Don't be content with desk-bound theology, Cardinal Mueller urges

Washington D.C., Nov 3, 2014 / 20:47 pm

Theologians must not be content with an intellectual pursuit of truth but must evangelize with charity so that the Gospel retains its freshness, the head of the Church's doctrinal office insisted.

In a Nov. 3 lecture at the Catholic University of America, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller,  prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, expressed his appreciation for the "charism of the theologians" in helping "the Church, in her commitment to evangelization."

However, the cardinal continued, in carrying out "this service as part of the Church's saving mission" theologians should carry the truth to the world.

Theologians, he urged, "must always remember that the Church and theology exist to evangelize and not to be content with a desk-bound theology."

Cardinal Mueller spoke at the invitation of president John Garvey of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. His lecture,  "Donum Veritatis: The Contribution of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the Theological Enterprise," focused on theology's purpose in spreading the Gospel.

The study of God's truth, the cardinal said, is ultimately for the service and love of the Church.

"The person proclaiming the truth has as his or her object not simply something intellectual, but human communion. That means that the truth must be transmitted in a way that offers an opportunity for people to give themselves unreservedly," he stated.

Cardinal  Mueller also cautioned that the truth is not an "intellectual" protection against the difficulties of life. Instead, it exists to assist the faithful "to continue to make the self-gift professing the faith requires as children of God who abandon themselves entirely into His arms and to the exigencies of the dark."

Helping the faithful to make this self-gift is the Magisterium, the teaching body of the Church, which the cardinal said guarantees "the possibility of professing the authentic faith free from error at all times and in diverse situations."

The cardinal stressed that the Magisterium "is not an extrinsic service imposed upon the Church" but instead "occurs within" and "arises directly" from "Christian doctrine and the Truth."

Rather than bind the Church, the Magisterium frees the Church to better give of itself, he said.

"One cannot give the freedom of truth unless one has given oneself to the truth," he explained. "And this is the point of the service to Christian truth rendered by the Magisterium."

The freedom opens the Church and her theologians to their mission, a mission that "finds its context precisely in the Church's mission to evangelize," Cardinal Mueller said, quoting Pope Francis in the encyclical "Evangelii Gaudium."

This message, he continued, requires engagement with different disciplines and culture.

"Theology," the cardinal explained, "all arises from love and love's dynamism, since love is ever desirous of better knowledge of the beloved."

Such love and proclamation to different cultures and fields of thought "means an encounter between faith, reason, and the sciences."

Theologians, as evangelists, can also help the Church in presenting the Gospel to all ages, Cardinal Müller encouraged.

"Truly, it is the role of the evangelist to allow the original freshness of the Gospel to refresh the eloquence in all forms of expression," the cardinal said,  "so that the Word remains living" and so that it does not become an "artifact of history."