The church & dissent
McCormick, Richard A.
THE CHURCH & DISSENT How Vatican II ushered in a new way of thinking Richard A. McCormick W n August 12, 1996, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin announced what is now known as the Common...
...In bibhcal studies, for instance, the Constitution on Divine Revelation accepted a critical approach to the Bible, thus supporting the previous initiatives of Pius XII and delivering the church once and for all from the incubus of the earlier decrees of the Bibhcal Commission...
...It has become "the working orthodoxy of most of the theological profession...
...Celibacy of the clergy, ordination of women, divorce, and contraception...
...26) 10...
...One thing it did not do, according to Hitchcock, is provide the rationale for the kind of dissent he laments...
...The first approach can be called the "preconciliar model...
...Second, if this is true of the "words which have been handed down," it would be a fortiori true of the solutions to certain moral problems that have not been "handed down...
...Speaking of the harmony between Christian teaching and culture, the council noted the difficulty of this harmony because changing times raise new questions...
...In such a process, dissent should play a positive, nonthreatening role...
...Collegiality prevails, and theoretically at all levels--papal, episcopal, parochial...
...One can see all of this, Hitchcock argues, in the Catholic press: Commonweal, U.S...
...There is another approach to the question "Why has dissent occurred...
...I note only that the word "pastors" includes bishops, even the bishop of Rome...
...1. Changing times...
...It continued: In order that such persons may fulfill their proper function, let it be recognized that all of the faithful, clerical and lay, possess a lawful freedom of inquiry and of thought, and the freedom to express their minds humbly and courageously about those matters in which they enjoy competence (62...
...Now let me turn to what I wiE call a postconciliar scenario...
...For example, Oswald von NellBreuning, who composed Quadragesimo anno, did so all alone, without consultors or critics...
...Once again noting the rapidity of change in the world and the desirability of an exchange between the church and diverse cultures, the council acknowledged that "the church requires special help...
...This matter was treated by the council in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation...
...2. Newness of problems...
...It is clear that Christians want to profess and apply their faith in the times and cultures in which they live...
...Some years ago--with the infallibility that attaches to younger years--I identified the characteristics as the following: 1. Self-definition of the church...
...Is dissent a form of loyalty or a liability...
...Those who were adversarii are now separated brothers and sisters...
...For Hitchcock, dissent challenges the church "not from the margins but through the church's own central organs...
...For centuries, a juridical model prevailed, a pyramidal structure in which truth and authority descended from above, from Rome...
...A tone of voice, a passing comment, a strategically situated smirk, a raised eyebrow are means by which those charged with upholding official teaching in fact contrive to undermine it...
...There we read: This tradition, which comes from the Apostles, develops in the church with the help of the Holy Spirit...
...To require," he says, "the same adhesion for doctrines that are indeed taught by offidals with authority but to which the church has not irrevocably committed herself is to abuse authority...
...E Commonweal 2 0 February27, 1998...
...Indeed, it is the official institutions of the church which are now used to propagate dissent and, often enough, to repress orthodoxy...
...6. The church's modesty about its own competence...
...crats learn their dissent from academics, especially theologians...
...For a long period, Catholic education was defensive...
...For all practical purposes, there no longer exists "an official Catholic press in the sense of publications which faithfully convey only official positions...
...That I think is clear...
...Our seminaries are dleek-by-jowl with the great universities in the country...
...Thus, in the field of moral theology it was taken for granted by many that on any given moral problem, however complex, Roma locuta causa finita...
...THE CHURCH & DISSENT How Vatican II ushered in a new way of thinking Richard A. McCormick W n August 12, 1996, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin announced what is now known as the Common Ground Initiative...
...2. Mass media...
...They are exposed to many modes of thought...
...He did not even promise that socalled "official teaching" would always be right...
...Hitchcock makes references to "present disarray," "the unraveling of the Catholic system of authority," "the subversion of authority," "the spectacle of a great institution apparently coming apart," "all the teachings of the church...in jeopardy," "the gradual erosion of faith...
...Lay persons are often capable of relating their experience and expertise to doctrinal matters, in a most enlightening way...
...Speaking of pastoral care, the council fathers insisted that "appropriate use must be made not only of theological principles, but also of the findings of the secular sciences, especially of psychology and sociology...
...It stated: "Recent studies and findings of science, history, and philosophy raise new questions which influence life and demand new theological investigations" (62...
...7. Educational styles...
...but that is a matter of one's psychological posture and of one's intellectual tolerance for the tentative and the unresolved...
...In the theology of secular realities, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World adopted an evolutionary view of history and a modified optimism regarding secular systems of thought, thus terminating more than a century of vehement denunciations of modem civilization...
...In the Decree on Ecumenism, the council cordially greeted the ecumenical movement and involved the Catholic church in the larger quest for Christian unity, thus putting an end to the hostility enshrined in Pius XII's Mortalium animos...
...There were many initial responses, both critical and supportive...
...2) teaching is understood as a multidimensional function, of which the judgmental or decisive is only one aspect...
...Butler...
...Furthermore, authentic formulations were received less critically than may have been warranted, and retained a formative influence, sometimes disproportionate to their value...
...5. Lay and clergy education...
...They are transparent of a notion of church, what it means to be church...
...This model predominated from the Council of Trent to Vatican II...
...Commonweal | 6 Februanj 27, 1998 This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers (see, Luke 2:19, 51 ), through the intimate understanding of spiritual things they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through episcopal succession the sure gift of truth (8...
...In effect the council said that the ordinary magisterium of the Roman Pontiff had fallen into error and had unjustly harmed the careers of loyal and able scholars...
...But, as Avery Dulles has pointed out (Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America, 1976), Vatican II has implicitly admitted church error and injustice By rehabilitating, as it were, and using the insights of theologians previously silenced...
...As DuUes puts it: Most importantly for our purposes, Vatican II quietly reversed the earlier positions of the Roman magisterium on a number of important issues...
...This meant that opinions were formed without the richness or the contribution of varying traditions...
...It went so far as to characterize our times as "a new stage of its history...
...and (3) the teaching function involves the charisms of many persons...
...4. Exercise of authority...
...My reflections will be adapted from earlier writings, especially The Critical Calling (Georgetown University Press, 1989...
...Is that sufficient for us...
...After calling attention to the key role of laypersons in the elaboration of moral doctrine and practice, the council stated: "Often enough the Christian view of things will itself suggest some specific solution in certain circumstances...
...3) an undue isolation of a single aspect of ~eaching, namely, the judgmental: who has the decisive, "'final word...
...The constitution then speaks of the constant movement of the church "forward toward the fullness of divine truth...
...Is that risky...
...I want to raise two questions to shape my argument...
...We know it hasn't been...
...It is not a question of what Vatican II did or did not say...
...Christ did not promise us that as individuals we would always be right when deliberating about the practical implications of "being in Christ...
...It is a normal outcome-even if infrequent--of an attempt to assimilate in a pilgrim and imperfect church, one which realizes that just as it is in via and can only imperfectly symbolize the coming reality of the Kingdom, so too its formulations of its convictions are always in via...
...3. In our day, Catholics are profoundly immersed in the social and intellectual world about them...
...My point is: Responsible dissent is not only a temporary end to a search...
...Hdlwig, 1993 Timothy O'Meara, 1988 John T. Noonan Jr., 1991 Philip Gleason, 1994 J. B]wan 'tehir, 1995 Charles Taylor, 1996 Gustavo Guti~rrez, 1997 Commonweal | 9 February 27, 1998 cesses and shared decision making...
...In summary, then, Hitchcock sees dissent as opposed to orthodoxy, as disloyalty and "infidelity," as a denial of authority, as the cause of confusion and an attack on faith, as catering to fads and ecclesiastical careerism, as reflecting timidity in high places, as a cave-in to lobbyists, as inevitably involving the destructive notion of a dual magisterium in the church...
...He opts for the latter...
...Acknowledgment of legitimate pluralism...
...The council then went on to urge the faithful to "live in very close union with the men of their time": "Let them blend modern science and its theories and the understanding of the most recent discoveries with Christian morality and doctrine...
...the official version of Casti connubii was altered in Acta Apostolicae Sedis because the Vatican latinist misrepresented the mind of Franciscus H/irth on punitive sterilization...
...The appropriate response to authentic noninfallible teaching is no longer seen as unquestioning acceptance and obedience...
...n H t is within this understanding of both church and magisterium that an assessment of dissent should occur...
...Second, what does it mean...
...5. Freedom of theological inquiry and speech...
...Conciliar admission of errors and deficiencies...
...Vatican II recognized this when it stated: "In fideli~ to conscience, Christians are joined with the rest of men in the search for truth and for the genuine solution to the numerous problems which arise in the life of individuals and from social relationships...
...4. Openness to the sciences...
...In this model, the very term "church" (as in "the church has always taught") referred to a small group with authority in the church...
...Within these perspectives, greater attention is given to evidence and analyses in evaluating authentic teaching...
...As Cardinal Suenens put it, "the pyramid of the old manuals was reversed...
...Even those who do not, have now experienced, for nearly two decades, the gradual erosion of that faith, as a rock is eroded by small but relentless drops of falling water...
...The first may be exemplified by James Hitchcock, professor of history at Saint Louis University, in his The Dissenting Church (National Committee of Catholic Laymen, 1983): "'The truth of the matter is that, at least in the United States, it would be difficult to find a major institution more internally disorganized, more ideologically divided, and less effective in its governing structures than is the Catholic church...
...Bernardin's response was interesting...
...ow, if we take these variables, shake, and mix them, they generate a notion of teaching in the church with the following characteristics: (1) an undue bifurcation between the teaching and learning functions in the church, with a consequent unique emphasis on the right to teach--and relatively little empha sis on the duty to learn and the sources of learning in the church...
...There is now widespread availability of higher education and intense specialization...
...Otherwise, we have ruled out personal reflection in the learning process of the church--and that is intolerable...
...2. Where the media are concerned, we live in the age of instant communication...
...hat is the meaning of dissent...
...Bernardin reflected on some of them in his inaugural address for the project (see, Origins, November 14,1996...
...Thus their religious practice and morality can keep pace with their scientific knowledge and with an ever-advancing technology" (62...
...An even more obscure theologian, then from the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown, writes a rather conservative essay on neonatal intensive care in the Journal of the American Medical Association and is banned from speaking by the local ordinary in Melbourne a week later...
...As John Courtney Murray stated: "It was, of course, the most controversial document of the whole council, largely because it raised with sharp emphasis the issue that lay continually below the surface of all the conciliar debates--the issue of the development of doctrine....The council formally sanctioned [in this document] the validity of the development itself...
...How one views dissent will reveal these deeper theological undercurrents...
...Here, by force of history, the variables have all changed...
...This article is based on a talk given at the Millennium Lecture Series, Saint Joseph's Church, New York City...
...He wrote: "The structure of a human community is correct only if it admits not just the presence of a justified opposition, but also that effectiveness of opposition which is required by the common good and the right of participation...
...Sometimes in the past, the teaching competence of the church was presented in a way that was all-encompassing and triumphalistic...
...For many centuries the clergy were the best educated persons in the church, not least because they had access to higher education...
...We rely on discussion, seminars, crossdisciplinary dialogue...
...27, 1998 area...
...First, why has dissent occurred in the church...
...1990 Monika t...
...We did not turn to these as sources of wisdom...
...There are two remarkably different answers given to this question...
...4. Authority...
...In this atmosphere, ecclesial attitudes could take shape without full exposure to contemporary sciences and disciplines, and therefore at times without an awareness of the real complexity of issues...
...As might be expected, this remains largely implicit...
...2) an undue identification of the teaching function with a single group in the church, the hierarchy...
...29,1998 Previous recipients of the Marianist Award John Tracy Ellis, 1986 Walter J, Ong, S.j, 1989 Louis Dupre, 1992 Rosemary Ha%hton, 1987 Sidney' Callahar...
...Hence we can already speak of a true social and cultural transformation, one which has repercussions on man's religious life as well (4...
...In Hitchcock's words: Many American Catholics regularly experience, from official sources, direct attacks on their faith...
...Indeed, he argues that one of the many failures of leadership over the past twenty-five years has been its inability to articulate what the council really said and did...
...First, movement forward "toward the fullness of divine truth" imphes an incomplete possession of such truth at given points in history...
...The council insisted on the autonomy of "earthly affairs" in the sense that created things and societies have their own laws and values that must be deciphered and respected...
...I disagree and will list twelve factors (more could be enumerated) that I believe encouraged a new critical awareness in the church and help explain the emergence of dissent in the postconciliar church...
...That little phrase "sometimes found, too, among Christians" is officially annotated with a reference to a two-volume study of the works of Galileo Galilei...
...3. The variety of competence in the church...
...Third, the first medium of this development is the contemplation and reflection of the faithful...
...It is no accident that collegiality emerged in the church at the very time secular institutions were captivated by democratic proUNIVERSITY D ON announces the presentation o[ the 1998 Marianist Award To Rev...
...After referring to the "respect that is due to the considered actions and utterances of those in positions of legitimate and official authority," Butler says this about what is the proper response to authoritative but noninfallibIe teaching: "The mood of the devout believer wilI be...a welcoming gratitude that goes along with the keen alertness of a critical mind, and with a good will concerned to play its part both in the purification and the development of the church's understanding of her inheritance...
...Rather, it is a docile personal attempt to assimilate and appropriate the teaching--a process that can end in full acceptance, or, when it is not convincing, in further study and conscientious dissent...
...Yet in the contemporary church, the idea of dissent remains terribly divisive...
...If such considerations do not explain--and even foster and validate--the notion of dissent in the church, then I should like to know why not...
...It is part of the ordinary way of progress in human understanding...
...This urging is a final shaking free of the "dependency syndrome" that previously dominated Catholic moral and pastoral formation and practice...
...9. Adaptation of practices...
...David Tracy a Catholic scholar who has made an outstanding contribution to the intellectual life Jan...
...Thus the faithful can be brought to live the faith in a more thorough and mature way" (62...
...By its actual practice of revision, the council implicitly taught the legitimacy and even the value of dissent...
...The new task of theology...
...The names of John Courtney Murray, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Henri de Lubac, and Yves Congar, all under a cloud of suspicion in the 1950s, suddenly became surrounded with a bright halo of enthusiasm...
...In church-state relations, the Declaration on Religious Freedom accepted the religiously neutral state, thus reversing the previously approved view that the state should formally propose the truth of Catholicism...
...Many ex tend endless sensitivity to "liberal anguish" while "similar manifestations of anguish from the 'right' are [seen asl mere hysteria...
...It is the people who are the repository of wisdom...
...Profound and rapid changes are spreading by degrees around the whole world...
...In such a situation, it is understandable that they would assume responsibilities that might be dispersed differently in other eras...
...No one has described this process better than Bishop B.C...
...This powerfully suggests the need of a new language, new formulations...
...To some extent, the church mimics in her internal life and organization the currents of the secular world in which she lives...
...Unless otherwise noted, the references are to paragraph numbers in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes...
...There may have been other factors involved, but anyone who reads the conciliar texts dispassionately will, I think, agree that Vatican II authorized a new critical spirit in the church, a spirit that lifted the notion of dissent from a suspect gloss in theological textbooks into the mainstream of Catholic life and polity...
...After noting that dis sent is a complicated term, he went on to characterize the view that all disagreement or criticism of church teaching is illegitimate is "unqualified...unfounded...a disservice to the church...
...Some of those who objected argued that the Common Ground Initiative would legitimate dissent...
...Authority was highly centralized, consultation was quite limited...
...Vatican II recognized this when it urged the layperson to "take on his/her own distinctive role...
...after the definition of papal infallibility it was--and still is--in some circles unthinkable to question papal statements, a development that reached its pinnacle in Humani gel~eris, as Yves Congar has noted...
...Several things should be noted here...
...In commenting on the words I have italicized, Walter M. Abbot states: "It is remarkable, indeed, for an ecumenical council to admit the possible deficiency of previous doctrinal formulations...
...That is, "She must rely on those who live in the world, are versed in different institutions and specialties, and grasp their innermost significance in the eyes of both believers and unbelievers" (44...
...Another accepts it as a normal aspect of human growth in understanding...
...Moreover, even more explicitly, in its Decree on Ecumenism, after noting the need of "continual reformation," the council Commonweal | 7 February 27, 1998 adds: "Therefore, if the influence of events or of the times has led to deficiencies in conduct, in church discipline, or even in the formulation of doctrine (which must be carefully distinguished from the deposit itself of faith), these should be appropriately rectified at the proper moment" (6...
...In summation, what we have here is Vatican II underlining the rapidly changing times, the novelty of the problems cast up by these changes, the many competences needed to face them adequately, the independence of the sciences and the openness to them required to face our problems, the freedom of inquiry and expression necessary, the incompleteness of the church's competence, deficiencies in past efforts to grapple with problems, the fact and need of development, the legitimacy of differences of opinion among believers, and the fact of variation in church discipline...
...Therefore, it is worth discussing...
...This means that theology must move from a mere repetition of past formulas to a search for fresh and more appropriate ones, to much more innovation than was envisaged in the past...
...Catholic, America, Theological Studies ("the chief organ for advancing dissenting opinion on the scholarly level...
...In this approach the term "magisterium" came to mean the hierarchical issuance of authoritative decrees...
...One mentality sees it as a threat to authority and as disobedience...
...In order to understand the meaning of dissent in the church, we must see it in the context of the overall mentality that assesses it...
...Today, the human race is passing through a new stage of its history...
...Thus dissent has become organized and entrenched...
...One of the interesting offshoots of that pastoral letter is that more conservative Catholics--who strongly rejected elements of it--learned that dissent does not necessarily involve disloyalty or disrespect...
...1. The church now defines herself as the People of God, a 'communio.' The model is concentric...
...Rapid communication suggests that people are better informed than ever--if not ahvays wiser than ever...
...Thus eventually "all of the teachings of the church are in jeopardy...
...Thus only persuasive reasons command assent...
...At the end of chapter 2 (on the proper development of culture), the council expressed the hope that laypersons would be well formed in the sacred sciences...
...The process must be prayerful, arduous, reflective, informed...
...The council was keenly aware of the rapidity of change in the modern world...
...What Bernardin did reject was "aggressive public campaigns against church teachings that undermine the au thority of the magisterium," not any dissent as such...
...The obvious examples are well-known...
...Why has dissent occurred in the church...
...These words of Karol Wojtyla in The Acting Person are no less true of the church than of any community...
...When Catholics realize that we must bring "the keen alertness of a critical mind" to official teachings if we are to contribute to them--as we must if we are to be loyal to the truth-then we will simultaneously understand that dissent is a distinct and nonthreatening possibility...
...For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down...
...The very same thing is true of a document like The Challenge of Peace...
...Finally, the Declaration on Religious Freedom was the key conciliar example of doctrinal development...
...In its Decree on Eastern Catholic Churches, the council modified its sacramental discipline with regard to the churches of the East...
...This modified notion would exemplify the following characteristics: (1) the learning process should be seen as essential to the teaching process...
...Their very separation from the one true church was a presumption against their orthodoxy...
...IL is playing the ostrich to say that dissent emerged in the church in the midsixties in spite of the council, not because of it...
...The council explicitly acknowledged this need in its distinction between the substance and formulation of the faith...
...I say this with considerable confidence, born of backing from a well-known continental thinker...
...Explanations as to why this is allowed to happen could range from simple confusion and timidity on the part of some church leaders, through the mistaken idea that the flames should be allowed to burn themselves out, to undeniable active sym pathy with dissenting positions on the part of an increasing number of bishops...
...Rather enlightened by Christian wisdom, and giving close attention to the teaching authority of the church, let the layman take on his own distinctive role (43...
...Is the risk avoidable...
...He did say, in the fact of our being a community of believers, that there is no better way of walking a narrow path than to walk it together--with the combined eyes and strength and experience of the entire people, all supporting each other's charisms and gifts...
...It then applied this explicitly to the sciences: "Consequently, we cannot but deplore certain habits of mind, sometimes found, too, among Christians, which do not sufficiently attend to the rightful independence of science" (36...
...6. Ecclesial groups existed in an atmosphere of polite warfare...
...And even more explicitly, the form of that reliance is specified in the following paragraph: Let the layman not imagine that his pastors are always such experts, that to every problem which arises, however complicated, they can readily give him a concrete solution, or even that such is their mission...
...Protestants, all Protestants, were adversarii of our docCommonweal | 8 February 27, 1998 trinal and moral theses...
...Canon Louis Janssens writes an obscure probe in Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses and it is reported in Newsweek a few weeks later...
...7. In education, we now encourage student involvement, experiment, creativity...
...It is sufficient--for in God we trust...
...It is and must be seen as a new beginning, a beginning of new evidence in the church...
...Otherwise there is no learning...
...These two mentalities are vying for dominance in the contemporary church...
...However, Hitchcock sees in such dissenters people who "instinctively oppose any reaffirmation of teaching authority, in no matter what Commonweal | 5 Februam...
...Concretely, if I dissent, it is the end of a process, a docile attempt to assimilate...
...Yet it happens rather frequently, and legitimately so, that with equal sincerity some of the faithful will disagree with others on a given matter...
...These remarkable and rather massive sea changes have generated--or perhaps more accurately, should generate--a modified notion of teaching in the church, the magisterium...
...Triggered by the intelligence and creative energies of man, these changes recoil upon him, upon his decisions and desires, both individual and collective, and upon his manner of thinking and acting with respect to things and to people...
...In what follows I want to present two different scenarios of the magisterium--that is, how the church teaches...
...In this perspective, the magisterial function in the church is much more a matter of a teaching-learningprocess...
...8. The fact of doctrinal development...
...As a result of these and other revisions, the council rehabilitated many theologians who had suffered under severe restrictions with regard to their ability to teach and publish...
...Philosophical uniformity has long disappeared from the scene...
...From my perspective it is an outcome, not a first-foot forward, aggressive starting-point...
...And what are the key issues around which dissent (a dissent that erodes faith) occurs...
...In the face of all this, bishops remain irresponsibly silent or show active sympathy with dissenting opinions...
...The "master concept" dominated seminary and universiey teaching, the "hand-down" notion of teaching where the professor dictated from his notes, which were often yellow with age...
...3. Complexity of issues...
...These two scenarios are generated by two distinct sets of cultural variables that affect the very notion of both teaching and of church, and therefore of our understanding of "dissent...
...It can be the latter (when irresponsible in form), but it should be the former...
...Hitchcock wonders whether the phenomenon of dissent occurred because of or in spite of Vatican II...
...This method was rendered viable and possible by a uniformity of philosophy and language in the church...
...Their doctrinal and moral writings were forbidden reading...
...Concretely, if large segments of competent and demonstrably loyal Catholics disagree with certain formulations of Humanae vitae, this must be seen as the beginning of a new reflection...
...One may, of course, regret this, may squirm under its untidiness...
...5. Educational status of lay people and clergy...
...7. The independence of the sciences...
...The effect of all this is the erosion of faith...
...In sum, we exist in an atmosphere highlighting the genuine complexity of moral and doctrinal issues...
...As such, we must learn to institutionalize dissent and profit from it...
...It is what God, through his incarnate Word, has left us...
...For centuries the information flow in the church and world was slow, restricted...
...Church bureauRichard A. McCormick, S.J., is the Joh~t A. O'Brierz Professor of Christimz Ethics at the University of Notre Dame...
...6. Ecclesial groups now exist in an ecumenical sunshine...
...43) 11...
...Specifically, in permitting access to the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist, and anointing of the sick Vatican II stated: "In view of special circumstances of time, place, and personage, the Catholic church has often adopted and now adopts a milder policy, offering to all the means of salvation and an example of charity among Christians through participation in the sacraments...
...The council fathers noted simply: "The church guards the heritage of God's Word and draws from it religious and moral principles, without always having at hand the solution to particular problems" (33...
...Our seminaries were isolated sanctuaries...
...Remarkable indeed...
Vol. 125 • February 1998 • No. 4
