Common Wisdom: Friendly Heresies

I have nothing against apostates and heretics. Some of the nicest people I know are apostates or heretics. In fact, at certain times in my life I was either an apostate or a heretic.

I think I was about 18 when I “became” an apostate, a state I subsequently found not only unsatisfactory, but also very boring. Shortly thereafter I “became” a heretic. Rather than forsaking Catholicism entirely, I drifted towards smorgasbord Catholicism — currently named “American Catholicism.” I thought of myself as a “Catholic.” I still attended Mass, I believed every dogma expressed in the Apostles’ Creed, and I was only “personally opposed” to messy doctrines like the Real Presence and the Church’s condemnation of the obviously necessary methods of artificial contraception.

After all, who could expect a modern young woman really to believe that common unleavened bread substantially changed into the body and blood of God Almighty just because someone the Church ordained said some special words? And where did a bunch of celibate males get off telling my generation of women that we should not use the Pill to “regulate” our cycles? I mean, after all, why should those unwilling to play the game tell those who are, how to do it? It was all so irrational, and the winds of reform in the Church were all about me — not yet the cyclone of the “spirit of Vatican II” but still a steady, stiff breeze that I was positive would bring the Church into the modern world. I even remember thinking that when the reforms were put in place and it became no longer necessary for people to adhere to peripheral Church teachings regarding the sacraments, infallibility, and how educated Catholics manage their sexual lives, that everyone would become a Catholic. What Jesus Christ had intended — the one, holy, catholic, and universal church — would become a reality. I patiently waited for the Church to come over to my way. There was no reason to attack the outmoded teachings grounded in a less enlightened age; the Church could maintain its own institutional integrity while the changes were prudently put in place, so as not to upset the old Italian monsignors who ran the show in Rome.

How I enjoyed teasing my more pious Catholic friends during my phase as a heretic! We were all “cradle Catholics” and religious discussions provided many an evening’s late conversation. “How do you know that God is not nature?” “Why cannot the material world have existed from all eternity?” I had skimmed some Teilard (whom I called “Chardin” — I didn’t know at the time that the really smart people discussed his theories using his first name). “You don’t mean to tell me that you really think that the God of the cosmos cares whether or not a woman takes the birth control pill? All that really matters is that we follow the two commandments Jesus left us — love God and love your neighbor. The rest of the rules have been made by mere men and don’t bind us. They probably hinder our spiritual development.” We had such fun as young adults, arguing about ultimate questions. What fond memories! Ashtrays filled, Catawba wine bottles emptied until the curve of midnight brilliance slowly descended to the 2 A.M. point of prudence (if I don’t leave now, I won’t be able to drive).

At no time during my heretic phase did I even consider that the “new” church I envisioned wouldn’t become a reality. My theories were the right ones and they would eventually become the teachings of the Church. I didn’t attack the authority of the Church because I was so sure that authority would prove to be “reasonable” and “modern,” and all the silly bickering among the Christian churches would be laid to rest. We would all be one-happy-contented Christian family holding to only the “fundamental” dogmas of the Church. I didn’t speculate on how the doctrine of infallibility would be softened, but remained confident that this would be defined as binding only on those Catholics of what would become the “orthodox” Catholic Church. My facile little mind told me that what had been defined can be undefined. Easy! Just do it. The Church had the authority to do anything it wanted, and the “spirit” was directing the Church toward accommodation with the real world. What a bright religious future lay ahead of us!

I was a pleasant heretic, and I think I was “well-liked, personally admired, and generous” toward those who held views different from mine. When we would talk about our disagreements concerning what the Church taught, we weren’t doing so as “theologians” or “professors at the Catholic University of America,” but my feminine intuition (excuse the sexism) tells me that in my simple, undereducated way I was behaving much like not-so-simple, overeducated, dissenting “Catholic” theologians such as Father Charles Curran.

Had our 1960s discussions about the Faith become matters for public consumption; had I, as a dissenter, carried any authority to teach my theory of the “new” Church; had I developed a following among Catholics in the diocese, I have no doubt that my discussion group “colleagues” would have jumped to my defense if the archbishop claimed my positions “violated the conditions necessary” to be called a believing Catholic. What I am suggesting is that the dynamics of the Curran controversy are not different from what would have been the dynamics of our ’60s group had we been challenged by Church authorities. If phrases quoted in the proceeding two paragraphs seem familiar to some of you, it is because they are taken from the nationally circulated letter of Curran supporters to their “professional colleagues” in the academic community. Our amateur theological group, just like today’s professional theological group, jealously guarded our right of inquiry, as well as our right to disagree with the Church and each other. The ’60s group would have behaved like the Curran cadre if a Church official had claimed that our (quoting again from the professional theologian’s letter) “various views” were “so incompatible with Catholic Church teaching” that we “must be declared no longer” believing Catholics — in Curran’s case, “no longer a Catholic theologian.”

I am not docile by nature, and God’s good providence directed me to live my life outside the halls of professional theological inquiry. The economy of creation suggests that I will do less harm and more good with the life before me than any other. While I think Charles Curran is awesomely wrong in what he holds regarding abortion, contraception, homosexuality, and euthanasia, I still empathize with his rebellion.

For some of us, it is, in a word, “fun” to rebel. There’s excitement in taking on the establishment, pressing the limits of the comfy arbitrary opinions of those who think they know it all. But there’s the rub. Which is the comfy arbitrary side in the Curran dispute? Or is there one? Could the entire situation simply be an academic debate on some questions of “theological equivalency”? If we define as not immoral some acts of killing by abortion or euthanasia, some homosexual relationships, some instances of artificial contraception, do such acts become the “moral equivalent” of refraining from such acts?

I will venture into my amateur, non-trained theological mode at this time, and propose that in matters of interpersonal relationships and sexual ethics there are few, if any, acts of omission or commission, which are morally equivalent. It cannot be morally equivalent to abort and not to abort, or to engage in homosexual acts and not so to engage, to fornicate and not to fornicate, to accept natural fecundity or to obliterate it. So, I find myself with Rome in the Curran matter because such acts touch on the essence of the physical human person. Either God’s plan for us as sexual creatures is good or it is not. God’s plan is not somewhere in between, depending upon the circumstances of our lives. Being somewhere in between, like Curran, is the arbitrary position, not Rome’s.

But, I admit I am nostalgic for my rebellious years. I thrive on rooting for the underdog. In order to protect this treasured mutinous facet of my personality, I’m rooting for the real underdogs in the Curran controversy. I’m rooting for the embattled loyal theologians and the long-suffering laity, religious, and clergy who stand with Rome in its confrontation with the powerful proponents of the American Catholic Church establishment.

Author

  • Ann O'Donnell

    Ann O'Donnell is a wife, mother, and registered nurse. She is founder of Women for Faith and Family, a St. Louis-based organization formed to support Church teachings on abortion, human sexuality and family life.

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