Rite and Reason:What might have been achieved if the theology envisaged by Vatican II had been allowed to develop unimpeded, wonders James P Mackey
My new book Christianity and Creation, began its life in a long retirement reverie; a lingering backward look that brought into fresh focus the traditional theology I learned in Maynooth, together with some modern philosophical movements, mainly hostile to religion, on which I lectured at Queen's University Belfast. Then there were the first green shoots of the new theology that took up again the quest of the historical Jesus, and saw a man who was like the rest of us in every way, except sin.
Following which was the dawning of a realisation that revelation of the divine occurred always through history, the natural history of the cosmos and human history and, in particular for Christians, through the historic figure of the prophet Jesus of Nazareth who, his followers believe, was indwelt by God as fully as a human being can be.
He was therefore fully equipped to open human minds and hearts to the revelation of God that is always there in God's good world; if only our self-centred and destructive blindness to the world's original destination, as goodness and grace divinely intended equally for all, could be relieved.
The new theology then tackled some individual Christian doctrines that seemed to have grown alien to the faith of the founder, as seen in the Bible.
A doctrine of original sin that had sin transmitted to all in the very process of conception; a doctrine of God who required the human sacrifice of his son, Jesus, in satisfaction for the sin of the world; a God who would send Jesus back again to impose eternal torture on those whose sin had not been shriven; with accompanying crude imagery of the real presence of Jesus, body and blood, in the Eucharist.
Good Pope John XXIII then saw that the age was ripe for an updating of the doctrine and practice of the faith, aggiornamento. The resulting council, Vatican II, did give much breathing space to the new theology; but enclosed in it too much of the unreformed theology of the past.
Subsequently the Vatican turned increasingly reactionary.
Examples: the persistent hostility to the theology of liberation; the imposition of yet another reactionary doctrine, the moral doctrine concerning contraception, that proved to be extremely damaging to faith and faithful alike; and in general, the serial sidelining and sometimes outright dismissal of some of the very ablest proponents of the new theology.
Christianity and Creation envisages what a systematic theology of the Christian faith would look like if the new theology had achieved, unimpeded, its full flowering.
As I awoke from the reverie, I stood on the shoulders of the best new theologians, looked again to the other men and women involved in aggiornamento, in which I played my small part, and wrote what I have written.
But I have also argued every step and stage of this systematic theology from the Bible, read as a whole; leaving challengers with no option but to do likewise.
A recent discussion of the book on RTÉ Radio 1's Off the Shelf programme, while generous in its praise, complained of my intolerance of some traditional doctrines; and asked whether I was accepted in the church's community of interpreters.
My whole professional life in philosophy and theology has been spent in that community.
But if the issue here is the role of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, then I need invoke but one other memory. My first book, The Modern Theology of Tradition, argued for a relative autonomy both for the community of theologians and for the whole community of the people of God; both authorities in their own right on the true faith.
The French Dominican theologian Yves Congar placed that book on the reading list for the bishops at Vatican II, when he was engaged to instruct them on the difficult matters that were to form the decree on Revelation.
Indeed, if the binding conviction of the biblical theology of Christianity and Creation, concerning divine revelation to all of creation, is at all true, then the community of Christian theologians owes both indebtedness and responsibility, not simply to one Christian church's hierarchy, but also to the whole of the Christian community in the world.
That includes the a la carte practitioners and those who have been driven away and lapsed, either from practice in their churches or from religious faith itself, to other religions, each with their own prophets and founts of wisdom.
Or to secular humanism, frequently more devoted to the good of humankind without the imbalancing forces of misguided fear of eternal punishment or anxious desire for eternal reward.
From all of these also I have learned all I could; and am unswervingly grateful for it.
James P Mackey has had an academic career in Ireland, Scotland and America. Christianity and Creation (Columba Press) will be launched tomorrow evening in Trinity College Dublin.