Vatican View : Catholicism--Dissent in America

In decreeing that Roman Catholic educators have “no right to public dissent” on authoritative church teachings, the Vatican is aggressively enforcing Pope John Paul II’s conservative orthodoxy and his intention to keep such U.S. Catholic theologians as Charles Curran in line, according to several American bishops and scholars.

The Vatican order on Monday stripping Curran of the right to teach theology in a Catholic university was the latest--and strongest--move by Rome to quash dissent in the American church.

The dispute surrounding the Catholic University professor mirrors the tension within the church between those who believe that authority flows from the top and those who hold the view that members of the church may participate in developing doctrine. The tension is particularly acute in the U.S. Catholic Church because of this country’s traditions of democracy and free speech.

“The church is not a democracy,” said Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony, “but many tend to see the church as valid only when it reflects the American democratic experiment. . . . Freedom of speech and academic freedom in the American college or university tradition is supposed to be the criterion for how the American Catholic Church is to teach.

Higher Norms of Authority

“But that is not the beginning for the church. . . . It’s been formed in a different context,” Mahony said this week in an interview.

Referring to a letter by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s guardian on doctrinal matters, to Curran, Mahony stated: “Ratzinger has said well in his letter that we follow higher norms of teaching authority. It’s not academic freedom on the university system, but the teaching authority of the church as handed down through 20 centuries of tradition.”

The restriction on Curran--the first American theologian to be punished by Pope John Paul II--brings into sharper focus what church teachings the Vatican considers to be outside the boundaries of debate, even when such doctrine is not held to be infallible by the church.

Not Seen as Something New

In the past, the Catholic Church has silenced many theologians, including John Courtney Murray, the late Jesuit professor whom the Vatican barred in the mid 1950s from speaking and writing about his views on freedom of conscience and dissent. (A decade later, however, Murray was a chief architect of the church’s declaration on religious liberty issued at the Second Vatican Council.)

“I don’t see this as something new, similar action was taken several years ago regarding Hans Kung,” said Archbishop John L. May of St. Louis, the vice president of the U.S. Catholic bishops. “From time to time the Holy See has made it very clear that certain theologians are no longer regarded as fulfilling their role as official theologians of the church.”

In 1979, the Vatican, with the approval of Pope John Paul II, stripped Kung, a Swiss theologian and one of the most widely known scholars in the Catholic Church, of his right to teach as a Catholic theologian. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by the conservative Cardinal Ratzinger, also declared Kung guilty of heresy for challenging the doctrine of papal infallibility and the bishops as sole arbiters of Catholic doctrine.

Last year, the Pope ordered a Brazilian theologian, the Rev. Leonardo Boff, silenced for a year because he had advocated a radical form of liberation theology, which involves Marxist principles of analysis and social activism on behalf of the poor.

And two American nuns are still under a Vatican threat of expulsion from their orders because they signed a 1984 newspaper advertisement arguing that “committed Catholics” hold a variety of views on abortion. The cases of 22 other nuns who signed the ad have been cleared by the Vatican after they clarified their positions; the church teaches that all abortions are morally wrong.

In an interview with an Italian magazine earlier this year, Ratzinger condemned an attitude of “bourgeois Christianity” by American theologians who dissent from the church’s teachings on sexuality. Such dissent is an attempt to accommodate the personal desires of individual Catholics by placing them on a par with official teaching, Ratzinger explained.

‘Spreading Confusion’

And last April, in a strong rebuke to theologians who dissent from traditional church views on sexuality, the Pope said such teachers were “spreading confusion in the conscience of the faithful” and demanded that they adhere to official doctrine.

Curran, 52, has taught at Catholic University in Washington for 20 years. During that time he has outlined his academic views on a number of controversial issues involving sexual ethics, including comments that neither contraception nor sterilization are “intrinsically evil,” that homosexual acts in limited circumstances may be an “objectively moral good” and that abortion may sometimes be permissible.

He told a press conference in Washington this week that he would not retract his views and would fight through academic--and possibly legal--channels to retain his job.

“I remain convinced that the hierarchical teaching office in the Roman Catholic Church must allow dissent on these issues and ultimately should change its teaching,” Curran said.

On Tuesday, Washington Archbishop James A. Hickey said that in disciplining Curran the Vatican had decreed that “there is no right to public dissent” within the church.

Submission of Intellect

Hickey, who also is chancellor of Catholic University, said in a statement issued to Curran that church teachings, even if “not solemnly defined,” require submission of “intellect and will.”

That is the heart of the controversy.

Curran has steadfastly maintained that his differences with church teachings on sexuality fall well within the mainstream of American Catholic theology and that he does not dissent from doctrine the church regards as “infallible.”

“I continue to hold my basic position that dissent from authoritative, non-infallible church teaching is possible and in certain cases is justified,” Curran declared this week.

Ratzinger holds this is error.

Quoting Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), a document adopted by the Second Vatican Council on Nov. 21, 1964, Ratzinger wrote Curran that when the bishops “are in agreement that a particular position ought to be held as definitive, then they are teaching the doctrine of Christ in an infallible manner.”

In his press statement, Hickey elaborated this point further: “The infallible teachings of the church do not stand alone, they are intimately related to all official church teachings and together form an organic unity of faith.”

Privilege Extended by God

According to Roman Catholic belief, the Pope is considered to have the privilege extended by God to speak infallibly on matters of faith and morals--but only when he speaks ex cathedra , or with the intent of stating an unquestionable truth. This power, formally declared by the First Vatican Council in 1870, has been used rarely by modern popes; it was last invoked by Pius XII in 1950 when he proclaimed as dogma the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven.

“It’s almost as if there is a mania (in the American church) over infallibility,” said a senior Vatican official, speaking on condition that he not be named. “If it’s infallible, you’ll accept it. If it’s not formally nailed down, then you can take it or leave it. Cardinal Ratzinger and the Holy Father just can’t go along with that.”

Archbishop Mahony, spiritual leader of the 2.6 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said that “not everything must be infallible to be considered authoritative. . . . Eighty to 85% of the church’s teaching is not specifically defined as infallible. Ordinary daily teaching of the church is normative.”

Speaking on dissent and Catholic education at a national conference of religion teachers in Anaheim last spring, Bishop William Levada, archbishop designate of Portland, Ore., and a former auxiliary bishop to Mahony, said that “exploration”--but not public dissent--is possible.

“Sometimes the word dissent is used--improperly in my view--to describe the work of theological research and of scholars who are exploring the frontiers of some issue with hypothetical, speculative, and hence tentative, conclusions,” Levada said. “It seems to me that such explorations do not properly fall within the area of dissent when they are presented as hypothetical and not as pastoral norms which can be followed in practice.”

But, Levada, Mahony, May and other bishops who have spoken on the Curran censure all agree that the Catholic University professor transgressed the line.

Crux of Problem

“When he (Curran) takes his ideas to the classrooms or popular journals with the impression they are approved pastoral practices, that’s the whole crux of the problem,” Mahony said.

However, Father David Tracy, a professor of theology at the University of Chicago and a former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, said he believes that Curran was well within allowable dissent.

Ratzinger’s premise that the faithful must give assent to all authentic church teaching on faith and morals is “not defensible,” Tracy said, adding:

“I think it is very unfortunate and should be resisted. Curran is a moderate and a very responsible theologian.”

Tracy was one of nine former presidents and more than 700 members of Catholic theological societies who signed a statement earlier this year supporting Curran.

“If Father Curran’s views on the various issues mentioned in the letter are so incompatible with Catholic teaching that he must be declared no longer a Catholic theologian, justice and fairness would dictate that other Catholic theologians should be treated in exactly the same way,” the statement said. “The problem is that there are very many Catholic theologians who do dissent from non-infallible teachings.”

Another signer of the statement, the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, chairman of the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, said this week that the Curran case is a “blow to Catholic higher education. . . . The brightest and best of young Catholic scholars will turn to non-Catholic academic institutions.”

‘Pontifical’ Institution

In Mahony’s view, the notion of American democracy and the historical teaching of the Catholic Church collide, exacerbating the conflict Curran and other U.S. dissenters are experiencing.

Curran’s situation is unusual because Catholic University is a “pontifical” institution organized by a papal charter granted in 1887. It is thus under the authority of the Vatican--unlike the nation’s other 234 Catholic colleges and universities--and has a special obligation and responsibility to the Pope.

About 7% of the 2,700 undergraduate and 3,700 graduate students at the school are clergy or members of religious orders. The three ecclesiastical faculties of Catholic University, falling under direct Vatican control, are the School of Philosophy, and the departments of theology and of canon law in the School of Religious Studies. Curran has been a tenured professor of moral theology in the Department of Theology.

“Curran is licensed on the ecclesiastical faculty,” noted Father James Mulligan, dean of studies at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. “His authority is from the Vatican, which gives his position a good bit of weight. At the same time, he has been disagreeing with positions the church has taught unambiguously for years. In doing that, he’s created the conflict.”

Curran contends that he is being “singled out” for punishment by Rome because he represents--in high profile--the dissent from official church doctrine on sexual ethics held by many U.S. Catholic theologians.

Curran’s run-in with church authority began in 1967 when he was fired by Catholic University’s trustees for his liberal views. But a campus-wide strike by sympathetic faculty and students resulted in his reinstatement and promotion five days later. The following year, Curran spearheaded U.S. resistance to Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Humane Vitae, which reaffirmed the church’s ban on artificial contraception.

Sent List of Errors

In 1979, as part of Pope John Paul II’s drive for orthodoxy, the Vatican launched an investigation into Curran’s writings, sending him a 16-page list of “principal errors and ambiguities” in his works.

Father John Connery, a retired theology professor at Loyola University in Chicago, said Archbishop Hickey’s statement did not rule out private dissent or inquiry by theologians.

But, he said, “I think it would have to be carried out . . . so as not to upset people.”

Bishop James Malone of Youngstown, Ohio, president of the U.S. bishops, concurred with the Vatican decision to oust Curran as an official theologian.

“Someone who does not accept the teaching of the church on crucial points cannot reasonably expect to occupy a position which requires that he teach what the church teaches,” Malone said in a press statement.

He added that he hoped the issue “will not become an occasion for prolonged confusion and bitterness.”

But there were indications from the Vatican, according to Associated Press reports, that further action against Curran and other church leaders Rome considers errant may be in the making.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro said the soft-spoken but defiant theologian could lose the right to function as a priest if he persists in challenging the church.

And one Vatican-commissioned panel is reviewing the activities of U.S. priests and nuns, while another is looking into the quality of the country’s Catholic education at the college level. “Corrective steps” and “housecleaning” may follow their reports, a Vatican official was quoted as saying.