Editorial In good faith
In good faith Will the Catholic church in the United States enter the new millennium as a church of promise, augmented by the faith of rising generations and able to be a leavening force in our...
...American Catholics must reconstitute the conditions for addressing our differences constructively-a common ground centered on faith in Jesus, marked by accountability to the living Catholic tradition, and ruled by a renewed spirit of civility, dialogue, generosity, and broad and serious consultation...
...America, August 31...
...The truth is contained in the magisterium, and is not subject to discussion, much less revision...
...They appear to imagine a series of mini-Vatican Councils under Cardinal Bernardin's auspices that would hammer out new positions on basic doctrinal questions...
...Conversion," not dialogue, is the answer, wrote Cardinal Law...
...The statement, he said at a widely reported press conference, would guide the Catholic Common Ground Project, an initiative aimed at overcoming "an increasing polarization" and even "mean-spirit-edness" that "hinders our addressing important pastoral concerns...
...Even between the apostles Peter and Paul, common ground was something that had to be sought, not something authority simply imposed...
...It is less concerned with immediately resolving conflicts than with proposing ground rules (common ground rules...
...Or will it become a church on the de- fensive, torn by dissension and weakened in its core structures...
...Conversion certainly is the answer...
...In good faith Will the Catholic church in the United States enter the new millennium as a church of promise, augmented by the faith of rising generations and able to be a leavening force in our culture...
...And to the organized lobbyists for change in the church it immediately poses a challenge: "How can we get a piece of the action...
...that can render legitimate conflicts among Catholics constructive over the long run rather than envenomed by suspicion and rhetorical overreaction...
...that we value persuasion over polemics...
...By launching the Catholic Common Ground Project, Cardinal Bernardin hopes to demonstrate in action what might otherwise remain fine words...
...The Catholic church in the United States has for too long been caught up in a stultifying standoff not only between groups on the right and left, but between official and unofficial initiatives, between sullen silences and shrill re-monstrations...
...But he does not claim any special status for the undertaking...
...The hair-trigger responses to these proposals were reminders of a common phenomenon...
...Is some of this thinking un-Catholic or unorthodox...
...Our readers know that we do not always succeed...
...is sure to follow, accompanied by none-too-subtle suggestions that the deviant thinker is angling for praise or position from the "liberal establishment" or the "curial restorationists...
...One cannot evaluate that criticism without first asking whether the analysis of our situation proposed by Cardinal Bernardin and "Called to Be Catholic" rings true...
...The cardinals, and some other critics too, have seriously misread both the statement and the project...
...The cardinal has invited other Catholic groups and individuals to read and reflect on the statement and to adopt it in whole or in part as guide for their own conversations and activities...
...Bewildered, but not deterred...
...Breathe the name "Charles Curran" to one side or "Cardinal Ratzinger" to the other, and the boos and hisses are positively Pavlovian...
...Church, Fall 1996...
...What is needed is what Cardinal Bernardin's initiative proposes: that we listen as well as argue...
...The statement, it seems to us, urges something much more modest and yet essential...
...We recognize, of course, that there are some Catholics in both wings of the church in the United States for whom all the divisions in today's church are stark confrontations between error and truth...
...Merely hint that here and there the other side may have a point, and "How could you...
...The outcome, we believe, depends on whether American Catholicism can confront an array of challenges with honesty and imagination, and whether the church can reverse the polarization that inhibits discussion and cripples leadership...
...Yet the proposal was scarcely out of the cardinal's mouth when it was greeted with criticisms from all directions, from his fellow cardinals, Bernard Law, James Hickey, and Anthony Bevilacqua, as well as from Catholics for a Free Choice and We Are Church...
...If nothing else, Cardinal Bernardin's invitation calls everyone to stop and consider what it is we are doing to the church and to the body of Christ by this internecine warfare...
...That is why the editor of this journal has signed on to the Catholic Common Ground Project's advisory committee, joining such a diverse group as feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson, neoconservative author Michael Novak, labor leader John Sweeney, Harvard law professor and representative of the Holy See to the Beijing Conference Mary Ann Glendon, former Democratic governor Robert Casey, and others...
...We understand the logic of their position but question its wisdom or realism...
...Are some of those conversations unsettling...
...Common ground is spelled c-o-n-f-u-s-i-o-n as far as these prelates are concerned...
...Seeking common ground, they warned, cannot be a back door to compromise on doctrinal matters...
...But it is hard to imagine how seeking common ground among those dedicated to conversion is a betrayal of the faith with which we all have been entrusted...
...Express dissatisfaction with today's liturgies or catechetics and you are immediately pigeonholed as a devotee of the preconciliar Mass or the Baltimore Catechism...
...To us, it does...
...Even so, enterprises such as Commonweal, Crisis, the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church, Call to Action, the National Catholic Reporter, Catholic Campaign for America are often vehicles for ideas and conversations that might otherwise receive little hearing...
...that we presume good faith rather than the opposite...
...Naturally, to the cardinals this smacks of a usurpation...
...For the full text of "Called to Be Catholic/' see Origins, August 29...
...The responses of Cardinals Law, Hickey, and Bevilacqua are particularly troubling...
...And for that we are grateful-even though a little bewildered that a call to discuss what ails us would be met by an effort to discredit the project before it gets off the ground...
...Open a discussion about the language we use for God and you are instantly suspected of denying the Trinity...
...It directs attention to many issues that are not directly or solely doctrinal-the effectiveness of our current religious education and of liturgical celebration, for example-even though doctrinal matters cannot be ignored in their discussion...
...and http://zvww...
...But ideas, conversations, suggestions, and criticisms on matters ecclesiastical and, yes, doctrinal, are not going to go away because giving voice to them is viewed by some as inopportune, dangerous, or threatening...
...Commonweal has tried for some time, in editorials and articles, to execute the high-wire act that the statement calls for: "reaffirm and promote the full range and demands of authentic unity, acceptable diversity, and respectful dialogue...
...Respectful dialogue can, therefore, only legitimate error...
...Dialogue," on occasion, has been reduced to a bumper-sticker slogan or a gambit in the politics of church authority...
...Possibly...
...The response to the proposal, which has taken on a new poignancy with Cardinal Bernardin's subsequent discovery that his cancer has returned and is terminal, has been generally positive and encouraging...
...If an idea or an initiative escapes the party lines that have become rigid three decades after Vatican II, the right suspects it of heresy, the left of capitulation...
...archdiocese-chgo.org...
...That is the opening paragraph-and indeed a capsule preview-of the statement, "Called to Be Catholic: Church in a Time of Peril/' that Cardinal Joseph Bernardin released on August 12...
...We do not believe that this is an atmosphere in which American Catholics can together seek answers to pressing questions about the church's future...
...But it is precisely the thrust of Cardinal Bernardin's effort to insist on the necessity of dialogue-and to safeguard its authenticity...
...Absolutely...
Vol. 123 • September 1996 • No. 15
