Minding Our Own Business

MINDING OUR OWN BUSINESS A religious community has to go about its business in its own way. Still, we can ask our own questions about what it says.1 WHAT MAY a Catholic theologian say about a philosophical study of the doctrines of religious communities? If William Christian is right (and I think he is) , this is not a simple question to answer. For some theologians, the question is a very personal matter, having to do with our vocations in the world. For others, it is also a professional question, having to do with whether and how we need to teach philosophy to our students (clergy, religious, and lay). For still others, it is also a question that we must address if we are to do and speak the truth in and to a physical, social, and historical world of diverse goods and evils. It is a refrain of this book that theologians (and their functional equivalents in non-theistic religious communities) take seriously such questions as their own questions in their own way. Philosophers and other students of religions will surely have their opinions of Christian's book. But what might we theologians say as theologians, i.e., as members of a community from and for which we speak? And yet this particular philosophical study of the doctrines of religious communities also insists that philosophical inquiries have their own questions; religious (like scientific, legal, and political) communities " do not wear on their sleeves what philosophers would like to know about them" (~~9). Philosophical questions may seem (to use Christian's intriguing adjective "alien" to some kinds of theology. Hence the initial question: what might a Catholic theologian (with his own questions) say about such a philosophical study of the doctrines of religious communities (with its own questions) ? 1 William A. Christian, Sr. Doctrines of Religi-Ous Communities. A Philosophioai Study (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 157. Numbers in the body of this essay are to this text. 307 308 REVIEW SYIVJ:POSIUM My goal here is to sketch some of the ways Doctrines of Religious Communities helps us answer this question. I emphasize that this is not a question this book wears on its sleeve. Doctrines of Religious Communities is a carefully constructed set of examples and arguments, written with extraordinary clarity, nuance, and learning and cumulatively yielding an array of different sorts of doctrines of religious communities. It includes dozens of examples from diverse religions-readers of The Thomist will be particularly interested in the examples front Aquinas and Bellarmine, Vatican I and Divina Afflante Spiritu, and several documents from Vatican II. Following Christian's arguments requires a sort of conceptual ascericism to see how his conclusions are "like a pattern on a transparent overlap which could be on maps of various territories ," i.e., the territories of the doctrines of particular religious communities (230). Rather than summarize, I will suggest how one movement of the book will simultaneously challenge, chastise, and delight one kind of theologian. I. What this Study is Not. One way to highlight the unusual character of this study is to note how it is only "a" study; i.e., there are other ways of studying religious doctrines which are not undertaken here. For example, Doctrines of Religious Com.JW'iLnities is not an exercise in proposing religious doctrines or making religious proposals. Christian has made such proposals,2 but his goal here is to study the doctrines of religious communities and make proposals about them. Further, this is not a study of or engagement in speculative philosophy. Christian has written a classic study of Whitehead's metaphysics.3 And he mentions Whitehead in connection with the proposal he makes about the possible "occasion-comprehensive" character of 2 See (among others) "God and the VVorlcl," .Tournal of Religion 28 (1948) 255-62; "Belief, Inquiry, and the 'Dilemma' of the Liberal," Journal of Religion 31 (1951) 79-90; "Augustine on the Creation of the vVord,'' Harvard Theological Review 46 (1953) 1-25; "The New Metaphysics and Theology," The Christian Scholar 50 (19137) 304-15. a An Interpre-tation of Whitehead'8 ]}Jeta,physics (New Hayen: Yale UniYersity Press, 1959, 1967). Doctrines...