John Paul's Cleanup Campaign

By Richard N. Ostling

Ever since Pope John Paul's celebrated American tour of 1979, it has been evident that one priority of his pontificate is to buttress official Roman Catholic policies that have faced continual questioning within the U.S. church. Now, a year prior to the Pope's planned return visit to America, his campaign to bring the nation's bishops, priests and sisters into line has provoked a rising tide of dissent. Bishops are privately vexed, and priests are salting sermons with barbs directed at Rome; the board of one Milwaukee parish even recommended that members divert gifts from the annual collection for the Vatican.

The burgeoning resistance to Rome is best demonstrated in Seattle, where Catholic activists last week presented Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen and Auxiliary Bishop Donald Wuerl with petitions signed by more than 13,000 parishioners over the past month to "protest the injustice" of Vatican intervention in the archdiocese. Earlier this year, in a virtually unprecedented step that was long kept secret, John Paul stripped authority from Hunthausen on moral teachings, marriage annulments, sacraments and the training of priests, bestowing those responsibilities upon the conservative Wuerl. Among Hunthausen's supposed transgressions: allowing altar girls and permitting a cathedral Mass for gay Catholics.

In a second major ruling, the Vatican in August ended Father Charles Curran's career at the Catholic University of America, citing his open disagreements with Catholic moral teachings on birth control and other issues. As Curran fights to reclaim his post, probably in vain, educators are nervously awaiting a Vatican decree that could clamp new doctrinal controls on all Catholic campuses.

Across the nation, other conflicts have been widening the rift between conservatives and liberals. In one long-running dispute, two radical West Virginia sisters, Barbara Ferraro and Patricia Hussey of the Notre Dame de Namur order, have refused to disavow a newspaper ad they signed in 1984 contending that there are various legitimate Catholic views on abortion. Rome hoped the ad signers would back down gracefully, but Ferraro and Hussey, and perhaps others, insist on a showdown that could end in Vatican-ordered expulsions.

Abortion is hardly the only divisive issue. Under Vatican pressure, California's Father Terrance Sweeney has been forced to resign from the Jesuits because he insisted on issuing the results of a survey he had made of U.S. bishops (24% of respondents favored optional celibacy for priests, 28% approved of women deacons). During the past few years there have been rancorous disputes between Rome and America over textbooks used in parishes on doctrine and on sex and several private struggles over appointments of theology teachers.

Concerned about the rising passions, Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, in a remarkable warning, wrote in the archdiocesan paper last month that the church must avoid the "fanaticism and small-mindedness" that through history have "led to much cruelty, suppression of theological creativity and lack of growth." On the right, a convention of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars last week demanded that the bishops take a harder line, declaring, "No institution is foolish enough to permit its reason for existence to be undermined from within."

Conservative Moral Theologian Germain Grisez of Mount St. Mary's College in Maryland sees John Paul's cleanup as one of historic proportions, comparing it with Pope Pius X's effort early in the century to crush the modernist movement. That dispute, says Grisez, "was basically a much smaller thing than what's happening now." Similarly underscoring the significance of the situation, the Vatican's official spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, stated last week that "this phenomenon of dissent, in the U.S. and elsewhere, touches the very nature of the church. The real question is no longer abortion, or even moral theology as a whole. It is the essence of Catholic faith about the church, its structure and how it works."

American Catholic academics and liberals have protested against the treatment of Curran, who may find himself shut out from other Catholic institutions as well; it is likely that none will dare give him a teaching job now. Curran says his own plight will create a general "chilling factor, at minimum. Certainly people are going to have to think twice about what they might write." Francis Fiorenza, a colleague of Curran's at Catholic University, predicts that despite efforts at dissuasion by U.S. educators, the Vatican will issue controversial new rules requiring that theology teachers on all Catholic campuses be approved by local bishops.

While obdurate dissenters will apparently not be spared in the crackdown, church policy has been ambiguous in some cases. Shortly after Curran's ouster, the Catholic University board granted tenure to Canon Lawyer James Provost, whose writings had irked the Vatican. In gaining tenure, however, Provost had to agree to write clarifications of his past support for first Communion before first confession and for giving Communion to some Catholics who divorce and remarry without annulments.

In another exception, despite grumbling from conservative laity and bishops, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops hired Jesuit Michael Buckley as the executive director of its doctrine committee. In 1977 Buckley had signed a significant open letter to Rome complaining that the Vatican decree against women priests used "faulty" arguments and "could impose a grave injustice." However, the Vatican did not fight Buckley's appointment, reasoning that the letter did not exactly deny its teaching.

Nor are results of an unusual investigation of all U.S. seminaries, ordered by John Paul, as harsh as some had feared. A Vatican report on 38 of the schools, out this week, declares them "generally satisfactory," though Rome is prodding a few seminaries (no names mentioned) to "resecure" loyalty to church teachings in moral theology.

Whatever the appearances, one Vatican official insists, "the Holy See does not have a fixation on the United States." Indeed, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Vatican doctrinal office, having dispensed with Curran, faces no other imminent decisions in the U.S., and two weeks ago turned toward Europe, issuing a formal rebuke of a theologian in the Netherlands, Edward Schillebeeckx. His offense: proposing that lay Catholics could celebrate Mass in unusual situations.

Though a church as large and freewheeling as the one in the U.S. is never far from Rome's thoughts, says one Vatican observer, the Holy See did not initiate the drive for conformity in America. Instead, he says, Rome is responding to a basic split within the U.S. church. "Whenever Rome moves, it is only after loud and powerful voices from the local scene," he insists, noting that lay conservatives in the U.S. send the Vatican slanted letters of "gloom and doom." John Paul is said to be not particularly worried about the chorus of disapproval from American liberals and determined to carry out his duty regardless of public opinion. While Americans tend to believe truth is discovered through open argument that leads to consensus, the Pontiff insists that religious truth is something to be accepted, not argued about. Americans complain that the ouster of Curran is a sign of "creeping infallibility," meaning that the absolutism of formally defined dogmas is being expanded to cover moral teachings. The Pope, however, believes Catholicism is only doing what it always has done, preserving all the God- given teachings on doctrine and morals that have guided believers over centuries.

At the center of John Paul's strategy for America is a revamping of the hierarchy. In 1980 he installed Archbishop Pio Laghi as his envoy to the U.S. and charged him, says a papal adviser, to "get the appointment of American bishops back on the track." One result was Rome's selection of Wuerl, 45, as Hunthausen's assistant. Wuerl formerly worked at the Vatican and then administered the U.S. seminary investigation.

Three others installed during the Laghi era: Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony, 50, who joined those question- ing the Buckley and Provost appointments; New York's John Cardinal O'Connor, 66, whose archdiocese now discourages parish speakers opposing church teachings and who sermonized last week, "The Holy Father demands that the truth, whole and unvarnished, be made available to everyone"; and Boston's Bernard Cardinal Law, 54, a rising star in papal eyes who cracked down on local Paulists for allowing lay preachers at Mass and who champions a new worldwide catechism to clarify church teaching.

Of all the recent moves by Rome, the treatment of Hunthausen remains the most dramatic and telling. Catholic University's Fiorenza thinks it warns all those who aspire to be bishops to toe the line. Many of the bishops themselves seem reluctant to speak out. Says liberal Father Richard McBrien, theology chairman at the University of Notre Dame: "As long as the American bishops remain silent or give words of support, the Vatican doesn't feel it has to pull back." McBrien thinks the action against Hunthausen was remarkably "bold." What it shows, he says, is that Vatican officials are "pretty confident they are going to fulfill the program to change the face of the American church."

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof and Wilton Wynn/Rome, with other bureaus