Balancing Truth and Change

Two weekends ago in Detroit, a group of 2000 or so liberal lay Catholics gathered in Detroit for a American Catholic Council-sponsored conference to caucus and to discuss strategies to influence change in the Catholic Church, changes which include "... a greater say in church decision-making, which is often top-down, (with) many calling for women, gay and non-celibate priests, along with more of an emphasis on social justice issues rather than abortion or anti-birth control efforts."

There is another conference which perhaps not-so-coincidentally is happening on the same weekend sanctioned by the Archdiocese of Detroit, which will include priests and speakers who will affirm church doctrine and point out where the American Catholic Council goes astray in terms of fundamental and core church teachings. They leaders of the archdiocese has has sternly warned Catholics, particularly priests, against attending the American Catholic Council-sponsored conference, lest there's any semblance of sanction and support.

The arguments between the two sides aren't terribly novel. On one side, people are calling for change because they think that certain church views are certain issues are wrong either because their outdated, immoral in a the current enlightened age, or unpopular and irrelevant to modern-day populations. They put little weight on church tradition, and point to other instances where church teachings were rightfully evolved (only holding mass in Latin) and think that other issues should be treated similarly. I can only assume that they are genuinely concerned that this is a church which teachings are less and less consistent with society's norms that before soon, nobody will be there left in the pews.

On the other side, the argument is that church teachings represent absolute truth, and as unpopular as some of these things might be, you can't change truth to suit the audience or the congregants. To do so would marginalize the purpose of the church, which is not to be popular or to "win votes", but to pronounce the truth at all times. The top-down approach is right, say these folks, because that is how God has ordained His church to operate. (Granted, there's a little circular logic here, because to submit to that governance model, you need to submit to "top-down" church teaching in the first place).

So who's right? Well, it'd be easy to cast stones from the outside as a non-Catholic, but the answer isn't clear cut as it seems, and that's why every denomination has these sort of battles for its soul. Let's establish that truth is the core of what the Church is about, but how the truth is interpreted and where how that truth is applied is the core reason for all the church splits you commonly see.

The knee-jerk reaction from many Protestants as they see these Catholic schisms is to wag their finger and say, "Ah, if they only held to sola scriptura (or Scripture alone) as the core of their doctrine instead of man-made precepts and tradition, they would not be in this mess." But this conveniently ignores the fact that there have been far more schisms in Protestant denominations, most of whom would argue that they are in fact grounded on sola scriptura. There's plenty of areas of high emotion which are either not spoken to specifically in Scripture, or there's ample room for interpretation in more than one direction which leads to this phenomenon.

It's obvious that truth isn't negotiable and the foundational tenets of our faith - that which lead to salvation and holiness, and yes, those which are outlined by Scripture alone - are also non-negotiable, regardless of how unpopular those tenets may be (I don't remember Christianity being particularly hip in 50 A.D. either). As for the rest of it? Feel free to discuss, deliberate and tweak with due humility.