Abstract
This volume is a collection of thirteen essays published between 1997 and 2013. The editor, Cajetan Cuddy, provides an introduction and accessible headnotes, and there is a foreword by the late Archbishop of Chicago, Francis George. The introduction draws attention to Romanus Cessario’s consistency of thought, portraying him as a theologian steadfast in his exploration of ‘the personal and moral implications of sacra doctrina’ (p. ix). Cessario is perhaps now most widely known for his Introduction to Moral Theology, though readers may also be familiar with significant earlier work on moral virtues. Anyone who has spent time with his work will find little here that surprises; or, to put it another way, ‘Romanus Cessario was a Thomist in 1972, and he remains a Thomist today’ (p. x).
Perhaps it is best to begin a précis of this collection by saying something about the final chapter. Chapter 13, ‘Culture and Contemplation: Catholicism in the Twenty-First Century’, is in large part an autobiographical sketch, and gives a sense of the kind of work being done here. We learn something of Cessario’s deep personal investment in a particular reading of the Vatican II period and his take on the direction and misdirection of the Catholic Church in its aftermath. He is particularly concerned to overcome neglect of the emphasis on contemplation implicit in that council and brought to speech in Paul VI’s summation of its achievements (p. 262). Additionally, Cessario exhibits here and throughout a concern—shared with his traditionalist interlocutors—that much post-Vatican II moral theology is insufficiently hopeful about the sanctification of persons, and thereby too conciliatory regarding contemporary circumstances. By the same token, he routinely employs material from John Paul II’s or Benedict XVI’s encyclicals to quash possible ‘novel’ directions of the postconciliar period. Veritatis splendor is found especially fruitful theologically, and not incidentally useful for this task. There is a proclivity here for declension narratives, but the theological bases of the analysis are worth considering.
Returning to the order given by the editor, we find that Cessario’s signature themes—those theological bases—form the material of the second to fifth chapters, with the sixth chapter drawing them together succinctly. In brief compass, they entail most obviously the following: Christian anthropology, in particular the notion of ‘sonship’ and the image of God; sacrifice and satisfaction; the shape of ‘the theological life’; and sacramental mediation. They are mutually illuminating themes, and are often explored by way of various historical forays into patristic and medieval discussion or the lives of the saints.
Chapter 1, while touching on these themes, represents amongst other things a particular angle on that issue of contemplation. It is concerned to expound—or, better, embody—’The Grace St. Dominic Brings to the World’, by taking ‘a fresh look at Dominican spirituality’ (p. 1). In sum, Cessario contends that a modern notion of ‘spirituality’ abstracted from the coherent, thoroughgoing ‘form of life’ espoused by the Dominican tradition is thin and wont to deteriorate into ‘ersatz spiritual exercises’ (p. 6). This critique, too, is directed at the fragmentation of academic disciplines of systematic, moral and spiritual theology. Happily, Cessario takes time to delineate the positive alternative the Dominican life epitomises. Specifically, its emphasis on preaching depends on habits of prayer, study and recollection, and its emphasis on the salvation of souls involves the elements of holiness of life, zeal, and even ‘a touch of genius’ (p. 16). Moreover, in tandem with chapter 2, the case is made that the Dominican form of life was essentially of a piece with ‘the new evangelisation’ before such a term was coined. Threaded through the essays is the sense that the most profound contemplation is not antithetical to missionary conviction but its very real crucible.
Chapter 7, ‘Aquinas on the Priest’, addresses the ‘indispensable, irreplaceable vocation of the priest’ (p. 133). The theological fundament of this vocation is found in precisely those theological bases mentioned above, now worked into a depiction of the ‘unique, personal expression’ (p. 133) the priestly ministry affords them. Cessario insists in uncompromising fashion on the distinctiveness of that ministry in preaching, sacramental mediation and moral uprightness. He is unimpressed with developments that might dilute such a ministry, jeopardising its distinctive gift to church and world. Chapter 8 broadens this focus to take in seminarian as well as priest: what can Aquinas teach both about ‘Scholarship and Sanctity’? Again, the inseparability of truth and love, or theology and sanctity, is foregrounded. Personal discipline and a properly constituted course of study are paramount.
Chapter 9 returns to more directly moral-theological topics. Here Cessario indicates that Thomistic ‘moral realism’ is highly compatible with the personalism of recent papal teaching. There is characteristic focus on a proper understanding of natural law, the role of human nature, the appropriateness of virtue language for moral theology, and the ultimately christological shape of the happy life.
Chapter 10, ‘Sacramental Confession and Addictions’, presents us with an application of the realist and personalist emphases of Thomistic moral theology. The essay’s argument stands in ambivalent relationship to contemporary clinical understandings, apparently the result of a high regard for the priority and explanatory power of traditional theological categories. Psychological analysis cannot fully identify the moral reality of the person with addiction; Cessario suggests that in view of classical expositions of ‘impairment to the voluntary … addiction is best understood as a metacategory for whatever factors can impede voluntary action’ (p. 208). The practice of penance is commended, positively conceived and based on a nuanced understanding of satisfaction.
Chapter 11, ‘Thomistic Moral Guidance’, once more ventures into historical detail, and again pushes toward pastoral relevance. In it we learn the story of the friendship between the Maritains and a troubled young man named Maurice Sachs. The cultural milieu of the 1920s and 30s and the Catholic Church’s response clearly fascinates Cessario, reappearing in the final chapter: perhaps equivalent to MacIntyre’s interest in the Bloomsbury circle. The Maritains sought to guide Sachs towards a fulfilled Christian life, and at one stage he pursued a clerical vocation. However, he was a controverted figure, a sometime bohemian, who felt psychologically divided between that vocation and homosexual inclinations. Cessario takes this narrative as an opportunity to comment on a Thomistic approach to ‘homosexual tendencies’. However, the circumstances of the tragic end of Sachs’s life, dying in the hands of the Gestapo who had arrested him ‘under the pretext of the article 175’ (p. 235) condemning homosexual practice, renders this, it seems to me, an extremely unwise way of making such a comment.
Frankly, the volume’s inclusion of this chapter diminishes it as a whole. It is understandable to give examples of the import of the foregoing moral-theological reflection. It is good to observe a seasoned thinker negotiate practical questions, seeking to bring rich conceptual insight to bear on the particular and the pastoral. It is tempting to show the value of theoretical work in counter-cultural or even anti-politically-correct fashion; this might be attractive to show the strength of a tradition of thought precisely in its ability to differ from contemporary consensus. But precisely for those reasons, the exercise of modelling practical application must be done carefully, not least because those from other traditions might want charitably to get a good look at how another approach to moral theology operates: does it shed light on the matter well, rendering it lucidly? Can it gain more traction on those aspects difficult to name and reflect upon? How does it discern courses of action that could otherwise not be outlined?
Whatever the merits of the choice of example—and the Maritains do come across as pastoral accompaniers in a Thomist style—readers of both revisionist and traditional positions within human sexuality debates will likely find this chapter insensitive, if not incendiary. Moreover, earlier essays make the point about the nature of sanctification with greater clarity, expressing with forthright conviction its real possibility and seeking to establish the real efficacious power of all of the Church’s sacramental mediations and the priority of grace’s transformative power (p. 67).
The propensity for slipping seamlessly between genres—philosophical rumination to pastoral admonition to historical excavation—might be a salutary reminder of moral theology’s holistic character. However, if it occludes or renders unpalatable the otherwise accessible insights of the work then this is to be regretted. Clearly, a powerfully integrated vision can be put to critical as well as constructive use. The critical comments seem all the more damning because they are spiritually charged (if one concurs) or incautiously freighted with metaphysical significance (if one is less sure). Of course, Cessario might regard these kinds of anxieties as precisely those ‘inclusivist’ ones that beset contemporary moral theology (his pejorative term of choice).
Those who paint conservative moral theologians as somewhat ridiculous figures expending their breath telling people what not to do could find plenty here to confirm them in their prejudices, despite Cessario’s general resistance to casuistry. Nuns are commended for ‘returning to … the wimple and veil’ (p. 31). Despite suggesting that moral theologians should not engage in sociology, Cessario often indulges in cultural-critical commentary. A questionable excursus involving the ‘higher statistical frequency of suicide among French Protestants’ apparently ‘suggests the importance of truth for life’. Cessario concludes the anecdote as follows: ‘In the culture wars, Christ conquers culture’ (p. 65).
Misgivings aside, it is an auspicious time for Dominicans to be heard in the wider church (2016 is the 800th Jubilee of the Order). The core of Cessario’s distinctly Dominican offering here is worth pondering. For one thing, it might be understood as contributing to the resurgent question of the relation of contemplation and theology. Cessario is not a figure often brought into conversation with theologians such as Rowan Williams, Mark McIntosh or Sarah Coakley, but it could be worthwhile. It is yet to be seen how this trend transforms—or merely runs alongside—the mainstream teaching and practice of theology. At any rate, what is notable about Theology and Sanctity is that Cessario does not understand an explicit interest in the mutuality of theology and contemplation to be simply a cipher for the retrieval of a neglected strand—‘mystical’ theologians—or the valorisation of certain practices of prayer as one approach amongst so many. That kind of move, for him, might already concede too much to the fragmentation of the theological enterprise and indeed ‘the theological life’ (the topic of another of his books). Instead, he locates a compelling portrayal of that integrated life in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. In so doing he doesn’t simply display Dominican loyalty to St Thomas—though he does quote Pascal on a Dominican who vowed to follow that Doctor ‘to the death’—but makes his case about Theology and Sanctity from what is often taken to be the very heart of the tradition.
At its best, this volume exemplifies a cumulative case for the renewal of interest in Aquinas. In these essays Cessario unerringly resorts to him as primary and supreme interlocutor and a certain number of key quotations reoccur. It is an exercise in a particular kind of ‘Ressourcement Thomism’—as in fact the editors of a recent volume in honour of Cessario entitled their collection. Nonetheless, the wisdom on offer will surely be welcomed by those working in Christian ethics beyond the Thomistic guild, and especially by any concerned with theological education and the formation of Christian ministers. Unfortunately I cannot but think that those of us who would like to give a fair hearing to the theological tradition championed here would be far better served by turning to Cessario’s earlier works, given the distractions inherent in this one.