Many Catholics, including some bishops, believe that most opposition to church teachings is rooted in misunderstanding. The challenge for the Church, therefore, is to teach more clearly. According to this line of thinking, there is never any question that the teachings themselves might be defective, and that this is the reason why they are rejected.

In a recent wide-ranging interview with The Boston Globe, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, archbishop of Boston, touched upon this very point.

When asked about the status of Catholics who disagree with particular teachings and policies of the Church, the archbishop conceded that pastoral leaders like himself "need to do an awful lot more to help our people to understand what the church's teachings are" (Globe, April 21, 2006).

The question had referred specifically to the recent decision by Catholic Charities of Boston, under pressure from the papal nuncio and with the backing of the four bishops of Massachusetts, to discontinue its adoption program because the Commonwealth's anti-discrimination rules prohibit such agencies from refusing to place children in same-sex households.

For Cardinal O'Malley, critics of the decision mistakenly view it in isolation from the whole "Catholic ethos, and our desire to be faithful to Christ and to the commandments, to certain core values."

When church teachings are challenged, he said, "one of the things that we must do is to engage more in a dialogue and try to explain to people what our doctrines are.... We're hoping that people will come to understand that the church's teachings are not vindictive or mean-spirited."

A questioner persisted. "If you disagree with the policy," the cardinal was asked, "should you take yourself out of the church?"

The archbishop fell back once again on a they-don't-understand approach. "I would hope that those who disagree would try to understand more where the church's teachings are coming from, and I know that it's incumbent upon us who are teachers to do a better job of communicating and helping people to see what the church's teachings are...."

Later in the interview the archbishop was asked about the ordination of women. "Well, to me," he began, "it's a matter of faith. The church's teaching goes back to the time of Christ and the apostles, and it's not something that we can change."

Women, he continued, have always had an important place in the Church, pointing out that Mother Teresa was "more important than any priest or bishop" that he could think of.

Then he adopted yet again a they-don't-understand posture. We need, he said, "to do a better job of trying to get people to understand and accept what the church's teaching is."

When pressed further, Cardinal O'Malley acknowledged that what "worries" him is that "people do not understand that this is Christ's rule for the church." As such it cannot be changed.

"I don't want people to think that the church is being unjust. I want them to see that we are being faithful even when it is difficult, even when it is challenging."

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late U.S. Senator from New York, was fond of saying that people are entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.

One must respect the position of good and sincere pastoral leaders like Cardinal O'Malley. They have strong convictions about the moral propriety of placing adoptive children in same-sex households and about the ordination of women to the priesthood.

But when church officials, even at the level of the Vatican, insist that placing children in such households is "gravely immoral" because "experience has shown" that such placements "would actually mean doing violence to these children...." (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, July 31, 2003), they are begging the question by assuming facts that have not been established as such.

And whatever one might think of the legitimacy of ordaining women to the priesthood --- and there are serious reasons that have been presented on both sides of the argument --- no one can gratuitously assert that Jesus or the New Testament explicitly prohibited the practice.

In the early 1970s, Pope Paul VI asked the Pontifical Biblical Commission to study this very question. In 1976 it issued its report, which acknowledged that no biblical evidence exists to require the exclusion of women from the ordained priesthood.

To be sure, some teachings, such as the divinity of Christ, are essential to Christian faith and cannot be changed. Adoptions by same-sex couples and women's ordination, however important in themselves, are not in the same category.

Many critics do understand these latter teachings and policies, and simply disagree with them. Perhaps the burden is on both sides to re-examine their views.

Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.