Top theologian criticises Church’s ‘disloyalty’ reflex

A leading moral theologian has said it is regrettable that all too often any questioning of policy or leadership in the Catholic Church is still seen in the 21st century as an expression of disloyalty, if not of lack of faith.

Fr Patrick Hannon, the emeritus professor of moral theology in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, is critical of “a climate in which the impression is easily taken that loyalty to the Church requires that no one give voice to any question at all”.

Writing in The Furrow, Fr Hannon emphasises that “a regard for public opinion and the right to freedom of expression is implicit in official Catholic teaching”.

However, if there is to be “a healthy public opinion and a fruitful freedom of expression” in the Church, there must also be “respect for the right to information”.

Writing against the background of recent events where prominent Irish priests have been “silenced” by order of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Fr Hannon says public discussion of these developments has been “hampered by a lack of information concerning the grounds for the measures by those who are in a position to provide it”, he writes.

Quoting the 1963 Decree of Vatican II on the modern means of communication, and a 1971 instruction on the media from the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Fr Hannon reiterates that information doe not just occur — it must be sought, and the right to information entails a duty to seek it out.

“But this means there must be access to the sources”, and “it is futile to talk about the right to information if a variety of the sources for it are not made available”.

Fr Hannon says it is an “unhappy fact” that an unwillingness to part with information “is almost reflex on the part of some Church officials when questioned, especially by representatives of the media, about matters of concern to Church members or to people generally”.

He acknowledges that all such restrictive laws are challenged from time to time by the public or the media, on the basis they inhibit the exercise of freedom of expression or the right to information, and that such restrictions are contrary to the public interest.

In any society, Fr Hannon writes, there is “a danger that lawmakers or law’s interpreters will identify the public interest with their own, perhaps even in good faith, and that they will shape or interpret laws accordingly.

“There is no reason to think that Church officials are immune from such temptation, and it would be regrettable indeed were all criticism of Church policy or leadership to be silenced.”