The Present Revelation: In Quest of Religious Foundations by Gabriel Moran (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 975 of homeostasis and at the same time betray the mission of the Church. This illustration points out (as does Granfield) that any democratic adaptation of the Church's decision-making structures which is not accompanied by an interior renewal of Christian values among the participating members would not be an improvement over authoritarian structures which do uphold those values. Indeed, there is a value far more important than system - persistencPwhen one advocates change in the Church's decision-making structures. The purpose of the Church is not to survive but to serve the mission entrusted to it by Christ. If its own man-made structures are impeding this mission, then they certainly should be changed, and insights derived from a cybernetic analysis of its structures may assist this task. But, again, the leap from this judgment to specific recommendations is one made hazardous by the presence of latent assumptions. In advocating popular participation in the selection of bishops, for example, Granfield tacitly assumes that the current method will not provide the kind of bishop needed in present necessities, and that popular participation will. However, one can conceive that a surer and faster method of obtaining better episcopal leadership in the United States could be to have an Apostolic Delegate (one enjoying great influence with the Vatican) who would nominate the kind of leaders which the American Church needs. Such a procedure might be repugnant to a democratic ideologue, but it would nevertheless solve the problem of providing the type of episcopal leadership which Granfield calls for. Thus, a much greater need than the democratization of the Church's structures is the need for political prudence in its decision-makers-whether they be found in the traditional authoritarian structures or in new participative ones. All of this is simply to say that a rigorous evaluation of the latent implications of any cybernetic reform of the Church's strutcures should accompany specific recommendations for changes. Granfield cannot be taken to task for what he did not do; he is to be commended for what he has done. He has given the reader a base from which to develop one's own insight into the full life of the Church. BERNARD F. DoNAHUE, 0. S. F. S. Allentmvn College Center Valley, Pennsylvania The Present Revelation: In Quest of Religious Foundations. By GABRIEL MoRAN. New York: Herder & Herder, 1972. Pp. 318. $8.95. One of the mvst important books to come from a Roman Catholic theollogian in the United States during the 1960's was Gabriel Moran's Theology of Revelation (New York, 1965). The book was notable, not so much 976 BOOK REVIEWS as a piece of original theology but as a synthesis of the developing understanding of revelation among Catholic and Protestant theologians, a sythesis forged by Moran in his light of the ongoing efforts of the Second Vatican Council. Theology of Revelation had, along with Catechesis of Revelation (New York, 1966), been the substance of a doctoral dissertation in the religious education department at the Catholic University of America. The basic thrust in both works was away from a conception of revelation as the communication of authoritative and immutable " truths " from God to man towards a conception of it as " a personal union in knowledge between God and a participating subject in the revelational history of a community." Revelation was thus not a past event in the lives of certain people but a relationship which could, indeed must, obtain for men of all times and all cultures. It is not hard to see how this understanding would affect the sort of catechesis to be advocated in Catechesis of Revelation. Despite its universalist tendency, Theology of Revelation was essentially a Christo-centric and ecclesio-centric book. Once the author had established some general principles on the question of revelation, he moved from a chapter on " Christ as Revelatory Communion " to chapters on " The Apostolic Sharing of Christ's Consciousness," " The Literary Objectification of Revelation," and " The Continuing Revelation in the Church." "Revelation to all the Earth " would come only in the penultimate position. Moran's more recent effort, The Present Revelation: In Quest of Religioug Foundations, proceeds in the...