A people-centered apologetic
by Father William Edens, CSP
September 4, 2013

Jesus begins his theology with a positive anthropology. This firmly distinguishes him from the Pharisees in the Gospels, whose theology often leads them to a negative anthropology.
To unpack this cryptic assertion I turn to the Paulist founder, Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker. Isaac Hecker and his friend Orestes Brownson, who was one of the leading lights of 19th century Boston society and the famous Transcendental author, had come to the conclusion that if they wanted to meet Jesus in the flesh they should take advantage of the presence of Jesus Christ in the world through the Catholic Church, which is his Mystical Body.

Hecker and Brownson not only believed that they had found the true presence of Christ in the world but also the authentic apostolic succession that would connect them with the teaching of the Apostles. They believed that the authority of the Church, expressed through the Magisterium, would affirm and critique their interior experiences of the Holy Spirit.

Despite this exalted language, what they were most interested in was anthropology – the study of human beings, how they live in society and what their needs are. Hecker titled his first two books “Questions of the Soul” and “Aspirations of Nature.” He believed that the deepest longings of his fellow American Seekers would be answered by meeting Jesus Christ in his Church.
These books laid out Hecker’s Apologetics. Hecker wanted Americans to come to the Catholic Church. But rather than give them proofs for the existence of God and a top-down insistence on the forms and dogmas of the Catholic church, he began with anthropology (the study of people) and proceeded to theology (the study of God). His invitation was for people to start with who they are, what they long to be, and what they long to do, and invite them to find fellow Seekers in communion with the Catholic Church.

What does a negative anthropology look like? We have no farther to look than the Gospels. The Pharisees asked about Jesus, “Why does he join sinners and eat with them?” Their theology was clear. “If you are a sinner then you do not belong at the table with us. Only the pure ones who keep all the laws that we lay down to come to Church.”

Some of the perennial dangers of Catholicism are triumphalism, legalism and fundamentalism. In Hecker we find a positive Apologetic that allows us to start with the least ones of society, the sinners, the atheists, the heretics, the apostates, and meet them on their own terms. If we start where they are, and affirm their common humanity and their basic goodness, then we can commune with them (like Jesus did) and invite them to find the deepest longings of their hearts in the Church.