Tiêu đề 230.07 - TVTT0003106 - Liturgy And Relational Ontolory In The Theology Of Joseph Ratzinger - A Master'S Thesis Submitted To Dr Cyrus Olsen - Joseph Dilauro Scranton - University Of Scranton.pdf ✅

UNIVERSITY OF SCRANTON LITURGY AND RELATIONAL ONTOLOGY IN THE THEOLOGY OF JOSEPH RATZINGER A MASTER’S THESIS SUBMITTED TO DR. CYRUS OLSEN DEPARTMENT OF THEOLOGY BY JOSEPH DILAURO SCRANTON, PA DECEMBER 2010
Joseph DiLauro Master’s Thesis TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................ 3 Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION......................................................................... 4 PART I: RATZINGER’S ‘RELATIONAL ONTOLOGY’ 2. RELATIONAL ONTOLOGY............................................................ 12 Ratzinger and the Concept of Person Person as Relation Christology and Jesus’ Divine Sonship The Human Person PART II. LITURGY’S CONSUMMATION OF RELATIONS 3. THE CHURCH AND CHRISTOLOGY: BEING A ‘WE’ IN CHRIST............ 28 The Church as Communion 4. LITURGY COMPLETES RELATIONAL ONTOLOGY ............................. 33 Why Humans Need Worship...and the Right Kind of Worship The Eucharistic Jesus and the Spirit of Unity The Divine Liturgy The Form of Christian Worship The Content of Christian Worship 5. THE LITURGICALLY GUIDED LIFE................................................ 58 The New Man : True Freedom in a Liturgically Guided Life 2

Joseph DiLauro Master’s Thesis CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Relationality is central to Joseph Ratzinger’s theology. As we shall see, it has remained a theme throughout his career unifying various strands of his own thought as well as those of the Christian tradition. Our concern here is to make plain how Ratzinger’s ‘relational ontology’1 illuminates his understanding of Christian liturgy in particular. In his unique contribution to ressourcement theology, a re-thinking of what he prefers to call the spirit of the liturgy never remains simply an academic exercise, but extends into his desire to increase the interdependence of the ecclesia. Liturgy, in fact, consummates relations between what have in certain areas of the Christian tradition been viewed as a series of often disjointed realities: faith and reason, grace and nature, Scripture and Tradition, theology and philosophy2 , Heaven and earth. Robert Louis Wilken well encapsulates the unifying power of liturgy with respect to the ‘words’ of Scripture in the following manner: “The liturgy provided a kind of grammar of Christian speech, a key to how the words of the Bible are used.”3 The liturgy is indeed a kind of ‘grammar’; we might venture to say it maintains and communicates a relational grammar. Not only can liturgy provide a manner of holding together Sacred Scripture as a whole; it also brings about a deepening of our ontological interdependence, thus making possible that for which Ratzinger has most recently argued, namely integral human development. Since the human being is more than a sum of his (material) parts, and more than simply 1 Although I have not found Ratzinger to use formally the phrase ‘relational ontology’. He nonetheless in several places refers to man as essentially relational. 2 Catherine Pickstock's After Writing: On The Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Blackwell, 1998) argues philosophically that liturgical language “is the only language that really makes sense” because “language exists primarily, and in the end only has meaning as, the praise of the divine”. Upon its publication, Ratzinger rather favorably viewed its contents, apparently going so far as to correspond personally with Pickstock (as noted in conversation with Dr. Olsen). 3 Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 43. 4