"The arms trade is a scandal," said the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops meeting in Chicago June 15-17, 1995. In speaking out against arms
transfers, the bishops are responding to similar statements from John Paul
II and to requests from Asian and African bishops who see their people
being killed by arms manufactured in the United States.
The bishops accused the U.S. Government of aggressively supporting the
arms sales through military aid and other means as a way of helping the
U.S. arms industry at a time of decreasing defense spending. The United
States now supplies half the world's arms exports and provides more than
70 percent of the arms going to the Third World. In 1994, U.S. government
military aid and sales amounted to $12.5 billion while direct sales by
U.S. companies amounted to an additional $25.6 billion.
"The glut of arms inhibits relief and development work, and vastly complicates
the international community's peacekeeping and peacemaking efforts," said
the bishops. "Three dozen regional conflicts around the world are fueled,
widened and prolonged by easy access to weapons," report the bishops although
they refused to specify to which countries the United States should stop
exporting arms. Since much of the arms go to the Middle East, it is hard
to see how arms transfers could be reduced without reducing them there.
The bishops also called for U.S. leadership in multilateral efforts
to reduce arms transfers. The bishops did not call for a total elimination
of arms transfers, but they did say that arms transfers should be limited
"only to those necessary for legitimate defense." The principle of legitimate
defense is subverted, the bishops said, when the arms transfers "expose
people to attacks by their own government, the destructiveness of protracted
conflict, or intimidation by armed groups that governments are unable or
unwilling to control."
The United States should not use the excuse that "others will supply
weapons if we do not," said the bishops. Nor should domestic jobs be an
excuse for continuing arms sales, rather the effects of defense cuts should
be dealt with through economic development and conversion programs. The
bishops also called for less military assistance, reduced arms sales, and
more development assistance, views that go contrary to the prevailing political
climate.
The bishops became very specific in their condemnation of antipersonnel
landmines. In this they are joining John Paul II and the bishops of the
world in an international campaign to ban the use of landmines just as
was done with chemical and biological weapons.
The statistics in the bishops' document are overwhelming. Some 100 million
landmines are strewn around the world and they kill 500 people a week.
In Cambodia, one of every 236 people is an amputee because of mine blasts.
Bishops also spoke of their personal experiences of meeting refugees and
other civilian victims of landmines. Cardinal James Hickey of Washington
told of a young man who had lost a limb before immigrating to the United
States and becoming a seminarian. Archbishop McCarrick of Newark confessed
to being embarrassed by these weapons that are labeled "Made in America."
The bishops were pleased that the United States has for the last four
years had a moratorium on the export of landmines. They hope that this
will become permanent and that the United States will lead the international
effort to ban landmines and help in the costly demining of countries currently
infested with mines.
The bishops also passed resolutions supporting the pope's recent encyclical,
the gospel of Life. They approved a statement encouraging the inclusion
of handicapped persons in the sacramental life of the church. The conference
also, for all practical purposes, killed CTNA, the bishops' television
network which has cost millions of dollars but failed to become financially
self-sufficient.
But much of the meeting was taken up with reviewing a new translation
of the Sacramentary developed by the International Commission on English
in the Liturgy (ICEL). Despite a tedious debate that often looked like
a high school Latin class without a teacher, the bishops supported the
liturgy committee and its recommendations on the ICEL text. One reason
the liturgy committee won is that it accepted changes in the ICEL text
that were proposed by "conservative" bishops. These strategic retreats
by the committee usually brought the text closer to its current translation.
No bishop fought the committee when it abandoned the ICEL or ecumenical
texts.
The committee, for example, rejected some ICEL attempts to avoid using
the masculine pronoun for God. There is vocal opposition within the conference
to what Archbishop Francis Stafford of Denver referred to as feminists'
demands to "geld" God. Thus it will continue to be "Glory to God in the
highest and peace to his people on earth" not "peace to God's people on
earth." The congregation will also continue to say: "May the Lord accept
the sacrifice at your hands, for the praise and glory of his name, for
our good, and the good of all his church" rather than "God's name" and
"the church." Changing "your hands" to "our hands" was not even up for
discussion. Whether the bishops will be able to stop people in the pews
from simply changing the texts on their own remains to be seen.
Some bishops wanted to retain the words "he descended into hell" in
the Apostles' Creed which will be an optional alternative to the Nicene
Creed. But here the liturgy committee and the bishops supported "descended
to the dead" in the ecumenical version of the text. The liturgy committee
and the bishops also decided to retain "sins of the world" in the Lamb
of God, although the Gloria and John's Gospel (1:29) has "sin of the world."
Fear of changing texts used by the people was again exemplified by refusing
to allow the new ecumenical translation of the Our Father to be used as
an option at mass. As a result, American Catholics will continue using
a translation dating back to Henry VIII while other English-speaking Catholics
and their Protestant brothers and sisters are using a contemporary translation.
One of the surprises of the meeting was that the recommendation to allow
the kiss of peace before the presentation of gifts went through with no
debate. Under this proposal, priests will have the option of having the
kiss of peace before the presentation of gifts or in its current position
before communion. (See "In the Catholic Church, A
Kiss is Never Just a Kiss," America, April 15). Another proposal
approved without debate will allow the laity to pray the Lord's Prayer
with their hands outstretched like the priest does. Besides being an ancient
way of praying, some bishops hope this will discourage people from holding
hands during the Our Father. The bishops also opposed allowing the people
to stand during the Eucharistic prayer, which is the norm outside the United
States. Because of a parliamentary tangle, the debate was long and confused.
Bishop Joseph Sullivan of Brooklyn cleared the air by reminding the bishops
that the position of most of their people on Sunday morning is "reclining."
A major problem with the way that the bishops deal with liturgy is that
changes are made without any pilot studies. All the debates are a priori
because no one is allowed to test liturgical changes in a parish setting
to see what works and what does not. Any industry that changed a major
product without market testing would be considered out of its mind, yet
this is the way the church treats the liturgy.
The bishops also discussed a report on the organization and structure
of the bishops' conference (see "The Bishops' Conference:
More Secretive, More Clerical, Less Vocal," America, June 3-10).
This discussion took place without the chairman of the committee that drafted
the report, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago who had undergone surgery
because of cancer in a kidney and his pancreas. There was great concern
that dropping lay members from the conference committees would give the
impression that lay input was being reduced through the restructuring process.
The proposal to increase the role of regions in the conference also received
mixed reviews. Many doubted that regional meetings would work successfully
without more staff and effort by the bishops. Some feared that the regional
meetings would be dominated by their archbishops. Although some bishops
felt that the bishops issued too many statements, other bishops felt that
other groups would step into the vacuum and claim to speak for the church
if the bishops were silent.
More disturbing was the feeling among some older bishops that the conference
is getting more polarized and ideological. Debates over translations of
liturgical texts, for example, which can be judgment calls, were raised
to the level of theological orthodoxy. Some bishops, it was said, did not
speak up because of the presence of the press or because certain topics
were considered non-discussible. And some bishops who do not get their
way in the conference go around it to Rome.
The restructuring committee got a lot of advice from the bishops, but
some of it was contradictory. Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, who stood
in for Cardinal Bernardin, wondered whether the committee would be able
to come up with a detailed recommendation by the November meeting of the
conference. One thing sure to be on the agenda in November will be more
liturgical translations as the bishops continue working through the Sacramentary.
By Thomas J. Reese, S.J., senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center
America, July 15, 1995
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