by Fr. Brian Daley, SJ

ONE EVENING about a year ago, as I was preparing dinner, Msgr. Philip Murnion of the National Pastoral Life Center (NPLC) called to invite me to be a member of the sponsoring committee for what has come to be known as the Catholic Common Ground Initiative. Conceived by Chicago's late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the initiative was to draw American Catholics into a new mode of confronting the controversial issues that polarize and paralyze us, an invitation to all to move beyond the labels of "liberal" and "conservative," "left" and "right," and to listen to each other with charity, humility, and respect.

"Called to Be Catholic: the Church in a Time of Peril," the initiative's founding document, was prepared by the NPLC. It analyzed tensions in the Catholic community in the United States, pointed to their deadening effect on liturgical life and pastoral activity, and suggested principles for dialogue based on our common faith in Jesus as Lord, our common acceptance of the tradition of apostolic doctrine, and our common membership in the Church.

The committee included a cardinal, several archbishops and bishops, as well as Catholic scholars, religious leaders, and public servants. Our role was not to rewrite that document or even to endorse every phrase of it; we were simply asked if we felt we could sympathize with its spirit and accept its general intent, to lend it our public moral support, and to help projects aimed at realizing its ideals.

Shortly before his death, Chicago's Cardinal Bernardin set in motion an idea he had to promote unity among Catholics in the United States. Author Fr. Brian Daley, SJ, was one of those invited to participate in the process.

It was Cardinal Bernardin, characterized by his holiness and pastoral concern, who lent the statement and the project initial credibility. At the committee's meeting last October, he summoned his waning strength to spend a morning with us to listen to our hopes for the project and to sketch out his desire to begin a process of healing and reconciliation within the Catholic community that might lead us beyond the present atmosphere of negativity and suspicion. Since then, Common Ground has sponsored a conference on Christian discipleship in American culture and hopes to sponsor annual conferences as models of constructive and substantial dialogue.

Most public response to the initiative has been strongly positive. Friends and strangers alike have expressed to me their sense of the need to encourage charitable, constructive dialogue among Catholics, and they have offered to help in whatever way possible.

But there have been voices of criticism, too. Shortly after the cardinal announced the initiative last August, four American cardinals expressed reservations about the document and the wisdom of starting public initiatives for reconciliation within the Church apart from the leadership of the Vatican and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. A number of Catholics noted for their public criticism of the hierarchy or disagreement with aspects of Catholic teaching criticized the initiative for not being inclusive enough in the makeup of its sponsoring committee or radical enough in stated aims.

Theological criticisms of the initiative have been made by Fr. Avery Dulles, SJ, in a lecture he gave in December, and more recently by David Schindler, in the winter issue of the journal Communio. Both theologians recognize the need for dialogue in the Christian community and praise the intention of promoting Christian reconciliation. But both criticize "Called to Be Catholic" for not clearly distinguishing the way of reconciliation proper to Christian believers-conversion and mutual commitment to Christ within a structured eucharistic community-from the more ideologically neutral kind of public dialogue and negotiation familiar to us in a modern, liberal, democratic society. As a result, they argue, despite the intention of Cardinal Bernardin and the document's drafters to promote unity, the initiative simply contributes to the reigning unclarity about where such unity is to be found.

My own feeling is that these last-mentioned criticisms rest on a misconception of the initiative's purpose. It is not intended to be a problem-solving body or a think tank developing pastoral policy, nor is it intended to bring hot issues to a broadly acceptable resolution or to develop a new process to negotiate intra-Church grievances. The sponsoring committee intends that its role in furthering Cardinal Bernardin's ideal will be modest: sponsoring conferences, perhaps publishing a newsletter, above all encouraging initiatives that foster respectful, frank dialogue among Catholics. The real purpose of the initiative, as I see it, is to appeal to Catholics, who profess the same apostolic faith and desire to live in the same sacramental community, to talk to each other in ways that result in genuine communication.

We sorely need the kind of practical conversion that improved communication requires. In our parishes and dioceses as well as in academic and religious life, labeling the other person as "progressive" or "reactionary" too often takes the place of listening to what he or she is really saying and of taking the risk of expressing one's own convictions in terms he or she might understand.

Jesuit communities are certainly not exempt from this polarization. Jesuits of my generation often do a real injustice to our younger brethren, for instance, by applying to them labels borrowed from the debates of the 1960s that have long outlived their applicability; as a result, we fail to perceive where the Spirit is really moving in the Church of today and shaping the Society of Jesus of tomorrow. The facile use of labels can undermine mutual trust and hinder the common life of prayer and spiritual conversation.

Common Ground challenges the Catholic Church in America to capture the same approach to dialogue it has been engaged in for 30 years now, with considerable success, with virtually all the other Christian churches and with most of the other major world religions. Since 1981, I have been a member of the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue in the United States and know from experience how demanding disciplined conversation about disputed aspects of our common Christian faith really is. Ecumenical dialogue is possible only when participants know their own churches' traditions well and are thoroughly committed to it as the way they believe best realizes the plan of Christ for his disciples. In this conviction, partners in dialogue must first identify the aspects of Christian faith on which their churches are in agreement, and then, against this backdrop of "common ground," consider the character and importance of the aspects of belief or Church life on which their churches seriously differ. Trying to reach a quick deal by negotiation, papering over differences with vague phrases, or borrowing concepts dear to the other side to give facile expression to one's own traditions does not advance real unity; it only further alienates the sponsoring churches.

Much more difficult is the slow business of trying over and over, on controversial subjects, to express what one believes to be the core of one's Church's faith in terms that another community might be able to recognize as part of its faith, too. In the process, churches usually come to understand their faith and the distinctive character of their own life more clearly and to respect their ecumenical partners more deeply as faithful Christians, even when irreducible differences remain that prevent sacramental communion.

Common Ground is an attempt to draw groups within the Catholic community at odds with one another into such painstaking "ecumenical" dialogue. The presumption is not that all questions are equally open to new answers or that the partners in the dialogue are always on an equal footing-bishops, for instance, surely have an authority to lead that cannot be dissolved into democratic process; but it is presumed that all involved in this dialogue owe ultimate obedience to Christ, the gospel, and the tradition of faith and are ready to talk and to listen with charity and goodwill.

I feel a responsibility as a Jesuit to promote this kind of reconciling conversation among Christians at odds with each other. The first official charter of the Society of Jesus lists "reconciling the estranged" among the ministries in which members of the order were to engage, and early Jesuits expended a good deal of energy on ending feuds that endangered the peace of many Italian cities of their day.

In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius proposes an alternative to the labeling we all indulge in, an alternative that is the presupposition for a fruitful relationship between director and retreatant and for any serious conversation about the things of God. "It is necessary to suppose," he writes, "that every good Christian is more ready to put a good interpretation on another's statement than to condemn it as false. If an orthodox construction cannot be put on a proposition, the one who made it should be asked how he understands it. If he is in error, he should be corrected with all kindness. If this does not suffice, all appropriate means should be used to bring the person to a correct interpretation."

There is no relativism here, no suggestion that authority be slighted or truth negotiated. Ignatius simply reminds us of what the Epistle to the Ephesians made clear at Christianity's dawn: that the only way to "build up the body of Christ" and to "knit together" its joints is to "speak the truth in love" (Eph 4.12, 15f.) and to assume that the one with whom we are speaking intends to do the same.

Common Ground is simply a new attempt on the part of some American Catholics pained at their Church's inner disunity to remind us all of how far we still are from this ideal.

Fr. Brian Daley, SJ, a graduate of St. Peter's Prep, Fordham College, and Oxford University, taught at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass., for eighteen years and is now professor of theology at Notre Dame.