CARDINAL LAW: PRELATE, FORMERLY OF SOUTHERN MISSOURI, DEPLORES VIOLENCE IN THE NAME OF RELIGION

BOSTON -- Recent dramatic and violent acts committed in the name of God represent "aberrations of religious thought" says the Roman Catholic prelate who helped write his church's new universal catechism.

Cardinal Bernard Law said the bombing at New York's World Trade Center, the violent standoff that continues in Waco, Texas, and the killing Wednesday of a physician outside his abortion clinic in Pensacola, Fla., are the acts of people who misunderstand the teachings of religion.

"Speaking of Christianity, it is certainly impossible to justify acts of violence for good," he said.

Law, the archbishop of Boston and the former bishop of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese, was interviewed by telephone Thursday at his residence in Boston.

He said violence and terrorism cannot be justified by the principles of either Islam according to his understanding of its teachings or Christianity.

"The kind of killing that took place in Pensacola and in Waco certainly does not spring from an authentic Christian position.

"I deplore these aberrations of religious thought. That can occur. People can go off the deep end from all sorts of sources."

The new universal catechism, unveiled in November, addresses the issue of violence.

"The fundamental lesson of Christianity is the lesson of human solidarity," Law said. "You are your brother's keeper, you are your sister's keeper."

The catechism says a state may undertake armed conflict as a last resort under very specific conditions, but Law says his conviction is that "violence begets violence."

Thus his opposition to capital punishment. "I believe in the climate of today that kind of person can be dealt with in the law in some other way than capital punishment," he said.

"I am convinced that until we break out of this culture of death and this culture of violence things are going to get worse."

The church's opposition to abortion, reaffirmed by the catechism, teaches the value of life in the face of the 25 million abortions that have occurred since the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade, Law said.

"I cannot help believe but that too has affected the psyche of the nation to view life cheaply."

The first new catechism in more than 400 years was drafted by 12 top church leaders. Law, whose suggestion instigated the project during an Extraordinary Synod in 1985, was one of them.

The catechism, literally a handbook for teaching the church's religious principles, was the final product of six years of debate among 3,000 bishops who submitted 24,000 amendments.

Law said he made the proposal "because of the perception I had there was a certain degree of faith illiteracy in the church today."

The catechism, originally written in French, is a best-seller in France and sales of the Italian translation have been brisk, Law said. The English version has not yet been published. Law said it will be worthwhile reading for anyone.

"I think it's a magnificent symphony of faith."

The catechism can serve the larger purpose of re-establishing the concept of absolute and morally binding truths, Law said.

"We are living in a culture which is not particularly friendly to the fundamental concepts of faith as they relate to God, as they relate to the nature of the human person and the dignity of the human person, as they relate to the way for fulfilling a fully human life, and as we live in relationship to one another."

In an age when science has provided humankind with extra~ordinary miracles, when the sovereignty of the individual is an article of faith to many, "Faith itself is a question," Law said.

To the dismay of some of the world's 900 million Catholics, the catechism made no basic changes in doctrine, neither adding nor subtracting any sins. The church's admonitions against abortion, divorce, adultery and homosexuality remain.

"You can't change immutable truths," Law said. "No one should have expected a catechism to do that."

Some were disappointed though not surprised that it reaffirmed the male-only priesthood in the same month that the Church of England began ordaining women.

Law said the Roman Catholic Church's position in no way infers inferiority or superiority for one sex.

"It is based on a conviction that the priest images the lord Jesus, who happened not to be the female child of Mary but the male child of Mary."

The catechism also asserts that priests must be male because Christ's 12 Apostles were. But critics say the Apostles were men solely because Jesus was adhering to the patriarchal practices of the day. Law says no. "Jesus went outside the cultural conventions of his time ... One could argue that he was crucified for that."

Focusing on the role of women in society today is appropriate, Law said, pointing out that women are paid less than men and that women and children are most affected by government programs that "are not family-friendly."

"There is much to redress in our society in the area of the role of women," Law said. "But the ordination question gets mixed in with a whole lot of other issues."

The church's position especially is not a matter of withholding power from women, Law said.

"The priesthood takes as its image the suffering servant, the servant of the servants of God ... To the extent it's a power role, to that extent it's not being lived appropriately."