Changing Witness: Catholic Bishops and Public Policy, 1917-1994 by Michael Warner (review)

146book reviews of blacks that caused the eventual dissolution of St. Sabina's Irish parish in the 1960's and '70's, not the embourgeoisement alone which made ethnic CathoUcs move to the far suburbs. She dates it precisely to August, 1965, when the murder of seventeen-year-old Frank KeUy by two black youths caused hundreds ofwhite famiUes to leave the parish. St. Sabina's became a predominantiy Afro-American "community." Apart from a smattering of racism in the priesthood, the Uberal CathoUc clergy tried to broaden the horizons oftheir parishioners in these trying times. But Irish devotionaUsm did not demand a more encompassing social conscience . Locked into a "parish mentaUty," St. Sabina's ethnics were unable to achieve permanent integration. Despite Uberal biases of the day of the 1960's, and the prejudice against the bonds of ethnicity (where the "white ethnic"was presumed to be an ardent racist), and the influences of Vatican Councü II, the Irish neighborhood parish of St. Sabina, UteraUy disbanded itself. EUeen McMahon's book is profoundly disturbing and pessimistic and not uplifting at all. The events portrayed by the author are historicaUy accurate. The decline of the parish in America is a precursor of the decline of CathoUc communaUsm , historicaUy at odds with American individuaUsm. The book leaves the reader flat. The final sentence is: "... the CathoUcs and the Irish have lost a vital aspect of their ethnic heritage." Peter d'A.Jones University ofIllinois at Chicago Changing Witness: Catholic Bishops and Public Policy, 1917-1994. By Michael Warner. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: WiUiam B. Eerdmans PubUshing Company. 1995. Pp. xvüi,202. $20.00 paperback.) There is a conspiracy. Without using this word, Warner so describes the change which took place after the Second Vatican CouncU in the content and style of the American Bishops' statements: the activity of a cabal of eUte leaders in the episcopal conference. This is not a history of the National CathoUc Welfare Conference or its 1966 successor, the National Conference of CathoUc Bishops/United States CathoUc Conference. Rather it is, as he describes it, an "interpretive essay." This frees Warner, in 170 pages of text, to draw sweeping conclusions without delving into the detaU of the conference's past. Warner focuses on the two recent episcopal statements on the economy and on war and peace. In the 1930's he finds episcopal social teachings very much in Une with Roman Thomism and the organic-guUd system outiook of papal social encycUcals. He notes the shift at the Second Vatican CouncU from natural law to a bibUcal ethics as a foundation for social teaching. Phenomenology also book reviews147 weakened Thomism's grasp on the councU and aUowed the Americans' social thinking to shift more toward poUtical and pragmatic theology, one which suddenly favored state intervention, social salvation, and lobbying by the bishops in very particular aspects of legislation. He notes that the councU,to the contrary, taught that this was the arena of the laity, not of the clergy. Warner explains that this change was the deUberate agenda of a new group of leaders in the bishops' conference after its reorganization into the NCCBAJSCC in 1966. Joseph L. Bernardin, the General Secretary of the Conference chosen by Archbishop John Dearden of Detroit and Archbishop Paul J. HaUinan ofAtlanta,is presented as the advocate ofa much-needed relevancy for the conference. He Usts Marciniak, Bordelon, Colonese, Rausch, and Hehir as stauncher advocates of a deUberate retreat from a natural-law ethics than Bernardin's pragmatism envisioned. Subsequent episcopal statements on Racism, the Vietnam War, War and Peace, and the Economic Pastoral aU evidenced this new activism. The one gUtch in this program was the need to address the issue of abortion, which Warner beUeves the conference finally avoided by wrapping it in a consistent ethic of Ufe ideology. Warner concludes his book with an editorial/homily calling on the American bishops to imitate PopeJohn Paul's focus on truth and the virtues needed to attain that truth; these should be the substance of their statements, not particular poUcy advocacy which merely renders the conference just another lobbying group. Warner weighs into a heady debate in this book. He...