Audition for tragedy

...For many who love the church, today is a crisis and tomorrow may well be a tragedy...

...The archbishops may be happy with their better relations with Rome...

...Radical" feminists appear to reject all existing authority as patriarchal or insist that equality is totally incompatible with the recognition of any differences between the sexes, i.e., of any "complementarity...

...In good inductive fashion, the sessions started with theological principles and never paused to look calmly and carefully at the social reality it was supposedly addressing...

...may appear disproportionate when compared to the number granted elsewhere, it appears more reasonable when measured against the much greater number sought, but never even accepted for consideration...

...And for all the complaining, the meeting featured not a single systematic and comprehensive examination of American culture and society...

...Altogether it was a curious meeting...

...Rome's solution to every problem is stricter enforcement of official church teaching and discipline by the bishops...

...Some American archbishops argued that the heavy-handed use of episcopal authority against theologians would becounter-productive, but none came to the defense of theologians in general...

...It follows the removal of Charles Curran from Catholic University, the announcement on March 1 of an oath and profession of faith to be taken, at least in principle, by all Catholic theology teachers in Catholic universities, and a proposed set of norms on Catholic higher education placing theology departments under the oversight of local bishops...

...While the benefits of religious freedom and democracy were acknowledged, theemphasis was on the dangers of excessive freedom and democracy in the church...

...While Roman and American prelates debate tribunal procedures, the vast majority of divorced Catholics either absent themselves from Holy Communion or participate in violation of church law...

...Yet beyond the question of effectively countering Vatican suspicions, the debate never confronted the fact that even with 36,000 annulments a year, the tribunals deal with only a small fraction of divorced and remarried Catholics in the U.S...

...bishops would be foolish to develop their long-range pastoral plans while ignoring the numerical decline and the aging of theirclergy...

...Although the archbishops may think that the Rome meeting, along with the John Paul's 1987 visit to the U.S., has eased the tensions, many of their flock will not feel so reassured, and the meeting's well-publicized jabs at women, theologians, and American culture generally may only increase the alienation the encounter was meant to heal...

...Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, attacked theologians for spreading dissonant views in the media...

...One day the hierarchy may wake up to realize that they have the ecclesiastical equivalent of an Alaskan oil spill on their hands, and there will be no regaining the opportunities they let slip by to prevent it...

...When the Catholic Theological Society of America meets in St...

...JOSEPH McNEAL Joseph McNeal is the pseudonym of a longtime observer of the church scene...

...Back in the United States, the archbishops quickly distanced themselves from these comments, but Cardinal Gagnon insisted after the Americans had returned home that his words were not sexist but merely accurate: "We have hundreds of cases of tribunals run by nuns," he said, "and they give declarations of nullity as soon as a woman cries in their presence...

...Instead, they seem unduly eager to rush from their own success at de-Christianizing much of Europe to telling the Americans how to evangelize the U.S...

...Rather than disagreeing with Vatican policies, the archbishops argued that they are doing what the pope wants but that Rome is misinformed about the American church and does not fully understand the conditions presented to the church by American culture...

...Finally, Cardinal William Baum, prefect of the Congregation for the Seminaries, told the archbishops to defend the celibate male priesthood and to get ready to expand their seminaries to receive more vocations...

...The Canon Law Society of America is so concerned about the situation that it is preparing to call for the ordination of married men...

...No one in the United States sees any empirical evidence for this expectation...

...No one questioned the reiterated condemnations of something known as "radical feminism," guilty of corrupting family values and destroying religious life...

...Bishops," he criticized, "have little exercised their teaching authority in opposition to theologians...

...Cardinal Edouard Gagnon, prefect of the Council on Family, warned bishops to keep an eye on religious women in their tribunals so that "their tender hearts do not play tricks on them...

...To have such an ignorant and insensitive man be the spokesman of the pope on the family can only increase the alienation of American Catholic women...

...Although the number of annulments granted in the U.S...

...Many women, for example, were distressed by the totally unserious treatment of feminism by both American and Vatican prelates...

...Cardinal Antonion Innocenti, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, asserted that women asking to be ordained are seeking power and not service in the church...

...Nor did any archbishop call for even limited experimentation in the liturgy...

...The archbishops went to Rome ready to defend themselves to the Vatican while trying not to appear confrontational...

...The papers that opened each session had not been circulated ahead of time, which to most people would seem like a minimum way to prepare for what the pope declared a "historic" encounter...

...Likewise, Archbishop Daniel Kucera of Dubuque reported that liturgical abuses and general absolution are rare in the U.S...

...For example, the Americans forcefully defended their church tribunals from attack by Roman officials who believe annulments are granted using improper procedures...

...But the use of church authority to suppress dissent is simply creating more dissent...

...But no one insisted that the term be defined either...

...This is also the man who condemned the sex education series, New Creation (with an imprimatur from Archbishop Kucera), for having dirty pictures...

...despite what is said to Rome in letter-writing campaigns from so-called traditionalists...

...The Roman meeting was first proposed in 1986 by Bishop James Malone of Youngstown, Ohio, then NCCB president, who called attention to "a growing and dangerous disaffection of elements of the church in the United States from the Holy See...

...In the words of Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, vice-president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), the meeting was a success because it was marked by "conviction, candor, and kindness...

...But back home many Americans, especially women and theologians, found the statements coming from Rome extremely disappointing...

...The tribunals will never be an adequate pastoral response to these Catholics...

...The archbishops, many of whom worked in these tribunals at earlier stages in their lives, argued that American tribunals grant 80 percent of the entire church's annulments because the American bodies are well staffed and efficient, and because large numbers of American Catholics are seeking annulments...

...The curia officials said little, leaving the Americans to make their excuses...

...Meanwhile, important sectors of the American church are becoming more alienated-and more disheartened...

...No American archbishops were so rude as to say that the problems were not just with American culture but with the Vatican's and, yes, the pope's outlook...

...Louis this June, it will likely join German, French, and Belgian theologians in protesting events in the church...

...But only a few archbishops argued for more generous norms for general absolution, and they were put off with the ahistorical argument that "the church is not free to change the modality of the celebration of the sacrament...

...As one theologian commented, "If we spoke about bishops with the kind of contempt that they spoke about theologians, they would be outraged...

...In the minds of theologians, the Rome meeting can only be the latest Vatican and episcopal vote of no-confidence in their scholarship...

...The Vatican's conception of authority is undermining the church's credibility at a time when American culture desperately needs a credible voice for sexual morality, family values, self-sacrifice, and justice...

...This is a new phenomenon in the American church that has traditionally been very loyal to the pope...

...Cardinal John O'Connor of New York agreed that bishops have lost confidence "in their magisterial authority, perhaps in the face of some hard-hitting theologians, perhaps out of fearof.the press...

...Perhaps as a consequence, almost all the presentations were mediocre...

...Those who are not themselves convinced of this papacy's wisdom apparently feel that the safest course is to make no waves but plead for understanding...

...Likewise, disaffection among theologians was heightened...

...At a minimum, complementarity means "no" to the ordination of women...

...Such statements not only do not relieve the tensions, they foster anticlericalism among women who already accuse the church of sexism...

...The big excuse was American culture, a veritable whipping boy, criticized all round for its secularism, hedonism, individualism, and moral relativism...

...Though American culture certainly has plenty to answer for, it is always strange to see European clerics exhibit so little curiosity about what has made religious life, Catholic and non-Catholic, so much more vital in America than in their own societies...