Being catholic (small c) in a Catholic (Capital C) Way

I was saddened by Fr. John Haughey S.J.’s essay “The Catholicity of Lonergan” in the recent Lonergan Review. I came to know Fr. Haughey’s work in the early days of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and was thrilled that such a sharp, erudite, Jesuit mind was serving this movement that was so enamored of the person of Jesus, within an ecclesial context, and so physically expressive and exuberant about it. Fr. Haughey has come a long ways since then…in an unfortunate direction. In the name of his fellow Jesuit Bernard Lonergan, he offers an ideal of “catholicity” as the capacity of the human intellect to reach out beyond itself in the direction of deeper truth. Thus described, catholicity is praiseworthy. The problem, however, is threefold: he explicitly disassociates it from Jesus; he removes it from an ecclesial, or Catholic, context; and lastly, he describes it as an abstract, intellectual action, transcendent of the body and the physical. The essay implies contempt for: Christocentrism, ecclesial institutions, and the role of the physical…precisely the three values so treasured in Catholic Pentecostalism.

The essay unfavorably contrasts the Christocentrism of the early Lonergan with the inclusiveness and uprootedness of his later work. It voices the standard disgust for “bureaucracies” on behalf of an ethereal, abstract spirituality unsoiled by the hard work of actually getting things done. Implicitly, this “catholicity” is anti-Roman and certainly non-Catholic. It imagines an inexorable dynamism of the human intellect in search of truth and goodness but fails to connect with the body, concretion, or the harsh reality of sin. Haughey pays homage to the Vatican II shift from objectivism and classicism, with their view of truths as abstract and absolute, towards a sense of the historicity and subjectivity intrinsic to all human knowing. It advocates, however, an idealism of the intellect, an idealized “transcending” dynamic of human knowing, that has no specific, concrete root or locus in human history. In this Lonergarian “catholicity” there is denial of the “concrete universal” of Jesus Christ, of His continued historic enfleshment in the institutional Church, of the sacramentality and intelligibility of the body and material creation. This is a “catholicity” without Jesus Christ, without a Catholic Church, and above the messiness of the body and sex and even Eucharist. We might call it an anti-incarnational or non-fleshly catholicity.

This shift from Catholic to catholic is paradigmatic of the tragic trajectory of liberal, especially so much Jesuit, theology since the Council. It directly contradicts the authentically magisterial hermeneutic of John Paul and Benedict which is absolutely Jesus-centered, ecclesial (which is to say, liturgical and sacramental), and physical (Theology of the Body, Benedict on eros and agape.)
Interestingly, this issue of the Lonergan Review is dedicated to Deacon Bill Toth, a man who excelled in his love for the person of Jesus, the Roman Catholic Church, and the gendered, sexual human body. Bill may have shared my misgivings about this Lonergarian "catholicity."

I considered Bill a role-model and an inspiration whom I came to know better in recent years through my friendship with his son Father Stephen. When I took Bill’s course in Moral Theology some 25 years ago, I was puzzled, then thrilled, and inspired. At first I was puzzled about his own views in that polarized field since he explained, with such clarity and sympathy, feminist and liberationist ethics which contradicted Church teachings. Eventually, in personal conversation, I learned how fiercely loyal he was to the magisterium. His was a catholic appreciation for other viewpoints, but he was entirely devoted to his Catholic faith. While running a business and raising a large family, he found time to study and teach theology. I was greatly encouraged that I too, with more modest intellectual endowments, might well continue to study and echo in my own sphere the voice of Christ as heard in the Church.

His was a catholic intellect; but he was wholeheartedly Catholic, unapologetically Roman Catholic, and completely at home in the messiness and physicality of family, sex, capitalistic business, power politics and all arenas of culture. What a great role model for a layman!

Bill Toth, pray for us, that we may be good Catholics, as you were!