How Catholic Is He? - books - book review

Commonweal, Jan 25, 2002 by Mark E. Gammon

That essay and three others from the same collection also appear in The Hauerwas Reader, a career-spanning collection edited by his former students. This book offers all one could hope for in such a volume, including a helpful introduction by John Berkman that points to the essays addressing different topics of interest, and a readers' guide that both summarizes essays not contained in the Reader and displays something of the evolution of Hauerwas's thought through the years. Also included is William Cavanaugh's superb biographical appreciation of the personality in question. Hauerwas's own work suggests that we should know more about the lives of our theologians, and Cavanaugh provides just that, though anyone who knows Hauerwas will recognize that some of his more entertaining and colorful turns of phrase have been omitted.

A collection of such scope invites assessment of the body of work as a whole, and there are some shortcomings. Hauerwas writes often of the importance of Scripture and the stories it contains for our moral formation, but the scriptural index for this 700-page tome comes in at just over a page, and that due to judicious use of white space. One would think that a theologian properly formed by the gospel narrative might refer to its specifics more often. That fact speaks to a broader issue, made clear when Hauerwas writes that Barth "cannot acknowledge that the community called the church is constitutive of the gospel proclamation." Here, Hauerwas essentially calls Barth--and, by extension, all of Reformed theology, including Niebuhr and arguably Yoder--to task for being something he is not, namely Catholic. At issue is whether ultimate authority lies with the church itself, institutionally or otherwise conceived, or with the Word given by God in part as a judge on the flawed human institution, as the Reformed tradition requires. To reject the latter is to be Catholic, and it is by no means clear that one can be "a little bit" Catholic without buying into the entire package. Hauerwas claims he will not become Catholic because his wife's ordination would not be valid, but it is precisely that kind of issue where the rubber hits the road. Until the familiar Hauerwasian catch phrases are given more depth, the ecclesial fence-sitting remains a problem.

Hauerwas notoriously eschews "applied ethics," arguing that the secular framing of common issues limits the moral imagination, and he puts his own considerable imagination to work reframing issues and reassessing priorities. Still, he often leaves the folks in the pews hanging with regard to what they actually should do. Given his particularistic assumptions, Hauerwas would no doubt say it is up to properly formed Christians to figure out such things for themselves. Fair enough, but his work would be exponentially enriched by more attention to pastoral matters.

Nonetheless, Hauerwas's vision of the church's role in the world is compelling and challenging, and after reading him, one cannot but wonder if we have become all too respectable.