Dissention in the Ranks: Part III

St. Louis has had its own ongoing controversy over the last few years...well, I suppose it has been going on for much longer than a few years, but it has gained notoriety in the past couple of years.

A polish parish has been confused about the ontological order of the Church for some time now. Instead of seeing their pastor as having power in virtue of his ordination and authority in virtue of being delegated by the ordinary, the parish council saw the priest's authority as coming from the democratic judgment of the parish council. As you may have guessed, the Archbishop of St. Louis did not concur with the parish council on this matter. The parish council was given a period of time to consider their position, and when they did not return to the orthodox position, they incurred the penalty of excommunication. Having lost their appeal to Rome, the parish council is still working on establishing an acceptable position.

While the St. Louis predicament may seem unique, I think its error is more widespread than one might think. In a country that has been built upon democracy and thus the will of the people, religion has also tended toward congregationalism. Each community desires to define the whole in virtue of the beliefs of the individuals. While this may not seem too bad, it has direr repercussions. Once the priority is shifted from the universal Church to that the believing individual, what is believed shifts from an objective truth handed down from the apostles to a subjective truth as held by a particular individual or set of individuals. It is still possible for these two sets of beliefs to be congruent, but it is my no means necessary. The individual can enter into error, and often does. This comes out even more strongly in many Protestant circles, where one goes "church shopping" to find a church or pastor that most clearly believes what the individual believes, and having found a church to belong to, the individual's beliefs may still remain distinct from those of this church. Further, even in well meaning and well catechized Catholics, the individual will still be required to believe many truths implicitly that the universal Church holds as true explicitly.

The correct understanding of the Church can be drawn out of a variety of texts. The first that comes to mind is Mt. 16:18, where Jesus speaks of founding his Church upon the sure foundation of Peter. Jesus is speaking of founding a Church and not merely sending the Apostles out in a disorganized evangelization. Second, in the Pauline texts, the Church itself is spoken of as the bride of Christ. The individual is not directly wed to Christ. Rather, Christ is joined to the individual in virtue of the individual's membership in the Church. Thus, the universal Church has an ontological priority to the belief of the individual.