U.S. bishops project 'air of unity'

Efforts to grapple with two deeming traumas of recent American Catholic experience, the sexual abuse crisis and political tensions between pro-lifers and peace-and-justice advocates, took center stage at the Nov. 12-15 fall meeting of the U.S. bishops in Baltimore.

On the political front, the bishops issued a document tiffed "Faithful Citizenship," intended as their most important statement to Catholic voters heading into the 2008 elections. It says that Catholics should be concerned with a variety of issues related to human dignity, from abortion to poverty relief, war and health care. On that continuum, however, pride of place must go to moral absolutes, principally the defense of human life.

"The direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life is always wrong and is not just one issue among many," the statement says.

Abortion is not the lone "intrinsic moral evil" cited by the bishops, who also pointed to other absolute wrongs such as racism, torture, euthanasia and embryonic stem-cell research. They acknowledged that in rare circumstances a Catholic might vote for a prochoice candidate, despite rather than because of that stance, for "grave moral reasons." (Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., chair of the bishops' Committee on Doctrine, stressed that Catholics should "go through some hoops" to reach such a conclusion.)

For the first time, the document was jointly prepared by committees on Domestic Policy, International Policy, Pro-Life Activities, Communications, Doctrine, Education and Migration, representing the bodies traditionally most identified with both the pro-life and the social justice concerns of the conference.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"This document is the result of an unprecedented process of listening carefully, consulting broadly and working diligently to build an ecclesial consensus that is true to Catholic teaching and can unite our conference," said Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, who led the effort.

"Faithful Citizenship" says that on political questions, the role of the bishops is to form consciences, with specific voting decisions to be made by individual Catholics. It also says that "voter guides" produced by other Catholic groups should not be distributed through official church channels.

The bishops did not directly tackle the vexed question of Communion for prochoice politicians, though in response to media inquires they confirmed that it remains up to individual bishops to decide on a case-by-case basis.

In one sign that the hard-line position does not command a majority, however, Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis lost a race to become head of the Committee on Canonical Affairs, drawing just over 40 percent of the vote. Burke is the American prelate most identified with the push to deny Communion to Catholic politicians opposed to church teaching on abortion.

On the sexual abuse crisis, the bishops heard preliminary findings from a $2 million study on the "causes and context" of the scandals by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Early results appear to suggest the crisis mirrored broad patterns in American society, such as the sexual revolution of the 1960s, rather than arising from unique forces within the church. "This is in conflict with the idea that there is something distinctive about the Catholic church that led to the sexual abuse of minors," Karen Terry, a researcher with John Jay College, told the bishops.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Speaking after the session with the bishops, Margaret Smith of John Jay College said that while the researchers do not have hard data on sexual abuse in other institutions, nothing they've seen suggests that the problem has been proportionately worse in the Catholic church than in other sectors of society.

While many bishops appeared to welcome the findings, a few warned that they offer no more than cold comfort.

"It's a bit like my doctor telling me that my cancer is no worse than my hospital roommate's cancer.... Our situation should be much better," said Bishop Robert Conlon of Steubenville, Ohio.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, who was elected president of the conference, Nicholas offered an additional note of caution. Learning that the church behaved like any other social institution, he said, could suggest the conclusion that religion doesn't make much difference in how believers, including clergy, conduct themselves.

"If that's the case, then the secularists shouldn't be disturbed about religion, because it has nothing Original to say anyway and it's not going to impose itself on anybody's behavior," George said. "However this thing finally turns out, it will inform the larger issues now before us in this country about secularism [and] the influence of religion in society."

In another move partly related to the crisis, the bishops adopted a new church law, which requires Vatican approval, obligating bishops to receive consent from their finance council and their college of consultors before taking five specific financial actions: