The bishop's bull - Roman Catholic Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska - Column

National Review, May 6, 1996 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Nothing lights up Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes quite like the opportunity to disparage Christianity. This is not to suggest that he is friendlier to Judaism or Islam: one gathers, in his company, that the very idea of God is simply -- infra dig; beneath the dignity of modern man. To the extent Andy's face can light up, then, it did last Sunday when he reported on the diktat of Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska. All that the poor bishop had done to make his way to Andy Rooney's attention was to tell his flock (85,000 parishioners) that by May 15 they should dissociate themselves from 12 organizations (he listed them) or incur excommunication, which is the capital sentence of the Roman Catholic Church, denying to the excommunicate access to the sacraments.

Among the anathematized organizations are Eastern Star, Job's Daughters, and Rainbow Girls. Apparently these are Masonic organizations, and what exactly they are up to that offends the word of God as transcribed by Rome isn't known on this watch, but the obvious targets of the bishop were Planned Parenthood and something named Call to Action. Planned Parenthood began generations ago as an organization promoting birth control by the use of contraceptives. In recent years it is primarily identified with enthusiasm for abortion. Most of those who favor the right to abortion nevertheless deplore its use as an instrument of population control, but PP is correctly judged as the outfit that makes no distinction between the pill and the scalpel.

Call to Action, with its 15,000 members, has a heavier role in the bishop's world, inasmuch as it is an organization made up primarily of Catholics identified with two goals, the ordination of women as priests, and the end of a celibate priesthood. A Nebraska representative of the organization had written in to the bishop requesting a "dialogue" on these questions, and it was that request that triggered the bishop's bull.

There are two aspects to the episode. The first has to do with the integrity of the Catholic Church, the second, with the finesse of its bishops. Concerning the former, the Church is organized around certain tablets of belief, and to the extent it is now and again required that these be interpreted, the authority to do so is given to the Pope and the so-called Magisterium, from which he draws guidance.

Now there are many Catholics who disbelieve this or that pronouncement of the Church, but disbelief is not tolerated concerning some positions. The Catholic who does not believe in the Trinity should instantly designate himself as an ex-Catholic. A year or so back, Pope John Paul announced that all the arguments favoring the ordination of women and an end to the requirement of celibacy among the priesthood had been heard and had been rejected. No Catholic disputes the authority of the Pope to pronounce a question as closed, even if it is not in fact closed in the minds of many of the faithful. But their duty is then to govern the nature of their dissent. They are not encouraged to agitate formally for the renunciation of a position pronounced as settled.

On the matter of abortion, it is inexplicable that there should be dissent. The very biology of Christianity asserts the sacredness of the unborn child. For a Catholic to encourage an organization that proselytizes for abortion is more than sheer truancy, it is mutiny; somebody has to get off that ship, and the general vote is that the Pope is best left at the wheel.

All of this is pretty plain, but so is it plain that the short fuse of the Bishop of Lincoln is something of an embarrassment. I asked the late Bishop Fulton Sheen once, on Firing Line, to name the excommunicable offenses. He replied, "The desecration of the Blessed Sacrament." Yes, and what else? He refused to add another such offense, not because he wouldn't acknowledge that there were others, but because he felt that to enumerate them was in some way to stand between the sinner and the charity of God.

In New Orleans a generation ago a bishop threatened excommunication of any Catholic who stood in the way of the racial integration of the Catholic schools. A very heavy intercession, by the way, but applauded at the time by the liberal community. In the early Fifties, Cardinal Segura of Seville, going gradually around the bend, pronounced excommunication for anyone who danced. A few months after his death, visiting in Seville, I asked my solemn, pious guide what life was now like. She responded, "When the cardinal died, he and we passed on to a better world." Bishop Bruskewitz should pause to consider the fraternal implications of his sortie. If his move was called for in today's circumstances, then the 162 other bishops in America are delinquent. If he was merely giving way to histrionic impulses, he should meditate on Cardinal Segura.