c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author most recently of”My Brother Joseph,”published by St. Martin Press.)

UNDATED _ The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops recently concluded their semiannual meeting in Washington, D.C. They have handed in their term paper for the autumn semester. It is time to give them their grades and, where possible, some gold stars.

It is important to grade even such advanced graduate students as the bishops on the right subjects. They unfailingly earn an A for attendance because they like to go to meetings. They are, as research at Loyola University of Chicago has shown, more comfortable dealing with management than with meditation. Their patron saint is Martha rather than Mary.

They deserve honors for confounding their AK-47 carrying critics on both the left and right flanks by striving to be moderate and sensible leaders.

This is reflected in their election of a new slate of moderate millennial leaders: as president, Bishop Joseph Fiorenza of the diocese of Galveston-Houston and, as vice president, Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Ill.

If precedent is followed, Gregory will become the president in 2001. Although Gregory is the first black to hold the post of vice president in the bishops’ conference, his electors showed themselves to be color-blind, selecting him for his character and his leadership rather than his skin color.

It would never enter the heads of America’s Catholic bishops to construct a balanced ticket. They are stricken with their principal attitude of soul when it comes to taking a vote on anything: conscientiousness. You hear their real voice when the election results are announced.

Some ecclesiastical lookouts standing on the liberal breastworks describe them as largely the appointees of Pope John Paul II and, therefore, extremely conservative, out of touch, and out to restore a pre-Vatican II church.

Then there is the St. Paul-based The Wanderer, a paper so far to the right that it falls off the flat earth in which it still seems to believe.

The paper views the present bishops as failures for lacking the old”burn ’em and learn ’em”Inquisition spirit in not criticizing and condemning their perennial targets of choice.

Among these are the progressive but thoroughly orthodox Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee and theologians Richard McCormick and Richard McBrien who, despite their faithfulness to the church, have been maligned even more than Kenneth Starr.

And the bishops, according to The Wanderer, should be out hunting down homosexuals in any and every season. The bishops get a gold star just for earning such overwrought wrath. They must be doing something right.

The real key to understanding and perhaps even appreciating our Catholic bishops is that, no matter what passports to heresy they are accused of carrying, they are, first and foremost, Americans.

That means that they are intuitively fair, that they want to hear both sides of any question, and that the theme of remembering the underdog is as clear in their deliberations as it is in Frank Capra movies.

Fascism free, they do not see condemnations as a preferred tactic in dealing with any problem. They attempt to be warmly pastoral instead of chillingly dogmatic. They strive for the thoroughly American goal of consensus and they come to moderate judgments on men and events.

These hardworking men love meetings, agendas, and the other engines of bureaucracy. If Paul placed administration next to last in his list of the gifts of the Spirit, it is finally necessary if the Church is to exist at all.

The Catholic bishops are not appointed to be charismatic leaders but to be unromantic managers. They are, after all, charged with maintaining an institution in institution-unfriendly times. They will not, therefore, introduce the radical changes that liberals long for, such as an end to clerical celibacy or women priests. These moves, in the bishops’ view, would introduce more imbalance into a church still adjusting to Vatican II.

If their moderation is not romantic enough for some and not heresy-hunting enough for others, we cannot fault them for being themselves. Perhaps, as Will Rogers said of the Congress of his day, they didn’t do anything but that’s just what most people wanted done anyway.

Fair-minded moderates, America’s Catholic bishops deserve far better than a gentleman’s C for their work this year. Maybe even a gold star, or at least a battle ribbon for surviving the attacks of such papers as The Wanderer.

DEA END KENNEDY