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Perspective
Dissent is also a Catholic
tradition
By PAT MORRISON
Several years ago a Dominican friend
gave me a contemporary icon of St. Catherine of Siena.
The icon, by artist Robert Lentz, depicts Catherine weighed down
by a ship she carries on her shoulders. The image represents a mystical event
that occurred toward the end of Catherine’s short life of 33 years: While
praying one day outside St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Catherine had a
vision that the barque of Peter, depicted in a mosaic above the façade
of the old basilica, came off the building and landed with an oppressive,
almost suffocating weight, on her frail shoulders.
A contemporary psychologist interpreting the experience in the
light of Catherine’s life would probably say that her vision was a
reflection of what was going on around her. In a way, the church’s
deadening heaviness was literally killing Catherine, who had spent her entire
life working and praying for its unity and reform -- at the time, it seemed to
her, totally unsuccessfully.
Almost 600 years later, in 1970, Catherine was honored as the
second female doctor of the church, and the title is not without significance:
In some ways, she was physician to the church of her day and its leadership,
diagnosing their ills and prescribing remedies, often with a less than gentle
“bedside manner.” The young upstart ragazza from Siena
displayed no hesitancy in telling the pope in no uncertain terms what she
believed God wanted him to do, whether it was returning the papacy to Rome from
Avignon or ordering moral reform. While she prayed and did penance for the pope
and lovingly referred to him as “Sweet Christ on Earth” for the
exalted office he held, she also didn’t mince words: “Get up now, act
manfully! God wills it!” And when she learned firsthand that
cardinals’ mistresses were cavorting in the halls and bedrooms of the
papal court, she wrote a blistering letter blasting the pontiff for his
weakness. “The stench from the sins of the Roman curia” was making
the world retch and sickening heaven too, she wrote, and he was
responsible.
Catherine is a prime example that one can love the church, be a
faithful lay Catholic -- she was a Dominican tertiary, or third order member,
not a nun -- and at the same time challenge the institution and its leadership
when they are wrong.
In Catherine’s time, dissent from the institutional church
carried a heavy price tag; it often meant facing the Inquisition, or worse.
Today, the measures against “dissenters” may be less severe (we
haven’t dragged the rack out of storage yet), but some church leaders seem
to need to label and punish anyone urging church reform.
A case in point is Voice of the Faithful, the new grassroots group
of lay Catholics calling on the U.S. church to reform itself. These are not
wild-eyed radicals bent on overthrowing the institution, but for the most part
committed Catholics who care about their church and are urging transparency and
openness, and an end to sex-abuse cover-ups. The group -- which is carefully
distancing itself from other agendas, whether women’s ordination or
married priests -- has been banned from meeting on church property in some
dioceses. In a recent issue of his diocesan newspaper, Archbishop John Myers of
Newark, N.J., called Voice of the Faithful “anti-church and, ultimately,
anti-Catholic.” His letter went on to say that “through its words and
deeds, we believe that this organization has as its purposes: to act as a cover
for dissent with the faith; to cause division within the church; and to openly
attack church hierarchy” (NCR, Oct. 25).
The knee-jerk vehemence of some bishops’ actions makes one
wonder what they’re so afraid of. It would seem that for Voice of the
Faithful, still in its infancy, the wisest approach, even if they feel
threatened, would be to follow the Gamaliel principle. Gamaliel was the
Pharisee, recorded in Acts 5, who urged the Jewish council to take a
wait-and-see attitude with this new rabble-rousing group of Christians. After
all, said the wise rabbi, “if this plan or this undertaking is of human
origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow
them -- and in that case you may even find yourselves fighting against
God!”
Right now, the U.S. church needs pastors with Gamaliel’s
wisdom and members with Catherine’s faithful dissent. As in every century,
God has made sure there is no lack of both. But we need to hear their voices.
The crushing heft of a beloved but unhealthy church weighs heavy on all our
shoulders.
Pat Morrison is NCR managing editor.
National Catholic Reporter, November 01,
2002
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