The Wolf In Professor’s Clothing

A philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame has declared in the New York Times that the bishops no longer decide morality in the Church and that “the immorality of birth control is no longer a teaching of the Catholic Church.”

Gary Gutting, Endowed Chair in Philosophy, argued that the will of many Catholics who choose to use contraceptives is paramount to the teaching of the bishops.

…haven’t the members of the Catholic Church recognized their bishops as having full and sole authority to determine the teachings of the Church?  By no means.  There was, perhaps, a time when the vast majority of Catholics accepted the bishops as having an absolute right to define theological and ethical doctrines.  Those days, if they ever existed, are long gone.  Most Catholics — meaning, to be more precise, people who were raised Catholic or converted as adults and continue to take church teachings and practices seriously — now reserve the right to reject doctrines insisted on by their bishops and to interpret in their own way the doctrines that they do accept.  This is above all true in matters of sexual morality, especially birth control, where the majority of Catholics have concluded that the teachings of the bishops do not apply to them.  Such “reservations” are an essential constraint on the authority of the bishops.

The bishops and the minority of Catholics who support their full authority have tried to marginalize Catholics who do not accept the bishops as absolute arbiters of doctrine.  They speak of “cafeteria Catholics” or merely “cultural Catholics,” and imply that the only “real Catholics” are those who accept their teachings entirely.  But this marginalization begs the question I’m raising about the proper source of the judgment that the bishops have divine authority.  Since, as I’ve argued, members of the church are themselves this source, it is not for the bishops but for the faithful to decide the nature and extent of episcopal authority.  The bishops truly are, as they so often say, “servants of the servants of the Lord.”

It may be objected that, regardless of what individual Catholics think, the bishops in fact exercise effective control over the church.  This is true in many respects, but only to the extent that members of the church accept their authority.  Stalin’s alleged query about papal authority (“How many divisions does the Pope have?”) expresses more than just cynical realpolitik.  The authority of the Catholic bishops is enforceable morally but not militarily or politically.  It resides entirely in the fact that people freely accept it.

The mistake of the Obama administration — and of almost everyone debating its decision — was to accept the bishops’ claim that their position on birth control expresses an authoritative “teaching of the church.”  (Of course, the administration may be right in thinking that the bishops need placating because they can cause them considerable political trouble.)  The bishops’ claim to authority in this matter has been undermined because Catholics have decisively rejected it. The immorality of birth control is no longer a teaching of the Catholic Church.  Pope Paul VI meant his 1968 encyclical, “Humanae Vitae,” to settle the issue in the manner of the famous tag, “Roma locuta est, causa finita est.”  In fact the issue has been settled by the voice of the Catholic people.

Gutting’s argument would seem to have Jesus telling Peter, “upon this poll I will build my Church.”

Gutting teaches courses to first year Philosophy students at Notre Dame and includes the writings of radical philosopher Peter Singer.

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Matthew Archbold is a contributing writer to Campus Notes and to National Catholic Register, as well as the co-founder of the popular website, Creative Minority Report.

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