Richard Renshaw, Welland, ON

The two theologians mentioned in the title have been important influences in my life. I got to know them when I was a seminarian studying in Rome during the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). Bernard Lonergan taught me theology at the Gregorian University and remained a key reference for me ever since; I met Gregory Baum at a gathering (over several days in Rome) near the end of the Council. In a sense, he took me under his wing during his later years, when I moved to Montreal. Though contemporaries, Lonergan was 19 years older than Baum. They are central figures in my faith and theological journey.

This essay is an initial exploration of the parallel paths of two internationally recognized Canadian theologians who, as far as I know, never made any reference to one another in their writings. I write in the context of a Synod on synodality, which brings to the fore our understanding of Church in our times. Both of these men spent decades addressing this issue. I will restrict my focus to two documents: Amazing Church by Gregory Baum, with references to some methodological reflections in Method in Theology by Bernard Lonergan. In Amazing Church, I will focus particularly on the introduction, the conclusion, and the chapter on “The Conversion to Human Rights” as an example of how Baum uses effectively a method similar to that suggested by Lonergan.

Both theologians were strongly influenced by German writers on history and hermeneutics; both studied Thomas Aquinas; and both were caught up in the transition from a theology dominated by Neo-Scholasticism to a significantly transformed framework for theology after Vatican II. Baum was German and did his doctoral work in theology in Germany; Lonergan, while North American, taught for 12 years in Rome and was exposed to European philosophical and theological writers, especially Germans. My interest is not to follow those influences but rather to explore the result and particularly some parallels in the way they understood the work of a theologian.

While Lonergan is a theologian’s theologian, in the sense that his body of work is specifically focused on the method to be used in theology, Baum is much more directly focused on specific contemporary ecclesial and societal issues. While addressing those issues, especially economic issues, was also Lonergan’s ultimate concern, he saw the restructuring of theological method as a necessary step in creating the conditions for addressing the ecclesial and social issues that underlay his theological project. Lonergan’s writing is scholarly and notoriously difficult to digest; Baum, on the other hand, uses language that is much more accessible to the non-specialist and introduces himself and his own learnings much more directly into his writing.

Amazing Church

Amazing Church was published by Gregory Baum in 2005; it is a useful resource for anyone participating in the Synod on synodality. That synod is unique in that it invites Catholics, Christians, and all people of goodwill to a dialogue about the relevant issues needing attention if we are to have a more authentic Church for our times. The underlying thesis of Amazing Church is that, on a number of issues significant for our times, the Church has, since the 19th century, “changed its mind” on important doctrinal matters in a fairly radical way. Baum attributes these changes to new questions about Church doctrine—questions that earlier history had not addressed because European society had not developed a culture in which those questions could be addressed. The cultural changes include transformations in societal structures and values that ultimately called for an evolution in the understanding of Church doctrine.

I find it extremely significant that Baum mentions on several occasions how shocked he was to hear Catholics questioning Church doctrine, even to the point of saying that papal statements or other Church documents were “wrong.” In other words, as a theologian, Baum found himself challenged to intense personal reflection on the Church’s understanding of its own doctrine. Baum’s worldview at that point was what Lonergan would have called “classicist” (a view of doctrine as true for all time and beyond differences of culture). This is not surprising; until Vatican II, Catholic theology was universally classicist, in the sense of being framed in a metaphysics of “eternal truths.”

Baum, who paid close attention to such apparent discords in Church thinking, evolved as a theologian noted for his capacity to explain the remarkable evolution of Church doctrine that was taking place in his own lifetime. It is clear that his was a personal struggle to determine how to resolve a series of dialectics that needed some resolution. As he admits, his initial feeling was that opposition to established Church teaching was a matter of contradiction, a rejection of Church, and a departure from truth. As a theologian deeply influenced by the Augustinian theology of the role of sin in the world, his effort to come to terms with questions raised by a rejection of Church authority was of the utmost importance. It was only by carefully rethinking the parameters of history and dialectic that he was able to understand that the Church could “change its mind” through a resolution of the poles of a dialectic and also that this involved a “dialectic of transcendence rather than contradiction.” His understanding of dialectic as an act of transcendence is also central to Lonergan’s understanding of the evolution of cognition toward “higher viewpoints.”

I will restrict my examination of this process to the first example Baum offers in Amazing Church, namely the transformation of the Church’s teaching on human rights from the time of Gregory XVI (1832) to John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. Subsequent chapters, while addressing other doctrines, follow a similar methodology.

In 1832, Pope Gregory XVI issued an encyclical, Mirari vos, which Baum identifies as a “passionate defence of the feudal-aristocratic order” and a rejection of the “emerging liberal society.” He quotes several excerpts from the document to show its intent. The argument in the encyclical is based on the principle that “there is no authority except from God” and that unchanging submission to princes, with their God-given authority, is a precept of the Christian religion.

Baum insists that the cultural context, or “ethical horizon,” of that period in history is a key factor in the position taken by the Pope as well as a key to the evolution of the doctrine in an historically later context. The emergence of “liberal society” in European society provided that framework. In 1888, Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical entitled Libertas praestantissimum in which he addresses the question of religious freedom in the State and affirms that “reason itself forbids the Church to be godless.” Thus, the “profession of one religion is necessary in the State.”

Shortly thereafter, the same Pope published the encyclical Rerum novarum, where he addresses social inequality in society. However, there is, in this second document, “no concession to democracy.” The State is to adopt the religion of the majority. Again, Baum makes reference to the ethical horizon of that time as the factor that made this position acceptable to the general public. For Baum, the concept of an ethical horizon, a set of values, will be a key to the resolution of several dialectics.

John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in terris, published in 1963, considerably altered the position of the Church on social rights. The context invoked by that document is the publication (in 1948) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the newly formed United Nations. Baum points out that the UN document offers no philosophical arguments to back up its position. It relies, rather, on a “universal ethical principle” of that time. John XXIII, Baum says, saw the acceptance of that universal principle in the UN document as a “sign of the times.” This was also the title of a subsequent book written by Baum. John XXIII’s encyclical represents the first time in history that the Church adopted a defense of human rights. The fundamental argument for an altered doctrine on this topic is grounded in the principle of God’s image in every human person—a specifically Christian principle, as Baum points out. He calls it a commitment to “universal solidarity,” a phrase repeated frequently throughout Amazing Church as central to the horizon of the Church’s ethical teaching today.

One of the documents of the Second Vatican Council approved in the final session of Vatican II is the Declaration on Religious Liberty (1965). With considerable inside knowledge of the proceedings at that time, since he participated in the Council sessions, Baum points out that this document caused a prolonged debate at the Council, with the American bishops leading a strong defense of the principles enshrined in the document. Once again, Baum stresses the importance of a transformed cultural context—enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—which made it possible for the Church to commit itself to the doctrine presented in the final conciliar declaration.

Finally, The Declaration on the Church in the Modern World, approved by Vatican II, “praised three modern cultural values in particular: freedom, equality and participation.” Baum is here underlining the profound difference between the treatment of these three issues in Vatican II and in the earlier documents of Gregory XVI and Leo XIII.

Based on these selected documents, and on his interpretation of them in the historically conditioned context of their times, Baum moves on to a theological reflection regarding the significance of the ethical horizons of each period and the “discontinuous” development involved. Baum points to a cultural transformation between 1832 and 1965 that he does not see as one of straightforward progressive development. There is a leap involved. Later, in the same chapter of Amazing Church, Baum turns to Cardinal Ratzinger’s Nota (2001). This short document lifted the sanctions against the writings of Rossini. Baum argues, against the position of Ratzinger, that the Nota is not in continuity with the “unchanging” doctrinal tradition of the Church. Rather, he argues that it is a “new” doctrine.

The question could then be asked: Is it contradictory to what went before? The question here is whether the dialectic was one of contraries or of contradictories, as Robert M. Doran would call them in Theology and the Dialectics of History. In a dialectic of contradictories, one is faced with truth or falsehood, or good and evil. The choice is for one or the other. The two cannot be reconciled. For Baum, considering his use of the term “discontinuous” and his discussion of the 2001 papal Nota, we might think he is opting for a dialectic of contradictories in comparing the earlier and later teaching.

In the final chapter of Amazing Church, however, Baum explains how there could be an element of continuity. In that chapter, Baum points to Pope John Paul II’s frequent insistence on the “subjectivity” of human beings. Baum identifies this as the capacity to “see, judge and act.” For this reason, he emphasizes the role taken by “individual conscience” in searching to do what is right. For Baum, this implies a recognition of the “supernatural” and of “mystery” in the faith of the Christian. That recognition can be found also in a variety of other examples given in Baum’s book. It is grounded in a new ethical horizon of what he terms “universal solidarity,” a “catholicisme solidaire.” Lonergan calls it “cosmopolis”; Robert Doran refers to it as “world cultural consciousness.” Under this rubric, the dialectic is resolved through the discovery of a new set of values that reconciles the real differences.

Method in Theology

Lonergan published Method in Theology in 1972. It was a theme he had been pursuing for a number of years. In fact, he had given courses on it during his years in Rome, preceding and during the Second Vatican Council. For Lonergan, method is a “normative pattern of recurrent and related operations yielding cumulative and progressive results.” That method is grounded in the pattern of operations that is the structure of conscious human cognitive operations: experience, understanding, judgment, and deliberation. In Method in Theology, Lonergan uses this structure of human cognitive operations to outline eight theological functions that clarify the procedures to be followed for an authentic theological body of work in the Church. His method begins with research: the selection of documents—or other sources (such as art)—pertinent to his investigation. Second, theology involves hermeneutics or the historically contextualized interpretation of those sources, a study that occupied much of his attention for many years. The third theological specialty is history, where a theologian explores the effort of theologians, over time, to determine the authentic teaching to be derived from the theological sources or documents.

Fourth, Lonergan also proposes a specialty called dialectic, which deals with the challenges faced by a theologian in coming to grips with the historically grounded struggles of theologians and church authorities to identify and characterize new questions left unanswered (and unasked!) by the earlier history of theology. Fifth is foundations: the critical graced dimension through which a theologian grounds their theology in the gift of God’s loving grace that provides the horizon without which theology, as a study of God and God’s action in the world, could not exist. The sixth theological specialty is doctrine, which expresses the decisive consensus of Church authorities as to the proper understanding of the tradition embodied in the various historical documents. Seventh, Lonergan proposes the specialty of systematics, a particularly critical specialty in that it points to the effort of theologians to provide what Robert Doran, following a thematic developed in the final chapter of Method in Theology, calls an “ontology of meaning.” This specialty addresses questions posed within a contemporary culture in order to provide new meaning to church tradition.

Finally, the theological specialty of communications presupposes a certain accumulation of the results of all the other specialties in view of sharing new insights with a broad public in cultures that are grappling with issues related to living an authentic Christian life today. It should be underlined that Lonergan is always focused on the theologian operating as a conscious subject within a given cultural horizon at a specific moment in history. The theology he speaks of, ultimately, is that which exists in the mind of a concrete existing human being.

Obviously, the method proposed by Lonergan requires collaboration among theologians operating in these specialties. No one theologian could possibly be expert in every domain. Nevertheless, the theologian who undertakes to operate in any one specialty draws on the expertise of the others. Lonergan pays special attention to matters of history, dialectic, and the conscious operations (experiencing, understanding, judging, and deliberating) of the human subject, the theologian, in presenting their understanding of theological issues. The resulting method, he argues, is universal both in time and across cultures because it is rooted in the very structure of human consciousness.

What caught my attention is that Gregory Baum also paid close attention to the selection of theological documents, their interpretation, the doctrines which emerged from those documents, and the dialectic that occurred when, in the course of history, new questions arose and required the creative rethinking of doctrine. He addressed those issues in language designed to reach a broad public.

The Resolution of Dialectic

Amazing Church consists of a series of presentations of change in Church teaching using a similar methodology in each case and noting that in each case the teaching is new. As a good observer of society, Baum cannot help remarking that he finds it amazing (and hopeful) that what had been perceived as a permanent teaching of the Church could change so radically, given the need for a new understanding. Yet, it is only in the last chapter of the book that he addresses the question of continuity through these extraordinary changes.

His reflection parallels in an important way that of Lonergan. Lonergan devoted significant attention in two of his books—Insight: A Study in Human Understanding and Method in Theology—to how dialectic both evokes what is new and yet includes a dimension of continuity. For Lonergan, it is the authentic search of the human subject for real meaning and authentic value that are transformed, without being lost, through changes in theological doctrine. In terms of the issue of human rights addressed by Baum, this would mean that an authentic Christian could find meaning and value in obedience to the prince during the early 19th century and, in turn, an authentic Christian in the 20th and early 21st centuries could find meaningful and valuable what Baum calls “universal solidarity.” Baum puts his finger on the key element when, in the last chapter of Amazing Church, he speaks—approvingly, I think—of John Paul II’s emphasis on “subjectivity.”

The bridge, the enduring element through the change, is the authentic Christian’s dedication to real existential meaning and value. This is also what Lonergan insists is the case.

Conclusion

I would like to conclude with a question about the relationship between Lonergan’s Method in Theology and Baum’s discussion of contemporary issues in Amazing Church. It is my conviction that the work of Baum, certainly in the book we have been examining, is a clear example of the kind of theological method that Lonergan promoted in Method in Theology and is so on many levels, including his care in the choice of documents, their interpretation in historical context, the confrontation with historical dialectics, the emergence of a new horizon involving a new set of values, and, finally, the grounding of change in the faith of the Christian who will not be satisfied with anything less than real meaning and authentic value.

What continues to puzzle me is that while both theologians contributed to collections dealing with issues such as The Declaration on Religious Freedom, Baum, as far as I know, never makes any reference to Lonergan’s writings, even though he is using a method very much like that proposed in Lonergan’s Method in Theology, which was published more than 30 years earlier. Nor did Lonergan, as far as I know, ever make any reference to Baum’s publications as an example of an excellent use of his proposed theological method. A first possibility is that both drew upon the same sources in German philosophical discussions of academic research and social analysis, and each pursued their work independently. That much does seem to be the case.

Yet it is highly unlikely that they were unaware of each other’s writings. I want to suggest a second possibility. My conjecture is that, since both authors were at the very edges of theological discourse at the time, for either of the two to explicitly reference the work of the other could have become an occasion for public debate and criticism that could have confounded the work of both. My own personal experience with each of them certainly left me with the strong conviction that both were men of great intellectual ability and highly respectful of the efforts of other theologians. They had a tendency to reference the work of others who had contributed to their own position; while, at times, they might point out difficulties with certain positions, they did not intend to cause personal or professional harm.

They were admirable in this respect. My speculation is that each of these two men continued on their own track. Lonergan spoke to theologians about the structure of their work, and Baum addressed specific contemporary issues such as human rights using a methodology that corresponds quite closely to that proposed by Lonergan. This exploration of historic dialectic leads me to a deeper appreciation of the genius of each of these two theologians. What an amazing Church constructed through people of faith, grounded in “universal solidarity” who, guided by the Spirit of God, walk the same path through the twists and turns of history!

Richard Renshaw, a Holy Cross priest, STL, MA (philosophy), MEd., received his graduate degrees from the University of Toronto and the Gregorian University in Rome. Now retired, he taught in New Brunswick and in Peru and worked for the national offices of the Canadian Religious Conference and the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace – Caritas Canada (CCODP).