A Question of Leadership

ROMAN CATHOLICS

At St. John's Seminary near Los Angeles one morning last week, the Rev. William Du Bay entered the chapel, genuflected before James Francis Cardinal Mclntyre, put his hand on a Bible in the cardinal's lap, and made a profession of loyalty to him. Then, as hundreds of priests watched, Du Bay kissed the cardinal's hands and withdrew. A week earlier, Father Du Bay had publicly petitioned the Pope to remove Mclntyre as Archbishop of Los Angeles, charging the cardinal with "gross malfeasance in office" for what he called his superior's failure to condemn racism as a moral evil.

Priests who would play Luther are notably rare in the Roman Catholic Church today, and Father Du Bay became something of a national celebrity. A fresh-faced man of 29, he had twice been transferred from parishes on charges of pressing for civil rights with excessive zeal. He then applied for mission service in Kenya, and instead was made administrative assistant in a mostly Negro parish in Compton, an industrial suburb of Los Angeles. Impressed by his parishioners' passionate concern for equality, Father Du Bay did a slow burn. One morning fortnight ago, he said Mass, then went to the Greater Los Angeles Press Club and loosed his thunderbolt against the cardinal. He spent the rest of the day, heart in mouth, teaching some of the parish kids how to play a game called "Steal the Bacon."

But Father Du Bay never meant to play the Luther game to the point of leaving the church, and Mclntyre responded by using a bishop's normal disciplinary powers. The chancery stripped Father Du Bay of his administrative duties and silenced him.

No Challenges. Canon law authorized Mclntyre's move, but he is such a strong-minded man that it was clear from the first he would brook no challenges. A year ago, when Swiss Theologian Hans Kueng spoke to Catholics all over the U.S. on reform in the church, conservative Cardinal Mclntyre forbade him to talk at U.C.L.A. He does not like such liberal Catholic magazines as America, The Commonweal and Ave Maria, and so he has banned them from his archdiocesan seminary. Mclntyre was one of 19 cardinals who last year signed a statement protesting to the Vatican Council the "heretical methods"--such as the technique of form criticism, devised by German Protestant theologians--used by Catholic Biblical scholars.

An ascetic and humble man, Mclntyre entered the priesthood late in life. Born in Manhattan, the son of an invalided former city employee, he attended public high school, City College and Columbia University at night, while working days for a Wall Street brokerage firm. At 29, he turned down the offer of a partnership to enter St. Joseph's Seminary at Yonkers, N.Y. He was ordained in 1921, spent two years as a curate in a Manhattan church, then put his financial skills to work as an administrative officer in New York's archdiocesan chancery. So successful was he that he was consecrated as one of Francis Spellman's auxiliary bishops in 1941, and five years later became coadjutor archbishop.

Spellman and Mclntyre are good friends, but they did not always see eye to eye on all public issues. In 1947 Mclntyre denounced, and thereby helped defeat, a state anti-discrimination law, which he called "formed after a Communistic pattern." A year later Spellman recommended him for the vacant see of Los Angeles and presided at his installation.

Arriving in Los Angeles, Mclntyre scrapped his predecessor's plans for a new cathedral and began the most vigorous construction drive for parochial schools of any diocese in the world. To date, this has resulted in the astonishing addition of 206 new schools, bringing the total for the diocese to 347. With California's population boom, his flock has grown from 625,000 to 1,500,000 in 15 years, and he has opened 76 new parishes, five new hospitals. In 1953 he became California's first cardinal.

Pickets at the Chancery. Mclntyre has provided what many Catholics regard as shrewd and adroit leadership for his archdiocese. But since he keeps insisting that "there is no racial problem in Los Angeles," he is a wide-open target for critics, both in and out of the church, who know better. He has forbidden priests and nuns to take part in racial demonstrations, and refused archdiocesan recognition to a lay-run Catholic Human Relations Council. As a result, another lay organization called Catholics United for Racial Equality has frequently picketed his chancery.

Last week Cardinal Mclntyre was on a retreat, and unavailable for comment. Archdiocesan officials pointed out that he is not a segregationist, has signed the antiracist statements of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, and has many times avowed his support of equality for all. But his other actions have helped create an ambivalent image--an image of a man who has prosecuted his ecclesiastical mission with zeal but has failed to seize the moral leadership that many of his flock had expected of him.

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