De Pauw's Departure

The liberalizing spirit of the Second Vatican Council has so far had little impact on the status of Roman Catholic priests, who remain firmly under their superiors' thumbs. In November, the Jesuits invoked their society's vow of obedience to send Father Daniel Berrigan out of the country for a while because of his outspoken stand against the Viet Nam war (TIME, Dec. 24).

Last week Baltimore's Lawrence Cardinal Shehan invoked another ecclesiastical weapon -- the canonical rule of incardination, which binds priests to obey and serve the bishop of the diocese to which they are attached. He used it to curb another kind of forthright priest, Father Gommar De Pauw, founder of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement.

A former professor at Mount St.

Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., De Pauw last spring formed his tiny movement, which seeks to restore the all-Latin Mass in U.S. parishes. De Pauw argued that the council's adoption of the vernacular was "protestantizing" the Mass, and that the bishops had been duped into accepting it by left-wing theologians. Cardinal Shehan, De Pauw's superior, angrily ordered him to get out of the movement.

De Pauw did so, but managed to get to Rome for the final session of the council. Some negotiations with conservative Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani of the Holy Office resulted in a proposal to transfer De Pauw from Baltimore to Tivoli, a small suburban diocese of Rome. Shehan tentatively agreed to the reincardination, but never sent along the formal papers. Bishop Luigi Faveri of Tivoli went ahead to sign the docu ments accepting De Pauw as his charge.

Early this month, confident that he was safely out of the jurisdiction of nontraditionalist Cardinal Shehan, De Pauw arrived in New York, declaring that it was now the home base for his movement. But, as it quickly turned out, he was not home free. Cardinal Shehan declared that he had not released De Pauw. Bishop Faveri, after thinking the matter over, agreed that the priest was still Baltimore's property -- a judgment that the Vatican Secretary of State solemnly affirmed. Last week Shehan bluntly ordered De Pauw to return to Baltimore for a discussion of his future.

De Pauw's plight differed from Berrigan's in that he had openly challenged church policy and conciliar directives, whereas Berrigan had embarrassed his superiors in a secular matter. But both cases showed that priests are much like privates when it comes to higher orders.

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