This past Sunday at the Mass I attended the priest talked in part of his homily about the choice one makes to follow Christ, and the consequences that are part of that choice. I cannot remember his words exactly enough to quote him, but basically he made the point that one of the consequences of choosing to follow Christ is a commitment to accept the whole truth that we receive from Him. Therefore, it is totally inadequate for a Catholic to say "I believe eighty percent of what God teaches me through the Catholic Church," or "I believe sixty percent of God's teaching, and the rest is wrong." Taking such a position does not merely involve a rejection of one truth or another, but rather indicates a completely different world view, incompatible with truly following Christ. Once one has gone that far, there is no fundamental reason why one cannot drop to fifty percent, or forty, or twenty, or zero, for that matter. Leaving the Catholic Church entirely becomes logically possible and acceptable the moment one decides that this or that teaching is wrong. Furthermore, if God is wrong on anything, then our whole faith is nonsense, since such an imperfect God clearly cannot be God. If on a particular issue an individual decides that he, and not God, has the real truth, and rejects the teaching of God, then in effect he is setting himself up as God. None of this is anything new, of course, but it was good to hear it proclaimed clearly in a homily (and, in fairness to the priest, I should say that the points made in his sermon end here, and everything from this point forward is purely my own thought).

Later on Sunday, I was thinking about some of what this priest had said when I saw parts of an interview of Robert Bennett by Raymond Arroyo on EWTN. Robert Bennett is a member of the national review board appointed some time ago by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to study the clergy abuse problems in the Catholic Church in the United States. There were some interesting things said in the interview, and some things from Bennett that were positive. He repeatedly and forcefully dismissed as "preposterous" the notion that there is a connection between celibacy and sexual abuse of children, saying that "no serious person" believes in such a connection. Also, although he gave no indication of any conclusions on the matter, Bennett at least acknowledged that the board was looking at the issue of homosexuality as it relates to some of the scandals. These were just a couple of points that I heard while listening to a few parts of the interview--there may have been much more that was positive. However, unfortunately, though predictably, there were also some statements from Bennett that again raised the question of why the American bishops have so consistently sought solutions to their problems from people who do not fully embrace the Catholic faith. Bennett rejected the concerns of those who have questioned whether someone like himself, who perhaps does not agree with Church teaching on all points, should be working for an ostensibly Catholic review board, with an official and high-profile status within the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church in the United States. He claimed that his positions do not really matter, because the board was not passing judgment on Church doctrine. Rather, he said, a large part of his job on the board is investigative, and he has the experience and demonstrated skills to work in an investigation. He also pointed out that people do not know what his positions are, and claimed that his positions are really not anyone's business. Bennett thinks that it is enough that he and his fellow review board members love and respect the Catholic Church, as he said they do. Whether the board members agree with specific Catholic teachings is, in Bennett's view, irrelevant.

The problem with Bennett's argument here is that it reflects a world view which, however common it may be among professed Catholics, is in effect non-Catholic. The Catholic Church does not just have "positions" on issues. The Church has teachings, which are given to her by God. Anyone who does not accept all the teachings of the Catholic Church either does not accept that the Church is able to speak for Jesus Christ on earth, or does not accept everything taught by God as true. Either position, obviously, means that from a Catholic perspective such a person cannot be said to be fully accepting Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church, however good their intentions may be. Bennett says that he and the other board members love and respect the Catholic Church, but in order to love and respect the Church, does not one need to have a view of the Church that is basically accurate? If you view the Church as just one religious body among numerous others, with many praiseworthy aspects, but not with a unique and unchanging mission and power to proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ on earth, then you cannot love and respect the Church as she really is, but only as you imagine her to be in your own mind. Therefore, any person who consciously dissents from even one infallible and unchanging teaching of the Catholic Church is not merely disagreeing with the Church on one issue, but rejecting a whole authentically Catholic world view, and the most basic claims of the Catholic Church about her own nature and mission.

Robert Bennett may have the best of intentions. He may even do some good work on the review board. However, surely any intelligent person can see that it is problematic to have a person with such a total misunderstanding of the nature of the Catholic Church on a review board designed to look at a critical problem in the Church in the United States, on behalf of the American bishops' conference. If this were just a question of a member of the national review board, then this would be disturbing, but of course in reality there is much more than that here. Bennett's comments only bring into focus the central issue behind concerns about his appointment that have existed since the initial formation of the board. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops appointed Bennett and all the other board members to their positions. Whichever individual bishops were responsible for choosing the members of the board either were familiar with Bennett's beliefs at the time, or they, like him, considered his beliefs unimportant. Either alternative forces one to ask whether some of the bishops share much of Bennett's radically mistaken understanding of the Church, which in reality amounts to a non-Catholic world view.

One might hope that the appointment of Bennett was due to some sort of oversight, or simply a single exception, except that another board member, Leon Panetta, has an extensive public record of support for legal abortion, a position clearly and consistently condemned by the Church as seriously immoral and incompatible with the Catholic faith. Panetta, even if one credits him too with sincere good intentions, clearly has absolutely no grasp, not only of the nature of the Catholic Chuch, but also of the respect for human life which is so fundamental to the Catholic view of the human person. The fact that such a person is on the review board only confirms that either the responsible bishops acted with complete thoughtlessness on an important issue, or they have an understanding of reality that differs little in essentials from that of Robert Bennett. That may seem like a strong statement, since earlier Bennett's view was identified as being in effect a non-Catholic one, but logic demands this conclusion. If the bishops involved mean well, and have any intention at all of fulfilling their role as Catholic bishops, this whole area should cause them serious thought and self-examination. It may be too late to re-examine the membership of the national review board, but the central issue is far greater than that. The American bishops need to examine themselves to confirm that they are still actually Catholic, not only in name, but in their understanding of and belief in the true reality of the Catholic Church.