Gadfly

Among the 2,500 mostly learned and lordly Roman Catholic bishops around the world, English Archbishop Thomas d'Esterre Roberts, 71, is an independent spirit who feels free to put churchly propositions up to the measure of his own reason. He has no use for pomp, and to discourage people from kissing his episcopal ring, he jokes, "I carry it in my back pocket."

Last week he was at Seattle University, wreathed in a cloud of Salem smoke, sitting at a desk littered with matchbooks, letters and Agatha Christie novels. He would rather have been in Southern California. But the arch-conservative Archbishop of Los Angeles, James Francis Cardinal Mclntyre, banned the liberal Roberts from lecturing there. Roberts took it philosophically: "Cardinal Mclntyre is in charge and is entitled to his own views as to what is expedient and what isn't."

"Please Confirm." A Jesuit priest born of English parents in Le Havre, Roberts once headed an archdiocese --but gave it up. In 1937, while teaching in Liverpool, he was told by a reporter of-his appointment as Archbishop of Bombay. Tongue in cheek, he wired Rome to "please confirm" the appointment. Thirteen years later, having become convinced that India's principal see ought to be occupied by an Indian, he resigned in favor of Valerian Gracias, and settled down at the Farm Street church in London's Mayfair.

Now titular Bishop of Sygdea in Crimea,* Roberts goes at a fast clip lecturing, traveling, writing, and battling for causes unpopular with most members of the church hierarchy. He likes to recall that in 1950 he advised Pope Pius XII against defining the dogma of Mary's assumption. He plugs away for a bigger voice for the laity in church affairs: "I would hope to see the apostolic tradition restored to where the laity had a voice, especially in matters concerning marriage, to advise a body entirely celibate."

He believes the church ought to amend its stand on birth control. "Practically all Protestant bodies today repudiate the position that contraception is forbidden by natural law. Moreover, great numbers of Catholics, perhaps even the great majority, are either disregarding the law altogether or their marriages are in serious trouble of breaking up." He feels that cumbersome marriage annulment procedures, which sometimes take several years, ought to be expedited. He militantly presses his church to support the ban-the-bomb movement, drawing a comparison between the church's concern for the lives of babies not conceived because of birth control and the apparent lack of the same solicitude for adults who might be killed in nuclear war.

"Ladies' Underwear." At the meetings of the Vatican Council, Roberts is likely to be found at the coffee bar in St. Peter's denouncing as "ladies' underwear" the episcopal finery that the bishops have to put on while there. Quite predictably, he stands at the outer periphery of the church's policymakers. He is not a methodical reformer, a dynamic organizer, but a prober, a prelate who says aloud what others may think in silence, who raises critical but often embarrassing questions for debate. Like Socrates, he feels that it is sufficient for a thoughtful man to be a gadfly.

* A certain number of Catholic bishops, chiefly auxiliaries, papal diplomats and Curia officials, preside over ancient dioceses that no longer exist as active churchly subdivisions. Such bishoprics are mostly in Moslem areas in northern Africa and the Middle East.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.