Democracy and Catholicism

by Ephrem Fernando

(February 02, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Catholic Church did not form itself. It was established by Christ who gave the laws and the constitution before summoning mankind to join it. The faithful are a new creation. The Catholic Church is therefore a unique organisation where the head existed before the existence of the members and authority prior to the community. Any view that sees the Catholic church conceived in a democratic fashion or based on public opinion whether they be that of bishops or priests or laity is false. Any attempt to bypass the Pope who is the Vicar of Christ by synods of bishops, conferences of bishops, diocesan councils, church councils is therefore anathema. The Pope is the foundation of the unity of the Catholic church and it is through communion with him that bishops have communion with each other and the laity. In other words a bishop despite his buckle shoes and red hat is no more than a postman who has the authority only to deliver. The first consequence of democratisation of the Catholic church after Vatican II is the weakening of this truism as can be seen from the disagreements which have arisen on important theological points. Today the bishops are no longer accountable to the Pope but to a collegial body called the Bishops’ Conference where responsibility is dispersed throughout the whole body and not located in anyone bishop. As a consequence there is now the tendency of Bishopss Conferences to pronounce their own judgements on papal documents as happened most scandalously in the case of Humanae Vitae where Pope Paul Vl’s teaching on contraception were openly rejected.

Before the Jesuit Order decayed into disrepute after Vatican II the problems of democracy in the Catholic church were debated by distinguished Jesuit theologians like Francisco Suarez, Juan de Mariana and Robert Bellarmine who maintained that authority was lodged in the Pope but derived from God and subject to divine law. They did not see authority as ultimately stemming from the will of the majority of bishops and rejected the view that a greater wisdom is attained by summoning a greater number of minds to deliberate on a matter. They argued that it is a fault of logic to judge the validity of an opinion without reference to the knowledge and competence of the person advancing the opinion. Plato condemned this kind of logical error when he rightly said that when we want an opinion on things to do with horses or gymnastics or engineering or medicine we do not consult indiscriminately. We ask an expert on the particular matter on hand. In the Catholic church that expertise on theological matters rests with the Pope.

It is obvious that majorities are not always right and that justice is not synonymous with the will of the majority. Truth does not stem from the number of human proponents. Truth and Justice do not automatically come from the majority as is proved from the fact that people sometimes appeal against a majority decision to a body say like the Supreme Court which is in fact is a statistical minority. Majorities falsely claim to be in tune with the movement of history, will of the people, spirit of the age or signs of the times. These are pseudoconcepts and metaphors as is seen by the damage the majority did to the Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council. Long ago Cicero said "A ruler of the people must think more about the good of the people than about what they want". The only revolution that can be in the Catholic church is a continuing one, which comes about through the Popes who are the Vicars of Christ.

The Catholic church ceases to exist when the Pope is replaced with a democratic form of control. The church is not founded on democratic principles which lead to novelty and innovations. The construction of the Catholic church is not based on a parliamentary system, which often ends in conflict with the idea of unity. The swarms of heresies in the early centuries were expressions of public opinion. Any view that sees the Catholic church as being based on democracy is at odds with the reality of the church which is based on Tradition in which authority is not something which is summoned forth from a body of bishops but from Christ and bound by his commands. Any view that gives bishops or priests a voice in theological decisions is an inversion of the centuries old structure of the Catholic church. The independence the bishops claim for themselves in relation to the Pope is based on the view that they must have the power to communicate joy to others and seek out new forms of life for the church. The substitution of joy for supernatural faith and hope leads bishops to jump up and down like biblical goats. Joy is not the main theme of the Catholic faith. Pain, bloody sweat at Gethsamane and evil are. Anyone who is blind to them rejects the evil that led to the suffering of Christ.

It is this type of joy that was witnessed recently at All Saints Church Borella during the celebrations of the 50th anniversary novena, mind you, not of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour but Our Mother of Perpetual Help a spurious name unknown to Catholics where the bishops were led in procession not with a crucifix, candles and incense but with Kandyan dancers. Why the clowns did not take the bishops on the backs of elephants is not known. The procession ended with a ear-splitting blast from a conch shell inside the sanctuary, a place of silence. None of the bishops objected to this nadagama. They were more afraid of the clowns than God. Meanwhile, the novena which was founded in Rome centuries ago was short circuited. Like a decoction, it was mixed with the Novus Ordo Mass which the saintly Catholic Bishop Salvador Lazo of the Philippines called Novus Bogus Mass. One of these new fangled Masses was also said on a table in the clarillon tower by a bishop, an authority on anthracite, not on theology, who is often seen slipping in his over size shoes, while the bemused devotees, a fraction of the multitudes that came for the novenas of the late Fr. John Herat, lingered on terra firma. When such crude spectacles which are neither fish nor fowl take place in the name of religion, learned men are wont to remark with bitter mockery that religion has hijacked morality. Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623) the Servite friar angered at the modest laxity during the Council of Trent remarked that the Cardinals entered the Council taking the Holy Spirit in their saddle bags. Four centuries later the bishops entered All Saints Church Borella with Our Lady of Perpetual Succour in their saddle bags. Borrowing a Euclidian phrase Democracy and Catholism are not congruent. Amen.