Brian P. FLANAGAN. Stumbling in Holiness: Sin and Sanctity in the Church. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2018. pp. viii+185. $24. 95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8146-8420-7, 8420; eISBN: 978-0-8146-8444-3, E8444. Reviewed by James T. BRETZKE, S.J., Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53233.

Flanagan, associate professor of theology at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, explains the rationale for the title of his book as Stumbling in Holiness, and not Stumbling toward Holiness, since the “church exists in the eschatological tension of ‘already’ and ‘not yet’, in which the res, the reign of God, is not entirely other, but is already real and present, though in a limited way, in the sacramentum of the life of the church” (99-100).

The deliberative choice of one preposition over another expresses the three foundational premises of his treatise on ecclesiology outlined in the Introduction: “First, that the church is holy, God’s chosen instrument for the salvation of the world…Second, that church is sinful, in that as it walks its pilgrimage toward its fulfillment in the reign of God, it stumbles, sometimes spectacularly so…[and finally and most importantly] To say that the church is holy and sinful is not contradictory…[giving the book’s purpose] “to work through the categories that allow us to believe in a holy yet sinful church” (3-4).

These premises are sound, the methodology appropriately informed by a wide range of scholarship, and the reader likely will be convinced of the sagacity of F’s final give guidelines: 1) “…we cannot divide the holy church from the sinful church; …2) the church that we know as the ‘concrete church’ by its holiness and sinfulness, once cannot talk about is holiness without talking about its sinfulness, nor can one talk about its sinfulness without talking about its holiness. … 3) there is a need to clearly state the potential and actual sinfulness of the historical church in order to ground more clearly ecclesial repentance and conversion. … 4) God’s holiness is stronger than human sinfulness, and God’s love is great than human self-centeredness, .. [but avoid] a quasi-Manichean struggle of good and evil. … [and finally] 5) “the church’s holiness gives the history of the church a certain directionality toward the reign of God; while importantly different from naïve modernist theories of continual progress, the church is a pilgrim and not simply a wanderer” (169).

The six chapters treat in greater detail sin and sanctity in the liturgy and the Church as whole, as well as wrestling with the paradox of both a Church and its members who are both sinful and holy.  F. raises the question of how “to explain the presence of evil in the world” (p. 56) and here is the one area that I found less than fully satisfactory.  Using the established theological responses, whether they derive from Augustine or Thomas, I think will not be sufficiently comprehensible to those who have experienced real and severe “evil” in their lives.  Of course in a certain thought construct we can speak of evil  “as the absence of a good that ought to be there” (p. 56) but I suspect this approach will not be entirely persuasive to a victim of rape, genocide, racism, and so on. But I would agree that evil is indeed both powerful and mysterious, and so we may need to wait longer for the type of response that may better address the needs of these victims of extreme evil.

However, F’s treatments of structural evil in both chapter 2 and chapter 4 are exceptionally well done and open up new avenues for reflection on how the Church can be sinful in very concrete ways, such as the sexual abuse crisis, without losing its holiness as a constitutive mark of being the true Church.  This also helps correct false or problematic ecclesiologies which F likens to a sort of “Docetism” viewing the church as “not really a human institution, but a purely divine institution merely appearing to be human” (76).  Contrasted with this error would be one on the other end of the theological spectrum, which he terms “ecclesiological naturalism” that “denies the real, continuing presence of God’s grace to the Church, [reducing it to] yet one human organization like any other, with all of the possibilities and flaws of any human society” (76).

In his concluding chapter, F references Rahner’s essay on “The Church of Saints” (Theological Investigations,v. 3, p. 94) on the tension in belief in the holiness of the Church as an act of faith, as belief, and as hope: “’God really has redeemed, he really has poured out his Spirit, he really has done mighty things for sinners, he has let his light shine in the darkness’” (175).  What F has admirably done is flesh out the reasonableness of this faith.  I recommend this book to all theologians and any adult who wishes to sort through the paradox in the words of Lumen gentium #8 of “the Church, embracing in its bosom sinners, at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, always follows the way of penance and renewal.”