John Paul II?s papacy was marked by moves to silence critics. But it is crucial for the health of the Church for a new pope to tolerate argument and debate
THE ones whose names we know give only an inkling of the situation. They were identified by Paul Collins in his book From Inquisition to Freedom as Charles Curran, Tissa Balasuriya, Jeanine Gramick, Robert Nugent, Hans K?ng, myself plus the author ? Paul Collins, the Antipodean heretic. The book is subtitled Seven prominent Catholics and their struggle with the Vatican, all people who by criticisms expressed in their actions, and their writings, had fallen out with the Church.
Many other prominent and less well-known Catholics can be counted as dissidents: those, for example, who left the priesthood, married and remained exemplary members of the Church (with or without the right dispensations in place at the right time), as well as those who did not, and who now see married former Anglicans made welcome as priests. Then there are those who regularly disobey the Church?s teaching on birth control or pre-marital sex; those who believe that the use of condoms is a lesser evil than an increase in the spread of HIV/Aids; those who do not really believe in certain bits of the Creed they recite Sunday after Sunday; those whose consciences struggle with aspects of the Church?s teaching; those who act with a singular lack of charity towards their fellow Catholics, while professing singular obedience to the Church?s teaching ? and yet all of whom profess that they are loyal Catholics.
These are people who have certain expectations of a new papacy and, while it is apparent that not all of them can be met, nevertheless it seems worthwhile to address the question of loyal dissent. Paul Collins? book named the Inquisition in its title and so raised an issue burnt into the memory of both secular and church historians. The Church used to police dissent in a singularly brutal way, sniffing it out and punishing it by excommunication and acts of violence, much as kings and princes punished those who disagreed with them. Then came a change in how people perceived themselves and their rights, leaving the Church out of kilter with what would eventually become the human rights movement, professing the importance of such rights for other people but somehow refusing them to its own.
Should we suspect overt malice in this mindset? I doubt it. I suspect that the problem is with an institution that has grown in size and power to such an extent over the years that it does not know how to slow down or examine itself. Its mechanisms appear to outsiders to be medieval, while for those affected it is experienced as bullying rather than a due process of law.
Why is it important for the new pope to consider how to deal with dissent? First, because this will be a touchstone to assess to what extent he is successful in getting the balance of power right between his own authority and the authority of the Vatican?s bureaucracy. If ever there were a machine needing an overhaul, the Vatican would surely qualify as a number one candidate for change. Its officers and departments have gained in power because much of the actual running of the Church has devolved to them over recent years. The new pope will surely need to rein them in, to promote the good and honourable people who do generous work; and to weed out the rest. Another root question is about the structures that regulate work done in the Vatican: the departments for this and the congregations for that. When were they last overhauled? When was an audit of their work last performed? And were we told the results? And what about practice? Is that based on mutual respect and love, or suspicion and hostility? For there is also an issue about credibility. How can the Church?s passionate advocacy of human rights be taken seriously when it appears so easily to damage its own?
Some of the Church?s teaching remains luminous. Soon after I resigned from my order, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, following continual criticism of my book Woman at the Altar, a reader of The Tablet, Dr Patrick Vaughan, brought the following to fellow readers? attention via the letters pages:
I was re-reading some notes I copied out a good while ago on the subject of the authority of an individual?s conscience. I was surprised when my eyes fell on the following extract:
?Over the pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there still stands one?s own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. This emphasis on the individual, whose conscience confronts him with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even of the official Church, also establishes a principle in opposition to increasing totalitarianism.?
The truly astonishing thing is that these words, showing how the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on conscience was in the line of thought deriving from John Henry Newman, were written by none other than Joseph Ratzinger (in Commentary on the Doctrine of Vatican II, vol v, p.134, edited by Herbert Vormgrimler) ? now prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Lavinia Byrne has experienced as ?pounding away? at her.
Just how are these teachings and these actions compatible?
Some of the Church?s teaching subjugates. As a Catholic woman I have to confess that the Church practises a form of male dominance I experience in no other realm of human existence. This needs to be looked at ? whatever the political complexion of the new pope.
Pope John Paul II will be remembered for many things, not least his part in the erosion of Communism and the creation of a new eastern Europe. Yet I believe that, despite his greatness, he suffered from what I choose to call the Smiley syndrome: even John Le Carr??s hero, the immaculate George Smiley, proved to be unable to resist the fatal temptation to become like his great enemy, the Soviet spymaster Karla. Le Carr? wrote of this magnetic attraction with a degree of psychological accuracy that has never ceased to amaze me: you become akin to what you fight, even as you demonise what you fear. For Smiley, read Vatican; for Karla, read Kremlin. The legacy for the new pope is to open the windows of the Vatican ? and to deal honourably with the prophets it dismisses as dissenters.
Dr Lavinia Byrne is a journalist and broadcaster.