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The Loss of the "Open" Vision of Vatican II
Benedict XVI has begun well. He is taking his own time to make his
mark and to shape his vision of Catholicism on the church. He is
clearly a man of genuine spirituality and culture. But there are
elements of his theology that should certainly cause concern for
Catholics who have inherited a more "open" vision
of Vatican II, that is the majority of Catholics in the English-speaking
world.
The core of the theological problem is that many in ecclesiastical leadership
at the highest level are moving in an increasingly sectarian direction and watering
down the catholicity of the church and even unconsciously neglecting elements
of its teaching.
Since this word "catholicity" will recur often it is important
to define it. It is derived from the Greek word katholikos that
means "general," "broad" or "universal." It
also has a profound theological meaning. Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ
has a book entitled The Catholicity of the Church (1988). Catholicity, he says,
is characterized by (1) inclusiveness, which means openness to various cultures
and opposition to sectarianism and religious individualism; (2) by an ability
to bridge generations and historical periods; (3) by an openness to truth and
value wherever it exists; (4) by a recognition that it is the Holy Spirit who
creates the unity of the church through whose indwelling we participate in the
life of God.
This is the kind of Catholicism that many of us have embraced throughout
our lives. Its foundations, which are deeply embedded in church history,
were given modern expression in the vision of the church articulated
at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. For Catholics like myself
our benchmark is a church that is defined as the living sacrament
of God’s presence and the place where
God’s sovereignty is acknowledged, expressed through a participative
community of people dedicated to the service of the world and characterized
by collegiality and ecumenism. It is precisely this image of Catholicism
which I think is being distorted by many at the highest level in
the contemporary church.
Many in the hierarchy and some laity are moving increasingly in this narrow,
elitist direction. Over the last few years a series of documents have been published
by the Vatican including the Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith, Dominus Jesus (DJ), issued on 6 August
2000. DJ, which claims to protect the uniqueness of Christ, in fact
expresses a profoundly anti-ecumenical spirit at odds with the sense
of God’s grace permeating
the whole cosmos. DJ gives voice to a wider movement that is slowly
but pervasively turning the Catholic church inward in an increasingly
sectarian direction.
Sectarianism is incompatible with genuine catholicity. It is the antithesis of
the kind of openness to the world, tolerant acceptance of others and a sense
of religious pluralism that most thinking Catholics have been formed in and have
embraced over the last three or four decades. Thus many Catholics find themselves
involved in a corrosive disjunction between what they believe and have experienced,
and the views expressed at the highest levels of the church. The reason is because
those who claim to articulate Catholic belief seem to be abandoning their catholic spirit.
As a result there is a turning away from the other Christian churches, and a
rejection of the search for common ground with the other great religious traditions.
Thus more and more thinking Catholics who have been educated and live in pluralist,
democratic and tolerant societies, find themselves in conflict with church hierarchs
who seem to be moving in an ever-more sectarian direction.
Some times there is a hankering after a more genuinely Catholic approach
- as you find in John Paul II’s encyclical Ut unum sint (1995), where
he went so far as to ask the other churches for advice on papal primacy. But
ecclesiastical reality indicates that this hankering is, in fact, merely ecumenical
wishful- thinking.
There have also been regular attempts to "muzzle" and condemn
the discussion of issues such as the ordination of women through
the use of a new category of doctrine. This has received its clearest
expression in the apostolic letter Ad
Tuendam Fidem (30 June 1998). The letter argues that there
is an intermediary, "second
level" of revealed doctrine between the established and defined teaching
that all Catholics believe, and what up until now has been called the "ordinary
magisterium." Before the introduction of this so-called "second level," all
non-infallible or non-defined teaching was exactly that: doctrine
that should be respected and offered various levels of submission
of mind and will, but still ultimately open to debate, discussion
and development within the Church community.
What Ad Tuendam Fidem has done is to introduce formally
a category of "definitive" but
non-infallibly-defined doctrine. The then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said that
this second-level teaching is, in fact, infallible. He says that it includes "all
those teachings in the dogmatic or moral area which are necessary for faithfully
keeping and expounding the deposit of faith, even if they have not been proposed
by the magisterium as formally revealed." As examples of second
level definitive teaching he includes the condemnation of euthanasia,
the validity of the canonization of a particular saint, the legitimacy
of a papal election, and even the invalidity of Anglican orders.
The gratuitous reference to Anglican orders is astonishingly maladroit
and insulting; it reveals a real lack of ecumenical sensitivity.
There is also an emerging unspoken assumption among some very senior
church leaders that the contemporary western world is so far gone
in individualism, permissiveness and consumerism that it is totally
impervious to church teaching. Claiming to assume the broader historical
perspective, these churchmen have virtually abandoned the secularised
masses, to nurture elitist enclaves which will carry the true faith
through to future, more "receptive" generations. This
is why the New Religious Movements (NRMs) have received so much favour
and patronage in this papacy. The NRMs have embraced an essentially
sectarian vision of Catholicism, are very hierarchical in structure
and theologically reactionary. This is true of some elements in the
Catholic charismatic movement, and also outfits like Opus Dei, Communion
and Liberation, the Neo-Catechuminate and the Legionaries of Christ,
as well as a number of other smaller, less significant groupings.
This has been highlighted by the article "Catholic Fundamentalism.
Some Implications of Dominus Jesus for Dialogue and Peacemaking," by
my friend, John D’Arcy May who teaches theology and ecumenism at Trinity
College, Dublin. DJ is primarily directed against those Catholics involved in
the "wider ecumenism" who have been trying to find common ground with
the great non-Christian religious traditions. But DJ also managed to offend many
Anglicans and Protestants through an awkwardly-worded passage that was so obscure
that many journalists incorrectly took it to mean that only Catholics could be
saved. The passage actually says that Anglicanism and the various forms of Protestantism "are
not churches in the proper sense"(DJ, Paragraph 17).
It was the opening sentences of May’s commentary that struck me between
the eyes. "There is no reason, in principle, why the Roman
Catholic church, despite its enormous size and global presence, could
not become a sect. Sectarianism is a matter of mentality, not size
... The deep shock Dominus Jesus caused
in ecumenical circles consisted precisely in their exposure to the
specifically Roman Catholic form of fundamentalism."
These are the real problems facing those Catholics who share an open vision of
Vatican II.
Paul Collins
THE AUTHOR
Born in Melbourne, Australia, in August 1940, Paul Collins is
an historian, broadcaster, and writer. A Catholic priest for thirty-three years,
he has also worked in varying capacities in TV and radio with the ABC since 1986.
He is the author of nine books: Mixed Blessings [Penguin, 1986], No
Set Agenda. Australia’s Catholic Church Faces an Uncertain
Future [David
Lovell, 1991], God’s Earth. Religion as if matter really
mattered [Harper
Collins 1995], Papal Power [Harper Collins, 1997], Upon This Rock.
The development of the papal office from Saint Peter to John Paul II [Melbourne
University Press, 2000 and Crossroad, 2002], From Inquisition to Freedom [Simon
and Schuster, 2001 and Overlook, 2002], Hells’ Gates. The
Terrible Journey of Alexander Pearce, Van Dieman’s Land Cannibal [HardieGrant,
2002], Between the Rock and a Hard Place. Being Catholic Today [ABC
Books, 2004]. His latest book is God’s New Man. The election
of Benedict XVI and the legacy of John Paul II [Melbourne University Press and Continuum,
2005]. He is well known as a commentator on the papacy and he also has a strong
interest in environmental and population issues, and his book God’s
Earth has been made into a major TV documentary by the ABC.
He has a Master’s
degree in theology (Th.M.) from Harvard University, and a Doctorate
in Philosophy (Ph.D) in history from the Australian National University
(ANU).
CCC is most grateful to Paul Collins for writing this article on the papacy. We have included the above biographical information, which he sent us, as the writer - shamefully little known in Britain - has illumined a wide range of subjects of interest to thinking Catholics. Editor
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