Communio Circle of the Diocese of Hamilton

Just finished Unlearning Protestantism: Sustaining Christian Community in an Unstable Age (Brazos Press, 2010) by Gerald W. Schlabach, the founder of “Bridgefolk” an organization of Catholics and Mennonites who hope to learn from one another’s traditions.
The thrust of the book is that what he sees as the Catholic tradition of stable community, is much needed by those in the Protestant tradition. He holds the so-called “Protestant Principle” of a Church always in need of reform is indeed true, but that Protestant history shows that it is destructive of community (and Church) if held as an absolute, unbalanced by the Catholic understanding of community, stability and tradition.
A Benedictine Oblate, Schlabach puts forward the Benedictine tradition’s vow of stability as a model of the Catholic approach, and notes the post-Vatican II tendency for vigorous theological debate within the Church as models for our Protestant brothers and sisters. By contrast he sees the Second Vatican Council (correctly in my view) as an example of the Church’s acceptance of the Protestant principle that the Church is in constant need of reform.
I must say that his models for “loyal dissent” within the Catholic tradition (Joan Chittister anyone?) didn’t give me a clear sense that Schlabach has fully grasped the Catholic principle of authoritative magisterial teaching. It’s one thing to debate theological issues before the Church has spoken authoritatively, it’s an entirely different thing after that event. His contemporary authorities seem limited to the writers of Commonweal and America, certainly an interesting bunch, but hardly representative of the breadth of the tradition he affirms so strongly. Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair Macintyre are two of his more academic influences, and there is an interesting discussion of Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder’s ecclesiology as well.
Originally a Mennonite, the author has entered the Roman Catholic Church while maintaining a connection with his original Mennonite Church, as well as with Bridgefolk. Definitely worth a read, but not the whole story in my view.
Dn. John Redmond
Diocese of Hamilton

by James K.A. Smith
Baker Academic (2009), Volume 1 of Cultural Liturgies, Paperback, 238 pages.
This book is not (as its author is first to admit) theoretically ground-breaking, but Smith provides a first-rate application of theory to Christian practice. The theory is what theologians refer to as  “theological anthropology” a theologically-grounded  understanding of the human person. Smith’s premise is that (per Augustine) we humans can best be understood in terms of what we love — that we are  “desiring animals”. And the burden of his argument is that contemporary capitalism and popular culture have understood that truth better than we Christians.
Smith’s background, and his primary audience are from the Reformed tradition, but his influences include other Christian traditions, and his argument speaks to us all. It is always interesting for a Catholic to read an evangelical Protestant’s views on liturgy — particularly important here since he takes up Eastern Orthodox Theologian Father Alexander Schmemann’s influential presentation of liturgy as formative, and offers a cultural analysis of things like shopping as “cultural liturgies”. Not the final word, but a very interesting read!
John Redmond
Diocese of Hamilton