Defining dogma: the danger of creeping infallibilism.

When, after months of resistance, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston finally had a meeting with representatives of Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), the attendees were at pains to assert that while they sought a larger lay participation in the running of the church, they were not challenging dogmas. The organization insists that it is "the voice of the faithful." Whether the cardinal believed the claim or whether VOTF is correct in its assurances is not, however, at all easy to establish. What is the extent of dogma, what is the intent of dogma? My conjecture is that VOTF and Law passed each other as ships in the night on the issue of dogma.

Properly understood, the extent of dogma is highly restrictive. Papal pronouncements, for instance, are judged to be infallible only as part of the extraordinary magisterium. Such extraordinary pronouncements are truly extraordinary and are presumed to issue only rarely after broad consultation. In contrast to the extraordinary declarations, there is the ordinary magisterium which has obvious probative authority but is definitely not de fide. This nice distinction between extraordinary and ordinary magisterium has been badly blurred under John Paul II, so that all sorts of prudential notions and derivative arguments have acquired an aura of near-absolute dogma. Whatever the reassurance about "dogma" offered by VOTF, many of its members hold to a restrictive reach of the dogmatic while Cardinal Law and John Paul II paint dogma with a broad brush.

A key issue to be addressed in conversations between laity and church officials is "How much dogma do you have in mind?" I do not believe that there can be real progress in the church simply by having lay people running the financial ledgers of the diocese or reviewing the conduct of wayward priests. Genuine reform demands reform of "dogma"--at least some of the "dogmas" that have been swept up in the omnibus de fide basket. How dogmatic is Rome prepared to be about priestly celibacy? Everyone agrees that it is only (!) a matter of discipline, but Rome holds on to it as if it were as imperative as the doctrine of the Trinity.

Celibacy is too easy a case when it comes to dismantling dogma. How about the ban on contraception? Paul VI was careful in Humanae vitae to indicate that the ban on artificial contraception was not an infallible proclamation. Despite that caution, the ban has been subject to creeping infallibilism under John Paul II. What sort of genuine conversation about the faith can one have when polls indicate the vast majority of lay Catholics in America and elsewhere disagree with the ban? Are these faithful faithful? Honest conversation between laity and church officials cannot skirt the manifest discrepancies between official teaching and the opinions of those in the pews. Some proclamations may need to be de-dogmatized.

If one could properly restrict the extent of the dogmatic, so that every pious thought from above is not taken as an infallible pronouncement, one would still have to understand the intent of dogma. Dogmas are, after all, statements of mystery. Sacred mysteries are not, of course, just bafflements like Zen koans, where the logic is deliberately topsy-turvy in order to rearrange the votary's spiritual state. Sacred mysteries are revelations: something is revealed therein, even if we can't get our heads around it. The conservative tendency moves much too easily from "something revealed" to specific verbal formulations which must be affirmed. There are indeed "primordial" faith statements such as affirmation of a Triune God. But once one passes on to explain that mystery, clarity does not emerge. Here is Saint Augustine on "Three persons in one God":

   But when it is asked "Three what," then the great poverty from which our
   language suffers becomes apparent. But the formula "Three persons" has been
   coined, not in order to give a complete explanation by means of it, but in
   order that we might not be obliged to remain silent. (De Trinitate)

We affirm "faith seeking understanding" and should recognize that the understanding, valuable as it may be, never reaches closure. Saint Thomas would finally declare his exquisite theology "straw." If dogma is mystery that conceals and reveals, it would seem appropriate to be exceedingly cautious in deciding who has the proper verbal formulae. Folks who don't quite know what they are talking about should not rush to silence deviance.

Introducing an air of the tentative into the notion of dogma seems a natural bridge to the statements of yet another Bostonian, the Catholic author James Carroll (Constantine's Sword). The National Catholic Reporter recently reprinted his remarks at a Call to Action meeting under the provocative title "To Reform the Church, Embrace Democracy." Carroll asks for "pluralism" about world religions and "an authentic commitment to democracy." Suppression of difference, dissent, and dialogue, he says, is based on the false idea "that there is one objective and absolute truth, and that its custodian is the Catholic Church."

Carroll goes on at some length to support his argument by considerations like the comments above about the diceyness of dogma. While I am sympathetic to Carroll's attack on too much pontification, I think that democracy is a misleading notion for church. Democracy is a political arrangement concerned only with action, not belief. You can believe anything you want in our democracy, provided that belief does not issue in an action judged detrimental to society. Christianity, for better or worse--and I suspect that Carroll thinks it is for the worse--is a religion of "right belief": orthodoxy. (In contrast, Judaism is claimed by some to be a religion of "right practice," or orthopraxy, where what or whether you believe about God is quite secondary. Judaism as pure orthopraxy is a caricature. Every Jewish service begins with the Shema: "Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God is One." That is a mighty belief.) In so far as belief of some sort is essential to Christianity, "democracy" won't suffice. Much as one may worry about whether vox papae is vox dei, it is equally risky to proclaim vox populi, vox dei. Although I dare say that a vote of VOTF about what is to be believed would be quite satisfactory to my theology, I doubt that I would be at all happy with a universal poll of a billion Catholics worldwide.

What is lacking in the conflict between papalism and populism is a sense of how dogma develops. John Paul II on the one hand and Carroll on the other seem to want clear moments of decision: declaration from above, democratic vote from below. If one looks at history, dogmas have emerged only over time, sometimes a very long time. It took some three centuries for the early church to thrash out a statement about Jesus as very man and very God. Popes need not pounce on every novelty nor should the faithful vote for the fashion of the day. "Proceed with caution!" would be the best theological road sign for all parties--"but proceed!"

If there are to be dogmatic statements, their only plausible trajectory is by slow and painstaking deliberation encompassing traditional formulae, theological insight, and pastoral concerns. Declarative encyclicals from above do not assure assent, democratic voting from below does not assure truth. In the current desire to avoid authoritarianism, one need not flee to a faulty model of a democratic church in order to legitimate broad and deep lay participation.

Dennis O'Brien's most recent book is The Idea of a Catholic University (University of Chicago).