It is evident that decisions of Church authority
are neither authoritative nor
decisive for a certain type of modern theologian.

Church authority:
No longer "authoritative"?

By K.D. Whitehead

n "Rome has spoken," but the "cause" goes on and on anyway: this is how authority is treated, at least in practice, in our present age. Our age flatters itself about how committed it is to "dialogue," and about how it always takes all points of view into account-except, as it happens, the pronouncements of authority.

Every decision of authority today becomes another subject for more "dialogue"-by which is usually meant that what authority has said is laid aside and something else is asserted in its place as if it were authoritative. What this almost ritual rejection of whatever authority says really signifies, however, is that the authority in question is simply no longer accepted as if it were authoritative: some new authority has been adopted in its place.

This is the exact situation in which the Catholic Church has found herself for a number of years now: Church authority is no longer accepted as authoritative by many, many Catholics, including some who are in positions of authority in the Church. Meanwhile, the authority of science or scholarship, and the judgments of contemporary secular culture, constitute the only "authority" that really counts today.

The fact of all this is rarely baldly stated; but the evidence for it is abundant-and undeniable. A regular pattern has been established whereby Church authority speaks out, only to be minimized if not denied outright in certain Church circles, in some cases by people who are presumably supposed to be speaking for the Church (such as members "in good standing" of Catholic theology faculties, for example).

In May 1994, Pope John Paul II issued an Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis on Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone.1 In this document, the Successor of Peter and the Vicar of Christ on earth reiterated in a particularly solemn manner a Church teaching to the effect that "the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women."

The Holy Father declared that this judgment was "to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." He said that he was issuing this judgment "in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself." He said that he was speaking in virtue of his "ministry of confirming the brethren (Luke 22:32)."

Nor was it any new thing that John Paul II was venturing to say. He correctly noted in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis itself that "the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the magisterium in its more recent documents." In particular, the pope specified, the teaching had been spelled out with a clarity impossible to misunderstand in a 1976 Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Inter Insigniores, issued under his predecessor, Pope Paul VI.2

However, as John Paul II also noted in the letter, in spite of the fact that this teaching had been clearly spelled out by his predecessor before he ever arrived on the scene, "in some places it was considered still open to debate." It was for this reason that the Holy Father believed he had to speak out again in order to verify in no uncertain terms that the debate was indeed closed.

In point of fact, the Church's position on the inadmissibility of women to the priesthood was more than just being "debated." It was being pointedly and vigorously combated. Radical feminists and their fellow travelers regularly heaped scorn on the Church's position, sometimes in colorful language; it was considered the Church's prototypical injustice. Polls consistently showed large majorities of Catholics to be in favor of it. Catholic theologians who upheld the teaching actually seemed to be the exception rather than the rule.

There was ample reason, therefore, for the Holy Father to reiterate the Church's teaching in the particularly solemn manner he adopted in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. It is hard to imagine what other words he could have used to convey the conclusion that the question of female ordination has now been decided. For professing Catholics the debate should have been over.

The pope did not say in his letter that he was deciding the question; he said that it had already been decided by the constant understanding and practice of the Church, once and for all and forever. If words mean anything, his words meant the decision was final, the causa was finita.

But words do not mean what they say today, apparently-if they are the words of Church authority. Instead the debate just goes on, if not necessarily as if there were no Church authority at all, then at least as if the pronouncements of this Church authority represented just one more "point of view." Far from closing off the debate, the words of John Paul II actually served to intensify the debate.

Rome's solution? Speak out again! In November, 1995, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued something called a Responsum ad dubium, a "Response" to a "doubt," that is, an official explanation concerning the theological note or weight to be accorded to the central teaching contained in the pope's Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis that the Church does not have the authority to confer priestly ordination on women.

The CDF Response was unequivocal in the answer it gave to the dubium in question: the teaching in the pope's letter, it declared, was "to be held definitively, to be understood as belonging to the deposit of the faith." It was to be accorded "definitive assent" by the faithful, since "founded upon the written word of God and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium." Thus, the "I-word," relatively uncommon in the pronouncements of the contemporary magisterium, was explicitly and no doubt deliberately employed in this CDF Response.

In an explanatory paper which accompanied the Response, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith not only did not downplay the significance of this use of the "I-word"; it further emphasized "the definitive and infallible nature of this teaching of the Church," and reiterated that it required the "full, definitive assent" of the faithful, assent which it described as "irrevocable." In other words, in non-technical language, if you profess the Creed, you have to believe this too on the authority of "the Holy Catholic Church."

The CDF explanatory paper accompanying the Response went on to underline the point that "the definitive and infallible nature of this teaching of the Church did not arise with the publication of the pope's Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis." In this case the Holy Father was not exercising the special authority he possesses in virtue of his office to declare a teaching infallible on behalf of the whole Church. Rather, "having taken account of present circumstances," John Paul II "confirmed . . . the teaching" as already having been "set forth infallibly by the ordinary universal magisterium"[emphasis added].3

Reference was made, both in the Response and in the CDF explanatory paper, to No. 25 of Lumen Gentium, Vatican Council II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. Lumen Gentium No. 25 states, inter alia, that "bishops . . . proclaim infallibly the doctrine of Christ when . . . even though dispersed throughout the world, but preserving for all that amongst themselves, and with Peter's successor, the bond of communion in their authoritative teaching concerning faith and morals, they are in agreement that a particular teaching is to be held definitively and absolutely."

According to the CDF Response, then, the pope's Apostolic Letter confirmed and placed on the official record the fact that the bishops of the world, by their universal understanding and practice, had irrevocably established that the Church had no authority to confer ordination on women. This was not merely a disciplinary matter, but belonged to the essence of the Church, and hence was properly a doctrinal matter.

Even though Christ affirmed, against the mores of his time and place, the equal dignity and value of women by the way in which he accepted and treated them, he nevertheless passed over even the Blessed Virgin Mary when it came to ordination to the ministerial priesthood in his Church. And the successors of the apostles, the Catholic bishops, have invariably and universally followed the same practice from apostolic times down to the present day, thereby confirming their "agreement" that the Church possesses no authority to act other than Christ did in this matter. The Church lives on what has been handed down, not on what modern ideologies may imagine to be preferable today. But not everybody today appears to be equally impressed with the standards by which the Church judges questions.

Dissent seen as the norm

To imagine that even multiple pronouncements of Church authority will "settle" the question of female non-ordination in the Catholic Church today would be to fail to recognize not only the power of ideological feminism in the climate of today, but the degree to which almost any question whatever is no longer susceptible to settlement on the basis of statements by authority alone.

This has been the basic situation in the Church since the encyclical Humanae Vitae was issued in 1968, only to be rejected by massive numbers of Catholics-led by some of the most prominent theologians of the day. Since that time, it has been more or less taken for granted in certain quarters that dissent from Catholic teaching is not only permitted; it is often seen as some kind of new Church norm.

This erroneous view of the licitness of theological dissent has persisted in spite of the disciplining of the leading theorist of such dissent, Fr. Charles E. Curran, formerly of the Catholic University of America; it has persisted in spite of the issuance of yet other very definite magisterial pronouncements excluding dissent, such as the 1990 CDF Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, Donum Veritatis.

A similar wave of dissent greeted the efforts of Pope John Paul II to establish once and for all the fact of the Church's inability to ordain women to the priesthood by issuing Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. Indeed, it was the widespread rejection of this Apostolic Letter of John Paul II's which motivated the CDF to issue its Response. In a letter dated November 8, 1995, transmitting the CDF Response to the heads of episcopal conferences, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger clearly stated that the Response was prepared because the pope's letter had been followed by "a number of problematic and negative statements by certain theologians, organizations of priests and religious, as well as some associations of lay people . . . [attempting] to cast doubt on the definitive character" of the letter.

Bishops were instructed in Cardinal Ratzinger's transmittal letter to "do everything possible to insure [the] distribution and favorable reception [of the Response], taking particular care that above all on the part of theologians, pastors of souls, and religious, ambiguous and contrary positions will not again be proposed."4

So how has the Response been received? Among theologians, Fr. Richard P. McBrien of the University of Notre Dame's theology faculty, writing in the National Catholic Reporter, judged that the teaching declared by Rome to be "definitive" and, indeed, "infallible," would be "extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prove"5-as if it were always incumbent upon the magisterium to "prove" its decisions. This is surely a notable instance of how magisterial teachings are now considered to be merely "opinions" thrown out for further dialogue and debate, not as in any way deciding or settling anything.

Fr. McBrien also thinks that the major question raised by the CDF Response is not an ordination question at all but an infallibility question; his reasoning here seems to turn on the question of how the Church could be infallible in declaring that women cannot be ordained priests when so many decent, intelligent, caring people today are quite certain that women can be ordained priests.

Writing in the same issue of the National Catholic Reporter, Fr. Paul Surlis of St. John's University in New York, agrees with Fr. McBrien that the theological question of ordination is not yet ripe for decision; he thinks the pope should have consulted the bishops of the world on the matter before speaking out, just as Popes Pius IX and Pius XII consulted with the world episcopacy before proclaiming the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption in 1854 and 1950, respectively. But Pope John Paul II was proclaiming no dogma in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis; rather, he was merely testifying to the fact of the universal and unvarying understanding and practice of the Church in the matter, which pointed to an already existing teaching.

Fr. Surlis also agrees with Fr. McBrien that the real question raised by the whole business is the infallibility issue rather than the ordination issue. He describes the CDF Response as a "heavy-handed attempt to smuggle the note of infallibility in where it does not belong." He thinks it will not only give "renewed impetus to discussion of the priesthood for women"-in other words, the "cause" will go on and on as a result of the CDF's attempt to settle it; so much for Rome's fond hope that "contrary positions will not be proposed."

Fr. Surlis also thinks it may also "spur renewed critical discussion of infallibility"6-again, taking it for granted that infallibility is just one more question that has not yet been settled and is entirely within the purview of "critical discussion" by theologians. "From the non-existence of the practice of ordination," Fr. Surlis contends, "one cannot infer the existence of formal teaching maintaining that prohibition as a matter of faith." Never mind that this is what the supreme authority in the Church has done; Church authority does not seem to impress him generally. "A false understanding of tradition underlies this mode of arguing," he adds: in other words, the magisterium of the universal Church does not understand tradition, although this associate professor at St. John's claims that he does-and it is this latter claim, of course, which tends to be taken seriously by the Church's "knowledge class" in America today.

It is significant, by the way, that Fr. Surlis describes a formal decision of Church authority at the highest level merely as a "mode of arguing." Again, it becomes evident: decisions of Church authority are neither authoritative nor decisive for a certain type of modern theologian.

The error and irrelevance believed by these two theologians to characterize the decision of Church authority concerning ordination is underlined, in the same issue of the National Catholic Reporter in which they appear, by the prominence given to what ex-Catholic theologian Fr. Hans Küng has to say about the CDF Response. The Swiss theologian is given three times the space given the other two theologians.

The fact that Fr. Hans Küng was formally declared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1979 to be no longer a Catholic theologian is of no moment in these circles of modern "Catholic" opinion; again, what Church authority may have decided or declared has no effect or force. In these circles, the "authority" that is accepted is that of what people consider science or scholarship; or it may merely be what "people today," meaning modern secular culture, has decided is true. For anyone holding this point of view, a non-Catholic theologian can be as fully qualified as a Catholic one to explain what the teaching of the Church is. All this is true not only in spite of, but, in the present climate, perhaps because of, the judgment concerning Hans Küng made by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Fr. Küng's article on the CDF Response is quite triumphant in tone, even exultant; he believes the whole Ordinatio Sacerdotalis business illustrates once again what he himself has been trying to tell the world for over a quarter of a century, beginning back in 1970 with the publication of his book Infallible? An Inquiry.7 Following the issuance of the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, Fr. Küng declined to go along with what was then the consensus of the dissenting theologians, namely, that the teaching of the pope's encyclical regarding the immorality of artificial birth control could be dissented from precisely because the encyclical had been described as "non-infallible."

None of that for Hans Küng. He argued that what was involved as far as Humanae Vitae was concerned was, precisely, infallibility; the central teaching of the encyclical surely met all of the Church's criteria for an infallible doctrine, in his view; this was the view set forth in his book. In his NCR article today, he even cites a 1986 tome by a Franciscan, Fr. Ermengildo Lio, which in his opinion proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that, according to the criteria laid down by the Church, Humanae Vitae has to be teaching infallibly that any artificial interruption of the natural human marriage act, before, during, or after, is immoral.8

There is only one catch here, of course, and that is, for Hans Küng, as for most of the modern world, the Church's "infallible teaching" in Humanae Vitae is quite patently wrong. As is very widely believed today, contraception is not only not considered immoral, it is held to constitute a great positive good for human beings. By attempting to declare contraception immoral, what the Church really accomplished was to destroy, presumably forever, her own credibility as an infallible teacher. The Church was not infallible, Fr. Hans Küng argued in his 1970 book; she was what he called "indefectible in truth" (i.e., even though she is capable of error in detail, as in the case of Humanae Vitae, he thinks she still continues to affirm "basic" Christian truths).

Now Fr. Küng sees himself as having been a major prophet. He was right all along, after all. Now the supreme Church authority has come along and declared yet another egregious error to be "infallible," namely, the idea that women cannot be ordained to the priesthood. Hans Küng could not be happier about this. Like his fellow NCR theologians, Fathers McBrien and Surlis, he believes the whole infallibility question will now have to be reopened and brought to the fore. He takes it for granted that the prohibition of female ordination cannot stand. He sees Catholics as "in open rebellion on this issue . . . . Debate continues undiminished among theologians and lay people alike . . . intensified by indignation at the arrogance of male power in the Church."

However, "for reasons of sheer self-respect," Fr. Küng concludes, "Catholic theology can no longer avoid examining . . . the problem of the infallibility of the magisterium"9-and presumably can no longer brush aside what he regards as the blinding evidence that the magisterium obviously can no longer be thought to be infallible. The manifest errors of the magisterium concerning first contraception and now ordination should provide all the proof that is needed to establish, at long last, the Küng position. Who knows, he himself might soon be back in business as a "Catholic theologian." After all, if Church authority can err so drastically in the instances of contraception and ordination, why can it not be argued that the same Church authority erred as grievously when deciding that Hans Küng was no longer a Catholic theologian back in 1979?

Open rebellion

There can be little doubt about the contention of Fr. Hans Küng that many Catholics, particularly among the "knowledge class," currently are "in open rebellion" over the decision of Church authority concerning her inability to ordain women to the ministerial priesthood. Even larger numbers of Catholics evidently "favor" female ordination, even though they are relatively passive about it.

But many Catholics are not passive about it. Cardinal Ratzinger was particularly concerned about theologians and religious in his letter transmitting the CDF Response, but it is among them that opposition to this decision of Church authority is centered. The reaction of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious to the CDF Response was to issue an urgent call for prayer and fasting.10 The National Coalition of American Nuns issued a statement saying the teaching forbidding ordination "cannot be infallible because the teaching is unjust and therefore in error. The Church may not employ gender to limit the call of the Holy Spirit to minister in a priestly fashion."11

Activist Sister Maureen Fiedler, in a piece written for National Public Radio, said that "this message from Rome is the last gasp of desperate and insecure men trying to shore up a crumbling status quo. Roman Catholic women will be ordained priests-perhaps sooner than we think."12

As regards theologians, we have already seen how a couple of them reacted to the CDF Response, and still other theologians could be quoted as speaking in the same vein. Moral theology professor Dr. Joseph Selling of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, for example, reacted to this definitive judgment of Church authority by saying: "This is not a finished matter by any means."13 This was certainly the consensus of the profusion of letters that came into the National Catholic Reporter in the issue following the one in which Fathers McBrien, Surlis, and Küng wrote. "A sad day for Catholic Christians," the "Catholic" readers of this newspaper judged. "They still don't 'get it.'" The newspaper itself ran a cartoon showing a woman demonstrator holding up a sign reading "Vaticant"!14

Commonweal magazine's editorial on the CDF Response found it "troubling . . . that women are definitively excluded from ordination. But," this journal went on, "the form of exercising papal authority manifest in this statement may prove even more serious and destabilizing for the Church itself"15-as if the exercise of papal authority were the problem, rather than the fact that large numbers of Catholics have evidently persuaded themselves, against the entire tradition of the Church, that acceptance of papal authority, as the pope has the responsibility for deciding to exercise it, is no longer a requirement for being Catholic.

America, the Jesuit magazine, faced with the CDF Response, took refuge in sophisms and legalisms, calling upon two Jesuits to attempt to explain away the force and thrust of the Roman document. Both Jesuits promptly cite Canon 749 to the effect that no doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless it is clearly established as such, and then they both argue, in their respective ways, that the teaching concerning the Church's inability to ordain women has not been so established-in spite of the plain words to this effect of the supreme authority in the Church.

Fr. Ladislas Orsy, S.J., currently of the Georgetown Law Center, discovers in the fact that the Response was signed by Cardinal Ratzinger rather than by the pope himself that we are dealing here merely with a "curial document" rather than a papal statement. But what does he think of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis then, which is signed by the pope, and says the same thing as the CDF Response?

In any case, nothing of any consequence is established by finding that a statement is "merely" a "curial document." Section No. 9 of Vatican Council II's Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church, Christus Dominus, plainly states that the Roman Curia acts "in the name of the Roman Pontiff and by his authority." Thus, a curial instruction promulgated in proper order with the express approval of the pope, as Fr. Orsy admits this Response was, is an entirely valid expression of Church authority, calling for acceptance by the faithful; but this does not prevent him from providing his own tortuous commentary claiming that since the CDF Response was not approved in what he calls in forma speciali, it adds nothing to Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which, he concludes, "remains the same as it was on the day of its publication."16

But on the day of its publication, this Apostolic Letter declared over John Paul II's signature that its judgment was "to be definitively held by all the faithful . . . in order that all doubt may be removed." Do these papal words mean what they say, or not? Disquisitions on the weight or meaning or authority of the CDF Response itself are irrelevant.

But this does not prevent Fr. Francis Sullivan, S.J., in the same issue of America, from imagining that he too has made some kind of a point when he finds the CDF Response itself to be not infallible, the implication apparently being that it could therefore be in error. We are told that Fr. Sullivan taught at Rome's Gregorian University for 36 years, but this does not seem to have given him much sympathy for Rome's attempts to bring Catholic theologians back to the Church's authentic tradition. Fr. Sullivan flatly does not believe that the pope can point to the "constant and universal tradition of the Church" as an instance of the ordinary and universal magisterium of the Church forbidding female ordination. He also does not, of course, because he could not, point to any other Church tradition than the Church's consistent tradition of not even considering the ordination of women; so it is not clear what his problem is. He asserts that the pope could only establish the Church's invariable practice as an infallible doctrine by "consultation with all the bishops, [by] the universal and constant consensus of Catholic theologians, [or by] the common adherence of Christ's faithful."17

But these are all criteria which Fr. Sullivan himself has picked out; they are in no way required by Lumen Gentium No. 25. Nor is it required, as Fr. Sullivan puts it, "that the worldwide Catholic episcopate is in agreement with John Paul II" today in order for the teaching proclaimed by the latter to be infallible in accordance with the constant and universal tradition of the Church. The question is the factual one of whether the Church has or has not, always and everywhere, restricted ordination to men only. The fact of this, if true, would not be changed by the possible deviation of some bishops in our day following the terrific pressure which ideological feminism has exerted on our culture.

Nor would the established fact of the Church's invariable understanding and practice in the matter of ordination be changed by the falling away of many other Catholics today under the pressures of today's all pervasive feminist bias; this would simply mean that these Catholics were no longer to be counted as among "Christ's faithful" in the full sense, since they would be refusing to hear those whom Christ said spoke for him (cf. Luke 10:16).

Nevertheless, citing examples of Church doctrines which he believes were changed even though they were once "the common teaching of the whole episcopate"-it could easily be shown that he is wrong about these too if space permitted-this modern Jesuit does not "see how it can be certain that this doctrine [concerning ordination] is taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium." Thus, for Fr. Francis Sullivan, S.J., Rome may have spoken all right, but the "cause" goes on and on anyway.

Without correction or rebuke

The consummation devoutly wished for by Cardinal Ratzinger in his letter transmitting the CDF Response to the various bishops' conferences that "ambiguous and contrary positions" on the ordination question would "not again be proposed" was pretty clearly never in the cards. Rather, it almost seems as if these kinds of positions are the only ones that are being proposed!

In point of fact, many have gratefully welcomed both Ordinatio Sacerdotalis and the Responsum ad dubium. However, in the climate of dissent from Church teaching that continues to prevail in the United States, and as it has so prevailed for virtually a quarter of a century, the "ambiguous and contrary positions" deplored by Cardinal Ratzinger are the ones that get most of the public attention.

But there is another problem that unfortunately lends great credibility to today's dissent. It is this: many of those who give public voice to dissenting theses are nevertheless allowed to remain in Church-sponsored positions, or to continue as members in good standing of what are supposed to be Catholic theology faculties. Since they remain in place without correction or rebuke, in spite of their dissent, the impression is inevitably created that the theses they advance in conflict with the magisterium of the Church must in some sense be acceptable to the Church and compatible with Catholic doctrine. Otherwise-the question is inescapable-why are they left in place and allowed to undermine what the Church continues to insist is the truth?

Yet the cases where anyone has suffered any consequences for public doctrinal deviation over the past quarter of a century, at least in the United States, can surely be counted on the fingers of one hand. A seminary professor or two has perhaps been removed or transferred; that has about been the extent of it. It is hard to think of any cases at all involving university faculty members.

The famous case of the removal of Fr. Charles E. Curran from the theology department of the Catholic University of America, of course, was instigated in 1986 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith itself (as was the equally famous 1979 case of Fr. Hans Küng). But as explained by Cardinal Ratzinger himself, however, the Curran case was always considered a special case: "With his theory of dissent," Cardinal Ratzinger has explained, "Father Curran moved beyond individual questions to challenge the Church's teaching office as such. He wanted to accord dissent itself an official teaching role."

In "normal" cases of dissent concerning university faculties and such, Cardinal Ratzinger went on to explain in the same interview, "the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith passes on inquiries and criticisms on such matters to the bishops."18 Trying to think of any cases where any bishops have actually removed any dissenters from anywhere for doctrinal deviation, one visualizes instead in one's imagination an unknown number of CDF communications that were undoubtedly filed in numerous chancery "circular files" instead.

In the United States at least, the fiction goes on being bravely maintained in public that the many "ambiguous and contrary positions" to be found in this country are merely diverse "theologies," not deviations from established Catholic doctrine; the people concerned are all considered "loyal," in spite of what they publicly maintain contrary to the magisterium. The statements from theological establishment figures quoted in this paper against the "definitive" and "infallible" teaching about the Church's inability to ordain women are merely a sampling of what goes on all the time with regard to not a few established Catholic doctrines.

So long as the fiction continues to be maintained that this kind of dissent does not affect one's loyalty or Catholicity, the "ambiguous and contrary positions" which Cardinal Ratzinger tried to rule out will go on being "proposed." What is more, they will go on being widely accepted and adopted by Catholics, some of whom never will get the true Catholic position because of the confusion that reigns. Who can take Church authority seriously when Church authorities allow it to be openly undermined and contradicted by people who at least appear to be in some sense speaking for the Church?

Indeed, in spite of the literal devastation wrought by theological dissent in the Church in the United States over the past quarter of a century and more, there is little evidence that theological dissent is even regarded as a very serious problem in official quarters. Dissenters remain in place, apparently, because few in authority can imagine why they should not or think it makes much difference. Open dissent from Catholic doctrine never seems to compromise anybody today. For example, America and Commonweal, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and such, apparently all go on being considered "loyal," mainstream Catholic enterprises, in spite of the dissenting positions we have seen that they adopted or sponsored as a matter of course on the ordination issue.

Many U.S. bishops probably see supposed threats "from the right" as a much greater "problem" for the Church in this country than, let us say, dissenters on Catholic university faculties. When the CDF Response was issued, many of the bishops contacted by reporters were described as "very concerned." One bishop, who perhaps understandably wished to remain anonymous, was quoted as saying: "Many people, including priests, religious, and laity, are certain to dissent. The right wing is going to say we have to declare them out of the Church."19

Thus, as seen by this bishop, the "problem" is evidently not the fact that professing members of his flock are tragically rejecting saving truths of Jesus Christ, authentically mediated to the faithful by his Church; the "problem" is the "threat" from the "right wing."

Of course, it remains obligatory to mention that, as is customary, the U.S. hierarchy immediately moved to affirm its official support of the CDF Response as soon as it was issued. This has-thankfully-been the regular, and-there is no reason to doubt-the sincere practice of the U.S. bishops throughout the entire past twenty-five years and more that public dissent in the Church has raged. The new president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Most Reverend Anthony Pilla of Cleveland, issued a statement calling upon Catholics to accept what the Holy See had duly decreed. Bishop Pilla's statement correctly reiterated that the Church's inability to ordain women in no way undermines the dignity of women or their essential equality with men.20

Those with long memories will recall that the U.S. bishops did not fail to issue a similar statement at the time of the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968; the statement called upon Catholics to accept the teaching of the encyclical and put it into practice in their lives. This was both admirable and necessary.

Very little on the subject of birth control has issued from the NCCB since, however; the Church's position on birth control is not a subject that many in authority in the Church find easy to defend. Nevertheless, no one can say that the U.S. bishops failed to "uphold" Rome on the matter. Nor have they failed to uphold Rome on the ordination question.

As we have tried to show in this paper, though, mere statements, however sound, whether coming from the CDF or the NCCB, are unlikely to "settle" much of anything in the Church of today. Too many people, for too long, have been allowed to disregard or reject the pronouncements of Church authority, and to teach others to do the same. As a consequence, decisions of Church authority are now widely considered to be neither decisive nor authoritative. This is true not merely for revisionist theologians; it is true for the faithful influenced and led astray by them.

The only remedy for this particular situation is no doubt a long-term one. It is to re-establish in the minds of Catholics that what the Catholic Church authentically teaches is true, whatever contemporary culture may tend to believe to the contrary. "The Catholic Church," No. 14 of Vatican II's Declaration of Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae, teaches, "is by the will of Christ the teacher of truth"; and "in forming their consciences the faithful must pay careful attention to the sacred and certain teaching of the Church." An intensive re-evangelizing effort is evidently necessary, certainly even among many "practicing Catholics."

This is why the ordination issue must be seen as a matter of Church doctrine or teaching, and not merely as a disciplinary matter: because the recognition that truth is involved is the only way that the question ever can be "settled." Only when people recognize that it really is true that the Church is unable to ordain women will they also begin to recognize that this is not unjust. Only then will they begin to grasp at a deeper level the different but complementary roles that men and women-equal in dignity-have been created to play in God's plan for us all. n

1 Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, May 22, 1994, in Origins: CNS Documentary Service, June 9, 1994.

2 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood, Inter Insigniores, October 15, 1976, in Austin Flannery, O.P., Editor, Vatican Council II: More Postconciliar Documents (Volume 2), Costello Publishing Co., Northport, N.Y., 1982.

3 The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Responsum ad dubium, dated October 28, 1995, along with the CDF's explanatory paper which accompanied it, can be found in L'Osservatore Romano (English Edition), November 22, 1995.

4 Cardinal Ratzinger's letter transmitting the CDF Response is reprinted in the National Catholic Reporter, December 15, 1995.

5 Richard P. McBrien, "Focus Shifts from Ordination to Infallibility," the National Catholic Reporter, December 15, 1995.

6 Paul Surlis, "Infallibility: the Argument from Silence," in Ibid.

7 Hans Küng, Infallible? An Inquiry, Doubleday Image Books, Garden City, New York, 1972 (Translation of Unfehlbar? Eine Anfrage, 1970).

8 Ermengildo Lio, O.F.M., Humanae Vitae e Infallibilità, Libreria Vaticana, Vatican City, 1986.

9 Hans Küng, "Theologians Now Face Either-Or Situation," in the National Catholic Reporter, December 15, 1995.

10 The National Catholic Reporter, December 8, 1995.

11 The Washington Post, December 23, 1995.

12 The National Catholic Reporter, December 8, 1995.

13 The National Catholic Reporter, December 8, 1995.

14 The National Catholic Reporter, December 22, 1995.

15 Commonweal, December 1, 1995.

16 Ladislas Orsy, S.J., "The Congregation's 'Response': Its Authority and Meaning," in America, December 9, 1995.

17 Francis A. Sullivan, S.J., "Guideposts from Tradition," America, December 1995.

18 See "Ratzinger Speaks," Interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in the Catholic World Report, January 1994.

19 The National Catholic Reporter, December 8, 1995.

20 Ibid.