c. 1996 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY (RNS)-If Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz is mistaken, as some critics charge, he’s erred on the right side.

That, at least, is the early assessment among leading Catholic scholars and Vatican cognoscenti who have watched the Lincoln, Neb., bishop launch a crusade to cleanse his diocese of dissent. Bruskewitz has said that Catholics belonging to any of 12 groups he deems objectionable will be subject to excommunication, which bars offenders from receiving the sacraments.

Bruskewitz’s order was scheduled to go into effect May 15. Msgr. Timothy Thorburn, spokesman for the Lincoln diocese, said that because the excommunication order was not targeted at specific individuals, he could not say how many people might be affected.

While the bishop’s crackdown has drawn considerable comment in the United States, the drama has elicited barely a spark at the Vatican.

The normally bellicose Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano has not mentioned the internal feud in which several U.S. bishops have suggested Bruskewitz has gone too far. No official pronouncements have been made on the affair, and most Vatican officials, taciturn by nature, refuse to be drawn into the debate.”Since it’s a disciplinary matter within his diocese, I think the Vatican feels it’s not appropriate to comment on the matter,”said the Rev. Robert Dempsey, editor of the weekly English edition of Osservatore Romano, which publishes official positions of the church, papal speeches and items of concern to the Holy See.

Dempsey and others noted that the church is not as monolithic as many people think. Bishops are given wide latitude to run their dioceses, even if that means taking forceful-and controversial-measures.

Under the pontificate of John Paul II, of course, it helps if a bishop leans toward caution or conservatism in his pronouncements. The Vatican has disciplined a number of bishops-in France, Ireland, Holland and elsewhere-for refusing to toe a conservative line.

Last year, Bishop Jacques Gaillot of Evreux, France, was ordered to step down from his diocese for preaching acceptance of gays and promoting the rights of priests to wed. In Ireland, one bishop was criticized by the Vatican merely for suggesting that the church examine such orthodoxy as the ban on women’s ordination.

In fact, some clergy and academics say that Vatican silence over the Bruskewitz affair amounts to a stamp of approval.”Unless it causes a huge brouhaha, it’s not likely to get much attention here,”said the Rev. Michael McDermott, a theologian at the Catholic Gregorian University.”He seems completely within his rights,”said the Rev. Charles Brown, a member of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which enforces Catholic teaching and law.”He’s interpreting the law of the church and to a certain extent making implicit what is in canon law,”which sets out rules and regulations of the church.

Bruskewitz was posted at the Vatican from 1969 to 1980, working at the Congregation for Catholic Education, and has a reputation of being a”very intelligent man,”Brown said.”He knows canon law. There are certain people out there who would disagree with him, but he does know what he’s doing.” One Vatican authority on canon law said Bruskewitz was within his rights and has not done anything so far that would cause disciplinary action.

But the official, who said he could not be identified because he could be asked to make a judgment on the matter, called the excommunication order”odious. There’s a general principle that penal law is meant to be a last resort. You’re supposed to use other pastoral means before exacting penalties.” Several U.S. cardinals have publicly made the same point.

In fact, the penalty of excommunication, active since the eighth century but enshrined in canon law only since 1917, has been unevenly applied over the years, much in the way U.S. laws on obscenity, for example, are enforced according to community standards.

Excommunication offenses include a wide variety of”crimes,”such as abortion, apostasy, heresy, schism and consecration of a bishop without permission from Rome.

The French bishop Marcel Lefebvre was excommunicated in 1988 for ordaining bishops without papal authority.

But excommunication is not a science. Catholic women who have abortions or doctors who perform them are technically automatically excommunicated from the church. They are supposed to refrain from receiving the sacraments. Yet many Catholics dismiss the automatic nature of these excommunications, and very few offenders deny themselves Communion on the basis of having committed an offense.

Vatican officials said that they knew of only two U.S. cases in the United States in the past eight years in which Catholics were excommunicated because of questions relating to abortion.

The penalty of excommunication can be appealed to the Vatican. The process is handled by one of the church’s departments-or congregations-or by an administrative tribunal, depending on how the excommunication was meted out.

Bruskewitz said his excommunication order was necessary because the 12 groups, including Planned Parenthood, an abortion rights organization; Call to Action, a church-reform movement; the Hemlock Society, a pro-euthanasia group; and two arch-conservative groups, are”perilous to the Catholic faith.” In fact, McDermott said the timing of the move appeared intended to stem the rise of dissident voices in the diocese. Planned Parenthood, the abortion- rights advocacy group, recently opened its first clinic in the diocese. And last February, the national group Call to Action, which supports the ordination of women priests and optional celibacy for priests, opened a chapter in Lincoln.”He may be doing this before they get a foothold in his diocese,”McDermott said.”He has that right.”

MJP END HEILBRONNER