By Steve Weatherbe

COMMENT

THE Second Vatican Council, soon to be 50 years old, ushered in remarkable changes in Christianity’s largest and most visible denomination – but not nearly enough for a group of Vancouver Island liberal Catholics.

When they tried to get an adult education series on the three-year-long convocation of Catholic leaders and theologians endorsed by the diocese of Victoria, they were told the diocese would be arranging for any commemorations.

The series was to have featured retired bishop Remi De Roo, who participated in Vatican II  – but who is a critic of church leadership and a hero to Catholics seeking ordination of women, marriage of priests and laicization of power.

The independent liberal Catholic paper on Vancouver Island, Island Catholic News, headlined its story on the dispute: “New bishop bans old bishop talking about Vatican II.”

The story offered no evidence of a personal ban, and the “new bishop,” Richard Gagnon, categorically denied it. “There is no basis in fact to that claim,” he told BC Christian News.  “There is no ban on Bishop De Roo.”

What the body of the ICN story does claim is that a “group of parish regulars in the town of Parksville with a long history of dedication and work in lay ministry” organized a series of talks on Vatican II, and invited De Roo to participate.

But when they asked the diocese to spread the word, the article claimed, Bishop Gagnon wrote all the clergy in the diocese, forbidding their support of the series.

Some consider Parksville a hotbed of dissent. This was exemplified in 2005, when a Parksville ex-nun participated in an ersatz ordination – which made her, according to one slightly inaccurate report, “Canada’s first female Catholic priest.”

The ICN article also appeared in the Toronto-based New Catholic Times. Both papers were founded in the heady spirit of change following Vatican II, and they have pushed for the Catholic church to become more permissive in terms of birth control, female ordination, divorce and married priests.

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The article noted De Roo “has even spoken in China” on Vatican II. He also spoke at an Anglican church in Victoria on the same subject. What the article coyly ignores are several good reasons why the Catholic church would not welcome De Roo, or an unapproved series of talks on Vatican II.

De Roo is the bishop whose unwise investments in Washington State landed the diocese in a 10-year legal battle from which it is only now emerging, at a cost of several million dollars. De Roo is also a certified teacher of a quasi-mystical method of personality typing and spiritual growth called enneagrams, which the Catholic church in the U.S. has advised its members to stay clear of.

But if Bishop Gagnon did order Catholic clergy from boycotting the dissenters’ lecture series on Vatican II, it could well be from a spirit of caution, rather than any animus against De Roo.

Tom Hamel, president of Redeemer Pacific College (a Catholic liberal arts college closely associated with the evangelical Trinity Western University in Langley) says there is a huge difference between what Vatican II actually taught and what liberalizers within the Catholic church say it taught.

“They tried to bring in a lot of the ideas from that historical period of social change. There was a great liberalization of sexual values. The Second Vatican Council called for the church to learn to speak to the world in ways it would understand. But to some this meant applying the standards of the secular world to the church. “

Because women’s rights were a growing issue at the time, the ordination of women became a popular cause. “They were disappointed when the church did not change its teaching that men and women have different roles.”

Redeemer teaches “the ongoing truths of the church as developed by Vatican II,” says Hamel. “But there is a generation of liberal Catholics who are profoundly disappointed that the church did not make the changes they sought.”

Would any wise shepherd invite unhappy, disgruntled sheep – or contrarian shepherds – into the flock?

May 2008