their lives, even though, sociologically at least, they regard themselves and are regarded by others as Catholics.
2. A second helpful guide through this labyrinth of the distinctiveness of Catholicism and Catholic identity is provided by recent conciliar teachings and canonical determination. Vatican II describes a Catholic Christian as follows:
Fully incorporated into the Church are those who, possessing the Spirit of Christ, accept all the means of salvation given to the Church together with her entire orgnization, and who -- by the bonds constituted by the profession of faith, the sacraments, ecclesiastical government, and communion -- are joined in the visible structure of the Church of Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops.10
As is well known, the 1917 Code of Canon Law presumed that the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church and determined that baptism into this church constitutes one a person in the church with all the rights and duties of a Christian. Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici Corporis (1943) also identified the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church and added the profession of true faith to the 1917 Code's two requirements for one to be truly (reapse) a member of the church, namely, baptism and good standing.
Vatican II modified Pius XII's teaching by introducing a distinction between the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church and taught that the Church of Christ, "constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him."11 Furthermore, the council distinguished between "incorporation" into the church as the effect of baptism and "full incorporation" into the church (canon 205 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law uses the expression "fully in communion") as the result of the following four elements: (1) possession of the Spirit of Christ; (2) personal adhesion to the entire system and all the means of salvation of the church; (3) union to Christ through the church's visible structure described as the bonds of professed faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government; and (4) communion.
Taxative as Vatican II's description of full incorporation into the church is, it is far from being helpful in answering the question of Catholic identity. Whereas the acceptance of the second and third elements is verifiable, at least in principle, it is not all clear how the presence of the first and fourth elements can be accurately gauged. By their nature possession of the Holy Spirit and communion are of an internal and spiritual order and evade empirical measurement.
Interestingly enough, the canon which enumerates the conditions for "full communion" of the baptized with the church mentions only the three visible bonds and omits the possession of the Holy Spirit and communion.12 In so doing the Code makes the issue of Catholic identity much less messy than it actually is, and people desirous of conceptual clarity may welcome this restriction to empirically verifiable criteria. However, the price for canonical neatness is unacceptably high, since what is at the heart of Catholic reality, namely, union with Christ and other Christians in the Holy Spirit, is left aside. Indeed, Vatican II felt obligated to add to its description of Catholic identity the warning that "even though incorporated into the Church, one who does not however persevere in charity is not saved. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but ‘in body' not ‘in heart'13. Clearly, for Vatican II, the spiritual conditions for full incorporation into the church obtains primacy over the visible ones.
3. So far our examination of theological, conciliar, and canonical writings has not yielded a helpful set of criteria to determine who is a Catholic. A third way to help settle this question is religious sociology. It may be said that a Catholic is the baptized person who actually describes himself or herself as Catholic and behaves externally as a Catholic. This is in fact the usual way pastors determine who is a Catholic in their parishes. They simply count (more or less accurately) the number of people who are registered in their parishes and/or who attend various liturgical functions, and report to the chancery the number of Catholics in their districts. Though placing great importance on the conditions for full incorporation into the church, pastors do not explicitly inquire whether their parishioners possess the Spirit of Christ, accept all the means of salvation given to the church, internalize the three bonds of union with Christ, and live out communion with God and others.
This statistical method may be useful in determining the size of the Catholic population and the amount of diocesan tax the parish owes (for this reason pastors may be excused for regularly underestimating the number of Catholics in their parishes!), but it is far from satisfactory theologically. It does not tell us what constitutes the heart of being a Catholic. Most importantly, this sociological approach highlights a severe challenge for people engaged in the ministry of religious education, especially with regard to the issue of Catholic identity. As is well known, sociologist Andrew Greeley has been arguing for over two decades in his many publications that his research revealed a new kind of Catholic which he called "communal Catholic." This is how he describes this new type of Catholics, and given the complex portrait, the length of the following quotations may be tolerated:
What is a communal Catholic? I would suggest that a communal Catholic is ;one committed to Catholicism and self-conscious in his attempt to understand the Catholic experience in the United States. He does not care ;much what the church as an institution says or does not say, does or does ;not do. He is committed to Catholicism as a collectivity and as a world view ;(though he reserves the right to interpret that world view to meet his own ;needs). But his expectations of the church as an ecclesiastical institution are ;minimal. Unlike some of his predecessors, he does not grow irate when the ;church fails to take a stand on the latest fashionable social issue, he doesn't ;much care because he isn't very confident that church leaders are well ;informed about such issues. Even if they did stand a stand, he would not ;listen very seriously to what they say. However, he will turn to the church for ;sacramental ministry when it is needed, and he may deem that ministry to be ;needed very frequently in his life. He will not expect religious, social, moral, ;or human guidance from the church....14
Greeley goes on to say that communal Catholics like being Catholic, though not militantly or belligerently so. Moreover, though not well versed in Catholic doctrines, they do have opinions about church issues: they tend to be in favor of optional celibacy for the clergy and of birth control and they are generally opposed to abortion and sexual permissiveness. Furthermore, according to Greeley, communal Catholics tend to demand professional competence, both of themselves and church leaders:
They are professionally competent.... The professionalism of these communal Catholics is so much a part of their lives that they simply cannot understand how it could be otherwise. They are offended by Sunday sermons, not so much because the content is either too radical or conservative, but because they are so bad....
Despite their lack of interest in internal affairs, internal politics, and internal debates of the organizational church, the communal Catholics are each profoundly and deeply involved in a search for understanding what it means to be Catholic in America. Their search is open minded, open ended, respectful, sympathetic, and critical....
While they are very self-conscious in their search for insight and understanding, the communal Catholics have yet to emerge as a self-conscious, collective group in the church, and they may never do so....15
In a later work, Greeley traced the rise of this "selective Catholicism" or "Do-It-Yourself Catholicism" or "Catholicism on Your Own Terms" or "Cafeteria Catholicism" to the reforms of Vatican II, Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae, the emergence of Catholics as a well-educated, suburban, and professional in the early seventies, and the failure of leadership of the American Catholic hierarchy.16 Finally, Greeley insists that "while as an institution the Catholic Church is in terrible condition, the Catholic community prospers -- precisely because Catholics like being Catholic" and that therefore "Catholicism is reshaping itself into new and intriguing forms for the next century and the next millennium."17
How many communal Catholics are there in the American Catholic Church? Greeley has not, to my knowledge, provided a precise number, but from his comments on the rate of non-reception of Humanae Vitae 18 and about how the Catholic Church would lose four-fifths of its communicants were communal Catholics forced to leave19, it can be presumed that the number of communal Catholics is rather high, among both the laity and the lower clergy.
Even if one finds Greeley's strident and arrogant voice distasteful and disagrees with some or most of the remedies he recommended for curing the ills he diagnosed in the church20, one can hardly ignore the sociological data regarding a new kind of American Catholics which his research has unearthed. Combined with the theological uncertainties concerning the identity of a Catholic discussed above, the recent emergence of the "communal Catholic" clearly poses a tremendous challenge for religious educators insofar as it touches the very heart of their enterprise which is the formation and shaping of a Catholic identity and life. To these challenges we now turn.
Catholic Identity and Its Challenges to Religious Education
Identity, both of the individual and the group, is usually defined by drawing clear differences and boundaries between oneself and others and between one group and others respectively. The sharper the differences between individuals, the stronger is the consciousness of one's identity. Similarly, the more numerous are the boundaries making the crossing of a member of one group over to another group impossible or at least costly, both materially and psychologically, the deeper and the more permanent is the esprit de corps and the cohesiveness of the group. In short, the identity of the individual and the group is defined and maintained over against that of others. Furthermore, to function as effective determinants of the identity of either the individual or the group, differences and boundaries must be highly visible and easily verifiable. Differences, even though profound and numerous, that remain at the invisible or spiritual level, and therefore not amenable to empirical verification, do not serve well to define and maintain personal and social identity.
In light of these considerations on the formation of individual and social identity it is clear that recent developments in the Catholic Church and its ecclesiology have conspired to corrode the identity of both the individual Catholic and the church as a whole. As summarized above, terminologically, the word ‘catholic' has lost much of its geographical, temporal, numerical, and doctrinal connotations -- dimensions that are visible and readily verifiable. It is now predominantly taken to refer to wholeness, a much richer concept but somewhat vague and therefore less capable to define boundaries and differences.21
Theologically, Vatican II's refusal to identify the Catholic Church with the Church of Christ, as Pius XII has done in Mystici Corporis, has the unintended effect of blurring the defining characteristics of the Catholic Church as the true church. Even Vatican II's non-use of the adjective ‘Roman' to describe the Catholic Church, as Vatican I has done22, adds to the confusion. Furthermore, the portrait of a Catholic is made fuzzy when Vatican II privileges spiritual conditions for full incorporation into the church, i.e., possession of the Spirit and communion, over the acceptance of the visible bonds of profession of faith, sacraments, and hierarchical structure. In addition, Vatican II's description of the various ways in which non-Catholic Christians are "joined" to the Catholic Church, non-Christian believers are "related" to it, and non-believers can be saved, often prompts the question of why one should be a Catholic at all23.
Sociologically, the identity of the Catholic is furthered eroded by the presence of "communal Catholics." If Greeley's characterization of these Catholics is correct, and there is no reason to question its accuracy, the boundaries separating Catholics and non-Catholic Christians have been stretched beyond tolerable limits.
With all these developments, it is not surprising that religious education is faced with a host of challenges since one of its goals is fostering the understanding of the Catholic faith and inculcating the Catholic practices with a view to deepening the Catholic identity. These can be summarized as follows, though the list is by no means exhaustive:
1. Accepting Vatican II's recognition of the ecclesial nature of non-Catholic denominations which it calls "churches" and "ecclesial communities" and their positive relationships to the Catholic Church, and accepting the necessity of ecumenical dialogue and practices, how can one impress upon Catholics the same council's teaching that "it is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help towards salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained"? The challenge is not to prove to Catholics the truth of this teaching, since presumably, being Catholic, they have already accepted it. Rather it is how to strengthen and deepen this conviction in their consciousness by means of various "structures of plausibility," to use the expression of sociologist Peter Berger.
2. In view of Vatican II's call for dialogue with non-Christian religions, and given the existence of various religious movements, such as New Age, which appropriate a host of beliefs and practices of Eastern religions, how can the distinctly Catholic beliefs and practices be maintained? Again, the challenge is not to prove to Catholics that Christian beliefs and practices are better than those of non-Christian religions, because presumably, being Christian, they are already convinced of their truths and values. Rather it is to help them understand and live the Christian truths and practices in the context of religious pluralism of the American society.
3. With regard to communal Catholics, while pointing out their doctrinal inconsistencies and lamenting their lack of interest in the institutional aspects of the church, how can we respond to their abiding love for Catholicism and the Catholic symbolic system? Is there a way, in and through the Catholic symbolic system itself, to reconnect them to the "full incorporation" into the Catholic Church as Vatican II describes it?
4. In meeting these challenges, can we gain a new understanding of the Catholic identity itself, one that keeps in creative tension the spiritual and institutional, the invisible and visible elements? Should this new concept of catholicity inform and shape the goal and practice of religious education?
Shaping the Catholic Identity as a Task of Religious Education
In this last part I will make a few suggestions as to how the above-mentioned challenges can be met in religious education. Since these challenges overlap with each other, I will not deal with them individually but will treat them in globo.
It may be helpful, however, to preface this discussion with two observations. First, while intra-Christian and interreligious dialogue is imperative for contemporary Christian theology and practice, it is neither feasible nor productive in religious education to aim at the formation of a generically Christian attitude and identity, since it is only through a particular community of faith, with its own beliefs, rituals, and ethical and spiritual practices that a person gains access to and is socialized into the common Christian heritage. Of course, such a community of faith must be able to acknowledge the religious traditions of communities other than itself and critically appropriate their positive aspects to enrich its own self-understanding and religious practices. Nevertheless, members of a particular religious community cannot do so effectively unless they are already well established in their own tradition. To put it differently, in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, one cannot "cross over" and "come back" unless one already is familiar with and dwells comfortably in the home from which one ventures forth into other faith communities and to which one returns, strengthened in one's own religious identity. In other words, one cannot be "Methodist, Taoist, Native American, Quaker, Russian Orthodox, and Jew," to quote our college graduate, unless one already lives, profoundly and fervently, some kind of Christian faith first.
Secondly, I am aware that Catholic identity is shaped not by doctrines alone, but also by other means such as worship and prayer. Indeed, the most effective catechesis is one that is built on all the four pillars of religious education, namely, doctrine, liturgy, ethical praxis, and prayer. In this part I focus only on doctrine, not denying the greater importance of the other three elements in shaping the Catholic identity. The reason for this narrow concentration is that according to the findings of a project currently directed by a research team composed of Dean Hoge, William Dinges, Mary Johnson, and Juan Gonzalez at the Catholic University of America, the elements that rank lowest in the American youth's estimation of what constitute Catholic identity are specific moral teachings25.
Perhaps it is necessary and proper to acknowledge at the outset that the issue of the identity of the Catholic Church and of Catholics and the alleged "identity crisis" cannot be resolved by religious education alone. These issues are much larger than religious education, and it is unfair to lay the confusion of Catholic identity at the doorsteps of religious educators exclusively. Measures other than religious education have been suggested, by both "liberals" and "conservatives," to restore Catholic identity to the American Church.
As far as religious education is concerned, it has been suggested that the most effective means to restore and strengthen Catholic identity is a faithful presentation of Catholic doctrines and a fervent promotion of Catholic practices, preferably by means of a common catechism such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. On the face of it, it is hard to see how anyone can disagree with this proposal in its general thrust.
However, in my judgment, the problem is not that the Catholic faithful do not know what the official church teaches. Except in arcane matters such as trinitarian theology, rare indeed is a Catholic who is ignorant of church teachings on issues such as sexual morality (e.g., masturbation, premarital and extramarital intercourse, artificial contraception, and homosexuality), priestly celibacy, or the exclusion of women from the hierarchical priesthood. The Magisterium has been repeatedly proclaiming its teachings on these issues, opportune et inopportune. Any Catholic still ignorant of church teachings on these issues can easily remedy his or her lack of knowledge by picking up any official catechism. Ironically, it is often thanks to the public media, the bête noire of conservatives, that church teachings on controversial issues are made known to a wide public (which is not to say that the media agree with them!).
The real problem in religious education lies then not in the ignorance of church teachings but in presenting the reasons that the official church uses to justify its teachings. To take two examples: no Catholic is presumably ignorant of the church's ban of artificial contraception and the ordination of women; the problem is that the reasons for the church's positions do not appear reasonable and convincing, to judge from polls, to many Catholics, even devout ones.
The religious educator must of course present the reasons fully, competently, sympathetically, clearly. But no amount of rhetoric, persuasion, pedagogy, repetition, or even threat can augment one bit the objective force and logic that these reasons possess in themselves. The teacher will rightfully appeal to faith and respect for the teaching church, but he or she cannot urge obedience to church authorities against the negative assessment of the logic of certain church teachings. One of the hallmarks of the Catholic Church is a profound respect for human reason and freedom as authentic ways to know God. Unless the student accepts and internalizes the reasons given in support of church teachings, and not just the teachings themselves; unless he or she perceives the reasonableness of the teachings (which is not the same as their purely rational grounds), the Catholic identity, which these teachings and religious education intend to maintain and develop, remains very weak.
What is one to do when reasons for church teachings fail to convince? Rather than repeating the same arguments (the weaker the arguments, the louder the voice and the more strident the appeal to authority) or concocting more and more arguments in direct support of church teachings, I suggest what can be called the "indirect approach." The indirect approach does not seek to prove the validity and truth of a particular teaching by examining its intrinsic evidence but by investigating and appealing to the ontological and existential conditions in the hearer that make the acceptance of the teaching possible. This approach is particularly helpful when the objective proofs are too many and too complex for the average mind to be able to grasp them all in their individual specificities. Indeed, in my judgment, this indirect rather than direct approach is the common one by which people reasonably arrive at certitude in matters that profoundly affect their lives such as ethics and religion32.
With regard to the question of Catholic identity, this approach is predicated upon the conviction that personal and social identity is shaped and maintained not primarily by the specific differences that an individual or a society possesses over against others, which may be many but superficial, but by what might be called "deep structures," which may be few and common to others. For example, my cultural identity as a Vietnamese is defined less by my particularities of birth, educational achievements, social status, and material acquisitions than by such long-lasting and pervasive factors such as language, gender, race, culture which I have in common with other Vietnamese.
Analogously, what constitutes a person a Catholic and defines his or her Catholic identity is not so much what differentiates him or her from a Protestant, Orthodox, or Anglican (e.g., acceptance of the Petrine office) but the fundamental and deep structures, even though these may be common to others. Such deep structures may include doctrines but are by no means limited to these. Religion, as anthropologists have pointed out, is a system of symbols which include not only doctrines but rituals, institutions, art, and behaviors33. Thus, a Catholic's identity is shaped by doctrines as much as (if not more) by sacramental celebrations (though sacraments are common to the Orthodox, the Anglicans, and most Protestants), by devotions to Mary and the saints (common to the Orthodox), by episcopal structures (common to the Orthodox and the Anglicans), and by artistic monuments such as architecture, the visual arts, and music.
These deep structures have been variously identified as sacramentality, mediation, communion, and the "analogical imagination.34" My intention here is not to add other candidates to the list but to argue that to form the Catholic identity of their students, religious educators should attend to these deep structures, especially when the reasons for the official doctrines fail to carry weight with the audience. Indeed, unless these structures are shaped, cultivated, and nurtured with care, most of the reasons for the church's controversial teachings, especially those that contradict popular trends, are not readily understandable.
It is commonly admitted that in moral and religious matters, besides the knowledge derived from formal inference and logical deduction, there is a knowledge through "connaturality," by "instinct" as it were. Though not opposed to the knowledge acquired through philosophical reasoning, this knowledge through connaturality is gained not so much from the technical accumulation of data and their logical ordering but from a personal, deep, and prolonged familiarity with the subject matter. This familiarity, which is often a product of technical expertise but far exceeds it, gives the individual an uncanny ability to see a pattern among the disparate data, to intuit a Gestalt in the disconnected parts, to anticipate the conclusion before the reasoning process is completed, to predict the outcome of an experiment, to tell true from false, right from wrong from the "feel" of the thing. In short, it is a kind of the sixth sense, the knowledge of what Blaise Pascal calls the "heart". This is the ability, for example, of the detective to figure out the culprit despite confusing clues, of the archaeologist to reconstruct bygone cities from bits and pieces of pottery, of the historian to interpret the meanings of events from conflicting records, of the artist to see beauty amidst what appears to be disharmony and ugliness, of the virtuous person to discern with ease what is good and evil on the basis of his or her experience.
This ability Cardinal Newman calls the "illative sense," that is, the ability of the practical reason (akin to Aristotle's phronesis) to arrive at certitude in practical matters, particularly in matters concerning Christianity, which is, according to Newman, addressed to both our intellect and imagination, "creating a certitude of its truth by arguments too various for direct enumeration, too personal and deep for words, too powerful and concurrent for refutation."
Catholics, it may be argued, cultivate a special illative sense with which they grasp and assent to the Christian faith. It is characterized by the inclusiveness of both-and rather than either-or thinking, a positive appreciation of created realities as mediation and sacrament of their divine creator, a high regard for the community as the locus of God's self-communication, and a basically optimistic attitude of hope for the redemption of everything. Prior to the explicit acceptance of each and every Christian belief and practice, there are these deep structures of the Catholic identity which function as both the religious context and the epistemological warrants for these beliefs and practices. These structures do not per se provide specific justifications for a particular belief and practice, which needs to be justified each on its own merits, but they offer the context in which these arguments, "too various for direct enumeration, too personal and deep for words," and perhaps, we must add, not strong enough to convince, can acquire a certain plausibility and invite a faithful acceptance. The religious educator cannot and should not expect immediate acquiescence on the part of the listeners to the church teachings presented, but he or she must explain how they can make sense within the whole complex of the fundamental options of Catholicism and hope that the listeners will give, eventually, a sympathetic consideration to perplexing church teachings. As Catholic religious educators, they can do no more but also no less.
An example will clarify the role these deep structures perform in the acceptance of a particular belief or practice. It is a well-known fact that Paul VI's teaching that every act of sexual intercourse must be open to the transmission of life and that therefore artificial contraception is morally wrong, encounters much resistance among Catholics. A religious educator may decide directly to defend this papal teaching with an array of arguments derived from natural law, often with very mixed results (and perhaps without full-throated conviction). Rather than ignoring the papal teaching altogether or dismissing it out of hand, the religious educator may want to try an alternative approach which is to show its plausibility indirectly, in a circuitous way as it were. He or she may appeal, for instance, to the fecund nature of God's love, both in the Trinity and for us, and to the belief that a Catholic should imitate this divine modus operandi as much as possible, sex being a sacrament of the divine. Admittedly, these broad reflections do not prove that every act of sexual intercourse must be open to procreation, but they provide the theological context in which Pope Paul VI's teaching might make sense and deserves a serious hearing. More importantly, its connections with a central Christian doctrine and a deep structure of Christian identity (i.e., the analogical imagination) are made manifest, and even though its philosophical arguments may not gain greater persuasiveness, it gathers support from a fundamental principle of Christian faith and the challenge of imitatio Dei. In this way the Catholic identity of the student is not minimized, but rather maintained and fostered.
There are at least five advantages in this indirect approach to shape the Catholic identity. First, by attending to the conditions of possibility for faith, it highlights the subjective aspects of faith, and not only the objective motives of credibility. Secondly, the indirect approach shifts the emphasis from information and reasoning in religious education to formation of the habitus mentis, the illative sense, the intellectual and moral virtues of the individual, which mark the identity of a Catholic. Thirdly, the indirect method spares the Magisterium from the practice of attributing to the reasons justifying its teachings more weight they they can bear, thus risking the danger that St. Thomas alluded to when he refused to prove by rational arguments the truth of creation, that is, exposing Catholic truths to the ridicule by non-believers who are led to think that Christians believe such truths on flimsy grounds. In other words, this method permits church teachers to affirm Christian truths with courage but also with humility and honesty. Fourthly, by distinguishing the deep structures of Catholic identity from particular doctrines, the indirect method encourages the observance of the "hierarchy of truths" which is recommended by Vatican II. Fifthly, with regard to communal Catholics, the indirect method appeals to their loyalty to Catholicism, and by attending to the deep structures of the Catholic identity, it exploits their interest in sacramental celebrations and devotional practices. Hopefully, through this "back door," they will be lead to appreciate the importance and relevance of the Magisterium's teachings and the hierarchical structure of the church.
Finally, in light of these methodological considerations, it is clear that the question of the Catholic identity will have to be renegotiated. In his book Catholic Identity After Vatican II, Frans Jozef van Beeck argues that Catholic identity has usually been defined by two experiences which he calls "pistic" and "charismatic." In "pistic" experiences Catholic life is defined by precepts and commandments, and Catholic worship by rules and obligations and rubrics, derived from the feudal shape of the Latin Church and the hardening of boundaries and definitions consequent upon the Counter-Reformation. The pistic experiences are marked by four unacceptable characteristics: inappropriate dependency of the laity, totalitarianism and clericalism, inhospitable structures, and judgmental attitude toward the outside world.
By "charismatic" experiences van Beeck refers those of Christians who in virtue of their charismata exercise their ministries without dependence upon the hierarchy; are motivated by the situations in which they live; emphasize integrity, authenticity, and personal responsibility; and prefer pluriformity and differentiation of ministries. These charismatic experiences, though positive, are marked, according to van Beeck, by four weaknesses: diffuseness and compromise, loss of tradition, dissipation and even some mild, mostly unintentional heresy, and a completely moralistic version of the Catholic faith and identity experience.
Given the inadequacy of pistic and charismatic experiences to define the Catholic identity, van Beeck suggests that they must be corrected and complemented by what he calls the "mystical" experience which is based upon the resurrection of Jesus. This mystical experience consists of two aspects: worship and witness, at the heart of both of which is the person of Jesus: "The person of Jesus Christ alive in the Spirit is the source of the Christian identity-experience as well as the Christian experience of openness to the world." As worship and witness, mystical experience defines the Catholic identity by its liturgical spirituality, its insistence on personal and communal prayer, and its commitment to ecumenism and evangelization42.
Though in basic agreement with van Beeck's proposals, I prefer to speak of the Catholic identity not in terms of defining and emphasizing boundaries and differences which distinguish Catholics from other Christian and non-Christian believers. This approach concentrates on the characteristics that Catholics (allegedly) alone possess. It is a self-identity over against the others. It is us versus them. Given the recent remarkable progress in ecumenical dialogue, doctrines and structures that at one time were regarded as exclusive properties of the Catholic Church (e.g., the eucharist and the Petrine ministry) are today fast becoming common possessions of all mainline Christian churches43.
Rather than differentiation and exclusiveness, I conceive Catholic identity as intensification and deepening of those deep structures which are pervasive in the Catholic Church's faith and practice and which are possessed in common with other Christians and even with non-Christian believers. In this way, ecumenical and interreligious dialogues do not constitute a threat to the preservation of the Catholic identity; rather they provide a necessary means and opportunities for deepening and intensifying the Catholic identity, not over against the others but with them44. This way of perceiving and forming the Catholic identity offers the means to maintain a healthy and creative tension between the four sets of apparently self-contradictory elements described at the end of the last section of this essay: between Vatican's recognition of the ecclesial nature of non-Catholic Christian denominations and its affirmation of the dynamic fullness of the Catholic Church as a community of salvation; between Vatican II's call for dialogue with other world religions in the context of religious pluralism and its profession in the truth of the Christian faith; between recognizing the valid concerns of communal Catholics and insisting on the necessity of full and active participation in the life of the Catholic community; between the spiritual and institutional, the invisible and visible aspects of the church45.
Religious educators, needless to say, are privileged to participate in the task of forming and nurturing this kind of Catholic identity, in an age where it is increasingly common to encounter a self-proclaimed Catholic-Protestant-Orthodox-Jewish-Buddhist-Hindu-Muslim-New Age.
End Notes:
1. Diane Winston, "Campuses Are a Bellwether for Society's Religious Revival," The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 16, 1998): A60.
2. Recent publications have taken up the question of Catholic identity, both on the scholarly and popular levels. To be noted are the following: Francis J. Butler, American Catholic Identity (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1994); William V. D'Antonio, et al., Laity: American and Catholic (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1996); James D. Davidson, et al., The Search For Common Ground: What Unites and Divides American Catholics (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1997); Daniel Donovan, Distinctively Catholic: An Exploration of Catholic Identity (New York: Paulist, 1997); Andrew Greeley, The Catholic Myth: The Behavior and Beliefs of American Catholics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990); John A. Grindel, Whither the U.S. Church? (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991); Robert A. Ludwig, Reconstructing Catholicism for a New Generation (New York: Crossroads, 1996); Timothy G. McCarthy, The Catholic Tradition Before and After Vatican II: 1878-1993 (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1994); Patrick H. McNamarra, Conscience First, Tradition Second: A Study of Young Catholics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); Richard Rohr and Joseph Martos, Why Be Catholics? Understanding Our Experience and Tradition (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1989); David L. Schindler, Catholicism and Secularization in American Culture (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1990); Paul Wilkes, The Good Enough Catholic: Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Ballantine, 1996); William O'Malley, Why Be Catholic? (New York: Crossroad,1994);and Cassian Yuhaus (ed.), The Catholic Church and American Culture: Reciprocity and Challenge (New York: Paulist, 1990). I am grateful to my colleague William Dinges for information on this bibliography.
There is also a plethora of recent publications on Ex corde Ecclesiae as well as on the nature of the Catholic identity of Catholic educational institutions, academic freedom, and the proposed ecclesiastical mandate required for teaching theological disciplines.
3. See Hans Küng, The Church, trans. Ray and Rosaleen Ockenden (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), 296-300.
4. See Avery Dulles, The Catholicity of the Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 185. See also his essay "The Meaning of Catholicism: Adventures of an Idea," in his The Reshaping of Catholicism: Current Challenges in the Theology of Church (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 51-74.
5. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (Mahwah: Paulist, 1994), nos. 830-831.
6. Ibid., no. 830.
7. See Richard McBrien, Catholicism (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1981), 1171-84. McBrien makes a distinction between characteristic and distinctive. What is characteristic may also be found in others, but what is distinctive is found in oneself alone. Characteristic of Catholicism is the insistence on the triumph of grace over sin, tradition and continuity, community, sacramentality, and mediation. Distinctive of Catholicism is its teaching on the Petrine office. Also distinctive is the particular configuration of the various characteristics mentioned above. See ibid., 722-23. For older works by McBrien on catholicity, see his Who Is A Catholic? (Denville: NJ: Dimension Books, 1971); Church: The Continuing Quest (New York: Newman Press, 1970)and Do We Need the Church? (New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1969).
8. See Robert Imbelli, "Vatican II: Twenty Years Later," Commonweal CIX, no. 17 (1982), 522-26.
9. See Avery Dulles, The Catholicity of the Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 30-105. See also his essay "Changing Concepts of Church Membership" in his The Resilient Church: The Necessity and Limits of Adaptation (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 133-51.
10. Lumen Gentium, no. 14. English translation from Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1984). For the canons on the identity of the Christian faithful and those fully in communion with the Catholic Church, see canons 204 and 205 and very helpful commentary by James Provost in The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary (New York: Paulist, 1985), 119-29.
11. Lumen Gentium, no. 8.
12. Canon 205 reads: "Those baptized are fully in communion with the Catholic Church on this earth who are joined with Christ in its visible structure by the bonds of profession of faith, of the sacraments and of ecclesiastical governance."
13. Lumen Gentium, no. 14. The quoted expressions "in body" and "in heart" are taken from Augustine.
14. Andrew Greeley, The Communal Catholic (New York: Seabury, 1976), 9-10.
15. Andrew Greeley, The Communal Catholic (New York: The Seabury Press, 1976), 13-14. I give this long quotation to give the reader a concrete feel of the "communal Catholic." Greeley himself has given a schematic definition of the communal Catholic: "1. The communal Catholic is loyal to Catholicism. It is his religious self-definition. He will have no other. 2. The communal Catholic is not angry at the ecclesiastical structure. 3. He does not expect to receive important instruction from that structure on any issue, ranging from sexuality to international economics. 4. Nevertheless, he is interested in and fascinated by the Catholic tradition to which he is loyal, and wishes to understand it better. 5. The communal Catholic seeks sacramental ministry from the church at such times in his life when such ministry seems appropriate and necessary -- for some, every day, for others, only at rites of passage like baptism, marriage, and death." Greeley points out that items 1, 3, 5 have been present with American Catholicism almost since its beginning, whereas items 2 and 4 are new and are promising venues for the church to reach communal Catholics. (See ibid., 181-82).
16. Andrew Greeley, The Communal Catholic (New York: The Seabury Press,
17. See Andrew M. Greeley and Mary Greeley Durkin, How To Save the Catholic Church (New York: Viking Penguin, 1984), 3-17. See also Andrew Greeley, American Catholics Since the Council: An Unauthorized Report (Chicago: St. Thomas More Press, 1985). Andrew Greeley, The Catholic Myth: The Behavior and Beliefs of American Catholics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990), 4.
18. See Andrew Greeley, The Catholic Myth, 90-96.
19. See Andrew Greeley and Mary Greeley Durkin, How To Save the Catholic Church, 8. Greeley’s solutions include: presentation of sex as sacramental experience, understanding woman as analog of God, a positive assessment of marriage and family as "comic story," restoration of the parish as "organic community," revitalization of worship, fostering of popular devotions, and strengthening of Catholic schools.
20. See in particular Part Three of How to Save the Catholic Church, 105-248.
21. This is true also of Protestants. Evaluating the report of the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches (Uppsala, 1968), Avery Dulles writes: "The concept of catholicity in this document may be described as qualitative rather then quantitative. Gone is the traditional stress on geographical extension.... No effort, moreover, is made to exploit catholicity as a visible mark of the true Church."
22. See The Catholicity of the Church, 26. See Vatican I’s dogmatic constitution on the Catholic faith (Dei Filius) which speaks of "the holy, catholic, apostolic, and Roman Church." Since the nineteenth century, romanitas has been sometimes treated as if it were the fifth mark of the church.
23. See Lumen Gentium, nos. 15-16.
24. Note that recent studies have shown a tendency in Church members substantially to overreport their religious attendance. See Stanley Presser and Linda Stinson, "Data Collection Mode and Social Desirability Bias in Self-Reported Religious Attendance," American Sociological Review, 63, no. 1 (1900): 137-45. The authors conclude that "[r]espondents in conventional surveys substantially overreport their religious attendance. Apparently, misreporting error is caused mainly by social desirability pressures associated with interviewer- administration. The error can be minimized through either self- administration or asking about time-use" (144-45). I am grateful to Dr. Stinson for drawing my attention to this fact.
25. See Unitatis Redintegratio, nos. 14-24.
26. Unitatis Redintegratio, no. 3, emphasis added.
27. See the structure of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Congregation for the Clergy, General Directory for Catechesis (The Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), nos. 85. The Directory lists four ;fundamental tasks of catechesis: promoting knowledge of the faith, liturgical celebration, moral formation, and teaching to pray. For a brief discussion of religious education after Vatican II, see Gabriel Moran, "Religious Education after Vatican II," in Open Catholicism: The Tradition at Its Best, Essays in Honor of Gerard Sloyan, ed. David Efroymson and John Raines (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1997), 151-166. Moran singles out three elements of religious education: catechetics, worship, and service.
28. I am grateful to my colleague William Dinges for sharing with me the results of the research project which will be published in the near future. According to the survey, religious identity for young adult Catholics is shaped by three basic elements: belief in God’s presence in the sacraments, including the "real presence" in the eucharist; social action to help the poor; and devotion to Mary. Least important are specific moral teachings and specific rules about the priesthood. Patrick H. McNamara, in his 1992 study of young American Catholics, finds that "for the remaining two-thirds, ‘being Catholic’ was simply a matter of choice. Sometimes coming across as choosing specific teachings while rejecting others. This mode of choosing lies at the heart of the contemporary form, for younger Catholics, of Catholic self-identification." See Conscience First, Tradition Second (Albany: State university of New York Press, 1992), 158.
29. For recommendations from the conservative side, see George A. Kelly, Keeping the Church Catholic with John Paul II (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 261-85.
30. I prescind here from the possibility and legitimacy of "dissent" from the teaching of the Magisterium in non-infallible teachings. For helpful discussions of this issue, see André Naud, Un Aggiornamento et son éclipse: La liberté de la pensée dans la foi et dans l’Église (Québec: Fides, 1996); Richard R. Gaillardetz, Teaching with Authority: A Theology of the Magisteriul in the Church (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1997) and Francis A. Sullivan, Mgisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church (New York: Paulist, 1983); idem, Creative Fidelity: Weighing and Interpreting Documents of the Magisterium (New York: Paulist, 1996).
31. I am inspired by Karl Rahner’s "indirect method" as it is deployed in his Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. William Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1982). See my "Cultural Pluralism and the Unity of the Sciences: Karl Rahner’s Transcendental Theology as a Test Case," Salesianum 51 (1989): 785-809.
32. I am indebted to Cardinal John Henry Newman’s An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent, first published in 1870. For a recent edition, see An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1973). Studies on Newman’s epistemology are abundant. For recent studies, note the following: Gerard Magill, "Intreting Moral Doctrine: Newman on Conscience and Law," Horizons 20/1 (1993): 7-22; Jeffrey D. Marlett, "Conversion Methodology and the Case of Cardinal Newman," Theological Studies 58 (1997): 669-85; Linda L. Stinson, Process and Conscience: Toward a Theology of Human Emergence (Lanham, MD: University Press of America,1986); and Gerard Casey, Natural Reason: A Study of the Notions of Inference, Assent, Intuition, and First Principles in the Philosophy of John Henry Cardinal Newman (New York: Peter Lang, 1984).
33. I am in broad agreement with George Lindbeck’s view of religion as a cultural-linguistic system, though I think he unduly underestimates the cognitive and expressive dimensions of doctrines. See his The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984).
34. Greeley speaks of four basic elements of the Catholic heritage: sacramental experience, the analogical imagination, the comic story, and organic community (see How To Save the Catholic Church, 33-102). With regard to the analogical imagination, see also The Catholic Myth, especially chapter 3 (pp. 34-64) entitled "Do Catholics Imagine Differently?" Greeley takes the analogical imagination as the root characteristic of Catholics. I agree with Greeley that Catholics tend to imagine "analogously" but I do not think that this is specific of Catholics. The analogical imagination works as powerfully among the Orthodox and the Anglicans, for example, as among Catholics; by the same token, the "dialectical imagination" is no less in use among Catholics than among Protestants. My point that Catholic identity is formed not by their differences from others as long as these remain superficial but by their deep structures, even though these may be shared extensively by others. This is not an idle point, since it allows Catholics to strengthen and nourish their own identity in a truly ecumenical way. In this way, ecumenical dialogue is not seen as diluting Catholic identity but fortifying it.
35. John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1973), 492.
36. For an attempt to understand how the doctrine of the Trinity can confer unity to Christian doctrine, see Peter C. Phan, "Now That I know How to Teach, What Do I Teach? In Search of the Unity of Faith in Religious Education," forthcoming in Salesianum, 1998.
37. See Unitatis Redintegratio, no. 11. Frans Jozef van Beeck, Catholic Identity After Vatican II: Three Types of Faith in the One Church (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1983).
38. See van Beeck, Catholic Identity After Vatican II, 24-34.
39. See van Beeck, Catholic Identity After Vatican II, 34-45.
40. Van Beeck, Catholic Identity After Vatican II, 57. Original italics.
41. Van Beeck, Catholic Identity After Vatican II, 61-71. Daniel Donovan, in his Distinctively Catholic: An Exploration of Catholic Identity (New York: Paulist, 1997) devotes the last chapter to the theme of being a Catholic today. As to what makes a Catholic today, Donovan singles out our common humanity which is shared with others; an affirmation of the presence an action of God in the life and destiny of Jesus; living in the presence of God; participating actively in the life of the church, especially its sacramental and eucharistic life; giving priority to grace; living their vocation of discipleship; celebrating forgiveness and reconciliation; and practicing the virtue of hope. However, for Donovan, "what is perhaps most distinctive of us as Catholics is our membership in the church with everything that it involves in terms of liturgy and sacraments, of mutual help and support" (210).
43. For baptism, eucharist, and ministry, see the groundbreaking so- called Lima Document and the report of ARCIC.
44. For a discussion of the logic of interreligious dialogue that is open to the truths and values of other religions and remains faithful to the claims of one’s faith, see Peter C. Phan, "Are There Other ‘Saviors’ for Other People? A Discussion of the Problem of the Universal Significance and Uniqueness of Jesus the Christ, " in: Christianity and the Wider Ecumenism, ed. Peter C. Phan (New York: Paragon House, 1990), 163-80, idem, "The Claim of Uniqueness and University in Interreligious Dialogue," Indian Theological Studies 31, no. 1 (1994): 44-66.
45. For a discussion of the tension between religious pluralism and theology and religious education, see Peter C. Phan, "Multiculturalism, Church, and the University," Religious Education 90, no. 1 (1994): 8-29; idem, "Cultural Diversity: A Blessing or a Curse for Theology and Spirituality?" Louvain Studies 19 (1994): 195- 211.