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Documents and Human Hearts: formal and experiential sexual morality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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For the true Christian it is axiomatic that the fundamental form of interpretation of the Scriptures is not search for meaning or valid patterns of thought for today, but discipleship: in other words, the enactment of Christian life, the establishment and building up of the Christian community, the singular and corporate worship of God, the completion of Christ’s Church by sharing in his afflictions (cf Col 1.24). The Christian interpretation of the Word of God occurs not in any private ‘religious’ place, but out where the human race speaks and suffers, endeavours and achieves. What Christian theology executes reflectively, Christian discipleship executes practically—mediating that memory and hope which we call the handing-on of the Gospel.
Where an opposite view prevails, responsibility for present interpretative mediation of the Gospel experience no longer devolves upon the community of Christian disciples, but far too much upon Church leaders and their theologians (commissioned as if only to explain the utterances of Authority). Christian living, which should always be responsively and responsibly interpretative—my affirmation of Christ’s call—in daily life, consequently tends merely to become the obedient practising of the explained ideas of others. Those ideas are received not in the context of our own mundane experience, cultural and psychological but before it, as the utterance of an ideology from an exterior citadei. Such utterances may appear standard to all societies, tunelessly valid, unaffected by particularity of place or people—in a word, universal and unchangeable (and so undebatable); they may satisfy the minds of those who construct pervasive patterns of thought. But above all what they can do is stifle the spirit of creative participation and joyful assent. The letter is made to prevail and the document rule; but the spirit then becomes joyless.
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- Copyright © 1985 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Cf. N. Lash, ‘Doing Theology in English’, New Blackfriars, September 1984, 354–8 and refs.
2 Quoted in Hebblethwaite, P., John XXIII: Pope of the Council, Chapman, London 1984, 498fGoogle Scholar.
3 Wojlyla, K. Card., Sources of Renewal: study on the implementation of the Second Vatican Council. Krakow 1972Google Scholar; ET Collins, London, 1980, 70, 165, 296.
4 The Tablet 22.9.1984, 917, commenting on article ‘What I really meant’ by Miles Norfolk, The Tablet, 19.5.1984, 473f.
5 The Times 5.5.1984, 21.5.1984, 18.7.1984.
6 Liverpool 1980: Official Report of the National Pastoral Council, St Paul Publications, Slough 1981, 67fGoogle Scholar.
7 Citations: Stacpoole, A., ‘A chronology of the principal statements made on the subject of Birth Control during the present pontificate, with documentation’, Ampleforth Journal LXXIV.1 (Spring 1969), 66–72Google Scholar. Also cf. Morgan, J. ed., Humanae Vitae and the bishops: the Encyclical and the Statements of the National Hierarchies, Irish University Press 1972Google Scholar; On human life: an examination of Humanae Vitae, Burns & Oates, London 1968Google Scholar, esp. ch. 5: ‘Authority, freedom and conscience’ by P. Harris.
8 28.10.1984. It is only fair to add that the Cardinal feels that such people are acting wrongly, since—as he put it in a phrase emenating from the Pope (cf York, 31.5.82)–he is unconvinced that a ‘contraceptive mentality’ would improve the world; he believes that the issue belongs to immutable divine law. (Those are, confusingly, two arguments unrelatedly at different levels, empirical and metaphysical: if the latter pertains, the former is irrelevant.)
9 J. McHugh, ‘The doctrinal authority of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae’, Clergy Review, August 1969, 586–96; September 1969, 680–93; October 1969, 791–802. Cf. Stacpoole, A., The Encyclical’, Ampleforth Journal LXXIII.3 (Autumn 1968), 379–95Google Scholar.
10 Grootaers, J. and Selling, J.A., The Synod of Bishops ‘On the role of the family’: an exposition of the events and an analysis of its texts, Leuven University Press 1983Google Scholar. The Secretary of the subsequent Synod, in 1983, replied on the opening day that he was authorised to reveal ‘that the first draft of Familiaris Consortio had been composed by the Synod Council’, and was therefore part of the work of the Synod and carried its authority: it was a gallant attempt to prevent a wedge being driven between Synod and Pope, though no first draft was made available for scholars to substantiate (hat frail claim. Cf. P. Hebblethwaite, review in TLS 30.3.84, 327, and ibid. The Pope and the Family’, The Tablet 9.1.82, 29–30.
11 Bishop Cormac Murphy‐O'Connor (Arundel),’Humanae Vitae reviewed’The Tablet, 13.10.84, 1017f. He said of HV that'it may even be more of a prophetic than a legislative document … calling the world back to a piety that even a wise pagan, let alone a Christian, ought to cherish … HV is a prophetic document: Pope Paul himself regarded the Encyclical as an invitation, a gospel summons to a new vision of life and not one which was to crush the faithful in any way. The tone of HV is to commend, not condemn: it does not condemn those who cannot always respond to its invitation … and rarely should (this) ever be an obstacle to the reception of Holy Communion. Indeed, how can the faithful begin to understand the prophetic wisdom of the document if they are not nourished by the Body of the Lord?’
12 For episcopal quotations see n. 7 above.
13 Recording of the author's.
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