ROMAN CATHOLICISM

a Christian church characterized by its uniform, highly developed doctrinal and organizational structure that traces its history to the Apostles of Jesus Christ in the lst century AD. Along with Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism, it is one of the three major branches of Christianity. Christian church characterized by its uniform, highly developed doctrinal and organizational structure that traces its history to the Apostles of Jesus Christ in the 1st century AD. Along with Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism, it is one of the three major branches of Christianity. Additional reading Reference works include Robert C. Broderick (ed.), The Catholic Encyclopedia, rev. and updated ed. (1987); New Catholic Encyclopedia, 17 vol. (196779, reissued 1981), which treats all phases of Roman Catholicism and includes a volume on change in the church; Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, ed. by Karl Rahner et al., 6 vol. (196870), which deals with Catholic doctrine and theological thought; and F.l. Cross and E.A. Livingstone (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed. (1974, reprinted 1983), with informative articles on Roman Catholic subjects and helpful bibliographies. An excellent brief compendium of doctrine is A New Catechism: Catholic Faith for Adults (1967; originally published in Dutch, 1966). The contemporary Roman Catholic Church is surveyed by John L. McKenzie, The Roman Catholic Church (1969, reissued 1971). A balanced and comprehensive introduction is Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism, 2 vol. (1980), with additional bibliographies. See also Barrie Ruth Straus, The Catholic Church (1987). Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (1971 ), of which 4 vol. had appeared by 1987, opens with the apostolic Fathers and is to close with the second Vatican Council. Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin (eds.), Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (1979), is a step toward redressing the imbalance in most scholarship. For developments in Roman Catholic theology after the second Vatican Council, see Hans Kng, On Being a Christian (1976, reissued 1984; originally published in German, 1974). On recent developments in Roman Catholic feminist theology, see Mary Jo Weaver, New Catholic Women: A Contemporary Challenge to Traditional Religious Authority (1985).Works on the papacy from the theological perspective include Paul C. Empie and T. Austin Murphy (eds.), Papal Primacy and the Universal Church (1974), an ecumenical dialogue; and Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Church in the New Testament (1965, reissued 1974; originally published in German, 1961), which presents the results of 20th-century Roman Catholic biblical scholarship. Raymond Brown, Karl P. Donfried, and John Reumann (eds.), Peter in the New Testament: A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic Scholars (1973), considers the biblical problems in the Petrine question. Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger, The Episcopate and the Primacy (1962; originally published in German, 1961), is an analysis of the popebishop relationship; and Hans Kng, Infallible? An Inquiry (1971, reissued 1983; originally published in German, 1970), The Church (1967, reissued 1976; originally published in German, 1967), and Structures of the Church (1964, reissued 1982; originally published in German, 1962), are basic to an understanding of contemporary liberal Roman Catholic thinking on the papacy. For Eastern Orthodox views on the papal primacy, see Francis Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy (1966, reprinted 1979; originally published in French, 1964); and J. Meyendorff et al., The Primacy of Peter, 2nd ed. (1973; originally published in French, 1960). Beliefs and practices Faith Concepts of faith The idea of faith shared by all Christian churches is rooted in the New Testament. But the New Testament idea of faith is not simple, and it permits a breadth of meaning that has led to variations even within a single Christian communion. Most modern interpreters of the New Testament would agree to a description of New Testament faith as a total commitment of the self to God revealing himself in Christ. Yet it is doubtful whether the post-Reformation theology of any Christian church has presented faith simply in these terms. Even before the Reformation, faith in Roman Catholicism had developed an emphasis that is not rooted in the New Testament but can be traced back to the Alexandrian school of theology and to Augustine. Faith appeared primarily as acceptance of revelation, and revelation appeared as a revelation of doctrine rather than as revelation of a person. This emphasis ultimately was formulated in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas in a definition of faithcanonized by the Council of Trent and the first Vatican Councilas an intellectual assent given to revealed truth by the command of the will inspired by grace and motivated by the authority of God revealing. The Reformers, with Martin Luther as the leader, rejected this idea of faith as nonbiblical and exclusively doctrinal; it seemed to place the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church between man and God not as a means of communication but as a replacement of God. Luther saw faith as confidence in the saving power of grace. This, Luther believed, was a return to the New Testament faith, but Roman Catholicism rejected this as a mere sentiment; these positions were crystallized up to the 20th century. At the risk of oversimplification, it is possible to say that both represented exaggerations of the New Testament. New Testament faith is more than either trust in the saving power and will of God or assent to revealed truth, although neither element can be entirely excluded. Efforts were wasted in trying to prove the adversaries wrong rather than in trying to understand the New Testament. The documents of the second Vatican Council reflect a shift in Roman Catholic theology from emphasis soley on faith as intellectual assent to recognition of faith as a loyal adherence to a personal God. Roman Catholic theology, having chosen the option of faith as assent, was faced with the problems of showing that it was a rational assent rather than an irrational assent and of maintaining that faith was a deliberate and free meritorious act under the inspiration of grace. At first glance the two problems seem to cancel each other out; one can maintain one affirmation only by denying the other. Preambles and motivation of faith The study of the problems connected with faith involves the investigation of what are called the preambles of faith and also of the motivation of faith. The preambles of faith include those processes by which the believer reaches the conclusion that it is reasonable to believee.g., the proof of the existence of God by the use of one's own reason. The freedom of faith is respected by affirming that this conclusion is as far as the preambles can take one. This process as proposed is a theoretical construction that actually occurs in no one, but the analysis can be of value in uncovering the psychological processes that occur without reflection. The preambles include the study of the scientific and historical difficulties raised against the Christian fact (i.e., the incarnation, Resurrection, Ascension, and glorification of Jesus Christ) itself or against the Roman Catholic interpretation and proclamation of the Christian fact or against the Roman Catholic claim to be the exclusive custodian of revealed doctrine and the means of salvation. These studies were efforts to show what cannot be shown by scientific and critical methods, but in the exaggerated claims of their defenders they showed that faith was a necessary conclusion of a valid rational process. Such a faith could be neither free nor the result of grace. The study of the motivation of faith attempted to meet this difficulty. Some earlier analyses candidly presented faith as resting on evidence and clumsily postulated a movement of grace necessary to assent to this particular evidence. Normally, one wills to believe something because the evidence is not compelling; thus, people choose to believe that the candidate of their choice has the qualities desired for the office, although the evidence is less than overwhelming. The Roman Catholic thinks this is an assent to the probably rather than the certainly true and yet insists that the certainty of faith is the highest of all certainties. Ultimately, the Roman Catholic analysis must say that the evidence that belief is reasonable can never be so clear and convincing that it compels the radical deviation from worldly patterns that assent implies. At this point, the will inspired by grace chooses to accept revelation for other reasons than the evidence. The motive of faith that has been presented by Catholic theologians is the authority of God revealing. It is held that the preambles of faith show beyond reasonable doubt that God exists and that he has revealed himself. This evidence and an acceptance of the notion that, if God reveals himself, he does so authoritatively motivate a person to make the act of faith. The problem with such an analysis has been to define how the authority of the revealer is manifest to the believer. It seems that the notion of the authority of God revealing must be an object of faith rather than a motive, because the conjunction of this authority with the fact of revelation cannot be the object of historical experience. In the mid-20th century this dilemma caused an increasing number of Catholic theologians to move closer to a view that emphasized faith as a personal commitment to God rather than as an assent to revealed truth.