The way things work:
McCarthy, Abigail
Abigail McCarthy THE WAY THINGS WORK FACING REALITY STILL MATTERS The once much-heralded "Catholic moment" in American history seems to be passing without much effect on American life and...
...Timothy S. Healy, S.J., president of Georgetown, was explicit in an annual report: Conflict arises between the church and the university when the two jurisdictions . . . are confused...
...It cannot be accomplished by fiat...
...Whichever of the candidates is perceived as best equipped to help us cope with change," said a thoughtful newsman the other night, "is the one who will win this fall...
...Will our educational institutions be rendered irrelevant at a time when they are sought as guides to change...
...Change has been unsettling within the church as well and one of the reasons we have not seized the ' 'Catholic moment.'' Changes in church practice...
...In like manner the church cannot...
...Whether one accepts the teaching or not, it cannot be denied that the practical effect of the encyclical was to render the teaching irrelevant...
...Splendid as Vatican II was-for many in the church a flowering of what had been hoped and worked for for over a century-its mandates were deeply disturbing to the many who had not been prepared...
...The residue of bitterness might not have been so deep...
...Change over which they seem to have no control...
...Watkins also noted something much more wide-reaching: We kept pulling the strings and finding all these problems, which tells us that the nation is basically, bankrupt in dealing with all of these interrelated social, economic, health, and ethical issues...
...that we have not always been "the good guys," and the slow realization that the bomb altered things forever...
...There is another paradigm for the future in the way in which Admiral James D. Watkins, both an exemplary Catholic and a master strategic planner, has transformed the President's Commission on AIDS from what was almost a laughing stock to a body whose recommendations the executive and the legislative can follow...
...Incidentally, he faces facts squarely-"The issue is not whether women 'should' be the ones making abortion decisions...
...Or that we no longer lead the world in trade or productivity, that our basic industries deteriorate, that we depend for employment on "service" occupations...
...that America stands vertiginous on the brink of one change in perception after the other...
...Unassimilated change...
...Moreover, the persuasive force of the church might not have been diminished-as it was-in the national debate over abortion...
...In Admiral Watkins's own words, the commission "wove a very careful line through this labyrinth" by keeping morals out of the agenda...
...It occurs to me that this may be so because we Catholics and those who represent us have been thinking more of what we have to offer than how we offer it...
...Another such debacle may be shaping up in the ill-considered effort of Vatican authorities to control the internal affairs of Catholic institutions of higher education...
...It does no violence to the memory of a pastoral, caring, and anguished pope, Paul VI, to note the obvious-most Catholics walked away from the teaching...
...Change in values...
...In 1968 Catholics had been led to believe that there would be a development in church teaching drawn from the experience of the whole people of God, only to be met once again with moral teaching argued from abstraction...
...They are all so tightly woven in the fabric of our society that when we began to expose what was already there through the lens of HIV, it became apparent to me that this was much bigger than HIV...
...Political analysts this year agree on one thing when they come back from their forays around the country: most Americans, whatever their personal well-being, are anxious and profoundly uneasy about the future...
...Changes in the liturgy, for instance, were decreed and executed in the old authoritarian way...
...An America still unsettled by the discovery that all wars are not winnable for us...
...We Americans kno w, for example, the facts of our economic reality but we have not yet accepted the picture of our country as a debtor nation dependent on the investment of foreign nations...
...Because of change...
...control the structure and penalties of the university, questioning its civil contracts, or call upon it to impose civil punishment or exclusion of any of its faculty members...
...In retrospect we can see that the way of change was, in part, the root of the tension which exists today between the so-called conservatives and liberals in the American church...
...Change in mores...
...In a provocative article in the New Republic (May 30, 1988) Charles Fager argues that the prolife movement might have had more effect if it adopted "persuasionist" rather than "prohibitionist" strategies, and cites the revolution in the American attitude toward smoking as an example of what he means...
...The university has neither the duty nor the right to determine authoritatively the teaching of the church, but must instead . . . influence respectfully the growth of the church's understanding...
...Yet the church might not have lost so many priests...
...And Rome must be led to perceive that Watkins is no less Catholic, no less a "moral man" (as he describes himself), in the way in which he has faced reality and led others to do so...
...In view of the status of the Curran case it , is doubtful that these responses are being heard...
...Those of us who had argued for the vernacular were made happy (to a certain extent only, if we cared about music and the beauty and rhythms of language-another story) but for the many who drew sustenance from the remote mysteriousness of the Latin Mass, those who were comforted by popular devotions, the sudden change was experienced as a deprivation...
...Change, in our place in the world...
...Notre Dame's new president, Edward Malloy, C.S.C., is reported to have said that the schema would make life in American institutions not only difficult but impossible...
...This commission is not capable of building a new moral menu for the country," he asserted...
...Abigail McCarthy THE WAY THINGS WORK FACING REALITY STILL MATTERS The once much-heralded "Catholic moment" in American history seems to be passing without much effect on American life and culture...
...Had the encyclical been promulgated differently, had clerical dissent from it been more sensitively handled, this result might not have been different...
...Changes in the people of the church...
...Theoretically, the schema on universities proposed a few years ago was issued to invite response...
...If in nothing else, the experience of the laity is in how things work...
...Changes in the relationship of the church to the world...
...The marking of the twentieth anniversary of the encyclical Humanae vitae evokes the memory of a storm in the church and furnishes us with an illustration of the clash when edict meets growth...
...In the course of the hearings he instituted, the commission found that AIDS is a much more serious threat to the nation than anticipated and that discrimination is rampant...
...Surely change is the law of life but it is positive only when it is the result of growth and that growth is organic...
...Such thoughtful and informed scrutiny is basic in helping the nation plan the actions necessary to cope with change...
...As a matter of fact they are...
...Perhaps, after all, in a time of a disappearing clergy, this may become the moment of the laity...
...That response-especially to the rules suggested for what can and should be taught, and for evaluating faculty on "doctrinal integrity and uprightness of life"-has been negative...
...On the other hand, when it is organic it cannot be halted by edict...
Vol. 115 • July 1988 • No. 13
