SUBTLE ECUMENISM
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
I don't know if Catholic Engaged Encounter existed locally when my wife and I got married. At any rate, we didn't have to go through its program. Our pastor verified that we knew what we were getting into and that we knew the faith sufficiently well, and that was enough to list our wedding on the parish calendar.
Nowadays it's different in my diocese and maybe in yours. Here, every engaged couple must go through the Catholic Engaged Encounter program. This weekend two Catholic Answers staff members began the process. It was penitential.
The concluding event was a Q & A session in which questions that had been put into a box throughout the weekend were to be answered. Who would do the answering? Not the facilitators. They stepped back and said that the couples would have to answer their own questions.
So there they were, all the couples sitting in a large circle, answering for one another questions about the Catholic faith, marriage, sexuality, and much more. Aside from the two Catholic Answers folks, it was the ignorant instructing the ignorant.
When a question about birth control was chosen from the box, one of our staff members said that the only method of regulation allowed by the Church is natural family planning. "Not so!" said all the other couples, most of whom had been living together for some time. They said it is okay to use any standard method of birth control.
The facilitators did nothing to correct them. They did not make clear the Church's teaching by saying that contraception is always immoral, and they did not even explain the necessity of pre-marital chastity. If they were facilitating something, it was not the apprehension of Catholic morality.
I don't know whether what my colleagues experienced is representative of Catholic Engaged Encounter. Perhaps in other dioceses the program is effective in conveying the substance of the Church's teaching on family life. Perhaps it does that even in my diocese in other venues. But in such matters I am an anti-Pollyanna: I expect the worst because I have learned from experience.
THE DOG THAT DIDN'T BARK
You remember the bit from Conan Doyle's story "Silver Blaze":
The inspector asks Sherlock Holmes, "Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident."
Sometimes what is not present is more important than what is present. This can apply even to papal utterances.
On August 19 Pope Benedict spoke in Cologne to representatives of non-Catholic churches. To Fr. Brian Harrison's mind, what the Pope said in one particular paragraph was especially interesting--for what he left out.
Here is how Harrison, whose byline you have seen in "This Rock," puts it:
The Pope's talk "included a paragraph which I personally find encouraging because, while paying lip service to the fashionable postconciliar repudiation of the traditional 'ecumenism of return,' the Pontiff gave his own subtle spin to this repudiation, which has caused so much anguish in recent years to traditional, orthodox Catholics."
Pope Benedict said:
"This unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one's own faith history. Absolutely not! It does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in disciplines."
Harrison comments:
"The first impression here is that Pope Benedict is right in line with Cardinal Kasper and other ecumaniac luminaries. ... But what, precisely, is Benedict ruling out when he rules out so categorically this dreaded, abhorrent, unthinkable 'return' of the separated brethren? He answers this question by proceeding to rule out any future requirement of 'uniformity' in four distinct and specific areas of the Church's life: theology, spirituality, liturgical forms, and discipline. Note well that the Pope conspicuously fails to include doctrine among these areas in which uniformity will not be required.
"Now I would suggest that this omission," continues Harrison, "to the extent that it comes to be taken seriously and implemented at high levels, really amounts to a pulling the rug out from under the feet of heretical ecumenists. It's the old Catholic orthodoxy creeping in again by the postconciliar back door. For what preconciliar pope ever insisted on uniformity in any of the four areas specified now by Benedict XVI?"
Harrison looks at each of the four areas.
In theology the Church always has permitted "legitimate theological differences among approved Fathers and Doctors." Saints such as Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Augustine, and John Chrysostom "have had their differing approaches in explaining the mysteries of faith and their relationship to human reason and philosophy."
The "non-requirement of uniformity has traditionally been even more evident" in matters of spirituality. "Differing schools of asceticism, ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, have always constituted part of the richness and true catholicity of the Church."
What about liturgical forms? Here one can point to "the wide variety of liturgical rites, Eastern and Western, approved from ancient times by all the successors of Peter."
And "the approved lack of uniformity over the centuries has perhaps been more evident" in matters of discipline than anywhere else. "Canon law has always allowed for innumerable variations between particular and universal law, and at present the differences in disciplines between the Latin-rite Church and the Oriental Churches are so significant as to require two separate codes of canon law."
"So there you have it," concludes Harrison. "In regard to ecumenism, the Holy Father comes across in this address as nothing more or less than a sheep (or, rather, shepherd) in wolf's clothing."
For my part, let me note that "ecumenism of return" always was an unfortunate phrase. You can't return to something unless you first have left it. Almost all non-Catholic Christians were brought up as non-Catholics. They never have been Catholics. If they were to become Catholics now, they would not be "returning" to the Church. They would be entering for the first time.
When such people come "home to Rome," they bring with them ways of theologizing, prayer, worship, and discipline that are not necessarily incompatible with the Catholic faith. The Church does not object to their keeping these distinctives.
What is insisted upon, though, is uniformity of belief. That's why creeds talk about matters of faith but never matters of spirituality or discipline. Under a regime of real ecumenism, everyone would believe the same (and thus be Catholic), but there would be many ways to pray or to worship or to work through theological questions. You'd be free to subscribe to Franciscan spirituality or Benedictine, to the Mass is Latin or to the Divine Liturgy in Greek, to Thomistic or Augustinian approaches to theological propositions.
Pope Benedict knows all this and, if Brian Harrison's reading is right, is trying to convey it not just to non-Catholics but to Catholics too.
p.s., If you have a comment about anything appearing in this E-Letter, please keep it to yourself.
Not, not really. I wrote that just to get your attention. These postscript points are boilerplate and usually don't change from week to week. I just want to verify that you're still reading.
What I usually say is this: If you have a comment about anything appearing in this E-letter, do not hit your Reply button. Instead, go to Catholic Answers' discussion forums at
http://forums.catholic.com
where you may post your comment in the subforum dedicated to the E-Letter. You will find a thread devoted to this issue of the E-Letter. Feel free to add your comment in the form of a reply to that thread.
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