RIP Fr. Edmund Hill, O.P.
January 28, 2011, 4:17 pm
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
I just learned today that Fr. Edmund Hill, O.P., died last November 11th. Not as well known as he might have been, he deserves our lasting gratitude for his contributions to the project of publishing all of the works of St. Augustine. The most important of these were his versions of the Sermons, of “On the Trinity,” and “On Christian Teaching.” He made the sermons read like spoken sermons, not like lectures, and his notes to all three of his translations were illuminating and often very entertaining. Requiescat in pace.
Here is a memorial essay on Fr. Hill by Fergus Kerr, O.P., the present editor of New Blackfriars.
And we can be grateful also to Father John Rotelle, OSA, who tirelessly guided the translation of Augustine’s works for the Augustinian Heritage Institute. John Rotelle, who had served as director of the US Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy and as executive secretary of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy in the 1970s, died at Villanova in September 2002, aged sixty-three. In pace cum sanctis.
I loved Father Edmond’s translation of Augustine’s De Trinitate not only for its clarity but for its (sometimes) very amusing footnotes to the text.
RIP
My favorite selection from Fr. Hill:
“Magisterial papalist: operates with a pyramidal view of the church and sees authority as bestowed by Christ exclusively upon Peter and the apostles and through them on the pope and the bishops. Church structures are firmly clerical. There is a “magisterium” which is predominantly papal or Roman. Authority comes directly from heaven and is bestowed as a religious and moral charge to be exercised hierarchially. This view triumphed at the First Vatican Council.
Ministerial collegialist: holds that Christ’s authority is committed not only to the pope and bishops but to the whole Church. Papal centralization is a late historical development. The Church is a collection of local communities united in brotherhood. These local communities should be able to elect their own bishops, who share with each other and with the bishop of Rome responsibility for the governance of the whole Church. Authority is for the service of all. This view prevailed at the Second Vatican Council and might have become a reality had structures been devised to give it practical expression.
This was not to be. ”
Edmund Hill, O.P., “Ministry and Authority in the Catholic Church.”
It would be wonderful to have published a collection of Father Edmond Hill’s trenchant letters to The Tablet over the years. I suspect that the publisher would be best advised not to seek an imprimatur.
In paradisum deducant te angeli ….
Sorry. Edmund not Edmond, I believe.
Concidentally, I had been remembering him these last days while reading Lewis Ayres on “Augustine and the Trinity”. He was an excellent, spunky fellow, and his annotated translation of the De Trinitate is a treasure.
Every time I read an obit of such a man, I hope and pray that he has left behind younger generations who reflect the kind of faithful curiosity of intellect that he showed.
Thanks, John Page, for the correction of Fr. Hill’s first name. I’ve changed it above.
Here’s an example of the kind of sensible and illuminating notes that Fr. Hill could append to his translation. This one comments on Sermon 37, in which Augustine applied to the Church the praise of the valiant woman in Prov 31:10-31, but his remarks can be applied much more widely to Augustine’s use of the Scriptures:
“Augustine, to the entire satisfaction of his audience, treats the valiant woman throughout as a figure of the Church, and so is involved all the time in an allegorical interpretation of the text. About this I think a word needs to be said. The most important thing is to understand what he was actually about, what he thought he was doing. Now the obvious thing he was doing was preaching, and for Augustine this meant that he was acting, acting a part with his congregation, engaging not only their attention (which as the reader will observe sometimes wandered), but also their participation. And to do this he quite unashamedly used all the powers of his very vivid imagination. As exegesis of the inspired text, I am quite certain he did not take his off-the-cuff allegorical interpretation very seriously. He is engaging in a marvelous game, a very important game certainly, but still a game: to be played with all the skill and panache at one’s command (the skills of poetry and rhetoric above all), but with enjoyment, light-heartedly, in a spirit of experimentation, of trial and error. He certainly offers explanations of words and phrases at times that he could not possibly have sustained if he had had a more accurate text, or if he himself had been more professionally grounded in the science of biblical exegesis. That’s where he did not take himself too seriously, as I read him, and where we do not have to do so either. But all the same, I suggest that readers will be making a big mistake if they refuse, with a kind of intellectual primness, to allow Augustine’s flights of fancy, absurd or extravagant as they may sometimes be, to kindle their own imaginations. Imagination is a faculty very seriously underrated by professional theologians and exegetes. [Sermons, vol. II, 201-202]
Warmest thanks for an introduction to a remarkable character and and one I seem so far to haved quite missed! You have sent me off to Amazon to try to repair some of the loss.