Summary of points:
A. There is a problem of authority in the church today.
B. Why is there a problem?
C. How do people respond to the authority problem?
D. What is the reaction of the hierarchical church in general?
E. What is the reaction of the hierarchical church to falling numbers in the American Catholic Church?
F. How should those of us working for reform react?
A. There is a problem of authority in the Church today, obviously in moral issues.
In 1992 in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, John Paul II
recognized what he called “a genuine crisis in the Church caused by the
fact that teachers of moral theology, even in seminaries, often disagree
with official Church teachings.”
And he went on to say, “Not only is it
theologians, but many other people in the Church also disagree.” So he
was willing to recognize that this was a crisis and a problem.
An interesting study was done by Bill D’Antonio and a group of
Catholic sociologists. They have been conducting polls of Catholics from
1987 to 2011, raising the same questions each time.
And one basic
question has been: “Who should have the final say about what is right or
wrong: church teaching, individuals, or both?”
The percentage of
respondents saying the Church leaders should have the final decision in
these matters have decreased since the poll was first taken in 1987.
On
most of the questions asked, over 50% of the respondents maintain that
the individual should have the final say.
So it’s not simply a question
of theological dissent, but there are many Roman Catholics in practice
who disagree with moral teachings of the Catholic Church.
There are other authority issues in the Church: the pedophilia problem; celibacy; above all, the role of women in the Church.
In the last two years, a number of priest groups in various places in
the world have come together to try to change many of these things.
For example, a group of Austrian priests, now representing more than
10% of all the priests in Austria, issued a very strong initiative
entitled, Appeal to Disobedience.
They said in the
light of what was not happening in the Catholic Church, it was necessary
for them to disobey rulings of the bishop and the pope:
• The signers will not deny Communion to people of good will,
especially divorced and remarried people, and members of other churches.
• They will avoid, as much as possible, celebrating multiple times on
Sunday liturgies, because the bishops think this is the only way to
deal with the shortage of ordained ministers in the Church.
• They will ignore the prohibition of preaching by competently trained lay people, including women.
• They will advocate for a married clergy, including women priests.
Obviously this is a VERY STRONG statement. What ultimately will happen here nobody knows?
Second example: The Irish Association of Catholic Priests.
They support in a statement at their opening meeting:
• Full implementation of the vision and teaching of Vatican II, with
special emphasis on the primacy of the individual conscience,
• The status and active participation of all the baptized,
• The task of establishing a Church, who are all believers, who will be treated as equals.
In particular they support a number of issues:
o The redesigning of the ministry of the Church to incorporate the gifts of all male and female.
o A re-structuring of the governing system of the Church based on service, not on power.
o Encouraging at every level the culture of consultation and transparency.
o A reevaluation of Catholic sexual teaching and practice that
recognizes the profound mystery of human sexuality and the experience
and wisdom of God’s people.
The Church in Ireland has come a long way.
But it’s interesting that
it’s priests groups who are recognizing the problem. So that’s the first
point; doesn’t need much proof.
There is a problem of authority in the
Church today.
B. Why is there a problem?
There’s no doubt that at Vatican II, and subsequently, the Church
changed so much of our thinking and our ideas. But the basic problem has
been that Church law and structures HAVE NOT changed.
Three aspects:
• The understanding of the Church itself.
• What Vatican II said about the role of bishops.
• The role of lay people in the Church.
1. First of all, the understanding of the Church
Lumen gentium was a marked change from the older
understanding of the pre-Vatican II Church. We used to say that the
Church was a perfect society.
The document on the Church started out by
saying the Church is a mystery; the Church is a sacrament.
And then it
used nine biblical metaphors to understand the Church. The primary
emphasis was not on the Church as an institution. In fact, the Church is
the people of God!
Only later in the document does it talk about the
hierarchical structure in the church. That is the teaching!
But,
unfortunately, the Code of Canon Law that came out in the early 1980’s,
and subsequent actions, have really gone back to the old model of the
Church.
The Swiss Italian canon lawyer, Eugenio Corecco very strongly
points out that the new Code of Canon Law does not give primacy to what
he calls the ecclesiology of communio. This is a communion of all the
baptized.
But instead more often than not it sees the Church as a
societas, a society with office holders.
Ladislas Orsy, a well known canonist, now at Georgetown, and 91 years
old, and going strong, is even stronger in his criticism of the code
and contemporary policies for not incorporating the centrality of the
communion ecclesiology.
Unfortunately today, Church law and structure
continues to stress the centralization of power and authority in the
papacy; and there has been no structural change.
2. Now, secondly, in regards to the role of bishops in the Church
What Vatican II rightly did was to stress the collegiality of
bishops.
All the bishops together with the pope have a concern for the
total Church, and a role to play in leading the total Church; and that
each individual bishop in one’s own diocese is by one’s own ordination
is not a vicar of the pope, but is truly a bishop of the diocese, who
again has solicitude for the total Church as well.
(Vatican I taught
only about the Petrine primacy and infallibility; and then, when the
armies came into Rome in the 1870, they had to call it all off.)
But
then Vatican II rightly stressed that you had to balance it out with the
role of bishops in the Church.
Unfortunately, however, the canonical
legal structures have not put that understanding of Vatican II into
effect.
So we have a problem there.
Let me quickly illustrate this change
with regard to dissent in moral matters.
In 1967 the West German bishops
explicitly recognized, “This teaching authority of the Church can and
on occasion actually does fall into errors.”
That non-infallible
teachings involve a certain element of the provisional, even to the
point of being able of including error.
The United States bishops, with a
real help from John Francis Cardinal Dearden, had that in their
document in 1968 talked about the legitimacy of theological dissent when
three conditions are met.
You haven’t heard a conference of bishops in
the last 30 years make similar statements — just to indicate the change
that has occurred.
3. The role of lay people in the Church
With regard to lay people in the Church – the document on the Church
said, “All the baptized share in the priestly teaching and ruling
function of Jesus.”
But unfortunately, the Code of Canon Law is very bad
on “the role of lay people in the Church.”
Canon 129 1. Those who have received sacred orders
are qualified according to the norm of the prescripts of the law for the
power of governance which exists in the Church by divine institution
and is also called the power of jurisdiction.
2. Lay members of the
Christian faithful can cooperate in the exercise of this same power
according of the norm of the law.
Yes, they can cooperate in it, but they don’t participate in it. In
other words THEY CANNOT HAVE governing power in the Church.
The result
of all of this, then, is a continued centralization of the Church in the
papacy.
John O’Malley from Georgetown, a brilliant historian of many
things in the millennium, wrote an article that said, “What has been the
greatest change in the Church in the second millennium of its
existence?”
And his answer was, “Without any doubt, it was the
papalization of the Church.”
C. How do people respond to the authority problem?
First of all, with regard to moral issues, there is what has been
called the internal forum solution, or the solution of conscience.
Let’s
face it, the vast majority of Catholic women practice contraception in
marriage, but they and their husbands have made up their minds they can
do this, and still be loyal Roman Catholics.
And who knows the
difference?
The same thing is happening, in many cases, in regard to
divorced and remarried people.
The same thing is happening, in some
places, with regard to gay marriage and gay people.
People that have
decided in their own conscience they can disagree with Church teaching
and still consider themselves loyal Roman Catholics.
I wholeheartedly
support that understanding; but it does create a credibility problem for
the Church. How can your teaching be credible in many of the other
areas, when many of your own people don’t go along with it in other
areas?
You can’t solve structural problems in the internal forum. Structural
problems have to be solved by putting a new structure in place – women
priests, married priests, whatever it might be.
You can’t solve that in
the forum of conscience. Some people can try, but then the Church
authorities will say, ‘Well, you’re no longer in the Church.”
But you
see the problem: you can solve the internal moral issues in the forum of
the conscience; you can’t with regard to the structural problems.
But there’s a third option how people react; and that is to leave the
Church; and this has been pointed out in the famous Pew Study, the Pew
Research Center; their study, which was published about 2009.
Basically,
what they said was: one out of three people born and raised in the
Catholic Church is no longer a Roman Catholic today. One out of ten
people in the United States is an ex-Catholic.
D. What about the reaction of the hierarchical Church?
How has the hierarchical Church dealt with this fact of the number of
people who have left the Church? With regard to moral issues Church
authority is obviously aware of the practice of some Catholics. You
can’t not be aware of it!
But this authority strongly rejects public
dissent by theologians – might leave the door somewhat open for quiet
dissent; but also there’s been no change whatsoever in regards to these
teachings. And, in fact, they have continued to be repeated.
There was always the recognition of human frailty; the fact that
people will never live up to the fullness.
In fact, this is what has
really been a horrendous effect of putting all this emphasis on the law,
because you distorted an important part of the Roman Catholic tradition
here, and that is the forgiveness of God for the sinner.
The law is a
blunt instrument: it’s got no place for forgiveness.
Then the question is raised, “Why are church authority, why are
popes, unwilling to change on issues such as contraception?”
I mean if
98%, the Goodmaker Institute says, of good Catholic married people
practice contraception,” why is the Church unwilling to change? And we
have to deal with this issue.
And I’m sure that power is part of the
whole thing; but I also think it is important that we try to recognize
what is the strongest argument that those of us who disagree can
propose? So what is the strongest argument that can be proposed as to
why the Church and the pope should not change Catholic moral teachings?
In the document on Humanae Vitae in 1968 Paul VI said that, “Yes, people
are proposing all of these arguments; but I couldn’t change the
teaching, because this has been the constant teaching of Church
authority.”
How do you respond to that argument?
There’s a number of points could be made.
• The Church has claimed too much certitude for its positions. If it
only said every time it taught it, this is a non-infallible teaching.
And, even then, non-infallible is circa locuta. What does it obviously
mean? Fallible! Problem solved. We claim too much certitude for it and
now we are suffering. We did not properly label what that teaching
involved.
• Church authority has changed its teachings on a number of moral
issues. I mentioned before that, in my judgment, the role of women is
probably the most significant difficult internal issue today. But in the
history of the whole Christian Church, there is nothing worse than our
teaching accepting slavery. It was really only in the 19th century that
we finally came to say that slavery is wrong. For 19 centuries we didn’t
do that; and look at the horror that it caused so many people. So, we
have been wrong on many other issues as well.
• We admitted that we had to change our teaching on religious freedom.
• We admitted long ago that we changed our teaching on usury. In fact
the Catholic Church condemned usury, which is taking interest on a
loan. We condemned that for 16 centuries, and, unlike artificial
contraception, had a scripture quote to prove it. Luke says, “Lend,
expecting nothing in return.”
But the Catholic Church changed. In the
16th century there were three papal documents saying usury is a sin,
taking interest on a loan. A century later everybody was doing it.
• We changed our teaching, for example, with regard to the meaning of
marital sexuality and the criteria for marital sexuality. The early
Church, with Augustine for example, said that there was always venial
sin involved with sexual intercourse; but then, interestingly enough, we
said so the only thing that justified sexual intercourse was
procreation.
But then we gradually realized that there was another end
of marriage: love, union, and that sexual intercourse helped those two
ends of marriage: procreation and love union.
But then, interestingly
enough, that innovator, Pius XII, comes along and says not only do you
not have to intend procreation, but you can even try to prevent it by
using the rhythm system. Now that’s a huge development; a huge change.
One of the primary reasons why Church authority is afraid to change
it is, because, if you change on this issue, you’re going to have go
change on other issues; and you’re going to open the door – Pandora’s
box.
E. What is the reaction of the hierarchical Church to falling numbers in the American Catholic Church?
If your organization, your business, your group lost one-third of its
members, wouldn’t you try to do something about it? The American
Catholic Church has barely mentioned the problem, let alone done
anything about it.
On a worldwide scene, including the American scene, they do recognize
there’s a problem.
In fact, no one has recognized the problem more than
Benedict XVI. Benedict XVI, from the day he became pope, and much
sooner, pointed out the problems of Europe: that the Catholic Church was
dying in Europe. He wasn’t denying the facts. He recognized them, and
pointed out the problem, as we’ve got to do something about it. That’s
why he even took the name Benedict, because what Benedict had done for
civilization in his time, we now had to do for European civilization in
his time.
So, to his great credit, he has recognized the problem, and
has tried to deal with it.
Unfortunately I don’t think he has dealt
adequately with the problem.
In 2010 the pope announced the formation of a new department – if you
want to call it that – in the Roman Curia: the Pontifical Council for
Promoting the New Evangelization.
And Benedict is the last one to start a
new bureaucracy, because, as you know, he is opposed to most
bureaucracy, but he thought it important to start this new council for
promoting the new evangelization. Its task is to promote a renewed
evangelization in the countries where the first proclamation of the
faith has occurred long ago, but are now “experiencing a progressive
secularization of society and an eclipse of a sense of God.”
He blames
the whole problem on secularization. Now, a year later, he addressed the
participants of the plenary assembly of this new pontifical council and
repeated the same basic themes: “The crisis comes from those countries
that were long ago evangelized, but now are losing many of their
members.”
And, in fact, in 2012 there will be a 13th Ordinary Synod of
Bishops on this precise topic of the New Evangelization.
And in preparation for it, the Vatican has sent out a working paper –
they call it an instrumental laborus, but it’s a working paper of what
they should discuss. But, here again, the primary problem is
secularization; and this is a huge problem.
So most of the documents say
the problem with the Church losing numbers is the secularization out
there.
Now even in this instrumental laborus draft working document,
they give one paragraph of about seventy talking about, “Well there
might be some internal Church problems causing it, and they are:
• Weak faith,
• The imperfect witness of Christians and bureaucratic structures,
• Routine liturgical celebrations, and even,
• The counter witness of some Christians.
But there is nothing wrong that the hierarchical Church has done. And that’s the problem.
F. How should those of us working for reform react?
There are no easy answers. I will suggest to recognize again the
Church is mediation. To me, one of the greatest of Catholic theological
traditions is its emphasis on mediation, the divine is mediated in and
through the human.
The best of the Catholic theology said, “I don’t belong in the Church
because I like the minister, because I like the music, because I like
the people. I do it because this is the way God has come to me through a
community, and I am to go to God through this community.”
And that’s
why one belongs to the Church.
Don’t forget the positive things the Church does.
• These edited highlights of Charles Curran’s address at the
Central Methodist Church, Detroit, USA on 11 September 2012 were
published on New Catholic Times Sensus F’s facebook page. Submitted for
publication by Mary O. Vallely.