EDITORIAL Try conversation rather than
condemnation
In early March, three students were
kicked out of school for the rest of the semester and fined $1,000 each for
posting tasteless fliers on the grounds of Providence College, a Rhode Island
Catholic school. At around the same time, three women were banned from giving
presentations at a Dominican sisters retreat house in Northern Virginia.
Thus, church leaders would have us believe, was Catholic teaching
saved from distortion. Thus was the churchs honor and integrity protected
against those who would tear it down from the inside.
Of course, it never quite strikes anyone else that way. What is
conveyed when the church shuts down conversation is not authentic teaching or
authentic authority. Instead, what Catholics experience and the rest of the
world sees are church leaders threatened and overreacting, administering a
bludgeon where something less aggressive would surely do.
No one is disputing the need for boundaries. One cannot simply
unscrew the bottom of church teaching, empty it out, fill it back up with
anything you like and call the result Catholic. The issue is not
the responsibility of bishops and school administrators to oversee faith
formation but rather the way they go about it.
The powers that be at Providence College seem to have lost
perspective. Perhaps thats to be expected of college kids, but not
administrators. How much more interesting might the conversation have been if
the administration had taken the time to find out just what the three young men
meant when they earlier wrote the school paper to register their frustration
with the lack of serious discussion on campus as well as the amount of
drunkenness.
How much more engaging if the administration had taken a firm line
in opposition to the fliers that used the Virgin Marys image to make a
pro-choice point, while encouraging more discussion of the other points that
seemed to be on these students agenda.
Personal umbrage and fear of upsetting someone higher up, which
seem to have driven the college authorities reactions, make a poor basis
from which to dispense wisdom. Its an even worse foundation for trying to
determine what is a just rebuke or punishment.
The losers here are not the Virgin Mary -- her image has survived
more severe blows from more serious enemies -- but the college authorities.
Providence College couldnt see a teaching moment when it was staring it
in the face.
So it went too in Northern Virginia, when Bishop Paul S. Loverde
of Arlington shut down a retreat on womens spirituality because the
presenters hold positions contrary to the formal teachings of the
church.
Loverdes language -- If the water in the well is
allowed to become polluted, no one should be surprised when the people who
drink it become ill -- was meant to convey the seriousness with which he
viewed the potential breach of official teaching.
That seriousness is commendable, but the over-reaching nature of
his action surely is not. For one thing, he smeared a woman who has given
retreats to religious orders, whose paintings have been displayed at activities
of the U.S. bishops and who, on every score would be considered a model
Catholic. Mary Lou Sleevi said she felt slandered, and rightly so.
If Loverde wanted to show the depth of his concern, why not
fulfill his role as teacher and ask to attend the series to make sure an
explanation of the churchs position -- and not just the imposition of a
condemnation -- was part of the proceedings?
Pope Paul VI, in a 1965 document that transformed the Holy Office
into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote: Since charity
banishes fear, it seems more appropriate now to preserve the faith by means of
an office for promoting doctrine. Although it will still correct errors and
gently recall those in error to moral excellence, emphasis is to be given to
preaching the gospel.
What we see in both Providence and Arlington smacks more of fear
than charity, and one strains to hear the gospel being preached.
National Catholic Reporter, March 17,
2000
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