Theological deplorables
by John Walters, First Things.
[Editor’s note: the idea of a particular interpretation of ‘pastoral care’ overriding and superseding doctrine is relevant to mainline Protestant denominations, not just Roman Catholics.]
Presumably out of deference to the current pontificate, almost nobody is saying something that is obvious and important: that there ought to be no conflict between the doctrinal and the pastoral, the rule and the allowing of exceptions. To the best of my recollection, it was ever the fact that clergy exhibited understanding of error and weakness. That’s what the word “pastor” means.
Yet, latterly, something quite different is being asserted: that we require a new approach, that insistence on the primacy of doctrine amounts to “rigidity,” if not indeed Pharisaism. The buzzword is “pastoral,” spoken as if it were intended to forestall talk of laws.
All this seems directed not at leniency or at mercy but at the dismantling of rules. But that would be an intrinsically disordered idea: Without the rule, there can be no waiving, no “mercy.” To emphasize the exception to the exclusion of the constant is to imply that the “periphery” can exist independently of a center. Sometimes it even seems that concepts like “mercy” and “compassion” are being used to intimidate the anxious faithful into silence. To be truly Christian, we are told, we must abandon legalism and scripturalism—more or less altogether.
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