Musings on Church Authority and the Challenge of Authority

“And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” Matt. 16:16-18. From the beginning, the matter of authority has been central to the Catholic understanding of the Church that Christ founded. So many doctrines, sacraments, teachings, and forms of worship are fundamental to our Catholic communion of believers – the Eucharist, the Communion of the Saints, Scripture, Redemption Through the Christ’s Death on the Cross, the Confession of Sins, Natural Law, the Sanctity of Human Life. No less essential is the Catholic understanding of Christ’s founding of the Church through the Apostolic Succession.

Christ Himself founded the Church by giving the Deposit of the Faith to the Apostles, led by Peter. In the second century, St. Irenaeus – who had studied under Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, who in turn had been a disciple of the Apostle John – wrote:

True knowledge is . . . the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient constitution of the Church throughout all the world, and the distinctive manifestation of the body of Christ according to the successions of the bishops, by which they have handed down that Church which exists in every place, and has come even unto us, being guarded and preserved.

In the Decree Concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church (Christus Dominus), the Second Vatican Council confirmed the teaching charism of the bishops, who are to proclaim “the Gospel of Christ to men” (¶ 12.1). The role of the bishops is to present Church doctrine “in a manner that will respond to the difficulties and questions by which people are especially burdened and troubled,” and “to converse with the human society in which it lives” (¶ 13). As part of this Christ-given mission, our bishops have a responsibility to urge public authority to uphold the teachings of the natural law:

Assuredly, while sacred pastors devote themselves to the spiritual care of their flock, they also in fact have regard for their social and civil progress and prosperity. According to the nature of their office and as behooves bishops, they collaborate actively with public authorities for this purpose and advocate obedience to just laws and reverence for legitimately constituted authorities (¶ 19).

Thus, on the Mirror of Justice blog devoted to Catholic teaching as it relates to law and public policy, our ongoing discussion of Church authority is most appropriate, tightly tethered to our animating purpose, and distinctly Catholic in nature. I have enjoyed and learned much from our continuing exploration of the source and nature of Church authority, the scope of that authority, the extent to which and circumstances under which that authority is binding on Catholic believers, and the content of authoritative teaching by our bishops who are joined in unity with Peter as the Bishop of Rome.

We might also learn something by considering a counter-example, that is, a community of religious people who have boldly set aside authority and have been willing to radically reconsider traditional Christian teachings. As it happens, we need not look very far in this country to find an empirical test case and in a church structure that in many other ways resembles the Catholic Church, being led by priests and bishops, being centered on the Eucharist, etc.  I am speaking of the Episcopal Church in the United States (in which I was baptized, confirmed, raised, and spent most of my adult life).

As a starting point and set of examples, consider the list of Catholic Church teachings and disciplines that Eduardo Peñalver listed as stumbling blocks for many Catholics:  Married priests? The Episcopalians have had them for centuries. Women priests? The Episcopal Church authorized ordination of women some 30 years ago. Contraception? That hasn’t been much of an issue among Episcopalians since at least the sixties. Homosexuality? Many Episcopalians have resisted liberalization of sexual morality in that denomination, but the traditionalists increasingly are seceding from the national church structure. Church blessings for homosexual unions are available in many Episcopal parishes and are strongly supported by the national Episcopal Church leadership. What of other social issues, most notably abortion? There too the Episcopal Church has jettisoned traditional Christian teaching and has even joined the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

And so, just how is the ever-so-modern Episcopal Church in the United States doing? Beginning with the numbers, the Episcopal Church has been a continuing story of dramatic decline for decades. Between 1965 and 1995, the Episcopal Church lost nearly one-third of its members. (Earle E. Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries: A History of the Christian Church 507 (1996).)  And in recent years the hemorrhaging appears to be accelerating. In the past decade, the Episcopal Church has lost 10 percent of its parishioners, with a 5 percent loss coming in 2006-2007 alone. As but one poignant numerical comparison, the current Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church was formerly bishop of Nevada, an entire diocese that now has fewer members (about 4700) than many Catholic parishes.

In sum, setting aside traditional Christian moral and social teaching to appeal to a new generation does not appear to have been a recipe for growth and vibrancy in the Episcopal Church.  As George Will commented in a column last fall, “as the [Episcopal] church’s doctrines have become more elastic, the church has contracted.”

But, of course, numbers tell only part of the story.  The Kingdom of God is not governed by referendum, much less by the opinions of that small group of God’s people who are located in the middle latitudes of the North American continent. To be sure, numbers of religious adherents are one indication of whether people searching for meaning have found life-giving water in that community of believers. So measured, those denominations that have detached themselves from traditional Christian teachings have faltered badly. The most dynamic and growing Christian communities in this country, both Catholic and Protestant, are those that stand clearly for traditional Christian principles (regardless of popular trends) and those which challenge and make moral demands on their followers (rather than taking an “I’m okay, you’re okay” stance).

Still, we all rightly care even more about the Gospel of Christ, that is, the foundational beliefs of our Christian faith.  As one of my Catholic friends says to get to the foundation, how do we respond to the Empty Tomb?  In this respect, as our readers presumably do and should know, we members of Mirror of Justice, however diverse our views on many matters, are joined together in affirming the central doctrinal truths of the Catholic Church as set out in the Nicene Creed.

Turning to such first things, the sobering experience in the Episcopal Church may again be instructive for us.  While emphasizing that many followers of Christ and some of the most faithful Christians that I know continue in the Episcopal tradition, the national Episcopal Church’s deliberate movement away from traditional Christian teaching on moral/social/cultural matters has often been accompanied by a similar departure on basic Christian doctrine. We regularly hear today of Episcopal priests and even Episcopal bishops who question whether or deny that Jesus was/is the Son of God, who reject the salvation through Christ’s death on the cross, who deny the authority of Scripture, who accept no Resurrection and see no Empty Tomb. For a growing segment of this denomination, and the segment that appears to be in the ascendancy, the Episcopal Church may be entering something of a post-Christian phase.

By noting what I see as an unfortunate model of an alternative approach to the question of authority in the Church, I do not mean to suggest that every Catholic must slavishly accept every jot and tittle of the non-infallible Magisterium, lest we find tomorrow that the Immaculate Conception itself has come under attack. The non-infallible Magisterium is, well, non-infallible. Faithful Catholics in full communion with the Church may, with due respect and careful deliberation, come to a different conclusion. The Mirror of Justice rightly does not have a litmus test for blogging members that tests our perfect obedience to every aspect of the Magisterium. Indeed, I suspect that nearly all of us have our doubts or questions about one or another element of that non-infallible teaching. But that is a very different thing from defining oneself by dissent from Church teaching.

Instead, I submit that the primary mission of the Mirror of Justice is for each of us to challenge others and to be challenged by Church teaching and to be constantly encouraged to ask how our concepts of law, society, culture, and politics square with what the Catholic Church calls upon us to believe. These challenges and the questions that follow may be different for political conservatives than for political liberals, for economists than for lawyers, for working men and women than for academics, etc. But we benefit from being so challenged. And we benefit as well when we join in common cause on the Mirror of Justice to find ways to reimagine solutions to problems in a manner that transcends conventional political or cultural labels.

As fallen human beings, we will find ourselves thinking from time to time that our personal concept of law, society, culture, or politics is preferable to what the Magisterium appears to be teaching on that point. When we encounter such a conflict, we usually should regard it as an occasion to reconsider our temporal and secular position in the light of Church teaching. After all, the Deposit of the Faith was entrusted by Christ to the Apostles, not to the lawyers or the professors or the politicians or, for that matter, the theologians. No Shadow Magisterium exists within the universities or the courthouses or the market-places. When we face a challenge to our personal beliefs about life, law, and politics, we should ask whether our discomfort with Church teaching is attributable to our own selfish or ideological propensities, to our desire to be well-liked by our acquaintances, or to our temptation to conform to the spirit of the age.

And, yes, on singular occasions, after searching our consciences and ensuring that our consciences are well-formed after diligent exploration and consideration of Church teaching through the centuries, we may conclude that a particular part of the Church’s non-infallible teaching is mistaken and cannot command our assent. In so reaching that conclusion, if we do so after careful study and with due humility, we do not thereby fall out of communion with the Catholic Church. At the same time, we must be careful not thereby to deny that the teaching charism of the Holy Spirit was given to the Apostolic Succession. And I would argue that we should not hone an identity around points of departure. I suggest that the greater and more valuable part of our mission as Catholic law professors and on the Mirror of Justice is to integrate Catholic teaching with our vocation to social justice through law.

Greg Sisk