The `infallible' temptation

...In fact description is, paradoxically, to withdraw the Catholic church he pronounced them to be non-questions...

...To maintain that more than simply an aspiration...

...Jesus came something that we can point to, a community with The "fit" is as follows...

...Too often we have played the tune badly, and concluded thence that it is a bad tune...

...Read between the lines, the New The question now is: If Bermejo is correct, what is left...

...The unity the fast Christians sought my article...

...Our thinking about unity thus moves from "long-established The real lesson of Vatican II's spirit of ecumenism for fact," through "aspiration for the future," to "aspiration with Roman Catholics is that the claim to be the one true church is some present referent or sign...

...Put this condemned Newman...

...The word that immediately springs to mind is con- Lourdes...

...Take it away, and the Roman church loses its iden- must already be present in our time, be manifest, in some tity, and thus, paradoxically, its capacity to contribute to the form, however exiguous and hard to discern because of sin...

...It follows, "as the night the Prakash, Anand, India, 1984...

...church...

...The claim to be than in the past...

...What seems to be the main block is the doctrine substance of our faith, the way in which this came to pass was of papal infallibility, together with the notion that the pope has not...

...not by being the new Jerusalem...

...It was no part of Rome's charism to ogy...

...Yet Cruz infiltrated church and seen its numbers expand even more...

...10 October 1986: 525 Thus a vital constituent of the final result is the positive human reality and this call as a mere aspiration...

...But the ideologue is its poverty as sign of the end-time...

...Thus, to describe the proc- L ET us take another tack...

...In all but name, he from the ecumenical dialogue by denying its identity...

...amount of time...

...But if not by being it, what...

...When, for instance, Benedict XV The history of the Modernist crisis is instructive in this succeeded to anti-Modernist Pius X, one of his first statements regard...

...a not have a reasonable suspicion to stop the car Willis-Conger resolution constructed by a wise, humanitarian, and policyhad been driving...

...cils...

...While continuity is perhaps divided Christianity...

...He thus set Catholic scholarship back way, the question brings things to a head...

...there were a Court Judge Alfredo Marquez ruled that the border patrol did less polarized resolution available than the current no-win...

...10 October 1986: 527...

...structure and authority...

...Wrongly underfifty years, at a time when it needed to catch up by a least that stood, the "one true church" description ends the dialogue...

...Or may a Catholic, coherently with being a Catholic, The above consideration seems relevant to the question of regard his or her church simply as one of the fragments of a the meaning of one true church...

...Haughton finds this "bug" for unity and What then does it refer to, this claim to be the one true communion in people as diverse as Pascal and Bernadette of church...

...And the flow of undocumented Central Americans ruled improperly obtained...

...to give, in the barest outline, Bermejo's thesis, and then to jurisdiction...

...It anticipates, however inidentity requires a high tolerance of ambiguity - the simul- adequately, that final condition...

...If they took us to trial and lost, they would have looked tions assumedly with a fellow Christian believer - all became foolish...

...On July 20, 1984, U.S...

...One wishes...

...such original community as we thus nostalgically look back to It follows from this that the major premise for Vatican I's is to be found in what we know of Christian origins...

...But not for the his touch, the unique position of the pope in the church is used ideologue...

...A major task for contemporary from history - what Michael Novak memorably called Catholicism is to free itself from the ideological temptation...

...On the other hand, all the attention ently the prosecution conceded on record that Cruz's evidence on the court case has only broadened the movement's impact, was necessary to establish its case...

...One thing that tends to be supess as one of infallible pronouncement and consequently pas- posed by all reflective Christians is that the church was sive reception is fatally to distort history...

...What I am suggesting is some such definition as: The one That identity is a subtle one: to make present the future unity of true church shows the promised unity of all people in Christ as all in Christ in a world torn apart by sin...

...Rightly understood, it is essential to it...

...The problem called for much favored by the opponents of Modernism...

...He concluded, "People of faith won't be intimiinadmissible, then a new trial, without Cruz, would become dated by the verdict...

...And as historical scholarship progressively exposes the weak foundations of Vatican I, clarification of the meaning of "one true church" becomes an urgent necessity...

...UNITY, CONTINUITY...

...We tality that swallows up the empirical reality in a Grand Idea...

...The church recognition of it, by the whole church, as "what we believe...

...nonhistorical orthodoxy...

...The Holy Spirit is a lot subtler than that...

...sanctuary workers...

...The point is that the the congregational principle is organic to some other Christian unity toward which the Spirit of Christ impels all humanity churches...

...was just that, something sought...

...District shows no sign of going away either...

...But what is an appropriate Roman modesty...

...Gujarat Sahitya jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff...

...But continuity in what...

...this fuller humanity in the world...

...It didn't happen that originally one, before "our sad divisions" took place...

...This suggests an issued decrees that all accepted because of its authority to pronounce on matters of faith...

...This is the theme of Rosemary Haughton's book The Catholic church for vital insights into the mysteries of faith...

...guishes between the teaching church, ecclesia docens, and the learning church, ecclesia discens...

...Their logical basis is as THIS SUMMER, a colleague at Downside, Dom Gregory follows...

...The most serious confusion is between this Rometinuity...

...How have they come to be part and parcel of Catholic belief...

...If they won, they spent $2 million to publicize our criminal evidence...

...It does not refer to a superior wisdom or to a deeper people, outside as well as inside the Roman communion, to grasp of the mystery of Christ and of his Spirit...

...It was, rather, that a body of SEBASTIAN MOORE, O.S.B., is a monk of Downside Abbey presently bishops deliberated on a critical issue and reached a consensus, with the university chaplaincy and department of theology at Boston the content of which was eventually received by the whole College...

...It lay in the future, not in an Bermejo's devastating historical critique of conciliar and original constitution...

...no further adjective is massive problem of understanding Christian belief as partici- necessary...

...the salient feature in the appropriate Roman claim, the unity The answer to the first question would seem to be yes, and that it is the role of the church to represent is in the future rather the answer to the second, in consequence, no...

...Out of ideology is very dangerous...

...An applexities of a widespread church, finds ready-to-hand a men- propriate Roman modesty would enhance the real, Gospel power of the church in the world...

...It is a position let off the hook of the dangerous and beautiful thing he lived most vulnerable to that detester of ambiguity, the ideologue...

...THE CHURCH The `infallible' temptation SEBASTIAN MOORE examination of these two doctrines...

...But having a crack at the Paul people with their emphasis on faith . this wants a lot of spelling out - which is the main purpose of as the be-all and end-all...

...On the one hand, the sanctuary movement (4) Evidence...

...The idea does not daunt him...

...I am concerned to clear the notion of the one true church from the heavy overlay in which it has become encrusted, so that there might appear its validity and usefulness in a divided Christianity...

...My purpose in what follows is day," that the pope is infallible and possessed of universal...

...It is not passive...

...I am only concerned here with suggesting what are the grounds for this modesty...

...and died and rose again for...

...Why has the ecumenical movement councils are enshrined in the various creeds that are of the lost its vigor...

...For lack of clarity here, Catholics feel faced with the choice between intransigence and indifference...

...Are we any closer to the But the point is not to emphasize the papal mistake, but to correct understanding...

...Endemic and intrinsic to the Roman church is the Summa is subtly indebted to what Rome signifies...

...The continuity is in belief in "the between the visionary Summa Theologiae and a papal encycliwhole thing...

...First, all general councils are infallible, as regards Murray, lent and strongly recommended to me a book th,:ir solemn decrees...

...that has so far drawn little or no attention: Towards And Vatican I solemnly defined the infallibility and universal Christian Reunion by Luis M. Bermejo, S.J...

...It is travestied in the later analysis of the process that distin- Once again, the meaning of the one true church eludes us...

...Materials seized by the arresting officers, minded judiciary - which we have yet to see on this case...

...It does not exempt us from looking outside the ogise...

...His latest book is Let This Mind Be in You: The Quest for church, in a complex process, not without conflict, that could Identity through Oedipus to Christ (Seabury...

...Catholic scholars were facing anew and belatedly the was that it suffices to be "Catholic...

...slants on the experience...

...ecumenical dialogue...

...take a century or so to complete...

...It taneous sense of being at the center and of being powerless to represents a world that, once entered by Christ, will never be change many situations seen to be destructive...

...This will never be allowed to The combination of the papal position with the influence of translate the promise of Jesus into a mere aspiration...

...For him the authority he felt bound by was the her first millennium that saw the first seven ecumenical coun- authority of his experience - as with Luther...

...The paradigm for Christian origins is not papal infallibility, as these issues were handled by Vatican I, the founding of a society or the constitution of a religious forces me as a Catholic to ask the questions: Is there any sense order...

...discuss the main problem that it raises...

...Unfortunately this is what Pius somewhat...

...To imagine so would be to inflate the papacy from sign of the unity of all in Christ to achiever of that L FE r me recall the question I started with, and elaborate it unity (for the faithful) by fiat...

...It is not that the unity the church once had it the one true church is as organic to the Roman communion as still has - in the Roman communion...

...Brought at last to acknowledge that a dangerously oversimplified understanding of the notion was operative in Vatican I, we need good theological grounds for not abandoning it...

...Christian unity is supernatural in its source, and thus in which the church in communion with Rome is the one true imperfectly realized...

...Bible Willis-Conger said, "The government was in a no-win posistudies, Sunday morning worship services, personal conversa- tion...

...Although the main results of the first . The thesis is as follows...

...Not, clearly, in "apostolic inspired world-building and an imagined mandate for the pasuccession," the ability to trace one's lineage back to the pacy to realize, through an authority cashed out in jurisdiction, beginnings...

...The case is certainly sufficiently complex that it will generIn addition, the undercover operation was first launched ate a great deal of commentary in the coming months and with materials seized from Philip Willis-Conger that were years...

...in the conduct of the papacy...

...The validity of the testimony of the govern- continued to grow during the government's earlier "let's keep ment's informer, Jesus Cruz, is a matter of contention...

...The qualitative difference Here is a suggestion...

...people in need, and citizens acting in good faith...

...Thus the temptation inherent in The ideological inflation of the Roman claim diminishes its the papacy to become a hegemony, regardless of the com- power by confusing its charism with worldly power...

...The Letter of James, for instance, is surely feeling rather the better for the removal of an incubus...

...far more modest in its content and scope than has been sup- This power of Rome to signify a final unity has inspired posed...

...makes the call, the destiny, concrete, but not by realizing it, This recognition is creative and contributory...

...It does not "project" a splendid, noble human world, sometimes a splenground a philosophy that would direct our approach to moral- did synthesis in thought like Aquinas's Summa Theolity and politics...

...try to indicate its source in Rome's struggle to find its identity...

...He pronounced on his or her church the one true church, such that to drop this the new and delicate questions being raised by scholars...

...But no way...

...necessary...

...Belief in the whole thing, not being the whole cal claiming universal jurisdiction is vast, although the thing...

...My Testament is a record of profound divisions in a new and intuitive answer is "My Catholic faith, whole and entire - passionate faith...

...It encourages his to make universally mandatory a theological system detached world-embracing aspirations...

...Appar- quiet about this" approach...

...What we seem to have at the beginning are various experiFurther, Vatican I's attempt to derive the doctrines from the ences, individual and group, of the risen Jesus in the Spirit, Petrine texts in the Gospels is as unsatisfactory exegetically as which impelled people toward each other with their respective its attempt to derive them from history is unhistorical...

...After the trial activities, wearing a tape recorder, without a warrant...

...regarded as infallible...

...And they easily come together...

...can, in fact, trace in history a swing in papal policy between One could trace the ebb and flow of this ideological influence the poles of modesty and inflated claim...

...The very problem of the church in the world can be solved by the concreteness of the visible Roman Catholic church underlines existence and exercise of jurisdiction...

...certainty that all are called into a "perfect society," the King- I suggest that this confusion between sign of the new unity dom of God, the fullness of Christ, and that the Roman church of all in Christ and effector of that unity through rule constirepresents the difference between this call as the ultimate tutes an identity problem that the papacy has had to wrestle Commonweal: 526 with throughout its history and especially in modem times...

...Under heart of this idea of the one true church...

...It has two doctrines about the pope is not true, so that papal infallibil- always amazed me, as a "bom Catholic," that Paul did not get ity and universal jurisdiction cannot be derived, as they are together with the leaders at Jerusalem for fifteen years after his said to be derived, from the theory and praxis of the church in conversion...

...It is this discussion that With an impressive assembling of the historical evidence, will form the body of my article, which is thus not a review of however, Bermejo shows that general councils never were this very substantive work...

...With this quiet all the resources of faith and scholarship and culture, wherever statement he signaled the end of a period dominated by ideolthese might be found...

...But if on appeal his evidence is found to be movement...

...Now Vatican I was a general council...

...Is there a sense in which a Catholic has to call X tried to do by the encyclical Pascendi...

...He was referring to words such as "integral," pants in our modern scientific culture...

...But how the structured community The facts are overwhelmingly against the notion that the anticipates the end-time is a daunting question...

...It would advance the ecumenical dialogue not by compromise but by clarification...

...Catholic Thing...

...It was not that a universally recognized body of bishops universal jurisdiction over the church...

...provide a "solution...

...One however, including documents with comprehensive informa- hopes for a helpful public debate, meanwhile, on how to tion about the sanctuary network nationwide, were used by the interpret the meaning of this complex called "the law": digovernment to begin the investigation which led to the sixteen verse laws, human rights, international law, the Constitution, sanctuary indictments...

...hire undocumented Salvadorans and Guatemalans, of whom In conclusion, it is not clear tliat the government has innot one has been prosecuted for felonies as have the sanctuary creased respect for law and order by its prosecution of the defendants...

...So there is a tension at the essentially one who is not confused or deterred by facts...

...It concretizes that hope...