Catholics Take to the Ramparts

By Richard N. Ostling

U.S. bishops tackle El Salvador, nukes, poverty and abortion

For a year now, Roman Catholic nuns and priests have gathered each Friday at the Federal Building in Providence to protest U.S. policy on El Salvador. In conservative Amarillo, Texas, Bishop Leroy Matthiesen is urging workers to quit the Pantex nuclear-bomb plant, resulting in a United Way cutoff of a $61,000 annual grant to Catholic Family Services. In Seattle, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen is risking prosecution by refusing, as an anti-nuclear protest, to pay half his income taxes. San Francisco Archbishop John Quinn is asking his hospitals to ignore a Defense Department plan to allocate beds because, he says, it "contributes to the illusion of a winnable nuclear war."

Rarely has the U.S. Catholic Church been involved so visibly and officially in so many public controversies at the same time. Church agencies and activists are playing a major role in a variety of local conflicts and in four national issues in particular: El Salvador, where they adamantly oppose U.S. military aid; nuclear arms, which they contend both sides should stop building; Reaganomic budget slashing, which they consider devastating for poor Americans; and abortion, which the church condemns in virtually all cases. The last, abortion, comes most directly out of traditional Catholic doctrine and represents a right-of-center stance, while the other three positions find allies on the political left. Says Commonweal Editor James O'Gara: "There has never been anything like this head-to-head confrontation between the church and U.S. foreign policy."

Priests, nuns and laity are all involved, but the most dramatic new factor is the leadership from bishops. Once belittled by church liberals as excessively cautious. much of the hierarchy is out in front of many in its U.S. flock of 50 million. Indisputably, though, the episcopal presence has been lending the causes an image of centrist respectability. "With American bishops, you're not dealing with radicals or anti-American kooks," says Father David Tracy of the University of Chicago.

Poverty is the current issue with the longest history in American Catholicism. The 1919 "Bishops' Program," well in advance of the New Deal, advocated a minimum wage, unemployment compensation and old-age insurance. But on foreign policy, Catholic bishops formed ranks behind whatever Administration was in power. "Being an immigrant church, we wanted to show we were more American than anyone," explains Father Cuchulain Moriarty, who runs San Francisco's archdiocesan social justice commission.

That attitude began to change after 1960, when Catholics "arrived" with the election of John F. Kennedy as President. Then Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council muted the church's fierce anti-Communism and emphasized social justice and peace. Vatican II also led, in 1967, to an upgrading of the U.S. hierarchy's modest Washington office into the U.S. Catholic Conference, which now employs a staff of 250 people working on religious as well as social issues.

Two disputes galvanized the new Catholic Conference. In 1971 the bishops urged an end to U.S. involvement in Viet Nam. Though that was "terrible moral tardiness" to Radical Jesuit Dan Berrigan, taking on the White House was a wrenching change for the hierarchy. Then in 1973 the bishops were rocked by the sweeping U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in most cases. The bishops soon abandoned above-the-fray moral preachments and plunged into down-in-the-trenches political action. They have now thrown their full weight behind a specific proposal that is due for a vote soon, Senator Orrin Hatch's constitutional amendment to give Congress and the states power to pass restrictive abortion laws.

The bishops then moved on to reformulate their pro-life viewpoints on a number of issues, most notably the nuclear-arms buildup. Though the hierarchy is not pacifist, it declared in 1976 that the use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances is evil, and that a deterrent strategy that even threatens to use them is also evil. Led by their activist president, Minnesota Archbishop John Roach, the bishops will meet in November to issue a new declaration that could endorse a bilateral freeze, unless moderates like Terence Cardinal Cooke prevail.

Whatever fears the bishops once had about meddling in foreign affairs, they did not hesitate when controversy arose about Central America, with its close missionary ties to the U.S. church. In El Salvador, says Editor Thomas Fox of the National Catholic Reporter, "Catholics know what's going on better than anybody else." The 1980 murders of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero and four U.S. missionaries stirred wide revulsion in church ranks. Though their brother bishops in El Salvador take a different view, the U.S. prelates decided to oppose U.S. military aid, in part because of information about right-wing atrocities from American missionaries.

Such positions do have impact. There is widespread agreement in Washington that the White House has tempered its El Salvador position, and perhaps its nuclear stance, at least partly because of the Catholic opposition. But the prelates also find themselves fighting some of their best-known laity, especially Secretary of State Alexander Haig and, on abortion, House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill, House Judiciary Chairman Peter Rodino and Senator Edward Kennedy.

The rising clangor of prelate protests and pronouncements has caused consternation inside and outside the church. Some are critical of tactics. Columnist William F. Buckley sympathizes with his church's bishops on abortion but thinks they made a serious mistake in embracing one particular bill. There are disputes over the seemliness of clerical protest vigils and sit-ins. "Disgusting," says Attorney Ed ward Riordan, a parishioner in Worcester, Mass. "They will change no minds by picketing or being arrested." When Arch bishop Hunthausen termed Seattle's new nuclear-submarine base an "American Auschwitz," Navy Secretary John Lehman, moral" a to Catholic, "misuse sacred replied that it religious was office "im to promulgate extremist political views." And Lay Theologian Michael Novak argues that in an area as complex as nuclear negotiations, bishops should not "invoke sacred authority" for one view when specialists have good reason to dispute it.

Bishops respond to such charges by saying that they have no choice. Vatican II's documents, says Archbishop Roach, "require that the church not only teach the moral truths about the person. It must also join the public debate where policies are shaped, programs developed and decisions taken which directly touch the rights of the person." Monsignor George Higgins, a veteran social-action specialist, contends that speaking against the Bomb in particular is simply "what the Pope wants them to do."

Is such activism indeed desired by the Pope? One clue may be in the fact that after conferring with Archbishop Roach, Pope John Paul protested outside military intervention in El Salvador. But John Paul pointedly castigated terrorism by both the right and the left. (The U.S. bishops have not emphasized their criticisms of the left.) One Vatican prelate contends that the Pope is mildly irritated with the U.S. bishops' stance on Central America but not enough to do anything about it. On the questions of nuclear arms, human rights, abortion and poverty, the Pope's stated positions and personal actions suggest that he almost certainly agrees in principle with what the newly activist Americans are doing. As Bishop Matthiesen says about nuclear arms, "This is the politics of survival. It would be surprising for the church not to say something."

-- By Richard N. Ostling.

-- Reported by Jim Castelli/ Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by Jim Castelli

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.