Vatican Order Forces U.S. Bishops to Change Agenda

An unexpected Vatican directive received by American Roman Catholic bishops just hours before they opened their annual meeting here Monday forced them to put off approving guidelines to resolve disagreements between themselves and theologians.

The Vatican action was based on objections that the guidelines--eight years in the making--might suggest equality between theologians and the bishops, who are the official teachers of Catholic doctrine. It appeared to heighten tensions between the U.S. hierarchy and Rome over the authority and autonomy of the national unit.

Several bishops expressed irritation at the delay and the timing of the Vatican reaction to their statement, “Doctrinal Responsibilities,” which was to have been adopted today. “I feel frustrated,” said Cardinal John O’Connor of New York, adding that the bishops’ Committee on Doctrine had reviewed the document “with scrupulous care.”

Archbishop Thomas C. Kelly of Louisville said, “The thinking came a little late. . . . It makes it a little awkward for us.”

Final discussion and vote on the guidelines is now scheduled for June, 1989.

The 57 pages of guidelines were intended to head off theological disputes such as the controversy over Father Charles Curran of the Catholic University of America. The Vatican suspended Curran as an official teacher of Catholic theology in 1986 for his dissent on some questions of sexual ethics, including birth control, homosexuality and abortion.

Bishop Raymond Lessard of Savannah, Ga., chairman of the doctrine committee, told the bishops that because of the last-minute intervention by the Vatican his committee would again reconsider the guidelines and that a U.S. delegation would meet with Roman Curia officials to “explain the intent as well as the content” of the proposed paper.

Announcement of the surprise critique by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, ironically came moments after Archbishop John L. May of St. Louis, the U.S. bishops’ president, opened the four-day conference with a speech citing glowing examples of apparent solidarity between Pope John Paul II and the U.S. hierarchy and the American church.

May said the Pope’s recent talks to groups of U.S. bishops during their periodic visits to the Vatican had highlighted “a consistency and harmony.”

Archbishop’s Viewpoint

“What has impressed me time and again is the convergence between his (John Paul’s) aspirations and the initiatives of our conference both past and present. I believe that the words of praise and challenge which Pope John Paul has spoken find a resounding echo in the ongoing work of our conference,” May told nearly 300 fellow bishops.

In the same speech, May announced that a special meeting of about 25 representative U.S. bishops will be held with John Paul in Rome next spring to discuss “needs and challenges” facing the 53-million-member U.S. Catholic Church.

The face-to-face discussion was requested by the U.S. bishops two years ago during the strains of the Vatican-requested disciplining of Seattle Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen because of his apparent laxity in pastoral administration and his liberal theology.

The American bishops face another potential confrontation with the Vatican this week over the scope and teaching authority of the national bishops’ conference itself.

Since the Second Vatican Council was held in the mid-1960s, national conferences of bishops have played an increasingly important role in the church by asserting the belief that the bishops, acting collectively, have a special role in shaping church policy through “collegiality.” But the Vatican draft denies that bishops’ conferences are genuine expressions of collegiality and questions adapting church practices to meet local situations.

If approved by the conference here, the bishops will ask the Vatican to scrap the draft by its Congregation for Bishops and start over.

The strong wording of the U.S. bishops’ critique was toned down in a version handed out Monday, but the paper says the Vatican’s 1987 draft, which would limit all of the world’s national bodies of bishops, was so defective that it couldn’t be salvaged.

Bishop James W. Malone of Youngstown, Ohio, the immediate past president of the U.S. bishops conference, presented the proposed U.S. hierarchy’s response. Although he said there was “nothing particularly novel in what we have done in asking for a new working document,” the committee of four U.S. bishops and three cardinals was unusually blunt in its rejection of the Vatican working paper, finding it “rigid,” “confused,” and “overly defensive and negative.”

Archbishop Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, usually a conservative theological voice within the bishops’ body, said in an interview that the draft from Rome was too academic and lacked “an experiential, human dimension.”

In his opening speech, May congratulated President-elect George Bush but warned that the bishops would stand for issues that the new Administration might oppose.

World’s Injustices

“Our voices will not be heard only in praise and appreciation,” May said. “We will stand with the Holy Father in denouncing injustices and actions which foster disrespect for human life, from abortion to the death penalty, in opposing policies which undermine human dignity, from poverty to the arms race, and in standing up for human rights, from Eastern Europe to South Africa.”

Although the bishops will vote Thursday on an extensive paper urging an end to religious persecution in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries, a statement calling on the United States to resume diplomatic relations with Vietnam was withdrawn Monday by Mahony, who chairs the international policy committee, in order to expand the statement to focus “more broadly on all of Southeast Asia.”