JPII, Dali, and Exorcism

Karol Wojtyla's education in Rome culminated in his doctoral thesis on St. John of the Cross: Questio de fide apud S. Joannem a Cruce (The Question of Faith according to St. John of the Cross). For Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dali, a question of faith is what determined dignified art from garbage. He too was inspired by his fellow Spaniard, and painted Christ crucified in accord with a sketch done by the Doctor of the Church:

Salvador Dali struggled with faith to a great extent, unable to reconcile it early on with his passion for Freudian psychology. However, because he placed so much emphasis on dreams, as did Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, Dali’s inspiration for “Christ of St. John of the Cross” as a result of a dream he recalled was irresistibly convicting to him. He notes the affect of the dream on his work:

In the first place, in 1950, I had a ‘cosmic dream’ in which I saw this image in color and which in my dream represented the ‘nucleus of the atom’. This nucleus later took on a metaphysical sense; I considered it ‘the very unity of the universe’, the Christ! In the second place, when thanks to the instructions of Father Bruno, a Carmelite, I saw the Christ drawn by Saint John of the Cross, I worked out geometrically a triangle and a circle, which ‘aesthetically’ summarized all my previous experiments, and I inscribed my Christ in this triangle.

Not too many years before this dream, Dali requested in 1947 for an exorcism. A Carmelite friar, Gabriele Maria Berardi, performed the exorcism and was given a handmade crucifix in return.

The rite of exorcism used for Dali was dated 1614, and was later revised twice during the pontificate of John Paul II. The Pope is rumored to have performed two exorcisms, one successful and one unsuccessful. Fr. Gabrielle Amorth was Rome's exorcist at the time, and came to the aid of the Pope after the second unsuccessful attempt.

I want to suggest a correlation between Dali's obsession with Freud and his need for an exorcism, and refer to my previous post on JPII vs. Jungian/Freudian Psychology. While psychology can be enormously beneficial to discernment of spirits, I suggest it can also be a major impediment or excuse: recall men like Jim Morrison, Aldous Huxley, etc.

Dali's repentant response to grace was very admirable, and his post-conversion artwork reflects his interior disposition. Fellow surrealists persecuted him to a great degree, but he portrayed the strength and substance of the Gospel to be infinitely more significant than mere dreams.

For further reading on dream interpretation from a Catholic perspective, see Sirach 34.

http://www.williambennettgallery.com/artists/dali/portfolios/divine2.php

http://www.ewtn.com/johnpaul2/writings/prepontifical.htm

http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2007/12/god-in-the-gallery

JPII and Solzhenitsyn

In June of 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave the commencement address at Harvard concerning Soviet Russia and the weakness of the West. By mid October of the same year, Karol Wojtyla would ascend to the chair of St. Peter. “A direct gift from God” was Solzhenitsyn’s response to the news of the first Slavic Pope. Below are some examples of how desperate the socialist situation was in Solzhenitsyn’s eyes, and how the West was powerless to stop it with only capitalism as its standard.

He describes his concern for the West in a financial metaphor of sorts:

Relations with the former colonial world now have switched to the opposite extreme and the Western world often exhibits an excess of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns, will be sufficient for the West to clear this account[…] But the persisting blindness of superiority continues to hold the belief that all the vast regions of our planet should develop and mature to the level of contemporary Western systems, the best in theory and the most attractive in practice; that all those other worlds are but temporarily prevented (by wicked leaders or by severe crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from pursuing Western pluralistic democracy and adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in that direction. But in fact such a conception is a fruit of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, a result of mistakenly measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet's development bears little resemblance to all this.[1]

At its core, Solzhenitsyn’s address identifies the West’s need for redemption—indeed, the entire world’s need! He continues, “All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century’s moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.[2]”

He accuses westerners of “weak human personality” due to avoidance of suffering, “decline in courage” from hiding behind rationalized laws based on weakness and cowardice, “lack of manhood” and “they [western governments] get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists”. By and large, Solzhenitsyn basically calls America and Western Europe, “girly men” compared with his own people.

He goes on to describe Soviets as stronger than westerners, on account of their sufferings:

But should I be asked, instead, whether I would propose the West, such as it is today, as a model to my country, I would frankly have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through deep suffering, people in our own country have now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive.[3]

To what does he attribute such weakness? Irresponsibility: “A total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer.[4]”

Now, based on my last post, anyone can see why Wojtyla’s election was an answer to Solzhenitsyn’s prayer! Redemption, Responsibility, Mercy…they all are at the heart of John Paul’s prophetic life. Furthermore, they are all rooted in Christ—the source of such abundant grace. But, when Christ is divorced from the public square, Solzhenitsyn speaks from his own experience:

Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism[…] The communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism's crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.[5]

Unfortunately, those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. How true is the above statement even a quarter century later! We are too slow to learn from Solzhenitsyn and Wojtyla.

Nevertheless, there is hope—just as there was for Solzhenitsyn when Wojtyla was elected; when he visited him in 1993 (a few years after the fall of the Iron Curtain) and with John Paul’s canonization fast approaching this Easter. Not that Wojtyla is himself the source of the hope—but that he is a “witness to hope”. He is a witness to the rediscovery of our Christian heritage through the New Evangelization, finally being enacted in parishes nearly ten years after his passing. He is a witness to vindication from the despotism of Stalin and others. He is a witness to suffering, probably the most needed of all crosses.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn stood as a forerunner to Wojtyla, and Wojtyla stands as a forerunner to the Redeemer. With the Olympics in Russia this year, and the World Youth Day in Krakow following, it will be interesting to see what transpires in these forerunners’ homelands.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “A World Split Apart: Commencement Address to Harvard University, June 8, 1978” http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolzhenitsynHarvard.php

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid

Update: While the '14 olympics were low-profile for the most part, the Ukrainian/Russian conflict erupted soon after this post. It will interesting to see how the conflict turns out...

Further reading: http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2978/his_beatitude_sviatoslav_shevchuk_speaks_truth_to_secular_powers.aspx

And again: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2014/03/13/ukrainian-catholics-fear-new-oppression-after-russian-takeover/

03/19/14 Update from http://www.aawsat.net/2014/03/article55329733:
Last month, when Vladimir Putin ordered that the Black Madonna of Kazan, the holiest icon of the Russian Orthodox Church, be flown over the Black Sea, many believed he wished to secure blessings for the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

It was the first time the icon, or rather a copy of it, since the original was stolen and possibly destroyed in 1904, was deployed to bless a peaceful enterprise. Over the centuries, the “Black Virgin” has been taken to battlefields to bless Russian armies fighting Swedish, Polish, Turkish, Persian, French and German invaders. Stalin sent it to Stalingrad in 1943 to ensure victory over the German invaders under Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus.

With Putin’s troops in control of Crimea and threatening to move further into Ukraine, we now know that the icon was brought in to bless a military operation this time as well.

Lastly, Weigel on the topic http://denvercatholicregister.org/opinion/orthodoxy-state-society/:
the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches faced a dramatic choice: stand in pastoral solidarity with the people, or stand with the state that was brutally repressing Ukrainian citizen-reformers? The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), largest of the Eastern Catholic Churches (Byzantine in liturgy and Church organization, but in full communion with the Bishop of Rome), did not face this dilemma; the UGCC was long the safe-deposit box of Ukrainian national consciousness, and in the post-Soviet period it has devoted its public life to building Ukrainian civil society. But the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches did face a historic fork-in-the-road: civil society, or the state?

JPII and/vs Religious Freedom

Several questions arise in my mind as to how religious freedom should be interpreted in light of Personalism.  Thankfully, the Second Vatican Council dealt heavily with this issue in its Declaration Dignitatis humanae, and John Paul II proved to be a crucial contributor.  In an article for Communio, David Schindler has written an extensive study of the topic in question, inspired largely by the true intentions of Wojtyla for the Declaration.  The topic itself interests me tremendously, because it substantially clears up questions that have been obstacles in my understanding of the relationship between Personalism and Truth. 

“Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity” is the comprehensive study written by Schindler to clarify a variety of interpretations of Dignitatis humanae’s approach to religious freedom.  He makes reference to John Courtney Murray’s “juridical approach” to Dignitatis humanae, alongside John Paul II’s “ontological approach”[1] in order to explain the process of redaction that the council fathers took to edit the formal documents.  Furthermore, Schindler makes the following basic argument, as I understand it, in summary of Wojtyla’s contribution (as recorded in what are called the “interventions” for Vatican II documentation, more specifically Acta Synodalia, abbreviated AS):

The dignity of the human person is dependent on the integrity of freedom and truth lived by him.  A person’s right to religious freedom must intrinsically correspond to his understanding of truth, and not as a “negative immunity”[2]from it.  To this end, freedom must be understood to stand for truth and not as freedom from truth. Fullness of truth is, ultimately, the Person of Christ.  In response to this Truth, a person only has the right to err insofar as he does not recognize the Truth.  He who denies the Truth abuses his freedom in the name of his right to religious freedom.

To the best of my ability, I have summarized Schindler’s argument for the “ontological approach” of JPII and the Second Vatican Council on religious freedom.  I will then flesh out this argument with explanations given by Schindler, Wojtyla, and others in an attempt to cover the entire scope of Schindler’s study “Freedom, Truth and Human Dignity”.  I also intend to show even more how Personalism must follow the same argument of Schindler in order to be in line with the thinking of the Church on human dignity.  I am aware that, to a degree, such a clear definition of human dignity can be offensive without the aid of mercy.  Indeed, I believe that mercy is also at the heart of the Church’s and Wojtyla’s view of the dignity of the human person in relation to God, that is, God’s merciful grace in helping people to seek the truth and abide by it.

 Schindler goes to great lengths to differentiate between the “negative immunity” stance connected with the “juridical approach” to religious freedom, and the “intrinsically positive good” connected with Wojtyla’s “ontological approach” to the same.  He further summarizes Wojtyla’s thinking as follows:

Wojtyła objected to the purely ‘negative’ concept of religious freedom as an, ‘immunity from coercion.’ Such a concept, he thought, lacked an adequate sense of the right to religious freedom as an intrinsically positive good owed to all persons.  Emphasizing religious freedom only in the negative terms of immunity leaves this right logically vulnerable to indifference in the matter of truth.[3]

Ironically, Wojtyla is often accused of the very thing he sought to avoid in the Second Vatican Council—indifference to the truth.  This is also true of his intentions for Personalism, namely, it is not meant to disregard truth in favor of an overemphasis on the freedom of the human person.  I find such a clarification very helpful in my doubts about Personalism, especially in regard to the question of its attitude toward virtue[4].  At the same time, it does not allow for a type of non-denominationalism either, insisting instead on the fullness of truth to subsist entirely in the Catholic Church.

Because of what is at stake in the topic of religious freedom, basically a strict attention to freedom and truth or a cowardly indifference to them, Schindler sides with Wojtyla’s emphasis not only on truth but on responsibility:

Again, Wojtyła insisted that one cannot say ‘I am free’ without saying at the same time that ‘I am responsible’ to God and others. ‘This teaching has its foundation in the Church’s living tradition of confessors and martyrs. Responsibility is, as it were, the culmination and necessary complement of freedom. This must be stressed, so that our Declaration may be seen to be deeply personalistic in the Christian sense, yet not subject to liberalism or indifferentism’[5]

Although the word “Truth” is sufficient as a compliment to freedom, Wojtyla adds an essential qualifier to truth by adding responsibility.  And responsibility is not limited to just individuals but entire governments in terms of insuring the religious freedom of individuals[6].  He takes great pains to ward off the abuse of duty to be responsible with freedom by essentially putting freedom at the service of truth.  In my opinion, it may be said that freedom is a means to truth.  Especially if truth is personal, as in Truth is the Person of Christ, then freedom is a means to the end of Truth.  Schindler agrees to this ‘means-end’ dynamic with different wording:

this abstraction of freedom from truth makes truth extrinsic to freedom: truth becomes a simple object of freedom rather than a natural end providing freedom with its original order as freedom.[7]

For this reason of means/end dynamic, Schindler defines the human person’s dignity as an “integrated order of freedom and truth”[8].  In light of this definition, government must take into account the proper understanding of man’s dignity, if it is to uphold a lasting approach to religious freedom.  Wojtyla and his fellow Bishops concluded, in the words of Schindler:

Indeed, they were convinced that it is only in the recognition by government that freedom is intrinsically tied to truth that the right to religious freedom can be sustained permanently and as a matter of principle for all human beings—whether they are believers or nonbelievers.[9]

 No government to date, especially the American and French constitutional experiments of the last few centuries, has successfully recognized the ontological reality of man’s dignity, as it relates to the juridical[10].  Instead they adopt a relativistic attitude towards truth, and an indifferent attitude towards freedom.  In the view of Wojtyla and the Bishops, such attitudes will ultimately erode the very framework of said governments.  If they do not alter their attitudes in favor of truth and the freedom of excellence and virtue, they will continue to disintegrate.

Now, it is not my intention to enter into an extended criticism of democracy or government, but it is worth noting that Schindler goes to great lengths to point out governmental inadequacies in his “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity”.  After all, the question of religious freedom is intimately linked with government in a pluralistic society.  My intentions are to continue to explore Schindler’s definition of human dignity as it relates to Personalism in Dignitatis humanaeand the Catholic understanding of religious freedom. 

According to Schindler, the original drafts of the Vatican II Declaration on religious freedom, “emphasized that truth alone had rights, and that error was at best to be tolerated”, but the final copy of the Declaration was much more Personalistic in scope:

The Council shifted its emphasis away from the formal question of truth to the rights of the human person [...] I argue in this article that the prevalent readings of DH today, while rightly recognizing the Council’s shift of emphasis away from the notion of truth formally considered to the notion of the person, fail for the most part to take note of the profound ways in which the issue of truth emerges once more, precisely from within this new context centered in the person (Ibid--elipses mine).

The human person is, in fact, the appropriate context for religious freedom.  But Schindler is quick to warn those who would read Personalism into the Declaration without the integration of truth and freedom.  Wojtyla also makes such a clarification by qualifying the type of personalism that he wanted to be read in the Declaration, as I have already quoted, “This must be stressed, so that our Declaration may be seen to be deeply personalistic in the Christian sense, yet not subject to liberalism or indifferentism”[11].  This qualification of Personalism is necessary, in my view, precisely because of the alternatives that Wojtyla points out in the aforementioned quote.  Again, much is at stake in the Church’s definition of religious freedom, including the very dignity of the human person as an ‘integration of freedom and truth’.

As previously noted, Wojtyla adds ‘responsibility’ as a qualifier for truth, and in particular, “responsibility to God and others”.  The dimension of Biblical shema, that is, love of God and love of neighbor, as inseparable parameters for Christian Personalism brings me tremendous satisfaction.  Without such parameters, we have relativism and indifference.  Therefore, Schindler clarifies Wojtyla’s “ontological approach” to the Declaration with an implicit “theological approach”:

The merely civil right to religious freedom asserted by Murray had to be tied in principle to an ontological-moral—indeed by implication ultimately theological—right, or, more precisely, had to be tied to some form of an ontology of freedom of excellence as distinct from freedom of indifference.[12]

Furthermore, Schindler narrows down this “theological approach” to the following:

That Jesus Christ is the ultimate and most basic foundation for an integrated view of freedom and truth was repeatedly stressed by Archbishop Wojtyla, as we have seen.[13]

I would merely add, in light of Schindler’s “theological approach” in connection with human dignity, that if man is an integration of freedom and truth---and that freedom is a means to truth—then, truth is ultimately the Person of Christ, the end and goal of all human inquiry.  So, the council fathers were right to shift the emphasis of religious freedom from truth to the person, knowing all along that Truth is himself a Person! 

In conclusion then, I admit to the truth of Personalism in regard to interpretingDignitatis humanae, so long as Personalism recognizes the supreme truth of the Person of Christ.  Likewise, human freedom is a means to truth, so long as coercion is not employed.  Since a person’s dignity is based on an integration of freedom and truth, other individuals and institutions are meant to be at the service of such integration and not as an obstacle or domineering impediment to it.  Interpreted correctly, thanks to the work of Schindler and others, a society in which religious freedom corresponds properly to personal dignity is attainable, and indeed, is already (but not yet) present in the Catholic Church.

      

  

[1] David Schindler.  “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity”.  Communio: International Catholic Review, 2013.  PDF available http://www.communio-icr.com/files/dlschindler40-2.pdf

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Father Servais Pinckaers.  Sources of Christian Ethics.  Catholic U Press, 1995. Thomistic account of freedom as either “indifference” or “excellence/quality”.

[5] Acta Synodalia or AS IV/2, 12. 

[6] Schindler explains that governments are in principle allowed to favor one religion over another, so long as those other religions are still allowed to function.

[7] David Schindler.  “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity”.  Communio: International Catholic Review, 2013

[8] Ibid.

[9] AS IV/2, 12

[10] Schindler: The truth of this argument is in fact verified historically, in that there exists no liberal society today whose legal-constitutional order has not over time evolved in just this direction of relativistic monism, with respect to the anthropological-ontological claims noted above regarding the nature and dignity of the human being.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

JPII vs. Freudian/Jungian Psychology

I have often wondered, after taking a more or less triumphalistic attitude toward Wojtyla: “are there any dangers with his philosophy? Can it be misinterpreted or subject to miscommunication?” I wager that it can, and the evidence I have comes from humanistic psychology.

A contemporary of Carl Rogers, Dr. William Coulson, admits to the disastrous effects of what he and Rogers coined as “nondirective psychotherapy”[1]. Essentially, this form of counseling relies on the individual to, in my understanding: “feel his/her way through the vicissitudes of life with utmost trust in self-fulfilling desires”. The term “nondirective” means precisely that, “no direction given”—a kind of existential self-arbitration in the name of Jungian Individuation, etc. In summary, this way of thinking about the person can result in the denial of original sin, or its effects on the baptized person, namely concupiscence. Here, JPII is very controversial in suggesting that concupiscence can be overcome in a redeemed man. Not that his faith in the redemption of Christ is fallacious, but its interpretation by the likes of Christopher West and others can be questionable.

Rogers and Coulson visited a number of west coast convents in the 1960s, with permission to further their research with TFN (or therapy for normals)[2], after having “successfully” implemented the nondirective psychotherapy on neurotic patients in Chicago. They formed “encounter” groups with upwards of 560 nuns, encouraging them to “refrain from spouting doctrine and tell them how they really felt about who they are”. As a result, Dr. Coulson admits to the dissolution of entire orders under his “nondirective” influence[3].

As a Catholic graduate of Notre Dame, Dr. Coulson’s confession about the dangers of psychotherapy adds invaluable wisdom to the understanding of Wojtyla today. His research tempers any extreme trends toward subjectivism or overemphasis on immanence as a means to fulfill personal desires. Likewise, he points to the authority of the Catholic Church, and the prominence of Christ as her source of authority. Throughout the writings of JPII I have found this same reference to the authority of the Church, and only those seeking to liberalize him fail to see the references.

As I have written before about solipsism being both subjectivist and objectivist in the thought of JPII, I believe that Dr. Coulson’s assessment of the results of his research may be interpreted to fall more on the objectivist side of the spectrum. That being said, it is necessary to be fully aware of the dangers of both extremes: too much emphasis on subjectivity and too much emphasis on objectivity.

The term that fans of JPII seem to have adopted to avoid such extremes is “intersubjectivity”. This is a fitting and respectful term for interpersonal activity and experience, so long as it is not confused with other psychotherapeutic terminology: Jungian collective unconscious, Freudian id, etc. Why do I make such a distinction? Mainly due to the fact that I believe this other psychobabble to be at the root of a system employed by Rogers and (formerly) Coulson to supplant the Biblical and Ecclesial understanding of the makeup of the human person.

For example, I recently read a commentary by a psychologist on Dante’s Inferno which borrowed from Jung[4], “if you consider the Inferno, as Dr. C. G. Jung believed, ‘hell represents, among every culture, the disturbing aspect of the collective unconscious,’ since it speaks of the trials and travails of humanity as a collective whole”. A number of alarming ideas present themselves from this psychological worldview, which, ironically, negates evil instead of recognizing it as such.

What do I mean by that exactly? Just as when Rogers and Coulson’s experiments resulted in the denial of the influence of original sin and concupiscence on their subjects, so too, the Jungian and Freudian worldview can deceive an individual into thinking that he/she is the source of goodness, creative power, archetypal destiny, etc. And, unfortunately, this way of seeing can encompass both the objective and subjective realms, such that “collective unconscious” is common to all people and at the same time intersubjective. All of a sudden, the common hermeneutic of psychotherapy can be strictly based on personal libido, on unconscious urges, and in a word: the desires of the flesh.

So, that brings me to a diagram constructed for the sake of illustrating the differences between the ecclesial vision of the human person vs. the Freudian and Jungian understanding:

Ecclesial/Biblical:                          Freudian:                         Jungian:

Flesh[5]                                       Id                                    Collective Unconscious

Body                                           Ego                                  Self

Soul                                            Superego                          Individualized self

Thus, we have the three visions of the human person. Over time, the first two have been shown to be somewhat compatible in intellectual discourse. Wojtyla and other Church leaders have employed Freudian terminology for half a century. However, I have tried to argue that by themselves, the Freudian and Jungian views of the human person are Godless—or even worse, self-idolatrous. Not to mention that they turn God’s creation of man as a psychosomatic unity (body and soul) into just “mind” or psychological being. Therefore, the ecclesial vision of man is healthier and more holistic, even though it identifies the inclinations of the flesh as evil.

Returning to the quote about Dante’s Inferno, then, we see that the Jungian vision of man exposes itself as pantheistic. Even to the point of including hell in the self-idolatrous make up of the human person. More alarming than that, I understand Jung’s vision to be verging on the annihilation of distinction between human persons, turning “intersubjectivity” into “primordial soup”—where one person’s “mind” is indecipherable from the next. Hell is excused as that which we all have in common, but are unwilling to venture into without the courage of Jesus, Dante, or Aeneas. Furthermore, we dare not call it evil lest one of our collectively unconscious comrades might actually go there.

Coulson says this about the willingness of the sisters to be duped into "encounter groups" which were geared toward exploiting their weaknesses and 'misery' as celibates:
Making one's own rules is not compatible with community life, or even with the Catholic faith, and it wasn't long before values-free therapy groups were causing conflicts with religious orders...It is not the case that we didn't believe in institutions, we believed only in our own. So, it was stupid for the Church to allow this to happen because it was inviting the enemy in. We were the Trojan horse. (Sisters in Crisis, Ann Carey, Ignatius Press, 2010)

In conclusion, I stand with the repentant Coulson in regard to the inadequacy of psychotherapy to solve the problems and sins of man. I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said that the Church has the truest and most time-tested understanding of the human person, and Coulson’s interview agrees: “psychologists don’t know what they are doing when it comes to the inner depth of the human person; and one would think that the Catholic Church, with 2000 years’ experience, does know”[6].

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Dr. William Coulson. “Story of a Repentant Psychologist”. EWTN, Manassas VA, 2010. http://www.ewtn.com/library/

[2] Ibid. See also http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kathyschiffer/2012/04/william-coulson-and-the-lcwr-we-overcame-their-traditions-and-their-faith/

[3] Ibid.

[4] Dr. Carole Brooks Platt. http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/09/30/fall-sweeps/. See also http://www.carolebrooksplatt.com/

[5] *In using the term ‘flesh’, I refer to that in man which is a result of original sin, is subject to concupiscence (if baptized), and rebellion against the Triune God. Note: The Church has always emphasized the importance of virtue in determining the overall well-being of a person (see my posts on Virgil and Dante). Only since the introduction of Rogers and Coulson's (based on Jung and Freud's) research to the modern era has "self-esteem" replaced virtue as the measure of excellence.

[6] Dr. William Coulson. “Story of a Repentant Psychologist”. EWTN, Manassas VA, 2010. http://www.ewtn.com/library/

Avery Cardinal Dulles' "Covenant with Israel", St. Gregory the Great, and JPII

I have known the late Avery Cardinal Dulles to be a champion of the Second Vatican Council. He is at once eloquent, obedient to the Papal Magisterium, and personable. Each of these attributes presents itself clearly in his sober assessment of the Church’s view of the Old Covenant, which in reality, is a series of many covenants with Mosaic law at the forefront. In his “Covenant with Israel”, Dulles is quick to point this distinction out, raising the question of the supersession of the Old Covenant by the New, and the fact that the two do not necessarily run parallel. Lastly, that God’s fidelity to the people of the Old Covenant remains in force despite their disbelief in His Messiah.

Drawing from a number of papal and conciliar documents, including those of John Paul II, Cardinal Dulles simplifies what has become in Pope Benedict XVI’s opinion, “’an enormous variety of theories’ about the extent to which Judaism remains a valid way of life since the coming of Christ”[1]. Furthermore, Dulles humbly admits to the mystery of God’s saving plan in history without surrendering the certainty of Christ as the only Mediator. For this reason, I will propose Dulles’ conclusions to the “variety of theories” mentioned by Benedict as authoritative. At the same time, I will try to point out those “theories” which are invalid interpretations of Catholic thought about Judaism.

As I said, Dulles is quick to point out the multiplicity of covenants in the Torah, “In Romans, Paul speaks of the Jews having been given ‘covenants’ in the plural.”[2]. It is necessary to understand the differences in meaning behind the word ‘covenant’ in the Biblical language, because they help to determine whether or not they are still efficacious. By and large, it is permissible to view the Old Covenant—exemplified by the Mosaic Covenant on Sinai—as only a means to the end of the New Covenant. But, this principle is not meant to strictly supersede those covenants which are unconditionally instituted by God. Dulles provides the following word definitions to aid the distinction:

The term ‘covenant’ is the usual translation of the Hebrew b’rith and the Greek diatheke . Scholars commonly distinguish between two types of covenant, the covenant grant and the covenant treaty. The covenant grant, modeled on the free royal decree, is an unconditional divine gift and is usually understood to be irrevocable. An example would be the covenant of God with Noah and his descendants in Genesis 9:8-17. God makes an everlasting promise not to destroy all living creatures by another flood such as the one that has just subsided. The covenant to make Abraham the Father of many nations in Genesis 15:5-6 and 17:4-8 and the promise to David to give an everlasting kingship to his son in 2 Samuel 7:8-16 are gratuitous and unilateral. They are also unconditional and irrevocable, though only in their deepest meaning.[3]

I interpret the covenants’ “deepest meaning” to be Christological and personally relational. That is to say, the unconditional covenant is entirely dependent upon the personal fidelity of God despite instances of infidelity on behalf of His people. We do have to take into account the influence of sin in man’s response to God’s invitations to covenant relationship, which, of course, does not apply to the Person of Christ. Therefore, a conditional covenant instituted by God in the old dispensation is proven time and again to be met with failure on the part of the people of Israel. Dulles presents the Mosaic covenant as the prime example of this phenomenon:

The Israelites almost immediately broke the covenant by worshiping the golden calf, but after the people’s repentance, God in his mercy reestablished the covenant. Jeremiah teaches that Israel has broken the Sinai covenant, but that God will give them a ‘new covenant,’ placing his law upon their hearts and making them his people (Jeremiah 31:31-34).[4]

We know, from a Catholic Christian perspective, that this “new covenant” is made possible by the blood of Jesus the Messiah: Son of man and Son of God. Where Adam’s descendants failed to obey the God of the Covenant on account of sin, Jesus restored lasting relationship. It is appropriate to say, then, that all unconditional and some conditional covenants in the old dispensation reach their fulfillment, or are respectively abolished, in the New Covenant[5]. Cardinal Dulles takes great pains to categorize each covenant and explain whether it is fulfilled in the New, or abolished altogether. I will simply refer to his brilliant conclusion to the original question raised by Pope Benedict on “various theories”:

It could be asked whether there are any promises to Israel that are not fulfilled in Christ and are waiting to be fulfilled in some other way. Is Judaism still needed to point to these further possibilities? Paul replies: “All the promises of God find their Yes in Him” (2 Corinthians 1:20). There is nothing incomplete in Christ’s fulfillment of what is promised and foreshadowed in the Old Testament. It is true, of course, that human beings still have to enter fully into that fulfillment […]Judaism, in this view, does not point to possibilities Christ failed to fulfill. But the witness of Jews to their tradition helps Christians understand the foundations of their own faith. By providing a living testimony to the hope of Israel and to the ancient promises, faithful Jews can inspire and strengthen Christians, who share the same hope and promises, though in a new modality.[6]

Those who are quick to accuse Catholics of sympathizing with the Jews, potentially misreading the intent of Dulles above, will attempt to note a change in the way the Church approaches Judaism since Vatican II. Dulles takes great pains to explain how the council’s declaration on other religions, Nostra Aetate, is, “not exhaustive or sufficient”. Furthermore, in terms of priority it is to be counted last among the more important constitutions of the council. But the real question at stake with the Church’s relationship toward Judaism is heresy. Only one heresy is mentioned by Dulles in a quote from John Paul II[7], but I want to make clear that in the debate about the efficacy of the Old Covenant, there are really two heresies at work.

1) Marcionism: Dulles quotes JPII’s warning against Marcionism, which is the error of disregarding the Old Testament as inapplicable to Catholic Christianity

2) Judaizers: those who deny the council of Jerusalem’s conclusion that Gentiles need not be circumcised or practice Mosaic law to be Christians

These are ancient errors that did not arise on account of the Second Vatican Council. Indeed, the proper interpretation of relationship between Christians and Jews has plagued the Church from her earliest days and grew particularly chaotic in the Medieval age, as well as in regard to the more recent Shoah. To further illustrate that Cardinal Dulles’ solutions are nothing new to the Church, I want to give an example from the life of St. Gregory the Great. His acceptance of the Jewish people is by no means heretical, but is exemplary for the modern disputes over covenant:

Gregory to Bacauda and Agnellus, Bishops;

The Hebrews dwelling in Terracina have petitioned us for license to hold, under our authority, the site of their synagogue which they have held hitherto. Therefore let your Fraternity, with our above-named brother and fellow bishop, diligently inspect this place, and if you find that there has been any annoyance to the church, provide another place within the fortress, where the aforesaid Hebrews may assemble, so that they may be able to celebrate their ceremonies without impediment. But let your Fraternity provide such a place, in case of their being deprived of this one, that there be no cause of complaint in future. But we forbid the aforesaid Hebrews to be oppressed or vexed unreasonably; but, as they are permitted, in accordance with justice, to live under the protection of the Roman laws, let them keep their observances as they have learnt them, no one hindering them: yet let it not be allowed them to have Christian slaves.[8]

Like a good land-lord, St. Gregory proves himself a wise manager of real estate. Far from prohibiting the Jews from worship or practice of Mosaic customs, he allows them to assemble nearby the Church. Lastly, he warns against any injustices that might result from their proximity to Christians, pointing out oppressive tendencies in both camps.

Without any inner monologue from St. Gregory, I can only estimate as to why he allowed the Jews to live so close to the Christian Church. My educated guess would be his understanding of the value of their relationship with the God of Israel. In that case, he and Dulles agree that while the Old Covenant is simply a means to an end of the New Covenant, it does remind those members of the New Covenant of that means. Christ, of course, is the capstone of the entire edifice and its founder.

Hypothetically, if St. Gregory were to make heretical decisions in the aforesaid situation, they would play out as follows:

1) Disregard of Jewish heritage altogether and perform forced baptisms on those who remain near the Church

2) Allow the Jews to celebrate their liturgy in the Church, while being careful to remove all images that cause offense to them

These responses would correspond respectively to the heresies most closely associated with Judaism. Between the example of the life of St. Gregory and the teaching of Cardinal Dulles, it is fair to say that no changes have occurred in the Church’s authentic approach to Judaism.

If anything, more dialogue has been emphasized by John Paul II and other popes with Jewish people and leaders. Given an honest assessment, such dialogue in favor of mutual learning and appreciation of our covenant-keeping God can only enrich our love of the true Messiah, and hope for his return in glory.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Peter Sewald. God and the World. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002.

[2] Avery Cardinal Dulles. “The Covenant with Israel”. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/08/the-covenant-with-israel

[3] Ibid. *Further clarification from Dulles: “The term b’rith is usually translated “covenant,” but this translation tends to emphasize the bilateral and conditional character of the engagement”.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7]http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1997/october/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19971031_com-teologica_en.html

[8] St. Gregory the Great. Epistle X: To Bacauda and Agnellus, Bishops. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf212.pdf

Update as of 03/19 from Fr. Brian Harrison, https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=9168:
This essay is based on the premise expressed by the Catholic adage lex orandi, lex credendi (the Church’s official prayer expresses her authentic belief). Its purpose is to make clear that while Pope Benedict’s new prayer certainly implies the supersessionist position, much of the subsequent media commentary, both favorable and unfavorable, is quite mistaken in seeing this prayer as a liturgical reversion to that position. For one cannot ‘revert’ or ‘return’ to a position that was never at any stage abandoned. And I hope to show here that the Church’s liturgy since Vatican II has never ceased to affirm supersessionist doctrine.

(and again cont'd)
It was actually by means of the covenant with “Abraham and his descendants” that God “revealed his law to them through Moses”. Then, prophets also living under that subsidiary Mosaic covenant prepared the way for the final stage in God’s salvific plan, in which the one great covenant would be extended to embrace “all humanity” through the new and definitive covenant sealed in the blood of Christ. At no stage in this process has the ancient covenant with Abraham been revoked or superseded, because God’s people in all three stages beginning with the patriarch himself – first, from Abraham to Moses, secondly, then Moses to Christ, and finally, from Christ till the end of time – have been living under its terms.

While these terms have changed in their secondary features (baptism has replaced circumcision, for instance, and the first day of the week has replaced the seventh) the fundamental principles have remained the same throughout. And what are these fundamentals? On God’s part, a promise of blessing to the whole world through Abraham’s descendants – above all, the Messiah; and on the part of God’s people, faith – faith in his revealing word. As Paul repeatedly stresses in Romans 4 (vv. 3, 9, and 22) and in Galatians (3: 6), Abraham “put his faith in the Lord, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness” (Genesis 15: 6). And just as faith in God’s Word required acceptance of the revealed Torah and the word of the prophets in the period from Moses to Christ, so, since the coming of Christ, that same gift of faith involves accepting also the fullness of revelation that designates him as the Savior of all mankind. Hence, all those with faith in Christ are now, whatever their ethnic origin, “children of Abraham” (Gal. 3: 7)...Pope John Paul himself made clear which covenant he held to be unrevoked in addressing Australian Jewish leaders in Sydney on November 26, 1986. He emphasized that:

. . . our attitude to the Jewish religion should be one of the greatest respect, since the Catholic faith is rooted in the eternal truths contained in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the irrevocable covenant made with Abraham.

Never, in fact, has any papal or conciliar document affirmed that the covenant God made with Israel through Moses, with all its distinctive cultic, civil, dietary and other prescriptions that still form the basis of Judaism, still remains valid and “unrevoked” for Jews after the coming of Christ