NON HABEMUS PAPAM?
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
When you hear someone push sedevacantism--the theory that the papal see is vacant and that we do not have a validly elected pope--you immediately think the argument is coming from the rightmost end of the Catholic spectrum.
Now it is coming from the leftmost end too.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, "professor of feminist theology" at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, speculates that maybe Benedict XVI still is just Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Maybe the Cardinal's election as pope did not "take" because the folks in the pews (at least in the pews Ruether frequents) have not "taken" to him.
Ruether falls back on a notion called "reception." This holds that a doctrinal teaching is not binding unless it is "received" by the faithful. Unless they accept it as their own, the teaching is not authoritative and may even be untrue.
Usually this argument is applied to "Humanae Vitae" and the Church's teaching against contraception. As is well known, most Catholic couples in the U.S. do not live up to the Church's strictures on this matter. They use or have used contraception in their marriages. Dissentient Catholics such as Ruether say that this shows that the majority of American Catholics have not "received" papal teaching regarding contraception, and therefore they are not bound by it.
This is the application of plebiscitary democracy to the establishment of moral truths. If most people do not "vote" in favor of a moral regulation by following it in their own lives, then no one is under an obligation to follow it. Ruether takes that principle and applies it now to Benedict XVI: If most Catholics do not approve of his election as pope, then he is not the pope--or at least he does not need to be obeyed.
In a newspaper column Ruether complains of Cardinal Ratzinger's "repeated list of repressive decisions" when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:
"This list typically includes the following items. He rejects any possibility of rethinking the Catholic teaching against contraception and against women's ordination. ... He suggested during the recent U.S. election that politicians who are pro-choice could be denied Communion. He also wishes to block public information on priestly sexual abuse. ...
"Cardinal Ratzinger is also seen as hostile to any form of interreligious dialogue that suggests equal truth in other religions. He wants to renew a monolithic Christian Europe. ... He insists that homosexuality is intrinsically evil and opposes any opening to gay marriage. He is hostile to feminism. ... and is also cited as having initiated a long string of investigations of theologians, creating an atmosphere of fear of open discussion."
Ruether asks, "Might we have in the offing the possibility of a pope whose papacy will not be 'received' by a substantial sector of Catholics? ... Could this be a case where a pope who has hitched his wagon to the right-wing side of these sexual debates might not be 'received' by the majority of Catholics? Could many Catholics, while continuing to see themselves as Catholics, implicitly, if not overtly, say 'No habemus papam'; this is not our pope?"
Needless to say--but I will say it anyway--the whole notion of "reception" as used by dissentient Catholics is bogus. Something is true whether or not you and I "receive" it as true. Today is Tuesday, and tomorrow will be Wednesday even if you and I want it to be Saturday instead.
The Church's teaching against contraception is either true or false. It is not "true" for those Catholics who "receive" it and "false" for those Catholics who do not. Benedict XVI either is the pope or he is a cardinal who mistakenly thinks he is the pope. Whichever he is, it is a matter of fact, not of "reception." He is not the pope merely because I think he is. He is not not the pope merely because someone like Rosemary Radford Ruether might think he is still just a cardinal.
The idea that a teaching or a papal election must be "received" is, at one level, the intrusion of a political concept--democracy--into a place it does not belong. That lump in your groin is either benign or malignant, and your physicians will find out, but not by taking a vote. Democracy has nothing to do with medical diagnoses, and it has nothing to do with determining moral truths.
In one way one can say it has something to do with whether a man truly is the pope: He must be elected by the cardinal electors. But that is the extent of it. No application to the general Catholic populace needs to be made, and even a majority disapproval would not undo the vote of the conclave.
At a certain level Ruether is engaging in what even her supporters must recognize as an intellectual sham. She may write about "reception," and they may nod their heads in favor of the notion, but I think they all see through it. It is simply a convenient excuse for them to remain in opposition to what the Church teaches and to what the Church is.
What these people have not "received" is the Catholic faith. At most they are nominal members of the Church, keeping a link because without it they would lose their raison d'etre. Without a nominal attachment public figures such as Ruether would be nothing in terms of their professions and notoriety. Her writings appear in Catholic publications only because she is touted as a Catholic. Without that cachet, she would be columnless.
Years from now, when the history of our time is written, people will wonder how it could happen that so many people called themselves Catholics without believing as Catholics--without even trying to be Catholics in any real sense. I will leave the delineation of that to sociologists and psychologists.
In the meantime, maybe the rest of us should stop "receiving" the likes of Ruether as Catholics. Maybe we no longer should grant them the courtesy of a label they refuse to live up to.
p.s., I am pleased and displeased about how sign-ups are going for the Catholic Answers cruise--pleased in that we have a throng of new bookings, displeased in that it looks like we will have to close sign-ups in a few weeks. We soon will run out of available staterooms.
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