The Ecclesiology of Babette and Gutierrez
Hey!
I've been so busy reading and writing papers that I've had less time than I'd like to keep this blog updated.
Here are few snippets from my papers. This first one comes from an ecclesiological take on the film Babette's Feast in which two models of church are dramatized, and Babette's model wins out over that of the religious sect:
"The experience of the sect calls their model into question in that it leads them to acrimony with one another and discontentment. The model certainly does not illuminate their experience. One man accuses another of cheating him. A fellow’s disgruntlement with yet another bowl of fish soup implies that perhaps God’s followers were never meant to be wholly otherworldly. The model represented by Babette, on the other hand, yields a very different experience: communion. The film climaxes in a Eucharistic feast in which the members of the sect reluctantly but eventually surrender to the model of Babette. Old conflicts melt away, Philippa and Martina retrieve their lost loves, and the group departs arm in arm in a parade of harmonious community. A new model has come."
The following is the best part of my second paper, which is an ecclesiological reading of Gustavo Gutierrez's A Theology of Liberation:
"Vatican II retrieved the notion of Church as sacrament, which “enables us to think of the Church within the horizon of salvific work and in terms radically different from those of the ecclesiocentric emphasis” (p. 146). In contradistinction to the ecclesiocentric model, the center of the Church as sacrament is outside itself, “in the work of Christ and his Spirit” (p. 146). The Church does not exist for itself but for others, and it is not an end in itself but a means to the Kingdom of God. Conversely, “the Church is nothing” to the extent that it does not place itself within the “action of the Spirit which leads the universe and history towards its fullness in Christ” (p. 147). The Church is not a distant oasis in a wide desert to which all thirsty souls must make the trek. Rather, the Holy Spirit is on the move in the world, leading it to its fullness in Christ; the Church, to be the Church, must participate in this movement."
I've been so busy reading and writing papers that I've had less time than I'd like to keep this blog updated.
Here are few snippets from my papers. This first one comes from an ecclesiological take on the film Babette's Feast in which two models of church are dramatized, and Babette's model wins out over that of the religious sect:
"The experience of the sect calls their model into question in that it leads them to acrimony with one another and discontentment. The model certainly does not illuminate their experience. One man accuses another of cheating him. A fellow’s disgruntlement with yet another bowl of fish soup implies that perhaps God’s followers were never meant to be wholly otherworldly. The model represented by Babette, on the other hand, yields a very different experience: communion. The film climaxes in a Eucharistic feast in which the members of the sect reluctantly but eventually surrender to the model of Babette. Old conflicts melt away, Philippa and Martina retrieve their lost loves, and the group departs arm in arm in a parade of harmonious community. A new model has come."
The following is the best part of my second paper, which is an ecclesiological reading of Gustavo Gutierrez's A Theology of Liberation:
"Vatican II retrieved the notion of Church as sacrament, which “enables us to think of the Church within the horizon of salvific work and in terms radically different from those of the ecclesiocentric emphasis” (p. 146). In contradistinction to the ecclesiocentric model, the center of the Church as sacrament is outside itself, “in the work of Christ and his Spirit” (p. 146). The Church does not exist for itself but for others, and it is not an end in itself but a means to the Kingdom of God. Conversely, “the Church is nothing” to the extent that it does not place itself within the “action of the Spirit which leads the universe and history towards its fullness in Christ” (p. 147). The Church is not a distant oasis in a wide desert to which all thirsty souls must make the trek. Rather, the Holy Spirit is on the move in the world, leading it to its fullness in Christ; the Church, to be the Church, must participate in this movement."
posted by ChadRAllen @ 10:31 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home