James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, can be ordered directly from Winepress Publishers — 1-877-421-READ (7323); $12.95, plus S&H. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at jkfitz42@aol.com.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
The charge is that we are overly suspicious and unwilling to accept that those who disagree with us are acting in good faith; that we assume the worst about theologians and clerics who are simply seeking to interpret the Church’s teachings in a way that will communicate most effectively to modern audiences. Our critics seek to shame us by acting as if they have been wounded by our unfair accusations of disloyalty to the Church. They protest that they “love the Church” and are merely seeking to make it more relevant and effective.
Admittedly, some on the conservative side can jump the gun at times. The term “heretic” should not be used lightly. There is room for discussion and disagreement over theological issues. Catholics on the right have been vocal in their protests against the Church’s current teaching on the Latin Mass and capital punishment. Catholics with free-market views have criticized the social encyclicals that call for more government regulation of the economy than economic libertarians think wise and appropriate. William F. Buckley, for example, received much attention for his quip “Mater, si, Magistra, no” in response to Pope John Paul XXIII’s 1961 encyclical Mater et Magistra.
Occasionally, though, Catholic leftists drop their guard and admit what they are up to. Rosemary Radford Reuther is a case in point. For decades, Reuther had led the charge for liberal and feminist causes in the Church. The journal First Things recently reported on her participation at a conference called “The Future of the American Church: From Impasse to Opportunity; Listening to the Voice of the Whole Church,” sponsored by the National Center for Pastoral Leadership. Reuther’s topic was “toward a more democratic church,” which First Things characterized as a call for a church where Jesus “would be but one of many Christ figures.”
An unfair accusation? An example of “McCarthyite” thinking on the Catholic right? The charge won’t stick this time. First Things recounted in its December issue a recent interview of Reuther, centering on why she continues to identify herself as a Catholic theologian. Her response? She spills the beans: “Frankly, if I hadn’t been born into the Catholic Church, I doubt that I would have joined it.” She makes clear that her goal is to change the Church in fundamental ways, bringing it into step with modern feminist and secular humanist thinking, but says, “to do that I need to identify as a Catholic, although I also function ecumenically and inter-religiously, so it is not a limitation for me.”
This is a startling admission. Reuther is admitting that she remains a Catholic only because doing so gives her the platform she needs to undermine the Church’s teachings; because Catholics would not listen to her if she were a non-Catholic. So she plays a game with us, pretends to be one of us in order to work for ideological causes hostile to Catholicism. I submit that this is a stark betrayal of trust.
Does saying that make me “paranoid”? I say no. I think I am a good test case for these matters. You see, I do not reflexively object to theologians who seek to interpret the Church’s teachings in the light of modern scholarship. In fact, traditionalist friends and acquaintances of mine will chide me for being too tolerant of theological dissent. Angry letter-writers do more than chide: I have been called everything from wishy-washy to a sell-out.
For example, I have no problem with theologians who explore what happened at the Ascension and Assumption in the light of modern science. I don’t know what it “looked like” when Jesus and Mary ascended into Heaven. I am not offended when theologians speculate that they disappeared from view in some other way than by literally rising through the clouds. I also do not take offense at those who explore the question of how and when Jesus became aware of His divinity.
I also have been more receptive some of the writings of John Courtney Murray and Teilhard de Chardin than certain of my traditionalist friends think wise. They insist that I am being naïve when I interpret them in a way that minimizes the challenge they present to what Cardinal Newman called the “depositum of faith.” You will have to take my word for it, but my interpretation of Teilhard and Murray does not diminish my understanding of the authority of Rome or Christ’s role in history. Maybe I’m wrong in seeing them this way, but I have no hidden agenda to weaken traditional Catholicism. I am convinced that many other Catholics who are attracted to the writings of these two theologians see them similarly; that their love for the Church is genuine; that — unlike Reuther — they would choose to be Catholics even if they had not been born one.
How many more Catholic theologians are there who view their role in the same way as Reuther? I don’t know. But her admission makes clear that we are not being fanatical or narrow-minded when we respond skeptically to those who challenge the core beliefs of the Church. Reuther continues to be held in high regard in some Catholic intellectual circles. That says a lot. Staying Catholic to manipulate the Church to advance secular ideological causes to which one is attracted fits my dictionary definition of treason: “a breach of faith, treachery, giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” Neo-modernists? There are such things.
