Roman Catholics: Authority Under Fire

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Increasingly, priests and laymen disobey the orders of an immediate superior in the name of obedience to "the mind of the church." One striking example took place in England last month where Father Arnold McMahon of Worcestershire and Father Joseph Cocker of the Isle of Wight openly challenged the church's position on contraception. "The official teaching authority has decreed that contraception is always wrong," wrote Father McMahon in the Birmingham Post. "This is what I deny." It is also denied in practice by millions of Catholics. "They don't leave the church over birth control nowadays," says San Francisco Jesuit George Kennard. "They leave that particular doctrine."

Quitting the Seminaries. In religious orders, there is considerable discussion by priests and nuns about the need to modernize the vow of obedience to allow more individual initiative. Bishops are also worried about the defection from seminaries of candidates for the priesthood who feel that they can do more for the church in secular jobs.

Many bishops have responded to defiance of authority with traditional methods of command. Bishop Bernard J. Topel of Spokane, Wash., last month said that "1964 will go down in the history of the Catholic press as a year of shame." Not only were certain publications guilty of attacking bishops by name, but, claimed the prelate, they called into question "the obligation of the laity to accept the teaching of bishops." Jesuit officials suppressed the publication of a symposium on obedience that raised some critical questions about the society's rules. Hierarchical pressure last month forced the National Council of Catholic Men to cancel a four-part television series explaining the current church-wide debate over birth control. Both Father McMahon and Father Cocker were promptly disciplined by their superiors, forbidden to preach, and sent off to retreats.

To Love & Serve. There are plenty of theologians who feel that such blunt methods are as obsolete as the Inquisition, and derive from an outdated understanding of the church as a purely juridical institution. Authority, they argue, has indeed the right to command and condemn—but it has an even greater obligation to love and serve. Jesuit Biblical Scholar John L. McKenzie of Chicago believes that the concept of bishops and priests as servants rather than masters of their flocks is a return to the earliest tradition of the church: "The base of authority in the New Testament is love, not the power to command or the power to coerce."

Many prelates, accepting this new theology of authority, have tried to put it into practice by welcoming laymen and priests into the corridors of power. In Atlanta, Archbishop Paul Hallinan has appointed more than 125 laymen to church commissions; Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston intends to have laymen present at archdiocesan ecumenical synods.