Law's example of victory by compromise

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 22, 1995 by Richard McBrien

The resolution of conflicts -- whether in politics, diplomacy, business or litigation -- is impossible if one of the parties should adopt a stonewall approach where there is no give, no compromise and no willingness even to consider the possible legitimacy of the other party's grievance.

What applies to nations, organizations and litigants also applies to communities, like families and the church. Marriage counseling, for example, can't work if one of the spouses adamantly refuses to participate. Parents can't hope to reach an understanding with their children if every item in dispute is labeled "nonnegotiable."

The church is subject to the same stresses and strains that any family experiences. When parties in conflict refuse to reach out to one another, the conflict becomes more bitter and the possibilities of settlement more remote. And the unity of the church is undermined.

As an influential conservative voice in the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law has loyally supported Vatican teaching and policy on a wide variety of controverted issues: ordination of women, clerical celibacy, legislation regulating abortions, birth control -- the usual suspects.

It is significant, therefore, when a church leader of his stature speaks and acts contrary to the stereotype in which the media and others have cast him. Two items will illustrate the point.

A recent Mike Barnicle column in The Boston Globe tells the story of a priest, on leave of absence from the active ministry, who telephoned the cardinal to inform him that he had AIDS.

"How are you doing?" the cardinal asked.

"Not too well," he replied. "I've called to ask a favor. I'd like you to say my funeral Mass."

Law did more than that. He offered to bring the man back into the priesthood. And when the illness worsened, he offered to care for him in the cardinal's official residence.

When asked by the Globe's columnist why he did that, the cardinal replied: "When someone has AIDS, you don't say, `How did you get it'" You say, "`What can I do to help?' This is the way we ought to lead our lives."

And that is also what good pastoring is all about. Nonjudgmental. Caring.

For columnist Barnicle, Rio Pollyannaish observer of the ecclesiastical scene, the cardinal's gesture was "an example of what it means to practice a faith in a world where judgments of black and white are a thing of the distant past."

But not on the far right or the far left are they "a thing of the distant past." And that is what makes the cardinal's example so compelling.

The second item concerns Law's recent address at the Knights of Columbus annual convention in Kansas City, Mo. (NCR, Aug. 11).

Speaking before some 2,000 delegates and their families and 70 fellow bishops, the cardinal reaffirmed the church's opposition to abortion and paid tribute to the Knights for their "peerless ... support for life at its most vulnerable -- at the beginning and at the end." And then came the "but."

However, he continued, "we cannot proclaim the gospel of life selectively," adding that concern for life must extend to the poor and the weak.

"I believe that abortion is the primordial evil of our time," he declared, "but we must be consistent -- our credibility depends on consistency." As in consistent ethic of life, perhaps -- an approach the U.S. bishops have taken in the teeth of derisive scorn from more militant antiabortion activists in the Catholic church.

"Think of immigration reform and welfare reform and capital punishment," he urged his largely conservative audience. "What a challenge it is to truly proclaim and truly believe the gospel of life,"

As an example of putting those beliefs into practice -- as he had put his own beliefs into practice with respect to the priest dying of AIDS -- Law said that he and others in Massachusetts had written to President Clinton asking him not to grant waivers of federal regulations allowing the state to put a family cap and a time cap on welfare support, as conservatives in Congress have urged.

"We must address ourselves to the president, to our governors, to our Congress and our legislatures and tell them that we don't want reform to be at the expense of the poor and of children."

Apparently, the Knights of Columbus needed to hear that message before they voted on their various resolutions: against obscenity, child pornography, abortion and sex education in schools, and for school vouchers and voluntary prayer in schools -- an agenda seemingly indistinguishable from that of the Christian Coalition.

The church can begin to transcend its inevitable conflicts if we develop the habit of reaching out occasionally to the other side and even gently challenging our own natural allies on issues of moment. Law has given the example.