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Introduction to Fall 2012 issue on “Death”

10 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by Communio in Adrian Walker, David Crawford, Death, Uncategorized

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The Fall, 2012 issue of Communio is dedicated to the theme of “Death.” In his book Eschatology, Joseph Ratzinger points out a “remarkably contradictory” attitude toward death prevalent in modern society: “On the one hand,” he writes, “death is placed under a taboo. It is unseemly. So far as possible, it must be hidden away, the thought of it repressed. . . . On the other hand, one is also aware of a tendency to put death on show, which corresponds to the general pulling down of shame barriers everywhere.” Both tendencies abstract death from life, and these attempts to either push death away or sensationalize it to the point of unreality ultimately accomplish a dehumanization of death. But when death is dehumanized, Ratzinger argues, life is inevitably dehumanized as well, for one does not exist without the other.

The articles in the present issue each, through different lenses, ask with Ratzinger, whence such a contradiction in the modern understanding of death comes, and, in their exploration of the question, begin to point the way to a recovery of what we might call a “Christian attitude towards death.”

In “Singulariter in spe constituisti me: On the Christian Attitude Towards Death,” Adrian J. Walker acknowledges that death is primarily a punishment for sin, but also points to what it reveals about creatureliness. Death, Walker writes, “conceals a medicinal mercy, an opportunity to come to our senses, to wake up from the perverse illusion of godlike autonomy without God.” Though death is in some sense the horror of all creaturely horrors, “Christ’s supernatural conversion of death into the sacrament of eternal life . . . includes its transformation into a confessio by which we fulfill our nature through the self-return into the hands of the Creator that we once refused him in Paradise.”

David S. Crawford, in “The Gospel of Life and the Integrity of Death” discusses the contradiction in modern culture’s attitude toward death pointed out above by Ratzinger. The so-called death with dignity movement and the trend to treat aging as a disease are paradigms of the simultaneous tendencies to relativize and absolutize the importance of life. Crawford identifies the common roots of each of these seemingly opposed movements as modernity’s turn to mechanism. He goes on to contrast this attitude with the analogous Christian absolutization and relativization of life, according to which life needs to experience “something like death” in order to be a life founded in love. The technical attempts to dominate life and death, Crawford argues, are not wrong in their tendency to absolutize or relativize life; rather, these attempts go astray because they turn a proper absolutization and relativization upside down, fervently denying that there should ever be anything ‘death-like’ in love.

In “The Gift of the Dying Person,” Ruth Ashfield invites us to stop and consider the experience of those who are suffering and dying, and shows how in doing so we discover truths of the human condition that enrich and are necessary to our understanding of life. Drawing on the work of Dr. Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement, and John Paul II, Ashfield explores a language of the suffering and dying body. In this exploration the dying person emerges as not only a witness to the dynamism of gift which lies at the heart of reality, but also as one who calls those who stay with him to true communion through genuine compassion.

Patricia Snow also explores the meaning of the body in terms of death, in “The Body and Christian Burial: The Question of Cremation.” Snow asks why cremation has again become an attractive option for many Christians, and explains that while the Church has relaxed its ban on cremation, the profound significance of funeral and burial is not to be passed over easily or quickly. “In the synthesis that was effected when the whole Christ rose from the dead,” Snow writes, “it was the supernatural affirmation of the body that was definitively new.” A casual attitude towards cremation or burial, she argues, betrays a culture-wide apathy to the mystery of the Incarnation, which effects “a marriage of flesh and spirit, heaven and earth, God and human race.”

The present issue also continues a discussion of brain death begun in the Summer, 2011 issue of Communio. Two articles were then published on whether brain death is the death of human person. Now we present Nicholas Tonti-Filippini’s reply to Robert Spaemann in “‘Bodily Integration’: A Response to Spaemann.” Tonti-Filippini argues that the brain is necessary for true bodily integration “because without the brain the integration that remains is only between parts of the body rather than the body as a whole.” D. Alan Shewmon, to whom much of Tonti-Filippini’s criticism is leveled, also weighs in on the debate, in a reply to Tonti-Filippini. Shewmon argues that “there is absolutely no compelling philosophical or scientific reason to suppose that brain death, however total and irreversible, is ipso facto the death of a human being as such.” In his article, “You Only Die Once: Why Brain Death is Not the Death of a Human Being,” Shewmon draws on his medical experience and research, as well as the hylemorphism Tonti-Filippini wishes to defend, in order to demonstrate that it is not the brain, but the soul, which constitutes bodily integration, and therefore, life.

Lastly, we include the final installment of a decade long series on The Mysteries of the Life of Jesus. Begun in Spring, 2002, we now close the series with an article on “The Return of Christ.” In “The End of History: The Parousia of Christ as Cosmic Liturgy,” Luis Granados asks what meaning the Parousia holds for us, and what its relevance is for the path Christ walked in the mysteries of the flesh. Granados examines the Parousia’s relationship to the other mysteries of the life of Jesus in order to shed light on the meaning of the time that unfolds between the Resurrection and the Final Judgment. If Christ is truly the end of history, it will be his life that should reveal to us the meaning of the ages. Between the coming in poverty and the coming in glory, time dilates and opens up to the action of the Spirit in man. This divine work is actualized in the mystery of the liturgy, which is a foretaste of the end of human history and that of the whole cosmos. In liturgy, Granados argues, we discover the bridge between present life and definitive life, and thus also the meaning that the mystery of the Parousia has in the divine plan.

Finally, Communio is pleased to welcome Katherine G. Quan as our new managing editor, and we extend our profound gratitude to Emily Lyon neé Rielley, who leaves the managing editor’s position she so capably filled for the past ten years. We wish her abundant joy and fruitfulness in her new way of life, and we cherish the memories of the time she spent with us. —The Editors

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Adrian Walker on Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth

04 Monday Apr 2011

Posted by Communio in Adrian Walker, Benedict XVI, Moral Theology, Philosophy, Ratzinger

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The current issue of Communio publishes an article by editor Adrian J. Walker, the English translator of the first volume of Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth: Living Water: Reading Scripture in the Body of Christ with Benedict XVI (pdf).

For more on Jesus of Nazareth see:

Denis Farkasfalvy. Jesus of Nazareth and the Renewal of New Testament Theology (2007) and
Roch Kereszty. The Challenge of Jesus of Nazareth for Theologians (2007)

Also by Adrian Walker:

On ‘Rephilosophizing’ Theology (2004) | ‘Rejoice always.’ How Everyday Joy Responds to the Problem of Evil (2004) | Personal Singularity and the Communio Personarum: A Creative Development of Thomas Aquinas’ Doctrine of Esse Commune (2004)  | Benedict XVI: A Co-Worker of the Truth (2005) | Love Alone: Hans Urs von Balthasar as a Master of Theological Renewal (2005) | ‘Sown Psychic, Raised Spiritual’: The Lived Body as the Organ of Theology (2006) | ‘Clouds of Witnesses’: Introducing Why We Need. . . (2007) | The Gift of Simplicity. Reflections on Obedience in the Work of Adrienne von Speyr. (2007)

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Introduction to Communio, The Unity of the Scriptures

13 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by Communio in Adrian Walker, Benedict XVI, Newman, Ratzinger, Scripture

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 The Fall, 2010 issue of Communio is devoted to “The Unity of the Scriptures.” In the words of St. Augustine, ‘novum in vetere latet, vetus in novo patet’ — the New Testament is hidden in the Old and the Old is made manifest in the New. There is, then, a reciprocal relationship between the two Testaments: “The New Testament demands to be read in the light of the Old, but it also invites a ‘re-reading’ of the Old in the light of Jesus Christ (cf. Lk 24:45).” The interpretation of Scripture in the Church involves a passage from letter to spirit that both presupposes and discovers anew the deepest ground of the unity of Scripture—the Word made flesh and communicated in the Holy Spirit. “The central Word which God speaks,” writes Hans Urs von Balthasar, “and which comprises as their unity and end all the manifold words of God is Jesus Christ, the incarnate God . . . . His life is a fulfilling of Scripture. Therefore he incorporates the written words into his own life, making it live and there take flesh.” The present issue explores the unity of Scripture both as a theological mystery and as an abiding source for the renewal of exegesis and theology.

Adrian J. Walker, in “Living Water: Reading Scripture in the Body of Christ With Benedict XVI,” suggests that Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth exemplifies a new form of exegesis that incorporates aspects of historical-critical scholarship while approaching Scripture as an organic whole that coalesces into a unity around the figure of Christ. Of decisive importance is the action of the Holy Spirit, who “(co-)creates Jesus’ body and then (co-)resurrects it from the tomb on the Third Day.” To read Scripture in the same Spirit in which it was written “is to receive Holy Writ as an icon displaying the features of the Incarnate Son—and to receive the impress of those features by the workings of the Holy Spirit.”

Paolo Prosperi, in “Novum in vetere latet. Vetus in novo patet: Toward a Renewal of Typological Exegesis,” begins with a survey of the contemporary debate over the relation between the two Testaments and the claim that Christ “fulfills all the Scriptures.” Drawing on the theology and typological exegesis of Origen, Maximus the Confessor, and Dionysius the Areopagite, Prosperi brings to light a complex and dynamic understanding of the novelty of Christ as the “fulfillment” of the letter and types of the Old Testament. “Thus,” he writes, “while it is right to say that the New Testament involves a spiritualization of that which had been ‘carnal,’ we must immediately offer this clarification: this means a passage to the total fullness of meaning contained in the figure. This fullness involves not only its transformation in the direction of interiorization, but also its opposite: a greater incarnation of that which previously had been metaphorical or spiritual.”

Scott W. Hahn, in “The Symphony of the Old and New Testaments in the Biblical Theology of Benedict XVI,” presents a synthetic account of the biblical theology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Hahn shows how for Pope Benedict, “the unity of the Old and New Testaments is more than a literary (canonical) or historical (economic) phenomenon; indeed, faith grasps the nature of that unity as a theological mystery—as something theandric — namely Christ.” In Benedict’s theology, “worship, law, and ethics are inseparably interwoven” within a biblical vision of the covenant whereby “God binds himself irrevocably” to his creation.

Ricardo Aldana, in “The Triune God as the Unity of Scripture,” reflects on the unity of Scripture as a mystery that reaches into God’s own being. Drawing on the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr, Aldana suggests that “the unity of Scripture . . . has its foundation, not only in trinitarian love, but also in created freedom’s loving participation therein. In particular, the Holy Spirit, who unites in himself the loving will of the Father and the Son, also incorporates the sacred writer’s loving reception of the Word into this unity.”

Mary Healy, in “The Hermeneutic of Jesus,” develops an argument in support of a christological reading of the Old Testament, or what ancient tradition calls the “spiritual sense.” The guiding question is, “What implicit hermeneutical assumptions and principles can be gleaned from Jesus’ own manner of interpreting the Old Testament as presented to us in the gospels?” Focusing on two passages in the gospel of Mark in which Jesus refers to David, Healy shows that “Jesus’ citations of the Scriptures . . . entail not merely a reinterpretation of texts but the claim that Israel’s kingship, worship, priesthood, and sabbath all belong to a divinely orchestrated plan, hidden within history, that is fully revealed and brought to fruition only in him.”

Michael Maria Waldstein, in “Constitutive Relations: A Response to David L. Schindler,” responds to the questions and critical remarks outlined in Schindler’s 2008 Communio article, “The Embodied Person as Gift and the Cultural Task in America.” After distinguishing Aristotelian substance together with its “proper” or “per se” accidents from the modern idea of substance as an unrelated and static block of being, Waldstein addresses the disputed question of “constitutive relationality.” “[I]n a human being,” he writes, “the proper subject of the relation of the creature as created to the Creator as origin is the person.” It follows that “the substance is ontologically prior to relation.”

Retrieving the Tradition presents two essays in honor of the beatification of John Henry Newman on 19 September 2010. The first is a selection, “On Conscience,” from John Henry Newman’s “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk,” which concludes with the famous words, “Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts, (which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall drink — to the Pope, if you please, — still to Conscience first and to the Pope afterwards.” According to Newman, “conscience” is the supreme authority precisely because it is “the internal witness of both the existence and the law of God.”

In his essay “Conscience and Truth,” Joseph Ratzinger reflects on the place of conscience in the whole of Newman’s life and thought. Ratzinger suggests that for Newman, “the middle term that establishes the connection between authority and subjectivity is truth . . . . [T]he centrality of the concept of conscience for Newman is linked to the prior centrality of the concept of truth and can only be understood from this vantage point.”

Notes & Comments concludes the issue with a reflection by Massimo Camisasca on “The Father, the Source of Communion: Fatherhood as the Generation of Life.” After describing some of the historical roots of the crisis of fatherhood, Camisasca meditates on the challenge of human fatherhood in relation to the divine origin. “Every form of fatherhood, if it is to remain faithful to its task, must lead to the unique and true, heavenly fatherhood, that of God the Father. Every form of fatherhood has the task of introducing the child to the mystery of Being, of accompanying him into the depths of existence, all the way to the origin of all things.”

—NJH

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Lecture for Washington, DC readers

29 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by Communio in Adrian Walker, Caritas in Veritate, Economics, Family, Science

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Communio readers in the Washington, D.C. area might like to know about a lecture this coming Thursday, Dec. 2 at the John Paul II Institute at The Catholic University of America. Communio editor Dr. Adrian Walker will speak on “The Limits of Science” at 4 pm. Details are here. Also of interest is the colloquium on Family, the Common Good, and the Economic Order: A Symposium on Caritas in Veritate on Friday and Saturday. Both events are free of charge.

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Current Issue: Liturgy and Culture (Winter 2012)

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