Fred Lawrence on Ravasi

04.11.2021

Dear Fred,

I am attaching something by Ravasi where he mentions Lonergan as one of his great teachers...

how are you and Sue? well, I hope.

I was in Jerusalem recently, and remembered you and Sue with Vernet!

wishes and prayers,

Ivo

06.11.2021

Dear Ivo,

It is so good to hear from you! It's been a while. We hope you've missed catching COVID 19. So far we've had good luck, with the help of Pfizer!

Thanks for sending the Ravasi piece. He certainly does sound like he operates in the vein of Lonergan. I very much appreciate his understanding of the Jesus of the Gospels, critically and as good news! His closing salvo--especially the Szymborska quote--certainly rings true for Sue and me.

After undergoing the crisis of chronic heart failure and chronic obstruction of the pulmonary system, I am back teaching for my 50th year, relieved to be doing so live instead of on ZOOM. What a difference that makes! Sue is pretty much the same, with the undiagnosable tinnitus in her ears running on down through her torso, together will loss of much memory of the past, so that when she hears of something familiar it rings a bell, and she sort of remembers when I remind her. The loss of the ability to concentrate for long, has made reading longer articles or books pretty much out of the question, but day-to-day, it's pretty normal. So keep us in your prayers, please.

Your mention of Fr Vernet brings back happy memories of being with you in Jerusalem. I cannot help recalling with a chuckle his answer to the question whether he's learned Arabic: "Shweh, Sweh." And I often think of the last line of his prayer to St Joseph: "Help us to be silent."

When I talk to my old Roman classmates, and people I was in the seminary with in California, there is a lot of consternation about how so many of the younger priests and seminarians pretty much reject Vatican II, and have returned to the old "circle the wagons" approach to the world, and have returned to the notion of the Holy Eucharist as a transaction between Jesus and the individual, with no sense Thomas Aquinas's teaching that the "res of this sacrament is the unitas mystici corporis, along with Jesus crucified, risen, exalted as the Head of the entire human race. Have you encountered this problem yet? Jeremy Blackwood, who teaches in the Milwaukee seminary, has said that both old and young seminarians, are  mainly comfortable with Neoscholastic philosophy/theology and the Roman Catechism. I remember Abp. Diarmuid McCollough saying after the vote in Ireland to embrace same-sex marriage, that "the Irish are the most catechized and least evangelized people in the world!" Many who have to do with religious education in the States, however, say to the ones they are training, "Don't teach catechism, teach Jesus!"

Love,

Fred & Sue 

Ivo Coelho <ivo.coelho@gmail.com>	09:06 (7 minutes ago)
to Frederick

dear Fred, 

good to hear from you. it seems you have been through a rough period, healthwise. a prayer for you and Sue.

yes, the problem that you mention regarding seminarians and young religious is very much present - more in Europe and N. America, probably, and in some parts of S. America. though I must not forget that also in the East... there is a very strong anti-pope francis trend..

i love the quote from Aquinas! thanks!

we have our noses to the grind, with the task of revising our Ratio fundamentalis ... but one day at a time.

once again, wishes to Sue and prayers for you both and your family.

and yes, I am well, thank God. we've been to Guatemala, Colombia, Kenya and Israel recently, and, apart from the increased complication and complexity of travel, I am well.

I pass by St Pauls inside the Walls now and then and think of Sue and you... they never did get back to me about the memorial service.

Ivo (09.11.2021)

Gilson on Descartes: "indisciplinatus"

From Ivo Coelho, RORTY’S ANTI-FOUNDATIONALISM AND FIDES ET RATIO :

There should be no difficulty, I think, in agreeing with Rorty’s attack on Cartesian subjectivity. Again, there should be no difficulty in agreeing with Rorty’s attack on the Cartesian search for apodicticity. Rorty quotes Dewey and Wittgenstein to the effect that a natural quest for understanding has been run together, by modern philosophers, with an unnatural quest for certainty. Even more interesting however is Rorty quoting Gilson on Descartes’ unwarranted extension of an excessive ideal of certitude to all spheres: “From the point of view of medieval philosophy, Descartes plays the role of the indisciplinatus – someone who takes pride in insisting, no matter what discipline is in question, on the same degree of certainty, no matter how inappropriate. In a word, Descartes no longer recognizes an intermediary between the true and the false; his philosophy is the radical elimination of the notion of the ‘probable.’”

Goa University Library

*Did you know that*... anyone can visit and refer to the Goa U. Library at
a modest fee of Rs400 per year? Dr Gopakumar is at 91588 35495  or
librarian@unigoa.ac.in

https://archive.org/details/library-gopakumar
--

Basil Xavier, Ethnophilosophy

 

basilxavier@gmail.com

Dear Fr Ivo Coelho,

New year Wishes from Fr Dr BASIL XAVIER, SJ

I've met you in some of our ACPR meetings but you may not remember me.

Just to introduce myself, I'm a Jesuit priest for Madurai Province, teaching philosophy at both UG and PG levels in Arul Anandar College, Madurai since 1998. (Kindly see my Short CV in the attached file)

Now I'm interested in a Post Doctoral Fellowship on Lonergan in Lonergan Institute,  Boston College, USA. I know you are  the only Indian Expert on Lonergan. My Ph.D is on Ethnophilosophy or Folk philosophy or Dalit Philosophy.

Kindly see the attached files for my recently published two books.

Will you suggest to me some possible topics connecting Lonergan and Ethnophilosophy? You also talk about the transcultural aspect of Lonergan's philosophy in your book.

I'll be grateful to you. I know you must be very busy now. Will you spend a few minutes for me dear Ivo? 

I'll be happy if you reply as soon as possible as the deadline is Jan 15, 2021. Please Fr..

Love,

BASIL SJ

Dear Basil,

thank you for your mail and your inquiry. 

I respond very briefly in the midst of other things.

The one thing that comes to me is: as part of the DATA of theology, Lonergan sees also the lived experience of people - the experience of the recognized saints and mystics, but also of ordinary people. I think that could be a fruitful line of inquiry. the one who has opened up this topic, if I am not mistaken, is Robert Doran. He, but also Fred Lawrence, are very sensitive to the political social economic aspects of life and of theology. 

You might find something in Method in Theology, ch. 11: Foundations, section 7: special theological categories. On CWL 14:272 he speaks of deriving categories from religious interiority, not only individual but also as community and history, and keep in mind the fourth set of categories, which anticipate that in the data we can expect to find not only authenticity but also many manifestations of unauthenticity, and the fifth set which moves on the assumption that God has intervened in this history ("progress, decline, redemption").

I guess you could read the whole of MT, in the sense that it champions a dialectical method of doing theology, a method that is "open to all comers", each one working from his own standpoint, with the differing viewpoints meeting in the functional specialty dialectic. in that sense, Lonergan sees method not as an individual affair but as done in team, group, community, and in fact with as much diversity as possible... within the church, but also within the larger society with differing religious, moral, intellectual standpoints, but also cultural, social, historical, psychological, and ethnic differences.

you might find helpful also the whole discussion of the biases, fundamentally in Insight: individual, group and general bias. the discussion on group and general bias, with the shorter and longer cycles of decline, is most interesting, it was a fundamental part of Lonergan's philosophy of history, and I think in the background were Hegel and Marx (see esp. group bias). General bias is, I think, peculiarly Lonergan's take on things; it would apply very much to the area of ecology, because it is the tendency of all human beings, moving by practicality and sometimes by greed, to take the short term rather than the long term view, to concentrate on the here and now to the disregard of the larger picture. 

I hope that might stimulate you!

wishes for your work. you could consult Fred Lawrence himself, or else Doran, or both.

Ivo

Ryliskyte, Ligita

Ryliskyte, Ligita. Cur Deus Cruciatus?: Lonergan’s Law of the Cross and the Transpositions of “Justice over Power.” PhD Thesis. Boston College, 2020. The basic question of this dissertation is, “Why a crucified God?” The history of this question is traced through strategically chosen increments in Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and Lonergan. Each contributes in some important way to the development of a tradition that focuses on the choice of divine love and wisdom to answer evil through the justice of the cross rather than by coercion. In light of these earlier transpositions and Lonergan’s own development, this dissertation examines the meaning and justice of the cross, as epitomized in Lonergan’s Law of the Cross, and re-contextualizes this law in relation to our collective responsibility in and for history. This teleological re-reading of Lonergan’s soteriology brings to the forefront that a fitting remedy to the problem of a dis-ordered love is a re-ordering and (re-)ordered love, not coercive power. According to Lonergan’s Law of the Cross, the intrinsic intelligibility of redemption is the transformation of evil into good by love. This love, caritas ordinata et ordinans, is understood by analogy with the antecedent offer of diffusive friendship and by analogy with sacramental penance. The restoration of right order through the cross is fitting because, if the laws of nature and history are not suspended, retaliation would only multiply the objective surd. The constructive part of this dissertation further specifies ontological conditions for the fittingness of the cross by bringing the lex crucis into dialogue with Lonergan’s general theory of historical process. In continuity with the emerging world order (as subject to classical, statistical, dialectical, and genetic laws), the cross manifests an orderly communication of divine friendship to sinners. Correspondingly, the justice of the cross regards, not retributive justice, but the possibility of justice among sinners. This possibility, it is argued, is inaugurated by Christ’s transformation of suffering into the means of a new finality in history, the probabilities of which are decisively shifted in the cross event and concretely realized through the emergent agape network, the higher integration of the human good of order through the whole Christ, head and members, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The justice of the cross, then, is an emergent agapic justice which proceeds from the dynamic state of being in love with God as its principle and is realized in a dialectic unification of all things in Christ, constituting the “cruciform” transformation of human September 2020 5 (inter-) subjectivity and the recovery of human progress as ordered to the eschatologically definitive reign of God. Ryliskyte, Ligita. “Conversion: Falling into Friendship Like No Other.” Theological Studies, 81/2 (2020) 370-93. In the context of contemporary vicissitudes, this article examines how Lonergan’s grasp of the meaning of redemption illuminates our understanding of Christian conversion. Lonergan’s Law of the Cross implies that the effectiveness of Christian conversion hinges on one’s antecedent willingness to undertake suffering for the sake of the transformation of evil into good. His analogies for Christ’s salvific work with the sacrament of reconciliation and with friendship further clarify the christomorphic, penitential, and community-building character of conversion, which proceeds from the total, transformative, and diffusive falling into friendship with God.

Fred Lawrence on "Lonergan on Authenticity"

Frederick Lawrence	7 Jun 2020, 02:22 (1 day ago)
to me

Dear Ivo,

I just finished reading your paper, "Lonergan on Authnticity." I must say, it is superb in every respect, especially the comparison and contrast between 'genuineness' and 'authenticity,' and then your way of showing how the latter sublates the former.

I also appreciated very much your careful tracing of the step-by-step evolution of his thought on authenticity through the different texts cited, proving once again that "concepts have dates.." 

Then the way you used the elements underlying authenticity toclarify the relationship between philosophy and theology.

Penultimately, as regards functional specialization, with respect to the varying role of conversion in the first phase while hearing the Word may be done in the context of faith, it is also completely valid to consider it as data to be supplied by the different modes of research, and then interpreted, integrated on the level of history, and discussed dialectically (rather than apologetically or eristically), and raised not simply by way of moving from the descriptive to the explanatory plane but through horizon-analysis to the criteria related variously to the intellectual, moral and religious conversions, and on into the direct discourse of foundations, doctrines, systematics, and communications.. I loved the underscoring of dialectic and foundations as the core of theology. 

Finally: initially, the comparison between unauthentic and authentic objectivities via the world of immediacy and the world mediated by meaning, and concluding with the reference to 'spiritual exercises' capped off by that lovely quotation.

Perhaps, the part concerning the prelude to what you had to say regarding theology ought to be an appendix to the Accompaniment document. but I suppose it is too late for that.

Providentially/ coincidentally, this morning we received from Frank Braio, part  of the closest of his associates as I suppose you are, too, the news that Phil McShane is struggling with the consequences of stage 4 cancer. It made me feel that I was honoring what he stands for while reading your paper.

As you must have already thought, Pentacostal fire has taken on a whole new meaning in the U.S. during this past week.

In Him, 

Fred & Sue

Ligita Ryliskyta, Cur Deus Cruciatus

Fred Lawrence - Coelho, 10.04.2020:

In accord with the season, on Wednesday afternoon, Ligita Ryliskyta, a Lithuanian medical Doctor, defended Cur Deus Cruciatus on the Law of the Cross in Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and Lonergan--the most extraordinary dissertation I have ever been associated with! She is also a member of the Sisters of the Eucharist in Jesus, a community founded by a Lithuanian Jesuit during the Communist take-over of that country. Ligita said that the community was very courageously involved in the underground resistance at that time. Her father's family--as "enemies of the regime"--were put in a vegetable cart and driven 4,000 miles to Siberia. When they left, her father was 5 years old, and when the family survivors finally returned, he was 16.

Coelho - Lawrence, 10.04.2020:

this Lithuanian doctorate: is it really the best you have seen? or just extraordinary in some special sense? I am curious. last year I visited Lithuania, it was a glorious autumn week, I can't tell you how beautiful the country was. and then finding the old Indo-European gods there... the ones mentioned in the Vedas... 

Lawrence - Coelho, 10.04.2020:

Yes, it was by far the best ... and I've been involved in quite a few splendid ones. Her research on Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, and the headings under which she interpreted and documented their specific contributions to the genesis of the comprehensive intelligibility that Lonergan called the Law of the Cross were just amazing. Then, after presenting her understanding of Lonergan's explanatory elucidation of his theses on redemption in DVI and the now published notes on the Redemption, which are much more expansive than the theses, she synthesized the way they stand in relation to Lonergan's tripartite philosophy of history, as well as its implications spelled out in light of emergent probability in Insight, Ch. 15 on genetic method. On top of all that, she surveyed every stream of liberation and political theology, which she took seriously, and while never selling short their various contributions, brought out how the explanatory account made possible by Lonergan could aid in strengthening each and every one of their more descriptive approaches--something she would be able to do with serene wisdom, if she felt called to do so.