Quote of the day: Fr. Ghislain Lafont on the “pathology of the truth”
It looks like we must always struggle in the Church and elsewhere to situate the precise status of truth. In an intellectualistic perspective tributary to Hellenism, there was a tendency to link truth (intellectual, speculative or practical) and concrete action, as if they were part of the process of cause and effect. Moreover, it is always difficult for human beings, at whatever level they are in a hierarchicized world, to be content with probability, just as it is hard to make room for other ways of looking at questions, ways that are legitimate but hard to reconcile with one another. One needs to be careful about falling into what might be called a “pathology of the truth”: in the end and despite all appeals to the truth and to revelation (sometimes well founded), a certain anxiety concerning orthodoxy can arise from a preoccupation with the need for intellectual security rather than from a jealous love of the Word of God. This sense of security is sought more by way of excluding other positions than by the humble interiorization of the truth.
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When truly new perspectives emerge, they often cannot be worked out in the grid of the existing synthesis and one risks judging them (indeed even condemning them) in terms of the categories at hand. But the latter have to be integrated into a wider whole that is in the process of being built. Excessive caution, outright rejection or condemnation slow down and even hinder the process of refocusing.
(Ghislain Lafont, OSB, Imagining the Catholic Church: Structured Communion in the Spirit (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), p. 146.)
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Great post Michael.
“in the end and despite all appeals to the truth and to revelation (sometimes well founded), a certain anxiety concerning orthodoxy can arise from a preoccupation with the need for intellectual security rather than from a jealous love of the Word of God. This sense of security is sought more by way of excluding other positions than by the humble interiorization of the truth.”
This anxiety and this sought security is the generational vice of the conservatively-oriented group of priests now in their 30s and early 40s. I experienced it myself in seminary circles and see it in the ministry of many cassock-clad and french cuff-link wearing young clergyman who are coming up through the ranks.
The desire to be right supercedes all too often the humble submission to the vulnerabilty-laden process of conforming to the Word, who empties(d)himself amongst us.
The deeper question is what really is truth, in the light of the Trinitarian, self-kenotic revelation of Jesus the Christ. A set of propostions linked by the authority of God as entrusted to the Church, or the Tri-personal emptying that is God?
The deeper question is what really is truth, in the light of the Trinitarian, self-kenotic revelation of Jesus the Christ. A set of propostions linked by the authority of God, or the Tri-personsol emptying that is God.
This is precisely what the entire book is about: that Vatican II represents not just reform of liturgy or this or that set of reforms, but a fundamental shift in the our understanding of “truth.” One understanding of truth — propositional, complete, non-negotiable, etc. — resulted in a particular ecclesiology and a set of institutions (or understandings of those institutions) geared primarily toward transmitting dogmatic certainties and combating “error.” Vatican II shifted to a more biblical view of truth, rooted not in propositional certainties, but in an encounter with the triune God and expressed in more symbolic and poetic language. A different view of truth requires a shift in ecclesiology, which was only partially begun at Vatican II. We’re still trying to “imagine” the Catholic Church in terms that match the fundamental underlying change in the view of truth that occurred at Vatican II.
It’s one of the most profound, deeply theological treatments of Vatican II that I have read.
Michael,
Thank you for this further information. I will look for the book, as I now desire to read it.
I notice that bishops get really angry when their hold on truth is threatened. They seem crippled with fear and angst. I was just watching Stephen Gately sing serenely about the happiness of gay couples — if only bishops could touch the common chord like that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogjFSW7PqRY
Don’t you think using the word “pathology” in a discussion on theology is a bit over the top? Are you not accusing those who disagree with you as being “pathalogical”?
I heard people Vatican II changed a lot of things, I never thought that it changed the Church’s understanding of what it meant for something to be true.
Don’t you think using the word “pathology” in a discussion on theology is a bit over the top?
No, of course not. I can in fact only think of maybe two words that probably shouldn’t be used in theological discussion.
Are you not accusing those who disagree with you as being “pathalogical”?
Me, or Fr. Lafont?
I don’t think he is doing so. Lafont is identifying a general tendency as pathological, not any particular persons or positions.
I’m certainly not doing so. I don’t think everyone who disagrees with me is generally pathological. Might be pathological about this or that specific view. Might share in the pathology that Lafont identifies. Hard to say in the abstract.
But no, neither I nor Fr. Lafont believe that everyone who disagrees with our own individuals views is pathological.
I heard people Vatican II changed a lot of things, I never thought that it changed the Church’s understanding of what it meant for something to be true.
I encourage you to read the book. I probably did not do it justice in my quick summary. Rest assured; your Dictatorship-of-Relativism Detector™ need not be at the ready while reading it.
I think people have a need for intellectual security by nature, and I think God provides for this need – He created it, after all. I don’t think it’s something to be embarrassed about. Our subjective minds can know objective reality – not perfectly, or completely. But we can know objective reality.
And truth is by definition propositional and certain. Otherwise it’s not truth.
I think it’s insane to suggest that we have a healthier grasp of truth now; most people reject the notion entirely.
I think it’s more probable that people now have a distaste for truth, because our culture is a culture of skepticism and doubt, especially when it comes to moral questions.
Zach – Might I suggest that you read the book?
“Truth is by definition propositional” — in that case the word “truth” as used in the Bible (emet or aletheia) is not truth in your sense.
Yeah, I could read it.