Catholic life is now dominated by what can be called "bottomline theology" — an approach to sacred truth which is less interested in the quality of reasoning or adherence to authentic doctrine than in results. Every theological idea is evaluated primarily with respect to two questions — whether it supports feminist aspirations and whether it will help justify the sexual revolution. Liberals have keen noses for such things and can sense, a long way off, which theologies may or not perform those services.

Of necessity, therefore, Catholics who wish to be orthodox find themselves forced into the same mentality. Theological speculation has to be approached not in an open-minded and respectful way but with a "hermeneutic of suspicion," asking what agenda various theologians may have in mind, what causes are being surreptitiously served.

The overall result has been a great impoverishment of theological discussion, one which is likely to continue until such time as would-be Catholic revolutionaries are at last persuaded that their cause is hopeless. But so feeble is magisterial authority that it will be a long time before that happens.

If orthodox Catholics employ a hermeneutic of suspicion towards contemporary theologians, liberals employ it towards the Church’s entire tradition, in ways which have become so familiar as scarcely to arouse more than passing notice. If the claims of liberal scholars are taken seriously, the meaning of the Gospel was systematically misunderstood and distorted until about 1960 and is only now being recovered.

Thus one of America’s leading theologians, Father Richard McBrien, has written a history of the papacy, the sole purpose of which seems to be to discredit the office in the eyes of people with little knowledge of its history. Dutifully, editors of diocesan newspapers have treated their leaders to advance samplings of his work, so that well-meaning Catholics have it on good authority — their diocesan newspaper, whose publisher is their bishop — that most of the claims made for the papal office are untenable and that its history is in many ways a shameful story.

The hermeneutic of suspicion is also employed in less crude ways. Thus Eamon Duffy, a very good historian, claims in his own recent history of the papacy that there is no evidence that Peter was bishop of Rome and that in fact Rome had no bishop for at least the first century of the Church’s existence. He employs a mode of reasoning long familiar in biblical criticism — since certain things could not have happened, evidence that they did happen is unreliable. Never mind, therefore, that the church at Rome carefully kept records of its bishops from the beginning, along with a memory of the site of Peter’s death and burial.

Unsuspecting Catholics are now routinely told that traditional orthodox claims, such as that Peter was bishop of Rome, were based on prejudice and interest, the need to bolster the bishop of Rome’s attempts to extend his power over the entire Church. Modern scholars, on the other hand, are never to be suspected of having an agenda of their own, and the fact that denying the historical claims of the papacy nicely suits the interests of the ecclesiastical revolutionaries is merely coincidental.

Revolutions are always directed at some alleged tyranny, but those recruited to the revolution are never told who will pick up the scepter of the dead tyrant. The same Father McBrien who regards it as virtually a religious duty to speak "frankly" about the papacy also considers it wicked for orthodox Catholics to criticize liberal bishops. He seems to envision a Church in which local prelates are largely independent of Rome and dissenting scholars are supported by the local prelates.

It may be a scenario which some bishops find attractive, although it can only be a preliminary to their own subsequent loss of power, in the same way that liberal nobles who supported the French Revolution themselves ended on the guillotine or had to flee. Liberals in the church never acknowledge that the "tyranny" of a distant papacy is always less oppressive than that of the local ecclesiastical establishment. (Liberal bishops now like to represent themselves as somehow the embodied spirits of the people of their dioceses, as though they had been elected rather than appointed by the same Holy See whose authority they resent.)

There are, however, legitimate questions with regard to the exercise of papal authority, questions which are partly doctrinal but even more prudential - how centralized the governance of the Church ought to be and how much autonomy the "local church" ought to have. In the best of all possible religious worlds the argument for a high degree of local autonomy might carry considerable weight.

Perhaps the local church should choose its own bishop, from among those with whom the faithful are familiar. Perhaps each country should have its own liturgical calendar, with national and local variations. Each country obviously needs its own liturgical and scriptural translations, and who is better qualified to produce them than those immersed in each culture.

Could it even be possible to allow significant liturgical variations from country to country, rather than all liturgy being a translation of the Roman liturgy? The example of the Eastern rites of course shows that there could be. Perhaps in matters admittedly disciplinary in nature it ought to be the national church which decides such things as whether girls should serve at the altar, whether priests might marry, or how communion is to be received.

Even in matters of belief, need there be complete uniformity of expression? Perhaps the Catechism of the Catholic Church, instead of simply being translated into each language, should instead be adapted to each culture. Perhaps in some cultures it is possible to express the truths of the faith in terms somewhat different from the familiar Western creeds and dogmas.

In the abstract a case could be made for all these things. But in practice they would have a catastrophic affect, eventually robbing whole nations of the genuine Catho lic faith.

The reasons for this are simple and must be bluntly stated — there simply does not exist, at the national or local levels, the kind of ecclesiastical leadership which would be capable of retaining the central truths of the faith while making legitimate cultural adjustments. Thus any system of national or local autonomy would soon produce something which might call itself Catho licism but would have cut its ties with the authen tic tradition.

Scriptural and liturgical translations are an obvious example. Proposed new translations are not offered as a more profound disclosure of the inner meaning of the sacred texts but are quite openly justified as necessary concessions to feminists who claim to be offended by the kind of language which has been employed in common discourse for many centuries, Thus the innovators are not oriented inward, to the truths of faith, but outward, to a currently ascendant political movement which rests on wholly secular assumptions. Although some people insist on a meaningful distinction be tween "horizontal" and "vertical inclusive language," the logic of the feminist position dictates that God himself cease to be referred to in masculine terms, and if the Church in America enjoyed complete freedom to choose its own translations, the feminists would undoubtedly get their wish.

The experience of the Protestant churches shows that the election of bishops is less likely to anoint saintly man than those with well-honed public-relations skills and a knack for ecclesiastical politicking, often the man who has offended the fewest people, thus would be least likely to provide the Church with strong leadership in troubled times.

In principle the concern with "inculturating" the faith into different milieus is a valid one, and a process which has gone on continuously in the Church since the earliest days. But is a task which is also extraordinarily difficult and subtle, requiring a profound understanding both of the faith itself and of the culture to which it is adapted. The spirit of the present age precisely goes against such care and such subtlety and, if inculturation were left unchecked, would probably result in bizarre and syncretistic forms of Catholicism.

Liberals point out that in various ages the church has adopted new ideas readily, even eagerly (Aristotle’s philosophy). But the liberal argument lacks a sense of historical context.

In certain ages — the Constantinian period or the High Middle Ages — the Church could reach out to the world with confidence because of its sense of its own strength, knowing that it could take what it wanted from the surrounding culture, transforming everything to its own uses.

But the present age is a time of disintegration, not only in the Church but in the entire culture. Every kind of certainty is being undermined, every synthesis un done, every settled tradition repudiated. The fiercest energy, in both Church and society, is the negative energy of fevered destruction, a work carried on relentlessly and which the guardians of the tradition, such as bishops, seem to lack the energy and commitment to counteract. The problem is especially acute in the West, even more so in Europe than in the United States, a cultural stance which is reflexively rebellious and destructive. In such a situation to rely on the resources of the "local church" is to court destruction.

When the "reformers" invite those in authority to show them trust, they refrain from stating what they are willing to state within their own circles - that they commit themselves finally to no unquestioned truths, no religious dogma of any kind, because the demands of the modern world precisely require openness to every kind of negation. In such a situation it is inherently impossible to have the kind of "trust" demanded.

If liberals in 1958 had been shown a vision of the Church of 1998 they would have recoiled in shock. But as the Catholic synthesis began to unravel, they not only accepted the unravelling with equanimity, they accelerated it with increasing fanaticism. If present proposals for "reform" should lead to the total annihilation of Christian belief, to a pervasive doubt, these same "reformers" would not consider their program to have failed.

In this situation the papal office, however it might be evaluated doctrinally, is of indispensable prudential importance, for it is only the papal office which still retains a vital sense of the Church’s entire tradition and of its unity across national and cultural boundaries. In John Paul II it also has a pope with the keenest understanding of contemporary realities and of the ways in which Catholic teaching can be related to those realities.

The task of holding the Church together at a time when every force works in the opposite direction, as pieces of the whole seem to fly off in all directions, is a daunting one. Like Voltaire’s God, if the papacy did not exist, we would have to invent it. Fortunately, as also with Voltaire’s God, we do not need to.