The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: The Price of Infallibility

Wow! I don’t agree with all this guy’s cause/effect conclusions (especially the ones about why the membership is declining) but he lays out clearly some good arguments against this Pope who is being lauded as John Paul the Great in the press.

Despite his choice of name, John Paul II shared little with his immediate predecessors. John Paul I lasted slightly more than a month, but in that time we were treated to a typical Italian of moderating tendencies, one who had even, before his election, congratulated the parents of the world’s first test-tube baby – not a gesture that resonated with the church’s fundamentalists, who still insist on holding the line against anything that smacks of tampering with nature, an intellectual construct far removed from what ordinary people mean by that word.

Paul VI, though painfully cautious, allowed the appointment of bishops (and especially archbishops and cardinals) who were the opposite of yes men, outspoken champions of the poor and oppressed and truly representative of the parts of the world they came from, like Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, who tried so hard at the end of his life to find common ground within a church rent by division. In contrast, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston rebuked the dying Cardinal Bernardin for this effort because, as Cardinal Law insisted, the church knows the truth and is therefore exempt from anything as undignified as dialogue. Cardinal Law, who had to resign after revelations that he had repeatedly allowed priests accused of sexual abuse to remain in the ministry while failing to inform either law enforcement officials or parishioners, must stand as the characteristic representative of John Paul II, protective of the church but often dismissive of the moral requirement to protect and cherish human beings.

This seems so common sense somehow. The biggest criticism of the church’s handling of this is their arrogance and protectionism under the cloak of “infallibility.” The fundamental breaking of the trust has hurt far more people than were actually molested.

John Paul II has been almost the polar opposite of John XXIII, who dragged Catholicism to confront 20th-century realities after the regressive policies of Pius IX, who imposed the peculiar doctrine of papal infallibility on the First Vatican Council in 1870, and after the reign of terror inflicted by Pius X on Catholic theologians in the opening decades of the 20th century. Unfortunately, this pope was much closer to the traditions of Pius IX and Pius X than to his namesakes. Instead of mitigating the absurdities of Vatican I’s novel declaration of papal infallibility, a declaration that stemmed almost wholly from Pius IX’s paranoia about the evils ranged against him in the modern world, John Paul II tried to further it. In seeking to impose conformity of thought, he summoned prominent theologians like Hans Kung, Edward Schillebeeckx and Leonardo Boff to star chamber inquiries and had his grand inquisitor, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, issue condemnations of their work.

I think it would be VERY new to most catholics to learn that this dogma of “infallibility” is such a recent and modern addition to the office. I wonder if something in their collective memory retains this and that is why, at least for American Catholics, so many are ready to follow rules they think make sense and ignore the others (You don’ playa da game, you don’ makea da rules)

But John Paul II’s most lasting legacy to Catholicism will come from the episcopal appointments he made. In order to have been named a bishop, a priest must have been seen to be absolutely opposed to masturbation, premarital sex, birth control (including condoms used to prevent the spread of AIDS), abortion, divorce, homosexual relations, married priests, female priests and any hint of Marxism. It is nearly impossible to find men who subscribe wholeheartedly to this entire catalogue of certitudes; as a result the ranks of the episcopate are filled with mindless sycophants and intellectual incompetents. The good priests have been passed over; and not a few, in their growing frustration as the pontificate of John Paul II stretched on, left the priesthood to seek fulfillment elsewhere.

This is why I hope they appoint the guy from Nigeria. I can’t believe an African could actually ignore the AIDs crisis with such a “heads in the sand” policy.

As far as the Liberation Theology stance, I have been enraged to hear again so many times this week the idea that Jesus was not concerned with political, economic and social reform. While he clearly did not become the revolutionary that Judas or even Peter wanted him to become EVERYTHING in his ministry had to do with changing the boundaries established by “nice society”; bringing the outsiders in and making sure the insiders knew they weren’t as “in” as they thought.

The situation is dire. Anyone can walk into a Catholic church on a Sunday and see pews, once filled to bursting, now sparsely populated with gray heads. And there is no other solution for the church but to begin again, as if it were the church of the catacombs, an oddball minority sect in a world of casual cruelty and unbending empire that gathered adherents because it was so unlike the surrounding society.

This is a conclusion that I think is too simplistic. The declining membership of “mainline” churches goes far beyond this pope as the phenomenon goes far beyond the Roman church.

Back then, the church called itself by the Greek word ekklesia, the word the Athenians used for their wide open assembly, the world’s first participatory democracy. (The Apostle Peter, to whom the Vatican awards the title of first pope, was one of many leaders in the primitive church, as far from an absolute monarch as could be, a man whose most salient characteristic was his frequent and humble confession that he was wrong.) In using ekklesia to describe their church, the early Christians meant to emphasize that their society within a society acted not out of political power but only out of the power of love, love for all as equal children of God. But they went much further than the Athenians, for they permitted no restrictions on participation: no citizens and noncitizens, no Greeks and non-Greeks, no patriarchs and submissive females. For, as St. Paul put it repeatedly, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus.”

Sadly, John Paul II represented a different tradition, one of aggressive papalism. Whereas John XXIII endeavored simply to show the validity of church teaching rather than to issue condemnations, John Paul II was an enthusiastic condemner. Yes, he will surely be remembered as one of the few great political figures of our age, a man of physical and moral courage more responsible than any other for bringing down the oppressive, antihuman Communism of Eastern Europe. But he was not a great religious figure. How could he be? He may, in time to come, be credited with destroying his church.

Thomas Cahill is the author of “How the Irish Saved Civilization,” “Pope John XXIII” and, most recently, “Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter.”

— — —
A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

Just the facts 2008
Thursday’s challenge 2007

April 5th, 2005 | Category: Roman Catholic, politics, theology, world news | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL