Jesuit Mark S. Massa, argues change is the companion of theological truth

Monday 19th November 2018

The preacher's carriage "was built in such a logical way / It ran a hundred years to a day" but then "went to pieces all at once, / All at once and nothing first, / Just as bubbles do when they burst." Oliver Wendell Holmes

By Mark S. Massa, SJ 232 pages; Oxford University Press

Jesuit Fr. Mark Massa opens his new book, The Structure of Theological Revolutions: How the Fight Over Birth Control Transformed American Catholicism, with a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes' poem "The Deacon's Masterpiece: Or the Wonderful 'One-Hoss Shay': A Logical Story" first published in 1858. The preacher's carriage "was built in such a logical way / It ran a hundred years to a day" but then "went to pieces all at once, / All at once and nothing first, / Just as bubbles do when they burst."

The poem is, of course, a metaphor, and the destruction of the one-horse carriage Holmes is describing represents the sudden destruction of Calvinism as the essential cultural framework for New England society.

"The American Catholic community experienced a very similar, and seemingly equally quick, disappearance of a revered theological system after 1968," Massa writes. "What passed from the scene was, as in the earlier case, a rigorously systematic, even logical, theological system, which has been traditionally labeled 'neo-scholastic natural law.' "

the structure of theological revolutions full review