c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago. His new book, “The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality,” will be published by St. Martin’s Press in the spring.)

(UNDATED) Is it true Roman Catholics have no right to question teachings given them by the pope or their bishops and their prime religious duty is to accept and do as they are told?

According to accepted church practice, no teaching or discipline is valid unless accepted by the believing faithful. The gift of reception is the response of ordinary good Catholics through which, by thoughtfully examining some decree in the light of their own human experience, they stamp it valid or invalid. That is the way the Holy Spirit speaks through the community.

Reception is “a process whereby the faithful accept a teaching or decision of the church; an ecclesial community or institution accepts … and makes this tradition or decision its own,” according to Ladislas M. Orsy in the “Encyclopedia of Catholicism.”

Until a teaching passes the test of community reception, it “does not as yet shape the life of the community.” As church members “encounter concrete, particular and personal situations, they must come to a conscious decision to implement the law.” Through this it “meets the demands of real life and, as in a crucible, it reveals its suitability or its shortcomings.”

If Catholics say that theological interpretation does not make sense to them, the teaching fails no matter with what solemnity or by what office it is promulgated. Through reception, the canon of the Bible was determined. Through lack of reception, church declarations against birth control or women priests have failed the crucial test of the ordinary experience of good Catholics.

Yet the pope makes unwavering support of these teachings that have not passed this test of reception his litmus test for candidates for the bishopric.

Although reception is a venerable and integral aspect of the church’s tradition, why do church leaders never mention it? Are they practicing the “cafeteria” Catholicism they allege against others by ignoring or failing to acknowledge reception, described since ancient times as one of the “munera,” or gifts, of the church?

One may sympathize with the pope and bishops who emphasize their teaching authority without acknowledging the unique authority of conscientious Catholics. There is scant joy for the shepherd who must remind the flock it is supposed to be following him.

Bishops are not to do something to believers but to do something with them, in which the contributions of both parties are essential for the healthy church described by Vatican II as the mystery of the “People of God.”

That is why the church honors such sayings as “lex orandi, lex credendi,” that is, how the people pray tells us what we believe. Or again, the “sensus fidelium,” the sense of the faithful _ the judgment of the healthy majority of Catholics that is a reliable guide both to belief and to moral action.

Pastors should say of their flocks, “I know mine and mine know me.” That wonderful and warm intimacy between the leaders and the led describes the relationship of good pastors with their people. They know their people and their people know them. Such feeling is a function of relationships that unite rather than estrange.

A believable pastor and a believing people fit together, therefore, as family members do. Their relationship is the membrane through which the dynamic osmosis of faith occurs, the element by which what the action of the bishop mingles and merges successfully with the reactions of the people to result in a third entity, dynamic Christian belief and practice.

Some Vatican documents make Catholic life sound more like rounding up the herd than gently moving with them into the green pastures that nourish community. We have had documents, such as the recent “Christus Dominus,” telling Catholics what they must believe.

The Catholic community’s reactions are critical in validating a pronouncement, no matter what its source may be. That believers should question or reject a certain emphasis is not a rebellious cry but the trustworthy voice of the believing “People of God.” What good people reject cannot be an authentic interpretation of the teachings of Jesus.

The American bishops surely know of and probably would like to invoke this long revered gift of the church. They do not seem free to do so as they must be loyal, often painfully against their pastoral hearts, to stand by the institution.

That the bishops cannot honor reception fully does not make it less significant or mean that Catholics cannot trust their spiritual reactions when something does not ring true in their souls. The bishops would enhance their own authority by trusting more this authority of their people.

DEA END KENNEDY