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FELLOWSHIP OF CATHOLIC SCHOLARS

.EWlLETnlVOLUME 6, NUMBER 3 JUNE 1983

Letter from Fr. William B. Smith

Recent issues of this Newsletter have incorporated many contributions from received Catholicteaching on war and peace. I would, like here to recall two papal contributions for their depth andtimeliness.

Writing an op-ed the N. Y. Times, Archbishop Manuel Obando y Bravo of Nicaragua recalled andreaffirmed a magnificent legacy of Pope John XXIII:

"Peacewillbe a meaninglesswordsolongasit isnot basedon order,emanatingfromtruth, establishedaccordingto the normsof justice,sustainedand filledby charity,and finally,carriedout under theauspicesof Liberty."

In truth, this is a final legacy of Pope John XXIII - his last will and testament, as it were - forhis definition of peace is the climactic summary of his final encyclical Pacem In Terris, n. 167 (AAS55 (1963) p. 303).

In this integral definition of peace, Pope John XXIII brought to a personal conclusion what hebegan in his first encyclical, On Truth, Unity and Peace (1959) in which he argued that of all the evilswhich corrupt individuals, society, even whole nations, the root cause is:

"ignoranceof truth or more correctly,not onlyignoranceof it, but evenat timesa contemptfor and arash betrayal of it. From this source, all kinds of errors spring,errors whichlike an evil diseasepenetrateinto the deepestrecessesof the souland enter the blood streamof humansociety.Theyknock all valuesout of kilter and result in incalculablelossesto the individualand the wholesocial

structure."(Ad PetriCathedram,n. 4) .From beginning to end, Pope John was convinced that truth advances the cause of peace and

that it is individuals motivated by truth, living justice, sustained by charity and acting under theauspices of liberty who can change society for the better.

C. S. Lewis advanced the same point in Mere Christianity - that simply drawing up good rules onpaper for good social behavior will be mere moonshine unless we realize that nothing but the courageand unselfishness of individuals is what makes any system work properly. In essence, "without goodmen you cannot have a good society."

I mention and underline this received understanding of peace and the importance of personalvirtue simply to place it next to some present emphases that so stress social structures and particularpolitical proposals that some readers might forget that a basic ethical crisis actually precedes all of ourcontemporary crises.

Our present Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, has stated it soberly and more than once; it is worthremembering and repeating:

"May I close with one last consideration. The production and the possession of armaments are aconsequence of an ethical crisis that is disrupting society in all its political, social and economicdimensions. Peace, as I have already said several times, is the result of respect for ethical principles.True disarmament, that which will actually guarantee peace among peoples, will come about only withthe resolution of this ethical crisis. To the extent that the efforts at arms reduction and then of totaldisarmament are not matched by parallel ethical renewal, they are doomed in advance to failure."

P. John Paul II, To Special Session ofUnited Nations (June 11, 1982) n. 12;

also To Trilateral Commission (April 18, 1983).

Volume 6, Number 3 Fellowshipof Catholic Scholars NEWSLETTER June 1983

Items of Interest

. The National Right to Life Committee Inc.has made available a transcript of a press con-ference conducted> earlier this year by "CatholicsFor a Free Choice" at the Russell Senate OfficeBuilding. The highlights of the conference werethese judgments and statements.

Highlights by Page -

3 denial of abortion funding "a clear issue ofsocial justice"

5 ". . . those of us working on the abortion issue,are now in a position to push the Church toexpand that debate so that the issue ofabortion will be treated with the same kind ofprocess, dissent, and dialogue that the issue ofnuclear war has been."

5 "as. . . the Church returns to its mission ofsocial justice, the Church will find it in-creasingly impossible to ally itself with ab-solutists in fundamental religions."

7 "We want to help people realize that dissentfrom their leaders in Catholicism is just asrespectable on this issue as it is on other issueson which the popes and bishops have spoken,such as contraception. . ."

7 ". . . we know that the teachings which haveissued from the official leaders on this subjecthave been issued from celibate males, who haveno experience of women's lives, or experienceof family life and children."

8 ". . . we want to help the Church be a truemoral helper. . ."

10 CFFC has special role in educating 37% ofHouse of Representatives which is Catholicregarding "their responsibility under a morallycompassionate system of Catholic social justicethat would require them, we feel, to makeavailable to poor women those services that arecurrently available to those of us who are luckyenough to have enough money to buy anabortion."

10 describes program of "in-depth legislative brief-ing" for Catholic congressmen

11 describes "extensive campus recruitment pro-gram"

12 "There is no difference between Catholics andProtestants and Jewish women in their prac-tices related to reproduction."

13 "... only God can excommunicate us."

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17 current Catholic teaching on abortion "a rela-tively new opinion"

20 ". . . the history of (Catholic) teaching is reallymore on our side than on the side of thebishops. "

(The full transcriptis availableat 419 7th Street,N.W.,Suite402, Washington,D.C.20004)

. Cathal Daly, Catholic bishop in Belfast,commenting on Irish paramilitaries' justification ofa "principled commitment to violence":

"There is no 'principled' way of murdering.There is no 'principled' form of sinning. This hasnothing to do with politics. This is a question ofmorality. This is all about what is right and what iswrong by God's truth and God's law. . . Youcannot create love by hate and murder. Youcannot build justice by corrupt practices. Youcannot make a united Ireland or a new Ireland bybullets and bombs, by getting children to firepetrol bombs or to throw stones or by shoutingugly words." (NY Daily News)'

. Professor and Mrs. Thomas Loome of St.Catherine's College in St. Paul Minnesota operate asecond-hand book business whose special purposeis to rescue and keep in circulation out of printCatholic authors and titles. Amphisbaena RareBooks publishes a catalogue 34 times each yearwhich is available from 320 North Fourth Street,Stillwater, Minn., 55082.

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. Mortimer Adler makes the following com-ment on Hans Kung's book Does God Exist?:

Here and there, Kung adopts the orthodoxview of faith as a supernatural gift. If this viewhadcompletely controlled his thought, he would havewritten a totally different book or better still, nobook at all on this subject.

Since he lacks the philosophical, and especiallythe metaphysical, acumen needed to cope with thefundamental errors of modem thought and sincehe has no contribution at all to make to philoso-phical thinking about God, Kung's reputation as atheologian, based on the positions he has taken incontroversies about certain dogmas of the RomanCatholic Church, might have been preserved by hisnot having attempted to deal with the question ofGod's existence. From Great Ideas Today, (Chic-ago, Brittanica Great Books, 1981, p. 200)

J. Shortly before the arrival in Spain of Pope

John Paul II, the nation's bishops issued a report

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Volume 6, Number 3 Fellowship of Catholic Scholars NEWSLETTER June 1983

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Items of Interestthat noted a serious decline in the practice ofCatholicism there and in adherence to churchteachings. According to the report, only one inthree Spanish Catholics attends Mass regularly andthe number of vocations to the priesthood hasfallen sharply. The report held that priests whodisobey their superiors and spread theologicallyunsound views and lead undisciplined private liveswere responsible to a large extent for the currentstate of Spanish Catholicism. (See Origins Novem-ber 18, 1982, p. 364)

Fellowship News Items

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1. Nominations for Office in the FellowshipAll members - Associate and Regular - are

invited to nominate three members for highoffice in the Fellowship. Elections for President,Vice-President, and Board membership will takeplace during the next few months. Our Board ofDirectors, guided by the results of these nomina-tions, will draw up the slate which will then besubmitted to a mail ballot of Regular members.

2. Nominations for the Cardinal Wright AwardThe Fellowship presents the Cardinal Wright

Award each September to a Catholic Scholarwho in the judgment of our Board has made asignificant contribution to the Church's authen-tic teaching by his work as a University profes-sor. In past years the Award has gone to Msgr.Kelly, Dr. William May, James Hitchcock andFr. John Connery, S.J. The Awardee need notbe a member of the Fellowship.

Members may send three recommendationsin the order of their preference to Dr. Joseph P.Scottino, Gannon University, Erie, Pennsylvania16541.

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3. The Executive Board will meet in Chicago,September 17th (Saturday) with the WrightAward scheduled for the following day. Furtherdetails will come from Dr. Scottino. .

4. The 1982 Proceedings, which have alreadybeen mailed to members, costs $6.00 to publishand mail. Please send a check to Dr. Scottino.Please indicate on the check that it is forProceedings.

19th Century AccademiaFlorence D. Cohalan's Popular History of theArchdiocese of New York, (Yonkers, New York10704, The U.S. Catholic Historical Society, 1983,353 pp. $20.00) has some spicy paragraphs.

"The golden opinions Archbishop Corrigan wonfrom his superiors and closest associates were notshared by all the clergy. An emphatic dissent wasregistered by a small group, mainly his con-temporaries in Rome, who were the survivors ofthose who had opposed Archbishop McCloskey'sappointment to New York. They were importantfor the effect they had on the Corrigan admin-istration, to which they were opposed from thebeginning to the end, and because they were thefirst spokesmen here for ideas that were to surfaceagain and spread widely after Vatican Council II.Known as the "Accademia" and about half a dozenstrong, they formed a close-knit body regarded byitself and others as an elite corps. They had theirorigin in an attempt to form an officially approvedvoluntary society for clerics interested in discussingtheology. . . . Several of them held Romandoctorates of which they were very conscious sincenon-medical doctorates of any kind were rare inthis country. They were also conscious and proudthat their views on a wide range of topics, bothsacred and profane, differed greatly from those ofmost Catholics, and even in some instances fromthe formal teaching of the Church. In spite of theirviews, most of which they neither preached norpublished, all of them persevered in the priesthoodand most of them were in many ways successfulpastors. None of them ever attained high rank.

"In the religious field, they questioned theinspiration and inerrancy of scripture. They limitedthe former to "a slight extent" and to being thesame kind as Dante's. They doubted papalinfallibility until 1870, and therefore they doubtedthe Immaculate Conception because it was definedby the Pope without the formal consent of aGeneral Council. They were highly critical ofreligious communities and especially of the vowsthat religious take, so they rejoiced in the mis-fortunes tha overtook those communities in UnitedItaly. They disliked the Latin liturgy, vestments,and the way in which the sacrament of Penancewas administered. They favored general absolutionwithout any obligation for individual confession,and thought it absurd for a priest to be listeningfor five hours to the tomfooleries of servant girls."

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The Church of Christ and the Catholic Churchvby Fr. James O'Connor

On June 24, 1973 the Sacred Congregation forthe Doctrine of the Faith tried to undercut theallegation made by certain theologians that VaticanII abandoned the claim that the Catholic Church isthe Church which Christ founded. MysteriumEcclesiae was considered to be a restrictive readingof Conciliar texts which, supposedly, differentiatedbetween the Church of Christ and the CatholicChurch. Fr. a 'Connor, a Dunwoodie dogmatictheologian, took up this allegation at the Fellow-ship's March convention. The following is anexcerpt from that address.

It is this claimed lack of harmony between theConciliar documents and the Declaration Mys-terium Ecclesiae which I wish to address directly inthis paper. With the publication of the finalvolumes, including the Index, of the Acta Syno-dalia of Vatican II, the tools for such a study arenow at hand. My purpose, therefore, is not to givean overall ecclesiology, nor to show the coherencebetween the doctrine of the last Council withprevious teaching. Nor is my purpose to engage intheological polemic. Rather, I should hope todetermine the clear meaning of the sections ofLumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio per-tinent to the question at hand, using the Acta toestablish, when possible, the precise intention ofthe wording found in the inaal Constitution andDecree.

Perhaps a preliminary word on the Acta Syn-odalia is pertinent. They compromise twenty-fivevolumes, containing all the Council's documents inall their various stages of development, as well asthe written and oral expressions of all the par-ticipants of the Council in respect to all of theCouncil's work. Each of the final documents of theCouncil went through various drafts. These draftsor schemata were written by special commissionsappointed for the purpose. When a commission hadcompleted its work, the draft or schema was thenpresented to the Council fathers by one of thebishops responsible for its preparation. This presen-tation is technically called the Relatio and itspurpose was to introduce the document, and toexplain to the bishops its purpose and meaning as awhole, as well as the purpose and meaning of itsparts. Therefore, the various presentations or rela-tiones are the key to the correct interpretation of agiven document.

Nevertheless, the relatio alone is not sufficient.The document once presented had to be acceptedby the bishops as the working document fordiscussion. This done, each section of the docu-ment in question was then discussed by the bishopswith a view to final approval. Frequently, sug-gestions would be made to emend wording or evenvarious parts of the working document. Thesesuggestions, called modi, were then taken by thecommission responsible for drafting the document,and either incorporated or rejected. The documentwas then resubmitted to the bishops as a whole,together with an official explanation concerningthe incorporation or rejection of the various modi.It is these explanations, together with the originalor subsequent relationes, which must be used indetermining the final intention of the text. For-tunately, the final documents are normally clearenough as to their meaning and intent. Recourse tothe various relationes and responses to the modi orsuggested emendations is not necessary for anadequate understanding of the text. In our case,however, since the wording of the final documentsis subject to various interpretations, one must recurto the relationes and the official explanationsconcerning the emendations or corrections.

We may now look first at the DogmaticConstitution On The Church, Lumen Gentium, andparticularly at no. 8 (Chapter One) of that docu-ment, in which the disputed phrase "subsists in" isfound.

The original draft or schema for the Con-stitution On The Church was submitted to theCouncil in 1962. This draft stated that the RomanCatholic Church and the Mystical Body of Christwere identical and that only the Roman CatholicChurch could be called, sola iure, Church. As towhom belonged to this Church, the Relator Car-dinal Franic admitted that membership, in animproper or analogous sense was a freely disputedquestion.

This draft was not acceptable to the bishops asa working document. It was considered too restric-tive, too scholastic and lacking an ecumenicalspirit. Nevertheless, even Bishop Christopher But-ler, who spoke against the draft, could ask rhetor-ically: "Who of those (who wish this draft rejected)would deny that the Church in Communionwith the vicar of Christ, the successor of Peter, isthat Church which Christ founded?" (Acta, vol. I,pt. 4, p. 389.)

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\..-/ The Church of Christ and the Catholic Church (continued)

~ A second schema or draft was submitted to thebishops in 1963. This draft was accepted fordiscussion as the working document, and, afteremendations, became the Dogmatic ConstitutionLumen Gentium. Number seven (Chapter One) ofthis working document read:

This holy Synod teaches and solemnly professesthat there is only one Church of Jesus Christ -which the Savior after His Resurrection handedover to Peter and the Apostles and to theirsuccessors. - Therefore this Church - is theCatholic Church, governed by the Roman Pontiffand the bishops in communion with him. (Acta,vol. 2, pt. 1, pp. 219-220).

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Notice that the Church of Christ and theCatholic Church are identified: "Therefore thisChurch - is the Catholic Church." Along withmuch else in the working draft, this sentence wasto be changed in the emended draft. That draft waspresented to the bishops at the 80th GeneralAssembly of the Council on September 15, 1964.This emended draft was accompanied by a writtenrelatio for each section or number of the docu-ment. What had been section or number seven inthe working document had here become section ornumber eight, where it still remains in the fmalConstitution Lumen Gentium. It read (and reads,since it was not further emended):

This is the only (unica) Church of Christ which weprofess in the Creed to be one, holy, catholic andapostolic, and which Our Savior after His Resur-rection handed over to Peter to be shepherded - .This Church, established and ordained as a societyin this world, subsists in the Catholic Church,governed by the successorof Peter and the Bishopsin communion with him, although outside herbodily structure there are found many elements ofsanctification and truth which, as gifts proper tothe Church of Christ, impel toward Catholic unity.

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Notice that, along with minor changes notpertinent to our theme, the "subsists in" has beensubstituted for "is". What, then, is the significanceof this substitution and how is one to understandthe entire section eight? The written relatio orexplanation on the section reads as follows, asfound in the Acta.

From the great number of observations and objec-tions which were brought forth by the bishops in

respect to this paragraph (as it appeared in theworking draft), it is evident that the intention andcontext of this section were not clear to all.

Now, the intention is to show that the Church,whose deep and hidden nature is described andwhich is perpetually united with Christ and Hiswork, is concretely found here on earth in theCatholic Church. This visible Church reveals amystery - not without shadows until it is broughtto full light, just as the Lord Himself through His'emptying out' came to glory. Thus there is to beavoided the impression that the description whichthe Council sets forth of the Church is merelyidealistic and unreal.

Therefore, a clearer subdivision is set forth, inwhich the followingpoints are successivelytreated:

a) The mystery of the Church is present in andmanifested in a concrete society. The visibleassembly and the spiritual element are not tworealities, but one complex reality, embracing thedivine and hwnan, the means of salvation and thefruit of salvation. This is illustrated by an analogywith the Word Incarnate.

b) The Church is one only (unica), and here onearth is present in the Catholic Church, althoughoutside of her there are found ecclesial elements.(ActaVol.3,pt. l,p. 176)

I do not think the statement could be clearer.Number eight of Lumen Gentium, according to theofficial explanation, intends to teach that there isonly one Church of Christ and that this Church isfound concretely in the Catholic Church. EveryPlatonic-type of thinking is excluded. The concretesociety and its spiritual element are not tworealities, but rather one complex reality, thespiritual being both revealed and hidden by theconcrete society, just as the humanity of Christboth revealed and hid the divinity of the Word.

The oral Relatio on the whole of chapter oneof Lumen Gentium makes the same points suc-cinctly:

The mystery of the Church is not an idealistic orunreal creation, but rather exists in the concreteCatholic society itself, under the leadership of thesuccessor of Peter and the bishops in communionwith him. There are not two churches, but onlyone - (Acta, vol. 3, pt. 1, p. 180).

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/IAmericanism""-P

by James Hitchcock ~

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[This is an excerpt from his address to the Fellowship Convention in March]

The so-called Americanist heresy of the 1890'shas generally been explained as a tempest in ateapot, based on a series of misunderstandings. Assuch it has also been taken as a classic example ofthe inability of the Roman mind to understand theAmerican situation.

In fact, however, there was more substance tothe entire episode than is usually recognized,although the term "heresy" is a misnomer. (In factLeo XIII did not accuse the so-called Americanistsof heresy.)

The issues in the episode are complex andtangled, and it is also difficult to separate per-sonalities from issues. However, a few majorthemes can be identified.

On one level, the conflict was not reallybetween Americans and Europeans but betweenIrish and German prelates, since the leading"Americanists," notably Archbishop John Irelandof St. Paul, had been born in Ireland. ArchbishopIreland in particular tended to identify Germaninfluence in American Catholicism as "foreign"and to oppose it bitterly. To extend the irony,some of the leading opponents of Americanism -such as Archbishop Michael A. Corrigan of NewYork - had been born in the United States.

Archbishop Ireland was the key figure in themovement, and his opposition to "foreign" ele-ments had as its corollary a kind of booster spiritconcerning America itself and all it stood for. Inpolitics, for example, Ireland, who was (like mostof the "liberal" bishops at the turn of the century)an ardent Republican, supported American ex-pansion and identified the chief American civicvirtues as almost synonomous with the Gospel. Onone occasion he bitterly regretted the great influxof immigrants into the country in the nineteenthcentury, preferring instead the small but distinc-tively American Church which had existed in thedays of Archbishop John Carroll.

The papal criticism of Americanism was con-tained in the 1899 Testem Benevolentiae of LeoXIII, which seems to have been triggered by theFrench translation of an American biography ofIsaac Hecker, the founder of the Paulist Fathers.Hecker was a rather complex and enigmatic charac-ter, a mixture of mystical and pragmaticallyAmerican strains. (He had been part of the

Transcendentalist movement and the Brook Farmexperiment.) Hecker's view of Protestantism was ofclassical sixteenth-century Lutheranism and Cal-vinism, with their teachings about human depravity.Arguing that optimistic Americans would never bewon over by such theologies, Hecker emphasizedthe "positive" aspects of Catholic spirituality andpredicted that, if introduced to those qualities,Americans would flock to the Catholic Church.

Archbishop Ireland and the other leadingAmericanizers agreed with this assessment, some-times taking it much farther than Hecker himselfprobably intended. As Leo XIII observed, therewas indeed a tendency to deepmhasize the con-templative and spiritual dimensions of Catholicism,on the part of some people, and a correspondingtendency to exalt the active life.

A key point in the Americanist program wasthe exaltation of the American system ofseparation of Church and state. Yet practically noone, even among their opponents, was urging unionof church and state in America. The point ofdisagreement was over whether the Americansystem was ideal, suitable for all other nations, orwhether it was merely a pragmatic arrangementsuitable for the United States. On the practicallevel, despite his exaltation of the doctrine ofchurch-state separation, Archbishop Ireland con-stantly intrigued in politics and used secularpolitical means to attain some of his ecclesiasticalgoals.

Although the American idea of freedom wasalso one of the leading planks in the Americanistplatform, the so-called liberals in the hierarchyunabashedly used their power to shape the charac-ter of the infant Catholic University of America,driving from the faculty those professors whomthey regarded as inimical to their own interests.

Overall, the Americanists seem to have beenmotivated, at least in part, by a sense of em-barassment about the immigrant character of theChurch, and they wanted to win over Protestantcritics by reforming the Church to meet theobjections made against it. In a sense they allowednon-Catholic culture to shape their agenda, andthey tended to ignore, or be openly hostile to,currents coming from within Catholicism itself,such as the Scholastic revival.

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"-./ The New Code of Canon Law and Marriageby William E. May

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The purpose of this brief overview of the newCode of Canon Law is to call attention to some ofthe more significant canons on marriage in the newCode and to compare them to canons in the 1917Code. I shall do this by first providing the text ofthe relevant canons from the 1917 Code, then thetext of the canons proposed in March 1975 in adocument called Schema Documenti Pontific;; quodisciplina canonica de sacramentis recoqnoscitur(prepared by the Coetus for revising the Code),along with some of the principal objections raisedagainst these proposed norms, and finally the textof the new Code with my own observations.Attention will focus on canons dealing with thesacramentality of marriage, its essential elementsand ends, the nature of matrimonial consent, andconsummation.

The first two canons in the 1917 Code aremost important because they deal with thesacramentality of marriage, its nature, essentialends, and properties:

Canon 1012. Christ our Lord elevatedthe verycontract of marriagebetweenbaptizedpersonstothe dignity of a sacrament.Thereforeit is im-possiblefor a validcontract of marriagebetweenbaptized persons to exist without being by thatvery fact a sacrament.

Canon 1013. The primaryend of marriageis theprocreation and education of children; its sec-ondary end is mutual help and the allaying ofconcupiscence. The essential properties of marriageare unity and indissolubility,which acquire apeculiarfirmnessin Christianmarriageby reasonofits sacramental character.

Closely linked with these two canons was thatconcerning matrimonial consent, although it waslocated in a later section of the material in theCode dealing with marriage. According to thiscanon, No. 1081,

Marriage is effected by the consent of the partieslawfully expressed between persons who arecapable according to law; and this consent nohuman power can supply. Matrimonial consent isan act of the will by which each party gives andaccepts a perpetual and exclusive right over thebody of the other for actswhichareof themselvessuitable for the generation of children.

The fIrst norm on marriage in the 1975 Schema(norm 242) retained the very same wording asCanon 1012 of the earlier Code. Its second norm(norm 243) read as follows:

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Marriage,which comes into existenceby mutualconsentas describedin canons295 and following,is an intimate partnership of the whole of lifebetween a man and a woman,which by its verynature is orderedto the procreationandeducationof children.Theessentialpropertiesof marriageareunity and indissolubility,whichacquirea peculiarfirmness in Christian marriage by reason of itssacramentalcharacter.

In the 1975 Schema, the canon on consent, againseparated from the fIrSt two canons and located inanother section of the material dealing with mar-riage, described marital consent as "that act of thewill whereby a man and a woman by means of amutual covenant constitute with one another acommunion of conjugal life which is perpetual andexclusive and which by its very nature is ordered tothe procreating and educating of children" (norm295).

When the 1975 Schema was released, it re-ceived heavy criticism; in particular norms 242,243, and 295 were criticized for failing to takesufficiently into account the teaching of VaticanII. A special task force of the Canon Law Societyof America faulted these norms for calling marriagea contract, for claiming that the valid contract ofmarriage of baptized persons is of necessity asacrament, and for overemphasizing the procrea-tive/educative purpose of marriage. It is thusinstructive to compare the language of the canonsin the Code promulgated in 1983 correspondingthe Canons 1012, 1013, and 1081 of the 1917Code and to norms 242, 243, and 295 in the 1975Schema. The pertinent canons are the following inthe new Code:

Canon 1055. The matrimonial covenant betweenbaptized persons, by which a man and womanconstitute together a communion of the whole oflife (tonus vitae consortium) ordered by its naturalcharacter (indole) to the good of the spouses andto the procreation and education of Children, hasbeen raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of asacrament. Therefore it is impossible for a validcontract of marriage between baptized persons toexist without being by that very fact a sacrament.

Canon 1056. The essential properties of marriageare unity and indissolubility, which by reason ofthe sacrament acquires a particular firmness inChristian marriage.

Canon 1057. Marriageis effected by the consent ofthe parties lawfully expressed between persons who


The New Code of Canon Law and Marriage (continued)

are capable according to law (matrimonium tacitparnum consensus inter personas iure habiles legiti-me manifestatus); and this consent no humanpower can supply (qui nulla humana potestatesuppleri valet). Matrimonial consent is an act of thewill whereby. a man and a woman, through anirrevocable covenant, givethemselves to each otherand accept each other in order to constitutemarriage (consensus matrimonialis est actus volun-tans, quo vir et mulier foedere irrevocabili sesemutuo tradunt et accipiunt ad constituendummatrimonium).

There are definitely some significant changes inthe way canons 1055, 1056, and 1057 in the newCode are worded and whereby they differ fromcanons 1012, 1013, and 1081 of the 1917 Codeand the 1975 Schema. The language surely evokesthat of Gaudium et Spes in speaking of marriage,and it is very important to note that the canon onmatrimonial consent is integrated into the pre-liminary canons dealing with the nature andmeaning of marriage instead of being separatedfrom these crucially important canons and placedlater in the Code in the section devoted toconditions affecting consent. In Canon 1055 theterm covenant (foedus) is used to describe thereality of marriage (the term we find in n. 48 ofGaudium et Spes). Yet it is noteworthy that thevery same canon, in its second part (dealing withthe sacramental nature of the marriage of baptizedpersons) insists on using the term contract (con-tractus). By choosing to use both foedus andcontractus to designate the human reality ofmarriage both the Code Commission and PopeJohn Paul II, who carefully examined the text ofthe new Code prior to promulgating it, obviouslyintend to teach us that marriage is both a covenantand a contract. Instead of seeing covenant andcontract as incompatible terms to signify marriage(as, I fear, some canonists and theologians seem tothink), the Code Commission and the Pope seethem as complementary terms enabling us to cometo a fuller, richer understanding of the beautifuland complex reality of human marriage, a humanreality that has been, by the grace of Christ,integrated into the economy of grace and made asacrament of the new law.

It is most important to note that Canon 1055insists on identifying a real, valid marriage ofbaptized persons with the sacrament of marriage.Many contemporary canonists and theologiansoppose this identification (cf. for instance, LadislasOrsy, "Faith, Sacrament, Contract, and Christian

Marriage: Disputed Questions," TheologicalStUdies 43. n. 3, 1982, 379-399). The Church'steaching here, however, is longstanding and isrooted, I believe, in the realistic idea that baptismdoes something to a human person, Le., makes aperson, for weal or woe, a member of Christ's bodythe Church. Both the International TheologicalCommission, in its Theses on Christian Marriage,and Pope John Paul II in Familiaris Consortioinsist, with the new Code, that the human realityof marriage, when this is brought into being bybaptized persons, is indeed a sacrament of the newlaw. But note that it is only the human reality ofmarriage as this reality is understood by theChurch that is a sacrament. And it is the nature ofthis reality that is described in canons 1055, 1056and 1057 of the new Code. It must, accordingly,be this sort of human reality that a man and awoman intend when they give themselves to oneanother through the act of matrimonial consent ifthey are indeed to be spouses and, if baptizedpersons, sacramentally united as Christian spouses.

According to canon 1055 this human realityrequires the man and the woman to be open tosharing their lives together - the consortium vitae- and to be open to the gift of human life whichthey are to nourish and educate. It is, of course,tragically possible that a husband and wife mightviolate their marriage by refusing to share theirlives with one another and by refusing to sharetheir lives with children, but if this is what a manand a woman intend to do when they givethemselves to one another in marriage (cf. canon1057) then they make each other spouses, husbandand wife, and they bring into being the beautifulhuman reality of marriage. This reality, moreover,as Canon 1056 insists, is by its nature monogamousand indissoluble, that is, it is the union of one manand one woman and is a union that perdures untildeath, no matter what the parties may wish.

The new canon on consent (no. 1057) is mostinteresting. It insists that marriage comes intobeing by the free and irrevocable consent of thespouses to marriage, Le., the consortium vitaewhich, as Canon 1055, in keeping with the wholeCatholic tradition, teaches is by its very natureordered to the procreation and education ofchildren. This canon, whose teaching echoes thethought of Leo XIII, Pius XI, Pius XII, Paul VI,Gaudium et Spes, and John Paul II on thecentrality of human consent in' establishing mar-riage and on the irrevocable character of this

~...J

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The New Code of Canon Law and Marriage (continued)consent, recaptures more fully the theologicaltradition of the Church on the object of matri-monial consent, namely marriage itself and all thatit entails (Le., a sharing of life and an openness toprocreating and educating children) than did thecorresponding norm in the 1917 Code.

The unity, indissolubility, and irrevocability ofmarriage are clearly affirmed in the new Code. It isthus possible that it will be criticized by those whowould like to reconsider polygamous unions andby those who opine that human persons are notcapable of giving irrevocable consent to anything.

Another interesting canon is that dealing withthe consummation of marriage. In the 1917 Codethe relevant Canon, no. 1015, read as follows: "Avalid marriage of baptized persons is called ratum ifit has not yet been completed by consummation;ratum et consummatum if there has taken placebetween the parties the conjugal act to which thematrimonial contract is by nature ordained and bywhich husband and wife are made one flesh. Afterthe celebration of marriage the consummation ofmarriage is presumed until the contrary is proved.~'In the new Code the relevant canon, no. 1061,reads as follows: "A valid marriage of baptizedpersons is called ratified (ratum) if it has not yetbeen completed by consummation; ratified andconsummated (ratum et consummatum) if theparties have completed between themselves in ahuman fashion (humano modo) the conjugal actwhich is apt for the generation of children, towhich marriage is by nature ordained, and bywhich husband and wife are made one flesh."

Some contemporary theologians and canonistshave objected to the understanding of consum-mation presented here. They prefer to think thatmarriage must be consummated "psychically" inorder to be a consummated marriage, and whetherany marriage is ever psychically consummatedcould be most difficult to determine since consum-mation so understood does not depend on aspecific human act/choice of the spouses. The newCode differs from the old Code by insisting thatmarriage is consummated by the marital act whenthis is carried out "in a human fashion." By this Iinterpret the Code to be teaching that marriage isconsummated only by the marital act that is trulymarital in the sense that it respects the goods ofmarriage, Le., procreation and the consortium vitaeor sharing of life. Thus contraceptive intercourse ora conjugal act (materially considered) that fails torespect the dignity of the spouse by violating his orher legitimate desires (cf. Humanae Vitae, n. 13)would not consummate marriage, and they wouldnot do so because they would not participate inthe marriage itself and would fail to make husbandand wife. "one flesh" in the rich biblical andtheological sense of this expression.

Other canons on marriage in the new Codemerit attention, in particular canon 1117. Accord-ing to this canon if two Roman Catholics have by aformal act renounced their Catholic faith, they areno longer bound to the canonical form of marriage.But to enter into a discussion of this matter wouldtake us too far afield.

Editorial Reflections on the U.S. Bishops Pastoral Letteron War and Peace

by Rev. Joseph T. Mangan, S.1., S.T.D.

In the finalized Pastoral Letter "On War andPeace" (May 2-3) the Bishops of the United Stateshave expressed a commendably strong and re-sounding opposition to nuclear war. In itself thisopposition should be welcomed by all thinkingpeople, not only in the United States but through-out the world.

Some details, however, in the Pastoral whichthe Bishops acknowledge as clearly controversialwill not meet with such universal approval. For thisreason the specific moral authority and binding

force for Roman Catholics remains unresolvd evenin the minds of some Bishops.

It is true that in the "Precis" and throughoutthe body of the Pastoral, the Bishops give a key totry to help the reader understand and interpretcorrectly the moral value judgements affirmed. ". . .We realize," they say, "and we want readers ofthis letter to recognize, that not all statements inthis letter have the same moral authority. At timeswe state universally binding moral principles aswell as formal Church teaching; at other times we


make specific applications, observations andrecommendations which allow for diversity ofopinion on the part of those who assess the factualdata of a situation differently than we do" (Precis,pp.i, ii). In another place they state: "We stressagain that readers should be aware, as we havebeen, of the distinction between our statement ofmoral principles and official Church teaching andour application of these to concrete issues" (Precis,p. ix).

During the two-day meeting in Chicago theCommittee responsible for writing the variousdrafts of the Pastoral reiterated again and againthat the Pastoral must be understood to involvecontingent judgements which allow for responsiblejudgments contrary to the ones expressed by theBishops.

There is no ambiguity about the certain truthsof Catholic doctrine. Following the leadership ofVatican Council II, the Bishops maintain that". . .all activities which deliberately conflict with theall-embracing principles of universal natural law,which is permanently binding, are criminal, as areall orders commanding such action" (Vd. ThirdDraft of the Pastoral, pp. 32, 33; Vatican CouncilII, Consititution on the Church in the ModernWorld, n. 79).

Some of these specific truths are the following:I) Governments have the right and duty to protecttheir people from unjust aggression. 2) The inter-national killing of innocent civilians or non-combatants is always wrong. 3) Any act of waraimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entirecities or of extensive areas along with theirpopulation is morally wrong.

One critical discussion among the Bishospoccurred over an amendment that, at first, wasapproved in spite of the Committee's vote of non-support. That amendment read: "Nevertheless,there must be no -misunderstanding --of our op-position on moral grounds to any use of nuclearweapons." At the suggestion of the Committee theBishops reconsidered that amendment and rejectedit as inconsistent with the necessary ambiguitycharacteristic of the Pastoral.

Let me now illustrate how the necessary am-biguity of the Pastoral may be applied to a specificexample. One of the Pastoral's strong statements isagainst the first use of nuclear weapons. It asserts:

"We do not perceive any situation in which thedeliberate. initiation of nuclear warfare, on howeverrestricted a scale, can be morally justified." Thisstatement allows for some other responsible persons(e.g. the West Germany Catholic Bishops; theUnited States Government; Catholic faithful of theUnited States) to perceive a situation in which theyresponsibly do judge the deliberate initiation ofnuclear warfare to be morally justified.

~

'J

In the light of the foregoing explanation and ofthe "contingent judgements" and "necessary am-biguity" of the Pastoral, it would hardly bepossible to rule out the following stances:

I) While striving for bilateral mutually veri-fiable disarmament, a nation may test, stockpile,and threaten-to-use, nuclear weapons for morallylawful use, if that is necessary for preparednessand/or as a deterrent against a likely aggressornation. It seems that it is necessary.

2) First and/or retaliatory use of nuclearwarfare in a defensive war is morally permissiblewhen that is judged to be the only effective meansof resisting an unjust aggressor nation, as long asthe principles of discrimination and proportionalityare observed.

11.

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3) In a defensive war it is possible and morallypermissible for a nation to use nuclear warfareagainst an unjust aggressor to destroy a militarytarget in or near a large metropolitan communitywith anticipated vast destruction of human lives, ifthe attack is discriminate and proportionate.

In my judgment, one substantive flaw in thePastoral is the omission of any attempt to ex-plain at length what the possible good effects couldbe of the use of nuclear warfare. To make aresponsible judgment under the principle of pro-portionality one should know the possible goodeffects as well as the possible evil effects.

The Pastoral Letter is long and complicated. Todiscern the richness of its pastoral concern and thedepths of its argumentation will take serious study.It will not be easy in every section clearly toseparate certain teaching from well-reasonedopinion. The Bishops do not claim this Pastoral asthe last word, but as "a first step" toward theeventual halting of the nuclear arms race andtoward bilateral disarmament. May this all-important purpose be fully realized.

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'~ Cardinal Ratzinger and the Sources of Faith

,~

[On January 16, 1983 the prefect of the SacredCongregation for the Doctrine of the Faith spoketo a Paris symposium on the general subject"Handing on the Faith Today". The following areselected paragraphs. The full text is available fromtranslator Fr. Michael Wrenn, Archdiocesan Cate-chetical Institute, Dunwoodie Seminary, Yonkers,New York 10704. It was originally published in LaDocumentation Catholique March 6, 1983.]

From Part I: Crisis in Catechetics

". . . In a highly technical world, which is acreation of man himself, it is not the Creator whois encountered, first of all. Instead man is alwaysencountering only himself. His overriding concernfor productivity, the gauge of his certainties, is oneof measurements and calculation. Consequently,the question of salvation is not raised in terms ofGod, who doesn't even figure anywhere in thequestion, rather it is raised in terms of man'saccomplishments as he strives to become his ownmaster builder and designer of his own destiny"

~ ". . . The current tendency to subordinatetruth to praxis in the context of neo-Marxist andpositivist philosophies carves out a way for itself intheology. . . Events contributed to providing aconsiderably more concentrated scope for anthro-pology: the priority of method over content meansthat anthropology predominates over theology, insuch away, that theology has to find a place foritself in a radical anthropocentrism. The decline ofanthropology produces, in its turn, new centers ofgravity: the reign of sociology or even the primacyof experience as a new criterion for an under-standing of traditional faith.

". . . The fact that some no longer have thecourage to present the Faith as an organic whole,in its own right, but only as partial anthropologicalglimmers, stems, in the final analysis, from acertain distrust of an bias toward the entire faithsystem. It is explained by a crisis of the Faith -more exactly - of the Faith common to theChurch of every age. It follows from this thatcatechesis generally omits dogma and the attemptis even made to reconstruct the Faith by startingdirectly with the Bible. But dogma is nothing else,by definition, than the interpretation of Scripturebut this interpretation, derived from the Faith overthe centuries, no longer seems capable of agreeingwith the understanding of texts to which thehistorical-critical methods, in the meantime, had

,'--./

~

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been leading. Consequently there co-exist twoforms of apparently irreconcilable interpretations:the historical-critical and dogmatic interpretations.But this latter interpretation, according to theviewpoint currently in vogue, could only be con-sidered as being a pre-scientific stage in the newinterpretation. Also it appeared difficult to recog-nize it as having its own special place. Whenscientific certitude is considered as the only valid,indeed, possible, form of certitude, the certitude ofdogma had to appear either as a now by-passedstage of an archaic idea or as the will to power ofsurviving institutions. It must then be evaluatedaccording to the standards of scientific exegesisand can, in the strict sense, assist the claims of thehistorical-critical method: it can no longer pretendto be the court of last resort in this particularregard. . ."

". . . A German mother one day told me thather son, who attended an elementary school, wasin the process of being introduced to Christologyby way of the so-called Source regarding the "logia(sayings) of the Savior." As for the seven sacra-ments, the articles of the Creed, not a word hasbeen breathed about them. The anecdote meansthe following: with the criteria of the earliestliterary stratum as the most certain historicalwitness, the real Bible disappears for the sake andbenefit of a reconstructed Bible, and for thebenefit of a Bible such as it would have to be intheir view. It is the same with Jesus. The "Jesus"of the Gospels is considered as a Christ con-siderably recast by dogma, behind which it wouldbe important to return to the Jesus of the logia orof yet another alleged source in order to rediscoverthe authentic Jesus. This authentic Jesus says anddoes nothing more than what pleases us. He sparesus, for example, the cross as expiatory sacrifice -the cross is reduced to the level of a scandalousaccident, before which it is not becoming to pausetoo long.

"The Resurrection also becomes an experienceof the disciples according to which Jesus, or atleast, His "reality" continues. One no longer needsto dwell on the events, but rather on the con-sciousness which the disciples and the communityhad about them. The certitude of faith is replacedby confidence in the historical-critical hypothesis.Now this procedure seems to me to be especiallyirritating. Caution regarding the historical-criticalhypothesis, in a number of catechetical writings,assuredly is a step in the right direction towards

11


Cardinal Ratzinger and the Sources of Faiththe certitude of faith. . .

". . . There arose a type of theologicalempiricism, in which the experience of the group,of the community, or of the "experts" became thefmal source, the last word. . .

". . . An examination of the question of theconnections between dogmatic and historical-critical exegesis is one which ought to be given toppriority. The question is also that of establishingthe connections between the living fabric oftradition, on the one hand, and the rationalmethods of re-establishing the past, on the otherhand...

". . . It is clear that faith without experiencecan come down to being mere verbiage or jargonconsisting of hollow formulas. On the other side ofthis coin, it is also all too evident that reducing thefaith to experience can only deprive it of its core"

II. How to Overcome the Crisis". . . The faithful must resist theories which

whittle away the Faith in the name of the authorityof pure reason.

". . . Faith then is not merely a face-to-faceencounter with God and Christ, it is also thiscontact, which opens one up to a communion withthose to whom God Himself was communicated.This communion, we can add, is the gift of theSpirit who lays down for us a bridge to the Fatherand the Son. Faith is then not merely an "I" and a"You"; it is also a "we." In this "we" dwells the"memorial" which enables us to rediscover whatwe had forgotten: "God and the one whom Hesent."

"To put it another way, there is no faithwithout the Church. Henri Cardinal de Lubac hasshown that the "I" of the confession of ChristianFaith is not the isolated "I" the individual" but thecollective "I" of the Church. When I say: "Ibelieve," this means that I am going beyond thelimits of my subjectivity, in order to identifymyself with the "I" of the Church and at the sametime I am identifying myself with knowledgesurpassing all the bounds of time. . ."

". . . The Bible, like every work of art andindeed even more than every work of art, saysmuch more than we can now understand about it,literally results from the fact that it expresses aRevelation reflected but not exhausted by words.This also explains that when Revelation has beenperceived and once again becomes living, thereresults an even deeper union with the word, than

'-"when it is analyzed as a text. The "instinctiveattraction" that the saints had for the Bible, theirsufferings sharing in those of the Word, helpedthem to understand more deeply what the learnedfrom the Age of the Enlightenment couldn't havebeen able to do. This is an altogether logicaloutcome.

"-..J

". . . Elements vitally indispensable to theChurch: the Apostles' Creed, the sacraments, theTen Commandments, the Our Father. These fourclassic and principal components of catechesishave, over the centuries, served as a device andresume for catechetical teaching. They have alsogiven access both to the Bible and to the life of theChurch. We have just said that they correspond todimension of Christian existence. This is what theRoman Catechism affirms, when it says that in itare found what the Christian is to believe (Creed-symbol), hope for (Our Father), and do (TenCommandments), as well as in what sector of life itis to be accomplished (sacraments and Church) . . .

"There is a widespread tendency today toavoid difficulty when the message of the Faithplaces us in the presence of material things bysticking to a symbolic interpretation of them: thisbegins with creation, continues with the virginbirth of Jesus and His Resurrection, and ends withthe Real Presence of Christ in the consecratedbread .and wine, with our own resurrection andwith the Lord's Second Coming. It is not a matterof theological discussion of slight importance whenindividual resurrection is situated at death andthereby denies not only the soul, but even thereality of salvation for the body. This is why adefmitive and decisive renewal of faith in creationconstitutes both a necessary and preliminary con-dition for the credibility and deeper understandingof Christology as well as eschatology. . . .

". . . (The Church establishes the contextwithin which Scripture is to be interpreted and isthe only locus, place, site for acknowledging thewritings of the Bible as holy Scripture and theirdeclarations as meaningful and true. Translator'snote.) There will, however, always be a certaintension between new issues raised by history andthe continuity of the faith. But, at the same time,it is clearly apparent to us that traditional Faith isnot the real enemy, but rather the guarantor of afidelity to the Bible, which, however, may beconsistent with historical methodologies."

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Volume 6. Number 3 Fellowshipof Catholic Scholars NEWSLETTER June 1983

~ Publications of Interest~

~ . Michael J. Wrenn (ed.), Pope John Paul IIand the Family, (Chicago, Franciscan Herald Press1983,286 pp. $15.00)

This is a valuable catechetical commentary onFamiliaris Consortio with discussion questions andthe complete text of this important papal docu-ment. The foreword is written by Cardinal Cookeand Fr. Wrenn's preface established the context forits message in the Roman Synod of 1980.

\W~

Ignatius Press

Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J. continues to make theIgnatius Press into a major publisher of Christianclassics including those written by Bouyer, DeLubac, Von Balthasar, Sheen, John Paul II etc.

James V. Schall, S.J. Distinctiveness of Christianity298 pp. $9.95

This is a collection of essays and reflections onhistorical and contemporary Christianity. Fr.Schall examines the distinct traditions, opposi-tions, doctrines, institutions and spiritualities ofChristianity. Because of the great challenge thatChristianity faces in the modern world, the authorshows that it is urgent for Christians to understandthe uniqueness and fertility of what is differentand distinct about Christianity.

Alba House

The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents ofthe Catholic Church edited by J. Neuner, S.J. andJ. Dupuis, S.J. 740 pp. $13.95.

This is an important collection of the Church'sdoctrinal documents from the earliest days to thelatest statement of John Paul II. First published in1938 in Germany, the present editors have revisedthe contents, up-dated the translations and addedexcerpts from recent Roman documents. Thethemes covered include Revelation, Tradition andScripture, Christo logy and Ecclesiology, the SocialTeaching, Eucharist and the Sacraments. Excellentindexes and tables enhance the books value forteachers and students.

,c,~

Hector Munoz,O.P. WillYou Hear My Confession?162 pp. $6.95.

Parish priests will find this book particularlyvaluable. The theological and liturgical norms arelucidly stated and 57 areas for personal examina-tion of conscience. Study groups and adult Ca-tholics will profit from Fr. Munoz' contribution totheir spiritual development.

.

Joan L. Pedraz S.J., I Wish I Could Believe, 201 pp.$7.95.

This book is intended to provide a rationalexposition of the 'basis for our faith in God andJesus Christ. Six chapters cover the reasons ad-duced against God's Existence, God as Person, theChrist of History and Faith, and the subjectiveconditions of belief in God. Fr. Pedras' book is atranslation from Spanish by Salvator Attanasio.

Justice and Warin the Nuclear Age - a publicationof the American Catholic Committee. This series ofpapers grew out of a conference in 1982 inWashington, D.C. Robert Reilly, Fr. James Schall,Thomas Payne, Angelo Codevella, Bishop John J.O'Connor, and Philip Lawler (the editor) not onlydiscussed the issues of justice and morality but theintellectual, political, and military aspect of mod-ern conflicts between nations. Copies are availablefrom the University Press of America or theCatholic Committee at 226 Massachusetts Avenue,N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002. Hard cover $15.95Paper $5.95.

Franciscan Herald Press

Joseph Pieper and Heinrich Raskop, What Catho-lics Believe: A Primer of the Catholic Faith, 110pp. no price.

This Primer, a runaway best seller in Germanyduring the Nazi rule, is a concise and accurateexposition of the truths of revelation, based on aninterpretation of the Apostles Creed. The chaptersdeal with Christian faith and life, the virtues,scripture and the history of the Church. Jan vanHeurck is the translator.

. Joseph A. Varacalli, Toward the Establishment ofLiberal Catholicism in America (Washington, D.C.,University Press of America 1983 pp. 310.)

Originally a doctoral thesis at Rutgers Univer-sity, this updated and revised work analyzes andevaluates the Bi-Centennial "Call to Action" ef-forts of the U.S. bishops as a program and amovement. This book's four parts deal respectivelywith the origins of the activity, its history, pre-suppositions and expected results. Appendix A liststhe 182 proposals emanating from the Call toAction Assembly.

13


Publications of Interest. Theology Notes From Richard A. McCormick,S.J., "1973-1983: Value Impacts of a Decade" inHospital Progress, December 1982, pp. 3841.

"Sterilization is the most frequent form of birthcontrol in the United States. I see no contem-porary developments that are going to change this.The official teaching of the Catholic Church ondirect sterilization is well known: It is absolutelymorally wrong. Equally well known is the wide-spread negative response, in theological and othercircles, to this absolute formulation of theChurch's concerns. The Catholic hospital is caughtsquarely in the middle of this debate. It isdedicated to the overall good of its patients, andthere are times when this overall good seems torequire sterilization. Official pressure to preventthis is increasingly intense.

"This problem has gone far beyond moraltheological discouse (where the arguments areoverwhelmingly on one side of the question). It isan ecclesiological problem and therefore one likelyto recur in other areas of concern.

"The nub of this problem is how experience andmoral analysis relate to authoritative (official)pronouncement. One view is that a teaching iscorrect because it is official, regardless of thepersuasiveness of the reasons that can be marshal-led for it. A different view is that it is preciselyexperience and analysis that must test officialformulations.

"These deeply buried differences have practicalrepercussions. For example, bishops of the firstview see their task as telling the people what isright; bishops of the second see their task asdiscovering what is right. Bishops of the first viewsee moral truth exclusively in terms of authori-tative formulation of it; bishops of the second aremore aware of doctrinal development and thechanging nature of our concrete personhood.Bishops of the fIrSt view see the magisterium interms of certainty and clarity; bishops of thesecond are more likely to hesitate, question, doubt.Bishops of the fust view see dissent and evenopenness as disloyalty; those of the second seethem as the necessary condition for moral anddoctrinal advance.

"Here is a difference, even a clash oftwo views,on some basic topics: the meaning of ChurchGuridical versus communitarian-sacramental); ofhuman persons (static versus evolving); of moralknowing (hierarchical versus shared); of authority(position versus service); and of teaching (beingtold versus assimilating).

In recent years the fust emphasis has received

~support in high places, and it is to be expected thatthis will affect Catholic health care facilities and,even more generally, ethical reflection in theCatholic community.

[Editors Note:(1) Fr. McCormick frequently laments the

"uncharitableness" of those who criticize dis-senting theology with any vigor; but he does nothesitate to suggest here that bishops who acceptthe teaching of the Holy See (Le., the receivedteaching of the Church) on sterilization do notunderstand what doctrinal development is, havebad authoritarian attitudes, do not believe thebishops' role is to serve. . . Would this apply alsoto Pope John Paul II?

(2) M. declares that the intrinsic argumentsagainst the received teaching are far better thanthose for it. Now the most creative moral theoristsin the English speaking Church (those, e.g. whohave the greatest influence on the secular moralthinkers of our time) for the example, G.E.M.Anscombe of Cambridge, John Finnis of Oxford,Germain Grisez of this country, are solidly on theside of a form of moral thinking that defends papalteaching in this area, and they explicitly defend thepapal teaching on sterilization. If we add moralistsof other languages (such as Karol Wojtyla) the casefor the standard Catholic teaching (which wasconsidered irreformable teaching before the recentdissent, and is still considered so by nondissentingtheologians), is even stronger.

(3) True, a very large number of Catholics nowresort to sterilization. But the whole secular worldis pressuring them toward solutions that theChurch has constantly called and still does callmortally sinful solutions. Today's Catholics receivetheir most vigorous moral teaching from dissenters.The Church has regularly taught that direct steri-lization is always wrong. It has not merely taughtthere is something undesirable about it.]

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--Margaret White, M.D. "Protestant View on Con-traception",Heartbeat Spring 1983, pp. 18-20

Many Protestants, though totally deceived bythe overpopulation myth, are very shocked bythese examples of deliberate attack on the family.They are also upset by the family planners'involvement in sex education. In Britain this ismuch the same as in the United States. Childrenare taught that sexual intercourse from puberty isnormal; that heterosexual activity and homosexualactivity are equally good, and that the only sin isnot to use efficient contraception.

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Volume6, Number3 Fellowship of Catholic Scholars NEWSLETTER June 1983

'*"~

Book Reviews

,~Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P. Ministry: Leadershipin the Community of Jesus Christ (New York:Crossroad Press, 1981)

Edward Schillebeeckx, whose Christologicalstudies have placed him in the forefront oftheological controversy during the past five years,has published the results of his long standinginquiry into the sacrament of orders. Nothing in itis new; the view of the priesthood which itadvocates is one which has appeared in severalarticles by him during the past dozen years: theirgist is available in English, whether in TheologicalStudies or in the Concilium series. The same viewunderlies the revisionist theology of Hans Kuengand of such other nominally Catholic theologiansas Bernard Cooke, Edward Kilmartin and mostrecently Joseph Martos. To this extent Schille-beeckx's book is useful: it provides a convenientaccess to those themes underlying the devaluationof the Catholic sacramental system which has,since the Council, been the program of theConcilium editors sympathetic to Kueng and whichhas since the late 1960s enlisted the support of theleadership of the Catholic Theological Society ofAmerica, the Catholic Biblical Association and theCanon Law Society, as well as of those liberationmovements which discover in the sacramentalrealism of Roman Catholicism the one intractableobstacle to their utopianism.

Schillebeeckx's argument rests upon a postu-late which could not be simpler: The Church(understood in the nominalist sense of any localassembly of Christians) has an unconditioned rightto the Eucharist. This juridical a priori presupposesthe subordination of the Eucharist to the Church.The Church that has a "right" to the Eucharist mustpossess the full power to implement that right -Le., the power to set up its own Eucharisticministry without hindrance from any ecclesialauthority extrinsic to the local congregation.Transformed in the process is the Eucharist itself.As no one supposes that the One Sacrifice of theCross is something over which the Church canclaim "rights," it follows that the Eucharist is nolonger to be identified with Christ's sacrifice.Hence the Mass, in spite of Trent, is not thesacrifice of the Cross, and needs no sacrificialpriesthood whose priesthood is really differentfrom that of the laity (in spite of Lumen Gentium)and no apostolic succession to a sacrificial office inPersona Christi.

All this lacks novelty. Schillebeeckx's nomin-alist ecclesiology is fundamental to the Re-

~

...,

formation, in which the local community, foundedon faith alone, has no necessary relation to anyhistorical institution. Roman Catholicism requiresa sacrificial priesthood because its cause is theEucharist. But Schillebeeckx will have it back-wards: the Church causes the Eucharist: ministry ishenceforth no more than an aspect of one'spre-existing leadership role in the community.

Schillebeeckx has arranged his book in sixchapters. The first presents a prejudicial exegesis ofthe New Testament material which the authorunderstands to underwrite his sola fide ecclesio-logy; the second presents a comparably criticalappreciation of the historical evidence which Schil-lebeeckx has garnered in support of his claim thatthe Tridentine doctrine of the priesthood is acreation of the Church's second millennium. Thethird chapter offers an academic redemption fromthis Fall by recourse to the same revisionisthistorical criticism which concocted it in the firstplace. The fourth chapter provides an equivalenttreatment" of contemporary liturgical practice,suggesting that the decline in priestly vocations andthe movement for the ordination of women to-gether confirm the legitimacy of this sort oftheology, and the final chapter, separated from thefourth by a very brief hermeneutical section,discusses the advantageous implications of thisNeo-protestantism for the future of the CatholicChurch.

Schillebeeckx has not attempted, in such abrief study, to present a summa on the sacramentof orders. Given the range of matter touched upon,a book of this brevity cannot hope to deal with itin depth, but it is not too much to ask that it dealwith it evenhandedly. The priesthood is a subjectof increasingly painful controversy today. Thisbook will add heat to that controversy withoutbringing much light to the disputants, for it is nomore than another instance of advocacy scholar-ship in which fundamental questions are ignored orbegged without notice to the reader in order thatthe author's viewpoint may prevail. Prevail it does;no serious consideration is given to the counter-vailing scriptural and historical evidence amassedduring the course of the current controversy bysuch scholars as Peter Blaser, Louis Bouyer, JosephCrehan, Henri Crouzel, Alex Gerkef, JeromeQuinn, Joseph Ratzinger and Heinrich Schiller, tomention only a few of the better known names.Consequently, anyone in search of the actual stateof theological discussion on the Catholic priest-hood will seek it here in vain; any teacher using

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Volume 6. Number 3 Fellowship of Catholic Scholars NEWSLETTER June 1983

this book as the basis of a course or seminar on thepriesthood will seriously deceive his students.

At bottom, Schillebeeckx's theory of thepriesthood makes points which are those uponwhich the Reformation was conceived. Thosewhich he scores against the ancient Catholicdoctrine are already inherent in Luther's radicalrejection of the sacrifice of the Mass. He conteststhe historical realism of the Church's sacramentalmediation of her Lord and the basis for his doingso is the historical pessimism which marks Re-formation theology, the mentality which cannotattribute to any discrete historical event the actualmediation of the risen Christ. This is to say, as theReform has long maintained, that His presence inthe Church is sola fide. Taken seriously, nosacrament survives this maxim, and the seculari-zation of the historical Church is inevitable. No-thing in it is any longer sacred.

Reams have been written in recent years ofhow the Church in the centuries before our ownhas failed to appreciate the relativity of its ownhistory. And it should not be denied that betweenthe 13th and 17th century theologians were notsufficiently sensitive to the dynamic quality of theChurch's temporal dimension. Much of this mayhave been due to an inadequately converted Greekclassicism, as Lonergan has maintained; more of it,since the Reformation, was defensive because thenew historical science has been developed and usedas a weapon against the medieval Church: notsimply against its manifest anachronisms, butagainst its very existence, its sacramental worship.The ancient Augustinian analysis of history as theintersection of the City of God and the City ofMan, as the temporal dimension of a fallen world,had frnt been rationalized by Luther's theology ofextrinsic grace and Calvin's theology of predes-tination, then secularized by the Enlightenment tobecome von Ranke's project of making historylittle more than chronology uninformed by anytranscendence, empty of any significance otherthan what the autonomous reason or will might inretrospect impose upon it. History became nothingmore than the fashionable academic interpretationof a carefully selected past, an interpretationentirely extrinsic to the Catholic worship, imposedupon it in the name of a dominant secularism. Toaccept the domination of historical interpretationby the secular ideology as the modernists did, isnot, as one too often hears, a function of theaggiomamento begun at Vatican II but a con-version by revisionist theologians to a false experi-ence of history. This is false worship wherein the

Lord of history is supplanted by an idol holdingacademic credentials and a secular method ofhistorical criticism. This methodolatry poses falseand unmanageable problems for the Catholic theo-logians who indulge in it. Their best knownproblem is determining the relation of the "Jesusof history" to the "Christ of faith" once they haverelatived "Jesus" as an historical event and find hissignificance more in the experience of his followersthan in revealed transcendence. What a secularhistoricism has divided, exegesis may not unite,hence the profusion of Christologies and ecclesi-ologies "from below". Schillebeeckx's Christo logyand ecclesiology accepts these methodologicalimplications and pursues them into the theology ofthe priesthood described above.

Contrariwise the a priori for authentic Catholictheology is not the historical critical method orhistorical consciousness, but concrete participationin the Church's history, a participation which isworship, and historical because it is sacramental.This participation is free, personal, existential. Onlyby means of it is a truly historical Catholicconsciousness given and received. Christian historyis not a secular category; it is a God-given grace, bywhich the believer's authentic reality is at oncereceived and lived. The reception of this life isprimarily ecclesial and only secondarily individual,Christ's Covenant with His Body, the Church.Catholic theology, therefore, is only the intel-lectual aspect of this gift, a rational quaerens intoits. mystery. This theology cannot be dissociatedfrom the sacramental worship which is its founda-tion and sustaining force. Catholic theology,because it is a provisional intellectualization ofone's individualquaerens, cannot judge the Church'sworship. It is instead continually under theChurch's judgment, that is, if it is to remaintheology, and not a merely private and idiosyn-cratic theorizing. To insinuate a method of his-torical criticism as the supra-ecclesial criterion ofwhat the Church and its worship may be, asSchillebeeckx does, is to elevate a non-historicalabstraction in triumph over that Revelation whichis ever immanent and creative in the Church'sworship. When this usurpation is complete,Catholic theology has been abandoned, and theautonomous mind proceeds with its familiar workof disintegrating revealed reality in the name ofintelligence.

Facts of Christian history which resist suchnullification, e.g., the letters of Clement and ofIgnatius of Antioch, the 'absolute' ordinations ofOrigen, Paulinus of Nola, and Jerome, the early

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liturgies, the early tradition of priestly celibacy,and of course the solemn conciliar definitions, aredealt with by Schi1lebeeckx in an ironic stylealmost sarcastically. Ignatius long a problem forSchillebeeckx, is now decided to have been datedfar too early; Clement's statement that the bishop'soffice as a Divine Institution is without theologicalrelevance, and the term Hippolytus used to desig-nate the priest's action over the gifts at theEucharist (proherein) is now to be translated as"preside over." Chalcedon's disciplinary decreesprohibiting absolute ordinations now become dog-matic invalidations of such orders; early priestlycelibacy is dismissed as a relic of a pagan fear ofthe feminine, and the Tridentine defmitions aredisqualified by their historical conditioning. This isnot the place to develop the detailed reply whichthese and similar allegations would merit, hadthey not been refuted copiously by contemporaryscholarship - the scholarship which Schillebeeckxsimply ignores. Such ignorance is irresponsibility;in a scholar of Schillebeeckx's standing it can hardlybe something he does accidentally.

In conclusion, Ministry is symptomatic of analienation which seems chronically natural forcertain Christians. The temptation to a falsehistorical consciousness, to a radical despair ofsalvation in history, is the weak side of their faithin the Lord of history. In our fallenness anxiety ordoubt sometimes reaches the level of their con-sciousness. The fear of and aversion for afflfmingthe historical realities Christ and the Churchafflfm, the fear of and aversion for the risksinvolved in making these affirmations triumph overfaith and fidelity. Quite oppositely, true historicalconciousness for the Christian is lived out, ex-pressed, and sustained by the sacramental symbolsof the Church's historicity.

The alienation of the Christian con-sciousness in contemporary Catholicism is of epid-emic proportions. Post-Vatican II theological litera-ture bestrewn with works comparable to the onereviewed here, each marked by that insistenceupon a non-historical Christian existence which byone of the more ironic twists of history is nowdescribed as true historical consciousness. Fortheir authors, as for Schillebeeckx, the Church ismisguided, fallen from its primal non-historiCity,whenever and wherever it afflfms its dependenceupon the presence - actual, revelational, redemp-tive, salvific, in aword, creative - of the Lord ofhistory in the historical worship whose structure isradically Eucharistic, radically sacrificial. For suchpeople, the sacramental realism of Roman Catho-licism amounts to an intolerable presumption, one

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responsible for all the ills (see Bishop deSmet'scatalog: clericalism, juridicalism, triumphalism)which marked the pre~onciliar Church, as well asforthe failure, relatively speaking, of the aggiorna-mento which was to have ushered in widespreadliturgical, canonical and ecumenical renewals.From this now common, if not dominant pointof view, in Catholic academic circles, sacra-mental realism amounts to an idolatry, and only itsabolition will meet the needs of the contemporaryChurch.

On the other hand, to those Catholics whohave studied (not so much the spirit as) the textsof Vatican II, and especially that most basic ofthem, the dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium,theologians such as Schillebeeckx are enmired in anElectra complex whose anguish drives them todeformation of their consciousness, which canrest content with nothing less than the destructionof the Ecclesia Mater Catholica. There is no neutralground upon which this mentality may be engagedin dialogue; one can only share it, or reject itutterly. It has begun to be so pervasive in Catholicintellectual circles and middle management that itsrejection must now be explicit if it is to be real.Failure to see it for what it is and to confront itwill be accounted as complicity and potentialagreement. The unconcern for the sacramentalrealism by which Catholicism lives has so in-fluenced Church leadership that American priestsare now usurping the political responsibilities ofthe Catholic laity, even as they become in-creasingly careless of the evident priestly respo~-sibility for the upholding of the sacramentality ofmarriage in their conferences, sermons, and dio-cesan tribunals. Schillebeeckx's Ministry presentsthe theological justification for this inversion:according to his theology, the Bishop's sacramentaland Eucharistic responsibility is a derivative of hisprior socio-political leadership role. Truly, how-ever, Catholic history teaches that any concept ofChurch authority based upon other reality than theEucharistic worship of the Church must fall backupon false criteria, and become despotic. Schil-lebeeck's theology of the priesthood is neither"satisfying" nor "courageous and provocative". Itrepresents instead the disinterment of the politicalAugustinianism which the Fathers at Vatican IIwere at some pains to bury. In the notion thatthese bones shall live there is latent a radicalmisunderstanding of Resurrection.

Fr. Donald J. Keefe, S.J.(A more complete review of this subject with docu-mentation is availablefrom this Newsletter)

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George A. Kelly, The New Biblical Theorists:Raymond E. Brown and Beyond, (Ann Arbor,Michigan, Servant Publications 224 pp. $12.95)

This book has, in addition to a foreword byFrench theologian Fr. Rene Laurentin, eight chap-ters variously entitled as follows: New BiblicalTheories and the Catholic Church; New BiblicalTheories and the Critics; What Is ScientificallyControllable Biblical Evidence?; Historical Crit-icism and the Infancy Narratives; The Foundationof the Church: Priesthood and Episcopacy; Theo-logical Pluralism: Ancient and Modem; BiblicalScholarship and Theological Controversy; A Pas-tor's Critique of the Critics.

The New Biblical Theorists is a timely pub-lication, providing an analysis of the methodology,theories and questionings of those who have beenenjoying the limelight in Catholic Biblical research.It provides these scholars with an opportunity fordialogue, since the author presents the reservationsof those who have expertise in other disciplines,giving the opening to explain positions and answercriticisms. The new work offers a positive ap-preciation of what has been done in the study ofthe Sacred Books.

The publication can be termed "timely"because, while the media have provided suchexposure of the scripturists' learned views -perhaps, embarrassing them sometimes - there hasbeen little opportunity given to those who need toquestion what the media have, obviously, regardedas sensational. This reviewer found treated in thiswork many of the questions that have been posed.One of these questions is how the scripturists canseemingly set aside the centuries-long under-standing and interpretation of Sacred Scriptureheld by the community which produced thesebooks, preserved them through periods of attackand presents them today as a precious heritage; thescripturists seem to be treating the Scriptures asjust any other documents of antiquity, and sub-jecting them solely to the methods of scientifichistorical and literary research. Another questionconcerns the scripturists' contention that they havediscovered pluriformity of credal expression, ~amatter that has received much airing in the contextof ecumenical discussion, where people are openlysubjected to the process of attitude change towardsall language, resulting, unsatisfactorily for thisreviewer, in so stripping meaning from words thatambiguous language is used, allowing to variousinterpretations equal acceptance. Still anotherquestion surfaces about how the Holy Spirit can

allow the teaching expressed by the Fathers of theCouncils, including those of the Second Vatican,little by little to disappear and be replaced by atleast uncertainty on such issues, as inerrancy, whichseem to be re-interpreted by contemporary scrip-turists. Perhaps naively, this reviewer considers thatonly one teaching can be right, ever, for those forwhom the Councils speak authoritatively, and evenfor those whose scientific views and research areconditioned by the fallibility of human judgments,which so often change.

These are just some of the questions to whichMsgr. Kelly provides an answer, substantiating hisclaims by an analysis which is thorough, calling forcalm consideration of the consequences in whichthe new theorists would involve us, so suggestingthat the assumptions and premises, upon whichthey rest, need to be re-assessed.

This reviewer has no doubt that all concerned,the scripturists and those in authority in theChurch, particularly, those concerned with theformation of clerics, religious, teachers and cate-chists, will listen carefully to what Mgr. Kellyshows conclusively is at stake, namely, God'srevelation. It is this reviewer's opinion that thepastoral clergy will be heartened by Mgr. Kelly'swork and that their morale will be restored andsupported. They have every reason to be gratefulto him, as have the scripturists themselves, whomust always re-examine their methodology, whentheir work is so trenchantly challenged by sowell-known and able a scholar.

Fr. John P. WilkinsonQuondam Lecturer in Pastoral Studies

Faculty of Theology, University ofOtago, New Zealand.

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--Fr. Paul Toinet, Theological Cautions: A DoctrinalAnalysis of the Church in France and Elsewheretranslation from the French and introduction byFr. Michael Wrenn (Chicago, Franciscan HeraldPress 1982 165 pp. $10.00)

This book has two parts; one entitled "TheProtestantization of the Church," concerned withrecent lax doctrinal postures, the decline of thepriesthood, alienation from Rome, and the weak-ening of the bishops' office, etc.; the second withinternal and external Church dialogue based on theChurch's truth, one which transcends politicallabels.

The fITst section explores the conflictingecclesiologies presently at work in the Church and

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the political power of academics and press to"bend" the exactness of dogmatic truth. Fr. Toinettakes up the problem of neo-Gallicanism and theuncomfortable situation in which bishops now findthemselves. His conclusion is that there never canbe a good "protestantization" of the Church, thatthe only reform possible is a Catholic reform. In hisexhortation to universal but peaceful dialogue, Fr.Toinet stresses the prophetic role of the Pope andforswears conciliation to the detriment of Catho-licism.

Fr. Wrenn summarizes the author's thesis:"[He] seeks to analyze and understand a numberof key issues with which the Roman CatholicChurch in France and elsewhere has had to grappleduring this post-conciliar period." That is exactlywhat he does. And what he says applies beyondFrance.

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In the Name of Peace. Collective Statements of theUnited State Bishops on Warand Peace, 1918-1980.Washington, D.C.: N.C.C.B.jU.S.C.C., 1983.

While this little book is presented as a col-lection of official statement of the Americanhierarchy on questions of war and peace, by far thelongest item - and perhaps the most significant onein it is an article by Fr. J. Brian Hehir, whichserves as an appendix. Fr. Hehir is Director of theDepartment of International Justice and Peace. Hehas been a chief staff officer in the shaping ofrecent statements of the American bishops in thesocial order, at a time when the radical changesnoted by Dr. J. Brian Benedstad and Fr. AveryDulles have been made in the whole philosophy ofpreparing pastoral statements (c.f. F.c.S. News-letter, December 1982, pp. 26-27).

In this brief note I would like to call attentionto only one facet of Fr. Hehir's interesting essay:the question of theological dissent. On p. 101Hehir notes simply that "pluralism is both a factand a desired characteristic in Catholic moraltheology today." He does not point out thatauthentic Church documents distinguish variouskinds of pluralism, and count a certain kind ofdissent as highly undesirable. (Cf., e.g., Pope PaulVI, Adhortatio Apostolica, "Paterna cum Bene-volentia," Sect. IV, first 3 paragraphs [Dec. 3,1974]; Sacred Congregation for Christian Edu-cation, The Theological Education of FuturePriests, No. 66 and 123 [Feb. 22, 1976]; see alsoPope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter "RedemptorHominis," n. 19 [March 4,1979]).

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The distinction between laudable and un-acceptable forms of pluralism is a most importantone. Some scholars clarify the distinction betweenthem by the use of the phrases "conwlementarypluralism" and "contradictory pluralism." (See:Thomas Dubay, "The State of Moral Theology: ACritical Appraisal," Theological Studies 35 (1974),pp. 482-506).

Some American moral theologians have beenleaders in what may be called "contradictorypluralism." That is, they hold that it is proper fortheologians to countradict insistent teachings ofthe pope and bishops (even when they are re-affirming the constant and very firm receivedteachings of the Church.) Father Charles Curranwould appear to be a leader in such "contradictorypluralism," and in his non-nuanced praises ofpluralism, Fr. Hehir adduces only Fr. Curran as awitness to the meaning of pluralism.

Surely one would find it difficult to supposethat Pope John Paul II is an enthusiastic supporterof the kind of pluralism that contradicts so muchof his firm teaching on the importance of moralabsolutes in matters of family ethics, life ethics,war ethics. (For example, Fr. Hehir notes Fr.Curran's rather adventuresome position that onemay, for suitable reasons, at times take directly thelife of an innocent person; and he seems to besuggesting that that position ought not be countedentirely unacceptable. But if that position is to becounted a plausible one, we have mortallywounded the principle of discrimination.) One whoreads carefully John Paul II's Familiaris Consortio(see, e.g., No. 31) would hardly judge that theHoly Father finds the sort of pluralism Fr. Curranrepresents to be acceptable.

Theologians should read carefully what FatherHehir writes on pp. 109 ff. Here he states withconsiderable accuracy the fundamental principlesof the revisionary moral theory of Fr. RichardMcCormick. Hehir insists that McCormick'steaching is "revisionary, not revolutionary." Bythat he seems to mean that McCormick's positionis a moderate one, to which all should be open. Tomany Catholic scholars, however, McCormick'sposition seems rather a very radical view. Changesin principle are always far-reaching. And to teachthat it is permissible to act directly against themost basic human values for a good enough,reasonis to suggest that the moral absolutes that havebeen especially characteristic of Catholic moralteaching all through the centuries must be rejected.It would no longer be appropriate to hold that onemust never slay the innocent, engage in nomosexualactivity, sterilize, remarry after a valid and con-


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John Joseph Cardinal CarberryArchbishop John J. MaguireBishop John J. GrahamBishop Lawrence P. GravesBishop Edward J. HarperBishop George LynchBishop Charles MaloneyBishop Emerson J. MooreMsgr. Francis M. Costello

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summated sacramental marriage while one's spouseis yet alive. One must be very innocent to supposethat theologians using the revisionary principles ofFr. McCormick have not already drawn these andmany more disturbing conclusions.

Many scholars and pastoral leaders are con-vinced that there is a significant relationshipbetween the growing rejection of moral absolutesamong revisionary theologians and religious edu-cators on one hand, and the painful growth of"selective Catholicism" on the other. If mostCatholics today reject Catholic teachings in sexualethics, and in other area of morals and doctrine, asFather Greeley tells us they do, is this unrelated tothe fact than an influential sect of scholars remainslargely un criticized by pastoral leaders when they

Msgr. John C. Knott R.I.P. w~

Msgr. Knott, Director of the Family LifeBureau - NCWC during the Birth Control Con-troversy of the 1960's died in West Hartford,Conn. March 25, 1983. A war-time Navy Chaplainhe was one of the founding fathers of the vigorousCana Movement from 1946 onward. A valiantdefender on the faith, he was also one of Hart-ford's most distinguished priests. Pray for him.

Non-Profit Org.

U.S. Postage

PAIDJamaica, N.Y.

Permit No. 451

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suggest everywhere that authentic teachings of theChurch may be casually dismissed as merelypositions of "conservatives"?

Certainly the American bishops are not goingto approve propositions blatantly asserting a posi-tion of dissent; and no such propositions appear inthe 1983 Pastoral on peace. But when leadingdissenters are utilized as chief advisors, dissent canbe injected into a document in more occult ways:in things not said, in subtle ambiguities, in forms ofargument, in interpretaions of "proportion." Onereads the things that have appeared in variousdrafts in this Pastoral, and wonders at the path ofthings to come.

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Fr. Ronald Lawler, OFM., Cap.