Organizing offers options for the sake of the church

National Catholic Reporter, Feb 27, 1998

Several events in recent weeks hint that members of the clergy, as well as some unordained faithful, have begun to realize that the church's inexorable drift to the right might indeed be impeded.

With condemnations seemingly issued weekly from one authoritative corner or another (see imprimatur story page 8), we are far from thawing the big chill. But any sign of hope is welcome.

Of course the big turnabout, covered extensively in these pages, was the reinstatement of Fr. Tissa Balasuriya of Sri Lanka (NCR, Jan. 30). His was a story of persistence, listening and compromise.

But it was also heartening, closer to home, to hear that 54 priests in the Syracuse, N.Y., diocese signed a letter of protest to Bishop James M. Moynihan after the bishop, without any consultation or regard for the integrity of his newspaper, yanked the column of Fr. Richard McBrien, a theologian from the University of Notre Dame, from the diocesan paper, the Catholic Sun (NCR, Feb. 13).

McBrien was replaced by George Weigel, a conservative thinker who quickly caused more headaches for Moynihan when, in a blurt of purple prose, he denounced renewal of religious orders as "the last pure exercise in Leninist politics in the 20th century." Weigel is given now and then to such sweeping pomposity.

So now the bishop has liberal Catholics and a sizable group of priests and a host of nuns angry at him for tampering with the paper's opinion pages. The nuns got an apology, but as far as we know Weigel did not get the boot. The bishop and his priests, meanwhile, were scheduled to meet about the matter.

We hope the bishop will listen to the priest who have had the courage to call him on his heavy-handed administration.

Meanwhile, a group of Catholic composers and musicians, motivated by the growing chill, gathered in St. Louis (see story page 5) to discuss "church music in a time of upheaval and change."

As in the case of the Syracuse newspaper, the upheaval is being generated largely by complaints from the right whose activists have become quite accomplished in shouting and fear-mongering and storming Rome with letters. Rome, in turn, has for years reacted to them in a way far out of proportion to their rather meager numbers. But such is the reality of the church today.

The priests and musicians provide a good example of a fundamental tactic that could well stem some of the more extreme craziness being pitched around the lot as "orthodoxy" these days: Begin to organize.

Bishops who wield authority in a vacuum need to be held accountable, as do congregations in Rome -- like those who have upended the U.S. bishops' work on translations.

A favorite pastor, now retired but nationally known for his innovations and model parish, would sometimes exasperatedly ask of no one in particular: When will priests learn that it's a seller's market? We don't have to go to the chancery on every little detail. And if they don't like what we do, what can they do about it? Send us somewhere else?

A point well-taken and one that conceivably can be applied, too, to lay catechists and musicians and others who run the day-to-day operations of the church -- if only they would organize.

A few have, willy-nilly, appropriated the term "orthodox" to themselves and set themselves up as arbiters of all that is true and holy. But who ways their point of view is a done deal? They are not the church. It is time to get together, as adult believers who have been loyal catholic on the same journey, to reclaim a church in which "people of God" is more than a token phrase.