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The Lord of History, by Msgr. Eugene Kevane. ©2003 The Miriam Press. All Rights Reserved Contents Directory • Next • Previous Introduction The General Catechetical Directory is lucid and categorical about the first principle of method in religious education. Its paragraph No. 40 states:
But if Christ is no longer the center how can a catechist be Christocentric in teaching? If He is no longer the center of the universal history of mankind, how can He be the center of each one’s personal history? Is not the very profession of the Apostolic Faith in the Lordship of Jesus at stake? The Second Vatican Council addresses such questions in one of its most far-reaching statements of position, made, significantly enough, in its Decree on the Training of Priests. Pointedly enough as well, granted the agitation among priests and bishops on the right way to renew and up-date philosophy and theology. That such an agitation exists is a commonplace since Fathers Loisy and Tyrrell early in the present century and a reality since Fathers George Hermes and Anton Günther in the German Universities of mid-Nineteenth Century. Indeed, the First Vatican Council was called primarily to settle this matter, and the program of Aeterni Patris for the renewal of Christian Philosophy was intended to be the instrument for effecting this conciliar settlement throughout all the institutions of Catholic higher education.
Before an entity can be coordinated with something else, it must continue to exist in its own right. The Council intends, therefore, that philosophy not fall by the wayside or merge somehow into theology. It must continue to be taught in programs of ecclesiastical studies. Vatican II takes it for granted that philosophy will continue to be taught in its own right as an independent intellectual discipline with its own proper object and its own distinctive methodology. Hence it is to have a suitable portion of academic time. When ecclesiastical students, whether seminarians or catechists, receive relatively too little philosophy, even quantitatively, the mind of Vatican II will not be implemented and the renewal of the Church which it intended will not be achieved.2 When once philosophy has its rightful quantitative presence in terms of the academic time devoted to it, the inevitable qualitative question arises. What kind of philosophy? The issues that depend upon the answer are immense. The very renewal of the Church is at stake. The Second Vatican Council is very clear. It must be that kind of philosophy which coordinates with theology, supplements theology, and, in some way to be determined, is in turn supplemented by theology. The purpose is likewise explicitly stated: when philosophy functions in this qualitative mode, it will join theology, while remaining itself, in “revealing the Mystery of Christ ...” This position of Vatican II calls for careful analysis. The purpose of the present study is to gather the elements which help to implement this revision of ecclesiastical studies and to indicate some implications for the religious way of thinking proper to the present times of the Church.2a This will be done in terms of the philosophy of history, that branch of philosophy which has achieved centrality of position in these two hundred contemporary years since Voltaire, Hegel and Marx. The Council itself points in this direction, for it has in mind a philosophizing, valid as philosophy, which helps “to reveal the Mystery of Christ which affects the whole course of human history.” This implies a certain idea of philosophy, one which completes and fulfills the renewal in philosophy which the Church has sponsored in her own universities, seminaries and schools since the First Vatican Council.2b In line with the pastoral nature of the Second Vatican Council, this renewal of philosophy turns from an emphasis on the possibility of saving Christian culture to a saving of the very substance of the Catholic Faith itself, in its very formulation, and in the right understanding and interpretation of its formulas. The renewal, to put it another way, turns to some extent from the academic toward a greater emphasis on the pastoral and the catechetical.2c These are large issues and perspectives, ones which imply for the philosophy of history that new importance and function for which Vatican II calls. The basic text of this work was first published as a monograph in Doctor Communis, the organ of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas founded in Rome by Pope Leo XII: (1977), pp. 219-249; pp. 378-409; and (1978), pp. 29-51. The writer wishes to thank Msgr. Antonio Piolanti, Vice-President of the Academy and Editor of Doctor Communis, for permission to publish it in this form. August 4, 1979 | ||
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