hittinger introduction to modern catholicism

“Introduction to Modern Catholicism,” by Russell Hittinger

1. Prof. Hittinger quotes Pope John XXIII, who reminded the bishops at the opening of the Second Vatican Council that previous councils were often accompanied by the most serious difficulties and sufferings.” What, according to John XXIII, was the source of these difficulties and sufferings?

2. What, according to Prof. Hittinger, was “the greatest, most sustained, and most troubling work of modernity”?

3. As Prof. Hittinger points out, Catholics were certainly not unique in having to reckon with the phenomenon of the modern nation-state. What was it about the Catholic Church, however, that according to Hittinger, made conflict and rivalry with the modern state almost inevitable?

4. On p. 5 of his text, Prof. Hittinger gives a nice preview of what is to come in his article.

* It begins with an analysis of what he calls “the crisis of the nineteenth century,” that is, the demise of Catholic political Christendom after the revolutions in the mid-nineteenth century.
* He then looks at the efforts of Pope Leo XIII to craft a new approach to the issues of church, state, and society – an effort that included the so-called ressourcement -- “return to the sources” – namely, a return to the thought of Thomas Aquinas.
* This Leonine revival of Thomism brought about a number of results, among which are: the case for human rights grounded in natural law; the development of the principle of subsidiarity; and the argument for the integrity and quasi-autonomy of civil prudence.
* After the Council, however, liberation theologians questioned whether the synthesis of scholastic anthropology and liberal constitutionalism adequately diagnoses the problem and the developing world, and whether it gives proper scope to the prophetic social and political message of the gospel.
* Since the Council, there have been conflicts as well in the economically developed Western democracies over a whole host of “life issues” such as abortion and euthanasia and the like.

Please take note of these topics as they arise over the course of Prof. Hittinger’s article.

The Nineteenth-Century Crisis

1. The first and obvious question here would be this: What is the nineteenth-century crisis identified by Prof. Hittinger? How is it a challenge to the Catholic Church?

2. Why did philosopher Jacques Maritain (one of those many thinkers of the twentieth century influenced by the Thomistic revival) insist in his book The Things That Are Not Caesar’s that “it was five hundred years ago that we began to die”? What, according to Hittinger and Maritain, was the source of the problem for the Church?

3. What was the goal of what Prof. Hittinger calls “the Gregorian quest” of Pope Gregory VII during what is now often described as the “Investiture Crisis” of the eleventh century?

4. As Prof. Hittinger points out, by the time of the French Revolution, virtually every baptized Catholic in the world lived under the regime of a royal family. In this situation, what often was the understanding of the Catholic monarchs about the “temporalities” (land, property, and temporal affairs) of the Church?

5. How did the Church’s attitude toward political Christendom change in the decades before the First Vatican Council (1870)?

6. Why was the work of Pope Gregory VII (who lived between 1015 and 1085) so influential in the second half of the nineteenth century?

7. In an 1892 address, Pope Leo XIII told the cardinals that the church’s temporal mission would center upon “faith embodied in the conscience of peoples rather than restoration of medieval institutions.” Explain.

8. Explain the “bottom-up” strategy toward the church-state problem that arose during the pontificate of Leo XIII. As part of your answer, you will want to explain the movement from the old diadic conception of church and state to the new triadic conception of the relationship between church, state, and society. (For more information on this, please see also the discussion in the first part of the section on scholasticism and a “new” christendom.)

9. Please be able to describe the neo-Thomist response to the modern premise about the nature of society: namely the modern idea that unity is achieved in society or the state only extrinsically: by contracts, by the serendipitous outcomes of a market, or by the external application of law as the superior force of the state.

Scholastic Rendition of a “New” Christendom

10. Please be able to describe the “new humanism” of Jacques Maritain and his view of the proper role of the state.

Democracy and Rights

11. Discuss some of the Catholic Church’s reservations about democracy. Explain what the Church believes should be the proper relationship between democracy and human rights?

12. Discuss the Catholic notion of “subsidiarity.”

14. Please explain what the fathers of the Second Vatican Council meant when they wrote the following in Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: “The political community exists, consequently, for the sake of the common good, in which it finds its full justification and significance, and the source of its inherent legitimacy. Indeed, the common good embraces the sum of those conditions of the social life whereby men, families, and associations more adequately and readily may attain their own perfection.” Please relate the viewpoint of this passage from Gaudium et Spes with Jacques Maritain’s statement: “The State is the facilitator not the substance of the common good.”

15. What is the teaching of Dignitatis humanae on the nature of religious freedom in the State?

Postconciliar Themes and Tensions

16. Near the beginning of this section, Prof. Hittinger remarks that, “From one point of view, the Second Vatican Council provided an impetus in some ways tailor-made for the Latin American thinkers.” Explain what developments of the Council cause him to make this claim.

17. What were some of the aspects of the thought of the liberation theologians in Latin America that brought them into conflict with the Pope?

18. Why did the liberation theologians find an emphasis on the “rule of law” to be problematic given the circumstances of the societies in Latin America?

19. What are the issues that continue to trouble the North American democracies and cause conflict with the Church? Why does the insistence on these “rights” seem like a “betrayal” from the point-of-view of Church leaders such as Pope John Paul II?