Catholic Unity Project Proceeds With Caution

Leaders of the Catholic Common Ground project are going slow in their bid to open up dialogue in a church struggling with the tensions between its teachings and popular expectations on such issues as the role of women.

After a two-day closed session this week at a seminary near Chicago, 40 Roman Catholics, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, reported that they had touched on a wide range of issues, but described their main goal as merely learning to talk to one another.

“Someone remarked that we were engaging the radical middle,” Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb, chairman of the project, told a news conference. “We wanted [the first conference] to be a dialogue, not a polemic.”

At the same time, Mahony told reporters that he and others intend to “work very hard” at establishing the same kind of dialogue in their own dioceses and parishes.

The Common Ground Project was launched by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago in August. Bernardin said he was troubled by increasing polarization and, at times, a “mean-spiritedness” within the church in the United States that hindered dialogue.

After Bernardin died in November, Lipscomb, the archbishop of Mobile, Ala., succeeded him as Common Ground chairman.

A communique issued by the group said the conference was intended to bring together Catholics of differing perspectives. Although one prominent Catholic reform organization was not invited to attend, its letter appeared to back the group’s measured pace.

“It’s a very difficult problem because they’re [Common Ground] getting so much pressure from more traditional Catholics not to talk about certain issues,” said Linda Pieczynsky, president of Call to Action, which claims 15,000 members nationwide. “Over time, I guess we’ll find out if there’s truly going to be dialogue on important issues.”

Catholics at the conference said they did discuss specific issues, including the role of women, inclusive language in the liturgy and the nature of authority in the church.

They agreed on some points, one being that many aspects of American culture “are inimical to discipleship,” the statement said.

When it comes to authority in the church, there was also agreement that “contemporary American culture itself is hostile to any idea that certain people can speak authoritatively regarding matters of morality and lifestyle--whether regarding sexual matters or social justice or issues such as physician-assisted suicide.”