For anybody looking at the papacy and the Vatican from the outside, the nature of the problem is fairly clear: we have a monolithic, centralized power structure dominated by people far removed from real life, steeped in fossilised theology from the middle ages, who are convinced not only that they are the sole holders of truth, but also that they thereby have the right to legislate for all Catholics everywhere. This goes to the heart of so much of what is wrong with the church today, from the total disconnect between official teaching on sexuality and the lived experience of ordinary Catholics to the appallingly inappropriate response of the Vatican (and the supporting chorus of bishops around the world) to the worldwide scandal of clerical sexual abuse. The oligarchy claim that Benedict has done a great deal to fight the problem, pointing to his many interventions in canon law.
This, however, is precisely the point: that Benedict and his minions are inherently incapabel of seing anything, or doing anything, except in the context of canon law, church teaching, and the curial bureaucracy. They have no conception of dealing real people, or of the importance of secular law and authority, or even of the simple principles of love and genuine human interaction as promoted by the Gospel.
The second Vatican Council appeared for a while to breathe fresh air into the church, pointin the way to a more inclusive structure, with greater sensitivity to the modern world, but this brief promise was soon swept away. All this is clear.
A new book by an eminent scholar is welcome for putting the obvious into clear theological terms. Judging by this review from National Catholic Reporter, this book would seem to be compulsory reading for anyone seeking understanding of how the modern crisis of the church has developed.
This is part of a review by John Wilkins
Excellent canon lawyers who are also excellent theologians are rare. Jesuit Fr. Ladislas Orsy, Hungarian-born but based in the United States, is one of them. His new book, Receiving the Council: Theological and Canonical Insights and Debates, is a distillation of his mature thought, composed of revised texts of previously published presentations, lectures and articles.
From first to last it breathes hope, faith and charity, and a model of how these should be approached. But it also contains dynamite.
In the discussion with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, which is the crown of this book, Orsy sets out his concern that the church is being moved in a disturbing direction, one that could take a long time to reverse.
The work of a canon lawyer, he says, is like that of the architect of a cathedral: to implement a vision, to give it a structural shape. Those in charge can, of course, botch the job. Orsy’s misgivings are plain.
Throughout the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Orsy, teaching at the Gregorian University in Rome, marveled as the world’s Catholic bishops got to work. The council was the “awakening” of the “entire people of God,” he writes.
Exactly the same metaphor was used at the time by then-Fr. Ratzinger, who was at Vatican II as the expert adviser to Cardinal Josef Frings, archbishop of Cologne, Germany. In an overview of the council’s work, published a year after it ended, Ratzinger hailed “the awakening of the church” as “the true event” of Vatican II. But as is shown by the dialogue between him and Orsy, the two men came eventually to very different conclusions about the implications.
And from another, by Arthur Jones:
He says that legislation enacted since the council supports the “definitive doctrine” theory. That means that by legislation no one can have an office in the church (be ordained, etc.) without taking the new profession of faith and the oath of fidelity — that is, promising to accept, to carry out, and to impose the acceptance of any definitive doctrine as if it were infallible.
In effect, to bring it down to everyday language, that means the laity is being legislatively maneuvered into having to accept that any time the pope utters a ruling on doctrine, it is, in effect, infallible.
Orsy is the Catholic scholar’s idea of a scholar. His licentiate in philosophy is from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome; his licentiate in theology from the University of Louvain, Belgium; his doctor of canon law from the Gregorian; and his master’s in law from Oxford University in England. He’s held academic posts at the Gregorian, Washington’s Catholic University of America, New York’s Fordham University, and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., with the past 16 years spent at Georgetown Law.
In 1960, when he arrived at the Gregorian with his Louvain and Oxford credentials in his bag, he said it was “like stepping into an island where an archaic civilization has been preserved intact. Gradually, at the time of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and after it, I became aware, one, how much the laws of the church had lost their vital connection with their source — namely sober and sound theological understanding — and next, how much laws have an existential priority in the church because they dominate its practical life, and by that they create a sort of secondary vision of what the community ought to be.”
Orsy says that behind Rome’s definitive doctrine argument “is an understanding that the whole of the revelation is given to the hierarchy.” That is not the case, Orsy contends, as he places his arguments before the academic community. Rather, he told Wilkins, such an approach ends in a contradiction: “Vatican I and II affirm that the whole people of God is infallible — but if the content of Christian revelation is exclusively in the possession of the hierarchy, the people can only be infallible if they obey the instructions.”
For the complete reviews by Trevor Wilkins and Arthur Jones, go to the NCR online.
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Terry, you might find this link fascinating:
http://www.womenpriests.org/teaching/ratzing1.asp
This is part of the discussion between Cardinal Ratzinger and Fr. Orsy and deals with the infallibility issues around ‘definitive doctrine.’
I found it quite instructive because to be quite honest I had no idea that the CDF was insisting that definitive doctrine statements, such as the by JPII on women’s ordination, were to be considered infallible papal statements.
Orsy is spot on. This is a concept which needs much further ellucidation because otherwise it represents tyranny by the Vatican.
Tyranny. And the end of Ecumenism.
Tyrants need dependent personalities. So it’s going to look like a baby having a tantrum soon, as the independents are more and more assertive.
To me, now an “outsider” so to speak, it looks more and more like irreconcilable differences. I simply cannot see thinking persons, capable of reading the Gospels, wanting a church which seeks to live them, hanging onto a fossilized dictatorship for much longer.
The top recommended comment to Maureen Dowd’s column today was this one, a harbinger if there ever was one:
“Something happened that I couldn’t conceive of as possible. My 84 year old mother, who has been devoted to the Catholic Church since she was a tiny tot, has left the Mass. She still offers her time to the Tuesday morning parish thrift shop, but that is the only day she is on the property of her church. She has made up her mind that she cannot look the other way any longer. We, her daughters, are amazed.”
(currently that comment has over 1500 recommends!)
Thanks, TheraP. I read Dowd’s column, but not the reaction in the comments. There is no doubt that the reputation of the institutional church has been severely damaged. AS Bernard Lynch urged last week for the Irish Church, the best remedy for the present trouble might well be if we deserted in droves: certainly, if we do not we simply have to be far more assertive in speaking up: perhaps community based parishes like the Spirit of St stephen’s and st Mary;s, Brisbane South have ther right idea. These were largely forced into their secession; how long will it be before otehrs secede on their own initiative?
Etienne, once again you raise important points and difficult questions: how should a priest respond to demands for loyalty oaths? What options are left? I have some ideas brwing for a future post along exactly these themes, which I hope to place within the enxt fes days.
If only the Vatican were steeped in a theology from the middle ages. Medieval theology was quite vibrant and multiform, What I think we have is a fossilised theology from the baroque period which then masquerades as the best of medieval theology. And even so, Papal Infallibility was a ‘gift’ of the modern era not the medieval.
The key problem is the question of power in the Church. The last two centuries, in particular, have seen overwhelming centralisation of power in the Vatican, a process accelerated through the 20th century and not least during the period of JP2.
I stand corrected, Michael. Yes, medieval theology was appropriate for its day, and I have been unfair to it. You are dead right that the issue is one of power. The challenge to us now, is what are we to do about it? The only reason that the oligarchs continue to hold and enjoy this “overwhelming centralization” of power is becasue we as lay Catholics have allowed them to.
Apart from the notion that medieval was only appropriate for its day, I couldn’t agree more, Part of the problem with power is that it masquerades as being in continuity with or even the same as the past, The reality of the Vatcan power structure is that it came into full flower in the 19th century once it lost its secular dimension. It also buried some of the best of medieval theology at the same time as it claimed to represent it (ditto for renaissance and post reformation theology too)
I would argue that we need to go back to medieval theology and spirituality and learn a new appreciation of what has been lost. We might be surprised by what we find. One example, he medieval Mary was a much more powerful figure than the terribly sacharine and heteornormative figure of pre-Vatican 2 Catholicism let alone the terribly vacuous (and still heteronormative) figure of the post Vat 2 era.
Michael thanks you for this very helpful contribution. An idea that I have been pondering recently goes along the lines that modern bibilical scholars have been showing that the standard, received version of Scripture and homoerotic relationships is gross distortion of what the texts actually say. Similarly, the Vatican version of early Church history and apostoloic succession has littel in common with the findings of unbiased, secualr historians. So, I ask myself, what can we learn about the theology of sexual ethics if we went back to the sources, considered in their cultural contexts, and freed from the centuries of interpretation that ahve overlaid them?
So I like your idea of taking another look at medieval theology as it was, and not as we have adapted and distorted it. I am particualarly interested in your reference to the medieval understanding of Mary. Personally, I am uncomfortable with the saccharine version, and would love to find a suitable counter. Can ou tell us more?
AS for power we can learn from eastern Orthodoxy and Anglicanism. I strongly believe in restoring full communion between East and West. Most people don’t know that the ordained female diaconate is already a fact in the Eastern churches
What we need more than anything else is a truly ecumenical council representing the full catholic church of east and west. Neither Trent, Vat 1 or Vat 2 were fully ecumenical IMO because the Eastern communions had no part in them. Western Catholicism is sadly lacking until it is put back in connection with the Eastern
I agree that we can learn a lot from the Orthodox church in particular. As I read church history, I have an uncomfortable feeling that Rome was on the wrong side of the schism, which I suspect had a lot more to do with a simple power struggle than with substantive theological issues. The Western Church was fortunate that the rise of Islam effectively eliminated its Eastern rivals in Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria, and then emasculated the remaining Eastern church that we now know as the Orthodox grouping.
And so yes, we need a real “ecumenical” council, not merely a general council of the “Catholic” church. But, if it were on offer, I would accept the latter as a precursor to the former.