I finally got through Paul Elie's long essay, "The Year of Two Popes" in The Atlantic Monthly (link to story, previous posts about same: 1, 2). For the most part, the essay confirms one of the reasons I think the Atlantic is the finest magazine in America: its effort at impartiality (the other reasons: simple but elegant prose, popularity, size, and eclectic mix of materials).
From what I've been able to learn, Elie is a Catholic that leans to the left, but not terribly, and he does so in good faith. He's not a person who feigns Catholicism and then disrupts the Church from within (say what you want about heretical right-wingers, at least they have the honesty to start their own churches instead of staying within the RCC and causing problems).
So I think highly of the Atlantic and tend to think highly of Elie. Nonetheless, a person must be careful when reading both. Part way into the essay, Elie makes the following observation:
Sometimes the prefect would correct the pope's theology; when John Paul seemed to declare the restriction of the ordained ministry to men an infallible teaching, for example, Ratzinger, though no supporter of a more open priesthood, made clear that this was not permissible.
The immediate impression is that Ratzinger opposed the teaching because the issue shouldn't be closed.
But that's not the case at all. While doing a little digging, I received the following information from a friend:
The Pope, as Ratzinger stressed, was saying that he, as pope, didn't have the authority to make a pronouncement about a matter that Christ himself had taught definitively. That's interesting stuff. It sure shows the Church as not above Scripture and the pope as not above Christ. That said, it has been infallibly set forth throughout the tradition, Ratzinger affirmed. But this is different than the Pope sitting on his throne and decreeing it. It's saying that like the Real Presence, which never needed an infallible pronouncement, it's been believed since Christ and because of Christ. Here's the background. I just think Elie or his editors got the story wrong.
The most salient portion of the article linked immediately above is the following:
[T]he definitive nature of this assent derives from the truth of the doctrine itself, since, founded on the written Word of God, and constantly held and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary universal Magisterium (cf. Lumen Gentium, 25). Thus, the Reply specifies that this doctrine belongs to the deposit of the faith of the Church. It should be emphasized that the definitive and infallible nature of this teaching of the Church did not arise with the publication of the Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.
The Atlantic is the most popular high-brow magazine in America. I wouldn't be surprised if Elie's comment gets into the mainstream. You may want to have this information handy, just in case the topic comes up at a cocktail party.
