Many pop-level Catholic apologists often appeal to the (purported) unity one can have if they
embrace Roman Catholicism. The problem is that, especially in the modern period
(Post-Vatican II), this is simply false. As Catholic priest Romano Amerio wrote
on this issue:
Loss of
unity of doctrine in the Church
Since a thing’s unity is a sign of its being,
the condition of its being can be judged from the degree of its unity, inasmuch
as it falls to pieces as its unifying principle weakens. Ens et unum convertuntur is true of moral entities no less than
physical ones. A molecule ceases to be with the breakup of the atoms of which
it consisted. An animal ceases to be the moment its mass of cells loses the
vital link that made it one organism. By the same token a moral entity loses
its being when it loses its own unity. The Church consists of numbers of people
undivided among themselves and divided from all other groups, and insofar as it
is a community, that is a Church, it is one. This one Church is kept in being
by a unifying principle through which individuals exist as one. The level of
being of that community which is the Church can be determined from the level of
its unity.
Now, in the present circumstances, its unity
is fractured in three respects: doctrine, worship and government. The doctrine taught and preached by the
Church’s ministers used once to be uttered with united voice. Now, however, it
is the same diocese from parish to parish, and within the same parish from
preacher to preacher. Instead of being merely that difference in color,
presentation or feeling regarding a single body of truth which is right and
inevitable when speaking on any subject, these differences represent an alternation
of dogma, cloaked in a policy of adapting the presentation of the faith to the
character and expectation of contemporary men. Private theorizings grow even
bolder. The doctrinal corruption of priests either precedes or follows that
of the bishops. The latter, in turn, issue individual pronouncements that
differ among themselves, and by generally tolerating or sanctioning the
deviations of their priests, the bishops have allowed a general confusion to
reign in the Church on matters of faith, and have thus caused a deplorable
weakening of unity among the faithful. Doctrinal unity used to be a peculiar
characteristic of the Roman Church and was recognized and admired by those
outside; it was also a reflection of the internal processions within the Holy Trinity,
since in principio erat Verbum (“In
the beginning was the Word”) and nothing can be achieved in the Church without
the Word.
The lack of doctrinal unity that had already
began to emerge at the council, but which was there treated as a symptom of
freedom and vitality, was manifested very openly by the appearance of Humane Vitae, and thereafter in a host
of publications that bishops consented to by their silence, that is, when they did
not actually intervene publicly to defend the errors of their priests against
the complaints by the laity. The faithful have a right to compare the teaching
of an individual minister with that of other ministers and ultimately with that
of the supreme teaching office. This right comes from their sharing in the
teaching office of Christ conferred by baptism, and carries with it an
obligation to reject false teaching in
the internal forum, that is, in their own minds, and, if circumstances require,
to attack it publicly as well.
As we have seen this doctrinal corruption has ceased to be restricted to small esoteric
circles and to be governed by a kind of disciplina
arcani (“Guarding of the secret”):
it has now become public in the body of the Church through sermons, books, schoolteaching
and catechesis, which latter has often fallen into the hands of lay people
with insufficient knowledge and a thirst for novelty. This obscuring of
Catholic doctrine is not altogether unconnected with the procedures of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Office, and which have delegated the watch
over orthodoxy that used to be exercised by the Holy See to the care of the
bishops, who are less doctrinally instructed and less firm; nor is it unconnected
with the lack of attention given to the cultural level of candidates when
appointing new bishops to dioceses. (Romano Amerio, Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth
Century [trans. John P. Parsons; Kansas City, Miss.: Sarto House, 1996], 715-17,
emphasis in bold added)
