Unfinished Journey: The Church 40 Years after Vatican II

304 Pages·2004·11.54 MB·English

by  Austen Ivereigh

Unfinished Journey
The Church 40 Years after Vatican II
Essays for John Wilkins
Edited by
Austen Ivereigh
continuum
new yoprk london
CONTINUUM
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© The Tablet Publishing Company 2003
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
First published 2003
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-8264-7100-5 (paperback)
Typeset by Aarontype Limited, Easton, Bristol
Printed and bound by Cromwell Press Ltd, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
Contents
About the Contributors v
Introduction
Austen Ivereigh 1
Part I Taking Stock
1 Vatican II: Of Happy Memory - and Hope?
Nicholas Lash 13
2 The 'Open Church' 40 Years Later: A Reckoning
Michael Novak 32
3 Tradition and Reaction: Historical Resources for
a Contemporary Renewal
Eamon Duffy 49
Part II The Unfinished Journey
4 On Having the Courage of One's Convictions
Hans Kung 69
5 Images of the Church: From 'Perfect Society' to
'God's People on Pilgrimage'
Rembert Weakland 78
6 Wanted: The Other Half of the Church
Joan Chittister 91
7 Augustine, Aquinas or the Gospel sine glossal
Divisions over Gaudium et spes
Joseph Komonchak 102
8 Power and Powerlessness in the Church:
The Chance for Renewal
Timothy Radcliffe 119
CONTENTS
9 Religious Freedom: The Limits of Progress
Michael Walsh 134
10 Where Does Catholic Social Teaching Go
from Here?
Clifford Longley 149
11 The Scientific Search for the Soul
John Cornwell 170
12 The Place of Philosophy in the Life of the Church:
A Time for Renewal
JohnHaldane 183
13 Captivated Ambivalence: How the Church Copes
with the Media
Lavinia Byrne 196
14 The Church and the Media: Beyond Inter mirifica
Alain Woodrow 208
Part III Signposts from Afar
15 A Lead from Asia
Thomas C. Fox 227
16 How Base Communities Started: Paraguay's
Christian Agrarian Leagues
Margaret Hebblethwaite 240
17 Truth beyond Division: Eastern Meditation and
Western Christianity
Shirley du Boulay 257
18 Oscar Romero, Bishop-Martyr and Model
of Church
Julian Filochowski 272
Part IV Postscript
19 John Wilkins: A Tribute
Hugo Young 287
IV
About the Contributors
LAVINIA BYRNE is a regular broadcaster with the BBC on
domestic radio and with the World Service. She used to teach
communications in the Cambridge Theological Federation,
where she was a tutor at Westcott House. A former editor of the
Ignatian spirituality journal The Way, she is author of Woman
at the Altar (Continuum, 1999), and 20 other titles. She writes
The Tablet's internet reviews and edits its Catholic internet
portal, www.cathport.com.
JOAN CHITTISTER OSB is a Benedictine sister of Erie, Penn-
sylvania, and a popular speaker and writer. A theologian, social
psychologist and communication theorist, she is an active mem-
ber of the International Peace Council and a regular columnist
for the National Catholic Reporter. Her recent books include
Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope (Wm. B. Eerdmans,
2003), New Designs: An Anthology of Spiritual Vision (3enet-
vision, 2002) and The Story of Ruth: Twelve Moments in Every
Woman's Life (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000).
JOHN CORNWELL is Director of the Science and Human
Dimension Project at Jesus College, Cambridge, and an Affili-
ated Research Scholar in the Department of History and Phil-
osophy of Science in the University of Cambridge. His books
include Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (Penguin
Books, 2000) and Breaking Faith: The Pope, the People and the
Fate of Catholicism (Penguin Books, 2002).
v
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
SHIRLEY DU BOULAY worked for several years covering
religion for the BBC. Among her many books are biographies
of Teresa of Avila, Dame Cicely Saunders, Desmond Tutu and
Bede Griffiths. She is currently working on a biography of
Swami Abhishiktananda. She was married to the late John
Harriott, for many years a much-loved Tablet columnist.
EAMON DUFFY is Reader in Church History in the Univer-
sity of Cambridge, and President of Magdalene College, Cam-
bridge, where he has been Fellow since 1979. He has recently
been appointed Professor of the History of Christianity. He is
a member of the Pontifical Historical Commission and of the
Theology Committee of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of
England and Wales. Among his books are The Stripping of
the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1570 (Yale
University Press, 1992) and a history of the popes, Saints and
Sinners (Yale University Press, 1997, with a revised and ex-
panded edition in 2000). His most recent book, The Voices of
Morebath, Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village
(Yale University Press, 2001), was awarded the Hawthornden
Prize for Literature in 2002. He is a frequent broadcaster on
radio and television, and a longstanding Tablet contributor.
JULIAN FILOCHOWSKI was director of CAFOD, the Catho-
lic Agency for Overseas Development in England and Wales,
from 1982 until 2003. He was also a member of the Com-
mittee for International Justice and Peace of the English and
Welsh Bishops' Conference from 1981, and co-chair of the
Caritas International AIDS Task Force from 1988. In 1999 he
was elected a member of Caritas International's Executive
Board and a member of the Board of Caritas Europe. In 1998 he
received an OBE for services to International Development.
VI
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
THOMAS C. FOX is the publisher and former editor of the
National Catholic Reporter. His books include Sexuality and
Catholicism (George Braziller, 1995) and most recently Pente-
cost in Asia (Orbis, 2002).
JOHN HALDANE is Professor of Philosophy and Director
of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs in the
University of St Andrews. He is author (with J. J. C. Smart) of
Atheism and Theism (Blackwell, 2nd edn, 2003) and of An
Intelligent Person's Guide to Religion (Duckworth, 2003). His
next book is a collection of essays, Faithful Reason (Rout-
ledge). He has been a frequent contributor to The Tablet for the
last decade.
MARGARET HEBBLETHWAITE is a theologian, spiritual
director and journalist living in Santa Maria, Misiones, Para-
guay, where she teaches a Bible class at a tertiary institute for
the poor. She married the Vaticanologist Peter Hebblethwaite
in 1974 and was widowed in 1994. From 1991 to 2000 she
was assistant editor at The Tablet. Her books include Mother-
hood and God (Geoffrey Chapman, 1984), Basic Is Beautiful:
Basic Ecclesial Communities from Third World to First World
(HarperCollins, 1993) and The Next Pope (with Peter Hebble-
thwaite: HarperCollins and HarperSanFrancisco, 2000). She
has edited an anthology of texts which appeared in The Tablet's
'Living Spirit' column: Living Spirit: Prayers and Readings for
the Christian Year (Canterbury Press, 2000).
AUSTEN IVEREIGH is The Tablets deputy editor. A former
lecturer in Spanish and Jesuit novice, he is the author of Catholi-
cism and Politics in Argentina (Macmillan, 1995) and editor
of The Politics of Religion in an Age of Revival: Essays in
Nineteenth-Century Europe and Latin America (University of
London, 2000).
vn
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
JOSEPH KOMONCHAK holds the John C. and Gertrude P.
Hubbard Chair in Religious Studies in the School of Theology
and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America
in Washington, D.C. An expert in the ecclesiology and theol-
ogy leading up to the Second Vatican Council, he is editor
of the English-language edition of the five-volume History of
Vatican II, the fourth volume of which is about to appear.
NICHOLAS LASH is the Norris-Hulse Professor Emeritus of
Divinity and Fellow Emeritus of Clare Hall at the University
of Cambridge. His books include Easter in Ordinary: Reflec-
tions on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God (SCM
Press, 1988), Believing Three Ways in One God: A Reading
of the Apostles9 Creed (SCM Press, 1992 and 2003) and The
Beginning and the End of 'Religion' (Cambridge University
Press, 1996).
CLIFFORD LONGLEY is The Tablet's editorial consultant,
fortnightly columnist and leader writer, and was for six months
in 1996 its acting editor. For 20 years he was religious affairs
editor of The Times, and for a time its chief leader writer. He
wrote a weekly column in The Times throughout that period,
and continued it in the Daily Telegraph, from 1992 to 2000.
Books include The Times Book of Clifford Longley (Harper-
Collins, 1991), The Worlock Archive (Geoffrey Chapman,
2000) and Chosen People (Hodder & Stoughton, 2002). He is a
regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day.
MICHAEL NOVAK covered the second session of Vatican II
in 1964 for the National Catholic Reporter. The winner of the
Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion (1994), he currently
holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Pub-
lic Policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington,
vin
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
D.C. His books include The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
(Madison Books, 1991), The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism (Free Press, 1993), Belief and Unbelief: A Philos-
ophy of Self-Knowledge (Transaction Publishers, 1994), The
Experience of Nothingness (Transaction Publishers, 1998) and
Catholic Social Thought and Liberal Institutions: Freedom
with Justice (Transaction Publishers, 1989). His latest book
is On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the
American Founding (Encounter Books, 2001).
TIMOTHY RADCLIFFE OP is a Dominican of the English
Province. He joined the Order in 1965, studying in Oxford
and Paris. He taught Scripture at Blackfriars, Oxford, for
many years and was its Prior from 1982 to 1988. As Provincial
he was President of the Conference of Religious. He was Mas-
ter of the Order of Preachers from 1992 to 2001, and is now
an itinerant preacher and lecturer. He is the author of Sing a
New Song (Dominican Publications, 1999) and I Call You
Friends (Continuum, 2000).
MICHAEL WALSH wrote the commemorative history of The
Tablet, and was for many years its television critic. He retired as
Librarian of Heythrop College, University of London, in 2001,
and is now editor of the Heythrop Journal. He is also the editor
of the Dictionary of Christian Biography (Continuum, 2001).
Among his recent books are Warriors of the Lord (John Hunt
Publishing, 2003), an account of the military religious orders,
and The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally
Bloody History of Papal Election (Canterbury Press, 2003).
REMBERT G. WEAKLAND OSB is the Archbishop Emeritus
of Milwaukee and an international expert in liturgy and sacred
music. A Benedictine monk of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, he was
IX