How Catholic is the CTSA? Three views.

AVERY DULLES 

In June 1997, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston aroused great indignation by writing that the Catholic Theological Society of America "has become an association of advocacy for theological dissent" and, in fact, "a wasteland."

To assess the validity of this characterization one has only to peruse the recent volumes of the CTSA Proceedings. The latest volume, based on the 1997 convention, is a show-case example. The convention theme, "The Eucharist for the Twenty-First Century," might be regarded as a promising Catholic enterprise. But the outcome belied the promise. The convention speakers mounted a series of attacks on Catholic doctrine more radical, it would seem, than the challenges issued by Luther and Calvin.

Most notoriously, the convention put itself on record as collectively opposing the irrevocable character of the teaching that the church has no authority to ordain women. The conclusions of a committee report to this effect were endorsed by a landslide vote of 216 Yes, 22 No, and 10 abstentions. The vote was widely, and I believe correctly, interpreted as a dissent not only from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's declaration on the subject but also from the pope's call for definitive adherence to his teaching.

The theological dissent, however, runs far deeper, as the convention addresses demonstrate. In an orchestrated chorus they rejected fundamental articles of Catholic belief regarding priesthood and Eucharist as expressed by the Council of Trent, the Second Vatican Council, the synods of bishops, Paul VI, John Paul II, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Some examples may here be given.

One speaker lamented what he described as the "ideological misuse" of the imagery of Christ as Bridegroom and the importance of the maleness of Christ. The idea that the priest-celebrant acts in persona Christi was repeatedly assailed. The debate "about in whose persona the priest acts in the Eucharist," one speaker sarcastically declared, is of interest "primarily as a disputational exercise, yielding occasional experiences of theological 'Gotcha.'"

Speaker after speaker rose to proclaim that the Eucharist is accomplished not by the priest-celebrant but by the whole assembly. It is dearly established, according to one, that the baptized, rather than the ordained, are "the effective human subjects of the church's liturgy." The particular liturgical assembly works as a collective subject invoking the memoria Christi by the power of the Holy Spirit. The priest, said another speaker, simply leads the assembly in prayer and action on the basis of his or her qualities of leadership. In the "new paradigm" for sacramental ministry, leadership depends not on a particular state in life or gender but on "demonstrated abilities or charisms."

No special importance is ascribed to the words of institution, recited by the celebrant. Sacramental theology, we are informed, "needs to question the very notion of a consecratory formula." The doctrine of ex opere operato needs to be reinterpreted to mean not "arbitrary rubrics" but explicit acknowledgment of the power of God and the bestowal of the Holy Spirit. In his delivery, I am told, the speaker commented that "validity is a small concern." Too small?

In American Catholicism today, said another speaker, "parishioners are no longer distinguishing between those rituals performed by the permanently ordained clergy and those rituals performed by laity." "Despite the protests of the magisterium," he contended, the difference between permanent and temporary forms of ordination is being "minimized."

Notwithstanding the prohibitions repeatedly issued by church authorities, the speakers at this convention did not shy away from advocating the celebration of the Eucharist without an ordained priest. Current Roman Catholic directives regarding Communion services in the absence of a priest are flawed, said one theologian, because they misconceive the Eucharist as the work of a single ordained minister. Unordained leaders can perform truly eucharistic actions. When a priest is present, the whole assembly should join in the posture and gestures of the priest, even at the recitation of the institution narrative.

At a workshop on "women and the Eucharist," a priest who meekly asked about how he could better respond to the sensitivities of women religious was sharply reminded that "priests may not be as central to the liturgy as some perceive themselves to be." Another participant issued an open invitation for members to participate in a "critical Mass" at which unordained women would preside. Acts of "public ritual transgression," said still another, are a desirable tactic to "crack open" the meaning of the Eucharist.

The convention, taken in general, was as vigorous as any sixteenth-century Reformer in seeking to banish the ideas of ordained priesthood and sacrifice, neither of which, in the judgment of several speakers, should be seen as anything more than metaphorical. These views were set forth with a certain display of historical erudition, as though doctrines could be invalidated by tagging them chronologically. The sacerdotalized vocabulary of the Christian church, said one speaker, was a problematic development of the third century, when the concept of Christian priesthood began to be taken literally rather than metaphorically. The medieval Scholastics were castigated by another speaker for having promoted the idea of sacrifice as a vehicle for concentrating the liturgy on the cultic action of the ordained minister. Still another observed that Thomas Aquinas, with his views on transubstantiation, was "an idiosyncratic voice in thirteenth-century eucharistic theology and by the end of that century, a voice which ceased to convince." Ritual ordination, one speaker remarked, was not specifically linked with consecration in official church teaching until 1215. A historical work was footnoted to prove that only in the fifteenth century did the church begin to teach officially "that order is a sacrament which is permanently effective and 'imprints character.'"

In our day - it would seem - we are liberated from all these illusions. We can shift the focus away from the cultic actions and concentrate rather on what one speaker strangely called "the eucharistic experience of Jesus." A woman psychiatrist was cited as a witness to the sad plight of those Catholics, clergy and laity alike, for whom the "traditional" liturgical practice and doctrine "served positively as a mediating 'transitional object' connecting them with the divine mystery."

In a workshop on "Sunday with Campus Ministry but without a Priest" the audience was regaled with an account of how two lay persons replaced an ordained priest at a regular Sunday worship service. The speaker, alluding to James Fowler's stages-of-faith development, made a rather revealing comment. He spoke of "the movement from the synthetic conventional faith to the individuative reflective faith." The terminology speaks volumes. It insinuates that adherence to the Catholic tradition and to the teaching of the church can only be conventional and unreflective. Significant too is the reference to "individuation." Reflective faith, it would seem, must arise from individual creativity rather than from participation in the faith of the church.

My own conclusion (not, I hope, a purely individual or unreflective one!) is that the 1997 convention of the CTSA confirms the presence of severe fault lines in contemporary American Catholicism, especially in the theological community. The CTSA, apparently driven by an urge for theological self-assertion against hierarchical authority, widens the gap and constitutes a kind of alternative magisterium for dissatisfied Catholics. It tends to impose an orthodoxy of its own. Graduate students who hope to find university teaching positions, and younger faculty seeking promotion and tenure, feel almost compelled to attend the CTSA and to refrain from vocal criticism.

Theologians are faced with a drastic choice: whether to follow the directions represented by the CTSA or to adhere to the tradition as taught by the popes and councils. Church authorities are faced with a similar choice. Can they recognize the CTSA as Catholic? Can anything be done to clarify or restore its Catholic character? Or must some new theological agency, more committed to Catholic principles, be established?

Sound and responsible statements can surely be found in the 1997 Proceedings, but they are difficult to come by in the major addresses on the convention theme. While my own reading is quite negative, I am anxious to hear from others whether they can make the case for a more favorable reading of the volume.

MARY ANN DONOVAN

Father Avery Dulles has leveled extremely grave charges at the Catholic Theological Society of America. I regret that he was not in attendance at the convention he censures so heavily. If he had been present he could have perceived how mistaken are the terms he uses to establish attitudes: for example, one speaker "sarcastically" declared, the priest who spoke "meekly" was "sharply" reminded, the chorus was "orchestrated." Neither the meetings nor the text of the Proceedings justifies his division of the participants into the sincere and the sneering. Many of us who have admired Avery Dulles can only ask what could have led this eminent theologian to adopt so hostile an attitude toward the CTSA and to offer so misleading an interpretation of its 1997 convention.

His first charge, that "the convention put itself on record as collectively opposing the irrevocable character of the teaching that the church has no authority to ordain women," misreads the resolution adopted by the society. Its text is: "(1) There are serious doubts regarding the nature of the authority of this teaching and its grounds in Tradition. (2) There is serious, widespread disagreement on this question not only among theologians, but also within the larger community of the church. (3) Once again, it seems clear, therefore, that further study, discussion, and prayer regarding this question by all the members of the church in accord with their particular gifts and vocations are necessary if the church is to be guided by the Spirit in remaining faithful to the authentic Tradition of the church in our day."

Sentences 1 and 2 do not "collectively oppose" anything. They simply state two facts: there are serious doubts about what kind of authority this doctrine has and these doubts exist among theologians and others throughout the church. Consequently, states sentence 3, the members of the church should give this matter further study, discussion, and prayer. The resolution endorsed by the CTSA states two facts and a consequence that is reasonably drawn from them. I strongly disagree with anyone who chooses to interpret the approval of this resolution as an act of dissent. This resolution was not asserted against the magisterium; it was submitted to the episcopal conferences of the United States and Canada. Theologians are expected to make difficulties clear to the magisterium. Doing so is part of their work.

Father Dulles has accused the speakers at the 1997 convention of rejecting "fundamental articles of Catholic belief regarding priesthood and Eucharist." Presumably he bases this charge on the various places in the Proceedings to which he then refers. The following comparison between what Dulles has written and what the speakers at the convention actually said, will, I believe, suffice to show that he has not offered a fair and objective presentation of what was said.

Dulles: "One speaker lamented what he described as the 'ideological misuse' of the imagery of Christ as Bridegroom and the importance of the maleness of Christ."

What was said: "Taking a useful metaphor like Bridegroom from the tradition and raising it to a principle of theology is dangerous business, for it fails to respect the genre in which the metaphor has been proposed and runs the risk of ideological misuse."

Dulles: "The idea that the priest-celebrant acts in persona Christi was repeatedly assailed."

What was said: In fact none of the speakers "assailed the idea." Dulles seems to have found an example of this in the passage to which he then refers:

Dulles: "The debate 'about in whose persona the priest acts in the Eucharist,' one speaker sarcastically declared, is of interest 'primarily as a disputational exercise, yielding occasional experiences of theological "Gotcha."'"

What was said: Whether this was said "sarcastically" is for those who were at the convention to judge. That the speaker was not "assailing the idea that the priest-celebrant acts in persona Christi" is clear from her next sentence, which gives her reasons for judging that dispute to be of minor importance: "Why? The premise of the debate is that the priest is the sole effective human subject of liturgical action, and that premise itself is no longer tenable."

Dulles: "Speaker after speaker rose to proclaim that the Eucharist is accomplished not by the priest-celebrant but by the whole assembly."

What was said: None of the speakers said that the Eucharist is not accomplished by the priest-celebrant. Rather, they rightly insisted that the Eucharist is offered by the whole assembly, and not only by the priest-celebrant.

Dulles: "It is clearly established, according to one, that the baptized, rather than the ordained, are the 'effective human subjects of the church's liturgy.'"

What was said: "Sacrosanctum concilium (par. 14) had mandated, 'In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, the full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered above all else....' In this statement, the baptized are clearly identified as the effective human subjects of the church's liturgy."

It is obvious that neither "all the people" nor "the baptized" excludes the ordained. There is no justification for Dulles inserting the phrase "rather than the ordained," as in another place he inserts the phrase "or her" where it is absent from the text.

Dulles: "No special importance is ascribed to the words of institution, recited by the celebrant. Sacramental theology, we are informed, 'needs to question the very notion of a consecratory formula.'"

What was said: "As I hope to argue in the third part of this essay...a sacramental theology from below, as well as a sacramental theology that depends upon a close reading of the rites and their history, needs to question the very notion of a consecratory formula."

The speaker devotes seven pages to detailed argument. Historical analysis leads him to write that what is needed, rather than the scholastic emphasis on the moment of consecration, is emphasis on the epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit so central to Eastern theology. So he concludes: "Thus Eastern theology has been on surer ground in pointing to the epiclesis as a moment of consecration, although limiting the notion of consecration to one moment is not necessary given my theory about the entire shape and content of the eucharistic action."

Dulles: "The speakers at this convention did not shy away from advocating the celebration of the Eucharist without an ordained priest."

What was said: The simple fact is that none of the three convention speakers advocated the celebration of the Eucharist without an ordained priest. What they did advocate is the full realization and implementation of the truth that the Eucharist is celebrated by the whole gathered people of God, and not by the priest alone.

It is not possible in the space allowed to respond to each one of Dulles's accusations. I am convinced that anyone who reads the Proceedings and compares Dulles's critique with what was actually said, will agree that there is no real justification for his accusing the convention speakers of mounting "a series of attacks on Catholic doctrine" or of rejecting "fundamental articles of Catholic belief regarding priesthood and Eucharist."

Much of the historical work presented by speakers is dismissed by Dulles's judgment: "These views were set forth with a certain display of historical erudition, as though doctrines could be invalidated by tagging them chronologically." He does not address the work seriously on its own terms and interprets the purpose of historical exposition as invalidating doctrines. One must then ask what is the theological significance of earlier practices, teachings, or beliefs? Critical history leads to the interpretation of doctrinal developments in a contextualized fashion. It is true that the vocabulary of "priesthood" began to be taken seriously in its application to Christian leadership in the third century. To affirm this is not to attack the priesthood. It is true that in his own day Thomas Aquinas and his teaching on transubstantiation were not given great weight. To affirm this is not to deny real presence. The first evidence currently available to link ordination and consecration in official church teaching is in 1215; in ending this section the speaker says "much more research is needed before any firm conclusions can be reached...." Here we have an area clearly identified as needing study. To adduce historical evidence for earlier stages of doctrinal development is not to attack doctrine. If Dulles holds this to be the case, he must establish it.

According to Dulles, the CTSA wishes to set itself up as a "kind of alternative magisterium." I can assure him that this is not its intention. The CTSA simply wishes to perform the service proper to members of the Catholic theological community. As the history of Vatican II shows, work of Catholic theologians which at first might seem to some to be incompatible with official doctrine, can, on further study, come to be seen as soundly based on the church's authentic tradition. The theology of the Eucharist is an area where sound scholarship, based on serious research, is reaching a consensus that post-tridentine Catholic doctrine is too narrowly focused on the words of consecration pronounced by the priest. A more authentic tradition emphasizes the entire eucharistic liturgy as celebrated by the whole gathered people of God. To present and explain this growing consensus, in scholarly papers presented at a theological convention, is the proper work of the Catholic theologian. It does not involve any claim to be an alternative magisterium.

If there are fault lines in U.S. Catholicism they are the fruit of a spirit of antagonism inappropriate to the community of disciples. Incorrect and misleading interpretations of the kind Dulles has given can only augment suspicions and divisions in the church. Why does disagreement among Catholics have to deteriorate into charges of heresy? We ought rather put into practice the "presupposition" with which Saint Ignatius began his Spiritual Exercises: "It should be presupposed that every good Christian ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbor's statement than to condemn it."

PETER STEINFELS 

Did the most recent convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America reveal a "wasteland"? Did the major addresses constitute a challenge to well-established Catholic beliefs regarding the priesthood and Eucharist? Must Catholic theologians and church authorities make a "drastic choice" between upholding the society as a legitimate venue for Catholic theology or condemning and possibly replacing it as no longer true to authentic Catholic tradition?

My answers to those questions are no, yes, and no.

I attended the CTSA's convention last June. I went as a reporter for the New York Times, as a friend of CTSA members of widely differing views, as a nontheologian who depends on theologians, not the least of them Avery Dulles, for intellectual insight and spiritual nourishment. I also went as an American Catholic more than a little worried about the future of the church.

In no way did the gathering suggest a theological "wasteland." In carefully arguing that a responsum from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith did not establish the teaching of Ordinatio sacerdatolis as infallible, the society's Task Force was, I would maintain, not only respectful and responsible but actually conservative.

I encountered very little of the anger at church authorities, the flippant dismissals, or argument by crowd-pleasing wisecrack that have often marred theological gatherings on both left and right. The morning prayer sessions were filled to overflowing; the convention liturgy was a central event. Most important, in view of widely voiced worries that the frame of reference for Catholic theology was increasingly becoming the academy rather than the church, the concerns behind the convention's papers and comments were unmistakably pastoral. At the Sunday-morning table discussions of the major addresses on the Eucharist, one theologian's questions arose from her efforts at catechizing young people; another's from her experience with Central European Eastern-rite Catholic immigrants; and so on.

At the same time, three of the convention's four major addresses, taken cumulatively, set a direction that Father Dulles is right to flag, even at the risk of courting the inevitable denunciations.

Unfortunately, Dulles's citations do not serve his critique well. Some are unfair. Others ignore the speaker's nuanced formulations or considerable argumentation. Still others read tone and meanings into these statements that I neither recall nor find in the text. I have heard any number of bishops, for example, declare that apparently many parishioners do not distinguish between rituals performed by the ordained and the nonordained. What is shocking about a theologian reporting the same reality?

Nonetheless, Dulles is not imagining that all three addresses moved in a similar direction, a direction away from positions taken from Trent through Vatican II and toward positions much more congenial to the Reformers and in general to their liberal and low-church descendants. Although the major speakers diverged on details, the overall thrust could best be captured by the image of diffusion. Priesthood is diffused into the assembly's leaders, ordained or not, and into the whole assembly. Real presence is diffused into intentional reception of the sacrament and even into spiritual communion. The words of institution and moment of consecration are diffused into other parts of the liturgy and then into the ritual as a whole. The "official" liturgy is diffused into its local, popular instantiations. Traditional methods of theological reflection on texts are diffused into "critical theory of ritual process."

One after another established category and distinction melts away, and what replaces them is fluid, vague, in a word, diffuse. So what is wrong? Aren't established categories and distinctions known to freeze, narrow, deaden? Isn't a gathering of theological scholars exactly the place where disquieting but plausible ideas can be explored?

What was disconcerting was not the exploration of radical possibilities, but the exploration of only those skewed in this one direction. An unacknowledged grid, it seemed to me, worked to determine which "audacious" ideas were to be entertained and which were ignored. At bottom, that grid had to do with the issue of women's ordination and the limitation of priestly leadership to (celibate) men.

This was the tail that wagged the whole meeting. Amend that statement: women's exclusion from the priesthood is too important an issue to be called a "tail." And yet it does have a stranglehold on the theological guild that excludes other, similarly weighty issues.

This imbalance in the major addresses was reinforced by their strange Pollyannishness, their inexplicable lack of irony, self-doubt, or tragic sense. For all the talk of new theological data, of studying concrete, local ritual process, and the experience of "the baptized in the nave," precious little of it actually appeared. There was no registering the various kinds of data, from opinion polls to dress and body language, suggesting that not all the news from "the nave" about eucharistic belief and piety is good - and that at least some negative side effects can be attributed to an understanding of Eucharist that is already much more diffuse than twenty-five years ago.

Take the fairly obvious fact that such increasingly diffuse understandings of Eucharist are more compatible with the world view of naturalistic science - and therefore may be attractive not because they challenge oppressive social hierarchies but because they minimize cultural dissonance and ease social assimilation. One would expect that some speaker might have at least adverted to this possibility.

Surely the most brilliant of these addresses was Gary Macy's virtuoso excursion into medieval eucharistic theology, a paper well-calculated to destabilize conventional Catholic assumptions about ordination, real presence, and the relationships among transubstantiation, reception, eucharistic devotion, and spiritual communion. Macy argued that the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries witnessed a "clericalization of the West" in which the ordained consolidated power over the Eucharist but only as the laity asserted a counter control over popular devotions, including access to the Eucharist redefined as spiritual communion. A similar "renegotiation of ritual power" is going on today, he surmised, with an eradication of the lines between ordained and nonordained that have existed since the mid-thirteenth century.

All very stimulating and maybe even true. As a nonexpert I worry that Macy's paper might be as much a fanciful tissue as, say, John Boswell's Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, but that will have to be demonstrated by something beyond Dulles's dismissive reference to "a certain display of historical erudition."

I simply note that this formidable erudition was accompanied by unalloyed approval. Macy mentioned no dark side to anything preceding or following the medieval division of ritual labor, only that the poor were well cared for in England, and his enthusiasm for the current "renegotiation of ritual power" was unqualified. Although he cannot "quite imagine the shape that new form of Catholicism is taking," he knows that it is "a new and wonderfully exciting church."

"For the first time in seven hundred years, something really new and wonderful is stirring," he said - a remarkably ahistorical claim for a historian - "and I, for one, am thrilled."

If, like Dulles, I am not so thrilled, I cannot think of a response less apt to be fruitful than the "drastic choices" Dulles contemplates. Another wedge driven between church authorities and theologians will be mutually destructive. And if the vote of 216-22 in a secret ballot on the Task Force report is any measure, there is not a large constituency for yet another competing scholarly group.

The CTSA can forestall that by assuring that its programs are not restricted in their concerns and ideology, that respondents do more than praise papers while adding boilerplate admonitions to pay more attention to the poor or other cultures, and that scholars be expected to relate their work to the established tradition with no less attention than they expend on the latest wave of scholarship.

Church authorities, for their part, need to surrender their lingering illusion that the production and consumption of theology by Catholics can be institutionally controlled as they once were, by oaths, Indexes, excommunications, imprimaturs, academic purges, fear of hell, or some variants of the same. Sorry. Authority will have to engage theology in a new way.

Church authorities must also recognize the high cost, the endless hemorrhaging of credibility, that stems from excluding women not just from the priesthood but, despite apologies and excuses, from all the higher echelons of church office, which remain tied to priesthood. I sincerely hope that Dulles has sounded a warning on this point to the quarters where he enjoys a hearing as vigorous as the one he has raised about the CTSA.

Avery Dulles, S.J., holds the Laurence J. McGinley Chair of Religion and Society at Fordham University.

Mary Ann Donovan, S.C., is president of the CTSA and professor of historical theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.

Peter Steinfels writes the "Beliefs" column for the New York Times and is visiting professor of history at Georgetown University.