Perhaps no Catholic theologian has been as influential over the past one hundred years as Henri de Lubac SJ. I am mostly new to de Lubac, and I am just getting to know his thought and influence. The more I consider who he was, his life, his theology, and his influence on so many others and on so much of modern Church history, I can’t help but be amazed at his brilliance. I also have been on the side of his detractors. I confess this was because of both my ignorance and because I was getting swept up in the radical traditionalist wave that’s been fomenting anti-modernist and anti-Pope Francis sentiments. I know it’s a complicated mess, but I am pulling back, reconsidering and, to my chagrin, realizing I was going down the wrong path. And this has led me to de Lubac afresh. Below are some videos that, I believe, do a good job shedding clarity on de Lubac’s thought, influence, and legacy.
Among the modern radical traditionalists, or rad trads as some like to call them (and how they proudly call themselves), de Lubac has gotten a bad rap. He is held forth as a modernist whose ideas are to blame for the apparent debacle we call the post-conciliar Church. This is too huge of a topic for this post, but this view has been gaining substantial traction, not least because of some videos by the popular rad trad Dr. Taylor Marshall. In one video, dealing with at the same time the so-called “Pachamama” debacle, Robert Barron, and Henri de Lubac, Dr. Marshall and Timothy Gordon give de Lubac a lashing. Were they fair to do so? I don’t think so, and I’m not the only one:
Note: I confess, I don’t dislike Taylor Marshall, though I can’t take much of him anymore. And I have met Tim Gordon and his family, and I like them a lot. But I can clearly see that Marshall plays well to those who love overly simplistic answers, pietistic rules, conspiracies, and right-wing politics. Consequently, he tends to produce radically unnuanced takes for those folks eager (desperate?) for easy answers and scathing judgments. Thus, he has been weaving a kind of distortion field of critiques and amassing a growing cadre of followers. In this vein, I believe, he and Gordon misread and misrepresent de Lubac – or perhaps they get him partially right but misrepresent the past decades and Vatican II. I’m still learning, and I won’t discount Taylor Marshall entirely. I do think his book Infiltration is interesting and contains many things worthy to ponder, but with great caution.
SatelliteSaint 