UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Donald Cozzens | Oct. 21, 2015
A STILL AND QUIET CONSCIENCE: THE ARCHBISHOP WHO CHALLENGED A POPE, A PRESIDENT, AND A CHURCH
By John A. McCoy
Published by Orbis, $26
It is one thing to suffer for the church, but quite another to suffer from the church. We understand that any Christian trying to bear witness to the Gospel will encounter pushback from the consumer-oriented, self-satisfied corners of our society. One would be naive to think otherwise. But to suffer public censure and humiliation from the church itself for bearing witness to the Gospel is particularly hurtful.
John McCoy’s biography of Archbishop Raymond “Dutch” Hunthausen paints the painful story of a bishop’s conscience and Rome’s determination to hold fast to institutional control.
Whether or not Hunthausen’s withholding of half his federal income tax as protest against nuclear weapons marked “a pivotal point in the history of the U.S. Catholic Church” as McCoy contends, it was unprecedented as a prophetic voice from an American Catholic bishop — and raised alarm bells in the halls of the Roman Curia.
Hunthausen, transformed by the profound breakthroughs of the Second Vatican Council, made the pastoral care of his priests, religious and laity a priority. In doing so, he would earn the disdain often accorded to a prophet and raised the suspicions of Rome. In the eyes of the entrenched church leaders committed to at least containing, if not reversing, the reforms of the council, a bishop whose pastoral judgment didn’t always square with canon law and the church’s official teachings was indeed dangerous.
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