What bishop might tell her people about encyclical - 'Veritatis Splendor' - Column

I recently returned from a visit with a friend. This friend is a Roman Catholic, very involved in parish ministry and teaching. She is close to her local bishop, an unpretentious man who lives in a simple house in her neighborhood. She belongs to a house church group that includes the bishop. During a recent meeting of the house church group, the bishop shared his concerns about the new papal encyclical and asked for help in figuring out how to interpret the encyclical to his people.

This experience inspired me to ask what a bishop ought to be saying to her people about the encyclical. The following is an imaginary letter from a bishop to her people that says what I believe needs to be said, if it were really possible to be truthful. Because no bishop would dare to say or perhaps even think what I have written here, this is an exercise in thinking the unthinkable.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

It is my sad duty to state publicly what many of you already know in your hearts: that our Pope John Paul II has just issued a bad encyclical, filled with untenable opinions that are presented as unquestionable moral absolutes.

Even worse than the mistaken notions in this encyclical of how we develop and teach guidelines for moral behavior is the pope's view of the church. The pope apparently conceives of the church as a world totalitarian party/state. He thinks of himself as absolute monarch with plenipotentiary knowledge and power. For him, bishops are mere branch managers of this world empire, and theologians are party ideologues whose duty is only to parrot the pronouncements of the central office, not to think critically in the light of the scriptures about the meaning of the faith.

The pope seems to think of the laity as passive children to be instructed and formed from above, not intelligent adults with whom one dialogues, respectful of their experience and knowledge. So that the "faithful shall not be confused," bishops are to repress any sign of critical thought on the part of theologians that reveals differences of opinion in theological circles. The pope has no trust in the value of open discussion of differences as a way to develop fuller understanding and consensus.

Perhaps such a model of the church is understandable for someone who came out of the experience of surviving under communism in Eastern Europe, but it is utterly incompatible with the gospel as good news for all persons. It is also incompatible with the understanding we gained about the church from the Second Vatican Council in which we returned to the original sense of the church as people of God and discerned the need for a pattern of collegiality that informs all relations of ministry and service, whether those involved are bishops and pope, bishops and priests or priests and people.

Ministry today must be understood as mutual service. That doesn't mean there should not be firm moral guidelines, but these guidelines must emerge from wide-ranging consultations with the experience of the whole community and be held with some modesty and tentativeness.

We, as Catholic people, must face today the capacity of the pope to err, and not only in her personal life but in authoritative teaching on faith and morals. We must face this, not just as a hypothetical possibility but as a reality all too evident in this encyclical.

The greatest error we Christians can commit is the refusal to recognize and accept our capacity to err in official capacities. This error might be called a sin against the Holy Spirit, which the New Testament calls the unforgivable sin. This is not to say that God cannot forgive us this error, but only when we acknowledge it as an error. As long as we claim such a stance of infallibility, we make ourselves incapable of repentance, incapable of receiving the Holy Spirit and hence of recognizing mistakes and receiving the grace to change our minds.

Such a church becomes demonic when it has power to enforce its will. When it forces upon people teachings that lack credibility, it loses any real authority and becomes an object of dismay and even of hatred. To attempt to enforce the attitudes of authoritarian power assumed in this encyclical will worsen, rather than resolve, the crisis of authority in the church today.

The promulgation of this mistaken encyclical forces us to face the error of infallibility, to shatter the blinders to our reality that we have put around our eyes. We must recognize the crisis of a church that has committed the ultimate error, the sin against the Holy Spirit, by refusing to stand under the judgment and grace of God as our ultimate hope and that has made itself, in its centralized authority, the idolatrous substitute for God.

We must repent of this error. We must return to an understanding of the church as a fallible human community whose best hope for truth lies in the most wide-ranging and respectful consultation with both the best experts in relevant fields and the experience of our people. Such a church seeks to teach out of a wise discernment of the consensus of the faithful, knowing that even these best efforts must be held tentatively and that our final hope and salvation lies not in our certainties but in the grace of God who upholds us and loves us in and through our uncertainties.