Jean Duchesne on Louis Bouyer

Les grands théologiens du XXe siècle : Louis Bouyer (4/6)

The others in the series:
Henri de Lubac
Jean Daniélou
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Karol Wojtyla
Joseph Ratzinger

The Mystical Body of Christ

First Things: A Wafer-Thin Practice by Hans Boersma

De Lubac was troubled by a Eucharistic individualism that he believed had shaped the mindset of many of his Catholic contemporaries. Convinced as they were that the body of Christ in the Eucharist was the true body (corpus verum), all that seemed to matter was to partake. Once the miraculous medicine of immortality had been ingested, one might as well turn back down the aisle and walk out of church, for the one and only reason for going to Mass had now been performed. De Lubac was agitated, rightly I think, with the individualism—yes, the selfish consumerism and greed—in this Eucharistic spirituality.

I don't know if "the selfish consumerism and greed" is de Lubac's own judgment or Boersma's. It seems to go too far -- I think there were poorly catechized Roman Catholics who were taught to be concerned with subjective certitude regarding their salvation and limited salvation to receiving the sacraments, rather than a fuller participation in the Mystery of Christ.

De Lubac countered the gnostic demon at work. He asked his readers to think about what it means to eat the body (the Eucharist) as a body (the church), pointing out the close link between embodiment and community. Turning to 1 Corinthians 10:16–17 (“The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread”), de Lubac pointed out that for Saint Paul, participation (koinōnia, communion) of the body of Christ (the Eucharist) turns us into the body of Christ (the church).

All this talk of the “body of Christ” is no mere metaphor. Saint Augustine, in his famous Sermon 227, writes about the Eucharist: “If you have received worthily, you are what you have received, for the Apostle says: ‘The bread is one; we though many, are one body.’” The African bishop seems to suggest that believers, by partaking of communion, are transubstantiated (well, changed) into the body of Christ. When we eat Christ, we become Christ.

Hence the allusion in the title of this post to de Lubac's Corpus Mysticum.

The Christian tradition has typically treated body and body (Eucharist and church) as mutually dependent. On the one hand, the Eucharist makes the church. This seems to be the Pauline logic of 1 Corinthians 10 and of Augustine in Sermon 227. On the other hand, the church makes the Eucharist: We offer up our gifts—our entire lives—in Christ on the altar. Body and body depend on each other. Neither can go it alone. The reason is simple: The two are one flesh (Eph. 5:31).

The ministers of the church, presbyters and episkopoi, do have an instrumental role in making Christ sacramentally present. But I have doubts as to whether we participate in the sacrifice in that manner, by offering ourselves in union with Christ. But this seems to be the typical Latin view of sacrifice and our participation in the Eucharist.


This essay is written by Boersma in connection with televised Masses during COVID-19 lockdowns. I am reminded of the question I posed in this post, whether it is possible to have a Eucharistic liturgy with pre-sanctified Gifts only. (Not the same as Boersma's thought experiment of having a virtual consecration done by a presbyter through long-distance communication.) If it is possible, would such a Eucharistic service that is done by teleconferencing be contrary to piety or to true liturgical participation? (People would receive the Divine Gifts at home and then have a internet teleconference in which a presbyter would lead them to some sort of communion service, one featuring an act of Thanksgiving.) I would think that it isn't true liturgical participation.

As for the original question I raised - if we take the Act of Thanksgiving in the abstract, it might seem that it is possible to have a Eucharistic liturgy of pre-sanctified Gifts only. But when the Act of Thanksgiving is tied to the Anamnesis of God's saving acts, including the salvation who is Christ, maybe it is not possible to separate the Thanksgiving from the Consecration of the Gifts at the same time.

Or maybe it is. I will have to think about it some more. I don't think that such a "Eucharistic" communion service has any historical precedent.


Related:
A Eucharistic Church by Avery Dulles
Eucharistic Ecclesiology of Henri de Lubac  by Fr. Manuel-Alfredo Razo-Canales

The Nature-Grace Distinction

What relevance to the distinction between the distinction between "State" and "Church"?

The reversal noted here by @jacobwwood is missed by many who think about the application of the nature-grace distinction to the distinction of the two powers. pic.twitter.com/UKGW1TV3CB

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 5, 2020

…because he has a much more "optimistic" theology of sin. That is, de Lubac has a naively optimistic understanding of justification through "implicit faith" that leads him to underestimate the extent to which the ’world‘ is under the domination of the devil.

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 5, 2020

An Interview with Matthew Levering and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr.

CWR: Ressourcement after Vatican II honors the work of Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
An interview with Matthew Levering and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., who co-edited a collection of 13 essays on ressourcement thought in gratitude to Fr. Fessio for a lifetime of service to the Church.

Ressourcement after Vatican II: Essays in Honor of Joseph Fessio, S.J.

Bishop Robert Barron on Henri de Lubac

CWR Dispatch: Cardinal Etchegaray, Henri de Lubac, and Vatican II by Bishop Robert Barron
What is still very much the needful thing today is the de Lubac attitude.

Are both left-wing and right-wing rejections of Vatican II on display today? Just go on the Catholic new media space and you’ll find the question readily answered. What is still very much the needful thing is the de Lubac attitude: deep commitment to the texts of Vatican II, openness to ecumenical conversation, a willingness to dialogue with the culture (without caving in to it), reverence for the tradition without a stifling traditionalism.

Often because of the post hoc fallacy, Ressourcement theology is being ignored by Latin traditionalists. Others merely are committed to their version of Thomism, and critique Ressourcement theology accordingly. Another approach taken by some contemporary Thomists is to take what was good in the return of the sources and employ it in Thomism, hence Ressourcement Thomism. Do Latins have what is necessary to reset their ecclesial tradition and teaching? Arguably that is what the best of Ressourcement theology was trying to do, though whether they were able to do so is questionable, as those who were orthodox had to stay within the bounds of second millenium Latin "dogma," rather than question whether those teachings by Latin councils were actually definitive.

To Stir a Restless Heart

The World Needs Christ

Not more academese, and "Modernity" is an invention of the elites, not out of whole cloth but close. Would the pioneers of "modernity" fall somewhere on the spectrum? Where would they fall on the social hierarchy?

Church Life: Renewing Nouvelle Théologie by Cyril O’Regan

Forgetfulness of God is a serious problem - without memory of God we cannot bless Him and thank Him for His manifold benefits. Is this forgetfulness, then, just an intellectual mistake, or is it one caused by sin? If the Latin churches had not first been internally weakened, and then lost to the modern nation-state, would there be a spiritual vacuum to be filled by some ideology? So what Latins have to offer the world in bringing Christ to it, after 50 years of a disastrous liturgical reform?

"And if there is a simple lesson to be drawn from the sprawling work of both de Lubac and Balthasar it may well be that misrememberers are far more dangerous to Christianity because in some lights they look just like it."

We are not talking about heresies but philosophical errors that do not fulfill man's heart, but feed upon sin and vice. what normal person claims to be a Hegelian or Nietzschean? Academics may pretend; there are those on the new right who claim to be followers of other philosophers, but they have rejected Christianity because of its perceived errors in its moral code.



Ressourcement Futures

Except the Patriarchate of Rome is not the Church Universal

In other news, Latins still infected with latinocentrism.

Beauty Will Save the World

CWR: Henri de Lubac's observations of Vatican II offer prescient perspective by Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas
Volume Two of de Lubac's "Vatican Council Notebooks", recently published Ignatius Press, is filled with endless detail, much drama, and many surprises.

Insight Scoop: New: "Vatican Council Notebooks: Volume Two" by Henri de Lubac
Now available from Ignatius Press: Vatican Council Notebooks: Volume Two by Henri de Lubac

Henri de Lubac

CWR: Pope Francis, Henri de Lubac, and the Decentralizing of Church Authority
The Holy Father wants to enhance the authority of episcopal conferences. But one of his theological lodestones warned of the dangers of such an approach—dangers come to fruition in countries such as Germany.
By Dr. Samuel Gregg

Missing in English Translation

CWR Blog: English translations of Benedict XVI's recent interview missing important section by CWR Staff

CWR: The Jesuit, the Monk, and the Malaise of the West by Dr. Samuel Gregg
The persistence of Joachimism over so many centuries suggests that, for all its vaunted secularism, the West remains profoundly religious in character.

CWR: Behind the Scenes at Vatican II by Peter M.J. Stravinskas
The first volume of Henri de Lubac's "Vatican Council Notebooks" (Ignatius Press, 2015) is filled with detailed and often surprising accounts of conversations, disputes, and key figures at the Council

Jeff Mirus on Henri de Lubac's Vatican Council Notebooks, Vol. 1

Henri de Lubac's fascinating notes on Vatican II By Dr. Jeff Mirus

How good is this generalization?

A more immediate historical influence might be attributed to the two world wars of the twentieth century. Throughout the West, people came to have a profound respect for military precision and obedience, and all the habits of thought associated with soldiering. Those who can remember the 1950s will remember a society still interested in precise dress, short military hair cuts, and punctilious manners when it came to rank, not to mention the need to concern oneself primarily with one’s own duties, while accepting unquestionably the larger decisions of authority. This lent the entire culture a quality of systemic formalism.

(Ignatius Press)

Gethsemeni

Pertinacious Papist: Cardinal Siri's banned forgotten book on ecumenism

Ignatius Press tbt

Post by Ignatius Press.

Next Friday at the DSPT

DSPT Events

Dumb Ox Theology Forum: Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP - Aquinas on Imperfect Happiness: Nature, Grace and the Final End of Man

Friday, April 11, 2014 DSPT Dumb Ox

Both Karl Barth and Henri De Lubac provided powerful, compelling visions of the relationship between the grace of God and human nature. However, their visions are in many respects opposed and incompatible. In his reading of Aristotle, Aquinas focuses on the imperfection of all natural human happiness, and on the natural desire for God. How does his vision provide a potential bridge between the diverse theologies of Barth and De Lubac?

Dumb Ox Theological Forum


Man, missed this - don't recall seeing it on my FB feed:

November 12, 2013 - Dr. Donald S. Prudlo jsu.edu , Associate Professor of Ancient and Medieval History, Jacksonville State University - Canonization and Infallibility: An Historical, Canonical, and Theological Investigation

Ever since the definition of Papal Infallibility at the First Vatican Council, there has been a lively debate in the Church about its meaning. This talk will address the roots of that doctrine in the middle ages, and in particular trace its development in the practice of the canonization of saints.
DSPT Dumb Ox Theology Forum - Canonization and Infallibility: An Historical, Canonical, and Theological Investigation Papal canonization did not really begin to take off until the 12th century. The challenge quickly became how to understand it apart from local and episcopal canonizations. At the same time various groups of heretics were beginning to challenge the doctrine of the Communion of saints, as well as the cultic practices of Christianity surrounding the tombs of its holy ones. In the 13th century the papacy and the new Mendicant orders established a symbiotic relationship that saw the elevation of Franciscan and Dominican saints. Some of these had been intimately involved in the suppression of heresy. Criticism of the cult of saints moved from the general to the particular, as individual saints came under attack. This forced the papacy and the Mendicant theologians to examine more closely the doctrine of papal canonization. By the end of
the thirteenth century, the difference had been established: papal canonizations enjoyed infallibility.
Canonization lies at the root of the personal infallibility dogma, and this will be the subject of the lecture.