THE THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF THOMAS GROOME

Abstract

Theological anthropology in the work of Thomas Groome can be understood by exploring the relationship between subjectivity and knowledge in his major works. This relationship is constituted by five fundamental elements: the knowing subject in religious education as existential, liberational, pedagogical, theological, and critical. A comprehension of this constitutive core of his theological anthropology affords a map for understanding the logic of his contribution to religious education.

Notes

See, for example, the General Directory for Catechesis on the liberating reign of God (1998, #101–104), on praxis (#245), and on the “activity and creativity of the catechized” (#157).

In the interest of delimitation, I will not consider here Groome's recent works written for a more popular audience (1998, 2002), although they also contain notes about theological anthropology, albeit in less rigorous form befitting their different audience.

A word about terms: Groome more often uses “self” than “subject” or “subjectivity” in the early work Christian Religious Education. I suspect that the variance is a result of tension in the text between the “subject” of Heideggerian existential philosophy, on the one hand, and the “self” of ego psychology (by way of Erikson, Piaget, and Fowler) on the other. Groome attempts to hold together both traditions. The use of “self” drops out by the time of Sharing Faith, as does a reliance on ego psychology (or any explicit psychological tradition) in favor of the term “agent-subject-in-relationship” (1991, 8–9). Throughout the shifts in language, and indeed governing the shifts, there seems to be a search for the most adequate way to render the existential experience of the individual that accounts for what he considers inescapable human realities and humanizing qualities: self-determination, communality, historicity, and responsibility. Existential philosophy, and a philosophical anthropology, on which Groome's project was founded, has remained this project's constant center of gravity.

See, for example, Groome (1980, 54 n. 38).

From Vatican II, see the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church” (Flannery 1996, #48–51).

See also Groome (1991, 20). Groome construes faith as a unity of trusting, believing, and doing. I have sifted out these three aspects into my own five-fold scheme here, with trusting under the “existential” element of human being, doing under the “liberational” element, and believing under the “pedagogical” element. These divisions are somewhat arbitrary but are made for the sake of mapping theological anthropology coherently across his works.

For the following, see Groome (1991, 86–98).

See his critical appreciation of Piaget (1980, 239–257).

The appropriation of Lonergan is not undifferentiated. For his criticisms of Lonergan, see Groome (1991, 481). Groome does not give the emphasis on “being-in-love-without-reserve,” as bonded to the transcendental activities that Lonergan (1990) does. It seems Groome's intent is particularly to recover “being reasonable” and “being responsible” for the “knowing being” in Catholic religious education.

My italics. See also Groome (1991, 20–21).

Italics mine.

In Groome (1991, 94), this capacity is intrinsic to the mind's conatus to reason.

Groome's theological anthropology is also evident in the way that he interprets prayers. Groome often cites prayers that emphasize the being–knowing unity in view of a certain exterior remaking of the world, a communal self, and with that unity taking place strongly in the present. See, for instance, Groome's interpretations of the prayers during the liturgy of the Eucharist (1991, 367–372). In Groome's interpretation of the Eucharistic prayer, we read that through this prayer, “the community reminds God of what God has done to save humankind, throughout history and especially in Jesus, and of the Vision of liberation this promises to all creation[,]” recalling Moses' exhortation in Deuteronomy 26, which included a new commitment to “God's liberating deeds … in the present” (1991, 369). “Though present rubrics regulate that it be prayed by the presider as sole voice … the priest's prayer, gestures, tone, and speaking emphases… should symbolize that this is the action of the whole community, not something done for them but by the assembly together” (1991, 370).

For example, in Christian Religious Education, wherein Groome endorses three themes in philosophical interpretations of human freedom, including “freedom for action and from external constraint or servitude of any kind” (1980, 83, italics mine). See also Groome (1991, 430), on freedom from “manipulation, domination, and indoctrination.” He frequently opposes the knowing subject's exercise of freedom to his or her mere reproduction of the reigning ideology. It is this bifurcation that I find too idealistic, insufficiently historically conscious, and in need of further differentiation.

This is a reference to Lonergan (1990, 130).