In a taping of “Firing Line” last winter and again in his column for the Catholic press, Father Richard McBrien has come out in favor of “cafeteria Catholicism”—on sexual and other matters for progressives, on Catholic social teaching for conservatives. “There are conservatives and neoconservatives in that cafeteria line. And I don’t deplore it. I say that’s what it means to be an adult Catholic.”
But there is an important difference between deferring in principle and in practice to papal authority and insisting upon the right of individuals to judge for themselves. It is a difference between living “under” authority and living “beyond” authority.
God, as Charles Peguy once wrote, loves best not the servile bended knee but the assent of a free man standing erect. To be a Catholic is an instance of the free exercise of religion. It is freely to choose to live under the teaching authority of the pope and bishops, as the ultimate and authentic interpreters of the scriptures and of the tradition to which the scriptures are joined.
When our friends who are not Catholic ask us what we believe, they are not asking us for information about the state of our personal consciences, as if we were Protestants. They are asking us what the Catholic Church teaches. They anticipate that we may be better or worse interpreters thereof, but they are asking about a corporate tradition, not an idiosyncratic opinion. The only claim of the Catholic Church worth paying attention to—the sole justification for the Church—is its claim to authority as the authentic voice of the revelation of Jesus Christ to humankind. Otherwise, its history makes no sense.
Yet one of the marks of “the free man standing erect” is that his assents. are intelligent, considered, and judicious. The free main knows that the authority of popes and bishops is defined and narrow, not broad and sweeping. That authority has authenticity only with respect to its proper objects: matters of faith and morals. In temporal affairs, not only a certain autonomy and personal responsibility, but also a certain authority inheres in lay persons. In temporal affairs, the farther popes and bishops descend from matters of faith and morals into the interpretation of matters of fact, the weaker runs their writ and the more they depend upon the experienced judgment of lay persons, who attempt to live by the light of the gospels in the manifold fields of their own responsibilities.
For this reason, the Church has been the mother of universities. It depends upon an educated laity. The Catholic Church recognizes that its own teaching is intended to act as yeast in dough throughout the whole texture of daily life. Catholic faith is not solely a Sunday worship activity. So the daily life of the Church depends upon an intelligent, adult laity, able to think critically and with evangelical discernment about complex matters of fact. Mere servility will not do.
Of university trained lay persons, therefore, independent insight and judgment are expected. But also a distinctive Catholic style of loyalty, docility, and respect. The Catholic lay person must be both independent and also a person who willingly lives under authority, since that is what the free exercise of the Catholic faith entails. “Liberty under law” is a profound American ideal, just as “liberty under authority” is a profound Catholic idea.
To balance this double dimension of Catholic living, entailing both the responsibilities inherent in liberty and those inherent in fidelity to authority, is not easy. It is not easy, not because the two are in contradiction, but because the responsibilities entailed are twofold. To fulfill one responsibility without the other would be easy. To fulfill both together (like the dynamic tension in a gothic arch) defines the high art of being Catholic.
There are not wanting American theologians of the present day who hope earnestly that Pope John Paul II will pass quickly from the scene, since he seems to contradict not only the specifics of what they hold to be true but also the principle that they attempt to serve.
Their principle is plain; viz., that they are free to teach their own judgments as authentic voices of Catholic faith. They demand freedom to depart from the teaching of the Pope. Their principle is that they are not under the pope, but equal or even superior to him in teaching authority. That principle is not a Catholic principle. It must be rejected.
There are three signs of authentic fidelity. One sign is an attitude of will, constituted by a willingness to be taught; it is an attitude of openness to the voice of God represented in the papal office. Another sign is a careful discrimination of the true range and bearing of magisterial authority; for authority, jealous of its own authenticity, can intend no greater reach than that with which it has been commissioned. The third is an effort to “save” authority, by an intelligent reading of context and relation to the past. As Homer sometimes nods, so also do phrases of the popes or bishops; the responsible lay person must listen for the inner music of the whole work, within which each quotidian statement is intended to be a movement.
One does not listen to popes—one does not choose to live one’s life as a Catholic—in order to be confirmed in one’s prejudices, but in order to be challenged and, in being challenged, to listen again and to inquire. Out of this rough-and-tumble, a Catholic believes that in due course the voice of Peter, not his own, will prevail.
I urge our readers to reflect on the pregnant essay on this theme by the young philosopher, Michael Pakaluk, below.