Editorials Catholicism
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
CATHOLICISM The best thing about the recent episcopal criticism of Catholicism is that its author, the Reverend Richard P. McBrien, is so able to speak for himself. Who doubts that he will give as...
...Who doubts that he will give as good as he gets from the Doctrine Committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops...
...The same could be said of many other books, even some written by bishops, that have somehow escaped the Doctrine Committee's censure...
...It seems to us that, despite the inevitable shortcomings and debatable points in these works, McBrien has done more to convey effectively to masses of people the breadth and depth of the Catholic "thing" than most of the bishops combined...
...No good deed goes unpunished...
...No doubt, Rome threatened, American conservatives complained, and Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk-the committee head and a man who does not believe in delaying the inevitable-decided to clear the McBrien file off his desk with as little damage as possible...
...We strongly suspect that not even as robust a personality as McBrien would maintain that his 1,300-page book was without fault, without passages that could be construed as "misleading" or an "overemphasis" or "confusing...
...McBrien is a candid, outspoken critic of many current church policies, ergo his book is scrutinized as others are not...
...In the last two years, McBrien has produced, besides Catholicism (HarperCollins), a remarkably useful (and handsome) one-volume Encyclopedia of Catholicism (HarperCollins...
...2) "an overemphasis on the plurality of opinion within the Catholic theological tradition...
...He did not help by suggesting in an ambiguous Preface that he and the bishops-who had gone several rounds on earlier editions-were now of one mind...
...He has even written the text for Inside Catholicism (yes, HarperCollins), a thoroughly traditional photo book of Catholic rituals and symbols...
...Such is life in contemporary American Catholicism...
...What he has gotten so far, along with free publicity for the latest edition of his widely used overview of Catholic teaching, is a sixteen-page unsigned critique of his book, scolding it for (1) "inaccurate or at least misleading" statements regarding matters like the basis of Jesus' sinlessness and Mary's perpetual virginity...
...But the matter is not mysterious...
...and (3) overstatement of the importance of recent theology to the detriment of the past and of authoritative teaching...
Vol. 123 • May 1996 • No. 9
