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By Avery Dulles, S.J.
[Woodstock Report, October 1994, no. 39]
Copyright © 1994 Woodstock Theological Center
All rights reserved
The Woodstock Theological Center Board of Directors and Father James L. Connor, S.J., invited Father Avery Dulles, S.J., to give a talk in February 1994 for Woodstock's 20th anniversary opening celebration in the Riggs Library at Georgetown University.
When the decision was made at the end of 1972 to phase out Woodstock College in New York City as a center of theological education for future Jesuit priests, the New York and Maryland Provincials became aware that they had reached a moment of opportunity. They had an excellent theological library and a number of professors available for whatever purposes they thought most urgent. After consultation with their advisers and with some of the Woodstock faculty, they came to the conclusion that it would be important and feasible to establish in Washington, D.C., an institute dedicated to theological reflection.
This kind of reflection was not intended to duplicate the work, always necessary, of seminary and university faculties. It was recognized, however, that the instructional and academic orientation of these faculties was in some ways limiting. The seminaries had to emphasize the transmission of the heritage of faith with a view to the ministry of word and sacrament. The universities dealt by preference with historical and systematic questions that could be handled by scholars trained in the interpretation of texts and in theoretical reasoning. Since Vatican II a new type of pastoral need was being felt in the Church. The Council declared that it was a task of the whole Church, pastors and laity together, to discern the presence and activity of God in the actual events of contemporary history, that is, to "read the signs of the times" (See Gaudium et spes 4, 11, 44). Many active and committed Christians in business, government, and the professions legitimately complained that traditional theology did not speak as clearly as it might to the problems and decisions with which they were faced.
It was also felt that we as Jesuits might be able to make a distinctive contribution to this new apostolate of theological reflection. St. Ignatius of Loyola, our founder, had taught his followers the importance of finding God in all things not simply in Scripture and the sacraments but in nature, society, and the unfolding process of secular history. He forged a methodology of discernment, including a logic that works not deductively from abstract propositions but inductively from the complex data of experience. He insisted that such discernment must be made in the light of Christ, with the help of serious prayer. Such discernment could be made not only by individuals but also by groups, which could reach communal decisions through a combination of personal prayer and discussion.
Pedro Arrupe, the General Superior of the Society of Jesus, had in 1971 made a plea for greater theological reflection on the urgent issues of our time, including humanism, freedom, mass culture, economic development, and violence. Such reflection, he indicated, could best be undertaken by multidisciplinary theological teams with members having different skills and backgrounds. Yet the entire reflection, he insisted, should be theological in the sense of being a search illuminated by Christian faith. These thoughts of Father General Arrupe entered into the decision of the Provincials to found the Woodstock Theological Center.
Over the past twenty years the Woodstock Center has magnificently fulfilled the expectations placed in it. It has produced a series of excellent books dealing with faith and justice, wealth and poverty, international development, and theological reflection itself. It has conducted seminars for prominent leaders in business and government. It has maintained an international outreach toward Western Europe and Latin America. Staffed by a team of Jesuits trained in theology, philosophy, sociology, politics, and economics, it has from its first days benefited from the full and active participation of non-Jesuits, including some highly trained laymen and lay women.*
In order to keep the Center on track I can only suggest that it continue to apply criteria similar to those it has used from the beginning. In selecting projects we have, either deliberately or instinctively, applied norms such as the following five:
A distinctive strength of Woodstock is that it has a privileged access to the heritage of John Courtney Murray. We have his papers, a number of his close associates, including Walter Burghardt, and close students of his thought, such as Leon Hooper. Possibly the leading American Catholic theologian of his generation, Murray played an important role at Vatican Council II, and worked on themes closely related to those of the Woodstock Center. He was a keen student of the American political, legal, and cultural heritage, and was capable of bringing it into dialogue with the Catholic heritage, including the thought of Thomas Aquinas. One of his specialties was the problem of religious freedom in a pluralistic society. I suspect that if he were alive today he might urge the Woodstock Center to work on questions such as the following two:
The choice of research topics must of course be determined by the people who are actually here, and who will have to carry out the research. If the projects do not appeal to the members of the team, success cannot be expected. These two suggestions are not made with any intent to prescribe, but simply to give examples of the kind of topics that I think would be of broad interest and consistent with the fine traditions established by the Woodstock Center up to the present time. As an associate in your work, I wish you great success for the next twenty years.
*In an article on "The Apostolate of Theological Reflection," published in The Way, Supplement 20 (Autumn 1973): 114-23, I had this to say about the "team":
In theological reflection on communal human questions, it will be advantageous, as Father Arrupe suggests, to make use of a team. The members of the team will have to be carefully selected. In the first place, all must be sincerely committed to the gospel, for the aim of the process is to decide what belief or course of action most accords with the revelation of Christ. Secondly, the team must constitute a community: they must have a common language, a capacity to understand one another's statements, and a good measure of mutual trust. Thirdly, they must be open to change their ideas and life-styles if the results of the discernment call for this. Finally, to guard against one-sidedness, the team should normally include persons or different temperaments, backgrounds, and specializations. For the dynamics of the discernment, it has often been found beneficial to have different age groups and sexes. In short, everything should be varied except the one essential concern for resolving the issue at stake in the light of the gospel. (page 118)