Finding Salvation in Christ

Essays on Christology and Soteriology in Honor of William P. Loewe

Denny, McMahon

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781498273060
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Finding Salvation in Christ brings together some of the most important figures in contemporary theology to honor the work of William Loewe, systematic theologian and specialist in the theology of Bernard Lonergan, SJ. For over three decades Loewe's writings have sought to make classic christological and soteriological doctrines comprehensible to a Catholic Church that is working to integrate individual subjectivity, communal living, and historical consciousness in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Essays included in this volume assess Loewe's reinterpretation of patristic and medieval Christology from Irenaeus to Anselm of Canterbury, and explain the significance of the theology of Lonergan and Loewe for the fields of soteriology, economics, family life, and interreligious theology.While some recent postliberal theologies have polarized the church's relationship with contemporary culture by minimizing similarities between Christianity and other worldviews, the contributors in this volume continue Lonergan's project of integrating the findings of various intellectual disciplines with Christian theology, and use Loewe's historical and systematic work as a guide in that endeavor. While Lonergan's transcendental Thomism has been criticized by both traditionalists and revisionists, essays in this collection apply Loewe's theological methodology in a variety of ways to demonstrate that time-honored doctrines about Christ can be transplanted into new cultural contexts and gain intelligibility and credibility in this process. Having lived and labored through the far-reaching changes in Catholic thought introduced in recent decades, Loewe's career provides a model for theologians attempting to build bridges between the past and the present, and between the church and the world.

Part 1

William Loewe and the Work of the Theologian

1

Estote Firmi: New York’s Local Church Under Cardinal Spellman’s Watch—Some Foundations for an Intellectual Journey

patrick j. hayes university of makeni (sierra leone)

Catholic life in New York’s archdiocese from the beginning of the Second World War to the mid-1960s was marked by a sense of surety and power that the Church in America had rarely seen. Catholics held mayoral and other public offices throughout the archdiocese, were barons of commerce, and, with their wealth and prestige, began a gradual migration from the city center to bedroom communities “up state,” to what one historian has called the “crabgrass frontier.”1 Catholic sprawl had been advancing northward from Manhattan, the Bronx, and Yonkers for at least two generations prior, but in the aftermath of World War II, the numbers had climbed so high that most new parishes were erected in Westchester and Duchess Counties. Many Catholics had seen what was happening to their city of birth or point of entry into America and found it wanting, both for themselves and their children. “Getting out” meant “going up.”

This was a part of the story of William Loewe’s youth, and insofar as it was formative for his theological interests and acumen it deserves some examination. He was born at a time and place that experienced rapid sociological change, witnessed unique political drama, coined particular cultural references and developed an attitude that I will argue shakes off an old apologetic Catholicism and finds strength in a new form. The Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan wrote in his classic work Method in Theology, “while in biography the ‘times’ are a subordinate clarification of the ‘life,’ in history this perspective is reversed.”2 An essential corollary to this, however, is that there is a fair amount of historical determinism at work in the creation of both the life and how it fits into history; the social is informed by the individual just as the personal must be measured against the popular. This essay will provide some historical background for Loewe’s life prior to his graduate training as a professional theologian. These formative years are important for understanding why the Catholicism that beset Loewe’s environment continued to hold his attention and, in fact, moved him to shape an ongoing Catholic narrative through his later work. In this the local Church is hardly a minor player, for the kind of Catholicism Loewe encountered in his youth, which I argue had a unique sense of purpose and vigor, constitutes the centripetal and centrifugal forces that made the man. This is where he hammered out both an intellectual self-understanding and a sense of place, and from which he launched his considerable contributions to the theological enterprise. It is important to understand the kinds of influences emergent at the time—by no means specific to Loewe or his immediate circle—that made Catholics both who they were and how they were.

To do so I will try to take a bird’s-eye view of the social and ecclesial markers in the history of the Archdiocese of New York, the cradle that bore Loewe, so to speak. At the center lies its cardinal archbishop, Francis Spellman, who not only appreciated a strong will in his fellow man, he exhibited his own strength of character for causes he thought just. In doing so, Spellman left a legacy for New York’s Catholics to be impassioned and creative and even daring in how they worked out their faith and grounded the principles used to support it. Though neither his style nor his ideas were permanently fixed, his perseverance later in life allowed a kind of Greek tragedy to play out: those with a new theological outlook would supplant the elders. By the time of the Second Vatican Council, budding theologians like Loewe were beginning to see how they could take the strength they inherited and fashion something viable and fresh—they hoped to keep Tradition alive, but different. After reviewing Spellman’s life and times, I look at how Loewe cut this new path.

Spellman’s Leadership in the Archidioecesis Neo-Eboracensis

Loewe’s early years coincided with a number of transition moments within the local Church, ushered in by a savvy and internationally recognized archbishop. He capitalized on his connections to transform nearly every facet of ecclesial life in his see, right down to directing that each rectory possess a telephone so the faithful (and His Grace) would have ready access to their pastors. Though known colloquially today as the “American Pope”—not so much as an alternative to papal authority as much as an extension of it—Francis Cardinal Spellman wielded considerable control within the archdiocese.3 He assumed responsibility for the New York See in April 1939, nearly eight months after the death of Patrick Cardinal Hayes, the deeply beloved “Cardinal of Charities,” and was formally installed the next month. From the first, and though small of stature, he put his new flock on notice that his ministry would not be marked by fear, even in dark times. In his sermon at the installation Mass, Spellman told the congregation that he wore “the Cross as my shield and my breastplate because I am set for the defense of the Gospel.”4 Hayes had enjoyed absolute discipline among his clergy, largely because he left them in life appointments, and Spellman did nothing to undermine that when he took over. Their filial devotion was matched by their ordinary’s own loyalty to Pope Pius XII, who, as the Cardinal Secretary of State, had consecrated Spellman a bishop in 1932. There was a clear demarcation of roles in this chain of command. Bonded in this way to their Supreme Shepherd, the ranks of the clergy were solidified, forming a bedrock for institutional, doctrinal, and ethical uniformity. The confidence that this engendered put Spellman on a near equal par with the cardinals of Boston and Chicago, and it was well known that Spellman’s links to the pope and the Roosevelts were but samples of his international standing as well. When Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago succumbed in October 1939, Spellman was poised to come into his glory, easily eclipsing the standing of Cardinals O’Connell of Boston and Dougherty of Philadelphia. Insofar as New York finally realized its centrality as the capital of Catholicism in North America, the Spellman years were exciting, even romantic in their domination of American Catholic culture, to say nothing of the episcopal appointments that were made in the United States owing to a word from 452 Madison Avenue.

New York City, too, had also arrived as the quintessential American urban center. World War II had insured a steady stream of manufacturing, which would not begin to see a decline until well into the 1960s. By the end of the Second World War, the Port of New York was the conduit for international shipping and trade and was a tightly controlled and lucrative entry point for food stuffs and machinery.5 The city was the premier travel destination both for foreigners and those within the United States. It was the publication capital of the world, where, in addition to dozens of publishing houses, the city’s streets were littered with scores of newspapers and magazines of every description and language. Though rivaled by Chicago for its impact on national commerce, in the aftermath of the Great Depression New York led the rebound and quickly outstripped the Windy City in the financial services sector—a position it has never relinquished either symbolically or in fact. It was not only the country’s most populated city, it was lauded as the most vital. Media of various kinds parodied or romanticized its mayors. One knew that New York was cultural king if only by tuning into Fibber McGee and Molly during the 1940s, which made a comedy of life on “Wistful Vista” under the leadership of “Mayor LaTrivia,” a clear reference to New York’s colorful Mayor Fiorello “The Hat” LaGuardia.6 In 1957, Bob Hope played the playboy Mayor Jimmy Walker in Beau James, a film that tended to celebrate Walker’s moral laxity, but which more importantly kept attention on Gotham’s many charms.7 Art, music, theater, fashion—all came together in a merry dance, expressed by the most lavish displays, in the most spectacular venues, by the most beautiful people.

Today the concept of New York as grandiose metropolis quickly becomes prone to nostalgia, especially considering its more seamy side of life—continuous poverty, rampant diphtheria, pestilence (from lice to rats), and the constant battle for sanitation in highly concentrated neighborhoods, most of which lacked proper housing for its citizens.8 The city’s population surged to its peak by 1950 and the ghetto was becoming a more conspicuous and unhealthful blight on the urban landscape. The people of New York knew the costs of human filth. It bred a mentality often accompanying the squalor of moral turpitude. Crime was a fact of life and no neighborhood was immune. Uptown in the Bronx, the sounds of kids playing stick ball were interrupted by their mothers calling them home to supper—in Italian and German and Yiddish—and blame for all manner of social ills was placed at the doorstep of these urchins. The grit of the city came out on screen, too, as the hardscrabble working class found itself portrayed in pictures like On the Waterfront (1954). Although shot in Hoboken, its blend of Catholicism and labor strife in the holes of stevedores resonated with anyone who ever strolled along the Chelsea piers. In this New York, one was never far from either the Ritz or Palookaville.

If New York set the tone for urban life in America, it also did yeoman work to tamp down the social negatives that could drag its reputation into the gutter. In this fight, the New York Archdiocese, with its numerous Catholic charities, was a leading exponent of human development, a champion of the New York that tendered itself ready for everything new and improved, and an ally in building up the best while not forgetting the least. The admixture of ecclesial significance and cultural location served to put Spellman’s reign at least on par with that of Archbishops John Carroll in the eighteenth century or John Hughes in the nineteenth. Spellman ushered in what promised to be a hopeful era. His tenure began what the historian John Patrick Diggins has labeled “the proud decades.”9 There was an air of possibility about New York; the Depression seemed to be finally over. Two weeks after Spellman was installed, the New York World’s Fair opened under the theme “Dawn of a New Day.” In less than a year, however, Spellman was called upon to lead through a Second World War—a test of mettle for both the archbishop and the souls in his care.

Military Vicar of the Largest Archdiocese in the World

When Cardinal Hayes died, the administration of the archdiocese fell to his auxiliary, Bishop Stephen Donahue. A classmate of Spellman and on the short list to succeed Hayes, Donahue was among the first to send congratulations to Boston, where Spellman was residing as pastor of Newton Center’s Sacred Heart Par...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: William Loewe, Bernard Lonergan, and the Salvific Matrix
• Part One: William Loewe and the Work of the Theologian
• Part Two: Soteriological Narratives in the Christian Tradition
• Part Three: Lonergan and Theological Method
• Part Four: Finding Salvation in a Pluralistic World
• Epilogue: Continuing Conversations