Change Comes Slowly : Pope Holds Ground, but Church Isn’t Immovable

Pope John Paul II’s well-orchestrated U.S. pastoral visit, which concludes today, has been punctuated with dissonant notes--pleas for change in Catholic Church doctrine and policies.

In virtually every case, the Pope has resisted. He gave no ground on priestly celibacy or the ban on women priests. The bishop of Rome made it plain that he will not change the church’s positions on divorce and remarriage, artificial birth control, homosexual behavior and abortion--issues over which, polls show, many American Catholics differ profoundly with the Vatican.

Yet, the Catholic Church is obviously not immovable.

For example, Charles Ara recalls that as a young Los Angeles priest in the mid-1960s, he repeatedly was admonished by his superiors for joining with non-Catholic clergy in civil rights forums or preaching sermons on that topic.

Now, Ara noted, Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony is celebrated for articulating social justice concerns in interfaith coalitions. Moreover, the Catholic Bishops Conference of America has approved provocative pastoral letters warning against the spread of nuclear weapons and calling for a redistribution of income in the United States.

And any Catholic who once faithfully abstained from meat on Fridays and never expected to hear the Mass routinely celebrated in English can testify to transformations wrought by the reform-minded Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

Can the Catholic Church change still more? Ara, now married, the father of five and a family counselor in Cerritos, hopes so. He is one of about 3,000 ex-priests who make perennial, organized appeals to serve the church again as married priests.

When shifts do occur, is it because the Pope asserts his authority or because he can hardly do otherwise? Are there new agents of change within the church?

Interviews with Catholic scholars suggest that the power of the Pope is increasingly offset or enhanced by the tide of opinion in the church. As much as John Paul has resisted calls for change, they point out, he faces resistance on his own goal of achieving more conformity from so-called “cafeteria Catholics” who affirm doctrines and selectively.

But in the long sweep of history, the opinions of dissenting theologians have, on occasion, become accepted doctrine. To the question of how the church of 840 million people changes, most Catholic thinkers say, “Very slowly,” and not simply to be humorous.

‘Reasonable Continuity’

“Our problem is that we have to explain ourselves to one another across time and across cultures, so we’re slow,” said Holy Cross Father James Burtchaell, a theology professor at Notre Dame. “If we accept something, we have to feel that it is in reasonable continuity with generations of people who have carried the faith in the past.”

Burtchaell also notes, with many others, that what seems a pressing need to Catholics in Western countries may not have the same urgency in Africa, Asia or Latin America. “We have to secure the confidence of people in very different cultures,” he said.

Some other theologians, however, suggest that that rationale amounts to an apology for Vatican inaction.

When asked about the dynamics of change, Catholic scholars distinguish between matters of discipline, or policy--such as priestly celibacy, which was not mandatory until the 12th Century--and matters of doctrine. Doctrine involves beliefs about moral behavior and divinity, which the church maintains have been constant through the centuries.

But differences of opinions arise on this point, too.

No Women Priests Soon

“Within 50 years there might be married priests but certainly not women priests,” said Ronda Chervin, a philosophy professor at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo. She is a consultant to U.S. bishops in planning their next major letter, “The Pastoral on the Concerns of Women,” whose first draft may be considered next year.

Chervin once thought that ordaining women to the priesthood was only a matter of discipline, and could be adopted. But she is now convinced, she said, that it is also a matter of doctrine; that is, doctrinal implications arise from the fact that Jesus was male and that the Gospels say that his 12 disciples were men.

But Burtchaell, on the church’s doctrinal objections to women priests, said: “Many people who are unable to envision the change think of it as essential doctrine until it changes.”

Since the 1970s, women have increasingly held chancery posts, sat on marriage tribunals, directed diocesan departments and, at the parish level, distributed Communion to the sick and at Mass. Chervin, however, said that is evidence of the church’s evolving character rather than an instance of an inexorable movement leading to women’s ordination.

Change Cited by Some

Many American theologians assert that the church has changed in doctrinal matters. Most often noted is the ban on usury, the charging of interest on loans. Early church councils condemned the practice and as late as 1745, Pope Benedict XIV endorsed the stricture. But eventually the church reversed itself and recognized the legitimacy of charging fair interest.

Official church teaching also once “denied the right of the accused to silence, banned Jews from participating in public life, and even in the latter half of the 19th Century did not hold slavery to be intrinsically evil,” Father Charles Curran said. Curran’s license to teach theology at Catholic University of America was lifted by the Vatican last year for his dissent on moral teachings.

The Second Vatican Council also reversed a 19th-Century papal teaching that it was “erroneous” to think that freedom of conscience and worship is an inherent right of citizens.

The late American Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray dissented on that point, and was silenced by his superiors in 1954 and “disinvited” to Vatican II’s first session in 1962. But Cardinal Francis Spellman brought him to the second session in 1963, and eventually Murray became the architect of the council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom.

Thus, Curran and others argue, passionate dissent can lead to accepted doctrine.

Seeds of Dissent

Ironically, the religious freedom declaration itself contained the seeds of dissent. The document purportedly did not endorse religious freedom within Catholicism, but Murray himself said after the council’s approval that those who receive Christian freedom “assert it within the church as well as within the world.”

To traditionalists who cry that the church is not a democracy--a point reiterated by John Paul on his U.S. visit--Father Patrick Guidon, president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, said that is a bit simplistic.

“The church is not a democracy, but it is also true that there is a development in the church understanding of her mission and the Gospels’ significance for the present time. The church doesn’t seek to be popular, but it also has always respected the good sense of the believing community,” Guidon said.

Pastoral Letter

Similarly, June O’Connor, who chairs the religious studies program at the University of California, Riverside, said the departure point of Archbishop Mahony’s recent pastoral letter on women was significant. “He takes the feelings of alienation voiced by women and uses it to tell priests to give women more participation in the church,” she said.

O’Connor attributed change in Catholicism to “the impact of new ideas, allowed and validated by the collective body. The decisions of councils and synods usually follow the shifting thought over decades of theologians voicing new ideas.”

Limiting Pope’s Power

Likewise, Benedictine Father Patrick Granfield of Catholic University argues in “The Limits of the Papacy,” to be published later this month, that the national bishops’ conferences and the periodic synods of bishops convened in Rome “limit papal authoritarianism” and “protect the church from unilateral and isolated leadership.”

The synods, called every two or three years, assemble delegate bishops from every country to advise the Pope on topics of his choice.

Granfield said in an interview that the Synod of Bishops that will meet again next month to discuss the laity’s roles is “still a group that is finding itself.” Rather than leaving the summary to the Pope, the 1985 synod, which reviewed the results of Vatican II, issued a final report of its own. It was only the second time in the last two decades the synod has taken such an action.

“The synods are consultative bodies by church law, but the Pope can give them deliberative status. He has not done that. Perhaps if he did, that would add to the credibility of the institution itself,” Granfield said.

Thus, many believe that certain changes will require another man heading the Holy See.

‘Let’s Have a Council’

Jesuit theologian Thomas P. Rausch of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles suggested that “the charisma of a particular individual elected to the papacy can result in the church moving in new directions.”

Recalling that Pope John XXIII called for Vatican II three months after his election, Rausch said: “He was a kind of compromise candidate and an old man when elected, and the first thing he said was, ‘Let’s have a council.’ ”

At the same time, Rausch said, the church’s teachings on sexual morality cannot be changed by a Pope without years of study and new perspectives to back him.

“People who think that the Pope can change that ascribe a greater infallibility to the bishop of Rome than any informed Catholic would. That idea presupposes that the Pope can change the church at whim and that’s clearly impossible,” he said.

Notre Dame’s Burtchaell put it succinctly: “The Pope may conduct the music, but he doesn’t write it.”