Power and Peril: The Catholic Church at the Crossroads. (Book Review).

Michael W. Higgins, Douglas R. Letson, Power and Peril: The Catholic Church at the Crossroads. Toronto, HarperCollins Canada, 2002, 440 pages, hardcover, $39.95.

The authors of this book, two Catholics, have many complaints against their Church. The litany of these complaints typically contrasts statements of the Church's Magisterium with a number of authors opposing them.

Several of the teachings in question have to do with sexuality; for example, contraception, homosexuality, and ordination of women to the priesthood. In the authors' minds, "the history of the twentieth century would suggest that the Vatican remains adamant in its unwillingness to review questions of human sexuality either critically or objectively or to evaluate on their own terms the contributions that various contemporary fields of study can bring to an understanding of the institutional human implications of our sexual nature" (p. 300).

The authors think that the Church's teaching on the sinfulness of contraception is wrong and they marshal many allies in this cause (208-232); even natural family planning is scorned (225). They do not however mention the problems that can come from separating the procreative and unitive aspects of sexuality, problems dealing with pornography, masturbation, fornication, adultery, and homosexual activity. As for this last, the authors present arguments for the liceity of homosexual sexual activity (232-246), even quoting from a Jesuit who has become well-known recently for his enmity to solid Catholic doctrine and who won't accept the teaching of the Church on homosexuality at present or even for a long way into the future: "So I would expect that the bishop is not going to be real happy with what's going on in terms of gay-lesbian couples and their relationships. We're going to disagree and it's going to take a couple of hundred years probably for that tension to get resolved into some kind of practice or for mulation that everybody agrees is reasonable and really captures what we're about" (p. 153).

The authors also are unhappy with the Church teaching that women may not be ordained to the priesthood. They quote Pope John Paul on the matter: "Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren ... I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is definitively to be held by all the Church's faithful" (319). The authors however say that the statement is not infallible (320). But in this they are wrong. The Code of Canon Law states: "In virtue of his office the Supreme Pontiff is infallible in his teaching when, as Chief Shepherd and Teacher of all Christ's faithful, with the duty of strengthening his brethren in the faith, he claims by definitive act a doctrine to be held concerning faith or morals" (#749.1).

The authors seem to be little worried about what is taught in theology classes in Catholic colleges or universities. Speaking, apparently approvingly, of two Canadian bishops, they have said: "Both men have drawn distinctions between academic freedom in a university college and fidelity to the teaching Church required of the magisterium in a seminary."' Does this mean that the souls of seminarians are more deserving of receiving Catholic truth than college students are?

The authors find fault with the Church when it says that "the recognition of the school as a Catholic school is always reserved to the competent ecclesiastical authority" (124). They also seem to be opposed to the Church disciplining a theologian, and present a list of prominent dissenters who presumably should not have been investigated (148). They quote Cardinal Hume of England as being in favour of never excommunicating presume, saying that he or she is no longer a Catholic theologian; this is said to be "driving a person out of the Church." On the other hand, could it not be simply warning the person that he or she is already outside the Church, or well along the way?

The authors seem to approve of the opinion of a a resuit theologian that "it is the role of the university to examine theological truths and not to defend theological orthodoxy." What, then, is the difference here Catholic theologian and any theologian at all?

There is no discussion in this book of the rampant dissent in many of our Canadian universities and colleges. No wonder the authors have the hubris to condemn a university such as the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, for not being "populated by inquisitive minds and a desire to find new ways of understanding truths" simply because it doesn't teach dissent (183).

One incredible objection the authors make to Church teaching concerns a sentence in the new Profession of Faith, which says: "With firm faith I believe as well everything contained in God's word, written or handed down in tradition and proposed by the Church -- whether in solemn judgment or in the ordinary and universal magisterium -- as divinely revealed and calling for faith." Now, the Code of Canon Law says that all Catholics are bound to accept such teachings (#750) and that to doubt or deny them is heresy (#751). Should a Profession of Faith not rule out heresy?

The authors also say that the Roman document Dominus lesus, which claims that the Catholic Church is the true Church and that other churches are deficient, has drawn a line in the sand, a line calling for firm belief, and that calling for this firm belief is opposed to the Church's teaching that the Church has always to be reformed. This interpretation of the Church's desire for its reformation, in the eyes of the authors, implies that its teachings can be doubtful, even, presumably, its most solemn teachings (151-152). The authors think also that having a firm faith is an impediment to the Church's ecumenical or interfaith dialogue, as if the Church would be more successful in these activities if it didn't have a firm faith in its teachings (151).

Dr. Higgins has recently succeeded Dr. Letson as president of St. Jerome's College in Kitchener, ON. It is sad to see two presidents of a Catholic college write a book like this. Ten years ago the Holy See asked the bishops of the world to accept and apply a document on Catholic Universities, Ex Corde Ecclesiae. The Holy See has not yet been able to approve the Canadian response. Is one reason for this the complaints of Catholic universities and colleges against the teaching of the Church?

Note:

(1.) Higgins and Letson, My Father's Business (1990), pp. 96, 99.

Father Kennedy was President of Assumption University, Windsor, and of St. Thomas More College, Saskatoon