The Archbishop Speaks Out : ‘Faith Isn’t Faith If You’ve Got the Answer on a Videocassette’

Roger M. Mahony, 49, the newly appointed archbishop of Los Angeles, oversees the largest Roman Catholic community in the United States. As the outspoken bishop of Stockton, he gained a national reputation for his role in formulating the bishops’ widely debated pastoral letter condemning the nuclear arms race, in 1983, as well as the forthcoming pastoral on economic justice. This is his first interview since his appointment.

Q: What are the key social issues at the top of your agenda? A: The question of the homeless. The question of refugees. There are 350,000 refugees here from El Salvador alone. Then there is the whole question of the continuing arms race, particularly since our county is such an extraordinary leader in the development of armaments. Q: Not long ago, a bishop in Texas took the position that Catholics should not work in the defense industry. There’s probably no bishop in the country who has more defense plants in his diocese than you. Have you given any thought to taking such a position? A: The bishop of the very small diocese of Amarillo, Tex., happened to have a major nuclear-weapons assembly plant located there. He really wasn’t encouraging people to leave that work. He was encouraging Catholics who were employed there to re-examine their consciences. Should they be basing their livelihoods upon a plant whose sole purpose is the assembly of nuclear bombs?

He appealed to them to start thinking and praying about that and set up a fund, whereby the diocese would help them in retraining and relocating, if they would come to their personal conscience conclusion that . . . “Hey, I don’t think I should be in this.”

I admire him for doing that. Now, whether that is something we’d want to do here, I’m really not certain. We have a large military-industrial base here, about $15 billion a year, producing all forms of armament. I’m not so certain that we’re at the point here of peace education to be able to suggest that. Maybe in the future we will be. Q: You speak of a Christian obligation to oppose the arms race. Yet others, including some evangelical Christians, claim that the Bible’s Armageddon prophecies foretell a nuclear holocaust preceding the Second Coming. How do you view that? A: It’s sad that people would seriously propose that for belief. I could take any event in our time, good or bad, and find something in Scripture that would support it, deny it, oppose it or whatever. For example, I could find Scripture passages that would portray a Bruce Springsteen concert as the moment before the Second Coming of Jesus. I think it’s terribly deceptive to use theatrics and manipulation to play games with the Scriptures and with peoples’ lives. I don’t have a whole lot of patience with that kind of thing. But we see it all the time. Q: But it seems to have a great deal of appeal to people. A: Yes, it does, and I think it’s part of people’s inner need for signs and wonders. For example, if tomorrow morning I announced to the press that I had seen a vision on the garage door of the cathedral, we’d have 10,000 people out there within an hour or two. We’d have buses coming in from all over the West. There’s that inner craving for visible signs and wonders, but Jesus calls us as Christians to a life of faith. And faith isn’t faith if you’ve got the answer on a videocassette.

When I was bishop of Stockton, we had a “weeping Madonna” in a mission church. People were literally coming by the busloads from Oregon, Arizona, all throughout California. Of course, the whole thing was a hoax and we caught the people who did it and that was it. But there’s a craving for some visible contact with the invisible. I think that’s what some of these preachers do with Scripture passages: They try to create an aura of the invisible event about to happen in the visible moment. But to say that God helped develop nuclear arms so that we could blow the world to smithereens to fit a small passage of the Book of Revelation is preposterous. And that people would believe it, I find even more preposterous. Q: The bishops’ forthcoming pastoral on the economy has, if anything, been even more controversial than the pastoral letter on the nuclear arms race. Can you tell us something more about it? A: I think the economic pastoral--and I intend to use it strongly in this diocese--is a great tool to use with our Catholic financial and business leaders. In speaking to them, I’ve already raised the letter’s moral principles for economic life and I’ve gotten some very positive comments afterward. Q: What are those principles? A: The common good demands justice for all. And the obligation to provide justice for all means that the poor have the single most urgent claim on the conscience of the nation. The investment of wealth, talent and human energy should be specially directed to benefit those who are poor or economically insecure. Q: Is the pastoral, as some have charged, hostile to capitalism? A: No, but it recognizes the reality that our system is not working adequately or we wouldn’t have 35 million people living below the poverty line. Any system that leaves that enormous number of people out on the fringes is not morally acceptable. Q: This puts you in disagreement with the television evangelical ministers--who have come to be symbolized by Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell--who justify the existing system as God-given. Are you concerned about that? A: I think your position on social issues ought to begin with your interpretation of the Gospel--and not the other way around. It’s dangerous to begin with the assumption that you’re trying to be friends with a certain group, and then to mold your evangelism after the ideology of that group. Q: Do you think that’s what Falwell is doing? A: Sure. I’ve seen some of those people on television. We had one of them in Fresno, when I was there at the height of the farm labor troubles in the 1960s. I happened to be sitting next to him at a prayer breakfast, and we were having a lot of turmoil in our own parishes because of conflict between Catholic growers and workers. So, I asked him whether he had similar difficulties in his church. He looked at me and said, “Of course not. I never preach on anything that would make the collection go down.”

I think that is the philosophy behind a lot of these popular religious beliefs. I find the whole thing terribly shallow, and I guess I’m surprised that people get taken in. But that’s why people buy lottery tickets. Q: Are you concerned at all about the intrusion of such religious groups into national politics, particularly into the internal workings of the Republican Party? A: That’s nothing new. Over the years in our own church we’ve had certain priests and bishops who espouse a particular political party’s message and then back it up with Scripture. But now the bishops--particularly in our pastorals on nuclear weapons and the economy--are trying to tell our people that we really need to adopt a different perspective, one that begins not with politics but with the Gospel. Q: But couldn’t someone like Falwell say: “You bishops took a political position when you criticized the Reagan Administration’s approach to the arms race. Why shouldn’t I do the same and defend his foreign policy?” A: Because the survival of the human race and of the planet is not a military or political issue. It’s more a moral and ethical issue. Therefore, we have no hesitation in raising up the moral and ethical dimensions inherent in these kinds of things. Obviously, politicians will say that the bishops have no right to say these things--unless, of course, we happen to take a position with which they agree. Then they think we are moral leaders of great courage. Q: Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and others recently have hinted that the Reagan Administration may abandon arms-control negotiations with the Soviets in favor of “Star Wars” defensive weapons, which they argue constitute a moral alternative to the current system of deterrence. As someone who was influential in drafting the bishops’ pastoral letter on nuclear war, how would you regard such a step? A: Speaking as a Catholic bishop, that’s so unacceptable that there isn’t even any room in our pastoral letter that will allow for anything like that. If you recall, our conditioned moral acceptance of limited deterrence is rooted totally in the presumption that negotiations to end the arms race are proceeding. Pope John Paul II said the same thing in his statement a couple of years ago to the U.N. disarmament conference. Deterrence has legitimacy in the strictest, narrowest sense only while concrete, positive, constructive steps are being taken to eliminate the arms. Abandoning negotiations would, in my opinion, say that there’s no longer any legitimate moral basis for deterrence. All these systems simply trigger a response system. They always have. If we want to get rid of the threat of nuclear weapons, then we need to get rid of nuclear weapons. The threat is only going to go away when there aren’t any left. Q: President Reagan has often described the Soviets as “Godless” communist enemies and talked about how we can’t trust them. Your message seems different. A: We’re looking at the world in a long historical context in which Russia was very much a Christian country. There still is a very strong Christian subculture there. I guess what we’re saying is that we are people of faith, who believe that the grace of God is much stronger than atheism or communism or anything else. I think the Catholic Church is an example of a worldwide group that makes great efforts to work with all kinds of regimes--not because we approve of what they do or say, but because we believe that the people there deserve the kind of support that we can provide. Q: Aren’t you also saying that it’s possible to conclude with these communists a nuclear-arms agreement that would be worth something?

A: Well, of course. I find it a bit ironic that we can conclude complicated agreements with the Russians that call for selling them millions of tons of wheat and everything works out without any problem. We seem to be able to deal with them when it is to our economic advantage. Our relationship with China is an excellent example of what I mean. Over the past 25 years, I have heard political leaders in this country--very prominent people--decry China as the Red Monster and the Red Dragon. But I find it curious that one day some years later these leaders are in the Great Hall of the People toasting the leadership of the Great Red Dragon. It’s a curious thing; we’ve worked out all kinds of economic arrangements and the Great Red Dragon is now the friendly People’s Republic of China. Our leaders present and past have said dramatically divisive and sharp things about governments and then have turned around and negotiated understandings and agreements with them. I think that to the extent that we can do that, we need to do it. The church encourages all those events. Q: Whatever your differences with these leaders about foreign policy, you seem to have found a common ground on the abortion issue. A: But what some government leaders and some of our own people fail to understand is that the bishops’ opposition to abortion is part of our concern for a whole spectrum of life issues. It’s incongruous to have a group of people who are adamantly pro-life and anti-abortion on one day, and the next day are out at a big pro-death-penalty rally. Q: Will you be speaking out against the death penalty, now that we’re moving here in California toward executions as more prisoners on Death Row exhaust their appeals? A: Yes, two or three weeks ago the California bishops issued a statement. Basically, we are saying that we understand the fear of people who confront increasing crime. But we then go on to point out that meeting violence with violence is not Christian and, in fact, is totally ineffective. By resorting to vengeance we simply compound the problem. The other issue is the whole question of fairness, and the morality of the death penalty being applied equally and fairly, which it’s simply not. If you just take a look at the basic statistics of who kills whom, who gets arrested, who gets convicted and who ends up on Death Row, it’s obviously discriminatory. Murders are committed across the general population in pretty much equal numbers according to racial and ethnic background. But members of minority groups end up on Death Row in totally disproportionate numbers. Q: Do you see any contradiction between the Reagan Administration’s sensitivity to the rights of the fetus and what critics claim is an indifference to poor children once they are born? A: The Catholic Church’s response to this is very clear. We find it inconsistent when the President or Congress decides to be very concerned about life in the womb, but then turns right around and eliminates a lot of very essential programs for the maintenance of the dignity of human life, whether that be through job training, health care or school lunches. It is unacceptable that we cut back on those essential human services at the same time we’re pouring billions into an arms race that is foolish, that doesn’t bring any security or peace and just brings worse problems. Q: Your definition of pro-life, then, goes far beyond abortion.

A: Sure. It includes respect and care for the handicapped, an end to the nuclear-arms race, just distribution of resources worldwide and a number of other things. All of those things are always presented by us in a package. Now, no matter what you do, you’re always going to get a small group of people who see respect for life as a much more narrow, restricted thing. Take, for example, the group that decides to bomb abortion centers. That’s a tragedy because it totally contradicts what they say are their ideals. They’re trying to do away with the violence in the womb through violence outside the womb. Q: It’s often a shrill debate between women who say, “I want to control my body,” and other people who say, “You’re a murderess.” Do you feel there’s something unfortunate about the way this debate has been framed? A: Obviously. There is nothing more emotional, particularly for a woman, than the whole reproductive question. I think that’s hard for us men to realize and I think we have been terribly slow to understand it. I think we need to find new ways to discuss this without the shrill argument; I think you’re right. For example, our concern as Catholics is the preservation and dignity of each human life from the time of conception to natural death. As a pro-life person, I have great respect for women and their concerns. And I think there are many women who are pro-choice and see our concern for life. But the minute we lose the common understanding of who or what the fetus is, then we don’t have a common platform upon which to speak. If some people truly believe that the fetus is not a living human person in any form whatsoever, then there’s no way they can understand our efforts to protect the dignity of that human being. It’s simply a chasm, and how we begin to bridge it I don’t know. Q: If the discussion was focused on birth control as opposed to abortion, would we be subject to the same kind of acrimonious debate? A: No, I don’t think so. I saw a Planned Parenthood ad in the paper saying in big headlines: This is a way to end abortion--family planning services. In a sense that’s what they’re trying to do, and within the moral confines of our own church I would not have any problem with that. My difficulty might be with their not giving some values to go along with techniques. I think it shortchanges our young people to simply give them the mechanics of sex and the techniques of birth control without giving them any kind of broader value system or responsibility for their own sexuality. Q: You’re not for any laws that would prevent people from using birth control? A: No. If you have family planning clinics run by the city or state we insist that the method we advocate, natural family planning, be part of the service offered and that it be offered in an unprejudiced way. We don’t want the nurse saying, “Well, there are 10 methods of birth control available and this last one, natural family planning, is a disaster, don’t try it.”

There have been some dialogues between the Catholic Church and Planned Parenthood around the country, and that has been the emphasis--that rather than yelling and screaming at each other about abortion, let’s deal with this. I think people who are in favor of abortion also agree that abortion is not the best thing for the people. Q (Scheer): I have a distinct memory of growing up Jewish in the Bronx and being challenged by some Italian and Irish Catholic kids who claimed that the Jews had killed Christ, which was the basis of their anti-Semitism. Then, as I recall, Pope John made a statement about this which seemed to change the atmosphere. How do you view this history? A: We have a marvelous dialogue with the Jewish community here. In fact, my problem is trying to get to meet them all. I’m getting all kinds of letters from rabbis and groups. We have the largest Jewish community outside New York and I’m looking forward to working with them. Going back to the first part of your question, what Pope John XXIII initially did was to drop from the Good Friday service a prayer for the “perfidious” Jews who supposedly crucified Jesus. That sort of sentiment was the heart of the problem. Today, of course, we pray for our Jewish brothers and sisters without attaching some stigma to them. Actually, the Roman soldiers, not the Jews, crucified Jesus. Q: But a great deal of anti-Semitism came out of this, and Catholic anti-Semitism was a strong force in Eastern Europe, Spain and elsewhere. Do you see any persistence of this? A: I suspect that a lot of anti-Semitism really didn’t have its roots in the Crucifixion narrative, but in political issues. I think people just dragged out the Crucifixion scene to support some other bias or prejudice. After all, it’s illogical to say that the Jewish people are “perfidious” when, as we know, Peter, the other Apostles and all of the people who established the Catholic Church, as well as its early members, were all Jews. Q: Earlier, you mentioned Central America and the large number of refugees here. Some Catholic Church leaders are providing a refuge for people who cannot get political asylum from this government. Do you support that position? A: We have always provided refuge for people who didn’t have a place to stay. We’ve tried always to welcome refugees, undocumented peoples, all peoples who need housing, clothing, food. We never ask questions about where they came from; we never ask to see their residency card. Q: What do you think of the Administration’s refusal to grant political-refugee status to the Salvadorans? A: I think the United States government must grant extended voluntary departure status to all peoples from Central America, period. I don’t think there’s any question about that. People normally don’t flee their country, their homes, their families just for adventure’s sake. So, the presumption, I’m convinced, is always on the side of the refugee. That’s why we have in this country a legal status called “extended voluntary departure.” It allows us to accept people until the problem is resolved back in their home country. I think there’s an absolute moral imperative to do that. Q: Congress currently is considering legislation to alter the immigration laws along the lines first proposed in the Simpson-Mazzoli bill, which would have legalized the status of some undocumented immigrants here, while tightening entrance requirements for others and imposing sanctions on employers who hire undocumented workers. Do you have a position on that? A: We are against a number of the new bill’s provisions. We’re totally against the whole guest-worker thing; that’s a revitalization of the old, bankrupt Bracero program, which we fought against in the 1960s. That’s simply unacceptable. We’re really opposed to employer sanctions because we don’t think there’s any way you can build in enough guarantees to prevent foreign-looking or -sounding people from being discriminated against. We saw that last year when Simpson-Mazzoli was being debated. We had companies in the Silicon Valley which were already turning away people because they thought this thing had been passed and they were afraid of getting caught up with the government. They told workers, “You don’t look American; therefore, we don’t have a job for you.” So we know that’s what’s going to happen and I think that could be just treacherous. Q: In some places, Catholic schools have been used as a means to escape integration of the public schools. Are you concerned about that, especially since school integration is once again an issue here in Los Angeles? A: Our schools are very popular with a lot of people for the wrong reasons. But our schools do not exist so that Johnny and Mary can get a better college entrance exam score, get a good job and make millions of dollars for Mommy and Daddy. That is not the reason we have our schools. Our schools exist for far more lofty reasons than that. And I intend to make efforts at restating that goal and to work toward it. And, by the way, all of our school principals and pastors are very much in favor of that.

I’m not sure what the issues are in Los Angeles, since I’ve just come here. But obviously, I will be very concerned about any steps that would tend to move us away from integration. With the diversity of peoples in our community we simply cannot allow anything except a forward, positive, constructive integration of all of us, as one community. Even to hint at going backward would be just tragic.