A restive and divided church

AS I WATCH the cardinals preparing to enter their conclave, I wonder, ''Who do they think the church is?" During the 26 years of Pope John Paul II's papacy, the church has grown from 750 million to 1.1 billion. If the church is now more Asian or African, should the cardinals elect a pope from there?

ADVERTISEMENT

Whoever the cardinals conceive the church to be, chances are that the man they select as pope will embody their understanding of the church.

Who, then, is the church? When asked at the beginning of Pope John Paul II's papacy, the answer was an easy one: ''the people of God." This was the landmark doctrinal declaration made in the Second Vatican Council document ''Lumen Gentium." Moreover, from the start, Pope John Paul II made clear that, like his predecessor, John Paul I, he was going to follow the legacies of their namesakes: Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, the architects of the Second Vatican Council.

Right now, the people of God are restive and divided. On the one hand, some would have it that the church is those who give assent and obedience to certain church teachings. Others contend that the church is those who have been baptized into it and who, through Eucharist, remain in communion with it despite their concerns about these teachings.

The first group right now enjoys a good deal of influence. We saw that in the last presidential election, when some bishops and their supporters sought to excommunicate those who publicly disagreed with the teachings on abortion and homosexuality, especially.

Though this group seeks to exclude, its intolerance is due to their desire for stability in the church; clear teaching can anchor us, they argue.

They perceive those who do not subscribe to these teachings absolutely and unquestioningly as relativists, threatening the church and their children. They denigrate them as ''cafeteria Catholics" on a diet of ''Catholic lite," selecting only those teachings they fancy. They also describe their opponents as ''dissenters" and welcome the news of the hundreds of theologians investigated or silenced during these past 26 years.

Yet these same people are selective about other teachings, like capital punishment, the options for the poor, or the moral illegitimacy of the recent Iraq war. Perhaps their consciences allow them to establish an order of these teachings. But to suggest to them that they are following their consciences rather than obeying the complete catalogue of church teachings would prompt from them a very critical response.

The second group embraces the primacy of the conscience. These have political and theological voices that are more tolerant, finding in the Catholic tradition a complexity that is resilient and at home with the diversity of positions in the church today.

They often argue that if they do not fully embrace a contemporary church teaching, they are not necessarily in dissent. Rather, they know that within the long-standing tradition itself there are other ways of thinking about contested issues.

We should not think that this second group is any more or less faithful than the first. Admittedly, many of these people (just like those in the first group) actually use the primacy of the conscience as a subjective excuse to ignore selectively, or to give less priority to, some of the church's claims on them.

Perhaps conscience, like church teaching, does not always get a fair hearing on either side. But when we really heed the conscience, we realize that it is not what frees us but rather what binds us: We are bound in conscience to find and adhere to the truth.

Finding and doing the truth is quite a challenge in the contemporary world. This second group is not convinced that every teaching of the church has an immediate claim on their consciences. Teachings on women especially raise concerns for these Catholics.

This tension between what the church teaches and what the conscience dictates is itself a long-standing traditional debate. In the high Middle Ages, for instance, Thomas Aquinas disagreed with his great predecessor, Peter Lombard. Lombard upheld church teaching as the last word; Aquinas the conscience. It is a tension we are destined to live with.

Strangely, as powerful and adept as John Paul II was, his church is now, in its inside life, very vulnerable. Hopefully, as the cardinals enter the conclave thinking about the church, they will identify both groups as Catholic, seeing the church as 1.1 billion people of God who are very anxious, who need to be reconciled, but who live in hope.

James F. Keenan S.J. is a professor of theological ethics at Boston College.