Authority Under Fire

The Roman Catholic Church is an authoritarian, hierarchal institution whose Pope and bishops claim to govern by divine right as descendants of Christ's Apostles. This fundamental Catholic concept is now undergoing widespread scrutiny, criticism and questioning, leading to what Father Joseph Gallagher an editor of Baltimore's archdiocesan weekly bluntly calls "a crisis of obedience in the church." What is being questioned is not authority as such, but how it is exercised; not the concept of obedience, but what it means in the modern world of free men.

The Spirit of the Time. The current Catholic mood of restlessness and discontent is in part inspired by challenge to authority plentifully visible in secular society. "Members of the church are also citizens of the world," writes Father Gallagher in the weekly Ave Maria. "They are unavoidably influenced by the spirit of their own time in history ."

The re-examination of authority also stems from the aggiornamento of the Second Vatican Council, which is transforming Catholicism, in the words of Kansas City Layman Robert Hoyt editor of the National Catholic Reporter "from a religion of paternalism to a religion of personal responsibility ." The debates in St. Peter's have made it clear that it is no sin to question outdated traditions. Moreover, the council's decree on the nature of the church marks the triumph of a revolution in theological thinking about what Catholicism is. It not only restores to bishops collegial rule that was theirs in the early church; it also justifies freedom of action and thought by the laity, who, the decree says, are "permitted and sometimes even obliged to express their opinions on those things which concern the good of the church."

This restructuring of authority has led to conflict and tension at almost every level of the church. Among bishops, for example, there is widespread resentment against efforts of the Roman Curia to limit the council's reforms and the scope of the bishops' collegial power. Last week, the U.S. hierarchy's ecumenical commission met in Washington to formulate rules for interfaith contacts; it ignored an order limiting those contacts handed down recently by Archbishop Egidio Vagnozzi, the apostolic delegate (TIME, March 12).

Outspoken Journals. Among laymen, the new spirit of questioning shows in the tone of such lay-edited Catholic journals as Commonweal, Ramparts Jubilee and the National Catholic Reporter, which have sharply criticized such authoritarians as James Francis Cardinal Mclntyre, and have given plenty of space to speculative proposals for further Catholic reforms in clerical celibacy and the theology of marriage. It is also apparent in the zest with which laymen are writing about Catholic theology, often critically. In a new book called Objections to Roman Catholicism, British Housewife Magdalen Coffin challenges many devotional practices as superstition; Rosemary Haughton writes a sharp but reasoned demand for more freedom in the church.

Increasingly, priests and laymen disobey the orders of an immediate superior in the name of obedience to "the mind of the church." One striking example took place in England last month where Father Arnold McMahon of Worcestershire and Father Joseph Cocker of the Isle of Wight openly challenged the church's position on contraception. "The official teaching authority has decreed that contraception is always wrong," wrote Father McMahon in the Birmingham Post. "This is what I deny." It is also denied in practice by millions of Catholics. "They don't leave the church over birth control nowadays," says San Francisco Jesuit George Kennard. "They leave that particular doctrine."

Quitting the Seminaries. In religious orders, there is considerable discussion by priests and nuns about the need to modernize the vow of obedience to allow more individual initiative. Bishops are also worried about the defection from seminaries of candidates for the priesthood who feel that they can do more for the church in secular jobs.

Many bishops have responded to defiance of authority with traditional methods of command. Bishop Bernard J. Topel of Spokane, Wash., last month said that "1964 will go down in the history of the Catholic press as a year of shame." Not only were certain publications guilty of attacking bishops by name, but, claimed the prelate, they called into question "the obligation of the laity to accept the teaching of bishops." Jesuit officials suppressed the publication of a symposium on obedience that raised some critical questions about the society's rules. Hierarchical pressure last month forced the National Council of Catholic Men to cancel a four-part television series explaining the current church-wide debate over birth control. Both Father McMahon and Father Cocker were promptly disciplined by their superiors, forbidden to preach, and sent off to retreats.

To Love & Serve. There are plenty of theologians who feel that such blunt methods are as obsolete as the Inquisition, and derive from an outdated understanding of the church as a purely juridical institution. Authority, they argue, has indeed the right to command and condemn--but it has an even greater obligation to love and serve. Jesuit Biblical Scholar John L. McKenzie of Chicago believes that the concept of bishops and priests as servants rather than masters of their flocks is a return to the earliest tradition of the church: "The base of authority in the New Testament is love, not the power to command or the power to coerce."

Many prelates, accepting this new theology of authority, have tried to put it into practice by welcoming laymen and priests into the corridors of power. In Atlanta, Archbishop Paul Hallinan has appointed more than 125 laymen to church commissions; Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston intends to have laymen present at archdiocesan ecumenical synods.

The real problem, argues Swiss Theologian Hans Kueng, is how soon and how widely the spirit of the council is accepted throughout the church. If it is not, he warns, it could lead "to an extremely serious crisis of confidence in regard to the ecclesiastical office, which will not result in a new schism (no one today would find that worth the trouble), but rather in a further quiet exodus from the church on the part of so many for whom the council has rekindled a new hope. And who should like to take upon himself the responsibility for that?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.