Ex Corde Article Slights Church’s Rights

Ernest B. Hook, J. Garcia

To the Editor:

As someone who is not a Roman Catholic, and not even religious, I found his claim that all religions always teeter on the brink of magic as grossly offensive to a number of my friends and colleagues who are religious and who regard themselves as part of a “religion.” Isn’t this statement unnecessarily offensive, especially from a professor of ethics, let alone “religious ethics”? But beyond that, it is simply incorrect in application to all religions. One must wonder who, precisely, lacks expertise or knowledge of theology.

Second, Maguire’s criticism of Ex Corde Ecclesiae ignores the obvious fact that a “nontheological bishop” can seek advice from theologians on matters beyond his own knowledge and competence without presuming any miraculous inspiration. In making final disciplinary and other regulatory decisions within any institution, rarely, if ever, does the person making the final decision have complete knowledge of the specific issue at hand, but seeks such advice as he or she may deem necessary. Maguire cannot be so naive as to think that a Roman Catholic bishop does not have, or cannot call upon, theological assistants and advisers.

Last, why should any believing Roman Catholic doubt the capability of the pope to transfer to a bishop, through implicit inspiration, explicit guidelines, or in any other manner, the right to interpret church doctrine regarding academic affairs or anything else?

Ernest B. Hook
(Public Health)
University of California, Berkeley

To the Editor:

There are three main possibilities. Dulles himself says the two magisteria are “mutually corrective.” If that is right, however, then Maguire must concede an episcopal right and competence of bishops to critique theologians’ teaching for the same reasons he thinks theologians may critique bishops’.

A second possibility is that each magisterium is autonomous, immune from the other’s criticism. However, a teaching, like any assertion, has clear content only insofar as we can say what (and whose) claims it entails or excludes. Moreover, because Maguire is a theologian himself, this position would disallow his article’s criticism of the bishops’ exercise of their power over the mandate.

Finally, Maguire could hold that the theologians’ magisterium is, in effect, superior in that it can criticize the bishops, while the bishops are incompetent to criticize the theologians. Indeed, if bishops cannot say what and whose claims their teaching excludes, then that teaching has no clear—indeed, no real—content, and their supposed teaching magisterium must be chimerical. This position seems implausible on its face and self-serving in its motivation and implications. More important, Maguire offers no good reasons for it.

Ought a bishop, then, withhold or withdraw a theologian’s teaching mandatum? Only, I should think, in cases of a theologian’s egregious or repeated distortion of church doctrine. Would this entail some modification of academic freedom as some in the United States understand it? Maybe so, but those troubled by that must offer some substantial and effective alternative procedures by which the Catholic Church can, through its episcopal hierarchy, exercise its right to say what (and whose) teaching conflicts with Catholic doctrine.

J. Garcia
Cambridge, Mass.

Maguire Responds:

Remarkably, he then proceeds both to prove my point about magic and also to insult Roman Catholics. In his view, no Roman Catholic should doubt the pope’s ability to impart “through implicit inspiration” to a bishop “the right to interpret church doctrine regarding academic affairs or anything else.” (Emphasis added.) The conveying of such sweeping powers of discernment to another person is a textbook example of epistemological magic. It is insulting to say believing Catholics should or do accept such legerdemain.

J. Garcia is chillingly prepared to accept for scholars of religion “some modification of academic freedom” by nonacademics. Since academic freedom, like pregnancy, is an either/or matter, such “modification” is fatal to the idea of a university, where, as Cardinal John Henry Newman put it, many minds compete freely together, and where the processes of correction are built into the competition.

He also misses my main point in critiquing the mandatum. I am not saying bishops, laity, and theologians cannot criticize one another. However, the bishops want to be the only critics with juridical power to deny the credentials of those whom they criticize. They want to do what the Vatican has done to Charles Curran and Hans Kung, declaring that they no longer can be considered “Catholic theologians,” even though they happen to be two of the most distinguished Catholic theologians in the world. Here is the mischief of misplaced juridicism, which would try to remove academic credentials in the way a government might withdraw credentials from an ambassador. It is against such pernicious nonsense that my Academe article protested.

Daniel C. Maguire
(Religious Ethics)
Marquette University

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