Uncommon Knowledge With Archbishop Charles Chaput
Archbishop Chaput appeared recently on Peter Robinson’s “Uncommon Knowledge.” It is a very interesting interview, which National Review Online links to in five segments. The Archbishop responds to the claims made by Nancy Pelosi about the Church’s teachings on abortion. There are many other interesting aspects to the interview as well, including the segment about Vatican II linked to here.
Peter Robinson, a conservative Catholic and a Republican, raises a very provocative question to the Archbishop about the abuse by American bishops, particularly by the NCCB (now the USCCB), of authority after the Council. Robinson raises this issue: In the 1980s, the NCCB was wrong about the economy and the Cold War, and it has gone against the papal magisterium — Robinson raises the issue of annullments. Is it any wonder, then, he asks, that Catholics are skeptical about the authority of the American bishops?
Chaput, who was clearly taken off-guard by the question, gives an interesting response. Check it out.
I have seen bishops allow themselves to be challenged in interviews by leftist journalists who are for all intents and purposes abortionists and sexual revolutionaries. Never before have I seen a bishop allow himself to be challenged in an interview by a journalist who happens to be a pro-life Catholic, and a Republican to boot. As I said, very interesting stuff.
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For the children, eh?
Comment by dad29 — October 6, 2008 @ 12:08 pm
Hooray Hooray some one is finally asking these types of questions!!! I only wish this kind of thing was more common and then shown to all Catholics… Our bishops too often lack the moral courage required to speak the Truth clearly and Loudly for all to hear.
Comment by kris — October 6, 2008 @ 1:10 pm
The more I hear from Archbishop Chaput the less impressed I am. He’s very good at repeating standard cliches, but his answer to the annullment question was really lame. And his notion that Vatican II was of surpassing grace in the 20th century is only arguable at best. And I’m tired of the constant put-down of the pre-conciliar Church. Chaput almost sounds like a “hermeneutics of rupture” type here. And not to put too fine a point on it, the notion that the laity have “always” been viewed by the Church as paramount (at least in the way Chaput was discussing it) is specious and fallacious. Particularly today, there are very few lay leaders I trust to communicate anything, either because they don’t know it that well themselves or they have their own agenda.
But thanks for posting this. It provided a real insight into clerical doublespeak.
Comment by Laura — October 7, 2008 @ 3:33 pm
Laura,
I don’t think Chaput fits into the “hermeneutics of rupture” camp at all. However, I do think that he might be a bit problematic in his “theology of the laity,” at least when he expresses himself on the subject.
As a case in point, I heard him give a lecture at The Catholic University of America where he argued that the decline of female religious orders might be a good thing. One might agree with him as a point of irony. After all, the postconciliar nuns in Europe and North America were politically radicalized and became a destructive force in the Church. But that is not what Chaput meant.
He had basically given up on the prospect of a future revival of female religious vocations and tried to put a positive spin on it. He saw in their decline a sign of ecclesial health, because, he said, in effect, it shows the Church’s increased recognition of the universal call to holiness. Holiness is not just the vocation of priests and nuns but of all of us, and the disappearance of the antiquated female religious orders could be interpreted as a sign that the Church has recognized this fact. Young women now realize, he argued, that they do not have to join a nunnery to be holy.
On the other hand, it seems that within his own diocese vocations are flourishing. So, if that’s true, the proof is in the pudding with him.
I am not always generationally inclined to favor Chaput’s instincts. He is, by inclination, a postwar generation, optimistic liberal who voted for Jimmy Carter. He is not constitutionally oriented, as I am, to see the modern world in terms of inevitable Church-state conflict. I think that history is on my side on this, but Chaput’s generation thought that after Vatican II the Church could co-opt modernity.
I’ve met good and holy leaders in the Church who are like that.
Comment by hierothee — October 7, 2008 @ 8:34 pm
Hierothee,
OK, I’ll give you the “hermeneutics of rupture” comment. It wasn’t fair to Chaput, although the constant stress on Vatican II as a signal moment in the Church without any linkage to what preceded it tends to reinforce the retro “rupture” mentality for many people. So did his blanket assertions about the pre-conciliar Church.
I see him as a typical, rather unreflective American who thinks one can be fully Catholic while accepting the precepts of modernity, but he also doesn’t seem to be aware of what it really takes to construct a fully Catholic society (and I grant that in America it might be difficult, if not impossible, to realize). It’s always a case of tacking on some Catholic elements to something that really won’t support them in the long run, but which makes many Catholics feel better about buying into the whole liberal deal.
Anyway, I think it might be a generational thing. Perhaps Catholics who were born in the 1980s (as I was) or later might be able to recoup some of the losses brought about by the headlong rush to embrace modernity. In any case, I feel a great distance from Archbishop Chaput and others like him, who may be holy, but who don’t seem to understand what’s at stake here.
Comment by Laura — October 8, 2008 @ 5:14 am