American Catholics Turn Left

...What is called for, they say, is active massive protest...

...Without mentioning communism or the cold war the pertinent passages left little doubt about the proper application...

...However articulated, it is a sense of the new and exciting perceptions that supports many of the Catholics who are most actively engaged in the current crucial struggles in this country—the attempts to abolish, or at least strongly contest, racial discrimination, poverty and war...

...These documents are revolutionary, especially for Catholics, not because they advocate revolution—they don't—but because they present good analyses of man's present sorry condition, suggest the improvement that is possible and affirm the moral responsibility of men to work for that improvement...

...The younger Catholics who are now interested in carrying on a dialogue with Communists have, naturally, an interest in the history of previous attempts and failures, but they tend to dismiss the advice of those who speak out of experience...

...These Catholics posit a clear line of obligation that runs from religious belief to moral responsibility to political action...

...They have rejected, that is, the static classical mentality in favor of empiricism and historical consciousness...

...But, if not inevitable, it seems highly probable that the theorizing will come...

...This teaching was sustained, they were taught, by the Bible, tradition, and natural law, and it was stamped as infallible and irrevocable by papal pronouncement...

...In 1941 D. W. Brogan wrote in his book on America that "not until this generation has the Church been given time (with the cessation of mass immigration) to take breath and take stock...

...In fact the changes within Catholicism are occurring so rapidly, among so many different people, and on so many different questions that almost all of the generalizations I will make must be regarded as partial...

...As important perhaps are the omissions...

...The older, more "comfortable" attitude was expressed by Archbishop Thomas Toolen of Mobile—Birmingham at the time of the Selma demonstrations last year...

...Americans upset by the term were regarded by European Catholics with mixed amusement and disbelief...

...McIntyre is the one prelate who seemed entirely untouched by the Vatican Council, and he maintains his stance with such obduracy that Southern California has been termed the Catholic Mississippi...

...The most dramatic, pitched battles between conservative and liberal Catholics have taken place in the Los Angeles area under the jurisdiction of James Francis Cardinal McIntyre...

...Yet Southern California decorates its neighborhoods with festive lights of welcome, when, in truth, they barricade them against the Christ Child because he is Negro...

...action in the Vietnam war, but that no such challenge has been issued by a comparable Catholic group...

...More Catholics now participate in politics of the left than theorize about it...

...This Catholic was not without strengths and virtues, but he was submissive, unintellectual or anti-intellectual, unadventurous and conservative...

...To be fair, his friends showed an understandable bias, for history had burdened the Catholic leftist with massive and unsettled problems, and if he internalized them the psychological tensions could cause at least momentary failings in his political faith...

...Another priest, Father John Coffield, exiled himself because he had been forbidden to speak against racism...

...But they also draw upon the traditional just-war theory, on encyclicals of Pope John and on the documents of the Vatican Council, particularly the Constitution of the Church in the Modern World...

...it means that he is uninterested in displaying it unless there is some special reason...

...Three men die in Mississippi and the nation is shocked into action...

...And these were given substance by new and well-founded scholarship...

...They feel that they sense, better than their elders, the conditions of the present...

...Nor are there sacred texts for these people...

...But many do not, and it is they who are determining the future of American Catholicism...

...When he was accorded a standing ovation only two people kept their seats, the representatives of the Commonweal...

...While the teaching once it has been clearly set forth is no longer subject to change, the movements, precisely because they take place in the midst of changing conditions, are readily susceptible of change...

...But let me add some cautionary remarks...

...The preoccupation with immigrants had, however, allowed the Church to grow to respectable proportions in America...

...J. M. Cameron, a contemporary English writer who refers to himself as a "Catholic of the left," says that "this is not so fabulous a creature as many English and American Catholics are inclined to believe...

...Roman" stands here for all that would emphasize one side of the constant struggle between authority and freedom, hierarchy and fraternity, community and the person, the letter and the spirit, order and justice, certitude and search...

...This is what underlies his present political action, the undeveloped or incomplete theorizing, the criticism, the inconsistencies and the passion...

...It will be most interesting in both religious and political terms if a significant number of Catholics take a position of selected conscientious objection to the war in Vietnam, invoking the traditional just-war principles which, however inadequately, the Church has attempted to keep in good repair...

...Now this teaching has been exposed to open debate and Catholics have been forced to recognize that the Church is capable of massive and sustained error...

...For younger Catholics the battles— theoretical at best—between socialism and Catholicism have long been relegated to the dustbin...

...But the nuns and priests were sufficiently sure the demonstrations were "God's work" that they bypassed the customary request to the local bishop for permission to participate in public forums...

...Though many Catholics share Berrigan's position, it is still difficult to find an American bishop and impossible to find an American cardinal who would openly criticize U.S...

...They have learned to criticize the "establishment," to follow their own judgments, and to take risks...

...Both government and Church proclaim principles of equality, but both prevent the principles from being applied...

...It is worth noting that large Protestant and Jewish organizations have issued statements challenging U.S...

...But other Catholics at different levels of society now readily join the protests...

...The seminary at which he taught soon began receiving letters accusing him of being a Communist and benefactors of the college threatened to withhold funds...

...Catholic laymen, not having the same problem, were not as dramatically visible...

...The texts they would mention are joined to a long tradition, but two encyclicals of Pope John, Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris, provide what needs particular emphasis in the modern world...

...The ecclesiastical documents I mentioned are useful, of course, but mostly in a negative sense...

...Now strong protests come from individual Catholics, de facto committees and new organizations such as the Catholic Peace Fellowship...

...Priests like these are supported by lay Catholics who occasionally adopt and express extreme positions...

...But by reason of their vocation, their position, and their garb, they dramatize the change that is taking place...

...The part that Catholics are playing in that ill-defined, inchoate thing called the peace movement is one of the best indications of the changing political attitudes of a number of Catholics...

...A case in point, not untypical, is that of Daniel Berrigan's brother...

...Anyone familiar with earlier encyclicals and papal statements will note the absence in these more recent statements of what was once pervasive—a fear of the doctrinaire socialism of the nineteenth century...

...The Constitution on the Church in the Modern World is a pastoral statement, that is, it attempts to suggest proper goals and point out dangerous pitfalls without attempting a blueprint for action...

...But there is an increasing awareness of the plight of the poor that derives not only from the situation in this country, but from discussions and controversies provoked by the Vatical Council, and I will return to this point...

...The dangers to the individual posed by centralization are acknowledged but what is emphasized is the obligation of the state to protect, support and foster the rights of all citizens—with particular attention given to the needs of the old, the sick, the poor and all whose rights are truncated by the society in which they live...

...Let me stress, however, something that is fundamental to understanding the present Catholic radical: his political stance is integral to his Catholicism, and his experience in the Church is immediately applicable to his society...

...Their understanding of religious commitment does not allow them to be content with improvements in the Church...

...but on the whole they moved with the social and political mainstream of America...

...For well over a decade, these Catholics have been subjecting the Church to an intensive self-criticism which has left untouched almost no office, institution, tradition, formulation, or practice...

...policy in Vietnam...

...For decades there had been building up a reservoir of ideas and attitudes that challenged "traditional" patterns within the Church...

...Catholics who had disengaged themselves from the cruder involvements of the cold war also found in Pacem in Terris a succinct expression of their own attitudes...

...The lack of identification many Catholics feel was expressed by one who said that "basically the Cardinal is a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant...

...The obligation of the rich toward the poor, and rich countries toward poorer countries, is emphasized, while the dangers of a benevolent but uncomprehending paternalism are pointed out...

...When referred to by the Catholic radical they are used to show, not that his position is the only and best course, but that it is a possible course...

...In his farewell to his friends Father Coffield said in part: On November 15, I told you how vehemently I condemned the colossal injustice done to our richly pigmented and moderately pigmented brothers and fellow citizens of California at the polls on November 3. I urged public penance for the shocking silence permitting the injustice to be done...

...And of still more importance to the democratic left is the probability that there will be an important number of Catholics who will share in its political goals, arguments, and actions...

...Catholic efforts to remedy the evils of poverty range from initiating rent strikes in slums to supporting the striking farm workers in California...

...policy has been Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit, poet and author...

...Philip Berrigan was then transferred to a Negro parish in Baltimore...

...As immigrants at the bottom of the economic ladder many Catholics struggled in the labor movement, as members of an educational ghetto they fought for their school system, and as puritans they spoke out against sexual immorality...

...Put your body where your mouth is...

...And that fabled creature, the Catholic of the left, will take on flesh-and-blood rather than legendary characteristics...

...To preach pie in the sky and to do nothing about the knife in a man's back is hardly Christianity...

...They are sometimes embittered about both the local Church and the local government...

...The reaction of these Catholics to the various crises in our society stems from a central impulse that is not yet well-defined...

...His criticism and his prominence as one of the three cochairmen of the Clergy Concerned About Vietnam apparently unsettled some of his superiors, for he was summarily sent on an editorial assignment to South America...

...This, finally, is what is regarded as inviolate, indestructible, irreplacable...

...To other Americans they are worth serious attention if only because they render past stereotypes about American Catholics almost unserviceable...

...He was then, coincidentally, reassigned to his former position and once again he is speaking out on Vietnam...

...Besides, who can deny that those movements, in so far as they conform to the dictates of right reason and are interpreters of the lawful aspirations of the human person, contain elements that are positive and deserving of approval...

...When Proposition 14 (which repealed the Rumford fair housing law) was coming up for a vote, the Cardinal insisted that it was improper for priests to comment on it because, in his terms, it was a political, not a moral issue...

...A recent and very good book by Joseph F. Scheuer and Edward Wakin described the discarding of this armor in its title: The De-Romanization of the American Catholic Church...

...It was John's great accomplishment to make an opening in the barriers that contained this pent-up force...

...The political splintering of the thirties holds no fascination for them...

...and the attitude has a respectable though somewhat troubled ancestry...

...The consistent critical position that earned for Commonweal a reputation as the leading liberal Catholic journal also earned for it, during the McCarthy period, a place of splendid isolation...

...For years Catholics were taught that birth control by artificial means was morally forbidden...

...but in this country the Catholic radical has usually had a rough time of it, for he has been almost completely dismissed by his fellow Catholics and not fully trusted by his radical friends...

...In fact the word "socialization" is used to describe the process by which an industrialized society might best order its human and material resources...

...Father James Groppi is a lively member of the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC), a group formed to fight the Milwaukee school board over the issue of de facto school segregation as a result of housing patterns...

...The Catholic Association for International Peace (CAIP) did issue a statement on Vietnam but it supported the government's action...

...There are many ways to express this more palatably, but this statement comes closest to expressing what Catholics have experienced...

...The problems of racism overlap, of course, those of widespread poverty...

...Catholics have increased in number, wealth, influence and respectability, and probably most of them still choose to stay fairly close to center...

...They have gained, thereby, a new sense of freedom, of personal responsibility and of true community...

...What is important for him is that he shares with a number of other people a particular moral perception of the inequities in our society and believes that they can best be remedied by the criticism and action that is offered by or—in his terms—associated with politics of the left...

...One result of this preoccupation with the immigrants has been that the Catholic Church in America has counted for astonishingly little in the formation of the American intellectual climate...

...And there is no certainty that they will remain committed to radical or even liberal politics...

...I'm obligated," he said "to minister to the needs of the people I serve, and if those people need freedom from discrimination, segregation and exploitation, then that defines my pastoral responsibility...

...His whole orientation is in terms of business and property values...

...They are encountering, that is the same practical and theoretical difficulties as the rest of the country...

...Where the phrase "Catholic pacifist" once seemed a contradiction in terms, Catholics now occupy a wide range of positions—from absolute pacifist, to nuclear pacifist, to selected conscientious objection...

...In our current debates this "tacit understanding" has been given at least a good shaking up and a number of Catholics are intent on pressing some awkward applications...

...I posit them only because they express the spirit of the Church today and it is that spirit plus a particular reading of our society that is drawing some Catholics to a more radical political position...

...In writing about Catholics of the left I have inevitably imposed a degree of order that is not there—at least not yet...

...I have mentioned by name priests rather than laymen not because they are more influential in determining political attitudes among Catholics...

...This charge comes from persons who can make the trip from open housing to liberalism to socialism to communism in several easy, well-rehearsed steps...

...The ideal product of this system was a Catholic of unquestioning obedience who looked to the institutional Church for guidance, regarded critics with hostility, and did his best to conform to "the Amer ican way...

...Father William DuBay accused the Cardinal of gross malfeasance at a press conference and said he had asked the Pope to remove him...

...yet in truth there has been a rapid and significant change in the Catholic press in this country...

...Today, by contrast, there is a committee that is trying to form a conservative Catholic journal because, it alleges, "the Left now speaks to and for the Church, in varying degrees of extravagance and stridency" in magazines such as Commonweal, Jubilee, Ave Maria, Ramparts, and The Catholic World...

...I have mentioned texts most frequently invoked by those Catholics who find themselves drawn to more radical positions than they have previously acknowledged...

...Catholics like the Berrigans have learned to appreciate the value of non-violence from their participation in the fight for civil rights and they would like to transfer what they have learned to international affairs...

...At the 1950 meeting of the Catholic Press Association, the featured speaker of the program was a man at the peak of his influence—Senator Joseph McCarthy...

...Certainly the sisters are out of place in these demonstrations," he said...

...An example that might seem initially irrelevant may make the point...

...In the fight against poverty, Catholics may be identified, but they are not distinguished by their actions...

...This sudden removal, which took him out of peace activities, aroused large public protest...

...He has been there less than one year but he has worked among the Negro poor in his area and they are now organized so that they are able to bring some pressure to bear on local officials...

...but they were responsible for the large Catholic participation in the Selma demonstrations...

...One of the most prominent and outspoken critics of U.S...

...When priests did preach against the evils of racism, he silenced them...

...This change is only one sign of profund developments within the Church that are, to sensitive Catholics, exhilarating and sometimes unnerving...

...They are permeated with a realistic optimism and are free from narrow dogmatism and self-interest...

...Their place is at home doing God's work...

...The radical political actions of these Catholics stems from a new perception of our society and a total response to it...

...These are, after all, rather minimal claims...

...The same is true of priests...

...True...

...In their terms the Church is one element of a society that is dealing in wholesale hypocrisy...

...Without John the renewal would not have come when and as it did...

...If there is any underlying set of values, they cluster around an intense belief in the value of the person...

...rather, it provides a drive toward particular immediate relevance in the social order...

...One million are given a deadly blow in California and some defenders are depressed into inaction...

...The criticism has met with incredulity, hostility, mean insinuation and boredom, but it continues, and it continues to be effective...

...Many of these Catholics show more affinity with the New Left than they do with older Catholic radicals or those whose attitudes were formed by the left of the thirties...

...Despite important exceptions, it would be fair to say that older Catholics either refuse to admit the possibility of change or else strain for an interpretation that says no real change in Church teaching would be involved...

...The Catholic layman participating in radical political activity has little desire to call attention to his Catholicism...

...And in much political and social action that reason is not immediately evident...

...For example: It is, therefore, especially to the point to make a clear distinction between false philosophical teachings regarding the nature, origin, and destiny of the universe and of man, and movements which have a direct bearing either on economic and social questions, or cultural matters or on the organization of the state, even if these movements owe their origin and inspiration to these false tenets...

...It says that whatever the facts about the kind of peace provided by our present nuclear weapons system, the so-called balance is not a sure and authentic peace: "The arms race is an utterly treacherous trap for humanity, and one which ensnares the poor to an intolerable degree...

...but even with him it could not have come if there had not been a long preparation...

...They have rejected the idea of a Church where all decisions are made at the top, with little awareness of the experience and thinking of the large community of Catholics...

...They have rejected the idea of the Church as a system of mutually interdependent and inter-locking parts, each of which is essential, and of faith as the end link in a series of logically compelling syllogisms...

...Though occupying a less favored seat in the boat, they didn't want to rock it...

...Their reasons are those of other Americans whose analysis of the war leads to a conviction of its foolish injustice...

...And they insist that the moral principles derived from these various resources should be applied...

...Now these burdens are being lifted, these tensions dissipated...

...The conservative Catholic, it further alleges, is generally excluded from a Catholic press that has succumbed to liberalism, welfarism, socialism and a string of even more horrible afflictions...

...The Catholic is willing to rely on his own authority, his political sense, and the political tradition, if any, that he would claim as his own...

...Younger people not only absorb the change readily, but have actively fought for it...

...And if some people described this large body with its heavy defensive armor and small intellectual capacity in unflattering terms it nevertheless belonged to the American scene—as soon as it could "take breath" it began to adapt...

...An important part of the adaptation is getting rid of the defensive armor...

...J. M. Cameron has said that Catholics are inclined to a political fetishism that gives to the commands of the state, notably where matters of war and peace are in question, a sacred and unchallengeable character, with the result that in this area of political life there is a tacit understanding that traditional moral principles are not to be applied . . . where the security of the state is held to be in question (held to be in question, that is, by the political authorities themselves), too often a guilty silence descends...

...11 For many people the first evidence of renewal within the Church was the warm voice of John XXIII saying the time had come to open the windows and let in some fresh air...

...In the past there would have been little Catholic dissent from the government's position...

...Few of the Catholics who are now engaged in radical political action have clearly developed political theories and many show no interest in such theories...

...But the way in which this trap is to be avoided is left, quite properly, for those in society who are engaged with the problems...

...This does not mean that it is unimportant in his motivation...

...Father Philip Berrigan was one of the signers of the "Declaration of Conscience Against the War in Vietnam...