Posted on 10/08/2008 11:33:01 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Much mischief in Catholicism often results from over-emphasizing one or another pole of a continuum. For example, push too hard on the church as a hierarchy, and the result is an inflated notion of authority; put too much stress on the church as the “people of God,” and you get congregationalism.
Applied to the current Synod of Bishops on the Bible, this "both/and" feature of Catholicism means that the bishops need to do two things at once: foster a deeper knowledge and love for the Scriptures, without generating an exaggerated cult of the printed word divorced from broader notions of tradition and the living church. A more succint way of phrasing the point is this: How can the church stress the Bible as fundamental, without turning Catholics into fundamentalists?
Yesterday saw just such an effort to strike the right balance, with a forceful plea from a key papal advisor to reject the idea of Christianity as a “Religion of the Book.”
By most accounts, the afternoon’s most memorable address came from Bishop Salvatore Fisichella, the rector of the Lateran University and President of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Under any circumstances, ears would perk up when Fisichella takes the floor. He’s a longtime advisor to Pope Benedict XVI; the two men worked closely together, for example, on Pope John Paul II’s 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio. (The joke around Rome at the time was that the text could have been titled Fisichella et Ratzinger.)
Fisichella began yesterday by arguing that the document of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) on Scripture, Dei Verbum, offered a piece of “authentic dogmatic progress” that has yet to be adequately discovered and developed: Its stress on the unity of the sources of revelation.
(By way of background, the big debate over Dei Verbum at the time of the council pitted what was then known as the “two-source theory,” which held that Scripture and tradition are essentially two separate streams of revelation, against the “one-source theory,” which posited that Scripture is the lone source of revelation and tradition is an elaboration of it. In effect, Dei Verbum held that Scripture and tradition are interdependent and integrally related to one another.)
Fisichella said the failure to appreciate the solution offered by Dei Verbum has had dangerous consequences.
“Many believers, when asked what the phrase ‘Word of God’ means, respond: ‘The Bible,’” Fisichella said. “That response isn’t wrong, but it’s incomplete , or at least it reflects an incomplete perception of the richness present in the expression, and as a consequence it tends to identify Christianity as a ‘Religion of the Book.’”
“In our language, we shouldn’t fall into the ambivalent expression ‘the three religions of the Book,’” Fisichella said, referring to Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Instead, he insisted, Christianity is properly understood as a “religion of the Word.”
“It’s important that we commit ourselves to constructing a culture that sees Scripture as a living word,” Fisichella said. Otherwise, he warned, “we run the risk of humiliating the Word of God by reducing it exclusively to a written text, without the provocative capacity to give meaning to life.”
Fisichella asserted that the church finds itself facing an “educational emergency,” created by a culture in which the Bible is often seen as a collection of “myths, lacking any historical character and intended solely for the naïve.” In that context, he said, it’s critical to present Scripture in its “totality” – meaning that it’s part of a living tradition, which is ultimately aimed at salvation.
Fisichella’s call to reject the phrase “Religion of the Book” echoes a point already made by Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec City, the relator of the synod, in his opening address. Ouellet, too, expressed a preference for the term “religion of the Word.”
Other notes struck yesterday afternoon:
• Bishop George Punnakottil of Kothamangalam, India, from the Syro-Malabar Church, offered a gentle rebuke to synod organizers for neglecting the Eastern tradition, noting that the working paper for the synod contained just eight citations from Eastern fathers. He argued that the Eastern perspective can help achieve one of the synod’s main aims, which is restoring spiritual depth to the way the Bible is read, beyond historical and literary analysis. Emphasizing development of the “inner eye of faith,” Punnakottil said that “true theologians are true saints.”
• Archbishop Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato, Philippines, who also serves as secretary-general of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, stressed that “God spoke his Word especially for the sake of the poor.” Asia today, Quevedo said, is “a continent of the poor, of economic and political imbalances, of ethnic division and conflict.” Yet in precisely that context, he said, “thousands of small communities of the poor” are springing up, drawing strength and consolation from reading the Bible. Quevedo’s endorsement of “Basic Ecclesial Communities” carries particular importance in light of the controversy that has sometimes surrounded them, especially in Latin America but also in other parts of the world. Critics charge that base communities can be excessively political and sometimes at odds with the hierarchy, but Quevedo praised them as “communities of solidarity and fellowship at the grassroots, effectively challenging in their own little way the modern culture of secularism and materialism.”
• Bishop Desiderius Rwoma of Singida, Tanzania, returned to one of the most popular themes so far in the synod – the need for better homilies. “If we speak of people being lukewarm concerning matters of our faith, and the phenomenon of religious sects which are spreading at an alarming speed in many parts of the world, the causes for this can possibly be traced back to a lack of good and proper preaching,” Rwoma said. He proposed a return to “mystagogical preaching,” meaning a style that gradually leads people more deeply into the central mysteries of the faith.
• Bishop Filippo Santoro of Petropolis, Brazil, was the first to raise the issue of “extraordinary ministers,” referring to lay people who under certain circumstances play roles once performed exclusively by priests, such as distributing communion during the Mass. Santoro asserted that extraordinary ministers “by themselves, and in themselves, do not arouse an encounter with Christ,” but rather “can end up exacerbating the bureaucratization of the church.”
Where did the writer get that?
Ron Sider? Jim Wallis? Tony Campolo?
Chapter & Verse please. This is the first I've heard this!
Does 2 Tim 3:16 not promote sola scriptura?
Sola Scriptura does not disallow other authority, but requires that all such submit to the Scriptures as the final logos authority, to which the Lord and his apostles themselves appealed, not a mortal man or men who presume that supremacy, and that according to their interpretation, only their interpretation can be right in any conflict.
Sola Scriptura requires that all authoritative teaching must be able to withstand the scrutiny of sound Scriptural exegesis, by which you will not find the perpetual virginity of Mary nor her as a Heavenly object of prayer, etc., supported. Nor even the Perpetuated Petrine papacy of Rome, from whence all this such flows.
“Does 2 Tim 3:16 not promote sola scriptura”
Not by itself. Catholics will make use of the things Scripture is useful for, and rightly point out that the church itself also is such. But the key words are “All scripture is given by inspiration of God,” which is nowhere said of Israel or the church, though they were and she upholds it (1 Tim. 3:15).
It is that which is affirmed to be inspired that enabled the church to be born, as it consists only of souls who are added to it by faith in the Word.
While even if it were possible that some traditions about Christ that are not recorded (Jn. 21:25) were also inspired, it is too late for that, as to hold that tradition is equal to Scripture is essentially adding to a closed canon (which t took 1400+ years and the Reformation for Rome to provide herself with a faulty, but “infallible” conclusion).
Meanwhile, church tradition is virtually a bottomless pit, as there is no certain beginning nor end to it. And that which is shown to contradict Scripture relies upon a self proclaim infallible magisterium. And appealing to Scripture for proof is submitting to sola Scriptura. But according her apologists, laymen cannot know anything for certain from that method, but need to submit first to the doctrine of her infallible magisterium.
But even then they can offer no infallible list of infallible teaching, while much or most of the Bible remains without such by heart (and few western Catholics manifest care for such).
I see the Berean heart and method much better, even with it’s inherent abuses.
“In our language, we shouldn’t fall into the ambivalent expression ‘the three religions of the Book,’” Fisichella said, referring to Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Instead, he insisted, Christianity is properly understood as a “religion of the Word.”
I think that sums it up. Frankly, I've never understood why the Muslims get a pass on this, since they accept neither the Book nor the Word...but it seems to be standard to accept Islam as being Biblically based. Just shows you what you can do with the Bible when an independent "prophet" gets hold of it and puts his own gloss on it, I guess.
He got it from Liberation Theology. In any case, “base communities” are so yesterday. The good bishop needs to get up to speed on this.
However, given the context of which the synod seems (in this translation) to be speaking, they are right. Even the most fundamentalist Bible only Christian is not a “Religion of the Book” in that there are doctrines that are not explicitly spelled out that all Christians hold. For instance, while the Bible speaks of the Trinity and Incarnation, the details are pretty vague at times. But looking at the Scripture and thinking about it, you can get a better idea. In Islam, that would not be possible.
To say that the doctrine of the Triunity of God is most certainly Biblically derived and substantiated, and if the born again Christian faith was not that of the Book, and which materially provides pastors, etc., it would simply not exist.
(James 1:18) “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”
(Eph 1:13) “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,”
(Rom 15:4) “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”
Something seems seriously askew here.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
LOL! A Cardinal is not a source for God’s Word. Man made traditions nullify God’s Word.
Deception NEEDS to attached itself to something good to survive so of course these RC will ‘try’ to attached itself to God’s Word.
They can say it all they want but GOD’s Word says differently. And HIS WORD is the ONLY WORD that counts as many will learn the hard way.
The Word of God is Jesus, not just a collection of books
He’s not Christian. A noahide
Same place they get a lot of other made up stuff. Tradition
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