Contrary to popular opinion, the Church is far from obsessed with defining a Catholic's every thought and action. In fact, there are few restrictions concerning what Catholics may and may not believe and do.

Appearing as a guest on a talk radio show recently, I received a call from a man who wanted to know what the “official Catholic teaching” was on “how much body mass you can lose before you lose your soul.”

The caller was serious. Odd as the question was, it was just one of the many “strange but true” inquiries into Church teaching I've encountered as a Catholic apologist. On the Internet, in magazines, and in other media, I frequently run across the notion that the Catholic Church must have an “official teaching” on absolutely everything. One noted apologist has remarked on the same phenomenon and says he has considered drafting a series of mock answers to those hard-to-believe questions. In moments of whimsy, he's considered a working TITLE: “The Catholic Church's Official Favorite Beatle and Other Answers to Questions about the Faith.”

What is going on here? Apparently, many people-including some Catholics- labor under the illusion that the Church operates according to the “that which is not forbidden is compulsory” model of totalitarian micro-management and thought control. The idea seems to be that, since the Church is hierarchical, its teaching must codify every picayune detail of life.

Evolutionary Dogma?

I have observed conversations on the Internet proceed in this fashion: Somebody declares, for instance, that “the Pope has officially declared that evolution is true.” (The logic: If the Pope has not declared evolution 100% false, the only alternative must be that it is 100% dogma.) Much speculation then ensues about the motive for this “radical reversal” in Catholic teaching. Cyberspace chatroom participants speculate about whether this might not be a gambit by Rome to prepare the way for other reversals of dogma like “married priests” or even apostolic succession (one wonders how apostolic succession might be reversed). Much bustle ensues as participants in the conversation attempt to cast some nuanced magisterial statement into concrete dogmatic galoshes and demand that it dance.

What never seems to occur in such conversations is the thought that the Catholic Church, far from being obsessed with defining everything down to the last jot and tittle is, in reality, profoundly disinclined to define her tradition unless she absolutely has to. Thus, in the case of John Paul II's statement on evolution, the Pope was aiming to open various channels for reflection, not cram all Catholics into some narrow rut.

He said, in essence, that certain aspects of evolutionary theory do not pose a theological problem to Catholic faith, but that Catholics could not, of course, accept a strictly materialistic philosophy to account for the creation of human life since this is counter to one of the basic truths of the faith. This is a far cry from saying that “evolution [which theory?] is dogma.” On the contrary, it is the declaration that a Catholic is free to accept or reject the possibility that God may have somehow used creatures, whether angelic or ape-like, to create the body of the first man. The only thing a Catholic is not free to believe is that the soul is merely a function of matter (as some forms of naturalism claim).

Constant Through the Ages

This is neither a new idea nor a “reversal” of Catholic teaching. St. Augustine speculated 15 centuries ago about whether God made Adam immediately or over a long period of time. Pope Pius XII, in Humani Generis, made substantially the same comments as Pope John Paul II nearly 50 years ago. Catholics have felt themselves free to speculate on this and thousands of other questions since the founding of the Church, for they have always understood that such questions are, to a very large degree, a matter of liberty and even ambiguity, not dogma.

Contemporary culture is about 2,000 years behind the times, however, when it comes to comprehending Catholic theological liberty and ambiguity. Hence the confused reaction to Pope John Paul II's expression of disapproval for the death penalty in Evangelium Vitae (when he said, in essence, that there was hardly ever justification for the death penalty anymore and that, if a criminal could be punished without taking his or her life–a life that comes from God–then human life should be spared).

Many commentators wondered how the Church could “reverse itself” on this topic. The reality is, this opinion of the Pope is no more dogmatic than previous teaching that allowed for the death penalty. All such teachings have been but prudential judgments, based on a reading of “the signs of the times,” which the Church asks the faithful to consider seriously as they form their own consciences.

The bottom line is, there is no official teaching stating unequivocally that the death penalty is always wrong, just as there was never an official teaching that it was always right. Prudence seems to indicate increasingly that it is, in almost all circumstances, a greater evil than the evil it seeks to avoid. So the Pope counsels against it. Still, he makes no dogma.

Freedom to Think

Such is the case with the bulk of the Church's tradition. There are a few-very few-restrictions concerning what Catholics may and may not believe and do, but one can be a perfectly faithful Catholic and believe, disbelieve, or care nothing about evolution, farm subsidies, tax reform, just war theory, pacifism, or smoking. One can hold all sorts of opinions about the duration of Purgatory, the music of Spike Jones, the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, the question of whether there is time in Heaven, whether Our Lady died, and whether we should have fought the Vietnam War. The Church has no “official position” on these and a billion other questions. She prefers freedom whenever possible. This is why, in 2000 years, the number of dogmatic definitions the Church has formulated is so very, very small.

It is also why, strangely enough, I often encounter an odd reaction from those who set out to criticize the Church for being rigid, dogmatic, and obsessed with angels on pinheads. For when they suddenly find that the Church is diverse, variegated, miscellaneous, and “catholic,” and discover that the Church has no “official teaching” on whether Mary died, or if Purgatory is instantaneous, or farm subsidies are the eternal will of the living God, then they react with tremendous confusion and resentment.

“What?” they ask. “The Church doesn't know?! But if it can't even answer an elementary question like this, why should we put any faith in her claim to be infallible in larger things?” The curious thing is that many of the people who protest most loudly against the Church's “overbearing authoritarianism” also object when the Church refuses to tell us what to think. They complain the Church is dogmatic about everything and then they complain that it isn't dogmatic enough.

It seems that in this regard the world has gotten things almost exactly backward about the Church. The world often has a philosophy that treats all matters of Catholic dogma as open questions and many open questions as dogma. “Is there a God?” Maybe. “Is smoking the locus of all evil in the universe?” Absolutely. “Did Jesus actually say what is attributed to him in the Gospels?” Don't know. “Is homosexuality inborn, natural and God-given?” Absolutely. “Are the Mosaic laws against adultery valid in our day and age?” That's debatable. “Can an office full of cubicled bureaucrats micro-manage an elementary school room 3,000 miles away?” Absolutely.

Many Faces of Catholicism

Chesterton once remarked of H.G. Wells that he held two bizarre and contradictory philosophies. One of his philosophies held that everything is absolutely unique and therefore unclassifiable (making a common morality impossible). The other philosophy argued passionately for the need of a World State. Chesterton remarked, “It is a quaint and almost comic fact, that this chaotic negation especially attracts those who are always complaining of social chaos, and who propose to replace it by the most sweeping social regulations. It is the very men who say that nothing can be classified, who say that everything must be codified.”

In contrast to this is the Catholic vision of a free human being. Catholics are certain about a few basic facts concerning the nature of the cosmos; facts sketched in the Creeds, offered in the sacraments and fleshed out in the few dogmatic pronouncements the Church has made. Beyond that, though, they are gloriously different and rather enjoy the fact that they do not see eye to eye on many things in the world. Submitted to God they find they are taller when they bow, freer when they wear the “shackles” of dogma, and wiser when they allow the Church to insist on the very few doctrines she cannot compromise. But the world, seeking to be free of the big laws, does not get freedom. It gets the small laws, the petty dogmatisms, and the mental slavery that forces it to not think (in a hundred ways) about Jesus, but allows it to think in only one way about whatever ideology is the going thing at the moment. Catholics, having no detailed dogmatic program to go on besides “Love God and love your neighbor” can look like William F. Buckley, Dorothy Day, Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa, Richard John Neuhaus, or Oscar Romero. They can be all over the map once they leave Mass, for they are all one in Christ at the altar. For Catholics, as Chesterton said, agree about everything. It is only everything “else” they disagree about.

Mark Shea, author of By What Authority: An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition, writes from Mountlake Terrace, Wash.