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The bishop miscalculated. A group of conservative laymen called Deus Dux ("God is our leader") sent a letter of complaint to Rome and held a "pray-in" in front of Bishop Tracy's apartment. Even worse for the good-conscience cause, Tracy's announcement touched off an ecclesiastical storm in the hierarchy.
Jesuit Daniel Lyons, a conservative columnist for the National Catholic Register, termed the good-conscience practice "a scandal" and questioned how any divorced Catholic who attempted remarriage could be considered to be in good conscience. Lyons' view is known to be shared privately by many U.S. prelates, including the president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, John Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia. In August, Cardinal Krol consigned the good-conscience cause to limbo. Citing a Vatican directive, the cardinal forbade all practices "contrary to current discipline," pending the results of a study on the problems of remarried Catholics that is currently under way in Rome. Most of the dioceses known to have set up good-conscience procedures have now suspended them.* It is unlikely though that the many hundreds of Catholics who have already been reinstated will now be turned away from Communion.
The good-conscience cause is only the tip of a theological iceberg. Several liberal Catholic thinkers have been reassessing the church's literal interpretation of the New Testament teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. They argue that indissolubility is an ideal rather than an absolute, and that a marriage from which the emotional and psychological life has faded is no less sundered than a union ended by the death of one of the partners. In his new book Power to Dissolve (Belknap Press, Harvard; $15), Lawyer-Philosopher John T. Noonan Jr. indicates that the church's conception of what makes a marriage null has been fluid rather than fixed throughout the eight-century evolution of canon law. Writes Noonan: "Neither the theoretical construct of marriage nor the express texts of Scripture, neither the absence of precedent nor the desire for uniformity, has barred innovation in the past." Noonan speaks for many Catholics when he says that the evolution should, and will, continue.
*Besides Portland and Baton Rouge, they include Boise, Idaho; Baker, Ore.; Seattle, Wash.; Birmingham; Pueblo, Colo., and Helena, Mont.