Posted on 07/03/2006 11:32:42 AM PDT by NYer
JULY 29, 1968, may prove to be a major landmark in the long history of the Roman Catholic Church—as significant, perhaps, as the moment when Martin Luther decided to post his theses on indulgences at Wittenberg Castle Church. On that day last summer, Pope Paul VI promulgated his seventh encyclical, Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), which condemned all methods of contraception as against God's natural law. Since it reflected the views of a distinct minority of Catholic theologians and moralists, the encyclical created an unprecedented storm of protest and dissent within the church. Millions of laymen, priests and even bishops made it clear that they simply could not accept, without qualification, the teaching of Humanae Vitae. At the same time, many contended that their dissent in no way affected their standing as Catholics. By so doing, they raised much larger and more troubling questions about the rights of freedom v. authority in Catholicism—and the limitations on the Pope's right to speak as teacher for the church.
It would be too much to hope—or fear —that the church is on the verge of a second Reformation What the ? We weren't "reformed" - a heretic ran off and started his own thing. There is little question, however, that it is suffering from an internal rebellion of critical proportions. Priest-Sociologist Andrew Greeley of Chicago, in a recent column for U.S. diocesan newspapers, quoted a bishop as saying that there are two Catholicisms—an "official church" belonging to the Pope and hierarchy, and an undefined "free church," which is attracting a growing number of laymen and priests. Similarly, Paulist Father Thomas Stransky, an official of Rome's Secretariat for Christian Unity, suggests that the church is suffering from a "silent schism" of rebels who are remaining Catholic in name but are "hanging loose" from the institutional church.
Corrosive Criticism. No man is more aware of this dissension than Pope Paul VI, who issues new warnings almost daily against imprudence, rebellion, disobedience and the dangers of heresy. Last week he cautioned Catholics against tampering with "indispensable structures of the church" and partaking in intercommunion services with Protestants. "A spirit of corrosive criticism has become fashionable in certain sectors of Catholic life," he told an audience at Castel Gandolfo last September in a typical peroration. "Some want to go beyond what the solemn assemblies of the church have authorized, envisaging not only reforms but upheavals, which they think they themselves can authorize and which they consider all the more clever the less they are faithful to tradition. Where is the consistency and dignity which belong to true Christians? Where is love for the church?"
Paul is not the only Catholic bishop to be worried by this restlessness and turmoil. A dramatic illustration of the hierarchy's concern—and of some of the reasons for it—took place last week in Washington. At their regular semiannual conference, the 235 Catholic bishops of the U.S. found themselves the target of a bizarre series of demonstrations by dissident priests and laymen. On the day before the bishops met, 3,500 laymen rallied at the Mayflower hotel in support of 41 local priests who had been disciplined by Patrick Cardinal O'Boyle for criticizing Humanae Vitae. The keynote speaker was one of the nation's best-known Catholic laymen, Senator Eugene McCarthy, a onetime novice in a Benedictine monastery.
Lobby Sit-in. Later, 130 priests burst into the lobby of the Washington Hilton hotel, where the bishops met, to stage a sit-in in support of the censured clerics. On another night, 120 laymen demonstrated in the Hilton lobby for two hours. They sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic and Impossible Dream, prayed for the disciplined priests to be granted due process and for "the proper use of authority in the church."
Unquestionably, Pope Paul was thoroughly unprepared for the reaction to his encyclical. Perhaps the most dramatic repudiation of its teaching in the U.S. was a statement, prepared by the Rev. Charles E. Curran and other theologians from the Catholic University of America, insisting that couples had the right to practice contraception if their consciences dictated; so far, more than 600 priests, theologians and laymen have subscribed to the declaration. In West Germany, 5,000 laymen at the church's annual Katholikentag (Catholic Day) gave their voice vote to a resolution warning the Pope that they simply could not accept the encyclical's teachings. Swiss Theologian Hans Küng, among many individual thinkers voicing their protests, declared that "the encyclical is not an infallible teaching. I fear it creates a second Galileo case."
"Birth control," says one American scholar in Rome, "is the Pope's Viet Nam."
Love over Negatives. Almost all the stern "thou shall nots" of Catholic morality are being similarly reinterpreted via a person-centered ethic based on the imperatives of love rather than on categorical negatives. Recently, Msgr. Stephen J. Kelleher of New York's archdiocesan rota openly proposed that the church allow divorce and remarriage in certain "intolerable marriages." (Kelleher was promptly transferred to a suburban parish.) Jesuit Lawyer Robert Drinan has proposed that abortion should be a matter for private decision. Some Catholic college chaplains will concede that where a boy-girl relationship is truly loving, premarital sex no longer need be considered a sin.
Catholic dissent, however, is not basically a question of objecting to specific strictures. Far more often it involves unhappiness with an unwieldy, outdated organization that demands obedience to dogmas that no longer make sense or to rules that restrict Christian liberty. Moreover, obedience is compelled frequently not by scriptural testimony but by threats of punishment in hell—an eschatological scare increasingly rejected by Catholic theologians. Despite their commitment by solemn vow to this ecclesiastical machinery, priests have been among the most vociferous rebels. This year alone, at least 463 Catholic clerics in the U.S. have left the priesthood, many of them to marry. Rome's Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has on file more than 3,000 requests for laicization, or approval of a priest's return to lay life. (Church officials customarily sit on these applications for months without taking action; many priests have discovered that when they marry illegally, their petitions are more quickly acted upon.)
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The most striking fact of the contemporary Catholic rebellion is that the vast majority of dissenters—except for priests whose marriages entail automatic excommunication—feel free to create and define their own faith and still consider themselves within the church. "Fewer are leaving than ever before," says Bishop Hugh Donohoe of Stockton, Calif. "Their attitude is 'We're not going to be thrown out of the church. We are going to fashion it to our own liking.' "
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"I don't know a well-educated young lay person who has religious concerns who's not a dissenter," says Greeley. Among Catholic college students, alienation from the church as an institution is almost a badge of maturity.
Kudos to Gerald Augustinus and his research. And for those of you who were not around back then, here's a "Back to the Future" moment and sampling of what we have been battling for 35+ years.
Greeley, Drinan.........etc......GAG! Well, I will say this at least they are consistent. Consistently dissident and putting root beer in everyone's 12-year old scotch.
2006: I don't know of a dissenter under the age of 60. Thank God for EWTN (and FR). Otherwise we might have to get information about the Church from Time Magazine.
Mother has her own personal cheering squad in heaven. What a celebration when she comes home.
Wow! That brings it all back. And I remember once again how truly horrible it was.
One important point, however, is that these people had been "dissenters" for years, long prior to VatII. Unfortunately, rightly or wrongly, VatII made them feel that they had finally gotten their way and they were no longer dissenters but were the new norm.
That was why they were so outraged by Humanae Vitae, which reminded them that they hadn't managed to get 100% control quite yet. This reaction that so overwhelmed Paul VI that, to my knowledge, he never wrote another encyclical. While it may seem unbelieveable, I honestly don't think he was fully aware of what was going on out there - until the reaction to Humanae Vitae.
Ahhh yes...........1968......when Roe v Wade was unheard of and AIDS was an acronym for......well.....who knows what?
Thirty million dead children, multitudes of broken marriages and a lethal sexually transmitted pandemic later, we can clearly see that Humanae Vitae was actually our Vitenam.
If only we'd listened.
Was it really that long ago?!! Oh my! You truly are a member of the JPII generation. You have been spared much and are now part of the rebuilding effort. God bless you!
Amazing, is it not. One half-crippled but indominable nun; one very hail and hearty Polish pope.
Looking at the population figures, I would contend that birth control is Western Civilization's demographic Viet Nam.
And BTW, the Pope isn't the only one. Amish, Hutterites, and a scattering of the more devout Evangelicals also hold the "Catholic" view of contraception.
You were born in 1985? I suddenly feel old.
John Paul II was more bark than bite.
Me too, but I am sure that 1974 would make your feel older.
Did you expect him to raise an army?
At the time the joke going around was: Pope Paul VI is hoping for an early death. He wants to die a Catholic.
Never heard that one! I think people who didn't live through it probably can't grasp how sudden and shocking the VatII rebellion was, and how rapidly it seemed to sweep away centuries of tradition and doctrine. Pope Paul VI simply holed up in the Vatican (supposedly passing his days in tears) and the few bishops and cardinals who fought back (McIntyre, for example) were rapidly overrun and either gave up or retired. Things looked very, very bleak indeed.
I expected him to do his job, and use the power of excommunication as well as his authority to remove erring bishops.
John Paul II was pope for 25 years, and the Catholic Church was in far worse shape than when he found it.
I he were a general in combat, he would have been removed for dereliction of duty.
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