Bernard Law: The USCCB

After his first stint in Mississippi, Law made a move. According to Wikipedia:

Law's civil rights activity led him to develop ties with Protestant church leaders and he received national attention for his work for ecumenism and in 1968 he was tapped for his first national post, as executive director of the US Bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

As I've mentioned here before, "ecumenism" in the 1960s was another way of saying "marching with Dr King", and it's hard to avoid thinking Law was taking cues from Episcopalian and other liberal Protestant counterparts in using this means to advance his career -- as Flannery O'Connor has indirectly pointed out, the Deep South wasn't especially Catholic, and New Orleans was one of the few foci for 19th-century Catholic immigration in the region. Catholics were a secondary target of the Klan, but because they were less visible, they remained secondary.

Beyond that, when I was an Episcopalian, I was in two parishes whose rectors had had real pastoral experience integrating Southern parishes in the 1960s. One was actually in Jackson, MS, and while he didn't face violence or violent threats, as far as I know, he nevertheless spoke of having to threaten excommunication with parishioners who resisted integration. The other was in fact severely beaten by the Klan. These men were in the front lines, not the same thing as marching for the cameras. We know very little of what Law actually did in this period besides edit a diocesan paper.

It appears that Law came to the attention of Joseph Bernardin, who was only three years older, but whose rise in the US Catholic Church had been meteoric. According to Wikipedia,

On April 26, 1952, Bernardin was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Charleston by John J. Russell at St. Joseph Church. This diocese covers the entire state of South Carolina. During his 14-year tenure at the Diocese of Charleston, Father Bernardin served under four bishops in capacities including chancellor, vicar general, diocesan counselor, and, when the See was vacant, diocesan administrator. In 1959, Pope John XXIII named Bernardin a Papal Chamberlain with the title Very Reverend Monsignor.

On March 9, 1966 Pope Paul VI appointed Monsignor Bernardin titular Bishop of Liguria and Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Atlanta. His episcopal consecration took place on April 26, 1966 at the hands of his mentor, the Archbishop of Atlanta, Paul Hallinan. Bernardin, only 38 years old, thus became the youngest bishop in America.

. . . In 1968, he resigned as auxiliary bishop of Atlanta to become the first General Secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, a post he held until 1972. In 1969 Bishop Bernadin was instrumental in founding one of the conference's most influential and successful programs, the anti-poverty Campaign for Human Development.

Engle in The Rite of Sodomy adds that in going to the USCCB, Bernardin became "the first of a long, virtually unbroken line of homosexual and pro-homosexual clerics to hold the position of General Secretary and/or Presidency of the NCCB/USCC" (p 892). Engle lists a large number of gay clergy, many of whom eventually became bishops, in Bernardin's inner circle at the USCCB, but Law is not among them.

It appears, though, that Bernardin picked Law at the start for a key post in what he saw as a progressive agenda for his term at the USCCB. In 1971, Law left the USCCB and became vicar general of his former Diocese of Natchez-Jackson under Bishop Joseph Brunini. This, of course, put Law in a good position for a bishopric.

Joseph Bernardin left his position as General Secretary of the USCCB in 1972 to become Archbishop of Cincinnati. However, Engle points out,

Much of the ten years Bernardin served as Archbishop of Cincinnati was spent in Washington, D.C. as the President of the NCCB. For all practical purposes he was the new “Kingmaker” with a much broader base of operation and control than Cardinal Spellman ever enjoyed as Archbishop of New York. The appointment of Archbishop Bernardin to the Archdiocese of Chicago on July 10, 1982 by Pope John Paul II confirmed his kingship over AmChurch. (p 897)

My informant tells me that Law's version of why he left his position with the USCCB was due to the amount of "drinking" that took place among the bureaucrats in Washington. Whatever the reason, it doesn't appear that there was any sort of rift with Bernardin.

When Law was consecrated Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau on December 5, 1973, his co-consecrators were William Wakefield Baum, Law's immediate predecessor in Springfield-Cape Girardeau and newly appointed Archbishop of Washington, DC, and Joseph Bernardin. Bernardin has a fairly extensive record as a homosexualist bishop and cardinal. Baum's record is less clear, although he would have been a member of what Engle calls the Chicago-Washington axis of the Church.

Baum was instrumental in ordaining Michael Peterson a priest. According to Engle,

In 1962, at age 19, while an undergraduate at Stanford University, Michael entered the Catholic Church. Tall, thin and handsome, he was pretty much a loner looking to find his niche in life.

He found that niche in the early 1970s when he returned to the University of California San Francisco Medical School to attend graduate school. Having left a rather mundane job at the National Institutes in Health in Washington, D.C., he joined Dr. Leon Epstein, Vice-Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Medical School. Here he discovered the world of sexual perversion beginning with exhibitionism and proceeding to transsexuality, clinical pedophilia, and same-sex attraction.

. . . {In 1975,] Peterson decided to enter the priesthood. His candidacy was approved by Archbishop William Baum of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Baum, overly impressed by Peterson’s medical and psychiatric credentials, broke all established rules to get Peterson ordained in a record three years time. To him, Peterson represented an exciting new breed of priests active in professional ministries in the post-Conciliar era. (pp 586-7)

Peterson's superiors in seminary noted that he spent little time in class, appeared to be actively gay, and also appeared to have a problem with amphetamines. Nevertheless,

With the backing of Cardinal Baum and later Cardinal Hickey, psychiatrist- priest Michael Peterson became the American bishops’ guru on all things sexual.

For his part, as an active member of the Homosexual Collective, Peterson actively promoted the Collective’s ideological agenda and foundational concepts among the American hierarchy from the time of the founding of St.Luke in 1981 to his death eight years later from complications associated with AIDS. (p 589)

Law was thought of as a "conservative", but two major promoters of the gay agenda in the US Church, including the "kingmaker" Bernardin, had no problem with making him a bishop. It seems to me that Ms Engle in over 1000 pages has only scratched the surface of the networks.