Friday, Jul. 12, 1968

Paul's Traditionalist Credo

At a time when Roman Catholics are questioning tenets of their religion in an atmosphere of rare intellectual excitement, Pope Paul VI last week proclaimed an inflexible affirmation of traditional Catholic doctrine. In a new church creed,* the Pontiff etched a portrait of Christianity little changed from medieval days:

sbGOD. Although many leading theologians, Catholics among them, are trying to avoid defining God at all, the Pope described him in highly anthropomorphic terms: "We believe in one only God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, creator of things visible, such as this world, of things invisible, such as the pure spirits which are also called angels. He is He Who is."

sbORIGINAL SIN. The concept that every human inherits Adam's guilt has increasingly been challenged by a counterview: "original sin" is man's inborn weakness, but the only sins for which a man can be held accountable are those committed of his own free will. Not so, said Paul: "We believe that in Adam all have sinned." The Pope specifically reaffirmed a pronouncement by the Council of Trent, which maintained that original sin is transmitted "not by imitation but by propagation."

sbINFANT BAPTISM. Because everyone is a sinner born, the Pope continued, "baptism should be administered even to little children ... in order that, though born deprived of supernatural grace, they may be reborn." Paul thus brushed aside the questioning of infant baptism raised recently by Catholics and non-Catholics alike on a variety of grounds--the most important of which asks whether those baptized should not be old enough to understand the significance of the ritual.

sbPAPAL INFALLIBILITY. The Pope reaffirmed the unchallengeable authority of his office: "We believe in the infallibility enjoyed by the successor of Peter when he teaches ex cathedra [that is, solemnly on matters of faith and morals] as pastor and teacher of all the faithful, and which is assured also to the episcopal body when it exercises with him the supreme magisterium." Thus his only concession in the entire credo was a nod in favor of the concept of collegiality, approved by Vatican II, under which bishops and cardinals can more fully share power with the Pope. Paul also expressed the hope that "Christians who are not yet in full communion of the one only Church will one day be reunited in one flock with one shepherd only"--a statement that was no comfort to the ecumenical movement.

sbTHE EUCHARIST. In recent years, some Catholic thinkers--primarily the Dutch --have questioned their church's difficult doctrine of transubstantiation-- that the wafer and wine of the Mass are mystically changed into Christ's true body and blood. They have suggested, instead, a doctrine of "transignification," which argues that the change does not take place in the substance of the bread and wine but in the meaning. Pope Paul reaffirmed the literal interpretation, concluding: "In the reality itself, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the consecration, so that they are the adorable Body and Blood of the Lord."

sb-THE HEREAFTER. The Pope was also explicit in his description of what lies after death, despite the fact that modern theologians tend to interpret the Bible's previews more in terms of symbolism. "We believe in the life eternal," said Paul. "We believe that the souls of all those who die in the grace of Christ, whether they must still be purified in Purgatory or whether from the moment they leave their bodies Jesus takes them to Paradise, are the people of God in the eternity beyond death, which will be finally conquered on the day of the resurrection when these souls will be reunited with their bodies." But those who refuse God will go "to the fire that will not be extinguished."

Paul's credo, which is to be entered in official Vatican documents, will be just as binding--in theory--on all Catholics as the Church's earlier creeds. To some Catholic leaders, it was comforting. "In these troubled times," said New York's Archbishop Terence Cooke, "it is helpful to have reassurance of faith. The Holy Father gave us just that." But many liberal members of the Pope's flock were dismayed by the new document's archaic theology and terminology, which they felt would do little to make Christianity more relevant to modern man. Commented the Dutch Catholic newspaper De Tijd: "He wanted to break bread, but his words are like stones in our stomachs."

In what seemed almost a counterpoint to Paul's traditionalism, a Catholic prelate last week strongly hinted that the Vatican may be preparing to lift its condemnation of Galileo Galilei, the 17th century Italian physicist whom the Inquisition put under eight years' house arrest for contending that the earth rotates around the sun. During his "examination" in 1633, the aged scientist was scoffed at for challenging the wisdom of Ptolemy, the Egyptian who 1,500 years earlier had asserted that the earth was the center of the universe. And why would Joshua have commanded the sun to stand still (Joshua 10: 12-13) if it did not move? Galileo was forced to recant. Addressing a meeting of Nobel-laureate physicists at Lindau, West Germany, Franz Cardinal Kooenig of Vienna announced: "I am in a position to declare that an initiative will be taken which will lead to an open and honest solution of this case." Although Church leaders and writers in recent decades have spoken warmly of Galileo--in 1965 Pope Paul praised him with Dante and Michelangelo as one of Italy's "great spirits"--the official censure has never been lifted. An open admission of error by the Church, even after three centuries, would do much to improve relations between religion and science.

* Others: the Apostles' Creed, dating from the 2nd century; the Athanasian Creed, circa A.D. 361; the Nicean Creed, A.D. 381; and the Tridentene Profession, adopted by the Council of Trent in the 16th century.

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