Because most philosophies that frown on reproduction don't survive.

Monday, June 13, 2005

Levada, Theology and Intellectual Freedom

An interview with the newly appointed head of the CDF, Archbisop Levada, has been causing some comment around the blogsphere.

Others have already speculated on what may discerned about Levada's MO based on his responses. I'll leave that to them, but this section really stuck me:
He said one of the "negative aspects" of the congregation's work is that it must occasionally intervene and ask theologians how they justify their positions or square them with the faith. That can be misunderstood as a form of repression, he said.

"I think people have sometimes gotten the idea that if you don't let every theologian say everything that he or she thinks, or if you challenge them in any way and say, 'That's not correct,' that somehow you are impeding freedom of conscience or freedom of inquiry," he said.

"But that's not the case. We have freedom to inquire. But a theologian himself or herself is called to discriminate between where that inquiry leads and how it corresponds to the faith that the church continues to receive and to live by. Otherwise they would not be doing true theology, it seems to me," he said.

"Theology itself is in dialogue with revelation, which has some things to say. And you can't just say that revelation says anything you want it to say," he said.

This tied in in with a subject that's been simmering on my mental back-burner since the whole stink about America's editor resigning hit the news: what exactly is "legitimate dissent" vs. "unacceptable dissent" in the theological world?

Really, though, perhaps "dissent" is the wrong word. After all, the Church is not a policy making body, it is the body of Christ, comissioned to spread His Word to all nations. The job of theologians is help the faithful by developing an ever clearer understanding of what scripture and tradition tell us about God, the faith, and ourselves.

The relationship of theologians and scripture/tradition should be much the same as that between scientists and the physical world. Scientists are often passionately attached to their favorite theories, but when the verdict increasingly comes in that their theories and physical reality don't match, they're expected to back down and come up with a new theory, not keep insisting that their theory was better than that reality is wrong.

The trick is, although as Catholics we believe that the Church has the ability to speak athoritatively on matters of faith and morals, it is through the human instruments of the Church (other theologians) that a given theologian might recieve words that his latest theories do not fit with scripture and tradition. (In science, it will be other scientists who point at the problems with a given scientist's theories, but at least there's an objectively verifiable physical process which he can fall back on and see for himself.) So all to often people seem to read the situation as: so-and-so doesn't like what I'm saying, so he's telling me to shut up.

People become attached to their ideas, and although we have the final authority of the the magisterium and the Holy Father theoretically doing gate-keeping duty, I think far too many Catholics probably convince themselves, "I'm not really outside the magisterium, it's just that venal [conservative, liberal, etc.] who doesn't like my work and is invoking Rome to back up his personal dislikes." It can't be easy to admit, "No, I'm wrong. My teaching contradicts the magisterium."

But as Catholics we believe that Christ didn't just turn us all loose with the Bible and the traditions (lower-case "t") of Christianity and tell us to find the truth as best we could. We believe that Christ gave the institutional Church the duty of presenting and protecting His teachings, and that he sent the Holy Spirit to guide the Church and prevent it from error. And so we have institutional gate keepers such as the CDF, whose duty it is to warn theologians if their teaching contradicts Scripture and Tradition.

This isn't the squelching of intellectual inquiry and more than physical reality "squelches" scientists whose theories prove wrong. Those organs of the Church who are responsible for preserving doctrinal integrity provide the experimental feedback (if you will) that separates truth from error. (And you generally have to stray pretty far into error before they get involved.)

Unless one is to abandon the idea the the institutional Church is the guardian of Christian Revelation and Tradition (which would mean ceasing to be Catholic) than one must accept the occasional doctrinal interventions by the Church's theological watchdogs with humility. The good theologian, like the good scientist, will take some time to figure out why that theory didn't work, and then formulate a new one.

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