Dear Father de Pauw:

Your latest public statement says that you and the Traditionalists are about to “smoke out the few bishops who are not in the Roman Catholic Church.” In view of our problem of air-pollution, I beg you to reconsider. Isn’t America suffering enough from fumes, spumes, smog, fog, gases, ashes, slime and grime without adding any more smoke?

Hundreds of commissions are trying to find out why, when the American takes a nice deep breath, he feels rotten. Must you add to their agenda?

If your definition of the Church is accurate, the job is going to turn out much sootier than you think. If you persist in preaching that our beloved Church is really a museum, a closed corporation or a private club, you’ll have to smoke out every bishop in the country. We may disagree on folk-song music, the height of miters, whole-wheat bread, and our opinion of assorted lay editors. But every one of us has, besides the document of his consecration, a well-thumbed copy of Vatican II. Each of us is honestly trying in our own way to bring it to life.

We Have Our ID Cards

Our episcopal ID cards have not yet been picked up. I am not aware that this task has been entrusted to your Traditionalists, smoke-pots or not.

I’ve read a fair sampling of your literature, and have been intermittently amused, saddened or bored. This time, I’m angry. You hit a sensitive spot-you said that along with a cardinal, the president of the United States hierarchy, and four other bishops, we were all “out of the Church.” I suspect I was added just to give the ticket a little southern tilt. But in the mind and heart of every priest there is one thing you keep your cotton-pickin hands off. You should know this. You can call into question a priest’s intellect, his singing voice or even his spirituality. Just don’t fool with his identity as a Catholic priest, his faith and his mission.

What you have done has demeaned several hundred other bishops just as Catholic, just as American as the “Suspect Seven.” By singling us out for anathema, you ridicule the rest by your implication that they stand with you. You forget that all of us joined with Paul VI, the Bishop of Rome, in the proclamation of this doctrine:

“In the bishops, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Supreme High Priest, is present in the midst of those who believe…” (The Church, #21)

Then the crux of your problem was spelled out by the Council:

The Church, sent to all peoples of every time and place, is not bound exclusively to any race or nation, nor to any particular way of life or any customary pattern of living, ancient or recent.

Faithful to her own tradition and at the same time conscious of her universal mission. She can enter into communion with various cultural modes, to her own enrichment, and theirs too.” (Church in Modern World)

Mission Is Universal

Clear and simple, isn’t it. Father? American bishops are of all backgrounds and temperaments. None of them has opted for an “exclusively American Church,” nor for an “exclusively Roman Church.” Our mission –and yours as a priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore- is universal. Our head is the bishop of Rome to whom we will always bear witness, affection, assistance and esteem.

American Catholics, in whose ranks I am blessed to serve, are simply the Catholic Church in the United States. They are generally as true to the American constitution, the states, the laws and the culture as they are true to Paul VI, successor of Peter upon whom Christ built his Church. There is not, nor can there be, a separate American Church.

Right now, our episcopal credentials are being countersigned by priests and people as well as popes. This takes time and induces various traumas. But “collegiality,” to paraphrase the old saying about charity, covers a multitude of choices. At the moment, collegiality has at least provided plenty elbowroom for trial and error.

You seem to see these innovations (which are really renovations) as part of the American way. There are, but as most students of Church history know, it has also been the Christian way, the Catholic way.

Not Even A Filter?

Just one thing more, Gommar! You demand in tones reminiscent of the late Joe McCarthy that the Suspect Seven “stand up” and be counted. While you and the Resistance are manning the smoke-pots? Stand up, coughing, in your smoke-filled new Lower Room? Rise, so that we can breathe more smog in that air-polluted climate?

Not me Gommar!

Sincerely, your brother-priest,

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop of Atlanta