CHAPTER 2: A PRACTICAL THEOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY 67 reason has lost its previous primacy; instead, practical reason has taken its place.173 If this is the case, the still apparent dominant theoretical or intellectual theology (or blueprint theology, in the words of Nicholas Healy174) should be complemented by pastoral or practical theology. The core of Healy’s critique of blueprint ecclesiologies is the conviction that the ‘empirical church’ is just as real, or even more so, as the eschatological ideal. To underline this point, Healy contrasts the church triumphant and the church militant: The pilgrim church is concrete in quite a different way from the heavenly church. It exists in a particular time and place, and is prone to error and sin as it struggles, often confusedly, on its way. If these characteristics are ignored, or relegated to a secondary concern, the temptation arises to set up false goals that cannot be realized, which may lead to depression for those who try to realize them, and cynicism in those who compare the ideal vision with the reality.175 Indeed, such depression and cynicism are very much present in ecumenical circles, leading people to speak of an ‘ecumenical winter’. A contrasting interpretation of the current situation is provided when the complexity of the reality of the church in this particular time and context is acknowledged and when the progress made is the measure of success rather than the work still pending. Cardinal Kasper, taking this position, therefore rejects the term ecumenical winter. This implies that the relationship between the sources of theological thought (theoretical and practical, idealistic and realistic) should be recognized as mutual and dialectical, and the implications should be properly thought through – also in the field of ecumenical theology. This requires taking seriously the locus of human experience, as is done in contextual theologies. As a consequence, this means that theologians or clergy are not the only agents of theology. Both elements are discussed in the following sections. 173 Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “Method in Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, ed. Declan Marmion and Mary E. Hines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 79, https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521832888. 174 Healy, Church, World, and the Christian Life, esp. 36-38. 175 Healy, 37.
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