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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 18, 1986
PAGE
13
Disaffection with Americals Catholics The Pope has two more scheduled
trips--to Chile, Argentina and Uruguay in April, 1987, and to West Germany
in May--before embarking on his next extensive journey, a nine-day, eight-
city visit to the United States next September. While in Los Angeles on
September
15
and 16, the Pope will confer with the bishops of the United
States for several hours. This meeting could prove to be momentous,
considering the widening rift between the Vatican and the Roman Catholic
community in the United States. The conflict has been heightened by
recent Vatican censuring of an American theologian at the Catholic
University of America in Washington, D.C., Charles Curran, and Seattle
Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, both outspoken liberal dissenters from
orthodox Roman Catholic teaching, especially in the area of morality.
The
U.S.
bishops met this week for their annual conference in Washington,
D.C., where the bishops' president, Bishop James W. Malone, admitted to "a
growing and dangerous dissaffection of elements of the church in the
United States from the Holy See.' In an unusually frank 'welcoming"
message, John Paul admonished the clerics: "It is precisely because you
are pastors of particular churches in which there subsists the fullness of
the universal church that you are, and must always be, in full communion
with the successor
of
(Saint) Peter.' But there is little doubt that the
Vatican-American Catholic rift will get wider, not smaller, as the cover
story in the November
17
issue of U.S. NEWS
&
WORLD REPORT explained:
"In the time of Galileo, it was physics and
astronomy. Today, it's pelvic theology. But the
issue is the same. The issue is power, and the issue
is control."--Daniel Maguire, theologian, Marquette
University
...
The battle lines are clearly drawn. On one side stand the Pope
and the ranks of Catholic traditionalists, who think the
U.S.
church is adrift, its orthodoxy on the wane and its leadership
wanting. The traditionalists argue that reformers took the
free spirit of Vatican
I1
too far. In opening the church to
more lay participation, for instance, some priests began to
view it as something of a democracy--and, in the process,
failed to insist on ecclesiastical authority in moral matters.
Similarly, some bishops believed that the church's ban on
divorce was too onerous in the modern world and took it upon
themselves to ease the way for their flocks....
Somewhere in the middle range are the vast ma'orit of
U.S. schooEooms, exposed to myriad viewpoTnts, they are quite
unliketheCatholics of a half-centur
-,
who in general gave
docile
obeisance t o t h 5 i r
--li-l#
c urc
s
paternalistic guidance.
Today, the polling data show, the average Catholic believes
that it is possible to disagree with the church's teaching on
moral issues and still remain a good Catholic. Despite Rome's
prohibition on birth control, for instance, a majority of
Catholic women say they practice it. [An accompanying CBS
NEWS-NEW
YORK
TIMES poll, published in the same issue of U.S.
NEWS, revealed that
73
percent of Catholics interviewed app-ove
remarriage for divorced people, 51 percent favor legalizing
homosexual relations between consenting adults and
58
percent
see nothing wrong with premarital sex.]...
America's 5 2 m i m o n Catholics. E d K t e d n antl-aut
w
oritariz
-