Church Turns to Discipline in Place of Social Justice

In the fall of 1967, traveling through the Amazon Basin with Robert Kennedy, we turned the curve of a small tributary to glimpse three large, ruddy-faced Roman Catholic missionaries--unmistakably Americans--waving from the river bank. What, we asked, had brought them to this endless forest, populated by only a handful of Indians? “Pope John,” they answered. And we needed no further explanation.

That great man, sovereign of the Catholic Church, whose picture still adorns walls in the huts of impoverished natives throughout the Andean plateau, had opened the arms of his ancient church to the manifold sins and injustices of the modern world. No person, however destitute his condition or exotic his belief, was beyond the possibilities of earthly justice or eternal salvation.

The work--one is tempted to say “the presence”--of Pope John XXIII, was crowned by the Second Vatican Council. The faithful were to be allowed, even encouraged, to resume the historic purification of church doctrine; the need, through debate and pious discussion, to adapt human understanding of divine will when confronted by new forms of evil.

Today, after only 20 fruitful and illuminating years, the doors to productive progress are closing. Father Charles A. Curran is stripped of his license to teach theology at Catholic University of America because he dares offer respectful alternatives to some of the ideas asserted by Rome. The archbishop of Seattle is denied his authority over sexual and moral issues that trouble his parishioners. An 11-year-old girl is expelled from parochial school for voicing support of abortion. And, in the most egregious extension of this new repression, the archbishop of New York bans from Catholic platforms those public officials who--by word or actions--dissent from the current credos.

These “punishments,” this “discipline” represent the beginning of an effort by the current Pope to reverse the work of his illustrious predecessor.

Meanwhile the Protestant religious right is finding an unexpected--and not wholly welcome--ally among those Catholic authorities newly determined to suppress even pious and submissive disagreement, not only from clerics but by all Catholics, including those chosen as leaders of our pluralistic democracy. “The faithful,” writes Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s official caretaker of orthodoxy, must “give . . . submission of intellect and will to . . . teaching . . . on faith or morals.” Not just priests or theologians, but all the “faithful.” And obedience is owed, not merely to established dogma, infallible pronouncements or articles of faith, but also, as Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee has begun to point out, to all the voluminous opinions, ranging over almost every human concern that emanates from “approved” theologians.

So sweeping a repression of ideas is not unprecedented. But neither is it sanctified by the history of a church that has often, and wisely, revised its moral teachings.

For Americans, however, the most urgent issues are not theological but political. It is no accident that repressive movements that seek sanction in the divine are usually associated with right-wing ideology. By making sexual morality or forms of worship the testing grounds of religious belief, they force the far more significant problems of social justice and compassionate beliefs to the margins of public concern.

Thus the persistence of poverty becomes less important than masturbation; the arms race, with its threat to all life, less significant than abortion. If energies are expended in combat against premarital sex or contraception, the contest over fair distribution of national wealth, or shelter for the poor, is drained and deflected.

I do not challenge the righteous motives or true piety of the Catholic authorities who, in pursuit of doctrinal purity, are infusing new strength into the ominous growth of the religious right. They act from the highest beliefs. But they are wrong. American Catholics should not be forced to choose between their relationship with God and their obligations as citizens to serve the wants of those who do not share their beliefs. Democracy and freedom are also moral principles, as deeply rooted in the manifold centuries of the church as problems of sexual conduct.

In 2,000 years the church has proved a resilient institution. Popes and cardinals change. And church teachings will change with them. Until then it is the task of every American--Catholic and non-Catholic--to resist any effort to import the particulars of any creed into the arena of democratic debate and policy. To enlist God in support of mortal policy is to supplant reasoned discourse with unanswerable dogma. And it verges on sacrilege against the Divine Providence that has long guarded our great experiment in democracy.