The Canon Law Society of America (CLSA) is incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia as a nonprofit corporation. The Board of Governors, composed of elected officers, exercises oversight over the operations of the Society. The work of the society is done by committees, an annual convention and other symposia. (see structure) As a non-profit incorporation, the magisterium of the Catholic Church has no authority over the work of the CLSA other than the authority exercised by bishops over the individual members in their home states. CLSA was receiving free office and storage space from Catholic University of America, but they were asked to leave, and they moved out in April of 2004. CLSA is listed as dissenting organization (definition) by a Human Life International's book, Call to Action or Call to Apostasy? by Brian Clower, PhD, and by Ignatious Press' book Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism by Donna Steichen.
Its Mission Statement is, "The Canon Law Society of America is a professional association whose members are dedicated to the promotion of the study and application of canon law in the Roman Catholic Church." The Preamble of the Society's Constitution states, 'Mindful that church laws ought to be pastoral in character and made only to serve the people of God, we accept our responsibility as Christians trained in canon law to continue research and study and to assist any member of Christ's Body singularly or collectively, laity or clergy, who will welcome the deliberations, research and common opinion of this Society.'" Membership in the Canon Law Society of America is open to interested persons who wish to collaborate in the promotion of the pastoral ministry of the Church within the context of the legal/canonical structures of the Roman Catholic Church. Membership of non-Catholic persons is also welcomed.
Longtime member of the Canon Law
Society of America, Dr. James Beichler, is on the board of directors for
the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (AARC).
AARC's charter
begins by listing affiliate orgnaizations, including Dignity [gays], WOC
(Women's Ordination Conference), and CTA (Call to Action).
AARC's preamble derives it's understanding of human rights from the United
Nations. AARC's charters quote canon laws which allude to freedom,
but omits any canon laws describing obligations and responsibility to obey
eclesiastical authority. In Dr. Beichler's article, A
Question of Rights The Vatican: “V” is For “Vindictive,” he states,
essentially, that Vatican officials are not pastoral and therefore have
no business defining a second marriage as a grave manifest sin. Beichler's
article contradicts authoritative Church teaching.
| A Question of Rights The Vatican: “V” is For “Vindictive” Beichler ARCC, CLSA DISSENTING | Mary's Advocates Commentary (see summary) |
| “I don’t want to be hypercritical
but it I have the impression that lately there seems to be a kind of anti-Vatican
sentiment abroad in the church. You can hardly pick up a Catholic periodical
without reading that somebody or other has a problem with church authority.
Is this just me or am I on to some new trend? And if the latter is true,
what sense do you make of it?”
—A.E.S., Kansas City, KS No, it’s not just you. And that news is not necessarily bad news. It can mean that the People of God are simply following the church’s law that it is their duty to make their views on church matters known to their pastors and to others who have a right to know. But you also need to get the story straight: “anti-Vatican” does not translate into “anti-authority.” If you have been reading these columns you will remember our analysis of the “dissent” phenomenon in the modern church. Our prime exemplars of “dissent” are the officials in the Vatican curia who dissented and are still dissenting from the documents of the Second Vatican Council. These “prophets of doom” opposed Pope John XXIII’s council, they fought the bishops all during the council, and are still hacking away at its teachings. The reason people have a problem with “church authority” as you call it, is that today’s educated Catholics do know something about what the Second Vatican Council taught. They look for collegiality in the church and find only a caricature of Pope Paul VI’s vision of a collaborative episcopal office. They look for the equality of the People of God which the council taught and find the continued repression of women, and the incessant directives aimed at keeping the laity in its place. They look for enlightened applications of the council’s teaching on the liturgy and find instead a retreat into Latin, picky rubricism, and an omniscient dominance of all liturgical translation, overriding local conferences of bishops and their linguistic advisors. Some might be inclined to think this centralism is nothing more than careful management. But that would be to miss the critical difference which historical perspective gives us. We must constantly place Vatican actions in the context of the Second Vatican Council and the bitter opposition which the Vatican curia exhibited throughout. A few short years after the council the synod of bishops came close to voting to permit a married clergy. The curia merely tightened the screws and went on record as prohibiting any married priest from having any liturgical role at all. All lay persons are permitted to be lectors or Eucharistic ministers in the liturgy. The only persons excluded by Vatican decree are those who have resigned the priesthood. |
Beichler
states that officials in the Vatican curia opposed the Second Vatican Council
and are still opposing it today. If there were any officials
in the Vatican curia who opposed Pope John XXIII's council, most of them
are now dead. In all all my research of Vatican documents, I have
never found a statement from any department in the Roman Curia undermining
Vatican II. In contrast, the most widely distributed document from
the Vatican, The Cathechism of the Catholic Church, quotes Vatican II hundreds
of times. I'd like to ask Beichler to provide one example of
a Vatican official hacking away at the teachings of Vatican II.
Beichler evidently wants his readers to believe Vatican II taught that collegiality and equality meant that women and men should do all the same tasks and the laity have equal authority as the teachers and rulers. But Vatican II states "That discernment in matters of faith is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth. It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, in faithful and respectful obedience to which the people of God accept that which is not just the word of men but truly the word of God” (Lumen Gentium, no. 12, par. 2). "The laity should, as all Christians, promptly accept in Christian obedience decisions of their spiritual shepherds, since they are representatives of Christ as well as teachers and rulers in the Church.” (no. 37, par. 2) As an educated Catholic, I am happy to find some authority to keep laity in their place when the laity are re-inventing Catholicism, dissenting, and undermining Christ's teaching. |
| Another recent and appalling instance of Vatican revenge was the recent decree from the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts that canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law must be interpreted to exclude all divorced and remarried persons from the Eucharist (cf. the last issue of this newsletter). They must be excluded, the Vatican said, as being “publicly unworthy” because they “obstinately persist in manifest grave sin.” Now why should the Vatican make such a declaration? It is surely not because canon 915 needs clarification. That canon simply states: “Those who are excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” Some canons might need interpretation but this canon is a model of legislative clarity. | Beichler
recognizes that persons who are obstinately persisting in grave manifest
sin shall be denied communion. As a wife who has been abandoned by her
husband, is now a defendant in a civil no-fault divorce case,
and has watched my children's' God-given right to and intact home be stolen
from them, I clearly understanding that my husband is sinning against me,
our sons, their grandparents, the priest who married us, etc etc etc.
I can only conclude the Beichler
thinks my husband, and others like him, who are forcing no-fault divorce
are not sinning, or even if they were, they are not committing a grave
sin. But the Catechism
of the Catholic Church 2384-2386
|
| To understand what the
Vatican is doing in this case, one must see it as focused not on the Catholic
faithful, but on those bishops, pastors, theologians and canonists who
have in recent years questioned the scandalous exclusion of remarried Catholics
from Holy Communion. Not being pastors themselves—perhaps not even knowing
any divorced and remarried Catholic—they are playing their Vatican trump
card in the power game. The so-called mandatum requirement for Catholics
teaching theology, the recent attempt to control liturgical texts, the
norms which prohibit any lay person from being called “chaplain,” “minister,”
“coordinator,” or “moderator,” and, more recently yet, the instructions
which prohibit the lay minister of the Eucharist from washing the sacred
vessels, from breaking the Eucharistic bread, and from returning the ciborium
to the tabernacle, the decree on the ordination of women—all of these are
curial attempts to stop the reforms which Vatican II began. It is hard
not to see a kind of revenge or vindictiveness in this pattern of negativity.
When the Vatican goes out of its way to say that the resigned, married
priest may not distribute communion what other conclusion can be drawn
but this? Nor is it hard to see vindictiveness in the association of Pius
IX with the beatification of John XXIII. It’s an “in your face” kind of
ploy which gives a stiletto-like stab at the soul of Vatican II.
We regret that we are driven to an interpretation which imputes a kind of ill-will to those who should be exemplars of the opposite. But we are not alone in this. Recall Bishop Stecher’s lament a few years ago that the Vatican issues only an “unforgiving ‘no’” to laicized priests who request some pastoral function. We wish another judgment were possible. |
Beichler
wants his readers to know that the Vatican's instruction to deny communion
to twice-married faithful is not aimed at the faithful themselves,
but at the pastors who want the twice-married faithful to receive
communion. If my husband marries someone else in the future, he is
NOT being faithful to me, or to the teachings of the church, so to describe
him as faithful is ridiculous. Beichler thinks it's scandalous to
tell the world that twice-married spouses are not in communion with the
church, but scandal, by definition,
is to allow sin to go unchecked with the danger of leading others to sin
because of bad example or erroneous teaching. Where is the scandal
in denying communion to an obstinately persistent grave manifest sinner?
Why does Beichler think the Vatican
is not pastoral? Has he read anything about John Paul II's life?
Beichler is obviously interested in protecting the licentiousness of twice-married
Catholics, while ignoring the devastation, and betrayal experienced by
the innocent children and unjustly abandoned spouses. I accuse him
of being unpastoral towards me and cowardly towards my husband in
his refusal to call a sin a sin. He accuses the Vatican of
playing their trump card in the power game. Beichler, my husband,
and twice-married spouses want to maintain the power to undermine marriage
vows, break children's' hearts and condone adultery, while calling themselves
good Catholics who follow the teaching of Vatican II. But they are flatly
ignoring Vatican II's statements about obedience to teachers and rulers.
The model pastor is Jesus and he would never condone such atrocities.
|
| Dr. Biechler, an emeritus professor of religion, is a member of ARCC's board of directors. He also holds a licentiate in canon law and is a longtime member of the Canon Law Society of America. | |