Eleventh Century The eleventh century is important in a number of ways and the consequences are still with us today. By the end of the tenth century geographically Christianity covered the whole of Europe but then tragically, in the eleventh century the church was divided into two, henceforth called Catholic and Orthodox and the schism is not healed till today. The definitive break between Rome and Constantinople occurred in 1054. But the happenings in the preceding centuries had contributed to an increasing alienation between the two as we have seen. Of all the divisions within Christianity until then, this was the most damaging and the most tragic. The gradual alienation between East and West which had begun centuries before, reached its culmination when the legate of pope Leo IX (1048-54), Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Caerularius, pronounced excommunication on each other. The biggest group of Eastern Christians, the Byzantine Churches or popularly called Orthodox Churches were separated from communion with Rome. Both the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Papal legate (not the pope) played equal but unfortunate roles in this. The patriarch was critical of the Roman church and its practices like, use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist, the inclusion of the filioque in the creed, the papal claims to authority as unfounded in scripture and tradition, the length of lent which was a week shorter in the west, the priests in the west not wearing a beard, which was suited for soldiers and people on the move but not for priests who are contemplatives, following the example of Jesus and the apostles and the philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. He criticized the law of celibacy for the clergy. He also ordered the closure of the Latin churches in Constantinople and confiscated the monasteries. Pope Leo IX (1046-1054) appointed an equally arrogant and ignorant Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida to answer these accusations and to protest and also entrusted him with a bull excommunicating the patriarch, which has to be promulgated only if no solution to the crisis was forthcoming. The legate was as expected unable to persuade Caerularius to change his mind, challenged the rights of the Patriarch and his election, and excommunicated the patriarch in the name of the pope who was already dead. He put the bull of excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia cathedral on 10th July 1054 and left. The document revealed his deep ignorance in many ways. He attacked the married clergy of adultery and incontinence, criticized the omission of the filioque in the creed. Attacked wearing of beard, use of unleavened bread etc. He also showed his lack of knowledge of Greek by using the word Maranatha for pronouncing his anathema. The text of the excommunication: "As for Michael, who was improperly been given the title patriarch, and those who share in his folly, they sow an abundance of heresies each day in their midst. Like the Simonians they sell the gift of God, like the Nicholaitans they allow ministers of the holy altar to be contracted in marriage; like the pneumatomachi (those who fought against the Spirit) they have suppressed the procession of holy Spirit a filio in the creed; like the Manichaeans they declare that fermented bread is alive; moreover allowing beard and hair to grow they refuse communion with those who following the customs of the Roman Church, cut their hair and shave their beard.
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That is why being unable to bear these unprecedented injuries and these outrages directed against the chief apostolic see, we sign against Michael and his supporters the anathema that our most reverend pope has pronounced against them, if they do not return to their senses. May Michael the neophyte, who improperly bears the title Patriarch, and all who follow him in the above mentioned errors, may they all fall under the anathema, maranatha, with the Simonians and all the heretics, and indeed with the devil and his angels, unless they return to their senses, amen, amen." Michael pronounced a counter excommunication against the legate, not the Pope. It was not of a good standard either. When the bull was promulgated the pope was dead three months. It is widely reckoned that papal legates lose their authority when a pope dies; so it may well be that, according to western canon law Caerularius was never excommunicated. Same way Michael could not excommunicate a dead pope. So at that time it was thought that the event was a personal one and a passing one, but as it happened it passed from personal excommunication to schism between the two churches. The single most event that contributed to this development was the events of the fourth crusade in 1204. In 1204 the crusaders from the west instead of fighting the Muslims sacked Constantinople and plundered it. The emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople were expelled from the city and deported to Nicaea. A Latin emperor, Baldwin, was crowned. A Latin Patriarchate and a Latin hierarchy were established which lasted till 1261. All Greek clergy were obliged to take an oath of obedience to Rome. The Greeks never forgave nor forgot this. They considered and still consider the Latins as enemies of their church and nation. Although union was proclaimed at two councils, II Lyons in 1274 and Florence in 1438/39, it remained on paper. The decisions were rejected by the majority of the clergy and the people. Moreover, when in 1453 Constantinople fell, the west never came to its help. Sadly the schism today remains one of the most fundamental divides within the Christian community. Only in 1965 did the two churches lifted the mutual excommunication by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athanagoras of Constantinople through a joint declaration. The text of this famous declaration: "Among the obstacles in the way of the development of these brotherly relationships of trust and esteem between the Roman catholic church and the Orthodox church is the memory of the painful decisions, acts and incidents which in 1054 came to a climax with the sentence of excommunication pronounced against the Patriarch Michael Caerularius and two other figures by the legates of the Roman See led by cardinal Humbert, legates who were themselves then the object of a similar sentence passed by the Patriarch and Synod of Constantinople. We reject the offensive words, the unfounded accusations and the despicable acts which from one side or the other marked or accompanied the sad events of this period. Equally regret and blot out from memory and from the realm of the church the sentences of excommunication which ensued, the memory of which even in our day acts as an obstacle to reconciliation in love, and consign them to oblivion. Finally, deplore the disturbing precedents and subsequent events 2
which under the influence of various factors, including a failure to understand and mutual distrust, led to the effective schism in communion." This is the time to say something about the salient features of orthodox churches. 1. Monasticism: Originated in the east and has remained a part of the eastern orthodox church's spirituality, helped in mission, helped in eradicating paganism, engaged in theological controversies, made the spirituality of the east an other worldly spirituality, often played political roles. 2. Veneration of Icons Cultic veneration instead of pious remembrance. The honour shown to the image is shown to the person itself. It was thought to be a participation in its divine origin, often superstitious, and miraculous powers were attributed to them. John of Damascus said: If God could be incarnate, he could also be painted. He has prepared matter for sanctification. He said, seeing is more than hearing, and the image is clearer than the word of God, so the cult of icons is a duty. For the Orthodox church icons are not merely aesthetic objects but along with the word of God, and the Eucharist, something like sacrament, a special form of communication of the believer with God. 3. Byzantine liturgy One of the most colourful liturgies in Christianity. The Eucharist is not the bloodless repetition of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross but the messianic banquet of the exalted Lord with his community. The emphasis is not on repentance and forgiveness but joy and jubilation at the presence of the Lord. It is the backbone of the Byzantine church. 4. The importance of the Holy Spirit Double procession of the Holy Spirit (from the Father and the Son) or "filioque" was not a part of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed. It was added by the Western church without consulting the Greeks in the 6th century and was accepted in the West only in the 11th century. The Greeks rejected this. The Spirit proceeds from the Father who is the sole source of being, the unique cause of hypostatic union within the deity. By adding the filioque, the Greeks said, the Westerners diminished the importance of the Holy Spirit, and undermined his personhood and autonomy. 5. Rejection of Jurisdictional Roman Primacy Pope as the elder brother in the universal Christian episcopate, the first in honour and in pastoral diakonia. But no direct power, supremacy and jurisdiction. They reject the idea that he has a special charism not given to other bishops. Church is conciliar, collegial, synodal, not monarchical. The ecumenical council is the highest body in the church. Truth is present in the Church, not in a single person. The faith of the Orthodox church is based on the first seven ecumenical councils. 3
Sacraments - seven, laity more role; married clergy (bishops do not marry); unleavened bread; no belief in purgatory. Weaknesses 1. The official formation of doctrine closed with the seventh ecumenical council. Since then, tradition has been the criterion of truth. So a traditionalism: tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. The church was not free. Except in Russia it was under Islam. It had to fight an external enemy. 2. Its alliance with the state. Its support for nationalism. State-church system. Russia is the best example. 3. No more dogmatic development. No call for creativity and criticism, innovative thought and knowledge. 4. Liturgism - reducing the church to liturgy, no social criticism, reform, proclamation. In Russia it was not free either. One with rulers. 2. The Orthodox churches desisted any transmission of reformation ideas from Europe. Strengths 1. The liturgy which speaks to the heart, emotions. In spite of its grandeur which was not according to the early church, it has remained faithful to the early church because of the importance it gives to the Holy Spirit; its emphasis on community etc. It does not emphasize the words of consecration, private silent mass, etc. 2. A communio ecclesiology, fellowship of churches, collegial structure and lay participation, besides its significant theology, mysticism, monastic tradition, The Orthodox churches are the most extensive group of Eastern Christians. Exact Statistics is unavailable - estimated to be 300 million. Consists of 21 autonomous churches, 4 canonical churches, 6 churches of non-canonical status thus a communion of 31 churches. The patriarch of Constantinople is the honorary head, first among equals. He resides in Istanbul, Turkey. In power and influence the patriarch of Russia can be said to be the first. Thus so far dealt with three divisions which took place in the church. When we studied the fifth century we spoke of the first two separations, the first after the council of Chalcedon when the church of Egypt refused to accept the decisions of the council and the second at the end of the fifth century when the church of Persia accepted Nestorianism which was condemned as a heresy by the council of Ephesus in 431. Both these divisions still exist. The non Chalcedonian churches are also called Monophysite churches or oriental orthodox churches and have a population of about 80 Million. It is a communion of five ancient churches, the church of Egypt, Syria, Ethiopia, Armenia and the Jacobite church of India. The Jacobites of India number about three million. The Nestorian church which is called Assyrian church of the East (they don’t like the 4
title Nestorian) may have little more than half a million believers world wide. About 50000 believers of this church are found in India. Doctrinally, both these churches have buried their differences with the Catholic church because they have reached doctrinal agreement with the catholic church. The main problem with all these churches with the catholic church seems to be papal primacy and infallibility. Only one more group of Eastern Christians remains to be mentioned, namely, Catholic Eastern churches. Who are they? These are Catholics who follow one or the other eastern rites. They have at different times in history have broken off from the above mentioned churches and have come under the Roman catholic church. They have been permitted to continue with their eastern liturgies, canon law and other traditions with some Latin influences in some cases. There are 21 such churches. Two of them are in India, the Syro Malabar and Syro Malankara churches The Ukrainian Catholic Church is the largest catholic eastern church, and the Syro-Malabar church of India is the second largest. These eastern Catholic Churches have 4 different hierarchical structure. Patriarchal churches: united under the patriarch who has power over all bishops including metropolitans. He is elected by the synod of bishops. The synod has legislative and juridical powers while the executive power rests with the Patriarch. Major Archiepiscopal churches: united under the Major Archbishop. The major archbishop and the synod of bishops have the same prerogatives as in the Patriarchal church except that the latter has precedence and that the election of the major archbishop must be confirmed by the Pope. Both the Indian eastern churches are governed by a major archbishop Metropolitan churches: church with one metropolitan or archbishop and eparchies or dioceses under him. He is appointed by the Pope and he administers the church together with his council of bishops. Churches are which are too small and so governed by a bishop directly dependent on the Vatican. The next important concern of the church in the eleventh century was to free the church from lay control, especially the papacy. Emperor, kings and local lords were freely interfering in the appointment of popes, bishops, parish priests, abbots and abbesses. It was clearly recognized that only the church had the power to stop this, especially the papacy. So the strengthening of papal authority became the central concern of the popes.. Although it was tried time and again, the rulers were not happy. For example, Pope Nicholas in 1059 decreed that the pope will be elected by the cardinals only. It was rejected by emperor Henry IV and he elected an anti pope when the decision was implemented. But with pope Gregory VII (1073-84) things changed. He was determined to do something about it and the reforms are named after him, the Gregorian reforms. They were the response of the 5
papacy to lay domination in the church. The papacy tried to break free from temporal power in spiritual matters. His name was Hildebrand, who was a monk and archdeacon under the previous popes. During the funeral of pope Alexander II, he was elected pope by popular acclaim, thus flouting the rule he himself had helped to formulate in 1059 that the cardinals should elect the pope. He was a man of passionate and convinced faith, of rare honesty, with a heart of granite which could be ruthless, fearless, impatient, and unscrupulous, rough to his friends, cruel to his enemies. A contemporary named him "holy Satan". He had one basic goal, to do away with lay investiture. For that he had to prove that his power was superior to that of kings and rulers. So he devises the Two Powers Theory, like the Two Swords Theory of pope Gelasius. God's kingdom is divided into Regnum and Sacerdotium, kingly power and spiritual power. Both are instituted by the Lord. However, sacerdotium is higher and he as successor of Peter has the supreme right to claim it. Peter lives in his successors and elevates them to holier and higher beings. Hence all should obey the pope who is responsible for their salvation, even the king. The king belongs to the body of Christ. If by evil deeds, he proves himself to be a member of the kingdom of Satan, then he loses his power to rule. Gregory claimed that by virtue of the papal power he could decide who was for God and who was for satan. He could depose such an unworthy ruler and free his subjects from their oath of loyalty. As Congar said, to obey God meant to obey the church and that meant to obey the pope. In 1075 he wrote his famous Dictatus Papae a document of 27 short propositions, which summarized all his powers and which remained the corner stone of papal power and primacy till Vatican I. Three Main Ideas of the Dictatus Papae 1. The pope is the unqualified Lord of the church, above all believers, clergy, bishops, and councils. 2. He is the supreme Lord of the world, Kings and emperors. 3. He receives this authority by taking up the office of the bishop of Rome. The Roman church founded by God alone will not err. His reforms 1. Submitting kings and rulers to his power. 2. Imposing celibacy. 3. action against Simony, buying and selling of dioceses and parishes, ordination without ecclesiastical consent etc. which were met with excommunication. 6
4. Abolition of lay investiture. This brought him into conflict with Henry IV the German emperor (1056-1106). He clashed with him on a range of issues, but primarily on the power to appoint bishops and abbots. In 1075 the pope prohibited all lay investiture and sent a clear warning to all. Henry IV continued appointing bishops. Gregory threatened him with excommunication. In 1076 Henry convoked a synod at Worms and deposed the pope saying Hildebrand was not the pope but a false monk. He had miscalculated. Gregory called a synod and deposed the emperor and excommunicated him and suspended all the bishops who supported him and released Henry's subjects from their oath of loyalty. This was an unprecedented action. The people, many nobles and the bishops chose to obey the pope rather than Henry and he had to submit. Henry with his wife and two year old son crossed the Alps in the high winter of 1077 and reached Canossa in Italy where Gregory had taken refuge. There, in front of the palace, he stood barefoot in penitential garb for three days asking pardon. After the many intervened on behalf of the emperor, the pope agreed to relent. Henry had to prostrate himself on the ground in the form of a cross. His royal status was restored but its sacral character was removed. From then on Journey to Canossa is a German proverb. In 1872, in the wake of his conflict with the Catholic church Bismarck remarked: "We are not going to Canossa". Of course Henry did not forgive this. In 1081 Henry elected an anti Pope, Clement II and marched on Rome. In 1084 Clement was enthroned pope and Gregory had to flee to Salerno in southern Italy. There he died uttering his famous words: I have loved justice and hated iniquity. Therefore I die in exile. He was canonized in 1606. But he had an epoch making impact. The Roman Catholic church of the middle ages had been founded on absolute papal power. Papal claims reached its pinnacle. He also laid the foundation for Christendom, the Christian society ruled according to the principles of the gospel and canon law. The characteristics of this Christian society were first, centralization. The whole church life was centered on Rome, the Pope. Gregory called the pope the father of the Roman church and the Roman church the mother of all churches. Innocent III (1198-1216) called himself vicar of Christ, not Peter. His successor Innocent IV called himself vicar of God. Thus the church was focused on the Pope, in faith, law, discipline and organization. Secondly, the church was regulated by canon law. Legal postulates of former Popes and councils and synods were collected as collections of ecclesiastical laws and were first published by Gratian in 1140 in a systematic way (Decretum Gratiani). Quite a bit of them were forgeries. For example, out of the 324 passages from the popes from the first four centuries quoted, 313 of them are demonstrable forgeries. Canon law became a science. Our present codex iuris canonici (1983) is a purified form of this Decretum Gratiani. The Pope was now supreme law giver and also the supreme judge.
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Thirdly, politicization. The popes engaging in direct political conflicts with the Kings and emperors and open warfare. This led to corruption of the curia. nepotism, avarice, financial exploitation through taxes etc. Fourthly, militarization. Gregory VII had contemplated to undertake a military expedition to Constantinople to force the eastern church to reunite and to recapture Jerusalem, but never carried it out. But he granted an indulgences for waging war against Islam for reconquering Spain. Ten years after his death the real crusades began. Crusades were military expeditions by the Western church to liberate the holy land from the Muslims. The name crusade derives from the cross worn by the pilgrims and the soldiers on their dress. The loss of the holy land to Muslims in 637/38was the greatest insult to Christians and they always wanted to recapture it. But because of the enmity between the west and the east there was no common effort so far. But the relationship with the Muslims became bitter with the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in 1009 by the Muslims. And still more dangerous was the threat from a group of Turkic peoples, the Seljuks from Central Asia, who attacked Persia and Afghanistan and also extended their power towards the West. The decisive event was the battle of Manzikert in 1071 where the Byzantine army was routed completely. This is what prompted emperor Alexios I to appeal to the West for help. The west ultimately decided to help. At the Synod of Clermont in 1095 pope Urban II decided to give help to the Byzantine emperor, and thus the Crusades were born. The first Crusade took place from 1096-1099. In Hungary and Asia Minor they would be driven back by the Turks but finally they managed to capture Jerusalem in 1099, and set up a Latin kingdom there, which lasted till 1187. There was massacre of Jews and Muslims during the five-week long siege. Slowly the word crusade came to be used for many repressive measures of the church against fellow Christians, Jews Muslims etc. the Baptists and revivalists use it for their gatherings. George Bush used it for his wars after the September 11 attack in New York. The Popes always delegated the whole enterprise to kings because to wage war was the duty of the king, but they were papal undertakings. It was made clear that they were Christian undertakings and that they were undertaken at the command of Christ since the Pope was the vicar of Christ. The People who participated in them believed it and hoped for spiritual benefits, indulgences, martyrdom etc. So some measure of religious motivation was there. But the people also had material motivations, plundering of the land, financial gains etc. Whatever may be the political and religious motivations, we have to ask whether this manifest political and military reinterpretation of the gospel was justified. 1. Whether Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount would have approved of this? 2. Whether the cross could be misused for such things instead of taking it up and following him. 3. Whether the Pope who was the spokesman for Christ should have permitted such a war like enterprise.
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4. Whether the crusades could be used for general persecution of people who differed from the Christians in any way, Jews, heretics? 5. Whether the triumphant entry into Jerusalem after massacring people was worthy of a Christian whose leader entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey 6. Whether those fallen warriors could be considered martyrs? A fifth characteristic of Christendom was clericalization. Gregorian reforms emphasized clerical celibacy and the distinction between clergy and laity became prominent. Clerical state was considered morally more perfect. In order to enforce celibacy Gregory ordered violent drives against wives of clerics in clergy houses. 3600 German clergy sent a petition to the pope. 1. Does the Pope not know the word of the Lord, He who is able to receive it let him receive it. 2. Is not the pope compelling men by force to live like angels. He wants to forbid the course of nature. This would only lead to unchastity. 3. Faced with the choice whether to give up the priestly office or marriage, they would decide for marriage. Let the pope recruit angels for the ministry of the church, it said. Finally they said, without the caring hands of women, they will die in cold and nakedness. Gregory VII suspended all the married clergy and mobilized the laity for a boycott of these clergymen. Finally at the Second Lateran Council of 1139 it was said that no clerics could enter lawful marriage. The wives of priests were declared concubines, their children were made the property of the church as slaves. The eleventh century also saw the birth of scholasticism Scholasticism was the result of the intellectual developments in Europe and the development of theology. What helped it was the revival of Greek philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, as was the case in the early church where the philosophy of Plato was popular. Scholasticism was a method of rational justification of Christian doctrine and the systematic presentation of those doctrines. The beginning was made in the eleventh century, with Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109) who is considered the father of scholasticism, who is known for his famous definition of theology, faith seeking understanding, (fides quaerens intellectum). His ontological proofs for the existence of God roused lively debates for centuries. It said, the concept of God as the highest concept must include his existence. After Augustine he was the first to use reason to delve deep into the Christian faith. Anselm manifested a balance between faith reason, inquiry and acceptance of divine revelation. Of course scholasticism would produce still greater intellectuals like Thomas Aquinas later on.
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Twelfth Century The twelfth century is a period of consolidation of the power of the papacy. In the first place it won a victory against lay investiture at the concordat of Worms in 1122 between pope Callistus II and emperor Henry V agreed for finally abolishing lay investiture. To further consolidate their powers and to continue reforms in the church the popes also called three councils. They were called Lateran Councils because they were held in the Lateran palace, the pope’s official residence. They are accepted as ecumenical only by the catholic church. Pope Paul VI also called them general councils of the western church since only the western church was present. In fact all councils in the second millennium belong to this category. Vatican II may be an exception because at least there were some observers of other churches. Lateran I (ninth Ecumenical Council) was called by pope Callistus II in 1123 for the solemn confirmation of the Concordat of Worms, which ended lay investiture. It also decided to reform clerical discipline and forbade simony. It also forbade priests, deacons, and sub-deacons from keeping women in their houses except mother, sister or aunt, and any others who were above every suspicion. Lateran II (tenth Ecumenical Council) was called in 1139 by Innocent II for the reformation of the Church after the schism that had taken place at his election (1130-38). One of its important canons was regarding the law of celibacy. Marriage of clerics was declared invalid. It also forbade monks to study medicine and prohibited the charging of interest. Lateran III (eleventh Ecumenical Council) was called in 1179 by Alexander III, and its most important decision was about papal election. It was reserved to the college of cardinals and two-thirds majority was declared necessary. Another important canon provided for the establishment at every cathedral of a school for the education of poor students. It also had various disciplinary decrees: it forbade multiple benefices and decided that a candidate for the office of bishops should be of minimum 30 years of age. Jews and Muslims were forbidden to own slaves. It also excommunicated the Cathars, a heretical sect. There were two crusades in the twelfth century. The second Crusade from 1147-1149, preached by Bernard of Clairvaux, was provoked by the fall of the Christian city of Edessa in the Persian border to the Muslims, but it failed to relieve the situation in the East in any way. In 1187 Saladin recaptured Jerusalem and this disaster provoked the third Crusade from 1189-1192. Considerable territory was recovered but Jerusalem itself remained in the hands of Saladin. But he allowed Christians to make pilgrimages to the holy places in Jerusalem. An unfortunate side effect of the Crusades was its shameless Antisemitism. The capture of Jerusalem was accompanied by a horrible massacre of the Jews. This was one of the many high points of the centuries-long antisemitism and pogroms against Jews in many European countries. It is even said that compared to the Christians, the Muslims were more tolerant towards the Jews. Reforms in Consecrated Life We have seen how the ideal of consecrated life in the form of monasticism developed and became a powerful institution in the church and how it was corrupted and reform movements like the reforms of Cluny were initiated and how even that did not solve the problem. Therefore, there were new attempts to revitalize it and we shall see some of them. These reform movements could be grouped into three categories: going back to the eremitical life of the Desert Fathers, the 10
return to the pure observance of the Benedictine Rule and the emergence of the so-called apostolic life with poverty itinerant preaching. Return to Eremitism This way of life was never very popular in the West as it was in the East, although it never disappeared totally. Now, there is a rediscovery of eremitism in Europe, a craving for the experience of the desert than the security of the monastery. The monastery is a school for beginners. From there the monks and nuns must go into the desert to live the real life of combat with the devil. That is the fullness of Christian life. That is the way to participate in the passion of Christ, which had become an important theme in the Middle Ages. So there is emphasis on extreme fasting, flogging, carrying of heavy crosses, long hours of prayer, perpetual silence, etc. In effect, it was a combination of both coenobitical and eremitic life coordinated in the same institution, an arrangement, which Benedict himself had expressly envisaged, although some of the practices of these new hermits clearly eclipsed the gentle nature of the Benedictine Rule. One of the first such movements was the Camaldolese, who derived the name from Camaldoli, the place of its origin, founded by Romuald of Ravenna in 1022. They practiced a very strict ascetic life. At the foot of the hill was a community following the Rule of Benedict with austere simplicity. This provided the nursery for the congregation of hermits living each in his own hut with a garden, higher up in the forests. Its severe regime of fasting (except on Sundays, only bread and water), flagellation and perpetual silence made it an institution for a contemplative elite. It did not become an attraction for many. The Vallumbrosans were another group of monks, deriving their name from the monastery at Vallombrosa, founded by John Gaulbert in 1036. It was a completely coenobitical monastery governed by the Benedictine Rule. What distinguished it was the scrupulous following of the Rule, and the strict seclusion from the world. This isolation was preserved by the use of lay brothers who were fully professed monks, but who did not share the choral duties of the community and managed the administrative side of the monastery. Their main contribution was the reversion to a literal observance of the Rule and the specialized use of lay brothers or the conversi. Both would be imitated by other orders later. The desire to break away from existing forms of monasticism, and the search for seclusion from the outside world with corporate as well as personal poverty found its classical expression in the Carthusian order, deriving the name from Grande Chartreuse, the place where it was founded. Its prime mover was Bruno of Cologne. About the year 1084, he began with a group of companions, an eremitical way of life high up in the valley of the Alps. Although he was the patriarch of the Carthusian order, he was not, properly speaking, its founder. He was summoned to Rome in 1090 by Pope Urban II, never to return. The real founder of the order was Guigues du Pin, whom the brethren elected prior in 1109. It was he who settled the foundation at Grande Chartreuse. Here was the best example of combining eremitism and coenobitism, which drew upon a wide range of monastic experience. The trials of solitude were mitigated by some degree of community. Each monk lived and slept in the solitude of his cell. Each cell had also a small plot of garden and a private lavatory. The monks assembled daily in the Church for the common celebration of Vespers and the night office. The remaining services of the day were done privately. The single meal of the day in winter, and the two meals of the summer were prepared 11
and eaten by the monk in solitude, from the materials provided by the common kitchen. Common eating took place on Sundays and feast days, when mass was celebrated, and on the occasion of the election of a prior and the funeral of a monk. In the afternoon of these days conversation was allowed, the only time the rule of absolute silence was relaxed. The diet was sparse. Meat was excluded, and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays bread and water were the rule, though wine was permitted with food. Everything was done in a spirit of austerity and poverty. Obviously, the enclosed hermitage could only survive, provided others serviced it. For this purpose, the Carthusians adopted the practice of using lay brothers and institutionalized it. They performed manual work, and did the necessary selling, buying etc. They lived in separate establishments known as the lower house. The principle of early monasticism that the monks should live by the work of their own hands was thus abandoned. There was also a religious reason for it, because it offered to many lay people, who really wanted to experience the monastic life, a chance for it. But with that, another important rule of early monasticism was flouted; that in the monastery all were to be equal. For the Carthusians, the fundamental purpose of monastic life was contemplation. Another task especially recommended was making of books, “the everlasting food of souls.” Monks who could not read or write had to learn to do so. They restricted the number as a deliberate policy to obviate the need for large scale endowments, a necessary condition to preserve poverty. The constitutional features were taken from the Cistercians, most importantly, that of the annual general chapter which was attended by all the priors. The most important contribution of the Carthusians was that they successfully domesticated the ideal of the desert in the form of a permanent institution. The order never relaxed or compromised its distinctive pattern of life, so that to the end of the Middle Ages it never required the attention of reformers. The Rediscovery of the Benedictine Ideal – the Cistercians The order of the Cistercians was another outcome of the same restless search for a simpler and more secluded form of ascetical life that found expression in the new orders. It also began as a reaction against corporate wealth, worldly involvements and exaggerated liturgical ritualism, and tried to create a monastery in which the pristine observance of the Benedictine Rule would be restored. As they conceived it, poverty and seclusion were the most important features of this observance. It all began with the secession of a group of dissatisfied monks from the abbey of Molesme in the year 1098, under the leadership of their abbot Robert of Molesme. They wanted to revive the simplicity and balance of the Rule of Benedict and observe it without compromise; go back to corporate poverty symbolized by manual work, in a location far enough to save them from entanglements with the outside world. It was the entry of Bernard of Fontaine, the later St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) in 1112, that made the order really reputed, and grow in number and fame. What was original in the Cistercian order was its unique constitution. It was this that influenced all subsequent orders, and in time, coloured the thinking of the Western Church as a whole. The life in the monastery was a pure observance of the Rule of Benedict to the letter. By doing this, the Cistercians were trying to abandon centuries of monastic development, which was neither possible nor desirable. For example, there was plenty in the Rule of Benedict to justify their desire to escape from secular involvements, and seek a more secluded form of religious life; there was rather less foundation in the Rule for the cult of corporate poverty and austerity and the puritanical rejection of all forms of aesthetic expression which came to prevail in the early phases of the Cistercian movement. 12
This puritanism was applied to everything – food, dress, buildings, and furniture. The use of the white coarse habit of undyed sheep’s wool as against the black habit of the Benedictines drew a bitter aside from Peter the Venerable who called them a new race of Pharisees, who to distinguish themselves from other monks, chose a habit of unwonted colour to show that they were white, while the rest were black. It was the intention of the founders of monasticism that the monks should live by the work of their own hands. But it was impossible for the monks to do all the work, and so they had plenty of lay brothers and also employed hired labour. A lay brother was usually illiterate but was a monk in the sense that he took the monastic vows and wore a habit, but he lived a separate existence altogether. He was chiefly occupied with manual work. There was a perverse social apartheid practiced between them and the choir monks. There was no justification for the inequality created in the monastery in the name of the Rule of Benedict, who had eschewed any such distinction in his communities. Very little is said in the monastic hagiography of the time about the simple, humble and sacrificing life of many of these brothers. Within a generation, the order become a mighty enterprise. By 1500, there were more than seven hundred men’s and six hundred women’s abbeys. There were Cistercian bishops and cardinals and even a Cistercian Pope (Eugenius III (1145-53) although the order was created for seclusion and distance from the world. The Cistercian constitution was unique. It helped monasticism evolve from an autocratic monarchic structure to a representational system. At the beginning, the abbot of Citaux had absolute powers over all daughter houses. Later, an annual general chapter developed as the sovereign body. Thus a strong federal framework evolved, where the bond that kept the abbeys in relationship with one another and the mother house was not that of subordination, but of mutual love. So there was uniformity of observance through a system of mutual supervision. The general chapter met every year, which all abbots were obliged to attend. This represented something new, not only in the monastic tradition, but in the polity of medieval Europe as well. It made the Cistercian order an international order with a cosmopolitan and partly representative legislature. These general chapters were the only international assemblies in Europe in those times apart from the general Councils of the Church, which were extremely rare. They were important annual events. This arrangement was copied by others, and in the fourth Lateran Council of 1215, Pope Innocent III gave it the status of an approved model, and commended it to all orders and instructed them to hold assemblies of their superiors in each region or kingdom, every three years. The Cistercian movement also attracted a large umber of women with hundreds of abbeys. But Bernard never allowed independence for women and enforced strict cloister for them. The effort to suppress centuries of history and to forge a totally new ideal ended in a grand failure. There is no way to go back upon history totally, because in the process, we always create something new. They protested against monastic wealth and grandeur, and wanted to practise apostolic poverty. By the end of the twelfth century, they had acquired for themselves the unenviable reputation for avarice and group acquisitiveness. The numerous exemptions and endowments made the order exceedingly wealthy. In the sources of their income, economic attitudes and business methods, they hardly differed from the older Benedictines. In fact there was even more exploitation of the 13
lay brothers as a work force and alienation of the general population around them because of their immunities and privileges. Having begun as a rebellion against the established conventions of monastic life, the Cistercians gradually adopted the same ways. In other ways, too, they departed from their ideals. From being unsympathetic to intellectual pursuits, they became the first monks to set up a college for their members in the universities. Their attempt to seclude themselves from the world also did not succeed. They were involved in the ecclesiastical, political and social affairs of the day. Bernard himself preached the second Crusade. Before the end of the thirteenth century, much that was distinctive in the Cistercian vocation had been lost. The compromises they made, made their voice less compelling. They suffered the same fate of their predecessors in observing the ideals of Benedict. The Vita apostolic or community life of priests The third way of responding to the crisis in monasticism was the so-called vita apostolica or the apostolic life, who came to be called “canons regular.” They were really a hybrid order of clerical monks. The canons were priests serving in cathedral Churches and they now decided to follow a regula or rule and so the name canons regular. The clergy who lived in rural areas could not be expected to do this. This was an attempt to free the clergy from worldly entanglements and to impress upon them their sacred calling. It was believed that the discipline of community offered the best hope of achieving these ends. In response to this, houses of canons regular began to appear – groups of clergy who had renounced private property and lived a fully communal life, observing a monastic time table and sharing a common refectory and dormitory. The group of religious men who follow a rule and still do pastoral work could be said to have got their inspiration from this movement. For this the “Rule of Augustine” was used. Augustine, after his conversion, began to observe a monastic way of life, and when he became bishop, he turned his episcopal household into a semimonastic community requiring his clergy to renounce private property and live a communal life. His sister also entered religious life, and it was for this sisterhood that Augustine wrote his famous letter No. 211 which is a treatise on chastity, charity and concord, which are supposed to be the foundations of a religious community. This was basically the so-called Rule of Augustine to which some things were added to make it gender sensitive, in this case, to apply it also to men. It suggested that the essence of the vita apostolica was the life of clergy living in a community based upon the renunciation of personal property. Sometimes it was difficult to say the difference between the canons regular and Benedictine monks as far as external observances were concerned. Poverty, simplicity and submission to the will of a superior were prescribed. The diet was more generous, and study and intellectual activity were recommended in place of manual labour. In some cases, they were involved in pastoral work, but it was not taken for granted. Pastoral work as integral part of the apostolic life emerged a little later. The Norbertines or the Premonstratensians, were one of the first groups who adopted the rule of Augustine and founded community in 1115 for the sake of the apostolate. Its founder was Norbert of Xanten, and the mother house was Premontre from there the name premonstratensians. Norbert had been a canon of the cathedral of Xanten. In 1115 he renounced all his benefices, and fled to solitude and became the leader of a group of hermits and preachers, which included laity of both sexes as well as clergy. In 1121 they took formal vows to live according to the Gospel and the sayings of the Apostles, and the Rule of St. Augustine. They 14
adopted a simple white dress, which also gave them the name “white canons.” For him, the vita apostolica meant a combination of community life organized around the ideal of austerity and poverty with active missionary preaching. He himself was eminently one. His model was Jesus, who with his disciples went about preaching. The community laid special stress on preaching, pastoral work and evangelization, but all under the supervision of the Church. Thus a new orientation came into monasticism, stressing wandering preaching and the insecurity and poverty that accompany it, and abandoning the stability and security of the monastery. The ideal is no more the community of Acts of the Apostles, but Jesus who moves from place to place with his disciples, proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Such movements increased in number in the twelfth century and came to be called “Poverty Movements. They all wanted to live the radical life of the Gospel, “naked following the naked Christ” (nudus nudum Christum sequi), a saying of Jerome, but which became a slogan of almost all the poverty movements of the Middle Ages. They were also a challenge to the church’s power and wealth. Some of them had unorthodox doctrines and were declared heretics, Peter de Bruys d. 1105, Henry of Lausanne d. 1135, Arnold of Brescia d. 1155, Cathari, appeared around 1140, Waldensians, originated around 1175, Humiliati, origin unknown, etc. They are called poverty movements because of their stress on poverty, asceticism. Paradoxically there also arose around this time, military orders. Of all the new forms of monastic life that emerged from the religious ferment of the twelfth century, none was more original or seemingly more paradoxical than the Military Orders. These were orders of knights, dedicated to fighting the infidels, but who were also fully professed monks. It surely looks like a contradiction in terms. This combination can only be understood from the situation of the times from where they emerged. The idea emerged from the new ideal of Christian knighthood. The Christian knight was a Christian warrior fighting in the service of the Church. There began to be introduced the blessing of warriors and their weapons. They were offered spiritual incentives like special spiritual privileges. What occasioned this change was the Crusades. In 1095, Pope Urban offered to all who participated in it an indulgence, a remission of the canonical penance due for their sins. In effect, it was the principle of a holy war. In such a war killing an enemy, provided he was an infidel, was not a materially sinful act requiring penance, but was a positively meritorious act, which remitted the temporal punishment due to sin. Death in such a war carried the rewards of martyrdom. This crusading indulgence represented a landmark in the medieval theory of Christian warfare. It proposed a new vocation of Christian knighthood. It diverted the aggressive instincts of the aristocracy of the Middle Ages, who took great pleasure in bloodletting, into a holy war against Islam, and in doing so, sanctified the profession of arms. The Military Orders were the product of this crusading ethos. They were professionally dedicated to the holy war. The Templars or the Knights of the Temple were the first to constitute as a military order. It was founded by Hugh de Payns in 1119 in order to protect the pilgrims to the Holy Land. They took vows of chastity and obedience, and followed some form of community life. They practiced personal poverty. They were bound also by the monastic regime of fasts and vigils, but to a lesser degree. The hardship of their life made up for the rest of monastic observance. Recruits, 15
donations and endowments flowed in fast, and it grew into an international order. Papal privileges followed including direct supervision by the Papacy. The head of the order was a grand master, to whom all the members took an oath. The provinces were directed by a master or commander. After the failure of the Crusades, the Templars grew into a wealthy institution, in fact, a reputed international banking system. With that grew its power and arrogance, too, which alienated the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the secular rulers. Philip IV of France was attracted to its enormous wealth, and suppressed it with the help of an “Ecumenical Council” in 1312, the Council of Vienne, perhaps the most disgraceful of all Church Councils. The Hospitallers (Knights Hospitaller), another important military order, suffered a less painful fate. They began as a fraternity serving a hospice for poor and sick pilgrims at Jerusalem, dedicated to St John the Baptist. The master of this establishment, Gerard, established many more such institutions with the help of royal and other patronages, and in 1113 obtained papal recognition as a distinct order under the Pope. The observances were of those of the canons regular. It was at first not a military order. Its primary task was care of the sick and indigent pilgrims. It was Raymond du Puy who made it into a military order in 1118, and they performed many military operations. They, also, like the Templars, took vows of chastity, poverty and obedience and lived in community. They, too, suffered an identity crisis after the failure of the Crusades, but gained a new lease of life when they captured the island of Rhodes from the Greeks, making it their headquarters. From this they also came to be known as the Knights of Rhodes, and after their settlement in the Island of Malta, the Knights of Malta. They had in any case never abandoned their more pacific social roles, and therefore, did something useful for society. There were other military orders, like the Teutonic Order or the Order of German Knights founded in 1190, once again a hospital order turned into a military order. After its military escapades, it, too, found its vocation in hospital work, surviving to the present day. The most famous theologian of the century was perhaps Peter Abelard (1079-1142). As he was a true follower of the scholastic method of use of reason in interpreting the faith, some complained that he exalted reason too much and endangered the Christian faith. Some say they were too jealous because he was the most famous teacher in Paris and the students were flocking to his lectures. At least three of his works were censured. But his love affair with his beautiful pupil Heloise is well known. It led to something unfortunate. Aberlard was given the choice by Heloise uncle who was canon of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris between marriage and priesthood and he was hesitant and he lost patience and Abelard was castrated. Subsequently Heloise entered a convent and Abelard became a monk and they continued their communication from there and the correspondence is a classic of romantic literature.
Thirteenth century The century begins and ends with two representatives of absolutist papacy, Innocent III (11981216) and Boniface VIII (1294-1303). There were quite many popes who bore the name Innocent but who were not innocent at all. Innocent III was one of them. He claimed that the power of the pope superseded all other powers because he was the vicar of Christ and not merely the vicar of Peter. He was also a politician who doubled the papal states through various political maneuvers. Innocent IV d. 1254 went a step further and said he was the vicar of God himself. With Boniface VIII who became pope in 1294 papal absolutism reached its zenith and ironically, 16
he also initiated its downfall in the next century. His election took place in an unusual manner. In order to put an end to the worldliness of the papacy the cardinals chose in 1294 an eighty five year old hermit Celestine V as pope. After only five months he realized that the post was not fitting for him, he resigned and the next one was Boniface VIII. A proof of his claim to absolute power was his bull in 1302 Unam Sanctam which said, outside the church there was no salvation and that it was essential for every human being to be subject to the Roman pontiff. However his reign ended in tragedy. He was in perpetual conflict with the king of France, Philip IV also called Philip the Fair on various matters. Angered by the popes various measures, the king sent a band of soldiers to arrest him at Anagni where he was staying, with the intention of bringing him to trial. He was arrested but was freed by the Italian soldiers but he died of this shock within a month, a broken man. It was later alleged that he had persuaded his predecessor Celestine to resign thereby preparing the way for his own election. There were three councils of the western church during this century. The most important one was Lateran IV called in 1215 by Innocent III. It was perhaps the most important council of the church in the entire middle ages. Its decrees numbering more than 70 were all practical and touched practically every aspect of church life some of which are practiced till today, for example the obligation of annual confession and communion during Easter season, and was notorious for its anti-Semitism, forbidding Jews from going out of their homes during the holy week. The next council was called by Innocent IV in 1245 in the city of Lyons (Lyons I) to depose Emperor Frederick II (1220-1250) who was always a thorn in the eye of the papacy. He was deposed accusing him of serious misdeeds, like sacrilege, heresy etc. The next Council Lyons II (fourteenth Ecumenical Council) called by Gregory X, in 1274 achieved a short-lived union with the Eastern Church. The union lasted only for seven years and came to end in 1281. It also made a decision about papal election that the cardinals are to remain in conclave till they name a pope, and that the conclave should take place ten days after the death of a pope. This century also gave birth to one of the unfortunate institutions of Christianity, the Inquisition. In the last chapter we saw that there were already some heretical movements emerging and the initial response of the church was excommunication, censures, ban etc. but later on the church began to arrest, prosecute and condemn them to death. This is the institution of the Inquisition. So Inquisition is juridical prosecution of heresy by special ecclesiastical courts. Heresy threatened the unity of Christendom and so it was both against the empire and the Church. It was treason as well as offence against the law of God. So the church could ask the emperor to eradicate heresy, using the two swords theory, according to which the secular arm has to help the spiritual authority. The first official move to counter heresy came in 1184 at a synod at Verona. Heresy was declared as failure to accord with the decrees of the papacy and the bishop was charged with the duty to search out heretics. In 1224 emperor Frederick II decided to take the matter seriously and asked the state officials to hunt out heretics and decreed death at the stake as punishment. Fearing his political ambitions, 1231 Pope Gregory IX, through his bull Excommunicamus decided to take control of it and decreed that prosecution of heretics belongs to the Church and nominated papal inquisitors from the Mendicant Orders, Dominicans and Franciscans for this. Heretics condemned by the Church would be handed over to the state where they were burnt. Those who showed repentance would be given various punishments, penance, 17
fasting or pilgrimage or imprisonment which was under sever conditions. The laity were asked to denounce all heresy which was considered an infectious disease. In 1232 the Dominicans were appointed as the official inquisitors. In 1252 Innocent IV officially allowed torture by his bull ad extirpanda. 1542 - Pope Paul II founded the Congregation of the Inquisition as the final court of appeal, in trials of heresy, later on the Holy Office, today, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The whole procedure had nothing to do with generally recognized legal principles or primitive requirements of justice because it had secret proceedings, no one knew who the informants were, no cross-examination of witnesses, no documents, prosecutor and judge was identical, no appeal, the aim of the inquiry was not truth but submission to doctrine. End of crusades The thirteenth century began with the crusading spirit but also saw its end. In 1202 pope Innocent III called for the fourth Crusade, which had disastrous consequences. It ended in the plundering and sacking of Constantinople in 1204. This sealed definitively the Eastern Schism. The Crusaders proclaimed a Latin empire in Constantinople under Balduin I. It ended in 1261 when Michael VIII conquered Constantinople back. The Greeks have neither forgiven nor forgotten this event. They still consider the Westerners as enemies of the Church and their nation. In 1212 thousands of children and youth from France and Germany set out for the so-called Children’s Crusade. It too ended in disaster. They were captured and were sold as salves on the way in the slave trading centers of Alexandria. The fifth Crusade began in 1228 under Frederick II. Through negotiations with the Sultan ElKamil, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth were recovered. But in 1244 Jerusalem was recaptured by the Muslims, and the sixth Crusade under Louis IX began in 1248 to recover it. His troops were beaten back at Cairo. Jerusalem would never be recovered. In 1270 there was a seventh Crusade, which ended with the death of Louis IX. The gains of the Crusades were minimal as far as the original aim was concerned. By 1291 all the remaining Latin possessions in the East were lost and the Crusaders left Palestine for good. This may be the place to make a final reflection on Chrisitian-Islam relationship which we began when we treated the rise of Islam. Now we know that the crusades were a war against Islam. A war waged on Islam, supported by the just war theory of Augustine, that a war is justified in certain circumstances, to avoid greater evils, if waged by a lawful authority, to establish justice, suppress evil. So it was waged now with the permission of the pope by the lawful rulers. It was a holy war and the fighters were given spiritual and material benefits including the status of martyrs. Exactly done by the Muslim fighters today.
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It did many abominable things, destruction and profanation of Jerusalem, ill treatment of Jews and Muslims. Crusades increased the alienation between the two religions. Islam was seen as an abomination, enemies of Christendom, and pope clement V said, their presence in Europe is an insult to the creator. It was not a serious religion but a superstition. The inquisition was extended to Islam later on. The prophet was ridiculed by intellectuals and even by saints. Although we come across any disrespect shown to Jesus by Muslims. Then there is political reasons for the enmity between Christians and Muslims. The Ottoman empire made bid for political supremacy in Europe and in the world from the fourteenth century which lasted till 1922. It was put down by western powers and they incorporated most of the Islamic world as their colonies or spheres of influence, especially, Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Russia, etc. Once again the memory of the crusades was brought back. So for the Muslims, the western world is imperialists, capitalists with decadent morals, undermining their values, their religion, and laws. The west had also produced a group of western rulers in their countries, educated in the west, who supported the west, and repressed their societies. So they use religion as a source of dissent except in democracies like India. They see modern society as corrupt, and therefore, the call for jihad to restore God’s law, the Sharia. So the whole west is still considered as crusaders and a jihad is declared against them. So political defeat and religious cultural insult have left a deep sense of resentment. That was the appeal of Bin Laden who wanted to set up an Islamic empire and pure Muslim society which has also failed. After his attack on America George bush declared a crusade. That is why Samuel Huntington spoke of a war of civilizations: the next world war will be a war of civilizations. He was accused by his critics saying that political and economic conflicts are being interpreted as ethnic and cultural conflicts and giving them a religious colour. But is he not right? Are not religious and ethnic rivalries the underlying causes of many conflicts today? Religion is a magic force. We have to acknowledge it. It can create a mighty power. Religion is being rediscovered, may be for political reasons, but it has strength to unite people and therefore peace between religions is an urgency. Mendicant Orders A significant development that affected consecrated life ever since was the emergence of the Mendicant Orders, a radical departure from traditional forms of consecrated life till then. Although some attempts were made to find new ways of living the consecrated, life a radical departure came with the mendicants. They built on the tradition of the vita apostolica, started by the Norbertines and lived by the canons regular emphasizing voluntary poverty and wandering preaching, and thus challenging the stability and security of traditional monasticism. They were also influenced by the “Poverty 19
Movements”, people who wanted to live the radical life of the Gospel and were open to all, irrespective of status or gender. Two of these movements, in many ways anticipated the Mendicant Orders, the Waldenses and the Humiliati. The Waldenses were founded by Peter Valdes, a wealthy cloth merchant and banker of Lyons. Following the Gospel call, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor,” he experienced a conversion (around 1170-73), abandoned everything and embarked upon a career of itinerant preaching, supporting himself by begging. Suspected of heresy, he was called before a synod at Lyons in 1181 where he professed the orthodox faith; but his followers, called the “Poor Men of Lyons,” in the face of increasing clerical hostility, drifted into an anticlerical and anti-hierarchical stance; they were condemned at a synod in 1184 by Pope Lucius. The Humiliati who were active in Italy, were a religious fraternity consisting of priests and literate lay people, dedicated to the new apostolic life. They engaged in preaching which was a breach of sacerdotal professionalism, and the hierarchy found in it a subversion of authority and therefore, heresy. They, too, were condemned by Pope Lucius in 1184. Thus, the Mendicant Orders came on a scene that had grown accustomed to wandering preachers and evangelists. Out of it they created a totally new concept of discipleship of Jesus in the Church, and a radical breakaway from the monastic tradition of the past. By adopting the rule of corporate poverty and refusing to accept endowments or to own property and by deciding to live by begging, they discarded things that had become part of monasticism. They also broke free from another important principle of traditional monasticism by abandoning seclusion and enclosure to engage in active pastoral work. Preaching and ministering were their raison d’etre. The message was clear. Salvation need no longer be sought by flight from the world nor is it reserved for a spiritual elite. The demands of Christian life could be fulfilled by sanctifying the humdrum duties and tasks of everyday life. All that was needed was that they repent and receive the Gospel. The abandonment of stability and seclusion was essential for such a life. Dominic (c. 1174-1221) was a canon of the cathedral of Osma in Spain, and wanted to spend his life in the conversion of the pagans in the East. But he soon joined the fight against the Albigensians, a heretical group at that time. He managed to attract the heretics more by his life than by his preaching. He founded a community, which lived the ideal of poverty, which the heretics of that time preached and admired and some of them joined this community. He and his men companions, essentially a group of diocesan priests, continued wandering preaching undertaken in strict poverty. Thus began the Order of Preachers. A new concept for a religious order was born, where preaching was the primary charism. The order was approved in 1216/17. First of all, it was the first really apostolic order. Its goals were clearly defined as preaching and pastoral care. It was therefore, from the beginning, a clerical order. The friars were not obliged to do manual work but were to be committed to intellectual work, that is, study as a life long educational process. Radical poverty, personal and corporate, was emphasized. It was a matter of credibility, especially among the heretics, whom he wanted to bring back to the Church. Poverty also provided mobility to be available to go anywhere, anytime. The Constitution of Dominic was very unique and has perhaps been the model for all religious orders thence. It embodied a completely new conception of authority. At every level the superiors were elected, and they were made responsible for the conduct of their office to their constituents. It succeeded in a way that no other Rule had done in institutionalizing the ascetical principle of obedience to a superior without recourse to paternalism or prelacy. It proved to be a 20
model that influenced many other ecclesiastical organizations. This structure was taken over by other Mendicant Orders, and with modification, by most institutes of religious life of modern times. The general chapter or provincial chapter that selects the superior general or provincial is common today. And the division of the order into local communities and provinces is taken for granted. It had influence also on the development of democracy and sovereignty. The constitution of the Dominicans is the first instance of a democratic constitution in Europe and it is the first international community, which reached its decisions through representation and election. The universities where the Dominicans were influential, took up this idea, and the larger society was influenced by it. Conciliarism, a concept dreaded by many Popes, had its roots here. Francis of Assisi (1181/2-1226) was a layman and never became a priest. He was ordained deacon. His father Pietro Bernadone was a rich cloth merchant of Assisi. We do not know what impact the ascetical ideas of the times had on Francis. Perhaps in travels in connection with his father’s business, he encountered members of the Humiliati and the Waldenses or other groups of the “poverty movements.” In the beginning he lived a carefree life. But through various experiences of his early life, like sickness and imprisonment, he was converted in 1206, at the age of 25. He dedicated himself to a life of radical poverty left his family and all possessions and began a life of poverty and wandering preaching with a group of companions. Thus arose the Order of Friars Minor. Although he was captivated by the eremitical ideal and solitary life he soon realized the importance of the active life of wandering preaching in radical poverty. His Rule was simply a collection of sayings from the Gospels originally was approved in 1210. Francis’ ideal of absolute poverty was too radical to be followed literally and so changed had to be made and on the basis of the observance of poverty and other compromises there were soon divisions in the Franciscan fraternity. The Carmelites were organized from a group of hermits on Mt. Carmel by Albert of Vercelli, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem by giving them a rule in 1209. After the failure of the crusades and the attack by the Muslim they migrated to the west. Under Simon Stock reorganized themselves in 1247 and took up pastoral work but retaining the monastic tradition. The Augustinian friars arose from a group of hermits living in Italy. In 1244 pope Innocent IV organized them into a religious order. The most famous member of the order is Martin Luther. The word friar comes from the Latin frater meaning brother. It underlined communal life and pastoral work and carried a different tone from monk which mean alone, from Greek monos. But the Augustinians and Carmelites continued to combine both the traditions and considered themselves monks as well as friars. By the end of the 13th century, the number of these friars reached several thousand with hundreds of houses all over Europe. There were other smaller orders of friars which came to be established and other groups who adopted the same life style. The mendicant friars helped the revival of popular preaching and it had an impact on Church life in general. It encouraged the practice of the devout life for the laity, a Christian life that was not modeled upon that of monks or dependent upon the vicarious merit acquired by professional ascetics, but one lived fully in the world. They offered a new theology of the secular life. They were responsible for spreading popular piety and devotions in urban areas. They were also great spiritual directors. The counterpart of evangelical preaching was hearing confessions. This achieved great success because of a new approach to moral theology, which placed greater 21
emphasis on the circumstances and intentions of the penitent than casuistry. They were also engaged in universal mission. Dominicans and Franciscans were the pioneers of the medieval mission to the East, as far as India and China. They helped in advanced education by their work in the universities. Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, etc., were men of creative genius, and left behind a huge mass of written work, which is of permanent and universal significance. It was inevitable that the friars would come into conflict with the secular clergy and the bishops who felt that they were out of their control. Besides, the number of orders and groups who followed such a life style increased. Already in 1215 the IV Lateran in canon 13 forbade the founding of new orders lest “too great variety of religious orders leads to grave confusion in God’s church.” At the second Council of Lyons in 1274, Pope Gregory X abolished several smaller orders of friars invoking the above canon, except the Franciscans, Dominicans Carmelites and Augustinians. How did women fare? Sure consecrated life for women was encouraged and there were outstanding women like the Cistercian nun Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). But convents were as susceptible to corruption as monasteries. The Lateran Council of 1215 said: “The disease of simony has infected many nuns to such an extent that they admit scarcely any as sisters without a payment wishing to cover this vice with the pretext of poverty.” Children, widows and assorted relatives composed the communities. There were significant number of married women and widows in most convents. Those whose marriages failed sometimes chose to live in a convent. Others were wives of men who had entered monasteries. It is doubtful if a sense of vocation was the primary motive in entering the convent. Women had to remain in cloister. It was inconceivable that women be allowed active role in the apostolic life. Ecclesiastical tradition disqualified them from preaching; social tradition from wandering about. The only safe place for a woman who had no husband was behind the high walls of a nunnery. They had to be under episcopal supervision. The solution was the cloister, one of the most notorious institutions imposed upon women by the Church. In 1298, Boniface VIII, in his bull Periculoso, decreed that all religious women everywhere must be cloistered. He stressed the peril of men’s inability to resist women, and women’s natural inability to refrain from tempting men. The restriction remained in force for centuries, in fact, officially till 1901. It was strict enclosure. They were not allowed to go out except in times of fire and pest. The cloister came to be so sacralized that even those who were not called to contemplative life were subjected to more or less to the same restrictions for centuries. Only in 1950 a distinction between the vocation of a nun and those of sisters in the modern sense was made, by Pius XII, in his encyclical Sponsa Christi. Situation was not different for the female followers for Francis and Dominic. One of Francis’ earliest and most illustrious converts was Clare of Assisi, who vowed to follow him in the practice of poverty and the imitation of Christ. But the Rule given to Clare in 1219 provided for a regime of strict enclosure based on the Rule of Benedict. But like Francis she demanded 22
absolute poverty from her sisters. The same was with the Dominicans. It was an inescapable paradox that the two Mendicant Orders which had broken out of the monastic tradition of segregation and enclosure originated two female contemplative orders which observed a regime of strict enclosure. This was the heavy part of the price they paid for Church approval of their enterprise. Some women who rejected this discrimination meted out to women and especially the cloister founded an innovative movement are known as the Beguines. The origin of the word Beguine is obscure. It could be from the gray-coloured cloth these pious women used to wear (beige). Mary of Oignies (1177-1213) is widely considered the movements founder. They were groups of laywomen living in the towns of northern Europe, who came together to practise a new form of religious life. They were not affiliated to any religious order nor did they follow any recognized monastic Rule. The movement was probably a response to the social exclusiveness of most convents and their formalism and affluence. Its piety was rooted in the cult of voluntary poverty and the current ideal of apostolic life. It was above all an urban phenomenon. The members came from the newly affluent bourgeoisie, and they found their milieu in the towns. In this they resembled the later Mendicant Orders. They were fired by the ideal of an uncomplicated Christian lay life, which was evangelical, imitating the life of Christ. They were devout women living in the world, in some cases remaining at home in their own families, who used a town Church as a focus for their association and engaged in works of charity. Then they began forming communities and living together. They took no vows but made an engagement to observe celibacy while they lived in the community. A condition of membership was the renunciation of personal property and a simple life style. They attended mass and the canonical hours in the parish Church. They supported themselves by their own work, like weaving, sewing, embroidery, etc and moved around freely, serving the needs of the poor and the sick. Some resorted to organized begging as a means of support. The movement spread fast with many members, there was some sort of approval by two popes in 1216 1nd 1233. But it also attracted much criticism from the clergy and the laity. The spectacle of laywomen without sanction of any religious order engaging in active apostolic role was offensive both to male chauvinism and clerical pride. They were also accused of heresy. By the middle of the thirteenth century, organized reaction had set in. Criticism focused upon the lack of inclaustration, clerical supervision and the practice of female mendicancy. In the early fourteenth century Margarete Porete, a Beguine, was burnt at the stake in Paris in 1310 for heresy. In 1312 the Council of Vienne censured the Beguines. “The women commonly known as Beguines since they promise obedience to nobody, nor renounce possessions, nor profess any approved rule, are not religious at all, although they wear the special dress of Beguines. We therefore with the approval of the council perpetually forbid their mode of life and remove it completely from the church of God.” It was one of the first movements of women’s liberation, offering women greater freedom than in a convent or in a lay household. Looked at peripherally it was one of the movements of the vita apostolica, but going deeper, we find that it was one of those early attempts by women to gain a foothold in the Church with their freedom and rights acknowledged and respected. Their struggle concerned not only the role of women in the Church but also wider issues, such as the place of the laity in the Church, the nature of monastic life, especially as it was interpreted for women, 23
and the nature of Christian life in general. It was a conscious movement of women for freedom and active participation in the life of the Church, which was their right but was denied to them. In general, women have been relegated to the background by the force of legal injunctions and the Beguines showed that it was possible to challenge them. It needed courage to challenge a system like the medieval Church which confined the lives of millions of women to the inner recesses of the home or to the walls of a monastery, and to seek alternatives with flexibility and informality. They are the forerunners of thousands of modern day women religious who effectively combine prayer with social service. They remain an inspiration to all women in all generations who want to develop a spirituality in tune with the needs of their times. The thirteenth century saw the best known scholastic theologians and the greatest theologian after Augustine, in the person of Thomas Aquinas (1225-74). A Dominican and professor of theology at the university of Paris, he produced the most creative synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian faith. With his Summa Theologiae and Summa Contra Gentiles he set the definitive standard for systematic theology for centuries to come. His attempt to harmonize reasons and faith was to show that God’s revelation in Jesus goes beyond what our natural reason can grasp but does not contradict it. Even today his teaching enjoys a privileged position in the church and is called angelic doctor. This is the century of the founding of the ancient European Universities, like Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. This century also saw the beginning of mysticism. Joachim of Fiore d. 1202, was a Cistercian monk and mystic, who was to exert considerable influence on mysticism on later times with his theology of history. He gave a Trinitarian interpretation to history dividing it into three ages, the age of the Father, (the Old Testament), the age of the Son (New Testament), and the age of the Holy Spirit (the age of the Spiritual Church inaugurated by the Religious Orders). He predicted that this new age would begin in 1260. The Franciscan Spirituals, who wanted to follow the radical poverty of Francis of Assisi and thus created a division in the Franciscan order understood their movement as the one that would inaugurate the spiritual Church. Another famous mystic of the century was Mechthild of Magdeburg (d. 1282) known for her famous book of mystical revelations, thus inaugurating the German mystical tradition. Her fellow mystics who lived in the same Cistercian convent in Helfta, Mechthild of Hackeborn (d. 1299), and Gertrude the Great (d. 1302) also achieved great fame. Mysticism which would become a strong movement in the fourteenth and fourteenth centuries was a criticism of the institutional church and would attract censures and punishment from the church.
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. There is a reason for putting these centuries together like the ninth and tenth centuries. The ninth and tenth centuries revolved around the papacy and similarly the 14th and 15th centuries also revolve around the crisis of the papacy known as the papal schism or western schism and the resolution of this great scandal. We will also deal with a few other important events of the two concluding centuries of the middle ages. One of the important characteristics of this period was the absence of the papacy from Rome, its traditional seat since its beginning: from 1309 to 1376 during which seven popes resided in the 24
French city of Avignon. This period is called the Babylonia captivity of the church, an expression later used by Martin Luther as a title of one his famous writings against the church. With the rise of nation states, like England, France, Spain and Portugal, the unity which was known as Christendom, the Christian society under the control of the Church, began to disintegrate and with that also the power of the papacy. That was seen in the conflict between pope Boniface VIII and the French King Philip. The pope was taken prisoner by the king which was a humiliation and he died a broken man in 1303. The next pope, Benedict IX died within a year of his election. Clement V (1305-14), who succeeded him was a French Cardinal and he was elected through the influence of the French King, and as a sign of gratitude, he decided to shift his residence to France and settle down in Avignon. From 1309 to 1377 the papacy remained there, virtually under French control. This is called the Avignon Exile. Avignon was a papal property and many previous popes used to stay there escaping the violent politics of Rome but it was for the first time that the papacy was completely shifted to this place. During Clement’s pontificate, there took place also the disgraceful Council of Vienne (1311-12), the fifteenth Ecumenical Council. It suppressed the Templars, a military order, at the behest of the French king who coveted their enormous wealth. The Order was accused of all sorts of misdeeds like heresy and immorality, and before any real evidence could be collected against it, it was suppressed. All the popes of the Avignon period were naturally Frenchmen and most of the cardinals and the curial officials too. Naturally criticism came of corruption and nepotism and there was widespread feeling that the papacy should return to its traditional city, Rome and finally pope Gregory XI decided to return to Rome, at the persuasion of the notable saints Catherine of Siena and Bridget of Sweden in 1377. From the Avignon Exile to the Western Schism When Gregory died the next year, the Italians, fearing that another French pope might prefer to go back to Avignon forced the election of Urban VI, an Italian cardinal. The French cardinals denounced it as invalid, and elected Clement VII, a French man, who took up residence at Avignon once again. Actually Urban VI’s election was recognized at the beginning but his difficult character (some say he was simply mad) might have forced the French cardinals to abandon him. Thus there were two popes now, both claiming legitimacy and excommunicating each other. The whole Western Church was divided into two camps. This is known as the Western Schism, the longest lasting papal schism which lasted till 1417. After the election the French cardinals fled Rome. The question was how to end the Schism? In 1394 the University of Paris suggested three ways. Abdication, Compromise or a Council The first two appealed to the good will of the popes (Benedict XIII and Gregory XII) but they failed to show any good will. So the idea of a universal Council began gaining ground, a representation of all Christianity. It was an orthodox tradition of the church. In 1409, the cardinals belonging to both the groups decided to desert their popes and gathered at the Italian city of Pisa with a number of bishops
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from Europe. They asserted their right to convoke a council in view of the refusal of the popes to compromise and declared it a correct step in accordance with the constitution of the church. The popes were tried in absence. They blamed the popes for the long duration of the Schism. They were accused of offending against the Papal office and the church's unity. They were declared heretics, and in accordance with medieval canon law, a heretical Pope could be deposed, and they were deposed. They were moreover declared promoters of schism, perjurers etc. In 1409, 26th June they elected Alexander V as pope and decided to call a council in 1412 to discuss the reform of the church. It only aggravated the situation further by creating another claimant to the papacy because the other two popes refused to resign and had even some supporters. Thus there were three popes instead of two. Benedict XIII, Gregory XII, Alexander V Alexander V, the official pope died in 1410 and John the XXIII was elected pope and the emperor Sigismund of Germany, now resolved to end the mess, forced him to call a Council as stipulated by the Council of Pisa. The Council of Constance (1414-1418) the sixteenth ecumenical council The objectives of the council were to end the schism (causa unionis), to reform the church (causa reformationis) and to combat heresy and purify doctrine (causa fidei). The council said that all the three popes should go, although John XXIII was a lawfully elected Pope. John Gerson of Paris university gave the reasons for this. The final norm in the church is the Council he said. The Pope should obey the council. He thus advocated what came to be known as conciliarism. The council cannot suspend the plenitude of power of the pope but can limit it if circumstances called for it. The council is not above the pope but if there is a need, the council can meet without the explicit consent or order of the Pope and he should obey the council for the good of the church. At this juncture, Pope John XXIII committed a blunder. In order to disrupt the council and unwilling to give up his post because he believed that he was a rightfully elected pope, he fled from the council. As he crossed the river Rhine, he was arrested by the soldiers of the emperor who were waiting for him, was brought back, and tried. He was accused of immorality of the worst sort, poisoning his predecessors, squandering the church's wealth, simony, intolerable avarice etc. He was deposed and also the other two popes. The council fathers were enraged and it passed the decree Haec Sancta in 1415. This holy synod of Constance declares that legitimately assembled in the holy spirit constituting a general council and representing the catholic church militant it has power immediately from Christ and that everyone of whatever state or dignity even papal is bound to obey in those matters which pertain to the faith, the eradication of the present schism and the general reform of the church of God in head and in members. 26
It clearly said that the Council was above the Pope and stressed reform in head and in members. The papacy too had to be reformed. Thus the council of Constance passed a radical decree came to be called Conciliarism. In order to ensure the reform of the church in head and in members in 1417, the council passed another decree called Frequens, that is a decree calling for frequent celebration of general councils. It elected Martin V as the new Pope (1417-31). As part of its programme of doctrinal reforms it condemned two popular theologians of the time, John Wycliffe and Jan Huss. The latter was burnt alive. The former escaped this fate because he was already dead, but his bones were exhumed and burnt. Following the requirements of Frequens a council was called in the Swiss city of Basel in 1431 but the pope of the time Eugene IV was hostile to it from the beginning mainly because he was afraid of it, remembering what the council of Constance had done to popes. After a long struggle, he transferred it to the Italian city of Ferrara in 1437 and later to another Italian city, Florence in 1439 and some followed him but others remained on in Basel and thus there were two councils. Meanwhile the Turks were threatening to attack Constantinople and there was a desire in Constantinople for a reunion with the Roman church partly because they hoped that it would bring in military help from the west and so there was a discussion in Florence with some delegates of the orthodox church for a reunion. A formula of reunion was drawn up but it was rejected soon by the orthodox church. In the meanwhile the council at Basel following the council of Constance declared that conciliarism was a dogma of the church and said that the pope should obey the council and elected a rival pope who took the name Felix V but this move proved disastrous for them because few people wanted a new papal schism again and so they lost support and the council was forcibly closed by the city authorities. This council is known as the council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence or simply the Council of Florence. The outcome was that the popes became increasingly hostile to councils and ignored the decree of the council of Constance which had stipulated that there should be periodic councils for the reform of the church. In this way, they were suppressing the only organ which was capable of enacting reforms in the church. In fact, In 1462, Pius II in his bull Execrabilis condemned appeals from the pope to a general council saying "A horrible abuse, unheard of in earlier times has sprung up in our period. Some men imbued with the spirit of rebellion suppose that they can appeal from the Pope, vicar of Christ to a future council. Desirous therefore of banishing this deadly poison from the church of Christ we condemn appeals of this kind and reject them as erroneous and abominable and declare them to be completely null and void". There are a lot of debates even today about the validity of the decrees of the council of Constance. But the fact is that Constance is an ecumenical council and the decrees were never formally rescinded. Evidently the papal schism discredited the papacy considerably. Added to that was what came to be called the Renaissance Papacy: Renaissance means rebirth. It refers to the literary and artistic revival which began in 14th century in Italy resulting in revival of the study of the literature of antiquity, the Greek and Latin classics, revival of painting, sculpture, architecture etc. In short, revival of art and culture in Europe. It had a secular outlook and an openness to the world. It was facilitated by Greek Scholars who fled from Constantinople in 1453 and took refuge in Rome. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Petrarch etc. were prominent among them. A number of Popes came under the spell of this movement and spent considerable amount of their time and attention to the rebuilding of the city of Rome, to make it the capital not 27
only of Christianity but also of art and culture. The spiritual cause was secondary for most of them. Renaissance papacy has become a proverbial expression for "nepotism, corruption, tremendous luxury, boundless sensuality, and uninhibited vice". The first was Nicholas V (144754). Sixtus IV (1471-84) elevated six of his nephews to be cardinals. The Sistine chapel and the Sistine choir bear his name and the Vatican archives and the Vatican library are his contributions. The most notorious Renaissance pope was of course was Alexander VI (14921503) who was a synonym for renaissance criminality and corruption and lived an openly licentious life keeping several mistresses and fathering at least 10 illegitimate children including two who were born while he was pope. He engaged Michaelangelo to draw the plans for the rebuilding of St Peter’s basilica and died, it seems when a poisoned cup of wine which was intended for a guest at a party was given to him by mistake. No pope has ever surpassed him in notoriety. He is said to have approved the rosary as a prayer in 1495. Julius II (1503-1513) had nothing of the priest in him except the dress and the name He was nick-named The Terrible because of his hobby which was waging wars. Leo X (1513-1521) was made a cardinal at the age of 13 and became Pope in 1513. Hubert Jedin says: "He was guilty of shocking negligence, irresponsible frivolity and prodigal love of pleasure". He called the Lateran V (1512-1517) council to reform the church and concluded it just three months before Martin Luther posted his ninety five theses at Wittenberg with these words: Finally it was reported to us on several occasions through the cardinals and the prelates of the three committees of the council that no topic remained for them to discuss and that over several months nothing at all had been brought before them by anyone.” And when he was told about the epoch-making event of the beginning of the Reformation on 31st October 1517 by Martin Luther, he dismissed it calling it a "squabble of monks in Germany". Of course Renaissance papacy is attacked by the Protestants and even by catholic historians and rightly so. But we must also be appreciative of the values associated with the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a rebellion against the church’s rejection of the human in many ways, music, art, aesthetics and emphasized the beauty of creation, especially of the human body, human sexuality, which are in line with the incarnation. The popes of the Renaissance were actually promoting a healthy and more positive vision of Christianity, a move away from the rather negative spirituality of suffering, cross, penance, retreat from the world etc which was widely prevalent for some time. Reactions to Western Christendom We already spoke of various movements in the early Middle Ages which were initiated by lay men and women protesting against the institutional church but many of them were condemned as heretics by the church. But Criticism of the church, especially of the papacy was never lacking, now from the intellectuals and clergy themselves. For example William of Ockham (d. 1347) was a Franciscan Friar and was a professor of theology at Oxford University. One of the great philosophers of the time he argued that truth could be found in any member of the church and rejected the indefectibility both of the pope and of the council. Marsilius of Padua (d. 1343), professor at the university of Paris argued for a democratic conception of the Church. He said, the church is a communion of the faithful and all the faithful, represented through a council is more important than a single individual, the pope. Both of them argued for the independence of the state from the Church, sovereignty of the people, and a democratic set up for the Church. 28
John Wycliffe (1328-84) was a priest and professor at the university of Oxford. As a theologian he was rooted in the Bible and the Fathers and relied little on speculation. He advocated the church to go back Jesus and the primitive church; preached against the powerful and rich Church of his time. Against the rich church he said all Christians must follow Jesus in his poverty. The secular power should deprive the Church of her power and help to reestablish the original church he said. Papal authority was not founded on scripture nor monasticism and religious life. The Eucharistic doctrine of transubstantiation was rejected because he wanted to free the Eucharist from superstitious popular cult. His views were unorthodox on many points. During his life-time all ecclesiastical actions against him remained ineffective because of the support he enjoyed among the nobility and the people; but he was condemned posthumously, and his remains were exhumed and burnt in 1428 in accordance with the decision of the Council of Constance which condemned 45 articles from his teachings, dealing with a wide range of issues, like the Eucharist, sacraments, predestination, indulgences, clergy, religious orders papacy, and many other things. Another critic of the church was Jan Hus (1372-1415) from Bohemia in today’s Czech Republic. He too was a priest, a popular preacher and teacher at the university of Prague, was influenced by Wycliffe. He preached in his native Czech language and attacked the excessive wealth of the church and the hierarchical structure of the church. He also spoke against the worldliness of the clergy. In 1411 he was excommunicated by Pope John XXIII. He appealed to be heard at a council. He was summoned to the Council of Constance and was promised safe conduct but contrary to the promise made by the emperor, he was arrested, tried, imprisoned and was burnt alive in 1415. Both Wycliffe and Hus had a real but indirect influence on the Reformation. Another popular reform movement was the Devotio Moderna, or Modern Devotion, a lay movement which was begun by Gerard Groote (1340-80). He began a life of wandering preaching, and called on the people to follow Christ in his simplicity and poverty. He criticized the life of the clergy, especially, simony and concubinage, and the abuses in the monasteries. His movement known as the Brethren of the Common Life emphasized a simple form of piety, and sought to foster a higher level of Christian life and devotion. His method of prayer focused on biblical imageries significantly influenced the approaches to Christian meditation. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis (d. 1471), a Brother of the Common Life, outlines the concepts of Modern Devotion, based on personal piety and devotion to Christ, especially in its advocacy of suffering, which was a theme in the Middle Ages. Another reformer was Girolamo Savonarola, the fiery Dominican preacher, who clashed with the Church authorities in his native city Florence with his apocalyptic preaching, and was condemned as a heretic and burnt at the stake together with two other Dominicans (1498) at the command of Alexander VI. Joan of Arc was condemned as a heretic and burnt alive in 1431. Humanism was another movement which embodied many of the principles of the Reformers and demanded radical reforms in the Church. The humanists called for a return to the original spirit of Christianity, and to its original sources (Ad Fontes). The greatest of the humanists was born in the second half of the fifteenth century, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) a contemporary of Martin Luther, who saw in the gospels the “philosophy of Christ.” According to him, the end and aim of the faith of the gospel is the conduct worthy of Christ. Measured against this standard, much of contemporary Christianity was a gross perversion of the gospel, which called forth hefty criticism from him. The reformers were helped in their endeavours by the invention of the printing press developed by the German, John Gutenberg in 1450. 29
The fifteenth century also saw the end of the east Roman empire, when Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453. One of the results of this was the Portuguese and Spanish explorations whose original aim was to find an alternative sea route to the East to buy pepper and other spices and precious commodities. The fall of Constantinople blocked the arrival of spices in Europe considerably. In 1492 Columbus landed in the Caribbean Island Guanahani, today San Salvador. That was the beginning of the colonization and Christianization of the Americas. In 1498 Vasco da Gama landed at Kozhikode in Kerala, South India, and that was the beginning of the colonization of India and the long contact of the Europeans with Asia. On their way to India the Portuguese had also a brief stopover in Africa, with the kingdom of Congo (today’s Angola). However, the Church there lasted only for half a century (1491-1541) because the Portuguese were more interested in “slaves, copper and ivory” than in establishing Christianity in Africa. The whole colonial enterprise was regulated by the popes, especially by the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 by which Alexander VI divided the whole world between Spain and Portugal (Donation of Alexander). The Middle Ages is a very complex period in the history of the church. Many church historians tend to think that it was a second dark age of the church, especially the Protestants who regard this period as a period of corruption of Christianity the answer to which was the Reformation. Particularly attacked is the papacy, the blame for which should be borne by it, to a large measure. But to call the Middle Ages a dark period is not a fully objective assessment. We cannot judge any period from our standpoints now. Each age has its own positive and negative aspects. We want to make a few remarks about the life of ordinary people in the Middle Ages because usually we deal with popes, and bishops and theologians and emperors. But what about the people? How did they live? What kind of religion did they practice? What was expected of them? What was they supposed to know? According to pope Innocent IV (1243-54) the laity were bound to believe explicitly that God exists and rewards the good, and implicitly the articles of the faith. They could seek to know more but if they could not it was not a sin but it was sufficient for them to do good works. Some bishops demanded more, the seven sacraments, the our father, the articles of the creed, and the hail Mary. Provided they did not propagate heretical doctrines, nobody paid much attention to the religious knowledge of the laity. Today it is not different. As far as Christian life was concerned, life of the Christian revolved around the sacraments. The council of Lyons in 1274 declared that there are seven sacraments. The basic religious requirements were reception of these sacraments as far as it concerned them. Other requirements were payment of tithes, observance of Sundays and feast days, fasting on the week days of lent, ember days or fasts of the four seasons, vigils of major feast days, and abstinence on these fast days and on all Fridays. There were many optional devotions, especially Eucharistic devotions like adoration which substituted for the dry mass in Latin where communion was not received except for three or four times a year, because one was unworthy to receive it, and Eucharistic processions. Daily mass was not a compulsory thing but it became common because of the practice of mass for the dead. Pilgrimages were common, and places were Rome, holy land and Santiago de Compostella in Spain. There were also confraternities or pious associations, some of which were very weird. Flagellants were people who went about scourging themselves doing penance for the sins of others, especially in the times of famine, war, and pest like the black 30
death (1347) which wiped out one third of the population of Europe and which were considered to be divine punishments for which penance had to be done. Some preachers reinforced these ideas by preaching about death and punishment all the time, thus instilling in the people fear and guilt. The Middle ages were the time also of learning. The first universities of the west were founded in the 12th century in Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. Universitas means the whole body of people, or corporation. The number grew in the subsequent centuries; fifteen more founded in the 13th century, 23 more in the 14th century, and 34 more in the 15th century. Originally their function was to educate priests because the seminaries came into existence only after the council of Trent in the 16th century. The interest in art and architecture can be seen in the great cathedrals of the middle ages, and the great sculptures and paintings which are preserved to our day. Church music was popular. The origin of it was from the chanting of the psalms in the monasteries. Medieval Europe was a closed society, culturally and religiously. The relations with Jews and Muslims were hostile and deteriorated during this period. The Jews numbered perhaps half a million out of a population of some sixty million. There were many persecutions and discriminations against them all over Europe. They lived in small enclaves and were merchants and traders. They were pressurized to become Christians, or expelled. The attitudes to the Muslims were outlined when we dealt with the crusades. It was not tolerant either. One special remark must be made about the belief in magic and witchcraft, the possibility of intervention by persons or forces beyond this world. It was generally accepted that it was possible, and especially strong was the belief in evil spirits. This was the background of the unfortunate practice of persecution of witches or witch hunting which was practiced in the middle ages with the help of the church. Witchcraft is malevolent exercise of extra-terrestrial powers by women, attributed to a connection with demons. Thousands of women were burnt under the accusation that they were partners with the devil. 1258 - Alexander IV initiated steps against witches 1320 - John XXII asks the inquisition to proceed against witches. 1484 - Innocent VIII asks the inquisition to use severe measures. 1487 - The Dominicans produced the notorious hammer of Witches, a handbook on witches. The reasons for the burning of witches 1. The demonology developed by Scholasticism. 2. The Dominicans and their pernicious handbook Malleus maleficarum 3. Papacy and curia - The bull of Innocent III in 1484 authorizing the Inquisition to deal with witches. 4. The emperor and the secular authorities and their readiness to co-operate with the church.
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5. Denunciation by the people. The reasons for hatred towards witches. 1. Reactions from the peasantry to the cursing of individual women. 2. Patriarchal anxiety about these solitary women, and their knowledge of medicine and contraception. 3. Hostile attitude of trained doctors to their popular medicine, and midwifery practised by them. 4. Women as scapegoat for impotence and barrenness, for the failure of harvests, natural disasters, sickness, death. 6. General opposition to any underground popular culture. It is believed that some 100,000 women were killed; with the exception of the persecution of the Jews, it was the greatest mass killing outside war. The first protest came from a Jesuit, Friedrich von Spee in 1631, then from the Protestant Christian Thomasius.
Sixteenth Century The Reformation and the Catholic Reform or sometimes called Counter Reformation are the themes that dominate the 16th century. After the painful division between East and West in the 11th century, now the western church also is divided, The word Reformation is used to refer to many simultaneous movements in Western Christianity in the first half of the sixteenth century, which led to its division into several groups, Roman Catholics on the side and Lutherans, Reformed Churches, Anglicans (mainline Protestant Churches) and the Anabaptists which formed the non-Catholic side, on the other. Later, from these non Catholic groups several churches emerged like the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and several other denominations. The term “Protestant” is generally applied to all these non-Catholic Christians other than the Orthodox Churches. The word is traced back to the so-called “Protestation of Speyer” when in an attempt to suppress the Reformation in Germany a meeting was called by the emperor Charles V in the German city of Speyer in 1529, and at this meeting six German princes made a formal “protestation” against it citing their right to freedom of religion. Beginning of the Reformation The date that is usually assigned to the beginning of the Reformation is October 31, 1517 when Martin Luther (1483-1546), an Augustinian monk and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, posted the ninety-five theses on the door of the Church of Wittenberg. The medieval church was in need of reform and there were many calls for reform. In fact, the council of Constance which was called to end the papal schism said that one of its chief concerns is reform of the church in head and in members, reformatio in capite et in membris, but nothing happened. Pope Leo X concluded the Lateran Council V (1512-1517) just three months before Martin Luther posted his ninety five theses at Wittenberg with these words: Finally it was reported to us on several occasions through the cardinals and the prelates of the three committees of the council that no topic remained for them to discuss and that over several 32
months nothing at all had been brought before them by anyone.” There were many attacks by intellectuals like John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, William of Ockham, Erasmus of Rotterdam, etc. against the medieval church and its practices. In other words, the church was in need of reform and it was not forthcoming and the Reformation was the answer. The life-blood of the church had ceased to flow through its veins. Its legal system was very much in need of overhaul. It was used to tax, to extract money by the curia which was dominated by the Italians Its administrative system, the curia had become notoriously corrupt and inefficient and was accused of nepotism. The morals of the hierarchy, popes, bishops, clergy, and in the monasteries were lax and scandalous. So there was much anti-clericalism and anti-papalism. There wide spread absenteeism of the bishops and priests from their dioceses and parishes. Most ecclesiastical posts were acquired through financial, or political influences. The church was also in need of spiritual reform. Educated people wanted the church to go back to the freshness and vitality of the faith of the apostolic times by going back to the Scriptures and the Fathers. Medieval religion according to them was superstitious and ritualistic. We need to say something about it to understand the concerns of Martin Luther and the principles of the Reformers. There was plenty of religion in the Middle Ages and the reason for it was a great existential anxiety, fear of death, eternity, hell, purgatory etc. This was caused by the many famines and plagues which occurred in the 14th century. The Bubonic Plague or Black Death wiped out one third of the European population from 1347-1349. Death was everywhere. Death, judgment, hell etc were the favourite themes of preaching. John of Capistrano always carried a skull when he preached and Richard of Paris always preached in the cemetery. This existential anxiety led to moral anxiety, anxiety about a moral life, and guilt feelings. People resorted to all sorts of piety and penitential practices to free themselves from this anxiety. The Flagellants went from place to place and whipped themselves, atoning for their own sins, and of others. Ordinarily people preferred less severe practices like buying of indulgences, pilgrimages, collection of relics, veneration of saints, Eucharistic adoration, recital of the rosary, etc. Rich people made arrangements for masses to be said for their souls, like Henry VIII who made arrangements for masses to be said for his soul till the" world shall endure". The confessionals notoriously reinforced guilt. Confession was prescribed from age 7. The priests would ask questions to see whether someone sinned against the Ten commandments. The penance was heavy. To avoid purgatory and hell, people had to perform them. They had to do all sorts of things to acquire merits, so traffic in indulgences, arrangements for masses to be said for those who are dead, arrangements for churches to be built, monasteries to be endowed, etc. because, "One spark of hell fire is greater than that caused by a thousand years of a woman's labour in child birth". The mass had become a ritual, one of the good works the priest performed. So here was spirituality of works and for many such a spirituality was unsatisfying. There was also a crisis in Christian theology. Luther, Calvin etc. thought that the church had lost its intellectual heritage and deviated from the distinctive ideas of the Christian faith and Christian ethics. Scholasticism made Christianity abstract and it itself was in crisis. Added to that was the 33
lack of authority and doctrinal pluralism. What was Christian faith and what was theological opinion was not clear and there was no central authority to give clear directions and clarifications. The immediate cause of the Reformation was the indulgence controversy. Indulgence: The remission by the church of the temporal penalty due to forgiven sin in virtue of the merits of Christ and the saints. 1. Man's sin must have a penalty either here on earth or after death, even after reconciliation. 2. The existence of a treasury of merits of Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saints. 3. The Church has the right to administer this to the faithful in consideration of prayer or other works. Its usage originated perhaps during the crusades. Any bishops could declare indulgences. From 1587 only the pope can declare an indulgence. Slowly the Church realized its financial implications, especially in connection with the dead and the remission of their sins. People could buy indulgences for the remission of purgatorial penalties of themselves or their dead relatives. In 1505 pope Julius II (1503-1513) began the building the basilica of St. Peter in Rome. In 1506 he announces the “Peter’s Indulgence” in order to finance it In 1513 – bishop Albert of Brandenburg aged 23, became archbishop of Magdeburg and next year he acquired the Archdiocese of Mainz by promising to pay a huge sum of money to Rome. He had to borrow 29,000 gold coins to pay the money. Later he found it difficult to repay the money to the bankers. The curia suggested a good way to pay back the debt and also to help the basilica project. He should allow the preaching of Peter’s Indulgence in his dioceses for 8 years and half of the money he could keep for himself and the other half he should give to the pope. So the preaching was launched by a special bull of the Pope Sacrosanctis Salvatores et Redemptoris, and the Dominican preacher John Tetzel, was deputed to preach it who was accompanied by the bank officials. It was a whole scale commercial transaction and a full fledged scandal. When they began preaching in Magdeburg, the neighbouring town of Luther, he strongly came out against it. He rightly said that the people were fleeing the penalties of sin, not sin itself. Penance is to affect one's whole life. Forgiveness is God's gift and the Pope cannot grant it for payment of money. Luther summed up his position in 95 theses, sent them to the bishop. It seems he did not reply. So on 31st October 1517 he made his theses public. Whether he nailed them on the door of the church of Wittenberg is a debated question. It received great publicity. People were waiting for something like that. The Theses contained orthodox teaching. This can be called the beginning of the Reformation. To this emotive issue Luther soon added many other issues later on. The papacy and the hierarchical structure of the church, the sacraments, much of Catholic piety and devotions, 34
monasticism and religious life. At the root of all this was his emphasis on Scripture and the rejection of Tradition and church authority and his emphasis on the justification of the sinner through faith to the exclusion of good works. The Progress of the Reformation The theses spread far and wide. Luther in fact did not want that. In 1518 Luther wrote to Pope Leo X, explaining why he did it, and asserting that he was not a heretic. But Luther was summoned to Augsburg by Albert of Mainz for a disputation with the Papal legate Cardinal Cajetan. He refused to recant and fearing imprisonment and burning, he escaped to the protection of, Frederick of Saxony, and called for a general council to discuss the matter. In 1519 another disputation took place with the papal legate John Eck who branded Luther a heretic. Luther now attacked most of Catholicism. He said Scripture is the sole norm and there is no authority above it. In 1520 he also produced his famous reform writings. 1. Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate. Call to the secular leaders to take the reform of the Church in their hands. Rejected all papal and curial power and exploitation, rejected monastic life, celibacy, indulgence, mass for the dead, feasts of saints, pilgrimages, religious orders etc. and stressed the priesthood of all believers. 2. The Babylonian captivity of the Church. Only two sacraments baptism and Eucharist. Rejected the sacrificial character of the Mass, transubstantiation, and advocated communion under both species. 3. On the Freedom of the Christian. Justification by faith and the freedom of the Christian. By then the Pope woke up. On 15th June 1520, in his bull Exsurge Domine: he lamented: "A wild boar has invaded thy vineyard, O Lord." Luther was threatened with excommunication if he did not recant within 60 days. Luther reacted by burning the bull and a copy of canon law in public and published a pamphlet called, Against the Accursed Bull of the Antichrist. On January 3rd 1521 Luther was excommunicated. The emperor Charles V called the Diet of Worms in 1521 asking Luther to recant. Luther refuses to recant and the emperor put him under ban of the empire. Luther escaped to his protector, the Elector of Saxony and lived hidden there in Warteburg castle for 8 months. There he translated the Bible into German and became the founder of the modern German language. He renounced monastic life and celibacy and many friars left the monastery and married the nuns from the neighbouring convents, so also many priests. In 1524 Luther himself took one of them
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as his wife, Catharine von Bora, a Cistercian nun to "flout the devil and his scales and all those who are mad enough to forbid priests to marry". The Lutheran movement gained wide support in Germany and outside. But the emperor was not willing to allow Luther's ideas to spread. In 1529 he called the Diet of Speyer to eradicate Reformation ideas. The German princes who supported Luther lodged a formal Protest branding it as religious intolerance and thence, the name Protestant for the movement. In 1530 the Reformers formulated the famous Augsburg Confession which constituted the official Protestant doctrine as opposed to the Roman Catholic one. Luther died in 1546 and by then he was the undisputed leader of the Reformation with appeal well beyond the boundaries of Germany. The conflict between the emperor and the German princes continued which plunged Germany into religious wars and conflicts. It officially came to an end only in 1555 at the Peace of Augsburg where the famous principle was adopted: Cuius regio eius religio (of whom the region of him the religion). Reformation in Switzerland It began with Huldrych Zwingly (1484-1531), a humanist, and a priest in Zurich where in 1522 he began preaching against many practices of the church and initiated many reforms. It was continued by John Calvin (1509-64) who consolidated the movement and became the second most important figure of the Reformation after Luther and founded the Reformed churches. In fact with him Protestantism became a world power. His idea on the Reformation are contained in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). The Reformed tradition distinguished itself from Lutheranism in many aspects, like the symbolic character of the Eucharist, rejection of images, the theory of “Election” and predestination, the presbyteral Church order, etc. Reformation in England The third centre of the Reformation was England under Henry VIII, not on account of doctrinal issues, but because of his quarrel with pope Clement VII who refused to grant annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon because he wanted to marry his court girl, Anne Boleyn. In 1534 he broke with Rome and declared himself supreme head on earth of the Church of England. It followed the theology of Protestantism (Calvinism) but retained some of its ancient traditions (liturgy, episcopate etc), and became the Anglican or Episcopalian (in America) tradition. It took definitive shape under Queen Elisabeth in (1558-1603). In the 39 Articles the Anglican Church formulated its final confession of faith. Other Reformers Simultaneously, there were also other Reformers whose movements developed into three major groups: (1) radical revolutionaries, fanatics and enthusiasts; (2) Anabaptists (re-baptizers); (3) and spiritualists and mystics. They were persecuted throughout Europe both by Protestants and Catholics. Thomas Muentzer, Andreas Karlstadt, Balthasar Hubmaier, Conrad Grebel, Melchior Hoffmann, Menno Simons, Sebastian Franck, Jacob Boehme, Jan Mattys etc are some of the important personalities among them. Reformation also gave birth to great social upheavals in Europe. In 1524 the Peasants War irrupted in Germany. The peasants, suffering under feudalism for centuries, revolted against the 36
exploitation by the land-owners. They based themselves on the teachings of Luther, especially his teaching on the sole authority of Scripture and the freedom of the Christian. However, The Peasants’ War was suppressed brutally by the rulers, and Luther supported it. In 1525 Thomas Muentzer and a radical group of his followers proclaimed the Kingdom of God in Muehlhausen, a society of equality with common property and a radically democratic constitution. At the battle of Frankenhausen, he was captured and executed. In 1535 the Anabaptist revolution in Muenster met with a similar end. They wanted to establish a Kingdom of the Saints, and introduced such practices as polygamy. The movement was brutally suppressed and its leaders were executed. Theology of the Reformers 1. Justification by Faith This was one of the fundamental doctrines of the Reformation. It began on account of this. There are misunderstanding that other issues like the papacy were the cause of the Reformation. This is not true. The Reformation was the result of a theological problem. Justification - redemption through Christ which implies victory over evil, forgiveness of sin, reconciliation with God, liberation from bondage, restoration of wholeness; in other words justification means salvation. Human beings are brought into a right relationship with God. How are human beings justified? How does a sinful human being enter into a relationship with a righteous God, just God? What must I as an individual do to be saved? This became the central concern of Luther after his study of Paul and Augustine and his own personal experience. First he followed the teachings of the Via Moderna which said if a human being does what is in his power, his best, God will do his part and he will be saved. Luther was not satisfied. How can a human being satisfy a just God? Will what he does be ever adequate to satisfy a God? Then Luther makes his famous discovery, the correct understanding of the Righteousness of God. It is not to be understood as justice of God but as UNCONDITIONAL GRACE OF GOD which alone justifies the sinner. He says this is the gospel (Rom 3,28). Human works are useless. It is God's grace and man's faith that save. The church was burdening people with a lot of external things. So the famous doctrine of Luther and the Reformation: JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH ALONE, where faith is a passive thing, a humble acceptance of the grace of God. Luther did not reject good works. He simply said, good works are the results of justification and not the cause. This doctrine had far reaching consequences for the church and its theology. One area it touched was the penitential practices of the church where confession to a priest was mandatory. Forgiveness could moreover be bought through good works or money. Luther dealt a death blow to these practices. Forgiveness was a matter between the believer and God. It was the grace of God. Purgatory was not real and with purgatory went a number of practices of the 37
church. Moreover he said all believers are equal and there was no need for confessing to a priest. In other words Luther, with his doctrine justification by faith alone marginalized the institutional church. God's grace was available to all, irrespective of status, financial position, without the mediation of the priest or the church. 2. Scriptura Sola (by Scripture alone) To bring the beliefs and practices of the church in line with Scripture. Justification by Faith is the material principle of the Reformation and Scriptura sola its formal principle. Nobody denied that Scripture was not important or that it was the primary norm for Christians. But the by the end of the middle ages the concept of tradition had come to be of major importance in relation to Scripture, tradition as a separate source of revelation, in addition to Scripture going back to the apostles themselves, passed on from generation to generation. Scripture did not contain everything. A belief thus not based on Scripture may be justified by this appeal to tradition. This was challenged by the Reformers. They simply wanted to go back to the world of God. They also challenged the Bible in use as faulty. They redefined the canon of the Bible excluding the Old Testament apocrypha. Purgatory and prayer for the dead were based on some of them, like the book of the Maccabees. They said Scripture has absolute authority, not popes and councils and bishops. Authority of the office bearers comes from the word of God not from the office itself or historical continuity. They stressed doctrinal continuity rather than historical continuity. The radical Reformers rejected all traditions whatsoever. The mainstream Reformers accepted tradition understood as the correct way of interpreting Scripture and those traditions which are the results of correctly interpreting Scripture. For example, they accepted all the traditions from the period of the Fathers of the church. They accepted all the dogmas and traditions of the church from this period. But they said, the medieval church has invented any traditions which have no scriptural backing. Who may interpret Scripture? The radical Reformers said, anyone can interpret Scripture. In the beginning Luther said any good Christian can interpret Scripture but later he said only those who have the necessary linguistic sills, knowledge of languages, and theories, and not every one. Luther's Lesser Catechism and Calvin's Institutes were helps for ordinary people to interpret Scripture. This was because of the anarchy caused by the radical Reformers who freely interpreted Scripture. Luther himself denounced the peasants' revolt who had appealed to Scripture and wanted justice and equality. 3. Sacraments Sacramentum means something which is consecrated. 38
Church rites and clerical actions which were signs of invisible grace, channels of grace. There were seven sacraments in the medieval church. The whole system came under severe attack by the Reformers. They considered the whole sacramental system a creation of the scholastics, medieval additions which made Christianity complicated. The sacraments revealed the public face of the church. The way they were celebrated pointed to the corruption in the church. The mass was said in Latin and the priest himself did not understand what he was saying. The theory of transubstantiation was a fanciful thing to many people. The mass was considered a good work, a sacrifice performed by the priest. The people were not offered the consecrated wine. The Reformers now brought out their sacramental theology. Sacraments are divine accommodations to human weakness. We need them because we need signs. They are not channels of grace but convey the promise of God, the pledge of God. There are only two sacraments according to the NT - Baptism and the Eucharist. The unjustified prominence of the priest in the celebration of the sacrament was rejected. Among the Reformers Luther accepted the real presence but the Reformed tradition rejected it. Infant baptism was justified saying that it was a tradition of the church according to the Fathers. They also said it was like circumcision which was performed even on children as a mark of their acceptance into the Jewish community. Calvin also brought forward the idea that sacraments encourage Christians to value creation because material elements can signify the grace, generosity and goodness of God. 4. The Church The Reformers were convinced that the church of their day had deviated from the gospel and its central message, the graciousness of God. It had therefore no right to claim to be the authentic church of God. But in the beginning Luther was not interested in creating a schism. He wanted to reform the church. Unfortunately there was no real mechanism to effect a dialogue between the warring parties. The Council of Trent which was called only 30 years after the nailing of the 95 theses did not effect any reconciliation but condemned the Protestants and that sealed the division. In fact, both Luther and the emperor wanted a council but this was not listened to. Popes had come to dislike councils. The radical Reformers rejected any notion of the church. For them the true church is in heaven. For Luther, church was the congregation of people where the Word of God is preached.
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An episcopally ordained ministry is therefore not necessary nor any other structure. The gospel is the norm of the church. But some institutions are necessary because the church consists of both sinners and saints. Institution is a historical contingency, not a scriptural prescription. Calvin said the marks of the true church were that the word of God is preached and sacraments are rightly administered. He constituted a church order according to the NT, with the office of pastor, doctor or teacher, elders and deacons. Moreover, he instituted the consistory consisting of pastors and elders for enforcing discipline. Calvin considered the church as necessary just like the incarnation. It was God's means of salvation for his people. The church was necessary for sanctification. He quoted Cyprian: "You cannot have God as your father, unless you have the church as your mother" and outside the church there is no salvation. Political Thought The medieval order was the dominance of spiritual power over temporal power. Luther demolished this distinction by his doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. All Christians are equal by their baptism. He did not abolish the place of ministry in the church. Though all are equal they have different functions. But ministry rests on the word of God which it serves. Moreover, it depends on the commission of the people. They perceive a particular gift in an individual and therefore they appoint him. Luther however draws a distinction between the spiritual authority and worldly government of society, in his theory of the two kingdoms. Both are performing the works of God. Both are founded on the word of God. They co-exist. They have their rightful functions. Thus Luther gave a divine justification for temporal authority. He also said this power cannot be opposed even if it became tyrannical. During the Peasants' Revolt, Luther asked the civil authorities to brutally suppress it. This led to domination of church by government in Germany. The failure of the Lutheran church to oppose Hitler Luther's theological justification for this was that the Sermon on the Mount applies to Christians as private individuals but not when they hold public office. Luther was a monarchist. Calvin admitted the need for temporal authority. It also has both political and ecclesiastical functions. They are not competitive but complementary. He mistrusted monarchy. The radical Reformers rejected all external authority. They hated coercion, and advocated nonresistance. They maintained discipline through the ban. Predestination 40
An important doctrine for the Reformed church. It means the absolute sovereignty of God. The Reformed tradition understood the unconditional grace of God as his absolute sovereignty and providence. And it originated in a personal experience of Zwingli, during the famine of 1519-20. He felt helpless and realized that his life was in the hands of God and God saved him while thousands of people perished. So God is the unconditional sovereign and lord of all individuals and society. Thus it is a doctrine of divine providence and the Reformers felt that their very call as Reformers was divine providence. Calvin developed this further. Augustine was the one who propagated this theory. God's grace is necessary but is not given to all. Some are saved, some are damned, or God passes them over. Calvin now says there is absolute double predestination. God saves some and positively damns the others. This saving of God he calls election. Those who are saved are the elect. He bases his theory on experience. Why do some people not receive the gospel? God must be the cause. It is a general mystery of human existence he says. Why are some rich and others poor? Salvation lies outside the sphere of the individual. But he does not try to explain this. He says, it lies in the inscrutable mystery of God. It is useless to say that God is whimsical and capricious. The concept of election became very important in Calvinism. The Puritans who went to America saw themselves as the elect, the chosen people entering the promised land. The social vision of international Calvinism was based on the doctrine of providence and predestination and election. That was the cause of the success of Calvinism throughout the world. They were fired by this idea. Thus the basic impulse of the Reformation was a return of the Church to the gospel of Jesus Christ as it was experienced in a living way in Holy Scripture, especially in Paul. It had three aspects: The primacy of Scripture against all traditions, laws, and authorities that have grown up in the course of centuries. The primacy of Christ against all mediators between God and human beings. The Primacy of grace and faith against all pious religious human achievements and efforts to achieve the salvation of the soul, primacy of grace of God as shown in the cross of Jesus and faith as the unconditional surrender to God in Jesus dead and risen. From this basic position he developed a totally new way of looking at the Christian faith. A new understanding of God (as gracious), human beings (as free), the Church (as a community of the believers) sacraments (not as rituals but as signs of trusting faith in God). From These
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Criticism of the idea of the sacrifice of the Mass, private masses, denial of chalice to the laity, and emphasized preaching, vernacular communication etc. Criticism of office: papacy, bishops, councils, hierarchical priesthood, divine element in church law; emphasized priesthood of all believers, church office as service, liturgy facing people etc. stressed. Criticism of monasticism and mendicancy as a religious value; emphasis on worldly profession, work. Criticism of the Church's traditions which were not justified by Scripture; rejection of veneration of saints, fasts, pilgrimages, processions, mass for the dead; cult of relics etc. Criticism of the law of celibacy as not in keeping with the gospel and as devaluation of sexuality, women, marriage, and family. Some problematical aspects of the Reformation 1. Intolerance and Inability to Unify Luther's attitude to the peasants' war under Thomas Müntzer (1490-1525) who interpreted the Reformation in a social sense. (1524-1526) Due to the economic distress peasants rose against feudalism. They demanded radical implementation of the Reformation ideals here and now. Wanted freedom from bondage, the establishment of Christ's Kingdom here on earth. They demanded the abolition of serfdom, right to elect their pastors, more social justice etc. They became violent. Luther asked the authorities to intervene mercilessly. Thomas Müntzer was executed in 1525 and many peasants were killed. This was suppressed for a long time in Protestantism till in 1848 Engels wrote the first history of the peasants' war. Luther was not ready to draw such radical political and social conclusion from his theory of the freedom of the Christian. He did not want to support the just demands of the peasants although he knew them to be right. Suppression of the Radical Reformers who had substantially differed from the mainline Reformers because of their radical consistency with regard to the main Reformation principle, Scriptura Sola. They were brutally persecuted and exterminated by tens of thousands by both Protestants and Catholics. 2. State Control: Instead of the Papal Church Protestantism became a state church. The local rulers gained uncontrolled power. The ideal of free Christian community was not realized. The local ruler became worse than the Papacy which they wanted to reject. He oppressed the people for political gains. Authoritarianism and absolutism by the ruler became rampant. This connection with the secular powers weakened the resistance of the Lutheran church to Nazism in Germany. 3. Fundamentalism 42
There was a time when all Protestants were called fundamentalists. This is not correct. Luther was not a fundamentalist. A fundamentalist is someone who confesses the literal inspiration and therefore the unconditional inerrancy of the Bible. There are many Protestant denominations which advocate fundamentalism. Catholic Response The Catholic response is called Catholic reform or sometimes counter Reformation. The Catholic church was slow to confront the Protestant challenge. The two popes during the initial periods of the Reformation were known for their worldliness and immorality, Leo X 1513-21) and Clement VII (1523-34). So the criticism against the papacy was valid to a great extent. Luther had actually asked for a general council but the popes were not willing to call it. As we already noted, Leo X concluded the V Lateran Council three months before the outbreak of the Reformation saying that there were no matters to be discussed. But then gradually the church regained strength and confidence to address the challenge. It began with a reform minded pope, Paul III (1534-49). Although before becoming the pope he was morally quite lax with a mistress and four children, as pope he was morally austere and determined and he finally called the Council of Trent in 1545 and promoted a number of religious orders, notable among them the Society of Jesus which he approved in 1540. The popes following him concluded the council of Trent and tried to implement its decrees and showed towards the Protestants no accommodation but firmness. Most controversial was the excommunication of queen Elizabeth of England in 1570 and as a result the severe persecution of Catholics by her who were considered as traitors. But as we will see, the papacy will face severe crises later on too, especially from political powers, both Catholic and Protestant, especially at the hands of Napoleon who almost succeeded in abolishing it in the wake of the French revolution. The centres of the Catholic reform were Italy and Spain which had remained unaffected by the Reformation. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) Called by Pope Paul III (1534-49) thirty years after Luther nailed the 95 theses. It ranks among the half dozen most influential councils in the history of the church. Luther himself demanded a council in 1518 and in 1521 the emperor Charles V also supported the calling of a council to answer the Protestant challenge. The curia was afraid, because of the council of Constance. Trent did not heal the division. It condemned the Protestant positions but more importantly it clarified Catholic doctrine to some extent. It remained normative till Vatican II. Represented by Italians and Spaniards, some Germans, and some Protestants as observers. The number initially was thirty but gradually became 200. The whole question of papacy was bracketed. Only matters of faith and discipline were to be discussed.
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1. Establishing True Doctrine: 1. Scripture and Tradition: The Reformers had challenged the concept of Tradition and stressed only Scripture. Trent said that Scripture is not the only source of revelation. Tradition is a vital supplement. It proposed the Two Source Theory. It ruled that the canonical books of the Protestants were incomplete and enumerated anew the canon of the Bible. The authority of the church alone to interpret Scripture was stressed No Roman Catholic was allowed to publish any book relating to the interpretation of Scripture without prior approval. This was a set back for Catholic biblical scholarship. The Protestants went ahead and produced a lot of works of scholarship. 2. Justification. This was the second key issue in the Reformation. The need for both faith and good works was asserted, and the role of human free will, yet God’s initiative in our justification was emphasized, very much in line with the Reformers’ principle. So by affirming Tradition the church was ready to defend its practices many of which were rejected by the Reformers as not founded on Scripture and rejected as merely works. By affirming that faith and good works are necessary, the church defended many practices that had become traditional in the Catholic church. The church however tried to purify them from error and abuse. Sacraments Trent decreed that there are seven sacraments instituted by Christ. They confer grace ex opere operato. Sacraments signify grace. Real presence and transubstantiation were defended. The sacrificial character of the mass was defended. Communion under both species was rejected. Vernacular in liturgy was also rejected. Many other decrees of moral reform were enacted. obligation of all parish priests to preach on Sundays. Obligation to read Scriptures in the Church obligation of the bishop to reside in his diocese no multiple benefices. no delegation of authority marriage of clergy rejected Seminaries made compulsory church marriage in the presence of a priest as mandatory holding of diocesan and provincial synods a new mass missal and breviary A catechism was published curia was reorganized; no lay cardinals, no nepotism, number of Cardinals limited to 70; congregations set up headed by Cardinals.
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The Congregation of the Inquisition was set up which in 1908 was renamed the Holy Office and in 1965 Congregation for the doctrine of the faith. Index of forbidden books introduced. It lasted till 1966. It was a defensive council. It did not try to dialogue with the Protestants and so the things they demanded were all rejected without asking whether they were justified or not. For example, in the last session, the church defended the practice of indulgences, the immediate cause of the Reformation. Only it asked for moderation in granting them. All in all Trent exercised a huge influence on Catholicism till Vatican II. A second agent of Catholic reform was religious orders. Religious orders encountered fierce criticism from the Protestants. Partly it was because of the lifestyle which was elitist and partly because it had no justification in Scripture according to them. Many of them were in fact members of religious orders. In all countries the Reformation took root religious life was suppressed. The council of Trent justified it in principle and it encouraged the reform of existing ones and encouraged the foundation of new ones. They all played a great role in education, pastoral care, and in a special way education of the clergy. The Theatine Order in 1524 The Barnabites in 1530 Anthony Maria Zacharia Somascians by Jerome Emiliani in 1532 Ursuline Order founded by Angela Merci in 1535. Oratorians by Philip Neri in 1575 The Capuchin Order was founded in 1528 by Matheo Da Bascio after a split in the Franciscan order to go back to the authentic Franciscan austerity. They also played a great role in the Catholic reform although less documented than that of the Jesuits. As a result they did not make as many enemies as the Jesuits and survived the secularization. Theresa of Avila (1515-82) and John of the Cross (1542-91) effected a reform in the Carmelite order. Teresa founded the first convent of the reformed order at Avila in 1562. But the greatest of the reform orders was the Society of Jesus founded by Ignatius of Loyola (1492-1556), founded in 1534, approved in 1540. Ignatius and his Order embodied the fundamental principles of the Catholic reform. Without them Catholic reform is not imaginable. Ignatius had three specific aims in founding the Order. 1. Spiritual benefits of its members 2. To foster reform within the church 3. to undertake missionary activity in the new world. 45
For this he constituted his order with a unique vow and a unique structure. The unique vow was made to the Pope to be under his service. The unique structure was that the order did not aspire to ecclesiastical dignity, benefices, distinctive habits; it had no obligation to say the office in choir, lived by relying on alms and benefactors. He also paid special attention to careful spiritual and intellectual formation and Ignatius understood this as his special charism. The Spiritual Profile of the Order 1. Service to the world in the world. No special habit, every worldly means can be used for the spread of the kingdom of God. Omnia ad maiorem Dei gloriam. 2. Contemplation in Action. Every day mysticism in the middle of ordinary life and work. 3. The importance of missionary apostolate 4. The belief that the Church is guided by the Spirit in spite of her sins. So his concrete appreciation of the ideal of the Church and its ministries through the 4th vow. 5. The almost slavish obedience to superiors but a surprisingly great emphasis on personal responsibility, freedom, development of the individual. Already in 1542 Francis Xavier was in India; by the end of the century Matheo Ricci in China, De Nobili in India Alexander Rhodes in Vietnam with their innovative missionary methods. They also contributed to education and formation of a new generation of Christians in Europe without neglecting pastoral work. The Reformation also led to political conflicts in many countries. In many countries there were attempts to contain it through force. This is known as Counter Reformation. 1. In Italy and Spain small Protestant groups were persecuted by the inquisition. 2. In France, a 150 year long period of conflict with 8 civil wars during which the French Calvinists who were called Huguenots were persecuted and expelled. One example is the notorious Bartholomew Day Massacre in 1572 where 3000 people were massacred in Paris, hearing which pope Gregory XIII ordered the Te Deum to be sung. In 1598 Freedom was granted at the Edict of Nantes but it was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685. 3. In the Netherlands the Calvinists were persecuted by the Spanish Court during a 8 year old civil war and 18,000 execution took place. 4. In England the Catholics suffered under queen Elizabeth after her excommunication by the pope in 1570. Success of world Mission: The beginning of modern world mission was when the Catholic powers, Spain and Portugal undertook navigational explorations and reached the Americas and Asia. Now in the 16th century we see progressive missionary work both in America and Asia, more in America of course and
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less in Asia. The loss of territories to Protestants was an added reason and the new religious orders, especially the Jesuits helped in this. The colonization and Christianization of South America under Spain was completed in this century and the whole continent, at least in name, became Christian. This was achieved at the cost of great violence and exploitation. In 1508 the Spanish crown received from the pope the patronage (patronato real) over conquered territories in South America, and in 1514 the same right was given to Portugal (padroado). Discovery, conquest, annexation, and mission constituted one unity. The ideology behind the spanish conquest was a document whose origin is unknown but a formula from 1514 has the following content: "God created humankind from two human beings. But he has given power over all these human begins to one human being the Pope. He has now gifted all these lands to the king of Spain. So accept his rule and become Christians voluntarily, otherwise we will force you". In 1532, the king of the Incas of Peru Athahualpa was told of this strange arrangement. He said: the Spanish king is a brother not a ruler over us. Besides, the Pope should be mad to gift land which did not belong to him. He also said he wants to follow his god (he pointed to the Sun) because he lives and is not like the god of the Christians who was murdered by his own people. He asked the missionaries, who had told them all these things. They said that it was in the gospel and gave him a copy. He threw it to the ground. The soldiers shouted "Santiago" the battle cry of the crusaders in Spain. Santiago is the place of the grave of the apostle Jacob, the patron of Spain. Atahualpa was asked to pay an enormous sum of money, baptized him and then he was strangled (1533). The patronage given by the Pope allowed them absolute control over their territories. No inculturation,. but hispanization. It was a Spanish church. In 1567 exclusion of the natives from priesthood by law. Conversion was done cruelly, using force. The result was enslavement of the local population, superficial Christianization, and destruction of culture and decimation of people. The decimation of peoples was effected through slavery, forced labour in the mines and plantations, microbe shock, that is, through sicknesses brought from Europe, like measles, small pox, common cold etc. which were unknown to the Indians, epidemics, suicide, and violence. In 1519 the civilization of the Aztecs of Mexico and in 1533 the kingdom of the Incas of Peru were wiped out. After 20 years the Antilles, (today's Panama, Haiti) had only a few hundred people. Already in 1501 import of slaves from Africa had begun. By the end of the 16th century the whole population of Latin America, about 7 million, were at least in name Christian. Protests 47
1. Antonio Montesinos. On the 4th Sunday of Advent in 1511, he gave a historic homily. He denounced the exploitation of the natives, quoting the words of John the Baptist. "I am the voice of the one crying in the wilderness". 2. Bartholome de Las Casas (1474-1566). He was one of the listeners of this sermon. He was a priest and an exploiter himself. He now becomes a Dominican and fights for the rights of the natives. He influenced Pope Paul III and the emperor Charles V in enacting laws for the protection of the natives, against forced conversion and against slavery. 3. Francisco de Vitoria (Dominican theologian of the University of Salamanca). In 1539 he challenged the right of Spain to Colonize in his Lessons on the Indians and the Rights of Law. However the imperialist missionary principles remained, formulated by Juan Sepulveda who held disputation with Bartholome de Las Casas in 1556. 1. Mission is possible only if the people are politically conquered. 2. Christians have the right and duty to subjugate the unbelievers. 3. Christians have the right and duty to civilize the primitives and transmit the culture of Europe to them. They are slaves. Las Casas challenged these ideas taken from the Crusades. The Indians are partners not slaves he said. The Jesuits were also in the forefront of protest against injustice done to the native Indians. Their novel form of protest was the founding of the Reductions. These were enclaves created for the natives run by the missionaries where they were protected from the colonial powers and where the natives could live preserve their culture and language. Although a paternalistic undertaking, it preserved them from the cruelty of the colonizers. The Reductions survived till 1767 when the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish territories. In 1588 the Jesuit Jose de Acosta in his book De Procuranda Indorum Salute denounced the treatment meted out to the natives. He denounced greed and force as enemies of the gospel. In 1992, the 500th anniversary of the discovery was celebrated. The US National Council of Churches condemned the “discovery of the Americas” as an invasion, colonization, legalized occupation, genocide, economic exploitation with a deep level of institution racism and moral decadence. Liberation Theology goes back to Antonio de Montesinos and Bartholome de Las Casas and all who raised their voices against exploitation of the natives. The important milestones in Portuguese mission India in the century were the colonization and Christianization of Goa in 1510, arrival of Francis Xavier in 1542 and his great missionary success (700,000 baptisms), the forced Latinization of the Thomas Christians of Kerala at the synod of Diamper 1599 by Portuguese missionaries, etc. These are to be studied in the history of Christianity in India. The only contact point with Africa in this century was with the kingdom of Congo where Catholicism was introduced by the Portuguese and was firmly established during the reign of King Afonso I (1506-43). There was a small Christian presence in a few more countries like 48
Angola, Benin, Sierre Leone, South Africa, Madagascar etc in the 17th and 18th centuries but real Christianization of Africa began only in the second half of the nineteenth century. Francis Xavier was the first European missionary to set foot in Japan in 1549. He laid the foundation for a flourishing Christian community. However, towards the end of the century there began tensions between the Europeans and native rulers. In the wake of the San Felipe Affair of 1596 (the Spanish ship San Felipe being confiscated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Spain threatening with war and colonization), there began a severe persecution. To the martyrs of this persecution in 1597 belong the Jesuit Paul Mikki and 25 of his companions. One of them was the Indian saint Gonzalo Garcia. Born in 1557 in Vasai, he wanted to become a Jesuit but his application was rejected. But he managed to become a Franciscan brother, and was working in Japan when he was executed by the Japanese. The century also saw the beginning of mission in China. Francis Xavier was waiting for permission to enter China when he died in 1552. However, towards the end of the century some Jesuits did indeed reach China, Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) and Michele Rugieri (1543-1607) began their missionary work in Cina, in Canton in 1583 and moved to Peking in 1601. There they began a mission of great originality, adapting Christianity to Chinese culture, attracting the attention of the intelligentsia of China. Already in 1586 there seems to have been a few conversions. Several other Jesuits followed them into the forbidden empire in the next two centuries till Christianity was banned in the wake of the Rites controversy. The greatest Christian success in Asia was in Philippines which is the largest Catholic country in Asia till today. It was conquered by Spain and 1564 and thus began the Christianization. Seventeenth Century The “East India Companies” One of the significant developments in the seventeenth century that affected posterity was the spread of European colonialism in the East, and the rise of the power of England. The East India companies founded by England, Holland, France etc at the beginning of the seventeenth century, for the purpose of trade, developed into political colonialism in the East, and later on, in other parts of the world. Especially England’s colonization of India had serious consequences. Holland and France too developed into colonial powers. Mission played a role in this world conquest. Wars of Religion Europe continues to suffer from religious wars, especially between Catholics and Protestants which leads to intolerance and dissent. Much of Europe was battered by the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), the bloodiest Europe had ever seen, fought on account of religious confessions of people. The Thirty Years War ended with The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which guaranteed religious freedom. By now roughly half the countries of western Christendom were officially or predominantly Protestant, principally in a Lutheran, Calvinist or Anglican form. It has remained in this form till today. Another development was the divisions within Protestantism, especially in the Anglican Church. The Puritans who were influenced by Calvinism felt that English Reformation was not consequent enough and Anglicanism was more Catholic than Protestant. They also had political 49
clout. The Puritan Revolution under Oliver Cromwell led to civil war and to the execution of King, Charles I (1649). The Scottish Church adopted Presbyterianism in 1638. But as the Puritan faith was coming under increasing pressure, some Puritans (the Pilgrim Fathers) sailed for America in 1620 to escape persecution and founded the colony of New England, making America a refuge for dissenters. Such groups included the Quakers (Society of Friends founded by George Fox (1647), and the Baptists founded by John Smyth in 1609 (in America already in 1639). This new development is called Congregationalism. It affirms the independence and autonomy of each local Church. The Catholic Church The Council of Trent made the Church a defensive and conservative entity, where authority played a major role, and dissent was punished with severity. The century began with the execution of the Dominican Giordano Bruno, the natural philosopher, for his pantheistic philosophy (1600). In 1633 Galileo (1564-1642) was forced to retract his teaching about the movement of the earth around the sun. His condemnation, taken back by pope John Paul II only in 1992, contributed to the deepening of the conflict between faith and reason. Rene Descartes’ philosophical breakthrough (d. 1650) expressed in his famous dictum cogito ergo sum which introduced extreme rationalism into philosophy and theology contributed to this tension. The Church resisted the questioning of its authority, especially papal authority by the state often supported by the local church. New movements like Gallicanism, which claimed independence for the French Church from papal control and Febronianism which did the same in Germany challenged the power of the pope to interfere in ecclesiastical affairs in these countries. Even traditional Catholic countries like Spain, Portugal and Austria would want to control the church within their domination. Time was being set for another face off between the papacy and political power during the French Revolution during which the death of the papacy seemed to be real possibility. Internal renewal But the Catholic Church also experienced internal renewal because of the intellectual and spiritual initiatives of a large number of people. The spiritual classic Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales (1609) soon became an influential book. Many Religious Orders were founded which had lasting influence on the Church: the founding of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Mary Ward (1609), Order of the Visitation by Jane Frances de Chantal (1610), the Congregation of the Mission (1625) by Vincent de Paul, Sisters of Charity, the first congregation of women who were not enclosed, by Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac (1633), the Trappists by John de Rance (1664), The Christian Brothers by John Baptist de La Salle (1680) etc are some of them. The literary works of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), and the theological activities of Luis de Molina (d. 1600), Francis Suraez (d. 1617), for the Jesuits even more important than Thomas Aquinas, Robert Bellarmine (d. 1621) etc enriched theology. Richard Simon’s Critical history of the Old Testament (1678) was an attempt to reconcile inspiration and historical problems in the Bible. He is considered the founder of historical critical exegesis. One cannot forget the compassionate saint Peter Claver (d. 1654) who spent all his life at the service of the black African slaves who were transported in the millions to work in the plantations of the western colonial powers. He seems to have baptized some 300,000 of them. Mission
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The church’s concern for mission is concretized in the founding of the Propaganda congregation which was an answer to the increasing control of colonial powers Spain and Portugal over the missionary activity of the church. In 1622 pope Gregory XV founded the congregation which would oversee missionary activity. However, it was not easy because the colonial powers were not willing to give up their rights which as they said were given by the popes in the preceding centuries. The pope had three specific aims in mind for founding the Propaganda congregation. He wanted to depoliticize mission. Mission had come to be controlled by colonial powers and their interests. He wanted to free it from the monopoly of religious orders. The rivalry between religious orders had come to hamper mission in many ways. He wanted to build up a native church adapted to the culture of the land with a native clergy and episcopate. In an instruction of the propaganda to the missionaries to China in the year 1659 we read: “Do not employ any zeal, do not advance any argument to convince these people to change their rites, their habits and their customs, unless they are manifestly contrary to religion and morality. What is more absurd than to transport France, Spain, Italy or any other country of Europe to the Chinese? Do not introduce our countries to them but the faith, this faith which neither rejects nor blesses the rites and customs of any people, provided that they are not detestable, but on the contrary seeks to guard them and protect them. It is so to speak inscribed in the nature of all men to esteem, to love, to put above all the world the traditions of their country and that country itself. Nor is there any more powerful cause of alienation and hatred than to make changes in the distinctive customs of a nation, particularly which have been practiced for as long as anyone can remember.” Unfortunately this grand vision did not materialize except that there were some experiments of inculturation and respect of cultures by some missionaries, especially the Jesuits in various parts of the world. The first was the Reductions of Paraguay which began in 1610 and continued till 1768 in some parts of Latin America. This was one of the original attempts to Christianize and protect indigenous culture as portrayed in the film The Mission. It was established by the Jesuit missionaries in the region which covers today’s southern Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and north Argentina. The natives were isolated from the colonial masters and were made into colonies looked after by the Jesuits to protect them, to preserve their culture and tradition, under a functional social structure. The idea was to protect them from violence and oppression which most native people suffered at the hands of the Spaniards and Portuguese. Jesuit missionary experiments in Asia: China, India, Vietnam Under the leadership of Mattheo Ricci and his companions the Jesuit missionaries embarked upon a new missionary method of accommodation and adaptation of Christianity to Chinese culture. He arrived in Peking in 1601 and began his work dressed as a Buddhist monk. He learned the Chinese language and Confucianism. Ricci realized that more than the Buddhist 51
monks, the conversion of the mandarins, the Confucian scholars was important for the mission. They were respected. Ricci now changed over to the mandarins, their dress, their language. To argue with them Ricci wrote his book The True doctrine of God, later on admitted among the Chinese classics. He proved that there was monotheism in Confucianism. Buddhism and Taoism were rejected as superstitions. He did everything to please the emperor. He made a map in which he made China the centre of the universe. There were other famous missionaries like Johann Adam Schall von Bell, Ferdinand Verbiest etc. who continued this scientific contribution to the emperor like the manufacturing of cannons, study of Astronomy, astrology etc. which was later questioned because they accused the Jesuits of following the principle, end justified the means. They wanted to have a Chinese Christianity. So the Chinese language was adapted for liturgy, sacraments etc. Pope Paul V allowed this in 1615. Chinese Rites Controversy Ricci had allowed the Chinese Christians ancestor worship according to Confucianism saying that it was purely a civil ceremony. After Ricci's death in 1600 this gave rise to the Chinese Rites controversy. The Reasons 1. National rivalry between Spain and Portugal 2. Rivalry among Religious Orders: Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans 3. Rivalry between the Padroado and Propaganda 4. Missionary method. The Franciscans (since 1631in China) and the Dominicans (since 1633 in China) did not like the Jesuits who followed a different missionary method. They engaged in direct preaching but the imageries they used did not at all appeal to the Chinese, like the crucifixion which was a gruesome doctrine for them. The Jesuits followed indirect mission. Conversion to Christianity was not a radical break with the past but a fulfillment of what is already existing. They concentrated on the elite class to be won over. In 1742, the Chinese Rites were forbidden by Benedict XIV, and the ban remained till 1936. It is considered one of the catastrophic blunders of Rome in the history of mission. The emperor was enraged. The church suffered persecution. Missionary work came to a standstill. It was not the only cause of the failure of the Chinese mission, but one of the causes. Basically, the Chinese intellectuals were not convinced of the superiority of the Christian religion. They wanted merely the western technology, astronomy and science. There were about 300,000 Christians in a population of 100 million. The “Malabar Rites” Controversy In India a similar controversy erupted called, the Malabar Rites Controversy. Robert de Nobili (1577-1656), an Italian Jesuit and his companions who worked in the Madurai mission in south India tried to adapt Christianity to the culture of the high caste Hindus of Madurai. He allowed 52
the brahmin converts the freedom to practise some of their social customs, like wearing the sacred thread, keeping the tuft of hair, taking ritual baths, use of the tāli by women etc. (Malabar Rites), and thus founded a flourishing Church. Controversy irrupted already during De Nobili’s life-time on account of these practices but he was able to defend himself and the case was judged in his favour by pope Gregory XV in 1623 (Romanae Sedis). However, in the eighteenth century, as in the case of the Chinese Rites, other Religious Orders, especially the Capuchins, raked up the controversy on the Malabar Rites once again and the Rites were banned by pope Benedict XIV in 1744. The Madurai mission also produced a popular martyr in India in this century, John de Britto (d. 1693). Some Indian Jesuits, true to their adventurous spirit, also undertook an arduous journey to Tibet in 1626. Without much missionary success they (whose names are simply Cacella and Cabral, two Portuguese Jesuits) returned the next year. It would take another century to set up a short-lived mission in Tibet by the Capuchins. In 1624 Alexander de Rhodes a French Jesuit began his mission in Indo-China, today's Vietnam. He tried to accommodate Christianity to Vietnamese tradition. Catechists were recruited and they lived like a religious order. He was the only one who at the time thought of forming a native clergy. He developed the Vietnamese script and language to make Vietnam independent of China. In Japan Christianity practically faced extinction in this century. We spoke of the brutal persecution of Christians in 1597. It was continued in the subsequent decades. The Japanese ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu unified Japan in 1600, and Christianity was regarded as a long-term threat to the stability of the country by the Tokugawa regime. In 1614 Christianity was outlawed, and in the subsequent persecutions it was practically exterminated. In the wake of the Shimbara insurrection in 1628 by some Christians brutal persecution began. In 1635, 35,000 Christians were massacred and Christianity was practically exterminated. From 1638 Japan was closed to the outside world till in 1854 when the Americans compelled the Japanese to open up. In 1865 a priest discovered 20,000 Christians who had survived as an underground church without priests. So historians speak of the Christian century in Japan. Another negative aspect of the missionary movement of the period was the slave trade or deportation of millions of slaves from Africa. There was a lot of protest by religious orders against the ill treatment of the natives in Latin America but not a word about slave trade in Africa. 15-20 million people seemed to have been transported to America to replace the Indians who died or were killed between 16th and 19th centuries. More than this number died on the way. This lasted till the beginning of the 19th century, led by the Portuguese but the Dutch and the English also had participated in it. Brazil, Southern states of the United States were the customers for their huge plantations. Before the 19th century no papal or ecclesiastical protest against slave trade but the pastoral problems were discussed, like the unbaptized should be transported, possibility of marriage for them in America etc. The fact was that the missionaries themselves had slaves. The Jesuit College of Lima had 1500 slaves. 53
It was justified using Aristotle who spoke of classes of men who were slaves by nature. The curse on the Sons of Ham (Gen. 9:5) which was supposed to refer to the Africans. The Jesuit moral theologian Luis de Molina (1535-1600) gave the most notorious of reasons. There are no missionaries to go to Africa. Through slavery at least some could be saved. In this way they are able to achieve a higher good, the faith. It was an absolute hypocrisy. The blacks did not have patrons like Bartholome de Las Casas Peter Claver was an exception. The missionaries never had a first hand experience of what was going on. In Latin America they could see what was going on. The Indians could not survive slavery. The Africans survived better. It was necessary for the economy of the colonizers and it simply showed the helplessness of the poor against the rich, like today, the Third World against the First World. The movement for the abolition of slavery came from the Protestants like William Penn (16441718), A Quaker, William Wilberforce (1759-1833) etc. The official condemnation by the Church only in 1838 by Gregory XVI. Critical Remarks about the Modern Missionary Movement Spanish America: Conquerors, colonizers and missionaries were brutally confronted with cultures and civilizations about which they knew nothing. Practices like human sacrifices prevalent among the Aztecs shocked them. So a clean sweep method, total destruction of native religions, cultures, societies, civilizations etc. in South America. Implantation of a Christianity from Europe which was the result of the development of centuries in Europe with all its cultural trappings. They imported their religion, culture, social habits, dress, names, food and manners. Asia They encountered highly developed and sophisticated religions and philosophical systems: Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism. Applied the same method, clean sweep method, except people like Ricci, de Nobili, Rhodes. etc. This led to the rejection of Christianity by India, China and Japan. The missionaries were imbued with the apologetic theology of the Council of Trent where mission was not discussed at all. They came with the absolute conviction that Christianity was the only true religion, that too European, Latin Christianity, and that is why the Portuguese tried to suppress the age old traditions of the Thomas Christians of kerala.
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Eighteenth Century The entire century can be characterized as the challenge of the Enlightenment and its consequences. After the Reformation, Catholic Reform and the devastating wars of religion, there began another watershed of modern European history and the church from the middle of the 17th century called the Enlightenment or Modernity. It had tremendous consequence for Christianity. It was one of the most revolutionary movements in European history and one of the most serious threats faced by Christianity comparable to that of Gnosticism. It not only affected Europe but also had repercussion outside it. It marks the beginning of the so called modern European or western culture. Its historical beginning is still debated. Middle of the 17th century till the first World War but the 18th century was decisive. Ideologically it is characterized by the notions of Reason, Progress and Nation as opposed to Faith, Tradition, and Empire. Its roots lay in Scholasticism, Nominalism, Humanism, Renaissance, Reformation, the geographical discoveries etc. The Scholastics had given the human intellect a power analogous to that of God but it was to be combined with faith, belief in God, and revealed religion. But now human reason tries to go it without God, and religion. It tries to attain self illumination (enlightenment) with the help of autonomous reason. Nominalism denied the universal and emphasized the individual and particular. Humanism emphasized critical acceptance of tradition. So the movement was rationalistic, individualistic and anti institutional. 1. It called for individual and personal religion. 2. Freedom and affirmation of the uniqueness of the individual. 3. Secularization of culture, thought and society. It involved thus a dialectic between ecclesiastical and political realm (church and state), personal and institutional religion, freedom and authority, world and God. The philosopher Kant called for criticism and it destroyed a system governed by religion and the Christian Church and promised a new world order based on education, justice, tolerance, rights and dignity of man and openness to other cultures. The important elements of Modernity were: 1. The revolutions in science and philosophy 2. The revolutions in culture and theology 3. The revolutions in state and society 4. The revolutions in technology and industry. 1. Revolutions in Science and Philosophy
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Francis Bacon (1561-1626) in his utopian social model Nova Atlantis had argued that knowledge is power and that the first great power is science and that science would make it possible to meet all the needs of humanity and thus it would lead to universal peace. This was now to be taken up by subsequent pioneers. a. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) in his Six books on the Circular Motions of the Heavenly Bodies proposed his revolutionary idea of a heliocentric world system and challenged the geocentric system of Ptolemy. Galileo now confirms this with his telescope, knowing it would call for a new interpretation of the Bible. b. Isaac Newton (1642-1727) Professor at Cambridge confirmed Galileo's discoveries and discovered more things like the theory of gravitation. His book Philosophiae naturalis Principia Mathematica published in 1687 is the foundational work of modern science. Galileo and Newton are the founders of modern science, encouraging the study of nature, mathematics etc. c. René Descartes (1596-1650) Founder of modern philosophy. He was a mathematician. He wanted mathematical certainty for epistemology without any external certainties but one's own reason. An individual can master his/her life in the surest way by using reason and through methodical, radical, and universal doubt. Doubting and thinking are the basic facts of existence. Cogito ergo sum. The fact of one's own existence is the foundation of all certainty. Thus the place of original certainty was transferred from God to the human being. d. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Construction of the whole of reality from the human subject and criticism but he also set limits for reason and said: the limits of reason are not the limits of reality. There is a reality beyond theoretical reason. So practical reason: morality, action. These thoughts had inevitable consequence for European society where for so many centuries the Church authorities had dominated thought. The Church's Reaction 1600: The former Dominican Giordano Bruno who developed from the Copernican model of the universe a pantheistic, mystical piety was burnt at the stake. 1616: Copernicus' work put on the index 1619: Lucilo Vanini, Italian natural philosopher burnt at the stake. 1632: Galileo was summoned before the inquisition and was condemned. Whether he said the legendary words "and yet it moves" is not sure but he was forced to abjure his error in 1633 and was kept under house arrest for eight years. 56
After 350 years Pope John Paul II rehabilitated Galileo. 2. Revolutions in Culture and Theology Up to the seventeenth century Western culture was shaped and pervaded by Christianity. Now an intellectual life began to be developed independently of the church and even opposed to the church based on two important ideas: reason and progress as against faith and tradition. Against faith it said, the supreme authority is not the Pope, not the Word of God but reason which is the arbiter in all questions of truth. What is true is what is reasonable. Emphasis on natural law, natural religion, nature, world, the human person etc. Against tradition the idea of progress gains importance. History progresses rationally. History will offer total fulfillment. Consequences for the Church Cultural Revolution: Culture and religion are separated. The beginning of secularization, emancipation of culture, self-determination, separation of religion from all spheres of life and relegating it to the private sphere of the individual. Revolutions in Theology: Historical Critical Method and biblical criticism. Richard Simon (1638-1712) proved that the Pentateuch is not by one author. Johann Semmler (1725-1791) introduces historical critical theology. Hermann Raimarus (1694-1768) applies the historical critical method to the NT. David Strauss publishes his famous Life of Jesus in 1835. Ferdinand Bauer (1792-1860) initiates the study of historical theology, history of Dogma Church History etc. The tendency to do away with tradition. Man's intellect is the judge of everything. Challenging the revealed character of Christianity. Christianity is a natural religion, a noble ethical system. Challenging Christian symbolisms, biblical chronology, biblical cosmology etc. through biblical criticism, scientific discoveries, mathematics etc. Challenging Christian beliefs and dogmas: divinity of Christ, virgin birth, resurrection, original sin etc. Challenging the Christian view of history as salvation history centered on the Jews. History includes all religions and cultures. Challenge to Christian uniqueness and universality through the discovery of other religions. Appreciation of other religions and culture. Challenge to Christian authority, particularly the Papacy which closed itself without critical examination and openness towards the new developments. It was still incapable of distinguishing the real requirements of faith and the non-essential accessories to it. Challenges to the church’s authority a. Gallicanism: Originated in France in the 18th century. It claimed autonomy for the French Church from the papacy and it was supported by the university of Sorbonne.
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b. Febronianism: stared in Germany in 1763. It denied the power of the Papacy over the episcopacy. It has neither spiritual nor temporal power. For them, the pope was nothing more than an Italian ruler. c. Enlightened despotism: Rulers imbued with the spirit of radical enlightenment and their effort to establish state churches independent of the Papacy. The threat came mainly from Catholic countries. The pope had to do what the authoritarian monarchs of France, Spain, Portugal, Austria etc. asked him to do and had little choice. One sad example of this helplessness is the Suppression of the Jesuits in 1773 by Clement XIV compelled by the Catholic powers, Portugal, France and Spain. The Jesuits suffered the consequences of the decadence of the papacy. The Papacy let down the Order for which it had been founded and to which Ignatius pledged special obedience. There were two important reasons for this: 1. The great ability of the Jesuits to create enemies through their relentless determination to fight theological controversies on behalf of the church. 2. Secondly, their new missionary methods in Asia and Latin America. Began during the papacy of Benedict XIV (1740-1758). Benedict was a supporter of Jansenism, a movement which began in the 17th century in France started by Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638). It was condemned as heretical by the Sorbonne (1649) and by Innocent X in 1653. Its teachings were: 1. Without a special grace from God the performance of his commandments is impossible. 2. The operation of Grace is irresistible and hence man is the victim of either natural or a supernatural determinism. This led to pessimism and moral rigorism. The Jesuits were the opponents of this movement and they also initiated violent persecution of the Jansenists. Benedict XIV first acted against the Jesuits by condemning the Malabar and Chinese Rites (1742, 1744) thus discrediting their missionary methods. Under his successor Clement XIII (1758-69) the programme of suppression proceeds. Portugal: The enlightened ruler of Portugal Pombal was against all orders particularly the Jesuits because of the problems with the Jesuits in the missions. In 1758 he forced the Pope to appoint the Portuguese Cardinal Saldanha as the Visitor of the Jesuits for Portugal. That was the end of the order there. They were accused of many things, illegal commerce, plot to kill the king etc. In 1759 all the assets of the Order were confiscated. The members were deported to the papal states. Many died. The others were imprisoned, including the General. Others left the order. France:
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France followed suit. There was a strong opposition to the Jesuits from the Jansenists and the Gallicanists. Another cause was the dislike of the mistress of the King Louis XV, Madame Pompadour towards the Jesuits because they disapproved of her position. There was an assassination attempt on the king in 1757 and some blamed the Jesuits. In 1762 all assets of the Order were confiscated. In 1763 all were deported. Many left the order. In 1764 the order was abolished in France. Spain In 1767 a decree banished all the Jesuits and confiscated their property. The members were deported. The same fate happened to the overseas missionaries, especially in Spanish America. The Reductions of Paraguay had to be closed. Now there was a united effort to abolish the order. The three countries agreed to push the matter together. Maria Theresa of Austria pledged neutrality. In 1769 the ambassadors of the three countries asked Pope Clement XIII to abolish the order. Luckily he died in the same year. His successor Clement XIV (1769-1774) was elected during this controversy. It was agreed that no friend of the Jesuits would be elected. Spain even demanded that the new Pope take an oath that he would abolish the order. But this was not accepted. In 1770 the pope was approached with the request to abolish the order, other wise, they would break off diplomatic relations. The Pope promised that he would do it but he managed to postpone it for another three years. Finally, Spain threatened that it would expel all the religious and prepared a draft of abolition and submitted it to the Pope for approval. On 9th June 1773, he singed. On 16th August 1773 it was implemented. It stated the Pope's right to do so. It enumerated the difficulties the Jesuits had caused for other religious orders and political leaders. It was celebrated as the triumph of reason. The Papal states themselves were cruel in implementation. The General, Lorenzo Ricci and other important superiors were imprisoned till death. Frederick II of Prussia did not implement it in the beginning but then gave in. Only Catherine of Russia did not abolish the Order. It damaged the European school system and the universities, and the overseas-missions. It was an on the against the Church. 3. Revolutions in State and Society From the political perspective, modernity gave rise to the idea of sovereign nation as opposed to the concept of empire. There emerged territorial states with equal rights. Neither the Pope nor the emperor is supreme but the people under a king or ruler. This was claimed to be based on natural law. The theoretical foundation was laid by Jean Bodin in his book The Six Books on the Republic in 1576. Thomas Hobbes in England spoke out for a strong state in his book Leviathan (1655). Politics is above religion he said. There were inherent dangers in this concept, like absolutism, nationalism etc. Instead of oppression by the Pope or the Church the ruler began to oppress. Instead of religious wars, now 59
there were wars for hegemony by nations. It reached its notorious peak during the Napoleonic era and later during the Nazi era, the Communist era etc. The crudest example of this was France and Louis XIV (1638-1713) who said, "L'etat?” c'est moi", What is the state? It is me. “I am the State”. He was intolerant (revoked the edict of Nantes, which had given freedom of religion to the Protestants in France in 1685), he was scandalously luxurious (built the palace of Versailles which took 22 years and had 4000 servants), autocratic, fanatic, ruled by divine right. (One God, one faith, one law, one king), domesticated the Church. In other words, absolutism at its highest peak. The funeral procession of Louis XIV was stoned by the people because he had left behind a totally bankrupt state. The state household was overdrawn by 18 years. This was the main cause of the French Revolution in 1789 during which his grandson Louis XVI lost his life together with his arrogant wife Maria Antoinette French Revolution There was massive poverty, famine, total bankruptcy. The court of Versailles was totally unchristian, ruling by divine right, supported by an aristocratic church. The people had not forgotten the barbaric treatment meted out to the Huguenots, the bitter conflicts between the Jesuits and the Jansenists and the persecution of the Jansenists and the theological controversies which wasted time. The church was hated. France's Catholic Church possessed one sixth of the land and the largest number of monasteries in Europe. The episcopate was dominated by the nobility. Monasteries and religious orders suffered crisis of faith. The clergy were uneducated. The Church was linked to the state and enjoyed many privileges. Philosophers like Voltaire accused the Church of irreligion. To overcome the financial difficulties the Estates General (first time since 1614) consisting of Aristocracy, Clergy, and Commoners was called on 1st May, 1789. The clergy (majority of them) joined the third estate and supported reform and constituted itself into a constituent assembly. The others refused to join. It claimed to be the sole representative of the will of the nation and partner of the crown. It abolished feudalism and voted the declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen, liberty, equality, fraternity. The declaration of the rights of man is the charter of modern democracy. French Revolution and the church The possessions of the Church were nationalized. All the monasteries and religious orders were dissolved, monastic vows declared invalid. A civil constitution for the clergy was drawn up. Diocesan boundaries were reorganized. Bishops and priests were appointed and paid by the state.
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The clergy were asked to take an oath before the civil constitution. This created a split within the clergy. Most of the bishops and half of the clergy refused to take the oath, supported by the people. Thus there came into being constitutional and anti-constitutional clergy. The anticonstitutional clergy were banned from office and were branded as counter-revolutionaries. In 1791 Pope Pius VI condemned the civil constitution as illegal, condemned the declaration of the rights of man as against Catholic doctrine, calling it the abominable philosophy of human rights. In 1792, Christianity was formally abolished and a cult of reason was established. The king was executed on 21st January, 1793. The reign of Terror started from 1793 to 1794 under Robespierre. 16,000 people were guillotined. It was claimed to be the ultimate triumph of reason and a total break with the past. Napoleon Bonaparte The Pope was helpless. Meanwhile Napoleon captured power and France began conquering neighbouring countries and also threaten to capture the Papal states. In 1796, he asked the Pope Pius VI to take back all condemnations pronounced against France since 1790. The Pope refused. Napoleon occupied part of the Papal States. The Pope made peace of Tolentino in 1797. But Napoleon took away a lot of treasures to Paris. In 1798 the assassination of a French general in Rome enraged a section of the army and it occupied Rome and declared a republic there. The Pope was taken to Valence and died there in 1799, although he pleaded with them to be allowed to die in Rome. It seemed to be the demise of the papacy and some even called Pius the VI Pius the Last. There was no holy See, no curia, no cardinals. But this was not to be. In 1800 Pius VII was elected in Venice and he returned to Rome. He signed a concordat with Napoleon in 1801. Catholicism was to be the official religion of the state but with a lot of powers for the state to interfere in ecclesiastical affairs including the appointment of bishops. Basically Napoleon was not interested in the Church. In 1804, he proclaimed himself emperor and the Pope had to anoint him, purely for practical reasons, in order to gain some concessions from him. Napoleon now compels the Pope to join him in his war against Britain and to make one third of the Cardinals French. The Pope rejected this and in 1808, Napoleon occupied Rome and annexed it the next year. The Pope excommunicated Napoleon. Napoleon imprisoned him and brought him to Savona. The Pope refused to give the bishops appointed by Napoleon, canonical rights. In 1811, Napoleon called a National Council but the bishops refused to co-operate. In 1813 he brought the Pope to Paris and forced him to sign a new concordat but soon after signing the Pope took back his consent. In 1814 Napoleon had to abdicate after his defeat. The pope returned gloriously to Rome and gave asylum to the Bonaparte family. The pope now experienced a sympathy wave of all the Christians and his action of granting asylum to the Bonaparte family which was hated throughout Europe also gave him moral authority.
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The French Revolution was a clear manifestation of the revolutions that were taking place in European society. On the one hand it affirmed the sovereignty of the nation, sovereignty of the people, rights of man etc., but it was a revolution against religion, culture, traditions, morality. It was the forerunner of modern war, aggressive nationalism, and western imperialism towards the end of the century. 4. Revolutions in Science and Technology. France gave leadership in the political revolution, England in the economic revolution. The result was the industrial revolution. It was the attempt to reap the fruits of science, concretely manifested in technological discoveries. This also affected religion. For example, Benjamin Franklin discovered the lightning conductor. If there is a lightning conductor on the roof why call on God when there is a storm? Similarly many discoveries were made, like new methods of production, agricultural revolution to match the population explosion, urbanization, free trade and capitalism, and the birth of the industrial society. But its shadow side was the poor condition of the working class and the birth of communism. Crisis of Modernity The three important consequences of Modernity for church and religion were: Secularization - affirmation of the world, separation of religion from other spheres of life. Individualization - Man is the master of his life. Religion as a private affair. Pluralization - Plurality of ideas, ideologies, religious convictions leading to relativism On the one hand Modernity provided an unprecedented innovatory thrust towards the progress of humanity as a whole. On the other hand, with its values of reason, progress and nation it also posed an unprecedented existential danger to humanity. This has been called the dialectic of the Enlightenment There has been scientific progress without corresponding moral progress which could prevent the misuse of science. There has been technological progress without corresponding spiritual progress which would control its risks. There has been economic progress without corresponding concern for ecology. There has been progress of democracy without a corresponding mechanism to control its excesses.
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Reason: Faith in reason is shaken. It was necessary to shake the traditional pattern based on blind faith and authority. But reason alone is not enough. Man needs intuition, experience, sensing, feeling, emotions, traditions and even religion and faith. Knowledge should be holistic. There are many things which are not explicable by reason alone. The slogan reason alone destroyed religion, the sense of the holy, the sense of the beyond. Progress: The faith in uninterrupted progress is shaken. It leads to destruction of the foundations of our natural life. Progress is not an end in itself. The idea of progress at all costs leads to destruction of our natural human environment, scarcity of resources, ecological imbalances, pollution, unemployment, Third-World debt etc. The idea that history is rationally progressive is questionable. The two World Wars, the Holocaust etc. point to this fact. Nation: Since the two World Wars, the faith in nation is shaken. The ideology of nationalism, leads to imperialism and colonialism and war. Also the ideologies of unbridled capitalism and communism, are deficient. Capitalism when it is unbridled can lead to social injustice and communism suppresses human freedom. Reactions to Modernity Ultra modernism: More modernity. Take these revolutions further. The advocates of this view have an optimistic view of humanity, closing their eyes to the evils of Modernity. Postmodernism: It proclaims the end to Modernity but it has no solutions to offer as far as the future is concerned. It has paved the way for pluralism, relativism, and anarchy of thought and principles etc. Antimodernism: Return to traditionalism, clerical domination, biblical fundamentalism etc. What must the church do? The Church must affirm the human side of Modernity instead of condemning it. It should fight against the inhuman side of Modernity. It should not sell out the substance of Christianity. The church has to realize that it is in a postmodern, postcolonial and postimperialistic age. The Church is no longer Eurocentric but polycentric. The central problems of the postmodern society are: ecology or the relationship between man and nature, women's liberation or the relationship between man and woman, distributive justice or the relationship between rich and poor, and religion or the relationship between man and God. Because of these convulsions in the European society in the second half of the 18th century world mission practically collapsed. One important reason was the suppression of the Society of Jesus, a prominent missionary order. The only positive development during this period was the founding of the Church in Korea brought there by lay people from the Chinese mainland (1777). The Korean Church is one of the fastest growing Churches in the world today.
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In Protestantism this was the time of the Evangelical movement in the Church of England by Henry Venn, John Newton etc, a remarkable reform movement that stressed personal conversion and salvation by faith in Christ. Its forerunner was to be the Methodist movement of John (17031791) and Charles (1707–88) Wesley and George Whitefield (1714-70), which spread rapidly throughout the world. Both movements had a missionary thrust, and a humanistic outlook (consider William Wilberforce’s campaign against slavery). Its counterpart in the American colonies was the Great Awakening in 1726 closely connected with the preaching of Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) and George Whitefield (1714-70). The Second Awakening took place in 1800. Nineteenth Century The nineteenth century witnessed many events that are important for the church and the world. The first was an attempt to restore the pre French Revolution society in Europe which was doomed to failure. It was not possible to turn back the historical clock. So the period was a stormy times for the church. In the aftermath of the French revolution the institutional church was widely attacked in many countries of Europe and the response of the church was to defend itself and the papacy played a crucial role in it culminating in the definition of the dogmas of papal primacy and infallibility at the first Vatican council in 1869-70). We saw how pope Pius VII (1800-1823) managed to withstand the second assault on the papacy by Napoleon and was able to return to Rome in 1815 after the defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo in 1814. There begins a process or restoration and reorganization in Europe because the French revolution was a cultural shock. In this the pope was supported by a large number of Catholics as well as by the conservative sections of the society throughout Europe. They were also convinced that only the pope was able to provide leadership in this. This process would last historically till the reign of pope Pius XII (1939-58), who can be called the last of the restoration popes. The pope who came after him pope John XXIII would radically change the face of the catholic church. Congress of Vienna 1814-15 to reorganize Europe. The Holy Alliance of Russia, Austria, and Prussia representing the three Christian confessions decided in the name of the Holy and undivided Trinity to rule according to Christian principles: religion, morality, hierarchy. The pope got the papal states back. A strong papacy was seen by many as the only organ to withstand the onslaught of the Revolution. This was the beginning of the movement called Ultramontanism (the name widely given to a tendency in the Catholic Church which favours the centralization of authority and influence in the papal curia as opposed to national or diocesan independence). It was initiated by theoreticians of a strong papacy, like Joseph de Maistre (Du papae 1819) who argued for an unassailable position for the pope in questions of faith and leadership in society. The movement culminated in the definition of the dogmas of papal primacy and infallibility in 1870. De Maistre said, the revolution was a punishment. He said that divine right had to be restored to the monarchy and the Papacy should be recognized as the guarantor of universal order. Louis de Bonald (1754-1840) said that monarchy and Catholicism cannot exist, without each other.
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The Religious Congregations provided the Church an effective support, especially the Society of Jesus which was restored by Pius VII in 1814. But revolutionary ideas were all over Europe. In 1830 the July Revolution in France, Belgium, Papal states, Poland. Pope Gregory XVI (18311846) put down the rebellion with the help of Austria and from then on he was considered the number one enemy of freedom and liberalism. But there were many catholic liberals like Felicite Lamennais (1782-1854), Henri Lacordaire (1802-1861), Charles Rene Montalembert (1810-1870) etc. who called for a renewal of church and society based on freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, freedom of association, decentralization, separation of the Church from state etc. In 1831 Lamennais went to Rome to meet the pope and Gregory XVI did not pay much attention. In 1832 he left Rome calling it a "gigantic tomb where there are only bones to be found". In the same year Pope Gregory XVI published his encyclical Mirari Vos, where he condemned all liberal ideas. He called freedom of conscience a madness. "This false and absurd maxim, or better madness, that everyone should have and practise freedom of conscience". About freedom of the press he said: "this loathsome freedom which one cannot despise too strongly and from which to expect anything good will be an illusion". In 1834, Lamenais and Montalembert were condemned in the encyclical Singulari Nos and Lamennais left the church. The next pope was Pius IX 91846-1878) the longest serving pope in history. He began with a number of reforms in the papal states but then there was another revolution in 1848 throughout Europe. Pope Pius IX had to flee. He came back the next year as an enemy of the Revolution and any liberalism. He had good support throughout Europe from people who were fed up with revolutions. He steadily worked towards the assertion of papal power. In 1854, he defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception to assert his power. For the first time a dogma had been proclaimed outside a council. He also begins a repression of Catholic theology. Neo-scholasticism and neo-Thomism are to be official theology and philosophy of the church. All liberal theologians and faculties were censured throughout Europe, especially in Germany, Austria etc. People like George Hermes, Anton Güther, Ignaz von Döllinger etc. are censured. In 1864, he published his Syllabus Errorum, list of 80 modern errors and an encyclical Quanta cura which condemned these errors and also Rationalism, Gallicanism, Liberalism, and Socialism. It was a total condemnation of modernity and modern society, liberal clerical associations, bible societies, human rights, everything. Most influential modern philosophers, scientists, theologians, writes etc. were put on the index. His crowning success was the I Vatican Council of 1869-70 where he also defined the two papal dogmas We have a good background by now to understand these two dogmas which were defined by this council. Factors that helped the definition of these dogmas 1. Majority of the council fathers had been products of the age of restoration, who had become conservative after the excesses of the revolution, liberalism and enlightenment.
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2 Revolutionary threats faced by the church such as liberalism, socialism, positivism, the conciliarist errors of Gallicanism, Febronianism, Josephenism etc. 3. The Roman question or the future of the Papal states now reduced to Rome and its environs as a result of Italian unification in 1861. The question arose: should the Papacy lose the papal states? Perhaps the assertion of the spiritual authority of the pope through the definition of infallibility and primacy of the pope would ultimately prevent it. 4. The pope's own wish to dogmatize his primacy and infallibility, supported by the Pope veneration of a large number of people, laity, clergy, and bishops all over the world. The Council defined two decrees: Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic faith, Dei Filius. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ Pastor Aeternus which dealt with the primacy and infallibility of the pope There were many other important items on the agenda: mission, oriental churches, canon law, religious orders etc. but they could not be dealt with because the Italians marched on Rome on 20th September 1870 and the council had to be adjourned. Ironically the pope lost Rome during the Council itself. The First decree defined the relationship between faith and reason and rejected all modern movements as threats to the faith. It affirmed the existence of a personal God who could be reached by reason but at the same time affirmed the necessity of revelation and said that there is no conflict between faith and reason. The second decree defined the pope's jurisdictional primacy and infallibility. There was from the beginning a conservative majority group which was determined to strengthen the Pope's power, and authority, to reject all conciliarist tendencies, to strengthen his spiritual power. There was also a minority group was led by Cardinal Newman, most German bishops and many American and Austrian bishops consisting of about 20% of the Council fathers who were against this. But the pope was not impressed by this minority and on 18th July 1870 the two dogmas were defined. They said: 1. The pope has legally binding primacy of jurisdiction over every individual national church and every individual Christian. 2. The pope has the gift of infallibility in his solemn magisterial decisions. These solemn (ex cathedra) decisions are infallible on the basis of a special support from the Holy Spirit and are unchangeable (irreformable) of themselves, not by virtue of the assent of the Church. Both these definitions together make the pope an absolute power. Many objected to it and to its ecumenical implications. 66
Characteristics of Roman Primacy according to Pastor Aeternus: Primacy is supreme, full, universal, ordinary, immediate and episcopal. Supreme and full means, he is subject to no other human power in the Church, he has total power. He has supreme jurisdiction, he is the supreme judge, he is subject to review by no one, he has supreme power of teaching. Universal means no one is exempt from this power. It extends to all. Ordinary means power that is not delegated but belongs to him properly in virtue of his office. He can exercise his power in the whole church like a bishop in a diocese Immediate means he can use his power directly without intermediaries. Episcopal means the same authority that the bishop has in his diocese, the pope has over the whole church. Together with these powers he also has the power of infallibility when he teaches on faith and morals. History of Infallibility There is a clear development of this doctrine. (Hans Küng, Infallible? An Inquiry, Brian Tierney Origin of Papal Infallibility. 1150-1350, Alois Bermejo Towards Christian Reunion) Brian Tierney says that infallibility limits the power of the Pope. He says it originated in the 13 th and 14th centuries in the wake of the controversy on the Franciscan Spirituals. An eccentric Franciscan Peter Olivi propagated around the year 1280 that Papal decisions on faith and morals are unchangeable. What was the occasion for it? The Franciscan spirituals had propagated the view that Christ and the apostles possessed nothing. There was another group which said they possessed something. The matter was settled by pope Nicholas III in 1279 in favour of the spirituals. In order to defend this view Peter Olivi now said that this was an infallible teaching of the pope because it concerns a matter of faith. He wanted that subsequent popes do not change this and said that anyone who went against this will be a false pope. No one took this seriously, particularly the popes. When the Franciscan spirituals tried to use it against pope John XXII he vehemently opposed this theory. In 1324 he in his bull Quia Quorundam condemned the doctrine of papal infallibility as a "work of the devil, the father of all lies". He moreover burnt four Franciscans uttering the famous words: "Poverty is great, integrity is greater, but obedience is the greatest good". Tierney thus says it is a creation of the middle ages.
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This is not exactly correct. Scripture Lk 22:32; Jn 21: 15-17 etc. speak of Peter's infallibility. Rom 1:8 speaks of the faith of the church of Rome as pure apostolic tradition, which was acknowledged since the third century. In 519 pope Hormisdas using Mt. 16:18 formulated the maxim that the Roman church has not erred and will not err. This refers to the Roman church, not the person of the pope because there are individual popes who later erred. Pope Honorius I was condemned at the 6th Ecumenical Council in 681, in 692 at the Synod of Trullo, and at the 7th and 8th Ecumenical councils because of his controversial position on monothelitism. The canonists of the 12th century said: The universal church in union with the Roman church will not err. Since the 13th century, the opinion was that the college of cardinals which represented the church will not err even if the pope errs. Later canonists bring in the idea of the role of the pope not only in the preservation of the apostolic faith but also in active definition. The pope can decide on questions of faith. Thomas Aquinas said, the pope can decree new formulations of faith. The pope is the head of the Council which can define doctrine. So the pope can define doctrine. But the question was asked: are these definitions true because they are defined by the pope or because they are received by the universal church, but no answer is given. The question of reception was raised without being answered. The Conciliarists of the 14th and 15th centuries said, the infallibility of the pope is founded on the infallibility of the church. Head and body cannot be separated: So the Council of Constance spoke of reform in head and in members and put the Council above the pope as the ultimate authority. Thus the leading idea is that the church is infallible. As the representative of the church the pope participates in this infallibility. As a private person he can err but not as the representative of the Church. The pope is infallible because he bases himself on the church. This position is now changed may be because of the influence of absolute monarchy in Europe. Rome wanted a counter-force to these absolute monarchies with absolute power. That is the context of the papal dogmas of Infallibility and primacy of Vatican I. We have two dogmas. We have to live with them. I don't think somebody will abolish them someday. Neither a development backward, nor forward. Infallibility is not used very much, only once since 1870, in 1950. The popes know that it is counter-productive for the papacy itself. It is like burning the bridge after crossing it. There is no way back. No chance for the future. The popes try to overcome this by encyclicals, especially since Leo XIII (1878-1903). Primacy on the other hand is used frequently, and decisively to control the activities of theologians, priests, religious, and bishops, also in doctrinal matters. 68
Vatican II emphasized collegiality but the pope's powers are not taken away. So there is a tension between the two ecclesiologies: the communio ecclesiology of Vatican II and the juridical ecclesiology of the pre-Vatican era. Loss of history, forgetfulness of history, rejecting/ignoring history is perilous for the church. An examination of history shows that the church had different options in defining its teaching and ruling authority. But the Ultramontane direction succeeded. But does that mean that the other directions or options are invalid or that the minority bishops of Vatican I representing a totally untenable position. It should not be forgotten that there was an opposition with valid arguments. As we have amply demonstrated the Roman church always had a special position, acknowledged both by West and East. It should have been used by Rome to develop a federal, collegial, episcopal structure of authority. This did not happen for various reasons. Now it needs a lot of courage and good will to change this situation. We should also reflect on the ultimate justification for this doctrine, namely, The unity of the church in faith. This unity is however not uniformity but a unity in plurality or diversity. When these two elements of unity and plurality are served, we can very well accept these dogmas. But if they are used to solve problems speedily without discussion, there is nothing Christian about it. There will always be problems in the church but attempts to solve them without discussion, consensus and reception by the universal church will be counter productive. In this context comes also the problem of ecumenism. An absolutist papacy is the enemy No. 1 enemy of ecumenism. From the present stand point of catholic exegesis and history any argument about a Petrine primacy of jurisdiction, continuation of such primacy in the bishop of Rome etc. face insuperable difficulties. But a primacy of service for the sake of the edification of the Spirit, a pastoral primacy may be acceptable to both Protestants and the Orthodox churches. A second important development in the 19th century was the origin of communism and the church’s response to it. The shadow side of the industrial revolution was the social consequences of it, namely the wretched state of the working class or the proletariat: the exploitation of the working class, children, women etc. resulting in class conflict and conflict between two ideologies, capitalism and communism. Capitalism: constitutional limitation of the power of the state, personal freedom, withdrawal of the state from economic and social spheres. Free market economy, free trade and business, competition, rise of the middle class. Communism: workers' benefits, the social question, that is, social justice, distribution of wealth equally etc., concretely taken up by the communists. Marx (1818-1883) and Engels (d. 1895) published the Communist Manifesto 1848. The central teaching of Marx is the thesis that all history is a series of class struggles between classes of society for economic power and for the establishment of a classless society. The whole exposition is radically atheistic and materialistic. For them the question is not any more the freedom of the individual but social justice. Reaction of the Churches
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1. Lack of perception: A whole new world was taking shape, but the churches did not notice it. After all they were in possession of eternal truths. The social order as divinely willed. 2. Charitable work: To mitigate the misery of the people, to re-Christianize the workers, but no effort to change the existing social order. Social action rather than social critique. 3. Church associations: Groups of laity led by socially conscious laity and clergy to organize people, to instill in them Christian ideals, in order to incorporate the proletariat into the mainstream church. Wilhelm Emmanuel Ketteler, the Archbishop of Mainz was one of the prominent churhmen who raised the social question officially. 4. Social Encyclicals: In 1892, Leo XIII wrote his famous first social encyclical Rerum Novarum and demanded regulatory laws of the state against liberal capitalism. The communist Manifesto was published in 1848. Private property was emphasized against socialism. He is the Pope who laid the foundation for the social teachings of the Church. 5. Confrontation with communism, which was always negative. The church was opposed to it on account of its atheistic underpinning and its encouragement to conflict within societies. The papacy was forthright in warning of the dangers. The Church opposed specially Communism’s attitude to religion (opium of the people), and its materialistic world-view. However, Karl Marx became the father of one of the most influential social and political theories of modern times, with a historic impact on the world. In short, there was no serious effort to reinterpret Christianity for the challenges of the industrial society, to ask the question, what is the relationship between the Christian message and the social order. The pope and the curia wanted only the re-Christianization of Europe according to the traditional pattern based on social service, maintaining traditional class distinctions, and the spiritualization of this class order. This was their alternative to the social question. This may be the place to say a few words about the intellectual challenge posed to the church by two other intellectuals of the 19th century together with Karl Marx, namely, Charles Darwin (1809-92) and Sigmund Freud (1956-1939). Charles Darwin was fascinated by botany and natural history from his youth and became a self made scientist after he broke off is studies for medicine and Anglican ministry. After about five years of assiduous explorations of the natural world he produced his masterpiece Origin of Species in 1895. Some churchmen of course immediately charged that the book’s central thesis of natural selection and evolution challenged the literal biblical interpretation of creation. This was the case with the Anglican church. But the catholic church eventually came to accept its central tenet teaching that science and faith are not contradictory and that evolution is a valid hypothesis. One of the supporters of Darwin Teilhad de Chardin was however censured by the church. Sigmund Freud who is regarded as the founder of psychoanalysis has exercised great influence upon development of psychiatry, psychology and the social sciences. Freud in his writings appears to be devoid of directly religious commitment. Crucial to his teaching are the existence of unconscious mental processes, the genetic origin of motivation in basic drives (instincts), the influence of childhood experiences on adult personality and the belief that all mental or behavioural events however apparently random are in fact psychically determined. As his 70
influence grew many catholics remained wary of his psychoanalysis partly because he sought to explain religious belief in terms of childhood experiences thereby relegating the objective truth of Christianity. Moreover his scientific world view and determinism threatened human free will. But counseling, spiritual direction and religious formation of both clergy and laity etc have been profoundly influenced by Freud’s insights. We must say a few words about John Henry Newman (1801-1899) one of the most influential theologians of the 19th century who was beatified by pope Benedict XVI on 19th September 2010. He was baptized as an Anglican and spent most of his adult life at Oxford university where he was a student, teacher and also vicar of the university church. He was prolific writer and above all a great preacher. Be began to be attracted to Catholicism and in 1843 he resigned his post as vicar and two years later he was received into the catholic church and was ordained a catholic priest. He remained a national figure and widely respected also by the Anglican church and was made a cardinal by pope Leo XIII. Although his exact influence on theology is difficult to pin point, his extensive writings on various themes and his background with both the churches and his commitment to his Christian faith make him an important figure also in the ecumenical field. He was against the proclamation of papal infallibility because he said it was unnecessary and also because it would damage relations with the other churches. His teachings of liberty and conscience, and his insistence on the role of the laity touched on issues that would be taken up by Vatican II. Newman may be considered the nineteenth century theologian who exercised the most influence on Vatican II. Another important development in the 19th century was the revival of mission under the protection of colonialism and imperialism Of course the missionary activity of this century was not purely a political undertaking. It was supported by a religious and missionary awakening in the church in Europe which could be seen in the revitalization of traditional religious Orders with a missionary dynamism and the founding of new missionary orders. (53 male and 200 female orders were founded in the 19th century only for missionary activity). Particularly important was the participation of women. Pioneered by Marie-Anne Javouhey who founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny and had sisters in the missions from 1817. People's Participation: Prompted by the horrible reports from the missions sent by the missionaries. So founding of missionary societies to support mission. In 1822 Society for the propagation of the faith was founded by a young girl, Pauline Mary Jaricot in 1822. Papal initiatives by Gregory XVI (1831-1840) also played a great role. Although he was reactionary in Europe, he reorganized missionary activity in the whole world. Condemned slavery, encouraged the formation of native clergy, created 70 dioceses and vicariates apostolic and appointed 195 missionary bishops world wide. But mission was supported by colonialism. Particularly in the 2nd half of the 19th century. From 1870 Europeans practically divide the whole world among themselves. In 1885, at the treaty of Berlin, Africa was divided except Ethiopia and Liberia. Where they could not take control, they established protectorates, initially to protect the Europeans and
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Christians but they always interfered in the internal affairs of these nations. Eg. China, Turkey, Persia, etc. Japan could not be colonized because after defeating Russia in 1904 it became a super power with a powerful navy. But China was weak. The English controlled the opium trade and it was sold in China. The Chinese did not like this and confiscated the goods. 1840-42 the Opium War. 1842 - Peace of Nanking. China lost Hongkong (1977 back to China), had to allow the import of opium and the missionaries. From 1858 China came under the French Protectorate and the favours shown to the Christians enraged the Chinese and there were violent reactions. In 1900 during the Boxer war thousands of Christians lost their life. Characteristics of colonial mission 1. Partnership in colonialism. Mission and the colonial powers benefitted mutually. Many countries were not allowing the missionaries. So the choice was between freedom for the people or success for mission. They chose success for mission and asked for protection. 2. Nationalism. Missionaries who normally belonged to the nationality of the colonizers saw no problem in their nationalistic tendencies. No criticism of colonialism by the missionaries. They were children of their time. 3. Europeanism. They considered their religion and culture as superior and with the help of the state they wanted to spread them. 4. Humanitarian services. They did a lot of charitable work with the help of the colonial powers, and effected social reform. Helped in the spread of education, health care etc protests against slave trade, sati or widow burning in India 5. No Native clergy and episcopate. As a result of the colonial mentality and feelings of superiority, there was little effort to bring up a native clergy. Before the World War I, there were only three indigenous bishops in the missions throughout the world, namely, in the three dioceses of the Thomas Christians, Trichur, Ernakulam, Changanachery. However, we cannot say that mission was an attendant symptom of colonialism or that for the missionaries economic and commercial interests were always more important than their religious ideals. In many cases they saw colonialism as a help for mission without noticing its future repercussions. Twentieth Century The twentieth century can be divided neatly into two periods, the period before Vatican II and the period after it. Let us begin with the first, and let us begin with some important popes: Pius X (1903-1914), inaugurated the twentieth century in Catholicism. The caution that characterized the previous popes with regard to modern ideas continued during his papacy too, perhaps even more strongly. He refused to accept even the most moderate of modern ideas. On the one hand he was responsible for a constructive renovation of the internal life of the church. He was pastoral minded, effected the reform of canon law, reform of seminaries, initiated 72
Catholic Action, reformed church music, liturgy, etc. On the other hand, He was known for his opposition to and suppression of a movement called Modernism. He condemned all reformminded theologians, historians, and exegetes, with index, excommunication, dismissal etc. What was Modernism? Attempt to reconcile contemporary scientific, historical, psychological and philosophical positions with the Catholic faith (1890-1910). The movement was started by a small group of intellectuals, laity, and clergy. The word Modernism was used by the curia to defame them. They themselves did not call themselves modernists. Two major areas of controversy - Bible and Dogma Two important persons Alfred Loisy (1857-1940) and George Tyrrel (1861-1909) SJ. Alfred Loisy was professor of theology at the Catholic Institute of Paris. He said that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch. Scripture cannot be seen as historical document. The first eleven chapters of Genesis are not historical. In 1893 he was forced to give up teaching. In 1902 he published his book Gospel and the Church. People were forbidden to read it. He emphasized the historical development of Christianity. He questioned the founding of the Church by Jesus. "Jesus came to announce the kingdom; but what arrived was the Church". The formulations of dogmas is historical. They evolved in line with contemporary knowledge. Thus he said that the church and the dogmas evolved historically. In 1903 his books were put on the index. In 1908 excommunicated. George Tyrrell was an English Jesuit. Doctrines should be compatible with the philosophy of the time, he said. Theology and dogmas are human efforts to grasp the divine force working in man. They should be expressed for the historical situation. Revelation is a personal communication. There is no original deposit of revelation. Each individual expresses his experience from the point of view of contemporary culture. He was expelled from the Society of Jesus and excommunicated in 1907. Pius X condemned modernism calling it the meeting place of all heresies. In 1907 he published the Lamentabili (a list of 67 proposition) and Pascendi giving the portrait of a modernist. Anti modernist oath for all clergy was introduced in 1910 and was lifted only in 1966. Many books were put on the index. Many theologians were removed from teaching posts. All were asked to return to Thomism, the official theology of the church. Suspected priests were watched and reported. Clergy were not allowed to study in state universities. Philosophy and history were named the most dangerous subjects. The Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome was founded for the study of scripture. The pope thought that he had restored theological order but in effect he produced an oppressive atmosphere. Particularly affected was exegesis. The next pope, Benedict XV (1914-1922) is remembered for his important missionary encyclical letter Maximum Illud (1919), a milestone in mission history. It called for the end of Europeanism 73
and nationalism in the missions, inculturation of the faith, and building up of a native clergy and episcopate. He pleaded for the rootedness of the Church in the countries where they existed, and the need for native leadership. The result: in India - 1923 the first native bishop of the Latin rite. In China 1926 - 6 Chinese bishops. Japan 1927 - first native bishop in Nagasaki. Phenomenal rise in the number of male and female religious from the missions, especially in India. This was partially necessitated by political developments, namely, end of colonialism which began after the first world war. Leading the process was Mahatma Gandhi in India who became an inspiration for all. The pope’s pleas for inculturation challenged the identification of the Church with Western culture. Church is not bound to any particular culture, thus rehabilitating the old Jesuit missionaries in India and China who had accepted harmless social customs of the place. A discussion began on the problem of theological inculturation rather than pedagogical inculturation or accommodation. Inculturation is the embodiment of Christianity in a culture as a historical reality. It is founded on the incarnation. The second Vatican council would give more impetus to it. The next pope Pius XI is known for his famous social encyclical Quadragesimo Anno in 1931 dealing with various economic and social problems of the time, especially in the wake of the communist revolution in Russia in 1917. Communism and socialism were condemned. Pius XII (1939-1958), the last pope before Vatican II is called last pope of the restoration, a process which began after the French Revolution. He too initiated many reforms in the church, like the liturgical movement, encouraging lay apostolate, encouraging biblical studies through his famous Divino afflante Spiritu of 1943 which allowed modern historical methods in the study of bible, encouraged Catholics to participate in democratic politics etc. The Marian dogma of 1950 delighted a great number of Catholics. But in the field of theology he was reactionary. He silenced philosophers and theologians like Teilhard de Chardin, Henri de Lubac, M.D. Chenu, Y. Congar, Karl Rahner etc. No pluralism in thinking was allowed. The encyclical Humani Generis of 1950 condemned all the errors of the time, the movement of worker priests, the New Theology which was historical, biblical and patristic. The church was a supernatural fortress set against the world. Communism was considered its greatest enemy. This showed that the Church was not ready to accept even the most moderate implications of modernity. The Church and Totalitarian systems Fascism, Nazism, Communism etc. were ideologies which emerged in Europe in the 20th century and the church opposed them, particularly, communism which was considered a universal scourge. Towards the other two, the position was ambivalent. Especially towards the holocaust or the extermination of the Jews during world war II is a shameful chapter in Christian history, called the betrayal of the Jews and the silence of Pius XII. In 1964 a play was staged in Germany by the title The Representative which criticized the attitude of Pope Pius XII to the persecution of the Jews, accusing him of discreet diplomatic interventions, and general statements rather than open condemnation because of fear of repression. The fact is that he spoke in general terms against the extermination on the basis of 74
race. He preferred discreet diplomatic interventions to solemn pronouncements. The curia is known for its veiled and generalized language. Perhaps this was not the language that was called for in the face such a crime. He really feared reprisals. But he also helped thousands of Jews privately. Both the churches officially kept silence. Neither the Catholic Church nor the Protestant church raised its voice. For the Catholics it was fear and political opportunism. For the Protestants it was the conviction that the state is justified in doing what it did, based on Luther's theory of the two kingdoms. It is alleged that both Christian churches became guilty of the crime committed against the Jews. The analysis of documents points to basic flows in their arguments and that they were primarily concerned about their existence. In 1933: Concordat with Hitler. Politically an opportune act but theologically the most colossal mistake of the century, instead of spiritual courage, a political decision. The protestant church woke up to the situation only when Karl Barth (1886-1968) wrote his tract Theological Existence Today in 1933. He said that the church should primarily listen to the Word of God. Inspired by this a Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller founded the Confessing Church in 1934. The church is the community which confesses Jesus Christ when it is called for. The scriptures and the Reformation principles were accepted as its basic criteria. This is one of the most important events in Protestant church history in the 20th century. It is known as the Barmen Confession. The most famous member of this church was Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), who was executed by the Nazis in 1945. There were however, many individual Catholics and Protestants who resisted the Nazis and were killed. The Ecumenical Movement A significant development in Christianity in the twentieth century was the emergence of the ecumenical movement. The word comes from the Greek word Oikoumenike meaning literally where there are houses (oikos house) and by extension the inhabited world. It is the process towards greater expression of unity and cooperation among all Christians. It is a movement which began in the 20th century. It is one of the most significant developments in Christianity in the 20th century. Began among the Protestants, not Catholics. It was started neither by theologians nor the hierarchy but groups of Christians who were interested in religious renewal and unity. Pre-history: Two Councils, Lyons in 1274, and Florence in 1439 had tried to heal the Eastern Schism but unsuccessful. Trent wanted to heal the Schism caused by the Reformation, but it was unsuccessful. The Protestant churches too were unable to heal the many divisions within them. In 1817 a union of Lutherans and Calvinists in Germany was forced upon them by emperor Frederick III of Prussia. The YMCA was founded in 1844 and the YWCA was founded in 1854 as supra-racial and supra-denominational youth organizations in the Protestant church. But the real movement began in the 20th century among the Protestants, primarily to eradicate competition in the missions. In 1910 a World Missionary Conference was organized at Edinburgh by Joseph Oldham and it was attended by delegates from various missionary societies and churches. As a result The International Missionary Council was established in 1921 to 75
coordinate missionary activity. This Conference can be considered the beginning of the ecumenical movement. At the conference it was emphasized that disunity was rendering mission useless and it was losing credibility. Catholics and the Orthodox churches were not invited to this meeting. Slowly it was felt that ecumenism should not be limited to solving pastoral problems in the missions but should extend also to doctrinal differences; that alone would lead to true unity. Thus the movement of Faith and Order was born, initiated by Charles Henry Brent and William Temple. The first world conference met at Lausanne in 1927 representing 108 ecclesial communities. They identified the following problems: essence and unity of the church's doctrines, ecclesiology, ministry, and sacraments. Another group of people discovered that doctrines separate but service unites. So in spite of doctrinal separation there is the need to organize a programme of service to the world. There is need for practical work for peace and social work. The result was the movement Life and Work initiated by the Lutheran bishop Nathan Söderblom of Uppsala (1866-1931). In 1925, the first world conference of Life and Work was held at Stockholm. Except the Catholic Church all the churches were present. The concern: how could Christian principles be applied to daily life in the world? The next step was to found a single organization uniting both these movements. The result was the World Council of Churches founded in 1948 at Amsterdam. 147 churches from 47 countries were represented. Now more than 300 churches from 100 countries with headquarters at Geneva. It is a fellowship of Churches which confesses the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour in accordance with the scriptures. The member bodies are churches, not individuals or groups. They should acknowledge the Christological and Trinitarian dogmas of the early Councils. Not a supra-church. No coercive power. Not binding, not a hierarchical organization. Its objective are: to work together with member churches in the interest of renewal, unity, witnessing to Christ, and Christian action. To hole frank and free theological discussions. To function as a resource for consultation. To hold conferences to discuss specific subjects. In short, to emphasize the responsibility of the churches to the world. Therefore, it has a political and social profile. It tries to define the relationship between faith, justice and freedom. So its periodic meetings are important events with relevant topics and it is the representative body of the all the non Catholic Churches in the world including the orthodox churches. The Catholic Church and Ecumenism
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With the decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio the Catholic Church produced its most authoritative document on ecumenism in the 20th century and has joined this movement with full vigour. But pre-Vatican attitude was deliberate distancing, passing judgment without being part of it. Catholic Church possesses the truth, other ecclesial bodies are not churches, they should return to the Catholic Church. 1918 the Lutheran Archbishops of Sweden, Denmark, Norway wrote to the Pope asking him to send a delegate to the ecumenical conference at Uppsala. Rome rejected the request. 1919 Benedict XV rejected an invitation to take part in the Faith and Order meeting. Any participation in such meetings without permission of the Holy See was forbidden. 1928 Encyclical letter by Pius XI Mortalium animos advised other ecclesial bodies to return to the church. Faith comes before charity, it was said. The Roman church is the true church. Of course there were private initiatives like the Week of prayer for Christian unity 18-25 January, popularized by Paul Couturier (1881-1953), the Una Sancta Movement in Germany, Catholic Conference for Ecumenical Questions founded by Cardinal Willibrands in 1948. etc. and the establishment of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity by Pope John XXIII in1960. These prepared the way for the decree on ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio of the second Vatican council. Another significant development in Christianity in the twentieth century is the emergence of pentecostalism The pentecostal movement, first broke out in Los Angeles in 1906. It refers to a movement within Christianity emphasizing direct personal experience of God thorough the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Worldwide their number is estimated to be some 600 million At least two thirds of them are in the developing world. Directly influenced by them is the catholic charismatic movement and their number is estimated to be 120 million The Catholic Church has suffered massive losses due to its members switching over to Pentecostalism, especially in Latin America and Africa and now increasingly also in Asia. The reasons for this are purported to be lack of pastoral care, a liturgy that appeals to the heart, the church’s excessively bureaucratic structures, especially its hierarchy and clericalism, divisiveness in the church pulling it in too many directions, the perceived liberalism in the church, lack of emotional appeal, neglect of women’s role in the church, lack of inculturation, stress on personal morality, economic advantage etc. It is generally believed that they are supported by the United States financially.
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As the fastest growing Christian movement, Pentecostalism will stay with us for at least the next fifty years. And it may help to accomplish what generations of popes, bishops, theologians, and pastors were unable to do, namely, rousing Catholicism from its slumber, creating pressure for a more personal pastoral care. The church cannot go to sleep content with the formal externals of religion but often not going any deeper and sit there waiting for people to show up. There is need for a more dynamic Catholicism to emerge. It is still yet another chance for developing a personal liturgy and not more translations, more inculturation, a topic that has been shelved for all practical purposes, ecumenism, empowering of catholic women, and to go back to the basic communities. It is interesting to note that the basic communities discovered by the church was disowned by it by accusing it of being the hotbed of liberation theology and the Pentecostal churches in Latin America made use exactly of this structure for its phenomenal success. The most important event in Catholicism in the 20th century was of course the second Vatican council. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) cannot be understood apart from John XXIII (1958-1963) When he was elected he was seventy seven years old and it was thought that he would be a caretaker pope. He was a simple man but he had lived in many countries and had seen that the world had moved forward a good deal and that the church played no part in many areas of life. So he announces a Council on 25 January 1959, 90 days after he was elected pope in order to bring the church in tune with the modern world. But there was considerable surprise at this. People had thought that the first Vatican council had given the pope the power to do what he wanted and do without a council and so the calling of a council was fully unnecessary. Commentators have debated how far the pope had a conscious plan for the council. On the one hand he spoke of opening the windows of the church to let in some fresh air but he also spoke of strengthening doctrine and ecclesiastical discipline. 1. Adaptation of the church, its teaching, discipline, organization, and apostolate to a world that was fast changing, or aggiornamento - updating. 2. Return to Christian unity and promotion of peace in the world. He wanted it to be pastoral rather than dogmatic. Its aim was not to proclaim new dogmas but to restate old dogmas anew. It was to be a new pentecost, it would give a new thrust to the proclamation of the Christian message Its aim was not to condemn errors but to dissipate error by the force of truth. It wanted to discern the signs of the time. Two quotations from pope John XXIII would suffice to understand his mind. “The church is on a journey… and the task of the one who leads it is not to preserve it as though it were a museum. The church is not an archaeological museum but is alive… tireless and life giving and it makes its way forward often in unexpected ways.” And still more forcefully in his opening speech of 78
the Council on 11 October 1962: “It pains us that we sometimes have to listen to the complaints of people, who though burning with zeal, are not endowed with an overabundance of discretion or measure. They see in modern times nothing but prevarication and ruin. They keep saying that as compared with past ages, ours is getting worse, and they behave as if they had learned nothing from history, which is nonetheless a teacher of life.… But we must disagree with these prophets of doom, who are always forecasting disaster as though the end of the world were imminent.” 1959-61 preparation 1962-65 Council in 4 sessions It was the best prepared council. 800 theologians and experts prepared the agenda. 2500 bishops, heads of men's religious orders (not women's) and faculties of 37 catholic universities were consulted in formulating the agenda. They were asked what were the problems facing the church. 2000 replies were received. There were analyzed by 12 preparatory committees and three secretariats and they prepared seventy schemata. They were reduced to 17 and 16 of them were passed. Besides 2400 bishops, 93 non-catholic and 36 lay observers including 4 women were present. 4 Constitutions (the essential documents of the council) Sacrosanctum Concilium: constitution on the liturgy Lumen Gentium : dogmatic constitution on the Church Dei Verbum: dogmatic constitution on Revelation Gaudium et Spes: pastoral constitution on the church in the modern world. 9 Decrees (texts which appeared as the application of principles laid down by the constitutions) Inter mirifica: social communications Orientalium ecclesiarum: Catholic eastern churches or oriental churches Unitatis redintegratio: ecumenism Christus dominus: pastoral office of the bishop Perfectae caritatis: renewal of religious life Optatam totius: training of priests Apostolicam actuositatem: laity 79
Ad gentes: missionary activity Presbyterorum ordinis: ministry and life of priests 3 Declarations (principles and guidelines expressing the thought of the church) Gravissimum educationis: education Nostra aetate: relation of the church to non-Christian religions Dignitatis humanae: religious liberty The original intention was to complete its work by the end of the year 1962. But that was not to be. So he announced another session for the autumn of 1963 but in June 1963 he died and Paul VI was elected who had the onerous task of guiding the council which ended only in 1965. All the drafts which were originally prepared by the commissions which were dominated by the Roman curia were rejected or radically reformulated and that was the reason for the long duration The weightiest body of official catholic teaching in the twentieth century. There are no solemn definitions, no condemnations, they are neither definitive nor exclusive of error, ambivalent, compromises. Some parts are important but some other, verbose. In spite of all these, it was a great achievement. If we analyze the documents we can find that the main statements of the council fall into three levels of significance. 1. Texts that mark new and wide-ranging orientation in the life of the church. Themes that keep coming back across the documents, themes that characterize the mind and achievements of the Council as a whole. 2. Texts which contain a clear shift from pre-conciliar teaching. 3. Practical decisions which deal with some new institutions or specific practices. We shall give a few examples for all the three categories. Texts which mark new and wide ranging orientations a. People of God: LG chapter 2, a characteristically Vatican II expression which mattered most to most people in the church. Previously the church was defined as a society, a term taken from juridical language and the need for authority was stressed. Now a biblical term is used and the basic quality of the baptized is emphasized saying that the church is the people of God. To drive home this point, this chapter is placed before the chapter on the hierarchy. Priesthood of all the faithful was Luther's theme. b. Eucharist as the centre of the church and its unity: CD 30, LG 3. Church is the body of Christ but it is the Eucharistic body. I Cor 10:17. The idea of the sacramentality of the church, the idea of church as a communion, the concept of local churches etc. are consequences of this doctrine of the Eucharist-church relationship. Wherever the Eucharist is celebrated there is the 80
church. If there is no Eucharist, there is no church. Earlier the pope gave unity to the church but now the Eucharist gives the church its unity. c. Primacy of Scripture: The teaching office is not above the word of God but serves it. (Dei Verbum 10). Easy Access to Sacred Scripture should be provided for all (DV 22). This was revolutionary. Ecumenism was made possible because cooperation with protestant Bible societies was made possible. d. Pluralism: The idea that the church is a communion of churches gives rise to the theology of the particular churches. LG 13, AG 3. It also gives rise to liturgical and theological pluralism. UR 4, GS 62, OE 17. e. Ecumenism A whole decree is dedicated to it. Separated Christians are not outside the Church but are recognized as being united with the church even if it is an imperfect union. Prayer in common, theological dialogue, practical cooperation etc. are considered almost necessary parts of church life. f. Concern with secular human values like Justice, peace etc. The pastoral constitution explains this in detail. Such concerns are constitutive of Christian living. Reading the signs of the times, cultural, economic, political signs of the contemporary world. The church is not selfsufficient. It is not a weakness but strength to respond to the signs of the times. GS 4, 44. This is founded christologically on the incarnation. Jesus reveals human destiny. 2. Texts which mark a clear shift from pre-conciliar teaching a. Collegiality LG 22. The episcopal college as such is empowered with supreme authority over the whole church exercised in a solemn way through an ecumenical council. It was bitterly resisted by many. At the end there was too much compromise and primacy still stands. But the episcopal college has great power at least in theory. b. The unique church of Christ subsists in the Roman Catholic Church LG 8 The earlier documents of the church identified the Roman Catholic Church with the church. The word subsists accepts at least partial ecclesial status for other Christian churches and ecclesial bodies. The true church is not co-extensive with the Catholic Church. The church of Christ is to be found there but it no longer says it is not to be found anywhere else. This was the foundation stone of ecumenism. c. The Right of Oriental Churches OE 5, UR 16 The importance of the Catholic oriental churches and their right to govern themselves. This is the core of the theology of the particular church. If the churches of the East have this right, what about the churches of other regions and places? What is theologically correct in one case should be correct also elsewhere. Throughout the world the local churches have the right and duty not to be governed by Rome, of course keeping in mind the unity of the church. d. Decree on the Life and Ministry of Priests PO 16 This document accepts married clergy in the eastern churches and it is commended. It is the first time that a document has accepted and recommended the unity of priesthood and marriage. However, celibacy is still recommended for 81
the Western church. What is theologically and pastorally appropriate in the eastern churches cannot be theologically wrong and pastorally unsuitable in the west or anywhere else. e. Declaration on Religious Freedom DH 2 It reverses the accepted catholic principle of freedom to truth not to persons, and that error has rights. It condemns much of church history, inquisition, crusades etc. f. Condemnation of anti-semitism NE 4 although after so many centuries of discrimination by Christians and the hierarchy. g. Condemnation of war GS 80. The word condemn is used for the only time here. It condemns mass destruction, particularly the dropping of the atom bomb (destruction of cities is explicitly mentioned) h. Theology of marriage GS 50, 51 The concept of responsible parenthood and the need to plan the family. The morality of the methods of contraception was not discussed. Procreation is not the sole purpose of marriage but conjugal love. In the past the church maintained that planning the family be left to God. Now the council says parents themselves should ultimately make the judgment as to whether or not they should have further children, (GS 50). They might temporarily decide that the size of their families should not be increased (GS 51). 3. Practical decisions which deal with new institutions or specific practices a. Vernacular Liturgy SC 36, 54 For the ordinary church goer a very practical decision. More than anything else it has changed the public life style of Catholicism. The reformers had asked for it centuries ago. b. Communion under both species SC 55 Communion under both kinds be given to religious and laity under certain circumstances. Luckily this limitation certain circumstances has been abandoned. It is difficult to imagine that for centuries a sister receiving daily communion was never once in her life was permitted to receive the cup. Luther had demanded it centuries ago. c. Concelebration SC 57, 58 From the 12th century every priest was obliged to say Mass daily separately. This involved the multiplication of side altars and private masses but still the mass was considered the sacrament of unity. This permission also was given under certain circumstances but soon the limiting of it to certain circumstances was abandoned and concelebration became a normal practice in the church. d. Diaconate as a permanent order in the church to which also married people can be admitted. LG 29. It was an important decision. A number of functions that these deacons perform were once upon a time reserved only for the priest. Since there is shortage of priests because of celibacy deacons are now commissioned, thus revising the ancient order of diaconate to include also married people. This is very significant because in the Latin church the ban to marry was applied also to deacons because it involved sex which was considered as causing pollution. Now this reasoning is abandoned. Celibacy for the priest can also be abandoned for pastoral reasons. e. Communicatio in sacris UR 8, OE 26, 27 Preconciliar period condemned inter church worship. The council does not condemn it but commends it but to be used restrictively. So from
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an emphatic NO to YES and NO. Post conciliar developments showed unwillingness to put this into practice which goes against the mind of the council. f. Episcopal Conferences CD 37-38 Practice of regional collegiality, strengthening individual bishops, preventing individual action by certain powerful bishops. g. International agency for universal peace GS 90 The church founds an international agency for fostering universal peace, progress, social justice. The Justice and Peace Commission evolved out of this concern. It has brought forth a whole new dimension of church life, social action, service of the poor, economic justice, peace, liberation theologies etc. Full acceptance of all these ideals of the council has not taken place. For example, the idea that the Eucharist is the centre of the church's life. There is shortage of priests in many countries and many bishops' conferences have suggested ordaining married men so that Eucharist can be celebrated which is more important than celibacy. This has been rejected by Rome. Genuine acceptance of the spirit of Vatican II can be seen in a people of God ecclesiology, collegiality, centrality of the Eucharist, values of pluralism, and freedom, within and between particular churches, commitment to work and struggle for justice and peace in solidarity with the poor etc. Institutional Reforms Pope Paul VI effected some institutional reforms in the spirit of the council through his document Regimini ecclesiae of 1967. Reform of the Roman curia by internationalizing and decentralizing it. Congregations and Pontifical Councils headed by cardinals Holy office changed its name to Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The cardinals were no more called inquisitors. Index of forbidden books abolished. Propaganda Fide became the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. Age limit 75, appointment only for 5 years, bound to the ruling Pope The International Theological Commission founded in 1969. Synod of Bishops set up after the council as a consultative body. An expression of collegiality. There are ordinary, extra ordinary and special synods. Ordinary synods have elected members from among the bishops of national Episcopal conferences. Extraordinary synods have the presidents of bishops' conferences. Special synods are for a geographic region. If a pope wants to try the adventure of collegiality he can call a synod. The synods decide on a number of things but there is nobody to implement. Before the decisions of a synod is implemented, another synod is called. Starting from 1968 several synods have been called, now once every two years as a rule. The Revision of Canon Law started in 1963 completed in 1983. It has partially incorporated the insights of the council. 1990 the code of oriental canon law was promulgated 83
For example, the council said the church is communion, stressed the equality of all believers. But in the code, power to govern is reserved for those who are ordained. Episcopal collegiality was a value for the council. But the code does not offer any mechanism for this except an ecumenical council. Freedom for particular churches was encouraged by the council. The code gives very little of it. Consecrated life was codified into well-defined categories thus limiting the charismatic nature of the call. Teaching office of the episcopate is stressed but the sensus fidelium or the sense of faith of the people is not considered. The council offered a new theology of Marriage but the code thinks still in legal categories and medieval psychological theories. Renewal of Religious Life: In accordance with the decree on religious life, all religious orders were asked to revise and update their constitutions and life style in accordance with the openness provided by the council. Reception of Vatican II The second Vatican council must be counted among the half dozen most influential councils in the church’s history. Its decrees were very comprehensive and it was the most representative of all councils. Its decrees were all passed with great majority but the reception of the council proved difficult. One reason was perhaps it was convoked without any external threat and perhaps the unity in purpose was missing and the Roman curia was not behind it, in fact much of the resistance came from it. The curia was opposed to the council from the beginning. It accused many bishops and theologians world wide of exaggerated or faulty application. There was no mechanism for the execution that were both clear and effective. Much of it was left to bishops’ conferences and their discretion. Some examples: Marriage and birth control Although Vatican II’s decree Gaudium et Spes contained a chapter on marriage pope Paul VI withdrew the issue of birth control from the council’s agenda. Three years later in 1968 he issued an encyclical letter Humanae Vitae which condemned the use of artificial means of contraception, including therefore the recently discovered contraceptive pill which was in widespread use by women, including Catholics. The encyclical caused a major crisis within the catholic community with opposition coming from clergy and laity. It was a major dissent and challenge to papal authority and indirectly influenced the council’s reception and reception of papal teachings in general. The attitude seemed to be that one would choose to believe what is acceptable to one and not because the pope said it. John Paul II said that "to dispute the encyclical Humanae Vitae is the equivalent of refusing to God himself the obedience of our intelligence". The majority of the members of the commission to which the pope referred the matter preferred an approach in line with the changes envisaged 84
by the council. "The morality of sexual acts takes its meaning from the ordering of their actions in a fruitful married life. It does not depend upon the direct fecundity of each and every particular sexual act". The conservative minority maintained the specific ordering of each free, generative action to procreation and maintained that any contraception is morally evil. There are moral absolutes which are so by natural law and the hierarchy is the authority to judge them. According to many, Huamnae Vitae gives a partial view of the human person, the biological view. The majority view was that biology is one aspect of the human totality. So it is not the individual sexual acts but the over all health, dignity and responsible parenthood of the couple that should be considered. Any way it led to a serous dissent and remains so even today. It was an exercise of non-collegiality, its view was too biological, thought to be too personal a matter to be judged by the pope, according to the view of many Catholics. Many believe that moral precepts are guidelines for responsible, particular decisions not absolute commands. They said they will follow their conscience. Liturgy: The decree on liturgy permitted more widespread use of vernacular liturgy while also encouraging the use of Latin. Naturally the vernacular quickly replaced Latin almost everywhere and the old Latin Tridentine mass almost disappeared from use. Similar changes were introduced in the other sacraments too. Some Catholics felt the changes had gone too far and too fast particularly regarding Sunday mass. These changes almost coincided with a decline in the number of practicing Catholics in the western world which happened for other reasons and the blame was linked to the liturgical changes. This was a major reason for the schism led by archbishop Lefebvre starting in 1976. Subsequently the use of more Latin and the old rite was initiated culminating in the recent approval of regular celebration of the Tridentine mass in Latin. Then there is the new English translation of the missal which is a horrible mistake. The entire liturgical inculturation is abandoned. Priesthood: The council had two documents on the priests, one on priestly training, and the other on priestly ministry. It only showed the importance of the subject. But soon after the council there was a dramatic increase in the number of people who left priesthood. The major causes for abandoning priesthood was loneliness, dissatisfaction with ecclesiastical superiors, political activism, ethical issues, protest against lack of implementation of the directives of the council, mandatory celibacy and so on. In the beginning dispensations were granted. But they are reduced to second class Catholics. They could not be Eucharistic ministers, or readers at mass etc. The attempt was to paint them as personal failures not institutional problems. Those who married without dispensation before 1983 were excommunicated automatically. In the new code, automatic excommunication is suspended. There are thousands of excommunicated priests all over the world. Dispensation could be granted only to older priests who had left active ministry for a number of years. There is no will to rethink the question. One consequence is that the church tries to diversify ministry, lay people, married deacons etc. These are right things but for the wrong reason. 85
The question of celibacy was not allowed to be discussed in the council. So in both conciliar documents there is no treatment of the problem of celibacy. However, it is a hot topic today, especially in the wake of sex scandals involving clergy. The pastoral problem is very real in many parts of the world. In the Eastern Catholic Churches marriage for clergy is allowed. But for the western clergy, the decree of the II Lateran Council of 1139 still stands. It is impossible to give universal juridical expression to what is essentially a charism. Many episcopal conferences have demanded the ordination of married men. Ministry is a charism of leadership and service. Celibacy may be freely chosen The theoretical arguments are flawed. Argument of ritual purity divides the world into pure and impure and considers sex as evil. The argument of undivided service to God puts the priest apart because serving the kingdom is the vocation of all human beings. Moreover, the central idea of the council that the Eucharist is the centre of Christian life is thwarted by this practice. Many communities are denied the Eucharist on account of the law of celibacy. Similarly, the decree on religious life called for a renewal but in the aftermath of it there was a dramatic decline in the number again in the west. Also there is growth of certain new religious orders and movements like the Opus Dei, Legionaries of Christ, Comunione e Liberazione, Neo Catechumenate etc. which are very conservative in tone. The reforms in many religious congregations led to an identity crisis for many and they left. Ecumenism: In the field of ecumenism, the council’s decree produced encouraging results in the years immediately after the council. The ecumenical principles of the church found expression in The Directory of Ecumenism (The Directory for the Application of the Decisions of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican Concerning Ecumenical Matters) in two parts: Part I, 1967, Part II, 1970. The Catholic Church has friendly relations with most churches and has reached agreement on some issues with some of these churches. For example since 1961 the world Council of Churches has catholic observers at its meetings and WCC observers were present as observers at Vatican II. Perhaps the most notable example of cooperation between was the presence of catholic theologians at the preparation of the so called Lima Document on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry in 1982 which paved the way for the acceptance of these sacraments mutually by the members of the World Council of Churches. Perhaps the most notable success with the Orthodox churches was the lifting of the excommunication in 1965 and the setting up of joint commission for dialogue in 1980. As a result of the work of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission agreement was reached on principle on the Eucharistic doctrine, ministry and ordination and authority in the church. But then problems arose because of the ordination of women in the Anglican communion.
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Perhaps the most notable success with the Lutherans was the agreement on justification reached in 1999 which was the starting point of the Reformation. There was a joint declaration by the Monophysite church and the Catholic Church in 1971 and again in 1993 about the common Christological faith of the two churches. “In words and life we confess the true doctrine concerning Christ our Lord notwithstanding the differences in interpretation of such a doctrine which arose at the time of the council of Chalcedon.” Similarly, in 1994 the Catholic Church and the Nestorian church made a Christological declaration in which they proclaimed before the world their common faith in the mystery of the incarnation and affirmed that the divisions of the past 1500 years were due in large part to misunderstanding. Regular contact with the World Methodist Council since 1967. Contact with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches since 1970 Contact with the Classical Pentecostal Churches since 1972 Contact with the Baptists since 1984 Non Christian religions: Much of the momentum of Vatican II’s declaration on other faiths and religions Nostra Aetate has been maintained. A major challenge that has come in recent times is the emergence of militant Islam. Aspects of church life after the council The council envisioned ecclesial and theological pluralism. Regarding ecclesial pluralism the council brought out the idea of the local church. LG 23 says local churches are constituted after the model of the universal church. In these and formed out of them the one unique Catholic Church exists. There is an unresolved tension here. These two statements are ambiguous and contradictory. Whenever there was an assertion of the power of the local church, there was problem with the universal church. The Dutch church in 1968 constituted a National Pastoral Council. The experiment was ended by Rome because it perceived it as a threat. In 1969 The All India Seminar of India suggested the constitution of a National Pastoral Council. It too was forbidden by Rome. The Latin American Bishops' Conference at Medellin in 1968 reflected on their unique social situation and experience and Liberation Theology emerged. But it also gave rise to conflict with Rome. The local church's autonomy is a threat to Rome. It halts experiments. Another aspect of ecclesial pluralism is the tension between primacy and collegiality, the leadership structures within the local church and universal church. All collegial structures emerging from Vatican II are consultative and not legislative. The episcopal conferences and synods have very little impact. The papal role is immediate. He travels directly to the place. All bishops are handpicked by Rome and are appointed by Rome. They are mostly person known for 87
their conservatism. The nuncios have important roles to play. There was even the opinion in the Roman curia that there is no theological rationale for bishops' conferences. Theological Pluralism The role of theology is maintaining a historical, pluralistic and contextual understanding of the Christian faith. Theology is at the service of the community and also of the leaders of the community. Theology and magisterium are however, in conflict. On the one hand there is freedom, right of conscience etc. On the other hand critical reflection is subordinated to the magisterium. The right to dissent is under threat. A number of theologians are silenced. Inter Communion "The expression of unity very generally forbids common worship. Grace to be obtained sometimes commends it." UR 8. It rules out intercommunion in normal circumstances. The restrictions are severe. Is sharing the Eucharist to be seen as the seal on unity achieved or should it be seen also as a means to create unity? No community is perfect. No community's Eucharist is a perfect symbol. In spite of all the openness, the Catholic Church believes that it is the one, true and absolute church. Devotion: Better education, a search for relevant and meaningful spirituality led to the widespread collapse of many old devotional practices, critical appraisal of many customary practices, Eucharistic devotions, confessions, Friday abstinence, saying prayers by rot etc. Spontaneous prayers, mature spiritual reading, study of the bible, retreats, charismatic retreats, meditation, use of the scriptures of other religions etc. were introduced. Communitarian rather than individual piety, pubic sacramental celebrations, basic communities etc. added to this reform. The Place of Women in the Church Women are seldom mentioned in the documents as a social group. When the delegation to the council assembled in Rome in October 1962, a woman news reporter was denied communion. The uproar created made cardinal Suenens remark: Half the church is absent at the council. At the end of the council 12 laywomen and ten religious sisters were present but without the right to vote. But their presence caused the council to make some forthright comments on women. Their equality GS 9, their right to legitimate social progress, GS 52, their right to culture GS 60, their right not to be discriminated on the basis of gender GS 29 etc. But nothing is said about women in the church, except in general terms about their role as laity AA 9. The whole problem of contraception is important for women. Without reliable contraception it is scarcely possible for married women to combine family life with significant contribution to society. Besides, in doing that they experience themselves as moral persons capable of making decisions. The three important issues of women in the post conciliar period which have caused conflict with the hierarchy are 1. Reproductive rights: Many women feel that reproductive rights are personal choice.
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2. Religious women and the hierarchy: The religious women want democratization, diversification of their ministries, and adaptation. But there have been many conflicts with Rome which wants all to follow uniform pattern. 3. Ordination of women. About ordination of women, the whole discussion is banned by the pope. The Theology of Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, Sacraments to the Divorced and Remarried etc. The church proclaims permanence of marriage as central to the gospel. But there is a radical marital breakdown in the western society. The traditional solution has been no Eucharist, brother-sister marriage etc. Second marriage is considered a sin. They live in a sinful state. They are imperfect symbols, they cause scandal. From our renewed understanding of the Eucharist, not to give Eucharist is a sin, if the Eucharist is central to the life of the Christian. 5. Abortion. According to GS 51 it is an unspeakable crime. Life from its conception is sacred. According to estimates millions of abortions are done annually, as part of reproductive rights, as means of social engineering, especially in communist countries like China. Feminists claim it as a right. They say it is a means to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Even catholic countries perform a lot of abortions. The popes were forthright in condemnation. But at the same time moral theologians should see their subject as an enquiry and refrain from condemnation by branding the aborting mother as a murderer, and imposing unreasonable penitential practices on the aborting person etc. There are also different opinions among them. Homosexuality: The Council said nothing about it. The church merely gives a fundamentalist exposition of scripture to brand it as sin and says it is not reproductive. But the developments in the developed world is too fast for the church to keep track. War and Arms Race: GS condemned war but the crucial moral dilemma between the right to self-defence and the essentially uncontrollable and indiscriminate nature of modern war was left unresolved. Therefore, during the arms race and the recent wars undertaken by powerful nations like the United States, the church had no effective voice. Conservative Reaction: against liturgical renewal and other renewals. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was one of its chief proponents. He considered the Council as the greatest disaster not only of this century but of any century since the foundation of the church. There are many movements which espouse such conservatism: Comunione e liberazione, a lay movement founded in 1954; the Opus Dei founded by Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer in 1928, the Neo-Catechumenate etc. Their characteristics: conservative, interiorized piety, no social commitment, retention of the Latin liturgy, hostility to the council, against liberation theology etc. Catholic Theology in the Post-Conciliar Period The council's importance for theology lies in the new location it proposed for theological reflection. 89
The church ought to be characterized by a profound engagement with the reality of the world's experience. The church should enter into solidarity with the experiences of contemporary society. Theology became more pastoral. What is the appropriate theology for a church committed to the good of the world? Human history is the locus revelationis or the place of revelation. It is the place for theology. Theology since the council is marked by particularity. The council marked the end of a theology marked by European domination. Examples: Edward Schillebeeckx: multi-disciplinary, secularly involved, and committed to fostering the prophetic character of communities. The task of theology is not to update a previously constructed body of truths but to articulate present experiences so that they may stand in a critical and creative relationship to the tradition of the church. Political Theology: Johan Baptist Metz: Mediating the Christian faith in ways that can transform the social and political world. It was born out of the conviction that the church does not exercise its socially critical function in the western society and so it has not been very effective. It is mainly university based. Feminist Theology: A critical response to a pervasive bias with regard to women in theology. It is one of the important developments after the council which will definitely influence the church and theology. Liberation Theology: A way of doing theology that originates, develops and culminates in response to the destructive experiences that characterize the lives of large sections of humanity: oppression, injustice, hunger, persecution. It is a theology through contact with the demands of particular social and historical situations. It gives simple answers to the three most difficult questions regarding theology. What is theology, why do it, where is it done, who does it? The answer is, theology is a critical reflection on historical praxis, undertaken on behalf of the poor, in situations of oppression and injustice. The poor themselves do it. Theology in the Inter-Faith Context: Asian Theology Aloysius Pieres: The first exponent of a catholic theology in contextual dialogue with nonChristian religions and one who has also understood the relevance of liberation theology for Asia. The Asian context is characterized by poverty and religiosity. Poverty in Asia is to be understood in the context of Asian religious interpretation of poverty. So for him liberation and inculturation are inseparable. The religiosity of Asia may be a new source of revelation of the Asian church. Summary: The centre of theology is not the church but the world's history. Theology is something to be done in a way that affects the present condition of humanity. The anthropological and social coordinates of theology are important. Theology in a polycentral world should be plural. There cannot be a domination by one theology. Attitudes to the Council 90
Soon after the council three approaches to the Council were manifested. 1. The council was a strange and almost unnecessary development - many Catholics. 2. Those who welcomed what had been done and desired their implementation, but no more. They are already radical enough. 3. Small number of bishops, large number of theologians, young priests, lay activists etc. who maintained that the council is not radical enough. They said many of the documents were compromises, ambiguous. Behind these attitudes lay a conflict between those who saw the council as a council for administrative and pastoral reforms and those who saw the council as a theological event with the aim of encountering the contemporary world. The conflict between these two groups continues till today. Nobody wants a disintegration of the church and its theology and a slavish adherence to modernity or post modernity because they too have problems. At the same time we have to speak to men and women of the world today. It is impossible to foresee the future. But the death of the Catholic Church has been prophesied so often that is wiser to ignore it. Vatican II may not easily fade away. The tensions of the present are hopefully only interludes, if the right decisions are made. The lesson from history is that Christianity has to retain its dominant themes but at the same time translate itself into the ever new situations that emerge constantly.
Twenty First Century The American Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray once correctly observed: “If we are to interpret the world, as we must, our first duty is to understand it, in detail, with full realism, under abnegation of the easy generalities with which the world is ordinarily denounced.” Quite many of us lack this understanding of the world in which we live and minister which consequently leads to easy generalizations about it and even to downright denunciation. This is nothing to be wondered about because there is always personal and group defence against change. People have invested considerable physical, intellectual, emotional and psychological energy into constructing a culture that defines and supports them with a comforting sense of security and when change is proposed or imposed, they are opposed and resisted. Every culture shows this resistance to change simply because people feel deeply about what they consider as normal or right. This is true of our ecclesiastical culture as well, in which we are rooted and brought up. But as leaders of communities we must lead people out of this situation because a leader by definition bears the sacred responsibility of vision. History is a good tool to understand the world. What kind of a world are we living in? That will shape the response of the church. The Syond on New Evangelization identified several sectors which need the attention of the church: culture, society, economy, politics, civic life, technology, communication, religion, etc. Some of them are mentioned below:
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Albert Einstein once defined insanity thus: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Unfortunately, all around us we encounter this form of insanity, including the church. If we want different results we should have different strategies. This applies to every aspect of life. But in Catholicism change is not easy. Catholicism thinks in centuries. The multiple layers of authority, its strong emphasis on tradition, and its self referential ethos are all designed to ensure that the church doesn’t march to the beat of every drum, that means, a given culture or historical moment. Claims that the church must move this direction or that direction are almost always projections of someone’s agenda. But history teaches us that sometimes changes can sweep away old paradigms in what may seem historically like the blink of an eye. The Protestant Reformation, for example, did that. Can we say that our present age is one such, and that the old paradigms are changing and we need new answers, new ways of thinking, new perspectives and open the windows of the church once again, fifty years after the council, to let in some fresh air, as pope John XXIII said? There are several such changes taking place in the church. A world church Hilaire Belloc, the Anglo-French catholic writer of the early 20th century wrote: “Faith is Europe and Europe is faith.” At the beginning of the 20th century just 25 per cent of the Catholics lived outside Europe and north America but by the end of the century it was 65.5 percent. Of course numbers don’t tell everything because they don’t exercise equivalent influence on church affairs. In the conclave of 2005 the Italian cardinals cast 19 votes, equivalent to the total number of Africa and Asia despite the fact there were just 55 million Catholics in Italy compared to 237 million in Africa and Asia. At the beginning of the 20th century there were roughly 266.5 million Catholics of whom over 200 million were in Europe and north America and just over 66 million in the rest of the world, most of them, some 53 million, in Latin America. In 2000 there were about 1.1 billion Catholics of whom 350 million were in Europe and north America and 720 million in the rest of the world, 400 million in Latin America alone. This growth is going to continue at least for some more time. So the Catholic population is not going to decline but grow because the growth will take place outside Europe where population decline is not so dramatic as in the west. The churches outside Europe and north America are demographically and culturally young and have a different set of priorities. The problems that the western churches face are not necessarily the problems of these churches. In other words the emergence of such a world church is not merely adding some numbers but has the potential of transformation of catholic life both internally and externally. The church will be asked for more engagement with broader religious and social questions outside itself. Questions of economic justice, democracy, violence and war, urbanization, dialogue with cultures and religions, ecumenism, absorbing indigenous cultures, etc will have to be rethought because the church’s response to these questions will be based on ground realities in. And secularization may not be the main problem for these Catholics because, according to a global survey which asked people around the world to say how important religion was to them, the following answers were given: Indonesia 95 percent Nigeria 92 percent India 92 percent 92
Philippines 88 percent Guatemala 80 percent USA 59 percent Poland 36 percent Great Britain 33 percent Italy 27 percent Germany 21 percent Russia 14 percent France 11 percent Czech Republic 11 percent The European nations are at the bottom of the list and they include the birthplace of the English Reformation, the headquarters of the Roman Catholic church, the land of Luther, the home of Russian Orthodoxy and the heartland of the Bohemian Reformation. But there is a mass of humanity for whom religion is vital where religion is very much active. But in the western world, secularization is indeed a problem which is defined as a general weakening of traditional religious faith, affiliation and practice, along with a strong distinction between church and state. It is basically a European phenomenon inherited from the Enlightenment. Even here, no religion or religious affiliation does not mean not believing. Many still consider themselves spiritual, they pray, or believe in God, but they don’t subscribe to traditional religious options. And there are others who belong to a religion but don’t believe, which is the case with Russia where national identity is closely linked to being Orthodox. Others don’t follow any religion but they have no hatred towards it because they see that it can do some good, especially when an emergency arises. Then are still others who follow the so called patch work religions, which means the tendency to assemble one’s own religion taking elements from all over the world. These phenomena of course affect the church in those counties. Countries which had 95 percent or more Catholics at the beginning of the century, some have only half of them now or profess themselves to be catholic. While in 1950 Europe had 64 percent of the worlds seminarians, now it is only 24 percent. Mass attendance is low. People who practice the catholic faith is a minority, even if they call themselves Catholic. Average mass attendance on a Sunday in Germany is a mere 8.2 percent. Now there is a perception that secularization is crossing the line from being indifferent to religion to outright hostility toward religion. The European Union refused to make a reference to God in its constitution in spite of repeated efforts by the church that the pope has accused Europe of lapsing into an apostasy. One cardinal even spoke of a secular inquisition of the church. Secularization poses a deep crisis for Catholicism. Added to that there are also internal problems and divisions, based on theological, moral, liturgical issues between liberals and conservatives. The response of the church is of course the attempt to create some order, liturgical and theological. Why is the church doing this? It is a sociological and empirical fact that religious movements which have grown dramatically over the last half a century are those with clear boundaries between themselves and the prevailing culture. Sociologists of religion call such religions “high tension religion” and the examples are Shia Islam and Pentecostalism. Catholicism is trying to do this, namely, a stronger assertion of its identity.
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The church wants to preserve its identity in the face of secularization and cultural pluralism. In theological terms it is coming to be called “Evangelical Catholicism” an attempt to revive traditional markers of Catholic thought, speech and practices. It is not correct to label them merely as conservative, although it is not entirely wrong. It is also a way of responding to modernity but not like the way liberal Catholicism does, but in a different way, by making sure that Catholicism does not end up kneeling before the world. What the danger is defining Catholic identity only on the basis of secularization because it will be doing injustice to the reality of the world church. There is nothing wrong in the church defining its separate identity in beliefs and practices in a strong way and not giving in to mindless dismissal of age old traditions but defining a too narrow sense of identity will backfire because it will cut off dialogue with a significant part of the world with its own problems where the majority of the Catholics will be in some years from now. The Challenge of Islam There are 2.3 billion Christians and 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. They represent 50 percent of humanity and the relationship matters. Moreover Islam represents a competition for converts, social influence, and political power. In the holy land where Christianity had its origin has a Christian population of 2 percent. In the Arab world there were 25 million Christians in 1975 but today there are 12 million. Terrorism carried out by Muslim extremists is a serious problem world over. Given the struggles facing institutional Christianity in Europe, there is a fear of the growth of Islam in Europe. Their number was said to be 8 million in 1985 and 15 million in 2005. By 2025 it will be 28 million and by 2050 it will be 40 million in a population of 500 million. France and Germany would have a Muslim population of 25 percent each. Population of Europe will 15 percent Muslim by 2050. But there are people who welcome this trend given the secular character of Europe. They say that the arrival of a large pool of new Europeans who share some spiritual values with Christians may prove to be a boon if they enter the middle class and make peace with pluralism. It is also a fact that there is not much substance in the argument that the world will be overrun by Muslims because the rate of their growth is not as astronomical as we say, in comparison, 1.38 for Christianity and 1.84 for Islam. So even after 100 years from now, Christianity will still be the largest religion in the world. But that is not the point here. The problem for the present is radical Islam. Radical Islam is not a small group of malcontents but a tradition with a significant base of support in all the world with access to considerable financial resources. That is a real danger, coupled with a real crisis of authority. The rise of radical Islam has produced deep scars in many Christian communities the world over where they are discriminated against and are persecuted. It has fueled the push for a more challenging catholic stance toward Islam. When Saubi Arabia spends 25 million dollars to build the largest mosque in Europe in Rome with the support of the pope, in that country any expression of any other religion is prohibited. But still the church tends to believe that the real threat to Christianity comes not from Islam but from secularism. What is our response? Is there not a need for a more serious catholic-islam dialogue with all that entails?
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Biotechnology Biotechnology is perhaps the greatest challenge to the church and her age old moral teachings. For ages religion was the moral guardian of humanity, especially the church with its high moral ground. Now there are grey areas provided by the new science of biotechnology which is a real revolution. Biotechnology refers to the scientific understanding of the mechanics of human, animal, and plant biology as well as the capacity to manipulate that through technical means. It is complex and is going to affect us in many ways. The issues raised are serious. The church was traditionally concerned about moral problems like artificial contraception, premarital sex, homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia etc. the standard moral problems, and now have to take positions on complex issues about which there are no clear answers. When human life begins and ends and how far it can be manipulated, the place of humans in creation, his freedom, his uniqueness, etc are to be thought afresh. Biotechnology is a big industry and there is enormous political pressure for liberal positions and for keeping religion outside of its purview. As someone put it, just as liberation theology strove for the emancipation of human beings from poverty and injustice, the point of biotechnology is to create a world in which people live longer, stay healthier, feel better, and produce less harmful effects on the world around it. And the church has to support this project, not hinder it, they argue. The issues involved are many, In Vitro fertilization, human cloning, embryonic stem cell research, end of life issues, Genetic engineering, genetically modified organisms, chimeras or organisms that carry both human and animal genes, etc. The consequence is that topics like Biomedical ethics, Christian anthropology etc. will have to be studied afresh. One will be appalled at casual and ignorant attitude taken by scientists, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, etc. regarding these issues although the religions to which they belong hold very strict positions. Maximization of profit seems to be the first norm, and end justifies the means, the second rule. It seems to be a free for all area as there are no clear answers given by religious leaders, including the church. The fact is that religious leaders are not competent to judge these positions. The future moral theologian should have an additional doctorate in medicine, biology or biotechnology. No one can close his eyes to the enormous advantages that accrue from these fields but there are also very real dangers. Expanding lay roles Perhaps the key to the future of the church is the laity. They are going to emerge as protagonists both inside and outside the church. Internally laypeople are occupying ministerial and administrative positions once held almost exclusively by priests, in many parts of the world. Externally more and more laypeople are taking it upon themselves to evangelize culture and to act on catholic social teaching. Of course there are tensions with the hierarchy and ordained priesthood because the laity are mostly seen as intruding into these power bases. But the laity will and have to be increasingly visible and consequential in the life of the church. There is no need to be upset about it. The dynamics of the primitive church was not created by priests and bishops but rather by lay men and women who were enthused by the gospel. Therefore, it is not lay activism that needs theological justification but the way their roles were constricted by the clerical structures in the history of the church.
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In many places, it is not theology that has forced the church to bring in lay people but other things, for example, shortage of priests. But the theology is solidly behind it. The decree on the Apostolate of the Laity of the Second Vatican Council says: “Lay people ought to take upon themselves as their distinctive task this renewal of the temporal order.” If the church’s concern for the world should reach beyond the boundaries of the visible institutional church, then there is no way of avoiding the laity. In fact there is no way the church can survive in the future without drawing upon all its followers. Perhaps accusations of corruption and lack of transparence which are increasingly heard against church authorities will have some respite if lay people are also increasingly involved in the administration of the church. Lack of accountability by clerical leadership to the local community and lack of adequate safeguards for good governance are facts. Too often bishops and priests make personnel and financial decisions without asking about their pastoral effectiveness. But a shared responsibility will serve the interests of the church, say many lay people. Any way, lay involvement is a fact and the sooner we pave the way for it, the better. One example: there are 20,000 people in the United States in programmes of formation to become lay ecclesial ministers, roughly six times the number of seminarians preparing to become priests. Roughly 80 percent of the lay ecclesial ministers serving in the United States are also women. Of course there are conflicts over control, fear of feminization, fear of losing the importance of ordained priesthood, pentecostalization of Catholicism, etc., but the advantages far outweigh the fears. First of all a more sacramental role for priests and time for personalized pastoral care leaving administrative role for the laity. It is a fact, unfortunately, that the institutional dimension of their responsibilities take up a disproportionate amount of the time of priests and many of these tasks require competencies that their seminary training never provided. Leaving them to the laity leads to a more participative church and less purple ecclesiology, that is a church that is centred on cardinals and bishops and a world with more Christian presence. It will also play a role in democratization of the catholic conversation, meaning, the laity will be able to speak for the church and make the church heard. In the thoroughly competitive religious marketplace of the twenty first century, the church has to be present or it is lost. But if presence is interpreted to mean presence of a priest only, it is going to be impossible. So who makes the church present? The lay people. If the lay people play their role, they will bring spirituality out of the sacristy and take it to where life is lived. Pastoral care will have a fuller meaning then. Globalization An important sector of modern life is Economics, and the problem here is the phenomenon of globalization, a growing planetary interconnectedness driven by technology, communication, travel and economic integration which has created vast opportunities for some and left others even farther behind. It is a transformation of local and regional realities into global ones uniting peoples of the world in a single global market and society, accelerating global integration of economics, politics, culture, communications, spirituality, and virtually everything that matters. It equals in importance to the agricultural and industrial revolutions and as in all cases there are winners and losers. 1.2 billion people still live on less than one dollar a day. India’s score on the global hunger index falls between Sudan and Burkina Faso with the highest rates of child malnutrition, child mortality, and highest proportion of people who are calorie deficient. But a 96
study among school children in New Delhi showed that the percentage of children who are qualified as obese jumped from 16 percent to 29 percent in two years and that is obviously a case of over-nutrition for some. According to some, it is the solution to all problems of the world and for others it is colonialism on a planetary scale perpetrated by the rich on the poor. The global has also negative elements, global terror networks, crime syndicates, human trafficking, illicit trade in natural resources, known as the pathologies of globalization. There is also an movement to assert simultaneously the local identity being at the same time open to the gains of globalization, what is termed as glocalization. The church has fortunately enough in her social teachings to deal with the problem; only that she needs to articulate forcefully: Dignity of the human person The social nature of the human person The common good, Solidarity Option for the poor Subsidiarity Social justice Integral humanism emphasizing both spiritual and material liberation, etc. The problem is that while these principles are good in themselves but they are too abstract and are sidelined even by well meaning Catholics. All want a piece of the cake and don’t want to be left out of the race for money and influence. And as usual people are divided; some are ultraconservative and want the forces of globalization to run its course; others are leftists and radicals who see only evil in it. But the facts remain. In 2007 the total gross domestic product of the poorest forty two nations on earth was less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico which was 157 billion dollars. The millennium goals formulated in 2000 which are to be achieved by 2015 have not been achieved, although strongly supported by the church. Globalization has made the global arms trade easy. Planetary commerce in weapons is the number one cause of the many conflicts around the world. One trillion is spent on it, every year. Human trafficking is a crime that is against human dignity but it goes on unabated. Globalization often encourages corruption and that in turn increases poverty in many parts of the world. Another fallout is the plight of migrants and refugees. 3 percent of the world population is refugees. The internet is another catalyst of globalization but its adverse effects are known. As an institution concerned with social justice and dedicated to the reading of the signs of the times these issues are important for the church. Every local church has to face these issues on its own right, and more local theologies will have to be developed to address these problems. Conflict between the developing and the developed world is bound to occur and the church will have to network with like-minded people and institutions and other religions to oppose the evils of globalization. Ecology 97
It was fashionable for the environmental movement to fault the Judeo-Christian tradition for humanity’s savage indifference to the earth. They would point to the bible, to the book of Genesis. But that is gone. The Catholic church is at the forefront of the environmental protection movement. The church has brought out clear teachings about its concern for the earth with key ideas which are important. In 1990 John Paul II in his message for the world day of peace said that concern for creation is an essential part of faith. The ideas that the church has developed are central to our pastoral practice: Stewardship: the earth has been given into our care on behalf of its rightful owner who is God. So our task is receiving the gifts of God with gratitude, cultivating them responsibly, sharing them lovingly in justice with others and standing before God in a spirit of accountability. It has a personal and social dimension. At the personal level it means avoiding addiction to consumption and making practical choices that are within ones reach to promote the common good. At the social level it means responsible policies aimed at environmental protection at all levels. Option for the poor: the poor are especially susceptible to the results of environmental irresponsibility because many of them depend on it. Natural disasters caused by environmental depredation affect them more. The most basic jobs are farming, fishing and forestry and the poor are dependent on them. Evidently some solutions to environmental problems that are proposed are for the convenience of the rich and make life more difficult for the poor. According to the church the right to safe and healthy environment is a human right and she demands life style changes and a change of heart which lead to changed behavior at the individual level in order to limit the waste of resources. The imbalance is well known. The average American draws on 25 acres of land to support his lifestyle while the average African gets by on 2.5 acres. There are skeptics who say that the predictions of a catastrophe by environmentalists is exaggerated. Others say some of them are more concerned about animals and trees than human beings and want to give no special place for human beings. So there may be a need for a new look at the doctrine of creation and the development of an eco theology, wherein the cosmos as a creature in its own right with its own moral, spiritual character exists without calling into question the privileged status enjoyed by humanity. The church’s role in the environmental movement is vital because living a spirituality of simplicity, adopting a lifestyle and consumption compatible with safeguarding creation etc. call for a change of heart which is notoriously difficult to bring about through legislation. But Catholicism being the largest world religion has a better chance to persuade its members for a conversion and change of heart through its pulpits and other forms of communication. Pentecostalism Pentecostalism refers to a movement within Christianity emphasizing direct personal experience of God thorough the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Worldwide their number is estimated to be 600
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At least two thirds of them are in the developing world. Directly influenced by them is the catholic charismatic movement and their number is estimated to be 120 million The Catholic church has suffered massive losses due to its members switching over to Pentecostalism, especially in Latin America and Africa and now increasingly also in Asia. The reasons for this are purported to be lack of pastoral care, a liturgy that appeals to the heart, the church’s excessively bureaucratic structures, especially its hierarchy and clericalism, divisiveness in the church pulling it in too many directions, the perceived liberalism in the church, lack of emotional appeal, neglect of women’s role in the church, lack of inculturation, stress on personal morality, economic advantage etc. It is generally believed that they are supported by the United States financially. As the fastest growing Christian movement, Pentecostalism will stay with us for at least the next fifty years. And it may help to accomplish what generations of popes, bishops, theologians, and pastors were unable to do, namely, rousing Catholicism from its slumber, creating pressure for a more personal pastoral care. The church cannot go to sleep content with the formal externals of religion but often not going any deeper and sit there waiting for people to show up. There is need for a more dynamic Catholicism to emerge. It is still yet another chance for developing a personal liturgy and not more translations, more inculturation, a topic that has been shelved for all practical purposes, ecumenism, empowering of catholic women, and to go back to the basic communities. It is interesting to note that the basic communities discovered by the church was disowned by it by accusing it of being the hotbed of liberation theology and the Pentecostal churches in Latin America made use exactly of this structure for its phenomenal success. Faced with these and similar problems there is a move to establish a catholic identity by revitalizing traditional catholic modes of language, practice, and thought. The supporters of this view see it as a bulwark against assimilation to secularism and relativism. The danger with this internal move is that it will close its eyes to anything else. What is important? To build up a distinctive culture or communicate the gospel to a culture? On the one hand Catholicism will have no distinctive contribution to offer to the world if it is not clear about what it stands for. Yet problems of the world cannot be put on hold till the church gets its own house in order. The divisions within the church, in its theology and pastoral practice are surely wasting energy needlessly. All may have something to say but life cannot be a story of internal battles. One has to clearly define what one wants and why one wants it. But any move that stifles creative thinking and activism, dissent and criticism is going to be counterproductive. Identity does not mean paralysis. Not every sentence of a heretic is a heresy. On the contrary, it is time for Catholicism to reach out to the world with its horizontal structures, with its lay people, consecrated men and women and grassroots movements. This horizontal structure needs development and this cannot be willed into being through a hierarchical fiat. It has to well up from the grassroots themselves reflecting a popular determination to get something done. Waiting for only the bishops or the pope to act or blaming them for doing it the wrong way won’t cut it. It’s the ultimate in clericalism to believe that everything in the church depends on the clergy or that nothing useful can be done until Rome turns over a new leaf. To expect the hierarchy to be the primary agent of change is both unfair 99
and unrealistic. It is also against history. Most impulses for reform in the church came from the laity. The Middle Ages offer us the best example. The soil for the mendicant movement of Francis and Dominic were prepared by the poverty movements begun by ordinary lay people who challenged the worldliness of the institutional church. Decades of bitter criticism by the laity was not heeded and the church got the Reformation. Taking into consideration the demographic shift in the catholic population which in turn put a different set of priorities on the table, only a church that is morally credible, liberal on social justice, biblical, horizontal in its structures, concerned with pluralism and dialogue, politically assertive, environment friendly and open to serious dialogue with the culture and religions of the world will have any voice that would be listened to seriously in the 21st century.
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