Excerpt from
Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory
Political and Liturgical Theology In Dialogue
Bruce T. Morrill, S.J
© The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced by any means, without the written permission of The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321.

Table of Contents
Introduction
I The Promise and Challenges in the Renewal of the Eucharistic Liturgy

1. The Council's Vision for Liturgy in the Church
2. Evaluating Postconciliar Liturgical Practice
3. An Invitation to Theological Investigation

II Johann Baptist Metz'sPolitical Theology of the Subject

1. Introduction
2. Theological Critique of Middle Class Religion
3. From Evolutionary World View to Dangerous Memory
4. The Christology of Imitation
5. Mysticism I: Apocalyptic Eschatology
6. Mysticism II: Prayer
7. Mysticism m Symbols and Sacramental Ritual
8. Conclusion: Points for Dialogue with Liturgical Theology

III Alexander Schmemann's Liturgical Theology: Joyous, Thankful Remembrance of the Kingdom of God

1. Introduction
2. The Contemporary Christian Crisis
3. Christian Liturgy: Its Basis, Content and Function
4. The Liturgy of Time: Time Made Eschatologically Transparent
5. The Interruption and Intensification of Time
6. Eschatolo,ical Symbolism: Remembrance of the Kingdom of God
7. The Transformative Vision of Joy
8. Christian Mission in the World: But What Mission?

IV Christian Memory: Anamnesis of Christ Jesus

1. Introduction
2. Memory at the Center of the Practice of Faith
3. Memory at the Origins of Christianity

a. Christian Memory in the New Testament
b. Commemoration in Jewish Tradition
c. Practices of Remembering in the Apostolic Communities

4. Eucharistic Anamnesis

a. Priority Among the Church's Commemorative Practices
b. Analysis of the Anamnesis Rubric in the New Testament
c. Time of the Church: Christ's Presence in Remembrance

5. Conclusion: Proclamation and Imitation

V Conclusion

1. Practical Knowledge Borne by an Anticipatory Memory
2. Anamnesis and Eschatology

a. Anamnesis and Promise
b. Maranatha!
c. Urgent Expectation
d. Future Judgement, Present Transformation

3. Theological Implications in Liturgical Practice

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

Introduction
To state at the turn of the twenty-first century that the Christian theological academy, across departmental and denominational lines, remains preoccupied with the question of method is to utter a truism. Issues of theological methodology at present owe their complexity and persistence to two factors: (1) the Enlightenment's irreversible impact on all theoretical endeavors and (2) burgeoning awareness, now also irreversible, among theologians that their work's adequacy, even legitimacy, depends upon direct attention to actual forms of Christian practice. While Kant opened the way for necessary attention to the freedom of the human subject, the ensuing philosophical movements gave rise to a transcendental idealism that major "schools" of both Protestant and Catholic "'neology came to appropriate. Although this modern turn in Christian theology included an invaluable discovery and use of history, its transcendental idealism impeded critical attention to the historical (social, political, embodied) realities of contemporary human subjects, operating instead out of abstract notions of "the person" and "experience." While Protestant neo-orthodox theologians prophetically recognized the duplicity of modern transcendentalism in oppressive socio-political systems, I would argue that their foremost figure, Karl Barth, remained mired in modernity by his insistence that the one "real man" is Jesus Christ and that all other present, historical "men" are merely "phenomenal."

Over the past few decades in North Atlantic countries two types of theology have emerged which look to the concrete circumstances and practices of contemporary Christians and wider society as primary sources for their theoretical work—liturgical theology and political theology. As Peter Fink explains, the current work of liturgical theology is to move "beyond" the systematic sacramental theology initiated by Edward Schillebeeckx and Karl Rahner in the early 1960s. Both writers abandoned the regnant scholastic view of sacraments as "objective realities" and oriented the discipline in terms of "meaning in experiential categories." Fink argues that the enterprise must continue to shift from sacramental to liturgical theology so as to recover "the liturgical act itself as a theological locus."2 As for political theology, Rebecca Chopp explains that its theological method interprets, protects, explains, and criticizes the narratives of Christian praxis,"the bringing together of action and reflection, transformation and understanding," in a way that is "fundamentally practical." Both theologies have inherited modern theology's agenda of freedom and human subjectivity while insisting, in distinctive fashions, on attendance to the particular practices of Christian communities in determinate socio-cultural matrices.

The objective of this present study, stated most broadly, is to explore how liturgical theology and political theology, as disciplines making normative theological claims in relation to concrete Christian practices, can benefit from a dialogue with each other. This brief introduction has sought to establish the theoretical circumstances and the historical moment that the two types of theology share as they pursue distinct efforts at methodology and content. The comparison is especially compelling since leading theologians in both areas judge the present situation of Christian theory and practice to be in a state of crisis.

Liturgical theologian David Power has explicitly used the language of "crisis,"4 "emergency," and "ruins"5 when describing two crucial facts: the struggle of the Roman Church to make a fundamental shift away from scholastic sacramental theology and post-tridentine ritual and piety, and the threatened societal and global context in which the Church performs the liturgy. Similarly, Aidan Kavanagh has written on the theological principles essential to liturgical reform while not mincing words about the crisis-level proportions he perceives American society's individualism and consumerism and, thus, human alienation to have reached.6 What Kavanagh and other liturgical theologians have demonstrated in rhetorical skill or pastoral perceptiveness, however, I believe could still benefit from the theoretical acumen of theologians who have studied more concertedly the present socio-political context.

In the field of political theology Johann Baptist Metz has emerged as the preeminent Roman Catholic author. Metz has formulated a penetrating critique of the social and economic systems in North Atlantic nations, analyzing the impact of their overall world view upon the religious subjects. Among other liturgical theologians is the passionate concern in his writings, not unlike that of Metz, for the Church's mission and viability at present. Schmemann shares with Metz not only a penchant for passionate prose and a clarity of insight on the fundamental topic of faiths but also some stimulating affinities with Metz's critical evaluation of the situation of the Church (its subjects, traditions, and institutions) in the late modern world. There are, as one might expect, strong differences between the two theologians as well. In my judgement, such are the makings for a feisty if not fruitful dialogue in chapter 3.

That dialogue will, nonetheless, lead to the recognition that Metz and Schmemann need assistance from the wider field of scholarship concerning a concept crucial to both their theologies: anamnesis. In the fourth chapter, study of the early Christian and Jewish sources of the concept of anamnesis will seek to understand how the Church's liturgical commemoration of God's salvific deeds in history (especially in Jesus) allows for neither a timeless form of religious piety and theology nor a ritualism detached from the commerce of life in the world. I shall rely on the work of several scripture scholars in order to weave the anamnetic strands of remembrance of the paschal mystery, anticipation of Christ's parousia, and the present call to ritual and ethical praxis. In the concluding chapter a closer investigation of the tensive relationship between anamnesis and eschatology will lead to further considerations about the dialectical character of the praxis of faith.

There is a certain awkwardness to writing in the abstract genre of a scholarly text about theologies critically committed to the particularities and contexts of the practice of faith. Indeed, as practical theologian Don Browning has argued, theory is never simply distinct from practice, no matter how much that may seem to be the case in an academic enterprise.' Thus, before moving into the theoretical dialogue between Metz's political theology and Schmemann's liturgical theology. I shall in chapter 1 provide a brief introduction to the practical reform of the Church and its liturgy which the Second Vatican Council officially set in motion over thirty years ago. The Council inaugurated an era of volatile change in the Church. In North America and Europe this change has perhaps been most evident to both Church members and wider society in the area of liturgical practice. Having studied both theology and anthropology at the graduate level, and possessing my own passionate concern for ecclesial reform, I would have liked to open this study with some form of my own participant-observation analysis of contemporary liturgy and parochial life in the United States. Unfortunately, such an undertaking was beyond the bounds of this project. Fortunately, however, in the recent past a study of fifteen American parishes was conducted and the data subjected to analysis by a group of theologians and one ritual theorist. In the first chapter, then, I shall avail myself of the published essays of that study in order to animate the ensuing dialogue between liturgical and political theology.

This book originated as my doctoral dissertation at Emory University, and I remain grateful to the professors who with great competence and compassion guided me in the work: Don Saliers (director), Rebecca Chopp, Theodore Runyon, and Walter Lowe. I had the opportunity to present pieces of the project's research at group sessions during the annual meetings of The College Theology Society, The Catholic Theological Society of America, and the North American Academy of Liturgy. I am especially grateful to Kevin Seasoltz, O.S.B., who as convener of the liturgical theology seminar of the N.A.A.L. not only provided me the forum to present my material but also thereafter persistently encouraged me to pursue its publication. The Jesuit community at The Aquinas Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, kindly welcomed me with office and living space for the better part of a summer as I undertook revising the manuscript for possible publication. My gratitude extends to the several people who read all or parts of the manuscript, but especially to my fellow Jesuits, Robert Daly, Roger Haight, and William Reiser, who took time and care to provide specific comments on content and style. The Department of Theology and The Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry at Boston College, under the leadership of Donald Dietrich and Claire L,owery, respectively, have provided support in numerous ways. To these and many friends, family members and colleagues, whose numbers exceed what I dare list here, I give my heartfelt thanks.