13 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 a Capsule Summary The

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 A Capsule Summary The Roman Catholic Church is one world Church made up of many local churches. Since its inception, the leadership of the Church has sought to forge an internal unity that transcends the diversity of its membership. Over the course of centuries, the Pope and other bishops of the Church have served as symbols and proponents of this desired unity. The Pope in union with the college of bishops constitutes the hierarchy which guides the Church and is responsible for its adherence to “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” When conflicts arise within the Catholic hierarchy, the unity of the Church is called into question. The reality of this threat is easily demonstrated by historical reference to the Reformation and to the Roman Catholic-Orthodox Catholic separation. But it is also seen in more contemporary examples, as in Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s post-Vatican II conflict with the Holy See, which resulted in the departure of Lefebvre and many of his followers from the Church. Conflicts such as the Rome-Lefebvre conflict may be described as “center-periphery” conflicts: the central authority in Rome is pitted against the authority of the local Church, and the authority of the Pope is placed in opposition to the authority of one or more local bishops. (Following Rahim 1992, I define conflict as an interactive process manifested in incompatibility, disagreement or dissonance within or between social entities.) Center- periphery conflicts are not the only kind of conflict to arise within the hierarchy. Conflicts may arise within the bounds of the organizational center (as in conflicts among bishops serving in the Roman Curia) or they may take place on the periphery (as in conflicts within a national or regional conference of bishops). But center-periphery conflicts are notable for the way they dramatize, in an especially clear way, the tension that exists generally in the Church between central and local control. Since the Second Vatican Council, several cases of center-periphery conflict have come before the public eye. Apart from the Lefebvre case, one thinks of such highly publicized cases as the Holy See’s exchanges with the Dutch Cardinal Bernard Alfrink, with the American Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, and with the French Bishop Jacques Gaillot. Typically, such cases have been assessed from journalistic and theological perspectives, but systematic descriptions focusing on the conflict handling as such have been lacking. Whereas the surface issues and a number of relevant theological questions have received consideration, one is hard pressed to find accounts that identify and break down the strategies employed to manage the conflicts. At best we have a sketchy picture of how participants seek to advance their own interests strategically in the course of such conflicts. The present case study is designed to address this information gap. This investigation attempts to make the handling of center-periphery conflict more transparent by conducting an exploratory and descriptive case study of a recent empirical example of the phenomenon. The empirical example I have chosen for study is the conflict between the Holy See and Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, which took place during the years 1983- 1989. (A brief summary of the case follows in section 1.7.) I have selected this case because it 13 is recent enough in time to be reflective of current conflict-handling patterns within the hierarchy (many key figures from the case, including Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger and Bishop Donald Wuerl, still hold office) and accessible to a variety of forms of information gathering (the extent to which the conflict handling came into the open is unusual). The case is also fascinating for being something of an extreme example. Not only did it draw a remarkably high level of public attention, especially in the American Church; it was exceptional, too, for the degree of polarization it demonstrated between the points of universal and local leadership in the Church. Another intriguing dimension of the case is the effectiveness with which Hunthausen defended his own position in the conflict. Although the Vatican, almost by definition, has the upper hand in the management of such conflicts, Hunthausen was able to achieve something that at first glance would appear to be unlikely in the handling of center-periphery conflict: he pressed the Vatican into a limited retreat. Though neither Hunthausen nor representatives of the Holy See were ever inclined to speak of winning or losing the conflict, there is reason to believe that both parties lost in substantial ways, as did the institutional Church. While it is striking that Hunthausen managed to resist Vatican imperatives without being forced from office, and also to induce Rome to retract sanctions it had already imposed at his expense, Roman priorities appear to have prevailed in the long run. No local bishop has so boldly made the case for local priorities in the years since. Though Hunthausen may in a limited sense have “won” simply by holding his ground, the Vatican appears to have sent a message that has been heard loud and clear by other bishops in ensuing years: the final say rests with the center. The loss for the institutional Church, as I see it, is that the opportunity for a more robust dialogue between center and periphery in the post-Vatican II era has been missed amid the center’s fear of losing control and the college of bishops’ constrained approach to conflict handling. Why I hold these conclusions should become clear as I present the findings from my intensive study of the Rome-Hunthausen case. First and foremost, my intention here is to describe how the principal parties (that is, Hunthausen, members of the hierarchy representing the Holy See and, to a lesser extent, bishops participating as third parties) managed the conflict strategically, with special attention going to their use of language. The research falls within the realm of practical theology, with practical theology understood to be an interdisciplinary field that draws extensively on the techniques of the social sciences. Though at no point in this research do I theologize explicitly, I do believe that this study of the Church organization can offer direct benefits to the Church’s own process of ecclesiological discernment. I have oriented my study by articulating a guiding question: What coping strategies are observable in center-periphery conflict discourse? This question indicates the phenomenon under consideration (center-periphery conflict), the data I intend to examine (discourse samples), the type of results I am seeking (coping strategies), and the exploratory and descriptive nature of the research. I will expound upon this question’s components later. By answering the guiding question, I hope to bring us to a clearer understanding of how center- periphery conflicts in the Church are managed in practice. 1.2 Center-Periphery Conflict in the Church There is nothing new or surprising about leadership conflicts in the Church. From the beginning of its existence, the life of the Church has been shaped by divergent viewpoints, various kinds of party alignments, and debates that have ranged from the amicable to the violent (Hume 1999, 6; Reese 1996, 25; McBrien 1992, 44; Cooke 1989, 3; O’Connor 1986, 79; Ashby 1955, 5). Nor, given the actual and potential costs to the Church through losses of 14 membership, material resources or prestige, should we be surprised to find that Church leaders might want to curb the likelihood for conflict to arise. Some observers have gone so far as to assert that an aversion to conflict prevails generally among Church leaders (Van der Ven 1996, 280-281; Stevens 1994, 7; Laeyendecker 1967, 307). Understandably, Church leaders concerned to promote harmony within the Church organization will tend to downplay the image of Jesus as controversialist, who promises to bring division, and to disrupt peace rather than to establish it (cf. Luke 12:51, Matthew 10:34). Nonetheless, conflicts have not disappeared from the life of the Church, because conflicts are intrinsic to social life itself. Indeed, in an age of democratization, globalization and efficient information technologies, one might say that conflicts within the Catholic Church are more visible than ever, especially when those conflicts involve the hierarchy. The challenge for the Church appears to be not to rid itself of conflict altogether, an unrealistic goal, but to manage conflict in productive rather than counterproductive ways. Present-day intraecclesial conflicts touch the membership of the Catholic Church more immediately, directly and (in some instances) extensively than they have in the past, thanks in part to developments in information technologies (Reese 1996, 2; Hanson 1987; Hume 1989, 185; Seidler and Meyer 1989, 5. See also: Soukup, Plude & Philibert 1995; Aetatis Novae 1992). Moreover, such conflicts gain widespread attention because they surface questions concerning freedom and authority which are of interest even to those who are not part of the Church’s membership (Quinn 1996, 14; K. A. Briggs 1992, 1). In a context of modernity, conflicts are more quickly and widely publicized than ever before, thanks to the facility of information technologies. With the arrival of global and instantaneous transmissions has come the participation of a broad public in conflictual matters as the conflicts themselves unfold. Thus recent disputes between the Vatican and certain bishops, and between the Vatican and certain theologians -- to name just two among many forms of intraecclesial conflict -- have drawn countless others, Catholic or not, into the conflict process. These new “participants” in the conflict, varying in the extent of their involvement, reside the world over. The Vatican exchanges with Bishop Gaillot of France in 1995 and with the theologian Leonardo Boff of Brazil in 1985, to cite just two examples, both received worldwide press coverage, eliciting comment from Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

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