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PDF versionVatican encourages a recovery of 'apologetics'
Jan. 13, 2012
VATICAN CITY -- In the Catholic Church, it's true that everything old can be new again, and the Vatican wants one of those things to be the art of "apologetics" -- dusted off and updated to respond to new challenges, including those posed by militant atheists.
The term "apologetics" literally means "to answer, account for or defend," and through the 1950s even Catholic high school students were given specific training in responding to questions about Catholicism and challenges to church teaching.
At least in Northern Europe and North America, the effort mainly was a response to Protestantism. Today, while sects and fundamentalist groups challenge Catholics in many parts of the world, almost all Catholics face objections to the idea of belief in general, said Legionary of Christ Father Thomas D. Williams, a professor at Rome's Pontifical Regina Apostolorum University.
Father Williams is author of "Greater Than You Think: A Theologian Answers the Atheists About God," written in response to the late Christopher Hitchens' book, "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," and similar works.
Over the past 50 years, apologetics lost its general appeal because "it was considered proselytism," an aggressive attempt to win converts that was replaced by ecumenical dialogue, he said. It didn't help that many Catholics started seeing all religions as equally valid paths to salvation, so they thought it was best to encourage people to live their own faith as best they could without trying to encourage them to consider Christianity.
Among the Regina Apostolorum students, he said, there is a renewed interest in apologetics -- usually covered today under the heading of fundamental theology. "You can change the name, make it gentler and nicer, but you always have to give reasons for your hope and belief," he said.
While there have been scattered attempts to train Catholics to explain their faith to others since Vatican II, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has asked for a more widespread effort to get apologetic material into the hands of Catholics.
In early January, the congregation issued a note on preparing for the Year of Faith, which will begin in October. Addressing national bishops' conferences, the congregation said, "It would be useful to arrange for the preparation of pamphlets and leaflets of an apologetic nature" so that every Catholic could "respond better to the questions which arise in difficult contexts" from sects to moral relativism and from secularism to science and technology.
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The congregation included a reference to the biblical admonition from the First Letter of Peter: "Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope."
The passage continues by saying responses should be given "with gentleness and reverence," which Jesuit Father Felix Korner said means taking the attitude that "the person talking to me has a real question; through the question I discover the deeper grounds of my hope and joy; I try to respond by making myself and our faith understood."
The Jesuit, a theology professor at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University and expert in Christian-Muslim relations, said, "Apologetics in the restricted, poor, primitive sense later became: 'I learn some answers, and I respond to any question as if it were an attack by refuting the other.'"
To make apologetics part of a true Christian witness, he said, involves "being interested in the newness of the question" posed and "challenged by its rationality, daring to explore deeper my own tradition and hope."
Pope Benedict XVI and the Pontifical Council for Culture have chosen the path of dialogue to explore the issues and objections to faith raised by some secular humanists, atheists and agnostics. The pope invited nonbelievers to his day of dialogue for peace in Assisi last October and the pontifical council has launched a dialogue project called "the Courtyard of the Gentiles" to explore issues raised by experts in the fields of politics, economics, law, literature and the arts.
An effort to combine dialogue and apologetics is found in Catholic Voices, an organization in the United Kingdom that compiles detailed responses to current questions and trains Catholics to present official church teaching civilly and clearly in the media when questions are raised on controversial topics.
The need for articulate Catholics who could remain calm under fire became evident after a 2009 formal debate in England in which Hitchens and the actor Stephen Fry faced off against Nigerian Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja and Ann Widdecombe, a Catholic member of Parliament. The crowd clearly was on the side of Hitchens and Fry, who argued against the motion that "the Catholic Church is a force for good."
Jack Valero, coordinator of Catholic Voices and U.K. press spokesman for Opus Dei, said the group began by trying to respond to objections raised by groups protesting Pope Benedict's 2010 visit to Scotland and England. The issues included homosexuality, contraception, assisted suicide, clerical sexual abuse, abortion, AIDS, same-sex marriage and women in the church.
"Once we had identified the issues, we studied how best to answer them and developed our apologetics materials," Valero said.
But having written responses isn't enough. "If somebody communicates aggressively, which is not a very Christian way to behave, then the message does not come across," he said.
This is a post Contintinian
This is a post Contintinian Empire period. While apologetics may seem to be what the Church might use to explain itself, people are past the idea of authoritarian governance. What is really necessary is to listen to the professional theologians that have dedicated their lives to the work of studying the Mind of God. People who have a free will and exercise it know the difference. Many also know that the authoritarian mindset only leads to a narrow minded explanation of what the few appointed officials see as truth. Totalitarian, legalistic apologetics will only lead many to explore other possibilities of Church. The totalitarian mind set is not The Way of Christ.
R. Dennis Porch, MD
Jesus endorses the work of
Jesus endorses the work of professional theologians. Especially women ones who don't like the Catholic Church. They know the Mind of God. Others don't, because they are sexist and hierarchic.
The term "apologetics"
The term "apologetics" literally means "to answer, account for or defend," and through the 1950s even Catholic high school students were given specific training in responding to questions about Catholicism and challenges to church teaching.
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A 1950s solution from a 1950s pope. A return to the gospels, the pristine faith of the Patristic era, a dismissal of the concocted Carolingian pontificalism, and a wholesale rejection of the mind-numbing ennui generated by a neo-fascist phariseeism springing from this hyper-clericalized western church, is what the Mystical Body of Christ needs now more than ever.
Benedict heads a museum piece. He and his hierarchy need to be expunged of encrustations of liturgical and theologicial archaisms. As they find themselves thoroughly incapable of facing the challenges of the new frontiers of Asia and Africa, and a rapidly growing educated and professional Catholic population repudiating their guidance and leadership. Just as a snake ejects old skin.
The pope can take his magic wand, holy mumbo jumbo, and his rattling noise-makers as he retreats into the past.
Which professional
Which professional theologians? Garrigou Lagrange or Kung, Scott Hahn or Raymond Brown, Joseph Ratizinger??? Fulton Sheen???? Or do you mean that we all should follow the theologians whom you agree with it...
"In early January, the
"In early January, the congregation issued a note on preparing for the Year of Faith, which will begin in October."
In this note, Cardinal Levada informs us that:
"From the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI has worked decisively for a correct understanding of the Council, rejecting as erroneous the so-called “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” and promoting what he himself has termed “the ‘hermeneutic of reform’, of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.”[6]
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_...
The real agenda (Nota Bene #5):
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/motu_proprio/documents/hf...
It is NO coincidence that the Holy Doors will be opened anew on the 50th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II. So get ready for some big-time INHOUSE apologetics and upcoming statements (TRACT WARS?) on the AUTHENTIC INTERPRETATION and reception of the Documents of Vatican II.
It should be obvious to
It should be obvious to readers that this attempt by the Vatican to re-introduce the ‘art’ of apologetics is a simple devise to ward off the fear of becoming irrelevant. The opening paragraph should already alert most enlightened and informed Catholics that Jesus warned us not to ‘pour old wine into new wineskins’. This fear is echoed again and again when its supporters try to defend the current problems experienced Church by pointing the finger at others, be they atheist, agnostics. Does scripture not remind us that before judging others we need to take the log out of our own eye before we examine the speck out our brother’s eye?” Note the long list apologist hope to defend: sexual abuse, abortion, AIDS, same-sex marriage and women in the Church. What is needed here is healing not some pamphlet defending it.
Note that the author makes repeated claims that the Church needs to TRAIN its members in its official teachings. Train? It is hoped/planned to disseminate appropriate apologetic material ASAP into the hands of Catholics. At no time does the article suggest that People of God should have any input into this project, however valuable and inspirational that could be. Has the Church forgotten that faith is a matter of the heart, the place where God resides? What is really needed is for the Church to direct people to God – not become the destination. The Church must return to pure humility as Christ teaches us abundantly. The heart is the place where ALL people who have placed their trust in God will find their answers. Anything other than that merely results in the continued sickness of blatant co-dependency.
This defensive article reminds me of a mechanic who when coming upon a car accident sends the driver to the garage instead of the automobile.
A great Catholic teacher of mine posted this reflection yesterday which explains the problem with ‘apologetics’ in much better terms.
“Today the unnecessary suffering on this earth is great for people who could have “known better” and should have been taught better by their religions. In the West, religion became preoccupied with telling people what to know more than how to know, telling people what to see more than how to see. We ended up seeing Holy Things faintly, trying to understand Great Things with a whittled-down mind, and trying to love God with our own small and divided heart. It has been like trying to view the galaxies with a five-dollar pair of binoculars.
Contemplation, my word for this larger seeing, keeps the whole field open; it remains vulnerable before the moment, the event, or the person—before it divides and tries to conquer or control it. Contemplatives refuse to create false dichotomies, dividing the field for the sake of the quick comfort of their ego. I call contemplation “full-access knowing”—not irrational, but pre-rational, non-rational, rational and trans-rational all at once. Contemplation is an exercise in keeping your heart and mind spaces open long enough for the mind to see other hidden material. It is content with the naked now and waits for futures given by God and grace”..
'Apologetics'. Revelations of
'Apologetics'.
Revelations of widespread clerical sexual abuse of children around the globe, episcopal mis- and malfeasance, and papal indifference to (and/or complicity in) all the aforementioned give new meaning to this Vatican push for a recovery of so-called "apologetics".
Before Rome engages in this effort, perhaps it should try to understand how it will be stymied in the court of ecclesial reception by the very pope who is hell-bent on returning Holy Mother Church to a pre-Vatican II modus operandi and way of thinking?
(but, hey, it's *your* money, right? and you don't mind the bishops throwing more good money after bad, do you??? sheople don't mind)
My image of an apologist is
My image of an apologist is either a snarler or a smug and self righteous type. Either way, they are unpleasant folk and I wouldn't wonder if that is the sort of person who are drawn to an education which attempts to put others down. I really don't think that sort of thing ever really draws people to Christ and the church.
The most impressive thing to point to the goodness of the church would be to DO something meaningful about the scandal, not just talk about doing something. The vast majority of people are drawn to good and holy people and not to argument.
Dialogue, not argument.
As if rote answers to a list
As if rote answers to a list of questions would change anyone's mind into WANTING to live the Faith!!
How puerile... but just the thing when the mass of Catholics are considered by the Pope himself to be only "like simple children"...unlike himself!!
Maybe he is the one with a "simple" mind!?!
Here is the problem that I
Here is the problem that I see. Atheists have pretty much always existed in one form or another. We know for sure that nonbeleif in certain Gods has always existed, especially by those from other faith "camps". Why is it now a problem that people do not beleive? because we can now communicate with each other so easily,even across national boundaries.
The only real difference today is that mass media and the internet have made it possible for the ideas presented by non-beleivers to be transmitted quickly and efficiently and for non-beleivers to control a small portion of the media for those who choose to follow their teachings. Facebook, blogs, youtube, vimeo, and many other "media" has been very successfully used to communicate the message of atheism.
Also, mass media advertising can now be bought with relatively small amounts of money.
The church,in it's many forms,used to control most of the media only 200 years ago via it's faithful followers . It was unthinkable to publish an atheist manifesto 300 years ago, and if one attempted there would be consequences for the publisher and the writer.
And yet, I do not get the impression that there are that many more atheists like me today than there were back then.
Bringing back apologetics literally means that the church leaders would have to relearn the old arguments and attempt to create channels of communication similar to those held by atheist groups world wide. This is problematic because getting online to communicate means that the faithful would also be exposed to the contagious internet media presented by atheists, agnostics, nonbeleivers of any sort, people of other faiths and certainly the "militant atheists".
In my humble opinion, the church now lacks the societal control to dominate the conversation.
Jeff Olsson, President, Humanist Association of Manitoba
Another attempt at mind
Another attempt at mind control! If those who professed to be Christian lived the message of Jesus, there would be no need for apologetics. Following Jesus is not a head game!
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