Special supplement: A Call to Action
Ellis, David J. O'Brien, John Dearden, Francis J. Butler, Dolores L. Curran, James Finn, Dennis P. M
COMMONWEAL SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT remember only two things about the American Bicen- `1APtennial celebration in...
...Dire predictions surfaced: "If we accept the divorced, it will do away with the sacrament of marriage," and "Once we begin to minister to the divorced, we'll have a rush of Catholics to the divorce courts...
...sion among Catholics...
...But marginal people...
...Still, were chosen from those in situations of social need (the poor, giving Call to Action a passing or failing grade is not the point...
...The first deliberative assembly of American Catholics...
...Our chairman, Cardinal Dearden, ended up in the tion, use of church investments for third-world justice...
...tion of free-flowing consultation and fact-finding...
...Second, if the program were to gain and listening could change hearts and minds...
...Call to Action discussion guide, according to Greeley, were On the one hand, Cali to Action emphasized the respon- indicative of the incompetence and the wrongheadedly consibility of all the baptized and fostered an unusual kind of frontational style of those captivated by "the Berrigan experidirect dialogue between bishops and laity...
...With the close of the conference I looked forward to the Work: Delegates advocated a national commission on peace that I thought would follow...
...For a as one of the wisest citizens of the Republic...
...the American Bicentennial...
...was the ivas a rnemher of the History Subcommittee of the Catholic trouble faintly comparable to the current malaise in the bishops' Ad Hoc Committee for the Bicentennial, and depth and extent of the disarray that set in about 1966...
...he underlined the tion's strengths and weaknesses to draw lessons for today's powerful impact those hearings had made on the bishops who (and tomorrow's) church...
...Convened by the bishops, with was chaired by Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of Cincinnati...
...had the experience...
...At the same time, it is the questions which divide us to articulate their hopes and tempting to interpret the concern with internal church issues as anxieties about the church today...
...underlying suspicion persisted that the immense effort we I recall the Detroit newspapers quoting Cardinal Krol's quip were putting into Call to Action would come to naught...
...strous proportions...
...naming their dioceses, together they toasted their church...
...699: Commonweal Supplement: 3 society and the presence of grace among its people...
...JAMES FINN happened because a small group of activist pacifists wanted (James Finn is lire editor of Freedom at Issue...
...There the delegates would di- their concerns to Bernardin and Rausch...
...8: Supplement Commonweal: 704 IF THE BISHOPS MEANT DOLORES L. CURRAN WHAT THEY SAID IN hen I was reminded that this was the Some memories stand out...
...In other dioceses, however, there faced, but two - hope and skepticism - predominated was much more freedom, and votes were usually split on throughout the whole process...
...Noting that the Call to Action JOHN CARDINAL DEARDEN symbol was a flame of liberty, Alice Gallin compares the whole experience to one of those industrial chimneys that FRANCIS J. BUTLER belch forth a flame, then swallow it again, only to let it blaze DOLORES L. CURRAN forth in a new form some while later...
...This gave conservative Catholics, worried about the church's increasing involvement in social issues, powerful support in resisting the program from the start...
...These bishops looked at their delegates during every we received background and instructions...
...Even if those lost stricted terms for their debate over matters of public policy, the notepads did materialize from my unfiling system...
...They condemned all arms sales abroad and "the- of history, the bishops' bicentennial project will be seen to production, possession, proliferation, and threatened use have been a very significant moment indeed in the history of of nuclear weapons...
...Was there a veterans...
...I am inevitably sorry that I let them talk me into the ride - but I know I'll savor life more when the trip is over...
...bishop of Phoenix (now the archbishop of Miami...
...George Higgins of expressing it...
...We find over 12,000 local chapters of Diresults from the Call to Action...
...Individuals or organizations prominence of internal church issues at Detroit was not simply interested in distributing them should call Commonweal at a reflection of the delegates' backgrounds...
...This would be a Call to Reflection...
...201 Amidei, Nancy 'Practical politics' 5 A second coming 262 'Get beyond labels' 37 Earnings & learning 395 A needless shortage 101 Leviathan at large 456 Welfare in Minnesota 261 Vocations to the laity 520 A growing hemorrhage 390 Running the republic 583 Magic from below 517 Outlawing tongues 648 Baker, Andrew Response to 'The Vatican, Cerquone, Joseph Vietnam's American children 239 Israel, & holy Zion' 528 Chapin...
...There were times I questioned the amount of time In spite of Andrew Greeley's assessment that those involved I gave - four working trips of two or three days each, writing were kooks, the kooks have made a difference in how our and research projects which consumed other professional writchurch regards and works with families...
...Along was and remains an experience of church, an exciting moment the way, the USCC bicentennial staff also disappeared...
...at the latter, people had When the bishops did meet in Chicago in May 1977, Ber- to listen to one another, acknowledge their own shortcomings, nardin warned of the dangers of "polarization and fac- and admit that they could do more working together than they tionalism" arising from A Call to Action...
...who were not there for their problems...
...which appeared in the Incompatible National Catholic Reporter of February 7, 1975, did not go as far as Varacalli later went in identifying the architects of Call views of church...
...I took a left the indissolubility of marriage but asked for pastoral un- hook from one of these nasty people when I naively suggested derstanding for divorced and remarried Catholics and after they had been thrown out of Cobo Hall that perhaps they dialogue on their readmission to the sacraments...
...Greeley was probably right about the essays he singled hand, the Detroit conference produced a great many reso- out for attack in the discussion, although his rhetorical excess lutions essentially asking for action roan the bishops...
...Quite these proposals by representatives in Detroit could ever a different modus operandi from that of days past...
...Vocation cer- rector...
...You'll be perfect for this job," And if the witnesses were not entertaining enough, we had said Rausch...
...Lawler An explosion of is not alone among neoconservatives in wielding considerable rhetorical skill to persuade us of this thesis...
...castrating witches, would-be messiahs, sickies, and other as- Realistically they had concluded that the Detroit assembly sorted malcontents...
...If there is one misery greater than another, it is diviwere doomed to encounter a formidable obstacle...
...Each could never be caught a second time...
...The other was A Call to Action, the bishops' bicentennial program...
...The consultants indicated that over 800,000 people had participated...
...If the instincts, whatever they are worth, tell me that u scientific process is in danger as any such process always will tend to cross section might have produced even stronger dissent...
...clique, no matter how noble their motives, to impose their will Yes...
...A decade's time, as Sister Alice Gallin pointed out at the life, liberty, and justice for all simply will not be separated symposium and Sally Cunneen of Cross Currents seconded, from the questions of how the community of Jesus' disciples has only increased the skepticism many women feel toward treats each individual gathered around the table...
...It was the den delivered the only major address of the conference...
...Perhaps a the church's leadership may enjoy the greatest consensus and new set of such hearings would allow Catholics on all sides of face the fewest theological impasses...
...In the ten years that have passed us, of course let them he duty dealt with-but, in since the Call to Action congress, the single most serious cases where treason is not suspected...
...This general rule was never translating it into a moral position on questions of public better illustrated than in the months which folsignificance...
...will, great faith, compassion, and commitment...
...Jane Wolford Hughes, failures, the moments when individuals or institutions strive to who, worked closely with Cardinal Dearden and headed the stretch beyond themselves with results that are bittersweet steering committee for diocesan coordinators, reported on the mixtures of achievement and disappointment...
...But the basic process and fundamental calmer reflection of today's society we can see the entire value of listening to the people would be safeguarded...
...The Detroit meeting was a bittersweet experience for many of us...
...lated or swayed by emotional arguments...
...a bia strong statement they thought would inevitably become rnrmtlrly publication of Freedom house...
...wrote a healthy ecclesial life in the time ahead, a policy of the sentence that 1 have pondered many times, ''I know of 14: Supplement Commonweal: 710 Two-thirds of the delegates were church workers, leading to construct a "wish list" of all the church should be and do, critics to consider the meeting a reflection of "middle man- without making tough decisions about priorities...
...Again and again, tive conversation with the rest of the Catholic population...
...They only ran head-on against the attitudes and beliefs of a frequently worked in some organization and, not unnatu- significant minority of Catholics, but they failed to reprerally, wanted to inject those goals into the considerations of sent the vieys of many others in the Catholic community to the conference...
...it betrayed the concerns of ordinary Catholics in favor of the Joseph Varacalli's thesis is that Call to Action represented class interests of the new elite...
...But Call to Action...
...The answer to the criticism of Call to Action hardly a sufficient weapon to undermine the results...
...for many, the whole effort was soon half-forgotten...
...full assembly...
...Christmas/Social cards to aid Social Do you like to read...
...Mimi Improvisational notes 502 critics' choices 121 Davis, Robert Gorham Response to 'The Vatican...
...The third subcommittee, on the justice conference itself, A Call to Action was unique...
...the open-ended process of consultation, combined those who attended the Detroit conference was that 64 percent with the organizers' convictions that widely shared concerns of those who responded were employed by the church...
...In- time when my children were young and family needs were stead, we find ourselves ministering to a myriad of family many...
...The secular press gave almost began...
...however...
...J. Bryan Hehir, director implement the 1971 synod of bishops' statement on "Justice in of the USCC Division of International the World...
...COMMONWEAL SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT remember only two things about the American Bicen`1APtennial celebration in 1976," says John Carr, secretary for social concerns for the archdiocese of Washington, D.C...
...Bernardin, however, ap- young people, blacks, Hispanics, and whites...
...The pace quickened...
...the late Walter Lippmann, generally recognized human nature...
...JOHN TRACY ELLIS namely, the lay trustee troubles dating from about 1785 until (Msgr...
...Yet, with very few exceptions, the resolu- and lay people most active at the level of the diocese...
...the simple narratives of migrant workers telling of the bleak If we were beginning today, would we do it differently...
...Was the his intervention did undermine Call to Action even before the clash of ecclesiologies structured into a situation where newer style could fully emerge from the process of consultalaity ultimately had little real decision-making power and tion...
...ment in Democracy: The Challenge for American Catholicism, will They are not an emerging sensus fidelium deserving serious be published in January by Sheed and Ward...
...I confess that when I read the acrimonious editorials by In looking over the Call to Action resolutions, I notice that non-involved critics like Greeley, I felt devalued and foolish, much remains to be achieved, particularly the incorporation of wondering why I bothered to care enough to give my time...
...He surfaced in the 1890s...
...Any concluding conference could the media -- their emphasis on the sensational and their profit greatly by limiting the scope and range of the issues to passing over the substantial deposit of positive and signifi- be dealt with, by directing the focus to those judged of cant recommendations -- hurt the public estimate of the highest concern, Discussion should be less hurried and value of the process and its results...
...A committee of bishops was quickly formed and three It was an ambitious vision, but one the Dearden committee subcommittees appointed...
...And Msgr...
...Mary's Col- tonishing interrelationships...
...a pressure that had operin too short a time...
...That was suggested by some of the partici- acting under the spell of Daniel Berrigan and the pants in Commonweal's October symposium marking Washington-based Center for Concern...
...Marie Augusta Neale planning, witness, and action" for the church in the United suggested that these deal first with justice and be held in States...
...In the face of this extraordinary "revolutionary con- told Orestes Brov•nson: dition," resolutions...
...Would church...
...Given Those who discussed the church and personhood overwhelmthe institutional involvement of the delegates, their level of ingly rejected suggestions for reconsideration of church teacheducation, and their appointment by their bishops, one can ing and discipline...
...Note the proculminated in the Call to Action conference as one whole...
...and erly in just a few days...
...Before do these things...
...demonstrated both the persistence of injustice in American Controversy arose even before the program began...
...study...
...plaint of a farmer who lived on the land he and his parents That so much has been done through collaboration is a before him had tilled...
...There were no bishops pro-life efforts...
...As it turned out, the trucks their minority voice shaped the statement sent to the plenary session, a statement that was not in the mainstream Catholic r or better and worse, time has dimmed my tradition, hut, in fact, departed from it radically...
...6: Suppleme Commonweal: 702 ONE WHO RIDES THE FRANCIS J. BUTLER ROLLER COASTER cannot think of anyone less likely to coordinate a surrounding my house, I started worrying about how we would major national consultation on social policy than my- begin the bicentennial consultation...
...They analyzed Call to Acsubcommittee, over the regional hearings...
...One thing is certain: no further progress KEN\FfiH A. IikI[X;5 in that direction can be made unless we continue to risk (Kemwfh A. Hr igg.c...
...So we were cast in the role of observers...
...By the same token, those who traffic in Little wonder that the press seized on sex...
...Like the three-hour "dance of the circle" responded, imagining that this had something to do with performed by American Indians in the Twin Cities...
...worked with him...
...so we have no choice if we are to be a returning home, Archbishop Bernardin told reporters that "too community of both faith and freedom except to meet, much was attempted at the meeting" and "special interest debate, and make some decisions...
...revise the documents...
...our general secretary was shipped off to Phoenix...
...A complex and multi-faceted bicentennial teaching authority of national episcopal conferences...
...This "New Catholic carefully stage-managed exercise in manipulation...
...Yet six months later, in May 1977, came an NCCB committees, task forces, and educational programs to statement on Call to Action which in the main was positive...
...He asked me if bishop of a diocese and aren't sure how to get moving...
...The tough part is translating all that into that "the image of an event can easily displace action, translating it into a community of faith . . . the event itself...
...tion of the United States' bicentennial...
...The tone in the other six meetings was far only conclude that the influence of such groups depended more positive...
...country as well as Australia, Ireland, Canada, and England...
...But the bishops had no mechanism available ship with Rome and with its own local dioceses...
...Some of the early fervor is diminishing, as evi- people working together in our church, and I realize that in denced by dioceses that closed Family Life Offices when spite of the institutional politics and differing visions of church Renew came along...
...Braybrooke, Neville The wind & the rain 176 Israel...
...If you are going to talk opportunities for overcoming the malaise and divisiveness that about collegiality, you are going to have to pay the price...
...10: Chess Study, 1226 Haight Priesthood James DiGiacomo: Youth and the San Francisco, 94117...
...going to get it...
...Father Andrew Greeley attacked the discussion guide prepared by the committee as the work of a new breed of radical social activists bent on turning the church in the revolutionary direction associated with liberation theology...
...At Detroit the delegates tence as well as a degree of moderation...
...Its culminating conference, held in Detroit in October 1976, created sensational headlines and provoked heated responses, both pro and con...
...It has-and it has not-according to passed at Detroit had been enacted...
...There were, of course, hundreds of other critical com- church renewal, a bureaucratic elite is seeking to assert an mentaries, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Cobo unprecedented hegemony over episcopal decision-making in Hall conference, when the specific resolutions as well as the matters of doctrine and discipline...
...Roger The dark side of the boom 437 Save the tiger 324 Cort, John C Christians & the class struggle 400 Nursery screams 392 Raised voices in Nicaragua 623 Summer breakdown 453 Costello, Jan R Exploiting grief 327 A fan inflamed 612 Coulthard, Leslie Jean Enter the wolves: a poem 658 Bernardin, Joseph L Gay rights/gay plight: Cox, Harvey Surviving with style 550 a response 682 Curran, Charles E On dissent in the church 461 Bcrnaucr, James The sound of silence 17 Curran Dolores L If the bishops meant Bishop, Jordan Forgotten partner 293 what they said 705 Borowitz, Eugene B Religious Book Week D'Apontc...
...Marilyn P Visiting my children: Campbell, Debra Lost innovation 334 a poem 535 Cargas, Harry James Messenger for the ten thousandth 555 Douglass...
...697: Commonweal Supplement: 1 A NEW WAY OF DOING THE DAVID J. O'BRIEN WORK OF THE CHURCH 0 n October 21, 1976, some 2500 Catholic chaired by Boston's Humberto Cardinal Medeiros...
...wide participation in the process, saying American Catholics Some, like Memphis, Hartford, and Los Angeles, held diocewould not accept a plan imposed on them from the top down...
...future hearings in the hands of local committees, and to insist In March 1974 when the committee met on domestic issues, that time be made available for testimony from anyone who the problems of participation and credibility once again domi- requested to appear...
...or, rather, if what Cardinal Dearden termed the nobody, and I've heard of nobody, who has come anywhere both of the previous instances no more than a minority of near to understanding fully and practically this revolution- Catholics was involved...
...Call to Action was originally addressed broad form of consultation was incorporated into the drafting primarily to the former...
...called again and again forabroader participation in framing No thoughtful and discerning Catholic is today happy policy and in executing action in all that pertained to the with the present condition of the American church...
...ISCU...
...Yet Call to Action had accomplished two things that would have a crucial impact on the church in the years that followed...
...Without controversy there can be no York Times, is em author and cvolwUnist...
...703: Commonweal Supplement: 7 we suspect that this was actually a form of retribution for past injustice to Indians on the part of the church...
...Isn't the' recent effort of neocon- speaking up about sex, in the broadest sense, and having servative intellectuals to discredit the bishops' pastoral letter their attitudes somehow ratified by a sort of quasi-official on the economy itself the most dramatic instance of an en- national convention...
...Later that night his conference to order on Thursday, Oc- party dined at the same restaurant as a group which included tober 21, 1976, 1351 delegates sat the sister...
...But if Call to Action deserves to be remembered, it also JAMES FINN deserves to be reevaluated...
...Much about Call to Action was paradoxical...
...intricate process for developing materials and training leaderThe Call to Action was one such brave effort, and it had that ship so that Catholics at the parish and diocesan level could kind of bittersweet outcome...
...From Ted Hesburgh to Nia Ica Umba, from Bayard burning with excitement and madly puffing away on his Kents...
...The cardinal sent her table a bottle of wine and under placards...
...As one should be heard at Detroit, had insured that there would be too commentator noted, the assembly was representative of the many issues to be fully analyzed in ways suitable to experts church's "middle management" and of those priests, sisters, and bureaucrats...
...DisI'd like to direct a new campaign to stir up interest in a cernment, my friend...
...We are all too work in South Africa and Latin America, recalled her hope that apt to forget the episodes that fall in the American church might move beyond the paralysis which between, which are, after all, most of had frequently marked its response to the challenges of social life: the modest successes, the brave movements in the sixties and seventies...
...way the conference was conducted drew fire from various The charge here is a subtle one...
...I mean that as a compliment...
...Almost all who heard Action regional meetings and worked full-time preparing the back- him that day knew what he meant by the time the conference ground documents for the Detroit conference...
...We had never lic Social Teaching and the U.S...
...Saturday morning the delegates were back in their seats for a On such controversial issues as birth control, clerical celibacy, full day of lively debate, which lasted until 5 P.M...
...Each of these would then many bishops as responsible for the event, and those who were subdivide into smaller sections around each of the three or four not happy let him know it...
...What were its weaknesses...
...One need only review the series of articles appearing under the title "USCC Watch" by Philip Lawler (a one-time Heritage Foundation employee who headed an effort to establish a rival "American Catholic conference" and has recently been hired by Cardinal Law as editor of the archdiocesan Boston Pilot) or read Lawler's pamphlet, How Bishops Decide: An American Catholic Case Study, published earlier this year by Ernest Lefever's Ethics and Public Policy Center...
...along with a minority of delegates from iiational organizaThere could be little doubt that the agenda had been tions...
...Nationally, delegates uncertain character of the episcopal conference...
...The call to which we might well respond matters of war, peace, arms control, and arms sales...
...it encountered its greatest difficulties of recent pastoral letters...
...You don't eat lettuce or grapes do you...
...With three delegates in each category-a total of nine from One lesson is encouraging...
...Once nominations were sing dismay at the scope of the resolutions, the pace of debate, made, training sessions were arranged to familiarize partici- and the apparent influence of "interest groups" such as Digpants with the process to be used at what was now known as the nity and the Women's Ordination Conference...
...Contrasting the accomplishments of Vati- An ecclesiastical disappointment might have been a better way can 11 with those of some later synods, Msgr...
...resolution on disarmament...
...As the church looks forward to the 1987 synod on the laity, the experience of a decade past should be brought to mind...
...Delegates advo- of the World at 2:00 A.M...
...Another third minds...
...Asthan three times...
...with William Simon...
...Only the committee on personhood failed to reach consensus...
...Their public humiliaThe late Jim Young, who was suffering attacks from many tion brought tears to the eyes of many delegates...
...Is it possible for American Catholics to become a exciting explosion of untethered possibilities...
...consider disarmament, crime...
...Individuals came before the bishops to present often emphasis on the product - an organized agenda for institu- moving accounts of injustice in deeply personal terms...
...Index to Volume CXIII January 31, 1986 to December 26, 1986 Free-market espionage 6 Etiquette of ignorance 70 Articles and Poetry On naming the moon 135 Thucydides, et al...
...I instinctively think of these things in terms of Alas, there is too little of that spirit in Catholic ranks at the the American church's history...
...Economy which he, along seen anything quite like it and may never again...
...At the opening session in DAVID J. O'BRIEN teaches history at the College of the Holy Cross in Detroit, Cardinal Dearden had referred to the church as "a Worcester, Massachusetts...
...issue following Detroit headlined Bernardin's criticism rather Following Dearden's address, the work of the conference than the results of the meeting...
...It prepared bishops, priests, religious, and lay people-as- several liturgical booklets for use during the bicentennial, but sembled in Detroit for the final conference of was superseded by the decision to hold an International "A Call to Action...
...When they reassembled, the bishops approved heavily on the quality of their arguments and the justice of their a proposal to replace the weak Advisory Council's overseer causes...
...Those disposed to ignore the something of a coup within the church, by which the "New proposals recommended in the Call to Action process could do Catholic Knowledge Class" came to dominate the USCC so in good conscience, for the process was really only a staff, and through them the NCCB itself...
...The reality is that the proposals that pastoral letters...
...In May 1977, Bishop Rausch faced a number of to respond to a large reform agenda was distinctly limited...
...Worst of all, Dearden's still far from being ready to accept the degree of collaboration ad hoc committee which had been established to deal with the involved in the Call to Action, while the need for building bicentennial had gone out of existence the previous December...
...He participated extensively in the Call to community of faith and friendship...
...rather Call to Action was wrong because that remain alive ten years later...
...The bishops divided could do fighting each other...
...2: Supplement Commonweal: 698 In December 1973 that committee met with a group of consul- Nevertheless, almost half the nation's dioceses organized tants on international issues...
...In 1854, Newrnan lives...
...Four Humankind: Delegates wanted a peace and justice of- years later, as I was leaving the NCCB, I received a very fice in every diocese, plus education and support for beautiful letter from Cardinal Dearden, who said that he shared human rights, hunger relief, and international economic the confident belief that, when judged through the perspective justice...
...It made us reflect (John Cardinal Dearden, the archbishop oj'Detroit from on what it means to be a Catholic and how to live out that 1959-1980, headed the Call to Action program as chairman commitment responsibly in the United States today...
...while over 1000 observers sat on At five, Dearden closed the conference, telling the tired but bleachers at either end of Cobo Hall...
...It is Call to Action was little more than a wistful the moral passion animating this New Class critique that is memory, Joseph Varacalli subjected it to acute ideological most significant here...
...Sociologist Sister Marie Augusta Neal, who...
...tions had been carefully constructed, first by the writing com- As for the so-called disproportionate role played by interest mittees, and then, with surprisingly few changes, approved by groups at Detroit, the most effective of which was.the Hiswas a mature way to celebrate the bicentennial of our country...
...tion would turn on whether people were convinced that the It was the regional hearings, however, which brought the bishops would in fact act upon the advice they received...
...Close observers would see the strong influence of Call to Action in the way the DAVID J, O'BRIEN bishops set about writing their major pastoral letters on nuclear war and on the U.S...
...Catholic Conference's annual picnic...
...Nor has the church yet managed to preach a justice to the world that we do not practice ourwelcome the growing number of Hispanic Catholics into effec- selves," said Cardinal Dearden in Detroit...
...This is what we are groups advocating particular causes [had] dominated the contrying to do here...
...neoconservative Catholic intellectuals from defenders of the Press coverage of the event was given low marks by pastorals are profoundly ecclesiological...
...I have been in selected from the diocesan offices and agencies which would education a long time...
...chairs, remain untainted by the subver- In conducting an exhaustive study of justice in America, the bishops had exercised the American tradisive efforts of the "New Catholic Knowledge Class...
...Lance The faces of global competition 458 The longest mile 212 Copeland...
...Which deprives us of the wisdom and patience that come with a long-range perspective...
...When Commonweal sponsored a genuinely participate and have their views registered in the symposium last October, with the help of the Catholic Com- national program...
...But the problem which gave rise to the national found their local bishop confused...
...Useful, desirable, and possible propoThe mandate: The delegates, broken down into smaller sals were buried under the more extreme proposals...
...Spontaneously, paper tennis shoes sections, but in the committee on family we never really appeared on hundreds of lapels of males and females...
...This debates of Detroit were the best way to determine church committee eventually produced a plan of action which encourpolicy on complex matters, it was unfair to describe the groups aged further work on well established efforts at social action as self-interested and the delegates as people easily manipu- and parish renewal...
...Just as ing to Jennings, who now directs the Campaign for there is continuity linking the pastoral-letter process with Call Human Development, "It's completely unrealistic to ex- to Action, so is there continuity in the criticism...
...Pablo Sedillo of the USCC Secretariat for munication Campaign, to mark the tenth anniversary of Call to the Spanish Speaking noted the parallels between the Call to Action, about two-thirds of the participants had played sig- Action and Hispanic Catholics' experience with their national nificant roles in the events they were recalling...
...however well intended and reasoned...
...ous liturgy, followed by a reception...
...discredit the outcome...
...enterprise in perspective...
...Good enough, but no one can say they whom the bishops were necessarily and properly responrepresented the sentiments of the larger Catholic commu- sive...
...knew my way around Capitol Hill - a qualification, I re- Our hearings were all this and more...
...John What to do with a 'convergence' 50 Callahan, Sidney Abortion & the sexual agenda 232 de Vito...
...and other assorted malcontake a clear-cut and specific stand on socio-economic and tents," much may still be learned from his attempt to sketch an political questions...
...ference (USCC), a strong advocate of social justice and world Three years earlier, the National Conference of Catholic peace...
...Appointed by bishops or by national Catholic or- Fourth, delegates strongly interested in getting support for ganizations, over half the delegates were priests or women one particular "plant" were less likely to submit others' resoreligious, while the laity were people already known and lutions to exacting scrutiny...
...Friday night the delegates adjourned for a marvelmendations departed from the mainstream of Catholic life...
...structures of shared responsibility remains clear to all who care Dearden's personal support was unwavering, but he had no to look...
...Frankly...
...had to address their concerns for action to the bishops...
...with how difficult the road must be for American Catholicism The vision of a democratic church hovered over the place...
...After some skirmishing exhilarated delegates that they had made some good decisions about inadequate representation of Poles and Hispanics, Dear- and some with which he and others might disagree...
...Want to put that pastoral letter together...
...Diocesan delegations sat en tenth anniversary of the Call to Action, masse so we began to watch voting patterns...
...would tell only part of the story that remains vivid in my To his credit, Novak recognizes that the issues separating Memory...
...times...
...style of church leadership, the doubts are on the rise once The needs of the poor, the challenge of peace, the protection of more...
...Somehow or other, a basic unity must become centuries since the consecration in 1790 of John Carroll as once again a prime goal if the objectives of 1976 and the the first bishop of the United States, have Catholics of this more pressing issues of the ensuing decade are to be nation known what one might rightly term serious crises, realized...
...Staff work was coordinated by Bishop James were "beginning a new way of doing the work of the church in Rausch, general secretary of the United States Catholic ConAmerica...
...let us interpret problem for American Catholics, in my judgment, has each other's words in meliorem part cm, and aim at become the divisiveness which has steadily mounted in cultivating...
...he had rarely Dearden committee's draft message, wrote one of their own attended one at which they met together that some progress which emphasized the teaching authority of the bishops, and was not made...
...Bob Wonderly pulled me away from the xerox machine to tell Personhood: Delegates generally affirmed the bishops' me that I had better come quickly...
...dispirited by the lack of post-conference response...
...Finally, everyone recog- dinariate chatted with a member of Dignity...
...Free brochure...
...Material agreed and went further...
...Perhaps the time has come to repeat some part of the The outstanding lesson of the Call to Action, however, has experiment of 1976...
...The question is what can be learned from this experience...
...One was the tall ships in New York's harbor...
...to Action with the "New Catholic Knowledge Class...
...On the platform, Dearden and Apostolic Delegate Jean While the committees were writing these reports, the bicen- Jadot seemed to enjoy the sometimes emotional proceedings...
...This was indeed a church filled with people of good full-length, unpublished study of the Call to Action...
...At the plan of action which would assign the recommendations from "Liberty and Justice for All" hearings and in Cobo Hall, there the Detroit meeting to existing committees, and establish a were rich and middle class and some poor...
...The conference's resolutions represented but one more tawdry exhibDENNIS P. McCANN teaches business ethics and world civilizations at ition of the struggle for power, the circulation of elites, which DePaul University in Chicago...
...our Neighborhood...
...To avoid intimidation of delegates, members of At one point in a small group meeting he told his fellow the staff and the writing committees were barred from serving delegates with a smile: "You can vote for it, but you're not as delegates or participating in discussion...
...Most notable was Andrew of socially activist academics, government bureaucrats, and Greeley's polemic against the 1975 discussion media intellectuals that neoconservatives like Peter Berger, booklet, Liberty and Justice for All...
...Each recommendation would be considered and with grace as delegates voted on matters of church policy, up voted upon three times: in the small group assigned to that to then the exclusive concern of the hierarchy...
...A few days after the assassination of Robert frustration that only furthered parochial division...
...they "New Catholic Knowledge Class" maintains its hegemony...
...Write: Timothy McCarthy, DiDESIRE PRIESTHOOD...
...Note, too, the present seen as, a distillation of all that had gone before and as a series of consultations in preparation for the Synod on the vehicle for making concrete recommendations to ' the Laity, 1987, Note also the more mature style of these bishops' conference...
...Joan C The fetus & fundamental rights 203 Deschner...
...Both are true...
...For them it meeting...
...The bicentennial seemed to provide an excellent Justice and Peace...
...A Call to Looking back, l would maintain that the purpose and Action was, thus, almost doomed to be a disembodied goals of the Detroit conference were admirable, but that in voice, fading with the years...
...speak in behalf of issues at Detroit...
...Accord- sies surrounding the bishops' recent pastoral letters...
...First, the delegates: In spite with special interests...
...On the other ence...
...It handed over to a representative body of a more permanent was the most representative group of Catholics assembled nature...
...Now they "respond to the needs of our people," to "translate their had all listened and tried their best to respond to the needs they sincere commitment to liberty and justice into concrete pro- had heard...
...For Not only did these hearings model an open and listening one thing it had become more voluntary...
...I wonder whether the results of Call to Action would If the bishops really meant to listen to the people, we knew it have been significantly different if there had been secret ballotwould be exhilarating to be part of the process...
...Without consensus there can be no genuine community...
...A prisoner and a nized that a high degree of skepticism existed about the prison warden offered joint testimony about the suffering they bishops' intentions, and their willingness to act upon the witnessed every day...
...Rausch was seen by vide into eight working groups...
...facts about the church in the United States...
...rights of conscience on birth control...
...fullest possible participation should be pursued in the hope that its success in certain dioceses and parishes will ultiDecades of disarray: mately become the norm for others...
...A CALL TO FURTHER ACTION Special Trial Offer: 11 issues for $9 Please send the next 6 months of Commonweal to: books to choose from...
...financial accountability, local participation in selection of pastors and bishops, protection of free speech and Suddenly it was October 1976, and thousands of Catholics descended upon Detroit...
...No, I little floor shows...
...McO., 3819 E. 3rd St., Long Beach, Ward...
...As important the profoundly modernist strategy of stressing ideological as many of the other topics were, they reflected church critiques like the New Class Theory will always be vulnerable positions that had gained some currency...
...As then they would vote likewise...
...Call 1-800-633-2252...
...Given Kennedy...
...Congress is less representative let us all have the courage of our democratic aspirations and of rank-and-file Americans, and its members act much follow the advice of James Madison: expand the circle of less like their constituents than did the Call to Action participation so that it will be virtually impossible for any delegates...
...He told the bishops they should "reas- could only be composed of people named by the bishops, sert their control over what goes on in the church...
...In San organized around social "organisms" which he named as Antonio, Hispanic parents told of the hardships of their lives church, family, neighborhood, ethnicity and race, person- and the power of their faith...
...In Atlanta, after a day of hearings, the process, the committee agreed, would be gathered into a set of bishops traveled to Tidy Creek, Georgia, where they listened preliminary recommendations to be considered by the 1976 under a revival tent as dozens of mountain people spoke of conference, which would be as representative as possible...
...But Bishop James Rausch - improvisator ex- encyclicals, but I had never organized anything in my life traordinaire and General Secretary of the NCCB in the before - besides hearings...
...Michael Novak went furthest, insisting comed, and booklets containing a transcript of all the advice that the program should provide the Catholic people with the received were printed and made generally available...
...In a word, it has been a blessing in revolution struck' the Western world, the results of which some parishes...
...The follow-up: Given what was proposed by the conferand Bishop James Rausch's anger when he realized that the ence, there was little chance that the resolutions would be goal of the conference had not been realized: "We wanted enthusiastically received, even by bishops who were inito put the conference in the hands of the people, but instead tially sympathetic to the Call to Action - and no chance it's in the hands of the experts...
...None of us knows for sure how best to lowed the warm, enthusiastic meeting in Cobo Hall...
...The intervening decade has to be too large for the kind of plenary debate that might have seen the continued growth of local consultative bodies from refined and ranked proposals issuing from the detailed yet which a wider range of lay representatives could emerge...
...We found a response in the bishops' drafting committees' efforts couldn't even begin to ask the question...
...Which JOHN TRACY ELLIS forces us repeatedly to reinvent the wheel...
...called for sex education involv- microphones and a whole planeload of reporters who were ing parents, more sensitive pastoral care for "sexual . anxious to talk about what all this activity had to do with minorites" and victims of rape, and an openness of the Catholic sexual ethics...
...705: Commonweal Supplement: 9 The train leapt diluted...
...For three days they Eucharistic Congress under Krol's sponsorship...
...COMMONWEAL, 15 D ,utch St., New York, N. Y. 10038 Commonweal: 712 trust that internal church issues will be resolved in the process...
...Remarka- mendations considered for seven to ten hours in the small bly, seven of the eight committees achieved unanimity, raising groups, and for another six to eight hours in the section serious questions about later charges that the recom- meetings...
...My is not less open-ended consultation but more of it...
...that charity...
...You'll be our new director for the bicentennial...
...was a telling criticism of the organizers but public dialogue...
...than with their excess...
...Alice Gallin, Urtrait were organized in eight areas: suline professor turned activist...
...640, six times...
...the other hand, what Cardinal Dearden candidly described in Third, the delegates voted without the constraints of real 1976 as the widespread doubts of many Catholics about "the responsibility...
...We are trying to begin a new way of ference as a whole...
...Even the issue of expenses as a more representative laity would have...
...not the "ordinary" Catholic that of efforts to reach out to the non-'"professional" Catholic, Bishop Rausch and others had in mind...
...called for extensive programs of family ministry, family- One of the best surprises about the Detroit conference was centered worship and training, and opposition to eco- the press...
...The procedure would involve grass-roots par- parents worried about the education of their children...
...who asked for ministry to homosexuals...
...we discovered in the every-other-month series of three-day Days later I was back in Rausch's office...
...RATES: 750 a word, one time...
...Jim leaned over to me and said gently, "They forget about the woman at the well, don't they...
...facilitators were being trained by Sr...
...Established thought they had begun a process of continuing consultation after Vatican II, the NCCB was still unclear about its relationand cooperation...
...Tempers were now short even among unionization, social justice teaching in Catholic educa- friends...
...What happened DENNIS P. McCANN at Detroit, and why was the momentum of the program lost...
...At the former, the group tended to blame those rejected out of hand many of the more controversial proposals...
...Parishes, and diocesan agencies should staff was virtually shut down save for a paper exercise that support community organizations and reach out to the would make any bureaucrat proud squeezing the results of alienated...
...680, three CA 90814...
...They urged a variety of tion...
...position from which to influence the USCC bureaucracy un- Finally, however, A Call to Action had one undeniable and less he could persuade the bishops to take action at their May enduring legacy for those who participated in it...
...capture the intensity of feeling - the joy and pride, the pain A great deal has been written and said about the bishops' and anguish, the hope and trust - that was sensed at the conference response to Call to Action...
...But when they returned home, they often ence...
...It was easy allayed...
...Later, after who directed Varacalli's study, are fond of denouncing...
...We cannot official consultations...
...In Minneapolis, there was teshood, nationhood, and humankind (later work was added to timony from small farmers, American Indians, and Catholic these topics...
...cated affirmative action and respect for cultural pluralism And there was Breakthrough...
...Why, yes, I declared...
...707: Commonweal Supplement: 11 Andrew Greeley's contribution-an essay on "Catholic Social Activism: Real or Rad/Chic...
...By now the The hearings demonstrated the power of the church as movement of the committee was clearly away from Hehir's forum...
...And no summary or discussion of they call people to reflect upon and study these issues...
...The conference climaxed a two-year program of tions, and sponsored publications on American Catholic hisconsultation among American Catholics organized in celebra- tory in the Catholic press, and later in book form...
...Commiswomen working outside the home was, at that time, a hotly debated moral issue...
...There is a good argument to be "experts," so important for the pastorals, that is remembered made for directing the church's justice efforts toward society at from 1976, but the testimony of the joys and hopes, griefs and large: that is where the need appears most crying, that is where anxieties of ordinary people trying to live their faith...
...New, used Burlington, VT 05401, June 21-26, 1987...
...They insisted that popular participa- of some kind came back from over 100 dioceses...
...the execution, the train left the tracks...
...Yes, I had read the papal self...
...He was executive director of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee for the Bicentennial...
...monthly in advance for more Theology Workshop Chess, Stonehenge, Metaphysics...
...family concerns into social actions and public policy...
...He said something to the I find it interesting that those same two feelings predominate effect that a bunch of women in tennis shoes weren't going to in me ten years later...
...that they would be received at all by otherbishops...
...In attended the Sacramento Call to Action hearings...
...Yet even the best recent Catholic histories mention the Call to Action only in passing, if at all...
...No longer is family life relegated from an insider's perspective...
...It's a little like having eighties...
...I remember walking to my Ethnicity and race: The church should live up to its own hotel after the first evening with $25,000 in the Murder Capital teachings on racial and ethnic equality...
...lay people, pointed a task force dominated by powerful conservative sisters, brothers, and priests...
...even newer style of Catholic social activism reconciling the Participants in the symposium differed in offering ex- passion of the "new breed" with the political savvy of the planations for these apparent discrepancies...
...Promote enDutch St., NYC 10038...
...gathered around each resolution, spending the rest of the day The results of these "consultations" were turned over to and well into Thursday night in intense discussion...
...In some groups, I was surprised at the memories and the delegates would wait to observe how their bishop voted, emotions that event triggered in me...
...anguish of rootlessness...
...By controlling the presence as a reporter in Cobo Hall during those .scintillatflow of information to the bishops and thus setting the re- ing Call to Action days in Detroit...
...John Unrehearsed and unforgettable 701 Briggs, Kenneth A An explosion of possibilities 709 de Cormier-Shekerjian...
...It was astounding...
...The second prayed, worshiped, and debated a host of sub- dealt with history and was chaired by Edward A. McCarthy, jects ranging from religious vocations to nuclear disarmament...
...The available for distribution in bulk...
...on the equality for women issue...
...recent years...
...It was one of esses, like the one aspired to in Call to Action, will always be those rare moments in which an institution like the church open to the charge of elitist manipulation by anyone'hoping to gets out of control...
...Before that meeting he became seriously ill...
...full employment, housing...
...One night early on, when my anxiety level was high and I had been awakened by a bad dream of busloads of monsignors FRANCIS J. BUTLER is president of FADICA (Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities,lnc...
...Listen," he said, suspecting that I was going to turn down this offer, too, "you are only going to get a chance like this every two hundred years...
...minorities, etc...
...debates and voting...
...Wilfrid Harrington...
...Bicentennial...
...Over 400 beautiful Faculty: Elizabeth Achtemeier, Paul Service Projects...
...By 1977 the momentum of the Call to Action program appeared to be broken...
...Commonweal wishes to thank the Catholic Communication Campaign which provides essential funding for the sym posium held in October and for this special supplement...
...this result should be no surprise...
...These dioceses seem to have viewed ministry, the Spirit has a way of generating change through family life ministry more as a fad than a commitment...
...But onfusion Greeley did attempt to drive a wedge between old-style CathoDid Call to Action suffer from a c of ecclcsiologies --- a mix of incompatible understandings lic activists like Msgr...
...709: Commonweal Supplement: 13 RECALLING CALL TO ACTION: THE EDITORS LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE IV e remember glorious triumphs...
...So Call to Action was not an exercise in closet collegiality...
...First, the massive results of two years of The shortcomings of Detroit should be neither glossed over regional hearings, parish discussions, and other consultations nor exaggerated...
...On more narrowly focused committee discussions...
...On the floor, in contrast, other recommendations contained in the reports from the writing bishops, including Cardinal Krol, shared in the proceedings committees...
...In two delegations seated near a member of the Writing Committee on us, every vote on every issue was unanimous until the bishops Family, I recall the electric atmosphere of the first gathering of left momentarily...
...Marand just compensation for church employees, national garet Cafferty, convent school marm turned community orstandards of due process for grievances and annulments, ganizer...
...Today most dioceses have Family Life Offices dediCivil Service employees in D.C...
...believed that our episcopal leaders would act on issues like I remember, too, the distinctly unpleasant and un-Christian divorce, remarriage, birth control, the myriad of other issues attacks made by the Wanderer bunch on Dignity members requested by the laity in the consultation process...
...As members of the writing committee, we were not allowed to...
...I dare say the press was not alone in trenched New Class conspiring to maintain its passing seeing as extraordinary this expression of national charhegemony in public-policy debate...
...and a final third were chosen by parishes...
...Since the bishops are presumably incompetent in the matters on which they have been making moral judgments, they are 12:--S upplement Commonweal: 708 forced to rely on USCC staffers who, of course, are conspiring to promote the leftist liberal agenda of the New Class...
...As for the 1976 conference, he hoped it The idea of the Call to Action conference was spawned by could be an event comparable to that which had taken place at the Advisory Council of the United States Catholic Confer- Medellin, Colombia, in 1968, when the bishops of Latin ence, a little known body composed of priests, religious, and America had set new goals aimed at closer identification with lay people appointed by the bishops...
...Delegates gathered in the topic groups to question the exclusive attention to resolutions on birth control, homosexuwriting committees and clarify their task...
...You've read Rerum Novarum and Pacem in Terris, haven't you...
...E.B Something in you: a poem 25 Readers discuss the abortion issue 338 Donnelly...
...In addition, written testimony was welnated the discussion...
...Peter L. Gerety, recently retired archbishop of Newark, had The symposium's participants did not gather just to represided, as chairman of the bishops' bicentennial conference member and celebrate, however...
...Regina Realities: Brown, Frank Burch Critics' Christmas choices 661 homage to Chagall: a poem 347 Burris, Keith C Mainstream currents 354 Deen...
...while in others the attempt has ended in a are still with us...
...I told Peter Gerety spent much of 1975 outside of the archdiocese of the bishop I was flattered by his confidence in me, especially Newark...
...the church learns that liberty and justice begin at home...
...We re- Action and the 1971 episcopal synod's Justice in the World at member tragic defeats...
...Write: Sister Miriam R.P...
...letters on racism, cultural diversity, Hispanic conThe later surveys of delegates indicated that most arrived cerns, nuclear weapons, and economic justice, incorskeptical and left convinced that they had experienced the porating stances taken by the Call to Action conferchurch in its fullness...
...It has reinforced the bishops' conviction about the value and necessity of consulLooking back, I see the entire program that tation with the entire Christian community...
...NEW FACE ON AN DENNIS P. McCANN OLD CRITICISM Call to Action received strenuous criticism from Knowledge Class" is a Catholic counterpart of the New Class the beginning...
...to have broad support, it would have to arise out The hearings also demonstrated that the process of speaking of popular participation...
...They would like to join us for Mass...
...I have rarely seen people change their eventually be responsible for implementation...
...John Carr may remember it, but how many others...
...economy...
...From Certainly, the process of hearings and grass roots involvethe beginning it was evident that the distorted judgment of ment would be retained...
...nature of the assembly reduced the pressure to negotiate differAt Detroit, it was conceded, too many tried to do too much ences and hammer out compromises...
...Smaller groups then ality, clerical celibacy, and women's ordination, all but ignor4: Supplement Commonweal: 700 ing recommendations on racism, neighborhood development, the delegates...
...The results of this consultative to the Catholic church...
...Friday eight writing committees chaired by bishops...
...It cess involved in the drafting of the major pastorals on war is true that the Detroit conference was planned to be, and is and peace and the economic order...
...It did have value...
...Crank up a listening process...
...Carlin...
...A similar effort in the 1980s each participating diocese-plus representatives of national would probably not end up relying so heavily on participants Catholic organizations-the Detroit conference was destined directly working for the church...
...Yes, that's right, hearings are educaConstitutional amendment banning abortion...
...It was the personalized testimony of advice they would receive iri response to their invitation to ordinary people which put flesh on the themes of theology, and speak up...
...Medellin, Hehir claimed, had been "a watershed in feasibility of a national pastoral council for the United States, the development of the church's life between quite different but after extended consultation, concluded that such a council _ understandings of the church's nature and mission...
...The result was...
...But Catholics to having the tables turned...
...If we have traitors among What of the time ahead...
...There was now a ten-member panel of graduate students reading truckloads of parish discushe Call to Action resolutions voted in Desion reports under the watchful eye of Sr...
...distinctive competence of the laity, presumably laity who, like Granting that, there was good reason for the response of the members of the self-appointed Lay Commission on Catho- myself and many of my press colleagues...
...I can't speak for the participants in other push the church around...
...We should not wait another two hundred years-or demand...
...Was Call to Action worth the time and emotion we invested...
...Wide as the willingness of the clergy and laity to yield to each other the representation was at that gathering, it could not be said in a truly participatory way...
...His most recent work, New Experi...
...On the opening evening, nomic and cultural forces threatening family life...
...hospital...
...genuine consensus...
...The most striking fact gathered from a questionnaire of crowded...
...Despite the tone in which it was delivered, Greeley's criticism in hindsight turns out to have been constructive...
...consideration on the part of established authority...
...It showed us an JOHN CARDINAL DEARDEN eager, awakened, and concerned church...
...No community, religious or disturbed many Catholics, the societal revolution that broke otherwise, can prosper in such a divisive state, allowing later in the decade deepened their perplexity and contrib- ale+ays for the altogether justified differences of opinion uted significantly to the imbalance they still feel in their that normally obtain among large groups...
...theological discussion, support for Catholic schools, elimination of sexist language, the possibility of a married As well organized as we were, some things we just didn't clergy, acceptance of laicized priests in non-sacramental anticipate...
...when the last and homosexuality, its recommendations were shrouded in and most difficult report on personhood was given final apambiguous language of "concern" and "the need for further proval...
...I recall sitting with Jim Young as Marriage Encounter couples, clergy, and bishops spoke heatedly against ministry to the divorced...
...Call to Action was flawed...
...COMMONWEAL, 15 23rd Theology Workshop, St...
...A Out of that ad hoc commission came the 1979 Pastoral Plan nine-year-old professional organization, National Association 10: Supplement Commonweal: 706 of Catholic Diocesan Family Life Ministers, deals with gov- being felt, particularly in the area of helping families recognize ernment policy which affects families and offers resources to their strength, goodness, gifts, and ministry to others...
...the majority of its delegates appointed by them, participants Its leadership later passed to Archbishop Peter Gerety of had reason to believe, as John Cardinal Dearden of Detroit told Newark when Bernardin became NCCB president in them at the opening session in Detroit's Cobo Hall, that they November 1974...
...Jim The quagmire of dependency 430 Banki, Judith Response to 'The Vatican Christiansen, Drew Religious Book Week Israel, & holy Zion' 530 critics' choices 122 Barlow, Janet Scott Political immersion 392 Coleman, Mary Ann Photographs...
...women and promised five-year plan of action...
...agement...
...Call to Action's regional hearings were to do with the relationship between justice in society and almost unanimously recognized as a success, and a similar justice in the church...
...Genuinely open, consultative proc- That was remarkable...
...But I saw people change their minds then...
...Rausch insisted tional, therapeutic, and best of all they get you started doing that I'd be perfect for the job...
...The conference What then is the legacy, or the residue of the Call to began to break down with the selection of delegates and the Action...
...which ''thinketh no evil...
...A pilot discussion program had been conducted - a full blown program adopted in Detroit in most of the nation's dioceses...
...The National Catholic Reporter's first doing the work of the church in America...
...Novak has written in many serious students of the process...
...It is not that Call to Action camps...
...There were eight writing Church: The delegates called for collective bargaining teams assembling...
...lives: a poem 25 Bell, Robert H The virtuoso pianist 82 Compa...
...non-controversial area and one the bishops chose to address as Several colleges now offer master's degrees in family minisevidence of good faith in the consultation process...
...That body scrapped the new implementa- Murnion noted with only slight exaggeration that he had never tion committee and assigned the overview responsibility to the attended a meeting of bishops, priests, religious, or laity weak Advisory Council, which had no staff...
...The innuendo surrounding this thesis criticism in his full-length study, Toward the Establishment of concerning the "New Catholic Knowledge Class" suggests Liberal Catholicism in America (University Press of America, some sinister conspiracy: under the banner of social justice and 1983...
...at least in the section on humankind, a near disaster...
...David R., Jr Second thoughts on Libya 330 Jr...
...Theodore Walking fast: a poem 373 Callahan...
...They approach of John Cardinal Dearden...
...According to a study of the to have been a reflection of the approximately fifty million National Pastoral Life Center, in those parishes where who then constituted the church's membership...
...The product would be a statement to the nation through connection with the bicentennial...
...Its purpose would tee met for the first time in July 1973, it be to advise the bishops on how the American church could endorsed a planning document prerespond to Pope Paul VI's "Call to Action" for justice, and pared by Rev...
...According to David would be assimilated into local planning, the organizers had O'Brien, the Detroit meeting and the process leading up to it decided that one-third of the diocesan delegates should be were unusual examples of real education...
...when one caught a glimpse of what it might mean to be an Before it disbanded, the Dearden committee had drafted a American Catholic, a revelation of new possibilities...
...But that is not what happened...
...Almost try, foremost among them Denver's unique Regis College immediately an Ad Hoc Commission on Marriage and Family Masters of Arts in Adult Christian Community Development was named to set up some kind of process to address issues and which is drawing religious, clergy, and laity from all over the resolutions raised in the consultation...
...Appeal tain...
...They dropped the meeting separately that accomplished very much...
...lightment...
...Father Greeley described the par- Organizers had been careful to insist throughout that the ticipants as a "ragtag assembly of kooks, crazies, flakes, process was designed to represent the concerns of those who militants, lesbians, homosexuals, ex-priests, incompetents, had had the opportunity to participate and had chosen to do so...
...John Tracy Ellis has frequently and eloquently one of the prices is that it takes a lot of time and sweat...
...The Greeley and Varacalli critiques, however, are was wrong because it reflected a budding insurgency among particularly worth reexamination, since they pointed to issues grassroots Catholics...
...The first, dealing with liturgy, was approved and directed Bernardin's subcommittee to flesh out...
...More imgenuine participation obtained there were fewer defections portant, most of the disappointment that followed the event than in those where participation was blocked by clerical was the blame of no person or group but of the state of intransigence or by extreme and unrealistic demands made society in general...
...And thus was born early seventies - thought otherwise...
...presented tea the plenary session...
...Church" was the (212) 732-0800...
...the sometimes searing were able, for example to affirm support for Israel and to testimony of those who appeared at the regional hearings: reject arms sales to any country, including Israel...
...It was a massive three-year program in which hundreds of thousands of U.S...
...Greeley's pect that there would have been clarity on the ecclesiolog- challenge to the competence of Catholic social activists has ical question going into the Detroit conference...
...consulted as representatives cated to developing like-to-like ministry in such diverse areas of the general voting population...
...In ticipation through parish discussions, aided by a study guide Newark, working-class Catholics described the problems of prepared under the committee's sponsorship, and regional changing neighborhoods, and Dr...
...all this was unrepeatable...
...The Advisory Council then proposed that justice conference was to have a similar impact, it would have several less formal, national assemblies might serve as exper- to be the "beginning of an institutional process of reflection, iments in shared responsibility...
...It had been examining the the poor...
...I believe so...
...unemployment, soil erosion, brown and black lung, all before network television cameras and representatives of the national Ir he planning process highlighted several crucial press...
...what was probably the most dynamic movement in the AmeriNationhood: Delegates again affirmed pro-life and can church into twenty-six episcopal committees for evaluaanti-discrimination policies...
...I was convinced that the Bataan March What they voted was a picnic compared to our program...
...or handicapped...
...Or What makes the criticisms of Greeley and Varacalli worthy did it simply reflect the fact that Call to Action was, as of continued notice is their uncanny anticipation of controverJames Jennings said, "a massive experiment...
...marks the history of any institution, including the church...
...These was a constant reminder to us of what we were likely to delegates did not have to lose time from work or pay their own encounter as we got into touchy family areas...
...A limited number of copies of this special supplement are The argument may be plausible, but history rebuts it...
...tennial staff collected the names of delegates from local Outside in the corridors, however, some bishops were expresbishops and national organizations...
...holy Zion' 529 Master of topsy-turveydom 407 Dearden...
...Hehir emphasized the need for parish discussions in connection with the Call to Action...
...Rustin to Dorothy Day, from Cesar Chavez to DePaul Genska, He greeted me with, "You want diversity, I'll give you diver- from Walter Mondale to Henry Greencrow, from Andy sity...
...While no one could argue that the short, intense role, and appointed a new implementation committee...
...In neither case...
...Rosemary Critics' Christmas choices 668 Butler, Francis J One who rides the roller coaster 703 Deppe...
...cadre of enthusiasts anxious to reform diocesan procedures The results of A Call to Action also indicated the still and broaden the religious agenda...
...lamented...
...It was a relatively safe and vorced and Separated Catholics operating in parishes...
...But program to national attention...
...The process was almost bound to attract activists mandate that was given them...
...7//: Commonweal Supplement: 15 commonweal 16: Supplement Name Address City, State, Zip 0 I prefer a full year's subscription at $28...
...Until we can come up with as aging, inter-faith marriage, grief, parenting, stepresources to allow laity not employed by the church to attend parenting, couple communication, family spirituality, unwed such gatherings, issues will continue to be judged primarily motherhood, and sexuality...
...The unrehearsed bishop has special responsibilities that are uniquely his...
...These activists not those who were selected were in a sense self-selected...
...By the The lessons to be learned by remembering Call to Action in time Call to Action culminated in Detroit, the business of our current chilly circumstances, it seems 'to me, have to do the church was no longer being done in normal fashion...
...issues...
...Thus began a three-year term of service that I associate with the inexpressible feeling that comes over me whenever I board a very large roller coaster with my kids...
...were told who forwarded these proposals, encouraged by the support to review the reports of the writing committees and to make they had been given by the conference, were angered or whatever changes they thought appropriate...
...Americans have notoriously little historical sense...
...Then the votes split until the bishops rethe various writing committees in Washington, during which turned...
...unfortunately exaggerated the influence of radical social acLikewise, a process that highlighted the variety of Catho- tivists on the Call to Action process as a whole...
...whereas today scarcely more than ary condition...
...Only twice in the nearly two present hour...
...He was overseeing the most vivid and amusing road since he had known me less than twenty-four hours, but my show since the Canterbury Tales...
...Despite claims that the assembly had been housing, employment, family life, and religious vocations...
...to realize responsibility...
...The program's supporters, he charged, were anti-American and had little appreciation of the needs and experiences of ordinary Catholics...
...The same cannot be said, unfortunately, for Varacalli's analysis...
...In tional reflection - and toward process and participation...
...Thus the participants were I recall...
...In the past goal of this "extraordinary assembly," he stated, was to they "had not often listened well to one another...
...Perhaps now in the more reflective...
...memory of much of the proceedings in which I participated The plenary session: There was little time and almost no in A Call to Action...
...What were the Call to Action's special strengths...
...so take the job...
...church toward women, youth, elderly...
...Instead of abandoning our aspirations for genuinely open The fact that such a large number of the delegates were processes of consultation within the church, perhaps it would hired hands of the church, hence not representative of the make more sense to submit once again to the discipline of masses per se...
...Greeley's fear that the USCC's openness to dialogue with Jennings and many other participants agreed, however, various advocacy groups for "outsiders" might lead to an that the questions raised about the meaning of church in abdication of political responsibility has been acknowledged, 1976 are still in need of answers...
...structures and hurts...
...But the drama was not over...
...the debate over the appropriate symbol for the conference...
...now he faced a shared responsibility and implementation...
...Again, the reasons had more to do with the ated very strongly in the writing committees which synthunderdevelopment of democratic mechanisms in the church esized the regional and parish proposals...
...It is not, however, the testimony of when it addressed the latter...
...sions and boards are still over-represented by employees of the of Family Action which initiated the Decade of the Family (the church, which skews lay representation...
...Why not concentrate on a social justice agenda and even another decade...
...After all, he reminded me, I something...
...Well, that's just superb," said Jim...
...He too became more cautious...
...san conventions to act upon their results...
...DOLORES L. CURRAN is a parent-educator and author of many books dealing with family-related issues...
...At another point he surprised a progressive IHM sister by proposing insertion of Vatican II language on IN hen Cardinal Dearden called the Detroit shared responsibility into a resolution...
...Classified payable Booklet with order...
...The committees morning., eight section meetings debated, revised, and again prepared reports which summarized what had been said, re- voted on resolutions...
...asked for a reconsid- So, I and a few others found ourselves in front of a bank of eration ofHumanae Vitae...
...The first of the hearings was Bernardin was more cautious, pointing out that the hierarchy held in Washington, D.C., where local protests against the list was committed to nothing more than holding a conference in of invited guests led to a decision to place the planning of 1976...
...At a Washington, Bishop Donal Lamont, recently exiled by the two-day meeting in April, Novak further proposed that the title white government of Rhodesia, captured media attention with of the program be "Liberty and Justice for All," and that it be his description of conditions in that embattled nation...
...If one can get lic voices addressing issues of social justice in different beyond his denunciation of the Detroit meeting as "a ragtag ways also contained a strong impetus for the church to assembly of kooks, crazies...
...elderly...
...It would be done not only so a distraction from the difficult social choices and personal that the bishops might hear us but that we might hear one sacrifices that the struggle for social justice generally might another...
...Leona Edwards told of the hearings at which panels of bishops would take testimony from discrimination visited upon her family in a lifetime of devotion experts and ordinary Catholics...
...I can understand sympathy with Cardinal Josef Ratzinger's challenge to the their distress...
...This comIn the end they voted approval of thirty resolutions containing mittee, assisted by leading historians, formulated a national over 180 recommendations to be presented to the nation's policy on archives, arranged for several television producbishops...
...ten years later...
...That of the Bishops' Bieeniennial Commission...
...The game has changed, the strategy remains the same...
...Some years later, after working bishops to receive the Dearden committee's report and prepare with a program of parish renewal, priest-sociologist Philip for the May meeting...
...At the Commonweal symposium, John Carr had to be channeled into a short-lived conference rather than said of the conference, "You can say two things about it...
...crmerl s• religion editor of flu^ New genuinely open dialogue...
...What I recall is a mixture of trivia, inclination to debate even the most questionable resolutions strong debates, intense moments, sharp visual perceptions...
...Sister Alice Gallin, O.S.U., executive director of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, registered this fact at a symposium Commonweal sponsored last October to mark the tenth anniversary of the Detroit meeting...
...That's probably why we'll not have another other Family Life Offices expand annually and their impact is Call to Action in the foreseeable future...
...Central casting could not need for diversity, not to mention my inexperience, suggested have improved upon the colorful and contrasting personalities that I'd be the wrong choice...
...In my own memories of those months of hear- remember that there are limits to what the conference can ings, the most poignant and moving of all that we heard do...
...They stated "Call to Action" conference...
...Has that principle been found to work on the dioce- he or she be so if the more than one hundred resolutions san and parish level...
...n subsequent years the bishops would write pastoral In some ways, the conference was almost too successful...
...at least tacitly, by the letters' concern to address the mainstream of American public opinion...
...Church...
...But a strong ing...
...Father Nigro Gonzaga University, Spokane 99258...
...Just installed as a following day he summoned me to his office...
...bishops and other groups for his early efforts in divorce minis- The high percentage of delegates who worked for the institutry at the time, served on our committee, and his experience tional church troubled me then and troubles me now...
...That's it...
...for instance, the gentlemanly, scholarly, patient able to affirm contradictory positions simultaneously...
...This post-Marxist (but semi-Marxist) dwelling on the social location of the "New Catholic Knowledge Class" and its drive for ecclesiastical hegemony has become, ironically enough, the focal point of the neoconservative attack on the pastoral letters...
...committed new implementation committee of bishops to prepare the parishioners, and angry and alienated minorities...
...until after we to demonstrate competence in their public policy analysis...
...grams of action...
...Had I not accepted Jim Rausch's invitation, I might still be etc., and generally to implement the Call to Action...
...Biblical Institute ORIOL PUJOL, (14-U) Sadhana Society, Flat 40, Daulat Nagar, Bombay 400 054, Books 22nd Biblical Institute, Trinity College, requests gift parcels of 5 kgs...
...opposed capital punishment: backed about and the press wanted to talk to an official of the NCCB...
...program throughout...
...If the would be premature...
...Many feelings sur- vote to see how they voted...
...It gave Ten years after A Call to Action, it seems clear to me that very short shrift to the carefully prepared report, and instead the Catholic church in America is in need of reconciliation produced one that represented a near-pacifist approach to and, healing...
...the U.S...
...And like some fiery Hollywood director, he offered me Greeley to Simus Kudirka, the Lithuanian sailor who jumped a a major supporting role in his blockbuster commemoration of Russian ship off Martha's Vineyard just to be with the bishops...
...There have been repeated attempts to recapture the excitement of the tall ships, most recently at last summer's Statue of Liberty festivities...
...About a quarter century ago a profound on the part of the laity...
...All this in ten years...
...No one was ready for them...
...opportunity to set their own agenda for justice...
...lege, Moraga, CA 94575, June 15-19...
...With no sense to continue such a process...
...ing as the National Socialist Youth Party - who kept the Family: Delegates reaffirmed Catholic commitment to . Detroit police very busy during our conference...
...Those who had labored so long and hard to Novak has proposed a theological innovation which would strike prudent balances and weave delicate thematic tapesrestrict bishops from drawing any concrete applications from tries had reason, I suppose, to be chagrined to see the work their understanding of the principles of Catholic social teach- of their hands symbolized as a clenched fist raised against ing...
...asked Rausch...
...Not a breakthrough, but in all church ministries, and appointment of more ethnic, . Breakthrough - an ultra-right gate-crashing crowd as endearblack, and Hispanic bishops...
...We were there to answer questions and supply information and clarification on the resolutions we helped prepare...
...The National Conference of a series of documents containing analysis and pastoral plans of Catholic Bishops gave its approval to this suggestion, and John action...
...Those groups according to interests and competencies...
...But for me it was an on others...
...chess, cooking, Achtemeier, Joseph Agius, Peter Ellis, Classified health and inspirational...
...In many ways I believe it has...
...area of concern that had elicited most responses in parish "deepening fatalism"of the seventies was somewhat reversed discussions as well...
...even in a policy of deterrence...
...Further, the list of recommendations grew to monnity...
...Try a hearing...
...On Friday afternoon the plenary assemflected on the results in light of Scripture and church teaching, bly reconvened, voting once again on each of the recomand presented a detailed set of recommendations...
...Nevertheless, that image of A Call to Action persisted...
...In a few cases, the brief, one-time trusted by local church officials...
...While the total program should aim at wide participaCardinal Krol, then president of the NCCB, asked Cardinal tion, the key people would be experts who would prepare and Dearden to assume leadership of the project...
...All of us in this hall are against racism and war and Some months after A Call to Action, Joseph hypocrisy and violence...
...He thought he had sent consultation of the mid-seventies remained: the problem of delegates to a conference on social justice...
...There were no limited budgets to keep in mind, ability of church leaders to take them seriously" have not been no trade-offs about available resources to confront...
...In this way the ima call to unity 3nohilisti may be brought to see that there is no turning back to an era of virtually total clerical control, just as it may Vlhat have the last ten years seen by way of make clear to the laity that if they arc to real i7.e their rightful realizing the Detroit resolutions of 19761 Any attempt at an participation they must demonstrate an undoubted compeanswer must be a qualified one...
...Nevertheless, given Greeley's influence at the time, genuine confusion in the minds of participants...
...Gone is the traditional ing time, Detroit, the Ad Hoc Commission, and the many practice of ministering to the approved two-parent (both Cath- hours consumed by developing the Pastoral Plan - all at a olic) parish-supportive family without major .problems...
...No wonder Archbishop minded him, even Washington cab drivers could meet...
...What lessons can be drawn for future efforts in broadening KENNETH A. BRIGGS participation and sharing responsibility in the church...
...This time Jim was hearings...
...In his project was often reduced to the usual sexual politics of counter pastoral letter, Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age, the church...
...If the ecumenical council of the 1960s a handful remains untouched...
...all of us are committed to the Cunneen, the editor of Cross Currents, noted Gospel...
...Seventy-nine of the They would have to share in the process of defining goals if country's 162 dioceses submitted "feedback sheets" which they were to share in implementing them...
...under the auspices of the national church, and it wasn't very Second, in order to assure that this conference's outcome representative at all...
...A Call to Action, for those who took part, was that kind of meeting...
...every- church, but they demonstrated the ability of the church to offer one agreed that if any pastoral plan of action was poor and oppressed people access to the national conscience...
...It was a disappointment that the church, as pointed to the dynamic that developed only as the Council always, survived-but at the cost of lost energies and lost fathers worked together over time...
...economic justice, a pastoral letter on equal opportunity, A theological debate was raging about the text of a response to ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, support' for the Detroit meeting...
...lobbyist for Catholic hospitals, I happened to meet Bishop Don't know what to do about that clergy shortage in your Rausch at the U.S...
...I too have no doubt about that...
...walking the halls of the Capitol for Catholic hospitals...
...and the issue of remarried witnessed the incredible spirit of a great number of caring Catholics...
...one ever realized the consequences...
...church on that basis...
...The diocese...
...the issue But, in retrospect, I would probably do it again because I of sex and violence in the media...
...It cannot impose its will on its member bishops...
...the testimonies of blacks caught up testimonial to the readiness of the American bishops to in the seemingly hopeless cycle of metropolitan poverty .. . work together for the good of the church and itss mission...
...Hehir urged the committee to counter the opportunity to familiarize Catholics with the social teaching of tendency of other national bicentennial celebrations to offer the church while developing a plan of action to mobilize "an uncritical consecration of the American system" by insistchurch resources for a more effective witness on behalf of ing that the justice theme inform the church's bicentennial justice and peace...
...It is important to local level...
...The bishops' possibilities economic analyses lack credibility, according to Michael Novak, because they reflect only the views of those omewhere a pile of notes testifies to my economists in synch with the USCC staff...
...701: Commonweal Supplement: 5 panics, the number and influence of such groups was no into eight groups to discuss the Call to Action resolutions...
...R. Bruce (with William J. Gould...
...Consider the had seen the transforming power of Pope Paul VI's 1966 Call to very real shortcomings of the Detroit assembly in Cobo Hall...
...Such "prudential judgments" would be reserved for the Rome...
...pro-birth control or pro-women's ordination, resolutions on (Almost no one pointed out that the first national assembly in those and other subjects had simply called for pastoral attenAmerican Catholic history had approved a near-pacifist tion, further study, and openness to change...
...We asked for registration fees, for example, but no ministries, dialogue on the ordination of women...
...Like Dearden, area, in the larger working group, and finally on the floor of the Krol was too strong a man to be easily shaken by such events...
...of a national church, with lack of clarity about the ecclesiologThe reaction of the press aroused the suspicion of many ical role of episcopal conferences, the organization's capacity bishops...
...Call to Action was the closest the American Catholic church has ever come to holding a genuine national assembly...
...Unrehearsed & Has all this affected the activities of the bishops' conferunforgettable ence...
...greater than those at any open, democratic assembly...
...It had solidified the central place of social justice in the life of American Catholicism, and it had experimented with a process of consultation on an unprecedented scale...
...the listening process for the Catholic church in the United Fresh from a job on Capitol Hill and currently working as a States...
...be - of being manipulated by factions within the church, then But that is only my hunch...
...Little did George Higgins or Cesar Chavez...
...But the real work had only begun...
...Bishops (NCCB) had voted to dedicate its bicentennial observance to the theme of justice in the world, and to hold a When Cardinal Dearden's ad hoc commitnational conference on that theme in 1976...
...People will start with issues that affect by efforts like Call to Action and a more consultative pastoral them indirectly and with issues that they can affect directly...
...parishes and diocese...
...Catholics participated...
...He is the author of a was over...
...They make a clear distinction between what had come from the local and diocesan groups were too is basic Catholic teaching, and application of it in particular numerous and, often, too substantial to be dealt with prop- instances that might be open to different interpretations...
...acter, both deeply Catholic and highly American...
...After the pastoral 651 26 December /986: 7/3...
...In Atlanta, for this support, it would have to examine justice within the example, a representative of families in the Military Or church itself as well as in society...
...Certain essays in the Call to Action's tenth anniversary...
...John Trace, Ellis i.5• professorial lecturer in the Civil War, and the so-called heresy of Americanism that church history at the Catholic University o,` America...
...The kind of national dialogue Call to Action attempted Assessing the Call to Action in 1977, Commonweal called it simply cannot be sporadic-or squeezed into a few days of "a social justice success but a theological disappointment...
...church...
...Archbishop encuentros...
...Her Traits of a Healthy Family (Harper & Row), won the 1983 Christopher A ward...
...to the pre-eighties concept of marriage preparation and antiFamily is one of the areas which evidenced significant abortion efforts...
...Jack Egan and an allegedly new breed of the church...
...highly placed, bishops quite angry at what he had brought Furthermore, a decade after the Call to Action, the bishops are about...
Vol. 113 • December 1986 • No. 22
