The process and the product:
Hehir, J Bryan
The process the product J. Bryan Hehir THE PROCESS IS more important than the product. Several com-mentators have made this state-ment about the American bishops' forthcoming pastoral letter on...
...J. BRYAN J. BRYAN...
...On the same day, The Center for Renewal, another new voice, held a press conference in Wash-ington featuring Mrs...
...The process has been underway for two years now, and it may be useful to look at some of its dimensions and to test the evaluation cited above...
...For this reason it is in the best sense a moral document...
...Henry Hyde, and others taking issue with most of the positions in the draft pastoral...
...Even the draft of the pastoral has provoked organized programs...
...Both of these events could be used as models in other places...
...Perhaps the best symbol of the widespread "secular" interest in the pastoral was the coverage by the media...
...A third aspect of the process - perhaps its most important - is the dialogue taking place in dioceses and parishes...
...it should be enriched by their own specific views on how the pol-icy debate should move in the years ahead...
...Those who emphasize the value of the process are correct on two counts...
...One aspect on the process is the gen-eral public interest shown toward the draft of the pastoral...
...For some years now the Catholic Peace Fellowship and Pax Christi have been catalysts within the church on the peace ministry...
...It also includes in-tense interest in Western Europe on be-half of church leaders, government of-ficials, and the general public...
...One commentator wrote: "The Catholic bishops' logic and passion have taken them to the very foundation of American security pol-icy...
...At a more scholarly level, Theological Studies has had three major articles this fall on the pastoral and the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars promises several articles in its next issue...
...A second aspect of the process is the emergence within the church of organi-zations of Catholics focused on the war-peace issue and the role the church should play in it...
...First, if the letter does not engage the wider ecclesial and public audiences, it will not be effective...
...It is a statement and a chal-lenge for which all Americans should be grateful...
...Phyllis Schlafly, Rep...
...One exception to this pattern was a series of first-rate scholarly studies, principally by Protestant authors, on the history of just-war and pacifist posi-tions...
...For the wider public debate should not only be stimu-lated by them...
...What the bishops have begun - a pastoral statement - must be brought to completion...
...To have moved the debate to that level is an accomplishment...
...It is correctly focused in the Catholic community, but it reaches be-yond it...
...Cardinal Medeiros hosted a meeting of the academic and scientific communities with representatives from parishes in Boston...
...The significant char-acteristic was not the large press corps present at the meeting, but the way they viewed the pastoral letter as setting a framework for tlje public debate...
...At the same time, all is not process...
...Several com-mentators have made this state-ment about the American bishops' forthcoming pastoral letter on war and peace...
...A fourth aspect of the process is the spurt of writing by theologians, social scientists, and other commentators generated by the pastoral...
...today other independent Catholic groups are forming with a perspective quite dis-tinct from their two predecessors...
...It is difficult at this time to measure the impact this organized competition of ideas will have in the church, but it has clearly been gener-ated by the process of the pastoral let-ter...
...The "process" is indeed part of the "prod-uct" of the pastoral...
...There is no doubt that a fruitful proc-ess - broad in its scope, diverse in its orientation, and serious in its tenor - is under way...
...At the meeting of the bishops in Washington last month, all of these various publics were represented...
...The range of inter-est is striking: it runs from the highest public officials of the nation to local parish communities...
...Archbishop Hickey gathered 1400 people in early September for a day of wide-ranging discussion in prep-aration for holding similar sessions in parishes...
...Second, the letter raises questions the bishops cannot an-swer on their own...
...The signifi-cance of this writing needs to be asses-sed in light of the dearth of commentary on the nuclear issue in theological writ-ing in the last fifteen years...
...A substan-tial debate existed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but was discontinued dur-ing the Vietnam conflict and has reemerged only in the last four years...
...The archdioceses of Boston and Washing-ton have both had successful experi-ments...
...Today serious articles are found regularly in America, Commonweal, This World, The New Catholic World, and other religious journals of opinion...
...An editorial in the Boston Globe said: "The bishops are now publicly voicing doubts about an issue literally crucial to the future of mankind...
...to 'seek to resolve the debate alone at that level would be futile and presumptuous...
...The American Catholic Committee, a lay organization, held a day-long sym-posium on war in the nuclear age, and had its proceedings published in time to distribute to the bishops on the first day of their meeting...
...The assessment holds that the process of debate generated in the church, and by extension in American society, will have greater long-term significance than the final version of the letter itself...
Vol. 109 • December 1982 • No. 22
