THE KNUCKLEHEAD
'
S GUIDE TO COVENANTAL THEOLOGY
59
you why it would take a two-volume work to show that.
That argument not only requires us to give up "common sense"
(but, since the beginnings of quantum mechanics, good scientists have
been willing to do that), it also requires us to give up -- or at least re-
evaluate -- a very large measure of our "Catholic common sense" -- the
intellectual instincts we have learned from Catholic theology, whether
modern or traditional. It remains to be seen whether Catholic
theological scientists will be willing to do that. That still leaves you
free to do so.
So, here is what Fr. Keefe is saying: it all comes down to the
Eucharist. If we stand to understand within any dehistoricized
cosmology whatever, the Eucharist has no meaning. On the other hand,
the Church has proclaimed every day since its very first day, that if
Man stands within the Eucharist to understand, then everything has
meaning. Further, Man can stand nowhere else, for "Through Him,
with Him, and in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and
honor is yours, almighty Father, forever and ever."
In a certain sense the argument of Covenantal Theology is an
argument that Catholic theology has forgotten how ridiculous
Catholicism is. Really, of course, it is an argument that Catholic
theology as an intellectual endeavor, a science, has only very
sporadically been able to take Catholicism seriously -- and so, if over a
long time, we have reached the unfortunate, and completely
predictable, conclusion to this failure of intellectual and scientific
method: Catholicism is not serious. Catholicism is ridiculous.
Catholicism is not for grown-ups.
Unlike the weakness and foolishness of Catholic thought, which
can step by step be made better, the weakness and foolishness of the
New Covenant, mediated in and through the liturgical freedom of the
Church, is neither temporary nor pretense, or the New Covenant itself,
the Eucharist itself, is denied.
And thus, considering what in the end happened to St. Paul, that
apostle of -- that martyr to -- the weakness of God's strength and the
foolishness of God's wisdom, we may begin to wonder, but not about
whether we are prepared to accept the weakness and foolishness of
Catholicism.
We may begin to wonder if we are willing, as St. Paul was, to pay
the price of accepting its weakness and foolishness.
All of a sudden, we may feel very grown-up -- and wish that we
didn't.
The following is no proof of the argument of Fr. Keefe's work,
which he is the first to say is only a work of science, a work of
Catholic theology, and is not the faith. His work is thus merely an
N.B. This is an html-ized copy of a page from the pdf file, The Knucklehead's Guide to Covenantal Theology.