The curious case of the dropped column: Common Ground becomes bone of contention

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 4, 1996 by Richard P. McBrien

I have been writing this column for over 30 years. Immediately after the first one appeared July 8, 1966, in The Catholic Transcript, the weekly newspaper published by the Hartford, Conn., archdiocese, my home diocese, other papers asked to carry it. The Transcript published and syndicated the column each week since then, but that relationship has now ended. Beginning this week, the column is self-syndicated.

The Transcript is changing to a monthly cycle of publication in November. The column, the executive editor said, wouldn't fit in the new format, even though there are a few monthly papers that carry it, selecting one column of four each month.

At the same time, a conservative columnist (a fellow priest of the archdiocese) will continue to appear in the Transcript's pages. I'm not exactly sure what he'll write about, since most of his efforts for many months have been by way of instant rebuttals of my column - same week, same page. Friends in the newspaper business had expressed amazement at this practice since it involved the use of advance copies of my column before their embargoed publication date.

I've been asked this. If the new monthly format was the only reason for the column's being dropped and if the Transcript's weekly cycle was to continue until the end of October, why was the column discontinued in mid-September?

The decision may have had something to do with a column I had written for the week my column was dropped.

It was a column I was not happy to Write because it involved some criticism of an initiative with which I was, and am, in total sympathy, namely, Cardinal Benardin's Catholic Common Ground Project. Furthermore, there is no church leader for whom I have greater respect or personal admiration than the archbishop of Chicago.

However, I felt that the cardinal and his immediate associates had not put together a sufficiently balanced project committee. I judged the non-episcopal segment of the group (laity, clergy, and religious) too strongly tilted toward the conservative and moderately conservative side.

Knowing Cardinal Bernardin's wonderfully conciliatory spirit, I understood that he was bending over backwards to forestall opposition from the right. But a good rule of thumb is that people with strongly held views and strong-willed personalities to match are rarely appeased by conciliatory gestures.

And that seems to have happened in this case. Cardinal Bernardin's laudable efforts to go more than halfway did not exempt the project from immediate criticism, even from four of his fellow cardinals.

Those who follow U.S. Catholic events closely know how unprecedented that display of criticism is. Until now, our bishops have almost never differed with one another publicly. That unwritten rule has apparently been abrogated - an event that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

But I'm wandering a bit from my story. That column also pointed out the great gap in the statement that accompanied the announcement of the Catholic Common Ground Project. The statement, "Called to Be Catholic," provides a long list of controversial items that need to be discussed openly in the church, and in a spirit of mutual respect.

There was one major item missing, which I referred to as "the elephant in the living room," an expression taken from literature about dysfunctional families. A friend suggested a different expression, taken from Sherlock Holmes: "the dog didn't bark."

Whatever the appropriate metaphor, the statement related to Cardinal Bernardin's initiative makes no explicit mention of the manner in which central authority is exercised in this pontificate nor of the personal style of the current pope. That omission is in spite of the pope's own invitation to reflect on these issues in his recent encyclical Ut Unum Sint.

I pointed out in that column that the reason dialogue is not widely or effectively practiced in the church isn't because liberals and conservatives refuse to talk with one another. It is because ecclesiastical power is too often exercised, at and from the center, to discourage and even to prohibit such dialogue from taking place, and then to punish those who presume to raise and address controversial issues.

The stated purpose of this column is to stimulate an increasingly well educated readership to think about often controverted questions of importance to the faith, life and work of the church. Better to reflect on these issues openly than to force the discussions underground or to the margins where they can fester, become distorted and do unnecessary harm to the Body of Christ.

This week, as the column begins a new phase in its history, I welcome the opportunity to recommit myself to this 30-year-long effort - an effort I have always believed to be essentially pastoral and ministered in character.