We beg to differ: The Roman Catholic church in the United States as a public church

grantor: University of St. Michael's CollegeMartin Marty contends the optimal ecclesial response to the American culture is that of the public church. This dissertation is a response to Marty's challenge to “discover not invent the public church” within the Roman Catholic church in the United States. Relying on the work of Robert Bellah, chapter one examines America's individualism as the primary cultural factor that relegates the role of religion to the private sphere. In the second chapter, the characteristics and manifestations of the nascent public church are examined in light of four twentieth century American Catholics who are antecedents of the public church in the twentieth century. Chapter three examines the shift in ecclesiology that allows the theological and conciliar foundations for the self-understanding of the Roman Catholic church as a public church. Part one of chapter three outlines the growing centralization of the Roman Catholic church in the late nineteenth century and its impact on the church in the United States. Part two shifts focus to the implicit characteristics of the public church contained in two specific conciliar documents. In Gaudium et spes and Dignitatis humanae there exists a theological foundation for the Roman Catholic church as a public church. These implicit characteristics—a critical anthropology, a critical and dialogical mode of ecclesial presence in the world, and the social implications of theology—allow a conciliar foundation for the Roman Catholic church as a public church. The fourth and final chapter demonstrates how Bernard Lonergan is a resource for the public church. Not attempting an exhaustive explanation of Lonergan's contribution, this chapter focuses on four of his categories for consideration—his anthropology; communities of meaning and value; history as the story of the simultaneous principles of progress, decline, and redemption; and the redemptive role of the church in the world—which provide a larger frame of reference for a fuller understanding of the public church. The task that remains is for the understanding of the public church to be effectively appropriated in the Roman Catholic church in the United States. This dissertation takes a step towards this appropriation.Ph.D