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Column With the latest mandate on dissent, should we laugh it off or get
mad?
By JOAN CHITTISTER
Tisn't life that matters! Tis the courage you
bring to it, Hugh Walpole wrote. And if that's right, this may be the
time that tests the theory. The question now is whether we should live life as
we're told or have the courage to imagine other ways.
We now have another document from Rome telling us that anyone who
does not accept dogmas, doctrines and positions given definitively, even if not
infallibly, as they are now taught by the church is, therefore,
excommunicated. I presume that means everyone who uses birth control, everyone
who looks at all the other rites of the Catholic church and wonders why
marriage and priesthood are not incompatible in those communions but are in
ours, everyone who knows that the Catholic church lacks celibate males rather
than vocations and everyone who admits that modern science has confused the
questions of when life either begins or ends. God help us if we admit the
questions and discuss the issues. Galileo should have died hereafter.
Two people have talked to me about the new document in the last
week. Two people do not a survey make, of course, but they may indeed indicate
the poles of the discussion: One snickered, and the other frowned an angry
frown. The first, from the Philippines, dismissed the statement out of hand.
It's impossible and ridiculous, she said. The other, from Germany,
said, I don't pay much attention to the church anyway. If that's the
present climate of what we call church, I'll be glad to go.
The person who laughed it off started me down a wild path of
possibilities -- and impossibilities. Who will they excommunicate? I began to
wonder. People who think about all those questions or only people who say them
out aloud? How will they know? Shall we have Vatican spies in every parish? Or
are we to be self-monitoring and take ourselves off the weekly envelope list if
any of those horrible thoughts cross our minds? Will there be yearly, monthly,
weekly pledges like the old Legion of Decency promises we once made not to go
to bad movies until we all grew up and knew enough about the human body not to
be sure what a bad movie was anymore? Will we question students about what
their professors talk about in class -- as they did in Nazi Germany and Soviet
Russia? And if this had been the case back when, what would have happened to
Gentiles when Paul confronted Peter to his face about their
exclusion from the church?
The second person worried me a great deal more than the first,
however. I could see the disaffection, the alienation, the fatigue from waiting
for the discussions that never come about the growing priest shortage, the
nature of Eucharist, the real meaning of Creation, female as well as male. What
effect would this latest attempt to control the church from the grave have on
these people? In fact, what effect would this attempt to silence thought have
on those to whom the unveiling of the universe makes life more a series of
questions rather than a catechism of past answers?
It is a difficult moment for any thinking Christian who loves the
church, values its doctrines, respects its dogmas and believes, as other popes
have asked them to believe, in the ongoing revelation of God through the
signs of the times. It is particularly difficult when a pope calls for
inclusion of peoples everywhere but in the church, when a pope calls for
equality everywhere but in the church, when a pope calls us to hear the voices
of the people everywhere but in the church. Living life as we've been
told then becomes impossible, schizophrenic, a kind of cruel joke.
Clearly, this is one of those because-I-said-so
moments in the church. We've had them before. We called them the Inquisition
and the Reformation, evolution and freedom of conscience. In each instance, at
the outset, force ruled. But the Holy Spirit, present in the whole church,
finally prevailed. The question now is whether to laugh it off as my first
respondent did or to confront it directly as the second is about to do. The
final answer may require a bit of both.
People have been very respectful these years, very honest in their
questions, very sincere in their search. They have been extremely patient. I'm
not sure that they will also be silent, however. And I really doubt that they
will stop thinking. There may be more people willing to bring courage to life
than we ever dreamed. I for one will have to beg to be excused from the ranks
of those who agree not to think.
So, be forewarned: We could be on the verge of a lot of
excommunications. I hope the Vatican has enough stamps. Maybe it would make
things easier if everybody just sent in a self-addressed envelope right now so
we could get on with the real gospel questions of the age.
Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister, author and lecturer, lives in
Erie, Pa.
National Catholic Reporter, July 31,
1998
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