#332: Set in Stone?

EXCERPT:
Once again the Archdiocese of Boston is in the news due to an internal conflict. When a Boston parish scheduled an “All Are Welcome” Mass coinciding with the city’s gay pride events, some Catholics complained to the archdiocese--and the archdiocese ordered the Mass canceled. Now some are calling for the dismissal of the event organizer, or even the pastor himself, even while he receives extended media coverage and standing ovations in church.

Amid all the back-and-forth (“Pride is a sin” vs. “Jesus accepted every one”; “You are celebrating homosexuality” vs. “We cannot discriminate”), and buried beneath the headlines, was a statement by Terrence Donilon, official spokesman for the archdiocese. Tasked with handling press coverage of the controversy, he said: “The teachings of the Catholic Church are set in stone.”

Oh really?

To be fair, it is possible that Donilon slipped his tongue. Or he might have intended “Church teachings” to refer, very narrowly, to Church disapproval of homosexual acts. Or he may have had some (unspoken) other qualification in mind which makes his meaning less definitive than it sounded.

Still, his remark begs a reply, since my experience tells me that he speaks for millions. “Set in Stone” is in fact a commonplace perception of Church teachings among “conservative” Catholics, who thus find “liberals” out of line. It is fairly common among “liberals,” who complain about the Church’s rigidity. It is even common among non-Catholics, looking in from the outside.

This perception has many sources: a misunderstanding of the doctrine of papal infallibility; the memory of Catholic life in the early 20th century; the tendency of Church officials to use language that makes every pronouncement sound eternal. But while this “Set in Stone” perception has many roots, it is not rooted in the actual history of Church teachings. It is, in fact, a misperception—simply wrong.

For however much popes, bishops, and other officials present teachings as though they never have and never will change, the simple truth is that Church teachings do change.

Of course, some fundamental beliefs--the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ, the triune God we call Trinity, the sacraments, the canon of the Bible, the obligation to love - -are pillars of our faith and essential to our Catholic identity. That is why we have creeds: to name the foundations of our Catholic tradition. We rightly believe that tradition has been built on rock, not sand.

But the vast majority of Catholic teachings, accumulated over 20-plus centuries, are not so foundational. In fact, our tradition is a living tradition precisely because, while built on a foundation of stone, its upper structure is an organic, changing body of beliefs and practices.

Examples of such change abound. Just pick an issue, and compare Church teachings from different historical periods. The 1998 book Rome Has Spoken supplies hundreds of examples.

…

The book title Rome Has Spoken is, of course, rather intentionally ironic. It translates the traditional Latin expression “Roma locuta est,” which always left an implied conclusion: Rome has spoken…Therefore the case is closed.

This is precisely the historic expression of the notion that Church teachings are “Set in Stone.” The irony, however, is that over the centuries Rome has spoken once, and then spoken again, and then spoken yet again, and sometimes spoken many more times on the same subject--each time proving that the case was not in fact closed, since even Rome often changed its mind.