By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
Gethsemane, by Giuseppe Cardinal Siri; available at Sophia Institute Press, Nashua, N.H.: sophiainsti
tute.com.
Gethsemane: The Origins and Rise of the Intellectual Revolution in the Church, by Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, is a powerful book, and one whose message remains relevant for the Church in the twenty-first century.
Giuseppe Siri (1906-1989), was an Italian theologian and cardinal, who was elevated to that role by Pope Pius XII. He was regarded as papabile at the time of the death of Pius in 1958, and also during the conclaves for his Successors up to the time of Pope John Paul II. He was very much in the conservative mold and opposed to modernism in all its forms.
The title of the book, Gethsemane, comes, of course, from the name of the garden where Jesus suffered His agony, and the word literally means “olive press.” It is clear from the book’s contents that Siri felt that the Church was going through its own Gethsemane. As the subtitle indicates, he was greatly concerned about the intellectual revolution which took place in the Church during the twentieth century, a process which has proved extremely traumatic for faithful Catholics.
The book focuses on topics including what exactly theology is, and should be, and it also looks at the work of some of the most prominent twentieth-century Catholic theologians and philosophers, including Henri de Lubac, Jacques Maritain, Karl Rahner, and Hans Kung. Their work ranged from an author like Kung, who frankly rejected traditional dogmas, to others who tried to reconcile their new ideas with traditional teachings.
Cardinal Siri also looks at the influence on their thinking of authors such as Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher, and the Protestant theologians, Rudolf Bultmann and Jurgen Moltmann.
Regarding Heidegger, the author says, “Heidegger’s book Being and Time is one of the numerous examples typical of that baseless venture of the human language, manifesting the intellectual, spiritual, and moral impasse of man in revolt against his natural and eternal references.”
Karl Rahner (1904-1984) was an influential German theologian, who prior to Vatican II, was part of the Nouvelle Théologie (“New Theology”) movement, which was comprised mainly of German and French theologians, and included figures such as Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Yves Congar.
This movement was criticized at the time by the French Dominican theologian Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. It was claimed that the Nouvelle Théologie was a return to the thinking of the Early Church fathers, but according to Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, it was rather a deviation from the centuries-old traditions of the Church, and one influenced by modernism, which in its original form had been condemned by Pope Pius X.
Cardinal Siri was critical of Fr. Rahner’s views on the Incarnation of Christ, saying, “there can be no doubt that Rahner…radically changes the thought and Faith of the Church with regard to the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus Christ, such as it is related in the Gospel and Tradition.”
Siri goes on to say that this approach to Christianity, “has had very great consequences and repercussions in the formation of the present theological climate.”
For the author, one of the effects of this approach has been the increasingly common view that the New Testament is “not a truthful witness to the mystery and teaching of Christ,” but rather that the biblical text is the “result of ‘reinterpretations’ and ‘demythologizations’ of the texts that the Church received from the hands of the apostles and evangelists.”
By “demythologizations,” the cardinal meant a process by which allegedly “mythological” aspects, such as miracles, are stripped out of the Gospels.
The author goes on to say that this is the type of approach which has been influential as regards later trends in theology, such as the “anonymous Christian,” the doctrine of the “death of God,” that of “demythology,” and with regards to theologies of “liberation.”
A large part of the book is taken up with a discussion of the principle of “historic consciousness,” a principle which was promoted by the German philosopher, Wilhelm Dilthey, and which involves the idea that history, especially as regards social and cultural practices, and beliefs, is determined by inflexible laws.
In connection with the historical proclamation of Christianity, Siri characterizes the historicist mentality and sensibility as being arbitrary and essentially opposed to Catholic truth, and he sees a modern example of this in the work of Hans Kung in his writings on the Person of Christ and on the Church.
He points out that, “Kung says repeatedly that Jesus may have become aware of his vocation during his baptism,” and says that the result of this type of thinking is a position which sees the Annunciation and early life of Christ as “pious frauds due to anonymous compilations of the first Christian community.”
The historicist mentality is also focused on the idea of “progress,” that mankind is inevitably progressing, but this is a progress only towards finite ends. For Siri, this mentality, “has profoundly altered the notion and the sacred vision of history.”
Cardinal Siri traces the development of this approach from Luther (1483-1546), who he argues had a very great influence on German philosophy and who facilitated the move towards historicism within Christianity.
He also deals with lesser-known thinkers such as Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), whose philosophical and historical principles were fundamentally opposed to Catholic teaching and faith. Siri states that Karl Rahner adopted a vision of history that “leads to the naturalization of grace and to the absorption of each man in the massive entity of historic society,” ideas which were the basis of Vico’s philosophy of history.
The author then gives a list of subsequent philosophers and theologians who have developed Vico’s approach, including Kant, Herder, Hegel, Teilhard de Chardin, Heidegger, Bultmann, Rahner, and Schillebeeckx.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), was a very influential figure in the so-called “Enlightenment,” the movement which dominated European thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This philosophical movement focused on ideas such as the primacy of reason, progress, and the downgrading, if not elimination, of the role of religion in society.
For Cardinal Siri, Immanuel Kant was anti-spiritual, agnostic, rationalistic, and also effectively a denier of the doctrine of original sin. The systems of individuals such as Hegel, Bergson, and Teilhard de Chardin are essentially a working out of Kant’s principles.
In sum, the argument of this book is that over the last four or five centuries or so, the Bible and the teachings of the Catholic Church have been increasingly subject to a hostile criticism, while at the same time an alternative view of history, philosophy, theology, and indeed reality, has grown up in intellectual circles.
For a long time, the Church was able to fend off the effects of this type of thinking, but in the twentieth century it began to gain a real foothold in Catholic circles, and now, to a greater or lesser extent, it has entered the mainstream of Catholic thought, causing great harm to the Church.
The solution for Cardinal Siri is a rejection of the novelties put forward by theologians such as Rahner and Kung, and a return to traditional Catholic orthodoxy as regards the Bible and Catholic teaching generally.
Gethsemane: The Origins and Rise of the Intellectual Revolution in the Church, is not an easy read, but an understanding of the message it presents is important if the Church is to regain its bearings and once more be a light for our increasingly darkening world.
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