Eminentoes/Hunthausen Humbled

...Because while the Holy See admits to being exercised over the degree of American dissent aimed at Rome (the apparent reason for its tiff with Curran), its unprecedented humbling of a sane and healthy prelate, ham-handed though it was, really had to do with events particular to Seattle that had been going on for a long time...

...You can't look at the life of the Lord and come to any other conclusion [than pacifism...

...Hunthausen merely had to dissociate himself from the left-wing fruitflies buzzing in profusion around him, often not even Catholic but who were using him and the church to advance their own secular agendas...

...By 1983, however, a reporter discovered that even Chancery insiders now considered Hunthausen's power-sharing "excessive": "If parish priests, nuns and lay workers felt they were too tightly controlled under [former Archbishop Thomas] Connolly, many now complain that no one's in charge, that in consulting everyone about everything, the archbishop has dropped the reins...

...Nuclear deterrence is "an inconceivable sin...

...Surely in the course of the two-plus years of his investigation of Seattle, during which he talked to hundreds of parishioners pro and contra, "apostolic visitor" James Hickey found this common knowledge out on his own...

...And one can surmise with some confidence that investigator Hickey asked himself why not, and then proceeded to learn the answer, uncovering in the process the core trouble with the archbishop's opinions: not that they were "left" or "right" per se, but that they corrupted the universality of the gospel message by exploiting Christian belief for political ends...

...The Hunthausen case reflects the growing polarization in American Catholicism between progressives who have absorbed the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and conservatives who stress unchanging tradition, with the pope siding, in most things, with the latter...

...Among the "services" that had nothing to do with Catholicism was the Justice and Peace Center, whose grand passion was the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua...

...I would even say at once...

...It was the perfect time, he said, for Hunthausen to step in and stop such slander against an innocent man, plus begin the process of reconciliation that his ministry heretofore has worked against...

...Hunthausen was urged to intervene, but even though he himself is virulently anti-abortion (so much for his liberalism) he did nothing...

...The teaching of Jesus tells us to render to a nuclear-armed Caesar what that Caesar deserves: tax resistance...

...James Hickey, on the other hand, evidently saw something else, the real cause of the spiritual suffering afflicting the archdiocese...

...one of the [American] bishops...

...Fortunately, the pre-Christmas surgery was deemed a complete success, and the archbishop, in typical form, left the hospital just one week later...

...Either he's preternaturally innocent and doesn't really know what he's doing to people, or he's dissembling...

...He made the church a democracy," said the Rev...

...And the [Catholic] church has doctrines...

...I am convinced that as Christian people we cannot live with [nuclear arms] and profess to be people of Christ...

...Now I don't know...

...A kind of rigid, messianic ardor seems to stop him...

...Hunthausen calls his views plain "Gospel logic"—they are what "people of Christ" believe...

...Listen to how Hunthausen couchedhis views: "I am challenged increasingly by the nonviolent truth of the Cross . . . to lose our lives for peace...

...If true, it means putting Hunthausen in that elite clique of liberal church leaders which includes Chicago's Joseph Cardinal Bernardin and Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee...

...1:1...

...But there is also the fact that this particular dispute has evolved in an atmosphere of what the NCCB calls a "growing and dangerous disaffection" and "estrangement" within the American church over the question of papal authority—and Hunthausen, along with theologian Charles Curran, has been transfigured by supporters and the press into a kind of symbol of that rift...

...In sum, it would have made no difference to the Holy See if, instead of nuclear deterrence, Hunthausen had called detente with the Soviet Union an "inconceivable sin...

...Foremost was the idea that secular concepts like democracy and free speech could be adopted by a religious institution...

...T he Vatican's critique centers on leadership, or what is politely called Hunthausen's "collegial style of management...

...The victims and inquisitors would have simply changed places...

...he didn't...

...Energy and life, perhaps...

...These include the role of the conscience in making moral decisions . " T he postscript is that Hunthausen refuses to accept the verdict...

...Robert Beaulieu...

...One reason for this is surely the archbishop's own lack of remorse...

...But the conditions of discord and recrimination and alienationwould have remained, necessitating the Vatican to stress the archbishop's "need to bring into clear focus . . . certain teachings of the church and their implications for the pastoral practices of the Archdiocese...

...But as Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, vice president-elect of the NCCB, recently pointed out: "In a theological context, it just doesn't fit in with a church that has doctrines...

...The prognosis for Hunthausen's recovery looks in fact a lot better than his chances of making up with Rome...

...That's why Hunthausen's democratization campaign was proceeded by a rapidly expanding Chancery bureaucracy with a $5million-plus budget and "a host of services" that one observer estimates grew nearly five times during Hunthausen's tenure...

...Significantly, the bishops' tepid (others say cowardly) support for him at the November meeting seemed to be saying the same thing: that the archbishop, "saintly" and "Jesus-like" though he may be, is not the innocent victim of Vatican reaction so many church (and non-church) liberals want to believe he is...

...Can "they" really...

...This may pose no special problem for contemporary Protestantism...

...He continues to minimize, ifnot deny, the situation in Seattle, blaming for his parishioners' anguish the power-sharing arrangement with auxiliary bishop Donald Wuerl, not his own actions...

...In fact, he says, "I don't see the need to change my ministry at all," and practically demands that all his powers be restored "as soon as possible...

...But collegiality fostered some misunderstandings as well...

...The "net effect" of Hunthausen's abdicating his responsibilities, an observer noted, was "not true collegiality, but oligarchical rule by a staff that follows its own liberal agenda...

...Richard McSorley of the Center for Peace Studies at Georgetown University, who wore a "Weak-land for Pope" button and a red (denoting martyrdom) letter "H" on his lapel at the NCCB conclave in November, "then they can do it to any Tory Stempf is a writer living in Seattle...

...Unassertive, a bit frumpy, compulsive, with no intellectual interests or discernible charisma...

...No doubt, too, he got a strong whiff of the underlying liberal-cultural hubris that flourishes (not just in the Catholic Church) here—that is, the air of self-importance and moral superiority which seems to have been stimulated by Hunthausen's ministry...

...Donald Wuerl, the church, are left twisting slowly in the wind—for a man's pride...

...The trouble is, Hunthausen isn't them, by a long shot...

...The popular misconception was correctible...

...Up to now I thought it was the former...

...They think about following their consciences, which, being the products of an ecumenical, progressive Seattle heritage, are naturally going to take a leftward direction...

...Indeed, these attitudes were cogently expressed in Seattle pastor Phillip Bloom's recent letter to the New York Times, where he denied that any "abuses" had even taken place, and asked impudently whether, like murdered Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero before him, Hunthausen (and by implication Bloom himself) wasn't simply "being attacked for taking official church teachings too seriously...

...In short, Hickey didn't need a nutty tabloid like the Wanderer or any other "arch-conservative" bogeymen to tell him Seattle had a serious problem: an archbishop stubbornly acting with "excessive humility" like a parish priest, the result being anarchy and pandemic administrative failure to articulate a specific Catholic identity or world-view...

...He seems to be daring the Vatican to ask him to resign...

...But he didn't...

...Evidently the benign neglect extended to matters concerning confession, intercommunion with non-Catholics, divorce, contraception, homosexuality, and married priests as well...

...You can see Hunthausen only one of two ways," he tells me...

...namely a liberal flip-side to the right-wing fundamentalism that judges people's Christian piety by its political T his crucial matter of competence got buried by the sexier, and even more misconstrued, issue of Hunthausen's radical politics...

...For whatever Hunthausen's intentions (and he insists he is only "challenging" people's values, not dictating them), a kind of inquisition, this-time by the left, was going on in Seattle, with "heretics" being isolated spiritually, even physically, from the life of their church and community—a process of schism-making in a palpable sense...

...Which is why the Vatican found this good and gentle archbishop "a man of gospel values," but "lacking the firmness to govern the archdiocese...

...He was already so firmly convinced that 'the spirit of God moves among all people,' " a reporter wrote, "that it was natural for him to open the governance of his diocese to by Tory Stempf parish priests and lay people...

...For "if they can do it to Hunthausen," suggested the Rev...

...namely the assumption that if Hunthausen were a political conservative, the Holy See would never have acted against him...

...But, of course, matters of doctrine and authority are not what underlings suddenly being exhorted to follow their own consciences think about...

...But THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1987 29 "correctness...

...For instance, the archdiocese's Respect Life Committee, a pro-life advisory group, resigned en 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1987 masse because it felt the Chancery staff assigned to work with it was stalling...

...As a result, traditional Catholic concerns suffered...

...A Catholic intellectual who admires the man's spirituality but calls him "stubborn ashell" mentioned a recent National Catholic Reporter article that viciously called Auxiliary Bishop Wuerl one of "Hitler's soldiers...

...He expected us all to be mature in applying gospel principles to our jobs, and it gave the whole diocese a new sense of energy and life...

...Now its suspicions seem confirmed...

...The Weekly's Rebecca Boren was surely right when she figured that the Vatican, even before the bishops' conference in November, suspected Hunthausen of defiance...

...and most important, with no political savvy or connections within the NCCB—and totally lacking any ambitions for such-J`Dutch" Hunthausen makes a lousy standard-bearer for Catholic progressivism, much less the dangerous heretic the Vatican would target for an auto-da-fj...

...First the prelate was publicly censured by the Vatican for incompetence and stripped of authority in key areas of his ministry, and then forced to beg for help from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) which never materialized...

...Thus spake the Washington Post on November 9. It proceeded to warn that "the same conservative forces that triggered the Seattle debacle" threaten the "survival" of the whole American church...

...So part of the problem was an unbridled band of overzealous lieutenants...

...On top of these traumatic events came the diagnosis of his "early stage D" prostate cancer...

...This is what the original bill of particulars against him, and later the Vatican's "Chronology," attempted, however clumsily, to say: that what "triggered" the Seattle debacle was finally the archbishop himself...

...Meanwhile the church continues to bleed, and this most "pastoral" of prelates does nothing to heal the wound...

...Temperamentally averse to taking orders to begin with ("my understanding of the virtue of obedience has never allowed me simply to acquiesce"), the archbishop took to heart Vatican II's call for more freedom of personal conscience when he arrived in Seattle in 1975...