In response to something in the comments, here is what I think. I stress the "I think" because I don't know.
George Weigel reports that John Paul II thought Humane Vitae was "a catechetical failure". I'd be more inclined to say a catechetical catastrophe but I think the Pope was substantially right. I think that a little honest self examination would reveal that the catechetical failure extends to the church's teaching on sexuality in general during the twentieth century. The teaching isn't wrong so much that the methods used to package it and present it have failed utterly. And I think that an honest assessment by the hierarchy would convince them of this. Even the majority of those Catholics who go to Mass every Sunday treat Church teaching on sexuality as advisory only.
In that regard, I am firmly on Christopher West's side of the issue: it is time for the Church to do a new thing rather than stressing continuity with the past. I think it is particularly important to recognize that Paul VI, although a good man, was not a successful Pope and that his approach to promoting the church's teaching on sexuality was an abject failure (as was much else that was introduced during his pontificate). Add to that the loss of credibility the Church has suffered through the sex-abuse scandals and I think there is no reason at all to think that we can simple tweak past approaches and keep going. It is time for a new thing
I think the good news is that both John Paul II and Benedict XVI realize this and have begun the slow moves that are going to be required to fix this. And while others would have the Church move more quickly I think the current pace is appropriate—it's going to take decades to put things right.
I think the Church has done a good job of beginning to counteract the anti-sex culture that haunted it for so long and I give John Paul II and Benedict XVI top marks to in that regard. Yes, there is work to be done but things are moving in the right direction and that is a huge achievement.
The primary thing the remains to be confronted now is a Church bureaucracy that, like all bureaucracies, has long been too fond of a command and control approach. And I think the Church leaders can do that by spending more time promoting public virtue instead of relying so heavily on rules and prohibitions.
One thing they could do is implement--for real--the documents of Vatican II. I don't see that happening any time soon. At the end of the day, as far as sex is concerned it will still be prayer and fasting if you're not in a valid heterosexual marriage.
ReplyDeleteThat JPII and Benedict think of Humanae Vitae as a simply a failure of chatachesis shows how out of touch with reality they were/are. Humanae Vitae was a major substantive failure, as was JPII's Theology of the Body. No matter how you present either of them, its still baloney.
ReplyDeleteBy Robert Blair Kaiser:
ReplyDelete"Pope Paul VI seemed to go deaf, too. He had championed the Council’s new charter for a people’s Church. He had put his blessing on the work of John XXIII’s birth control commission but he pulled back when advisors in his Curia warned him that, if he accepted its conclusions for a change in the birth control rule, he would lose his moral authority. Paul VI took the Curia’s advice -- and lost his moral authority."
"Paul VI’s two successors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI took the Vatican II libretto in hand but wrote their own revised musical score for it, losing the new tone struck in Gaudium et Spes. To keep absolute control, they did everything they could to make the Church less human and more severe; more a Church of laws than a Church of love, more Roman and less Catholic."
"Vatican II proclaimed that Christ had to have an African face in Africa and an Asian face in Asia. John Paul II didn’t get it. He frowned at efforts in Africa to create an encultured African Church in Africa. In a dozen trips during his papacy, he wasn’t promoting the face of an African Jesus so much as he was selling Africans a commodity, papal celebrity: the Pope as hero, the Pope as God."
The whole piece "No More Thrones" is worth reading:
http://www.richardsipe.com/Media/2010--08-19.htm
Forgive me if I don't share your optimism that Benedict "gets it." I do think that things are moving in the right direction--but its coming from the bottom up--the Faithful--not from the top down.