The We Are All Church movement in South Africa (or WAACSA) has decided to modify its name and adopt its own mission statement, so as to set it apart from the international We Are Church movement, which to some in the Church is a toxic brand. For those interested in fostering unity across the spectrum of perspectives in our Church, this must be seen as a welcome step.
We Are Church, which promotes what it believes are necessary reforms in the Church, has acquired a reputation, rightly or wrongly, of fostering dissent and division in the Church — and its recent call to “holy disobedience” will do little to pacify the suspicion of many Catholics.
Bishops are rightly anxious when groups in their dioceses challenge Church doctrines and disciplines, especially those that have become virtual litmus test issues: Humanae vitae, the admission of women to holy orders, and clerical celibacy. Without absolute clarity about how issues such as these are going to be addressed, and in what tone, a bishop cannot be expected to authorise the use of Church property for public events involving debate on the “hot issues”. Indeed, doing so could create division and confusion among the faithful.
In November, We Are All Church wrote to the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) with a request for dialogue to establish that the group can function as an organisation of good standing in the Church. Indications are that within the SACBC there is some openness to exploring dialogue with WAACSA. Such a willingness would indeed be commendable. The importance of dialogue, at least in some respects, is being recognised in the Church today.
For example, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna made it a point of meeting with rebel priests, prepared to listen even as he forcefully restated the position of the Church authorities. In September he said: “We are in talks and will remain in talks because I and the bishops are still convinced that a lot can and must be cleared up by dialogue.”
Among the primary constituents of Pope Benedict’s pontifical pursuits has been dialogue with another group of dissenters. Unlike the members of We Are Church, the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) exists outside full communion with Rome.
Pope Benedict’s admirable efforts at bringing the SSPX — which rejects the authority of the Second Vatican Councils and several conciliar teachings — back into full communion will likely be fruitless, but they suggest that the pope takes seriously Christ’s command that his followers be one (Jn 17:21).
There is a hazard in marginalising Catholics on the progressive end of the spectrum by neglecting to hear their concerns. In many parishes, it is precisely those Catholics who are most dedicated in contributing to the live of the Church. They must not be taken for granted, never mind being denigrated, by those in authority.
Whatever one thinks of their vision for the Church or the way that vision is expressed, it is evident that the leading members of We Are All Church in South Africa are good Catholics whose actions are rooted in love for Christ and the Church, and who strive for gospel holiness in communion with the People of God. The good faith of WAACSA’s membership should not be doubted, even if one disagrees with them.
At the same time, the movement will have to persuade the Church authorities and fellow Catholics that their brand of critique is not intended to sow doctrinal discord and dissent. Its arguments, therefore, need to be stated within the possibilities provided by the framework of the Church’s doctrines and canon law, their demands must be reasonable, and their rhetoric must not be inflammatory.
By creating some structural distance between the international We Are Church movement and themselves, WAACSA has stated its serious intent to be part of the life of the local Church.
Sincere and open dialogue between the group and the bishops will be necessary to establish whether this will be possible.
If WAACSA really supported the reform of the Church according to the principles of Vatican II, then it would show respect and obedience to the Holy Father. Lumen Gentium 25:
“Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking”
Few will be fooled by this strategic rebranding by “We are [no definite article] Church”. They may hope this ruse may make infiltration easier, but this is just a case of “Wolves in wolves’ clothing”.
Caveat
Cavete lupos!
I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;
and from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears.
And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
Acts 20:29-32
@Donal
Amen… I say to you I AM the gate for the sheep. All who came (before me) are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.
John 10:7-9
and
I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and MINE know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father,and I will lay down my life for the sheep. I have OTHER sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they WILL hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd.
John 10:14-16
Ah blessed UNITY again!!!
For good measure:
2 Tim. 1:7
For God DID NOT give us a spirit of cowardice, but a spirit of power and love and of SELF-discipline.
[Don't, therefore, be ashamed of witnessing to [Jesus]… under the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling not because of our works but because of HIS OWN purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus
@ D Williamson
You are arguing FOR one of the very points WAACSA believe has been ‘overlooked’ by the Magisterium since the close of VII i.e. collegiality!!??
@Rosemary: How does this support the (highly creative) interpretation of V2 “collegiality” you are suggesting?:
“This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking”
Rosemary: I think you may have a confused undersanding of the relation between collegiality and the teaching authority of the Church.
Our Lord Jesus Christ came to open the way to salvation to all people by revealing the mystery of God’s inner trinitarian life as well as the eternal plan of His will, namely, to make each of us sharers in His own blessed life. Before his ascension into heaven Jesus entrusted this revelation to His 12 Apostles and charged them to preach what they had received from Him to all the world, endowing them with plenipotentiary powers to govern and rule the church which he established as a permanent vessel of the salvation of the whole human race. He also appointed one of them, Peter, to be their head and the guarantor of unity within the church, and promised them that he would be with them until the end of the world and that his church would remain indefectable until the end of time. And just as He promised, today the Church continues to proclaim the good news, with the difference now that with the growth of the Church the number of the bishops, the successors of the Apostles, has grown to about 4000. The principle however is still the same. When the bishops in union with the HF exercise their divene office of teaching and governing the church on matters of faith and morals they are infallibe. But if they propose something which is neither in accord with the teaching of their fellow other bishops nor with that of the HF then ispo facto they stand outside of the comminion of the church. When there is large-scale doubt on a certain issue (for example: Arianism in the 4th century or contraception in the 20th), the HF as successor of Peter and as the sign of unity has a special charim by which he indicates where the Chuch stands in regard to some matter. So if you want to know what the Church teaches, you only have to look to the Holy Father. As St Ambrose said in the 4th century: ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia. Where Peter is, there is the Church. I hope this helps.
For a much better explanation of all this, I strongly recommend reading Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constition on Divine Revelation “Dei Verbum” chapter 2.
Dear D Williamson,
I think that it might be of use to quote from the excellent “viewpoint” article of Robert McClory (author of “Faithful Dissenters: Men and Women Who Loved and Changed the Church”) which appeared in the NCR last year ( see http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/newman-sense-and-consent-faithful ), since it does much to contextualise the idea that all we have to do to know where the Church stands on a particular issue is look to the Holy Father (apologies for the length of the quote, but its coherence is otherwise possibly lost):
“There is stark irony in the words Pope Benedict XVI chose when he announced last February his plan to visit England this year and there pronounce John Henry Newman as among the “blessed,” just one step from canonization as a saint. He cited Newman as an example for all the world of opposition to dissent. “In a social milieu that encourages the expression of a variety of opinions on every question that arises,” said the pope, “it is important to recognize dissent for what it is and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate.”
If Newman’s remains had not decomposed — as Vatican investigators discovered when they attempted to dig up his coffin in 2008 seeking evidence of his sanctity — he would have been spinning in his grave. For Newman was as singular a voice for responsible dissent and the rights of the laity as the Roman Catholic church has ever seen. He paid dearly for his convictions and was very nearly silenced or worse when he became embroiled in 1859 in a controversy over the development of doctrine.
The idea of development was not popular at the time, especially among the hierarchy. So Newman, using history to make his point, wrote about the Arian heresy of the 4th century. Twenty-five years before, he had produced a massive, scholarly history of the Arians and how they failed, despite a 50-year, emperor-supported campaign to impose as church doctrine the belief that Christ was not divine; rather, he was a most elevated, godlike being, but creature nevertheless. Now in a lengthy, pointed article, titled “On Consulting the Faithful on Matters of Doctrine,” Newman argued that the Arian position, shared by the overwhelming majority of the bishops and endorsed by at least one pope, did not become Catholic doctrine because a great mass of the laity along with a handful of priests and bishops resisted. Despite beatings, seizures of property and in some cases martyrdom, they refused, they dissented. They clung to the doctrine of the Council of Nicea, which, they were assured, had been discredited. Only at the First Council of Constantinople was the Arian position repudiated.
Belief in Christ’s divinity was maintained during the greater part of the 4th century, wrote Newman, “not by the unswerving firmness of the Holy See, Councils or Bishops, but … by the consensus fidelium [consent of the faithful]. On the one hand, I say, there was a temporary suspense of the functions of the Ecclesia docens [the teaching church]. The body of the Bishops failed in their confession of the faith. … There were untrustworthy Councils, unfaithful Bishops; there was weakness, fear of consequences, misguidance, delusion, hallucination, endless, hopeless, extending itself into nearly every corner of the Catholic church.”
To explain how such a thing happened (and could happen again), Newman relied on his own, well developed ideas about the “sense” and the “consent” of the faithful. Church teaching, he argued cannot be a top-down enterprise, a one-way street. It must be the result of a conspiratio, literally a breathing together of the faithful and the bishops. It is the first responsibility of the episcopacy and papacy, he said, to listen carefully before teaching doctrine.
And to what must they listen? Said Newman, “I think I am right in saying that the tradition of the Apostles, committed to the whole Church … manifests itself variously at various times: sometimes by the mouth of the episcopacy, sometimes by the doctors, sometimes by the people, sometimes by liturgies … customs, disputes, movements, and all those other phenomena which are comprised under the name of history. It follows that none of these channels of tradition may be treated with disrespect.” This is not to undercut the teaching authority of the bishops, insisted Newman; they must wade through all these sources. And, he added, of all the sources, “I am accustomed to lay stress on the consensus fidelium.” “
D. Williamson says “When the bishops in union with the HF exercise their divene [sic] office of teaching and governing the church on matters of faith and morals they are infallibe.” Of course, this sweeping statement is most decidedly NOT in accord with the teaching of Vatican II.
The Conciliar Documents of Vatican II are quite unambiguous in stating that “And this infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine of faith and morals, extends as far as the deposit of Revelation extends, which must be religiously guarded and faithfully expounded.” (Lumen Gentium #25).
Such clear limits must always be acknowledged … and D. Williamson fails to do so, extending infallibility to ALL matters of faith and morals. Such mendacity! Such heresy! (tongue firmly in cheek!)
Pope Benedict XVI himself alluded to this (rather significant!) limitation when he said in 2005: “The Pope is not an oracle; he is infallible in very rare situations, as we know.”
ALWAYS bear in mind Canon 749 part 3: “No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless it is CLEARLY established as such” (emphasis mine).
The Council’s Decree on Ecumenism (no. 6) further clarifies this distinction when it says “Therefore, if the influence of events or of the times has led to deficiencies in conduct, in Church discipline, or even in the formulation of doctrine (which must be carefully distinguished from the deposit of faith itself), these should be appropriately rectified at the proper moment.”
In fact, Lumen Gentium no.12 is worth looking at in this regard … “The holy people of God shares also in Christ’s prophetic office … The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One, cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples’ supernatural discernment in matters of faith when “from the Bishops down to the last of the lay faithful” they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals.”
In the light of this doctrine, I would amend D. Williamson’s rather sweeping statement that “if you want to know what the Church teaches, you only have to look to the Holy Father” to: “if you want to know what the Church teaches, you only have to look at what teachings meet the condition of being in “universal agreement” within the entire Mystical Body of Christ.” These two statements are, of course, quite different!
Incidentally, I have no problem with St Ambrose’s statement “ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia” – but I don’t think that I see it in quite the same (triumphalistic and neoscholastic?) way that D. Williamson does.
Due to my circumstances, I am going to have to attempt to recover from my fall (having broken my new year’s resolution not to post here anymore), and will endeavour with every smidgen of willpower I can muster to refrain from making any further posts … no matter how tempting or catastrophically essential it might seem to make an intervention!
My energies must needs be focussed elsewhere.
Adieu
Dear Vincent,
Although you may have sworn off posting for now, please let me reply to your points.
First, there is no difference between matters of faith and morals and the deposit of Divine Revelation. They are the same thing. The one phrase refers to the specific nature of the contents, the other to its origin. So your point does not stand.
Second, the College of Bishops united to the Holy Father, having been endowed by Our Lord with the sacred office of teaching and passing on divine revelation, is always infallible when pronouncing on matters of faith and morals, whether teaching in an ordinary manner (councils, synods, preaching, etc) or in an extraordinary manner (ecumenical councils, solemn definitions ex cathedra, etc). However, the principle of unity within the College and indeed the Church is the office of the successor of Peter. For example, if 70% of the world’s bishops began preaching a doctrine contrary to that taught by the Holy Father, the remaining 30% united to him would then form the true College of Bishops.
Third, while it is true that the entire body of Christ’s faithful when in agreement on matters of faith and morals is likewise infallible, as you point out, still this must be understood correctly. This infallibility derives from their union and assent to the teachings of the College of Bishops whose principle of unity is the office of Holy Father as successor of St Peter. And so as long as the faithful are united to their bishops as pastors in communion with the Holy Father, it can be said that they are infallible in matters of faith and morals.
What is being said here nullifies the work of the Holy Spirit. Effectively, the Spirit blows where she will but judging by what D Williamson is saying: we have no need of Her – we need only obey the words, commands [doctrines], directives emanating from the Office of the Pope. Why are we gifted with faith, free will, conscience etc – if we have no rights and responsibilities bestowed by our Baptism? The ‘endowment’ you speak of is the endowment given to all the Baptised and Confirmed!
The magisterium is looking at changing the teaching about infant Baptism. I am positive this will be a long slow process because in the process of renewing the doctrine of infant Baptism, they must come slap bang up against the doctrine of Original Sin.
Now – where was the deposit of Divine Revelation in those original beliefs? Then, as has been argued before, what about the deposit of Divine Revelation in the matter of Galileo, the injustice of allowing slavery, the ursury that promoted the Reformation, the criminal behaviour – both as perpetrators and ‘cover-ups’ etc etc. [remember your stated belief is that there is no difference between matters of faith and MORALS and the deposit of Divine Revelation].
This ideology effectively trashes the principle of Sensus Fidelium also.
If the Office has been less than Holy in these matters and teaches such ‘undependables’ how can any person give unconditional obedience and remain sane let alone find Truth?! That sort of ideology promotes idolatry.
There is a law above the law. Christianity is about a relationship with Christ and about correct relationship to and with others. Religion, call it Catholicism, if you will, is a finger pointing to the moon. It is not the moon! Who has the key to bind and loose the criminal acts of key religious leaders?
We are taught that the Sacraments – so intrinsic to Catholicism – are outward signs of inward grace. Where is the grace going inward? Only into the hearts of the ‘Holy Office’ or those who have taken an oath of allegiance to such ‘Office’ [read: blind obedience]?
Your post about confusion [22/1]:
I have been reading the Bible for about 20 years – daily – and I know that any promise Jesus made, it was made to all disciples – right down to our day. Insofar as promising to be with ‘them’ is concerned Jesus never spoke Greek so he never used the word ‘apostle’. He taught and ‘formed’ ALL disciples the same things. His only special directive to the chosen twelve was a ‘servant leadership’. If you read all the accounts in all Gospels when Jesus makes promises, you will see that there was nothing ‘exclusive’ in them.
In closing, I am afraid all your ‘soap-boxing’ falls on deaf ears. I follow my conscience in the light of my relationship with Christ.
What a piously arrogant post!
@Donal
A Delphic post!
This response appears to have been as long in gestation as it is characteristically too clever by half.
“He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/pierre_teilhard_de_chardi.html#ixzz1ozTNC4fX