1 Avery Dulles on Catholicism, Protestantism and American Culture – Peter Dobbing – 27.10.

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CTC401: Catholic Identity and Its Main Themes

Assessment Task 1 (Portfolio)

Avery Dulles on Catholicism, Protestantism and American Culture

The being of something that is viable is analysable into two complementary

principles: one that accounts for its continuing identity in spite of accidental
change; the other that affirms its capacity to realise itself only through the
change implied by its need for self-transcendence. Two points should be kept
in mind following any such ontological analysis: first, the being’s integrity must
be maintained at all times by maintaining a balance between the two
principles; secondly, the substance of each principle should not be reified into
a self-sufficient reality, thus distorting the real nature of the viable being under
analysis.

In his book, The Catholicity of the Church (Clarendon, 1985), Avery Dulles,
while commenting on Protestantism as the principal type of Christianity that
does not consider itself Catholic (see op. cit. Ch.8), develops an
understanding of Church that essentially endorses the general points and
implied caveats of the above analysis. Proceeding chronologically, he outlines
a sequence of historical understandings of the Church. As we move from the
deep divisions of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation towards the
broader, ecumenical vision of Vatican II, we can see how the distortions of
imbalance and misleading reification have led to the real possibility of
convergence between the churches on matters of substance.

The church of the Reformation understood itself to be ‘witnessing on behalf of’

(pro-testari) the primitive Christian community. As such, it believed that the
one, true, catholic and authentic Church was Protestant. Catholicism, with its
historical and doctrinal accretions, represented an aberration in need of
reform (but not abolition). Two divergent views of catholicity (the quality of
2 Avery Dulles on Catholicism, Protestantism and American Culture – Peter Dobbing – 27.10.03

universality of the Church) seem to characterise the positions of the Reformed

and Counter-Reformation churches. For the reformers, catholicity was
something to be achieved through the universal preaching of, and fidelity to,
the Gospel. For Catholics, catholicity was an essential feature of the Church,
externalised and expressed through its geographical extension (the
Protestants were, in comparison, local sects) and its common, visible
structures of mediation (including the administration of the sacraments and
the presence of hierarchical authority).

The mainly polemical interchanges between Catholic and Protestant began to

change and soften under the influence of late 18th century philosophical
idealism and the omnipresent dialectical thinking of Georg Hegel (1770-1831).
A new theological science of comparative symbolics (under the influence of
Schleiermacher) distinguished between surface oppositions between the
churches and the possibility of a higher synthesis in which these oppositions
are seen as complementary manifestations of a fundamental and shared
reality. The problem with this (or one of the many problems) from the Catholic
point of view was that historical Catholicism was made to represent the
internally contradictory thesis that was overcome by the relatively enlightened
and purified synthesis of 19th century Protestantism. In spite of this
unwelcome (for Catholics) trend, however, the discipline of symbolics did
stimulate catholic theologians to think in terms of complementary (‘catholic’
and ‘protestant’) principles within Catholicism. Johann Sebastian Drey, a
founder of the Tübingen school and a teacher of Johann Adam Möhler,
argued that the Church did need a countervailing principle to balance the
authoritarian aspects of its catholicity. However, rather than adopting the
reforms advocated by Protestants, Drey suggested that the balancing
principle that was needed by Catholicism was mysticism. Möhler – in spite of
his general tone that is often irenic and ecumenical - went so far as to say that
the Reformed Church did not represent an authentic form of Christianity and
was irredeemably irreconcilable with Catholicism.

The softening process that began with comparative symbolism of the 19th
century matured into a more sympathetic consideration of opposing positions
3 Avery Dulles on Catholicism, Protestantism and American Culture – Peter Dobbing – 27.10.03

during the decades after the First World War. On the Protestant side, Paul
Tillich picked up on the idea of a dialectical opposition between Protestant and
Catholic Christianity, referring in his analysis to Catholic substance and the
Protestant principle. By Catholic substance, Tillich seems to be referring to the
visible structures in Catholicism that mediate the reality of Christ’s life and
presence, including the sacraments, the ordained ministry and hierarchical
authority. Balancing this is the Protestant principle that rejects any form of
absolutism connected with human and finite realities. Dulles feels that,
broadly speaking, Tillich is moving in the right direction with his analysis
though he has a couple of provisos. First, Tillich seems to apply his Protestant
rejection of idolatory to the notion of a symbol to such an extent that the
symbol cannot actually function as something that effectively mediates divine
reality. Consequently, Jesus cannot be really present in the Eucharist.
Secondly, Tillich suffers from the same tendency as the dialectical theologians
mentioned above and tends to regard Catholic substance as the poor relation
of a dynamic and (largely negative) critical Protestant principle.

In this brief survey we have moved from the 15th century idea that the Church
is embodied in its fullness in two competing movements towards the belief
that Christianity is constituted by two authentic and complementary principles.
Dulles suggests that some of the difficulties associated with this analysis are
addressed and, to some extent, resolved by the reforms of Vatican II. Indeed,
this Council could be said to have endorsed the authentic insights of the
reformers and made them fully constitutive of a form of Catholic Christianity
that has learned from its past and accepted its calling to be a pilgrim Church.
According to Vatican II, the Catholic Church is the organisation in which the
Church of Christ subsists. The Catholic principle protects the mediatory
structures of the Church but it does not, alone, express the full nature of the
Church. It needs to be complemented by a (Protestant) principle that prevents
structures from being unduly absolutized and that also balances the structures
of mediation with the possibility of the experience of the immediacy of
inspiration by the Holy Spirit. Finally, though the Church of Christ subsists in
the Catholic Church, the Council stated that the Church is in continual need of
purification and reform; it also broadened its notion of catholicity to include
4 Avery Dulles on Catholicism, Protestantism and American Culture – Peter Dobbing – 27.10.03

churches outside the Catholic Church and spoke of them as possessing

varying ‘degrees’ of catholicity (Decrees on Ecumenism, n. 3).

What are the hallmarks of a Catholic theology that Dulles believes can and
ought to exist? Dulles maintains that the way this is answered will depend on
how the two key terms ‘catholicity’ and ‘Catholicism’ are understood. For him,
‘catholicity’ is an attribute that points simultaneously in two directions: within to
the fullness of a truth that can complete and perfect any genuine insights into
truth that are given to humankind; without to the capacity of the Church to
bring all human beings together in Christ who is confessed as the Way, the
Truth and the Life. ‘Catholicism’ may be related to what was discussed above
as ‘Catholic substance’ or ‘ the Catholic principle’, that is, to the ‘order of
mediation’ meaning the visible, tangible, symbolic ways in which the reality of
Christ becomes present through faith to the world. A theology that is fully
Catholic must accept both the inclusiveness of catholicity and the specificity
implied by Catholicism in the senses set out by Dulles.

Dulles is clearly concerned about the state of Catholicism in his native

country, the Unites States of America. He mentions high levels of religious
illiteracy, the lack of interest in evangelisation, the flouting of liturgical laws,
the falling off of religious practice, the immoral behaviour of Catholics and the
prevalence of dissent (see True and False Reform, Avery Cardinal Dulles from
First Things 135 (August/September 2003): 14-19). In connection with his last
complaint he feels there are a number of ways in which theology practised in
the USA fails to meet the criteria implied by his understanding of Catholic
theology referred to above. In particular, the following ideas or trends are
indicative of a malaise at the heart of North American Catholicism:

• The view that Christ can be Lord only of a Western world or of a

Christian community.
• A Catholic theology may be produced in isolation from, and not be
considered as fully accountable to, the Catholic community both in the
United States and elsewhere in the world.
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• Catholic theology may be essentially destructive and antagonistic

towards the Church as it is constituted in the world.
• Catholic theology may be developed and used to support particular
factions or pressure groups within the Church.
• Theologians should be free to disparage the predecessors and
cultivate a climate of negative criticism.
• The hierarchical magisterium of the Church is not to be trusted
particularly on those moral matters with which it is deemed to be out of
touch.

Theology that falls short of the criteria that are implied by the senses of
‘catholicity’ and ‘Catholicism’ provided by Dulles, is not authentically Catholic,
though Dulles does concede that the norms themselves are in need of
clarification and that his own approach is still exploratory.

(words 1500)

References and bibliography

A. Dulles, The Catholicity of the Church (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1985),

147-80
J. McDade, ‘The Evangelical Dimension of Catholicism’, The Month (1992),
256-63.
A. Dulles, ‘The Essence of Catholicism: Protestant and Catholic
Perspectives’, The Thomist 48 (1984), 607-33.
A. Dulles, ‘Criteria of Catholic Theology’, Communio 22 (1995), 303-15.
A. Dulles, ‘True and False Reform’, First Things, 135 (August/Sept 2003, 14-
19).
6 Avery Dulles on Catholicism, Protestantism and American Culture – Peter Dobbing – 27.10.03