A conservative questions the RC Church
Posted: 29 Jun 2012 @ 01:31
This layman's book is an indictment, says Robert Nowell
© NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND
Station Mass in a domestic setting: Mass in a Connemara
Cabin, 1883, by Alysius O'Kelly (1853-1941), on loan to the
National Gallery of Ireland from the people of St Patrick's,
Edinburgh, and the Trustees of the Archdiocese of St Andrews &
Edinburgh, is one of the images discussed in detail in Art and
the Eucharist, a slim volume, scholarly but also devotional,
by the Dublin art-historian Eileen Kane, a Dame of the Order of
Pope St Gregory the Great (Veritas, £12.75 (£11.50);
978-1-84730-
380-6)
Credit: © NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND
Station Mass in a domestic setting: Mass in a Connemara
Cabin, 1883, by Alysius O'Kelly (1853-1941), on loan to the
National Gallery of Ireland from the people of St Patrick's,
Edinburgh, and the Trustees of the Archdiocese of St Andrews &
Edinburgh, is one of the images discussed in detail in Art and
the Eucharist, a slim volume, scholarly but also devotional,
by the Dublin art-historian Eileen Kane, a Dame of the Order of
Pope St Gregory the Great (Veritas, £12.75 (£11.50);
978-1-84730-
380-6)
Off-Beam, Off-Side, Off-Menu: An appeal
from the Catholic pews
Kevin Clarke
Book Guild Publishing £9.99
(978-1-84624-685-2)
KEVIN CLARKE has put together a telling indictment both of the
way in which Roman Catholics were taught their faith in the years
before the Second Vatican Council, and of the RC Church's failure
to use the insights and impetus of that Council to create a more
Christian understanding of what we believe, why we believe it, and
how we should treat each other.
The indictment is all the more powerful in that it is written
from a conservative standpoint, by someone who is happy to have
been brought up in the 1950s on the Penny Catechism (now costing
£1.50). In Clarke's experience, "official Church teaching has
tended to comprise a litany of faith statements that have not
always been accompanied by explanations of the context in which
they might best be understood".
For his generation, this may not have been a problem (though we
should remember the cynic's view that the purpose of Catholic
schools was to produce the next generation of lapsed Catholics),
but "in today's climate the 'why' and the 'how' need to form part
of the basic proposition, as loose ends or perceived
inconsistencies can easily become faith deterrents."
But, with the reimposition of obedience to authority (rather
than truth) as the key demand on the simple faithful, we reach a
situation where "our unity in faith as the people of God can easily
become confused with ecclesial uniformity and conformity, where any
question is automatically treated as an act of dissent."
What Clarke looks forward to is a Church in keeping with two key
documents of Vatican II, the constitution on the Church and the
constitution on the Church in the modern world. What we have at
present can, to my mind, best be described as a reversion to
Nuremberg Rally Catholicism.
The book, like too many today, suffers from some sloppy
proof-reading, while German theologians such as Möhler, Häring, and
Küng lose their umlauts. The works that the author refers to make a
strange selection: Karl Rahner only at secondhand; Hans Küng (whose
The Council and Reunion did
so much to alert English Catholics to what Vatican II was about) is
quoted (once) only at secondhand, via the Australian Bishop
Geoffrey Robinson.
The latter's analysis of what has gone wrong is often referred
to, as is Jean-Paul Audet's illuminating account of how a very
secular ministry (overseers, elders, and servants) became
sacralised.