Discuss the 2-3 Major Themes in This Week's Lumen Fidei Reading

America asked a selection of writers, theologians and church leaders to respond to Pope Francis' outset encyclical, Lumen Fidei. Check this page in the coming days for additional contributions.

Knowing The One Whom We Dear

By Drew Christiansen, S. J.

"The Light of Faith," Pope Francis said, would exist an encyclical written "by 4 hands"—those of Pope Emeritus Benedict Sixteen and his ain. Much of the encyclical shows the thinking of Benedict who had completed most of the text before his resignation: all-encompassing appeal to the doctors of the church, a sacralizing of Hellenistic philosophy and a preoccupation with 19th-century disbelief. With these come a concern for (unitary) truth equally the object of faith, defence force of the integrity of the eolith of faith, the ecclesial context of faith and the responsibility of the magisterium to guard the wholeness of faith confronting compunction over time.

Naturally enough for a text begun by Benedict the letter also touches a number of times on the modern antagonism between faith and reason. At the same time, there are splendidly positive passages on the human search for God and on the penetration of science by the light of organized religion.

With a bow to the religious sensibility of searchers who lack explicit faith, the alphabetic character recognizes that "Religious man strives to see signs of God, in the daily experiences of life, in the cycle of the seasons, in the fruitfulness of the earth and in the movement of the cosmos" (no. 35). It continues, "To the extent that they are sincerely open up to dearest and fix out with whatever lite they tin can find, the popes tell us, "[searchers] are already, fifty-fifty without knowing information technology, on the path leading to faith."

According to the letter, moreover, religion illumines the whole of life, including scientific research. "Faith encourages the scientist to remain constantly open to reality in all its inexhaustible richness," the popes write. "Faith," they proceed, "awakens the critical sense by preventing enquiry from being satisfied with its own formulae and helps it to realize that nature is always greater. Past stimulating wonder earlier the profound mystery of creation, religion broadens the horizons of reason, to shed greater low-cal on the world which discloses itself to scientific investigation" (no. 34). While in cardinal theology these dynamics propelling the advance of science may be interpreted every bit manifestations of implicit faith apart from Christ, when viewed the optics of faith, by a believing scientist like Teilhard de Chardin, they gain a Christic depth. It is to that greater depth of life lived in faith that the two popes want to draw our attention.

Except for 1 introductory passage where Pope Francis speaks of Bridegroom's training, information technology is more than difficult to make out Francis' ain contribution. I doubtable it includes elements of two capacity: affiliate three, "I Delivered to You What I Likewise Received," treats the transmission of faith, and chapter iv, "God Prepares a Urban center for Them," treats the vivifying role of religion in family and society. To this reader's consternation, however, the ecclesiology of the encyclical is not that of Francis's retainer church (the church in the street where accidents happen), but of Bridegroom's church, a church building that guards the faith confronting error. The true-blue would accept benefitted hither from some revision on Francis's office in keeping with his homiletic teaching on the church's vulnerable appointment in the earth.

Pope Francis had indicated that he would fold in the recommendations of the last synod of bishops on evangelization into this encyclical rather than issue a divide apostolic exhortation closing the last synod. Even so but three numbers (37-39) touch on the sharing of faith and stress the communal, ecclesial nature of faith, rather than mission of evangelization. Nigh of chapter three, a baptismal catechesis, treats the transmission of faith in the sacrament. Chapter 4, on the church's service to the world, hints of the nowadays pope'due south pastoral bear upon, particularly the closing section (nos. 56-57) on the consoling role of faith in suffering and dying.

This would take been the fourth encyclical prepared by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Information technology completes a trilogy on the theological virtues. Since ii of the previous three—"God Is Honey," on the mystery of God, and "Love in Truth," on truth and love in the moral life—dealt with dimensions of Christian dear, it should be no surprise that love plays a cardinal role in this joint encyclical'due south treatment of religion too.

It is ultimately the dear of God, which comes to us past grace, the encyclical affirms, that enables us to believe. Quoting St. Paul, "Ane believes with the heart" (Rom. x:10), the alphabetic character says: "Faith knows because it is tied to honey, because honey itself brings enlightenment." It is love that opens the eyes of the heed. "Organized religion'southward understanding is born," it says, "when we receive the immense love of God which transforms us inwardly and enables u.s. to see reality with new optics" (no. 26). It is remarkable that Pope Benedict for all his concern with the truth content of faith not just must turn to love to seal his statement about organized religion, merely that it is with his description of dearest'south knowledge that the argument of the encyclical is at its most convincing. God, the encyclical confesses, "is a field of study who makes himself known and perceived in an interpersonal human relationship" (no. 36).

In the terminate, the image of sight that was the starting betoken for "Light of Faith" proves bereft to capture the fullness and vitality of organized religion. The biblical witness itself, the popes remind u.s., speaks of faith as hearing and fifty-fifty as touch. The Gospel testifies to "what we have heard, what we take seen with our optics and touched with our easily, concerning the word of life" (i Jn 1:ane; LF, no. 31).

True honey, the encyclical tells usa, "unifies all the elements of our person and becomes a new light pointing the style to a great and fulfilled life" (no. 27). Appealing to all the senses and the whole person, the Gospel invites u.s.a. to run across Christ (no. 31). Love yields knowledge considering it alone embraces the whole person. The love at the heart of faith is the love that unites us with Christ.

Further thoughts on Lumen Fidei from Drew Christiansen, Due south.J., can be constitute here.

Drew Christiansen, S.J., is a visiting scholar at Boston College and former editor of America. He has been a frequent commentator on papal encyclicals and Catholic social didactics in these pages.

An Extraordinary Collaboration

By Robert P. Imbelli

At the end of the new encyclical, Lumen Fidei, the unproblematic signature appears: "Franciscus." Officially, information technology is thus the kickoff encyclical of the new pope.

All the same things are not as unproblematic equally they announced. Francis, some days prior to releasing the certificate, stated it was the work "of 4 easily," his and those of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. And in the encyclical itself he writes: "[Benedict] himself had almost completed a first draft of an encyclical on faith. For this I am most deeply grateful to him, and as his brother in Christ I accept taken up his fine work and added a few contributions of my own" (#seven).

Thus we are witnesses to an extraordinary collaboration that might as be chosen the Testament of Bridegroom and the Inaugural Address of Francis.

Those familiar with the 3 encyclicals and other writings of Bridegroom will quickly recognize favorite themes and sensibilities. In many ways, this lovely exposition of Catholic religion can serve nearly as a "Summa" of Benedict's magisterium, written in a lucid, inviting style. Indeed, the threescore succinct paragraphs beg to be pondered and prayed.

At the heart of the encyclical's meditation on faith is this conviction: "In the love of God revealed in Jesus, faith perceives the foundation on which all reality and its concluding destiny residual" (#fifteen). Christian faith arises from the loving see with Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. Thus information technology engages the whole person, understanding, will, and affections.

As a result, before being formulated in propositions (necessary though these be), organized religion is a deeply experiential reality which sets the person on a new way, enabling him or her to see reality in a new light, the calorie-free of Christ, and opening upward a new horizon and mission. "Those who believe are transformed by the dearest to which they have opened their hearts in faith" (#21) They are being transformed by the indwelling of Christ in the Spirit.

The "I" of the laic becomes incorporated into Christ'south ecclesial trunk: the "I believe" of the private situated in the "we believe" of the community. In a rich passage the encyclical teaches: "This openness to the ecclesial 'We' reflects the openness of God'due south own dearest, which is not but a relationship between the Begetter and the Son, betwixt an 'I' and a 'Thou,' just it is also, in the Spirit, a 'Nosotros,' a communion of persons" (#39).

Moreover, the ecclesial communion experienced and enjoyed is not self-enclosed, simply impels united states of america to our responsibilities for the common adept. "[Faith's] lite does non simply brighten the interior of the Church building, nor does information technology serve solely to build an eternal city in the hereafter; it helps us build our societies in such a way that they can journey towards a future of hope" (#51).

Rooted in the soil of Christ's paschal mystery, organized religion does not deny or ignore the sufferings of the world. It seeks to bring the service of hope and beloved, particularly to the about needy and abandoned. "Religion is not a lite which scatters all darkness, but a lamp which guides our steps in the nighttime and suffices for the journeying" (#57).

Lumen Fidei offers challenging and enriching spiritual exercises for the contemporary church and the wider world. Tolle, lege–take it up and read!

Rev. Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, teaches theology at Boston College.

Francis' Gentle Invitation to Seekers

Past James Martin, S.J.

Pope Francis' starting time encyclical is a cute invitation to believers and seekers akin. While Lumen Fidei is officially addressed to bishops, priests, members of religious orders and "the lay faithful," information technology is besides a heartfelt effort to speak to anyone still searching for God.

There is probably piffling that will exist accounted "newsworthy" in Lumen Fidei, save peradventure the strong linkage between faith and "justice, law and peace" which reflects Francis' emphasis on the poor.  Another section speaks explicitly of bang-up figures, like St. Francis of Assisi and Mother Teresa, whose religion impelled them to piece of work directly with the poor. Some commentators may try to parse which pope—Bridegroom or Francis—wrote which part, rather than looking at the certificate in its totality.  A few may even endeavour to disbelieve i or some other office, based on the putative author.  But that would exist a fool'southward errand: if anything the encyclical should enjoy greater influence as the work of ii popes.

While many passages will provide material for rich meditation for Catholics and Christians, I would similar to highlight a few that might specifically help the seeker, the agnostic, the agnostic and even the atheist.

"Faith is born of an run into with God," writes Francis. That is, faith is non simply an intellectual process, or the answer to a serial of philosophical questions, but is primarily about a human relationship—with God, with Jesus, and with others. We can see, says Francis, the progress of that relationship throughout history, in the story of salvation, which begins with Abraham. So for seekers despairing of "figuring out" faith, the pope offers not a philosophical disquisition or a theological debate, but a person: Jesus. Faith is, he says, "a participation in his manner of seeing." Nosotros seek to enter into human relationship with him.

Merely that doesn't hateful that the intellect is unimportant. For seekers who worry that condign a Christian will mean leaving their brains behind, Francis highlights the value of the intellectual path, and reminds united states of the experience of St. Augustine. Encountering God did not lead Augustine to "reject calorie-free and seeing," that is, reason.  However, our longing for the truth will only be satisfied when "we will encounter and will love."

For, as the pope says, "Love is an experience of truth." For those even so searching for God, and so, Francis encourages them to meditate on their experience of love, not merely as an ephemeral emotion, but equally a way of tasting faith and experiencing truth, both of which can atomic number 82 to faith.  As we reflect on the love that God has shown us in our lives, equally the People of State of israel did over history, we slowly come up to belief. And here is a beautiful line that will speak to many seekers: "To the extent that they are sincerely open to love and set up out with whatsoever light they can find, they are already, even without knowing it, on the path leading to faith."

To that finish, faith is a journey. Lumen Fidei speaks of the "path" and "road which faith opens up before us." In other words, don't exist afraid to keep looking. "Religious man is a wayfarer," says Francis (and I would add religious woman, too), "he must be ready to be led, to come out of himself, and to find the God of perpetual surprises."

And then, to the seeker Francis says: don't be afraid of using your intellect, see what love might teach you about faith, and stay on the path. And then one day, you lot may be surprised to discover that you are in a human relationship with God and, more important, that God is in a relationship with yous.

James Martin, S.J.,is editor at large at America.

A Light Unto Our Path

By Peter Folan, S.J.

In ane of the closing paragraphs of Lumen Fidei, the encyclical of Pope Francis released this morning, the Holy Father remarks, "Organized religion is not a light which scatters all our darkness, but a lamp which guides our steps in the dark and suffices for the journey" (§57).  Ane can say too of Lumen Fidei itself.  The encyclical isa light for the church, and thus, by extension, humankind, not because it eradicates all challenges to belief, but because information technology shows that the faith of the church stands upwardly to those challenges.  In particular, Lumen Fidei engages three of today's challenges to conventionalities.

First, organized religion is a backup plan. Those who pose this challenge see faith every bit a caulk to fill in the e'er-shrinking gaps between feel and scientific explanation.  Fourth dimension and deeper learning, these critics say, volition eventually expose organized religion equally unnecessary, if not dangerous.  Francis, for his office, trumpets the importance of noesis and truth, for "without these we cannot stand house, we cannot move forward" (§24), all the same he also diagnoses a "massive amnesia in our contemporary world" (§25).  Questions of truth and knowledge are fundamentally, he argues, questions of memory, for they "deal with something prior to ourselves" (§25).  Stoking the embers of our individual and ecclesial retention through prayer and the sacraments unites us, condign non a connective tissue betwixt disjointed moments of reality, but the core stuff of reality itself, pointing the mode toward the futurity past being grounded in the past.

Fifty-fifty if faith is not a backup plan, the second claiming responds, organized religion is an private pursuit.  This claiming, which spawns the popular shoots of "spiritual but not religious" and "faith demands blind obedience," meets with a stiff response in Lumen Fidei.  The Holy Male parent, in reminding his readers that "faith is not a private matter, a completely individualistic notion or a personal opinion," connects the life of faith with seeing and hearing, concluding that faith " is meant to find expression in words and to be proclaimed" (§22).  The faith-knowledge that this seeing and hearing impart focuses our eyes and ears "on an encounter with Christ" (§thirty), a coming together that "is kept alive in that one remembering subject area which is the Church building" (§38).  The church, so, sharpens the individual'southward seeing, hearing and remembering, that is, the individual's faith, just equally the individual does besides for the church building.

Finally, Lumen Fidei addresses ones who protestation that organized religion is an intra-ecclesial matter.  On the contrary, religion, like the church building herself, "sets u.s. on a journey; it enables witness and dialogue with all" (§34).  The goal of this dialogue must be no less than the oneness for which Jesus prays in John 17, for, as St. Leo the Bang-up wrote, "If organized religion is not one, and then it is non religion" (§47).  This calls for more than than ecumenism.  Information technology demands the unity of all humankind in a alliance anchored not but in equality, only in "a common Male parent as its ultimate foundation" (§54).

The calorie-free of faith, the light that the name and the content of Lumen Fidei circulate, contrasts with the "smaller lights which illumine the fleeting moment however prove incapable of showing the way" (§iii).  The flames of those smaller lights may resolve challenges to belief for a fourth dimension, though eventually, they volition gutter.  The light of religion, nonetheless, especially every bit Pope Francis gives voice to it in Lumen Fidei, reveals a course through and across those challenges, a class that the church, ever on pilgrimage, must traverse.

Peter Folan, S.J. is a parochial vicar at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington, D.C.

The Unity of Religion

By Christiana Z. Peppard

When reading Lumen fidei, the first encyclical of Francis' pontificate, information technology can exist tempting to speculate virtually "what Benedict Sixteen wrote" and "what Francis added." (Indeed, Francis notes that his predecessor had "nearly completed a outset draft of an encyclical on faith" [no. 7]). Does authorship make a difference here?

Readers may discover that early references (to Nietszche, Justin Martyr, Dante and Dostoevsky, among others) resonate with the mode of Benedict Sixteen; also, key terms surface subsequently that evoke themes of Francis' early pontificate (relationships, the common good, economy and creation).  Just to interpret this certificate in this manner is problematic. Encyclicals are not fragmentary documents.  Fifty-fifty when written by collaboration or committee, there is a unity of administrative vocalization.  The genre brooks no majority opinion and minority dissent.

Unity and univocality are important themes of Lumen fidei, which strives to assert that, "the light of organized religion is unique, since it is capable of illuminating every attribute of homo existence" (no. 4).  Cognizant of contemporary realities, information technology worries about the "crisis of truth in our historic period" and "relativism," which presents a fundamental challenge to the relevance of "the question of God " (no. 25).  It notes the importance of the new evangelization; it specifies that science and organized religion are complementary: "by stimulating wonder before the profound mystery of creation, faith broadens the horizons of reason to shed greater light on the world which discloses itself to scientific investigation" (34). Certainly these are all topics worthy of further conversation.

Merely the encyclical—both its authorship and its topic—prompts another question for me: What does it hateful to speak univocally and universally about organized religion in a time when the global church is becoming conscious of its ain internal diversity? Ii issues are worthy of further exploration.

First, the encyclical views ecclesial truth every bit a straightforward and univocal endeavour. In this view, truth is magisterial; through apostolic succession, "the magisterium ensures our contact with the primordial source and thus provides the certainty of attaining to the word of Christ in all its integrity" (36). This is by no means a new claim. But it is noteworthy in light of ongoing conversations near the role and potency of theologians vis-à-vis the hierarchical magisterium.

Second, how is Catholic unity understood? Of class, Lumen fidei explains that liturgy, sacraments, biblical witness, prayers and creed are how the church preserves and transmits the foundational claim that "the history of Jesus is the complete manifestation of God's reliability" (no. 15).  These features endure across space and time and are foundational sources of Catholic unity.

Simply what is the topography of unity in a global church? This is an of import and complicated question. The Church may be unified in faith, but it is not uniform in its practice or constitution.  How, then, is the diversity of human being feel in a global, pluralistic Church incorporated into—or omitted from—the univocal utterances of magisterial teaching? Such reflection is absent from Lumen fidei, which offers affirmation of unity without delving into the Church'south constitutive diversity.  This is unfortunate, considering unity is not necessarily reducible to uniformity.

Perhaps the plurality of the contemporary—and future—body of Christ will be addressed in other ways during Francis' pontificate. Merely readers volition not find information technology in Lumen fidei, where Benedict and Francis speak with unity about the uniformity of faith.

Christiana Z. Peppard is an Assistant Professor of Theology, Science, and Ethics at Fordham University in New York.

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Source: https://www.americamagazine.org/light-faith

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