UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Jon M. Sweeney
Right now, the United States government is doing all it can to capture a young man who leaked sensitive information that embarrassed it. They are probably justified in trying to capture Edward Snowden. But Catholics are still wondering why the U.S. government hasn’t insisted that the Vatican send Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston back to face charges for knowingly harboring and supporting a criminal priest who raped more than 150 boys in his archdiocese. After fleeing Boston in late 2002, Cardinal Law was appointed by Pope John Paul II to a prestigious position in Rome, where for a decade he recommended the appointment of new bishops and helped to investigate American nuns. Today, he sits in happy retirement behind the Vatican walls. Matthew Fox is angry about this sort of thing, as well he should be. So, too, are millions of Catholics.
It is from such a place of anger and frustration, but also hope for the future, that Fox’s Letters to Pope Francis: Rebuilding a Church with Justice and Compassion (July ’13, 152 pp, ebook and printed book editions) comes. Just published, the book is a welcome set of missives, echoing themes that are at once familiar and well argued. Surely, the new Pope will never read these letters, but one wishes that he would, particularly before planning what he will say to millions of Catholic youth in Rio de Janeiro later this month. (Look for millions of young people glued to the Pope’s every word, July 23-28.)
Fox reinvigorates a term from the Second Vatican Council, sensus fidelium, “sense of the faithful,” in these letters to Pope Francis. It is a beautiful phrase and a powerful reminder that the Catholic Church is larger–much larger–than the Chair of Saint Peter. The Second Vatican Council said that the Church was supposed to listen carefully to the sensus fidelium, and Fox makes the point that the performance and perspective of Pope Francis’s two predecessors shows that, not only hasn’t the Church done so, but it is actually in schism as a result. The last two popes have deliberately gone about undoing the reforms and teachings of Vatican II. Fox explains, “Quite simply, in Catholic theology a Council trumps a Pope but a Pope does not trump a Council.” What we’ve essentially had since 1978 is two popes turning their backs on reforms that were decided by a valid Council, leading to a schismatic Church.
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