-BEFORE YOU CONSIDER THE TERM OF REFERENCE BELOW, TO SEE MY INTEREST IN THIS MATTER IN THE PROPER CONTEXT TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE.-BEFORE YOU CONSIDER THE TERM OF REFERENCE BELOW, TO SEE MY INTEREST IN THIS MATTER IN THE PROPER CONTEXT TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE.
In the rectory of St. Paul's Church in East Harlem yesterday, Sister Joan Hart took another step toward bringing the Roman Catholic bishops' recent pastoral letter against nuclear arms to the attention of priests working in the field.
Sister Hart, who has carried out similar missions in dozens of parishes in the archdiocese since last fall, talked abut the letter to nine priests from parishes in the area.
Then she asked what she could do, as the head of the archdiocesan office of justice and peace, to help them raise the issue with their parishioners.
The priests said the task was difficult in East Harlem
because the agonies of daily life often made cosmic issues such
as war and peace seem irrelevant.
"The bomb has already gone off," said the Rev. John Mellitt of Our Lady Queen of Angels said the goal was to "use the issue of nuclear war to tie into the needs of the poor."
Sister Hart, like scores of church leaders across the country, has joined in in(sic) a vigorous effort to educate Catholics on the contents of the 150-page letter, which rejects nuclear war, calls for a nuclear freeze and allows for nuclear deterrence only as a temporary measure along the road to disarmament.
Since the letter was approved in May, church leaders say it has spurred more interest, debate and discussion than any other statement issued by the bishops.
More than a million copies have been distributed, and the church's publishing house in Washington is turning out the fifth printing of the letter. A Spanish translation is expected to be ready this week.
The bishops have named a follow-up committee headed by
Bishop
George Fulcher of Columbus, Ohio. But the dioceses have largely been left free to develop their own programs to respond to local needs. Officials say some areas have done more than others, but all share a determination to keep the issue alive.
The Rev. Brian McCollough, who directs a national clearinghouse that monitors those activities for the bishops, said the response to the document was even greater than church leaders had expected.
As an example, he said, a daylong gathering on the letter
last Saturday in Peoria, Ill., morning drew 600 people.
"The impact has been unprecedented," Father McCollough said. "The interest is coming from all areas of the church. It didn't get caught in one area, such as the college community. We're at the six-month point since the publication of the letter and things are still pretty intense."
Joseph Cardinal Bernadin of Chicago, who was chairman of the bishops' committee that wrote the document, told a Fordham University audience last week that the efforts were off to a good start because of the initiative taken by individual dioceses. He said the process of fully reaching parishes with a hierarchical statement usually took three years.
In his address at Fordham, Cardinal Bernadin indicated how the bishops intended to capitalize on the unusual amount of attention stirred by the pastoral letter.
The Cardinal proposed a wider campaign that would expand the "respect for life" theme of the letter to other issues such as capital punishment and abortion.
As Catholics evaluate the letter, church leaders say, a variety of opinions have emerged on specific aspects of it.
The most debated points, many church officials say, are the
call for a nuclear freeze and the skeptical view of deterrence
as a morally justifiable strategy.
"Generally, we've had a good response," said Sister Kathleen Crowley, who is active on the issue in the St. Louis Archdiocese, where there has been considerable criticism. "Some of the people who are questioning the letter are willing, I think, to concede that the church is a place where questions such as this should be asked.
Enthusiasm for the letter has spawned activities and articles throughout the American church. Many dioceses, including New York, have urged priests to emphasize the letter in homilies and special services during the present season of Advent, when the theme of peace permeates the Christian celebration of the birth of Christ.
Terence Cardinal Cooke took the lead in New York last
spring by reviewing the document with his priests. Two months
ago, the justice and peace office held a training session for
200 clergymen and lay people in ways of applying the pastoral
letter to their own parishes.
By late November, the archdiocese had distributed a packet containing assorted material suitable for use during Advent, including outlines for homilies and suggestions on how the subject could become the focus of retreats and study groups.
New York was also the site of a major national conference for 300 Catholic educators on means of integrating the document into school material. Some dioceses, such as Chicago, have been in the vanguard of efforts to provide curriculum guidelines.
A growing supply of pamphlets, books, tape recordings and films relating to the topic are being stocked by dioceses and parishes. The Washington clearinghouse has compiled a 12-page compendium of resources already available.
Hundreds of leaders are being sought to educate Catholic parishioners and stimulate dialogue over the pastoral letter's conclusion. In January, a month in which many diocese plan to underscore the issue of peace, the church has scheduled a national training conference to supplement similar programs at the local level.
Other efforts are expected at the annual meeting of the
National Catholic Educational Association in March, which will
spotlight the pastoral letter. The current issue of the
association magazine Momentum is completely given over to
the subject.
Some dioceses have long been active on the peace issue. In Boston, for example, the archdiocese has formed Parish Education for Peace teams made up of lay people, clergymen, professors from the area and more. A typical two-hour visit to a parish by a "Pep" team would include a summary account of the letter, and a discussion of the effects of the arms race on business, the economy and the third world.*
As the message of the letter filters down, some leaders say
it presents a formidable challenge.
"I don't know of anything more difficult to get across to our
people," said Bishop William E. McMannus of the South
Bend-Fort Wayne Diocese in Indiana. "The reason it's so hard is
that many people are very close to paranoid about the Soviet
Union. And I can't blame them."
A common problem, church officials say, is that some Catholics mistakenly believe that the pastoral letter calls for unilateral disarmament by the United States.
For that reason, some material intended to help priests preach on the subject stresses the need to emphasize that the pastoral letter explicitly rejects that idea, and calls for a negotiated disarmament by both the United States and the Soviet Union.
In Seattle, where Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen has been an outspoken opponent of the arms race, the topic of war and peace has been studied by the parishes for two years. "People in Seattle are extremely aware that Christian values bear on the nuclear issue," said Don Hopps, director of the archdiocesan justice and peace center.
Alluding to the large military industry in the area, he continued: "The nuclear issue hits people in the pocketbook here. The issues have been debated here for some time, so the positions of lay people on the pastoral letter tend to be more polarized in Seattle than in many places." Many Catholics say the airing of differences is healthy for the church.
"People come down in their conclusions at all different spots," said Christine Doby, a member of the justice and peace office of the Archdiocese of Detroit, a center of much activity on the issue. "But the Catholic Church is kind of used to that diversity. Especially since the Second Vatican Council, we've gotten very used to diversity."
Although sheer numbers create difficulties in some dioceses, that has not been a problem for Bishop Michael H. Kenny of Juneau. In his sprawling diocese in southeastern Alaska, there are 5,000 Catholics and 9 parishes.
The Bishop, who personally rejects even limited nuclear
deterrence, has delivered talks to his priests and informed
others through the diocesan newsletter. The one complaint he
has received, he says, is that the pastoral letter "doesn't go
far enough."
(article accompanied by photograph of Sister Joan Hart,
Rev. Nicanor Lana, and the Rev. Douglas Schleider,
captioned:
Sister Joan Hart discussing the pastoral letter concerning nuclear war with the Rev. Nicanor Lana, left, and the Rev. Douglas Schleider.)
*-ALL I WANT TO SAY HERE IS THAT IF VISITORS SPEND ANY SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TIME GOING THROUGH THE CONTENTS OF THIS AWARD-WINNING WEBSITE, THEY KNOW HOW MANY TIMES AND HOW MANY WAYS I'VE INDICATED THAT MY EFFORTS TO SECURE FROM PRESIDENT CARTER OR PRESIDENT REAGAN "INSTRUCTIONS HOW (THEY) WOULD HAVE ME CONTINUE OR COMPLETE THIS "INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC WORK...ON A DIRECT BASIS" FOR THE WORLD'S CHILDREN TO (THEIR) SATISFACTION WERE REBUFFED/IGNORED BY THEM.
I WROTE "SCIENCE FICTION" NOT ONLY AS A PERSONAL REACTION TO APARTHEID.
I also wrote it with my personal 'Fear of annihilation'--for myself and for the world's children.