By Christopher Pearson
The Australian
May 21, 2011
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/sacked-toowoomba-bishop-discovers-romes-word-still-law/story-e6frg6zo-1226059618972
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| Illustration: Tom Jellett Source: The Australian |
THE fact that a Catholic bishop in Toowoomba has been deprived of his see on doctrinal grounds continues to generate controversy.
Whether in mainstream media such as The Record, Perth's diocesan paper, and the CathNews website, or journals of dissent such as the Jesuits' Eureka Street and Catholica, debate still rages.
The story is newsworthy because it's the first time in decades that a bishop has been removed from office for heresy.
The brazen advocacy of heterodox positions has been so common in the Catholic Church since the 1970s that it came as something of a surprise to most observers when the Vatican acted.
Despite the anxious talk of Joseph Ratzinger as "the Panzer-Kardinal" when he was elected Pope, his rule has been so mild and patient that many doubted he had the will to intervene.
After years of playing for time with the Curia and obduracy in error, Bishop William Morris finally exhausted Benedict's patience and he was told in February that his departure would be announced a week after Easter.
Despite his ordination oaths of fidelity and obedience to the Holy See, Morris decided he wasn't going quietly.
Some of his supporters seem to have played on his not inconsiderable vanity and now he's casting himself in the role of a global spokesman for what liberal Catholics like to call "loyal dissent".
Recently, Luther-like, he has told us: "You need to stand in your own truth."
However, there are a number of problems for those who want to promote Morris as a cause celebre for theological modernism.
His grip on his personal situation appears rather precarious, and so does his grasp of theology.
Take, for example, the television interview where he talked about the head of the Congregation of Bishops repeatedly demanding his resignation during a four-year period.
He described, as though it were evidence of his own bona fides, his offer to the Pope to negotiate, with a view to departing in another three years' time.
On the theological front, the main reason for his removal was that he could never quite see why there was a problem for a Catholic bishop in contemplating the ordination of women.
He proposed it 12 years after the Pope had comprehensively ruled it out and eight years after the decree that any clergy who canvassed it were liable to grave ecclesiastical sanctions.
He had a similar blind spot on why Catholic bishops couldn't recognise as valid the orders of Protestant clergy.
Such elementary confusions are not the stuff of which martyrdom is made. So it wasn't surprising that, after extensive briefing from Morris, Paul Syvret in Brisbane's The Courier-Mail should produce an alternative version of why he was sacked.
According to Syvret: "Ostensibly Morris's transgressions relate to a pastoral letter he wrote late in 2006, in which it is claimed he advocated the ordination of women and the recognition of other non-Catholic church orders. This is not really the case at all. Morris's battle with the Vatican spans more than a decade and at its heart encapsulates the schism that has existed for nearly half a century since the sweeping reforms implemented by the Second Vatican Council."
On the question of female and Protestant orders he quotes Morris as saying: "I was raising these things as a point of discussion. I was not advocating them."
But in the context of the Vatican's ban on debating the matter it's a distinction without a difference.
Besides, it's clear that the electronic version of the pastoral letter on the diocesan website has been sanitised by the removal of an undertaking by Morris to "continue to reflect" on the proposals, which had appeared in earlier published versions.
A far larger rewriting of history is Morris's claim that his real crime was sanctioning a common liturgical abuse of the 80s involving the third rite of reconciliation. This is a form of general confession and absolution designed for groups of people in imminent danger of death, on the battlefield or in a natural disaster, when there's no time for individual confession to a priest.
The rules governing its use were always clear. But some Australian clergy who resented the time spent in hearing individual confessions -- and often no longer believed in the value of the sacrament of penance -- persuaded their bishops to bend the rules and let them use it anyway.
It was rationalised as a bridging strategy designed to appeal equally to a generation accustomed to regular confession and their unchurched grandchildren.
For the clergy, it made life much easier. Third rite services quickly contracted into a minimalist twice-a-year exercise before Christmas and Easter.
For the laity, in the 80s when popular culture contrived to make the whole notion of sin seem anachronistic, it no doubt felt very sophisticated (and far less confronting than telling everything to a priest).
Morris describes his early years as a priest fondly to Syvret: "I was surrounded by reformers, modernisers and risk-takers."
Of the third rite he says: "The Church community as a whole were crying out for it; they were saying 'we want this'. If the voice of the people is going to be heard then the bishops must carry that voice."
Unlike Morris, the Congregation of Divine Worship didn't subscribe to the vox populi, vox deo hypothesis (that the voice of the people is the voice of God) and in March 1999 it prohibited widespread use of the third rite.
Two higher-profile Australian bishops briefly defied the ban and came close to being removed because of it.
Morris must have been operating under the radar in his far-flung country diocese because we now know his fight with the CDW on the matter erupted in 2004.
In a famous passage on "cheap grace", German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer explains in a nutshell what's wrong with sacramental soft options.
"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession."
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