In an interview with America Magazine, Francis responded to a question posed by Kerry Webber, executive editor of the magazine published by the Jesuits of the United States:

"Many women feel pain because they cannot be ordained priests. What would you say to a woman who is already serving in the life of the Church but who still feels called to be a priest?"

The Holy Father was unequivocal in his response:

"And why can a woman not enter ordained ministry? It is because the Petrine principle has no place for that," the pope said.

"The ministerial dimension, we can say, is that of the Petrine church. I am using a category of theologians. The Petrine principle is that of ministry," the Holy Father said.

A theology of the ‘Marian principle'

The pope explained that there is another "theological" way in which women play a vital role in Church life.

The dignity of women, he said, reflected the spousal nature of the Church, which he called the "Marian principle".

"The way is not only [ordained] ministry. The Church is woman. The Church is a spouse. We have not developed a theology of women that reflects this," Pope Francis said.

"The Petrine principle is that of ministry.

"But there is another principle that is still more important, about which we do not speak, that is the Marian principle, which is the principle of femininity in the Church, of the woman in the Church, where the Church sees a mirror of herself because she is a woman and a spouse.

"A church with only the Petrine principle would be a church that one would think is reduced to its ministerial dimension, nothing else. But the Church is more than a ministry.

"It is the whole people of God.

"The Church is woman. The Church is a spouse. Therefore, the dignity of women is mirrored in this way," the pope said.

"Therefore, that the woman does not enter into the ministerial life is not a deprivation.

"No. Your place is that which is much more important and which we have yet to develop, the catechesis about women in the way of the Marian principle," he said.

"There is a third way: the administrative way.

"The ministerial way, the ecclesial way, let us say, Marian, and the administrative way, which is not a theological thing, it is something of normal administration. And, in this aspect, I believe we have to give more space to women," Pope Francis said.

Theologians must explore and venture

At a recent meeting with members of the International Theological Commission, Pope Francis told the Commission that it is the vocation of the theologian is always to risk going further because they are seeking and they are trying to make theology clearer.

"The theologian dares to go further, and it will be the magisterium that will stop them," the pope said.

Theologians must explore and "venture" out further to help enrich doctrine while catechists must stick to established, "solid" doctrine, never anything new, Pope Francis told theologians.

The pope singled out the women members on the Theological Commission, saying women bring a different intellectual perspective to theology, which can make it "more profound and more ‘flavourful'."

Francis suggested that the prestigious ITC could consider including more women in their group.

In September, women's role in the Catholic Church was the focus of a New Zealand group working for gender equality in Church leadership.

A media release from a group called "Be the Change, Catholic Church, Aotearoa" notes New Zealand women's suffrage was granted on 19 September 1893, and the September anniversary shows the Catholic Church is 129 years behind New Zealand in recognising the leadership skills of women.

To mark women's suffrage and highlight God's call for the Church to allow women to exercise their gifts, on 18 September, Catholic women in Auckland and Wellington mounted an installation of women's shoes at their respective cathedrals.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• CathNews New Zealand
• CathNews New Zealand
• CathNews New Zealand

More women

Francis suggested that the prestigious ITC could consider including more women in their group.

Not because it's the 'done thing' according to current fashion, he added.

Rather, Francis suggests, women bring a different intellectual perspective to theology, which can make it "more profound and more 'flavourful'."

Of the 10th Commission's 28 members, five are women. Francis appointed them for five-year terms in 2021.

Three theological questions

Working in an advisory capacity to the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the ITC has agreed to explore three theological questions Francis suggested.

These include themes of the Christological faith professed by the Council of Nicea; certain current anthropological questions; and the theology of creation from a Trinitarian perspective.

Francis expressed his pleasure that members would explore these questions, reminding members of their obligations.

They must carry out their work "in the path traced out by the Second Vatican Council, which … constitutes the sure compass for the journey of the Church" in our day," Francis said.

Francis then proposed three "directions" for the ITC to follow.

• Creative fidelity to Tradition

Tradition must either grow or die out, Francis warned. He highlighted the dangers of refusing to grow, but falling back on "the way it's always been done." He invited theologians to help correct this tendency in the Church.

• The theologian's role

A theologian has a vocation to go beyond existing doctrine, because "he is trying to make theology more explicit," Francis explained.

They must be open to the contributions of other disciplines.

This means "treasuring" a "strong form" of "transdisciplinarity" as the gathering and deepening of all human knowledge "within the space of Light and Life offered by the Wisdom that emanates from God's revelation".

"Theologians must go further [than catechists], try to go beyond.

"But I want to distinguish this from the catechist: When instructing children and adults in the faith, the catechist must give the correct doctrine, solid doctrine; not the possible new things, of which some are good…"

He encouraged them to teach theology in a way that provokes "wonder and awe" to those who hear them.

• Collegiality

Collegiality is especially important in the context of the ongoing synodal process, he said.

The Holy Spirit

Francis finished by saying he hopes the Commission's work might be tranquil and fruitful, undertaken in a spirit of mutual listening, dialogue, and communal discernment, and in openness to the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Vatican News

Earlier this year a prime specialist theology and philosophy institution in the UK, Heythrop College, closed its doors after 400 years of teaching.

Founded in 1614 by the Society of Jesus, and part of the University of London since 1970, Heythrop had a mission to provide ‘an education marked by intelligence, scholarship and generosity of spirit'.

In recent years the college struggled to recruit students, and this, along with increasing administrative pressures, forced its closure in January.

This was gloomy news, but not surprising.

As the British Academy has shown this week, student numbers for theology and religious studies have fallen by almost half since 2012 - 6,500 fewer students on theology and religious studies degree courses in 2017-18 than six years before - and the decline has led to the closure or reduction in size of several theology departments in the UK.

There are many reasons for this - chief among them the trebling of university tuition fees in 2012.

Prospective students now face an enormous financial burden from tuition fees and living costs, greatly affecting the decisions they make, not only about what to study, but whether to study at all.

Hardest hit will be those wishing to return to education later in life or to study part-time.

Yet causes are less alarming than consequences: theology and religious studies risk disappearing from our universities just at the time when we need them most.

Despite two centuries of apparent secularisation in the West, religion has an all-pervasive role on the world stage.

From the persecution of Myanmar Rohingya in a surge of Buddhist nationalism, to revived power struggles between Sunni and Shia Muslims, the electoral appeal of Narendra Modi to many Hindus or Donald Trump's popularity among US Evangelicals, we can't hope to understand the swirl of current events - or tackle their challenges - without first understanding religion in all its forms.

In these embittered and increasingly turbulent times, public debates have become more polarised, not least through the deliberate misuse of social media.

There is a widespread scorn for debating in good faith or respecting one's opponent, and a preference for viciously assertive arguments in a call-out culture.

It is no longer enough simply to disagree with your opponents; they can never be more than hypocrites, liars, or idiots.

This is an age of pitchforks and pithy putdowns - ugly and cynical, a poison for sane society.

Theology and religious studies offer antidotes to this increasingly adversarial culture.

Given the chance to study analytically the belief systems, morality, art, philosophy and history of varying faiths and cultures, graduates in these disciplines leave university with an unrivalled understanding of humanity in all its glorious untidy complexity.

How could such degree courses fail to nurture the empathy and curiosity of those who study them?

Yet the value of theology and religious studies degrees extends beyond this.

The Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey shows how theology and religious studies graduates are ideally placed to enjoy rich and rewarding careers in non-religious sectors, including international development, journalism, welfare, social care, teaching, and policymaking.

In fact, theology and religious studies students graduating in 2016/17 were more likely to be employed than graduates across historical and philosophical studies as a whole.

Nearly two-thirds of those employed were in professional occupations or associate professions and technical occupations - the so-called ‘highly-skilled graduate jobs' - within six months of completing their degree.

The British Academy's report - and, for that matter, the closure of Heythrop College - must serve as a wake-up call. Theology and religious studies need to confront significant challenges if they are to survive the era of high fees. Continue reading

• Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University, is a Vice-President of the British Academy.
• Image: YouTube

The theologians were given an entire "study day" to address the German Bishops' Conference during its March 11-14 spring assembly in the northern Diocese of Osnabrück.

They did not mince their words, openly directing the bishops to the Church's "systemic defects."

Revise the teaching on human sexuality

Professor Eberhard Schockenhoff told the bishops it was imperative for the Church to adopt a positive attitude to human sexuality and drop St. Augustine's "poisoned view" that erotic sexual pleasure was a consequence of original sin.

However, the 66-year-old moral theology professor from Freiburg University, said the abuse crisis was not the reason why the Church's view of sexual morality was no longer credible.

Rather, he blamed it on the fact that the Church had failed to integrate contemporary scientific insights into its teaching on sexual ethics.

Schockenhoff said the Church should no longer condemn the use of artificial contraception by married couples as an act hostile to life.

Instead, he said the use of contraceptives must be recognized as a decision of conscience based on the mutual respect of the spouses in the interest of their children's wellbeing.

The moral theologian said the Church must also recognize that there are other legitimate sexual relationships besides heterosexual marriage.

While lifelong marriage may be the best framework for living out one's sexuality, he said it is not the only one.

The Church must unconditionally recognize same-sex partnerships and stop "disqualifying their sexual practices as immoral," Schockenhof said.

He admitted, however, that promiscuity and having several relationships raise serious moral questions.

Schockenhoff called the positive view of sexuality and the erotic dimension of love that Pope Francis puts forth in his apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, "a true ray of hope."

Checks needed on clerical power

Gregor Maria Hoff, who teaches fundamental and ecumenical theology at the University of Salzburg, said the abuse crisis had precipitated the Church into a "sacralization trap," which could only be solved by introducing a system of checks and balances.

The 55-year-old theologian said that, as a religious institution with priests who are seen as representatives of Jesus Christ, the Church possesses a sacred power based on trust.

He said it is thus "fatal" and "disastrous" when such trust, and the power linked to it, are shattered as happens when priests sexually abuse others.

He said the only solution is for the Church to introduce a system of checks and balances so that power is controlled both from within and from outside the Church.

"This is the only way of preventing an unholy power, which still believes in its holiness even when it abuses it, from gaining independence," Hoff emphasized.

"Otherwise, why have some of the Church's highest representatives - of all people - refused to admit their guilt as, for example, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer (Archbishop of Vienna from 1986-1995), who flatly refused to admit his guilt either publicly or to victims to the very end until he died (in 2003)?" the theologian said.

Hoff argued that power would be divided and "sacralised power would dissolve" if the Church were to introduce a system of checks and balances.

The place of women in the Church

"The question for the German bishops' conference is whether it merely wants to delegate power or whether it wants the People of God to participate independently in Church power and is prepared to make this possible," he said.

Later, in a March 15 interview with Kathpress, Professor Hoff said the Church's decision-making processes must be more transparent, stating this is the only way to come to grips with the so-called "hot-button" issues.

These include dealing with power, the Church's teaching on sexual morality, the question of priestly celibacy and "last, but not least, women's place in a clerical Church." He said this final issue should be "the order of the day."

Hoff noted that Pope Francis is continually urging the Church to go to the peripheries, saying this has opened the way for experiments in local Churches. He said introducing participative power would be such an experiment.

Julia Knop, a professor of dogmatic theology at the University of Erfurt, was the most critical of the theologians who addressed the bishops.

She accused them of having opposed, for far too long, any discussion on power in the Church, compulsory priestly celibacy and the teachings on sexual morality.

The 42-year-old Knop said the bishops had, for years, turned these into taboo subjects.

"And I assume that some of you would like to continue this tradition," she told the stunned bishops.

Professor Knop said she hoped the March 13 study day with the episcopal conference would, at last, get the bishops to join in the ongoing discussions.

"You are in leading positions in the Church and you represent a Church whose systemic defects have become obvious," she warned.

Open your eyes to reality

The female theologian admitted that issues of power, celibacy and sexual morality are by no means new to the Church.

"But what is new is that their destructive connection can no longer be denied," she warned.

"They can no longer be brushed aside as the favorite issues of left-wing Catholicism. They simply cannot be made taboos any longer. What is new is the insight that serious Church self-correction is now imperative," she said

In an interview a couple of days later with katholisch.de, the official website of the German Catholic Church, Knop explained that she had not wanted to give the bishops a telling-off.

Rather, she wanted to open their eyes to the precariousness of the present situation and trigger a serious debate on the hot-button issues.

She also defended her statement that some bishops wanted to continue to cut off discussion on controversial inner-Church questions and keep them as taboos.

"In recent months, some bishops have repeatedly warned that one should not speak of typically Catholic systemic dangers, but should see clerical abuse as a phenomenon that is to be found in society in general," she said.

"Whoever argues like this maintains taboos in order to prevent Church reform," Knop said.

"I find the present situation in the Church in Germany really dramatic. Many people are saying that the Church is threatened with collapse," she said.

Knop then made this final point: "Not a single bishop got up and left during my address and no bishop has since told me that what I said was wrong."

• Christa Pongratz-Lippitt, Vienna
• Image: The Tablet

Just as Chile's 34 bishops resigned in May after revelations of sexual abuse and corruption, US bishops should also submit their resignations to Pope Francis.

Doing so would show the public an act of penance and a "willing abdication of earthly status," say those who are urging the bishops to resign.

"Only then might the wrenching work of healing begin," a blog from the group says.

The call for the bishops' resignation came in response to Tuesday's release of a grand jury report that detailed seven decades of sexual abuse by clergy and cover-up by church leaders in six dioceses in Pennsylvania.

The report followed recent allegations that former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, sexually abused two children and adult seminarians.

"We are brought to our knees in revulsion and shame by the abominations that these priests committed against innocent children," the statement said.

"We are sickened in equal measure by the conspiracy of silence among bishops who exploited victims' wounds as collateral in self-protection and the preservation of power. It is clear that it was the complicity of the powerful that allowed this radical evil to flourish with impunity."

While the group acknowledges some bishops are "humble servants and well-intentioned pastors," it still urges a collective resignation by all bishops because of the "systemic nature of this evil."

"Systemic sin cannot be ended through individual goodwill. Its wounds are not healed through statements, internal investigations or public relations campaigns but rather through collective accountability, transparency and truth-telling," the statement from the group said.

"We are responsible for the house we live in, even if we did not build it ourselves," it said.

The statement also expressed support for "sound proposals" such as those for external investigations like the one in Pennsylvania, which "would begin to convert this ecclesial culture of violence into one of transparency, accountability, humility, safety and earned trust."

But "truth-telling and repentance are prerequisites to conversion" at the institutional as well as individual level, the statement said, noting that "no genuine process of healing and reform can begin" without such a demonstration of repentance.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Daily Theology
• Image: USA Today

"We need witnesses," said Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education, at the Ateneo de Manila University on March 10.

He said four Missionaries of Charity nuns who were shot dead by terrorists in Yemen last week were "witnesses ... who testified with their faith."

Speaking before a gathering of Catholic educators, theologians, religious superiors, and seminarians, Cardinal Versaldi said "sanctity is the more convincing way" to attract people to the church.

"You must be saints," the cardinal said when asked by a student how priests and the religious can put into practice what they learn from the university.

Cardinal Versaldi was in Manila to deliver the keynote address of a two-day international theological symposium sponsored by the Jesuit-run Loyola School of Theology.

Continue Reading

The theologians, from throughout the world, issued a declaration at the end of a theological congress in Germany earlier this month.

The title of the gathering in Munich was "Opening the Council - Theology and Church under the Guiding Principle of the Second Vatican Council".

In a five-page declaration, 200 leading international theologians called for fundamental changes in the Church.

Reform of the Roman Curia must be expanded to a reform of the whole church and of church offices, they wrote.

Greater participation must be given to the laity and the synodal structures strengthened, the statement continued.

"Synodality must once again become a structural principle in the Church," the text underlined.

It must be fully implemented legally, must be enforceable and "practised at all Church levels".

Important Church decisions must not be made behind closed doors, the theologians agreed.

The theologians recalled Pope Francis's words that "Everyone must have a say in what concerns everyone".

Christoph Böttinger, a fundamental theologian from Eichstätt who presented the declaration, said it was addressed to all theologians, but also to the general public.

German Cardinal Karl Lehman told the congress that the Church's synodal structures must be strengthened at every level.

The cardinal, who was once an assistant to Karl Rahner, said this "synodality" was more important than possibly holding a Third Vatican Council.

There are great opportunities for the Church in a globalised world as long as it discards its centralist approach, he emphasised.

The council's decrees have not always been adequately applied or implemented, Cardinal Lehmann said.

German bishops' conference president Cardinal Reinhard Marx said Vatican II texts must be used as sources for further developing Church reform today.

In October, Pope Francis outlined his vision of a synodal Church at every level that listens, learns and shares mission.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Bavaria.by

Last month, columnist Ross Douthat wrote several pieces about the synod on the family in Rome.

He suggesting, among other things, that clear factions among the bishops have emerged, that Pope Francis favours a more liberal resolution of the key questions and that heretical viewpoints are afoot in Rome.

Dozens of theologians and academics responded by sending a letter to the editors of the New York Times.

They stated that Douthat was proposing a politicised reading of Church affairs and that he was, at the end of the day, unqualified to speak on such complex matters.

"Moreover, accusing other members of the Catholic Church of heresy, sometimes subtly, sometimes openly, is serious business that can have serious consequences for those so accused. This is not what we expect of the New York Times," the academics wrote.

Douthat responded by agreeing that he is not a theologian.

"But neither is Catholicism supposed to be an esoteric religion, its teachings accessible only to academic adepts," he said.

Douthat said that while he has great respect for the professors' vocation, his own role is to provoke and explain.

He said that in his columns, he aims to cut through obfuscations and get to the basic truth.

He went on to explain his concerns about ideas of "development of doctrine" that appeared to reverse doctrine, and to pastoral suggestions that seem to empty doctrine in practice.

Los Angeles auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron backed Douthat being able to express his views.

"Are all of Ross Douthat's opinions on the synod debatable? Of course," Bishop Barron wrote.

"Do I subscribe to everything he has said in this regard? No. But is he playing outside the rules of legitimate public discourse in such an egregious way that he ought to be censored? Absolutely not!"

"The [academics'] letter to the Times is indicative indeed of a much wider problem in our intellectual culture, namely, the tendency to avoid real argument and to censor what makes us, for whatever reason, uncomfortable," Bishop Barron added.

Sources

• New York Times
• Daily Theology
• New York Times
• Aleteia
• Image: Veritas

The Australian cardinal delivered his intervention at the synod on the family in Rome last week, and an extended form of it was posted to the Catholic Herald's website.

In this piece, Cardinal Pell said bishops stand under the Word of God as its servants and protectors.

" . . . [O]ur first episcopal task as teaching bishops is not to be theologians, but to teach, explain, and defend the apostolic tradition of faith and morals," he stated.

"Young adults need to be shown that our defence of lifelong marriage is sincere and serious."

Cardinal Pell also noted that while bishops are successors of the apostles, "we are not their equals".

Bishops can contribute to the development of doctrine, he added.

"But we have no power to change or diminish the Word of God, much less to refashion it according to prevailing insights, or relativise the objective truths of Catholic faith and morals as passing expressions in some Hegelian flux.

"Too many have lost confidence in Jesus' doctrines and doubt or deny that mercy is found in his hard moral teachings.

"The crucified Jesus was not afraid to confront society, and he was crucified for his pains, teaching his followers that life is a moral struggle that requires sacrifices, and his followers cannot always take the easy options.

"He did not tell the adulterous woman to continue in her good work, but to repent and sin no more.

"The Prodigal Son acknowledged his sins before he returned home."

Cardinal Pell stated that "while we have many theologians, we have one faith and one set of official doctrine".

"The Ten Commandments are not like an examination where only six out of ten need to be attempted," he added.

Cardinal Pell later rejected a call made in a petition for a walkout by conservative bishops at the synod.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Image: SBS

Earlier this month, the annual meeting of the Catholic Theological Society of America grappled with the issue of the "sensus fidelium" or "sense of the faithful" of the whole Church.

The meeting opened with a presentation that sought to describe the faithful, but also raised the question of whom should be included in that group.

"We do well to pay better attention to those who are now absent," said Jerome P. Baggett, professor of religion and society at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University.

Professor Baggett challenged theologians to be "absence-minded", to take note of those who once counted themselves among the faithful and are now missing from parishes.

According to research by the Pew Research Center on Religion and Public life, one in ten adult Americans today is an "ex-Catholic".

And a soon to be published study from the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame will show that one-half of US youth who self-identified as Catholic as teenagers no longer identified as Catholics 10 years later.

Professor Baggett also noted two other absences: an absence of understanding of the faith among those still in the pews and an absence of public-minded conversations.

The latter is a kind of "civic silence" in which people in parishes avoid difficult conversations, not only out of a fear of conflict, but to somehow preserve the sacredness of Church communities.

Franciscan theologian Fr John Burkhard discussed the need for reception of teachings by the People of God as a counterbalance to a modern need for certitude.

"In some situations the real question is not ‘Is it true?' but ‘Is it life-giving?' " he said.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: The Telegraph

In a letter to the theological faculty of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, the Pope used language he had previously applied to pastors.

According to an article in the National Catholic Reporter, Francis wrote that the Second Vatican Council "produced an irreversible movement of renewal that comes from the Gospel".

So teaching and studying theology means living on a "frontier", he continued.

"We must guard ourselves against a theology that is exhausted in the academic dispute or watching humanity from a glass castle," the Pope said.

"You learn it to live: theology and holiness are an inseparable pair."

"Do not settle for a theology of the desk," he added. "Your place for reflection [is] the boundaries."

"And do not fall into the temptation to paint over them, to perfume them, to adjust them a bit and tame them," Francis wrote.

"The good theologians, like the good shepherds, smell of the people and of the road and, with their reflection, pour oil and wine on the wounds of humankind."

"Theology may be an expression of a Church which is a 'field hospital,' which lives its mission of salvation and healing in the world," he continued.

Pope Francis said the sort of theologian formed at the university must not be "an intellectual without talent, an ethicist without kindness or a bureaucrat of the sacred".

Similarly such an aspiring theologian must not be a theologian "of the museum" who "accumulates data and information on revelation without really knowing what to do with it".

Rather, such an aspirant should be "is a person able to build around themselves humanity, to transmit the divine Christian truth in a truly human dimension".

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Spiritual Travels

The Pontiff made the comments on Friday during a meeting with the International Theological Commission; it is the beginning of the Commission's new five-year mandate.

Noting the contribution women bring to the "intelligence of faith", Francis described the five women now serving on the Commission as "the strawberries on the cake."

"But there is need for more," he said.

Only two women served on the Commission in the past 10 years.

"In virtue of their feminine genius, ... female theologians are able to take up... certain unexplored aspects of the unfathomable mystery of Christ."

He invited the Commission "to draw greater profit from this specific contribution of women to the understanding of the faith."

Not all Francis' comments specifically concerned women theologians.

The Holy Father explained the mission of the Commission as, "to study doctrinal problems of great importance, especially those which present new points of view, and in this way to offer its help to the Magisterium of the Church."

This mission, he said, requires not only "intellectual competence, but also spiritual dispositions."

He called the Commission's particular attention to the important spiritual disposition of listening to the "signs of the times".

The theologian is "called to hear, distinguish and interpret the many voices of our time, and judge them in the light of the Word of God," the Pontiff told the Commission.

Pope Francis said that theologians must believe and hear the word of God, and humbly listen to the Spirit talking in the Churches through the various manifestation of lived faith of the Church.

The International Theological Commission is made up of 30 theologians the pope appoints from around the world.

Founded in 1969 to study important doctrinal issues, it helps the pontiff and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Sources

• ICN
• CNS
• NCR
• Image: Daily Theology

He told Pentecostal bishops visiting him in Rome that Catholics and Evangelicals should "walk together".

Focussing on differences amounts to "sinning against God's will", the Pope said.

He said Christians should not wait for theologians' documents before forging closer ties.

"We each have in our Churches excellent theologians. That's another way to walk together also. But we shouldn't wait for them to reach agreement! That's what I think."

He went on to say that Christians' shared Baptism was more important than the differences between denominations.

The Pope said Christians should walk together, pray for each other and do works of charity together, while seeking truth.

Continue reading

The recent, unfortunate forced early retirement of Bishop Morris of Toowoomba has caused significant disquiet, not just in Australia, but throughout the Catholic world says Gerald Arbuckle.

Even the Australian Bishops' Conference, while reaffirming their loyalty to the Pope as the head of the College of Bishops, nonetheless has publicly and very wisely stated that they will later this year "have the opportunity to share with the Holy Father…[their] questions and concerns with an eye to the future." Bishop Morris' human and priestly qualities have never been in question.

Why are people concerned? Simply because the process has lacked transparency and due process.

The Archbishop Chaput from Denver, USA, officially visited the diocese and wrote a report for Rome. This report finally led to the forced retirement. But the problem is: Bishop Morris has not seen this secret report so he has been unable to defend himself. This is contrary to natural justice.

Unfortunately, many theologians have been censured, even condemned, over the years by Rome, and secrecy has also without justification interfered with the process. It has been customary for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to assess theological orthodoxy in this way: the Congregation is prosecutor, judge, and jury; the person being investigated is not told of the inquiry until stage thirteen (of eighteen stages; the defendant is unable to choose his/her defender or even know his/her identity, nor is there access to material relating to the allegations against the accused; no publicity is permitted concerning the proceedings and there is no right of appeal.

There are times when secrecy is essential, for example to protect the welfare of a person or group, but it must not be habitually used as a cloak for anything any organization does or wants to keep from the public gaze. And, as we see in secular affairs also, the habit of secrecy often leads to a very unpleasant quality, namely the justification of infringing laws and human rights "for the sake of the common good." Secrets give power of control over others, even more so when those who cultivate them are accountable to no public group. We have but to recall how secrecy was used in the Inquisition to intimidate victims. The use of secrecy to intimidate continues.

The Church is not above the Gospel. It is imperative that we respect human rights everywhere, first and foremost within the Church itself, otherwise it contradicts what it is trying to preach. Was it not the Bishops' Synod of 1971 that said: "While the Church is bound to give witness to justice, she recognizes that anyone who ventures to speak to people about justice must first be just in their eyes. Hence we must undertake an examination of the modes of acting …within the Church itself."

It is time to cease using secrecy in ecclesiastical matters in ways that infringe the rights of members of the Church.

___________________

Gerald A. Arbuckle, sm is the author of Refounding the Church: Dissent for Leadership (1993). His most recent book is: Culture, Inculturation, and Theologians: A Postmodern Critique (2010).

Image: St Vincent de Paul Society