Punishing dissent
McCormick, Richard A.
PUNISHING DISSENT Coralling theologians, containing bishops RICHARD A. McCORMICK is a Jesuit priest and the John A. O'Brien Professor Emeritus of Christian Ethics at the University of Notre...
...He is not deemed unicus legislator for the whole church in the canons, but that is the way he is free to act...
...This provision had no parallel in the 1917 Code, nor was it recommended by those who worked on the code's revision for fifteen years...
...The terse letter, which was given motu proprio (on his own initiative), made two minor changes in the church's two governing books of canons, the 1983 Code of Canon Law for the Latin church and the 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches...
...In this perspective, Ratzinger's list represents a fallible judgment on what is infallibly taught...
...Failure to do so means that individuals would "no longer be in full communion with the Catholic church...
...The bishops didn't study the pros and cons...
...The pope does not state what these teachings are...
...restriction of ordination to men...
...n his widely heralded speech at the opening of I Vatican II, John XXIII mentioned errors that threaten the truth of the Lord...
...What they will want to know is: When is the teaching "definitive" and who determines this...
...JAMES A. CORIDEN is a priest of the Diocese of Gary and professor of church law at Washington Theological Union...
...Do historians and theologians have no say here...
...First, the genuiness...
...If the bishops around the world are united with the pope in their teaching, then that teaching can achieve a greater level of stability and certainty, and indeed achieve infallible status if the teaching is a proper object of infallibility and is presented as something to be held definitively...
...Second, the mention of the invalidity of Anglican orders represents a remarkable insensitivity, coming as it did just weeks before the Lambeth Conference...
...They received directives, they bowed to them, and they tried to explain them to their congregations...
...Indeed, Canon 1371 is now to state that dissenters "may be punished with a just penalty...
...It threatens ministry, sours the laity and divides the church-the very opposite of what the pope intended...
...But the unity must be genuine and clear...
...As for clarity, the more likely scenario in a coercive atmosphere is that the bishops (some at least) will say nothing if they disagree...
...These doctrines are not those revealed by God and taught by the church as revealed, but are those which the church's teaching authority considers to be connected to God's revealed truths so closely that they are required in order to safeguard or expound those revealed truths...
...9 The Weakening of the Papal Magisterium...
...Commonweal | 3 August 14, 1998...
...The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) articulated this category of doctrines in 1989 as a part of a new formula for the profession of faith which some categories of officials, for example, cardinals, bishops, pastors, deacons, and seminary professors, are canonically required to make when first assuming office...
...In such circumstances, to read episcopal silence as unanimity is self-deceptive...
...That is why what is called the "enforcement of doctrine" is literally counterproductive...
...Commonweal | 2 August 14, 1998 In particular, I see three impacts of a coercive atmosphere on the teaching office of the church...
...and the declaration of Leo XIII in 1896 that Anglican orders are invalid...
...To this point Cardinal Leo-Joseph Suenens of Belgium replied: "We have heard arguments based on 'what the bishops all taught for decades.' Well, the bishops did defend the classical position...
...In a coercive atmosphere people will repeat things because they are told to and threatened with punishment if they say anything else...
...On questions of moral theology, Karl Rahner noted of authentic church teaching: "These statements of the magisterium, although they can make no claim to be definitive, are nonetheless presented in such a way as though in fact they are definitive" ("Open Questions in Dogma Considered by the Institutional Church as Definitively Answered," Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Spring, 1978...
...The coercive trajectory has been clear for many years...
...Briefly, any public dissent is anathema...
...He says: "It can be a call to suffer for the truth, in silence and prayer...
...Cardinal Ratzinger, in his "Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian" (1990), remarks on the situation of a theologian who cannot give his intellectual assent to a proposition...
...If reputable theologians are marginalized, the magisterium is proportionately weakened...
...Here we should recall the theological force of episcopal agreement described in Lumen gentium, no...
...Theologians will have little problem with the "firm and definitive" assent to be given to teachings proposed definitively...
...9 The Weakening of the Episcopal Magisterium...
...Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger fills this lacuna with his commentary on the apostolic letter...
...Now is now...
...Ratzinger declares that we must give "firm and definitive assent" to these teachings...
...A coercive atmosphere in the church is counterproductive...
...The letter inserted into the canons a category of "definitively proposed" teachings about faith or morals which must be "accepted and held," and a provision to permit the punishment of anyone who "pertinaciously rejects" such teachings and fails to make a retraction after being admonished to do so...
...When the genuiness and clarity of episcopal agreement have been cast into grave doubt by a coercive atmosphere, the episcopal magisterium itself has been undermined...
...Nowadays, however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity...
...In a coercive atmosphere both the genuiness and clarity are put in serious doubt...
...There are several things worthy of note in this papal initiative...
...Do officials simply decree it to be so...
...PUNISHING DISSENT Coralling theologians, containing bishops RICHARD A. McCORMICK is a Jesuit priest and the John A. O'Brien Professor Emeritus of Christian Ethics at the University of Notre Dame...
...In it he outlawed dissent from "definitive" even if not formally revealed truths...
...She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations...
...9 The Marginalization of Theologians...
...Third, the category of "definitive" teaching, demanding irrevocable consent is troubling at the practical level...
...Coercive measures will almost certainly have the effect of quieting theologians, at least on certain issues...
...The church," he said, "has always opposed these errors...
...Frequently she has condemned them with the greatest severity...
...legitimacy of the election of the pope and convocation of an ecumenical council...
...Even though this category of teachings has been included in the official profession of faith since 1989, it had not been included in the church's canons, and, more importantly, the rejection of these teachings was not a punishable offense until now...
...Second, Pope John Paul II, despite his philosophical background and his writing on the "splendor of truth," has already left a legacy of these attempts to enforce an expanded scope of faith-related teachings by juridical means: _9 He added a punitive provision to the 1983 Code so that those who disagreed with even nondefinitive teachings could be penalized...
...the canonization of saints...
...It is one of "frosty" coercion, an adjective used by the late Bernard Haring in his last letter to me...
...The pope is not accustomed to doing this for laity...
...This is no longer our climate...
...But is was imposed on them by authority...
...As noted, that was then...
...These words symbolized the collegial and mutually trusting attitudes of bishops and theologians that made Vatican II possible...
...When this happens, the presumption of truth in papal teaching is weakened, because such a presumption assumes that the ordinary sources of human understanding have been consulted...
...Three things are especially worthy of note about this little letter: (1) the exercise of rule-making authority, (2) the canonical enforcement of faith, and (3) the content of this category of teaching...
...In Veritatis splendor (1993), John Paul II reminded bishops that they are "to have recourse to appropriate measures to ensure that the faithful are guarded from every doctrine and theory contrary to" the church's moral teaching...
...It was contended that the church could not modify its teaching on birth regulation because that teaching had been proposed unanimously as certain by the bishops around the world with the pope over a long period of time...
...Now is now...
...The meaning of consensus has been eviscerated...
...The pope, with a stroke of his pen, can and did change the law for the entire Roman Catholic church, without a gesture toward collegiality or an attempt at consultation...
...Here we would recall one of the arguments made during the deliberations of the so-called Birth Control Commission in the 1960s...
...If bishops are not speaking their true sentiments, then clearly the pope is not able to draw on the wisdom and reflection of the bishops in the exercise of his ordinary magisterium...
...In the long haul, the significance of the pope's initiative and Ratzinger's accompanying commentary may be the symbolization of a shift in ecdesial climate from persuasion to coercion...
...This further erodes both the episcopal and papal magisterium by silencing yet another source of understanding and growth...
...ope John Paul II signed an apostolic letter on May 18, 1998, titled Ad tuendam fidem, "To Defend the Faith...
...On May 18, John Paul II issued the apostolic letter Ad tuendam fidem ("To Defend the Faith...
...Episcopal unity is revealed as enforced, not genuine...
...Furthermore, if it is "definitive" teaching that Anglican orders are invalid, how is it that the pope could present George Carey, the archbishop of Canterbury, a gold pectoral cross on the occasion of Carey's visit to Rome and allow him to march fully vested and mitred at the Church of Saint Gregory the Great...
...First, nowhere is the raw monarchical authority of the modern papacy more clearly revealed than in this sort of legislative action...
...It weakens the very vehicle (papal magisterium) that proposes to be the agent of strength and certainty...
...That was then...
...The bishops should be the first ones to protest this diminishment of their magisterium, and the atmosphere that grounds it...
...First, it represents no surprise...
...PauI VI wanted people to be convaincus, pas vaincus (convinced, not conquered...
...This follows from the first point...
...The precise punishment is not specified, but excommunication is not excluded...
...He lists the following as "definitively" taught: rejection of prostitution, fornication, euthanasia...
...It was one of changes the pope made in the canons after they were turned over to him in 1982...
Vol. 125 • August 1998 • No. 14
