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CATHOLIC CONTROVERSIES

Development

The diversity of Catholics in the United States reflected the diversity of the nation. Catholicism remained the largest single religious organization in the nation, representing 28 percent of the general population. The decade of the 1980s marked the bicentennial of the Catholic hierarchy in the independent United States and the church proved in this decade that it had become a formidable force in the United States, particularly in the areas of politics, policy, and morality. The Catholic Church continued its mission to reach out to immigrants. One in five Catholics belonged to a minority group. The two largest new Catholic populations were Hispanics, who made up 16 percent of Catholics, and African Americans who were about 3 percent of the population, or 2 million people. Struggling to meet the special needs of these new groups as well as tackle the growing dissent in its ranks was the contemporary challenge of the Catholic Church. John Paul II, the newly elected pope, faced a sometimes belligerent American public and clergy who felt that many of the old ideas of the Catholic Church were not fully applicable to the United States and needed to be updated to fit the times. The battle of tradition versus modernity was a conflict that was fought on all levels throughout the decade.

Transition

American Catholicism faced a difficult paradox in the fact that it was on the surface a strong, vibrant, growing religion; yet the infrastructure that supported the Catholic Church was continually weakening without any sign of relief. Structurally the Catholic Church had lost ground in the 1980s as the number of priests in the church was not growing to keep pace with membership, and the number of new seminarians entering the church fell by 16 percent during the past twenty-five years. The number of nuns serving the Catholic Church also decreased sharply, perhaps primarily because many women felt the church was too male dominated and hierarchical. In 1962 there were 173,351 nuns, but the number had decreased by 1988 to 106,912. Another seeming contradiction the church dealt with was the curious fact that membership had grown consistently every year, but attendance at services was down. Tied in directly with declining mass attendance was the decrease in church revenues despite the increasing prosperity of Catholics, who had the same average income as Protestants. In response to these problems the Catholic hierarchy made dramatic cutbacks. Cardinal Szoka of Detroit symbolized this best in 1988 when he eliminated 43 of Detroit's 112 parishes, citing lack of funds and declining membership in urban Catholic Churches. American Catholics, for their part, felt it much less important to adhere to strict Catholic teachings, prompting some theologians to refer to their mind-set as "cafeteria style," picking and choosing what they liked. The independence of the Catholic laity as they became more educated, wealthier, and worldly increased the opportunities for friction between them and the traditional hierarchy.

Politics

The Catholic Church had been no stranger to the political arena; yet in 1980 the Vatican decreed that no priest or nun could hold a public office in the government. This decree, which was specifically aimed at the rebellious, liberal priest and U.S. Congress member from Massachusetts, Father Robert Drinan, forced him to resign his seat in May 1980; but the larger implication of the decree resonated throughout the period. The Vatican was taking a hard-line stance against liberal to radical priests and nuns who veered away from traditional church teachings. Drinan, in his ten years in the House of Representatives, often voted for abortion rights—an act that infuriated the Vatican and conservative Catholics every-where. The antipolitics decree served the Vatican greatly in disciplining several nuns who joined campaigns for women's rights and abortion rights. Sister Agnes Mary Mansour, acting director of the Michigan Department of Social Services and a nun in the Sisters of Mercy of the Union order for thirty years, was ordered by the Vatican in 1983 to step down from her position in social services or to resign as a nun. The controvery surrounding Mansour involved the issue of abortion as the social-services department she worked for administered funds for public abortions. Mansour, though personally opposed to abortion, felt that her position in government was helping many people and that the Catholic Church was doing a disservice to women. Therefore, she abandoned her position as a nun. Similarly Sisters Elizabeth Morancy and Arlene Violet were forced out of the Sisters of Mercy after they were elected to public office in Rhode Island. Several other clergy members and Catholic organizations, such as the National Coalition of American Nuns and Catholics for a Free Choice, clashed with the Vatican on this ban, seeing it as skewed toward only liberal groups, while conservative cardinals, priests, and bishops were given free rein to state publicly their staunch opposition to issues such as abortion and gay rights and the candidates that supported them.

Abortion

The issue of abortion was at the forefront of much of the heated debate that occurred between liberal Catholics and more traditional ones. American Catholics for the most part believed in theory that abortion was wrong, but few believed it a mortal sin, an act of murder. Catholics felt that issues of contraception, abortion, and sexuality were personal matters that could be handled without the church's interference. Many Catholics regarded the encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968), the Vatican's doctrine on sexuality and contraception, as too intrusive, and Pope John Paul II's desire to enforce it too draconian. Father Charles E. Curran, a Catholic theologian at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., had his license revoked in 1986 by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for preaching against the Vatican's official teachings on sexuality and abortion. Curran's dismissal served as a warning to church officials to abide by official teachings or be severely reprimanded. Abortion had been labeled an unspeakable crime by the Vatican, and there-fore church leaders were urged to act against it. Newly appointed cardinals, such as Bernard Law of Boston and John O'Connor of New York placed the issue on the forefront of the Catholic agenda in 1984. O'Connor, who labeled the issue his "No. 1 priority," compared abortion to the Holocaust and directly criticized Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, a Catholic, for her prochoice position. This direct reference to politics and a highly visible political figure caused Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York and also a prochoice Catholic, to enter the debate and defend a Catholic's right to choose without compromising her church membership. The church remained unyielding in its belief in a prolife stance, so much so that in 1985 the National Conference of Catholic Bishops updated the ten-year-old prolife document "Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities: A Reaffirmation." The issue struck a chord with Catholic women and nuns, many of whom viewed the question of this debate as woman's right to decide the fate of her own body and not a decision that should be made by a male-dominated church. Activist nuns, such as Sister Traxler, a member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame for more than forty years, saw the issue of abortion as the most prominent example of the church's debasement of women, The National Coalition of American Nuns helped to sponsor a prochoice advertisement in 1984 to counterattack the harassment they felt that women were receiving from an overruling Vatican. The strong, rebellious stance of female clergy symbolized the rift that was developing in the church because of perceived sexism.

Women and the Church

Americans led in the battle for equality of the sexes in the Catholic Church. The Vatican, realizing the growing need to legitimize women's role in the church and in the modern era, attempted to walk a fine line balancing tradition with progress. The results of these efforts left both traditionalists and modernists unsatisfied. Against the backdrop of the women's movement and the great progress that had been made in mainline Protestant churches, progressive nuns and laity demanded a larger, more visible role for women in the Catholic Church. The demands by women to be become priests and have a greater say in church policy were seen as major goals in fostering equality. Nuns fighting the two-thousand-year-old, male-dominated church joined together to form groups to enhance their strength and shed their image as "docile." Organizations such as the National Assembly of Religious Women, The National Coalition of American Nuns, The Leadership Conference of Women Religious Speakers, and The Black Sisters Conference saw their membership increase, and all worked for feminist causes in and out of the church. Another sign of the rebellion of women in the church was the sheer drop in the number of women who chose to enter convents. Seeing no hope for equality and justice in Catholicism, many young Catholic women steered away from it as a vocation. The nuns who remained in the church were highly educated, with 65 percent having master's degrees and 25 percent possessing doctorates. Conservative Catholic women, such as Phyllis Schlafly, opposed all facets of women's equality in the church and were staunch opponents of the ERA, She and many conservative Catholics joined with fundamentalists to lobby against women's rights and abortion. Though well funded and strident, activists such as Schlafly grew dimmer and dimmer among Catholic women as the quest for equality entered the mainstream. In 1985 Gallup polls found that 47 percent of Catholics were in favor of women priests. In 1988 U.S. Catholic bishops, realizing the need for some new official statement on women's role in the church, published the "Partners in the Mystery of Redemption." The document differed from previous bishops' documents in that some nuns were allowed to participate in discussing and drafting it, but in the end the document broke very little new ground on the issues that interested female Catholics. The church condemned sexism as a sin; yet it still did not favor women priests, contraception, or abortion. In 1989 out of desperation at the realization of the shortage of priests, the bishops issued the "Order for Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest." This decree allowed a bishop to assign a deacon or nun to lead a prayer service based on the Scriptures. Some nuns felt that this act was a first step toward real changes in the Catholic Church.

Homosexuality

The Catholic Church's condemnation of homosexuality remained consistent in the 1980s, but with the emergence of AIDS the church found that criticism of its policies intensified. One of the church's most militant crusaders against homosexuality was New York's John Cardinal O'Connor. O'Connor, appointed in 1984, believed wholeheartedly in the strict Vatican teaching that homosexuality was a sin against God and nature. O'Connor vehemently refused an organization of gay Catholics called Dignity to hold masses in New York churches. He also attacked the New York City Council for sponsoring a gay-rights bill that would have made it illegal to discriminate against homosexuals. In October of 1986 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger of the Vatican issued an order forbidding Father John J. McNeill, author of the book The Church and the Homosexual, from preaching to the gay community and from speaking publicly about his ideas and works. McNeill's silencing followed that of Father Curran the year before for his statements on sexuality, contraception, and homosexuality. The Vatican's crackdown continued on 30 October 1987 with what gay activists referred to as the "Halloween letter," a directive that ordered all Catholic bishops to withdraw support from any organization that opposed the official church teaching on homosexuality. Greatly impacted by this letter were the many Dignity groups located across the country that used church facilities to hold their masses. Homosexual Catholics vowed to continue their services with or without official approval, as they felt it possible to be gay and still be a good Catholic. Surveys showed that American Catholics for the most part did not view homosexuality in the abstract as a threatening concept. Church officials held their ground, viewing homosexual acts as immoral, and were unwilling to compromise with the current sentiment. Only the epidemic of AIDS, which had caused about eighteen thousand fatalities in the United States by 1988, prompted U.S. bishops to action. The Catholic Church, after substantial debate, allowed in 1987 for the educational discussion of the use of condoms to help control the AIDS virus, Condoms, considered a form of contraception, were previously for-bidden to be discussed. Several conservative cardinals, among them Law of Boston, O'Connor of New York, and John Krol of Philadelphia, voted against the measure, believing that it condoned sex and homosexuality, but more-liberal cardinals, such as Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, pushed the issue. The question of homosexuality was also an internal one for the Catholic Church in the 1980s. Several works were written by homosexual priests and nuns exposing to the world the church's internal dilemma. A book that caused the biggest stir in the church was the 1984 publication of the biography of the late Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York by John Cooney. The work entitled The American Pope exposed evidence of the cardinal's homosexuality. Another work Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence (1985) documented the stories of present and former nuns. The Catholic Church's official response to the majority of these accusations was denial.