I love this anecdote. Partly because the boundlessly congeneal, humble, magnanimous Liddy related it entirely without resentment in serene acceptance and a touch of humour and affection. Additionally, it represents two faces of the Catholic Church as "here comes everybody." Liddy: warm and welcoming, kind-hearted and open-minded. Jaki: cantankerous, fiercely combatative, take-no-prisioners Warrior for Truth.
Liddy, of course, would have happily engaged with the neo-Thomism of Gilson; but Jaki was intolerant of the transcendental Thomism of Lonergan. Why? I don't know. I hope to ask the Monsignor if I get to see him. But surely it has to do with Emmanuel Kant. Kant is arguably THE premier philosopher of modernity. Out of the systematic skeptism and the foundational "I think therefore I am" of Descartes, he created a new philosophy rooted in the knowing, subjective (transcendental) Self. He renounced as naive the traditional realism whereby we accept the knowing act as the immediate appropriation of the real, the objective, the other. He proposed an epistemology of the constructive human mind which creates knowledge in the form of "phenomena" but lacks clear, intimate and direct access to the "noumenal" as real and objective. Modern European/American philosophy in large part assumes, reacts to, and builds upon Kant.
Much of the divide in contemporary Catholic theology is rooted in Kant. On the one hand, you have the transcendental Thomism of Lonergan and Rahner which attempts to blend the best of Kant with the tradition of St. Thomas. On the other side, you have at least three movements against Kant. First, neo-Thomists Maritain/Gilson flat out renounce Kant to revive a naive but robust realism. Second, the monumental Balthasar retrieves Thomas in the spirit of Goethe and a mysticsm of beauty, nuptiality and drama. A third movement, entirely commensurate with the prior two, is the "phenomenological metaphysics" of John Paul, Edith Stein, and Hildebrand. These followed the phenomenological path of Husserl out of Kant by closely attending to the experience, temporarily "bracketing" the metaphysical question, but returning to that question to rediscover the robust metaphysics of being and realistic epistemology in an enrichment from modern personalism and historicity.
The Catholic question becomes: is there enough of the True and the Good and the Beautiful in Kant that we can incorporate him substantially into our theology? Recalling the "spoils of Egypt" trope and the Tertullian/Origin debate: is there gold here that can enrich our worship of the one true God or is it intrinsically oriented to idolatry?
I can't answer this because I have never been able to read much of Rahner or Lonergan: my narcolepsy kicks in and I get bored, fatigued, irritable. I listened to a Lonergan lecture at St. Peters College JC circa 1971 and couldn't stay awake. I keep a copy of Insightat bedside and when my melatonin is inadequate, rather than reach for a Xanax, I randomly read a paragraph or footnote and am fast asleep by the third sentence. (LOL!) Clearly an intelligent, holy scholar like Liddy has obviously allowed Lonergan to deepen and intensify his faith. According to Balthasar, Marechal succeeded in the synthesis of Thomas and Kant...if it is good enough for the Swiss genius, it is good enough for me. Monsignor Tom Guarino, whom I trust implicitly on these things, is cleary tolerant of such critical realism and cautions a slow, patient ecclesial process of discernment rather than rash judgment. So we have to give them the benefit of the doubt.
In his recent The Unchanging Truth of God? Guarino asks what philosophies can sustain and protect the truth claims inherent to the Revelation received by the Catholic Church. A correlative question, perhaps more important for our salvation, is: What philosophies are able to sustain and protect Catholic life...virtue, faith-hope-love, loyalty to state of life, concrete (not ideological)intimacy with the poor, resistance to the Evil Kingdom, worship and contemplation. As Balthasar taught us, theology's task is to protect the Good and the Beautiful along with the True.
From this practical viewpoint, a problem arises with the Kanitan Catholics. Rahnerians and Longergarins seem to move, en masse and inexorably, to a rejection of the core Catholic ethos of sexuality, gender, the secramentality of the human body (or bodies: feminine and masculine; there is no generic, neutral human body) and the sacramental system itself. For example, Rahner and Lonergan both rejected Humanae Vitae's restatement on contraception and therefore aligned themselves against the Church on an absolutely foundational principle. Arguably, the current transgender obsession is the final consequence of the lonely Kantian Subject, isolated in the phenomenal from the noumenal. Exposure to Kant seems to lessen Catholic immunity and lead to accomadation with the toxicities of Modernity.
Serious engagment with Kant seems gtroubling in several ways:
First, the detachment and disincarnation of the phenomenal from the noumenal tends to a vague agnositicsm, an exaggeratedly aphophatic theology that disrupts the fleshly Transcendent/Immanent balance of the Incarnation as Catholically conceived.
Secondly, the pronounced focus on the autonomous, isolated Conscious Self makes it vulnerable to the fundamental idolatry of late modernity: the hegemony of this Self. And so we find among progressive Catholics a tolerance for legal abortion whereby the conscious Self has total control over the less-than-competent, smaller, dependent and vulnerable person.
Thirdly, infatuation with the thinking self tends to entertain a disembodied subjectivty like a platonic soul trapped in an alien body or a Cartesian knower boxed into a machine. There is the loss of the hylomorphic person, body and soul wed together, that we find in Aristotle, Thomas and John Paul's catechesis of the body.
Fourth, the inflated Self moves to obscure the objective, natural, moral order as intended by the Creator for the physcial order as expressive of the spiritual.
Fifth, such Catholic Kantianism lends itself to an exagerated historicism that eventually swallows and destroys the Catholic, "Guarino-ian" protection of the univerality, permanence and material continuity of the Truth.
Lastly, centering of the Subject unavoidably obsures and marginalizes the essential nature of reality, and divinity, as gift received and given, event, drama, love and knowing as mutual indwelling. Clearly solid Catholic thinkers like Liddy, Lonergan and Rahner adhere to these fundamentals; but arguably the inherent trajectory of Kantian logic undully elevates the autonomous, monadic Self.
In conclusion, and returning to Fr. Jaki: Notwithstanding his anger issues, he may have been on to something. We are on stronger Catholic ground with the robust realism of Gilson, Balthasar and Edith Stein. But we certainly don't want to "cancel" Rahnerians and Lonergarians!
Sidebar: Seton Hall University, which has been an academic home for my family, has had a good run of world-class thinkers. First and foremost is Monsignor John Ostereicher. His work was continued by Fr. Frizzel and Rabbi Finkel. The above mentioned Fr. Jaki and Monsignor Liddy. In my own high school years on that campus the President was scripture scholar Bishop John Dougherty. Today we are blessed with Emeritus Professor Tom Guarino. Thanks be to God!
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