Mahony’s Challenging Moral Vision

Archbishop Roger Mahony’s stands on immigration and immigrant rights are striking indicators of the new faces of the Roman Catholic Church in Los Angeles.

In the 19th Century the Catholic Church in America was a defensive, immigrant-based institution struggling for social acceptance and legitimacy. In Philadelphia in 1844, for example, three days of anti-Catholic rioting resulted in 13 people being killed, plus blocks of Catholic housing being burned along with a seminary and two churches. In 1854 there were 10 people killed in anti-Catholic riots in St. Louis, and in 1855 nearly 100 Catholics lost their lives in Louisville in what became known as “Bloody Monday.”

The issue in the last century was immigration: hysteria among “established” Americans that the hordes of newcomers were taking their jobs and working for substandard wages. Between 1820 and 1865 almost 2 million Irish Catholics came to the United States. Irish priests had undisputed leadership in Catholic ghettos in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other urban centers.

Today Mahony is faithfully carrying out this same tradition as spokesman for about 2 million Latino Catholics living in the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

In the last 100 years, however, some striking changes have occurred for American Catholics. Far from being worried about their survival, according to the Gallup Poll, Catholics now make up 28% of the American population. And, rather than struggling for economic viability, priest-sociologist Andrew Greeley says that in education, annual family income and occupational achievement Catholics have higher mean scores than do American Protestants.

This change in economic status provides Catholic clergy with an entirely new power base from which to influence American public policy. A minority ethnic group struggling for legitimacy is bound to be culture-affirming. But Mahony is part of a new mood among Catholic bishops in America--one that has resulted in pastoral letters challenging Reagan Administration policy on both nuclear war and the economy. And in this regard it is important to note that the bishop’s pastoral letters were not directed just to Catholics, but to the American population as a whole.

In the last several weeks Mahony has been exerting his moral leadership on a broad variety of fronts. First, he publicly scolded Supervisor Mike Antonovich for his political advertisements on the problem of illegal aliens. Then he grabbed front-page headlines when he announced a far-reaching program of social activism directed at the Latino population in Los Angeles. The next day he read a stinging 800-word condemnation of pornography released by California’s 25 Catholic bishops. In this same time span he made a major address to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on the integrity of the family. And he was negotiating for the right of a pregnant 17-year-old to attend commencement exercises at Mary Star of the Sea High School in San Pedro.

The issues addressed by Mahony during the past weeks indicate the breadth of the archbishop’s moral vision. But at the same time they reveal a curious liberal-conservative tension.

On the one hand, the archbishop supports classical Catholic values in upholding the primacy of the family and in attacking the forces that threaten home life, such as pornography. Indeed, he displayed some fancy footwork in pardoning the pregnant and unwed San Pedro teen-ager since she resisted “the pressure to conform to the unacceptable ‘abortion option.’ ”

On the other hand, as revealed in several letters to the editor of The Times, not everyone--including many Catholics--agrees with his stance on immigration. And publisher Hugh Hefner labeled as “totally untrue” Mahony’s suggestion that reading Playboy magazine leads people to more deviant activities.

While the archbishop has been extremely successful in the last few days in gaining public attention, his long-term success rests with the credibility of his moral argumentation and his political astuteness.

The issues that he has been addressing are extremely complex. It is important that Mahony not allow himself to be viewed as championing an open-border policy--something that is not politically viable. Similarly, in his statements on pornography it is extremely important that he is well informed on social-science research on the subject as well as being in command of basic facts regarding the pornography industry.

Many Americans are looking for an alternative to the Religious Right. Mahony has a formidable task in crafting a political agenda that strikes an appropriate balance between issues of private and public morality. His success among Los Angeles Catholics undoubtedly rests on his ability to maintain an ongoing tension between his roles as pastor and prophet. The Catholic Church in Los Angeles is far from homogeneous; to champion the immigrant poor at the expense of the middle class would be disastrous. For Protestants it will be a test of their ecumenicity to see if the prophetic posture of a Catholic archbishop can challenge their moral consciousness.