Editorial
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...A number of theologians and canonists, perhaps to avoid futile wrangling, appear similarly ready to downplay this development...
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...Of course, not all their fears are groundless...
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...Was it the absence of any credible sense of historical or doctrinal development that made the CDF commentary seem arbitrary, written not to encourage faith but to dictate it...
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...But we look long and hard at the actions issuing from Rome without finding anything different from strategies that were tried over the last two centuries in Europe...
...In fact, among the truly sanguine, there is the view that here is but another fin de regime maneuver that will be duly buried in the next pontificate...
...There can be no bright-line distinction, of course, between pastoral and doctrinal...
...Are we right to find these letters from Rome dispiriting and discouraging...
...Perhaps, as many have said, by setting out the levels of church teaching and adding these more consistently to canon law, the pope is simply emphasizing and clarifying the responsibility of church leaders and teachers to uphold Catholic teaching...
...Yet without some such departure from the present course, where the defense of the faith becomes itself a test of the faith, the celebration of the millennium, by which this pontiff sets so much store, may turn out to be a grand and hollow event...
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...Much of what bishops' conferences like the National Conference of Catholic Bishops do and say for largely pastoral purposes nonetheless has doctrinal implications...
...They would begin with a turn to prayer and ever deeper theological reflection, recognizing that the latest turns in papal policies constitute for some Catholics not merely organizational difficulties but a challenge to their faith in the church itself...
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...To construct a structure of doctrinal authority without addressing this elementary fact is practically to beg that the whole thing, like the faulty scaffolding in Times Square, come crashing down...
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...The pope and the Vatican are building a structure of church authority that is reaching new heights of complexity and legalism--and is being asked to bear more and more weight...
...absent that, the conference must seek the approval of the Vatican...
...We await the opinion of ecclesiologists as to the theory of episcopal authority embedded in the letter, but we note that its rhetorical strategy is essentially to reduce the standing of national bishops' conferences by contrasting them with both the bishop in his diocese and the full authority of the universal college of bishops...
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...Some Catholics have adopted a theological minimatism that gives as little weight to the fact of long-held teachings as curialists give to the fact of doctrinal development...
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...Just the usual liberal reaction to the Vatican's relentless pursuit of doctrinal conformity...
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...and third, teachings that are official and requiring adherence even if not yet judged definitive or irreformable...
...p. 7, Valerry...
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...There is an extraordinary challenge to maintaining unity in a church that now ranges across cultures and politically independent nations in a way for which there has been little historical preparation...
...The American bishops' conference, for example, has already been growing inert, secretive, and apprehensive of secondguessing by Rome, to the point that some bishops have been heard doubting that it is even worthwhile to attend conference meetings...
...The levels consist, first, of truths considered divinely revealed in Scripture and tradition or by the solemn or universal judgment of the church...
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...History and the Holy Spirit will sort the wheat from the chaff...
...And it may be that the accompanying commentary from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith has no particular standing except as one possible illustration of those three levels of teaching, which were added to the Nicene Creed in a 1989 revision of the profession of faith to be taken by church officials and professors of Catholic theology...
...Under terms of the letter, a document of a doctrinal character issued by an episcopal conference must be unanimously agreed to...
...p. 8, Summers, Rothco...
...the examples provided in the commentary include the restriction of priestly ordination to males, the illicitness of euthanasia and prostitution, the legitimacy of papal elections, and the invalidity of Anglican orders...
...It is clearly the second of these that the p o p e ' s letter and the CDF commentary wish to expand...
...Was it that the examples set forth in the CDF commentary seemed carefully selected to draw that noose tighter...
...No one intends to put the brakes on discussion and dialogue," says Archbishop Tarcisio Berone, who signed the CDF commentary along with C a r d i n a l Joseph Ratzinger, adding of course a warning that "dissent and debate" must not "go so far as to touch the definitions of the faith" (see, Origins, July 16, 1998, which also contains the p o p e ' s letter and CDF commentary...
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...Is it fair to say that this papacy is in the hands of fear-filled men...
...we asked ourselves...
...It often seemed that way as we sought the opinions and counsel of others...
...Why rail against the last stand of a brilliant man...
...No sooner did we entertain those thoughts than a new test of faith came along...
...We must keep in mind Jesus' admonition of how others will know us: by our love...
...The report published in our last issue on the indifference of young Catholics to the institutional church suggests that the process of disintegration is well underway...
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...Was it that the ties of faith that should bind us to the Catholic tradition of pope and hierarchy seem here to resemble a noose...
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...And though both letters drew only a handful of negative votes, that would suffice to turn final authorship over to what are Vatican offices with no real episcopal accountability at all (and whose willingness to interfere and to override the overwhelming opinion of bishops' conferences has been amply demonstrated in the case of English translations of liturgical texts...
...It would be an ironic, although not unprecedented, twist if a measure aimed at enforcing unity ended by eroding it...
...Whatever technical juridical issues the letter may resolve, and whatever level of authority it finally may grant episcopal conferences, it is pretty clear that the Vatican has strictly limited their collegial and particular, or local, character...
...On July 24, the Vatican released another papal letter, this one "On the Theological and Juridical Nature of Episcopal Conferences" (see, Robert Imbelli, page 14...
...Again, there are voices to remind us, what does it matter...
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...So why, if there is nothing new or alarming here, did reading these documents make us feel so dispirited and discouraged...
...p. 26, Ray, Rothco...
...Anticipating an extended period when church authority will be weakened by self-inflicted wounds, we must create independent institutions that take orthodoxy seriously without depending on ecclesiastical threats or purges...
...second, teachings not considered explicitly revealed but so intimately linked to revealed truths as to require full and definitive assent from every Catholic who wishes to be in full communion with the church...
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...There is something bordering on hypocrisy here when one thinks of curial efforts to harass and overawe individual bishops, on the one hand, and to control and cripple the initiatives and discussions at the worldwide Synods of Bishops, which in principle should reflect that more authoritative collegiality...
...Those strategies not only failed to arrest but probably advanced the secularization of culture and the marginalization of Christianity so lamented by the pope...
...Perhaps some respected bishops may see the latest letter as a signal to cease being team players and to speak their minds as individuals...
...Some commentators seem prepared to minimize the reach of this action...
...p. 9, Punch/Cluff, Rothco...
...columnist portraits, Elaine Mills...
...Surely the 1983 "pastoral" letter on war and peace and the 1986 "pastoral" letter on Catholic social teaching and the U.S...
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...http://www.commonwealmagazine.org Tests o f f a i t h " t may be that there is nothing new in Ad tuendam fidem ("To Defend I the Faith"), John Paul II's June 30 apostolic letter...
...But isn't this reaction altogether too dramatic...
...Every college freshman knows that there are many things over the centuries about which the church, despite the Holy Spirit, has simply been Commonweal 5 August14, 1998 wrong--wrong--and that there are some things about which its teaching has changed--changed--and not all the apologetic sophistries under the sun will demonstrate otherwise...
Vol. 125 • August 1998 • No. 14
