Academic Dissent: An Original Ecclesiology

ACADEMIC DISSENT: AN ORIGINAL ECCLESIOLOGY A REVIEW ARTICLE TWO VOLUMES 1 WHICH spell out a well-publicized position on dissent bear extensive critical evaluation. The first volume, purports to repeat substantially the theological rationale which Charles Curran and his associates submitted to the Inquiry Board at the Catholic University in justification of their public dissent to Humanae Vitae. The companion volume, The Responsibility of Dissent: The Church and Academic Freedom , is a development of the written testimony presented to the Inquiry Board by counsel on behalf of the " subject professors " in vindication " of the propriety and responsibility of their actions in the light of accepted academic norms." The first volume contains its own history of the case. Within thirty hours of the encyclical's promulgation a neuresthenic telephonic harvesting of signatures was activated with zealous vigor by Charles Curran and twenty associates of the Department of Theology of The Catholic University of America for subscription to their Statement of July 30, 1968 in opposition to the doctrinal prescriptions of Humanae Vitae. Some of the subscribers did admit that they had not yet read the text of the encyclical or, if they had, that it was hardly with benefit of those schoarly and meditative reflections that a broader expansion of time would have encouraged. Time has the numbing effect of dimming the memory of the asperities of this contestation of a solemn and definitive papal teaching but the spiritual wounds inflicted upon the faithful may be long in mending. The raw aching fact is that scandal was given. These dissidents did interpose their pastoral counsel between the Supreme Pastor of the Universal Church and the faithful in a grave matter of morality touching intimately the conscience of spouses. None of the numerous statements of Pope Paul subsequent to the promulgation of Humanae Vitae in any way has substracted from the full original force of its doctrinal content, nor-more nearly to the nerve center of the sensitivities of academic freedom, its prerogatives and immunities in theological disciplines, as they are related to the grave responsibilities of 1 Dissent IN and FOR the Church: Theologians and Humanae Vitae, by Charles E. Curran, Robert E. Hunt, Terence R. Connelly; The Responsibility of Dissent: The Church and Academic Freedom, by John F. Hunt and Terence R. Connelly with Charles E. Curran, Robert E. Hunt, Robert K. Webb. S<'arch Book paperbacks. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1969. 636 ACADEMIC DISSENT: AN ORIGINAL ECCLESIOLOGY 637 Catholic theologians and priests to teach, preach, publish, and counsel in accordance with the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church-has there been any expression of disapproval from the Vatican on the correctness of Cardinal O'Boyle's stand on Humanae Vitae, both in his capacity as Chancellor of the University and as Ordinary of his priests. My own religious and intellectual response to these two volumes is such that to dispense with them by the customary brief review would be less than fair to readers of the review. There is need for an articlelength review in order that frequent referrals to the text may disclose the evidence for the critical appraisal. The title, preface, and first chapter, The Historical Context, chronicle the events leading to the theological contestation of Humanae Vitae by the author and the " subject professors " with a faultless choice of words ami expressions. The title is Dissent IN and FOR the Church, (italics in the original). The Preface spells out the refreshing liberalization and independence of priests and layman " of ecclesiastical direction " and " from the institutional Church" and notes that "Pope Paul VI has spoken frequently in a fearful, and even reactionary, manner about the contemporary tumult in the Church." (italics supplied) . The defense of dissent is undertaken " with the hope that the Roman Catholic Church will thus be able to carry more faithfully its God-given mission in history." And the volume is dedicated " especially to those unjustly accused of disloyalty without benefit of due process." Their Statement did not constitute a " rebellion or revolution " but rather was inspired by a conscientious responsibility to do just what they did and in the very manner they did it. Summarily, my own appraisal of the Statement is that it is a supercilious pastiche of highly questionable postulates, such as the crude charge that the Roman Pontiff does not correctly understand orthodox catholic ecclesiology, the referrals to past reversals of authoritative papal pronouncements on matters about which even onetime militant Protestant scholarship has long since become too embarassed to regurgitate, the position that Humanae Vitae is at variance with affirmations of Vatican II and demonstrates no advance upon Casti Connubii, etc. The Statement-and the exposition of all that is implied therein in succeeding chapters-constitutes a bold and novel ccclesiology which, we respectfully submit, none of the Pontiffs, Councils, and Fathers of the Church have ever known, and surely one that might have drawn unusual interest had it been proposed to the Fathers of Vatican II as the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. Chapter Two, Preliminary Consideration concerning the Nature of Theology and the Role of Theologians, and Chapter Three, Preliminary Consideration concerning the Nature and Function of the M agisterium, represent the schema of the constitution of the Church which the authors are confident that the ever " ongoing" divine revelation will ratify and make 638 JOSEPH F. COSTANZO incontestably clear to the community of believers in unearthing the original and authentic divine intent of Our Divine Lord from the historical incrustations of usurpations of ecclesiastical power and from uncritical deference and obedience to an " aggrandized teaching authority residing in councils and Church officers." In the face of this trend toward establishing an exclusive teaching prerogative ;n the hierarchy, recent historical studies have exercised a modifying influence by pointing out the presence of error by way of theological dissent. Dissent thus appears traditionally as one possible, responsible option in the theological task, and in its own way, is an intrinsic element in the total magisterial function of the Church. The entire Church, as truly magistral, can never be contained simply and exclusively in what has become known as the hierarchical magisterium. (pp. 86-87) . The credibility of Dissent IN and FOR the Church then rests on the necessity of bringing the " theologians," dissenters as well as nondissenters, within the magisterial authority of the Church as, supposedly, established by Christ, Our Lord. This is done by the employment of a concatenation of terms excised from Vatican II and at variance with their original meaning in text and context. The argument proceeds as follows: The People of God-all, without exception, are called upon to the aedificatio Corporis Christi which St. Paul proclaims (Col. g: 7; Eph. 4: 16). Now surely within this all comprehensive sweep " theologians " are associated in a special way by a "coresponsibility," a notion that is in accordance with and is further reenforced by the full implications of " collegiality of bishops." Now, when we turn to the principal document of Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, the very first chapter is an unambiguous reaffirmation of the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ with eighty-four scriptural references to attest to this, and of the supplementary notes five are nominatim to Pius XII's Mystici Corporis and Humani Generis and others to the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, Conciliar documents, and papal encyclicals in support of it. Let the reader compare Chapter One of Lumen Gentium on the Mystical Body of Christ with the only two scant considerations of it by Curran: Pius XII, in Mystici Corporis (1943) and again with more emphasis in Humani Generis (1950), insisted that the mystical body of Jesus on earth was simply identical with the Roman Catholic Church. In Humani Generis, the Pope insisted that his teaching on the matter was to settle the discussion among theologians. Vatican II has produced a different teaching. (p. 80) Has it? In the twentieth century, the distinct and "official" recovery of a broader-based ecclesiology under one biblical image was brought about by the encyclical Mystici Corporis of Pius XII (1943). This encyclical marked an important stage in the development of ecclesiology-the end of one era (taking up the findings and ACADEMIC DISSENT: AN ORIGINAL ECCLESIOLOGY 639 themes of over a century of minority theological works) and the beginnings of another era. Ecclesial life-style, howenr, was not significantly changed by the issuance of Mystici Corporis. However, almost immediately, it was recognized that the doctrine and limits of the 1943 encyclical and the use of solely the " mystical body" image were inadequate to articulate properly an authentic churchly self-awareness, both domestically in terms of the internal componency and life-dynamics of the Church, and especially in respect to other Christian communities outside the Roman communion. (p. 95) Is this a valid reflection of Chapter One of the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church on the Mystical Body of Christ? Chapter Two, On the People of God, follows upon, without abrogating, the preceding and first chapter on the Mystical Body of Christ. It affirms the universal salvific will of God, the redemptive merits of Christ's passion, death, and Resurrection, the removal of ethnic, racial, national, and geographic barriers among the People of God, etc. Within this all comprehensive catholicity all the people are the people of God, and they are diversely related to the Mystical Body of Christ, his Church on earth. The Catholic faithful are " fully incorporated "; the catechumens are incorporated into the Church by intention; the baptized non-Catholic Christians are " linked " with the Catholic Church to the degree that they " share " by baptism and other sacraments, the acceptance of Scripture, and participation in prayer in the life of God. All these are " prompted " by Christ's grace to that unity by " faith in its entirety " and " union of communion with the successor of Peter " for which " Mother Church never ceases to pray, hope and work that this may come about." (15) If there is a fuller and more radiant bloom to the doctrinal formulation of the People of God, its roots are deeply embedded in medieval theologizing. Chapter Three of Lumen Gentium-On the Hierarchical Structure of the Church and in Particular on the Episcopate-with its firm reaffirmation of the Petrine commission, its unique and exclusive prerogatives, its independent , plenary, and unconditioned magisterial authority, and the formal explicitation of the doctrine of the collegiality of the bishops (and of the bishops alone, not a collegiality of any other ministry) as a constitutive part of ecclesial magisterium in its union with, agreement with, and by consent of the Vicar of Christ, stands out with the full radiance of divine revelation against the congregationalist ecclesiology of Curran; it stands out fully authoritarian and unabashedly hierarchical. All this in one of the only two dogmatic constitutions of Vatican II. But the college or body of bishops has no authority unless it is simultaneously conceived in terms of its head, the Roman Pontiff, Peter's successor, and without any lessening of his power of primacy over all, pastors as well as the general faithful. For in virtue of his office, that is, as Vicar of Christ and pastor of the whole Church, the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme, and universal power over the 640 JOSEPH F. COSTANZO Church. And he can always exercise this power freely. The order of bishops is the successor to the college of the apostles in teaching authority and pastoral rule; or, rather, in the episcopal order the apostolic body continues without a break. Together with its head, the Roman Pontiff, and never without its head, the episcopal order is Lhe subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church. But this power can be exercised only with the consent of the Roman Pontiff. For Our Lord made Simon Peter alone the rock and keybearer of the Church (cf. Mt. 16: 18-19), and appointed him shepherd of the whole flock (cf. Jn. 21:15 ff.). (Lumen Gentium), n. 22. As Oscar Cullman, the renowned Protestant theologian observer at the Council remarked, the formulation of the doctrine of the collegiality of the bishops left the full and plenary powers of the Roman Pontiff undiminished and unconditioned as before, and, if I may add, completely removed any lingering doubt to the contrary on the intent and meaning of the Vatican I definition. Square all this with the shabby historicism on p. 56 and following. The insistence of the authors of Dissent that theologians are intrinsic to the ecclesial magisterium is the most rootless of all their protestations. There is no warrant for it in the mandate of Christ, neither explicitly, implicitly, or by any mamH'r of prolonged inferential ratiocination. There is no evidence of such a role for theologians in the writings of the Fathers of the Church nor in any of the official documents of the Church, papal and conciliar. And for all the dissidents' facile rhetorical references to Vatican II, the Council Fathers never graced them with a distinct classification or separate consideration as they did with the Roman Pontiff, the bishops, the religious, laity, and priests. Indeed, the word itself "theologians " appears only once among the 103,014 words of the sixteen official texts promulgated by the Ecumenical Council. Considering the centrality of the dissendents' concept of the role of theologians as an intrinsic element in the total magisterial function of the Church " (p. 87) to their ecclesiology, it seems that they have been slighted by a Council celebrated for its formulation of the collegiality of bishops and by those very bishops who were accompanied by pcriti. Undaunted, the dissidents manage to overcome this formidable accumulation of traditional ecclesiological barriers by several ploys. First, the absolutes and certitudes of Christian doctrine are brought within the changing concept of valid knowledge and subjected to the historical and cultural limitations to which most human science is heir. The object of science has changed from the Aristotelian-Scholastic ideal (" certain knowledge of things through their causes ")-and the resultant concern for university , necessity and certainty-to the contemporary scientific ideal (complete explanation of all data in terms of their intelligible relationships) -and the resultant concern for development, probability and matter-of-factness. (p. 82) ACADEMIC DISSENT: AN ORIGINAL ECCLESIOLOGY 641 In the light of an appreciation of historical growth and development, the theologian realizes he will never attain the older ideal of absolute certitude. (p. 32) (What a field day Gilbert K. Chesterton would have had with these new ecclesiologists and a pity we have been denied so much amusement.) What shall we say of the absolutes of " whatever I have taught you " that Christ Our Lord commanded his Apostles to teach to every man everywhere to the end of time unconditionally for eternal salvation? At this juncture of theologizing, there must be a denial to any empowerment on earth to definitive teaching-including the last Council. 'Vith all reverence, theologians recog11ize that the documents of Vatican II were "dated " on the first day after solemn promulgation. The spirit of Vatican II mighL be i!,'110red in favor of the letter and limitations of officially promulgated formulations. Reference in the future to the letter of the pronouncements of Vatican II as the final norm for e\·aluating theological data would effectively bring Roman Catholic ecclesiological progress to a halt. This is not because Vatican II formulations are unsuitable; rather, it is because they are intrinsically limited to what the Council :Fathers intended them to be-formulations which express, for the most part, the maximum capacity of that time but which do not preclude future, ongoing developments beyond the categories of Vatican II itself. (pp. 100, 101) (italics supplied) And if this be true of Vatican II, then it is no less true of all the ecumenical councils since Nicaea. Whether they realize it or not, the dissidents have extinguished the blaze of their fiery zeal to gray ashes. For, if Vatican II is "dated" on the first day after their solemn promulgation in an "ongoing " process of religious knowledge and understanding, then there really never is any dissent. How could one distinguish an orthodox from a heterodox (Catholic) theologian? A negative book review is generally not likely to encourage its readers to peruse the volume, much less to advertise its sales. I for one earnestly urge all who were interested or troubled by the Statement of the principal and the " subject professors " and by succeeding events which brought into their train among other considerations the question of the prerogatives and immunities of academic freedom to read Dissent IN and FOR the Church studiously together with a copy of the Documents of Vatican II. We have noted how far apart are Dissent's referrals to the Mystical Body of Christ, the People of God, the papacy, the collegiality of bishops, and the hierarchical Church, as well as the role the dissident " theologians " claim to be rightfully their own within the magisterium of the Church from the doctrinal teaching of the Fathers of the Council as solemnly set down in Lumen Gentium. The reader of Dissent ought also to observe whether its referrals to the Council's teaching on religious freedom is based on a correct understanding and application of the authentic meaning of the Declaration 642 JOSEPH F. COSTANZO On Religious Freedom, (Dignitatis Humanae). One such provocative reference reads as follows: Vatican II, with its declarations on collegiality and religious liberty, has made every contemporary theologian particularly familiar with doctrinal development and with the implications of that process for his interpretative endeavors. (p. 35) (see also p. 100). Now, surely, it is not to the discredit of the Fathers of the Council nor is it a slight upon the Council's Declaration On Religious Freedom that neither their deliberations nor the document's content in anyway were concerned even remotely with " doctrinal development and the implications of that process for (every contemporary) theologian's interpretative endeavors ." Religious freedom, in turn, which men demand as necessary to fulfill their duty to worship God, has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society. Therefore, it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ. (Dignitatis Humanae, l.) The reader of Dissent ought earnestly to search the Council's document to note whether the " subject Professors " and their principal have based their ecclesiological theologizing on the teaching of the Council Fathers and further, in broader context, whether, in fact, the main thesis of The Responsibility of Dissent: the Church and Academic Freedom, the companion volume, has been virtuously exercised. Of course, the reader must also bear in mind that they have written: With all reverence, theologians recognize that the documents of Vatican II were " dated " on the first day after solemn promulgation. (p. 100). With such an escape hatch, it would be rather difficult to hold anyone of them to account. The authors of Dissent exert much effort on distinguishing between infallible and noninfallible teachings of the magisterium. Their discussion, however, is inadequate and the emphasis misplaced. To begin with, the note of infallibility is attached to the solemn definitions of the Vicar of Christ, to the solemn definitions of an ecumenical council, not, however, without approbation and ratification of the Roman Pontiff, and to what has been traditionally recognized by the theologians themselves: infallibilis ex ordinaria magisterio. Of this last, Dissent is completely silent despite the fact that Vatican II first speaks of this infallibility before expounding thai of the Roman Pontiff, followed by the infallible pronouncements of a council acting together with the successor of Peter. Dissent does fix upon noninfallible teachings of the Church which are authentic but-as they will argue-not binding even if and when the Teaching Authority of the ACADEMIC DISSENT: AN ORIGINAL ECCLESIOLOGY 648 Church says that it is binding in conscience, as it did in Humanae Vitae. This is as necessary to the argumentation of Dissent as the necessity of inserting the "theologians" within the magisterium. Summarily, this necessitous course of logic proceeds as follows: Infallibility absolutely precludes the possibility of error. Anything less than an infallible teaching does not foreclose absolutely such a possibility of error. And herein is grounded ultimately the possibility of dissent (p. 40) and the recourse to probabilism whereby an alternate course of conduct becomes justifiably permissible. A number of clarifications are here in order. An authentic noninfallible teaching of the magisterium is invested with certitude, that is, with moral, practical certitude. Such a certitude precludes and, in fact, is unrelated to any consideration of a contrary probable opinion. It is not the absolute possibility of error that an authentic noninfallible teaching of the Church speculatively does not foreclose that establishes the justifying grounds for recourse to the principle of probabilism. Nor is such recourse dependent upon the acknowledgement of a " doubtful law does not bind," a popular axiom which presumes what it denies. Probabilism does not rely on the absolute possibility of error but rather, given the absence of certitude (which an authentic noninfallible teaching of the Church does provide), it is an exercise of the virtue of prudence to choose between two solidly probable opinions. No such claim on the absence of certitude on the Church's absolute ban against artificial contraceptives may be made as existing within the Magisterium, whatever doubts some private theologians may have entertained within their own persuasion after 1963. (At this point we may appreciate more fully why it was necessary for the " subject professors " and their principal to bring the dissidents into the authority of the Church.) Of the universality of commitment prior to the Council John T. Noonan wrote: No Catholic the