Does the Roman Catholic Church believe that popes, in conducting the ordinary affairs of the church, can never make mistakes? Ask any Catholic bishop that question, and he will reply, “Of course not.”
That is a common misconception, the bishop will say; on the contrary, history attests that popes can prove all too human, and the idea that they are preserved by God from error applies only to very solemn pronouncements on very special questions of faith and morals.
Another common misconception, the bishop would also say, is that the church is an absolute monarchy, with popes as religious versions of Louis XIV declaring, “L’église c’est moi.” The bishops themselves, he would add, are not just papal branch managers but descendants of the apostles, each bishop, no less than the pope himself, recognized as a “vicar of Christ.”
Given that teaching, one would expect that at least one of 433 active or retired Catholic bishops in the United States might have voiced some misgivings or raised some questions about Pope Benedict XVI’s recent action in revoking the excommunication of four bishops — including one who has denied the Holocaust — of an ultratraditionalist schismatic group, the Society of St. Pius X.
As of Friday afternoon, Catholic News Service knew of not one who had done so.
To be sure, prominent bishops, primarily in Europe, and then the pope himself were quick to insist that the church rejected Holocaust denial and any form of anti-Semitism.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops distributed talking points explaining all the recondite details of church law involved in the 1988 excommunication of the schismatic leaders and exactly what the pope’s action last Saturday does and does not do regarding their present status, which remains at considerably less than full communion with the church and the pope.
The talking points repeat the church’s “authoritative teaching” that God has never abandoned the Jewish people and that all forms of anti-Semitic teaching, including charges of Jewish deicide, are “unacceptable from the standpoint of Catholic teaching today.”
These positions, solemnly taken in 1965 at the Second Vatican Council, are among the council’s declarations that led Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to break with Rome and form the Society of St. Pius X, which the pope now seeks to bring back into good standing in the church.
On Friday, Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Atlanta, the current chairman of the United States bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, said Catholics were “embarrassed” by this episode and needed to reaffirm their bonds with Jews.
But no bishop, it appears, has added a public word of doubt about the wisdom of Pope Benedict’s action, or wondered out loud how it came about.
The pope’s action has provoked a crisis in Catholic-Jewish relations. But you don’t have to be Jewish to be outraged by Holocaust denial. Many Catholics are upset, and they are upset not only because Jews are upset.
The problem is more than Bishop Richard Williamson, the British-born, Holocaust-denying schismatic. He is a man who insists that on Sept. 11 the World Trade Center was brought down by explosives, not airplanes, and the Pentagon was hit by a guided missile, a man who declares trousers for women “an assault on woman’s womanhood” and that women should not attend universities, none of which is likely to make him a very effective missionary for Holocaust denial.
Further, the Society of St. Pius X itself has disowned his views on the Holocaust, if belatedly, and barred him from repeating them, although others of like mind remain in its ranks.
No, the further problem, for Catholics no less than for Jews, is puzzlement about the pope and his leadership. No one believes that he shares Bishop Williamson’s grotesque views about the Holocaust. But was he somehow uninformed about them? Or was he aware of them but inclined to minimize their significance? Or did he disregard how they might poison what he was trying to accomplish? None of the alternatives seem comforting.
Even Catholics who understand the priority that church leaders always give to healing any formal schism that can perpetuate itself are puzzling over the Vatican’s extraordinary solicitude for this relatively small ultratraditionalist sect.
They wonder whether proponents of liberation theology or women’s ordination need to enlist a few schismatic bishops, who might ordain further bishops, in order to get a similar hearing in Rome.
And of course there are Catholics who dread — and some who hope — that the accommodations made to the Society of St. Pius X augur a larger reversal of the work of Vatican II.
Surely Catholic bishops are aware of the corrosive effect that these kinds of nagging questions can have on the faith of their people. A few such questions have quite likely nagged at some bishops themselves. But so far none of them have chosen to discuss the matter out loud.
This silence would be understandable if the bishops’ only option were to engage in harsh criticism. But they have plenty of respectful, charitable alternatives, from merely acknowledging that the papal action was troubling or perplexing to indicating that they are requesting clarification of Rome’s procedures and the pope’s intentions.
It’s a safe bet that during the last week, private expressions of dismay or bewilderment have been flying from bishop to bishop and from bishops to Rome.
Still, that does not satisfy Jews. Nor does it assure millions of concerned Catholics that their questions and anxieties are shared by leaders determined to discuss them charitably, candidly, maturely, in a way suited to what the bishops themselves teach about the church and the papacy.
Who will speak up first?
