Index VOTF-cd

CATHOLICISM IS NOT A TOP DOWN RELIGION
By
Eugene Cullen Kennedy

Pope Benedict XVI knows more theology than many of the bishops and militant Catholics who take his election as a signal that passive obedience is in for all believers and that discussion or what they brand as dissent is out and that you are, too, if you disagree with even the least regulation of Church life.

This feeling that the happy days of the Inquisition are here again may explain why Rockford Bishop Thomas Doran refuses to meet with members of the Catholic lay group, The Voice of The Faithful, and denies them permission to meet on church property. On Pentecost Sunday, celebrated by the faithful as the birthday of the Church, Doran also instructed priests at the Cathedral of St. Peter to deny the Eucharist to Voice of The Faithful members wearing small multi-colored ribbons signifying support for gay Catholics. Archbishop Harry Flynn of Minneapolis-St. Paul issued a similar edict to bar anybody wearing a multi-colored sash of spiritual solidarity with gays from the Eucharist, asserting that sash wearing was a protest against Church teaching on homosexuality.

This eager embrace of authoritarianism by some bishops matches the raw hubris of Catholic League head William Donahue's declaration that "The malcontents really have to make up their minds now….Why stay when you're not wanted?" Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Russell Shaw compares the recent dismissal of Jesuit Thomas Reese as editor of America magazine to discharging a military officer who refuses to follow the orders of his superiors.

These arrogant and punitive attitudes and actions are based on a misconception of Catholicism that, howsoever traditionalist he may be, the new theologian Pope understands to be outside both the teachings and the traditions of the Catholic Church.

This is not then a moment of the bishops' return to absolute control over unquestioning and submissive communicants. It is rather one in which their own knowledge of theology and tradition will be severely tried in the fire of their relationships with millions of Catholics who know at least as much and often more theology than they do.

The Catholic Church is not, nor has it ever been, a top-down organization. Vatican II's renewal of its understanding of itself as a People of God rather than a triumphant army or overpowering institution affirms the vital participatory role that all Catholics play in their Church.

Almost as old as the Church is the formulation that if you want to know what the Church teaches, you must look at what its community believes and how it prays. The morality of an action can be ascertained, according to another ancient tradition, by asking "What do the majority of healthy faithful (sanior et major pars fidelium) believe on this issue?" What ordinary Catholics, rather than just officials, believe remains a crucial determinant of how we understand Catholic teaching.

This dynamic sense of how laws and regulations must be examined in the light of the human experience of conscientious Catholics is best expressed in what has long been accepted as one of the munera, or gifts, of the Church, the canonical doctrine of Reception. Described in the twelfth century by Gratian who based his work on such figures as the fifth century St. Augustine, Reception means, according to Canon Lawyer James A. Coriden of the Washington Theological Union, "that for a law or rule to be an effective guide for the believing community it must be accepted by the community."

The soundness of Catholic teaching is not tested against the findings of highly trained scientists but against the human experience of everyday Catholics. The Church has always recognized that no law can have substance or be put into effect, no matter how much abstract institutional authority is invoked or how much power is applied, if it does not make sense to or does not match what ordinary good people have learned about it in the real world of time and chance.

This follows St. Thomas Aquinas's definition of the law as "an ordination of reason for the common good promulgated by one who has care of the community." As Father Coriden explains that "The regulation of the life of the Church community is never entirely outside of that community. Thus the community has a share in its own care, in its own direction toward its common good. One way in which it plays that part is by accepting or rejecting the laws promulgated for its use." Reception is the name we give to this vital ongoing process.

The Church has never taught that every regulation must be accepted in the same way. While the divinity of Christ is to be held by all Catholics, many questions remain open to discussion and theological development, including such disciplinary matters as clerical celibacy and the possibility of women priests. Nor can the Church successfully impose regulations or teachings on believers without attending to their conscientious reactions. The latter often validate but sometimes invalidate even precepts or interpretations of Catholic teaching offered by popes. Pope John XXIII's encyclical Veterum Sapientiae prescribing the restoration of Latin as the teaching language in seminaries was never received by the believing Church. Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae restating the ban on birth control has never been received fully by the believing Church. Pope John Paul II's effort to make his 1994 letter rejecting women priests has never been fully accepted by believers. That is why the discussion on both issues continues. Theologians see these as examples of how the doctrine of Reception works.

Bishops who refuse to meet with or listen to such groups as The Voice of The Faithful not only reject relating to their own Catholic people but set themselves against the Catholic tradition that recognizes the indispensable role carried out by Catholics in evaluating ecclesiastical laws and regulations according to their own hard bought experience of life. The bishops' justification of their denial of the Eucharist to Catholics wearing symbols of support for homosexual Catholics because it supposedly challenges Church teaching thereby violate the teaching and tradition that looks for guidance in the judgments of Catholics when issuing such regulations.

By welcoming gay relatives into their lives and supporting them with their affection, everyday Catholics tell their Church something they have learned from life. By receiving gays lovingly they refuse to receive the harsh judgments and arrogant self-righteous behavior of Church officials who, if anything, seem to protest too much when they offer a paternalistic blessing but not the Body and Blood of Christ to homosexuals who present themselves for the sacraments.

Bishops thereby manifest not only a failed pastoral sense but a failed sense of the community's long recognized role in separating the wheat from the chaff of Catholic teaching. They lessen their already severely compromised authority by using such authoritarian tactics.

Ordinary Catholics are not out to overthrow their bishops. Their own theological sophistication deepens their consciousness of being the Church rather than being the subjects of churchmen. The most serious challenge facing bishops is not to keep gays away from the Eucharist or women away from the altar but to learn as much theology as the new Pope so they can have real conversations with their believing people whose life experience is, according to the doctrine of Reception, the acid test of all Church teaching.