Burying the National Association of Laity
Castelli, Jim
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Burying t h e National A s s o c i a t i o n o l L a i t y In June, 1973, I went to Philadelphia for the seventh annual convention of the National Association of...
...Except for those adhering to another system of political economy, the problem for most Americans is not so much the immensity of the Rockefeller wealth--ali's fair in love and war under capitalism's ground-rulesm than it is the disposition of the money...
...Individual gifts to his associates total far more than many Americans earn in a working life-time...
...Until the end the NAL remained an elite of 1960s liberals disaffected with their church...
...Its people went in different directions, wanted different things, and the organization couldn't move quickly enough to keep up and present alternatives...
...The sad thing is that it doesn't have to be that way...
...Others who received Rockefeller pin money over the years included Edward Logue, President of the State Urban Development Corporation, and L. Judson Morhouse, once State Republican Party Chairman and later convicted of bribery and pardoned by Nelson...
...The group's inflated membership claims were still small, and it had produced no reports or critiques in the past year...
...Well, white people aren't either...
...It took a critical look at church stands on issues such as Catholic schools, abortion and war and provided a voice of dissent within the church...
...If revolution comes from this group, it's not going to come on time...
...It's become a clich6 within Commonweal: I01 the NAL that "NAL people have moved on to other things and don't need the church anymore," but that doesn't tell the whole story...
...The walking death of the NAL, though far from a good sign, doesn't mark the end of lay reform in the church...
...It marks the end of a certain style of reform from a very particular group of people...
...But Philadelphia surprised me...
...Does it then become the Rockeford Administration...
...They were, it seemed, where NAL people had been five or more years before...
...These reports were cursed, attacked and, in the final analysis, listened to by church officials...
...Welfare mothers, whom Rockefeller, as Governor of New York State, scolded during non-election years, must have taken a special interest in the list of Who's-Who on the Dole...
...The burden, though, is no longer theirs--it floats around looking for a shoulder to light on--a shoulder or shoulders that can organize different people on different issues and then help them relate to one another...
...There's still a need for a Ralph Nader type organization to keep the church on its toes...
...It moved toward none of them but any one might be viable, and all might be viable for others...
...The atmosphere was that of a dying organization...
...Leo Jordan, an NAL veteran and legal counsel to the organization, introduced a resolution to disband...
...I November 1974:102...
...Dozier called on the NAL to come back into the parishes to help progressive bishops like himself to implement Vatican II reforms over the objections of conservatives...
...There was talk of rejuvenating old affiliates and forming new ones and assurances that important reports on church finances and other issues were nearing completion...
...He said he wanted to introduce the resolution for discussion purposes the year before, but was talked out of it...
...At last count, Rockefeller has acknowledged disbursing an estimated $2-million to approximately 20 workers in his political vineyard...
...During its last two years the NAL discussed several options for a new direction...
...Only a handful attended, and they were preaching to the converted...
...Only Senator Robert Byrd, born into poverty as miserable as Rockefeller's wealth was opulent, asked persistent questions in contrast to the awe-struck, deferential questioning of the other members of the Committee...
...The number of active local affiliates was listed as one, New Jersey...
...He made up his mind to introduce it this year, he said, after a mailing to promote the convention went to 8,000 people and drew 12 responses...
...Attendance was too small to break up into separate rooms for panels, so all panels were held consecutively in the same room, with almost no time for dialogue...
...Another recipient included a syndicated columnist, who years ago borrowed money to buy a newspaper~lending further substance to observations set down in the last of these columns from Washington that the Augean stables of politics are not the only ones in need of cleansing these days...
...The answer may be simply that the NAL, like the institutional church, couldn't handle pluralism...
...Since neither Ford nor Rockefeller, assuming his confirmation, was elected to his position as President or Vice President respectivelyma unique situation in our history--the possibility of continued muddled responsibility at the highest levels of government is a dismaying one in the era of Watergate(s...
...In the following year, the NAL existed only as occasional press releases sent from its new president, Joe Skehan...
...Vice President-designate Rockefeller professes to comprehend no problem with such lavish disbursements of his monies to associates...
...NAL people" weren't any more successful in talking to non-NAL people than the princes of the church have been...
...This problem is aggravated in this situation by the stated attitudes of both the donor and recipients...
...He virtually pleaded for help, but was rebuffed by people who had apparently been hurt so badly in parish disputes or who were so uninterested, that they wouldn't consider going back...
...He waltzed through his confirmation hearing last month before the Senate Rules Committee...
...His nomination to be Vice President started smoothly enough...
...But there's still a big difference between more or less liberal middle-class liturgical communities---of which there seem to be a number--and communities of whatever size dominated by former priests...
...Henry Kissinger, whose halo is turning into a marshmallow anyway, received $50,000 just before he joined the Nixon Administration as its foreign-affairs sharpshooter...
...It may have been unfair to expect the NAL to shoulder the burden...
...The eighth annual convention, held in Washington, D.C., Oct...
...Will Rockefeller, as Vice President, continue his profligacy by paying President Ford's family medical bills...
...Some changes were made at the convention...
...The Bianchi model: The same meeting that Dozier addressed was also addressed by Eugene Bianchi, former Jesuit and former president of the Society of Priests for a Free Ministry, basically an organization of married priests and their sympathizers...
...Rockefeller may be the first to get in trouble for giving...
...So I didn't write the obituary...
...Another estimate was 2,500...
...The NAL was killed by a lack of imagination and the same problems that face the institutional church...
...an announced shift in emphasis to at-large members who were there even after local organization had faded...
...Most politicians get in trouble for taking...
...Then, in early October, flowed the "leaks" from the direction of the House Judiciary Committee on the subject of Rockefeller's largesse...
...If 12,000 people~the peak NAL membership ---couldn't remake the church, 25 people meeting in a small Washington hotel can't sound its death knell...
...At this writing, the brass, more aptly, the gold ring goes to William Ronan, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who accepted a gift of a sum of upwards of $550,000 originally given as a loan...
...The American hierarchy itself has shown some very healthy trends...
...Several workshops on black Catholics had been scheduled in an attempt to draw large numbers of Washington's black Catholic population...
...In any event, the role of coordinator of a network of Christian communities may still be a viable one...
...JIM CASTELLI (Jim Castelli, ]ormerly with the National Catholic Reporter, is now on the staff o/NC News Service...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Burying t h e National A s s o c i a t i o n o l L a i t y In June, 1973, I went to Philadelphia for the seventh annual convention of the National Association of Laity (NAL) expecting to write the reform organization's obituary...
...Calm down, Henry, you've got more degrees...
...Rockefeller's is an inverse way of laundering money...
...It did research and made studies, particularly in the critical areas of schools and diocesan financial practices...
...The task is to get them together and get moving...
...The NAL was offered three basic models, what might be called the Yorke, Dozier and Bianchi models: The Yorke model: This was basically the model of the role NAL played for several years--the shock troops, the gadfly...
...The SPFM changed its name to the Fellowship of Christian Ministries and attempted such a network...
...After all, as his Press Secretary told reporters, Nelson paid the required gift taxes, didn't he...
...Skehan claimed 5,000 members, one thousand more than the group claimed all year...
...The final irony may have been comments from a Washington black: "They say niggers aren't ready...
...The attendance, more than 200 people, was higher than the year before, and many seemed to be people who were just beginning to have their consciousnesses raised about injustices and problems within the church some even wanted to talk about birth control...
...There were NAL people out there, Skehan said, but no local leadership...
...11-13, drew just 50 people...
...The Dozier model: The 1973 Philadelphia NAL meeting marked a first--the convention was addressed by a bishop, Carroll T. Dozier of Memphis, who had been personally invited by Yorke...
...Bianchi urged the NAL to drop the church altogether and form a network of new alternative communities, including everything from groups of four--two couples--to larger commune-type arrangements...
...Correspondingly, Ronan, for example, professes to see no conflict-of-interest in accepting half-a-million dollars or more from the Governor of a State for whom he worked, but presumably was to work in a public-interest capacity beyond that of the political well-being of his boss...
...WASHINGTON REPORT HrYA, FELLA, YOURSELF "1 never/ound it a handicap to be a Rocke[eller" --Nelson R Nelson Rockefeller may be the softest touch since Shaw's Sir Andrew Undershaft...
...There is no organized group of liberals battling it out in the parishes, and no doubt that one is needed...
...The resolution was soundly defeated by a voice vote-of 25 people...
...its most news-making event was a statement from its women's rights task force lavishly praising the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion...
...But it was still time to bring out the shovels and play taps...
...There are still a lot of Catholic progressives and people who can be progressives with a little education...
...But I should have...
Vol. 101 • November 1974 • No. 5
