The Wardman Wire

Simon Barrow has been thinking about the tensions within the Roman Catholic Church between a traditional vision of authority, and a desire to engage with human rights and the modern world.

Whose rights, whose wrongs?

Benedict XVI’s recent, high profile visit to the United States highlighted the coincidence of two anniversaries. The first was his own inauguration on 24 April 2005 as 265th reigning Pope, Bishop of Rome, spiritual head of the 1.2 billion strong Roman Catholic Church, and Sovereign of the Vatican City State. The second, to be marked fully later this year, was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted and proclaimed by UN General Assembly in resolution 217 A (III) on 10 December 1948.

The pontiff embodies three kinds of combined headship – the ecclesiastical, the spiritual and the political. As such, his office is the supreme expression of a Christendom vision of the relation of heavenly and temporal authority in one inherited throne, invested in locus Christi. Here is a universal claim to supervening moral authority, one that causes considerable controversy within and without.

The United Nations declaration, by contrast, is the result of an agreement among states and their peoples (what is somewhat vaguely deemed “the international community”) arising from a long historical struggle, involving people of many faiths and none. Its aim is to give practical expression to an inalienable sense of human dignity, worth and mutual obligation which can be seen to be grounded (though not without disputation) in significant strands of Jewish, Christian, humanist, secular and Muslim thought.

Global ethics and institutional inquisitions

For some, the UN declaration is part of the quest for a truly global ethic arising from major points of inter-religious, inter-cultural and cross-political convergence among those “of good faith”, believers and otherwise. Such an ethic invites cooperation through consent, self-limitation and relationship (covenant) as well as regulation (contract).

One of the key figures in this quest is Professor Hans Kung, the prominent Catholic intellectual. There is, of course, an irony here; one which points to the underlying tension between some institutional religious interests and the search for universal human goods within a plural framework. For this is the same Hans Kung who, after forming a collegial academic relationship with one Josef Ratzinger (they shared a reforming agenda as advisers at the great Vatican II Council) ended up being stripped of his official teaching office by the Church in 1979, after he questioned the doctrine of papal infallibility and the functioning of the magesterium. Meanwhile, the man he had known for nearly 35 years (at that stage) went on to become the Vatican’s prime theological ‘enforcer’.

In that capacity Cardinal Ratzinger denounced not only Hans Kung. He also disciplined and condemned a range of creative thinkers ranging from Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff (for his advocacy of a grassroots church) through to the late Jacques Dupuis (who wrote with enormous depth and humanity on the theology of religions) and Roger Haight (whose Jesus, Symbol of God seeks to express concerns conceived through ancient metaphysics in terms of modern thought).

Dupuis, a deeply faithful scholar, died a broken man as a result of the harsh way he was treated. Meanwhile, the Catholic Theological Society of America, the European Society for Catholic Theology and committee members of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain went on to complain about what they called an “unjust, theologically questionable and unnecessary” 2007 notification against Fr. Jon Sobrino, whose writing and work has been done against a backdrop of poverty, violence and threat to his personal safety in Central America.

Critics of the Vatican, both within and without the Catholic community, often observe that the Church is in the habit of affirming human rights, fair treatment and intellectual and religious freedom in the world at large, while acting rather differently towards those inside its own institutions - using a hierarchical doctrine of the Church as a privileged instrument of God to justify this.

Women on the line

Among others who have been shunned is Lavinia Byrne, a former IBVM sister, whose enquiring book Women at the Altar (1994) trod on forbidden territory and was pulped in the US as a result of its condemnation by the man who would become pope. The Church’s attitude toward and treatment of women as protagonists, ministers and life-bearers is viewed by many as especially significant in indicating where the current tensions lie.

In 1993 the UN adopted a declaration that Women’s Rights are Human Rights. But on issues such as family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS prevention and therapeutic abortion or emergency contraception for women who have been raped and abused, the Holy See has remained implacable.

• It has used its special Non-Permanent Member Status at the UN and its global voice to oppose change.
• There has been little if any effective interpersonal dialogue over such issues.

Lavinia Byrne remains largely loyal to her Church, though dissenting on some issues and desirous of a much wider conversation about women, rights, responsibilities, enhancing life, social justice and the biblical vision of shalom. Yet neither when the now Pope was her interrogator, nor since, has she had a chance to speak with him, to put her case directly. But not long after Ratzinger became pontiff he did hold a “cordial discussion” (in September 2005) with the her rather better known male counterpart, Hans Kung. Their disagreement remains strong, however, and restoring the Swiss thinker his status as a recognised Catholic theologian was never on the agenda.

Beyond a purely ‘rights based’ argument

Meanwhile, those who want to see the transformation of the church into “a place of abundant freedom, of a passion for truthfulness, and a delight in beauty” (Timothy Radcliffe) continue to argue that in the name of genuine Catholicity it must abandon its inquisitorial tendencies, cease to use its power to coerce others into its thinking, resource the UN Declaration, and adopt internal procedures which match its rhetoric of human flourishing in other areas of life.

Wrapping up

What is at stake in these clashes is something larger than “right-based arguments”. It requires an empowering vision that resides neither in a ‘liberal’ abandonment of the search for communal truth, nor in the ‘conservative’ imposition of an absolute interpretation, but in the genuine development of ecclesia semper reformanda (the church reformed and reforming), a body capable of promoting good, just and loving actions in a world often characterised by inequality, violence and greed.

Simon Barrow is co-Director of the think tank Ekklesia, and writes a blog at Faith in Society.