"This is no cave!" -- Princess Leia
One facet of Cardinal Newman's perception in regard to Ideas and development of doctrine is that we who are downstream from the theologians and philosophers are given a language and a kind of mythology associated with that language, and these things comprise the tools we are able to use or sometimes transcend.
This seems to tie in a bit with what Bishop Varden said about generations in regard to the reception of Vatican II. The first generation is in the middle of the event, the second generation is trying to consolidate or dispute that legacy, and the third generation is sometimes baffled by the preoccupations of their elders. But they are still holders of the legacy the thing has left. They have to decide what it is going to mean to them -- what is ephemeral, situational, and what is durable.
For example -- an example that comes to mind after reading various takes on Neoplatonism in the controversy about hermetic magic and the Church -- according to most scholars of early Church history, Church Fathers looked to some extent Greek philosophy to formalize and communicate Scriptural theology. Not everyone agrees on how beneficial the interaction was. And there are differences in how much say, Augustine or Aquinas are said to be influenced by Neo-Platonists and how much the neo-Platonists might have been influenced by Christianity.
But one takeaway seems to be that even a not-entirely-satisfactory system or framework can be used constructively, at least to a certain extent. There is nothing syncretistic, in this viewing, with using the tools of human reason to come to grips with something vast, real, and transcendent but not closed to human reason. St John Paul II in Fides et Ratio famously warned that not all systems or frameworks are developmentally equal, however. Some are flatly opposed to Christianity; for instance, any system that denies a knowable metaphysics will be difficult if not impossible to reconcile productively with the essentials of Christian doctrine. Straight up materialism or rationalism would be examples.
I am bringing this up upon rereading Kale Zelden's post of a year or so ago called Vatican II as Hyperobject. Hyperobject is a term used by environmental philosopher Timothy Morton to conceptualize the idea of something so vast that we can't directly see or experience it, but only its effects. Kale Zelden quotes Morton:
It is “viscous” — whatever I do, wherever I am, it sort of “sticks” to me. It is “nonlocal” — its effects are globally distributed through a huge tract of time. It forces me to experience time in an unusual way. It is “phased” — I only experience pieces of it at any one time. And it is “inter-objective” — it consists of all kinds of other entities but it isn’t reducible to them.
Dr Morton, who has written a book on Hyperobjects seems to want to use the concept in a wholly materialistic and yet in some ways transcendent sense. He is distinguishing between our limited perceptions and the object of them, and encouraging a kind of awareness upgrade in human consciousness. In his words:
So hyperobjects are funny. On the one hand, we have all this incredible data about them. On the other hand, we can’t experience them directly. We’ve stumbled upon these huge things, like Han Solo and Princess Leia and the giant worm. So we need philosophy and art to help guide us, while the way we think about things gets upgraded.
Zelden is more interested in the downstream effect of an ecclesial event that has had immense proliferation of implications, ramifications, and shifts in language and practice of the church. But the feeling of being inside a giant creature with its own interior ecosystem is somewhat similar. Or, that is my understanding of what he's saying. It is similar to what Bishop Varden describes of the "third generation" -- they are baffled by, sometimes constricted by, some of the frameworks of earlier discussions, while still inevitably affected by them.
So this goes back to the role of language in the reception and development of ideas. One set of terms in discussion of Vatican II as an event are the terms "progressive" and "liberal" on one hand "conservative" and "reactionary". As far as I can tell, this political language was first used by journalists covering the council -- generally secular or progressively minded Catholic journalists.
It became the accepted terminology, apparently, and it is interesting how paradigmatic it became even for people who did not like the terminology and resisted it. And it seems to me that many of the people who disliked the terminology and resisted it were resisting the paradigmatic baggage.
Using political frames for ecclesial affairs has a tendency to reduce religion to politics or rather, to partisan struggles for power. That's one thing. At the time, it was much closer to the way "progressives" wanted to see the Church than the way Catholics as such, normie Catholics, wanted to see it. In other words, the language comes with a mythology that is instrinsically instrumental and horizontal. This was resisted fiercely even if inchoately by many -- and perhaps seen as simple revelation of a historical truth by others. Either way, it had a deeply unsettling effect on the religious lives of many.
Another related note is that the political terms are not well defined and in fact, are not meant to be well defined except as a polarity, a correlative binary. The so-called reactionaries in the council were members of the Curia who had been formed in what is now called neo-Scholastic Thomism. They were circumvented to some extent by what were called "progressives" like then-Fr Ratzinger, and to a lesser extent Bishop Wojtyla, as well as others. But there was way more to the whole thing than that in the minds of many of the actual periti and Council Fathers. They were not generally thinking of themselves as progressives. ... rather, they often saw the neo-Scholastics as relatively modern in their methods and limitations, and were trying, generally speaking, to restore an earlier tradition. (obviously, over-simplifications abound in this kind of Mr Toad's Wild Ride survey).
On the other hand, perhaps political terminology did evoke a certain kind of worldview that had developed after the World Wars or perhaps more specifically after the rise of communism and fascism and a more amorphous kind of liberalism. Again, we are in the world of hyperobjects, trends that are too complex and current to read comprehensively, though everyone wants to try.
Going back to the 60's -- the players grouped under the labels were quickly shuffled after the Council, again largely by the media and the more secular thinkers in Catholic circles. Progressive now meant dissent and "spirit of the Council" and Wojtyla and Ratzinger and others like them were now considered ultra-conservatives. I am sure it must have seemed somewhat ironic to them. Here, what I am calling the mythology associated with the terminology made great use of metamorphosis or mutation of terms. This method of using language imports a lot of "revolution" presumptions -- the constituency of the "enemy of the people" changes day by day, but the labels allow for an appearance of continuity. When you read about the history of the Council, the shifting of terms and proscriptives induces a disheartening relativistic effect.
The bigger point here -- well, I would have a difficult time summing it up in a few words, which is why I listed examples. I was going to proceed to sketch how new terminology or, more usually, newly employed language can actually shift the framework of a discussion so that dormant ideas are revealed. Our human ability to Name things, mentioned in Genesis, is a very rich ability and very closely connected to Logos. It's an intrinsic feature of what Newman described in his Essay on Development.
Basically, I think the political terms used during and after the Council and even to this day were used because they had traction. But the specifics of the controversies, especially when they are politically oriented, quickly become dated and the terminology morphs and makes it difficult to understand the earlier uses of the terms. Who remembers the investiture battles or what the Guelphs and Ghibellines were fighting about? Who has a living memory now, except a few in senior living spaces, when Charlie Curran or Bernard Haring were something like demagogues? But the ideas and principles remain to be sorted and applied and this is what the succeeding generations inherit and have to disentangle from their temporal accidentals.
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