Mahony Plays Large Role in Meeting of Catholic Bishops : Helped Shape Statements on Policies

Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony played a major role in shaping and presenting international and social policy statements at the annual meeting of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops here this week.

As chairman of the bishops Committee on International Policy, he presented a comprehensive statement on religious freedom in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and he announced that another major paper on U.S. relations and the role of the Catholic Church in Southeast Asia will be presented for the bishops’ approval next June.

Middle East Policies

The archbishop, who heads the nation’s most populous archdiocese, is also in charge of a special committee reviewing U.S. policies in the Middle East, particularly focusing on unrest in Lebanon and tensions among Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Holy Land. Although a brief statement urging the U.S. government to work for free presidential elections in Lebanon was approved here Thursday, Mahony’s committee is expected to develop an extensive new Middle East statement for approval in June.

Mahony said recent Mideast events, including recognition of the state of Israel’s right to exist by the Palestine Liberation Organization this week, have heightened the bishops’ desire “to address issues of the Middle East in terms of justice and peace.” The Vatican does not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel and does not recognize the PLO.

Acting as the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the U.S. hierarchy frequently issues policy statements and recommendations on international affairs. The body issued major statements on the Middle East in 1973 and 1978 and a document on religious liberty in Eastern Europe in 1977.

Mahony said the bishops want to make “an informed, fair and useful contribution” to public discussion on touchy Middle East questions as well as demonstrate “our understanding of the pressures” faced by residents there. The upcoming statement will also show concern for the Christian church in the Holy Land and West Bank, “which has already known much unrest . . . violence and reaction,” Mahony said.

Religious Liberty

The lengthy paper calling for greater religious liberty in Eastern Europe was adopted unanimously by the 300 bishops on the last day of their four-day conference. The document says that despite “breezes of renewal that are beginning to blow” because of Soviet glasnost , or openness, “a general pattern of intolerance of religion remains clearly evident.”

Freedom of conscience, the statement says, requires that believers be treated equally and “not be discriminated against in economic, social, political or cultural life; and that educational programs, the media and government policies respect religious beliefs and not attempt to undermine or destroy them.”

The statement, analyzing the state of religious freedom in Eastern-bloc nations on a country-by-country basis, seeks “the day when religious persecution and intolerance have become unvenerated relics of an unhappy past, anachronisms with no place in modern societies.”

Another resolution--also drafted by Mahony and his International Policy Committee--was withdrawn Monday. It called for resumption of diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam. The archbishop conceded that Vietnamese-American groups in this country are divided on the issue but explained that the committee was pulling back the resolution in order to broaden its focus to include all of Southeast Asia.

Presenting yet another report to his fellow bishops Tuesday, Mahony said a new statement on AIDS, being prepared by a panel he chairs, will be ready for review by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in February and for action by the U.S. bishops next June.

A statement issued in the conference’s name last December, after approval by the executive committee, drew criticism from the Vatican. Some bishops objected because it put the church in the position of recommending, as a last resort, the use of condoms as a way to prevent the deadly disease in cases where people clearly would not follow the church’s teachings.

Mahony was subsequently appointed to head the new drafting group, which he said is gathering data from Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and other experts.

Finally, because the chairman of the Committee on Migration was absent, Mahony, a member of that committee, presented a policy statement Thursday that seeks to ease legal restrictions on employing undocumented workers. The bishops unanimously adopted the paper, which opposes employer sanctions but says “effective opposition . . . does not require that we break the law.”

The bishops also approved a report by Archbishop John Roach of St. Paul-Minneapolis, chairman of the food and agriculture task force that is responsible for developing ethical policy and advocacy positions on land ownership, food production and distribution, and ecological and trade issues.

The unit will make specific recommendations that go beyond general themes on agriculture and food advanced in the bishops’ 1986 pastoral letter on the U.S. economy, Roach said.

The report approved this week decries a trend toward “consolidation of land ownership” in many parts of the world and says justice demands a greater dependence on small, family owned U.S. farms.

The report also declares that “rural America has become a major dumping ground for toxic chemicals and nuclear waste. . . . The continued use of petrochemicals in agriculture threatens both food safety and the quality of our water and soil.”

Roach said the threat that foreclosure warnings would be sent to 85,000 American farmers within the next 45 days by the Farmers Home Administration was a “tragedy not only for those families but for the nation.”

In other business, the bishops:

- Adopted a $30.6-million budget for 1989.

- Heard Archbishop Pio Laghi, the apostolic pro-nuncio who is Pope John Paul II’s delegate in Washington, call for the Catholic Church to evangelize the rapidly growing Spanish-speaking segment of the country, which he said includes more than 19 million persons, an estimated 85% of whom identify themselves as Catholics. Laghi urged priests to become bilingual and noted that “the annual loss of Spanish-speaking Catholics to non-Catholic sects is significantly, I would say disturbingly, high.”

- Elected Father Robert N. Lynch general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, succeeding Msgr. Daniel F. Hoye, who has served since 1982. Lynch, who was the national coordinator for Pope John Paul II’s 1979 and 1987 visits to the United States, will carry out the bishops’ administrative policies beginning in February.