X. Fitzgerald Spohn

8/12/2019 X. Fitzgerald Spohn

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preted, tbe property tax is the only local revenue source.Sanders does not interpret the law that way. Hecalls the property tax regressive, and has proposed a3 percent gross receipts tax on hotel bills and restaurantmeals. There is some question about whether the citycan legally impose this tax, and the proposal so enragedthe business establishment that it went out and hired aCalifornia consultant firm to fight itwhich only addedto Sanders's anti-establishment appeal.All this makes Sand ers a slight favorite to beat Demo-crat Judith Stephany and Republican James Gilson in theMarch 1election. The Dem ocrats, thoug h, h ave reason-able hopes of forcing Sanders into arunoff where theythink they can beat him. They h ave a good candidate inStephany, a 37-year-old liberal with no ties to the oldPaquette machine. She takes the race seriously enoughto have quit as minority leader of the State House ofRepresentatives to run against Sanders.

If Sanders wins, some of his supporters want him torun for the U.S. Senate, and he has not discouraged their

talk. The next available Senate seat in Vermont will heDemocrat Patrick Leahy's in 1986. It is extraordinarilyunlikely that Sanders could get elected statewide, but byrunning as a left-of-center independent he could con-ceivably deliver the seat to a Republican. In the kind ofradical politics Sanders pursues, this result would be noworse than the election of another Democrat.But Sanders, even if re-elected, probably will not havemuch impact outside Burlington. He disdains what littlenationwide Socialist movement there is (the DemocraticSocialists of America) for its gradualist philosophy andits ties to the Democrahc Party. He prefers to make therevolution in one city, fill the potholes, and keep the taxrate down. All this may not be what Debs and Thomashad in mind. But then, they never got elected.

JON MARGOLISJon Margolis is a Washington correspondent for theChicago Tribune.

In a time of doubt, the Church turns to the Social Gospel.PULPIT POLITICS

BY PATRICK GLYNNW HATEVER its consequences for the nation as awhole, the debate over nuclear arms has becomea curiously pivotal event for the Roman CatholicChurch. Not since Humanae Vitaethe papal encycli-cal prohibiting artificial contraception for Catholicshas an official Church pronouncement stirred as muchattention as the bishops' draft pastoral letter on nu-clear war. But whereas the effect of HumanaeVitaein1968 was to shatter the morale of the AmericanChurch and undermine the authority of the bishops,the current pastoral message is having the oppositeresult. Clergy at all levels have been galvanized by theantinuclear theme, and, dissent from the right notwith-standing, the bishops are growing accustomed to thewarrnest praise from quarters that formerly profferedonly criticism and scorn.

Yet to see the pastoral letter solely as the product ofChurch doctrine or everi of the bish ops' strong personalconvictions would be misleading. Behind the hierarchy'sbold new stance on disarmament lies a series of institu-tional changes that over the past fifteen years havePatrick Glynn issen ior editorrary Studies. of Contempo-

thrust politics more and more to the center of Catholiclife. The period since Pope Paul VI's pronouncement onbirth control has been marked by self-doubt and severedissension within the Church, Since 1966 the AmericanChurch has lost over 11,000 priests and 35,000 sistersthrough resignations; weekly Mass attendance hasdrop ped p recipitously; and roughly four-fifths of Ameri-can Catholics, according to polls taken by the NationalOpinion Research Center, have found themselves atodds with the Vatican on the birth control question.Again and again, in the Catholic press and at publicmeetings, clergy and lay Catholics have clashed bitterlywith the bishops on the issues of contraception, abor-tion, divorce, the marriage of priests, and the ordinationof women. The revisions of canon law recently signedby the Pope have d one nothing to alter the fundamentalterms of this debate.

At the same time, there has been an enormou s grow thin the portion of the Church's institutional resourcesdevoted to the co ncerns of social justice. Much of it datesfrom 1967, the year before Humanae Vitae when PopePaul issued his encyclical on third world development.In its own way the 1967 document, Populorum Pro-gressio was nearly as controversial as Humanae Vitae. It


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chastised the wealthier nations for indifference to thepoorer, and blamed third world poverty on Westernexploitation. It was attacked vociferously by the A meri-can right. opulorum rogressio culminated a series ofencyclicals and council documentsPope John XXIII'sMater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963),and Vatican Council II's audium et Spes (1965)inwhich the Vatican set forth a new political teachingwhose themes mirrored the mood of the era: a moreconciliatory attitude toward Communism, a new em-phasis on peace and disarmament, a special sympathyfor the third world. To advance these interests, Paulestablished a Pontifi-cal Commission onJustice and Peace tooversee the develop-ment of Church socialdoctrine.

In a sense, Paul'scontrasting encyclicalson birth control andon the problems ofd e v e lo p in g n a t io n sh a v e d e f in e d twopoles in Amer icanCatholic life since thelate 1960s: the one asource of dissensionand decay, the other astimulus to energeticgrowth. At the sametime that parish insti-tutions have witheredand local churchesand parochial schoolshave experienced reli-gious staff shortages,the Church bureau-cracy devoted to thepromotion of peaceand justice has dra-matically expanded.Altogether there hasbeen an enormous re-direction of religiousenergy into the secular realm, particularly on th e part ofthe clergy. For many clerics shaken by the changes of theCouncil era, politics has provided what the Catholicsocial scientist Russell Barta calls a new apo logetic anew message with which to rouse the faithful andvindicate the Church in the modern world.

Hundreds of clerics and Church officials are nowprofessionally involved in Church-sponsored social ac-tivism. Over the last ten years, about 90 percent of thenation's Catholic religious orders and 60 percent of its173 dioceses and archdioceses have established peaceand justice commissions of their own. Twenty yearsago such political involvement on the part of official

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Church personnel would have been inconceivable, cept in connection with matters such as federal aid parochial schools, where the interests of the Churwere directly at stake. To the degree that there was identifiably Catholic tradition of political activismtCatholic Worker movement, the liberal Catholic movment in Chicagoit was initiated and sustained by lpeople, with only rare (and usually tacit) support frocertain hierarchs. Activism generally occurred outsthe official Church bureaucracy; it existed as a mincountercurrent to the public stance of the Churcwhich, because of its strong anti-Communist emphas

was generally seenconservative. Not tthe bishops were ways conservative silent on political sues; in 1919 Cathoprelates outlined a scial program callifor child labor lawhigher wages, socinsurance, and simireforms, and througout the twentieth cetury the hierarchy mained supportive unionism. But if thepositions never regtered very strongin the public minit was partly becaustatements from tbishops on politin any form were infrequent.

Nowadays, by cotrast, it has becoroutine for a Cathodiocese to take pubstands and even lobon a whole range domestic and foreipolicy issuesevething from local cocerns, such as housing and rent control, to natioquestions, such as U.S. aid to El Salvador and nucledisarmament. The more active diocesan commissioemploy full-time activistsas m any as six to eight prfessionalswho organize letter-writing campaigns, vimembers of Congress and state legislators, sponsdemonstrations, and instruct local Catholics on the sues. San Francisco's diocesan commission, one of tmost active, has a full-time staff of six and a budget thyear of 150,00045 percent from diocesan sources amuch of the rest from supporters of California's nucle

freeze campaign.In short, after two decades of change and inner


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mult, it is the Church's politically oriented institutionsthat have emerged the most vital and unscathed. Theresulting structural incentives have operated powerfullyon the bishops, since to speak on such matters as birthcontrol and priestly celibacy has been to risk a torrent ofabuse In the attempt to gain the ear of clergy and laityalike, it has proved infinitely more gratifying and pro-ductive to turn to political themes.The Catholic bishopsonce a conservative and gen-erally sober lotnow find themselves willy-nilly in thevanguard of half a dozen political movements. Since1966, when they created the United States CatholicConference and hired a staff of policy analysts to grap-ple officially with the secular realm, the bishops haveissued countless declarations on public policy topics:pastoral letters, statements to the press. Congressionaltestimony, lengthy policy analyses. These documentsmake for curious reading, mixing a rather standard brewof secula r left-liberalism with th e lofty m oral rheto ric ofrevealed religion: The Church has a particular respon-sibility to address the moral questions involved in theissue of strip-mining . Or again: As an advocate, theChurch should analyze housing needs in light of theGospel, make judgm ents and offer sugge stions. It re-quires perhaps more than an average grasp of religiousmatters to discover what the Gospel has to say abouthousing needs, but such, nonetheless, is the perspectivethat the bishops offer. They are not above using theirformidable moral authority to drive home a narrowlypolitical point. Thus a plan of national health insuranceis urged upon us as a moral necessity ; and with aconfidence reserved for Galbraithian economists andCatholic prelates, the bishops assure the nation thatthere is no necessary trade-off between inflation andunemployment. At times the Church seems to be par-ticularly far afield from its own concerns. There is alengthy treatise on the virtues of small family farms, apassionate endorsement of the Panama Canal treaty,and a do cumen t that insists on the rights of Palestiniansto reparations from Israel and a state of their own.

THE VAST MAJORITY of these statements aredrafted by the U.S.C.C.'s nine-member policy-writingstaff but the bishops are aw are of what is issuedunder their imprimatur, and many have taken consider-able pride in the progressive tenor of their pronounce-ments. In 1976, after a particularly disastrous confer-ence, where 1,300 Catholics convened by the bishopsvoted resolutions calling for ordination of women, per-mitting priests to marry, reinstatement for divorcedCatholics who have remarried, and determination ofconscience in birth control. Archbishop Joseph L.Bernadin assured theNational atholic Reporterthat inthe area of social conce rns the bishops were ahead ofthe main stream of Catholics. We've got the substance,but not the style, maybe, to attract a larger audience,explained Bernadin, who was recently made a cardinaland heads the committee that drafted the nuclear pas-

toral letter. The se things [the bis hops' policy state-ments] have to be written in a more popular style.The draft pastoral letter has certainly succeeded inattracting this larger audience. Until now, the bishops'policy statements have gone generally unnoticed out-side the Church, although that is not to say that theyhave been without effect. The Catho lic Chu rch, for all itsrecent divagations, is still an institution where officialdocuments mattereven if they matter somewhat in-consistently. Thus Catholic activists who dismissHumanae Vitaeout of hand will cite chapter and verse ofPopulorum Progressio in support of their political activi-ties. Populorum Progressio and similar statements haveplayed a critical role in legitimating social activismwithin the institutional Church. (The 1968 statement ofthe Latin American bishops at Medellin, Colombia, andthe 1971 declaration ustice in theWorld by the WorldSynod of Bishops are also key documents for the activ-ists.) Therein lies the real significance of the bishops'nuclear pastoral message. Because of the general erosionof authority within the Church, statements by bishopsthese days are unlikely to change th e minds of many layCatholics, but they can p rovide impetus for the comm it-ment of the Church's considerable resourcesmoraland financialto particular political programs. Officialdocuments free clerics and Church professionals to actpolitically, ostensibly on behalf of the Church.

N UMEROUS CLERICS are already involved in anti-nuclear activities, and many of them predict thatthe bishops' letter, if approved in roughly its presentform, will open the floodgates to new involvement.There are a lot of staff people who would like to act onthese issues, explains Sister Valerie Heino nen, w hodirects military affairs for the Interfaith Center for Cor-pora te Responsibility in New York. But until there is aformal statement, they can't act. People criticize them. Ifthey can go back to a formal statement, that's the end ofthe argument.

Yet it is not clear how much thought bishops andChurch leaders have given to the broad social conse-quences of their pronouncements on topics like nuclearwar. Thus far the m ost imp ortant practical effect of thesedeclarations has been to fan th e fires of political activismamong clerics.Many clerical activists approach politics with a naiveair of moral certitude and an irresponsible singleness ofpurpos e. Yet as the Church awak ened to its new politicalrole,enorm ous institutional power fell into the ha nds ofthese well-meaning but unworldly sisters and priests.More and m ore religious comm unities have placed theirinstitutionally held stock portfolios at the service ofactivist members, who have used them to put share-holde rs' resolutions on corporate ballots. In the past yearninety communities of sisters and priests have joinedforces with the Milwaukee diocese and with severalProtestant congregations to take action against n ineteencompanies involved in defense work. The resolutions


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are intended to force companies like General Electricand AT&T to get out of the business of designing andbuilding nuclear weapons. Though none of the resolu-tions is likely to succeed, millions of dollars of stock areinvolved. Altogether the Interfaith Center for CorporateResponsibility has about $8 billion in church-ownedshares, Protestant and Catholic, at its disposal for suchinitiatives.

THE CLERICS directing the corporate responsibilitycampaign are remarkably untroubled by the pros-pect that their efforts could have a one-sided impact,curtailing U.S. weapons production without affectingsimilar cutbacks in the Soviet Union. They act with anassurance that only the Holy Spirit should provide. Wethink if you have two countries, one atheistic and oneGo d-fear ing, says Father Michael Crosby, a FranciscanCapuchin who coordinates shareholder activity for theNational Catholic Coalition for Responsible Investme nt, and if the two are at the same point [as regards nucleararmamentsj, the first step ought to be taken by theChristian g roup. Faith is the ultimate rationale. We mustbe the ones to take the concrete first step. What'shap pen ing n ow in this country is no different fromwhat's happening in the atheistic country. We're theones who should be turning the other cheek.To hear clerics like Father Crosby discuss these mat-ters so simplistically is to long for the days of Wolseyand Richelieu, when the Church's immense power fellinto the hands of men who, while ebulliently corrupt,were nonetheless shrewd and prudent. In the newChurch the chief qualification for authority increasinglyseems to be laudable intentions and an uncanny abilityto read diplomacy and military policy directly fromBiblical parables. Yet the stance of perfect innocence isnot without its moral ironies. Thus a sister in Washing-ton who coordinates political action for nuns can calmlyexplain that the sisters' activities range from the smash-ing of warheads, to the pouring of blood, to a simplepresenc e, as though it were hard to imagine goodworks taking any other form.And always in the background are Church docu-ments. I don't see that we have much to worry about,says Sister He inon en, especially if we fall back on our

theological docu men ts. For Roman Catholics it's easy topull out a whole bunch of documents about peace.According to our statements, this is what we're sup-posed to be doing.In the end, the modern Church is faced with an almostinsuperable dilemma. The fact is that its traditionalteaching on sexual matters, and indeed on much ofprivate life, retains little popular appeal. Inevitably, it isthe social Go spel that proves most resonant for mod -em Catholics. The Pope himself seems acutely con-scious of this circumstance; though John Paul II dutifullyreiterates more traditional Church themes, it is the mes-sage of justice and peace that electrifies his hearers. Thisrecurrent public emphasis on politics by the Pope and

the bishops is altering the nature of Catholic doctrinenot as it is technically expressed in official pronouncments, at least as it lives in the minds of Church mebers. For many Catholics today, religious feeling been redefined in political terms, and the very content moral life has changed: the old preoccupation wscrupulous personal virtue has been replaced by a geeralized sense of good intentions and series of impeccbly vir tuo us stances on public issues. Othe rwor ldness has given way to utopianism; as a result, tspiritual has come to be understood by many as somthing in opposition not so much to the profane world a whole as to the established political order. In suchcontext, the religiou s approach to politics almost neessarily takes the form of extremism. After all, whmakes a political position religiou s, Ch ristia n, Cath olic is precisely its uncomprom ising purity intention, its vehemence, its unwillingness to accedethe exigencies of the secular realm. And so friars todawaken us to the sacred by demanding that we conduforeign policy according to the rules laid forth in tSermon on the Mount, and they use all the tempopower at their disposal to see that we are forced to do Catholicism is not alone in this development; but bcause of its enormous institutional powerit remaithe nation's largest denominationits inner shifts chave significant consequences for all of us.

DEFENDERS of the C hurch 's social doctrine em phsize that there is a great distance between tVatican's generalized statemen ts on such topics as dismam ent and the actual end orsem ent of specific policibut what characterizes the current clerical activism precisely the direct application of principle to practiSince the Church is for disarmam ent, one must favor tfreeze. Since the Church favors negotiations, one mubackS LT[].Since the Church backs peace, one musteverything in one's pow er to prevent the manufacture nuclear weapons by U.S. companies. By consistenfailing to distinguish between general moral princpleswith which we all agreeand specific applictions of these principles, the bishops have opened tway to a flood of naive activist initiatives whose lonterm consequences are difficult to predict.Long ago, defending C atholicism's compatibility wdemocracy, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:

The Catholic priests in America have divided the intellectual world into two p arts: in the on e they place the do ctrineof revealed religion, which they assent to without discussion; in the other they leave those political truths whicthey believe the D eity h as left open to free inquiry. Thus thCatholics of the United States are at the same time the mossubmissive believers and the most independent citizens.The situation described by Tocqueville has exactly versed itself Now many Catholics assent to politic t rut hs without a second thought; it is the doctrinesrevealed religion that have become problematical.


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X. Fitzgerald Spohn