A provocative title but a well-researched and informed look at many of the issues that divide the Catholic Church hierarchy and many of the faithful today. Kaufman explores the development of conscience among the people of the church over the centuries and how it has always been valued when regarding moral questions. The idea of infallibility in teachings of the church has always had to consider the sense of the faithful (sensus fidelium) something that has not been considered or reached in many of the controversial issues of today. These issues include birth control, divorce & remarriage, and democracy within the church. Kaufman addresses each of these issues in detail exploring Biblical and traditional takes on the issues and how they've changed over time. This is a good book to get an informed look at issues affecting the Church today and realizing that they're not always as simple or clear-cut as they've been presented.
Favorite Passages:

The list of moral questions on which authoritative teaching has changed is long. Defenders of a call for absolute obedience to all such teaching often hold that the doctrines taught were correct for their own time and circumstances, but that changed conditions and further enlightenment led to the formulation of new positions. But such a justification can hardly be applied to Pope St. Gregory the Great's condemnation of pleasure in marital intercourse, Innocent IV's teaching on witches and the use of torture in judicial interogations, or Pius IX's condemnation of the proposition "that freedom of conscience and of worship is the proper right of each man, and that this should be proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society. - p. 21

It is often argued that scandal will be given by a relaxation of current practice [regarding divorce & remarriage]. If available statistics are any indication, lack of compassion toward people in great suffering and need gives even greater scandal. It is a question of who is being scandalized. Should our concern be only for those who will not accept change in church teaching? What of the scandal of those who ask: Is it moral in the face of so much suffering by so many millions of the church's own members to maintain a discipline with such a weak biblical, historical, and doctrinal foundation? - p. 115

Since God does not govern the church directly, however, but through human beings, it is legitimate and necessary to ask what type of government comes closest to realizing the New Testament ideal. I doubt that autocracy, in which the educated, priviliged few teach and control the uneducated masses, the so-called simple faithful, ever realized that ideal. Autocracy is particularly inappropriate in the modern world. The form of church government that accords best with the gospel spirit is democracy. - p. 119

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