Some Fallout from the Vatican's crackdown on dissident nuns

For those who haven't yet heard the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith recently cracked down on the Leadership Conference for Women Religious. The CDF document can be found here.

In response to this, the PBS Newhour did an interview with Donna Bethell (defending the CDF, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Christendom Colelge) and Jennine Hill Fletcher (defending the nuns, self-styled Feminist Theologian, professor of Theology at Fordham).

In the brief segment, Miss Fletcher takes the last word. Here it is:

Let me just say, as a scholar -- as a scholar of religion and a theologian, church teaching does change.
And I think that's one of the fundamental issues here, especially around the issue of LGBTQ persons and homosexuality. I think that the issue -- one of the issues is the church teaching we have seen in -- from the second to the 16th century, church teaching was no salvation outside the church.
At Vatican II, in the 20th century, there's a very different understanding of the relationship of the Catholic truth and the Catholic faith to the truths and faiths of people of the world. And so to suggest that there are some things that simply will not change, I'm not sure that that's been the tradition of the Catholic Church.

I'm not going to let Miss Fletcher have the last word on this.

First, it is well acknowledge that Church teaching changes, at least for some values of "change" and "Church teaching."

First, no one disputes that there is a development of doctrine. This is a well established principle that every theologian knows. Through this development the Church comes to more fully articulate what is contain in revelation. My favorite example is the two fundamental mysteries of the faith, the Trinity and Incarnation. On the one hand they are certainly present in Scripture, on the other it was only after centuries that the Church came to what we would consider a clear formulation of precisely how we are to understand what Scripture is telling us and what further that implies, e.g., the very word "Trinity" or the formulas "three Persons, and one Substance" and "one Person, two natures".

Second, there are other church teachings which can in principle be changed. That is why Theologians make a study of the levels of authority, and try to clearly distinguish reformable from irreformable teaching.

Any remotely competent theologian is aware of these basic ideas  because it defines the legitimate scope of the theologian's work. But these principles, acknowledging as they do some respects in which Church teaching can change, do not by any means imply that Catholic theology is a free-for-all.

She mentioned two topics on which the Church has changed her teaching: LGBTQ persons and homosexuality (without ellaboration) and extra ecclesiam nulla salus (citing in particular Lumen Gentium).

As to the first, I'm not sure what change in teaching the eminent theologian refers to, but here are a couple relevant and recent statements.

Catechism of the Catholic Church number 2357:

Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. . . . Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

And the Congregation for Catholic Education's 2005 Instruction on the criteria of discernment of vocations for those with homosexual tendencies:

Regarding [homosexual] acts, it teaches that, in Sacred Scripture, these are presented as grave sins. Tradition has constantly considered them to be intrinsically immoral and contrary to natural law. These, consequently, may not be approved in any case.
Concerning profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies, that one discovers in a certain number of men and women, these are also objectively disordered and often constitute a trial, even for these men and women.

Again, she didn't make clear what precise change she alludes to, but the major teaching seems to have remained quite stable. And as a Theologian, I have no bloody idea what alleged change she is referring to on this front. In fact, this teaching is one of the teachings that the left gives the Church the most flack for not changing.

As to the claim that Lumen Gentium rejects the teaching of extra ecclesiam nulla salus, I quote from the same document, number 14:

Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church.

(While I hate to get sidetracked I feel bound to make mention of the fact that, despite a long and formidable history of teaching extra ecclesiam nulla salus, the Catholic Church has always acknowledge baptism of desire and baptism of blood, both of which constitute ways that a person can, etraordinarily, be incorporated into the Body of Christ without formal, public entrance into the institutional Church.)

Miss Fletcher seems to be embracing the "hermeneutic of discontinuity" decried by HH Benedict XVI in his Christmas address to the Roman Curia in 2005:

On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call "a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture"; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the "hermeneutic of reform", of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.
The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church.

Now fun fun fun, along comes the National "Catholic" Reporter ('Catholic' in quotes because they use the name in defiance of canon 216), with a host of ad mulierem attacks and non-sequiturs.

Bethell spent her airtime discrediting women religious for not presenting the "full doctrine of the church" and not helping members "to understand it and to live it." But a web search of Ms. Bethell quickly reveals that some of her most deeply held convictions conflict significantly with Roman Catholic doctrine.

They go on to outline "three significant conflicts" between Mrs. Betthell and her husband and the Catholic Church. Namely: battling climate change, nuclear disarmament and evolution.

One by one shall we proceed:

"Battling climate change"--First, there is nothing dogmatic about climate change. The hypothesis of man-made climate change falls decidedly in the realm of science, and outside the ken of revelation.The Church may give practical advice based on her judgement of the scientific facts combined with her moral teaching, but such advice is entirely prudential, and as such is not a matter of supreme magisterial authority.
Second, it must be pointed out that the offensive opinion is publicly held by Mrs. Bethell's husband. In other words this is guilt by association.

"Nuclear disarmament"--This objection is unique in that it actually attaches to Mrs. Bethell. But the problem is again, that this does not seem to be a matter of Church dogma. While the Church lays out principles of just  prosecution of war (for example decrying "total war"), she has never bound the faithful to reject the holding of nuclear arms.

"Evolution"--First this has nothing to do with Mrs. Bethell. Unless the NCR wishes to affirm that women in public life are morally one with their husbands and responsible for their husbands' acts, this is irrelevant, and again an allegation of guilt by association. Second, and more to the point, nothing in Church teaches says that holding evolution is a matter of the Catholic faith. The Church respects on this issue the legitimate inquiry of science, and although she allows the study of evolution, and even though the last couple popes have appeared to espouse it, the Church has never imposed it on the Church as a matter of the faith. Nor I would argue could they. Again, I find the claim that questioning evolution contradicts the Magisterium, when the Church is frequently ridiculed by the secularists for not more vigorously embracing evolution, simply laughable.

Of the three objectionable opinions that The NCR associates with Mrs. Bethell, none actually pertains to irreformable Chruch teaching. Mrs. Bethell herself pointed out that on many issues (especially moral issues that involve prudence) there is a diversity of oppinions accepatable within the Catholic Church:

There are doctrines in the church which are not open for debate. Everybody knows that. If that weren't the case, there wouldn't be a Catholic Church. And there are things that are open for debate, for discussion about how you apply this principle. There's lots of room for prudential judgment, especially in the area of social justice, but there are things that are not open for debate.

She was merely echoing Card. Ratzinger and the CDF:

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

Further of these three, only one of them is based on something Mrs. Bethell herself actually has done. Two of the three are things that her husband has done.

Hence NCR's closing line--

The Vatican's double standard on dissent is breathtaking.

--is breathtakingly stupid. The Vatican's standard is perfectly consistent.

Hence, the line in this debate is not solely between liberal and conservative, but between correct theology and bad theology, between theology that knows what the proper job of theology is, and what it is not, a thing that neither of the two opponents to Mrs. Bethell seem to understand.