Saturday, July 18, 1998

Some Catholics fear future crackdown on dissent in the church

By Jeffrey Weiss

The Dallas Morning News

Some U.S. Catholics wonder whether an announcement last week by Pope John Paul II sets up a future crackdown against dissent in the church.

Others consider the apostolic letter titled "In Defense of the Faith" an interesting but hardly groundbreaking move by the pope to clear up a confusing bit of church law.

The bottom line may be that both are right.

"I think Catholics who disagree will continue to disagree. The onus will be on the institutional church to decide whether to punish them," said Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, a group that supports abortion rights. "Will the second papal slipper drop?"

She and many other American Catholics consider this an effort by an elderly pope to cement his legacy into the life of the church. They disagree about how binding his wishes will be on future papacies.

The first "papal slipper" was a four-page letter accompanied by a commentary by one of the most influential Vatican officials - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The papal letter is aimed at Catholic theologians and sets into canon law a new category of teachings to be considered infallible. And it adds this category to an oath required since 1989 of most church officials and teachers.

Canon law had included two broad categories: Teachings considered to be directly divinely inspired - the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, for example - and matters taught as true but not considered God-given.

The letter adds a third category: Teachings that are logically or historically derived from divine truths. Those, too, are now considered infallible. One who denies such teachings, the pope wrote, "opposes the doctrine of the Catholic Church."

The cardinal's letter offers a few examples of the topics in this new category: male-only priestly ordination, euthanasia, fornication and prostitution, and the invalidity of Anglican priestly ordination.

The hot-button issues of homosexuality, contraception and abortion were not included. But the cardinal's letter says the examples were offered "without any intention of completeness or exhaustiveness."

The pope's letter says that those who violate their oath - teach contrary to what is now defined as the infallible lessons of the church - can be subject to an unspecified "just punishment."

The cardinal's letter makes an even stronger point. Those who disagree with these teachings "would therefore no longer be in full communion with the Catholic Church."

This is all less precedent-setting than it might sound, said the Rev. Lawrence DiNardo, president of the Canon Law Society of America. The concepts outlined in the papal letter have been part of generally understood church law, even though they had not been codified into the law books, he said.

"The church has the right to make sure that those people who take office or teach Catholic doctrine do in fact teach that which is authentic," he said.

Some American Catholic leaders made similar comments.

"I would see it rather as a clarification of certain issues that have been discussed by theologians," Cardinal John O'Connor of New York said in a prepared statement responding to claims that the letter represented a new attack on dissent.

And in fact, the church has always had the ability to move against those it felt were outside the bounds of accepted doctrine, though enforcement in recent years has been infrequent.

The Rev. Charles Curran, now a professor at Southern Methodist University, was a notable exception. In 1986, because of his views on homosexuality, contraception and other issues, he was stripped of his right to teach Catholic theology at Catholic University of America in Washington.

The latest papal letter is merely a continuation of this pope's policies, he said.

"It's an attempt to create a chilling effect," he said. "I don't think this is a straw that's going to break a camel's back. I see it as ratcheting it up one more step."

Expanded infallibility is not even a new issue, he said. Dr. Curran was at the University of Notre Dame this week. While doing research in the school library, he came across a discussion of what was called the "secondary object of infallibility."

The article was published in 1891, he said.

But the current discussion could have an impact on American higher education, he said. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that government money cannot go to parochial schools but can go to Catholic-run colleges and universities. Church-state issues did not come into play in higher education because academic freedom meant that those institutions were not promoting a particular faith, he said.

If the pope's letter is a prelude to a purge of dissenters, that could inspire challenges to federal grants, financial aid and other programs, Dr. Curran said.

"That's an opening the leaders of Catholic higher education clearly don't want to see," he said.

The current issue of U.S. Catholic magazine has a headline made ironic by last week's events: "Who says the Church can't change?"

The writer of the article, theology professor Christine Gudorf, explained how the church's attitude toward women had changed over the centuries. That's all still true, said Dr. Gudorf, a professor at Florida International University. And this pope's effort to eliminate change is destined to fail, she said.

"I guess the big question this document raises is whether you can prevent people from changing the tradition to which you belong," she said. "I think that's a pretty losing proposition."

In the short run, Catholics who disagree with the Vatican will focus their attention on their local church, she said.

"Even though we have seen the last 150 years of increasing centralization, that still remains at the center of church teaching and Catholic practice. The community we pray with and worship with at the local level gives us our experience of church community."

Like most American Catholics, Gudorf had not seen the papal letter. It was issued in Latin and Italian, and few Americans had seen an English translation late this week. The cardinal's commentary, however, was issued in English.

Some American Catholics who disagree with the pope say they hope for more flexibility in the next papacy. That's despite the fact that John Paul II has appointed most of the cardinals who will choose his successor.

But style as much as theology is at issue, said Timothy Ragan, president of the national Center for Pastoral Leadership, an independent Catholic nonprofit organization that describes itself as "the resource for contemporary Catholics."

"Bishops don't like to be told what to do. They like to be part of the conversation, even among the conservatives," he said. And those who will select the next pope may be looking for someone more open to discussion.

"The question is, what ever happened to collegiality in the church?" Ragan said.

(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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