Spectrum of Catholic Attitudes

The drive for aggiornamento (i.e., renewal or updating) within the Catholic intellectual community is now so great that it has moved beyond the original desire for mere changes in the existing forms and doctrines; Catholics are now busy demanding fundamental changes in the doctrine and organization of the church. The questioning spirit is not merely a Dutch proclivity. Spectrum of Catholic Attitudes shows that among Catholic laymen questions are now being asked such as, “Who is God? How does he speak to man? What is his Church? How are the people of God to be lead?” The sacraments, worship, ritual, structure of the Church, priesthood, and most everything else are now open to honest questioning. Spectrum of Catholic Attitudes provides an interesting sample of lay Catholic opinion of these and other questions. The book avoids specialized and technical jargon and therefore can be understood by readers who might find the usual responses of Catholic theologians rather difficult to follow.

In a useful “introduction,” the editor, Robert Campbell, stresses the magnitude of recent changes in Catholic opinion in contemporary America. He reports that the one thing Catholic intellectuals fear most is the conservative label, for once one is branded a conservative neither invitations to lecture nor opportunities to contribute to symposiums will come. Likewise, a conservative may find it difficult to find a publisher for his books and articles, and he may not be recommended for a full professorship. Campbell describes in detail what he calls the “liberaler-than-thou” gamesmanship now taking place among her Catholic intellectuals: In this game “the most devastating ploy is to tag your opponent a conservative. Of course ultra-conservative, or by extension, Birchite, is even worse.” Once labeled he loses credibility in many circles “and his contract as a teacher is in danger of nonrenewal for ‘failure to maintain professional standards.’”

Spectrum of Catholic Attitudes reports the opinion of six prominent lay Catholic intellectuals on twenty-nine topics ranging from the concept of God and the infallibility of the Pope to such questions as contraception and communism. In a few places the opinions of Marshell McLuham are reported—yes, he of “electric culture” and “the medium is the message” fame is a Catholic, having become one at age twenty-six. Walter Matt and, to a lesser degree, Dale Francis present “conservative” Catholic views. F. J. Sheed and William Buckley are more or less conventional in their views, while Leslie Dewart and Daniel Callahan are each in their own special way less conventional and much more liberal. The book does succeed in presenting a wide spectrum.

Buckley, of National Review and recent TV fame, of course, is always fun. But my personal favorite among the six is Daniel Callahan, who studied at Yale, Georgetown, and Harvard (where he took a Ph.D. in philosophy). Campbell reports that Callahan has “some claim to being the person whose ideas are most likely to gain currency in liberal Catholic circles.” Mormons should find his opinions rather interesting.

As is well known, certain young Protestant theologians employ the slogan “death-of-God” and describe themselves as radicals, but actually Callahan is far more radical than any of the so-called “death-of-God” theologians. Callahan observes that “it is not that ‘God is dead’; he never was in the first place.” Such statements, however, do not really place Callahan in league with Thomas J. J. Altizer’s “Christian atheism.” It is true that Callahan emphatically denies that he believes in the traditional “God” of Christian theology. He entirely disclaims any belief or any interest in either the transcendent or immanent God of the Christian tradition. But this does not make him a total unbeliever in God. His affirmations are important. “I could,” he insists, “. . . believe in a God who, like myself, has a body, is a very limited mystery, can be seen, felt, and touched—in a word, a God who is a material (even if glorified) body, who is a being who exists, who can be seen, felt, heard, smelled and touched. I think I do believe in this kind of God, but he is a God, I take it, who would be offensive to both tradition and to the most radical contemporary theists. I am constantly amazed that philosophers and theologians go to such great lengths to show that God can’t be like ourselves. Why do we hate ourselves so much?”

Much of the current debate in Protestant and Catholic circles about the possibility of meaningful God-talk has been generated by the honest recognition of certain weaknesses within the traditional doctrine of God. Partly what is meant by the death of God is that God has died in man’s heart; he has been rejected by man and we now experience only an “eclipse of God” (Buber). But in a different sense, many are now turning their backs on all God-talk simply as a reaction to the apparent bankruptcy of traditional theology. The current efforts to refurbish the concept of God, however, appear as a series of clever and sophisticated but still highly unconvincing tricks. Kai Nielsen expressed the matter well in a reference to Paul Tillich: “Tillich doesn’t put new wine in old bottles, he puts in grape soda and then labels it Chateau Latour.” Some are taken in by this sort of thing, but not Daniel Callahan.

Callahan rejects both a transcendent or immanent God; he cannot trust the impersonal absolute of traditional Catholic theology, and he is unimpressed by (Protestant) efforts to find God by looking within man or to the course of history. The philosophers and theologians may struggle to establish the reality (i.e., prove the existence) of God, but Callahan finds their proofs unconvincing, and he refuses to be taken in by sophisticated philosophers who talk about God in merely analogical or symbolic ways. The word “God,” for many, may seem like just a mark or a noise, but for Callahan “the Christ of the Scripture remains a powerful, mysterious, and unique person,” who cannot be fully contained within the categories of that secularity which now seems so triumphant and persuasive in our worldly culture. His belief is that Jesus Christ is God, but this is a radical departure from the traditional formula. The Jesus of the Bible is his (only?) God-in-a-body.

Though Callahan does not speak of God as finite, perhaps that is what he is actually suggesting. He believes that Jesus Christ “continues to exist in a glorified body” (which is, he tells us, “a body presumably free of the limitations we normally associate with bodiliness”). Furthermore, he insists “that this God-in-a-body is a God who can be seen, felt, heard, smelled and touched. In a figure, indeed in the corporate person, of the risen Christ, we have a perfect image of God. He is one like ourselves, only more so—I won’t say infinitely more so since I don’t know what that could possibly mean. He is different from ourselves because he has risen from the dead and continues to exist for all time. . . .” Callahan then suggests that man may actually be resurrected and thereby be like Jesus. “We have,” he argues, “in the image of the risen Christ an answer to the problem of God: God is a body. We also have an answer to the problem of man: Man is destined to be a risen body.” Clearly Callahan is working out a position on these issues that is radically unlike traditional Catholic doctrine but not unlike certain Mormon views.

Callahan’s views on the Trinity are thus also novel. “I am tempted,” he writes, “to say that the Trinity, like Celibacy, is for those who can bear it. I do not know what to make of the traditional doctrine; it strikes me as wholly obscure, a mere way of playing with words.” “I can’t even start on the Trinity. Once upon a time, I did believe in the Trinity; and I knew all the traditional reasons why I did and why I should. But I can’t recall just now how it all went.”

Spectrum of Catholic Attitudes, though it raises some obviously interesting questions, does not survey the entire range of developments in Catholic theology. For example, nothing much is said about the questions now being raised about the Eucharist by Catholic scholars. Is the Eucharist a sacrifice or, as Mormons maintain, a simple memorial meal and thanksgiving? There are even some interesting suggestions now being made about the question of the Real Presence. These issues are, it is true, mostly of concern to Europeans, so it is not surprising that they are overlooked in Spectrum. Likewise, there is little said about the new self-image of the Church as a pilgrim church, the wayfaring people of God. Nor is anything said about the new interest among Catholic theologians of the first rank in the question of postapostolic revelation and prophecy. Some are arguing that the people of God (i.e., true Israel, God’s covenant people) must have prophets to lead them on their journey through this world and that, in order to be the people of God, Christians must also be a genuinely prophetic community. Developments such as these are not touched on in Spectrum. However, the book does offer a nontechnical introduction to some interesting currents in Catholic thought, as our short survey of Daniel Callahan’s opinions on God has perhaps shown.