Second Call to Action

...They have created for themselves a great opportunity...

...I pray they will...

...The Catholic community of America, this segment of the people of God, has been properly bold and innovative in their exploration...

...And a declaration that states that "the Church, in fidelity to the example of Our Lord, does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination," even if issued with the approval of Pope Paul, does not put an end to the matter...

...The teaching of the Church has changed on the principle of religious liberty, the inerrancy of scripture and ecumenism...

...Monsignor Ellis gave partial explanations for the "confusion and uncertainty that now bedevil the Catholic community...

...It lacks a woman's touch," he answered...

...It is sometimes difficult for those intimately involved in Vatican II to realize that those who were in their late teens during the time of the Council are now in their thirties...

...The final propositions that emerged from the section on Humankind, for example, condemned not only the threatened use of nuclear weapons but .their production and possession...

...They have lived their adult life in the consciousness that they are part of a searching, pilgrim people...

...Catholics know full well what .the historical practice has been, although most have not thought carefully about the theological basis offered for that practice...

...I JAMES FIS~, Jormerly an editor o! Commonweal, is now editor oJ Worldview, a monthly journal devoted to morality and politics...

...These, too, must be on any future agenda if the bishops, who assumed a listening posture during the two-year process, are not to appear as if they had been stricken with intermittent deafness...

...Outlining these distributed responsibilities is itself a necessary educational task of the bishops...

...I,t lies, therefore, within the very nature of the Church to be always open to new and greater exploration...

...And as they did, it became evident that they were reflecting on and bringing into the conference issues that have preoccupied the larger society during the last decade or so...

...But, as we have indicated, the hour is late...

...The third point how the bishops approach their task, with what attitude they deliberate on the myriad issues placed before them, how they consider their responsibilities to other Christians in the community of faith may be the most significant, indeed the crucial, point of the May meetings...

...Much of what was recommended can best be carried out through national and diocesan organizations, religious communities and issue-oriented organizations...

...Instant laughter...

...The real problems are (1) how they will assign priorities to the vast number of recommendations (2) what plan they will devise to implement them, and (3) most important, what understanding of the Church will underlie their deliberations and their planning...

...But a number of propositions passed at Detroit could not be as readily categorized: the need for careful preparation for marriage and the permanence of that institution, the recognition of parents as primary in teaching children about sex, support for Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and opposition to abortion, the value of rural life for a good Christian life...

...And an impressive number of Catholic organizations and individuals have tried publicly to bring an outline of their own deep interests into focus with what they hope that meeting will accomplish...

...And I would appropriate for that prayer these words of Rilke, applying them to what might be a springtime for the Church in America: "Now, let us believe in the new year that is given us, new, untried, full of things that have never been...

...If this is done well, one will be able in a year or two or three to evaluate, however roughly, what has been developed successfully, what has failed, and why...

...The outcome of this program is still uncertain, resting as heavily as it does on the wisdom, the openness, the energy, and the judgment of .the bishops...

...The instrument they are forging is clearly imperfect...

...The Catholic community has lived with the sharp realization that the Church cannot provide definitive answers to religious questions for over a decade now...

...better that those who tried to gather this testimony and distill its essence in the Working Papers had turned their energies to their usual scholarly or organizational pursuits...

...I hope that spirit permeates my comments on the future of that bicentennial program...

...But to grasp fully the boldness and the vision that launched this process, one must recall the state of the Church in this country when the idea developed...

...Even if they do their best and their best is very good, they are unlikely to escape criticism...

...Without claiming that they were the ones to surface the issues, American Catholics now share with many other Americans a concern about the status of women in our society, civil rights for homosexuals, grave economic inequities, racial and ethnic discrimination, multinational corporations...

...There would then be an office and a responsible person who would see that the dialogic process continued and that action, where called for, would be taken...

...This is the model that will make it easier to see how action for justice could be a constitutive element in Catholic life...

...The list of concerns is important...

...29 April 1977:272...

...What consequences flow from this in terms of the teaching Church...

...If we don't love one another, one another won't love us...

...It is also familiar...

...But when "in the late 1960s, the dam gave way, so to speak, and in the rush and ferment that ensued there broke on Catholic consciousness the unsettling fact that the Church did not have answers to all questions, that there are questions to which no human source can supply an answer, confidence in the Church's reliability began to crumble...

...Nevertheless, we have seen that, in moments of stress and pressure, some people wish to regress to those earlier, apparently less-troubled times, to assert or to accept on the basis of authority what should be the result of collective thought, action and prayer...

...In the 183 years that have passed since the American Church was formally organized," he wrote, "the Catholic community has experienced a fair share of crisis and untoward movements, but that community has never known anything to approximate its present dispiritedness and disarray...

...The attention aroused by the meeting the American Catholic bishops will hold in May is unprecedented...

...It is easy to see flaws in the process of consultation, reflection, study and action that we have gone through in the last two years...

...These recommendations are the consequence of a process that is itself unprecedented in American history, so that at their May meeting the bishops will not follow custom but will establish it...

...Like other approaches that seem to recommend themselves, this is clearly inadequate...

...But if I thought this were a likely, even a possible, outcome, I think I would not have the courage publicly to anticipate it...

...For example, while anticipating the May meeting I ran across, in Paul Johnson's recent A History of Christianity, this brief comment: "'Antiquity relates that laymen show a spirit of hostility towards the clergy,' wrote Pope Boniface in 1296, 'and it is dearly proven by ,the experience of the present time.' Having uttered this melancholy reflection, in his bull Clericos laicos, Boniface went on to make a number of pronouncements calculated to ensure that the warfare continued...

...I expect the bishops eto deal with the recommendations seriously...

...It was in early 1973 that the Administrative Committee of the NCCB decided that it would be proper and becoming that the Catholic Church in this country celebrate the national bicentennial with a program based on the theme of justice in the world...

...Who is going to do what...

...That shaking up has, rather, allowed them to reexamine ecclesiastical structures, to see what has fallen into disuse, what is anachronistic or merely cumbersome, what are the trappings of another age and what the message for which such trappings were once considered appropriate...

...There are other questions, less important or important to fewer people, that have taken on high symbolic importance...

...What has been suggested is that each significant recommendation developed from the consultative process be assigned to an appropriate committee of the NCCB/USCC under a designated chairman...

...That "profound revolution" of which Monsignor Ellis wrote and the cultural and social forces that condition our daily lives were evident during the hearings and at Detroit...

...The exchange they look for is not, then, one of question-and-answer but of dialogue, out of which will emerge new insights and new directions...

...What are the political and moral implications...

...An incongruous if not outrageous notion...

...After priorities are assigned, .in whatever fashion, there is the second problem: What are the structures through which plans will be implemented...

...It can change on other issues...

...women in society...

...But to see the flaws should be a spur to repair them, to perfect the instrument, not to discard it...

...family and community values...

...That statement of the bishops runs head on against the present strategic posture of the United States...

...It is a reality imbued with the hidden presence of God...

...But it would be worse than foolish to exploit those differences, to attempt to disguise the much larger measure of agreement that exists...

...This was a deep misfortune and does strike a sour note before the May meeting...

...It is generally accepted that this Declaration, which opposes the concept of women priests in the Catholic Church, was inspired by a request from Church authorities in this country who wish to terminate the discussion...

...When one listened, at the plenary session in Detroit, it was impossible not to feel that too much was being placed on the bishops' desks...

...The perfect method is still to be found...

...In opening the second session of Vatican II, Pope Paul said: "The Church is a mystery...

...The last decade has not been easy for most of them...

...better that the bishops had expended their monies on less damaging enterprises...

...When ,the bishops meet in May, they will be taking part in that process launched with hope and uncertainty years ago...

...As a minor key that accompanied th~ strong concern there was an undercurrent of anxiety and suspicion that the whole thing might be sidetracked, that the process of consultation in which they had been invited to share might be regarded as a dangerous novelty rather than a fructifying innovation...

...The bishops of this country have had as little preparation for true dialogue as has the community they serve...

...There are some I know who see at least some of the bishops, mutatis mutandis, as present-day Bonifaces and expect that the most unfamiliar and vexing recommendations of the bicentennial program will meet 29 April 1977:270 opposition rather than open consideration...

...Two documents of Vatican II, "The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church" and "The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World," carry us some distance beyond the understanding of the Church that most Catholics had in the early '60s...

...At the same time, they wish to see a vigorous Church pursue these values within the society at large...

...On this basis top priority would be given to family life and community values, to the Church's need to share with the poor and to carry on its teaching mission...

...I agree wi~h this sober assessment of the distinguished historian...

...Let us hope that our new President will grab the initiative before it is too late...

...Out of that grew the "Liberty and Justice for All" program, the national hearings across the country and the Detroit conference...

...The attention concentrated on that meeting is justified...

...It is no longer a new experience, a new sensation...

...Some of the recommendations will present little conceptual problem, requiring only the necessary hard work, organization, and money to see that the desired steps are taken...

...The Detroit conference has been widely reported...

...Well, it's not outrageous anymore...

...This is the model more appropriate to the kind of discussion the bicentennial program has initiated...

...It is not a question here of moving with the zeitgeist or being carried along by fads, but one of examining seriously an issue that has not been given prolonged consideration previously...

...The Conference--and the bright promise it represents--may well capsize unless there is a new beginning...

...Do not wait for the wind and rain Thrashing, the boughs' crack and rending, But on silent final wings, landing In the garden where we began, Come This stillest day of fall-Leaves in the air, leaves still on the tree Leaves to cover me...

...better that the projeet had not been conceived or that it had been early aborted...

...The participants understood that their advice would be considered seriously by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and .that their work would help inform and shape a five-year pastoral plan on justice...

...Pope John and Vatican II played "a significam part in the subsequent chain of events, but the profound revolution through which humankind was then, and is still, passing has been too Commonweal: 269 all-embracing not to have touched deeply the Catholic Church, as it has every other situation, whether or not there had ever been a Pope John or an ecumenical council...

...They could not have known how much there would be to listen to, how eagerly their response would be awaited, how truly significant an opportunity they had created for themselves...

...In other words, the roots of the present unease, in my judgment, are to be found more outside the Church than within, more in the cultural and social forces that, willy-nilly, condition Catholics' daily lives...

...Even apart from the particular issues, there was a deep, shared concern that ,the bishops truly respond to the aspirations and grievances, the fears and hopes that welled up in all the meetings...

...Anyone who has read accounts of ,that conference knows that it was the culmination of an immense amount of planning, thought and work, involving Catholics across the country from almost every level and sector of our society...

...That shaking up has caused Catholics to repair to fundamental questions concerning the message of Jesus the Christ and to ask how, as people of God, they can be faithful to that message...

...In various parts of the world that model of the Church that emphasizes the institutional and hierarchical aspects of the Church, the historical model that is comfortable in its familiarity, is being modified, transcended, by a model that stresses the communal and human, a model that can more readily cope with the strong historical currents that stress justice, liberty, human rights...

...A very significant issue, going a step beyond the position enunciated by the American bishops in their Pastoral Letter of last November in which they said that "not only is it wrong to attack civilian populations but it is also wrong to threaten to attack as part of the strategy of deterrence...

...Another quite different issue that will not disappear concerns the ordination of women...

...It could do much to break the present inpasse between East and West and between North and South...

...It would be foolish to pretend .to unanimity and consensus where they do not exist, and as a delegate at the Detroit conference who was more than once in a minority position, I know that there were and are sharp differences among the many delegates and among the bishops...

...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 JOYCE HORNER WORDS FOR MUSIC Come without sound Now, while the leaves float brilliant Through the air Down, As the leaves noiseless part from the tree, Come to me, Not with the apple's commotion, The thud in the grass, or the late shut roses' Slow inward decay, Let the last life-thread whatever it be Give way With the leaves' lightest severance, So, on such a day, Now...

...Some of these have, in fact, already started working on plans inspired by the bicemennial program...

...But here the critics themselves have the responsibility of assessing what can be done realistically in the days of the May meeting...

...I would add some qualifications, however...

...Their religion has not shielded them from those social forces that have rocked all of our major institutions and therefore our own individual lives...

...The reason for this surge of interest is not that the bishops of this country have suddenly become more popular, but that they are going to consider recommendations derived from the Detroit "Call to Action" conference of October...

...A bold law of the sea proposal by President Carter could be a major breakthrough in the struggle to achieve peace, economic development and a safe world environment...

...They promised to respond...

...That anxiety is not simply free-floating but attaches to many events, historical and contemporary...

...During the hearings one speaker recalled Will Rogers's comment when, on his return from a visit to the Vatican, someone asked what he thought of it...

...As evidence they point to the Declaration on the question of ordaining women to the priesthood issued by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in January of this year...

...That community grew and flourished in this country, accepting almost without question the teaching authority of the Church under conditions which made it easy to assume that the Church had an answer for every question...

...To do well what Commonweal: 271 they are called to do will tax the ingenuity of the bishops...

...But they did initiate and support the process of bicentennial hearings, they did ask for advice from the Catholics of this country, they have reviewed the resuits of this process of broad consultation, and they will consider the recommendations collectively...

...If this incident were to prove typical of the responses to other issues of deep concern to a significant segment of the Catholic community, if the May meeting were to heighten the differences and exacerbate strained feelings, it were better than those who came to regional hearings to pour forth often painful personal testimonies in their different regional and ethnic accents had stayed at home...

...war, nuclear arms, and global justice...

...They promised to listen...

...These and other propositions make clear that the thousands of Catholics whose concerns helped shape the bicentennial program wish to see our present secular emphases on justice and equality brought within the structure of the Church...

...At exactly that time, in early 1973, John Tracy Ellis assayed the state of American Catholicism in the pages of this journal...

...They and many of their elders are quite prepared to look to Church leaders, not for ready answers to their own difficult and often painful questions, but for leadership...

...Others are more problematic...

...SECOND CALL TO ACTION JAMES FINN National attention turns to the bishops" meeting In one of the regional hearings of the bicentennial program sponsored by the Catholic bishops of Amerioa, a small girl got up to testify...

...A true representative of the secular 'city would recognize many familiar landmarks...

...To consider these points in order: First...

...It is possible to say, in mere statistical terms, what general themes received most attention during the entire process...

...And with what resources...

...But Catholics also know full well that a rationale that appeared adequate for a period past must sometimes give way to a fuller and more complete understanding...

...There have been, for example, more applications for press credentials than for any previous general meeting of the bishops...

...I believe the bishops can help discover .those new paths...

...The course must go forward along untried paths, not backward along the familiar well-marked avenues...

...I believe, further, that it will help us to understand better the bicentennial program, the Detroit conference, and what we can expect and hope from the May meeting...

...to understand better what shared responsibility means, how it would be carried out at different levels within the Church...

...There are many things to trigger such feelings...

...If the Catholic community in this country is to emerge from .the "confusion and uncertainty" that Monsignor Ellis attributed to it, much will depend upon the course taken in May...

...financial responsibility within the Church...

...The delegates discussed and voted on issues concerning ethnicity and race, the poor, the aged, and the handicapped...

...But on this basis global justice, human rights, and the needs of workers would be put at the bottom of the ladder...