AFRICANEWS
Book ReviewWhat Went Wrong with Vatican II: The Catholic Crisis Explainedby Laurenti Magesa
In this small volume McInerny who is also a popular novelist in the USA, does not discuss general problems facing the Catholic Church today, as the title would seem to suggest. Rather, he identifies one which, to him, is the source of all others. Heconsiders the problems of the Church today as arising from what he calls "the crisis of authority" (pp. 16 and passim), unleashed by some theologians who misinterpreted the documents of Vatican II to fit their own expectations. And theologians who continue to do so. Thus these theologians have, according to McInerny, portrayed Vatican II as if it contradicted the teachings of previous Councils, and have continued to consistently rebel against the authority of the Pope and the bishops. According to the author this rebellion took alarming shape with the publication of Pope Paul VI's Encyclical "Humanae Vitae" in 1968, on the immorality of using artificial contraceptives. Then afterwards some certain theologians took a public stand of protest against the encyclical, a stand which McInreny calls "demonic" (p. 158). McInerny describes theological dissent as setting oneself against the teaching authority of the Church, for which he finds no justification neither in Scripture nor in the Tradition of the Church. That's why he praises the steps the Church has taken against dissenters in recent years, among which the institution in 1989 of the Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity and the 1998 "motu proprio" "Ad Tuendam Fidem" (To Protect the Faith). The style of the book is brisk and straightforward. The position it defends is unambiguously "ultramontanist," without subtlety or nuance. And perhaps this is where the book is weakest. For the author the question for theologians and all members of the Church is simple: "Whose word should I take? Which authority should I follow?"(p. 149). And to him the answer is equally simple: "Rome has spoken; the cause is finished" (p. 82). Again, without nuance, he heaps together and dismisses with a wave of the hand as dissenters people such asHans Kung, Charles Curran, Karl Rahner, and even Cardinal Doepfner, then Archbishop of Munich for daring to voice even a slightly different opinion from that of Rome, in the face of the Church's historical mistakes, admitted publicly by Pope John Paul II since the beginning of his pontificate, and for which he has asked pardon. McInernywho is also regardedas the intellectual doyen of America's Catholic right wing, seems to have a defective perception of the historical perception of the development of the Church's positions. And it is for this reason why his book is worth reading in order to understand the various shades of thought and conviction that exist in the Church, a Church that should be wide enough to hold them all in its loving embrace. Charity tells us that we have to learn to live together. Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II have all insisted on this.
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