ALESSANDRO BIANCHI/REUTERS - A nun looks on as Pope Benedict XVI leads a ceremony commemorating Christ's gesture of humility toward his apostles on the night before he died at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome April 5, 2012. Pope Benedict on Thursday re-stated the Roman Catholic Church's ban on women priests and warned that he would not tolerate disobedience by clerics on fundamental teachings.
For a millennium, the
Catholic church has based moral teaching on Natural Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
Generally, Natural
Law is a sound foundation.
Now, however, exclusive
adherence to "general truth" is no longer adequate.
There is "something new
under the sun": natural exceptions to Natural Law -
natural exceptions to "general truth."
Given that these exceptions
are natural, what should be done about them?
What happens when supporters
of a statistically-dominant telos realize the existence
of less frequent but naturally occurring teloi?
Until now, Natural
Law's most vocal advocates have persistently ignored -- or called into
question -- authentic "exceptions" to homo sapien's heterosexual
"rule." (Revealingly, such ignorance/denial/contempt is reminiscent
of "conservatism's" similar dismissal of evolution and global
warming. It's not that facts are lacking: it's the perceived need to persist in
erroneous doctrine.)
In the past, homosexuals (3%
to 5% of the population?) were never numerous enough to muster a democratic
majority.
Lacking political power and -
even more fundamentally - lacking enough acceptance to help frame the
"debate,” the observable fact that homosexual behavior occurs across the
animal kingdom never “rose to radar.”
In recent decades, most
Americans and Europeans (unlike "Christian" kin in Uganda) have had
opportunity to observe same-sex couples in their own families and friendships.
This constant conviviality has instilled the self-evident truth that
loving-and-committed same-sex couples deserve full validation.
Many churchmen (and some
church women) will argue that sexual relationship outside marriage is always
morally suspect.
Nevertheless, the larger
question remains: Do committed same-sex couples have the right
to marry?
Which is to say, should
same-sex couples have the right to participate in monogamous,
vow-circumscribed, ritually-sanctioned unions?
A similar question is begged
by recently-renewed interest in the ethics of contraception: Has humankind's
reproductive "telos" been qualitatively altered now
that we've "multiplied and filled the earth?"
At bedrock: Is Christianity
prepared to acknowledge the inevitability of change, even in the domain of
moral theology?
In this regard, consider the
"evolution" of usury, once a grievous sin and now so insignificant
that priests and nuns - without exception! -- promote usury by virtue of the
credit cards they carry.
It is a historical fact that
Christian moral theology has changed in the past - just as it would prudently
change now.
Of course, unlike "the
demotion of usury" which took place centuries ago, any contemporary
spotlight on fundamental change in church-sanctioned morality would send a
tsunami across Vatican City.
Be that as it may, ongoing
"Revelation/Apocalypse” has illuminated natural "exceptions"
to Natural Law.
In the wake of these "exceptional"
revelations, the church would wisely review its absolutism without any a
priori assumption that "her" traditional
dominance-submission hierarchies will eventually prevail.
Since we never know “where we
are” - nor “where we're going” - unless we know whence "we've come,"
I encourage you to review church teaching on sex and gender.
How many contemporary
Christians can ponder these foundational teachings on sex-and-gender without
cringing?
In the end, I am much more
concerned with Christians who can read them without cringing.
It is time for ecclesial
truth-seekers to clean this Augean stable.
***
Jesus never mentions
"abortion" or "homosexuality." Not once.
For a millennium, the Catholic church has based moral teaching on Natural Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
Generally, Natural
Law is a sound foundation.
Now, however, exclusive
adherence to "general truth" is no longer adequate.
There is "something new
under the sun": natural exceptions to Natural Law -
natural exceptions to "general truth."
Given that these exceptions
are natural, what should be done about them?
What happens when supporters
of a statistically-dominant telos realize the existence
of less frequent but naturally occurring teloi?
Until now, Natural
Law's most vocal advocates have persistently ignored -- or called into
question -- authentic "exceptions" to homo sapien's heterosexual
"rule." (Revealingly, such ignorance/denial/contempt is reminiscent
of "conservatism's" similar dismissal of evolution and global
warming. It's not that facts are lacking: it's the perceived need to persist in
erroneous doctrine.)
In the past, homosexuals (3%
to 5% of the population?) were never numerous enough to muster a democratic
majority.
Lacking political power and -
even more fundamentally - lacking enough acceptance to help frame the
"debate,” the observable fact that homosexual behavior occurs across the
animal kingdom never “rose to radar.”
In recent decades, most
Americans and Europeans (unlike "Christian" kin in Uganda) have had
opportunity to observe same-sex couples in their own families and friendships.
This constant conviviality has instilled the self-evident truth that
loving-and-committed same-sex couples deserve full validation.
Many churchmen (and some
church women) will argue that sexual relationship outside marriage is always
morally suspect.
Nevertheless, the larger
question remains: Do committed same-sex couples have the right
to marry?
Which is to say, should
same-sex couples have the right to participate in monogamous,
vow-circumscribed, ritually-sanctioned unions?
A similar question is begged
by recently-renewed interest in the ethics of contraception: Has humankind's
reproductive "telos" been qualitatively altered now
that we've "multiplied and filled the earth?"
At bedrock: Is Christianity
prepared to acknowledge the inevitability of change, even in the domain of
moral theology?
In this regard, consider the
"evolution" of usury, once a grievous sin and now so insignificant
that priests and nuns - without exception! -- promote usury by virtue of the
credit cards they carry.
It is a historical fact that
Christian moral theology has changed in the past - just as it would prudently
change now.
Of course, unlike "the
demotion of usury" which took place centuries ago, any contemporary
spotlight on fundamental change in church-sanctioned morality would send a
tsunami across Vatican City.
Be that as it may, ongoing
"Revelation/Apocalypse” has illuminated natural "exceptions"
to Natural Law.
In the wake of these
"exceptional" revelations, the church would wisely review its
absolutism without any a priori assumption that
"her" traditional dominance-submission hierarchies will eventually
prevail.
Since we never know “where we
are” - nor “where we're going” - unless we know whence "we've come,"
I encourage you to review church teaching on sex and gender.
How many contemporary
Christians can ponder these foundational teachings on sex-and-gender without
cringing?
In the end, I am much more
concerned with Christians who can read them without cringing.
It is time for ecclesial
truth-seekers to clean this Augean stable.
***
Jesus never mentions
"abortion" or "homosexuality." Not once.
***
***
In a stinging report on Wednesday, the Vatican said the Leadership Conference of Women Religious had been “silent on the right to life” and had failed to make the “Biblical view of family life and human sexuality” a central plank in its agenda.
It also reprimanded American nuns for expressing positions on political issues that differed, at times, from views held by U.S. bishops. Public disagreement with the bishops — “who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals” — is unacceptable, the report said.
The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a “doctrinal assessment” saying the Holy See was compelled to intervene with the leadership conference to correct “serious doctrinal problems.”
The nuns group said in a statement on its Web site: “The presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious was stunned by the conclusions of the doctrinal assessment.”
It added the group may give a lengthier response at a later date.
The conference, whose headquarters is in Silver Spring, said its members represented 80 percent of the country’s 57,000 Catholic nuns.
Academics who study the church said the Vatican’s move was predictable given Pope Benedict XVI’s conservative views and efforts by Rome to quell internal dissent and curtail autonomy within its ranks.
“This is more an expression of the church feeling under siege by trends it cannot control within the church, much less within the broader society,” University of Notre Dame historian Scott Appleby said.
Those trends include a steady drumbeat of calls to ordain women as priests. The pope has repeated his predecessors’ teaching that such a move is not possible.
The Vatican named Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain and two other U.S. bishops to undertake the reforms of the conference’s statutes, programs and its application of liturgical texts, a process it said could take up to five years.
— Reuters
359
Comments
The instructive timing of the crackdown on nuns
There were two Santa Maria! stories out of the Vatican this week. First, the bad news: The ultra-traditionalists of Marcel Lefebvre’s Society of St. Pius X are another step closer to being welcomed back into the fold — though church fathers have yet to sort out the problem of the dissident group’s Holocaust denying Bishop Richard Williamson, whose
Pope Benedict XVI (Getty Images)excommunication Pope Benedict XVI lifted two years ago.
Pope Benedict XVI (Getty Images)excommunication Pope Benedict XVI lifted two years ago.
Then there was the even worse news, by my votive lights, that the Vatican is cracking down on American nuns – who as one of my fellow Catholics noted over a cup of unconsecrated wine last night, “Only do what Jesus told us to do,’’ in their hospitals, schools and orphanages, “so no wonder they’re in trouble.’’
After a lengthy investigation by the office formerly known as the Inquisition, Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle has been signed up to oversee a forced reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents about 80 percent of the 57,000 Catholic nuns in this country.
That’s because, according to the Vatican report released Wednesday, a number of the good sisters appear to investigators to have been influenced by “radical feminism,” and to have fallen out of step with church teaching on homosexuality and women’s ordination.
Maybe timing isn’t everything, but the juxtaposition of these two announcements on the same day was perfect. If, that is, the intent was to send the message that while schisms may come and go, feminism won’t be tolerated. Or that a man who says, as Williamson did, that history is “hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed” will be waved back in, but women accused of dissent can leave if they like.
In fact, with the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council coming up in October, what better time to remind people how far we still have to go, five decades since Pope John XXIII promised to throw open the windows of the church and let in some fresh air?
Some things about the Vatican report do leave me torn: I can’t, for instance, decide if my favorite part is where they dare to indict the sisters for silence on abortion. (If memory serves, the Vatican itself has now and again been accused of keeping quiet when it shouldn’t have been.) Or maybe it’s the part where they describe one sister’s language about “moving beyond the Church’’ as “a cry for help.’’
“Such a rejection of faith,’’ the document warns, “is also a serious source of scandal and is incompatible with religious life.”
The Vatican, of course, knows a lot about scandal — to the point that the nuns are the only morally uncompromised leaders poor Holy Mother Church has left.
Keep right on like this, your excellencies, and before you know it even more Catholics will be “moving beyond the church.”
This whole course correction, the report said, must be properly “understood in virtue of the mandate given by the Lord to Simon Peter as the rock on which He founded his Church: “I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned to me, you must strengthen the faith of your brothers and sisters.”
But to the uninitiated, the exercise looks a lot like a common garden power play by a bunch of guys whose control is slipping, their authority undermined by their own failures.
It also looks like payback. Some American bishops openly criticized the Leadership Conference of Women Religious’s support of the Affordable Care Act, which the bishops strenuously opposed.
And though it’s probably a coincidence, the LCWR approved of President Obama’s compromise with religious institutions over providing their employees with insurance coverage that covers birth control — a proposal the bishops have not accepted.
Some of the complaints go back much further, suggesting ancient grievances polished to a high shine: “The LCWR publicly expressed in 1977 its refusal to assent to the teaching of Inter insigniores on the reservation of priestly ordination to men,’’ the Vatican report said. “This public refusal has never been corrected.”
NETWORK, a nun-founded Washington lobbying group that focuses on poverty, immigration and health-care issues, was singled out in the report as “silent on the right to life.”
“I think we scare them,” NETWORK’s executive director, Sister Simone Campbell, told my Post colleague Liz Tenety, referring to the male hierarchy.
American sisters do outnumber the priests, and it’s the women who have the troops, too – at schools and hospitals the bishops couldn’t close if they wanted to. The nuns no longer only empty the bed pans, you see, but now also own the institutions where they work. And you have to wonder whether that’s the real problem.
Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchor’s the paper’s ‘She the People’ blog. Follow her on Twitter at @MelindaDC.
