(2 of 3)
The book most at issue is his 767-page tome Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (Seabury; $24.50), published in Dutch in 1974. The writing is prolix, to put it mildly. But Jesus makes clear that the author is heavily influenced by liberal Protestant Bible scholarship of the past century. In this modern approach, the Gospels are not the unquestioned Word of God but collections of competing evidence about Jesus Christ, various layers of tradition subject to interpretation that may or may not bear resemblance to what the historical Jesus did or said. English-language reviewers of Jesus have been less confounded and perplexed about Schillebeeckx's notion of Jesus' divinity than about his murky meditations on whether Jesus rose bodily from the grave or merely lived on through some miraculous renewal of faith on the part of his disciples
The report on last week's hearing will go for consideration to the Cardinals who govern the doctrinal congregation, then to Pope John Paul. A judgment will be months in coming. The Vatican could merely issue a formal warning if it finds "false teachings." It could also bar Schillebeeckx from teaching at any Catholic university or ask the Dominican order to suspend him from priestly functions, as happened to France's Jacques Pohier earlier this year for doubting the Resurrection of Christ, among other things.
The Vatican would ponder long and hard before taking these steps against such a major scholar, and Schillebeeckx exuded confidence when the hearing was over. "I do not fear condemnation like Pohier," he said. "There was no difference between us on the Resurrection," though at least one panelist was dissatisfied over his handling of Christ's divinity in the book.
However the case turns out, it is the latest sign that John Paul's Vatican is determined to crack down on divisive interpretations of doctrine. Evidence of division is plentiful. Just before the hearing, Schillebeeckx won a ringing endorsement from The Netherlands' Primate, Johannes Cardinal Willebrands, who sits on the board of the doctrinal congregation. Dutch theological students joined the campaign, rounding up more than 60,000 signatures for a petition taken to the Vatican as the hearing began. Willebrands will be back in Rome with his bishops in January for an unprecedented meeting with the Pope aimed at bringing order out of the current doctrinal chaos in the Dutch church. A new poll in The Netherlands shows that only 47% of Catholics there think Christ is the Son of God, compared with 70% in 1966; fewer still be lieve in a personal God or life after death.
In The Netherlands and elsewhere, John Paul plainly seeks to shore up the church through doctrinal discipline. In Germany, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger recently used a long dormant concordat to deny a professorship to Johann Baptist Metz, a leading exponent of Liberation Theology. The Vatican doctrinal office has also just issued a second attack on a liberal study of sexual morality commissioned by the Catholic Theological Society of America.