| | Honouring, Not Owned | | — Fr Peter M. J. Stravinskas | | | Q. One of our parishioners is convinced that our church and parish names should be St Mary’s Church and St Mary’s Parish, and not St Mary Church and St Mary Parish. Can you tell us which is correct?
Ans: lthough noted in the breach more than in the observance, church, school, hospital names should not be in the possessive. The patron does not own the institution; it is dedicated to the honour of that saint. It is interesting that when the title is not a saint but some mystery of faith or Trinitarian in nature, no one seems tempted to say something like, “Blessed Sacrament’s Church” or Holy Spirit’s undo it?
Q Could you please tell me if there is anything official being said about the pursuit of either liberation theology or feminist theology. Are these studies being encouraged, discouraged or simply ignored?
Ans: Over the past two decades or so, the Holy See has handled these issues, especially liberation theology; the 1984 and 1986 instructions of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are important documents to understand the Church’s position. The basic point to appreciate in these areas is that Catholic theology is grounded in Divine Revelation and does not admit of a type of Erector-set approach to things, so that one can create his own theological system to satisfy various desires of oneself or of a particular constituency. |
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That Christ came to liberate the human race is clearly true; the first liberation He brings is from Satan, sin and death. All other political, social and economic liberations (worthwhile goals, to be sure) stem from that first liberation. And the order is essential to grasp; otherwise, one has his vision skewed toward a form of Christianity that does not acknowledge the primacy of the spiritual and the eternal. One other concern is that class warfare or conflict be avoided, unlike the situation in a Marxist analysis.
Similarly, a so-called feminist spin on things is not ipso facto problematic, if one is simply trying to provide a more accurate understanding of the Christian Tradition or trying to recapture what may have gotten lost in the theological shuffle of the centuries. Once more, however, most feminist theologians today are not seeking to accomplish such goals but are actually concerned with eschewing the Christian Revelation in favour of a fabrication of their own, with notions of a feminine deity and various other ecclesial policies that would flow from that original heresy.
“Doing theology” with a social or political end in mind is always fraught with danger because we are sorely tempted to make the texts (whether of Scripture or Tradition) say what we want them to say; often enough, when we can’t achieve that prospect, we then jettison the whole project for something not in keeping with the definitive revelation given us by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity; simply put, then, we cease to be Christian.
— Fr Peter M. J. Stravinskas
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