| "Beginning Catholic school
immediately after the close of Vatican II, I never had the opportunity
to learn the revered (or infamous) Baltimore Catechism, as I
stated earlier. If I had, I surely would have learned formulas
and details about dogmas and doctrines that had been passed
down through the centuries and accounted for the treasury of
the Catholic tradition. Instead, from the first through the
eighth grade we primarily learned about scripture: the history
underlying it, its central stories, main characters, dominant
themes, and the many ethical implications that it had for our
daily lives. That is not to say that we were never exposed to
any dogma or doctrine, but rather that all our exposure to the
tradition was seen through the prism of the Bible. Our doctrinal
formation unsystematically reflected on four fundamental dimensions
of Catholic thought: God as Trinity, the Incarnation, the sacraments,
and Christian ethics/morality. Maybe, even without knowing it
or at least fully understanding it, my teachers were enacting
the very first paragraph of Lumen Gentium by opening up the
great mysteries of the Tradition to the faithful through the
light of scripture.
"What emerged for me from this was a deep quandary: How
could God be a Trinity? What could this possibly mean? I could
understand and believe the rest of the story - the Incarnation,
the sacraments, Mary - all of it; but the Trinity seemed to
connote a strange and impenetrable mystery. I realized that
this doctrine could not just be one idea or proposition beside
many others, one more painting in the immense art museum called
the Catholic Tradition. My early intuition was that the whole
edifice rested on the viability and credibility of this bedrock
claim about the nature of God and God's life in relation to
us. Unfortunately, my early education was limited to unveiling
the mystery of God. It did not actually help me penetrate
more deeply this profound revelation always hovering just
above or around the scriptures we so arduously studied.
"Unwittingly, my own innocent intellectual struggle paralleled
the wider theological and ideological revolution under way
in the Catholic Church as a whole. At the center of this Copernican
revolution (as I described it earlier) was precisely this
radical new emphasis on the dogma of the Trinity. This is
not to say that the Trinity had been absent from Catholic
thought and doctrinal definition over the preceding centuries.
On the contrary, it was a standard part of every theological,
liturgical, and canonical formula defined, promulgated, or
proposed throughout the history of the Church. But it often
tended to be merely included - an addendum that completed
an orthodox statement or proposal that had already been formulated,
sometimes without even taking the Trinity into consideration.
The Constitutions of Vatican II, however, made the Trinity
the central and defining core around which every other dimension
of life and practice was to be interpreted and understood.
"The Council, called mainly to discuss matters internal to
the life of the Church, realized that no adequate interpretation
of its life and mission could take place outside of the divine
life and plan for all creation, revealed in the missions of
the Son and the Spirit. In other words, all of creation and
the Church itself could only be adequately understood in light
of the outpouring of the triune divine love of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. This reality had to serve as the starting
point, context, and goal of all theological reflection and
practical planning for matters internal and external to ecclesial
life. The Trinity, therefore, serves as more than just the
major theological topic of the Council or even the main source
of other theological discourse; it is really the canvas on
which the vast landscape of Vatican II was portrayed. The
Trinity penetrates and runs through the documents like a vast
river with many tributaries, streams, and trickling branches.
It was the recovery, renewal, and reinterpretation of this
most foundational dogma (as Congar and others realized) that
made the Second Vatican Council possible.
"With the spotlight recast brightly on the central character
of theology, another primary player began to emerge slowly
from the shadows. The Holy Spirit, consigned to a secondary
role for centuries and almost overshadowed altogether by the
Counter-Reformation, appears on the main stage at Vatican
II. Given the centrality of the roles that missions of the
persons of the Trinity play in organizing and coordinating
God's plan of redemption in general and the Church in particular,
the Holy Spirit assumes a dynamic and leading role in each.
The New Testament reveals that the mission of the Holy Spirit,
though wider than the boundaries of the visible Church, serves
as the source of growth and unity of the Church. Jesus Christ
gives the Spirit to the Church as the guarantee of the continuation
on earth and in history of his life and work - literally his
body - for the service of the redemption and salvation of
all humankind. Vatican II, therefore, in its reflection, had
to dwell in a new and particularly sustained way on the Holy
Spirit and the Spirit's unique relationship with the Church
and her members.
"In this part of the book, I will further explore the component
parts of the "triad" that create genuine communion: pneumatology,
community, and sacrament. Based on the documents of Vatican
II, the Trinitarian backdrop that underlies all orthodox theology
and contemporary scholarship in each of these component parts,
I will offer a fuller understanding of these significant realities." |
