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CajunRick
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Houma, Louisiana USA |
| Posts: | 5079 |
| First Name: | Rick (& Kermie) | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Lifetime Catholic, Latin Rite |
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Posted: Tue May 22nd, 2007 01:11 am |
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Much has been written about changes in the thrust of Catholic theological thinking in the last 150 years or so. Popes wrote encyclicals condemning "modernity" of thinking, and theologians who proposed the very modernity being condemned were officially silenced for decades before Pope John XXIII "opened the windows" of the Church which his call for aggiornamento at Vatican II.
I found an interesting article that discusses what it calls the ten most influential theologians of the last half of the 20th century, which I think goes a long way to explaining some of the turmoil in the Church during the 40 years after Vatican II as the Church struggled to find a new theological model or "center". The article can be read at Catholic Culture. As always, debates and disagreements over Catholic teaching, doctrine, and theology are not really appropriate at CHN, but I do think the article is informative for those who wish to learn more about the history of the Church and the thinkers who influenced her up to, during, and since Vatican II.
This article is not a light read. It does help to explain how some of the turmoil of the post-Vatican II era occurred, but be prepared to read it with a dictionary in one hand and a doctorate in theology in the other, and you still might not understand a lot of it. It is sort of a review of the works of a Scottish Dominican, and discusses the ten theologians who, the article says, "fundamentally changed the way in which the Church thinks."
I think it reinforces something I've said before, that the first 40 years after a major council are always years of turmoil, until the final decade when the Church reaches a "new equilibrium". The Vatican is not always at fault, as the article points out when it talks about a dearth of theological education in seminaries, with the later theologians being presented as the saviors of Catholic thought and the former theologians (such as Thomas Aquinas) being presented as antiquated, out of date models. Two of the ten named theologians happen to have occupied the Chair of Peter for the last 29 years, but it is the bishops and priests who have had to implement the Vatican's pronouncements, and where failures have existed, they have been responsible.
At any rate, it is an interesting article.
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Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
Luquette Lane
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