Thread on the Catholic thing in the context of a new center, from a talk given earlier this fall: "Good theology, in my estimation, almost always bleeds into other disciplines—philosophy, history, philology, etc.… Catholicism behaves in history like a wildfire. 1/7
"It brings light, but also burns, and it transforms the landscape where it appears. It both meets cultures & at the same time is its own culture. A center for the study of global Catholicism, in my estimation, aspires to be as fearless as a fire. 2/7
"By exploring Catholicism globally, it unsettles whatever constructs seek to contain it. And by interrogating Catholicism, it explores not an idea, or a worldview, but a “living tradition.” 3/7
"This means that all disciplines that explore human life lived together—the humanities, certainly the social sciences, & perhaps even some of the life sciences—can sit around the table. Let me switch metaphors. The most fundamental idea in Catholicism is the incarnation- 4/7
"the belief that God became human in history. If God can become human, then we can become divine; “whatever humanizes, divinizes” is perhaps the most laconic answer to the question as to how this religious culture produced its art & literature. 5/7
"A center for the study of global Catholicism embraces what makes us human by excluding nothing that humans make. It would be a loss, let me conclude, if it omitted the transcendent from its field of exploration 6/7
"By this I mean the theological, which encompasses the mysteries of faith and the revealed truths that most of Catholicism’s subjects for most of its history have believed and understood in such a way that made them understand other realities in a different light." 7/7
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
