Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan said the Church and the courts have to avoid the bleak rigidity of absolutism and the shifting sands of relativism if they are to function properly.

His comments were made last week in an address to the Judicial Conference of the United States Courts of the Faith Judicial Circuit. The topic of the archbishop’s talk was “The Church Looks At the Courts.”

The prelate said, “We meet in a common bond of responsibility—yours is civic, ours is pastoral. This responsibility is losing out today; legal relativism sees no crimes—only abnormalities. Situational morality sees no sins—only conduct beyond the control of the person.

“I fear that one reason for this creeping relativism has been the stagnation of its opposite—moral absolutism. If we define law as something always, and everywhere in the same rigid abstractions, it should not surprise us when anthropology, sociology, medicine and psychology shoot holes in it.’

Archbishop Hallinan said the Church should become morally concerned if justice is diminished by the disparity of sentences, by the lack of judges or their necessary training.

“We are likewise aware that our open system of law (as opposed to the star-chamber of earlier England) is seriously impaired by ‘negotiate pleas’ of guilt that lack judicial scrutiny in the interest of speeding up the legal calendar.

“We recognized the need of extensive rehabilitation, especially of first offenders, and regard such care as inconsistent with a political structure of justices of the peace, the fee system and the political choice of judges,” he said.

The archbishop said when justice is diminished, public scrutiny is denied or rehabilitation is ignored, God’s voice is not heard by a puzzled, disillusioned humanity. “I can cite these offenses in good grace only if you reciprocate. You have equal rights to criticize the working of religion especially when the churches become irrelevant, uncommitted, affluent or absent-minded.”

Archbishop Hallinan said he would not attempt to assess how far men of the law are culpable for the alleged disarray of the American system of laws, “but I will humbly admit that, on our side, we have not as a body measured up to the servant ministry enshrined in the Judaic code, and personalized in the suffering servant, Jesus.”

The archbishop said he was glad that the Church and the courts no longer, at least in this nation, are blurred by a false identity.