Arlington Diocese parishioners question need for fidelity oath

[Denise1957]

It would be proper to request that there be no teachings that are in conflict with the
prouncements from the Chair of Peter.

There have only been 2 such prouncements in the more than 100 years since Vatican I.
Both relate to Mary.

There has been no such prouncements about women’s ordination or priesthood celebacy.
There have been no such prouncements about the reception of the sacraments by divorced
Catholics.

It is ludicrus to expect someone to pledge allegience to something that is in debate. Issues of women’s ordination and priestly celibacy or in active debate. This oath is
nothing more than an effort to stiffle debate. It is an effort to thwart the work of the Holy
Spirit. The Pope takes a back seat to a Church Council decree. This is nothing more than
an effort to prevent the church from correcting the Church.

My understanding is that Bl. John Paul ll did invoke infallibility when he said that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer ordination on women.

In a document written May 22, 1994, called, “Apostolic Letter of John Paul ll To The Bishops Of The Catholic Church On Reserving Ordination To Men Alone,” Pope John Paul ll explains in the next-to-the-last paragraph that:

“Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf.Lk.22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be difinitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

Link to Vatican document:

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_22051994_ordinatio-sacerdotalis_en.html

 

[jwinch2]

There are three ways something can be declared to be infallible when it comes to Magesterial teaching. 1) Declared statement of Papal Infallibility; 2) Solemn Definitions of Ecumenical Councils and similar gatherings; and 3) The Ordinary and Universal Magesterium. Anything taught by the ordinary and universal Magesterium, thought the Sacred Tradition of the Church, is to be taken as an infallible part of the deposit of faith regardless of whether or not the pope has made such a statement ex cathedra. However, in the case of women’s ordination, he has. So, we have women’s ordination taught infallibly by the decleration of the Pope, and also through the living Tradition of the Magesterium.

The debate is over.

 

[gerry_clark]

Too bad the Pope is wrong!

 

[jwinch2]

Too bad the Pope is wrong!

If you are going to come on a Catholic forum and dissent from Catholic doctrine, to include that which has been infallibly defined by both the ordinary and universal Magesterium and the Vicar of Christ, at least have the intellectual honestly to stop calling yourself Catholic. I can understand someone who dissents and has trouble accepting aspects of the Faith. That is not unusual. I can even respect someone if they make an honest decision to stop being Catholic because of it. I don’t like it and I pray for their return, but I can, at the least, respect their honesty.

What I can’t understand, nor do I respect, are people who deny the Church but still claim to be part of her. If you deny the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and Magesterial authority, then the simple truth is that you stopped being Catholic some time ago.

I’ll pray for you, as I do all who separate themselves from the Bride of Christ.

 

[Robert_Bay]

MODERATOR NOTICE

Please stay on the topic of the original post

Please charitably discuss the issues, not each other

 

[benjammin]

In regards to the OP, why is this an issue. If you work for the government you take a loyalty oath to the United States. If you work for a certain company, you basically sign a pledge saying you’ll be loyal and won’t sell company secrets or cheat the company. Why is a church no different. Shoot, when I worked at a Baptist summer camp as a groundskeeper, I had to take an oath to the American Baptist Church that I would be a good representative of it’s values. Why the big hullaballoo? If someone was doing this to the government, they would be called crazy.

 

[Dale_M]

In regards to the OP, why is this an issue. If you work for the government you take a loyalty oath to the United States. If you work for a certain company, you basically sign a pledge saying you’ll be loyal and won’t sell company secrets or cheat the company. Why is a church no different. Shoot, when I worked at a Baptist summer camp as a groundskeeper, I had to take an oath to the American Baptist Church that I would be a good representative of it’s values. Why the big hullaballoo?.

I don’t understand the controversy either. Teachers in Catholic schools are often required to sign a pledge that they will uphold Church teaching. The pledge applies not only to their classroom time, but also to the rest of their public life.

The Profession of Faith which the Diocese of Arlington is asking of its catechists seems to be no different.

 

[jwinch2]

In regards to the OP, why is this an issue. If you work for the government you take a loyalty oath to the United States. If you work for a certain company, you basically sign a pledge saying you’ll be loyal and won’t sell company secrets or cheat the company. Why is a church no different. Shoot, when I worked at a Baptist summer camp as a groundskeeper, I had to take an oath to the American Baptist Church that I would be a good representative of it’s values. Why the big hullaballoo? If someone was doing this to the government, they would be called crazy.

I don’t understand the controversy either. Teachers in Catholic schools are often required to sign a pledge that they will uphold Church teaching. The pledge applies not only to their classroom time, but also to the rest of their public life.

The Profession of Faith which the Diocese of Arlington is asking of its catechists seems to be no different.

Well stated, both of you.

Peace,

 

[Tony_the_mad]

Where does it say in any Church document that we have to make an oath of fidelity in order to prove our Catholicity?

There may be thousands of people in a parish, but there are only 5 or 10 maybe who are going to teach the kids. If the priest can’t take the time to sit down with each one and establish some kind of working relationship and oversight then I don’t see how an Oath of Fidelity is going to ensure good teaching.

…

We can take ALL the vows required but unless someone is going to provide the oversight how does anyone know, or how can they guarantee what the kids are being taught?

Oaths prove and ensure nothing - probably why Christ enjoined the disciples not to take them.

My position has nothing to do with pride but with common sense.

Think about it.

Say I want my daughter to learn her times tables.

I can make her take an oath to learn them…

or I can teach them to her and take time with her to ensure that she does learn them.

Nine times out of ten which approach is going to be more successful?

Thank you.

 

[Tony_the_mad]

I don’t understand the controversy either. Teachers in Catholic schools are often required to sign a pledge that they will uphold Church teaching. The pledge applies not only to their classroom time, but also to the rest of their public life.

The Profession of Faith which the Diocese of Arlington is asking of its catechists seems to be no different.

Do they also require the teachers to believe everything absolutely completely and fully? There is a huge difference between a requirement to teach and act according to the teaching of the Catholic Church and a requirement to believe.

No matter what the correct answer to this issue is, it is a moot point, though. Whether to ask for oaths or not is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It is a solution for a non-existent problem when a more pressing problem is upon us.

It is my experience that for every one person who teaches poorly and will leave because of this there are at least 2 who teach well and will leave because they are insulted. This would be tolerable except for the fact that there are probably 10 if not a hundred teachers who teach poorly because they are poorly trained or other fixable reasons.

A great man said ‘trust but verify’. This document practically screams we will not trust you and that we don’t have the resources to verify your work so we will use this lame instrument instead.

 

[Corki]

It would be proper to request that there be no teachings that are in conflict with the
prouncements from the Chair of Peter.

There have only been 2 such prouncements in the more than 100 years since Vatican I.
Both relate to Mary.

There has been no such prouncements about women’s ordination or priesthood celebacy.
There have been no such prouncements about the reception of the sacraments by divorced
Catholics.

It is ludicrus to expect someone to pledge allegience to something that is in debate. Issues of women’s ordination and priestly celibacy or in active debate. This oath is
nothing more than an effort to stiffle debate. It is an effort to thwart the work of the Holy
Spirit. The Pope takes a back seat to a Church Council decree. This is nothing more than
an effort to prevent the church from correcting the Church.

The problem with your line of thought is that these are teachers. Teachers cannot use thier position to forment dissent or to sew seeds of doubt regarding the teachings of the Church. The religious ed classroom is not the venue for “correcting”. As Catholics, we owe assent of faith to **all **of the teachings of the Church, not just those pronounced ex cathedra. This “oath” of fidelity is nothing more than requiring the teachers to put their signature to something they should already be doing verbally.

There have most definately been doctrinal pronouncements about the ordination of women. There have been doctrinal prounouncements about the reception of Communion for those not in a state of grace. No one can dissent from these teachings without sinning - especially someone charged with teaching. As for the ordination of married men, that is a matter of discipline and as long as a teacher presented it in that way, a discussion would not violate the oath.

 

[livingwordunity]

Loyalty oaths mean nothing. Anyone can sign one, and it is insulting. I’d never sign one myself.

If anyone can sign one why can’t you? If the bishop were to ever ask me to sign a statement saying that I’m loyal to the Catholic Church I would ask “where do I sign?” And I would be happy to sign it.

 

[curlycool89]

In regards to the OP, why is this an issue. If you work for the government you take a loyalty oath to the United States. If you work for a certain company, you basically sign a pledge saying you’ll be loyal and won’t sell company secrets or cheat the company. Why is a church no different. Shoot, when I worked at a Baptist summer camp as a groundskeeper, I had to take an oath to the American Baptist Church that I would be a good representative of it’s values. Why the big hullaballoo? If someone was doing this to the government, they would be called crazy.

Exactly.

I had a manager explain to me once his idea of subordinates. He’s given certain tasks to accomplish by his bosses (VPs, CEOs, Board of Directors, whatever it is). As someone who works for that manager, my job is to help him to accomplish those tasks, which gets done by delegating to me certain tasks to complete which feed into the tasks the manager is to accomplish. It’s implicit that if my division is working on X, then I will be working to help accomplish X. If my company wants me to do X and I say “I don’t agree with X, so I’m going to do Y instead because I believe in Y”, then I’m going to get fired, and justifiably so.

In this case, the boss is the bishop. They’re saying “artificial contraception is wrong”; meanwhile some catechists are saying “I don’t agree with that, so I’m gong to tell people it’s ok”, and that’s insubordination. Being a catechist is not a right, if you are one then it is your job to teach what the Church teaches.

Strictly speaking, an oath is not needed because the idea that you’re going to teach what the Church teaches is implicit. With the continuing scandal of catechists teaching false doctrines though, the Church needs to cover the bases. Sure, we can fire catechists now and they’ll just say “they didn’t like me because I disagreed with them”, which is true but they end up sounding sympathetic in media. So, instead we turn this closer to an employer-employee relationship by requiring you to sign a form saying “I will teach what the Church teaches”. If you violate that and whine about it, everyone can now see that it’s your own fault, and whether or not they agree with you or not they can clearly see that you violated this contract.

What this does is it turns the onus around. Right now, people see big bad pontificating Church. After this, you see people who are too stupid to read their employment contracts, and people start asking why they wanted to do this job if they don’t agree with it; it would be like a Greenpeace member working at a nuclear power plant. The issue is that right now people publicly think that the Church is a free for all, and our refusal to try and reign that idea in and set boundaries does not help us.

 

[PaulinVA]

Partially, this is using the sentinel effect to weed out dissenters.

That is, the people who are refusing to sign are self-selecting themselves as people not loyal to the magisterium or with issues with authority. Yes, I know that some people only have problems with canon 752 at the end of the profession, but, you are bound to follow canon 752 even if you *don’t *sign the paper.

 

[fix]

If anyone can sign one why can’t you? If the bishop were to ever ask me to sign a statement saying that I’m loyal to the Catholic Church I would ask “where do I sign?” And I would be happy to sign it.

Amen.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

If anyone can sign one why can’t you? If the bishop were to ever ask me to sign a statement saying that I’m loyal to the Catholic Church I would ask “where do I sign?” And I would be happy to sign it.

That’s you, and I would not suggest that you not sign a loyalty oath or be unhappy to do so, but that’s not me. Nor do I deny the right of the diocese to ask RCIA teachers to sign such. I simply would not sign any such document as it puts into question my personal honor and my fidelity to the Church. Sorry.

 

[Elizabeth502]

That’s you, and I would not suggest that you not sign a loyalty oath or be unhappy to do so, but that’s not me. Nor do I deny the right of the diocese to ask RCIA teachers to sign such. I simply would not sign any such document as it puts into question my personal honor and my fidelity to the Church. Sorry.

It’s actually putting into question the personal honor and fidelity to the Church of previous and recent catechists. It is true that the standard now falls to current and future catechists, but reaffirming a standard is not the same thing as “questioning” fidelity.

It’s difficult for me to see the distinction you have drawn between oral and written, because one simply confirms the other. They are two sides of the same coin. For example, it would be easy to see our oral renewal of baptismal promises as “questioning our fidelity.” I.m.o. it does or doesn’t question our fidelity any more or less than a written renewal of promises.

I do know what you mean by “personal honor.” My Protestant father objected to the Church requiring him to sign papers to raise his children Catholic, on the same grounds you do. He restated his offense about that requirement several times during our childhoods. He said that he took his obligation seriously (and he did more than fulfill his obligation), without a need for his signature. However, both situations concern young children. (The vulnerable, and the baptized, which are members of a larger community than merely the nuclear family unit.) Therefore, the issue of protection is also involved.

You are correct in asserting that a signature does not guarantee fidelity or compliance. Again, it is not my opinion that the Church believes a signature will guarantee anything, merely that a signature is an additional level of awareness, is a promise made public, and is an administrative protection allowing swifter removal of non-Catholic influences on vulnerable children which the Church assumes partial responsibility for.

Your turn, Counsellor…

 

[fix]

I simply would not sign any such document as it puts into question my personal honor and my fidelity to the Church. Sorry.

It does not do either of those things.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

It’s difficult for me to see the distinction you have drawn between oral and written, because one simply confirms the other. They are two sides of the same coin. For example, it would be easy to see our oral renewal of baptismal promises as “questioning our fidelity.” I.m.o. it does or doesn’t question our fidelity any more or less than a written renewal of promises.

When I enlisted in the Air Force, later when I was commissioned as an AF officer, and later still when I was given access to highly classified (“above Top Secret”) “codeword” Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) and Human Source Intelligence (HUMINT) material, I was never asked to sign anything. It was presumed that my oaths sufficed as my bond

I do know what you mean by “personal honor.” My Protestant father objected to the Church requiring him to sign papers to raise his children Catholic, on the same grounds you do. He restated his offense about that requirement several times during our childhoods. He said that he took his obligation seriously (and he did more than fulfill his obligation), without a need for his signature.

An honorable man IMO.

However, both situations concern young children. (The vulnerable, and the baptized, which are members of a larger community than merely the nuclear family unit.) Therefore, the issue of protection is also involved.

Protection of children is not enhanced by ink on paper.

You are correct in asserting that a signature does not guarantee fidelity or compliance. Again, it is not my opinion that the Church believes a signature will guarantee anything, merely that a signature is an additional level of awareness, is a promise made public, and is an administrative protection allowing swifter removal of non-Catholic influences on vulnerable children which the Church assumes partial responsibility for.

I’d think that a person could be removed from a teaching office with or without a signature. However, if there were contractual obligations, perhaps some payment for teaching, then a signed document would be justified. As has been said, “an oral agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

It does not do either of those things.

Speak for yourself. You cannot say what the effect on my honor or fidelity to the Church would be.