[Industrialblog,
December 14, 2006]
News flash: Roman Catholic Church still not Protestant
UPDATE: After a commenter's objections, I have clipped a line or three to make this entry clearer. The point of this entry was never to discuss the Catholic view of conscience, and the lines regrettably sent some readers in the wrong direction. The clipped lines are marked with a [...] and turned out to be unnecessary to the piece. IndustrialBlog regrets the confusion, and realizes this is not the first time this has happened. Have a nice day.
My friend TWS has a post that surprised me this morning. Here's the news event he links to.
The news is:
TWS says:
Well, yes and no. The Roman Catholic Church makes claims for itself that you either accept or reject. And any church reserves the right to order its ecclesial affairs according to its own beliefs and internal laws.
In the RCC, priests must exercise their ministry within canon law. If you disagree with canon law, you discuss it internally. If you really really disagree and decide to break it, you incur various degrees of discipline. If you ignore the discipline, you incur a more severe discipline, a suspension of sorts, called excommunication.
All the pope is doing is exercising his authority to keep the ecclesial order in his church. Now, what happens if he didn't?
Some bishops would ordain married men. A few would ordain divorced men. A couple would ordain women. And one or two would ordain divorced, practicing homosexuals. Canon law would go out the window, and the magisterium (the official teaching of the RC Church) would follow.
[...]
In other words, the RCC would become Protestant. (And look an awful like the Anglican Communion, btw.) It ain't. [...] [...]
As far as the argument itself about married priests, that's fair enough. But in the RCC, you go through channels. The church itself admits priestly celibacy is something that can be changed, as there was a thousand-year tradition of married priests with the Roman Church. But if and when it's changed, the change will come within the church's own institutional structures.
NOTE: TWS is a seminarian in the Episcopal Church. He's a friend. Be cordial in the comments.
My friend TWS has a post that surprised me this morning. Here's the news event he links to.
The news is:
WEST NEW YORK, New Jersey — An excommunicated Roman Catholic archbishop continued his defiance of the Vatican when he ordained two married men as priests.
In front of a congregation that included nearly two dozen members of the media at the Trinity Reformed Church, Raymond A. Grosswirth of Rochester, New York and Dominic Riccio, of Newark, were installed by Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo.
TWS says:
I am also struck by the intentional, measured ignorance, hm, perhaps mendacity, of Rome, excommincating Milingo, and then holding a summit to confirm their hateful stand....
What's with all the excommunication? PB16 seems to have a real thing for tossing out bishops and priests. (He also excommunicated those Bps who ordained women, if you recall) Apparently it's not enough to forbid them from celebrating or acting as an ordained person, he's got to declare the communion they take void.
I don't think that anyone, not Popes, Powers, Principalities or People, can take that away.
And I think that they shouldn't try, one, because it sounds like evil, an evil I had hoped even the RC church had grown out of, two, lest the excommunicators find themselves judged and excluded in the same way in the hereafter, three, because it wounds the body of Christ (Who can separate out those Christ has included?), and four, because excluding married priests insults, lessens and rejects our most ancient and sacred human institution -marriage.
Many of the Apostles were married and had families, as were many luminaries in the early church -but in the world of PB16, apparently, they were not only inadequate ministers, but should be separated from Christ's Church for their pains. Perhaps PB16 should get started on excommunicating them too... ...there are quite a few of them... He'd better get busy.
Well, yes and no. The Roman Catholic Church makes claims for itself that you either accept or reject. And any church reserves the right to order its ecclesial affairs according to its own beliefs and internal laws.
In the RCC, priests must exercise their ministry within canon law. If you disagree with canon law, you discuss it internally. If you really really disagree and decide to break it, you incur various degrees of discipline. If you ignore the discipline, you incur a more severe discipline, a suspension of sorts, called excommunication.
All the pope is doing is exercising his authority to keep the ecclesial order in his church. Now, what happens if he didn't?
Some bishops would ordain married men. A few would ordain divorced men. A couple would ordain women. And one or two would ordain divorced, practicing homosexuals. Canon law would go out the window, and the magisterium (the official teaching of the RC Church) would follow.
[...]
In other words, the RCC would become Protestant. (And look an awful like the Anglican Communion, btw.) It ain't. [...] [...]
As far as the argument itself about married priests, that's fair enough. But in the RCC, you go through channels. The church itself admits priestly celibacy is something that can be changed, as there was a thousand-year tradition of married priests with the Roman Church. But if and when it's changed, the change will come within the church's own institutional structures.
NOTE: TWS is a seminarian in the Episcopal Church. He's a friend. Be cordial in the comments.
Bill, doing that is a requirement for adults in the Catholic church. See Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1782, 1790-1793. (it's a good idea to read 1782-1794 in total, though.)
Very loosely put, catholic doctrine is that God didn't give us brains capable of reason by mistake. We are therefore supposed to use them. That's not at all to say that we can't make mistakes that we're culpable for, of course.
Regarding excommunication, TWS should check out that part of the bible, assuming he's willing to read any of the parts where Jesus isn't all touchy-feely ( ;) ), where Jesus says that it would better for a man never to have been born than to lead one of the little ones astray. The church has a heavy burden to bear; it's silly to wonder why they don't show great tolerance to people it places in authority who show great willingness to violate discipline with consideration.
I wasn't sure what to make of your disclaimer, really. If you mean that to be called Roman Catholic you have to, you know, be a Roman Catholic, then it's really sad that this might ever need pointing out. But the RC church would rather you follow your own conscience (which was formed diligently in good faith) in contravention of RC dogma than violate your own conscience. I don't see how your disclaimer indicates that.
Having said that, I don't know what the point of your discussion with TWS is. His aim is warm bodies in a church, not belief; this is fundamentally incompatible with the catholic church's goal. Lacking a common goal, it's silly to talk about the methods of achieving it.
I probably should have used the word "judgment" instead of "conscience."
But I didn't have a lot of time to write this entry.
What about it? Obviously your judgment can be wrong, and obviously you can be culpable for it. That's most of what the formation of conscience section says.
You can be culpable for forming your conscience badly, but acting against your conscience is sin, whatever your conscience is. If a badly formed conscience leads you out of the catholic church, then the church won't pretend that you're still in it, but they want you to follow your conscience. They also want you to re-form your conscience in accordance with the truth; they might think that you're likely to end up in hell for what you did, but you'd be in no better shape to act against your conscience.
You still didn't address my comment that TWS has fundamentally different goals than the RC church.
Do you really see there being enough common ground there to talk about anything?
'Bodies in the church' - :) in a way, you could try and size up my argument that way. And it wouldn't be terrible. Much as I might disagree with Paul on issues relating to human sexuality, his willingness reach out to all peoples speaks to me.
But I am afraid my point was more theological, and as such, might not matter to most. See, if we agree that the eucharist 'does' something. If the eucharist in fact helps people to commune with Christ, and if Christ is in fact the savior of the world and part of the Godhead, we should be very afraid to withhold it unjustly. Clearly in withholding it unjustly we would be 'placing a stumbling block in front of one of the little ones'. ...Discouraging married people from serving God also seems right down this alley.
And what does the Chatechism say about excommunication?
"1463 Certain particularly grave sins incur excommunication, the most severe ecclesiastical penalty, which impedes the reception of the sacraments and the exercize of certain ecclesiastical acts, and for which absolution consequently cannot be granted [...] Except by the pope [or the local bishop].".
Now, I am loath to argue that if the silly rules are enforced fairly, and represent well-structured (if not good) theology, they are o.k. In fact, I think that excommunication has serious issues, as I explain above. But consider: given the long and venerable history of married priests in the church, can we claim that ordaining a married priest is a 'particularly grave sin' for which a church should excommunicate?
Another point: Bill, you talk about there being a path to change in the Roman church, but I don't see it. The pope acts as near-absolute dictator, with infallibility at his side, and no force on Earth need sway him. I am commonly accused of thinking my own denomination should be 'Congregational' when it is not, and it is well pointed out that the Roman church is even less so. How can the people of the Roman church bring about change? Where is that path?
Peace,
TWS