The Catholic Tradition

1091 Pages·1998·3.07 MB·English

by  Thomas Langan

title: The Catholic Tradition
author: Langan, Thomas.
publisher: University of Missouri Press
isbn10 | asin: 0826211836
print isbn13: 9780826211835
ebook isbn13: 9780826260963
language: English
Catholic Church--Doctrines , Tradition
subject
(Theology)
publication date: 1998
lcc: BX1751.2.L336 1998eb
ddc: 230/.2
Catholic Church--Doctrines , Tradition
subject:
(Theology)
Page iii
The Catholic Tradition
Thomas Langan
Page iv
TO MY WIFE, JANINE
Copyright © 1998 by
The Curators of the University of Missouri
University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201
Printed and bound in the United States of America
All rights reserved
5 4 3 2 1 02 01 00 99 98
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Langan, Thomas
The Catholic tradition / Thomas Langan.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8262-1183-6 (alk. paper)
1. Catholic ChurchDoctrines. 2. Tradition (Theology)
I. Title.
BX1751.2.L336 1998
230'.2dc21 98-27053
CIP
This paper meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.
Text design: Elizabeth K. Young
Jacket design: Stephanie Foley
Typesetter: Bookcomp, Inc.
Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Typefaces: Palatino, Charlemagne

Page v
Contents
1. Why and How "Appropriate One's Traditions"?: 1
A Philosophical Foreword
2. The Essential Catholic Vision: A Contemporary View 21
3. Who Is This Jesus?: A Deepening Understanding of 54
Christ through the Christological and Iconoclastic Crises
4. The Nature of the Early Church 94
5. The East-West Crisis: The Great Schism 117
6. The Western Church's Search for a New Synthesis 142
7. Medieval Catholicism: An Incarnational Religion 176
8. The Fabric Rent: The Protestant Revolt and the Origins 203
of Modernity
9. The Challenges of Modernity 247
10. The Church's Response to Modernity 310
11. The "New Anthropology" and the "New Morality" 340
12. The Church's Openness to Other "Ways": The 356
Challenge and Perils of Ecumenism
13. How Can the Tradition Change, yet Have an Essence? 370
How Can Truth Be "Eternal," yet Unfold in History?
14. Authenticity and Christic Man 390
15. The Church in the World of Today: Seeking to Dwell 409
in the Center
Index 529
Page 1
1
Why and How "Appropriate One's Traditions"?:
A Philosophical Foreword
The Need Today for Methodic Appropriation of Traditions
In Tradition and Authenticity in the Search for Ecumenic Wisdom, I
argued the need in today's situation for personal, methodic
appropriation of the traditions that have formed one.1 Methodic
appropriation entails a more explicit, more aware consciousness of the
truth implications of the traditions that, in being formed by them, one
has already in some less philosophical way appropriatedor, shall we
say, been appropriated by them! This more critical reflection on who
we are is demanded by our time, an epoch of unprecedented self-
awareness, when nothing can be taken for granted, everything is in
question, the most basic assumptions upon which a "commonsense"
personal and social life could be based are under attack by some
group. Moreover, encounters between peoples formed by the different
great traditions are more intimate than ever before. The traditions
challenge one another more insistently. A better grasp of why we
believe what we do provides the security for letting the other be
himself, a condition for any fruitful dialogue, while allowing one to
respond in an enlightened fashion to the challenges of other visions, of
foreign experience.
Many doubt that meaningful dialogue between traditions is possible. It
is certainly already difficultsometimes even more tensebetween
factions within a given tradition. A thoughtful friend said to me
recently, "All we can do is better define different peoples' turf, and
mediate political compromises to keep the peace." To be sure, Islam,
for instance, can be ignored. For a while. And at our peril. Only
through taking the great traditions seriously will we be able to
cooperate at more than a superficial, pragmatic level with those of
very different beliefs, and that goes, as I said, for those of different
parties within our own traditions and institutions. The
1. Langan, Tradition and Authenticity (Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1992). Hereinafter, TA.
Page 2
appropriator will never take others seriously unless he comes to
believe that they may offer insight into experiences foreign to him,
which may be the basis of truths unifiable into an accumulating
personal and communitarian wisdom. He is not likely to consider
foreign experiences meaningful until he has probed a bit deeper than
common sense into the significance of the things declared true by his
own traditions.
My project of exploring how the many explicit traditions hand down
(tradere means "to hand down," hence traditio) truths of many kinds
is grounded in a particular sense of response-ability: How can we
enhance our personal and collective abilities (and, just as important,
willingness) to respond to the needs and possibilities of our situation
in life and hence the needs and possibilities of one another? This
particular sense is influenced by the Christian revelations about
lovethe key, I believe, to who we are. It is only the Christian-
influenced traditions that are eager for dialogue.
The project of exploring what our planetary situation demands began
with the just-mentioned programmatic introduction Tradition and
Authenticity in the Search for Ecumenic Wisdom. That volume
explained that different kinds of tradition pass on distinctive kinds of
truth (a "true" work of art is something very different from a scientific
principle, for example). It described the position of the main explicit
traditions in the present world system, operating through their
respective kinds of institutions, and expressing their distinctive kinds
of truth through different sorts of symbol systems (musical notation is
different from mathematical symbols, and English from Arabic).
While completing this programmatic introduction I was working on a
first draft of my own effort to develop a method of critical
appropriation, choosing the tradition that had most deeply formed me,
Catholic Christianity. The two efforts were causing one another to be
modified, and, as you might expect, I began to develop many urgent
questions concerning knowledge and being. It became evident that yet
another volume, one of what philosophers call "epistemology and
ontology," would be an important part of this appropriative work.
Over about ten years I was privileged to work with undergraduate and
graduate students as I taught successive drafts of that text. It has now
been published as the hefty tome Being and Truth.2 That effort
pointed the way toward a Christian anthropology. I was coming to see
better what is demanded by focusing my own response3 on what my
life as a Christian holds as a personal mission. How am I called to
move forward in my life, as a reflective intellectual who recognizes
that any reflection is carried on within the context of daily challenges
to live lovingly with others in a multilayered series of communities
and institutions, while struggling to reach out to grasp the ultimate
contexts within which that
2. Langan, Being and Truth (Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
1996), Hereinafter, BT.
3.Spondeo means "I commit."