Michael J. Wrenn
“Rene Laurentin has now turned his attention to the two Infancy Gospels with the sound scholarship, perceptiveness and deep spiritual penetration which characterize his work. . . . With this book the Infancy Gospels are restored to us with a new life.”
— Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the Preface to Laurentin’s book
The book had been “crowned” by the French Academy. Jean Guitton of the Academy hailed it as a work of genius. The second French edition contained a laudatory preface by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, President of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. At a time when biblical scholarship has attracted tremendous attention and controversy, Father Rene Laurentin had produced a masterpiece: The Truth of Christmas, Beyond the Myth, The Gospels of the Infancy of Christ (St. Bede’s Publications; Petersham, MA 01366).
Why is it, then, that some scholars did not want Father Laurentin’s book in print? Why did some people oppose our efforts to publish an English translation?
The history of our efforts, and the many vicissitudes we encountered in seeking a publisher for our English translation, should serve as a warning. Future generations of biblical specialists, and ordinary lovers of the Word of God, may realize the heavy price that Father Laurentin, his translators, and even a courageous publisher had to pay before this book could see the light of day.
First a bit of background. Father Laurentin’s book is a very valuable contribution to scriptural exegesis both in Europe and in the United States. It should be a source of important new knowledge for three reasons: (1) It does away with those illusory presuppositions which tend to weaken one’s faith; (2) it restores the historical reality of the infancy of Christ; and (3) it manifests the divine reality of the Incarnation, since this reality vanishes if the admirable historical dimensions of these Gospels are downplayed. Along with several colleagues, I undertook to translate this important book into English.
In March 1983, we received a modest grant from a Catholic foundation (DeRance), which covered payment for eight translators who could produce an English version of this important contribution to biblical scholarship. Since we sought to make the book available in English as quickly as possible, the eight of us translated the entire work within five months; another three weeks were given over to editing and correcting the translation so that it would be ready for a publisher.
We had secured a foundation grant for translation expenses because we believed that, in all likelihood, most American publishers would not be willing to assume those expenses for such a monumental work. By providing an editor with the translation gratis, we thought, we would give him an added incentive to accept the work for publication. In our view, the book should have been almost irresistible to a suitable publisher.
That notion could not have been more mistaken. The editor of a leading publishing house indicated that, although he agreed with a number of Father Laurentin’s findings, it would not be politic for him to publish this book, because Laurentin seriously questioned many of the theories of people whom he had been publishing for years. These authors, he feared, would consider it a personal offense if he published Laurentin; in all likelihood they would no longer choose to publish with him in the future.
The second publishing house we contacted expressed tremendous interest, even to the point of having one of their editors meet and speak at great length with Father Laurentin. But this editor, who expressed such a desire to publish the work, ultimately would refuse to do so. He indicated that he personally feared that when he would have to defend his doctoral dissertation, a couple of years hence, some members of his examining board would look unfavorably upon him for having published Laurentin.
As we trudged about the Northeast Corridor, and elsewhere, seeking a publisher for The Gospels of the Infancy, we endured some bizarre episodes. One publisher observed that he was very much interested in Father Laurentin’s thesis. “I have for quite a long time seriously questioned the whole relevance of the deus-ex-machina device invented by the Germans known as `Q,’” he stated. About six or seven weeks after we sent him the manuscript, this publisher wrote us a letter, indicating that he had two readers go through Laurentin’s work, and that in their view the American Catholic exegetical community would never accept this book; thus it would be a failure.
In a subsequent phone conversation, this gracious gentleman further revealed that his impressions were not solely based on the work of his two reviewers. He had also received, unsolicited, a pre-publication review of the French edition — a review which was slated to appear in a forthcoming issue of a biblical journal. He made it quite clear that he had not asked for this review — that it came totally unsolicited. Once again, the book had been reviewed unfavorably.
Interestingly enough, our travails in trying to find a publisher were not unique. A similar fate almost befell the translation into French of a very significant contribution to the ongoing debate regarding the dating and language of the New Testament, a book by the late Anglican Bishop John A.T. Robinson. This book casts serious doubts on a number of theories that are espoused in some of the ruling circles of international scriptural exegesis. Actually, a publisher in France literally purchased the rights for the French translation of Redating the New Testament in order to prevent its publication. Only now has it been translated into French in its final form — this translation having been prepared by a former professor at the Pontificial Archdiocesan Catechetical Institute, the Princess Marie deCroy de Merode of Belgium.
For my own part, I grew up in the Parish of St. Jerome, in the South Bronx. The first book I read was that still-timely classic, The Little Engine That Could. I absorbed the stick-to-it-iveness and industry that characterized that post-war neighborhood, where one learned to play handball without gloves with the best of them. Later in life I successfully established a graduate school of religious studies at St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, at a time when such pontifical and/or diocesan catechetical institutes were being denounced as bastions of arch-conservatism at national meetings of Catholic educators. All these experiences steeled me for the battle; I remained undaunted in my efforts to find a publisher for The Truth of Christmas, Beyond the Myths, The Gospels of the Infancy of Christ.
One morning about, eighteen months after our translation had been completed, we received a telephone call from St. Bede’s Publications, a small publishing house run by Benedictine Nuns located in Petersham, Massachusetts. Mother Mary Clar and Father Cyril Karam, O.S.B. said they would be very much interested in publishing the work. During the summer of 1984 they visited with Father Laurentin, who was lecturing at the Archdiocesan Catechetical Institute at Dunwoodie. They accepted the manuscript for publication on the spot.
One final detail should be mentioned, because it reveals a great deal about the state of Catholic biblical scholarship today — not just in this country but, as the troubled translation of the Robinson book illustrates, in other parts of the world as well. Readers of Father Laurentin’s work will find in the translator’s. preface a list of the people who assisted in the work of translation. Only six other names are on that list. Yet there was a seventh member of the translating team who assisted me. Why is he not listed? Amazing, but true: He asked that his name be omitted because he feared professional reprisals from peers in the field here in the United States.
Even before its final publication, Father Laurentin’s masterpiece has been the object of some rather virulent name-calling and totally unscholarly polemics. Why? Quite simply because we are beginning to see — not only in the United States but especially in France and Germany — a number of biblical scholars who are having second thoughts about a certain type of methodology, which has been used not only by German liberal Protestant exegetes, but also, in recent decades, by a number of Catholic exegetes. Those who use this methodology have not yet realized that some of the philosophical presuppositions underlying it do not square with Christian revelation. (This recalls particularly the influence of Idealism and Rationalism on certain liberal German Protestant schools of exegesis.)
The methodology in question, of course, is the historical-critical method. Or, to be more precise, the monopolistic use of the historical-critical method, to the exclusion of every other means of scriptural analysis.
The importance of this more inclusive approach to Scripture was highlighted by one of the most renowned and respected of today’s scripture scholars, Andre Feuillet, S.S., in his work Jesus and His Mother:
But what imposes itself as an absolutely necessary preliminary is a radical purification of the exegetical methods that have led to a lamentable result: the total historical devaluation of the Infancy narratives of St. Matthew and St. Luke. There is in our day a strange tendency which abuses comparisons with the Old Testament in order to depreciate the history of salvation, especially gospel history. The fact that such or such a detail of the childhood of Jesus, of the Baptism, of the Transfiguration, of a miracle of Jesus, of the dialogue with the Samaritan woman, etc., reminds us of certain Old Testament narratives does not authorize us to conclude scientifically to a mere theological construction elaborated from traditional motifs. Such a method opens the door to all sorts of fantasies and to negations carrying the most serious consequences. It is high time we began reversing the process.
Feuillet continues by pointing out that many of the scholars whose pioneering work opened the frontiers of modern scriptural exegesis, such as Lagrange, Alto, DeGrandmaison, Huby, Prat, and Lebreton, were they alive today, would be “aghast” at the facility and levity with which some modern Catholic exegetes — who claim to be continuing their pioneering work — treat the Gospel narratives. In the view of some contemporary scriptural scholars, the Infancy narratives seem to be nothing more than a set of theological constructions, doctrinal edifices built by the evangelists themselves. As Feuillet observes, “Such a position, which prides itself on being objective and scientific, in reality is neither, for it disregards completely the intention, so clearly expressed both by St. Luke and by St. John, to provide a foundation for Christian faith in reliable facts and real intervention of God in history, and not fabrications of their minds and imaginations.”
What Father Feuillet called for in 1974 — at least as it applies to the Infancy narratives — has been realized in The Truth of Christmas. Father Laurentin does not dismiss historical-critical analysis; rather, he argues that the excessive, exclusive utilization of that method is counter-productive. Used in conjunction with other means of exegesis, the historical-critical method is a valuable new tool. Used exclusively by itself, it is counterproductive; it obscures rather than clarifies the message of the Gospels. Father Laurentin himself makes use of the historical-critical method. But he also draws on the full range of tools available to Scriptural scholars, from the writings, of the Church Fathers’to the modern science of semiotics.
In France the voices of Claude Tresmontant in his The Hebrew Christ, Father Jean Carmignac in his The Birth of the Synoptic Gospels, the concerns expressed by Bishop Thomas of Ajaccio in Corsica, and the works of Father Laurentin — all have resulted in a broadside against these scholars by Father Pierre Grelot, one of the leading scriptural scholars in France. Once again, the polemical tone of his work is truly unworthy of someone so gifted in his ability to research and explain the Word of God.
Recently a mutually vituperative and polemical exchange between Father Grelot and M. Pierre Debray in a French Catholic weekly has given way to a reconciliation of views between these two gentlemen and an agreement that, yes, this Catholic layman’s concerns about the hypotheses being set forth as scientific facts were indeed something that could cause — and had caused — tremendous difficulty in France and elsewhere. In short, both of these men agreed that hypotheses should not be presented as certitudes.
Might the muscular pre-publication maneuverings against Father Laurentin’s book, and the subsequent negative treatments of it, be motivated not by purely scientific concerns but rather by that feeling of dread and worry that must come into the minds of theoreticians when they see their own theories and hypotheses seriously and scientifically threatened?
Father Rene Laurentin recently observed to me, with a twinkle in his eye, that he deeply regretted his inability to secure from his government the Croix de Guerre for my efforts in translating and finding a publisher for his work — and the Legion d’honneur for the other translator known only to God and to myself. But I told him that he should not feel badly; our efforts were really their own reward. They were also a personal tribute to Father Laurentin — for many years one of the world’s most renowned students of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a distinguished theologian and phenomenologist of the miraculous. The translation was also an expression of gratitude, on behalf of the hundreds of students whom he has instructed during the course of some twenty summers at either the Marian Center in Dayton, Ohio, or the Pontifical Archdiocesan Catechetical Institute in Arlington, Virginia.
Father Laurentin is an honor to the Church which he so selflessly serves. May our translation, with all the many sad surprises it engendered, serve as a lasting tribute to him.