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From the April/May 2005 Issue
Implications of St. Paul’s Teaching on Unity for
Tensions in the Contemporary Church
Connie Gates

Connie Gates is both a mother and grandmother who graduated from Regis University in May 2004 with a B.A. in Religious Studies. This article is a much-condensed summary of her Senior Thesis.

Paul’s letters are often dismissed as culturally dated, misogynistic, or homophobic, but the contemporary Catholic Church in the United States might do well to consider his advice to early Christians concerning unity. Paul taught Christians to embrace cultural differences in order to become the united Body of Christ: the Church. Today’s Church struggles to remain one Body in a culture that is shifting due to the lack of a universal language, the co-education of men and women, and the emergence of the electronic media. Paul transcended his own personal failings in order to teach Christ and his letters can instruct contemporary Christians that the Body of Christ must transcend each member’s failings and differences for the salvation of all.

Language in a Shifting Culture
As a Hellenized Jew, Paul was able to unite Jews and Gentiles because he was adept at communicating with each in a manner that both would understand. Sadly, the contemporary Church has found itself unable to communicate effectively and hence struggles to maintain a community for the salvation of all.
Catholic discourse changed dramatically when economic success allowed Catholics to move out of the immigrant communities into the suburbs. Parents enrolled their children in public schools where a distinct Catholic theology and history was not taught. Church leadership followed the standard set by the Second Vatican Council, which focused on pastoral, rather than doctrinal matters. Religion classes (CCD) stressed the needs of Catholics living in suburbia: equality, freedom, and peaceful co-existence with other Christian religions. Hence, the generations following Vatican II did not adequately learn doctrine or how to discuss theology.

Economic success also led to the ability of Catholic parents to send their children, both male and female, to universities in the United States. In 1981 Walter Ong wrote Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness to address, among other issues, the change in academia due to co-education. In the “male” only classroom, when a student “argued with a teacher about the teacher’s own subject [the student] risked losing.” Such “ritual death” forced the student to learn to respect his opponent’s greater skill and to come to the next battle better prepared. In the co-education classroom, since teachers were no longer willing to be their students’ enemy, a new form of factional or partisan combat developed, a form Ong likens to “revolutionary guerilla combat.” Attacks were made against the opponent’s personal beliefs, or in the name of social justice, instead of against a position, and those attacks could occur anywhere because there was no longer an arena for combat. Since instructors no longer taught students how to take part in ritual combat, they did not learn to separate the position from the person or to recognize that human beings of good will often hold opposing positions. But most importantly, students did not learn to respect the skill and knowledge of those who held opposing points of view.

The electronic media has further enabled factions of like-minded interpreters of Catholic thought to unite, and thus effectively divide the Body of Christ. Five hundred years ago a similar challenge to Church unity occurred as a result of the invention of the printing press. Tradition holds that in 1517 Martin Luther nailed his “95 Theses” on the church door in Wittenburg, Germany. If that is true, it would not, as Protestants believe, have been a form of protest, but rather a customary method of communication for academic discourse. Luther, a university scholar, posted a list of “talking points,” in Latin, for future discussion in the classroom. What was revolutionary was subsequent widespread dissemination of these points outside the classroom thanks to the printing press. For scholars in Wittenberg posting theses did not end discussion nor did differences in interpretation demand division. Today, however, the electronic media, like the printing press, enables non-academic Catholics to interpret Catholic documents, to unite with like-minded interpreters, and then to condemn alternate interpretations at the speed of their Internet connection. Again, what is revolutionary is not the posting of ideas, but that they are disseminated so vastly and without any context for respectful debate.

Cultural Changes and Vatican II
Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962 to usher the Church into the modern world. Council members did not adequately foresee the conflict that would arise over interpretation in a shifting culture. Yet once the documents were published, American Catholics soon divided into factions over how to interpret them.

The published documents were interpreted by a generation untrained for discussion and for accepting differences in interpretation. Although there are many ways to define the separate interpretations of Vatican II, the most popular seem to be along political lines: conservative and liberal. Catholics united with like minded Catholics, and, with the aid of print and electronic media, advocated from differing perspectives for what each believed to be the “true” interpretation of the Vatican II documents. Although many Catholics attempted to respond to the Gospel message in a manner advocated by Church leadership, forty years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church in the United States is still divided by interpretation.

Divisions in the Modern World
Catholics today are uncomfortable using the word heresy; it brings visions of the Middle-Ages, the Spanish Inquisition, and post-Reformation religious wars. Though the word “heretic” is no longer current, “Conservative” and “Liberal” have become the new words for division in the contemporary Church. The American Catholic Church might do well to set aside the Latin definition of heresy: a “belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious [. . .] doctrine,” and instead apply Paul’s understanding to the problem of division in the contemporary Church. He might ask today: “One of you says I follow the ultra-conservative; another, I follow the conservative; still another, I follow the liberal; and another, I follow the radical liberal; is the Body of Christ divided?” Paul might urge contemporary Catholics not to allow these differences to separate them because the salvation of all will be at risk.

Paul’s example for the contemporary Church cannot be effective unless the leadership remains aware of the reasons for the contemporary situation. The absence of space for respectful discourse coupled with the impact of print electronic media has made it easier for Catholics to perpetuate divisions within the Body. Catholics in the United States might better wonder, “When will I become a liberal to save the liberal and how will I become a conservative to save the conservative?” Perhaps when contemporary Church members learn to accept the Spirit’s movement and gifts throughout the whole Body, the salvation of all will be assured.

 

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