John Milbank is a fascinating mixture of insight and insanity, as is made clear by a recent interview that he’s given concerning Cardinal Newman’s forthcoming beatification and Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to England.
He is insightful at times in the area of the relation of theology to economics. He refuses, at least on the surface, to let theology be placed by the social sciences. Concomitantly, he recognizes that something is very wrong with a purely secular culture that has cut out any connection between itself and the divine, lacking any reference to the Christian sacred. He realizes that such a culture tends to promulgate barbaric practices in the realm of politics and economics. He even, on occasion, laments the “consumerizing” of sexual practices in post-1968 European culture.
In the recent interview linked to above, published just today, in fact, he even goes so far as to argue that Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to England is very much needed and that the beatification of Cardinal Newman is a work of unity: as Newman, he argues, was both Anglican and Catholic and a treasure to both communions.
Anyone who is concerned with the integrity of the traditional faith, might, on occasion, be taken in by his words. But it is not long before a strange dissonance creeps in. For he speaks out of both sides of his mouth.
No sooner does he commend the high tradition of Patristic and Scholastic theology, then he starts in odd directions in regard to sexual issues. So, for instance, in the programmatic book on “Radical Orthodoxy,” which he compiled and edited, he publishes an essay (by another author, but presumably representative of the radically orthodox position) commending the practice of homosexual sexual unions as a sign of Trinitarian love, a position that he has never, to my knowledge, refuted. His critique of consumerism in the realm of sexual ethics can only fall to the ground with such an ideology in place.
In commending Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Great Britain, he adds the remark that the ordination of women to the episcopacy in the Anglican Church will prove to be, in the long run, a great ecumenical achievement, especially now that, on Milbank’s opinion, the Pope’s recent provision to Anglicans who want to convert to Catholicism, Anglicanorum Coetibus, has shown that the Catholic Church recognizes Anglicanism to be a valid tradition, along the lines of Eastern Orthodoxy. This will, he implies, lead to a fluidity between the communions that will force the Catholic Church to confront the issues of homosexuality, the ordination of women, and married priests more forthrightly than it has done previously.
I suppose that this an interesting point to some extent, inasmuch as it gives a different perspective on Anglicanorum Coetibus than one generally hears from the Catholic side. Many traditionalist Catholics think that the provision will strengthen Catholic tradition, because it will presumably bring in converts who want more of that tradition and not less of it. Milbank in fact argues precisely to the contrary.
But this is why I think Milbank comes across as rather delusional in the end. The Catholic Church is not going to ordain women — ever, just as it has never done in 2,000 years, and not simply because of cultural conditioning that has presumably affected the Church’s disciplinary practice. The debate is closed, and it will not be opening any time soon, except among aging college professors who will be long dead before they ever have had a chance to carry out the revolution that they have so long desired. To the extent that Anglicanism pushes in that direction, the Catholic Church will close its ears. At the same time, the Catholic Church is not going to canonize the act of homosexual sex — ever, just as it has never done in 2,000 years. Milbank has accused John Paul II of being a Romantic for arguing for traditional marriage on the grounds of the nuptial analogy of the body. But, in fact, it is Milbank who has accepted, hook, line, and sinker, the libertine premises that have traditionally accompanied the Romantic ideology.
Milbank’s reading of the tradition comes across as tendentious and twisted. In the end, I think that the best that can be said of him is that he is a theological modernist who just happens to love some smells and bells. And, by the way, he is completely out of touch with the direction in which the Catholic Church is headed. Few young Catholics today, who take their faith seriously, are attracted to the kind of pansexualism that Milank would have us submerged in. The young priests, who will soon be bishops and popes, are going in a direction diametrically opposed to the Milbankian option. And, besides, he has hardly spearheaded a renewal of the life of faith in his own Anglican communion. We’re hardly talking about a personage on the level of John Paul II here. Radical Orthodoxy may be appealing to a handful of subversive and socially awkward eggheads, but it is not the path to spiritual renewal in Christianity.
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