Today theologians are as often lay as cleric. Vatican II reshaped the nature of this vocation as a charism located with the prophetic office of the people of God. Originally theologians were bishops, then monks, then Scholastic thinkers. Prior to Vatican II, changes in theology affected the theological vocation: a shift in the understanding of the magisterium, changes in methodology, and renewed attention to Pneumatology enabled the birth of the new cadre. However, the relation between the institutional Church and its lay theologians remains a work in progress.] S OME TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO on a November evening a ceremony for the conferral of the doctorate in theology was underway. 1 The place was the University of St. Michael's College (Toronto). Most of the candidates for the degree were priests or religious, though there were some lay candidates, men and women. The ceremony was presided over by the chancellor of the university, the local archbishop. One by one the candidates for the doctorate knelt before the bishop, and they placed their hands between his. Then he admitted each candidate to the degree as the dean of the faculty adjusted the doctoral hood. After this the new doctor rose to accept the diploma. The ritual with the hands marks that ceremony as perhaps one of a kind. Borrowed from the medieval period, it symbolizes a pledge of fidelity made by the candidate to the Church in the person of the presiding archbishop. The symbolism suggests that participants were commissioned as Catholic theologians, with a serious responsibility toward the faith. Equally, with the hooding, the candidates were inducted into a new status in the academy. The entire ritual, taken as a whole, confirmed MARY ANN DONOVAN, S.C., received her doctorate in theology from the University of St. Michael's College, Toronto. She is professor of historical theology and spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, a founding member of the Graduate Theological Union. She has published studies in patristics and spirituality, including One Right Reading? A Guide to Irenaeus (Liturgical, 1997). Forthcoming soon will be "A Theologian Dialogues with Scripture Scholars," in Biblical and Theological Perspectives on Creation, ed. C. Dempsey and M. Pazdan (Liturgical). She is also preparing an article on Elizabeth Ann Seton and the Eucharist.
A BEAUTIFUL formulation of a key insight in the anthropology of Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons late in the second century, is the sentence "gloria enim Dei vivens homo, vita autem hominis visio Dei" (AH 4, 20, 7). As such, it is foundational for the spirituality that is dependent on that anthropology. The problem is that too often it is truncated and then interpreted in a humanistic sense: "The glory of God is the living human." This severs the text from its context in Adversus haereses.
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