If you’re considering a Christmas present for Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, a former Master General of the Dominican order, might I suggest a case of Ivory soap? He undoubtedly needs it for all of the mouths he apparently would like to scrub clean:
"Dogma is a bad word! But beauty has its own authority, an authority to which every human being responds, and an authority that in no way threatens. We need to find ways of disclosing God’s beauty to our contemporaries."
Of all the many quotes that could have been pulled from Vatican correspondent John L. Allen’s "The Word From Rome" column this week, which one do you suppose the National Catholic Reporter‘s webmaster chose to pull for highlighting? Fr. Radcliffe’s or this one from Pope Benedict XVI:
"[W]ithout the light of truth, sooner or later every person is in fact condemned to doubt the goodness of his or her own life and the relations that make it up, as well as the validity of his or her commitment to construct something in common with others."
No fair peeking at the story before guessing.
I’m really not fond of Radcliffe, but I thought upon reading the story that his point was that to modern man dogma is a bad word, i.e., people tune it out, and therefore we have to find different ways of getting the message across to people. All very Vatican II – compatible. That was the idea behind the Council, wasn’t it? I don’t think he himself was stating dogma was bad.
JJ, that’s one interpretation of Fr. Radcliffe’s remarks and certainly more charitable than mine. I hope you’re right about his personal intent. However, the way I read it, he is contrasting dogma with beauty and saying that dogma cannot be used to reach hearts and minds but beauty can.
In any case, NCR highlighted his remarks in its pull quote in exactly such a way that it would more naturally be read according to my interpretation.
I agree with JJ. I think Radcliffe is saying that “Dogma is a bad word!” according to “Modern Europeans” who “are resistant to Church teaching”. I think this is fairly clear from the full context, which includes the first line of the paragraph (missing from the quote on this blog, but included in John L. Allan Jr’s blog):
“Modern Europeans are resistant to Church teaching. Dogma is a bad word! But beauty has its own authority, an authority to which every human being responds, and an authority that in no way threatens. We need to find ways of disclosing God’s beauty to our contemporaries. We must give people a glimpse of Christ’s beauty, for as Augustine said…”
I think Radcliffe is exploring the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches to evangelization of modern Europe, which is an important part of the New Evangelization. I think his generalization of “Modern Europeans” not being attracted to dogma (or truth) is a bit too broad, but I do agree that approaches that highlight God’s beauty could be, on the whole, more successful.
For the full text, see the following link:
http://www.columban.com/christianity_in_europe.htm
Father, thanks for the further clarification.
I do still maintain that Fr. Radcliffe’s words were poorly chosen at the very least. Rather than defend dogma, he appears to be driving a wedge between dogma and beauty and saying that we should only present modern men with the beautiful and not the dogmatic.
Contrast this to Pope Benedict who said just prior to his election that love without truth would be blind and truth without love would be a “clashing cymbal.” I feel confident that Pope Benedict would consider dogma a thing of beauty.
It’s funny because modern man has abandoned not only dogma, but beauty as well. The two are united in an unbreakable union. The greatest beauty in history has been expressed by Catholics, from the icons of the catacombs to the grand paintings of the Rennaissance.
And what has happened to this beauty throughout the Church? No, it hasn’t been put on full display for modern man. We have constructed iconoclastic airports to worship in.