Blessed John Paul II and ‘Sensus Fidelium’

“SENSUS FIDELIUM” means “sense of the faithful.” It is “the actual belief of Christians down through the centuries” or “the sense of faith that the People of God share among themselves.” As one of the early norms for acceptance of Church teachings it has been effectively eclipsed since the late Middle Ages. I “discovered” it around three years ago, one of many closed doors Vatican II has been trying to re-open. I mentioned it in a talk and in the forum, a priest cautioned to go slow on it.

And now comes the beatification of John Paul II like fireworks, “the swiftest ascension toward sainthood on record.” His apotheosis is meteoric. Already, “the Great” is being attached to his name. The lead number of “saints” blessed and canonized, encyclicals and exhortations written, countries visited, multitudes attracted, charisma, are by themselves, not measures of greatness. JP II would wave away such high-flying praise. It “does not mean that everything he did as pope is now somehow beyond critique.”

But the man was holy. In health and infirmity, he led a life of “heroic sanctity,” “prayerful, fearless and zealous.” He was “an object of popular devotion.” This was “the voice of the ‘people of God,’” the “sense of the faithful” at work, overlooking any mistake he might have made. The Vatican, inadvertently resurrecting a long-ignored “sense of the faithful” or accepting it this time, listened. “Santo subito!” Sainthood by acclamation, now.

A community abroad has included Archbishop Oscar Romero in the Litany of the Saints; I have included John XXIII. What are their chances for a groundswell?

Have there been other instances when the “sense of the faithful” may have been at work? Ideally, did they fuse with the thinking of the official Church leading to formalized teachings? Or were they rejected, resulting in a people and its Church unfortunately at odds with each other? Three examples come to mind.

The Immaculate Conception and the Assumption were already manifest in the “lived faith” of the early Church even before they were declared doctrines. The faithful “sensed” it; the Church “received” the lived faith and enshrined it in the Marian dogmas in a cycle of reciprocity beautifully described by Cardinal John Henry Newman as a “breathing together of the faithful and the pastors.” Thus “received by the Church at large,” the dogmas raised nary a dissenting note.

Not so with the second example. Who hasn’t heard of “Humanae Vitae” in 1968: the Papal Commission established by John XXIII to review the teaching on contraception, the recommendation that it was time to change in light of new knowledge and human experience, the magisterial fear of losing credibility and the anguished decision of Paul VI who “refused to invoke his infallible teaching authority” to overturn consensus reflective of sensus fidelium.

Something snapped there, from which the Church has never recovered, a lamentable example when pastors and people did not “breathe together.” On many fronts, the fall-out has been costly unless one prefers the “small but pure” Church.

Are we now faced, in this nth season of RH, with a possible sensus fidelium “breathing” with the Church or at odds with her? Do the surveys reveal the pulse of the faithful? There is common ground but dialogue ground to a stop. I don’t intend to talk of right or wrong arguments, of who’s right or wrong. Enough already.

I talk of only one thing—the long-term effects of the fall-out—win or lose. Mind the four-pronged polarization unfolding before our eyes: between Church and State; between Church and people at large; between pastors and flock; and perhaps the most acute, between antagonistic Catholic factions. Divisive and enfeebling is every one of them; less to the State, more to the Church; the worse for the latter because “within.”

Alarmist? Yes, if like the Church we wait for grievous matters like sexual scandals to “go away”; no, if we look at the pathetic chain of claims and denunciations around us. RH may be to the local Church what HV has been to the world Church—no shortage of reviews on the latter. HV’s tsunamic wavelets still lap on far-off shores including ours. If RH is indeed the local extension of HV, our conflict may spawn similar effects: de facto exits from the Church, its weakened credibility, disenchantment among the educated, hostility between factions in the Church, serious capers like walk-ins, walk-outs, “Excommunicate me” on T-shirts.

Maybe it’s just as well that many are forming their own consciences, and going their way. But what rue, what loss, if the Church becomes weakest in the one field where she feels strongest, the moral field which she claims is notably hers.

Civil society calls it the pulse of the people; the people of God, the sense of the faithful. JP II was remarkably one with that “sense.” HV may have frustrated it. Where does Responsible Parenthood (the better name) stand? But which sense is fruit of a supernatural “sixth sense,” or of ignorance; which pulse is genuine, which orchestrated? Which vox populi is vox dei?

Asuncion David Maramba is a retired professor, book editor and occasional journalist. Comments to marda_ph @yahoo.com, fax 8284454