"Baptism unites the church, not ordination," theologian and author
Anthony T. Padovano told more than 1,800 reform-minded Catholics
gathered June 10-12 at Detroit's Cobo Hall.
Addressing the inaugural national meeting of the American Catholic
Council June 11, he said, "The pope does not unify or sanctify the
church and make it catholic or apostolic. This is the work of the Spirit
and the community. The pope is an institutional sign of a unity already
achieved by the faithful. The pope does not create a community of
believers or validate baptisms or make the Eucharist occur."
Padovano was first president of CORPUS, an organization originally
formed to seek return of married priests to ministry but now advocating
"inclusive ministry," meaning also the ordination of women.
Most of his talk focused on the fact of changes in the church's history, the need for such change, and how the sensus fidelium,
the sense of the faithful as to the church's beliefs and practices,
often preceded the recognition by church authorities that change was
needed.
"This consensus of the faithful is never valid if it is forced," he
said. "In a totalitarian system, force is a factor in creating
compliance. In a believing community, agreement must be free."
"The church learns, early in its history, that the Spirit is best
discerned in community, in councils, in synods. … Thus the acceptance of
the Gentiles was not credible to the church in the year 35 and yet
became doctrine in the year 50 at the Jerusalem Council," he said.
"In our era," he added, "we have seen that women priests were not a
credible option for the community a century ago and seem an imperative
now; ecumenism was unthinkable for Catholics at large in 1865 and became
conciliar teaching in 1965; a lay-led Communion service was prohibited
in 1935 and promoted in 1995."
"What made the difference?" he asked. "The community and its
experience with Gentiles or women or Protestants or enlightened laity.
The Spirit led the community to accept what church administrators once
denounced."
"There are three magisterial or teaching structures in the church:
episcopal (papal), theological, communitarian," Padovano said.
"Teaching is formally expressed by the episcopal magisterium," he
added, but "this teaching is not authentic and cannot be considered
infallible unless a genuine dialogue among bishops and theologians and
the community at large is a substantial part of it."
He quoted Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman: "The body of the
faithful … and their consensus is the voice of the infallible church."
"Following Newman's lead, a doctrine not received is not infallible.
Infallibility in teaching depends on infallibility in believing and
receiving, not the other way around," he said.
Applying that to the reception of the teachings of the Second Vatican
Council, he commented,
"The community has affirmed the major themes of
that council: collegiality, liturgical and biblical renewal, ecumenism,
religious freedom and conscience. The turbulence of the last 50 years is
not caused by resistance to the council, but by their desire to
implement the council and to do this even while church administrators
resist their efforts."
Again quoting Newman, that truth "is the daughter of time," Padovano
said, "The sensus fidelium may receive a doctrine in one era and reject
it in another, not because the faithful are frivolous but because they
sense the emergence of new circumstances, often before church
administrators do."
"Thus, mandatory celibacy may make sense in one century but not
another," and changes in time, culture or circumstance may similarly
change what the faithful believe about questions of women priests, birth
control or church-state separation, he said.
If church authorities were more in tune with the sense of the
faithful over the past 50 years, Padovano argued, church teaching would
now be different on birth control, married priesthood, ordination of
women, same-sex relationships, ecumenical unity, the clergy sexual abuse
crisis, and "on fiscal accountability and on hierarchical
mismanagement."
He also devoted part of his address to the difference between civil
law and church law, "which is closer to theology than to jurisprudence,"
noting that the church "officially allows lawlessness."
Among examples, he cited the refusal of the Eastern Catholic churches
to accept mandatory celibacy and the fact that "bishops, even the
bishop of Rome, did not comply" after the 1917 Code of Canon Law ordered
every diocese to hold a synod every 10 years.
When Pope John XXIII in 1962 ordered that all seminary courses be
taught in Latin, virtually all seminaries ignored it because many of
their professors couldn't speak it and many students couldn't understand
it, and "Rome allowed the contrary custom to prevail" over the papal
order, he said.
"Fasting for a time before receiving Communion is ignored. … "When
eating meat on Friday was prohibited, Catholic countries in Europe
simply did not comply and the law was changed," he said.
The principle that "in the church, law is not valid unless it is
accepted by the community" goes back 16 centuries to St. Augustine, he
said.
He noted that the final canon in the Code of Canon Law, governing all
the rest, says that "the salvation of souls … is always the supreme law
of the church." That canon shows that the fundamental intent of all
church law "is spirituality rather than compliance," he said.
Calling for greater hierarchical recognition that the faith of the
church "is not entrusted to a few but to all God's people," Padovano
said, "Once we lose sight of Luke's words that Pentecost was for 'all,'
we create not a Pentecost church, but a church without Pentecost …
[that] has a place for the hierarchy but not for God's people."
"Why would we want such a church?" he asked. "Clearly Christ did not. Nor do we."
The American Catholic Council, formed three years ago to advance
reform in the church, convened the gathering in Detroit in an effort to
develop a reform agenda and reverse what its leaders – and clearly
virtually all its participants – see as a sustained program, under Popes
John Paul II and Benedict XVI and many of the U.S. bishops appointed by
them, to reverse many of the reforms of Vatican II.