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The Bishops' Conference, in Print
By Msgr. George G. Higgins
August 7, 1998
I have more than the average degree of interest in what is said in print about the U.S. bishops' conference. I spent 20 years on the old National Catholic Welfare Conference staff and 15 years on that of its successor organization, the combined National Conference of Catholic Bishops-U.S. Catholic Conference.Much has been said about the bishops' conference in recent months. Ralph McInerny, professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and a popular novelist, led off with more than a dozen unflattering stabs at the bishops' conference in his latest novel, ``The Red Hat."
The book is described on the jacket cover as "a novel of suspense, humor and spiritual insight about the Catholic Church rocked by schism, scandal and contested papal elections early in the third millennium."
It's a fairly good read, as the saying goes, but it is really an aggressively ideological tract cast more or less entertainingly in the form of a novel.
The author appears obsessed with the bishops' conference. Like all organizations, it is open to objective criticism. But I found some references to the conference staff offensive.
In one passage, the author has Leach (the fictional lead character) calling the staff "moles who have burrowed into the NCCB and USCC and, working from within, sapped the church of her strength."
Leach, he adds, "regarded it as an established fact that the bishops' bureaucrats were traitors to the faith."
Another document that recently has put the bishops' conference in the headlines is Pope John Paul II's apostolic letter on the theological and juridical nature of episcopal conferences.
Since I am neither a theologian nor canon lawyer, I am not qualified to comment with authority on this document. I can only say that a statement Cardinal Miloslav Vlk of Prague made as one of those who presented the document to reporters at a Vatican press conference was worrisome.
"Creativity," he said, banging the podium, "can be found here. This is the place for creativity."
When I read that, I went back and reread a quite different statement by Pope Paul VI in his apostolic letter "Octogesima Adveniens": "There is ... a wide diversity among the situations in which Christians ... find themselves according to regions, socio-political systems and cultures.... In the face of such widely varying situations it is difficult for us to utter a unified message and to put forward a solution which has universal validity. "Such is not our ambition, nor is it our mission."It is up to the Christian communities to analyze with objectivity the situation which is proper to their own country, to shed on it the light of the Gospel's unalterable words and to draw principles of reflection, norms of judgment and directives of action from the social teaching of the church."
Clearly, Paul VI did not think Rome had a monopoly on creativity. The history of Vatican Council II also casts doubt on the cardinal's statement, for it is a matter of record that almost without exception the documents put before the council by the Roman authorities of that time either were flatly rejected or radically amended.
This is not to denigrate the Holy See's indispensable role in the universal church. It is to say -- as the recent apostolic letter states -- that the episcopal conferences mandated by Vatican II also have their role to play in the church's mission.
To affirm the Holy See's role, it is not necessary to deny or make light of Vatican II's teaching on episcopal collegiality, nor is it necessary to expurgate or rewrite church history.
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