Editorials Bad karma
Bad karma Excommunication sounds worse than it is-at least we hope that's true. Ideally, or so the technical definitions suggest, excommunication is a pastoral tool of last resort used both to...
...Yes, error can do damage...
...Not all such deliberations need to be made public, but the Vatican's penchant for secrecy is an invitation for prejudice, personal vendetta, hearsay, and self-serving ecclesiastical politics to distort the truth...
...Bishops can make mistakes, but in the end Catholic theologians are accountable to the bishops...
...According to news reports, Balasuriya's fifty-five page response to the CDF's questions seeking clarification of positions taken in his Mary and Human Liberation (1990) was judged "unsatisfactory...
...These are serious accusations requiring a Vatican response...
...That said, the Vatican seems to be one of the last Western institutions resistant to the common-sense notion that any procedure that demonstrates a high regard for the rights of the accused enhances the credibility of its verdicts...
...He refused...
...When it comes to judging works of theology, both a defense of revelation and its cognate doctrines and the most creative theological expression must somehow be accommodated...
...Rome must learn a new way to say, "Wrong...
...The judgment of the CDF and the pope will remain less than persuasive until there is a public accounting of the process of excommunication...
...Ideally, or so the technical definitions suggest, excommunication is a pastoral tool of last resort used both to protect the integrity of church teaching and to instruct the incorrigible in the error of their ways...
...Nor is Balasuriya's credibility enhanced by the fact that he subsequently threatened to sue his bishops...
...And even when such a process is conducted properly, its secrecy still leaves the appearance of manipulation and injustice...
...Those who judge Ratzinger and the pope authoritarian throwbacks will tend to write off any disciplinary action by the magisterium as malicious and unwarranted...
...It is especially troubling that Balasuriya was not given a face-to-face hearing in Rome by the CDF-and that his punishment is so much more severe than any comparable Vatican action in recent decades...
...Those who have cheered this papacy's policing of such theologians as Charles Curran, Hans Kung, and Leonardo Boff will rejoice at what appears to be an escalation in the penalties imposed on "dissent...
...Yes, truth must be defended...
...And, contrary to Balasuriya's defiant countercharge, Rome need not prove him "wrong in terms of contemporary theological scholarship," whatever that might mean...
...But, as in most pedagogical exercises, masters and pupils often differ with regard to what exactly is being taught or communicated...
...Balasuriya's contumacy concerned his purported views on Original Sin, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, papal infallibility, and the nature of salvation outside the church...
...It is significant, for example, that the Sri Lankan bishops had previously criticized Balasuriya's book, while Charles Curran's own bishop testified eloquently to his orthodoxy and fidelity...
...As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is one of the church's most formidable teachers, if not its most persuasive...
...Sadly, how that is done without the imposition of coercive oaths and the specter of secret interrogations has yet to be figured out...
...Thirty years after Vatican II, ressource-ment increasingly seems to mean an enthusiasm for some of the most dubious authoritarian methods of the past...
...Earlier this month the pope, on the recommendation of Ratzinger and the congregation, excommunicated (latae sententiae, or automatically) Sri Lankan liberation theologian Tissa Balasuriya, a priest of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, for heresy...
...Repentance and reconciliation are the goal...
...Yes, some errors are worthy of excommunication, and there is much teaching of the wayward to be done...
...He was then asked to sign a profession of faith not only pledging loyalty to the pope but also endorsing the church's prohibition on the ordination of women...
...Balasuriya's more than forty years as a priest, his manifest concern for the poor, and his endeavors to bring Catholicism into a respectful dialogue with Asian religions (see Clooney, page 9) deserve the church's regard and thanks...
...Balasuriya was an occasional contributor to this journal in the 1960s and '70s, see list on page 7.) News of the excommunication will elicit predictable responses...
...This is a tragedy for Balasuriya and for the church...
...At the same time, it is important not to lump the action against Balasuriya carelessly together with disciplinary steps taken against theologians like Curran and Kung...
...His religious community has also distanced itself from the theologian's writings...
...It is imperative that the church do so...
...Does Balasuriya's excommunication signal a new round of heresy-hunting by a pope allergic to public dissent and clerical independence...
...Balasuriya asserts that his rights under canon law have been ignored, criticizes the "unilateral" nature of the CDF's role as both prosecutor and jury, and complains of prejudice against "Asian theologians...
...Given the information available, it is unclear whether Balasuriya received a fair opportunity to answer the charges against him...
...the explicit goal for those being punished, but equally the burden, one hopes, of those in positions of episcopal authority and trust...
...Neither an adversarial and rights-driven juridical process nor the positivist bias and moral agnosticism of the academy is an appropriate model for decision making in the church...
Vol. 124 • January 1997 • No. 2
