In the Catholic Church, the Spirit of Synodality (a fresh rebrand of the Spirit of Vatican II… gotta keep everything fresh, you know) seems to be blowing anew through the corridors of the Vatican, with all of the heady hopes for paradigm shifts and the reconsideration of received realities.

To some, all of this may seem fresh, vital, and unexplored at first blush. But I experience all of this talk as an invitation to post-traumatic stress. The same ecclesial revolution and devolution has been underway for sixty years. Some of the language has changed, as well as the accompanying music, imagery, and fashions, but the message is still very much as it was in the decade of ferment that followed the close of the Council. 

I’m very much a child of the Council and the early post-conciliar days. I was born in 1970, five years after the close of the Council. As the youngest of ten children, I was conceived almost exactly a year after Pope Paul VI released Humanae Vitae. I have a letter my dad wrote to his pastor the week after this encyclical letter was released, explaining why he had already re-evaluated his impression that the church was wrong, and offering to his pastor reasons why Paul VI might actually be right about artificial contraception.

I also have the script my parents wrote for my baptism in July of 1970 (that’s right; they scripted the liturgy):

Looking back, I can see in my own story that some of what followed the Council did suggest a certain new vitality, and some dimensions of the Catholic charismatic renewal, which deeply impacted the lives of my parents in the late 1960’s, has had salutary influence on the post-conciliar church.

But I also can see certain troubling trends that still seem to be marching forward, undeterred by arguments and caution and the witness of human experience.

In the mid-1990’s, the Director of Religious Education in my home parish—a woman who had achieved a Masters of Divinity degree at the Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity of the University of Saint Thomas (SPSSODUST) and was upset that she could not be ordained a priest (she went on record about this in a Minnesota Monthly feature article in 1994)—invited an ex-priest into my parish to offer a four-week adult education seminar entitled “A Church for Our Children.”

It was filled with a great deal of boilerplate theological dissent, sprinkled with passing allusions to the Second Vatican Council and a spirit of renewal. Not surprisingly, it focused on below-the-belt issues of sexual morality; as someone once observed, most heresy begins below the belt. Sin darkens the intellect and weakens the will, and some of what results are initiatives to change the church so that we don’t have to change.

I tried to explain my position to the presenter in a lengthy letter. I don’t believe I ever changed his mind at all regarding his favorite topic, but it did help me clarify my own thinking vis-a-vis theological and moral dissent in the Catholic Church. I’m reprinting the 1994 letter in full, in case someone might find it helpful in thinking through a few of the issues we frequently discover in efforts to update the Church… that where synods abound, grace might abound the more.

Thursday, March 10, 1994

Mr. Terence Dosh
4124 Harriet
Minneapolis, MN 55409

Clayton D. Emmer
6321 Yosemite Avenue
Excelsior, MN 55331

Dear Mr. Dosh:

After attending your presentation at Saint John the Baptist Parish in Excelsior last Sunday morning, I felt that I should write you in response to your lecture, which was billed as an examination of the historical and cultural backdrop of Vatican II as it relates to today’s Church.

Your lecture did indeed focus on history and the cultural response to Vatican II. I was disappointed, however, to observe that you never quoted the documents of Vatican II and never discussed the actual content of these documents.

As you opened your lecture, you made it very clear that you have an extensive background in history, and that you tend to “perceive things historically.” While I admire your love of history, I believe that, when discussing the topic of “A Church for Our Children,” it is essential to consider not only history and culture, but also objective truth as it manifests itself in natural law and divine revelation. When looking at the Church, our first question should not be “What does the Church look like to us and what do we desire the Church to be?” but rather “What is the Church as revealed by God and what does He desire for it?”

Your lecture focused almost entirely on theological dissent, and, in clear opposition to the teaching of the Church, included favorable references to topics such as birth control and divorce, as though these things were somehow mandated by historical and cultural needs. The Church is not free to change its stand on these and other doctrinal issues, as it must always preserve and proclaim the unchanging truth of Christ. Pope John Paul II has discussed the issue of history, culture and natural law in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor: The Splendor of Truth. Making reference to Matthew 19, in which Jesus proclaims the indissolubility of marriage, the Pope writes:

The great concern of our contemporaries for historicity and for culture has led some to call into question the immutability of the natural law itself, and thus the existence of “objective norms of morality” valid for all people of the present and the future, as for those of the past….

It must certainly be admitted that man always exists in a particular culture, but it must also be admitted that man is not exhaustively defined by that same culture. Moreover, the very progress of cultures demonstrates that there is something in man which transcends those cultures. This “something” is precisely human nature: this nature is itself the measure of culture and the condition ensuring that man does not become the prisoner of any of his cultures, but asserts his personal dignity by living in accordance with the profound truth of his being. To call into question the permanent structural elements of man which are connected with his own bodily dimension would not only conflict with common experience, but would render meaningless Jesus’ reference to the “beginning,” precisely where the social and cultural context of the time had distorted the primordial meaning and the role of certain moral norms (cf. Mt 19:1-9). This is the reason why “the Church affirms that underlying so many changes there are some things which do not change and are ultimately founded upon Christ, who is the same yesterday and today and for ever.” (Veritatis Splendor, II, i, 53)

As the Holy Father continues, he asserts that instead of changing moral norms to meet different historical contexts, the Church must try to discover “the most adequate formulation” of these norms. In a later section of the same encyclical, the issue of history as it relates to morality is addressed again:

From the theological viewpoint, moral principles are not dependent upon the historical moment in which they are discovered. Moreover, the fact that some believers act without following the teachings of the Magisterium, or erroneously consider as morally correct a kind of behavior declared by their Pastors as contrary to the law of God, cannot be a valid argument for rejecting the truth of the moral norms taught by the Church. The affirmation of moral principles is not within the competence of formal empirical methods. While not denying the validity of such methods, but at the same time not restricting its viewpoint to them, moral theology, faithful to the supernatural sense of the faith, takes into account first and foremost the spiritual dimension of the human heart and its vocation to divine love. (III, 112)

While I recognize that your talk was not designed as a discussion of moral theology, your lecture by its content frequently touched upon issues of morality. However, I heard no mention about the vocation of the human person to love God by following Christ. The absence of this spiritual perspective was evident several times during your lecture; I will limit myself to one example. As a Secular Franciscan, I was naturally interested in your references to Saint Francis. I certainly agree with you that Francis was a great saint and that he “changed the way people perceived God’s relation to them and changed society.” However, you made no mention of how Francis became a catalyst for change. By the tenor of your lecture, you left the impression that he was a revolutionary who brought about change by deliberately championing social reform and/or reform of Church structure. However, in reality, Francis brought about change in the world simply by attending to his own conversion, by trying to follow the crucified Christ and to serve His Church. Dietrich von Hildebrand, whom Pope Pius XII called the twentieth-century Doctor of the Church, had this to say about Saint Francis and the modern interpretation of him:

No other saint is so misunderstood or misinterpreted as is St. Francis. Some have made him a pantheist; others a lovely troubadour, a romantic worshipper of nature; others again have seen in him a subjectivist and a forerunner of Luther. All these interpretations are false; they come from the spirit of the world. Only he who sees Francis as the most faithful son of the holy, infallible Church, ”the mother of saints”; only he who acknowledges every detail of Francis’ life as the effect of the all-conquering, all-redeeming love of Jesus;–only he can comprehend the nature of this most radiant of all saints. Whoever contemplates objectively this saintly figure… must feel how wrong is all such talk of him as a “life’s artist,” or a “modern saint,” and how far from the truth are all these terms, expressive of the spirit of the times, with regard to one who is encircled with the bright light of eternity. He set up no program, neither for social reforms nor for anything else. He was no “sage” who claimed to have found the secrets of peace of soul and contentment. He was a saint…. (Image of Christ: Saint Francis of Assisi, pp. 28-9)

I think this excerpt highlights the fact that our primary obligation is to follow Christ, and that any and all reform that we accomplish must be done in Christ, with Christ and for Christ, which at the same time means that it should be done in His Church, with His Church and for His Church.

This brings me back to the issue of theological dissent and your presentation on Vatican II. Particularly in your discussion of the early “implementation” of Vatican II in Holland, you failed to provide your audience with any sense of the actual content of the Council documents. Without reference to these documents, there is no way for your audience to know whether the implementation of Vatican II in Holland was consistent with Council teaching. When one actually reads the Council documents, however, one discovers that Vatican II represents neither a spirit of dissent nor a non-hierarchical ecclesiology of the People of God. If the Dutch Church did, in fact, view Vatican II as an invitation to dissent, it certainly found no such invitation within the actual Council documents.

You stated in your talk that the demand for a married priesthood and birth control came from the “whole Dutch Church, through the bishop” who is ”just as apostolic as Peter” and who is “an equal apostle with the Pope.” I wonder what you mean by this statement. If you are implying that the bishop of Holland exercises an equal and autonomous authority, then you are contradicting the actual teaching of Vatican II, which declared that:

The college or body of bishops has… no authority unless united with the Roman Pontiff, Peter’s successor, as its head, whose primatial authority, let it be added, over all, whether pastors or faithful, remains in its integrity. For the Roman Pontiff, by reason his office as Vicar of Christ, namely, and as pastor of the entire Church, has full, supreme and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered. (Lumen Gentium, III, 22)

In short, the bishops must exercise their authority in communion with the Pope.

John Paul II has written very explicitly about the dissent rampant in today’s Church and says that it is inappropriate to life in the body of Christ. The Church is not a democracy, he points out:

While exchanges and conflicts of opinion may constitute normal expressions of public life in a representative democracy, moral teaching certainly cannot depend simply upon respect for a process: indeed, it is in no way established by following the rules and deliberative procedures typical of a democracy. Dissent, in the form of carefully organized protests and polemics carried on in the media, is opposed to ecclesial communion and to a correct understanding of the hierarchical constitution of the People of God. Opposition to the teaching of the Church’s Pastors cannot be seen as a legitimate expression either of Christian freedom or of the diversity of the Spirit’s gifts. When this happens, the Church’s Pastors have the duty to act in conformity with their apostolic mission, insisting that the right of the faithful to receive Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity must always be respected. “Never forgetting that he too is a member of the People of God, the theologian must be respectful of them, and be committed to offering them a teaching which in no way does harm to the doctrine of the faith.” (Veritatis Splendor, III, 113)

As stated above, the faithful have the right to receive the actual teachings of the Church, and theologians should respect this. A few pages earlier in the document, the Pope speaks more explicitly about the responsibilities of theologians, and, in particular, moral theologians:

As the Instruction Donum Veritatis teaches: “Among the vocations awakened by the Spirit in the Church is that of the theologian. His role is to pursue in a particular way an ever deeper understanding of the word of God found in the inspired Scriptures and handed on by the living Tradition of the Church. He does this in communion with the Magisterium, which has been charged with the responsibility of preserving the deposit of faith.” (Veritatis Splendor, III, 109)

The theologian has a duty to work in communion with the Church as he helps her to develop a deeper and more profound understanding of the revelation of Christ.

In your discussion of dissent, you spoke frequently of freedom. You called freedom “the most significant value in the world since the end of World War II.” Freedom is indeed very important: It is a gift of God and is essential to the good of the human person. However, as Vatican II observed, freedom is often misunderstood:

It is… only in freedom that man can turn himself towards what is good. The people of our time prize freedom very highly and strive eagerly for it. In this they are right. Yet they often cherish it improperly, as if it gave them leave to do anything they like, even when it is evil. But that which is truly freedom is an exceptional sign of the image of God in man. For God willed that man should “be left in the power of his own counsel” (cf. Eccl. 15:14) so that he might of his own accord seek his creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him. (Gaudium et Spes, I, 17)

In other words, freedom gains its value by reference to the Good. Choosing what is not good does not represent freedom but rather slavery to fallen nature and sin. As John Paul II makes clear in his encyclical on moral theology, freedom is related in its essence to Truth and the Good:

According to Christian faith and the Church’s teaching, “only the freedom which submits to the Truth leads the human person to his true good. The good of the person is to be in the Truth and to do the Truth.”

….This essential bond between Truth, the Good and Freedom has been largely lost sight of by present-day culture. As a result, helping man to rediscover it represents nowadays one of the specific requirements of the Church’s mission, for the salvation of the worId…. According to some, it appears that one no longer need acknowledge the enduring absoluteness of any moral value. All around us we encounter contempt for human life after conception and before birth; the ongoing violation of basic rights of the person; the unjust destruction of goods minimally necessary for a human life. Indeed, something more serious has happened: man is no longer convinced that only in the truth can he find salvation…. This relativism becomes, in the field of theology, a lack of trust in the wisdom of God, who guides man with the moral law. (Veritatis Splendor, III, 84)

In a later passage, the Pope points out that the Church puts itself at the service of man’s freedom:

The Church’s firmness in defending the universal and unchanging moral norms is not demeaning at all. Its only purpose is to serve man’s true freedom. Because there can be no freedom apart from or in opposition to the truth, the categorical—unyielding and uncompromising—defense of the absolutely essential demands of man’s personal dignity must be considered the way and the condition for the very existence of freedom. (III, 96)

The authority of the Church is not the enemy of man’s freedom; rather, the Church is the champion of man’s freedom because she upholds the validity of the natural law, that law which God has inscribed in human nature for the good of man:

The authority of the Church… in no way undermines the freedom of conscience of Christians. This is so not only because freedom of conscience is never freedom “from” the truth but always and only freedom “in” the truth, but also because the Magisterium does not bring to the Christian conscience truths which are extraneous to it; rather it brings to light the truths which it ought already to possess, developing them from the starting point of the primordial act of faith. (II, ii, 64)

The Church, in responding to its vocation as teacher, does not demonstrate hostility to man or his freedom, but acts as a mother of souls. As John Paul II writes in yet another passage of the same encyclical:

The Church’s teaching, and in particular her firmness in defending the universal and permanent validity of the precepts prohibiting intrinsically evil acts, is not infrequently seen as the sign of an intolerable intransigence, particularly with regard to the enormously complex and conflict-filled situations present in the moral life of individuals and of society today; this intransigence is said to be in contrast with the Church’s motherhood. The Church, one hears, is lacking in understanding and compassion. But the Church’s motherhood can never in fact be separated from her teaching mission, which she must always carry out as the faithful Bride of Christ, who is the Truth in person….

In fact, genuine understanding and compassion must mean love for the person, for his true good, for his authentic freedom. And this does not result, certainly, from concealing or weakening moral truth, but rather from proposing it in its most profound meaning as an outpouring of God’s eternal Wisdom, which we have received in Christ, and as a service to man, to the growth of his freedom and to the attainment of his happiness. (III, 95)

I thought this quote was particularly significant in light of the title of your lecture series, “A Church for our Children”—a title that indicates an interest in what will nourish and strengthen the lives of future generations. It seems to me that if we desire our children to be morally and spiritually nourished and strengthened, we would do well to entrust them to the mother of souls, who offers them Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life. By entrusting ourselves to the teachings of the Church and by putting these teachings into practice, we will be modeling for our children the vocation to which Christ calls all people and showing them the path to eternal life.

Please forgive the length of this letter. There were important issues raised by your talk, however, which I felt should be addressed. As I am not a theologian by profession, and as I think the best way to understand the Church’s teaching is to go to actual Church documents, I have quoted extensively from such documents. If what I have written here in any way contradicts the teaching of Christ as safeguarded by the Church, it is against my knowledge and will. I desire to submit in all things to Christ and to His Church. If this sort of submission makes one a fool, then foolishness is what I desire above all things.

I hope that you will respond to this letter. I plan to attend your next lecture this coming Sunday, so I will see you then.

In the love of Christ and his servant Francis,

Clayton Emmer

Saint John the Baptist Parish
Excelsior

cc:
Fr. Allen McIntyre, Pastor
Sheila Kozar, Christian Community Education 

Works Cited

Flannery, Austin, ed. Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents. 1975. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1980.

Hildebrand, Dietrich von. Image of Christ: Saint Francis of Assisi. 1963. Steubenville: Franciscan University Press, 1993.

John Paul II, Pope. Veritatis Splendor: The Splendor of Truth. Boston: Saint Paul Books & Media, 1993.