Authority in the Church - The Interpretation of Lay Members of the Bishops‘ Commission in the Mid 1970s’

Mary C Mansfield and Michael P Hornsby-Smith

I The study of the question of authority within religious institutions has been inadequate, from both theological and sociological per- spectives. McKenzie2 has explained the inadequacy of theological studies as being due to ‘the emphasis placed on authority and the fervour in defending it’ and, according to Kokosalakis3

‘the reluctance of many sociologists to deal with the question of values and the structures of authority and meaning in reli- gious institutions derives mainly from the lack of a profounder theoretical foundation and/or adequate methodology to cope with the difficulties which these questions imply.’ Clearly, the Church like any other social institution, is in dia-

lectical relation with the society in which it exists. If we are to es- tablish the causes of a change in the attitudes towards religious authority we must begin by considering firstly the social changes which have taken place not only in the global society but also within the Roman Catholic community itself, and secondly, those changes which are the direct result of some immanent force within the institution itself.

Advances in science and technology have vastly expanded man’s knowledge and thereby his mastery over his physical and social environment. Additionally , developments in communications have provided him with an amount of information which greatly exceeds his own personal experience; in particular, the introduc- tion of the television interview has exposed many authority figures to public scrutiny for the first time. Both factors have contributed to a de-sacralisation of authority whereby its origin has become de-mystified and its power is no longer considered to be-taboo. In addition there has been a process of democratisation in many institutions in ~ o c i e t y . ~

If we consider the changes which have taken place specifically at the level of the Roman Catholic community in England we can identify two main factors. The authority of the cocultural priest 4 5 0

in the ghetto parish of immigrant Catholics has been, and is con- tinuing to be, eroded as ethnic identity ceases to be an important source of cohesion for the Catholic community. As a result of higher education a large number of Catholics have experienced a certain amount of upward social mobility. The “new Catholic middle class” are assertively self confident and less deferential towards traditional forms of authority. In this respect Catholics have participated in the broad process of democratisation in indus- try, universities, schools and homes in the wider ~ o c i e t y . ~

For Catholics the teaching of the Second Vatican Council has had a profound influence in changing the dominant emphases and orientation which make up the normatively prescribed belief and value system. As Houtart has indicated the emphasis placed on collegiality, participation, personal conscience and the impor- tance of cultural differences within the Universal Church and so on, has presented many Roman Catholics with the vision of a new democratic type of Church organisation. While we would not deny that these changes have emanated from the institution itself, it is important to note that some may have been facilitated, or even necessitated by developments in the wider society. For example, effective collegiality is facilitated when a developed and efficient means of intercommunication exists, and the vast amount of com- plex information to be assimilated has necessitated the introduc- tion of new structures such as the episcopal conferences and the various commissions.

I 1 This would seem to be a good point to reflect on what we

understand by the concept of authority. Most people would distm- guish two elements: the quality attributed to a person indepen- dent of his role, and that which is specifically associated with his social position and role within a group.6 Sociological discussions of power and authority invariably begin with a commentary on what Max Weber said.’ Weber defined authority as “legitimate power” and he wrote that power is ‘that opportunity existing with- in a social relationship which permits one to carry out one’s will even against resistance and regardless of the basis on which this opportunity rests’. He was particularly interested in the validity of authority as perceived by those who were subordinate to it, and he described the various ways in which a system of authority can legit- imately assume such validity. Firstly that which has always existed is thought to be legitimate by tradition. Secondly, legitimacy may be validated by affective attitudes; such is the case with a charis- matic leader. Thirdly there may be a rational belief in the absolute value of the authority: ‘what has been revealed as being absolutely valid is valid’. Finally validity will be assumed because some for-

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malised legal system exists which is beyond question. Weber went further to distinguish three different types of authority: tradi- tional, charismatic and legal-rational and we will consider these within the context of ecclesiastical authority.

First of all ecclesiastical authority is traditional because it can be traced in a continuous line from Jesus and the apostles to the present day bishops. Secondly, religious authority has had to adopt some practices from the rational world and has, as a result, be- come bureaucratic and of a legal-rational type. Finally, charismatic authority (which depends on the special qualities of the leader) may arise at special times in the life of the Church, for example at the foundation of the Church with Jesus Christ and more recently with Popes John XXIII and John-Paul 11. In addition religious authority may be a special case because the authority itself, deriv- ing in a linear way from a divine founder; assumes ascribed charis- matic qualities.

I 1 1 A number of writers have recently suggested that there is an

impending crisis within the Roman Catholic Church over the ques- tion of ecclesiastical authority. Moreover, some of these commen- tators of the contemporary Church have forecast that the conflicts which exist at present in a latent form, will inevitably result in some kind of rupture. Thus Professor David Martin* suggested that social mobility, in creating a Catholic middle class in closer contact with Protestants and humanists of similar status, will inev- itably lead to ‘unspoken divergence’ from Catholic norms 2nd eventually to audible dissent. He concluded by saying that while

‘the Catholic system can cope with largescale divergence . . . it cannot brook overt disruption and challenge, and it is precisely this that occurs as more and more climb out of the overlapping ghettos of class and religious separatism’. Another sociologist, Dr Kokosalakis, on the basis of interviews

obtained from a sample of 30 parishioners in the Liverpool parish studied in the late 196Os, showed that there was a disparity be- tween the structure of authority and the actual loyalty of some members of the Roman Catholic Church and moreover that the gap was much wider and the conflict much more acutely felt by those who had been brought up and educated in the post-war years than by the pre-war generations. He inferred from his fmd- ings that

‘the peak of the crisis is yet to come. As our culture and our society attain a more and more universalistic character, and individuals reach a greater awareness of their individuality and freedom of conscience, these traditional structures will appear more and more unrelated to the lives and direct social experi-

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ences of Roman Catholic laity ’.’ We have taken as the starting point for our own analysis, the

conceptual framework of Canon Houtart.” Houtart begins by proposing the existence of contestation within the contemporary Church and then attempts to interpret this phenomenon through the construction of typologies for the objects, types and means of contestation and the official reaction to contestation. It will be helpful at this point briefly to summarise these typologies. The first object of contestation, according to Houtart, is legitimacy. in other words the manner in which authority justifies its function or its decisions. This could involve

‘a refusal to recognise the competence of the religious author- ity’s intervention in a specific domain . . . for example the legitimacy of imposing strict norms in the areas of a person’s conscience’. One such domain would be that of family morality. The values

proposed by the religious authority are offered as the second ob- ject of contestation by Houtart. Some Catholics may feel that the ’values are contradictory to the evangelical norm’ or that ‘religious authority does not propose, or does not sufficiently emphasise, certain values’. For example many Catholics would like the Church to place more emphasis on matters of peace and social justice. Fin- ally what Houtart defines as the social system, that is the organisa- tion of the Church, may become the object of contestation:

‘Some people think that it does not correspond with, or is in fact in contradiction with the values which have been p r u posed (or the values which should have been proposed). . In this way, the modalities of exercising authority can be consjd- ered as being unacceptable because they do not correspond with the evangelical principles’.

Thus for example some would argue that the values propou!idec! by the Vatican Council necessitate a wide range of parochial, dioc- esan, national and international structures of consultation within the Church.

In addition three types of contestation are distinguished by Houtart: individual contestation, joinf contestation and lastly a contestation which takes on the form of a social movemenf. The means being used by the contestants can be individual or collec- tive. private or public. Having outlined the objects, types and means of contestation Houtart offers descriptions of the three types of the reaction to contestation. The bishops can uncondi- tionally refuse to accept the contestation through suppression or exclusion of the individual or group, or endeavour to diminish the contestation by giving it some legitimation, or it can accept either partially or totally the contestation.

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In an attempt to explain the latent conflict existing within the Church he proposes the following hypothesis. There are two groups of people within the Church with opposing concepts of God and the Church. Catholics who would be included in the first group would be those who would

‘tend to give value to an organisation which places decision and power in the hands of a small group of persons, assuming an uncontested authority . . . The institution’s cohesion is based on a system of authority, conceived in a vertical way and legitimised by a special divine assistance. Authority is thus seen as a key value in the institution’.

‘the members play an active role . . . With regard to the basis of coherence in the institutional Church, it is placed at the level of real participation on the part of its members in its values (that is, in their internalisation), in its internal function- ing (in the structures of participation of decisions, in the lit- urgy etc.) and in its external functioning (which is evangelisa- tion in the general sense). Authority is seen according to this perspective as a norm, that is to say a means which is more or less efficacious in assuring the pursuit of its goals’. These two groups of Catholics perceive authority differently.

For the first group it is seen as a primary value whereas for the sec- ond it is only a means of achieving efficiency within the institu- tion in the pursuit of its goals.

I V In 1974 we interviewed 71 of the 83 lay members of five of

the bishops’ national advisory commissions in the course of our research, sponsored by the Social Science Research Council, into patterns of change in the Roman Catholic community in England. On average these tape-recorded interviews lasted about two hours and frequently informal discussion continued for some time after- wards. The interviews covered five main areas: Catholic organisa- tions belonged to by the members of the commissions, comments on the working of their own commission, the teachings of the Church and the future needs of the Church, and the social and educational backgrounds of the commission members. Our find- ings in these areas will be reported in due course. In the remainder of this paper we will discuss the individual interpretations of auth- ority in the Church of this particular sample of lay influentials in this country and suggest that they provide some basis for testing Houtart’s hypothesis.

In the course of these interviews the Commission members were asked the same questions as the Liverpool parishioners in Kokosalakis’s study:’ ’

According to the second concept of the Church

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‘Is there anything in the teaching of your Church which you find difficult to accept? Would you be prepared to accept changes in the teaching of your Church? What are the main points in the teaching of your Church which you would like to see changed?’

These questions precipitated discussions on specific teachings (particularly birth control) and sometimes developed at length on the theme of authority in the Church. Indeed, it appears that the opposition to the papal encyclical on birth control, published in 1968, may be founded more on the question of the interpretation and exercise of ecclesiastical authority than on the birth control issue itself. At the start of our work we were advised by the SSRC not to antagonise our respondents by raising sensitive personal issues such as birth control. Accordingly we did not mention this issue directly but it is interesting to note that almost every one of our lay members of the commissions used this as a focus for their discussions in the area of ecclesiastical authority.

We were able to distinguish four groups among our respon- dents, the submissives, the doubters, the innovators and the trans- formers. For the first group, the submissives, comprising only a handful of respondents, ecclesiastical authority was accepted with- out reservation. The reasons given for total submission to author- ity were either based on the belief that ‘a good Catholic is required to be obedient to authority’ and/or that the bishops have some kind of divine assistance which gives them superior knowledge and understanding and, in consequence, the power to make decisions for the whole Church.

The majority of commission members fell into a second group which we can call the doubters. Although they complied with authority they admitted to experiencing doubts about the content of some of the teachings. Many people considered that the hier- archy of values proposed by the authorities was unacceptable. One middle-aged lady expressed thh in the following way:

‘It must seeem to most Catholics that the Church is only con- cerned with what they must not do and never with what they should be doing . . . their responsibilities as Christians’.

Several references were made to the Church’s obsession with mat- ters concerning sex, abortion, contraception, divorce etc. Some felt that the authorities need to be more realistic. A middle-aged man, for example, commented:

‘Of course we all have responsibilities to the unborn foetus . . . but that is not the only responsibility . . . our responsibility is to all life . . . and not just to life itself but to the quality of that life’.

Continuing on this theme other commission members suggested 455

that the Church authorities should emphasise other values. A middle-aged lady, for example, commented:

‘It seems so dreadful to have these rigid rules applied about everyday life and then a political situation arises and everyone is blessed to go off to war. . .’

This group of Catholics, although critical of some of the decisions made by those in authority, were nevertheless obedient to that authority. Their reasons for such obedience were in part like those of the first group, that is, they believed that those in authority had the right to make decisions even if those decisions were at times misinformed. However, there were some who could not really give a reason other than that they were unable to disobey. This was neatly summarised by the statement of a male respondent in his fifties :

‘I have been so conditioned by my Catholic upbringing that I find it very difficult to go against the Church’s authority with- out feeling guilty . . . I know in my heart of hearts that I will be unhappy so I do not confront authority . . . I think that people of my generation disagree with the Church in their minds but obey it in their practice’. There was a third group of commission members, the innova-

tors, who did not always comply with authority. There were those who could not accept a social teaching such as birth control and who therefore refused to accept the legitimacy of ecclesiastical authority in an area of their life which they felt was a matter solely for personal conscience. In addition there was the group who felt that it was their duty to initiate change by adopting practices which would in time be accepted by the authorities. Thus one woman who favoured intercommunion said:

‘I’ve come to the stage where I don’t really regret the unautho- rised any more. I used to think this could happen very tidily and at a certain point the authorities would say “Yes” and one could go ahead, but I don’t think this is the way in fact in which things change in the Church. I think some people have to be prepared to act before anything will change’. Finally there were the transformers who did not comply with

authority in certain matters but who did not feel that they were in any way disobeying the authority or questioning its legitimacy.

‘Authority . . . is there to provide guidelines . . . but there will always be grey areas where you must make up your own mind . . . and the authorities would support you in this . . . after all your personal conscience is in every event the final arbiter . . . the rules are only there to help’. To summarise, then, our respondents could be roughly divided

into four groups: those who accepted unreservedly the absolute 4 5 6

authority of the hierarchy, those who complied with ecclesiastical authority but at the same time doubted some of the teachings and finally those who did not always comply with the authority of the Church but who may or may not have seen themselves as challeng- ing that authority.

v Do our findings support the typologies of the objects and

means of contestation elaborated by Houtart in his attempt to interpret conflicts of authority in the Roman Catholic Church? Certainly there is evidence for the existence of some form of con- testation among many lay members of the bishops’ national com- missions. However, the application of the word contestation to what is essentially a “calling into question” would be disputed by the respondents themselves. This results from the use of the word “contestation” to describe some of the more extreme means which have been exployed to express a challenging of authority. As Hou- tart notes in his article: ‘It is this which makes Cardinal Suenens and some other groups of priests say that they refuse to be called “contestants”.” Nevertheless, Houtart’s objects of contestation (values, legitimacy and social system) w e all identifiable as foci for contestation among our respondents. Several members ques- tioned the values either because they felt that they were inconsis- tent with the values expressed by the Second Vatican Council or because some of the values were underemphasised or not even proposed by the religious authorities. Where it was felt that the Church’s organisation had not internalised these values, or that the ways of exercising authority did not correspond to evangel- ical principles, the social system itself became a focus for dis- pute. Finally, on the question of legitimacy although a number of the commission members did not always comply with ecclesi- astical authority, not all of them could be described as contest- ing the legitimacy of that authority. The majority only ques- tioned the legitimacy of imposing strict norms in areas of per- sonal morality, while a few went further to dispute the manner in which the authority legitimised its function or decisions.

The types of contestation proposed by Houtart are indi- vidual contestation, joint contestation and the social movement. Only the first two types, individual and joint contestation are detectable in our findings. The refusal to assent to the encyclical Humunae Vitae can generally be taken as an example of contesta- tion at an individual level. Joint contestation seems to be occur- ring where Catholics are regarding their actions (such as inter- communicating) as a way of applying covert pressure on those responsible for the organisational Church, to internalise the values of Vatican 11. This notion that practice precedes legislation was

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common among several of the commission members who had be- come frustrated with the widening gap between the system of val- ues introduced by Vatican 11, and the present organisation of the Church.

We have concentrated so far on those Catholics who are con- testing but we must not overlook the small group of commission members who accepted unconditionally the content of Church teachings and ecclesiastical authority. These Catholics would accept Houtart’s first concept of the Church, that is they valued an organisation which placed power in the hands of a small group of people and whose authority was uncontested. Their reaction to the changes which have taken place within the Church is one of fear that the essential values in the Church are being abandoned. On the other hand, the “contestants” among our sample would subscribe to the second concept of the Church where cohesion was based on real participation and authority was built on a horizon- tal/collegial model and seen only as a means for achieving the goals of the institution.

If as our findings suggest, contestation does exist within the contemporary Church, is it inevitable as some writers have pre- dicted, that these contestations will develop into deeper conflicts and even rupture? The answer to this question hinges on two fac- tors: the reaction of those in authority to the presence of contes- tation, and the extent to which a l l the members of the Church accept some kind of pluralism. We have not studied the ways in which the English bishops are reacting to contestation but the commission members in general felt that there had been a genuine, if slow, development in the processes of consultation by the bish- ops and lay participation at both national and diocesan levels in recent years.’ Our findings from our sample of commission mem- bers do suggest that there might be in this country two groups of Catholics who differ radically over their interpretations of author- ity and it is interesting to speculate on the results of this kind of pluralism within an institution noted for the emphasis it placed on unity and uniformity.

the Catholics with different concep- tions of the Church (and therefore of authority) can co-exist if an agreement can be ‘founded on a certain number of common values and on some practical norms which allow people to live and to act collectively’. However, he believes that where conflicts are situ- ated at the level of values, this kind of solution will not hold in the long run. Martin agrees with Houtart in supposing that the source of “explosion” will be those Catholics who are contesting the Church’s authority. He writes: ‘Intellectuals begin by inventing verbal subterfuges -and, when they can bear these no longer, erupt

In Houtart’s opinion’

against authority’.’ ’ We would suggest that the “contestants” among our sample of

lay commission members are unlikely to ‘erupt against authority’ because what Martin refers to as “verbal subterfuge” is, in fact, a transformation and new interpretation of authority which enables the contestants to coexist with the other members of the institu- tional Church. This kind of privatised religion may not be so poss- ible for contestants among the clergy who are subject to ecclesias- tical sanctions and are therefore more likely to experience conflict; Indeed a number of our respondents considered that this was the case for some of the clerical members of their commission.’ 13 Fin- ally, it is possible that the traditional Catholics who are suspicious of the innovations being made in the Church following the Second Vatican Council, may become more defensive and force a split between themselves and the contestants. However, should some form of cleavage occur, it now seems quite certain that it would cut vertically across all the strata in the Church and not horizon- tally separate the laity from the religious authorities.’

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This article was based on interviews carried out with lay membas of the bishops’ commissions m England and Wales in the mid 1970s. J. McKenzie. Authority in the Church, Sheed & Ward, 1966, p 4. Quoted in F. Houtart ‘Conflicts of Authority in the Roman Catholic Church’ Social Com-

N. Kokosalakis, ‘Aspects of Conflict Between the Structure of Authority and the Beliefs of the Laity in the Roman Catholic Church’, Ch. 2 i n M. Hill (ed) A Sodo- bgicul Yeurbookof Religion in Brituin 4. SCM, 1971, 21-35. F. Houtart, op. cit. p 312. M. P. HornsbySmith and M. C. Mansfield, ‘English Catholicism in Change’, I2e N e w m , 7 (3) Sept 1974, 62-70. F. Houtart, op. cit. p 315. M. Weber,,Bapc Concepts in Sociology, Peter Owen, 1969. See also F. Houkart, op. cit. pp 3154; M. Hill. A Sociolo~ ofReligfon, Heinemann, 1973, Chs. 7 & 8. D. Martin, Church, Denomination and Society, Ch 12 in M. Hill (ed) A Socidogv Yeurbook of Religion in Brituin, 5. SCM, 1972, 184-191. N. KokosalaLis, op. cit. p 34.

N. Kokosalakis, op. cit. p 27. F. Houtart, op. cit. note 30, p 325. This suggests that in this country the reaction of the religious authorities has taken Houtart’s second form by Biving the contestation a certain legitimation and by pro- moting the ideology of participation at the national level. However, as Houtart shrewdly notes, this can ’be a means of avoiding the duty of discussing fundamen- tal questions’, F. Houtart, op. cit. p 320. b i d , p 323. D. Martin, op-cit. pp 187-8. What Martin suggests might have seemed likely in the years immediately after the publication of the encyclical HUmaMe Vitue. However, this issue appears to be no longer a matter for feverish debate among Roman Catho- UCJ. A change in the dominant topic of conversation among Catholics attending

PUSS, 3, XVI, 1969, 309-25.

F. Ho~tar t , OP. Cit. pp 319-22.

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national and international conferences over the past few years was specifically noted by some of our informants. It seems that Catholics have in large measure transferred the judgment of contraception from the religious authorities to their personal conscience. By doing this the eruption against authority which Martin pre- dicted has been avoided but in the process religion has become more privatised. Martin concluded his article by arguing that such a privatised religion is vulnerable to secular pressures and to the emptying of theological concepts of their power (op.

When considering the clergy, F. Houtart comments that ‘their basic financial depen- dency upon the institutional Chuch can render certain situations extremely pain- ful’, op. cit. p 320. A number of commission members thought that this was the case. More recent studies in four English parishes and a s w e y of the delegates to the National Pas- toral Congress have confiimed that there is no deep split between clergy and laity in England and Wales.

cit. pp 188-91). 16

17

Evil in Angels and Men: Thomas Aquinas and Melanie Klein”

Marcus Lefhbure 0 P

When I opened this series of Dominican conversations SUIIIC luul

months ago now, I suggested that angels were worth studying not only in their own right but for the light they throw on the human condition. I want now in this concluding paper to apply this sug-. gestion to our final topic, evil in angels. This paper will, therefore, consist of two main parts: In the first part I want to indicate how St Thomas analyses evil in angels, while in the second part I want to show how this analysis clarifies the root of evil in ourselves. 1 St Thomas’ Analysis of Evil in the Angels

Turning, then, to our fmt concern, I want to help you pick a way through the often dense wood of St Thomas’ thinking by as it were blazing those trees which serve as so many markers of the way through. These turn out on inspection and in reflection not to be as numerous as first appears. In fact St Thomas’ thinking on evil in the angels continues to be what we have already seen his thinking on other aspects of the angels to be: the sustained and rigorous pursuit of the implications of certain basic metaphysical principles or axioms. The sheer intellectual energy, brilliance and 460