Opinion: Why a liberal Catholic is embarassed

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Robert E. Doud is a retired professor of philosophy and religious studies at Pasadena City College. He has also been a member of the Catholic Theology Society of America for more than 30 years. Here he responds to an article in The Times. If you would like to respond to a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed in our Blowback forum, here are our FAQs and submission policy.

In his recent L.A. Times article, ‘None So Blind,’ Jason Berry describes Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George, who is about to assume leadership of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, as arrogant and callous. But George’s character and attitudes are not unusual in the current church hierarchy. A short time ago, some Catholics were embarrassed to have Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger become Pope Benedict XVI. Throughout his long career as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith *, Ratzinger suppressed thought, opinion and open discussion.

My own Catholic values are clustered around the open window of aggiornamento and around the style of Pope John XXIII, who convened the Second Vatican Council. In my view, style communicates substance, and substance is the foundation of style. Jesus had a certain style of living, loving and thinking. Despite the learned and sincere obfuscations of many popes, prophets, saints and theologians over the centuries, the style of Jesus comes through the New Testament Scriptures beautifully. To me, there is an obvious connection between the open style of good Pope John and the documents of Vatican II, and the style of Jesus and the New Testament; all the other documents and decretals of Catholicism and Christianity must be read with a view to the horizon of Pope John XXIII and Vatican II.

Enter Pope John Paul II, who became pontiff 13 years after the Second Vatican Council had closed. Immediate chagrin, abiding embarrassment — these describe my somewhat learned, basically but not totally liberal and abidingly loyal Catholic response. For me and others like me, Pope Benedict XVI puts the seal of relativity upon Catholicism. To my mind, the Vatican is less credible, not more credible, when it condemns theologians. Bad style relativizes good substance. The same Holy Spirit that guided Jesus guides all Christians, the Christian churches and the Catholic Church preeminently. The rock star style of Pope John Paul II never impressed me. He wrote voluminously and even brilliantly at times, but he was a dictatorial pope who refused to allow competing ideas in the Catholic Church during his reign. Intellectually, his was a reign of terror for thinking Catholics. Great Catholic thinkers living and dead — Teilhard de Chardin, Hans Kung, Charles Curran, Edward Schillebeeckx, Leonardo Boff, Anthony de Mello, Roger Haight, Thomas Reese — were censured in one way or another. Cardinal Ratzinger was the enforcer.

So I spent the entire reign of John Paul in a state of religious embarrassment. I was embarrassed to be a Catholic long before the news of the pedophilia scandals began to break. I was not embarrassed about the Vatican’s probing and judging the ideas of the Catholic thinkers and theologians but about the way the Vatican carries on its necessary work. The Vatican’s probing, questioning and testing of theological work are important and necessary. But even before that, the theologians must probe and ponder the Gospels and other writing for ever deeper meanings and ever broader applications. The style of the Vatican’s response need not be anathemas and condemnation.

There are various ways and degrees of censure that are used by the Vatican in reviewing theological work. When a theological work is published, official Vatican theologians or the Holy Office should offer a preface or appendix that criticizes the work from an official point of view. Catholics should be regarded as intelligent enough to compare the work and its criticism and to make their own conclusions. Teachers of theology in the colleges could then refer to the Vatican response as well as to the new ideas, as they are found under the same cover. It is a question of style that very soon becomes a question of substance. The church’s guidance will be more accessible, more effective and more respected. It will at last show charity and respect toward theologians and other thinkers.

A few years back, the distinguished but censured theologian Charles Curran came as a visiting professor to the University of Southern California. I was very proud as Cardinal Roger Mahony debated Father Curran in an open format of mutual respect. I realized then that I could have a cardinal for a hero and could applaud one of my theological heroes, both at the same time. The heroism of both men that day was demonstrated in the respect that they showed for one another. Their common ground and style was one that communicated respect for truth in the Catholic tradition, the communication of truth and the development of truth. I am Catholic because I believe we need the teaching authority of the church, but I am embarrassed by the lack of Christian style in the way the Vatican treats our theologians.

This type of open exchange stands in marked contrast to the Vatican’s treatment of our theologians. It must be possible for a Catholic to oppose abortion on the grounds of the church’s moral teaching and still be in favor of choice in the public sector. A public official who happens to be Catholic represents many people, not only Catholics. Each of those constituents has a conscience, and many do not hold that abortion is the taking of a full human life. A Catholic public official must support the liberty of conscience of each constituent, even above his or her personal moral convictions. In the opinion of many, the question of abortion is so intimate to the woman involved that her conscience must be the ultimate court of appeal in the matter. Her conscience may not be properly informed, or may even be malicious, but it is a matter of her conscience in the final appeal. To deny a woman access to proper medical care as a matter of public policy runs counter to the spirit of democracy, as well as the traditional Catholic view on the freedom of conscience.

Yet Benedict XVI would make private conscience a matter of public censure, to the point of suggesting that Catholic politicians be denied Holy Communion. The church should not behave as a pressure group or political lobby. Nor should our political life become the means for imposing our views on others. Neither should we start rehearsing the rhetoric of punishment, penalties and excommunication for Catholics who hold different opinions on these matters. Separation of church and state is a political and a moral principle for each American, and each of us should deepen that conviction in our own hearts.

The bishops have done their job when they articulate the church’s moral teaching on abortion and urge us to vote accordingly. They go too far if they try to eliminate the pro-choice option from the conscience of every Catholic public official. The Catholic Church does not require that its moral teaching be imposed on others without regard for individual conscience. It’s embarrassing when our church leaders or vocal Catholic groups disrespect this American principle.

There is no mechanism in Catholic theology by which dogma and moral teaching can be revised or brought up to date. There is no mechanism in our church by which truth may be spoken to power. We love so much about our church, but our church is also human, fallible and sinful. Catholicism has never found a way of acknowledging its own faults. To all non-Catholics, I apologize for my church. Please pray for us Catholics that we can get through a period of very poor leadership, and indeed make revisions and reforms that were anticipated in the Second Vatican Council.

* An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Ratzinger was secretary to John Paul II. He was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith during John Paul II’s reign.