U.S. bishops vote to push social teaching

National Catholic Reporter, July 3, 1998 by Patricia Lefevere

PITTSBURGH -- The nation's Catholic bishops approved a 27-page document opposing pornography, excessive violence and what they termed irresponsible use of sex and violence in the media during their spring meeting here. They also voted to have "the best kept secret of the Catholic church" -- its social teaching -- incorporated into all Catholic educational programs and institutions.

The two actions, along with a broad discussion of ways to encourage greater use of the sacrament of reconciliation and a vote to submit the lectionary to Rome for its confirmation and authorization, highlighted the agenda for some 220 prelates during the June 18-20 meeting at the Hilton Hotel.

Favoring a V-chip but not censorship, the bishops urged the media to self-regulate, the government to more strictly enforce licensing rules for broadcasters and parents to oversee their children's use of the media.

The document also urged parishes and schools to push for aggressive enforcement of existing pornography laws, to hold discussions about the media and to analyze the moral messages transmitted over the air, in movies and via cyberspace.

The prelates suggest that families forsake television, video games, talk radio, the Internet and music videos one day each week and take time to pray and to discuss how the media contributes to each family member's understanding of sex and violence.

Titled "Renewing the Mind of the Media," the paper acknowledges the media's "culture-forming impact" and its great potential for good. "The media has the power to shape human destiny," Auxiliary Bishop Michael Cote of Portland, Maine, told NCR, "but it also has its dark side."

Cote, who headed a subcommittee of the bishops' Communications Committee that drafted the document, said he thought the central message, "pornography harms the human person who is made in God's image," would be well received.

The responsibility for parents, he said, is to become "more reactive" to what their children see, read and listen to.

Although the bishops adopted the statement by a vote of 207-11, several criticized its wordiness, bad writing and lack of documentation.

Urgently needed

Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Sullivan of Brooklyn quoted sentences that he felt were overwritten or lacked clarity. An example: "Sexuality offers the prospect of the most fulfilling experience of this drive toward social communion."

If that's what the media thinks the bishops see as the sex drive, "then we've got nothing to worry about," Sullivan said with a laugh.

Auxiliary Bishop Peter Rosazza of Hartford, Conn., also critical of the document's composition, said that no document should be addressed to the media before it had first met the standard "of the finest articles in the Catholic and secular press." But Baltimore's Cardinal William Keeler said that the statement was urgently needed, even in its current form.

Citing the $6 billion U.S. pornography industry, Keeler said: "We know from parents what's happening in movies, TV and on the Internet." The cardinal also said the National Council of Churches and the National Association of Evangelicals are looking at the same issues and are ready to approve "similar statements." He added that "Jewish and Muslim leaders are willing to support our position taken here."

The bishops' statement, which made no mention of guns nor of the teaching of nonviolence, was adopted the day the Presbyterian Church (USA) took a first step against violence by asking its members to remove guns from their homes.

Asked by NCR whether he could foresee a day when the U.S. bishops might confront the National Rifle Association, Cote said: "They are part of this reality."

At a news conference after the vote, Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., said the document was meant to include all violence from soft porn to murder. He pointed to the Jonesboro, Ark., case in which two boys are charged with killing four girls and a teacher at school this spring and asked: "Where did they learn that from?"

Keeler said that support for the bishops' suggestions exists in both Hollywood and New York, where he and Archbishop John Foley have made several visits to entertainment industry executives. Foley heads Rome's Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

A new effort to communicate the church's more than 100-year history of social teaching won the bishops' support by a vote of 213-5. The 17-page paper emerged from three years of work by the Domestic Policy, Education and International Policy committees. The three committees convened a 30-member task force headed by former Archbishop John Roach of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The task force found that in too many classrooms the values, principles and lessons of the church's social teachings are "vague ... unclear ... unlearned." The task force is promoting a new effort to infuse the tradition from preschool through graduate school and to link service and action, charity and justice.

Teaching falls short

In an interview with NCR, Roach said that sermons and classroom teaching had fallen short and that priests and teachers had failed to use the church's resources to advance its social teachings. Many instructors in Catholic institutions would fail, he said, were they to be tested on church teaching on assisted suicide, the death penalty, a just wage and working conditions or a just war.