ARTICLES

God Talk?

EX-PRIEST SPREADS '60S LEFTISM ON AIRWAVES

By Stephen Schwartz

Bernie Ward is relaxed about his new schedule for talk radio at KGO-AM in San Francisco. The station's management has moved him from 7 to 10 p.m. over to 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., Monday through Friday, although his controversial "God Talk" will continue to be aired on Sundays.

The schedule change is a step down in talk radio, from the mainstream slot to the edge of nighttime madness. But Ward , speaking with the Faith, remains upbeat. "They're replacing me in that slot with more time for Dr. Laura, but I feel fine about the change," he says with his typical self-confidence. "And 'God Talk' is still at the top of the ratings."

He and his many supporters in the Bay Area had a few close moments, however, when KGO first announced last fall that it was considering not renewing his contract.

San Francisco Examiner columnist Stephanie Salter called on Ward's liberal-left "constituency" to rally in his support, by sending canned goods in care of KGO for Ward's favorite charity, Saint Anthony's Dining Room. Salter defended Ward for, like her, wearing "lefty, labor-leaning, social justice lenses," which they both equate with faith and religion.

If KGO management, and Bay Area radio listeners, seem to prefer conservative "Dr. Laura" and her personal self-help advice to Ward, that should come as no surprise. Even the briefest of encounters with Bernie Ward reveals a man committed to a political agenda that primarily identifies religious life with social work and political activism rather than with worship of God.

Ward comes to his task with some authority. He served as a Catholic priest for two years, having been ordained in the Society of the Precious Blood and fulfilling an assignment at Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa. But he gave up his vocation, he says, because "the priests were too concerned with power and not enough with people. The main concerns were always formal, about things like scheduling masses, rather than with the needs of people in the community."

In addition, he says, he was censured by his superiors in the hierarchy for appearing (but not officiating) at a mixed Catholic-Lutheran wedding.

Ward sees no contradiction between the works of the faithful and political organizing. He describes his own family in similar terms: "My father was a Roosevelt Democrat... who became a Reagan Democrat. He was active every day in the St. Vincent de Paul Society, taking food to the needy, and in other things they did... He was a better priest than the ordained priests, in terms of serving people."

Finally, Ward says, it was "easier for me to get out (of the priesthood)... than to keep beating my head against the wall."

His family's reputation for Catholic commitment has proven a durable asset for Ward in his media career. A San Francisco diocesan source who spoke on condition of anonymity, and who is very critical of Ward's present political stance, nonetheless insisted, "The Ward family was a model of Catholic life. His father was a respected lawyer, dedicated to the St. Vincent de Paul society, and his uncles were Franciscans, but there is something in Bernie's own character that twisted him."

Ward speaks with great admiration of the Franciscan order, whom he calls "my friends" and "the best" among the intellectuals in Catholic life today. Above all, it is the Franciscan commitment to action in the world that inspires him; the mystical Franciscan dedication to God's presence in the world and power over the universe leaves him cold.

A certain self-contradiction is present throughout his discourse. He admits that people like his father became Reagan Democrats because the liberal-left establishment in the Democrat party chose to emphasize issues of race, gender, and lifestyle -- code words for antiwhite separatism, radical feminism, and homosexual politics -- over the economic strivings of working-class Democrat voters.

"The liberal establishment became so caught up in race that we lost sight of the real problem, which is class," he says. But he fails to see a validation of labor principles and working class organization in the actions of John Paul II, whose commitment to Polish Solidarity not only undermined Communism and revived Catholicism, but also gave new life to labor consciousness throughout the world.

"John Paul II did not do in the Americas what he did in Poland," Ward says. "The iron curtain came down but the rosary curtain went up."

He is particularly critical of the Pope's action in restraining Catholic clergy from serving in political offices under the totalitarian Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. For Bernie Ward, the fall of Sandinismo, the election of Violeta Chamorro on a Christian and social democratic, free market platform -- the long series of events including the recent revelations of charges that Sandinista dictator Daniel Ortega sexually abused his own stepdaughter -- might as well never have happened. The Sandinistas, in his mind, are still the good guys.

"Look how the Pope ordered the priests out of the Nicaraguan government," he says. "It had to do with stopping them from involvement in issues of class oppression."

He goes on to repeat the criticism of the Nicaraguan Catholic hierarchy, exemplified by the heroic Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, typically heard from Anglo intellectuals. "The entire Central American Church was associated with the oligarchy," he declares.

This particular claim infuriates Nicaraguan Americans. "The Nicaraguan church has not been a colonial or oligarchical church since the end of the 18th century," says Leo Lacayo of San Francisco, an administrator for the Jesuits in Nicaragua over 10 years and personal friend of Obando. "It is the national church of the Nicaraguan people, and its clergy are drawn from all classes in society, including the most humble. Obando y Bravo was among the first to denounce the Somoza dictatorship. His coworkers like Bishop Pablo Antonio Vega organized peasant unions and fought the abuses inflicted on the poor while the Sandinistas were busy reading Lenin and fantasizing."

Somoza repeatedly asked for Obando y Bravo's support, even offering him a $10 million bribe, but the cardinal never bent in his defense of human rights, says Lacayo. "People like Bernie Ward haven't paid any attention to Nicaragua since Sandinismo fell, and now, when the people down there have real needs in terms of medical care and economic growth, they don't say a word.".

But Ward responds, "It was only with the organizing of the base camps that the church in Latin America became relevant to the people's needs," using a militaristic malapropism clearly meant to refer to the comunidades de base or "base communities" organized decades ago. "Look at how the Pope suppressed Leonardo Boff," Ward complains, in a reference to Brazil's schismatic Castroite "theologian."

But when asked if the Hispanization of American Catholicism is a positive phenomenon for the faith and the nation, he suddenly turns against the Hispanics. South of the border they may inculcate the political agenda Ward promotes, but not here in the U.S.

"The Church is going to have problems with this," he warns grimly. "So much of the Hispanic Catholic viewpoint is based on magic, on superstition." According to him, the growing appeal of the evangelicals among Hispanics is based on the Protestants' devotion to magic and the supernatural, an opinion that would no doubt greatly surprise most evangelicals.

"Hispanic Catholicism is suspect theologically, but it also lacks the social aspect," he argues. "They have to be brought into the 20th Century."

One of the sharpest debates over Ward's radio programming broke out two years ago when he criticized Judaism as an inferior and reactionary creed lost "in the backwaters of history" -- remarks for which he quickly apologized. But given his critical attitude toward traditional religion, as well as his dislike for Pope John Paul II, it is no wonder that Ward is unimpressed by the Pope's quest for a better relationship with "the elder brothers" of the Hebrew faith.

Here, as elsewhere, Ward's criterion is political more than theological. Recent Vatican statements of regret about insufficient action to protect Jews during the Holocaust "fell about 20 yards short," he says. "The Vatican has got to come clean about this."

He then spins off into a recitation of allegations about Vatican collaboration with Croatian fascists. Although based on a kernel of truth, such arguments are largely viewed today, by South Slavic history experts, as propaganda serving the interests of Serbian extremists, whose "revenge" for Croat fascist misdeeds in World War II led in 1991 to the outbreak of the atrocious war in the former Yugoslavia. But impeaching the Vatican over obscure events in Balkan history also allows Ward to attack the United States, which also supposedly assisted Croatian fascists.

When Ward is asked about former archbishop John Quinn and his replacement, William Levada, he begins regretfully. "I'm sad about it," he says. "Quinn is writing brilliant stuff now that he's retired. Quinn talked about the important issues, like collegiality in the church. Levada was brought in to crack down, in the style of the Pope."

Still, his criticism of Levada is emphatically political: "He opposed the domestic partners law," Ward says bitterly. But he also draws on the scandals that have plagued the archdiocese for weapons against the new archbishop. "Levada has not accounted for the money problems in the archdiocese," he says. "People who supported (Rev. Martin) Greenlaw and (Monsignor Patrick) O'Shea" -- clerics charged, respectively, with financial abuses and financial and sexual abuses -- "are still prominent."

The bottom line is that KGO-AM will continue to feature, if less prominently, Bernie Ward in defense of "the old time religion" prevalent in San Francisco: social radicalism. There isn't much room for God Himself in this kind of "God Talk."

Stephen Schwartz, a new contributor to the Faith, is author of the new book, From West to East: California and the Making of the American Mind (Simon & Schuster).

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