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This article was downloaded by: [Duke University Medical Center] On: 10 October 2014, At: 09:46 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Religious Education: The official journal of the Religious Education Association Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/urea20 THE THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF THOMAS GROOME Tom Beaudoin a a Santa Clara University Published online: 15 Aug 2006. To cite this article: Tom Beaudoin (2005) THE THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF THOMAS GROOME, Religious Education: The official journal of the Religious Education Association, 100:2, 127-138, DOI: 10.1080/00344080590932427 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00344080590932427 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

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Page 1: THE THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF THOMAS GROOME

This article was downloaded by: [Duke University Medical Center]On: 10 October 2014, At: 09:46Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Religious Education: Theofficial journal of the ReligiousEducation AssociationPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/urea20

THE THEOLOGICALANTHROPOLOGY OF THOMASGROOMETom Beaudoin aa Santa Clara UniversityPublished online: 15 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Tom Beaudoin (2005) THE THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OFTHOMAS GROOME, Religious Education: The official journal of the Religious EducationAssociation, 100:2, 127-138, DOI: 10.1080/00344080590932427

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00344080590932427

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.

Page 2: THE THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF THOMAS GROOME

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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THE THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGYOF THOMAS GROOME

Tom BeaudoinSanta Clara University

Abstract

Theological anthropology in the work of Thomas Groome can beunderstood by exploring the relationship between subjectivity andknowledge in his major works. This relationship is constituted by fivefundamental elements: the knowing subject in religious educationas existential, liberational, pedagogical, theological, and critical. Acomprehension of this constitutive core of his theological anthropol-ogy affords a map for understanding the logic of his contribution toreligious education.

The texts of Thomas Groome have proven influential, even founda-tional, for nearly a generation of work in practical theology and reli-gious education. Their constant theme is the teaching of a religioustradition oriented to the liberation of the learner. Groome’s books de-velop this theme, melding an approach to teaching about Christianitywith a commitment to the transformation of learners’ lives.

Groome develops a theology of teaching that encourages learningthrough personal appropriation, where the “subject” of the teachingis the learner’s existential experience, to which the religious traditionspeaks in a dialogue involving learners interpreting the tradition, con-strued very broadly, for their situation, and their situation throughthe tradition. Education is a constant critical correlation of subjectmatter and subjectivity for the sake of a deeper critical engagement,with the obstacles to personal and social thriving in the learner’s placeand time. The resources for this project are arranged somewhat eclec-tically, although ultimately consistently, in his two major books. InChristian Religious Education, Groome draws from Western philoso-phy, Catholic magisterial teaching (particularly Vatican II), liberationtheology, and ego psychology. In Sharing Faith, Western philosophy(and Heidegger in particular) provides the primary source material inestablishing his foundations.

Religious Education Copyright C© The Religious Education AssociationVol. 100 No. 2 Spring 2005 ISSN: 0034–4087 print

DOI: 10.1080/00344080590932427

127

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One measure of Groome’s influence in his own Catholic contextis the institutionalizing of some of his key ideas in official Catholicteaching documents. For example, the recent Vatican guide for reli-gious instruction, the General Directory for Catechesis, contains sev-eral themes that have become the hallmark of his work. These includethe notions of praxis, the active subject in religious education, and thepersonally and socially liberating reign of God as the telos of religiouseducation.1 Such deserved influence in the theory and praxis of reli-gious education merits careful attention to key themes in Groome’swork, for the sake of both a scholarly appreciation of his claims, andas an aid to schematizing his approach for those who are new to it.

Out of many themes that could be chosen for analysis, this articletakes up Groome’s construal of theological anthropology. A focus ontheological anthropology is justified due to the critical, even determi-native, significance that assumptions about the nature of human lifein relation to God play in all teaching and learning about Christian-ity. Such pedagogical practices are, in the language of Don Browning(1991), “theory-laden;” that is, animated by concepts of what humansought to be and to do in the light of faith, concepts that typicallyfunction by remaining in the background of pedagogical practice. In-difference to theological anthropology would be a mistake, inasmuchas religious education is concerned with the relevance of faith for thelife of the anthropos. In “religious education at all age levels, when-ever human beings are the subject—in their relationships to self andothers, in their social and psychological contexts, and in their relation-ship to God seen through the understanding of God in Scripture andtradition—it may be termed theological anthropology” (Bryce 1990,646). Groome himself has argued that there is value for religious ed-ucators in heightening their “consciousness about the anthropologicalassumptions that underlie [their] educating” (1980, 261). That the-ological anthropology may play a crucial role in religious educationseems clear.

I shall primarily treat his theological anthropology through inter-preting the relationship between subjectivity and knowledge, as pre-sented in his two major academic works (1980, 1991).2 These works,

1See, for example, the General Directory for Catechesis on the liberating reignof God (1998, #101–104), on praxis (#245), and on the “activity and creativity of thecatechized” (#157).

2In the interest of delimitation, I will not consider here Groome’s recent workswritten for a more popular audience (1998, 2002), although they also contain notes

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indeed arguably all his writings, labor to fuse a critical epistemologydrawn from Western philosophy and pedagogy with liberationist con-tents and forms of analysis culled largely from Catholic theology. Al-though there are some shifts in the construal of subjectivity and knowl-edge from Christian Religious Education to Sharing Faith, enoughcontinuity and consistency remain between these two major projectsthat it is sufficient to outline chief shared claims, noting where neces-sary the points at which the texts seem to diverge.

For Groome, the subject-as-knower plays a central, irreplaceablerole for religious education. It is, thus, important at the outset notto bifurcate subjectivity and knowledge; for Groome, they are co-implicated, as the theoretical and practical center of an approach toreligious education. I propose to interpret Groome’s understandingof subjectivity and knowledge as rooted in what might be called, al-beit awkwardly, a critically existential liberation theological pedagogy.It will serve my purposes here to unpack this descriptor, and to seehow its components organize subjectivity and knowledge in Groome’stexts. Subjectivity and knowledge in Groome’s work are like a “twistedpair,” a strand of DNA, made up of these five elements, as fundamentalamino acids. I shall argue that it is out of this basic twisted pair thatGroome builds the system of his shared praxis approach to religiouseducation.3

Although these five dimensions of the knowing subject, these“amino acids,” are all central to Groome’s ongoing project, I have listedthem here in the order in which I think they ground his project: theknowing subject as existential, pedagogical, liberational, theological,and critical.

about theological anthropology, albeit in less rigorous form befitting their differentaudience.

3A word about terms: Groome more often uses “self” than “subject” or “subjec-tivity” in the early work Christian Religious Education. I suspect that the variance is aresult of tension in the text between the “subject” of Heideggerian existential philoso-phy, on the one hand, and the “self” of ego psychology (by way of Erikson, Piaget, andFowler) 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 (orany 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, thereseems to be a search for the most adequate way to render the existential experienceof the individual that accounts for what he considers inescapable human realities andhumanizing qualities: self-determination, communality, historicity, and responsibility.Existential philosophy, and a philosophical anthropology, on which Groome’s projectwas founded, has remained this project’s constant center of gravity.

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EXISTENTIAL: THE KNOWING SUBJECTAS TEMPORAL-HISTORICAL

The argument that opens Groome’s first book and remains promi-nent emphasizes the time-bound, historical character of the subject.Indeed, all other dimensions of the knowing subject are constantlyreferred, in all his works, to this existential dimension.

This dimension of the knowing subject can be simply stated: howwe know is rooted in who we are temporally. Between our being intime and place, and our knowing, there is no outside. To advert to oneis simultaneously to call the other into view. Thus, what I discuss inthis section will fit very closely with the “pedagogical” aspect I describelater.

Groome posits that humans share an essential “being” that is ableto be rendered in terms of basic existentials, and that, drawing espe-cially on early Heidegger, is only known by reflection on our being-in-the-world, always governed by a past tradition and future visionpresent to us in our particular concrete and historical present. Everyattempt to deny our existential historicity and temporality must berejected as unresponsive to the most fundamentally observable dataof our existence (1991, 33). What Groome primarily means here iswhat could be called an existentialist anthropology: to be is to be tem-poral, historical, communal, and responsible (1991, 33–34). Subjectscan never escape the historical relativity of their time and place. Andyet this relativity is itself somewhat relative, insofar as Groome doesmake some transhistorical claims about the character of subjective ex-istence. This seems to be a result of the transcendental mode of his ap-proach to the historical character of the subject, evident in his emphasison “historicity,” the transcendentally derived time-bound condition ofbeing.4

In Christian Religious Education, he employs the prevailingmetaphor (that he attributes to Dwayne Huebner) of subjects as “pil-grims in time.” This notion of subjects as pilgrims dovetails with theSecond Vatican Council’s description of the “pilgrim Church,” sug-gesting that the Church is a Church of time-bound beings on theirway through history together, none of whom can have a universal view“from above” (1980, 14–15).5

4See, for example, Groome (1980, 54 n. 38).5From Vatican II, see the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church” (Flannery

1996, #48–51).

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Yet this is no absolutely solitary existentialism; our existence aspeople who are and who know is neither individual nor private. Thiscan be seen, not only positively through psychological and sociologicalmodels of socialization, but also negatively, in the “excessively individu-alistic interpretation of the Christian message” that betrays the gospel’smodels of social-communal solidarity (Groome 1980, 46, 109ff). Thisexistential character of subjectivity and knowledge implies that faithcan be viewed as a kind of trusting, even as an “existential develop-mental reality,” by which Groome means that it is lived in the world, intime, in progressive stages, and allied with human maturing—althoughnone of this occurs without intentional educating (1980, 57, 66–73).6

In Sharing Faith, Groome is more schematic about the existentialcharacter of human being-knowing. He differentiates human “being”into three “aspects,” corporeal, mental, and volitional. In so doing, heaims for a holistic, pastoral-theological account of the irreducible, uni-versal elements that bind all humans to one another and make themmost uniquely human.7 With regard to the corporeal aspect, he asso-ciates a “sensuous wisdom” with the body, carrying its own dynamismtoward aesthetic activity. When located in the “existential” matrix, heargues that the body bears its own ways of maintaining, engaging, andregenerating. Human mental capacities are bonded to their existentialmatrix, and issue in unique ways of remembering, reasoning, and imag-ining governed by intentional and critical reflection. Although moredifficult to quantify, the volitional aspect of human being is evident indesiring and intending, and often glimpsed by adverting to our affec-tive life. Existentially, volition has its own tasks of inheriting, relating,and committing.

These three aspects of the existential dimension of the “knowingbeing” are located within social–cultural systems that both distort andcontrol human values, as well as serve the achievement of the commongood. Utilizing models from cultural anthropology, Groome describesa dialectical relationship between the agency of the person and theinfluence of the larger social world in which personhood emerges. Indiscussing pedagogical practice, however, he often seems to emphasize

6See 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 schemehere, with trusting under the “existential” element of human being, doing under the“liberational” element, and believing under the “pedagogical” element. These divisionsare somewhat arbitrary but are made for the sake of mapping theological anthropologycoherently across his works.

7For the following, see Groome (1991, 86–98).

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the necessity and the potential for human agency over against socialconstraints, rather than its actuality (1991, 98–100, 102). Groome’santhropology attempts to fly philosophically as low to the ground aspossible, seeking the origins of knowing in a phenomenology of humanbeing.

PEDAGOGICAL: THE KNOWING SUBJECTAS RECONSTRUCTOR OF EXPERIENCE

In Christian Religious Education, Groome interrelates readingsof Freire, Dewey, and Piaget to portray the subject as one who cannotknow apart from the continual reconstructing of their experience. Indoing so, he explicates a subject whose knowing is developmental,that is to say, happens in sequential, scientifically derived stages ofmaturity.8 Yet this development is not likely to happen unless educationis consciously and intentionally critical and liberating, an imperative forboth knower and educator present on almost every page of ChristianReligious Education.

Groome argues that this knowing always involves two totalities.First, of the total person, which in his early work he discusses as com-bining affectivity and rationality, and which he later expands in SharingFaith under the rubric “conation” (1980, 15–17; 1991, 25–32). What hemeans by conation is a certain wisdom that is present in a “holistic ca-pacity and disposition people have to realize their own ‘being’; it is theagency that undergirds one’s cognition, affection, and volition.” Cona-tion is the intentional formation toward the historically responsiblerealization of “our sensations, actions, cognitions, affections, choices,decisions . . . [of] our style of ‘being”’ (1991, 27, 30). From ChristianReligious Education through Sharing Faith, it seems as if for Groomethere is nothing that can be isolated phenomenologically about our“being” that cannot itself also be understood as a site of “knowing.”Second, knowing always takes place with respect to one’s experienceof the total life-situation, both personal and social. Therefore, knowingis always political (1980, 15–17). The experience to be reconstructedin the subject as learner is thus both personal and social.

As a reconstructer of experience, the knowing subject construesfaith as believing (in addition to trusting and doing), that is to say,as an active intellectual endorsement and appropriation of particular

8See his critical appreciation of Piaget (1980, 239–257).

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doctrinal propositions, an exercise of “rational conviction” (1980,59; 1991, 18–20). Reconstructing experience is understood, in Shar-ing Faith, on Bernard Lonergan’s model of transcendental capaci-ties and imperatives: be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, beresponsible.9 In Groome’s work—and, he would argue, in advertingto our experience of everyday life—one continually circles back to thepedagogical aspect of subjectivity-knowledge as inseparable from theexistential aspect, even though their separation has been attemptedmany times in the last several centuries: “Epistemology and ontology,‘knowing’ and ‘being,’ should be united in the philosophical founda-tions of Christian religious education” (1991, 8).

LIBERATIONAL: THE KNOWING SUBJECTAS FREEDOM-SEEKING

Christian faith would not be possible without a subject who is andknows freely, seeking to know the good, choose the good, and do thegood (1980, 83). In Christian Religious Education, Groome continuallyrelates freedom to faithfulness. Faith as an eminently human activityis manifest, not only in believing or trusting, but also in doing, with “aconstant dialectical relationship between what is known and what isdone.” Jesus, revealer of human being-knowing, “did the will of Godperfectly [and so] could claim to know the Father best” (1980, 64).10

The scriptures also disclose this truth about the knowing subject. Inthe Old Testament, this truth is evidenced in the description of God’sdesire for human liberation and freedom that are notably specific, bothconcrete and historical, such as Isaiah 58:6–7 (1980, 38). In the NewTestament, this truth is clear in Jesus’ convictions about the ability ofhis followers to act freely: “Members of the Kingdom are not objectsacted upon by God’s activity, but subjects called to respond to God’skingdom by living their lives in partnership for each other” (1980, 41).Jesus affirms and reveals the capacity of the subject to be and knowfreely, by offering a spiritual, personal, and social/political freedom tothose who seek, choose, and know the good—that is, to every knowing

9The appropriation of Lonergan is not undifferentiated. For his criticisms ofLonergan, 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.

10My italics. See also Groome (1991, 20–21).

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subject (1980, 96). Given this dynamism of the subject to be and knowfreely, “authentic knowing . . . transform reality toward human freedomand emancipation” (1980, 167).

Sharing Faith, written a quarter century after Vatican II, is moresober than Christian Religious Education about the restrictions on hu-man growth within the Church itself, distinguishing between religiouseducation as mere “socialization” and as invitation to freedom. Theformer is a work of maintenance; the latter is a work of transforma-tion of persons and social structures (1991, 102). But humans do notmerely rebel against repression as a dialectical response to externalprovocation. Groome agrees with Jurgen Habermas that every socialconversation itself harbors an immanent desire for freedom (1991,103). Again, being is bonded to knowing—but here, by way of thedesire for freedom born as an inner dynamic in every human being.

THEOLOGICAL: THE KNOWING SUBJECT AS ORIENTEDTOWARD GOD, CAPABLE OF THE KINGDOM

All knowing subjects are created in God’s image and have recourseto the transcendental qualities intrinsic to the created goodness of thatimage (qualities as the present five “amino acids”). Union with Godthrough lived temporal solidarity with God’s creation is a constanttheme in Groome’s work. Although all subjects experience a basic dy-namism toward self-transcendence, for Christian-knowing subjects,this becomes most explicit as the kingdom of God, a transformed andtransforming Church and World—as limit-situation and basic crite-rion. It could be said that for Groome, it is the experience of thekingdom of God, both in the scripture and in our present, that revealsGod to humans and humans to each other. It is as if for Groome, theexperience and promise of the kingdom that makes christology andtheology of God intelligible and practicable to knowing subjects.

Living as graced knowing subjects means that “grace comes to us inour present to enable us to live lives that make the Kingdom presenteven now. By such lives, we help prepare the ‘material’ for its finalrealization” (1980, 45).11 To be oriented toward God is not somethingthat can be put off or restricted to certain domains of life. “God’s actionat the end of history and within history are inseparable, as God’s time isone time” (1980, 46). Even Lonergan’s notion of “religious conversion”

11Italics mine.

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is adapted by Groome to more explicitly include within it a momentof “social conversion,” which includes critical consciousness, politicalwork, and ecclesial affiliation (1991, 130). In Groome’s later work, thetheological dimension of the knowing subject is also theorized in termsof “‘everyday’ revelation,” by which he adopts Rahner’s later theologicalanthropology, focusing on God’s continual self-communication and thehuman ability to appropriate it, in his terms, in “conative rather thansimply informative ways” (1991, 162). Spirituality, however, is neversolitary achievement, and everyday revelation is never for the sakeof private enjoyment; it helps us locate ourselves in relation to God’sactivity in our time and our responsibilities for concrete and historicalaction within our time. The theological circles back to the existential.

CRITICAL: THE KNOWING SUBJECT AS ACTIVE SOCIALQUESTIONER AND IMAGINER

Drawing on the Frankfurt School of critical theory, particularlyHabermas, and tempered by the more conservative hermeneutics ofHans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, Groome’s knowing subjecthas the capacity for ideology critique, that is to say, for both nam-ing reality as a particular human social arrangement, and for searchingout imaginatively those arrangements that limit or distort fundamentalhuman potentials. But such capacity remains a “potency” unless ac-tivated by an intentional pedagogical situation into “actuality” (1980,114, 122ff).12 This ideology critique does not begin purely externally,but begins with the subject’s own situation: there is no “pure” knowl-edge, no untethered view “from above.” Each subject brings to theirknowledge a particular “interest,” in Habermasian language, a “basicorientation of the knowing subject that shapes the outcome of whatis known” (1980, 170). The social constitution of every act of know-ing requires that knowing subjects become more conscious of thisconstitution, aware of what is, by being self-critical about their inter-ests and the social context that supports or inhibits those interests—because this social constitution supports or inhibits human growth(1980, 185;1991,100–104).

As is the case for the other four basic “amino acids” discussedearlier, the critical capacity of the knowing subject is, indeed, a ba-sic human capacity that is always at least minimally exercised, in the

12In Groome (1991, 94), this capacity is intrinsic to the mind’s conatus to reason.

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transcendental dynamism toward intelligence, judgment, and deci-sion, and in the specific forms of analytical and social remembering(historical consciousness), critical and social reasoning (interrogatingstructures toward greater freedom for all), and creative and socialimagining (picturing a more just reality).

Insofar as the scheme presented here adequately representsGroome’s work, these dimensions of the knowing subject are not fiveseparate realms; rather there is quite a dense interdependence be-tween them. For example, critical knowing discloses a reach for self-transcendence, and temporality requires a constantly new understand-ing and use of our time-specific experiences.

As is well known, Groome’s project is to think intentionally aboutreligious education from a Roman Catholic perspective. In elaboratingthe theological anthropology pertaining to this project, he attempts toovercome the rift between being and knowing through his construal ofsubjectivity. Being and knowing form a unity. For Groome, this unityis evident in the subject’s immersion in specific socio-historical con-ditions, which the subject—when supported pedagogically—seeks toknow better in order to transform. It is proper to the human personto exercise this sort of “existential knowing,” which is always also a“doing.” This knowing is made possible by transcendental structures,actualized by operations on concrete and historical social–culturalsituations.

There is an ethical element present in Groome’s relation of knowl-edge and subjectivity: to be human is to know with accountability andresponsibility to one’s present social–historical milieu. The subject al-ways has an accountability to know—and in knowing, to continue trans-forming praxis in the direction of freedom—the most basic featuresof one’s existence, specifically one’s time and place, the site of one’s“historicity.” This is, perhaps, why Groome’s subjectivity–knowledgemetaphors constellate around such ethically active constructions asdoing-reflecting, directing, practicing, handling, sharing, acting, andworking.

Groome’s theological anthropology features a realized eschatol-ogy about the being–knowing bond. This feature may be a function ofGroome’s early decision, in Christian Religious Education, to followan Augustinian sense of time-as-present-inclusive-of-past-and-future,than a Heideggerian sense of a being-pulled toward the future. Thisleads to the tendency in Groome’s writings toward a relatively extrinsicsort of “call” to justice (in the biblical witness, example of Jesus, possi-bility of the reign of God, and philosophical theories of the subject)and

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foregrounds the exteriorization of all knowing as reconstruction ofone’s social milieu. Groome’s knowing subject is enmeshed in a con-crete historical problematic, beset with a more specific history andobligation, a unique socioeconomic matrix of problems that must beovercome.13

I shall conclude by raising some questions about Groome’s theo-logical anthropology.

How are we to talk responsibly about employing knowledge forfreedom in ways that reflect adequately the real limits that our his-tories impose on us, or produce in us? The freedom toward whichthe knowing subject is or should be oriented, in Groome, tends tobe an absolute sort of freedom, a freedom that can be opposed to“unfreedom” or “bondage.”14 This way of construing freedom maybe a product of his debt to an existentialist intellectual framework.One may wonder whether we should not, instead, be religiously ed-ucating subjects to use knowledge to reconfigure constraints and rig-orously critique any utopic frame for interpreting the knowledge–subjectivity relation. In other words, might it not be more adequate torework an existential understanding of freedom in favor of a morerigorously historical one, which might foreground creative uses ofpower relations that are always inescapable—toward the more modestgoal of merely greater maneuvering room, constantly reassessed andreconstructed?

13Groome’s theological anthropology is also evident in the way that he interpretsprayers. Groome often cites prayers that emphasize the being–knowing unity in viewof a certain exterior remaking of the world, a communal self, and with that unity takingplace strongly in the present. See, for instance, Groome’s interpretations of the prayersduring the liturgy of the Eucharist (1991, 367–372). In Groome’s interpretation of theEucharistic prayer, we read that through this prayer, “the community reminds God ofwhat God has done to save humankind, throughout history and especially in Jesus, andof the Vision of liberation this promises to all creation[,]” recalling Moses’ exhortationin Deuteronomy 26, which included a new commitment to “God’s liberating deeds. . . in the present” (1991, 369). “Though present rubrics regulate that it be prayedby the presider as sole voice . . . the priest’s prayer, gestures, tone, and speakingemphases. . . should symbolize that this is the action of the whole community, notsomething done for them but by the assembly together” (1991, 370).

14For example, in Christian Religious Education, wherein Groome endorsesthree themes in philosophical interpretations of human freedom, including “free-dom for action and from external constraint or servitude of any kind” (1980, 83, italicsmine). See also Groome (1991, 430), on freedom from “manipulation, domination,and indoctrination.” He frequently opposes the knowing subject’s exercise of free-dom to his or her mere reproduction of the reigning ideology. It is this bifurcationthat I find too idealistic, insufficiently historically conscious, and in need of furtherdifferentiation.

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Page 14: THE THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF THOMAS GROOME

138 GROOME’S THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Groome promotes a “remembrance of being” that requires atten-tion to the consciousness of the knower as she or he is related to theworld as a historical agent-subject-in-relationship (1991, 34). But mustwe not also foreground more radically an historical interpretation thatincorporates the forces governing how people come to be who theyare? We may ask whether a theological anthropology with such a strongexistential inflection is sufficiently critical about subjectivity, and doesnot, instead, presume too idealistic or ahistorical an account of “thesubject.”

For the purpose of the present project, however, one implicationabove all emerges from this consideration of the works of Groome:subjectivity is always being shaped and marked in and through ev-ery religious-educational event. Groome highlights that his work “en-courages educators to engage and inform, form, and transform thevery ‘being’ of people in the world” (1991, 8). Theological pedagogy“shape[s] the Christian identity and agency of participants,” toward,in Lonergan’s terms, an intellectual, moral, or religious conversionthat effects a “transformation of the subject and [the subject’s] world”(1991, 129).15 This, above all, is the reason that those who teach in thename of religion should consider carefully the theological anthropolo-gies that guide their work.

Tom Beaudoin is assistant professor in the Religious Studies Department atSanta Clara University. E-mail: [email protected]

REFERENCES

Browning. D. 1991. Fundamental practical theology: Descriptive and strategic proposals.Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Bryce, M. T. 1990. Theological anthropology. In Iris V. Cully and Kendig Brubaker Kelly (eds.),Harper’s encyclopedia of religious education, San Francisco: Harper and Rou, p. 646.

Congregation for the Clergy. 1998. General directory for catechesis. Washington, DC: UnitedStates Catholic Conference.

Flannery, A. Ed. 1996. Vatican council II: Volume 1: The Conciliar and post conciliar documents.Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Company.

Groome, T. 1980. Christian religious education. San Francisco: Harper and Row.———. 1991. Sharing faith: A comprehensive approach to religious education and pastoral

ministry: The way of shared praxis. New York: HarperCollins.———. 1998. Educating for life. Allen, TX: Thomas More Press.———. 2002. What makes us Catholic. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.Lonergan, B. [1972] 1990. Method in theology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

15This is a reference to Lonergan (1990, 130).

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