Bishop in the doghouse

BISHOP IN THE DOGHOUSE

THE 1986 MEETING of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, at Washington's Capital Hilton Hotel, was scheduled to debate the bishops' controversial pastoral letter on the economy. But the pastoral was unexpectedly upstaged by what everyone was calling "the Hunthausen affair.' That affair brought the American bishops as close to an open break with Rome as they have ever come. Not very close, as it turned out, but close enough.

Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle has made national headlines before, but for different reasons. He is an inveterate pacifist and anti-nuclear protestor who has called a locally based nuclear-armed submarine the "Auschwitz of Puget Sound.' He withholds half his income tax in protest against this country's military stance. He condemns the American "lifestyle' of "outrageous wealth and power,' saying it invites nuclear war. To some he is a prophet, to others a kook.

But Catholics, in Seattle and Rome especially, know him best for other things. Under his administration, the Archdiocese of Seattle has become a liberal playground in matters of Catholic discipline. Annulments are easy, even by today's lax standards. Priests give "general absolution' to whole congregations, without individual "auricular' confession. Children receive First Communion without making a confession first. A Catholic hospital performs contraceptive sterilizations. Renegade priests and their wives hold jobs with the Archdiocese itself.

One of Hunthausen's most controversial acts was to permit a militant homosexual group, Dignity, to hold its own Mass in his cathedral. "They're Catholics too,' he explained. "They need a place to pray.' But according to Catholic teaching, the event can be fairly described as sacrilegious.

Local Catholics appealed to Rome, which appointed Archbishop James Hickey of Washington, D.C., to look into Hunthausen's administration. Hickey's findings moved the Vatican this year to appoint an auxiliary bishop, Donald Wuerl, to take over episcopal authority in the areas in question. The appointment was not announced publicly, and Hunthausen was not otherwise disciplined or censured.

Nevertheless, Hunthausen was deeply wounded by this unusual limitation on his authority. In September, two months before the NCCB meeting, he made it public and complained bitterly. The Vatican countered his version of the events by publishing its own chronology.

Hunthausen's announcement divided American Catholics from the top down. Some saw the Vatican action as long overdue. But theological and political liberals (pretty much the same people) denounced it. Milwaukee's Archbishop Rembert Weakland, one of the leading liberals among the American bishops, did what is Just Not Done: He publicly criticized the Vatican, not only for stripping Hunthausen of authority but fot its recent dismissal of Father Charles Curran, the liberal moral theologian at Catholic University.

The fat was in the fire. Archbishop Philip Hannan of New Orleans accused Weakland of "wildly exaggerating' in comparing the Vatican's action to "the Inquisition and the periodic witch hunts for heretics.' Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston also defended Rome. "Indeed,' he said, "not to have acted would have been irresponsible.'

And there it stood as the bishops convened in Washington on November 10. An executive session was scheduled for the second day to discuss the Hunthausen affair.

The NCCB meeting opened with a speech by outgoing president Bishop James Malone of Youngstown. He appealed for unity with Rome and with the Pope as "successor of Peter.' The papal representative, Archbishop Pio Laghi, read an unprecedented personal letter from John Paul II, pleading the Church's "unity and universality' under the "successor of Peter.' The pointed reiteration underscored how serious things had gotten.

On Tuesday morning, the second day, the hundred or so journalists followed the election of new officers with special interest, as clues to what might happen at the closed session later in the day. The bishops routinely elected the outgoing vice president, Archbishop John May of St. Louis, as their new president. But the vice presidential vote was more interesting. The top three candidates were Law, leading the pro-Vatican forces; Weakland, leading the liberals; and Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati, a "moderate' but Weakland-leaning prelate.

The voting coalesced on the second ballot. Out of 279 votes, Law got 110; Pilarczyk, 75; and Weakland, 74. On the runoff, nearly all Weakland's votes went to Pilarczyk, who won easily. The preponderant sentiment appeared to be anti-Law. Before the meeting ended, he lost another minor election in a lopsided vote. If the bishops were opting for formal unity with Rome, most of them seemed angry with the man who was its most forthright advocate.

The closed session took the entire afternoon and still was not concluded. It was adjourned to Wednesday morning, and the press was disappointed when the post-session press conference had to be canceled. The big story was going untold.