Response to Joseph Martos

                                           History and Method in Sacramental Theology
                                                         Joseph Martos

                                          College Theological Society Annual Convention
                                                          May 30, 2014

                                                       Carla Mae Streeter, OP
                                                     Aquinas Institute of Theology
                                                                 St. Louis


   I. Agreement with the Thesis of the Paper
    A. Why Do We Do What We Do?
    B. A Fuller Systematic Sacramental Theology is Needed
    C. A Return to the Method of the Fathers/Medievalists
    D. The Focus of the Paper is on Ritual

 II. Clarifying the “Res” of the Sacrament
    A. Jesus Risen as the Operator
    B. Through his Body the Church in its Rites
    C. The Rites as Instruments of the Res

III. A Deeper Sacramental Theology
    A. The Marian Metaphor
    B. The Unaddressed Feminine
    C. The Woman and the Res

Agreement with the Thesis of the Paper

Professor Martos is challenging us to rethink our sacramental theology. His challenge, as I read it, consists of several concrete suggestions. I would like to comment briefly on them, and then support his argument by offering several additional challenges.

Our first challenge from Dr. Martos is to return to the why of what we do in our sacramental rituals. Clarity on the reasons and motives behind our actions can save us from the pitfall of magic ritualism, the hazard that our Protestant brothers and sisters still warn us against. Second, we are urged to create a much fuller and clearly systematic sacramental theology, one that speaks to today. Finally, we are challenged to return to some of the insights and the method of the early Church Fathers and Medievalists. I fully agree and support these suggestions, and it is on the last challenge that I would like to devote most of my comments, giving it a modern thrust.

The focus of Dr. Martos’ paper is on ritual. While this is well and good, I propose that the why of what we do cannot be addressed without a renewed consideration of what we call the res of sacramental theology. This term refers to the thing, the substance of the sacramental action. The ritual, in my understanding, delivers the res. It would seem paramount then, for us to renew our attention on the res if we are going to renew our sacramental theology in a truly systematic way. This refocusing of attention will also help us to realize Dr. Martos’ challenge to revisit the methodology of the early Church Fathers.

Clarifying the Res of the Sacrament

It would seem we need to begin by realizing that the total Christ is operative in each sacrament. This means the risen Christ as head, and his body, the Church, as his members. To renew our understanding of the actions of the Christ, the same, yesterday, today, and forever, we need to return, as the early Church Fathers did, to the gospels as foundation. In those texts we find a Jesus who is an inclusive welcome, an encourager and strengthener, one who nurtures or feeds his followers both with bread and his word. We find a Jesus who forgives, and who heals. Finally we see a Jesus who shepherds and who is an inimitable lover. Without any difficulty we can see this action as the basis for the seven sacraments we have come to know in their three-part distinction: sacraments of initiation (baptism, confirmation, and eucharist), of healing (reconciliation and anointing), and of service (orders and matrimony). This Jesus is the sacrament of God still operating through his sacred humanity, for his humanness, now extended to the Church, provides the rite through which the divine action takes place.

After his ascension this sacred action continues through his body, the Church, through the action of the Holy Spirit. This too we learn from reading the Fathers. The rites which symbolically deliver what they signify become the extended human involvement intended by the risen Christ. The pattern remains constant: the risen Christ continues to act through his humanity, now extended to us as his body in the Church throughout time. This deeper reality, the res, cannot be unaddressed in any renewed sacramental theology that is soundly systematic.

A Deeper Sacramental Theology

Lest we move to quickly from res to ritual, however, I would like to plum some possible implications of this renewed consideration of the res. If we keep the total Christ in mind, that is, the risen Christ and we, the members of his body, some rather startling possibilities confront us. If we again turn to the Fathers and their successors the Medievalists, we come upon a subtle Marian metaphor. The virgin mother sits with her infant on her lap and can substantially say, “This is my body…this is my blood.”  She does not ritualize, ever. This woman is substantially the source of the sacramental sign that is the Christ, the sacrament of God. By her person, her very feminine humanity, she provides him with the ritual means for all his action by providing him with his sacred humanity.

The presence of the feminine in the Church is quite sacramentally invisible. I suggest this is so because the feminine substantial contribution, both biological and psycho-spiritual, to the life of the Church has simply been taken for granted and has never been seriously addressed sacramentally and theologically. The woman is the human source of every member of the Church. As such she has a vital role in providing the source for the subsequent human ritual dimension of the Church’s sacramental life. This fact, if carefully examined, might impact the impasse in the Church regarding women’s ordination. Should the woman move so quickly to settle for ritualizing? Should not her role as source of the res be explored and given voice in our renewed systematic sacramental theology? My point here is not to provide conclusions, but simply to suggest we have further work to do to challenge both the cultures and the Church to address the distinct role of women in our midst. For now, it seems the only way the feminine can gain notice and voice is by imitating what men do. This, it seems, is a basic inequity that compromises over half of the human race culturally, and does not provide an adequate answer to the renewal of sacramental theology ecclesially. We need instead, a full discussion of both the res and the ritual in our sacramental renewal, and full recognition of what the entire Church, both women and men, offers in service to the risen Christ