Theology must be Christocentric

From Sandro Magister's latest:

AN INFALLIBLE METHOD FOR RENEWING THEOLOGY

by Inos Biffi


If the Christian mystery stands at the origin of theology, and this can be defined as "understanding of the faith," it is unthinkable that at any point in time remaking it from scratch can be contemplated. In the diversity of the times, it is nourished by an uninterrupted tradition of content and also of language, which does not admit drastic and revolutionary discontinuities, on pain of losing its identity. It is permissible at least to harbor some perplexity before a theology convinced that it is presenting unusual and singular theological doctrines, never before taught.

Nevertheless, this does not doom theology to pure repetition. The history of theology itself shows how much, without breaking continuity, it has been variously and profoundly renewed: but not by somehow obscuring or ignoring the mystery; on the contrary, by allowing it to emerge with greater power and consistency.

Theology does not let itself be unsettled and influenced by the myth of becoming and progress, aware that it was born and is continually reborn from the inexhaustible and unchangeable resources of divine revelation, which is complete and does not wear out, from communion with the Word of God, ancient and always new.

It is also true that the renewal of theology can be accompanied by a new philosophy, but on the condition that it offer, so to speak, a space more open to the predominance and understanding of the mystery, and that it be exercised within the "understanding of the faith."

It is significant that the brilliant historian of medieval theology Marie-Dominique Chenu should affirm that "it is not the introduction of Aristotle that determines the thought of Saint Thomas, just as it is not the rebirth of Antiquity that constitutes the theology of the thirteenth century." The rebirth represents only one component of renewal: its impulse and its advance are attributed to "evangelism," as he calls it.

It goes without saying that it can never be philosophy that judges the validity of a theology: this judgment belongs only to the Word of God, while the same theology can judge the pertinence or lack thereof of a philosophy in contributing to the understanding of the faith.

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Here, however, we are not interested in illustrating the relationship between philosophy and Christian theology, but in indicating the decision through which theology could and should receive a profound renewal or new arrangement: a decision that is unavoidable, because it is founded on the event from which emerges the faith, and therefore the "understanding of the faith."

This way is Christocentrism.

Truly, this is by no means a novelty. Christian theology has always had Jesus Christ at its center; it was born and developed from the event that is him.

But perhaps this original centrality requires a more rigorous, more consistent, and more complete translation. Above all beginning with the very definition of Christocentrism.

This does not signify only the excellence of Christ with respect to all the rest, but his predestination to be the unconditional reason for all that which God has called and calls into existence.

But other indispensable and essential clarifications are required. When one speaks of Christocentrism, one intends to affirm not only the primacy of the Word, but also the primacy or "precedence" in God's plan of the incarnate Word, who died and was raised, through whom, in whom, and in view of whom "were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible" (Colossians 1:15-17). Obviously, as a complement rather than an alternative to the Johannine perspective, according to which there is nothing that has not been made through the Word (John 1:3).

The "Preeminent over all things" (Colossians 1:18) is, precisely, the glorified Crucified One, who comes before everything and from whom everything departs. It is as if to say that Jesus the redeemer, with the grace of his forgiveness, is the ontological foundation and the historical motive of all things (cf. Colossians 1:17), the Object of God's eternal "purpose."

The first letter of Peter speaks of the "the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished lamb," "known before the foundation of the world," revealed in the final time" (1:19-20). And as for the prophets, it says that they were "investigating the time and circumstances that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the glories to follow them" (1:11).

But if Jesus risen from the dead is the Predestined One, this means the figure of humanity originally conceived and "preferred" by God is the glorified humanity of the Son, the achievement to which all of history is oriented.

In it, all humanity finds its rationale and model: all men are predestined, created "in grace," or "predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers" (Romans 8:29).

We can define everything that we have described in the words of Paul: "the mystery of God that is Christ" (Colossians 2:2), or more precisely: "the wise mystery of God" that is "Christ crucified" (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:21,23).

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So then, the task of theology is the exploration of this mystery. Those who dedicate themselves to it have the mission of "speaking God's wisdom, mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages" (1 Corinthians 2:7).

It is on this realism that Christian theology is built, with no interest in watering itself down in the world of hypothetical divine plans or designs. Only God knows what he could have done. Everything has been created in the grace of Jesus crucified and risen.

In particular, the nature of man was grounded on that grace. A "pure nature," for a "pure" and "natural" end, has never existed, and we can know nothing about it.

In fact, the "Original" that sacred doctrine intends to know above all, and therefore, the first object of theological interest, is the glorious Crucified One predestined from all time, and therefore, his life with its events, among which takes place the particularized manifestation of the eternal plan generated and motivated by the divine mercy.

In this sense, Christian theology is originally Christic: Christ risen from the dead describes and exhaustively offers all of his object. He is the Object that is to be understood, as the concrete and historical "narration" of the plan (cf. John 1:18). He is the dimension that Christology must take on.

But Christ does not stop at himself: he is the Son, and thus he refers to the Father, whom no one has seen and of whom he is the epiphany, and he is the attestation of the Spirit. In him is found the Trinity, which reveals itself as the creating and merciful Trinity, which stands at the origin of an order intended as an initiative of mercy.

This is the order that the theologian is called to study, which in particular concerns man, although he appears to be preceded, before his creation, by an angelic world already marked by Christ and by the decisions related to him: of acceptance, but also of rejection, or sin.

In particular, Christ unveils for us a God who, in his merciful love, gives the Son, predetermined as forgiveness for the sin of man, who in this way finds his advantage not in coming into the world, but in being redeemed. As Saint Ambrose writes, "Non prodesset nasci, nisi redimi profuisset" (Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, II, 41-42).

Sacred doctrine, then, deals with anthropology, meaning man as existing solely as disposed in the grace and glory of the Cross: a grace and a glory at work in the sacraments, which Thomas Aquinas sees entirely suspended in the "energy of the passion of Christ" (Summa Theologiae, III, 62, 5, c).

So it is easy to see what ecclesiology deals with: precisely with the humanity that emerges from the Passover of Christ and finds itself configured and intimately associated with the Lord risen from the dead.

As for eschatology, this is the exploration of the glory and therefore of the achievement of the Crucified One: a glory that transcends and attracts history and is the end for which man and together with him all things were created and desired from eternity.

If it is true that Christian theology has always done this, I would in any case maintain that is is possible, even necessary, to refocus this in an even more consistent and profound way on Christocentrism. It is only from here that a strong, admirable impulse of renewal could come, which would be sought in vain elsewhere.

Ite ad Thomam: Hermeneutics of Discontinuity? JP2 vs. Florence on the Revocation of the Mosaic Covenant

Catholic Dualists

Original posted at The New Beginning. I'm reposting it here, with some small changes.

To deny that there are differences between men and women in how they think, materialists and feminsits must be "subtle" in attacking the data. (One strategem is to argue that since not all of one sex exhibit a trait to the nth degree that therefore this trait is not more exemplary of one sex than another. That is to say, a distribution curve is insufficient--one is needed is two distinct and sharp peaks.) In contrast, it is likely that Catholic egalitariansno matter how much they may criticize Descartes for being a father of modernity, must partially embrace a form of dualism that is similar to his if they are to dismiss the generalizations that have been made about the cognitive differences between men and women. They may claim to accept the hylomorphic account of the relation of soul to body, but on this point they become a dualists. They have to argue that because the soul is equal in all that all reason equally or in the same way.

They may acknowledge that there are differences in the exercise of the intellect or intellectual performance, as some are clearly more intelligent than others, but the power is the same in all. Now I think some distinctions need to be made. While the intellectual power may be the same in all, it is not exercised, in this life, by itself, but in conjunction with the sense powers. It is also influenced by other factors, such as one's emotions. The conjunction of body and soul is not something that is accidental to our way of reasoning in this life. That the body may have a regular (and not necessarily determintal) influence on how we reason may be part of God's design--sex differences in reasoning are "natural."

John Finnis is a Catholic egalitarian, and as far as I know, he has not written specifically about the soul or Descartes. But perhaps his egalitarianism is tied to his understanding of human dignity, and human dignity upon the spiritual nature of man.

Dropping “Patriarch of the West” and changing titles of Roman Basilicas to “Papal”

See the comments for what some think the implications of these acts for Catholic ecclesiology are.

Thomistica.net: Call for papers: Fordham conference on the Metaphysics of Aquinas (March 26-27, 2011)

Edward Feser comments on the Prop. 8 decision

Some thoughts on the Prop 8 decision (entry at his own blog)

The Catholic Thing: Tradition, Continuity, and Vatican II By David G. Bonagura, Jr

Yet an effort to avoid polemics is a mere surface reason for Benedict’s choice of the word. By insisting that Vatican II be interpreted in continuity with the Church of all ages, the pope is saying that the council is part of the Church’s Tradition (with a capital “T”), that is, part of the Church’s authoritative interpretation of divine revelation. Vatican II, therefore, is not a “rupture” in the Church’s Tradition (interpretation of God’s word) or traditions (ecclesial practices descended from the Apostles) resulting in a completely new way of believing, as Professor Hans Küng on the Left and the followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on the Right maintain. For Benedict, Vatican II is a legitimate development in the Church’s ongoing understanding of Christ and His saving message for the world.

With respect to the sentences in bold -- I don't see how the second necessarily follows from the first.

Thomistica.net: Thomistic commentators online and Thomistic commentators online

Public Discourse: The Abiding Significance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Christopher O. Tollefsen

Americans must still wrestle with what it means to take the lives of innocent civilians intentionally.

There are, finally, some problem areas, puzzles regarding which we have not yet determined how the lessons of World War Two are to be brought to bear. As I noted, military ethics now take for granted that civilians are not to be targeted. Perhaps, however, that has simply made our leaders more scrupulous about calling civilian casualties “collateral damage,” even when they are willing to accept many more such casualties than they would harm to our own troops. But the original precept against killing the innocent no matter what the consequences is based on an even deeper truth: the fundamental and radical equality of all human beings as persons, as free and rational beings whose lives are each loci of intrinsic and incommensurable value. The West’s willingness to bomb at a distance, engage in drone attacks, and tolerate, in Iraq and Afghanistan, wildly disproportionate numbers of civilian casualties, suggests that our soldiers do indeed count more than their wives, children, and elderly. While this may be an understandable viewpoint in any society, it is not, for all that, a correct one.

I find it odd that someone who has studied MacIntyre would employ a modern notion of justice to explain the precept against murder. But as Grisez was very influential on Professor Tollefsen, it is not unexpected. This sort of explanation is employed by other contemporary Catholic intellectuals and by a few bishops as well. The explanation is serviceable, but it fails to distinguish the difference between justice from charity. (Since Grisez is not interested in keeping the Thomistic account of the virtues, it may not seem important, but if there is going to be more than a verbal difference between charity and justice then... )

A Prayer Rule by St. Theophan the Recluse

here

Other resources
Orthodox Information Center

Did Cardinal Ratzinger think that Vatican I is non-negotiable?

It would seem so, with respect to its teachings on the office of the pope. From the CDF's Doctrinal Commentary on Ad Tuendam Fidem:

With respect to the truths of the second paragraph, with reference to those connected with revelation by a logical necessity, one can consider, for example, the development in the understanding of the doctrine connected with the definition of papal infallibility, prior to the dogmatic definition of the First Vatican Council. The primacy of the Successor of Peter was always believed as a revealed fact, although until Vatican I the discussion remained open as to whether the conceptual elaboration of what is understood by the terms 'jurisdiction' and 'infallibility' was to be considered an intrinsic part of revelation or only a logical consequence. On the other hand, although its character as a divinely revealed truth was defined in the First Vatican Council, the doctrine on the infallibility and primacy of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff was already recognized as definitive in the period before the council. History clearly shows, therefore, that what was accepted into the consciousness of the Church was considered a true doctrine from the beginning, and was subsequently held to be definitive; however, only in the final stage - the definition of Vatican I - was it also accepted as a divinely revealed truth.

I don't see why he would have changed his mind once become pope.

Responsibilities of a migrant. And who owes land?

The right to migrate is not the same as the right to join a political community. I've speculated before that the right to migrate is joined in part to land and other natural resources being common goods. One has the right to move elsewhere in order to supply for their physical needs. As a consequence, they can settle there and establish some sort of community. Because of man by nature is ordered to living in community, he should first of all move in a group, not individually or with a family. If he seeks to join another group, then he should find one with which he already has some social ties and shares a common culture, and while his request to be with them should probably be granted out of hospitality (guest-hospitality of the Greeks or what not), it is nonetheless provisional. His acceptance does not mean that he is entitled to the full rights and benefits of citizenship.

I have also mentioned the responsibilities of a migrant in passing elsewhere. Off the top of my head, I am thinking primarily of the responsibility to adopt the culture of the host community (in so far as it is not forbidden by the natural law), and to embrace its mores and language, and to offer one's loyalty to the people and devotion to the common good. If his heart does not lie first of all with his host community, at the very least he should not expect to be considered one of its own, but to remain an outsider. If he desires to be a member of the host community, he owes out of justice complete participation in its economy, as the the network of economic exchanges from which he seeks to benefit is ordered to the good of the community (of the members who make up that community), and not to the good of another community. (Hence there is a moral dilemma for those who leave family behind in their native community and are obligated to provide them with financial support, plus whatever other obligations he owes to other members of his native community.)

If he remains an outsider, he may be morally free to send money home. And it may be that he is owed a family wage for his work, and not merely a wage that will support him individually. Still, does the host community have a right to decline him the right to participate in the economy? (So long as it provides him with some means to work and sustain himself?)

A tentative response to the question I raised here, "If secular governments are unwilling to part with the territory they control, even though land is a common good, then how can the right to move (for the sake of improving life) not be transformed into the right to immigrate?" It seems to me that the claim to land and so on should first be pressed in their native country, not in a foreign country. We can look at a concrete example, Mexico, and ask how many in Mexico are forced to leave and look for work elsewhere because of the lack of social justice in that country? Isn't it incumbent upon the Mexican government to satisfy the claim to land and such, before any other political community? And if the Mexican government fails to meet its obligation, forcing another political community to do so, then does that political community have the right to seek redress/compensation from the Mexican government?

(I ignore at the moment the complicity of U.S. companies, and by extension the Federal Government, in promoting social injustice in Mexico.)

Ite ad Thomam: "Any Ideas on How to Reconcile These? (John Paul II's Fides et ratio & the Pre-Conciliar Popes)"

My preliminary thoughts, which I posted over there:
I'm working on a more extended response at my blog, but here are some beginning reflections:

John Paul wishes to claim that there is a legitimate plurality of philosophical systems, and it is not the task or competence of the Magisterium to rectify deficiences in a system, only to judge what is compatible with the Faith and what is not.

Nonetheless, there is a core of truths that can be called implicit philosophy, which is shared by all systems to one degree or another. (This is similar to the perennial philosophy of apologists for Thomism?)

(Hence, John Paul II is able to talk about philosophy, human reason, and knowledege, and other fundamental truths.)

Although he does not say that the implicit philosophy is the philosophy of the Church, I don't think that it would be a stretch to claim that it functions as such, and provides the basis for judging the soundness and coherence of philosophical systems.

(Not that I think agree with his terminology or with the claims he makes about philosophical systems, but I'm attempting to explain his position on his own terms first.)

The question is, then, whether this implicit philosophy "large" enough that it encompasses "our philosophy" of which previous popes speak?

Fermat's Last Theorem (abridged)

(via Steve Sailer)

More info:
Andrew Wiles (Mathematics Department, Princeton University)
Fermat's Last Theorem
Fermat Corner
NOVA Online|The Proof
Fermat's Last Theorem
wiki
pdf

A Short-Form Proof

John Zizioulas on Baptism and the Eucharist

Experiencing the Sacrament/Mystery of the Church through Baptism and the Eucharist
Metropolitan of Pergamus, fr. John Zizioulas

An excerpt from the exceptional book “Eucharistic Exemplarium”. Megara 2006. “Evergetis” Publications. Pages 64-73.

(source of link: The Byzantine Anglo-Catholic)


One Single Source by His Grace John Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon

George Weigel, In Praise of Father Schall

Brian Tierney, "The Idea of Natural Rights - Origins and Persistence"

I believe the issue in which this article appears may have another article or two about rights, but I'm too lazy to check at the moment.

Ian Shapiro has an evaluation of J. G. A. Pocock: J. G. A. Pocock's republicanism and political theory: A critique and reinterpretation. Unfortunately I can't access it. The abstract:

A growing sense of the exhaustion of both liberalism and Marxism has fueled a revival of interest in civic republicanism among historians, political theorists, and social commentators. This turn is evaluated via an examination of the normative implications off. G. A. Pocock's account of civic republicanism. Arguing that what is at issue between liberals and republicans has been misunderstood by both sides in the debate, the author shows that the turn to republicanism fails to address the most vexing problems liberalism confronts in the modern world, and that it is and has been compatible with much of what critics of liberalism dislike. He argues, further, that the civic republican view involves an instrumental attitude to outsiders that cannot be justified in today's world and has other unattractive dimensions of which too little account has been taken by defenders and detractors alike.

The article was published in 1990. I should see if Pocock has written anything on civic republicanism recently. I can't recall if Shapiro is a Straussian.

Interview with John F. Crosby, Part 2

Dietrich von Hildebrand: Giving the Heart Its Due (Part 2)

An Interview with Hildebrand Legacy Project Director

By Andrea Kirk Assaf

ROME, JULY 23, 2010 (Zenit.org).- When searching for a way to dialogue with modernists, Catholic philosophers would be wise to study and utilize the thought of phenomenologist Dietrich von Hildebrand, says John Henry Crosby, the founder and president of the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy project.

Last month, phenomenologists and other academics related to von Hildebrand's work converged in Rome to take part in a conference live-streamed on the Internet, organized by the legacy project.

In the wake of that event, ZENIT sat down with Crosby to discuss the continuing and even growing contribution of von Hildebrand’s thought within the Church and secular culture.

In Part 2 of this interview, Crosby explains how von Hildebrand restores the heart to its rightful place as the greatest among equals.

Part 1 of this interview appeared Thursday.

ZENIT: Why should we read Von Hildebrand and phenomenology today?

Crosby: Von Hildebrand is a great thinker to know because he is distinctly modern in many ways. He made traditionalists a little nervous because on the one hand he was one of their greatest proponents when it came to the Latin Mass; he wrote passionately in defense of the Tridentine Mass and grieved its loss yet at the same time, while the typical traditionalist was a strict Thomist, he was a cutting edge philosopher out of this modern movement of phenomenology. It’s also useful that he’s got all the right credentials -- you can go to Harvard or Princeton or Yale and they have to accept that with von Hildebrand you’ve got a really serious person. Aquinas is a blip in their weak sense of history but here’s a person whose colleagues were Edith Stein and Heidegger. And you have the witness of his life -- philosophical beliefs sealed in heroic living.

Adolf Reinach, whom Edith Stein and von Hildebrand saw as their true master while Edmund Husserl is known as the father of the phenomenology movement, wrote an essay on phenomenology in which he says that phenomenology is a certain way of doing philosophy -- a willingness to look deep into experiences, to take concrete cases seriously. Von Hildebrand defined it as the systematic unveiling of one’s prejudices, so that one went into a subject by cleansing oneself not just of moral prejudices but of intellectual prejudices, of assumptions and inclinations. What that expresses is an ardor for truth that defined every other aspect of his work, a readiness to make any sacrifice for it, whether personal or giving up his career.

That radical pursuit of truth at all costs defines the man and his character as a thinker. One of the extraordinary things about him is the unity of thought and life -- the great intellect and the heroic witness, especially at that time in history. The idea that you have to put your life on the line for your philosophical beliefs is nobody’s preference, it wasn’t his either, but he didn’t think twice about doing it. When he was at Vienna all his Catholic colleagues opposed him, they all wanted to find ways to make it work with Hitler -- "building bridges" they called it. He had a willingness to go alone out of this dedication to truth, and a trust that God would honor that. He once said he could never justify a physical risk for adventure but the moment it involved a possible assassination for what he thought was right, the consequences could never be too high.

ZENIT: What is distinctive about his thought?

Crosby: In terms of his thought, it’s not as if there are things he says that no one else has said because with philosophy all thinkers build on and borrow from one another, but von Hildebrand, certainly more than any medieval thinker and even more than most modern Christian thinkers, was very intent on giving the heart its due in the understanding of love, the subject of our Rome conference. He thought the traditional focus on the will was totally inadequate, that love is ultimately an expression of the heart, and the traditional distinction of man between intellect and will just doesn’t hold true to experience. In literature, in poetry, even in biblical faith, the heart is always used as a way to express the deepest in man but in philosophy it has a kind of "stepson status." From a philosophical point of view it starts to look irascible, unreliable, fleeting…Von Hildebrand said we have to think of man as having three different centers -- intellect, will, and the heart, with the heart being the deepest of them. Then he has some very beautiful things to say about how, when we think of it this way, the heart expresses our nature the most deeply because the deepest experiences we have, whether they be joy, freedom, or peace, are expressions of the heart, not experiences of the will. They are states of being that are expressed in a felt way and they are all gifts -- you can’t seek joy as an object and have joy, it just won’t be granted in that way. You can’t love someone simply to be happy, you won’t find happiness that way. The fact that all the deepest experiences are fundamentally received is very telling, it reflects our status as finite, dependent beings. Rather than complaining about that, he sees all the experiences of the heart fundamentally as gifts and a philosophy of the gift arises from that. Some people have done research on how this links up with the thought of John Paul II and his writings on the philosophy of gift.

You could say that, as a matter of principle, von Hildebrand sees the human person as fundamentally oriented to being fulfilled only by receiving all of what is most essential to human fulfillment as a gift. So in that sense it goes against the naturalism of Aristotle that says if you know the right goods you can pursue them and therefore reach a state of flourishing. With von Hildebrand it’s a little bit more complicated -- we have to live in right order to the good but our happiness in one sense is super added, it’s not directly in our control. I would say that the retrieval of the heart is one of his greatest contributions.

ZENIT: Contemporary culture seeks to appeal immediately to our emotions. Can the work of von Hildebrand engage the emotions-based secular philosophy that is so predominant today?

Crosby: I recently spoke to a Catholic man who was very upset with the Church for its lack of attention to the heart in its preaching and presentation of the Gospel. He said there are Catholics in California who will go to the Catholic Mass on Saturday evening and then to the mega churches for their emotional sustenance on Sundays -- they meet the requirement one day and then get their nourishment the next day. He said this is a failure of the Church to meet the affectivity of the person. I think von Hildebrand would agree in principle with this because the heart has to be engaged. He had none of the distrust of the emotions that we sometimes find in certain cultural traditions in which we stifle emotions or at least think that what is really serious is what is in our heads, not our hearts.

Von Hildebrand is trustful of the heart but also seems to understand all the different deformations of the heart; you can see in his writings that he’s trying to understand that we have to form the habits of discernment to know when we are being swayed by our concupiscence. As a Christian he didn’t at all think that we should trust any impulse. He’s not saying that anything we want we should have because the heart is good, rather he’s observing that most of the really important, deep experiences we have in life are precisely in the heart.

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On ZENIT's Web page:

Part 1: www.zenit.org/article-29971?l=english

On the Net:

www.hildebrandlegacy.org

Interview with John F. Crosby, Part 1

Dietrich von Hildebrand: Giving the Heart Its Due (Part 1)

An Interview with Hildebrand Legacy Project Director

By Andrea Kirk Assaf

ROME, JULY 22, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Despite Benedict XVI's prediction in 2000 that Dietrich von Hildebrand would become one of the "most prominent" intellectual figures of modern times, the German-born Catholic philosopher was at the time in danger of being relegated to obscurity.

But because of the work of the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project to translate, publish, and disseminate his books, essays, and anti-Nazi tracts, the Christian personalism of von Hildebrand (1880-1977), a large number of whose works still must be translated from the original German, is enjoying something of a revival.

A significant step forward in the organization’s goals occurred in May when phenomenologists and other academics related to von Hildebrand's work converged in Rome to take part in a conference live-streamed on the Internet.

ZENIT sat down with the project's young founder and director to discuss the continuing and even growing contribution of von Hildebrand’s thought within the Church and secular culture.

Here is part 1 of the interview. Part 2 will appear Friday.

ZENIT: How did you come to devote yourself full time to preserving and promoting the legacy of Dietrich von Hildebrand?

Crosby: I founded the project in 2004, rather unintentionally, which is probably how some of the best projects get off the ground. I had wanted to translate some work of von Hildebrand and then write a dissertation on it. So I called our old family friend, Alice von Hildebrand, and said I wasn’t really sure about going to graduate school, but what did she think about helping me to raise support to do a one-year privately funded fellowship to translate von Hildebrand’s work.

She and I had talked about translation work over the years but it never got off the ground, so she said fine and gave me 10 names who might be interested in this project. One of them was Mike Doherty who was the chairman of the board of the Franciscan University of Steubenville at the time and he told me, “This sounds great, what do we need to do to get going?”

He helped me start my own 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization and then we started to put together an advisory board. In about October 2004, less than a year into the project, then-Cardinal Ratzinger accepted an honorary position on our board. Now we have a wonderful advisory council of 20 people including Cardinal Schönborn, Rocco Buttiglione, several individuals known in the Catholic world, several of von Hildebrand’s students; I tried to select them according to the different areas of von Hildebrand’s thought -- the philosophers, the theologians, the political figures, those who represent the artistic and cultural side.

ZENIT: Why did you choose von Hildebrand in particular?

Crosby: The reason I was even able to do this is that there are links to von Hildebrand on both sides of my family. My father was one of his students and got to know him as a 22 year old at Georgetown. He invited von Hildebrand to speak, he had read some of his works, and this talk that he gave at Georgetown made a huge impression on my dad.

Then von Hildebrand in turn essentially directed where my dad studied and so he went to study with one of von Hildebrand’s students, but every free moment he studied in Austria with von Hildebrand or back in the U.S. in New York. My mother is Austrian and she was already a second-generation friend of von Hildebrand.

My grandfather got swept up in the Hitler youth when very young in Austria. When von Hildebrand left Germany for Austria to set up his anti-Nazi newspaper, he had to give an opening lecture at the University of Vienna where he had a small appointment. Von Hildebrand was so known as an outspoken anti-Nazi that the talk was somewhat violently protested by Communists on the left and National Socialists on the right, and my grandfather was on the right with the Nationalist Socialists yelling “Down with von Hildebrand!”

My grandfather had a conversion during the war when he lost a lung and spent some time in the hospital. He became a Catholic -- he had been Lutheran -- and then after the war found his way back to von Hildebrand and they became friends.

Alice von Hildebrand remembers a moving episode where my grandfather approached von Hildebrand sometime in the 1950s and knelt down in front of him and asked his forgiveness. My grandfather was a historian by trade by then, in fact he was the archivist of the Diocese of Salzburg where my mother was born and raised. My mother knew him as a young girl and kept up a correspondence with him. She came to the United States to study in 1977 just before his death. Without getting too much into it, von Hildebrand had a lot to do with my parents’ marriage because my father was a philosopher with his head in the clouds and von Hildebrand was a great promoter of relationships. My mother told him that she was interested in my father, so von Hildebrand pulled some strings and my father eventually woke up.

ZENIT: What is the mission of your organization?

Crosby: It was a much smaller initiative initially without seeing the full potential of what was there. The mission now is twofold -- on the one hand to promote von Hildebrand’s legacy through translating his work and make his writings known; a lot of his work hasn’t yet been translated from the German and a lot of books are out of print. We also aim to have an audience for these books, so we started having an annual moderate-sized conference, less frequently if it is a large conference like this year's in Rome. The public side has largely been in the form of these conferences, but we will also have a robust Web presence as a place for the international community of scholars to meet and share their research.

When you're promoting a thinker, I think it's important that the issues [that] the thinker was engaging are not lost. So in that sense part of our mission is to promote an authentically philosophical approach to these perennial questions of life and offering von Hildebrand as a great guide, but not the only guide.

Our mission statement says we are inspired by the need to recover and reinterpret and translate our intellectual patrimony, and at the same time we operate with a great spirit of gratitude toward contemporary thinkers. Phenomenology has classical roots, but it's also a modern movement within philosophy. We're often assumed that new insights can't be had; that sometimes happens with traditionalists who think that the last word on an issue has been said. I don't want to single them out, but you get that with Thomists sometimes because there is a system with Aquinas.

Von Hildebrand reminds that we can always move forward; it doesn’t mean that we are throwing everything else out but there are questions that are distinctive to a period in time, just as there are questions that arise in every generation. I don't think John Paul II built his papacy on the idea that nothing had changed since 1100. Sometimes we don't like to use the expression "the history of ethics," but there has been a slow-growing, and in some ways relentless, process of greater illumination. I think personalism is built around the idea that historically there is a new and deeper understanding and appreciation for what it means to be a person.

I happen to also think that personalism is a very useful way to engage modern issues because personalists love notions such as freedom, which puts them in a strong position to talk to people who are perhaps confused about freedom, like with the gay rights movement. A personalist has a great language to use, you can understand their intuition, but you are also rooted in fundamental concepts like human nature, which they don’t have; the general liberal problem is the belief that the human is just an atomized individual who doesn’t want to accept any limitation. Human nature is a limitation so you don’t want it, you want everything to be subject to your freedom. Personalists understand that intuition but they also understand that our freedom is finite.
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On the Net:

www.hildebrandlegacy.org