Practicing Catholic: The Search for a Livable Catholicism

Rating:
Summary: Smart but in error
Review: I can certainly appreciate Professor Ryan's desire to see the Church declare a liberalized sexual theology. One sees a similar movement on the right, wherein conservative Catholics want to see the magisterium change its teachings on social justice, the death penalty, and just wars. It's pretty clear that, despite the left's repeated depiction of the Church hierarchy as some paleolithic conservative beast, the pope and bishops also happen to disappoint the fondest (i.e., the meanest) hopes of the American right as well. The question is whether the Church should be at the service of one of the American political ideologies, as Ryan would have it, or whether it should transcend them.

The problem with Ryan's thesis as I see it is that while it may seem perfectly reasonable and just to her to bracket and dismiss the church's teachings on, say, homosexuality, in doing so she cedes her capacity to cite the church's teachings against sweat shops or the death penalty in an argument on economic or criminal justice. I've seen conservative Catholics engage in the same kind of nuanced historical arguments to show that while John Paul II and the Catechism are perfectly clear on their opposition to capital punishment, we can historicize their position and still be pro-execution. Her method, in other words, is similarly employed by right-wing Catholics to justify rejecting social teachings that Ryan, I assume, would hold dear.

The end result is what is generally called Cafeteria Catholicism. Of the scores of doctrines laid out on the buffet, many Catholics want to walk through and put on their plate only those teachings which confirm their already-held secular-political beliefs. The problem, of course, is that such a scheme is nothing more than moral relativism, with each individual deciding on her own what moral teachings really matter and which she can ignore. Again, I am sympathetic. There are more than a few teachings in the Church that are difficult for me.

The larger issue is whether the teachings Ryan would have us dismiss are superfluous ornamentation to the architecture of the Church, or whether they are load-bearing walls upon which the structure depends. My own sense of the Church is that each moral teaching depends on and is depended on by several related teachings, kind of like a game of Jenga, and like Jenga, we remove a plank of the moral platform at the risk of having the whole edifice collapse.

Or to change metaphors: some Catholics see the Church as one might see a sweater knit of gold and green and brown and purple threads, only they don't like purple, so they find each purple thread and pull it out of the sweater. In the end, do they have their dream sweater, or just an unraveled mess?

Rating:
Summary: Written in the context of American thinking and values
Review: Read this if controversial topics like ordination of women and homosexuality in the church interest you. Initially I was absorbed in the opinions, thinking many were very sound and were valid. As I moved on, I became increasingly aware of the "American" tone of the book. Catholic communities in different societies are at different spiritual maturity and have different priorities. One country's search for "loyal dissent" may not be on another's agenda; feminist theology and inclusive language must not be assumed to be embraced by all women in other parts of the world.

The universal Catholic church is this incredible community of so many races and cultures. Remember this as you read this book. Be enlightened and exposed, but remember that not all Catholics are brought up in the same vein as an American Catholic and should not be. Read it and evaluate it based on the needs and spirituality of your own Church context. May I say, we don't necessarily have to blindly accept American religious imperialism.

Rating:
Summary: 30 years too late..
Review: This is an excellent, well-written book. It is written by a woman - which is progress for the Catholic Church, who have rarely let women speak on serious theological matters. But that is the only progress I can see. The same issues are being discussed, the same problems addressed, as were the questions which pushed me out of a Catholic seminary over 35 years ago. No progress, either theological or sociological, seems to have been made on the issues of birth control, or women in the clergy, or married priests, etc. The Catholic Church no doubt would see this as a positive characteristic, but the rest of the world has moved on -- and taken a lot of the Catholic faithful with them.

This is a good book. It's a shame that it could have been written almost word for word in the "60's.