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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2022
This article analyzes the complex processes of modernization and individualization, as well as how the church has structurally fostered individualization despite its public criticism. First, the article demonstrates how modernization and individualization have gradually restructured human self-understanding into an economic image of humanity: the human person as homo oeconomicus. Second, this article examines the church's relation to modernity, and specifically its critiques of liberalism and economic individualism. However, the church has often generated the conditions and structures for individualization, and by extension the processes of acceleration and economization of the life-world that it criticizes. Three areas in intra-ecclesial discourse that foster individualization are examined: the interiorization of faith, ecclesial centralization and clerical bureaucracy, and the promotion of corporatism and digital immediacy. The article concludes by examining recent papal efforts at structural reform and the degree to which they address previously entrenched problems and point toward a renewed, non-economic anthropology.
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70 Arnold, “The Roman Magisterium and Anti-Modernism,” 167–68; Claus Arnold, “Pius X, Merry Del Val and the Cases of Alfred Loisy and George Tyrrell: Institutional Aspects of Antimodernism,” in Le Pontificat Romain Dans l'époque Contemporaine/The Papacy in the Contemporary Age, ed. Giovanni Vian, Studi Di Storia 5 (Venice: Università Ca” Foscari Venezia, 2018), 21–22, http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/libri/978-88-6969-256-7/pius-x-merry-del-val-and-the-cases-of-alfred-loisy/.
71 Arnold, “The Roman Magisterium and Anti-Modernism,” 168.
72 Arnold, “Pius X, Merry Del Val and the Cases of Alfred Loisy and George Tyrrell,” 57: “There were very clear theological and political choices behind the measures taken by Pius X and Merry del Val against Tyrrell. It would be more precise to characterise this way of handling as executive. The doctrine of the papal primacy enables the Roman pontiff to act directly and freely at any time, even without the help and advice of his own Congregations in the Roman Curia.”
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75 Wilhelm and Scannell, A Manual of Catholic Theology Based on Scheeben's Dogmatik, I:43–45. At 45: The “Teaching Body [possesses] Active Infallibility, that is, inability to lead astray; in the Body Taught it is Passive Infallibility that is, incapability of being led astray.”
76 Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology, 35.
77 Krämer, “Einzelbeichte,” 212–13.
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81 Lüdecke and Bier, Das römisch-katholische Kirchenrecht, 101. My translation.
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83 John P. Beal, “Something There Is That Doesn't Love a Law: Canon Law and Its Discontents,” in The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity, ed. Michael James Lacey and Francis Oakley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 142: “Despite the fact that the Second Vatican Council clearly intended its identification of the ‘secular’ character and vocation of the laity to be merely descriptive of the typical situation of the lay faithful, it has become, especially in the teaching of John Paul II, an ontological definition of the lay state.” Beal considers this to be a “misinterpretation” of the text that has nevertheless been made the more or less official interpretation.
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95 Wolf, “‘Wahr ist, was gelehrt wird’ statt ‘Gelehrt wird, was wahr ist’? Zur Erfindung des ‘ordentlichen’ Lehramts,” 238.
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99 Code of Canon Law: Latin-English Edition (Washington, DC: Canon Law Society of America, 1983), can. 455 §1. §4 of can. 455 is also particularly relevant here for the lack of cooperation between individual bishops and the national conference with regard to the voluntary guidelines: “In cases in which neither universal law nor a special mandate of the Apostolic See has granted the power mentioned in §1 to a conference of bishops, the competence of each diocesan bishop remains intact, nor is a conference or its president able to act in the name of all the bishops unless each and every bishop has given consent.” Although it was possible to “agree” to the guidelines publicly, they could be ignored or selectively enforced without consequences or oversight.
100 Rosa, Social Acceleration, 203–07.
101 Bradford E. Hinze, “A Decade of Disciplining Theologians,” in When the Magisterium Intervenes: The Magisterium and Theologians in Today's Church, ed. Richard R. Gaillardetz (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 3–39.
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104 See Gerald J. Beyer, “Karol Wojtyła's Katolicka Etyka Społeczna as Precursor and Hermeneutic Key to Pope John Paul II's Economic Teaching,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 79, no. 4 (2020): 1111–45, doi:10.1111/ajes.12358. It is notable, however, that despite Pius XI's condemnation of liberalism and its many effects in his first encyclicals, Quadragesimo Anno 101 curiously asserts: “Leo XIII sought to adjust this economic system according to the norms of right order; hence, it is evident that this system is not to be condemned in itself. And surely it is not of its own nature vicious.”
105 Godzieba, “The Magisterium in an Age of Digital Reproduction,” 152–53.
106 Pope Francis, On Care for our Common Home: Laudato Si’ (hereafter cited in text as LS), May 24, 2015, 138, 176–181, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html; Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (hereafter cited in text as EG), November 24, 2013, 202–08, 222, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html.
107 See LS 119: “Our relationship with the environment can never be isolated from our relationship with others and with God. Otherwise, it would be nothing more than romantic individualism dressed up in ecological garb, locking us into a stifling immanence.”
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111 Pope Francis, “Brief an das pilgernde Volk Gottes in Deutschland,” June 29, 2019, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/de/letters/2019/documents/papa-francesco_20190629_lettera-fedeligermania.html. See especially paragraph 8.
112 Francis, Querida Amazonia (hereafter cited in text as QA), February 02, 2020, https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2020/02/12/200212c.html.
113 Phyllis Zagano, “It Is Time to Ask, Formally, for Married Priests and Woman Deacons,” National Catholic Reporter, February 21, 2020, sec. Opinion, https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/just-catholic/it-time-ask-formally-married-priests-and-woman-deacons.
114 Interestingly, Querida Amazonia is an Apostolic Exhortation, like the controversial Amoris Laetita. The latter document is perceived as having changed the church's stance toward divorced and civily remarried Catholics, but no change in the law has been effected. The use of Exhortations by Francis in these instances should be examined further.
115 Section 101 of Querida Amazonia goes on to portray the role of women within a “classical” high-modern maternal Marian paradigm, which is itself a heavily restricted view of women. Women are portrayed as “quiet caregivers,” whose presence and “tender strength” preserves the integrity of a community (QA 99, 101). In section 101, the gender of the priest is brought to the fore as “the figure of a man who presides as a sign of the one Priest. This dialogue between the Spouse [Christ/the priest] and his Bride [the church] …” See also QA 107.
116 Wolf, “‘Wahr ist, was gelehrt wird’ statt ‘Gelehrt wird, was wahr ist’? Zur Erfindung des ‘ordentlichen’ Lehramts,” 255–56.