LOCKING OUT THE PRISON CHAPLAIN

...at the moment, it looks as if he will have an even more difficult time finding a second replacement, in two years, for the job...

...Only a team that is willing to be silent in the face of observed injustice will be allowed to enter the prison...

...In early April, three black organizations and a prisoners reform group demanded that the U.S...

...Their conclusion: "We unequivocably oppose this position of our bishop...

...The conflict arose in part over the following stipulation in the bishop's guidelines for future chaplains: "In the exercise of this ministry . . . when a violation of human rights is alleged, remedial action is to be taken by the chaplains only with prior recourse to and approval from the Bishop...

...But maybe Governor Noel will help...

...Several administrators have been charged (and prosecuted) for brutality and mismanagement at various levels in Rhode Island's major prison facility...

...In their statement on the evening of April 16 supporting Father Marstin, the thirty-five persons, principally priests, sisters, and laity long involved in inner-city ministries, criticized Bishop Gelineau, saying that "by the excessive limitations of his advocacy policy, the bishop has effectively eliminated any self-respecting ministers from functioning at the ACI...

...CHURCH & STATE IN RHODE ISLAND LOCKING OUT THE PRISON CHAPLAIN "We are casualties of Governor Noel's lumps and bumps philosophy," said Ronald Marstin, S.M., on March 5, when he found himself locked out of the minimum security building of the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI...

...have refused to enter the prison facilities until they are allowed to perform their duties as ministers to the prisoners...

...On April 16, the bishop dissolved the team chaplaincy, Father Marstin disagreeing with the new guidelines and Brother Reis and Sister Guertin resigning in support of his position...

...Those agreements may have been seriously undermined by Bishop Gelineau's recent statements...

...n Massachusetts...

...On April 9, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in Federal Court charging that barring a priest from the Adult Correctional Institute and thus denying the prisoners' access to religion violated the First Amendment...

...In order to replace Father Demers in 1973, Bishop Gelineau had to go outside the diocese...

...Noel agrees with Warden James W. Mullen that a priest should be admitted to the prison only "to say Mass, hear confessions, and perform his duties as a priest...

...For Father Marstin, the matter is essentially a prison issue...

...Guidelines for the present team chaplaincy grew out of the subsequent discussions of Father Demers' replacement, involving the governor and Father Francis J. Guidice, the Vicar for Community Affairs, who is still a key person in the debate...

...The prison's policy toward the chaplaincy appears to be consistent with a general policy that has provoked concern among state officials and the general public in recent years...

...And on April 16, thirty-five persons, including eleven diocesan priests, signed a statement accusing Louis E. Gelineau, Bishop of Providence, of capitulating to Governor Philip W. Noel on the matter involving the prison chaplaincy...

...Attorney investigate inhumane treatment of inmates, when twelve men in solitary confinement were denied food...

...More recently, in this, "the most Catholic state in the Union," the restrictions against Father Marstin raised serious questions about church-state relations as well...

...This point conflicted with previous policy, whereby the team functioned largely on its own, and with Father Marstin's recommendation that chaplains deal directly with prison officials on matters of social justice for prisoners...

...he has been excluded, he says, without formal charges or a hearing by the Governor or the Department of Corrections, with no allegations of improper conduct or of any violation of the original agreement between the Diocese of Providence and the Department of Corrections...

...Last fall, deputy warden Frederick Chiarine, Jr., paid $5,000 in punitive damages, after a long investigation of brutality to inmates in the medium security building...

...Although he has made statements supporting the advocacy role of the chaplains, Bishop Gelineau, in his recently published guidelines, suggests that he and the Governor expect the chaplain to perform primarily a cultic role...

...for the past month, he and his two associates, Brother Michael Reis, F.S.C., and Sister Constance Guertin, P.M...

...according to the statement by the diocesan group on April 16, the bishop showed "a total lack of trust in the team to be appointed in the future...

...This spring, for example, during the controversy over the chaplains, the governor's own advisory commission on corrections called for the removal of James W. Mullen, the warden at ACI, with charges that fear pervaded the medium security building and its control was under the "vise-like grip of the supervisory authority...

...MICHAEL TRUE (Michael True is chairman of the English Department at Assumption College and lecturer at Clark University in Massachusetts...

...Governor Noel, who describes himself as a traditional Catholic, has said that "we don't need religious [who go into the prison under the guise] of tending to the religious and spiritual needs of the prisoners and then take to advocating prisoners' rights and [stirring up] a lot of agitation and grief...

...According to some residents of Rhode Island, where church and state are disconcertingly one, the two men could change jobs and no one would ever know the difference...

...In the midst of this situation, Father Marstin's insistence on the advocacy mission for the Church, supported by quotations from Papal documents since the Second Vatican Council and from the United States Catholic Conference statement on The Reform of Correctional Institutions in the 1970s (November, 1973), takes on special meaning...

...Additional evidence against the prison administration and in support of the chaplains, including editorials in the Providence Evening Bulletin and statements by other religious bodies, suggests that dismissing the team won't solve the problem for the governor or the bishop...

...As co-chaplain to the prison since September, 1974, Father Marstin has been faced with increasing restrictions in fulfilling his responsibility as chaplain, first by the state (by order of the warden) and later by the church (through the office of the bishop...

...An Australian Marist, who is also a doctoral student and part-time teacher in applied theology at Harvard Divinity School, Father Marstin is not the first priest to be dismissed from the Adult Correctional Institute for taking seriously his job as chaplain...

...In July, 1973, his predecessor, Father Normand J. Demers, a diocesan priest, was barred from the ACI after he made charges, later substantiated, of brutal treatment of inmates by guards and state troopers, leaving the prison without a chaplain for nine months...