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In an interview with TIME, Archbishop Bernardin said the technical competence question "makes me smile. There are many people who write about these issues, newspaper editors, for instance. Are they really expert in a technical sense in every field they write about? They write on the basis of study, on the basis of their conversations with people. The same thing is true of us bishops. We do not present ourselves as experts in nuclear warfare or in nuclear armaments, but we do want to share with our people, and all people of good will, what we have learned and what we think the moral implications are."
Some critics charge that the bishops are usurping the proper role of the laity. Quentin Quade, executive vice president of Jesuit-run Marquette University, says the real issue is not "more or less activism, but who is responsible for putting these values into practice." Quade deduces from Vatican II that the clergy are supposed to preach principles and the laity are supposed to apply them. Michael Novak, a Catholic philosopher and theologian who is perhaps the most quoted opponent of the bishops' pastoral, thinks that "they are suffering from hubris, taking on vocations that aren't theirs."
The Bishops' Aides. Some conservatives argue that the bishops are largely endorsing documents drafted by the Washington staff of the U.S. Catholic Conference, which Catholic rightists consider to be unfairly tilted to the left. The favorite target of the conservatives is Father J. Bryan Hehir, 41, onetime Harvard student of Henry Kissinger, who has been in charge of the conference's office for international justice and peace since 1974. Hehir, who makes no secret of his liberal tendencies, often testifies before Congress on such topics as amnesty for draft resisters, disarmament, world food policy, and human rights violations in Chile and South Korea. He is the top adviser for Bernardin's committee on nuclear arms as well as for the committee on capitalism.
Bernardin dismisses the criticism that he and his peers are prisoners of their staffs ("It's kind of offensive and demeaning"). Hehir readily defends the bishops' campaign: "Protecting human dignity is a thoroughly Gospel task. It can't be done outside the political arena. That's why the church does it. It's not trying to impress people with being au courant."
Secularization. One criticism of the bishops echoes a complaint that conservative Protestants have long registered against their ecclesiastical leaders: in speaking out on every conceivable issue, the church runs the risk of losing sight of its essential task—to preach the Gospel message. "Some people will feel we have lost our spirituality," admits Cleveland's Bishop Anthony Pilla, 50, who nonetheless supports the pastoral letter, with some reservations.
In a new 206-page critique of the bishops' social policies, Political Theorist J. Brian Benestad of the University of Scranton argues that by subtly secularizing the church, the bishops are