BC opens forum on Church's future

(9-19-02) — Dedicated to Cardinal Newman's prescription that "great minds need elbow room," an ambitious academic inquiry into the current crisis in the Catholic Church was launched at Boston College Sept. 18 with an address by a prominent American religion writer who seized sacred cows by the horn.

Longtime Newsweek religion editor Kenneth L. Woodward, speaking to a Conte Forum audience of 4,000 at the opening of The Church in the 21st Century program, challenged the Church and Catholic universities to do a better job of passing on the Catholic faith.

Himself a Catholic, Woodward urged discussion of the ordination of women and married men, while noting his own opposition to either innovation. He encouraged a greater lay voice in Church affairs, but warned against too closely emulating mainline Protestant denominations that have been in steady decline.

And he credited the Church's defense of traditional concepts of marriage and family, but argued Church teachings against contraception have undermined its witness on abortion.

Woodward was keynote speaker at the opening session of The Church in the 21st Century, a two-year academic inquiry Boston College is sponsoring into the issues underlying the clerical sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. [Web site: http://www.bc.edu/church21]

Respondents at the event were Monan Professor of Theology Lisa Sowle Cahill and Professor of Theology Roberto S. Goizueta of Boston College, and University Trustee Jack Connors Jr. '63, chairman and chief executive of the advertising firm of Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos.

Connors, a prominent executive who is one of the most active Catholic laymen in the city, sent a charge through the arena with pointed criticisms of the Boston Archdiocese's handling of clerical sexual-abuse cases.

''Those church leaders who have made a series of bad judgments may continue to hold onto their titles, but they will be leaders in title only,'' he said. "We need to open the doors, let in some fresh air, stop sweeping our secrets under the Orientals," he said.

"The Church is the people," said Connors. "Our faith has lasted 2,000 years. Today, you and I are the stewards. We are the future."

University President William Leahy, SJ, said The Church in the 21st Century project will focus on three issues: the roles of the laity, priests and bishops; sexuality in Catholic teaching and contemporary culture, and the challenge of passing on the Catholic faith to succeeding generations.

"Obviously, Boston College alone cannot resolve all the hurts and challenges facing the Catholic community today," said Fr. Leahy. "Nor does it seek to supplant bishops or others in the Church who must eventually respond to pressing issues.

"Our initiative intends to be respectful of the Church and its teachings and tradition, strive for balance and fairness in its programs, and promote healing and understanding in the Catholic Church.

"I realize that at times our initiative may generate disagreement and controversy. Faithful Catholics hold different opinions about many important matters, and it may well be, at times, that views and positions will become controversial or disputed.

"When that happens, we need to remind ourselves that Boston College, as a university, is committed to open discussion and to the objective consideration of the wide variety of opinions that can be reasonably argued."

Woodward obliged with an address likely to stir reactions on the academic left as well as on the clerical right.

"This initiative…emphasizes the importance of a Catholic university as the place where the church does its learning. If a university is not free to inquire, it is not a university. But if it does not understand and respect its role in the basic mission of the Church, it is not a Catholic university.

"I hope your project will be a sober and balanced probe. The culture of the American academy, unfortunately, has in general become more ideological – and therefore more intellectually predictable – since the late Sixties. It has also become generally hostile to all forms of authority other than its own. In light of this, your task will be all the more delicate if it is properly dispassionate, humbly intellectual rather than arrogantly academic."

Woodward said the time was "long overdue for a disciplined discussion of ordaining women and married men to the priesthood." But he noted he opposed both changes, for reasons he found "sociologically compelling," and warned that Protestant-style reforms would not necessarily change the Church for the better.

"My advice to Catholic friends…is 'Look before you leap' – that is, I see no reason why the Catholic Church should imitate those declining mainline Protestant denominations which ordain women, reject clerical celibacy and institutionalize lay leadership. Would-be Church reformers would do well to study the Protestant experience, where they would learn that tyranny by committee can be as stifling as tyranny by hierarchy."

Woodward urged a "professionalization" of the priesthood that would bring standards and accountability to parish ministry, and at the same time, a greater attention by bishops to spiritual discernment than to careerism. "I'd rather a bishop with a knack for holiness than a head for business," he said. He suggested the laity be given a greater role in running the institutional machinery of the Church, and also a voice in the appointment of hierarchy. "I see this crisis as an opportunity to demand and declare new criteria for choosing and judging bishops," he said. "It is within church tradition to give a voice to the clergy in the selection of bishops, and I see no reason why such a voice – or at least a taking of the pulse – could not be given to laity, as well."

Woodward called for a collegial yet forthright approach by diocesan leadership when confronted with allegations of priestly abuses. "Let a bishop's bond with his priests be one of father and sons in Christ, colleagues even," he said. "Fathers do not automatically throw their sons out of the house when they are accused of wrong-doing. Neither do they shield their sons from the law when found guilty. Above all, they do not put the honor of clan or church above the truth, on the pretext of avoiding scandal."

He said the Church and its colleges must do a better job at conveying the riches of Catholicism if its heirs are to engage in meaningful participation in the faith.

"Beginning in the late Sixties, when the flood of baby boomers reached adolescence, most religious institutions either indulged their young by jettisoning hard demands, or ignored them altogether," he said. "The Catholic Church lost at least a generation of young people through misconceived catechesis and other foolish enthusiasms following Vatican Council II. But mainline Protestantism has suffered the most, in part because the otherwise laudable ecumenical movement – which began decades earlier as an intra-Protestant afffair – blunted differences in historic traditions and unintentionally encouraged the kind of church-shopping that has virtually destroyed all but the most sentimental denominational loyalties.

"For instance, in the Sixties, liberal Protestants jettisoned their church camps and youth groups, and woke up in the 1980s to find that most little Presbyterians do not grow up to become adult Presbyterians but something else – or just as often – nothing at all. Catholics, in part because of their school system and especially because of their all-male high schools, have done a marginally better job in retaining the young.

"In fact, mainline denominations like the Episcopalians would be half their current shrunken size were it not for an influx of divorced or otherwise disaffected Catholics. Put another way, the Catholic Church, though growing through immigration, has become the farm system for American Protestantism – and especially for the fastest-growing sector of American Christianity, the no-name non-denominational community churches." With the breakdown of ethnic and religious neighborhood enclaves, the Church has a vital role to play in forming the young, particularly in a media culture in which to be a religious parent…is to find oneself immersed in guerrilla warfare on all fronts," he said.

"Now the effort at formation must be conscious and persistent," he said. "Parents must make their children realize that to be Catholic is not only distinctive but often quite at odds with the culture of public education, the media and entertainment. Children should be taught that as Christians, they will always live in tension with the powers of the world. This is not an easy lesson to teach or to accept, when, at present, the Catholic pulpits are reluctant to announce – as Dorothy Day liked to remind us – that love of God is 'a harsh and dangerous love.'"

Catholic schools too often fall short in this mission, he said. "I am old-fashioned enough to think that Catholic universities exist to train students to be critics of the world they are about to enter, that criticism being rooted in a Catholic vision not only of social justice but of the hope that Christ brings to the world…

"But I wonder: would Boston College, or any other Catholic university, be willing to withhold a diploma from any Catholic student who did not pass a sophisticated, mandatory test designed to measure a student's grasp of the forms and content of the faith? And if you did, how many of your students do you think would pass?

In short, I see no point in talking about the laity's role in the Church if the graduates of our best Catholic universities are uninterested or unable to enter into that loving, critical conversation with the past, which is why we have tradition."

On matters sexual, the Catholic Church remains a voice of conscience at a time traditional social mores have collapsed, Woodward said.

"Abortion on demand is the law of the land; abortion itself is widely practiced as a form of birth control and represents the only instance in law in which the snuffing out of human life – itself a phrase prohibited in the media – is tolerated for any reason. Put another way, abortion is the only form of taking another's life in which intention is given no consideration in law or in public morals. What matters is individual choice.

"Indeed, some Protestant denominations – the United Church of Christ comes to mind – see their pro-choice position on abortion as a natural extension of the principal of individual interpretation of Scripture. And in politics abortion remains the one constant benchmark issue separating the two major parties.

"In this context, Catholic sexual norms appear to be not only eccentric, but dangerously sectarian. Possibly even un-American. This is not altogether a bad thing. It is a tribute to be disrespected for the right reasons."

Yet Vatican teaching against birth control that has been found unconvincing by many Catholics, lay and clerical, has undermined acceptance of the Church's teaching authority in sexual matters.

"The effort to ground its opposition to contraception in a universal natural law, as in Humanae Vitae, not only hasn't persuaded otherwise committed Catholics, it has also demonstrated that nature and its laws are not as transparently obvious to others of good moral will," said Woodward.

"Indeed, nothing, I think, has so hobbled the Church's witness on abortion as Humanae Vitae, nothing has distanced more women from the Church, and, I suspect, nothing has so compromised the consciences of priests in the confessional than that single encyclical."

He credited the Church for its defense of marriage and family as underpinnings of society. And while saying he does not see civil unions among homosexuals posing a threat to the institution of marriage, he noted he views that institution as an exclusively heterosexual bond that has among its purposes the raising of children.

"It seems to me the Church owes it to society to insist on the permanence of the marriage bond," he said. "After 40 years of sexual revolution, even the Joe Namaths among us want to make good marriages and make them last…There is wisdom in the Church's treating marriage as a sacrament, and realism in its insistence that a good marriage, like a good life, requires the grace of God.

"There is, finally, the question of homosexual marriage. If you feel, as I do, that marriage is possible only between male and female, and that procreation and rearing of children is one of the purposes of marriage, still we must ask whether and how we also ought to encourage monogamy among homosexuals. I do not think civil unions endanger the institution of marriage. But even though infants seek attachment to whatever set of parents given them, we have ample studies demonstrating the harm that comes to children, especially boys, who have no father in their lives."

A very good essay articulating reasonableness in debate in light of today's climate.

The symposium at Boston College was attended by mostly those looking for a forum and inserting their own agenda at the same time (going by the people I know who attended - mostly "VOTF" type adherents).

I thought Mr. Woodward provided great context - we, as Catholics are not afraid to discuss any issue, but it must be within the context of Church teaching, else, why are we Catholic?

I've been keeping up with "Voice of the Faithful" (coming to a parish or diocese near you, sooner rather than later) and one of the things they say is that the hierarchy is afraid of them and their ideas for the involvement of laity in the governance of the Church. But they don't say that their starting platform is assuming Church teaching is correct, because they do not, on the whole, believe that everything the Catholic Church teaches is correct... they have an agenda which Mr. Woodward adressed rather neatly, I thought.

My impression is that the VOTF is going to someday be an umbrella for CTA, We are Church, etc., etc. dissenting groups. The members of VOTF have the same m.o. plus lots of money, media friends and educational friends (BC College, for one).

My impression also is that the VOTF leaders are providing the fill for the vacuum created in a lot of dioceses... especially mine in Boston. Our Cardinal is silent on everything right now (fear of lawsuit?) and VOTF is doing all the talking and writing the agenda. It's scary, rather like a freight train, I think, and our religious leaders need to begin to address the scandal and dissent issues ASAP because the loudest voices addressing these things are the dissent voices themselves.

I thought Mr. Woodward provided great context - we, as Catholics are not afraid to discuss any issue, but it must be within the context of Church teaching, else, why are we Catholic?

Of course Catholics are afraid to discuss certain issues. They're afraid to discuss women's ordination because the Pope has closed that possibility off.

They're afraid to discuss optional celibacy because the Pope has closed that possibility off.

They're afraid to have an honest, open discussion about contraception because they'll be called "abortion-enablers" by those who don't care to hear how, as Woodward puts it

The effort to ground its opposition to contraception in a universal natural law, as in Humanae Vitae, not only hasn't persuaded otherwise committed Catholics, it has also demonstrated that nature and its laws are not as transparently obvious to others of good moral will," said Woodward.

I accept the Church's teaching on contraception because, well, that's what the Church teaches. But there's got to be some way to reach those who've reached another conclusion without damning them to hell or questioning their good will.

I'm all for honest discussion, but it's a waste of time if there's not some mutual effort at understanding.

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