Catholic Dilemma: Control versus Conscience

Growing tensions in the Roman Catholic Church between the conservative hierarchy and increasingly independent, liberal theologians broke into open revolt last month on two controversial fronts: birth control and academic freedom.

On birth control, a member of the Pope’s special commission leaked to the press highly secret position papers that showed dramatic division on the issue, with the majority opinion favoring contraception and rejecting the idea that the church’s historic stand is unalterable.

Meanwhile, at Washington, D. C.’s, Catholic University of America, the Rev. Charles E. Curran, a liberal-minded assistant professor, became the center of a dispute over academic freedom. Faculty and student body united last month to boycott classes for five days after the board of trustees, without explanation, failed to renew Curran’s teaching contract despite unanimous endorsement by his colleagues.

While the instances were individual, the issue in each case was the same: Who will control the direction of the church in its post-Vatican Council era?

This question sparked the dramatic confrontation late last month at CU, the church’s national university, whose administration includes all American cardinals and archbishops.

On the surface the issue appeared clear-cut: A professor in the School of Sacred Theology was fired without either stated charges or a hearing. The school’s faculty reacted swiftly in a move equally clear-cut. Their statement read:

“The academic freedom and security of every professor in this university is jeopardized. Under these circumstances, we cannot function unless and until Father Curran is reinstated.”

The following day the revolt caught fire across the whole university, and nearly all the 6,600 students and 600 faculty members joined the strike and refused to attend class.

For five days everything stopped. Black-robed faculty joined students on picket lines to carry posters reading: “Help Stamp Out the Middle Ages” and “Home Rule, Not Rome Rule.” On the university’s large, grassy common, the musical chimes from the austere Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (where Luci Johnson was wed) mingled with the singing of folk ballads like “We Shall Overcome” and “The Times, They Are A-Changing.”

For CU, times were indeed changing. On April 24, with a cold, setting sun shining on his face, the university’s chancellor, Archbishop Patrick A. O’Boyle, told a crowd of 1,500 expectant students: “The Board of Trustees has voted to abrogate its action.” Curran was rehired and promoted, and the administration agreed to meet with the faculty to establish procedures for governing any such future disputes. The teachers then met and called for a meeting with O’Boyle this month to negotiate for more faculty power.

It was a Berkeley-type showdown, but it happened on a Catholic campus, and few people missed the implications.

While outwardly the fight centered on the broader question of academic freedom, there were hints that the dispute had a darker side. Many faculty members admitted privately that they believed the action of the trustees against Curran was an attempt to censure him for his liberal views on various subjects, including birth control.

The board made its decision to let Curran go at a trustees meeting in Chicago in early April, during the national bishops’ meeting. The action, according to Curran, was based on a report to the board by a secret three-man committee of trustees that had been assigned by the board to investigate his teachings.

A teacher of moral theology, Curran has been a student of Germany’s Bernard Häring, a leading liberal Catholic scholar in moral theology who will teach at Union Theological Seminary, New York, this fall.

Outlining his own views last year in an interview (which he has since repudiated) in the National Catholic Reporter, Curran spoke out against the “absolutism” of the church’s moral decrees. While he indicated the need for enlightenment from Scripture on broad matters, the newspaper reported him as saying that “the greatest source of moral knowledge [where the Scriptures don’t speak directly] will come from the experience of Christian people”—not the Church.

When people find apparent discrepancies between the teachings of experience and the teachings of the Church, he said, Catholics are forced to ask the question: “How does the church arrive at its moral teaching?” The result is that the church’s traditional answers are undermined, as on birth control.

The trustees deny that Curran’s theology was a factor in the firing, but they have explained neither why he was dismissed nor why he was rehired. They wanted it clearly understood that his reinstatement did not include any kind of endorsement of his views. To establish the point, O’Boyle said, “This decision in no way derogates from the teaching … on birth control.”

Birth control, however, was unquestionably the issue last month when a member of Pope Paul’s advisory commission ignored a papal order of secrecy and released the documents to the press (see story below).

The three separate papers—a total of 20,000 words—reveal clearly the deep, behind-the-scenes division of the church’s scholars on the issue.

The commission’s majority opinion, expressed in two papers, supported contraception as a legitimate form of birth control, saying primarily that man has the right to intervene in natural processes to achieve proper human goals.

The minority report, however, calls the church’s present teachings on contraception “irreformable,” first because they are true and further because a change in position would tend to destroy confidence in the church’s authority to set moral standards.

“If contraceptives were declared not intrinsically evil, in honesty it would have to be acknowledged that the Holy Spirit … assisted Protestant churches, and that for half a century Pius XI, Pius XII and a great part of the Catholic hierarchy did not protest against a very serious error, one most pernicious to souls.”

But there is more at issue than doctrine, according to the minority. A softened stand on birth control, it said, would lead ultimately to increased sexual abuses.

The majority met head-on the charge that the integrity of the church’s teachings was in danger over the issue.

“In point of fact,” the majority stated, “we know that there have been errors in the teachings of the magisterium and of tradition.” The difficulty with the traditional view, according to the majority, is that it elevates natural law so that it becomes the voice of God.

Man has the right, the opinion asserts, to alter natural law through contraception (specific forms were not mentioned) because “sexuality is not ordered only to procreation.… In some cases intercourse can be required as a manifestation of self-giving love.… This is neither egocentricity nor hedonism.…”

In a second paper, the majority attempts to construct a view of marriage into which contraception could be fitted. While rejecting abortion and sterilization, it calls for educating couples to the responsibility of parenthood.

The paper ends with a plea for more research and suggests that the normal procedure of secrecy be suspended and the commission’s opinions be made public. When the commission’s documents were made public, it was without official approval.

The commission turned its papers over to the Pope last June, but there was no word when—or if—a papal statement will appear.

Coup In Catholic Reporting

Release of the full texts of a secret report from the Pope’s birth-control commission is a historic “scoop” for religious journalism. The decision of a member of the commission to leak the text, and the decision of the National Catholic Reporter to publish it, both indicate dramatic changes in the authority system of the Roman Catholic Church.

An NCR editorial defended publication on two grounds: (1) It isn’t a newspaper’s job to enforce security regulations within such bodies as the commission, and (2) a newspaper should “publish news of service to readers.”

As to the argument that public release of the documents will produce “undue and illegitimate pressure” on the Pope, NCR asserts that “while an informed public opinion is almost by definition a form of pressure, it is not undue or illegitimate.”

Sex And Mental Health

Premarital sex relations growing out of the so-called new morality have significantly increased the number of young people in mental hospitals. This was reported last month by Dr. Francis Braceland, former president of the American Psychiatric Association and currently the editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Braceland told the National Methodist Convocation on Medicine and Theology in Rochester, Minnesota, that “a more lenient attitude on campus about premarital sex experience has imposed stresses on some college women severe enough to cause emotional breakdown.”

NCR had hoped to discuss the ethics and handling of the release at a more leisurely pace, consulting various advisers within the church. But word came April 20 that Le Monde in Paris was on the verge of publication, so Editor Robert G. Hoyt rushed NCR’s recently received translation into print.

Why did the commission source give the documents to NCR? Hoyt says he doesn’t know but speculates that the source “decided the Pope was simply wrong to suspend judgment this long.”

Hoyt said he agonized over the possibility that publication would harden papal opposition to change but decided that “to look to possible consequences to that extent was improper.” NCR’s general position on birth control, he said, is that “change is required by theological developments, and the facts of the situation.”

Vatican press officer Monsignor Fausto Vallainc said the release is a “very serious” breach of secrecy vows. “Such indiscretions do not make examination of the problem especially serene,” he said. “They apply pressure that only stirs up agitation in public opinion.”

Hoyt said a week after publication that no American bishop had complained to NCR. Even those bishops who were privately displeased must have put NCR on their required reading list—if it wasn’t there already. The daily press service of the U. S. Catholic Conference didn’t carry a story on the birth-control documents.

Elusive Facts

America, national Jesuit weekly, has complained about a Playboy article by Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike in which he contends that the big Roman Catholic order realizes a yearly income of $250 million from stock holdings without paying taxes. (See April 14 issue, page 46.)

“To any Jesuit who knows the universal needs of the order in its schools, colleges, universities and missions, this allegation is so wildly irresponsible as to be almost funny,” America said, “Statements of this kind, however, have a persistent way of being repeated, once they get into print. And this is not funny.”

Pike conceded that the Playboy article contains mistakes because certain reports apparently were not checked. “I am afraid the errors can blur the main analysis of what I was trying to say,” he declared.

Pike had asserted that Jesuits own the controlling stock in the Bank of America, Phillips Petroleum Company, Creole Petroleum Company, and the DiGiorgio Fruit Company. A spokesman for the Bank of America said, “The statements by Bishop Pike in Playboy magazine are completely untrue and without even a small basis in fact.”

Still unreported is the actual extent of Jesuit stock holdings. Neither America nor the Bank of America shed any light on that question.

Methodist Omnibus

Speaking “only for itself,” the Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns kept its mimeograph strangely warmed last month, passing resolutions favoring:

Withdrawal of U. S. troops from Viet Nam, Martin Luther King’s anti-war drive, an end to the military draft, conscientious objection on non-religious grounds, repeal of laws against interracial marriage, economic and other reprisals against South Africa, majority rule in Southern Rhodesia, prevention of a U. S. anti-ballistic missile system, a guaranteed annual income for U. S. families (sort of), inclusion of farm workers under NLRB, more federal aid to schools, a seat in Congress for the District of Columbia, et cetera …

Top Clergy Clash On Viet Nam

The two best-known Presbyterian ministers in Washington, D. C., collided on the issue of Viet Nam last month. After their debate in a presbytery meeting, the hawks beat a dove resolution 86 to 27.

The showdown came on a resolution by the Rev. George M. Docherty, of historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, calling for a stop to the bombing and the bilateral withdrawal of troops. Docherty charged the Viet Nam war will smell “in the nostrils of history for the next 100 years.”

The Rev. Edward L. R. Elson—minister of the National Presbyterian Church, Army Reserve chaplain, and President Eisenhower’s former pastor—attacked the resolution as ill-timed and harmful. In a sermon the following Sunday, he said ministers who picket and protest do so from limited data and an arrogance of conscience.

Pointing out that he has a son-in-law in the Army and a son about to enter military age, Elson said:

“I do not want my sons commanded by officers whose targets are limited by a resolution, or whose weapons are restricted by an irresponsible resolution adopted by a church body.…”

On the same Sunday, Docherty, successor to Peter Marshall, argued that the Church in its role as prophet is to speak loud and clear on political issues.

In an interview in his book-lined study, Docherty said he had been a pacifist from 1935 to 1943 while living in Scotland. After an agonizing struggle with his own conscience he found pacifism an impossibility in wartime. “I flagellate myself that I didn’t join the paratroopers the first day,” he admits. But Docherty believes America can’t win in Viet Nam and is there under false pretenses.

JAMES L. ADAMS

Nagaland Closed To Missionaries

External Affairs minister M. C. Chagla announced a few weeks ago that the government of India will not admit any more foreign missionaries to Nagaland, because of widespread political unrest there.

Chagla also said that Naga rebels have been seeking military aid from Red China. Nagaland, situated in the northeast corner of India and wedged between China and Burma, is vitally important for India’s security.

The Naga tribesmen, onetime headhunters, were converted to Christianity through American Baptist missionary work that began in 1897. Before a 1964 ceasefire, they had waged guerrilla warfare against the Indian government for ten years.

By and large the Christian Naga tribesmen are literate, and they have a political following even among the small minority of animists in Nagaland’s one million population.

The government of India has always been suspicious of foreign missionaries because of their alleged political influence upon the Nagas in their rebellion against India. India has also ordered the four foreign missionaries now in Nagaland not to evangelize.

Angami Zapu Phizo, a Baptist who leads the Naga Liberation Movement, arrived in the United States in mid-April to seek support for the independence of his state.

T. E. KOSHY

150 Years On Course

One of the oldest Christian organizations in the United States, and one that has veered little from its original purpose, is the American Sunday-School Union. It was founded in Philadelphia 150 years ago this week to promote establishment of new Sunday schools, and it is still doing so.

The ASSU currently employs 150 missionaries in thirty-nine states, ministering to some 100,000 children. The Sunday school is still a key facet of the operation, but activities have also branched out into vacation Bible schools, Bible conferences, nursing programs, and projects to deal with school drop-outs. Some 7,000 conversions are reported annually.

The ASSU has been under occasional pressure to broaden its outlook by moving away from the confines of the Sunday School approach, which undoubtedly was more relevant in the rural—oriented, mass—media—less nineteenth century. But ASSU leaders have thus far resisted efforts to replace “Sunday School” in the title with a more contemporary phrase.

A group of Philadelphia citizens founded the organization in a schoolroom at Fourth and Vine Streets on May 13, 1817. Francis Scott Key, author of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” helped to get it off the ground. Within ten years it had become the foremost publisher of children’s literature. In its first century, more than 100,000 Sunday schools were established.

The Invisible Evangelical

To Negro novelist Ralph Ellison, the Negro in American society is the “invisible man.” To the Negro in the conservative religious context, he is the “invisible evangelical.”

To help give that image some substance, a small group of Negro evangelicals four years ago formed the National Negro Evangelical Association. At its annual meeting in Philadelphia last month, broad outlines of its purpose could be seen taking form.

The NNEA seeks a dual role: First, to demonstrate to the larger (read white) body of evangelicals that there is an active, conservative Negro movement that wants first-class fellowship with white brethren, and second, to provide a rallying point within the Negro community for evangelistic outreach.

Attempts to achieve this double thrust can be seen in the NNEA’s membership in the overwhelmingly white National Association of Evangelicals while at the same time it organizes independent evangelistic efforts in a number of inner-city ghettoes, including Watts.

While seeking stronger ties with white evangelicals, Negro conservatives find it difficult to feel like a “true brother in the Lord” with whites. In his president’s report, Howard O. Jones, an associate evangelist with the Billy Graham team, observed: “White evangelicals must explain … how they can reconcile their love for Christ and loyalty to the Bible with race prejudice and bigotry.”

But the NNEA can be as critical of Negroes as of whites. Jones, in the same report, charged that most Negro churches “are absolutely blind to the need for a soul-winning ministry on a local and worldwide basis.”

The tone of such statements has caused some whites to charge that the NNEA stands for Negro separatism. Negroes aren’t flocking to join, either: membership stands at only 400.

The NNEA counters that it is no more “separatist” than predominantly white organizations (about one-third of its members are white). On the question of size, spokesmen point to NNEA’s youth and the fact that membership has doubled in the last two years. Next year’s budget is up, too—nearly 20 per cent, to $15,000.

WILLIAM D. FREELAND

Converse Ideas On Conversion

Delegate response to the featured theme of Christian conversion at the United States Conference for the World Council of Churches was characterized as one of “paralysis” by conference chairman Charles C. Parlin, a WCC president. After being exposed to divergent views by speakers at the Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, meetings last month, participants showed little enthusiasm for probing conversion in depth or hammering out any kind of consensus. The conference offered little hope that the WCC is ready to formulate a conception of conversion acceptable either to non-WCC evangelicals or to the differing traditions found within its own ranks. The topic is to be discussed further at the Fourth Assembly of the WCC next year in Uppsala, Sweden.

The dominant view of conversion at Buck Hill Falls was less concerned with the believer’s eternal relationship to God than with his involvement in church mission to achieve international economic justice today. In the opening address, D. T. Niles, executive secretary of the East Asia Christian Conference, stressed that conversion means “to be converted to the Lord and his mission and to the Lord in his mission.” Referring to Christ’s high-priestly prayer, Niles claimed that Jesus “did not say simply that this world must believe in him, but that the world must believe that the Father sent the Son. The object of belief is the mission of Christ.”

In reply to a question from the floor about the condition of men who do not believe in Christ, Niles stated, “I am not prepared to say and Scripture will not allow me to say I am sure at the end everybody will be saved. I will not say and Scripture will not allow me to say I am sure that at the end somebody will be damned. All that Scripture makes me say is that damnation is a real possibility for anyone.”

The diverse understandings of conversion were shown most vividly by a three-man panel whose views roughly paralleled those of the ecumenical leadership, the Orthodox churches, and Reformation theology.

The Rev. William A. Norgren, executive director of the National Council of Churches’ Department of Faith and Order, asserted that “our new understandings of social questions seem to call for a theology of conversion which will be adequate to the present day.” He claimed that conversion experiences today lead people away from social action because Christian groups which stress the “conversion phenomenon” tend to be socially and politically conservative. He said it is impossible to draw a direct line from modern concepts of conversion to the Bible.

Father William Schneirla of the Syrian Antiochian Church advanced Orthodoxy’s sacramental conception of conversion. He averred that the good news must be proclaimed to all men so that those who believe “may be baptized into the Christian fellowship which is the Body of Christ, the Kingdom of God on earth, the Orthodox Church.” Said Schneirla, “By the supernatural effects of the visible, material washing with water and anointing with myron, all sins are forgiven and a new creature emerges from the fount.” Before an Orthodox churchman could agree to embrace new meanings of conversion, he said, it would be necessary to reconsider the tradition and dynamics of the church, and the advantages of such an undertaking have not yet been demonstrated.

The conference turned to a sympathetic member of a non-WCC denomination for the Lutheran perspective on conversion. Concordia Seminary’s Professor Richard Caemmerer of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod based his view of conversion on the Augsburg Confession of 1530. “The question emerges,” he concluded, “whether the Word of God affirming his love to the world in giving his Son into death and raising him again to life is essential for conversion. I speak only for myself but my faith says yes.… This is not a tenet to be debated, a theological position to be maintained against other theologians, but this is light to shine in life … an affirmation to speak with joy and with meekness.”

The political discussions were the liveliest. In one program, Dr. Eugene L. Smith called the Church to witness to the Lordship of Christ in international affairs, and India’s M. M. Thomas chastised the U. S. for its lagging foreign aid.

The conference as a whole proved to be a predictable, lackluster affair. If anything, it showed that the WCC leadership continues to be dedicated to converting the mission of the Church from proclaiming the historic Gospel that reconciles men eternally to God, to changing the world through socio-economic means.

ROBERT L. CLEATH

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