The cover of the new issue of America magazine says "Notre Dame revisited." The issue includes essays by my own bishop -- and the bishop in whose diocese the University of Notre Dame is located -- John D'arcy, and also the archbishop emeritus of San Francisco, John R. Quinn.
It would be unfortunate if readers of America took these pieces as "pro" and "con", or "point" and "counter-point." It seems to me that they are, in fact, addressing different questions. Archbishop Quinn seemed to treat as closely related what, in my view, are two very different sets of questions: (1) Questions about the nature of a Catholic university and the relationship of such a university to the Church, specifically, the teaching office of the local bishop; and (2) questions about the actions that a bishop should take, in order to bear faithful witness to the Church's teachings, especially on the sanctity of life, with respect to political leaders and candidates who advance unjust policies. He wrote:
The dilemma that confronts us today is whether the church’s vision is best realized on the issue of abortion by focusing our witness on the clear moral teaching about abortion and public law, or whether it is preferable or obligatory to add to that teaching role the additional role of directly sanctioning public officials through sustained, personally focused criticism, the denial of honors or even excommunication.
This dilemma has troubled us for many years now, but it has been crystallized in the controversy over the decision of the University of Notre Dame to award an honorary degree in May of this year to the president of the United States. This is the first time in the history of this conference that a large number of bishops of the United States have publicly condemned honoring a sitting president, and this condemnation has further ramifications due to the fact that this president is the first African-American to hold that high office.
I worry, again, that Archbishop Quinn is slipping too easily from the "should bishops condemn political leaders directly, deny communion to Catholic politicians, etc.?" debate to the "what does it mean to be a Catholic university?" debate. Bishop D'arcy's essay is not about the importance of condemning pro-abortion-rights politicians (I am confident that he would agree with much of what Archbishop Quinn writes about, e.g., the need for bishops to avoid the appearance of partisanship, etc.). Instead, he asks:
What is the relationship of the Catholic university to the local bishop? No relationship? Someone who occasionally offers Mass on campus? Someone who sits on the platform at graduation? Or is the bishop the teacher in the diocese, responsible for souls, including the souls of students—in this case, the students at Notre Dame? Does the responsibility of the bishop to teach, to govern and to sanctify end at the gate of the university? In the spirit of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which places the primary responsibility on the institution, I am proposing these questions for the university. . . .
As bishops, we must be teachers and pastors. In that spirit, I would respectfully put these questions to the Catholic universities in the diocese I serve and to other Catholic universities.
Do you consider it a responsibility in your public statements, in your life as a university and in your actions, including your public awards, to give witness to the Catholic faith in all its fullness?
What is your relationship to the church and, specifically, to the local bishop and his pastoral authority as defined by the Second Vatican Council?
Finally, a more fundamental question: Where will the great Catholic universities search for a guiding light in the years ahead? Will it be the Land O’Lakes Statement or Ex Corde Ecclesiae? The first comes from a frantic time, with finances as the driving force. Its understanding of freedom is defensive, absolutist and narrow. It never mentions Christ and barely mentions the truth. The second text, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, speaks constantly of truth and the pursuit of truth. It speaks of freedom in the broader, Catholic philosophical and theological tradition, as linked to the common good, to the rights of others and always subject to truth. Unlike Land O’Lakes, it is communal, reflective of the developments since Vatican II, and it speaks with a language enlightened by the Holy Spirit.
On these three questions, I respectfully submit, rests the future of Catholic higher education in this country and so much else.
Like I said, I am confident that Bishop D'arcy agrees with Archbishop Quinn regarding the importance of "cordiality." (It would be very unfortunate if the juxtaposition of the two essays led any America readers to imagine that Bishop D'arcy has been anything but cordial.) I wonder, though, what Archbishop Quinn thinks are the answers to Bishop D'arcy's questions?
The August 31 edition of America has Bishop D'Arcy's "pastoral reflection on the controversy at Notre Dame." Read it here.
A reader had these comments on the lay leadership discussion:
Like yourself, and Prof. Stabile, I'm puzzled by the
lack of support for lay leadership of religious institutes that have
established lay membership. I find it particularly puzzling in light
of the attention paid in recent pontificates to how the laity can lead
lives of heroic virtue (see Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, St. Joseph
Moscati, St. Gianna Beretta Molla). Presumably if you can do that, you
can lead. So I put the question to a seminarian friend of mine, who
attributed it to, at least in part, the formation of those presently in
leadership roles. He noted that this is likely to change (I think
JPII's reflections on the laity will help), and pointed to the
increasing use of laity (both men and women) as chancellors of dioceses
as evidence that the shift was already occurring.
Metallica's "Black Album" was very cool. So, I am confident, is my friend Gary Anderson's (Theology, Notre Dame) new (and very black) book, "Sin."
What is sin? Is it simply wrongdoing? Why do its effects linger over time? In this sensitive, imaginative, and original work, Gary Anderson shows how changing conceptions of sin and forgiveness lay at the very heart of the biblical tradition. Spanning nearly two thousand years, the book brilliantly demonstrates how sin, once conceived of as a physical burden, becomes, over time, eclipsed by economic metaphors. Transformed from a weight that an individual carried, sin becomes a debt that must be repaid in order to be redeemed in God’s eyes.
Anderson shows how this ancient Jewish revolution in thought shaped the way the Christian church understood the death and resurrection of Jesus and eventually led to the development of various penitential disciplines, deeds of charity, and even papal indulgences. In so doing it reveals how these changing notions of sin provided a spur for the Protestant Reformation.
Broad in scope while still exceptionally attentive to detail, this ambitious and profound book unveils one of the most seismic shifts that occurred in religious belief and practice, deepening our understanding of one of the most fundamental aspects of human experience.
As Nigel Tufnel might have put it, "[i]t's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black."
One reader offers these reactions to Greg's reply to my response to his original post on the ELCA's recent decision to allow parishes to allow noncelibate homosexualis in committed relationships to the pulpit:
"I greatly appreciated your comment in response to Greg's original post entitled "The ECLA, the Episcopal Church, and the Integration of Church Teaching on Sexual Morality with Christian Doctrine." I think that you are entirely correct that questioning one issue does not destroy the entire structure of the Catholic Church's teachings. John T. Noonan in his book "The Church that Can and Cannot Change" discusses issues on which the Church has changed its position over time because of people within the Chuch questioning them.
"I see that Greg has responded to your post demanding empirical evidence for your views. In particular, he asked two questions: "Has it not been true that the minority of political societies in the world that have recognized same-sex unions (something that, as a political matter, I myself am tempted to support in some manner) are also characterized by a persisting or increasing libertinism on matters of sexual behavior? Has orthodox Christian faith increased in any such country (or has the opposite occurred)? "
"The first question confuses correlation with causation as there has been a general decline in actual church attendance in most Western developed nations since WWII (although polls in the US show that those claiming to attend church regularly have been relatively stable from 1939 to today - about 40%) while attitudes about sex became more liberal during the same period. It would be difficult for him to prove that one caused the other or that other factors did not play a significantly stronger role in causing the decline in church attendance. The second question seems a bit of a catch-22 because Greg would probably exclude as "orthodox" any Christian faith that condone same-sex unions.
"For what it is worth, a survey earlier this year reported that the number of people who regularly attended church in Britain, one of the few nations that permis homosexuals to marry, increased in 2008 from 21% to 26%. In addition, homosexuals in the United States who profess to be Christian (about 70% which is pretty high given the extent to which Christian Churches have traditionally demonized homosexuals) tend to be more active in the churches to which they belong than their straight brethen according to a survey by George Barna, an evangelica pollster. As for "orthodox" teachings of the Catholic Church keeping people in the pews in Europe, this doesn't seem to be the case in Italy where a recent survey revealed that chuch attendance was far lower than previously thought and much closer to that of Britain."
Monday, August 24, 2009
Susan Stabile
responds to my earlier posting and argues that it indeed is possible for a religious
organization or denomination to “pluck” the thread of traditional church teaching
on the morality of same-sex sexual conduct without unraveling the rest of the
garment of Christian doctrine. I do hope
that she’s right. Because some mainline
denominations in the United States are moving in that direction, and even recognizing that this represents a small minority of Christians in this country much less the world, I genuinely do
hope that they will be able to fuse together a modern progressive view of
sexuality with a traditional orthodox faith in Christ.
But I
wonder where is the empirical basis for Susan’s optimism? Has it not been true that the minority of political societies in the world that have recognized same-sex
unions (something that, as a political matter, I myself am tempted to support in some
manner) are also characterized by a persisting or increasing libertinism on
matters of sexual behavior? Has orthodox
Christian faith increased in any such country (or has the opposite occurred)? And what Christian group of any significance
size and venerability has accepted a revision of traditional church teaching on
sexual morality, thereby setting aside the complementarity of male and female
as a guiding principle for sexual relationships, while still maintaining
orthodox beliefs on the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ, on His
Church, and on the Scriptures? I don’t
mean to be “snarky” here, but truly wonder whether such beliefs can be held
side-by-side over time and with a critical mass of the faithful.
In
response to my earlier post, Susan understandably resists what she reads as my
“implying that one can’t question one issue without risking everything falling
to pieces risks cutting off useful questioning and discussing of issues.” But is this just “one issue”? Or does logic and experience indicate that there is something about this particular issue that
presents a breaking-point?
Could it
be that, in contrast with most other matters, traditional Christian teaching on
sexual morality is so well-developed, so ontologically grounded in the
traditional Christian understanding of what it means to be human and to be man and woman, and so
anchored in Scripture that it cannot easily – or perhaps at all – be separated
from the rest of the Deposit of Faith? Yes,
we’ve all seen the valiant efforts of some to reconstruct that tradition, to
invent a new theology of the human body, or to explain away those scriptural
passages. But, if we are honest with
ourselves, don’t such efforts always prove to be a little too clever, at least if presented
as consistent with tradition rather than as a new reconstruction (and thus one
that departs from orthodox theology)?
So here’s
my question: might it be that an assault
on that dimension of the magisterial authority addressing sexual relationships is so
revolutionary as to place the magisterial authority itself and generally at risk, so as to
lead to an inevitable post-modern retreat from tradition and in the direction
of further elevating individual experience and self-sovereignty above teaching,
tradition, and Scripture? (To be sure,
some on and off this list might welcome such a diminution of magisterial
authority and a movement away from orthodoxy and tradition. But then they would simply be proving the point, that traditional Christian beliefs on the
essence of the faith are difficult to reconcile with present-day liberal sexual
mores.)
In sum, might the surgery necessary to excise moral teaching on sexual relationships from the rest of the body of Christian tradition prove to be so radical that the patient cannot survive?
Greg Sisk
