Church in a Changed World

American Roman Catholics have confronted in recent days some difficult questions that, at least for those outside the church, seem perplexing and disturbing.

Cardinal John O’Connor, archbishop of New York, has been required by the Holy See to amend his travel plans within Israel because his proposed consultations with Israeli officials were seen as contrary to the foreign policy of the Vatican. If every bishop is an instrument of that foreign policy, is every priest likewise?

And Father Charles Curran, a priest on the faculty of Catholic University of America, after being suspended by Rome as an official teacher of theology, has also been denied by his bishop the right to teach any subjects. What is the definition of academic freedom for Roman Catholic institutions?

We had not judged O’Connor’s visit as a diplomatic mission to Israel any more than it represented an official American function, but that judgment may betray our ignorance of the international standing of bishops in the structure of the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, Rome and Washington share the same official reservations about the status of Jerusalem, and for that reason the Vatican maintains only truncated relations with Israel and the United States maintains its embassy in Tel Aviv on land internationally recognized as within Israel’s sovereign territory. American government officials have exercised caution about how they deal with Israel, avoiding official action that would appear to sanction the annexation after the 1967 war of Arab East Jerusalem, but American diplomats freely deal with the government of Israel in West Jerusalem in the same way O’Connor had intended, with no apparent concern that this could prejudice the ultimate peace negotiations.

The purity of theology is, of course, the business of each church, although religions inevitably will be judged by the way they go about guarding their beliefs, faiths and commitments. Curran has certainly made no secret of his disagreement with the Vatican on some conspicuous moral issues--including homosexuality, divorce and the use of contraceptives. And, by the questions that he has raised, he has invited a fresh discussion of discipline as it is enforced in the Roman communion. We suppose that it is for Rome to decide how much discussion it can tolerate without placing its principles in peril. History suggests that church ideas have evolved through the years and that debate often has strengthened the institution. Certainly it is Rome’s right to set limits on dissent for those licensed to teach the official views. It is far more difficult, however, to grasp how an American university can feel at risk in allowing a distinguished theologian to continue teaching after his official license as theologian has been lifted. There was no possibility that his students would be ignorant of the fact that he no longer had an official canonical mission. There is no evidence that he had corrupted them through the years.

Vatican Council II celebrated the movement of the Roman Church into the 20th Century and into a world that had greatly changed even in the span of less than a century following the first Vatican Council. The vision of the new council was of a less centralized and less authoritarian church, its national conferences of bishops given new responsibility in recognition of the diversity of the world. Perhaps the struggle for purity of thought has now led the leadership to stumble over how to apply doctrine to a diverse world. Granted, of course, that there are values and ethics and principles--holy truths, if you will--that apply equally in every nation through all time. The Decalogue has survived the test of the millennia. But it is not easy to separate the transient from the permanent, the evolving from the unchanging, without the acceptance of the fecundity of a variety of national approaches, without the freedom of unfearing discussion.