(3 of 10)
French Theologian Jean Cardinal Danielou, writing in L'Osservatore Romano recently, argued that the attacks on celibacy were really a challenge to papal authority. To a certain extent, James Shannon would agree. At issue in the clerical exodus, he argues, is the nature of church government and the way in which its teachings are formulated. For centuries, Catholicism was a consistent defender of the principles of Roman law, which envisions government from the top by code and decree, with moral and theological teachings established by deductive reasoning from a priori principles.
At the Second Vatican Council, the church began to turn away from Roinanita; it envisioned a more democratized church in which power would be shared, and suggested that doctrine and morality should reflect not the deductions of casuists but the faith and reflective experience of God's people. Many of the exodus clergy in North America and Europe have also been affected by non-Roman ideologies: the Anglo-Saxon common law, in which community consensus shapes law, and the scientific method, which arrives at truth through empirical reasoning based on observed evidence. All this contributes to a rebellion against a church hierarchy still trapped by its traditional concept of how power should be used. "Ours is a legal struggle with authority," says Sister Anita of the Immaculate
Heart nuns. "Where we see the embodiment of authority and where the Sacred Congregation of Religion sees it."
Ironically, the clerical exodus was occasioned by the Second Vatican Council —the most significant movement of Catholic renewal in centuries. Initially, Vatican II was heralded as the first council in history that did not lead to a schism. Many observers now fear the danger of what they call a "psychological schism," in which progressive Catholics will nominally remain in the church, but increasingly work out their own definitions of Christian life.
The greatest danger of such a psychological schism is in The Netherlands.
Before World War II and perhaps even before the council, Dutch Catholics were noted for their pious conservatism. The war forced many of the church's leaders into working for a common cause with previously distrusted Protestants and into dialogue with atheists. The Dutch interpreted the new direction of Vatican II with their customary thoroughness. "We are used to taking everything very seriously in Holland," says Bernard Jan Cardinal Alfrink, 69, the imperturbable biblical scholar who heads his nation's hierarchy. "It is not in our character to be very subtle. The Dutch are pretty stringent and rigid."
In the years since the council, Dutch theologians have been among the church's leaders in proposing novel formulations of dogma. Abetted by their priests, Dutch lay Catholics vociferously opposed Pope Paul's 1968 ban on contraception, which they have largely ignored. Last month a nationwide Pastoral Council passed a resolution urging, optional celibacy for priests.
Eminent Names