Politics for Pilgrim Church - Thomistic Theory of Civic Virtue

277 Pages·2015·5.493 MB·English

by  Thomas J. Bushlack

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THOMAS BUSHLACK
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction
The Theological Challenge of Political Authority
1. 32
PART I
Civic Virtue in Thomas Aquinas's Account of Justice
2.
3. A Passion for Justice 109
PART II
4. Civic Virtue and Natural Law 129
5. Civic Virtue and Contemporary Political Philosophy 165
6. Toward a Constructive Account of Civic Virtue and Public
Rhetoric 197
Conclusion: Politics for a Pilgrim Church
WorCkist ed
IndoeNfxa maensSd u bjects 268
IndoeSfxc riRpetfuerree nces 271
V
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
this project from several other fine scholars; I solicited advice from some
of them via email, and they responded with great intellectual generosity
and magnanimity. Russell Bittinger provided some very helpful citations
and comments for understanding the history and development of Catholic
social thought since the late eighteenth century. Eugene Garver's work and
comments on drafts provided valuable insight into the nature of Aristotle's
Rhetoric and its ongoing significance in contemporary democratic politics
and culture. And James Davison Hunter's wbrk was particularly helpful for
my understanding of the nature of the relationship between politics and cul­
ture and its significance for Christian engagement in the late modern world.
Professor Hunter very graciously provided comments on the later chapters
amid a very busy research and lecturing schedule. His comments saved me
from misrepresenting his work and that of others on key issues related to the
sociological study of culture. Any insights from these scholars are entirely
owed to their generosity, and any oversights are entirely my own.
Of course, none of this would have been possible without the generous
support and endless patience of my wife, Anna Marie, without whose love
and encouragement to keep writing I would still be sitting in the Hesburgh
Library finishing the manuscript. She has been not only a constant source
of support and encouragement but also a sounding board at the dinner table
for many of the ideas contained in this book (and a reason why many of those
poor ideas have been discarded). I am also grateful to my three children,
Sean, Audrey, and Frances, who consistently call me back from research and
writing in order to be present with them as they play and grow into their
own expressions of joy, love, and virtue (civic, or otherwise). Of any and all
testaments to the grace of God, my family remains the greatest witness, and
to them I am deeply grateful.
Finally, I wish to thank you, the reader, for picking up this book and
journeying with me in seeking to discern the best way for us as Christians
and as citizens to witness to Christian civic virtue in the dizzying maze oflate
modern culture and politics. It is my sincere hope that you find something
in the pages that follow that provides you with new insight or inspiration to
carry on the work of seeking justice and the common good in this pilgrimage
through life. Should you find such inspiration, it would bring me great joy
to know that you will pass it on and share it with others.
viii
Introduction
For here we have no lasting city, but we are lookingfor the city that
is to come.
Hebrews 13:14 (NRSV)
But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and
pray for the Lo on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your
RD
welfare.
Jeremiah 29:7
The People of God on Pilgrimage
The Christian life understood as a pilgrimage through this world presents
a paradox. On the one hand, pilgrims are a people who are fully present to
each stage on their journey and depend on one another for their survival
in the liminal space of journey away from the safety of their true home. As
Pope Francis recently noted, "We must never forget that we are pilgrims
journeying alongside one another. This means that we must have sincere
trust in our fellow pilgrims, putting aside all suspicion or mistrust, and turn
our gaze to what we are seeking: the radiant peace of God's face."1 Thus
a pilgrim people also look forward to a goal of seeing God face to face in
friendship, a goal that transcends the present moment. This final goal of the
journey holds out the promises of reward and rest, and it provides a sense
1. Francis, Evangelii gaudium (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013), §244.
POLITICS FOR A PILGRIM CHURCH
of hope and courage amid the inevitable setbacks and moments of doubt on
any arduous pilgrimage. At the same time the final goal unites the traveling
companions in a common aim and sense of solidarity. As Robin Gill says,
"Pilgrims are clearly still part of this world, yet they have their sight set
steadily beyond this world."2 Thus, the Christian pilgrim lives within this
paradoxical tension of commitment to seeking the good that can be found on
this earthly journey, while also recognizing that she is destined for the final
goal of the kingdom of God that both fulfills and transcends the ambiguities
and paradoxes of this earthly existence.
Indeed, all of the Christian life can be seen in one form or another as a
pilgrimage, as the following examples demonstrate. Christians, along with
Jews and Muslims, trace the biblical roots of monotheistic faith to Abram
and Sarai's journey from Ur to the land of Canaan promised by God (see
Genesis 12-25). Pilgrimages to the Holy Land or the Camino de Compostello
in Spain remain popular for many Christians today. As the title of his spiri­
tual autobiography suggests, Ignatius of Loyola referred to himself as "the
pilgrim" and began his life after conversion with a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land. Thomas Aquinas frequently refers to the human person as a homo
viator-a wayfarer or pilgrim on a journey home to God.3 Making pilgrim­
age is a way of deepening a commitment to one's faith and of growing in
deeper appreciation for the significance of faith in this life and its necessity
for reaching the final goal. It implies a dual loyalty to seeking the good things
that can be found and appreciated in this life while also looking forward to
a perfect, future good that transcends the current moment and functions as
an architectonic goal for each step along the way.
If the Christian life is viewed as a pilgrimage, then Christians claim a par­
adoxical dual citizenship in this world, one that was classically articulated by
Augustine's two cities in The City of God. Christians count themselves among
the people of God striving toward the heavenly city and among the common
humanity of those who belong to the earthly city. Cathleen Kaveny suggests
that when attempting to live faithfully to one's dual citizenship in political
life "Christians need to keep two values in creative tension by honoring the
insights of two groups of devout Catholics, which I call the prophets and the
2. Robin Gill, Churchgoing and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999), p. 22.
3. A search of viator in the Index Thomisticus indicates that Aquinas frequently uses the
term to refer to Christ's human nature, as contrasted with his divine nature in which he is
already comprehensor. Thus, Christ is the perfect image of the paradox of the human person
as wayfarer called to a more perfect completion by grace.
2
Introduction
pilgrims."4 Kaveny explains that prophets witness to an uncompromising
commitment to the absolute justice of the kingdom of God and an unwill­
ingness to cooperate with the evils of the times. Pilgrims maintain that the
current conditions of sin, injustice, and suffering call for loving engagement
in the unjust and imperfect structures of the world to ameliorate human suf­
fering while awaiting the final arrival of God's kingdom. Both are necessary
stances for Christian political witness and engagement, but my defense of
civic virtue in what follows fits more closely with the image of pilgrimage,
as the title of this book suggests.
The Thomistic account of civic virtue that I develop in what follows
pays close attention to Aquinas's method, aims, and historical context, to
understand how insights gained from his theological work continue to have
practical value today. In his thirteenth-century context, Aquinas was inter­
ested in demonstrating how the penultimate goals of this earthly life might
be harmonized with the transcendent goals of the Christian pilgrim. Aquinas
states this plainly when he writes that "a human being is not only a citizen of
the earthly city but also a member of the heavenly city ofJerusalem" (De vir­
tutibus a. 9 ).5 A Thomistic account of civic virtue likewise seeks to integrate
these two commitments- the one eschatological, the other immanent -in
the life of the people of God within a pilgrim church.
I begin with the image of the pilgrim church from chapter VII of Lumen
gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church).6 Lumengentium expresses
the Christian paradox in the following manner. On the one hand, the council
fathers affirm that "the pilgrim church, in its sacraments and institutions,
which belong to this present age, carries the mark of this world which will
pass, and it takes its place among the creatures which groan and until now
suffer the pains of childbirth and await the revelation of the children of God
4. M. Cathleen Kaveny, "Catholics as Citizens: Today's Ethical Challenges Call for New
Moral Thinking," America 203, no. 121 (2010 ), Expanded Academic ASAP, Web, December
17, 2013.
5. Aquinas repeats this theme in his defense of the mendicants against the seculars at
the University of Paris, when he writes that "one and the same person can be a citizen of
two cities" ( Contra impugnantes II.2). I am grateful for these citations provided by Bonnie
Kent in "Reinventing Augustine's Ethics: The Afterlife of the City of God," in Augustine's
City of God: A Critical Guide, ed. James Wetzel (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2012), pp. 225-44.
6. English quotations of the Vatican II documents are taken from The Basic Sixteen
Documents of Vatican Council II: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations, ed. Austin Flannery,
O.P. (Northport, N.Y.: Costello, 1996).
3
POLITICS FOR A PILGRIM CHURCH
(see Rom 8:19-22)."7 On the other hand, however, "while on earth it journeys
in a foreign land away from the Lord (see 2 Cor 5:6), the church sees itself
as an exile. It seeks and is concerned about those things which are above."8
The text adds further, paraphrasing the thirteenth chapter of the letter to
the Hebrews, that the "people of God has here no lasting city but looks to
that which is to come."9 How can a Christian resolve the tension between
this dual commitment to "this present age" and "to that which is to come"?
This book presents a response to that question as embodied in a Thomistic
theory of civic virtue that seeks to integrate this dual commitment within
the political practices of a pilgrim church.
My engagement with postconciliar Catholic ecclesiology is born of a
belief that one's ecclesiological stance is significant for the manner in which
one engages in the common good of the political community. Those who
are involved in political theology often operate with implicit assumptions
about the church that are not always well defined, but are rather assumed
to be shared by all Christians. But even a brief foray into postconciliar ec­
clesiological debates indicates that one cannot assume one, univocal image
of the church operating among those who wish to reflect on the political
significance of the pilgrim church. My desire to use the image of the pilgrim
church from Lumen gentium as a hermeneutical lens for Christian civic virtue
in the late modern world based on Aquinas's notion of justice requires some
justification from the outset. My purpose in this introduction is to defend
the claim that the texts of Vatican II can be read as embodying certain key
elements of a Thomistic ecclesiology and moral theology, and that the image
of the pilgrim church is consistent with Aquinas's understanding of the role
of the church in cultivating the virtues necessary to sustain the human way­
farer on her journey to God. Therefore, the ecclesiology of a pilgrim church
provides a fitting hermeneutical paradigm for the practice of civic virtue in
early twenty-first-century liberal democracies.
I begin by noting that Aquinas does not develop an explicit ecclesiology.
Nor is there a section or question in the Summa theologiae on the organization
of the church as such. Aquinas wrote no De ecclesia. Indeed, tractates dedi­
cated explicitly to the nature of the church do not preoccupy scholastic theo­
logians and canonists until the fourteenth century. 10 Rather, there are impor-
7. Lumengentium, §48.
8. Lumen gentium, §6.
9. Lumen gentium, §44.
10. George Sabra writes, for example, that "the theological outlook of the thirteenth
century was replaced or overcome by a juridico-political one" in the fourteenth century,
4
Introduction
cant implications of Aquinas's approach to theology for understanding the
nature of the church as the space within which the Christian wayfarer learns
to receive and to hear the Word of God, to participate in the sacramental life
of the church, and to embark on her pilgrimage toward God. In his seminal
article on Aquinas's ecclesiology Yves Congar writes, for example, that it is
more fitting to speak of a "treatise [on the church] which could be written
with the guidance of his principles."0 Indeed, Aquinas's notion of church is
so thoroughly integrated into his entire approach to theology that Martin
Grabmann has claimed that the church functions as "a kind of 'architectonic
law' which governs and underlies the whole of his work," and Congar adds
that everything can be understood as ecclesiological in Aquinas's thought.12
Therefore, although Aquinas does not have an explicit ecclesiology, it is pos­
sible to discern the main contours of a theology of the church that undergirds
his mature work and bears directly on his understanding of the wayfarer's
return to God, a journey that is lived in the practice of the virtues.
My analysis thus far suggests two distinct but interrelated questions that
need to be addressed in order to propose Vatican II's image of the pilgrim
church as a model for Thomistic civic virtue and Christian political engage­
ment. Although each of these questions could easily fill a separate monograph,
I want to state at the outset how I understand my use of this image embedded
in the ecclesiology of Vatican II to be congruent with Thomistic notions of
virtue. First, the status and fate of Thomas Aquinas's body of work, and of
the various strands or schools of Thomistic thought - what Pope Leo XIII
referred to as "those purest streams of wisdom flowing inexhaustibly from the
precious fountainhead of the Angelic Doctor"13 -before, during, and after
Vatican II is quite complex. Some scholars, for example, see Vatican II as the
end of Thomism tout court (accompanied with a collective sigh ofrelief).
Others hail it as a new moment of renewal in Thomistic thought. For these
latter scholars, Vatican II expresses certain aspects of Aquinas's methodolog­
ical approach to theology, one that remains capable of breathing new life into
and that this juridical model became even more pronounced after Trent and the Counter­
Reformation, up until the twentieth century (Thomas Aquinas's Vision of the Church: Fun­
damentals of an Ecumenical Ecclesiology [Mainz: Matthias-Grunewald-Verlag, 1987 ], p. 31).
11. Yves Congar, O.P., "The Idea of the Church in St. Thomas Aquinas," in The Mystery
of the Church trans. A. V. Littledale (Baltimore: Helicon, 1960), pp. 97-117, pp. 115-16, italics
added. The original French article is "L'idee de l'Eglise chez saint Thomas d'Aquin," Revue
des science'S philosophiques et theologiques 29 (1940 ): 31-58.
12. Quoted in Sabra, Thomas Aquinas's Vision of the Church, p. 27.
13. Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris, §26.
5