The bishop's tale
Quigley, Thomas E.
Nicaragua aid THE BISHOPS TALC WHO WAS THAT MTTERED MAN? "DOES THE gentleman know the meaning of the word 'catholic'?" said Mr. Schulzeto Mr. Harkin. This, mind you, on the floor of the U.S....
...One is left wondering what pressures, what help, and what he did with it after deciding to move...
...This worthy whose picture graced the pages of a Guatemalan daily last April (he certainly looks like a bishop) was there bidding farewell to the esteemed president of the republic (whom some other bishops consider less than a model Christian) and explaining why he was moving his operation out of Guatemala...
...Could there be a bishopscam...
...And does it make some people want to give you money, especially if they think—as Commonweal: 230 they are likely to in the U.S...
...American Montfort Fathers who had opened their radio facilities to the Sandinistas during the war snatched Lang from that fate and the Capuchins helped him in Managua before he was evacuated by the U.S...
...Catholic Conference's Office of International Justice and Peace 25 April 1980:231...
...Lang was widely suspected among the people of informing on wounded Sandinistas and his clinic bore Somoza's name so it was no surprise that after the war, Lang would be invited out...
...and bound to in Latin America— that you are a bona fide bishop of the Roman Catholic or Anglican communions...
...Perhaps others had been more suspicious...
...The word 'catholic' means Christian in that phrase...
...The clue can be found in his letters to the congressman and the ambassador, he wants "restitution for our material losses," which according to his letter to Ambassador Solis amount to nearly $1 million...
...But in the context of Latin America and the progressive role assumed by much of the Catholic church there, these gents have to be questioned about the probabilities of deception and confusion...
...One who was is a priest who had worked in the same area of Nicaragua as Lang, knew him as a preacher who ran a clinic and also as a Somoza sympathizer...
...Just how Lang's little band came to invest $700,000 of their own resources in this mission is not easily determined, especially since the group was unknown to the USAID people dealing with private voluntary organizations (PVOs) in Nicaragua, and the church itself is not generally known among either missionary or development agencies...
...THOMAS E. QUIGLEY (Thomas E. Quigley is Advisor for Latin America at the U.S...
...But why is he still saying those mean things about Nicaragua...
...Embassy...
...Seems he ran a small ten-bed emergency hospital in Nicaragua to which Somoza had contributed, but which, after the area fell to the Sandinistas, was taken over by the new government...
...Schulze, no mean theologian, shot back: "That does not necessarily mean Roman Catholic...
...According to the State Department, he has already filed for the losses and has received a waiver from the attorney general's requirement that he go personally to Nicaragua to verify the loss...
...What the good bishop wanted, he made clear at the end, was indemnification for the property expropriated...
...According to sources in Guatemala his next destination was to be El Salvador...
...It is recognized.by State at least, that he has a valid claim, and the Nicaraguan government will be pressed to pay up...
...Indeed he came close to never leaving at all as some of the muchachos had him slated for summary trial and probable execution in the days before Managua asserted full control over the provinces...
...Schulze, a conservative Republican from Pennsylvania, had just read from a letter from a constituent whom he described as an Episcopalian bishop...
...I was and am outraged," he wrote, "by the treatment accorded myself and my staff, but I am even more outraged that the government of the United States would now—in effect—reward the brutality and extortion of American property by now funneling large sums of money to assist these people...
...Does that make you tax exempt...
...Harkin went on to say that a check with church authorities disclosed that there is no Catholic bishop nor Catholic priest by that name, nor any diocese of Middleburg...
...But the question still remained, who was that mitred man...
...All attempts to get Bishop Lang's own responses to such have been repeatedly thwarted by his unanswered telephone...
...Well, he didn't exactly explain...
...Derek Lang, who signs his name with a cross and lists his title as Bishop of Middleburg, had written 25 April 1980: 229 the congressman of the nasty treatment he had suffered at the hands of the Sandinistas...
...The final vote authorizing aid was frighteningly close (202-197) and while it's unlikely that Lang was a factor, his letter to the Nicaraguan ambassador, the letter Harkin had, did ' cause some real consternation at the embassy since the Catholic bishops of the United States had outdone even their Nicaraguan counterparts in pressing very strongly for the aid package...
...Harkin questioned whether such a person was a bishop of any denomination, but left off when Schulze offered to suspend the already delayed discussion and voting till Lang could be produced...
...I am not putting myself in his mind but I presume he may be saying a member of the Christian church...
...According to some, however, he was once a lay brother or student at an Episcopal monastery who decided the quickest way to become a bishop was to invest in a zucchetto and pectoral cross...
...there were * 'pressures'' but he thanked everybody for all the help he had received in his now-aborted attempt to set up the Hospital of Our Lady of Mercy...
...According to this priest, NEXT ISSUE: Spring books, Gregory Baum on Peter L. Berger, an interview with Mary Gordon...
...Christopher is apparently just playing at it, and there's no law against dressing up funny...
...Curiously, my informant who said he was one of Lang's consecrators, assured me repeatedly that Lang was a decent and honorable man who wouldn't do anything dishonest, although I had asked no more than whether he knew the man...
...Maybe he would except the quarter million that came from Somoza...
...And that's exactly what he's trying to get...
...And indeed, according to the pastor of one of the Old Roman Catholic Church parishes in Chicago, Derek Lang is one of theirs...
...Hearing Derek Lang's name, the gentleman from Iowa, Tom Harkin, rose to ask the gentleman to yield.' 'I have in my hands," he said, a letter from the same D. Lang, full of menacing portent, but in which he identified himself as a Catholic bishop...
...Having established that he wasn't "one of ours," I checked with the Episcopal Church Center in New York which couldn't find him on any of its lists, which left (excluding outright fraud) any one of the several Old Catholic sects...
...Your standard church sources can't provide much information about this bishop either, since the "Holy Order of the Holy Cross, Ecumenical Catholic Congregation" is evidently confined to the well-groomed personage of John Augustine Christopher and his priest (singular...
...Lang may really be a bishop...
...House of Representatives, while serious debate on aid to Nicaragua was raging...
...Somehow the bishop's tale bears a marked resemblance to the story of another fleeting figure in episcopal garb, the strange John Augustine Christopher, Archbishop (not just bishop) of the Ecumenical Order of the Holy Cross...
Vol. 107 • April 1980 • No. 8
