The Council of Elders:
Tapping the Wisdom of the Vatican II Archbishops
ARCHBISHOP WILLIAM BORDERS
Transcript of Interview
Sister Carroll Juliano, SHCJ and Brother Loughlan Sofield, S.T. conducted the interview in his home in Baltimore, MD on June 1, 2005.
B=Borders C=Carroll L=Lock
B Basically, I think the biggest issue is to reach the young adults with an understanding of what it means to be church and that they really have a mission in the church. I don’t think we’ve done that yet. It’s really vital. I wouldn’t call it an issue. I would call it a mission and I think it’s really essential. There’s some hope there because I think the response has been fairly good in the last five years. I have a lot more confidence now than I would have had 25 years ago. Twenty-five years ago the whole culture was in rebellion among the college students and that age level and they were questioning everything on God’s green earth and now that they have seen the results of a subjective approach to life are reacting more realistically. I think there is an openness.
L How could church be more responsive to young adults?
B You’re talking to a 91 year old man. I think that the only way you are really going to accomplish this is not in broad, philosophical lectures or studies. It has to be on a personal relationship working together with them in relatively small communities where they can interact, relate and challenge but at the same time listen. It’s not an academic approach. It’s a pastoral approach, an approach to challenge young people’s ideals. I’d like to challenge them to service, forget themselves and reach out. Once that really happens the grace of God takes over.
L. Anything else?
B. The major difference is more openness and willingness to listen. When I was in campus ministry 40 years ago, and I was in campus ministry for 14 years ago, right after WWII. Right after WWII the response was tremendous. The young people in college were influenced by veterans coming back. Veterans asked themselves some very serious questions. As we moved into the next generation there was almost a rebellion of young people in society, such as the riots at college. I wrote a research paper 20 years ago on the young adults reaction to that comparing the college group with the non-college group and their reactions. Before I started I thought that the college group would be more responsive but they weren’t. The working-class group were much more responsive because they hadn’t been exposed to a lot of erroneous ideas. Secularism had dominated a lot of the courses and in education the theories of Dewey were pretty dominant. The college group were better informed but the working group, that had not gone to college were more practical. They had to live and make decisions. (You can find that research paper on the Internet.)
B. If you want to understand my approach to church, my last pastoral on ecclesiology, on the nature of the church, has been circulated all over the US. It was addressed to the whole people of God. Origins printed it. In fact, Origins printed all my pastorals. The last 2 were my favorite pastorals. Also you might read my book, The Spiritual Living of the Saints in Society. It’s a combination of ecclesiology, philosophy and sociology. I started out describing where the church is today and then I went into the foundations for secularism, especially Kant, who influence as much as anyone else. After that I took about 4 issues and then I took the understanding of Avery Dulles on the church and paraphrased a lot of the stuff and said Avery developed this much better. Then I went into what I thought were the key virtues. I started with humility because without humility you are not going to be open to grace or anything else. You are not going to be objective without humility. Everybody, including myself, falls back on his own ideology and then I carried that out to the end.
L. Do you still see secularism as a major issue in the church today?
B. People don’t even recognize it. They live it on a practical but they have no idea of the philosophical roots for it. (He gives some of the examples.)
L. What does the church need to do in terms of the secularism?
B. The only way you can counter that is to develop strong faith communities in different levels of society and have a knowledge of where the people come from because everyone in this world is exposed to different influences. There is not one simple answer. Coupled with that, a thorough knowledge of your faith. You can’t substitute anything for knowledge.
L. What are some of the other issues?
B. The subjective approach to morality. The whole approach to abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research, critical(?) expediency. It’s pretty subjective. The church must do the only thing it can do, continue on the education of (?) and the spiritual formation level. The church is not going to do it by publishing everything on God’s green earth. It has to be on the local level, try to implement (?). I certainly would push religious education and faith community strongly. They go hand-in-hand. And the theology that everyone is personally responsible. The parents are the ones who have to do this. You can’t theorize that. You have to live it.
L. Anything more we could be doing to helping parents?
B. I think someone a generation younger than me could answer that question. I’ve been ordained 64 years. My generation of archbishops, priests and scholars was influenced tremendously by Vatican II. There’s no question that Vatican II challenged not only the church but the world. I was at one of the work sessions before Vatican II and I didn’t have the vaguest idea of how it would turn out. We were babes in the woods. The Curia developed a whole series of papers and documents. Most of us thought the bishops would get together, study them, make a few observations and changes. They didn’t. They threw the whole business out, lock, stock and barrel. At the first session of the council we started from scratch. I’m convinced the Holy Spirit was present. I was there for the debates on Lumen Gentium and Gaudium and Spes toward the end of the council. Boy, that debate was intense. You had better than 3000 bishops, fairly conservative, pretty much having their authority not challenged in their dioceses at that time and coming up with something as radical as those 2 documents. I was interested in the debate, “How in the world is this thing going to be?” The opinions were pretty strong. Gaudium et Spes was probably most radical from a practical point of view. You know what the vote was? Better than 3000 to 17. I was sitting next to a Scottish bishop who said, “We have 17 guys here who do not know what is going on.”
L. In what ways have we been successful in implementing the vision of the Second Vatican Council?
B. I think after a few mistakes in the liturgy, I think we’ve been very successful. We went too fast in the beginning and it threw a lot of people off. Once it started improving we became much stronger as a community of faith and prayer. Before people prayed independently and now we’ve really developed prayerful communities. Not perfect and that’s good.
C. Are there areas that we have missed the call of Vatican II?
B. Obviously, we’re human and there are areas that we’ve missed. What you’re really asking is what are some of the key areas. I would say consistency and ecclesiology. We don’t have a common ecclesiology in the world. We don’t have a common ecclesiology in the United States basically because of the fact that dealing with people, listening and making collective decision is the most difficult thing on God’s green earth because there is so much nonsense that comes up. Anyone with experience, including myself, not consciously, comes to a conclusion long before the crowd comes and sometimes it’s the right decision and sometimes the wrong decision. The fact that you have better background than the groups and people do not have the same level of knowledge or the same level of commitment and people have their own agendas so it’s never going to be perfect. But, you have to listen. The church has to be owned by the People of God. In order to do that it is hard, hard, work all the time. You have to grow up with people, help with formation, help bring people together, help to develop leadership, help their knowledge. It’s not a single package.
L. How did you develop lay leadership?
B. I shared my ideas and I pushed them. I learned a long time ago that if you listen, you learn and that if you don’t listen, you don’t learn. A lot of things you learn, you don’t want to learn.
L. You are known as an empowerer of people’s gifts. Do you see yourself that way?
B. I certainly try. It wasn’t so much the ecclesiology that moved me in that direction. It was the philosophy. I was in university work for years. I taught epistemology. Epistemology can be the dullest subject on earth if you don’t get people to think. If you get people to think, they start questioning everything on God’s green earth and they have a basis and foundation for that. You have to get people to think and to challenge, as far as that’s concerned. First, you have to know where the error is and the only way you can know where the error is, is to listen. Then, you find people with gifts. My theory in administration was to get someone in every category to do more than I did and then get them to work together. It works. One of the ways I did that was by sharing the meetings. In the beginning a person may be in finance, or education or social services, or Catholic charities or youth movement. They zero in on their orientation and expertise and they (?) balance. And also, if you create at atmosphere, they challenge each other. Often, I didn’t have to do a doggone thing. I just asked questions. It definitely works.
L. In one of your pastorals you talk about the church being a community of collaborative ministries. What does that mean?
B: The mission of the church is to proclaim the gospel and share the love of Christ with others. Those are the two thrusts of the church. You don’t do that on a theoretical level. You do it in living.
B If you’re going to enable people to live this you have to live with them and work with them. Basically, it has to be at all levels. The South American people have implemented that with the base communities. They’ve done a beautiful job of that. There is no single organization or simple program that can do it. I still work with Cursillo. I like the Cursillo very much, basically because in the final analysis everybody does the work themselves. That and the RCIA are two really marvelous tools in the church today. In the RCIA everybody is introduced by a Catholic, encouraged along the line. They study and you not only have people who are not Catholic studying but you have lapsed Catholics and people who know very little about the church and it’s a community, a faith community welcoming others to the faith community. It’s marvelous. We have about 1000 a year enter the church here through the RCIA.
L. What are some of the issues or missions that we need to be about?
B. The sanctity of marriage. More than 50% of the marriages in the US end in divorce. Beside that you have a fourth that are multiple marriages. There are all kinds of reasons for that. First, a total lack of knowledge of values. People just growing up without any basic values. That includes Catholics, too. That’s one cause. Another cause is people do not make permanent commitments. For instance, even in the economic field how many second and third careers do you have? They don’t make a permanent commitment on that level. To make a permanent commitment to a person for life in an imperfect world, and anyone who gets married is imperfect, including us, unless they have a deep love that can overlook and work with the spouse’s faults and a spiritual commitment to make the marriage work; it’s not going to succeed. Love is real and thank God it does exist. I’ve seen some magnificent conjugal love. If the love is there and the unselfishness is there and as they mature in the knowledge of personal limitations and how to deal with them, but you have to have the unselfish love. That’s even more important than knowledge because you can acquire the knowledge. You can’t manufacture love.
L. Is there more we can be doing in this area as a church?
B. The church is doing a pretty good job there now. I think the whole marriage preparation course is really ideal, not only pre-cana but also marriage encounter. I attended one marriage encounter where all these basic questions were asked. Four couples decided not to get married and that was marvelous. They didn’t know each and they discovered that they didn’t know each other. So, you have any number of programs that are good but not all programs are adapted to all people.
L. If you were mentoring a young bishop today, what would you say to him?
B. First, sit down. Keep an open mind. Pray and then listen. I’d like to have the Holy Father let me appoint bishops.
C. If you were the Holy Father and were appointing bishops, what would you be looking for?
B. Number one, a good strong pastoral and theological background. Number two, the virtue of humility. I’d even put that before commitment to mission because you are not going to have a commitment to mission unless you recognize the fact that this is God’s will. I think for a bishop (?) knowledge is very, very important both of the world and of the church. Besides that, you have to be an enabler. If you are not an enabler, you will fall on your face. You don’t form bishops. Bishops are formed in the process of their priesthood. Either they have the qualities or they don’t. Thank God, most of them do a fairly good job.
L. Any recommendations you would make about selection or appointment of bishops?
B. Let’s put it this way. Everyone I’ve ever recommended to become a bishop has become a bishop. Basically, (?) (He talked about the 2 newly appointed auxiliaries in the diocese. He described the one as a pastoral man, a people person, one almost spontaneously approved by the local clergy. He described the other bishop as a scholar.)
Most priests want auxiliary bishops to be from their diocese. Most priests are open for the ordinary to come from another diocese because they figure they always need another challenge. In a small diocese a priest who has been involved with everyone on God’s green earth, unless he’s a saint, has stepped on a few toes or he’ll be identified with (one or another group). An outsider doesn’t have that baggage. In a large diocese he’s been a bishop and he’s been transferred and so he brings a lot of experience. For instance, when I was appointed Archbishop of Baltimore I needed to do a lot of thinking before accepting because Orlando was a new diocese. I had only been there for 6 years and I didn’t know whether everything was in place or not, so (?) accepted it.
L. Are we moving bishops in the US too much?
B. Actually, most bishops are not moved. We look at the ones who are prominent and have national leadership and think all bishops are moved like that, but they’re not.
L. What else would you say to bishops or people in leadership today?
B. The church is still in charge of the Holy Spirit. We don’t know all the answers and you can’t even try. Offer leadership with the resources you have. Don’t try something that is impossible. Do something that will work, that the people can do it.
L. Any thoughts on the sexual abuse?
B. This might seem strange to you but I think it’s good that the publicity happened. That was a cancer in the church that we didn’t know anything about. Now I’m not naïve. I had not even heard of pedophilia until the mid 80’s. The psychiatrists hadn’t heard of it. There was something terrible there, but it was there. We didn’t even know about it. It had to come out because we had to address it. We had to address it with knowledge and with formation. While it will take a couple of generations for the church to recover from it, I still think its good it came out. I’ve dealt with both the victims and the priests. There is a psychological approach of denial on the part of the priests who are guilty. Denial within themselves. Denial of the harm. Again, I think it is good that the issue emerged. (??)
From the bishops’ point of view it’s a matter of real spiritual leadership. On a broader view with the laity, Brothers, Sisters and priests approach should be quality, not quantity. Screening, not just (?) Careful approach in formation. And I think we’re addressing that now. Not perfectly, because we make mistakes. People who have psychological or emotional problems can mask it. (??) Vocations are going to improve, though. I think we’re being much more realistic and I think the formation is better and the men we’re getting right now are not children. We’re only going to have one ordained this year but 8 next year. They range in age from 26 to about 35 average. One is older. All, except the 26 year old, had a professional background in some form or the other. The vocations we are getting are mature people. I think the Sisters are having the same experience. The religious orders that are getting more vocations are the service groups, like the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Medical missionaries, and group like that because they are seeing tangible results in their vocation. It’s definitely mission and service. Education, which Sisters have been involved in for years (?)
(Regarding the interviews, it will be interesting to have different concepts come up. He would be interested in getting together with the others being interviewed.)
Ten years after Vatican II the Canon Law Society of the US had an evaluation of the canonical response to Vatican II and they asked me to be one of the presenters. I told them that I wasn’t a canonist. They said we know you’re not, so therefore you are not going to come in with any (?) Therefore I can ask questions perfectly innocently.
C Summarized for clarity. Several words jump out and I wonder if it sort of summarizes your approach to life? Certainly, in terms of the personal relationship building, I heard listening. I heard an openness. I heard education, formation and knowledge. Those seem to be coming forth from you as areas of importance and they have given a direction or focus.
B Yes. I would add something to that that is probably implied in all of that. A bishop cannot possible accomplish his mission all by himself. It’s extremely important, not just to collaborate, but to find leaders in various fields, ones who are knowledgeable and dedicated. We have very little turnover here in the diocese.
L. Tell us your thoughts on lay leadership.
B It goes back to the church. The church is the People of God. The church is not the bishops or priests or Sisters or Brothers. The church is the People of God. The church is going to accomplish this mission through the work of the People of God. So, if you are going to accomplish your mission, all the People of God have to be involved. It’s that simple.
It’s a parallel and actually the dearth of the number of priests, while I wouldn’t call it a blessing; it is certainly an occasion where it is necessary to call forth leadership. The Permanent Deacon has been one of the responses of God. We have a lot of extremely competent permanent deacons in this diocese. They do a beautiful job. For example, all the Auxiliary Bishops have a permanent deacon as their official assistant. We have four parishes that are run by either Sisters or laypersons. Two parishes that are actually run by a laywoman. Priests do the sacramental work among everything else but the basic planning and decisions are by the laywomen.
There’s not a substitute for priests, number one, not only because of the sacramental nature but just because of the vocation and call. There is so much (?) that the priests give that # 1 it wasn’t necessary and #2 they might not have the confidence. #3 They’ve (?) the lay people from doing the job. I think you are always going to have a need for a leadership role among the laity and in many, many areas more competency than the pastor. For instance, if I had to (something about finances)
L. How might parishes look in the future?
B I have to ask the Holy Spirit to answer that question. Prophecy is not one of my gifts or attributes. Everyone is actually living in the real world. They’re not living in some theoretical world or some ideological world and while we’re all both cursed and blessed with our ideologies and theologies, they should never dominate reality.
L As you look back on your life, what gives you satisfaction for what you’ve done as a leader?
B I would say 2 experiences have been the most dominant in my life. I had a theology professor in the seminary who was a marvelous scholar but at the same time a good teacher. That’s not always a good combination. He challenged my thinking so much that he made me mad because he definitely challenged when you couldn’t come up with all the answers. He influenced my thinking down through the years, that one man, more than anyone else. He taught me that you don’t come to conclusions unless you’ve studied the facts, the background: don’t theorize unless you have (?)
The second influence was negative but it had a tremendous influence on me. I was a chaplain in WWII in the infantry. I saw some really incompetent people in leadership roles, where these young fellows, 18, 19 20’s were killed and it had an almost emotional effect on me because of the incompetence brought about by this difficulty. So, unconsciously, not consciously, I developed an attitude that I would listen to people who really offered something positive in leadership, not because they had a position. It affected my entire life. The incompetence of those people was a blessing for me. It really was because I would never have had that idea and because it was so stark and people were killed. A third of my regiment were either killed or wounded. It was in North Africa and Italy, mostly Italy. (He told a story of a reception at LSU.)
L Anything else you would want to share?
B I think that the important thing for anyone who feels a vocation to the priesthood or religious life is that they have to be a person of prayer. There’s no substitute. It’s not easy. You can be theoretical some times. You can be bored some times but you have to be persistent.
C If you were asked to describe the church today in a word or phrase, how would you describe it?
B The church is in motion. By that I mean the struggle within the church is positive. We don’t know all the answers and there is a struggle within the church to be better. Anyone in a leadership role has to be mature. A person who is mature #1 knows what his mission and vocation is. #2 Knows his limitations. #3 Is not worried too much about approval. There is no substitute for that. For instance, I know some good people who have never matured. They make mistakes but they’re good.
L. How can we create a climate in the church to help people mature more?
B. You’re asking a question I don’t think most psychologists can answer because maturity is an individual development. I can’t mature someone. The climate is to create an atmosphere where people will accept responsibility, a climate where they are not afraid to make a mistake in their judgments because they know they are imperfect. In that climate to know that they are bound to make mistakes.
After I retired I got involved in religious education for adults, really the foundation for the book that I wrote, The Spiritual Living in a Secular Society. I’ve taught in 27 parishes here, actually before I wrote the book. It’s also been used in dioceses throughout the country. So many people just insisted that I put it in book form. I had to adjust it and adapt it, of course. It’s very interesting because the people who took these courses are number one, interested, and number two; most of them are converts (?). Also, you find some oddballs. (He told about one “oddball” he had in a class.)