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PAGE 14
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 18, 1986
This is not the first time that American Catholicism has
run
afoul of the Vatican.
At
the turn of the century*, Rome was
very disturbed
&
5
phenomenon it called "Americanism," which
embraced
-
such concepts as
--
the separation
&
church
and
state.
In 1899, PoDe Leo XI11 condemned the trend, and his successor,
-----
Pius
X I -
engorced the condemnation by appointing a number
of
conservative
U.S.
bishops who hewed closely to the Vatican
line.... Although so far, the Vatican's crackdown has focused
on moral and sexual issues,
between America and Rome runs
- -
kind of anti-Americanism, s
American religious history
some scholars think the split
far dee er. "There is a latent
a r
D&k
0'
B r z
~o
-teaches
- -
-
at Holy Cross College in
Massachusetts.
-
"The Pope and a lot of European church leaders
feel that we are a libertarian, hedonistic, loose kind of
society, They simply don't understand this culture, and don't
really want to.",..
It is the most visible cases...that have stirred the most
controversy. The first involves the Rev. Charles Curran, a
moral theologian who has taught at the Catholic University
of
America since 1965. Curran has long disputed the Vatican's
hard line on a number of sexual topics--from contraception and
abortion to homosexuality. All, he has taught, are justifiable
under certain circumstances, and the magisterium should
accommodate some moral shades of gray.... Last summer, the
Vatican acted, declaring him neither "suitable nor eligible" to
teach theology....
What worries progressives is the possibility that the Vatican
will extend the crackdown beyond that particular case....
Sister Kathleen Feeley, vice chairman of the Association of
Catholic Colleges and Universities, says Catholic campuses "are
places of inquiry and intellectual strength. They're not
-
places
-
to indoctrinate."...
[Then there1 is the case of Seattle Archbishop Raymond
Hunthausen. In early September, the 65-year-old prelate
revealed that the Vatican had stripped him of authority in five
key areas.... A two-year apostolic visitation...criticized
Hunthausen for not following traditional teaching in matters of
liturgy, marriage annulment, homosexuality and contraception.
...
Hunthausen...had allowed Dignity, a national organization
Catholic=
-
to sponsor
- - -
a mass-at Seattle's
St.
James
S h e F a l . .
..
More than
13,000
Catholics in western Washington signed
petitions asking Pope John Paul to restore Hunthausen's full
authority. Protest groups joined the outcry as far away as New
York's Long Island, And Archbishop Rembert Weakland of
Milwaukee, the scholarly and highly respected former head 0.f
the worldwide Benedictine order, devoted two columns of his
diocesan newspaper to criticism of the Vatican. These columns,
Weakland later reported, drew a huge amount
of
mail: "It made
me realize how vast the uneasiness is out there among priests
and lay people
."...