Begins 3 days of confidential meetings

By James L. Franklin, Globe Staff, 5/22/1985

rchbishop Bernard F. Law arrived from Boston yesterday and plunged into a full day's work almost immediately with the first session of what is to be a three-day round of confidential meetings with the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Archbishop Law, who will be elevated to a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church in ceremonies Saturday, said on his arrival at Leonardo da Vinci Airport shortly after 9 a.m. that he looked forward to being "one with the Holy Father," Pope John Paul II. The archbishop declined to characterize the meetings with the congregation, which acts as a theological watchdog for the Vatican. He downplayed the significance of his elevation to cardinal and emphasized the importance of current events in the Roman Catholic Church.

Speaking of the state of the church today, he said, "This is one of the greatest moments the church has had since the Reformation."

Asked about the criticism and sometimes violent protests that greeted the Pope's visit to the Netherlands last week, the archbishop compared the "pockets of organized protest and dissent" to a "morality play, a clash of two world views."

"The Holy Father eloquently speaks for one of those views," the prelate said. The other, which he said he saw "in some of the uglier dimensions of the protests . . . has connotations of a practical atheism that puts the individual at the center of the universe."

Although the conflict "weighs heavily on the hearts of so many in the Netherlands," he said, it is "healthy, because it lets us know what are the alternatives: Either we will put God at the center or we will put the individual at the center."

The archbishop's nomination for membership in the College of Cardinals is to be ratified by the college in a consistory Saturday.

After leaving the airport, Archbishop Law went to Villa Stritch, the residence for American clergy working at the Vatican, where he will remain for the next nine days.

Taking only a short time to rest and change his clothes, the archbishop was briefed by aides on plans for the next week, was fitted for the red robes of a cardinal by the papal tailor and attended the first of the meetings with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Archbishop Law was summoned to attend the meetings along with three other Americans, Archbishop John O'Connor of New York, Archbishop James Hickey of Washington and Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco.

Archbishop Law said he has worked frequently with the congregation on the "pastoral provision" for receiving into the Catholic Church former priests and members of the Episcopal Church who have chosen to become Catholics while retaining some of their Anglican Church heritage.

Archbishop Quinn was the chief proponent of that plan.

The pastoral provision, approved by the Vatican in 1980, was a response to dissident Episcopalians who were upset by their church's ordination of women and were convinced that its theology had become too liberal.

Archbishop Law has been responsible for administering the pastoral provision since 1980, when he was bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Mo. Rev. James Parker, a former Episcopal priest who has since been ordained a Roman Catholic priest, moved with him from Missouri to Boston more than a year ago to help administer the provision.

Archbishop Law said he met with Mayor Andrew Young of Atlanta, a former UN ambassador, at Boston College Monday. He said he shared Young's conviction that "hope for human solidarity and the possibility of a world at peace flows from the recognition of who God is, on which depends a full appreciation of the dignity of a human person."

Helen Law, the prelate's 73-year-old mother, did not travel to Rome yesterday, as had been planned. She is scheduled to be here tomorrow.

Mayor Raymond L. Flynn also arrived yesterday. He is staying at the residence of Maxwell Rabb, the US ambassador to Italy.

Asked for his impression of Villa Taverna, the ambassador's residence at the huge embassy on Via Veneto here, Flynn said, "Wow, this is as big as Dorchester."

This story ran in the Boston Globe on 5/22/1985.
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