From: jocallag@bach.helios.nd.edu (john ocallaghan)
Subject: Re:      Re: Homosexuality
Organization: OUC, University of Notre Dame
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 05:48:26 GMT

In article <9210150838.AA28810@pegasus.com> "(Len Howard)" <tas@PEGASUS.COM> writes:
Dear Len,
Thanks for the psoting.  This is quite good.  You clearly know where you
are coming from.  These evening, at 11:45 P.M. I am coming from having
watched the presedential debates.  Naturally I was drinking wine also.  Though
I am far from inebraited, I am a little more positve about these sorts of
discussions than political ones. Anyway, I'll just add a few comments.
>John,   Thank you for your courteous reply.  This is sort of what
>I have always had in mind for this mail group, a discussion about
>the various ways we look at our particular brand of the Christian
>(and other) religion.  When we discuss, rather than debate or
>judge, we are able to learn from each other.
Here here!!  Though no doubt, I will continue to dive into controversial topics
as the Spirit moves.
>
>     THEOLOGY - the study, which, through participation in and
>reflection upon a religious faith, seeks to express the content
>of this faith in the clearest and most coherent language
>available.  This definition indicates that theology is both
>continuous with and yet distinct from faith.  The faith mentioned
>is not just faith in general but the faith of an historic
>community.  We speak from the point of view of Christian
>theology.  This means that theology implies participation in a
>community of faith.
I can't at the moment thing of any differences here.
>   EXPERIENCE - appeared first on the list, not because it is to
Yup.
Thirty years as a sometime reflective cradel Roman Catholic.
>   REVELATION - This is the primary source of theology, and is
>also a basic category in theological thinking. We see a gift-like
>character in what we come to know through revelation.  It would
>seem that almost anything in the world can be an occasion for
>revelation., and especially in primitive and archaic religions
>especially, the holy is believed to manifest itself in nature.
>At a more sophisticated level, nature is replaced by history and
>personal relationship as the locus wherein the holy discloses
>itself.  In the Christian religion, a person, Jesus the Christ,
>is the bearer of revelation.  Because of its gift-like character,
I don't know how these differences of expression should be weighed, but
I have a few here.  There is the broad sense of revelation you speak of.
But your description of Christ's part in revelation strikes me as making
Christ a part of revelation, perhaps a very special part, but revelation 
encompasses Him in some way; He is a special revelation.  Here is where I differ, though in substance perhaps you would agree, and this is a difference of language.  There are indeed many revelations of the Divine in nature and in history.
But Christ is not a particularly special and great instance of revelation.
Christ is the revelation; revelation broadly considered does not encompass
Christ, but Christ the Incarnate Word encompasses within Himself all revelation
broadly considered.  I was looking at the documents of Vatican II last 
night and they seemed to say something like this.  But as I said, I have
been drinking wine and don't feel like looking it up.  So all broadly
considered revelations of the divine are taken up within the One Lord Jesus
Christ born of the Virgin Mary, and either presage that One Revelation, or
are continuing signs of it.  But they are not separate from it, nor continuous
with it; whatever being or reality they have, they have within the One
Revlation; As John Paul said in Redemptor Hominis, Christ is the center of the
universe and of history."  Praised be to the Lord Jesus Christ.
>how do we have access to it today, you ask.  The next two factors
>bring the primordial revelation to us.  These factors are not
>coordinate with revelation, but subordinate to it.  The next two
>factors are Scripture and Tradition.  Now we are getting closer
>to the answer to your question.
As I understand it, this is close to what Vatican II says about scripture and
tradition.
>John.  "Tradition, as everyone knows, can become dead and
>mechanical, so that all growth and healthy development are
>inhibited.  I have argued the case for tradition alongside
Here again I would differ, but again it might be a matter of words.  Tradition,
precisely because it is the life of the Spirit within the Church, cannot become
dead.  No doubt all of our lives can be dead to the living springs of faith
within the tradition, but the tradition cannot die.
>its life to scripture.  But if tradition itself becomes dead,
>then we get a rigid fixity of the theological (as well as the
>other) expressions of a religious faith that is just as harmful
>as any rigid biblicism.  But this need not happen.  The function
Again, traditon cannot die.  Precisely because theology is a human endeavor, 
though I agree with you that it must have a continuity with Faith if it is
to live at all, it can die to the extent that it separates itself from the
living springs of tradition which is the life of the Spirit of in the Church.
>be, into its own categories of thought.  This means that one has
>to ask what the formula was trying to express in its own
>historical context, or what error it was trying to guard against,
>and then rethink this in our own situation."
Yup.
>on thru each cycle.  I believe in a living God, thus a continuing
>revelation.  It is up to us to discern revelation when we see it
>walking down the street.  This is why you get so many different
I believe in a living God, which is why I do not believe in a continuing 
revelation.  There is but the one revelation of Jesus Christ, once and for
all.
>answers about religious topics from Episcopalians.  We are asked
>to think, study, pray, meditate, and inform our conscience, then
>proceed to use that conscience as 'right reason' in the tripod of
>Sacred Scripture, Tradition, and Right Reason which are the
>classic Episcopal sources of revelation.
One source for theology that you did not mention above, which I meant to comment upon above, but which actually fits better here, is the teaching magisterium
of the Church.  Certainly Roman Catholics are asked to to do all the things
that you list above as what are asked of Episcopalians, but Roman Catholics are
also asked to recognize that the primary teacher involved in the formation of
conscience is the teaching magisterium of the Church.  And theological
reflection must similarly take as a primary source that teaching authority
which exercises an ordinary magisterium in matters of faith and morals to which
Roman Catholics are bound to assent in will even if they cannot assent in 
intellect.
One last point I would make, is that no one is bound in conscience to accept
the results of theological reflection.  This is not to undermine the importance
of theological reflection: I for one love it.  However, no theological reflection, precisely because it is a human endeavor, can ever bind the faithful in
conscience; but precisely because in exercising its ordinary magisterium on
matter of faith an morals, the Church is teaching in the name of Christ, guided
by the Holy Spirit, the faithful are bound in conscience to give their assent
of will, even to those teachings of the ordianry magisterium which have not
been proclaimed infallible.
Since these are such important matters, I must make a standard disclaimer
that I make to non-Roman Catholic christian friends of mine all the time;
if in anything I have said, I have contradicted the teaching of the Roman
Catholic Church, I disavow what I have said, and bind myself to the teaching
of the Roman Catholic Church.
>
>Shalom,                        Len Howard
Thanks for reading all this Len.
Pax tecum,
John


Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU