Will it sell in Utrecht?
Coleman, John A.
THE SYNOD IN ROME WAS NO DUTCH TREAT Will it sell in Utrecht? JOHN A. COLEMAN AN ARTICLE which appeared in the French newspaper, Le Monde, some weeks before the recently completed Dutch...
...Incumbents of roles within the church are all seen, in different positions within the hierarchical pyramid, as agents of the church...
...Dutch Catholic and Protestant press reaction has been uniformly negative, if not pessimistic and despairing...
...One wonders whether the authors of the synodal document ever read the remarkable brochure-length Christmas letter of the Dutch episcopacy written in 1960 where this collegial model is brilliantly set out...
...As wags put it, "If a bishop sneezes in Groningen you will feel its reverberations in Roermond...
...The Dutch bishops alone among their countrymen seem to have exhibited any enthusiasm for the final synodal document containing forty-six directives mandating far-reaching changes...
...Throughout the synod, Pope John Paul II noted that the deliberations were of importance to the whole world church...
...At any rate, I hope the Dutch bishops fare better than the Orthodox bishops who returned, in euphoria, from the Council of Florence to Armenia, Byzantium and Greece with the glad tidings of a new-found communion with Rome...
...Despite Utopian speculations from various camps, it was clear from the outset that no bishop, including Gijsen, would be removed from his see...
...To preach revelation in time-bound formulae is a near guarantee that it will not be heard or that it will be misunderstood...
...Meanwhile, on issue after issue which have come before the Dutch public—from ecumenical cooperation to a pastoral approach to the Catholic homosexual or the Catholic divorcedremarried, the advisability of pastoral councils and the moral responsibility of Catholic politicians to determine for themselves the concrete common good on specific legislation regarding abortion—Gijsen has publicly repudiated his fellow bishops and, in several nationally featured interviews, insinuated that his fellow bishops are disobedient rebels...
...Both communion and mission are equally constitutive and simultaneously given marks of the church...
...It will not be easy after twenty years of episcopal inculcation of an alternative view of the church...
...paragraph 24 with its paternalistic model of the bishop as "father" to priestly sons and the curious warning against any independent association of priests...
...It does not, in any way, 14 March 1980: 137 pre-exist as Christian community and, then, only subsequently engage in mission...
...3) a re-evaluation of lay ministers to insure they do not have'' a permanent function of global scope'' and that their distinction from ordained ministers is manifest...
...Although I purposely refrained from asking any questions about Gijsen, indeed assiduously avoided even mentioning his name, every middle-level national or diocesan administrator, without exception, in every diocese except Gijsen's own, heatedly asserted during the interview: "Gijsen is the problem...
...By almost any standard, the recent Dutch bishops' synod in Rome was typically un-Dutch...
...Make no mistake about it...
...The compactness of the country, its fabric of national Catholic organizations (schools, charity organizations, political party, labor union, news media etc...
...The Dutch synod represents drastic surgery, an abrupt about-face on twenty years of institutional development and the capitulation of the Dutch episcopacy to Rome...
...One of the current heretical tendencies in Roman Catholic thought is the attempt to isolate and separate inner-church and church-world models...
...4) a reevaluation of catechesis which will be based on the General Catechetical Directory and Roman documents...
...More to the point, it effectively submerged the pastoral and missionary vision of the church which informs the governing style of the Dutch pastoral bishops such as Den Bosch's Bluyssen and Breda's Ernst...
...14 March 1980: 139...
...There would be no longer any need for hermeneutics...
...Because of unique sociological conditions, the Dutch church—whatever the canon law—is primarily a national church and, only secondarily, a diocesan entity...
...If we shall try to hold the line against this development that will entail a disaster for the faithful and could lead many, once again, to leave the church...
...When communications between the members of the Dutch episcopacy finally irretrievably broke down and the polarizations of a decade or more standing grew intense, the Dutch bishops, themselves, came up with the idea of a unique national synod to be held in Rome together with the pope and selected members of the Roman curia...
...Paragraph 36 shows that there are fears in Rome that granting the laity "a permanent function of global scope" runs the risk of "the creation, of a parallel clergy which would be presented as an alternative to the priesthood and the diaconate...
...Feelings about Gijsen run extraordinarily high in the Netherlands...
...The Dutch are, perhaps, too hyper-sensitive about Rome, even to a fault...
...Lower agents in the hierarchy are dependent upon higher agents who more perfectly embody the system's purposes...
...Moreover, his traditionalist seminary will undergo collective episcopal scrutiny...
...Instead, the so-called Cardinal Baggio plan was launched which foresees the splitting of current dioceses or the naming of auxiliary bishops so as to expand the current seven to approximately thirteen bishops...
...Bella figura...
...Through some still unexplained process, Bishop Albert Deschamps, Honorary Rector of Louvain and, most recently, a judge in the Roman curial proceedings investigating Edward Schillebeeckx's orthodoxy as well as a visiting professor at reactionary Dutch Bishop Jan Gijsen's seminary in Rolduc, was added at the last minute to the secretariat of the synod alongside the previously announced moderate, Louvain professor J. Lescrauwaet...
...He is the author of The Evolution of Dutch Catholicism (U...
...The danger will be that the desire for a clarity on the character of ordination as opposed to lay calls to ministry might lead the prelates to forget the ancient dictum of sacramental theology, sacramenta suntpropter hominem, i.e., the sacraments exist for the good and the need of the concrete human person...
...How wonderful if revelation were so obvious as the document seems to suggest...
...its inter-twined and mobile network of church professionals—all these demand an especially close and collegial cooperation among the Dutch bishops...
...The world church will watch very closely the deliberations of the episcopal commission set up to determine the respective pastoral tasks of the priest, deacon and lay pastoral worker called for in paragraphs 35-36 of the document...
...If my assessment of Dutch Catholicism is at all valid, it will be a well-nigh impossible task...
...Stark choices are posited between St...
...The community is gathered in and for its sending...
...If Pope John XXIII was correct in distinguishing between the transcendent norm of faith and the formulas which express it and in insisting that the latter are always to a large extent the product of a definite culture, then the bishops can not separate, as they do in paragraph #5, "the content of revelation" from the hearers of the word...
...THERE IS abundant longitudinal sociological evidence about Dutch Catholicism, in part due to a national Catholic bureau of statistics and in part to periodic surveys conducted by the Netherlands Institute of Public Opinion...
...Paul's concern for "a love for God and for Christ, in the Spirit, which can contribute greatly to integrate the need for affection in fraternal love" and a "third way lived as an ambiguous state between celibacy and marriage...
...Moreover, the document pointedly omits the assertion that ' 'the faithful are not delegates of the bishops nor priests but are ministers of*Jesus Christ at the service of the ecclesial community...
...Unfortunately, the charism of baptism has a way of puncturing holes in this model of pyramidal authority...
...In what follows I want to sort out what I think is the significance of the synod for Dutch Catholicism and what for the world church...
...After a long pause and several hesitant aahs, he replied, "That is, of course, the question...
...This evidence makes clear that Gijsen's constituency can be reckoned at circa 5-10 percent of the population...
...One-sided attention to the church as communion, the focus of the synod agenda, is always potentially heretical...
...John and St...
...At the synod, the bishops of the church which was aptly described in the January, 1980 issue of Informations Catholiques Internationales as ,"the privileged locale of co-responsibility and adult lay initiative" turned their backs on both by opting for a highly clerical, one-sidedly hierarchical pyramid model of authority, jurisdiction and charism...
...Knowing that the complexion of Dutch theologians and the corps of religious professionals is overwhelmingly moderate to progressive, I asked a Dutch religious journalist friend where the bishops would find able and willing collaborators to aid in their operation of self-destruction of the collegial church...
...The difficulties of making precise demarcations on this point at this moment in history are obvious...
...At the very least a massive knowledge of the history of philosophy and theology seems necessary to understand centuries-old formulae correctly...
...That collegial collaboration— an expected part of the Dutch landscape at least since 1945— broke down in 1971 and 1972 when Rome named a conservaCommonweal: 136 tive, Adriann Sinonis, as bishop of Rotterdam and an archreactionary, Jan Gijsen, as bishop of Roermond...
...Unfortunately, however, there have been few bridges of compromise between the majority Dutch Catholic position and the intransigent conservatives who follow Gijsen's lead...
...By the time this article appears, the basic decisions of the Dutch synod will be already known: (1) a re-evaluation of Dutch Theological Centers to guarantee they are firmly under episcopal control and that all married former priests are removed from their faculties (Seemingly, laicized former priests do not have the rights of the ordinary laity...
...To the best of my knowledge, however, the declines in candidates for the celibate priesthood pre-date, worldwide, any new experimentation with lay ministry...
...2) The institution of what the document refers to as "true seminaries" for each diocese...
...Over the years he has effectively withdrawn his diocese from almost every national commission for the liturgy, catechesis, theological training, overseas mission work and ecumenism...
...The synod document, of course, does not deserve careful scrutiny...
...In the end, of course, the Dutch bishops must try to sell their people and co-workers in the ministry on their new-found vision of a pyramid structure for the church...
...Roman theology has generally had difficulty in conceptualizing any independent element in the church...
...Several points, however, bear noting...
...LIMITATIONS of space preclude any detailed exegetical analysis of the final synodal document to substantiate my kafka-esque impression that the Dutch bishops signed a document diametrically opposed to the collegial church they have spent twenty years in building...
...TJie problem is that influential members of the Roman curia have staked their reputation on his appointment...
...Otherwise, you end up, as the final document does, with abstract notions of revelation, charism and authority...
...The theology of ministry is still in process of being developed...
...This false separation is the root cause of the lack of both credibility and cogency in church pronouncements on justice, women, human community and the right to participation which are applied only ad extra...
...I recognized their intensity five years ago when I held extensive field interviews with all of the diocesan vicars and middle-level members of the national church bureaucracy for my book, The Evolution of Dutch Catholicism...
...As I recall my history, their people greeted them with stones...
...It is understood as something primarily "objective' ' with a clear ahistorical content, interpreted by the magisterium...
...It should also be public knowledge from the news reports that Bishop Gijsen had to make various minor concessions at the synod such as an agreement to rejoin his fellow bishops in the area of the Pontifical Missionary Works, the Lenten collection and the Dutch Missionary Week (Gijsen objected to the linkage of evangelization to development programs...
...Gijsen, particularly, has been the open sore on the Dutch episcopacy...
...Unfortunately, alsof, the Roman curia allied itself closely and openly during the past decade with the traditionalist camp...
...Nevertheless, enough well-documented stories (alongside the exaggerations) have appeared in the Dutch media in the past fifteen years to make any Dutchman at least cautious, if not suspicious, about Roman comprehension of Dutch sociological realities, if not also of Roman intentions...
...In the present climate of shortage of celibate priests in the Netherlands (and elsewhere), this right can not be honored without utilizing lay pastoral workers...
...I miss the insistence that revelation unites the subjectivity of the faith response of the human person with the transcendent presence of God, that revelation is always salvational, always existential, always addressed to concrete hearers of the word in a definite language, place and time...
...The synod document insists in paragraph #3 that "neither the bishops nor priests are delegates of the faithful but are ministers of Jesus Christ at the service of the ecclesial community.' ' No one can take exception to this claim and—to the best of my knowledge—no one in the Netherlands ever has...
...Two hours after returning to the country at the completion of the synod, Utrecht's John Cardinal Willebrands complained in an open meeting with his diocesan pastoral council that press reports of the synod were irresponsibly one-sided...
...Rather, Pentecost (the gathering-sending is simultaneous) is the birthday of the church...
...Any seasoned reader of the letters of the Dutch bishops over the past twenty years will read the synodal document with the growing incredulity of an Isaac: "The signers are the Dutch episcopacy indeed but the voice is the voice of another: the Roman curia and Roman theology...
...Germans analyze and defend it...
...Since it is not fashionable to use psychological models drawn from pathology to describe members of the episcopacy, few say openly in.print what almost everyone in the Netherlands says to one another in conversation and I, for one, credit: Bishop Gijsen is not a stable or psychologically well man...
...The Americans know how to package the truth and the Dutch make sure it gets into the public media...
...Despite these concessions, most Dutch Catholics greeted the synodal results with a jaundiced remark which noted that Queen Juliana announced her resignation from the throne on the same day that the synod ended:' 'Juliana has abdicated but Gijsen continues to rule...
...This pyramid model can be contrasted with a collegial model where hierarchy is acknowledged as essential to the constitution of the church, indeed, but as subordinate to the basic unity of the body and in dialogue with independent charisms which do not flow from orders or office...
...What kind of code of responsibility, however, could he credibly urge on journalists who were kept unaccustomedly in the dark and fed bland and unenlightening resumes of daily discussions...
...This abstract ahistorical approach reveals the clear signature of Roman theology...
...Vatican skirmishes first forbade, then allowed stringently limited access to the synod to H. Kowenhoven, press secretary for the Dutch episcopal conference...
...Surveys show that 88 percent of the Dutch Catholics have confidence in the prudent moderate experimentation and collegial style of the Dutch progressives...
...JOHN A. COLEMAN AN ARTICLE which appeared in the French newspaper, Le Monde, some weeks before the recently completed Dutch bishops' synod engaged in a game of national character types: "The French know how to discover the truth...
...Moreover, the shortage of clerical and celibate priests as well as a new appreciation of the lay charism have led many churches—besides the Netherlands one thinks of the church in Latin America and Africa and, increasingly, the United States—to experiment with new forms of lay ministry to meet real and pressing pastoral needs...
...of California...
...The usual openness and cordial relations with the press—a stance dictated by the vigorous, extensive, and autonomously lay-controlled network of Catholic media in the Netherlands—were replaced by the utmost secrecy...
...Clearly, the final synodal document had him uniquely in mind when it asserts in paragraph 14, section B that a bishop should "abstain from declarations which could harm a confrere in the episcopacy...
...The bishops treat of revelation in paragraphs 4-6 of their document...
...It is a mish-mash, theologically inconsistent and incoherent and filled with the strangest juxtapositions such as the one in paragraph 32 where the issue of the emotional integration of celibate members of religious orders is treated...
...Expect From the Synod," was captured in the slogan, "They are making decisions about us and for us but over our heads without any consultation with us...
...Commonweal: 138 Similarly, canon law proclaims a right of the laity to receive the sacraments...
...For months before the synod, the persistent complaint of group after group, in public gatherings or in a weekly feature of the Catholic newsmagazine, De Tijd, entitled, "What I Father JOHN a. COLEMAN, s.j., is associate professor of religion and society at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley...
...I would suggest that the writers of the synod document would have been helped if they had consulted the letter of the Dutch Bishops to Cardinal Ottaviani in 1966 where the bishops averred that "the faithful who do not understand what the ancient formulas mean find precisely in the new formulas the ancient unchangeable faith...
...The tone of paragraph 36 shows a curious conflation between the two notions of "office" and "ministry" which neglects the theology of charisms which are not bound to office or ordination...
...The community exists/or the world as a sacrament of possibility, hope and healing for this concretely given sinful world...
...Surely, there are many more intermediate (and one would hope more illuminating) points on this continuum...
...Rather, it sees every agent in the church—from pope through bishop to priest and layman—as subordinate and dependent upon the purposes of the whole...
...One would surmise that they represent a rather extensive set...
...You cannot—as the synod attempted to dodiscuss the appropriate pastoral response for the Dutch church without careful attention to Dutch political, social, cultural and structural realities...
...What is strange, however, is the way the document slips into assumptions that priests are delegates of the bishops (cf...
Vol. 107 • March 1980 • No. 5
