What Might Reform Look Like?

Hans Küng en la UNED 02 For those who are not familiar with Hans Kung, here is a quick background.  Way back at the time of the Second Vatican Council (1958-1964), Kung, a Swiss priest, was a prominent member of the group of young theologians that was trying to move the Council fathers toward a more expansive and modern interpretation of the teachings of the Catholic Church.  Among even this group, Kung was the youngest and (arguably) the most brilliant, matched only by an obscure Bavarian priest by the name of Josef Ratzinger--the future Pope Benedict XVI.  These Young Turks basically got their way, and their fingerprints are all over the documents of Vatican II.

In the aftermath of the Council, the Young Turks eventually split down the middle over what to do next.  One party, lead in many ways by Ratzinger/Benedict, pulled back from some of the outcomes of the Council and called for some measure of retrenchment.  The other side, led by Kung, called for going farther.  Needless to say, the Ratzinger view prevailed in the institutional Church, and Kung has been more or less in exile since the early 80s.

With that as background, here is Father Kung's thoughts on what directions the "Franciscan Reform" might take.  First off, I think his reflection on the "spiritually poor" is important.  There are many Catholics out there who love the Church and want to be active members, but who are excluded for the reasons Kung mentions.  This insight is at the heart of the failure of imagination and/or compassion that one sees in some Catholic conservatives--they imagine that the world consists of them (who love the Church) and the heretic outsiders who hate it.  There are many, many people who are estranged who feel their estrangement is not by choice, but as a result of the policies and attitudes of the Church.

As a product of his reflection on the spiritually poor, Kung focuses on three areas of emphasis to reach those people--(1) change the rules that prevent divorced and remarried Catholics to participate fully in the sacraments; (2) serious outreach to women who use contraception, have abortions, etc.; and (3) allowing married priests.  I would add (4) serious institutional reform that would allow the regular Catholic in the pew to be confident that their money was being used prudently and their leaders were not going to embarrass them publicly.  But, in general, I think Fr. Kung is spot on.

Among Kung's three points, the easiest to address is #3.  Even the most traditionalist voices agree that mandatory celibacy for all priests is not an iron-clad rule that could be changed.  There would be institutional resistance to these changes, but if it was implemented wisely and carefully, I think it would be welcomed by most quarters in the Church.  Basically, Francis could just do it.

#1 is a little trickier.  The Catholic Church has lived and died on the hill of not recognizing divorces--look at Henry VIII (though, in truth, that's a more complicated story than is portrayed).  This would be a big, big change.  However, there are two different options for making this happen.  One would be to simply announce that the Latin Church was adopting the model used by the Eastern Orthodox Churches, which allow second marriages under the principle of oikonomia, or pastoral discretion.  This has the advantage of tying the move to ancient practices.  This article has a good summary of the arguments for this approach.  The other move is to not change the policy per se, but to rework Canon law in a way that accomplishes the same effect--perhaps a summary process for annulment that is handled by a local priest.  While somewhat of a slight of hand, it might be more palatable to traditionalists.  Either way, I think Pope Francis has called his shot that he is looking to do something here, because he was the one who brought up this issue in the first place.

The final point, regarding women who use birth control or have abortions, is the most problematic, because it is so vague.  Notice that Fr. Kung does not say that the Church should change the teachings in these areas.  I suspect that's because he knows that such a move creates a serious danger of splitting the Church.  Changing the birth control teaching means explicitly rejecting a central message of the last three Popes.  It can't be finessed in the way that the divorce issue can be.  Thus, if it is only a call is for some sort of new pastoral response, it is unclear to me what that response would be or how it will work out in practice.  Certainly, Pope Francis is pointing to a change of emphasis with his comments regarding the need to have a more balanced presentation of the Catholic faith, rather than an at times obsessive focus on "pelvic issues."  That's good, but it's aspirational, and will be dependent in practice on the willingness of local priests to absorb that change of tone.  Some no doubt will and lay off these issues, but others will not.  In truth, that's the status quo right now anyway, so I'm not sure the Pope's statements do much of anything, other than nudge folks in that direction.  I would be really curious to know if Father Kung has something substantive in mind with this issue.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jesus Doesn't Care if You Masturbate, and Other Provocations

Image
1.  A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon this post on the Patheos Catholic channel .  In it, a young woman named Marina S. Olsen began what she promised is a series of posts discussing sexual sins, and she begins with masturbation.  To call the post alarmist would not do it justice--even in the heyday of the drug scares in the 80s, an anti-drug ad that adopted this tone would be seen as over-the-top.   But something struck me in reading her post--Ms. Olsen believes, with an apparently unshakable conviction, that what the Catholic Church has to say about masturbation is true.  Actually, that's not quite right--she takes as a given  that what the Church says about masturbation is true.  It is noticeable that at no point does she try to do the Dr. Greg trick, which is to justify her opposition to masturbation on the basis of ostensibly neutral or scientific grounds .  No, her thesis is that people despair about masturbation because masturbation is going to result in those folks
Read more

Another Theology of the Body, Part VI--A Theological Exploration of the Clitoris

I was introduced to The Body's Grace by Frank from Letters to the Catholic Right in this post , where he quotes Williams saying: It puts the question which is also raised for some kinds of moralist by the existence of the clitoris in women; something whose function is joy. If the creator were quite so instrumentalist in ‘his’ attitude to sexuality, these hints of prodigality and redundancy in the way the whole thing works might cause us to worry about whether he was, after all, in full rational control of it. But if God made us for joy…? I want to talk about the first part of that quote here, regarding the clitoris.  I am not aware of any theology that has been done on the clitoris, but there should be.  As Williams alludes to, the existence and nature of the clitoris is a theological "problem," especially if you want to hold on to traditional Christian sexual morality.  It is especially problematic if you want to hold that sexuality needs to be understood through the
Read more

Holy Sex!--Part 3.3 Getting Down to Business, Part II

Chapter 12 is about foreplay.  Most everyone acknowledges that foreplay is good, and this chapter is no exception.  Popcak makes the interesting but seemingly effective choice to break foreplay down into the various senses.  So, for example, under seeing he discusses things like wearing lingerie, under smell he suggests to use scented candles, etc.  There is nothing revolutionary or earthshaking here, but the suggestions are solid and reasonable. He also provides an unambiguous defense of oral sex.  Some might be puzzled as to why oral sex needs defending, but the traditional position of the Church opposed oral sex--hence the reason it was traditionally grouped with anal sex under the heading of "sodomy."  So, Popcak is stepping out a bit on a limb here, and he deserves his kudos for that.  He also makes clear that oral sex goes both ways, subject only to the One Rule.  Good on him for recognizing the needs of the ladies in this realm. I could see how his constant use of
Read more