McClory. INFALLIBLITY etc

McClory, Robert F. POWER & THE PAPACY: the People & Politics Behind the the Doctrine of Infallibility. Triumph 1997. $25.

A journalist's reflections on the dogma of infallibility, set off by the ruling of the Congregation of the Faith concerning the Church's lack of authority to ordain women. The author relies on about half a dozen books on the matter. He takes from them what re-inforces his polite feeling that women should be ordainable; while setting a few straw positions to knock down without the effort of thinking. There is no real force in the book, no personal sense that for him the Church lacks something which makes it difficult for him to accept its teachings. The whole is a long, vague essay put between covers. It has the force of boiled cabbage.
To take an instance: the author makes much of the "reception" of a teaching by the pope. Thus, he cites Francis Sullivan on the teaching concerning contraception: that the continued debate since the 1960s, removes its claim to be considered a constant teaching. The world began in 1960, and Father Kueng is its prophet. By this argument, the Arians, who were numerous indeed for several centuries, were correct.
Although not their patron saint, George Orwell could serve as a role model for journalists. At the top of every page, or the frame of every screen of a word-blender, should be inscribed: "Do not write of fire unless you have been burned". On contraception, there is an aspect not considered at all: it is a sterilization of the female. It simplifies copulating, without danger of consequences.
On the ordination of women, the major practical, or pastoral, aspect is the existing general tendency of men to avoid going to church. Being preached at by a woman is not a sure remedy to overcome this sloth. Nor is at all certain that women will easily accept being ordered around by a woman. The realist novelist, Anthony Trollope, has given us the figure of Bishopess Mrs. Prouty. The woman theologian who began by insisting on ordination for women, came to realize that ordination entails sub-ordination. She is now against ordination of any kind. Mr. McClory would light a fire; he has not considered whether the fire might not burn down the house.

A minor, irritating, continuous reference in this book is to the figures of Cardinals Manning and Newman. Both began life as members of the English State Church, for the sensibilities of whose current members Mr. McClory expresses some concern. To one whose tradition is rather from the experience of that church in Ireland, this concern too quickly by-passes its failure to testify against the brutality of its government. Bishops of the English State Church sat in the House of Lords. Newman's Oxford-bred snarling at Rome was not likely to convince a people who got their religion from Rome, and their politics from the English parliament.
Just so does a question arise about the Lutheran church during the great persecution. It is not a question whether the Lutherans were right about this or that matter of theology, or interpretation of Holy Writ. It is rather a question of a failure to take into account the "whole picture" of human nature. And the openings left to allow the weakness of our nature to be played upon.
Cardinal Manning did great work among the immigrants driven from Ireland by starvation. Cardinal Newman did some work; but he acknowledged at the end of his life, that he had labored in the study, while his own bishop, Bishop Ullathorne, had been out in the vineyard. Were Mr. McClory's hero, Cardinal Newman, still with us, he would likely send many of the authors cited by Mr. McClory - college students all - out into the vineyard to learn that the sun is indeed hot, and the work sweaty and tedious. Give the sheep a chance to be promiscuous, and they will not fail. Give a college boy three books and he will invent a virtual world; with all the ease of not having to be virtuous.
It is curious that Mr. McCloskey - father of a daughter - is not alert to the risk posed by a sweet-talking college boy, who has taken some courses in theology and can come up with a 20 page bibliography of scholars' articles, demonstrating the lack of "constant acceptance" of the prohibition against rolls-in-the-hay. Is it to be wondered that the woman spokesman for the Providers of Sexual Services complained that the promiscuity of college girls amounted to unfair competition?