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  • 18 comments

    Seán Ó Conaill – Jaja’s Question: A Blasphemous Theology?

    December 9 2025
    Joe O'Leary
    Schwager is deeply influenced by von Balthasar's Theodramatik (5 voll, from 1973) as the title "Jesus in the Drama of Salvation" (1990, translated into English 1999) suggests. I looked at the first volume of Theodramatik and found that it is a discussion of drama on the broadest basis, starting from Hegel's discussion in his Aesthetics. 600 pages is the usual length of Balthasar's books, and this first volume is only the Prolegomena to the properly theological following volumes on the drama between God and Christ in the incarnation and passion (and even within the immanent Trinity). The discussion is all over the place, with countless summary declarations on every imaginable playwright (Beckett, O'Casey and Behan make brief appearances). All of this is supposed to lay open the space of theatricality on the basis of which the divine drama is to be set forth. Balthasar studied Germanistik in his formative years, which yielded his first mammoth publication, Apocalypse der deutschen Seele (1937). It is a very colorful account of how the German soul is revealed in Idealism, Goethe and the Romantics, Wagner and Nietzsche. Do not expect sharply focused close readings; his musing on literature aims at a broad vision of the evolution of the German soul. Then, as a Jesuit, he studied philosophy and theology, but with a distance from strict academic method. He never broke with his distinctive manner as a Germanist. His intellectual climate is a Goethean world-wisdom rather than disciplined philosophy (though he recycled a feeble early work on truth within the last section of his trilogy, namely, the Theologik). His volumes on metaphysics in the first section, the Glory of the Lord, are a sort of aesthetic take on philosophy. The fascination with Balthasar among Anglophone theologians is in part due to the way he transmitted basic bourgeois German culture, which seemed fresh to them. John Paul II's and Ratzinger's intense promotion of Balthasar as the most cultured man of our times, at the expense of more standard theologians such as Rahner, Congar, and Schillebeeckx, änd of course Kung, had a stifling effect on theology. Balthasar could be relied on to support Rome and to dismiss critical questions as stemming from what he called "the anti-Roman affect." See Tom O'Loughlin's interview with Karen Kilby: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=hans+urs+von+balthasar+wikipedia&view=detail&mid=3CA0C6B3293CAA467F8F3CA0C6B3293CAA467F8F&FORM=VIREA last interview with Balthasar shows him as a defender of theological conservatism: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=hans+urs+von+balthasar+wikipedia&view=detail&mid=F26E8F1021AB0E388818F26E8F1021AB0E388818&FORM=VIRE His best books are those that focus on an individual figure: Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor. Barth, Bernanos (though his 600 pages book on Bernanos is faulted for imposing a theological grid on the literary texture of the novels; I would say he projects a sanitized version of Bernanos).
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  • 7 comments

    Julieann Moran: Synodal Pathway Update

    December 17 2025
    Joe O'Leary
    Dermot, your IS or ISN'T dichotomy may not work very well. Jesus gave the apostles the ability to discern and decide using their own wits in response to reading the signs of the times. "Whatever you bind on earth, will be bound in heaven." The arguments against women's ordination are all a matter of absolutizing past practice (itself quite possibly misread -- in the insistence that the deaconesses of the early church were not sacramental deacons, or in the failure to recall a world in which abbesses were equal to bishops in authority and power), whereas the arguments for women's ordination refer to the present situation, to the changed status of women in our culture, to their readiness to serve as deacons and priests, to the pastoral needs of today, to the success of female ordination in our sister churches. The process of discernment, led by the Spirit, rather than summary reference to an old rulebook, is the Christian method of dealing with such complex disputed questions.
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  • 7 comments

    Julieann Moran: Synodal Pathway Update

    December 17 2025
    Dermot Quigley
    Joe, the authority given to St. Peter by Christ the King, most certainly doesn't have to earn its spurs, as you say. My main assertion stands: either an ordained female Diaconate IS the will of the most Holy Trinity or it ISN'T. I note you only pointed out your views of the consequences of an ex Cathedra Teaching rejecting a female Diaconate. For completeness, you should have also pointed out the consequences of ex Cathedra acceptance, as you see it. My own view is of course, that the issue of a female Diaconate will be in perpetual discernment until we get a Pope who adheres to a principle taught by our Blessed Lord during the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:37 is a brilliant principle!
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  • 7 comments

    Julieann Moran: Synodal Pathway Update

    December 17 2025
    Joe O'Leary
    A Frenchman told me that the power of the French President to declare (nuclear) war single-handed adds to his prestige but cannot be used in practice. The aura surrounding the papacy used to centre on the magic word "infallibility", but we hear it very rarely nowadays, largely due to the Humanae Vitae flop. Papal infallibility, as defined at Vatican I, is a much more restricted power than people expected to come out of that council; and only one attempt to use it has happened since, in 1950. Some theologians argue that even that attempt did not meet the stringent requirements of Vatican I. If Leo XIV were to issue a solemn edict banning women from ordination he would be seen as attempting to shore up a discredited model of church government and as pushing against two most powerful orthodoxies emerging in the present church, namely, the urge toward collegiality and synodality, which goes back to Vatican II, and the urge to give women roles in the church that convincingly reflect their equality with men. Today authority has to earn its spurs. Some see it as catastrophic that hallowed traditions have to stand the test of open discussion and critical thinking, but anyone concerned with truth and fairness will be ready to undergo this test.
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