FINDING GOD IN ALL THINGS

A Snippet taken from Mark Bosco, S.J. & David Stagaman, S.J. (2007) Finding God in All Things Celebrating Bernard Lonergan, John Courtney Murray, and Karl Rahner Fordham University Press

In every age, the church carries the responsibilities of reading the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel, if it is to carry out its task. In language intelligible to every generation, it should be able to answer the ever recurring questions which people ask about the meaning of this present life and of the life to come, and how one is related to the other. We must be aware of and understand the aspirations,the yearning's and the often dramatic features of the world in which we live.                                                                                 

Gaudium et Spes

Patrick. H. Byrne picks up the importance of Lonergan’s (1094 - 1984) thought by explicating his use of the phrase, the passionateness of being. He traces the import of this phrase to Lonergan’s notion of the implicit and explicit paradigms that shape human ways to thinking, feeling, and judging. Each of us has an unconscious, implicit ‘metaphysics’ operating in one’s life: assumptions and ideologies – inherited from our parents, family, friends, culture, and religion – become the unconscious paradigm of one’s reality. We human beings get passionate about our insights into ourselves in a profoundly different way than the implicit paradigms operating in our lives. Indeed, this innate, explicit metaphysics or first philosophy has to do with reflective self-awareness, what Lonergan calls “Self Appropriation.” Here connected to theology: to self-appropriate God’s self-gift of passionate, unconditional love as rendered in the Christian Way, so as to move us to preach this passionate love and transform the world.

Elizabeth. A. Murray delves even deeper temporality into Lonergan’s understanding of human consciousness in order to find what she calls the key to his philosophy. This moment of insight is Lonergan’s Methodological Key, employed in order to safeguard the complex nature of consciousness, a methodology that keeps in tension the understanding of consciousness as an ‘act of knowing’ and consciousness as an ‘act of identity.

John. C. Haughey brings to us Lonergan’s worldview of ‘emergent probability,’ a view that describes how the ongoing accumulation of scientific and humanistic data helps account for the complex interdependency of cosmic evolution. Haughey illuminates how Lonergan’s notion of emergent probability changes the very nature of how we speak about God and the human transcendence. For it has its greatest referent in the intersubjective experience of love, a self-transcending, transformative act that changes the world. He also notes that for Lonergan, the human person is a co-creator, actively or halting its decline.

Michael. J. Schuck notes that the pillars of Murray’s (1904 – 1967) theology focused on an immigrant’s vision: human freedom, the courage to open up to genuine dialogue, and the hard work it would take to maintain it.

Harvey D. Egan argues that Rahner (1904 – 1984) deserves the title, Doctor Mysticus of the Church, for God’s self-communication to human persons is always at the heart of his theological vision, however difficult or hidden that experience of God might be.  

George E. Griener further develops an understanding of Rahner as a pastoral theologian. The Heart is the major theme of Rahner’s project. His theology of grace as God’s self-communication is the lens by which all of his theology is based.

All these mentioned above, points to new avenues of reflection and research for the contemporary Church. The many threads of their theological focus were bound together into one large pattern in the defining moment of the Second Vatican Council.

Each found in the Council an opening to explore the meaning of Christian faith in the midst of the ‘joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the people of our time.’ Each in one’s own way was able to integrate the wisdom of the Church’s past with the novel possibilities of the present and suggest a future search for meaning.

Dear Friends,

Hope you as yoUth will appreciate this article for the simple reason that it invites U all for a Search in Meaning as the future of the ChUrch.