LIsten Up
Theologians, Dennis O'Brien: & together, bishops
LISTEN UP Bishops need to hear theologians debate Dennis O'Brien ritics of Pope John Paul II claim that although he often refers to certain themes from Vatican II, he has failed to heed the...
...The papacy of John Paul II has been a teaching papacy, obsessed with the assertion and re-assertion of traditional doctrine...
...Over a period of time, the two apostolic functions (orthodoxy and missionary preaching ) devolved onto the "bishops," though that was clearly not their original function...
...An antlered gleam caromed in fragments out of my high beam...
...Germain Grisez, an influential, learned, and deeply conservative moral theologian is as much exercised by the lack of dialogue between theologians and bishops as radicals from Call to Action...
...the buck had not mounted and, floundering, killed me with sharp hooves of engendering...
...I said canticles of thanks to pure Diana once again: the windshield had not gone to particles...
...The ultraconservative construction of church collapses all the apostolic functions into the hierarchic office of bishop, centered ultimately in the magisterium and the bishop of Rome...
...LISTEN UP Bishops need to hear theologians debate Dennis O'Brien ritics of Pope John Paul II claim that although he often refers to certain themes from Vatican II, he has failed to heed the "spirit" of the council...
...manae vitae, which upheld the traditional teaching against artificial contraception...
...Excel-lent bishops have put themselves in a vulnerable and even ludicrous position by making dubious theological pronouncements, not because they were proud men, but because they felt that as part of their apostolic office they must supply the answers to the dogmatic and moral problems of the time...
...Unfortunately, this sense of theological interchange seemed to end with Paul VI's encyclical HuDennis O'Brien is the author of, most recently, The Idea of a Catholic University (University of Chicago Press...
...and I was wounded down to the white bone, but somehow quickened by my watching, too, as if a god had bearded my night-black car with long white hairs embedded in the rubber...
...It did appear for a short time during the heady days of Vatican II that a deeper theology of church as the faith's medium and expression would emerge...
...Gerald Blaszczak • SiJIney.Callahan John Cecero • juke A. Collins Fran Ferder & John Heaglr • Christine...
...Thus, after one of Paul's missionary forays, he would move on and sometimes leave behind some-one to guard the teaching...
...it transfers direct apostolic function outside the vested episcopal hierarchy...
...The garment of the church is not only spotless...
...Ask us questions, and make us answer until you've heard all you want to hear...
...Neither his Union nor the VALERRY Commonweal 18 September 10, 2004 counterpart union of women's religious orders has been able to establish direct dialogue...
...persuasive, not proclamatory...
...Grisez rejects such a strategy: al Commonweal 19 September 10, 2004 I have heard the line, "The Holy See seems to be following a policy of trying to appoint 'better bishops...
...i l 11 on Love hri~tian Se..[: /.)iio,t inrjuirie~ 1, [1[ -[i1 or1 Grisez is suggesting a learning session like Vatican II where bishops and theologians dialogue...
...Doctrinal orthodoxy—often on the controverted issue of artificial contraception—has become a litmus tests for episcopal appointment...
...And they do not talk to one another...
...Sit still and listen until you learn what the issues are, and what you think about them...
...In short, this has not been a learning papacy in the spirit of Vatican-II...
...What is crucial in assessing the present circumstance of the church is that none of the apostles were bishops—even Peter who, though he may have gone to Rome, was certainly not in any manner "bishop of Rome...
...Send us home...
...The most recent meeting was held in 1990...
...2004 Two days of ,Ii,cnssion ~Ilyd seminars to help Catholic Cllurclh Ieilie/ redahn the depth and %vision/ o f otit I L l/c,lo IS tradition...
...There were two senses of "apostle" in the earliest church: the twelve who, as those who witnessed oil topics snclr as: I h .idtualPro i L:o...
...Vatican II's style is discursive, not doctrinal...
...Dialogue between laity and bishops was the demand of the day...
...Evidence of monologue abounds...
...Lash concludes: What continues to be quite lacking...is any sense from the bishops' conference of its recognition that the grave cultural and pastoral crisis in which we find ourselves has, ineluctably, profound and far-reaching theological implications for every aspect of the church's structures, life, and mission...
...That teaching has been from above: didacticism without dialogue...
...Brown's assessment of the coalescence of apostolicity on the office of bishop is telling: The unexamined claim of apostolic succession [in the office of bishop] can cause confusion about the theological role of the episcopate in several ways...
...Theologians such as Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, John Courtney Murray, and Henri de Lubac, who had been under official suspicion or outright ban, were recruited as periti to the assembled bishops...
...The Vatican's desire to avoid controversy and even the appearance of controversy seems to govern the present appointment of bishops...
...I set my hazards and walked back to where The buck lay broken in the autumn rain, so beautiful, the pouch of testicles at ease in pure white fur, and a small stain of blood at the mouth...
...At a Common Ground conference I attended in 2002, a monsignor who had spent ten years at the North American College in Rome commented on claims about "what Rome thinks": "You have to realize that there are three Romes: the Rome of the universities (the Gregorian, the Angelicum), the Rome of the generalates of the great religious orders (Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits), and the Rome of the Vatican...
...Paul VI spoke from the spirit of Vatican II when he said that the church's aim was pas vaincu, mais convaincu: not to conquer, but to convince...
...Then sit down with the Holy Father...
...In an interview published in the National Catholic Reporter (November 21, 2003), Fr...
...The shock of Humanae vitae was not simply the prohibition of contraception, it was the fact that the pope unilaterally reversed the recommendation for change of two special commissions, the second of which was his own hand-picked group...
...Traditional councils like Trent formulated their documents in doctrinal proclamation and condemnation...
...In a brief article with the provocative title "We Need More Than Mitres" (the Tablet of London, December 13, 2003), he recounted the efforts shortly after the council to establish a commission to maintain dialogue between bishops and theologians...
...The moderator challenged the audience: "What are you—bishops, priests, laity—afraid of about dialogue...
...Sit still and listen," then you send the theologians home...
...Then there was the missionary apostle represented by Paul...
...Not so...
...When that's done, both sides will have had a very fair opportunity to tell you what they're thinking...
...Then throw us out...
...High on the cannon bones I set both hands, intending to drag him out of the way my chance should not become another's chance—but saw as I did so that he stirred weakly: the net of breath still held...
...He laments not just the fact of deep disagreement and dissent among Catholic theologians, but even more the failure of the hierarchy to admit that there is dissent and to address the crisis entailed in conflicting views...
...Given the lack of conversation between theologians and bishops (up to the bishop of Rome himself), it is worth offering a biblical comment on the role of bishops and theologians...
...He goes on to offer a possible solution to the "overload" of function on the contemporary office of "resident" bishop: Perhaps then it would be wise for Catholics to affirm explicitly, and not merely implicitly, that in the mod-ern church some of the principal activities of the Pauline apostolate, especially as regards offering leadership to face new religious problems, have been taken over by men and women who are not bishops—by theologians, by enterprising priests and religious who by circumstances are thrust into new situations, and by perceptive laity with their manifold competencies...
...Commonweal 2 0 September 10, 2004...
...Dulles, who tends to side with "conservatives" on various church issues, carefully extracted the doctrinal conclusions of Vatican II and noted that they do not in any way stray from traditional teaching...
...Brown sees a continuing dialogue of theologians and resident bishops, but he concludes that only through such dialogue—drawing on the larger re-sources of the church—can apostolic succession be realistic...
...The documents of the council reflect the spirit of theological dialogue, not the proclamation of dogmatic conclusions...
...And the how of faith may be essential to the what: does a sentimental holy card tell the same religious truth as a Rembrandt etching of the Crucifixion...
...Rome bars the door to dialogue so that there is not even the mere Karl Kirchwey Actaeon ripped to gobbets by his hounds, felled in the mazy paths of venery: it was not like that...
...Vatican II displayed a different way to be church...
...As a layman, I fear that no one's listening at the top...
...His remedy (speaking to a bishop at the Ninth Bishops' Workshop): First you [the bishops] must face up to the disagreement...
...Where the dark abounds, a five-point buck hit by an SUV ghosted into my lane with car-wreck sounds, huge, pale and cartwheeling like an empty refrigerator box...
...It often seems that the Vatican prefers to throw out the theologians straight off...
...Gudorf Harold D. Horell • Kieran Scott appearance of disagreement or dissent...
...I recently attended an earnest conference on the role of the laity in the life and governance of the church...
...Does a colored plaster statue of Mary carry the same religious sense as Michelangelo's Pieta...
...FORDHAM UNIVERSITY ANNOUNCES A Pastoral Conference: Human Sexuality in the Roman Catholic Tradition October 2S-29...
...Distinguished theologian Nicholas Lash summed up the abysmal failure of bishop-theologian dialogue in Great Britain after Vatican II...
...Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi's His Holiness (Doubleday) says about John Paul II: "he seems to listen and ask questions of other people, but at bottom he does not really dialogue...
...The modernist controversy should have taught the church one thing: Questions must be faced up to and answered...
...That strategy isn't going to work...[B]ishop appointments don't answer [dissenting theologian] Charlie Curran's questions...
...I lost my balance, my hands gloved in his musk, and staggered free of that black gaze diamonded by the rill at the curb...
...This is a change in the church which is much more than laity auditing the books and checking on errant clergy...
...I could not find even the little he sought in me, who lacked a simple weapon to end him with, so that his death was slow, a long indifference, like the rescission of splattered leaves, a passion in dumb-show...
...Changing the mode of communication may not change the verbal content of faith (Dulles can well extract traditional statements of "faith"), but it changes what it means to speak the faith...
...They won't go away...
...Brown's modest proposal changes the sense of church by locating missionary-apostolicity in the work of theologians and even the competencies of perceptive laypeoplemaybe even women...
...Road Kill Jesus in the flesh, were the guardians of "orthodoxy...
...it isn't even fraying at the edges...
...For whoso list to hunt—the hart, the hart—I thought my Previa took him in her stride, breasting the rain-slick road, always apart, not tangled this way, fell and underside so implicated in a single dart of time, horn and steel dragging through the pied landscape and the loud reek of viscera...
...In the first five years of the commission's work, the theologians were asked to comment on only two issues: the appropriate age for confirmation and whether people could receive Communion more than once a day...
...Quarrels about the "spirit" of Vatican II are often nothing more than partisan positioning, but an ex-change in the February 24, 2003, issue of America between Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ, and John W. O'Malley, SJ, illuminates the meaning of "spirit...
...O'-Malley, who is a church historian, countered by comparing the "style" of the Council of Trent with that of Vatican II...
...Camilo Maccisse, the former president of the Union of Superiors General, which rep-resents 240 male religious orders, criticized the lack of contact between his group and the pope...
...The council became an exercise in intense theological instruction in the dialogue between assembled bishops and recruited theologians...
...The late Raymond E. Brown, SS, perhaps the most respected Catholic Scripture scholar of his day, described the sharp distinction between Apostles and bishops (Priest and Bishop, Paulist...
...They don't answer my arguments...
...In the early church, bishops were the leaders left behind...
...And ask your-self this very important question: What is the Catholic faith here...
...The theologians were to act as a "consultative body" to the bishops...
...it changed the way in which the message was to be communicated...
...Vatican II's spirit was that of a learning church, open to debate and discussion, hearing from the many voices assembled, from bishops to theologians to (even) the Protestant and Orthodox "observers...
...Then give me and those who disagree a chance to come before you and the Holy Father...and present our views and argue with each other...
...They don't answer anything...
...And the questions have to be answered...
...iven my "liberal" leanings, it would be all too easy to imagine that the demand for dialogue is a special concern of "liberals" and the "democratic left" in the Catholic community...
...Vatican II's "style" of presentation differs sharply...
Vol. 131 • September 2004 • No. 15
