Responses to Rome
O'Gara, Margaret
Margaret O'Gara Margaret O'Gara is a Roman Catholic and teaches theology at the Faculty of Theology in the University of Saint Michael's College, Toronto. She is a member of several ecumenical...
...She is a member of several ecumenical dialogue commissions and published Triumph in Defeat: Infallibility, Vatican I, and the French Minority Bishops (Catholic University of America Press, 1988...
...Besides the issue of discerning consensus, there is the issue of the nature of infallibility itself...
...cannot completely fall away from the way of salvation...
...While widespread newspaper coverage in November on infallibility and women's ordi-nation showed my students the relevance of theology, I would have preferred another means to achieve this pedagogical goal...
...By causing confusion and skepticism, he continued, it weakens all exercises of authority, even those which are good...
...It may convince some that infallibility is simply too dangerous an idea to use: too easily open to abuse, too confusing...
...Roman Catholics have used the word "infallibility" to describe the assistance God gives the church in believing and teaching on matters of faith and morals, matters such as the Incarnation or the Trinity...
...Infallibility's purpose is suggested by an official clarification to Lumen gentium (12) made at Vatican II...
...He cautioned, "Doubtless...
...It is hard to find a basis for this judgment...
...One could think of a number of issues, such as the morality of owning slaves or torturing people suspected of heresy," he writes, "where a position that was taken for granted as true through most of the church's history was reversed when the question had finally been raised in a new way" (The Tablet, June 18,1994...
...The surprising and problematic thing here is the congregation's judgment that the ordinary and universal magisterium has taught infallibly about women's ordination...
...So it is a loss for all Christians...
...And bishops themselves are no longer of one mind on this question...
...When visiting four theological centers during two weeks in December for conferences on various topics, I could not find a single theologian who agreed with the congregation's judgment...
...So too are Roman Catholic theologians...
...But the congregation, he notes, "has not invoked any of these criteria" {America, December 9,1995...
...The congregation's recent teaching about infallibility, made more confusing by the routine papal approval to publish it, illustrates the kind of papal exercise of authority most feared by ecumenical-dialogue-partner churches...
...But in fact it is hard to argue that the whole episcopate has actually expressed any common judgment about women's ordination in the form this question has taken in modern times, Francis Sullivan, S.J., notes...
...For ecumenical dialogue, the congregation's statement may be very damaging...
...It's hard to see how...
...Sullivan notes three possible criteria for establishing that a doctrine is taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium: common adherence of all the faithful, or universal and constant consensus of Catholic theologians, or consultation with all the bishops...
...Many Orthodox, Episcopalians, and Protestants in ecumenical dialogue increasingly recognize the value to the whole church of a ministry of unity by the bishop of Rome, but they emphasize that his ministry should be exercised more collegially, as Vatican II envisioned...
...The congregation's action, he said sadly, is a clumsy exercise of authority...
...On May 30,1994, Pope John Paul II declared that the church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood, and that this judgment is to be held definitively by the faithful...
...Ordinary Roman Catholics are obviously divided among themselves over this issue...
...Then on November 18, 1995, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith publicized its judgment that the teaching about women's exclusion from priestly ordination pertains to the deposit of the faith and that it has been taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium...
...there infallibility is described as the Holy Spirit's assistance by which "the church...
...This reminds me of a warning by Felix Dupanloup of Orleans, a French bishop at Vatican I who opposed the proposal to teach papal infallibility...
...In recent years, several bishops have publicly questioned either the arguments or the irreversibility of the teaching against women's ordination...
...Vatican II says that the college of bishops can teach infallibly not only through ecumenical councils but also sometimes in their ordinary teaching on faith and morals when they all hold the same position...
...theologians will be able to distinguish the nuances and the fine points and to show that this is not exactly a definition, but how will the multitude of those who are not theologians discern that the pope who is fallible even as pope in such and such an act is no longer fallible in this or that other act...
...In his gentle but realistic reproof/Roman Catholics may find some direction for seeking deeper understanding of infallibility's meaning...
...Is this question-whom the church may admit to priestly ordination-the kind of matter on which pope, or council, or anyone at all, could in fact speak infallibly...
...I hope that some ecumenical partners will be as generous as one colleague, an Anglican bishop deeply committed to the unity of the church...
...Nor, I would add/is it clear that they could be invoked...
Vol. 123 • January 1996 • No. 2
