TOP STORY: A DIVIDED CHURCH SEEKS COMMON GROUND: Cardinal Bernardin to launch major reconciliation e

c. 1996 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Seeking to heal divisions among Roman Catholics in the United States, Chicago Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin will launch a new national initiative next week designed to find ways to overcome the divisions among the church’s feuding factions.”We must act today to prepare our church for the new millennium,”Bernardin said […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Seeking to heal divisions among Roman Catholics in the United States, Chicago Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin will launch a new national initiative next week designed to find ways to overcome the divisions among the church’s feuding factions.”We must act today to prepare our church for the new millennium,”Bernardin said in a statement announcing the outline of the new initiative, to be presented Monday (Aug. 12) in Chicago.

Bernardin, along with eight other bishops and the leaders of 17 national Catholic groups, will release a statement on the situation and outline a program to overcome the”ideological litmus tests of either the so-called left or the so-called right.” Of all the American prelates, Bernardin _ a high-profile moderate and a pragmatic church diplomat with a reputation for bringing warring factions together _ is the most likely leader for such an initiative.


Bernardin is best known for the American bishops’ 1983 pastoral letter,”The Challenge of Peace,”which set the boundaries for ethical debate on nuclear weapons.

He is also known as the most articulate advocate of the”seamless garment”philosophy, which intimately linked the Catholic Church’s”consistent ethic of life”to public policy issues ranging from abortion, euthanasia, and concern for the poor to capital punishment and nuclear weapons.

But in seeking to overcome the divisions that currently affect the U.S. church, Bernardin has undertaken a formidable task.

In the past decade, American Catholics have become deeply divided over internal issues such as women’s ordination, clashes of authority between bishops and theologians, and the role of laity in the church.

An erosion of church authority has led Catholics on the left and the right to publicly disagree with church teachings on such issues as abortion, welfare reform and immigration.

Also at issue is a sometimes strained relationship between the U.S. hierarchy and the Vatican.

That overall atmosphere, according to a statement released in advance by the Archdiocese of Chicago, has paralyzed efforts to address looming issues ranging from the changing role of U.S. women and religious illiteracy among young Catholics to the Catholic presence in political life and the survival of Catholic institutions.


While declining to disclose details of the plan, the archdiocese did release this preview of the reconciliation plan:”Unless we examine our situation with fresh eyes, open minds and changed hearts, within a few decades a vital Catholic legacy may be squandered, to the loss of both church and nation.” The precise outline of the Bernardin initiative, developed under the auspices of the National Pastoral Life Center in New York, an independent consulting group, are unknown. But it comes at a time when a number of recent incidents have deepened the divisions in Catholic life that first surfaced in 1968, when the Vatican restated the church’s opposition to artificial contraception.

Recent flashpoints include:

_ The excommunication threat leveled by Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Neb., against members of several dissident Catholic groups on the left and the right, as well as members of Planned Parenthood, the Hemlock Society and several Masonic groups.

_ The official criticism by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Doctrine of liberal theologian Richard McBrien’s popular book,”Catholicism,”on grounds that it does not reflect church teachings.

_ The dismissal of Sister Carmel McEnroy from the faculty of St. Meinrad’s Seminary, St. Meinrad, Ind., because of her support for the continued discussion of the possibility of women’s ordination.

In addition, the church has seen a continuing decline in vocations to religious life; a decline in financial support despite a growth in members; and a series of sexual scandals involving priests.

Currently, under the umbrella”We Are Church: A Catholic Referendum,”a number of liberal Catholic groups, echoing similar efforts in Europe, have mounted a petition campaign calling for a host of church reforms ranging from the popular election of bishops to women’s ordination.


MJP END ANDERSON

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