Michael J. Tkacik and Thomas C. McGonigle, Pneumatic Correctives (Lanham, MD.: University Press of America, 2007), vii + 153 Pps., $32.95.
Michael J. Tkacik is Director of the Pastoral Studies and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Saint Leo University in St. Leo, Florida, and Thomas C. McGonigle is the Director of the center for Catholic and Dominican Studies and Associate Professor of History at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. This work is written in response to Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, calling for the church of the 21st century to become anew the People of God journeying together in history to become the Sacrament of the Paschal Mystery for the world. The overall claim of the book is that the Church must embody and exemplify the kenotic (self emptying) and agapic (unconditional) love of the One of whom she is the sacrament. Fidelity, then, to the Spirit is key to the Church’s sacramental mission. So then, the Church must surrender to the promptings and call of the Holy Spirit, which will require that the directives of renewal introduced at the Second Vatican Council be more fully developed, which this book attempts to do.
In order to move to the next stage of renewal that was introduced at the Second Vatican Council, the authors suggest, the Roman Catholic Church must enter into a process of kenosis that calls her to let go of historically conditioned facets of her self-understanding that hinder her mission to the peoples of the current age. Responding to the to the call to be anew the People of God, they assert that we must listen again to what the Spirit has said and is saying to Christian communities from the early church to the present so that we may learn what we may take with us and what we may leave behind. The Church needs to become comfortable this fact, the authors posit, and trust the Spirit to guide her where the Godhead intends. In so doing, the Church must beyond the fear of change, and embrace flexibility. Tkacik and McGonigle describe this process as one of Pneumatic correctives. By labeling this process as such, the authors intend to promote the idea that the truths of the Christian faith are neither absolute nor relative, but Pneumatic instead, i.e., they are guided and formed by the Holy Spirit in their meaning and interpretation. They contend that the Spirit uses the prophetic voices of the hierarchy, theologians and the consensus fidelium to bring about necessary Pneumatic correctives in the Church.
The book is broken down into six distinct chapters, each covering a proposed Pneumatic corrective to current Church positions. In chapter one, ‘Baptismal Dignity of the People of God’, the authors assert that the members of the Church must live-out their vocations specifically within the secular realm, which has revolutionary effects upon the sacramental and liturgical reforms of the Church, as the ministry of the Church will be seen as a shared responsibility of the members and the clergy. Chapter two contends that in order for the Church and her members to become the Paschal Mystery of Christ for the world, she and her members must continually partake of the Eucharist. In essence, then, this chapter argues for an intrinsic connection between the Eucharist and the Church’s social mission. Chapter three extends the thought of chapter one in that it places heightened responsibility on its members to enact and complete the mission of service of the Church to the world. In the fourth chapter, ‘The Church: Ministry and Mission of Servant Leaders’, the authors present some of the areas of life in the Church wherein the dialogue of serious reform and renewal must be deepened. Chapter five radically redefines and re-depicts the role of the Pope as the ‘Servant of the Servants of God unto Unity in Diversity’ (95). Therein, they contend that the primacy of the pope would be best displayed through his kenotic (i.e. self-giving/self-emptying) behavior for the benefit of others. The book closes with a chapter that concerns how we may heal the scandal of the divisions in Christianity, divisions which are contrary to Christ and his intentions for the Church.
All in all, this work confronts the Roman Catholic Church’s need to be open to ecumenism. The primary argument is that the Holy Spirit perennially reforms the Church. Tkacik’s and McGonigle’s visions regarding the future of the Roman Catholic Church require that the hierarchical leaders, as well as laity, embrace new models of leadership within the Church. For those readers who possess interests in ecumenism and catholicity, I would strongly recommend this title.
Bradford McCall, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA.