In 1980 there was a congress in Liverpool and a synod of bishops in Rome. The latter destroyed the hopes raised by the former, and forced Cardinal Hume and Archbishop Worlock to take a more conservative line (see leading article). CARDINAL Basil Hume and Archbishop Derek Worlock agreed to allow a public debate on contraception at the National Pastoral Congress in Liverpool in 1980, 12 years after Pope Paul VI?s encyclical Humanae Vitae had reaffirmed the traditional ban. The congress was well aware that the international synod of bishops on the family, due to be held in Rome later that year, would be discussing the whole issue of sex and marriage.

The congress was conducted against the background of a plethora of right-wing denunciations (technically known as delations) to Rome of the entire proceedings, on the grounds that it was an unrepresentative liberal conspiracy to overthrow the Church?s established teaching on contraception.

Archbishop Bruno Heim, the Pope?s representative in Great Britain, had been present in person and generally supportive. But his deputy at the Apostolic Delegation in Wimbledon, Mgr Mario Oliveri, was deeply suspicious. While Heim was away ill, he allowed himself to become a channel through which some extremely conservative Catholics could denounce the congress to the Vatican. One paper he forwarded was headed REASONS WHY THE NATIONAL PASTORAL CONGRESS OUGHT TO BE STOPPED, and another complained that the congress delegates appeared to be drawn, on the whole, from either those holding progressive views or from amongst those who know little or nothing about the nature of the Church. It went on to appeal to the Pope to visit England in person, to help English Catholics to defend the Faith of their Fathers, for the sake of their children.

Worlock complained that these papers had gone to Rome without the bishops being given a chance to comment on them. Oliveri replied that the bishops had to take seriously the complaints of the people who had written to him. A damage limitation exercise was arranged forthwith, with the co-operation of Archbishop Heim, who had now taken charge again. A number of bishops (including, according to Worlock, David Konstant) organised letters from delegates in support of the congress, asking that they be forwarded to the Holy See through the Apostolic Delegation in Wimbledon.

Worlock flew to Rome to mend fences. The affair blew over with a handwritten note from Heim to Worlock in July 1980, in which he said: I am so sorry about all this trouble which has arisen during my absence. I believe that Rome is now properly informed and that any damage has been undone. At about that time, Worlock wrote to a correspondent in Australia saying: The situation has not been helped by almost inevitable right-wing delations to Rome, but I hope that my visit [to Rome] last week will at least have reduced the danger from these. It is as well that the Pope knows me. . . .

While disloyalty to the papal policy on birth control was one of the things uppermost in the critics? minds, the debate on that constituted only a small part of the work the congress had to get through. In the event, after some discussion, 322 delegates in this section, 93 per cent of the total, voted for the proposition: There is a widespread lack of understanding and widespread disagreement amongst Catholics about the present teaching on contraception; 281 (81 per cent) voted for: The Church?s teaching on marriage is at an impasse because of confusion, uncertainty, and disagreement over contraception, which affects the whole sacramental life of many Catholics; and 299 (87 per cent) for: The Church?s teaching on marriage can only develop through a fundamental re-examination of the teaching on marriage, sexuality and on contraception. The proposition that Non-contraceptive intercourse is the ideal for which everyone should strive received only 52 votes.

The secular press concentrated on the one issue that would be most likely to interest the general reader ? this was where the frisson was. But the congress was about much more than that. It was also the occasion when something very important happened in the post-war history of the Catholic community in England and Wales that is not recorded in any of the resolutions. It was when the post-Vatican II bishops of England and Wales encountered the post-Vatican II laity as they truly were for the first time: not as troublemakers over Humanae Vitae, not as customers of the Catholic schools system, not as docile clients of the institutional Church, not as mere pew-fodder and payers-up. They saw them as equals, as fellow Christians, and above all as the primary evangelisers of the world they lived in. And very impressed the bishops were too. One remarked afterwards: I felt I had met the modern Catholic layman for the very first time. Phew! (And it was Derek Worlock, of course, who had arranged the introduction.) Another, regarded as rather conservative, was asked if he had learnt anything from the congress and dryly replied: It has caused me to rearrange my prejudices.

As well as concern over birth control, there was considerable criticism of the current Catholic policy, stemming from the Vatican, of treating a person who had remarried after divorce, or who was married to somebody in that position, as being in a state of sin and therefore excluded from Holy Communion. These were, in fact, the two messages from the Catholic Church in England and Wales for the international synod on the family. The bishops appointed Cardinal Hume and Archbishop Worlock as their two delegates, the latter being accompanied by Mgr Vincent Nichols. Hume was to deal with contraception, Worlock with divorce. Hume had attended the congress discussion on contraception, sitting modestly at the back. He seemed impressed by what he heard, and at the final press conference stoutly defended the right of delegates to say what they had said (and the right of the press to report it). His remarks to the Rome synod faithfully reflected what he had heard at the congress.

After the congress Worlock organised the writing of the official report, and the draft of the bishops? response to it. He took over a room above his garage for a team that mainly consisted of Jack Mahoney, the Jesuit moral theologian, Pat Jones, a young laywoman Worlock had got to know from both her parents being full-time YCW workers, and Mgr George Leonard, a Shrewsbury diocese priest who was press officer and public affairs assistant to Cardinal Hume in Westminster. They had six weeks to prepare for the Bishops? Conference a draft statement of response to the congress, for it to amend as it pleased. In the end it was a composite job, largely from my pen, Worlock wrote later to Hume. In fact it went through the Bishops? Conference more or less as drafted, and was published under the title The Easter People.

The most delicate passage of all was on marriage, contraception and divorce. Prior to the international synod, Cardinal Hume and Archbishop Worlock visited the Pope in Rome to present him with a personal copy of The Easter People. They clearly felt it was nothing to be ashamed of. But Hume later described how he handed it across, deliberately opened at the page on birth control, and drew it to the Pope?s attention. The Pope merely waved it to one side. It was an unfavourable omen.

Yet the bishops? document was hardly radical. It declared unhesitatingly that the encyclical Humanae Vitae is the authentic teaching of the Church. If it was possible to reconcile fidelity to Humanae Vitae with what the congress had decided, then this was the way.

The 1980 Synod of Bishops on the family was a highly delicate moment in the life of the Church. The briefing papers circulated beforehand held out little prospect of movement in the direction desired by the National Pastoral Congress. The Pope himself had made some preliminary remarks that seemed to toughen, rather than soften, the position over contraception. Worlock and Hume delivered their messages, as requested by the National Pastoral Congress and endorsed by the bishops of England and Wales (more or less).

The object of the synod was to make recommendations to the Pope. Hume, and even more so Worlock, both felt that the synod had been steered towards foregone, and basically closed-minded, conclusions. Indeed, some members of their official party were briefing the press afterwards that the two English Catholic leaders had felt badly let down by the outcome. Particular exception was taken to the hand-picked lay people present, primed to sing the praises of Humanae Vitae in the most triumphalistic manner. There was very little tolerance on display towards those who had difficulties with it. Worlock had tried to have the final message completely redrafted, and offered his own version instead. He argued that the drafters of the official text have attempted the impossible in trying to give some account of the work and mind of the synod fathers before the propositions have been submitted or agreed. He was ruled out of order.

AFTER the National Pastoral Congress but before the Rome synod, The Easter People had been published and the National Conference of Priests had met to consider it. They passed a declaration welcoming it. Then they began to learn what had happened at the synod in Rome, and been dis- appointed. They felt the English delegation, from what they had read, had not been bold enough.

So a meeting was arranged at which leaders of the National Conference of Priests could put their misgivings to Worlock and Hume, and hear first-hand what had happened. Mgr David Norris was present as secretary of the Bishops? Conference, to draw up a report to be circulated to the bishops. What was said was extraordinarily frank. Hume told them that the liberal shutters were going up in the Church. If the English Catholic community was to hold on to what progress it had made so far, it was going to have to proceed very carefully in future. Already there were signs of their own positions being under attack.

This was inflammably dangerous stuff, as Worlock immediately realised. No doubt Norris had already been told to be careful what he reported. The reality of the conversation must have been a good deal more candid.

Even so: Worlock to Norris (6 November 1980): I hope you will understand when I say that I think it would be disastrous if this report were circulated to the bishops. Indeed I must confess I am most unhappy about the whole of the first page and I doubt very much whether the cardinal would want his remarks reported. The reference to the attacks upon himself and myself could throw our meeting of the conference later this month into all kinds of chaos . . . and so on. Worlock to Hume: I enclose a copy of a letter I have written to David Norris on the subject of his report of the meeting with the standing committee of the NCP. I think the report would be disastrous if it goes to the NCP. It would be even more disastrous if it is sent out with the papers for the bishops? meeting. It will probably be best if I prepare a single sheet. . . .

Hume to Worlock: I am in full agreement with what you say about the report concerning the NCP. . . . In the passage they agreed to suppress, Norris had reported how the cardinal had dealt with the priests? disappointment. The cardinal replied that he considered that conservatism was succeeding in many parts of the world and was also rising in Rome. We had to remember that Western Europe was now a minority in the Church and places like Africa and South America were very conservative. Our local Church has to find its way in the present circumstances and it is not always clear how it should proceed. The cardinal was sure that it would not help to have public calls on our bishops to act by themselves. There were some conservatives in this country who were already attacking what had already been done by himself and Archbishop Worlock.

The eagerness of Hume and Worlock subsequently to suppress the record in order to conceal what they really thought, strongly implied that the two of them had agonised long and hard about the situation in the Catholic Church at that time, and realised they were in some difficulty. Their dismissal from office was almost inconceivable; but the Vatican had other ways in which it could have wrested control of the Bishops? Conference of England and Wales out of the hands of people it did not trust to promote the party line. Before and since, it had shown itself willing to use those powers in countries such as Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the United States, and above all Holland, where a progressive and popular hierarchy had been gradually replaced by a highly conservative and very unpopular one. Often, the tactics involved using ultra- conservative Catholics in the country in question to raise a barrage of complaints, suggesting certain bishops were not loyally obeying the papal line (especially on issues like sex). This evidence was then used as a weapon inside the Vatican to discredit the individuals concerned. What Cardinal Hume was saying to the priests, in effect, was that we cannot do all the things we might like to do because Rome would intervene, not only to stop it but eventually to reverse the whole direction of our policy.

? This is the first of two extracts from Clifford Longley?s forthcoming biographical memoir about Archbishop Worlock and the evolution of the Catholic Church in England and Wales in his time.

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