Drawing The Line on Dissent

By Richard N. Ostling

Since the beginning of his papacy in 1978, John Paul II has worried about the disintegration of his church's unified front on doctrines and moral teachings. Catholic scholars were not only squabbling about birth control, they were publicly challenging everything from divorce to the Virgin Birth to papal powers. The campaign to clamp down on dissent has since become a hallmark of John Paul's reign. Last week the Vatican hardened that effort, issuing a decree notifying Catholic scholars that and most sweeping pronouncement Rome has made in modern times on the limits of intellectual freedom in the Roman Catholic Church.

The 28-page Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian was issued with John Paul's endorsement by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by the Pope's righthand man, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. The Cardinal presented the text at a two-hour press conference, an ironic setting since the document demands that dissenting theologians "avoid turning to the 'mass media' " to air their views. Instead, dissidents are urged to raise their doubts with the hierarchy in private. Those who cannot resolve their differences should "suffer for the truth in silence and prayer," or face "serious measures," including removal from their teaching posts.

| Ratzinger stiffened when a reporter asked about the Rev. Bernard Haring, a liberal theologian who has criticized the Vatican's crackdown on dissent. Bristled the Cardinal about his fellow West German: "Father Haring's statement that the methods of Hitler were better than ours seems to me to show a lack of balanced judgment." The exchange revealed Rome's sensitivity to charges that its tactics smack of 20th century totalitarianism or medieval inquisitions.

The decree strives valiantly -- if not wholly convincingly -- to meet that objection. Theologians decide of their own free will to teach in the name of the church, Rome reasons. Once they have done so, their right of individual conscience is overcome by "the right of the People of God to receive the message of the Church in its purity and integrity and not to be disturbed" by heterodox opinions. Open opposition by scholars has done the church "serious harm," the text asserts.

The decree, in the works for more than six years, comes in the wake of harsh challenges from Catholic dissidents. Early last year, 163 German-speaking theologians issued a manifesto attacking the Pope's conservative appointments and hard line on doctrine. It inspired similar protests by scholars across Western Europe.

Several passages of the new document aim squarely at an argument made by Father Charles Curran, who in 1986 was forbidden to teach moral theology at the Catholic University of America. Curran contended that his writings on birth control, abortion and homosexuality were proper. Reason: he did not question any teachings that the church considers infallible -- formally defined by the Pope or hierarchy and absolutely certain. The Instruction replies that theologians must give "religious submission of will and intellect" even to teachings not explicitly defined as infallible (for example, the ban on women priests). Rome insists that all church teaching has validity "by virtue of divine assistance."

The chairman of the U.S. bishops' committee on doctrine, Alabama Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb, dutifully welcomed the Vatican thunderbolt as "a positive contribution to the discussion" on the relation between theologians and the hierarchy. Lipscomb did not point out that the U.S. bishops' 1989 policy statement on the problem took a far more tolerant tack toward troublesome theologians.

As Rome anticipated, its new text met immediate scorn from Catholic academics. Snapped the Rev. Richard McBrien, outspoken chairman of theology at the University of Notre Dame: "This is redolent of another era. It's like an outbreak of polio; we thought we had it conquered. This document comes out of the church of the 1940s and 1950s. The document is not a surprise; it's an embarrassment."

What practical impact will the decree have? Along with church law and a 1989 loyalty oath, it provides ammunition against upstart scholars. A gloomy Father Curran fears that "this document will have the same negative effects" as the 1907 papal decree against Modernism. That earlier crackdown, he contends, vitiated U.S. Catholic scholarship for decades. But for that to happen again, local bishops would have to take unpopular steps toward dismissing errant theologians. While the Pope has appointed more conservatives to the hierarchy, it is questionable that many Western bishops are willing to embark on an ideological housecleaning.

With reporting by Michael P. Harris/New York and Robert Moynihan/Rome