By James L. Franklin, Globe Staff, 11/28/1985

ardinal Bernard F. Law was pensive as he prepared for the opening of a synod of bishops summoned to evaluate contemporary Catholic life, insisting that the synod was a retreat in which he would wait until most other bishops had spoken so he could sense "the dynamic of the Holy Spirit.

"I really go to listen to my brothers, as witnesses to the faith from all over the world, and to listen to the Holy Spirit in prayer," he said in an interview last weekend at Villa Stritch, a residence set in parkland in Southwest Rome for American clergy working at the Vatican.

Those plans appeared to change rapidly when the synod began work Monday. By 11 p.m. that night, after only the first, two-hour round of speeches, Cardinal Law had finished an English version of an address in which he would urge the bishops to make themselves felt once again as "masters and teachers of faith."

In a speech he would deliver in Latin Tuesday night -- that would be made public only in a summary by a synod spokesman -- Cardinal Law put himself on the side of church leaders who want to restore strong central controls in the Catholic Church as he urged that the Vatican prepare a doctrinal summary for use throughout the 800 million member church.

A church burdened with dissent, worst of all among its professional theologians, needs a "universal catechism," prepared in Rome by a special committee of cardinals, the Boston archbishop argued in the text he handed Monday night to a surprised aide who was preparing for bed.

Cardinal Law asked first for an opinion and second for a Latin translation by morning so he could prepare the paper for presentation.

With the sang-froid cultivated by the clergy who have studied and worked here, the aide first agreed to the long night's work and then suggested that the speech would have more effect if it were not made yesterday morning, when Pope John Paul II would greet pilgrims at his weekly general audience instead of attending the synod of bishops.

Tuesday morning Cardinal Law had a first version of his Latin oration and aides had sent a message seeking special permission to speak from Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia, the good friend of Pope John Paul and the senior president, or moderator, of the synod.

But there were changes to be made in the Latin of Cardinal Law's "intervention" and still no word on the request to speak when he went to the synod's evening session at 5 p.m.

A final Latin version of the speech, rushed to the synod hall by automobile, reached the Boston churchman at 6:15 p.m., as his request was granted, contrary to later statements by the synod's information service that speakers are chosen on a first-come, first-served basis.

In the presence of the pope, Cardinal Law was called to speak half an hour later at 6:45 p.m., immediately following Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's doctrinal office and author of the most widely read bill of indictment against the recent failings of a church that many cardinals feel has grown slack and undisciplined.

Yesterday, Cardinal Law at first refused all requests for interviews but gradually relented, meeting reporters waiting outside the synod hall, taking a phone call later in the day, and allowing himself to be persuaded to take part in a Friday press conference organized for the other American participants here.

But he held fast against all requests for a text of his speech, both in the English original and in Latin.

Cardinal Law cited synod rules, in effect since 1971, that require all information to be released only by bishops on the information committee for the synod.

"I tend to be that kind of a person," he said when asked why he kept to the letter of the synod regula, or rule, when many bishops and cardinals from the United States and other nations had distributed full copies of speeches and met freely with the press during the five regular meetings of the synod beginning in 1971.

"The rule is absolutely necessary for discussion within the synod to be free," the cardinal said. He added that he did not want to "contribute to misleading the public.

"If they are only getting fragmentary accounts, that is open to the creation of a whole scenario that would not adequately reflect what is taking place in the synod," he said.

Cardinal Law said he had been "wrestling with ideas" over last weekend and didn't have the specific suggestions in his speech until Monday.

The speech is not part of an agenda he planned for the synod, the prelate said. "It doesn't represent a position, but simply a conviction that I test often, against what others are saying in the synod."

Despite telling the bishops that catechisms prepared by national groups of bishops were "insufficient," Cardinal Law said he meant only that "in a global village, in which the young people of Boston, Leningrad and Santiago wear blue jeans, sing and dance to the same music. . . we have a universal need and unity of faith that is best served by one catechism."

The church's College of Cardinals is an appropriate group to formulate such a summary of Catholic doctrine because it is "an ongoing body, international in scope," he said, but the catechism should also be reviewed by "the whole body of bishops" before being promulgated by the pope.

Cardinal Law said he had also told the bishops of the synod that he agreed with the "many positive things" said about the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council.

Problems in the church today "come from a lack of a grasp of the fundamentals of the faith that undergird the documents of the council," he said. "We have to attend to the underlying principles."

Cardinal Law said his concern about dissent in the church was focused on "public dissent to magisterial teaching when it is exalted to the status of a methodological principle in theology.

"That does great harm to the life of the church," he said, adding that there is "nothing confining" in the needed attention to the fundamentals of belief.

"My concern is that we not be stifled by error and that we be very clear about the life-giving truths in the sacred deposit of faith," he said.

This story ran in the Boston Globe on 11/28/1985.
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