Hunthausen, Curran, Sweeney Among Targets : Vatican Crackdowns Listed as Year’s Top Religion Story

Vatican crackdowns on U.S. Roman Catholicism were seen by the nation’s religion news specialists as the top religion story of 1986, according to year-end reports and a poll of members of the Religion Newswriters Assn.

Highlighting a series of disciplinary measures by Rome that evoked sharp tensions within the American Catholic Church were the curtailing of Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen’s pastoral authority, and the revoking of teaching credentials of Father Charles Curran, a noted moral theologian at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

In Southern California, Jesuit Father Terrance A. Sweeney clashed with Catholic authority, resigning from his order under Vatican pressure rather than stopping his research into the attitudes of the U.S. hierarchy toward optional celibacy for priests and the ordination of women. Neither is permitted in the Roman Catholic Church.

The widely publicized Curran case was showcased in Los Angeles in October when Curran and Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony discussed church dissent and authority before an overflow crowd at a USC forum. Mahony’s appearance typified his assertive style and willingness to address controversial issues in the public arena.

Social Activism Program

In other major developments within the three-county archdiocese, Mahony announced in May a far-reaching $2-million-a-year program of social activism to help the area’s estimated 2 million Latino Catholics. The plan was said to be the most comprehensive of its kind in any diocese.

Mahony also implemented a unique information-gathering convocation process for the nation’s most populous archdiocese. More than 310,000 local Catholics responded to a questionnaire asking them to set goals for the next five years. They chose increased youth involvement in church activities as their top priority.

In the poll by the Religion Newswriters Assn., whose members serve on newspapers and other secular news services across the country, the reporters overwhelmingly picked the Vatican moves to tighten reins on U.S. Roman Catholicism as the top religion story of 1986. About one-fourth of the organization’s 226 active members responded to the annual survey.

Their No. 2 story was the potential presidential candidacy of television evangelist Pat Robertson, who has said he will seek the Republican nomination in 1988 if 3 million registered voters petition him to do so.

According to the Religion Newswriters’ poll, the No. 3 story of 1986 was the order of a Tennessee judge to excuse public-school pupils from studying books that parents say oppose religious convictions, and to permit home teaching on the subjects. In a similar case in Alabama, 624 parents charged that textbooks there promoted “secular humanism” and “misrepresented or seriously under-presented” religion.

South African Turmoil

The religion writers said the fourth most significant religion story of 1986 involved the continued turmoil in South Africa. Under a state-of-emergency decree, many church workers were jailed. At the same time, two anti-apartheid leaders got new positions: Desmond Tutu as Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, and the Rev. Allan Boesak as head of South Africa’s mixed-race Reformed Church.

In a year-end report, Darrell Turner, an associate editor of Religious News Service, noted an important sign of change in October when South Africa’s largest Dutch Reformed denomination called apartheid “unjust”--marking a “historic break” by a church group that previously had staunchly defended racial separation.

Fifth in the religion writers’ ranking was the tightening control of the Southern Baptist Convention by its fundamentalist wing, which again captured the powerful presidency of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

In a later development, trustees of the Southern Baptists’ Golden Gate Theological Seminary in Mill Valley picked a strict theological conservative to be its president--Riverside pastor William Crews. But Crews said he is nonpartisan in the denominational struggle.

Noting the 1986 “family squabbles” and in-house feuding within various faiths--including Roman Catholic, Anglican, Jewish and Southern Baptist--Turner, in his year-end wrap-up, commented: “The fact that they all occurred in the same 12-month period demonstrated that the churches faced more serious problems getting their own houses in order than they did in strengthening ecumenical and interfaith relations.”

Churches vs. U.S.

Meanwhile, churches continued battling with the U.S. government on several fronts during 1986, as indicated by the religion writers’ No. 6 story: A federal jury in Phoenix convicted eight workers in the church-based sanctuary movement of breaking the law by helping refugees from Central America.

And, later, two denominations and four Arizona congregations lost the first round of a federal suit seeking to block the government from infiltrating and “bugging” church meetings by sending in undercover agents--which occurred in the sanctuary case.

Amid the strife that marked the year, there were signs of unity.

The No. 7 religion story, according to the writers’ poll, was the August vote of three Lutheran denominations to merge in 1988. They picked Chicago as the site for national offices of the new body, to be called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and also voted for closer ties with Presbyterian and Reformed groups.

Events selected for the 8th, 9th and 10th spots in the poll:

- Experts credited the Roman Catholic Church with exerting decisive influence in the ouster of despotic regimes in Haiti and the Philippines.

- Thousands of stores, including a big chain of 7-Eleven convenience stores, ended the sale of adult magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse after pressure from religious groups. Moved by the final report of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, most of the country’s religious leaders formed an alliance to combat child and other pornography.

- Pope John Paul II paid a historic visit to Rome’s main synagogue, embraced the chief rabbi and described the Jewish people as Christianity’s “elder brothers.” Later, leaders of various world religions--Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and others--accepted the Pope’s invitation to join him in Assisi, Italy, for a day of prayer for peace. Meanwhile, the Pope kept up his rigorous schedule of worldwide pastoral travels.

Religious individuals who made the news this year included Gen. Eva Burrows, elected worldwide head of the Salvation Army; Father Lawrence Jenco, a Roman Catholic priest, released after 564 days of captivity in Lebanon; Anglican envoy Terry Waite, who negotiated for the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon, and the Rev. Benjamin Weir, a hostage clergyman freed earlier, elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Deaths of Leaders

The founders of two controversial religious groups died in January: Herbert W. Armstrong, patriarch of the Pasadena-based Worldwide Church of God, at age 93, and reclusive science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, originator of Dianetics and the Church of Scientology, whose U.S. headquarters are in Los Angeles, at age 74.