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Faith and Reasoning Archbishop DiNoia speaks of how to address challenges to faith in Christ By CLAUDIA McDONNELL Intellectual challenges to faith must be taken seriously and addressed with charity, Archbishop J. Augustine DiNoia said in a recent lecture in Manhattan. He then took three challenges to faith in Christ and showed, clearly and charitably, why the position of faith is the right one. Archbishop DiNoia, a Dominican, was born and grew up in the Bronx. He has served at the Vatican since 2002 and was appointed in 2009 as Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. He spoke June 2 at the Yale Club in Manhattan on "Facing the Challenges to Faith in Christ Today: The Dominican Way." More than 200 attended. Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop DiNoia said that there is "an 'intellectual charity' that must be exercised to enlighten minds and to combine faith with culture." Intellectual charity requires Catholics to "take seriously" the challenges and questions that people raise about Catholicism, the archbishop said. "When the challenges are at least in part intellectual," he said, and when misunderstandings of Catholic faith and teaching "can block the way" to faith in Christ, or to joining in liturgical worship, or to living as a Christian, then "we need to engage the questions people have and reason through them in a serious way." The first challenge the archbishop addressed was "the notion that it is arrogant to claim that Jesus Christ is the unique mediator of salvation"—that salvation is possible only through Christ. This position can seem to deny "the salvific role of other religious founders" and therefore to be "an affront to their communities," he said. He added that this view reflects "the culture of pluralism." In response, Catholics must show that "our faith in Christ's uniqueness" does not devalue other religions, he said. "The religions of the world are monuments to the human search for God," he said, and they deserve "respect and study." "But the Christian faith attests not only to the human search for God, but principally to God's search for us," he continued. God wants human beings to participate in his own divine life, and for that to happen, sin must be overcome. "It has never been claimed of anyone but Jesus Christ that he could and did overcome these obstacles, and that he could and did make us sharers in his divine life," the archbishop said. If Christians cease to believe in and proclaim Jesus as the only way to salvation, there is no one else to fill the role. "We need the Savior who is not just any savior," the archbishop said. The second challenge the archbishop addressed was "Why we need Christ to become authentically human." Many people are blocked from accepting Christianity because of the notion that "somehow being a Christian involves giving up or suppressing what is uniquely human in each one of us" and accepting external standards "alien to one's true self," he said. Behind this idea, he said, is the "culture of authenticity," which holds that it is "immoral to be intolerant of the values of others" and immoral also to allow an outside authority to "displace one's authentic self." The archbishop's response to this challenge was to say that Christians are called to conform themselves to Christ. "We must become like the Son so that the Father sees and loves in us what he sees and loves in Christ," he said. But in doing this, people don't lose themselves; they become more fully themselves. The archbishop quoted Christ's words, "If a man wants to be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it..." (Mt. 16:24-25). The third challenge concerned the moral life—specifically, "the idea that the moral law is a more or less arbitrary constraint in which certain things are permitted and certain things are forbidden," regardless of how they affect human beings. This idea, he said, is rooted in "a culture of legalism" that was "decisively rejected by the Magisterium" in Pope John Paul II's encyclical "Veritatis Splendor" ("The Splendor of Truth"). Genuine Catholic moral teaching, he continued, holds that certain acts are "forbidden and wrong" because they are bad for whoever does them, while other actions are "permitted and right" because they are good for the person doing them. He said that "the commandments are more like an athlete's daily exercise and diet regime than they are like the traffic laws." "Traffic regulations require that we stop on red and go on green, but it could just as well be the other way around," he said. But an athlete's regimen, prescribed by his or her coach, enables the athlete to achieve goals that otherwise would be impossible. Similarly, the requirements of the moral law exist for a high purpose: "to guide us steadily toward the good in every action, and thus toward our ultimate good," which is God, the archbishop said. The archbishop was introduced by Father Dominic Izzo, O.P., provincial of the Province of St. Joseph, which is based at St. Vincent Ferrer parish in Manhattan. Father Izzo told CNY that the archbishop "epitomizes the Dominican tradition," which holds that "the pursuit of truth forms one's whole life and holiness." Attending the lecture was Father Carlos Quijano, O.P., a chaplain at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He told CNY that he was struck by Archbishop DiNoia's discussion of "the encounter with pluralism." "At the hospital we have chaplains of all faiths, and in a certain sense we are to serve (patients) of all the faiths that are there, not just our own traditions," he said. He noted the importance of "entering into honest dialogue with different religions" on moral topics and "even the whole question of suffering and death." | |