Rome and her Defectors

By DOUGLAS BROWN

cONSIDER this strange episode of ecclesiastical history: England's foremost Roman Catholic theologian, Fr Charles Davis, quits the Church in well-publicised disgust, accusing her of 'concern for authority at the expense of truth.' The editor of England's most seminal Catholic journal, Fr Herbert McCabe, writes in a leading article: 'These charges seem to me to be very well founded,' adding that the Roman Catholic Church 'is quite plainly corrupt.' His immediate superior, the Provincial of the English Domini- cans, defends his right to express a personal 'opinion that. is not repugnant to Catholic dogma, and a spokesman of the Cardinal Archbishop Of Westminster takes pride in the new freedom now accorded to Catholic writers.

Then the machine goes into reverse. The Apostolic Delegate to Great Britain angrily suggests that Fr McCabe is either in bad faith or is 'utterly immature.' The Provincial states that, on instructions from the Master General in Rome, Fr McCabe has been removed from his editorship. A spokesman of the Master General at first denies but later confirms that he has given such instructions. Later he announces that Fr McCabe has been suspended from his priestly functions.

But now the wheels turn briefly back again. After a storm of protest from an influential section of the English laity the Apostolic Delegate says he regrets this punishment and complains that he was not consulted about it. The Provin- cial announces that, as a result of the Apostolic Delegate's intercession, Fr McCabe has been

restored to his priestly office, but not to his editorial chair.

At last the wheels come to rest. The Apostolic Delegate declines either to confirm or to deny that he has intervened. The Master General states that he was under no obligation to consult him, and adds, not very credibly, that it was the Provincial who first asked for guidance from Rome. He concludes by saying that the whole Dominican. Council has condemned Fr McCabe for misusing his position as editor of an official Dominican organ to make 'false and calumnious accusations' against the Pope and the whole Catholic hierarchy.

The significance of this story lies not so much in the manifest lack of charity and frankness it reveals as in the variety of churchly voices in which it is told. It publicly exemplifies, for the first time in England, the extent of the revolution that has overtaken the Church of Rome under the inspiration of the late Pope John and the Second Vatican Council.

Charles Davis, in an earlier age, would have left the Church without showing her to be any different from what she was before. He might have had followers; he might, indeed, like Luther, have changed the whole course of Christian history. But, whatever disturbance his departure might have caused in her inner counsels, the Church of Rome would have closed her ranks behind him. Today this appearance of unity has been lost. The ecclesiastical liberalism of Vatican II, combined with modern means of widespread and instant communication, has made it impos- sible to preserve the monolithic illusion. As in a political democracy, the Church has openly

developed 'parties,' of the left, the right and the centre. Intellectuals, both clerical and lay, dis- pute at the top of their voices, and not least in the popular religious press.

The ordinary Roman Catholic in the theologi- cal backwater that is England is unaccustomed to

such dissonance. Amid so much public confusion

it is difficult for him to identify the Church's magisterium, however willing he may still be to

submit to it. He reads of Dominicans who flirt with Marxism, Dutch bishops who try to teach the Holy Office its business, German cardinals who countenance birth control. He turns to the Jesuits, those master communicators of the mind of Rome, and finds that even they have been roundly rebuked as potential deviationists by Pope Paul himself.

The world has grown accustomed to accepting the Papacy as a social and political as well as a spiritual force, varying in effectiveness in succes- sive ages, but always identifiable. Since the loss of the temporal power the Pope, as Stalin remarked, has had no divisions. Nevertheless, he has continued to exert a limited, but still direct and positive, influence on secular affairs.

In some countries his agents have allied them- selves with authoritarian rdgimes, in others they have made possible the emergence of Demo- christian parties, in others again they have disposed of `the Catholic vote.' There has thus been scope for a very active and subtle Vatican diplomacy, intimately connected until recently with the cold war. To this end a highly centralised bureaucracy has been necessary, capable not only of governing the Church in the minutest detail but of conducting what has amounted to a unified foreign policy.

That era is past. The devolution of spiritual authority cannot fail to be reflected in the sphere of politics. Henceforth it will no longer be possible to speak of 'the Vatican' as a single political entity, like the White House or the Elysee. Rome will still be the Scarlet Woman to some, and the divinely appointed guardian of eternal truth to others. But she cannot, now that her own institu- tions are being radically decentralised, continue to act on the things that are Caesar's as a united force.

In September a permanent Synod of diocesan bishops will gather round the Pope, in obedience to the reformulated principle of apostolic 'col- legiality.' Most of them will not spring from Catholic Europe at all, let alone Italy. Many of them will be used to living with Protestants and Orthodox, Moslems and Hindus, Communists and African nationalists. They will be of every race and colour. And they will come as much to enrich the fountainhead as to drink from it.

One can foresee a new ecclestiastical order arising. It could be one in which the worldly wisdom of Holy Mother Church, so dear to the mythologists, was actually based on the experi- ence of contemporary Christians. It might take the world some time to adjust itself to this new kind of Vatican. It might take many English Roman Catholics even longer. As we have seen, there is a heavy religious price to pay for the current reforms.

Nothing essential has changed, the theologians will assure us. The ordinary magisterium still exists—somewhere; and papal infallibility remains in reserve, as the remote long-stop. All the same, as the Davis-McCabe affair shows, that hot line to Heaven, hitherto so conveniently plugged in through parish priest, 'safe' bishop or the nearest clever Jesuit, has been discontinued.