Unnecessary Pain

From The Sooner Catholic, December 3, 1995

There will undoubtedly be some people who are very upset that the Church has reaffimed her policy of a male-only priesthood. Some will actually be in pain. While respecting that pain, it is still reasonable to ask, “Why should this be?”

There has never been any authoritative grounds for the slightest expectation of women’s ordination. There is nothing, anywhere, in the documents of Vatican II or the post-conciliar documents that could excite this expectation. In fact, it is quite the contrary. So why this pain of dashed hopes? Who raised these expectations?

The Church reverences the struggle of people who have honest difficulties with her teachings, and who sincerely want to understand them, and is always there for them.

The problem comes with those who set themselves up as a magisterium unto themselves and take an arrogant, public, and often flagrantly disrespectful stance towards the Church, and attempt to foment this attitude in others who are honestly struggling with hard questions. This is often done under the banner of “the Spirit of Vatican II.” But this moniker has come to mean something that has no relation whatsoever to the letter of Vatican II.

This kind of dissent, as it has come to be played out since the Council, is not simply a matter of good folks having difficulty with certain teachings, it has become an ideology. An ideology that says “I’m right, the Church is wrong!”

It says, “We are the Church, and the ‘Institutional Church’ is out of touch,” and attempts to attract followers in order to invoke the Sensus Fidelium arguement. The Sensus Fidelium is the “Sense of the Faithful,” a recognition that the Holy Spirit keeps the truth alive and on track in the hearts of God’s faithful people.

Dissent, the ideology, relentlessly attempts to drive a wedge between Church leadership and the people, as though they were two separate entities. They are not. We are one body.

The now older generation of dissident theologians seem to greet every statement from the Holy See with hostility rather than prayerful reflection, and waste no time spreading that hostility through the media. Statements from the Vatican are frequently dismissed a priori without a hearing.

All of the controverted issues in the Church have profound metaphysical underpinnings in God’s plan of love, which are ignored in the reactionary rhetoric of dissent which appeals to a highly flawed and secular concept of justice and power.

As for the Sensus Fidelium, the sense of the faithful, the key word is faithful. This means, fidelity to God in prayer, sacraments, study, humility and docility before God and legitimate Church authority.

By the faithful, when referring to the Sensus Fidelium, the Church does not simply mean Catholics living now, but also includes what Chesterton called the “democracy of the dead” — what the holy men and women before us have always believed throughout the history of the Church. When there is wide-spread rejection and disobedience of legitimate Church authority, especially in faith and morals, those rejecting it cannot claim the Sensus Fidelium argument.

Those who criticize the ideology of dissent do so because it harms people. It harms people's faith, and even their souls, bodies, and lives.

Many of us can say we’ve been hurt by the Church—by which we mean individuals in the Church. Maybe we even felt hurt because we were in the wrong and a priest or bishop or pope loved us enough to point it out to us, and the hurt was part of the healing.

Some leaders in the Church have better pastoral skills than others, and some may make blunders which hurt people, but there is a difference between being hurt and being harmed. Hurt is merely painful, harm is permanant damage.

Dissent harms people’s lives and souls especially in the realm of morals by giving the impression than sinful behaviors are not in fact, sinful.

In matters of faith it often gives the impression that the teaching office of the Church is simply another voice among equals, offering just another opinion or viewpoint. It is not.

When the Magisterial teachings are hard, the Church expects pastors and theologians to help explain them for the good of the faithful. The faithful, for their part are called to prayer and study. But for a Catholic to reject the voice of the Magisterium on matters of faith and morals, out of hand, is to reject the voice of the Lord.

The dissenters now can be expected to jump in with both feet blaming the “Institutional Church” for the pain and difficulty some people will have with this latest pronouncement. But the blame may lie closer to home.

John Mallon is contributing editor to Inside the Vatican magazine and an editorial consultant and contributor to The Daily Oklahoman editorial page. Read more about John here!