Hostname: page-component-76dd75c94c-68sx7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T08:47:31.670Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Pastoral Criticism, Structural Collaboration: The Role of Ecclesial Power Structures in Modernization and Economic Individualization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2022

Daniel Minch*
Affiliation:
University of Graz

Abstract

This article analyzes the complex processes of modernization and individualization, as well as how the church has structurally fostered individualization despite its public criticism. First, the article demonstrates how modernization and individualization have gradually restructured human self-understanding into an economic image of humanity: the human person as homo oeconomicus. Second, this article examines the church's relation to modernity, and specifically its critiques of liberalism and economic individualism. However, the church has often generated the conditions and structures for individualization, and by extension the processes of acceleration and economization of the life-world that it criticizes. Three areas in intra-ecclesial discourse that foster individualization are examined: the interiorization of faith, ecclesial centralization and clerical bureaucracy, and the promotion of corporatism and digital immediacy. The article concludes by examining recent papal efforts at structural reform and the degree to which they address previously entrenched problems and point toward a renewed, non-economic anthropology.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Rosa, Hartmut, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, trans. Trejo-Mathys, Jonathan, New Directions for Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

2 Boeve, Lieven, “Consumer Culture and Christian Faith in a Post-Secular Europe: Reflections on Individualisation, Critical Agency and Reflexivity,” ET Bulletin 17 (2006): 112Google Scholar.

3 Tierney, Brian, “Medieval Canon Law and Western Constitutionalism,” The Catholic Historical Review 52, no. 1 (1966): 1–17Google Scholar.

4 Prusak, Bernard P., The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 252–54Google Scholar.

5 Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship (hereafter cited in text as FT), October 3, 2020, 105, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html. This article was mainly written prior to the publication of Fratelli Tutti, and although this encyclical will be touched on in some places, it will not be dealt with extensively.

6 See Milton Friedman, “Neo-Liberalism and Its Prospects,” Farmand, February 17, 1951.

7 Karabell, Zachary, The Leading Indicators: A Short History of the Numbers That Rule Our World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 95Google Scholar.

8 Clark, Charles M. A., “Catholicism and Economics: Toward a ‘Deeper Reflection on the Nature of the Economy and Its Purposes,’American Journal of Economics and Sociology 78, no. 2 (2019): 411CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Clark, “Catholicism and Economics,” 412–13.

10 Schumpeter, Joseph A. and Perlman, Mark, History of Economic Analysis, ed. Schumpeter, Elizabeth Boody, reprint (London: Routledge, 2009), 38–40, esp. 39Google Scholar. Many thanks to the anonymous reviewer who pointed me to this helpful perspective from the history of economic theory.

11 Schumpeter and Perlman, History of Economic Analysis, 40.

12 Edgeworth, Francis Ysidro, Mathematical Psychics: An Essay on the Application of Mathematics to the Moral Sciences (London: Kegan Paul, 1881), 15–16, esp. 16Google Scholar.

13 Sen, Amartya K., “Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 6, no. 4 (1977): 322Google Scholar.

14 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 180.

15 William Davies, “The New Neoliberalism,” New Left Review 101 (2016): 121–34; Friedman, “Neo-Liberalism and Its Prospects.” Friedman explicitly also characterizes neoliberalism as a kind of “faith.”

16 Urquhart, Robert, “The Price of the Market: Pursuit of Self-Interest as Annihilation of Self,” International Review of Economics 59, no. 4 (2012): 435CrossRefGoogle Scholar, doi:10.1007/s12232-012-0159-8.

17 Urquhart, “The Price of the Market: Pursuit of Self-Interest as Annihilation of Self,” 437.

18 Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, 2nd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 257Google Scholar.

19 Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 258.

20 Davies, “The New Neoliberalism,” 129.

21 Davies, “The New Neoliberalism,” 128.

22 Kotsko, Adam, Neoliberalism's Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), 71Google Scholar.

23 Philip Goodchild, Theology of Money, New Slant: Religion, Politics, Ontology (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 117–19.

24 Poole, Eve, Capitalism's Toxic Assumptions: Redefining Next Generation Economics (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 11–15, 2326Google Scholar.

25 Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 121–31.

26 Foley, Duncan K., Adam's Fallacy: A Guide to Economic Theology (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), 205–06Google Scholar.

27 Perelman, Michael, The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 13–24, 3858CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kotsko, Neoliberalism's Demons, 71–96.

28 Davies, “The New Neoliberalism,” 129–32.

29 Boeve, Lieven, God Interrupts History: Theology in a Time of Upheaval (New York: Continuum, 2007), 2324Google Scholar.

30 Rosa, Hartmut, “Social Acceleration: Ethical and Political Consequences of a Desynchronized High-Speed Society,” Constellations 10, no. 1 (2003): 1–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Rosa, Social Acceleration, 71–80.

32 Rosa, Social Acceleration, 174–75.

33 Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism, 38–58, 121–23.

34 Rosa, “Social Acceleration,” 14–15.

35 Michel Foucault, “Pastoral Power and Political Reason (1979),” in Religion and Culture, ed. Jeremy R. Carrette, Manchester Studies in Religion, Culture and Gender (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 152.

36 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 135–228.

37 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 221.

38 Rosa, “Social Acceleration,” 14.

39 Rosa, Social Acceleration, 200–01.

40 Rosa, “Social Acceleration,” 13–14.

41 See Cavanaugh, William T., Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2008), 1617Google Scholar.

42 Lehner, Ulrich L., The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 206–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 O'Malley, John W., Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), 4954CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 252–54.

45 Hubert Wolf, “‘Wahr ist, was gelehrt wird’ statt ‘Gelehrt wird, was wahr ist’? Zur Erfindung des ‘ordentlichen’ Lehramts,” in Neutestamentliche Ämtermodelle im Kontext, eds. Thomas Schmeller, Martin Ebner, and Rudolf Hoppe, Quaestiones disputatae 239 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2010), 236–59.

46 Wolf, “‘Wahr ist, was gelehrt wird’ statt ‘Gelehrt wird, was wahr ist’? Zur Erfindung des ‘ordentlichen’ Lehramts,” 255.

47 Laurent, Bernard, “Caritas in Veritate as a Social Encyclical: A Modest Challenge to Economic, Social, and Political Institutions,” Theological Studies 71, no. 3 (2010): 518CrossRefGoogle Scholar, doi:10.1177/004056391007100301.

48 Laurent, “Caritas in Veritate as a Social Encyclical,” 518.

49 Laurent, Bernard, “Catholicism and Liberalism: Two Ideologies in Confrontation,” Theological Studies 68, no. 4 (2007): 837CrossRefGoogle Scholar, doi:10.1177/004056390706800404.

50 Laurent, “Catholicism and Liberalism,” 823.

53 Clark, “Catholicism and Economics,” 409–11, 421–22.

54 Bruni, Luigino, Civil Happiness: Economics and Human Flourishing in Historical Perspective (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 2430CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment, 19–25.

56 Gunda Werner, “Specifically Catholic: At the Intersection of Power, Maleness, Holiness, and Sexualised Violence. A Theological and Historical Comment on Power,” Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research 27 (2019): 147–74, doi:10.2143/ESWTR.27.0.3286560.

57 Peter Krämer, “Einzelbeichte. Einzige oder eine Form des Bußsakramentes?,” Trierer theologische Zeitschrift. Pastor Bonus 107 (1998): 214. See also O'Malley, John W., Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2013), 152–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 See Michel Foucault, “On the Government of the Living (1980),” in Religion and Culture, ed. Jeremy R. Carrette, Manchester Studies in Religion, Culture and Gender (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 154–57.

59 John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition, Reprint, Clarendon Paperbacks (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 21.

60 Gunda Werner, “Bildung und Kontrolle. Historische Rückführung des Narrativ eines ‘gesunden’ Sündenbewusstseins in exemplarischen lehramtlichen Verlautbarungen nach dem Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil,” in “Unheilige Theologie.” Theologie und sexueller Missbrauch, eds. Magnus Striet and Rita Werden, Katholizismus im Umbruch 9 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2019), 153–55.

61 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 177.

62 Komonchak, Joseph A., “Theology and Culture at Mid-Century: The Example of Henri de Lubac,” Theological Studies 51, no. 4 (1990): 591–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot C. Sheppard and Elizabeth Englund, OCD (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988).

63 Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 253.

64 Wolf, “‘Wahr ist, was gelehrt wird’ statt ‘Gelehrt wird, was wahr ist’? Zur Erfindung des ‘ordentlichen’ Lehramts,” 255. My translation.

65 Walter Kasper, Die Methoden der Dogmatik: Einheit und Vielheit, Kleine Schriften zu Theologie (Munich: Kösel-Verlag KG, 1967), 23–29.

66 Wolf, “‘Wahr ist, was gelehrt wird’ statt ‘Gelehrt wird, was wahr ist’? Zur Erfindung des ‘ordentlichen’ Lehramts,” 239–52.

67 Wolf, “‘Wahr ist, was gelehrt wird’ statt ‘Gelehrt wird, was wahr ist’? Zur Erfindung des ‘ordentlichen’ Lehramts,” 253–54; Franz Xaver Bischof and Georg Essen, eds., Theologie, kirchliches Lehramt und öffentliche Meinung: Die Münchener Gelehrtenversammlung von 1863 und ihre Folgen, Münchener kirchenhistorische Studien. Neue Folge 4 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2015).

69 Claus Arnold, “The Roman Magisterium and Anti-Modernism,” in Religious Modernism in the Low Countries, eds. Leo Kenis and Ernestine van der Wall, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 75 (Leuven and Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2013), 167.

70 Arnold, “The Roman Magisterium and Anti-Modernism,” 167–68; Claus Arnold, “Pius X, Merry Del Val and the Cases of Alfred Loisy and George Tyrrell: Institutional Aspects of Antimodernism,” in Le Pontificat Romain Dans l'époque Contemporaine/The Papacy in the Contemporary Age, ed. Giovanni Vian, Studi Di Storia 5 (Venice: Università Ca” Foscari Venezia, 2018), 21–22, http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/libri/978-88-6969-256-7/pius-x-merry-del-val-and-the-cases-of-alfred-loisy/.

71 Arnold, “The Roman Magisterium and Anti-Modernism,” 168.

72 Arnold, “Pius X, Merry Del Val and the Cases of Alfred Loisy and George Tyrrell,” 57: “There were very clear theological and political choices behind the measures taken by Pius X and Merry del Val against Tyrrell. It would be more precise to characterise this way of handling as executive. The doctrine of the papal primacy enables the Roman pontiff to act directly and freely at any time, even without the help and advice of his own Congregations in the Roman Curia.”

73 See Otfried Müller, “Zum Begriff der Tradition in der Theologie der letzten hundert Jahre,” Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift 4 (1953): 164–86. Cf. Thomas Söding, ed., Der Spürsinn des Gottesvolkes: Eine Diskussion mit der Internationalen Theologischen Kommission, Quaestiones disputatae 281 (Freiburg and Basel and Vienna: Herder, 2016).

74 Joseph Wilhelm, DD, and Thomas B. Scannell, DD, eds., A Manual of Catholic Theology Based on Scheeben's Dogmatik, 4th ed., vol. I (London and New York and Cincinnati and Chicago: Kegan Paul, Trench Trübner and Co./Benzinger Bros., 1909), 40.

75 Wilhelm and Scannell, A Manual of Catholic Theology Based on Scheeben's Dogmatik, I:43–45. At 45: The “Teaching Body [possesses] Active Infallibility, that is, inability to lead astray; in the Body Taught it is Passive Infallibility that is, incapability of being led astray.”

76 Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology, 35.

77 Krämer, “Einzelbeichte,” 212–13.

78 Lüdecke, Norbert and Bier, Georg, Das römisch-katholische Kirchenrecht: Eine Einführung (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2012), 9899Google Scholar.

79 Robert Ombres, OP, “What Future for the Laity? Law and History,” in Governance and Authority in the Roman Catholic Church: Beginning a Conversation, eds. Noel Timms and Kenneth Wilson (London: SPCK, 2000), 92.

80 International Theological Commission, Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church (2014): 4, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_20140610_sensus-fidei_en.html.

81 Lüdecke and Bier, Das römisch-katholische Kirchenrecht, 101. My translation.

82 Lüdecke and Bier, Das römisch-katholische Kirchenrecht, 101.

83 John P. Beal, “Something There Is That Doesn't Love a Law: Canon Law and Its Discontents,” in The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity, ed. Michael James Lacey and Francis Oakley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 142: “Despite the fact that the Second Vatican Council clearly intended its identification of the ‘secular’ character and vocation of the laity to be merely descriptive of the typical situation of the lay faithful, it has become, especially in the teaching of John Paul II, an ontological definition of the lay state.” Beal considers this to be a “misinterpretation” of the text that has nevertheless been made the more or less official interpretation.

84 Rushkoff, Douglas, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (New York: Current, 2013), 110–15Google Scholar.

85 Anthony J. Godzieba, “The Magisterium in an Age of Digital Reproduction,” in When the Magisterium Intervenes: The Magisterium and Theologians in Today's Church, ed. Richard R. Gaillardetz (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 140–53.

86 Godzieba, “The Magisterium in an Age of Digital Reproduction,” 147.

87 See Rushkoff, Present Shock, 43–58.

88 Godzieba, “The Magisterium in an Age of Digital Reproduction,” 142–46.

89 Godzieba, “The Magisterium in an Age of Digital Reproduction,” 148.

90 Hinze, Bradford E., Prophetic Obedience: Ecclesiology for a Dialogical Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016), 4448Google Scholar.

91 Hinze, Prophetic Obedience, 48.

92 Hinze, Prophetic Obedience, 50.

93 Hinze, Prophetic Obedience, 50–64.

94 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Formula to Be Used for the Profession of Faith and for the Oath of Fidelity to Assume an Office to Be Exercised in the Name of the Church, July 1, 1988, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19880701_professio-fidei_en.html.

95 Wolf, “‘Wahr ist, was gelehrt wird’ statt ‘Gelehrt wird, was wahr ist’? Zur Erfindung des ‘ordentlichen’ Lehramts,” 238.

96 Godzieba, “The Magisterium in an Age of Digital Reproduction,” 148.

98 Cafardi, Nicholas P., Before Dallas: The U.S. Bishops’ Response to Clergy Sexual Abuse of Children (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2008), 90Google Scholar.

99 Code of Canon Law: Latin-English Edition (Washington, DC: Canon Law Society of America, 1983), can. 455 §1. §4 of can. 455 is also particularly relevant here for the lack of cooperation between individual bishops and the national conference with regard to the voluntary guidelines: “In cases in which neither universal law nor a special mandate of the Apostolic See has granted the power mentioned in §1 to a conference of bishops, the competence of each diocesan bishop remains intact, nor is a conference or its president able to act in the name of all the bishops unless each and every bishop has given consent.” Although it was possible to “agree” to the guidelines publicly, they could be ignored or selectively enforced without consequences or oversight.

100 Rosa, Social Acceleration, 203–07.

101 Bradford E. Hinze, “A Decade of Disciplining Theologians,” in When the Magisterium Intervenes: The Magisterium and Theologians in Today's Church, ed. Richard R. Gaillardetz (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 3–39.

102 Finn, Daniel R., “John Paul II and the Moral Ecology of Markets,” Theological Studies 59, no. 4 (1998): 665CrossRefGoogle Scholar, doi:10.1177/004056399805900404.

103 Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (hereafter cited in text as CV), June 29, 2009, 36,https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html.

104 See Gerald J. Beyer, “Karol Wojtyła's Katolicka Etyka Społeczna as Precursor and Hermeneutic Key to Pope John Paul II's Economic Teaching,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 79, no. 4 (2020): 1111–45, doi:10.1111/ajes.12358. It is notable, however, that despite Pius XI's condemnation of liberalism and its many effects in his first encyclicals, Quadragesimo Anno 101 curiously asserts: “Leo XIII sought to adjust this economic system according to the norms of right order; hence, it is evident that this system is not to be condemned in itself. And surely it is not of its own nature vicious.”

105 Godzieba, “The Magisterium in an Age of Digital Reproduction,” 152–53.

106 Pope Francis, On Care for our Common Home: Laudato Si’ (hereafter cited in text as LS), May 24, 2015, 138, 176–181, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html; Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (hereafter cited in text as EG), November 24, 2013, 202–08, 222, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html.

107 See LS 119: “Our relationship with the environment can never be isolated from our relationship with others and with God. Otherwise, it would be nothing more than romantic individualism dressed up in ecological garb, locking us into a stifling immanence.”

108 Colberg, Kristin, “Looking at Vatican I's Pastor Aeternus 150 Years Later: A Fresh Consideration of the Council's Significance Yesterday and Today,” Horizons 46, no. 2 (2019): 345CrossRefGoogle Scholar, doi:10.1017/hor.2019.57.

109 Richard Gaillardetz, “Francis’ Draft of Curial Reform Fundamentally Reimagines Vatican's Role,” National Catholic Reporter, June 5, 2019, sec. Commentary, https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/francis-draft-curial-reform-fundamentally-reimagines-vaticans-role.

110 See “Kirchenrechtler Lüdecke: Synodaler Weg keine echte Beteiligung,” Katholisch.de, February 4, 2020, https://www.katholisch.de/artikel/24420-kirchenrechtler-luedecke-synodaler-weg-keine-echte-beteiligung.

111 Pope Francis, “Brief an das pilgernde Volk Gottes in Deutschland,” June 29, 2019, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/de/letters/2019/documents/papa-francesco_20190629_lettera-fedeligermania.html. See especially paragraph 8.

112 Francis, Querida Amazonia (hereafter cited in text as QA), February 02, 2020, https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2020/02/12/200212c.html.

113 Phyllis Zagano, “It Is Time to Ask, Formally, for Married Priests and Woman Deacons,” National Catholic Reporter, February 21, 2020, sec. Opinion, https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/just-catholic/it-time-ask-formally-married-priests-and-woman-deacons.

114 Interestingly, Querida Amazonia is an Apostolic Exhortation, like the controversial Amoris Laetita. The latter document is perceived as having changed the church's stance toward divorced and civily remarried Catholics, but no change in the law has been effected. The use of Exhortations by Francis in these instances should be examined further.

115 Section 101 of Querida Amazonia goes on to portray the role of women within a “classical” high-modern maternal Marian paradigm, which is itself a heavily restricted view of women. Women are portrayed as “quiet caregivers,” whose presence and “tender strength” preserves the integrity of a community (QA 99, 101). In section 101, the gender of the priest is brought to the fore as “the figure of a man who presides as a sign of the one Priest. This dialogue between the Spouse [Christ/the priest] and his Bride [the church] …” See also QA 107.

116 Wolf, “‘Wahr ist, was gelehrt wird’ statt ‘Gelehrt wird, was wahr ist’? Zur Erfindung des ‘ordentlichen’ Lehramts,” 255–56.