Editorials
COMMONWEAL Behold, a mouse! It is a sign of the times that the American Catholic bishops have been more successful describing the political responsibilities of their fellow citizens than in...
...the views of their fellow bishops and of Rome must be weighed...
...One of the unexamined components of the Commonweal 31 January 1992: 3 debates over dissent in the church and Catholic bashing by the media is the apprehension among many Americans (Catholics, too) that ultimately the Catholic church does not really believe in freedom of speech...
...Now, Playboy magazine compounds the ecumenical problem...
...and responds to outside attackers (shut up, please...
...And one of the reasons why the American bishops have to write a document defining and defending their teaching authority, in the first place, is precisely that the known history of ecclesiastical abuse lives on in the fears of their fellow citizens...
...When the bishops themselves seem to minimize what has proven one of their own most effective teaching practices, we should protest...
...church...
...4: 31 January 1992 Commonweal...
...In fact, it has been reinforced by outsiders for generations...
...collegiality...
...The May 1991 draft, in fact, dealt ably and at length with the crisis in authority Ind the consequences for authoritative teaching...
...There is, for example, the long tradition of the Lenny Bruce criterion...
...This pastoral reflection seems neither to understand what religious authority is up against nor to be able to advance a compelling argument for such authority that would have bite in an individualistic and skeptical society...
...But how, we want to know, can the discussion of "private theological opinion," even in professional settings, be kept "private" in a free society...
...In contrast, "The Teaching Ministry of the Diocesan Bishop: A Pastoral Reflection," adopted at the bishops' November 1991 meeting (Origins, January 2, 1992), is marked by a peculiar combination of formalism, verbal ping-pong, and curial rhetoric that are a sign of writers and agendas working at cross-purposes...
...In the same vein: theologians will no doubt welcome the acknowledgment that "theological faculties, Catholic universities, professional societies, learned journals, books, and monographs have been the customary setting for....theological investigation that ranges freely over many subjects and even challenges through careful argument the teaching of the church...
...But they dismiss vein that: "In the last analysis, however, the authority of the teach ng does not stem from prior consultation...
...The "Reflection" needed only a simple majority, which in the end was taken by a voice vote...
...Capitalize Church when referring to the Catholic Church...
...With obstacles such as these, ecumenism may have to wait until the Church calls another council...
...Should Commonweal cancel its subscription to Theological Studies...
...Yet we also see how anemic these claims can be when they are set forth apar from a serious effort to grapple with the real problem: how to effectively exercise such authority in the here and now...
...Outward conformity to the concerns of Rome on this score cannot count for more than the bishops' own reading and understanding of the U.S...
...This pastoral reflection was begun in 1985, conceived, it says, "by bishops for bishops," with the rest of us invited to look on...
...Capitalize Club when used alone to refer to the Playboy Club...
...Skepticism about any claims to authority is one of the defining characteristics of modernity...
...Clearly, the six-year labor that brought forth a mouse reflects the stasis of the bishops' conference, currently divided between bishops appointed with concern for the needs of the local church and those appointed, as one theologian has remarked, as apostolic vicars representing the interests of Rome...
...ET CETERA LENNY BRUCE LIVES When you get right down to it, the chief impediment to ecumenical progress remains Roman Catholic triumphalism...
...Perhaps only in a culture like our own that disdains formal definitions of authority can we appreciate the value of the church's effort to articulate such definitions...
...A document on their own teaching ministry is, of course, a different and weightier enterprise...
...The clear-sightedness that the bishops bring to our national political quandaries eludes them when they turn to their own...
...Who knows...
...They merely achieved greater depth, accuracy, and pertinence...
...Mere repetition and assertion will not do...
...This is a softening of the views expressed in the statement of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, "Instruction on the Ecclesial Mission of the Theologian" (Origins, July 5, 1990...
...According to Copy Editor, a national newsletter for professional copy editors, Playboy's style manual offers the following rules for capitalization in its pages: "Capitalize Bunny when referring to the Playboy Bunny...
...People merely sat up and paid attention to what the bishops finally wrote...
...In their statement on political responsibility for the 1992 elections, the bishops achieved clarity of thought and expression because they stand somewhat apart from the fray and are free to assess and judge our national situation...
...Perhaps the process did not render them more "authoritative" in some sense of that word...
...That was the rallying impulse that the Enlightenment directed at both ecclesiastical and civil institutions...
...Should Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times cancel their subscriptions to Commonweal...
...Such marching-in-lockstep is in the first instance dishonest, and in the second a disservice to local churches around the world who might benefit from adapting it to their own needs...
...Nothing remarkable, we might say, though one effect of such generalizations is to focus attention not on effective teaching by the bishops but on docility and obedience from theologians and the faithful...
...These fears gain support from the way the church treats its internal critics (shut up...
...and the relations between bishops and theologians...
...In the final analysis the bishops themselves may have had little commitment to "The Teaching Ministry of the Diocesan Bishop...
...the opinions of the faithful (confused and otherwise...
...By designating it a pastoral reflection, they spared the text the rigors of having to muster a two-thirds vote...
...Another example of how this pastoral reflection betrayed its potential: It hardly helps when the American bisho )s can make no more than a stingy bow to the consultation process that they developed themselves, linking it simply to pastor/ letters, as they write, on "contingent social issues...
...But with these nods to the trenches, the document takes the high ground offering firm and lengthy instructions on how to understand the office of bishop (in general), its responsibilities (in general), and, above all, the reception of church teaching by the rest of us...
...consultation on pastoral letters...
...And the problem is compounded by the fact that the mind set is not entirely homegrown...
...Yet who can doubt that the pastorals on war and peace and on the economy derived an anormous amount of "authority" from the consultation process...
...Yes, yes, the teaching is right (or wrong) if it is in conformity (or not) with Scripture, tradition, and the magisterium...
...The hermeneutics of suspicion permeates all modern societies, our own above all—whether in the informal query, "sez who?," or the more elegantly posed: "what unrecognized psychological impulse or self-interested rationalization lies behind the claims of authority...
...But still it is cause for dismay that they can say so little that is useful or apposite about their teaching role to those looking on—not just cranks who write editorials, but parish priests, teachers, catechists, and parish ministers, and the whole People of God who, after all, depend more than the bishops on good episcopal leadership...
...Condensed from a far longer draft sent to the bishops in May 1991, this final document is a hodge-podge of these lingering quarrels interleaved with tantalizingly brief hints that bishops have practical as well as theological problems to contend with, cultural as well as catechetical ambivalences to sort out, personal as well as ecclesial virtues to practice...
...There is more history and more tradition to take into account...
...Europe perhaps more than anywhere else...
...The erratic combination of practical observation and abstract formulation points up a historical and intellectual hole in the document's argument...
...Its long gestation period bears the traces of ecclesiastical skirmishes over dissent...
...A lack of consensus...
...unfortunately it was deleted from the final document...
...Their statement on "Political Responsibility: Revitalizing American Democracy," prepared in advance of the 1992 elections, presents a forthright assessment of the lethargy that besets American politics, the need to recover a sense of the common good, and the many issues voters should analyze in considering candidates (Origins, October 24, 1991...
...Always capitalize Playmate when referring to the girl on our centerfold, and try to avoid using the word in any other context...
...It was the late comedian who first instructed grammarians that there was only one the church, and that that church was the Catholic church...
...A lack of confidence...
...It is a sign of the times that the American Catholic bishops have been more successful describing the political responsibilities of their fellow citizens than in exploring their own teaching and pastoral responsibilities as bishops...
Vol. 119 • January 1992 • No. 2
