| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| COLUMN |
A MISTAKEN CHURCH?
by Janet E. Smith
Early in the semester one of my bioethics students asked me if she was allowed to
disagree with me. I told her that I welcomed opposition, indeed, I would help anyone who
wanted to disagree with me; that I would try to help my opponent develop the best possible
version of his argument or position — before I squashed him! I then told the class of
a recent experience of doing a search on the Internet. I was looking for a
pro-contraceptive article by a Catholic to use as one of the readings for the bioethics
class. Using the Google search command I typed in “contraception and Catholic”
and was rewarded with over 6,000 options. I visited about 150 of them. One was an essay
written by a Dominican priest who focused on my own arguments and found them lacking. I
told my students that had the essay been submitted to me as paper for class I would have
given him an A-, because he identified the key issue correctly (he did not focus on
charges of “physicalism or biologism,” but he noted that the key argument is
that the processes that lead to new human life share in the dignity of human life) and he
did a decent job representing my arguments. And that is just about the best that one can
hope from the opposition. He would get an A- rather than an A because he didn’t do a
complete enough job of articulating his own position.
Though my students were dazzled by this incredible display of my potential for fairness,
what really flummoxed them was my question: “Of the 150 sites that I visited, how
many do you think opposed and how many supported the Church’s teaching on
contraception?” They were astonished that only 2 of the 150 — one by Catholics
for Free Choice and the other by the Dominican — were against the Church’s
teaching. Now, these young people have no idea of the depth and breadth of opposition to
the Church’s teaching within the Church (in their youthful naiveté they expect
Catholics, especially those who represent the Church, to be faithful to the Church). So I
have some explaining to do.
I tell them that the vast majority of Catholics and Catholic theologians and a significant
portion of priests do not accept the Church’s teaching on contraception. I explain
that most of them were taught in the seminary not to teach the Church’s teaching.
Shortly after Humanae Vitae was released, the dissenters got control of the seminaries and
taught that eventually the Church would have to change its teaching and that priests
should leave couples free to do what their consciences dictated. Faithful Catholics have
taken to the Internet to promulgate the teachings of the Church since in some ways the
promulgation within the Church is lacking.
Are the laity overreaching their responsibilities? No, not if we understand that the laity
are very much “the Church”; they are an integral part of the people of God who
make up the Church. Lumen Gentium explains what the Church is. It reviews the metaphors
that have been used to explain the Church: among them, a sheepfold, a land to be
cultivated, a building of God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, a mother, an exile, a door, a body,
a bride. It largely adopts for its purposes the description of the Church as the people of
God led by the Spirit. In every way the Church is meant to lead us towards Christ who is
the Lumen Gentium or the Light of Nations. It is through the Church that Christ
communicates truth and grace. Thus, a Catholic does not view the Church as just one more
institution, just one more establishment that has a “mission statement” and
“goals.” While the Church is the Bride of Christ who is immaculately Holy, it is
also the People of God who are, one hopes, always growing in holiness.
Fortunately, or more accurately, blessedly, a growing number of this new generation of
Catholics does have respect for the teaching Church. They have evidently been well taught
by someone that what the Church teaches is not just one other opinion that they are free
to agree or disagree with. To say that something is taught by the Church carries powerful
weight with them — it is not to signal — as it does for many of my
generation— that something is an antiquated position from which the enlightened must
distance themselves. One doubts that they have read Lumen Gentium but one knows that any
inclination that they have to respect Church teaching would be strengthened were they to
do so.
Recent history, however, suggests that it is not wrong to be wary of some of the
“teachers” within the Church. Again, we live in a time in which the
“church” has failed in some of its teaching responsibilities, as the case of
contraception illustrates. In fact, several years ago, the bishops of the Philippines made
a remarkable apology for their failure to teach the Church’s teaching on
contraception. They said:
It is said that when seeking ways of regulating births, only 5% of you consult God. In the
face of this unfortunate fact, we your pastors have been remiss: how few are there among
you whom we have reached. There have been some couples eager to share their expertise and
values on birth regulation with others. They did not receive adequate support from their
priests. We did not give them due attention, believing then this ministry consisted merely
of imparting a technique best left to married couples.
Only recently have we discovered how deep your yearning is for God to be present in your
married lives. But we did not know then how to help you discover God’s presence and
activity in your mission of Christian parenting. Afflicted with doubts about alternatives
to contraceptive technology, we abandoned you to your confused and lonely consciences with
a lame excuse: “follow what your conscience tells you.” How little we realized
that it was our consciences that needed to be formed first. A greater concern would have
led us to discover that religious hunger in you.
Now, this is a remarkable and inspiring statement since it indicates real
self-consciousness, courage, humility, and sensitivity on the part of the bishops who
issued it. It seems, as well, to have anticipated the current round of apologies issued by
the Holy Father.
Both set of apologies raise some questions. The statement of the Filipino bishops raises
the question: If as Lumen Gentium states, the Church is indefectible, how can the bishops,
who are the chief teachers of the Church, make mistakes? Aren’t we supposed to be
able to trust the Church to teach us infallibly in matters of faith and morals? The Holy
Father’s statements raise in particular the question: “Isn’t he giving
acquiescence to the false accusations historically made against the Church?”
Isn’t he aiding and abetting those who would, for instance, falsely accuse Pius XII
of negligence during the Holocaust or, even worse, of anti-Semitism?
The International Theological Commission anticipated many such questions in respect to the
Holy Father’s recent apologies and issued a statement: Mercy and Reconciliation: The
Church and the Faults of the Past. Any who question the actions of the Holy Father owe him
the courtesy of reading this document; it is a truly extraordinary mini-education in the
history of acts of asking for forgiveness within and by the Church.
Mercy and Reconciliation is incredibly rich with citations from Scripture, Church fathers,
magisterial documents, and papal statements. At key points it draws upon Lumen Gentium.
Early on, referencing Lumen Gentium 8, it tells us that the Church has taken upon itself
the “weight of past faults in order to purify memory and to live the renewal of heart
and life according to the will of the Lord. She is able to do this insofar as Christ
Jesus, whose mystical body extended through history she is, has taken upon himself once
and for all the sins of the world.” Passages from LG 39 state that the Church is
“indefectibly holy” and also one from LG 48 that states that while the Church on
earth is “marked with a true holiness,” it is however “imperfect.”
Mercy and Reconciliation cites Augustine as having said: “The Church as a whole says:
Forgive us our trespasses! Therefore she has blemishes and wrinkles. But by means of
confession the wrinkles are smoothened out and the blemishes washed clean. The Church
stands in prayer in order to be purified by confession and, as long as men live on earth
it will be so.” Many crucial distinctions must be made to ensure that we aren’t
guilty of equivocations that confuse the Church as the immaculate Bride of Christ with the
Church as the sinful People of God, but that there is some sense in which the
“Church” rightly apologizes to God and to victims for the sins of its members
seems immediately right to me. I have always found it right to participate in liturgical
ceremonies conducted, for instance, in reparation for abuses against the Eucharist and I
like to seek plenary indulgences for those in purgatory and am hoping that others will do
so for me when I am gone. I can even remember a few occasions in my youth, when family
members apologized to others for me (imagine)! For my part, in my talks on the
Church’s teachings on sexuality, as I trace the incredible licentiousness and social
chaos that has stemmed from the sexual revolution, I regularly apologize to the young for
my generation since we initiated the sexual revolution, we wouldn’t trust anyone over
thirty, and we thought that we were the first truly socially sensitive generation that
ever existed (among our other sins!).
Taking corporate responsibility for sin seems especially appropriate for Christians who
claim to be “one body in the Lord.” Again, the Holy Father, who bids us “be
not afraid,” boldly treads where others have feared to venture. Undoubtedly there are
theological challenges here; I believe Mercy and Reconciliation goes a long to meeting
them without at all compromising the vision of the Church as articulated in Lumen Gentium.
Janet E. Smith is professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas and a
regular columnist for Catholic Dossier.
Back to Catholic Information Center on Internet