The Council of Elders:
Tapping the Wisdom of the Vatican II Archbishops
ARCHBISHOP PETER GERETY
Transcript of Interview
Interview with Archbishop Peter Gerety on August 9, 2005 by Sister Carroll Juliano, SHCJ and Brother Loughlan Sofield S.T. at his home in Rutherford, NJ.
PG=Archbishop Peter Gerety
CJ=Sister Carroll Juliano, SHCJ
LS=Brother Loughlan Sofield, ST
LS What are some of the issues that need to be addressed in the church?
PG. It’s pretty hard to sum that up since there are so many of them. Our culture is changing with enormous rapidity, the rapidity of communication and the whole secularization of practically everything. That’s # 1, the general thing about the present culture in which we live. There are other problems that we have. You could make a whole list of them. For instance, I was noticing the other day the disastrous figures about the numbers of marriages that we have in the Catholic church today and the numbers of baptisms. They are way down. That’s a very serious thing. If we imagine that we are making progress that is an indication that we are losing an awful lot of people and that the next generation is going to be very, very difficult to handle with regard to evangelization. Lapsed Catholics are not necessarily the best material for bringing people back to the church. That struck me. Then the whole business of the changing character, the demographic character of the people in our country is I think a great challenge to us.
CJ What do you mean by a great challenge?
PG For instance, I’m talking about the varieties of peoples who have come into this country. Number one, the way the Hispanics are just growing by leaps and bounds. Incidentally, I have a very, very close interest in that because I, myself, served the Spanish speaking (unintelligible). I don’t know if you know anything about my background. I’ll tell you a little bit about myself so you’ll know where I’m coming from. I was a priest in New Haven, CT for 27 years before I became a bishop. 24 of those years were in the inner city and I, with a number of other people founded a parish called St. Martin de Porres. So for 24 years I was working in the black area of New Haven, CT. Now along about 13 years before I became a bishop I began to notice Puerto Ricans coming to Mass. I brought that to the intention of the Archbishop and told him that I’d be glad to take care of them but that I had to learn Spanish. So, I worked at learning Spanish and picked it up pretty quickly, with a fair amount of facility because I was ordained in Notre Dame in Paris. I studied in the Sulpician seminary in Paris. All my seminary was in French. So when I got to look into the Spanish language I began to realize that the syntax was similar, though not exactly the same. I began reading Spanish and I began talking with the people and knocking on doors. So we had a real Spanish thing going. I was sort of doing it with my left hand because I was still serving the blacks at the same time. I eventually did a lot of work for the archdiocese in human rights. I was chairman of the Archbishop’s Committee on Human Rights. We had all sorts of protests going. It was from that little parish that I was made Bishop of Portland, ME, where there were practically no blacks or Hispanics. I went up to ME expecting I would be talking French. I found out that when I went up there every time I would go into what they called a French-speaking parish they would say, “Oh no, just a say a few French words and that will be all.” I’d talk in English. They were learning English in school so there was a sort of tension in the French population because they were concerned about the loss of their culture, etc. I was in ME for 8 years. I went up there in 1966. That is when I became Bishop. I went up as co-adjutor at the end of June. In January the Ordinary had a massive stroke so I took over right away. For all practical purpose I was the Ordinary right away. I’m listed as becoming the Ordinary when he died but practically I became Ordinary right away. So I was there until 1974 when I was made Archbishop of Newark. When I cam down to Newark people were saying to me, “It must be tough to come down from the rather rural area in Maine and come down to Newark.” I’d say for me that was like coming home. I spent all my time as a priest in the inner city. That’s where I am.
LS You started to list a number of issues. You said the first is culture.
PG I think that’s the ambience from which we’re working. That’s the first and overall thing. It’s a very serious thing. I think of the way in which our cities have disintegrated and people have moved on to the suburbs. Now that’s a phenomenon that took place a couple of generations ago but it is still operating. It broke down the old system of community. I think the reestablishment of community among Catholic people is very challenging. It’s a difficult challenge and I think many of our parishes are doing a good job of it. But it is a challenge. That’s one challenge. I think the changing demographics, the changing numbers of different people. We’re beyond the Irish and the French and the Polish and the Lithuanians and the Germans, etc., etc. We’re beyond that. Now it’s the Hispanics that have been growing by leaps and bounds. I think there is a difficulty of handling that. It shows because so many of them are going to the protestant sects. It’s evident that we’re losing quite a few of them. Although I must say that there are an awful lot of priests, sisters and lay people who re doing a tremendous job trying to cope with the needs of those people in Catholic schools and other institutions. That’s a big challenge. And there are other groups. If we’re talking about evangelization there are Orientals that are coming in. There are the Filipinos. Of course, they are, generally speaking, Catholic and pretty darn good Catholics too. I say the Hispanics are a very different brand of Catholicism but they are a great people. These are all challenges that are just dumped on us before we really have been prepared for them.
LS What could we or should we be doing as a church right now to respond to those challenges?
PG A general answer to all those challenges is that I think that we have to involve the lay people in a really meaningful manner to handle this. In other words, it seems to me, that it is a challenge this is not only for the priests and religious. It is a challenge for the entire body of the Catholic Church. Here, again I should say, I myself am out of the loop. I’m 93 years old. I’ve been retired since 1986, almost 20 years and I feel like I’m talking like I’m an expert but I’m not but I do have some ideas from observing things that are going on. I do know that there is a great concern for the involvement of the lay people among the bishops. I don’t think that there is any question about that. There are a lot of them who are trying to work on this. However, I referred to Laveda in the talk I gave at the Priests Convocation in Newark. I was very interested in what he said. He was talking at a conference on leadership in the church and in the report that I read he said that he felt that the reason why parish councils and pastoral councils and all these other consultative bodies have not been as effective as they should be is because of the regulations (canon law) in setting them up. It’s too vague. Which sparked something in mind. Because I’ve been educated in France and because I read a lot of French and I read Etude, the French magazine published by the Jesuits in Parish. God, I don’t remember how many years ago I read this in one of their issues. It was an article on the present problems in the church and the author said we are trying to work on two levels. Vatican II gave the impetus toward a more broadened approach to how the church operates. The Vatican II impetus was to get the whole body involved but in fact we’re operating out of Vatican I ecclesiology. That’s what he said years ago. I think that there are a number of cultural shifts which we’re going through in the church. When you have a General Council tremendous problems pop up all over the place and it takes generations to correct it, to adjust to what is going on. That certainly happened after Trent. It happened after Vatican I and it’s now happening after Vatican II. I don’t think we have really incorporated into our modus vivandi and operandi the whole business of the imperatives of Vatican II.
LS Could you go further with that? We’ve heard that exact thing from the other Archbishops that we interviewed. What do we need to do at this point?
PG I think, first of all, we need to keep talking about it and we need to be frank about the problems. I’m not sure, but I wonder whether our seminaries are preparing priests to involve lay people the way Vatican II started, that is getting everyone involved. I’m not sure of that and it seems to me that I’d love to see somebody study just exactly what is going on in the seminaries with regard to the training of the priests for this new cultural phenomenon and the implementation of Vatican II. The bishops who are being ordained today are the product of our seminaries and I just wonder how well they’ve been trained in that vision. I had the fortunate experience of being in a situation where I had to organize all sorts of things about the laity. In order to do this we have to have a vision of the church. This vision was given to us by Vatican II. I have always tried to live up to involving lay people but my observation is that very frequently that doesn’t take place.
LS Any idea why?
PG I think it is mentality. When I gave that talk to the priests’ convocation in Newark what I really was talking about was a vision of church. I could have used a more popular term but I was really talking about vision. Maybe I should have brought that in with the priests. What interested me, incidentally, in giving that talk was the response.
LS Which was?
PG Tremendous! What I was saying is that we need to be a dynamic church. I’m talking about a vision of church, though I didn’t use those words. I was talking about a vision of the church which must bring about enthusiasm. That’s what we need. We can’t just sit back and operate in this present day in a manner which is just going to keep us going. When I was a priest, I had to think that way because I was out there making oodles of converts and everything else and we had to have a lot of enthusiasm. I was given challenges that the ordinary guy in a parish was not faced with. I was faced with people who, except for a few, just had no cultural experience. When I started to work with the blacks in New Haven, CT things were really tough and that whole business of (?). I started in 1942. That’s a long time ago, long before the cultural revolution. There were a lot of men who had a vision in those days with regards to working with the blacks. They were very (?). I became a great friend of Fr. LaFarge. He was a great man. He had a vision. To me it is absolutely essential that we have a vision of the church. That vision must be a dynamic vision. That’s what I think Vatican II is telling us.
LS Could you summarize what that vision would be?
PG Essentially, what it means is that the church has to be involved in the joys and sorrows and of the world. It is not merely a challenge to the hierarchy or the priests or religious. It’s a challenge for everybody! Everybody has to be involved. If a Bishop in a diocese is going to accomplish anything that is really going to bring about and implement such a vision he has to have that vision himself and he has to get out there and courageously try to influence.
LS You just mentioned that one of the reasons that people aren’t implementing the vision is because there is a lack of enthusiasm among some leaders.
PG I don’t want to judge other people. I’m just merely saying we need enthusiasm.
LS You compared that enthusiasm with what “was?” Any idea what’s happened to the enthusiasm?
PG Not comparing. We need it. I think Vatican II introduced a sea change in the attitude that the church should have with regard to the world and everything. You can’t talk about things so general. I loved my priesthood before Vatican II. There were tremendous things going on, such as in France, where I was studying in the 1930’s. I was ordained in 1939 so I’m 66 years a priest. Yves Conger, whom I love to quote, and others like him, were the rage. There were liturgical studies going on and movements with regard to theology. All sorts of things were happening. They bore fruit in Vatican II. Vatican II just didn’t pop out of nowhere. The ideas that were promulgated by Vatican II were certainly (?) by Yves Congar and others. What I’m saying is I don’t think we can lose sight of the fact that before Vatican II the church was doing some tremendous things but we have an enormous sea change in the culture in which we’re working. It’s difficult for people who are brought up in the church and in the normal parish to develop that feeling that things are going on that we have to get after. I think a lot of them know that. I just don’t know, I wonder what sort of a dynamic vision is given in the seminary training. Since the bishops are the products of that training, in order to face up to a new situation, they have to shake loose from a lot of their preconceived ideas and their cultural traditions. I think that’s a difficult thing to do. That’s the reason why after every General Council you have all sorts of problems, because it’s a switch. To switch a thing like the Catholic Church, that’s an enormous organization. To switch it and to really (?) Vatican II in America is not the easiest thing in the world. It requires a leadership and it also requires people who are the great body of the church to go along with you. You have to bring people along, to get that sense.
LS Is there anything we could be doing to bring people along for that leadership more?
PG (Unintelligible. At this point he had us turn the recorder off for a while and talked about racism, even among seemingly good religious.)
PG I’m sorry that when I started working in the black area there were prejudices to overcome and the cultural situation was simply that blacks were not accepted. A lot of us used to look down on the south with a certain amount of disdain and feel that we up north are not like that. I’m telling you that when I first started back in 1942 the situation was that blacks were not accepted in a lot of places, in hotels, etc. They were not treated properly in the restaurants. My black secretary went on vacation with her husband and two kids. They would go to Canada because in Canada they were accepted. But on the way they had to use a directory that was put out by some black organization that would tell the blacks where they would be accepted, so they could stop on the way at a hotel and feel comfortable, but they had all sorts of problems. They used to talk about visible jobs in the places of commerce, such as stores, etc. In those days no bank would put a black as a teller. Absolutely not. They only place a black could work in a bank would be sweeping a floor. It is the only way you could get them to do business. They used to talk bout that, “We want visible jobs. We put our money in the banks and that’s what we get.” It was all that sort of thing. To change all that you had to have the support of law but you also had to have the support of people’s understanding and to have their hearts in the right place as Christians, realizing that we have do something about this, that this is wrong. That business takes a long time.
LS You started to say that there are implications of that for today. What is it that we, as a church should be doing?
PG A lot has changed. To respond to that question, we should take the history of what has happened because I told you that little story of how those prejudices are deeply ingrained in a lot of people. In my own family I have a forbearer who was not enamored with the blacks. My grandmother and grandfather were both NY people, from Manhattan. They came over because of the wars. My grandmother used to talk to me about the draft riots. There were also anti black riots because of the freedom of the blacks. My grandmother used to often talk about this. She was all for us, not for them. My mother’s family came over too because of the blight. Her father was a florist. He had a business in North Bergen. He was a wholesale florist and had a greenhouse. Her father, when the Civil War broke out, was down in FL someplace, working on some estate as a gardener. He joined the Confederates. I used to kid my mother about that. My father and mother got married in January 1911 in North Bergen. My father came from Manhattan. They went to VA for their honeymoon. People were very cool toward things that were northern and that wasn’t so long after the Civil War. My mother sized up the situation and she let it be known that her father was a soldier in the Confederate army and everything was fine.
LS You tied together a few things in the beginning, e.g., culture, marriage, etc.
PG I was talking about the breakdown of marriage. That was another question. I was talking about the sacramental life with regard to baptism. What I read struck me as a disaster. I think it has to do with the breakdown of the tight knit neighborhoods and cities that were destroyed when the people moved out into the suburbs. We tried to rebuild community out there. I’m not sure if we were very successful. On the other hand, we’re constantly talking to them about the difficulty of instructing children. I think that has a lot to do with the constant mobility of people. That’s another challenge. I think the breakdown in marriage and the divorce rate are enormous. I think that is a tremendous challenge to any Christian (?) of life. It says to me that this American excessive individualism has infected our people in many ways. A lot of them will sacrifice in many ways but when it comes to personal relationships they find it hard to sacrifice. I’m no sociologist. I’m just an observer.
LS You tied a lot of it together with evangelization. What is it the church should be doing now when you look at culture, family life, prejudice to new immigrants?
PG You’re asking me to give conclusions. The first thing you’ve got to find out is the problem.
LS How do you do that?
PG I think you can observe that there are all sorts of problems out there. It seems to me that at least one item on the platter for our solution is to get everybody, the lay people, involved in a massive fashion and find out what they’re thinking.
LS Any ways you can think of that we could do that better?
PG Yes. I agree with what Archbishop Laveda said: the legal structure, somehow or other, has to resolve the two poles of church policy. The first is the hierarchical structure of the church. It is a given but the matter in which that is exercised is another problem because of the cultural situation from Trent on. Now the next one is, how do we involve the people, the body of the church and give them canonically supported responsibilities where the priests and bishops and the people are accountable? How do you bring these two things together so that you maintain a hierarchical structure and don’t destroy that since it comes from the gospel but yet the implementation of how it is exercised has all sorts of ramifications. It has changed drastically over the centuries, as we all know. Now how do you bring something into that to give responsibility to the people, and accountability? Now that’s the problem. I’m not giving the solution. I’m saying that somehow or other we’ve got to preserve those two things or at least initiate some discussion with regard to the people and see what they discern. He (Laveda) is talking about the canons obviously. They’re set up as consultative bodies. He said (?). That’s what I believe. That’s what the article I was talking about in Etude one hundred years ago said. We’re talking about operating on two ecclesiologies. We’re actually running things on Vatican I but we want to be Vatican II and we don’t have it resolved yet. I think we made progress but the progress we have made has to be supported by the law. Exactly what that ought to be I don’t know. I think we ought to get together and we ought to be discussing these things and how we will do it. Tom Ivory (a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark) was talking about how we ought to have a conference on church governance. I was talking with him about that. He has all these brilliant ideas. He got enthusiastic. He wanted to do it immediately and to offer his parish as the locus.
LS If a young man, just appointed a bishop, was to come and ask you what you would recommend to him, what would you recommend to him?
PG I’d say to him that I think he ought to try to get into the mentality of Vatican II. Make sure that he’s there and not in a (?) situation. His cultural background might have made it difficult for him to work with lay people. I don’t know. I certainly would tell him he’s got to find out what the imperatives of Vatican II meant and try to implement them as a bishop. One of the big things is we have to involve the body of the Church (?) somehow. There are no easy answers.
LS You mentioned community a couple of times and you’re done an awful lot through Renew to build community. What more could we do along those lines.
PG That’s a big question. It involves the activities on a parochial level. Here again, with that talk I was trying to inspire the priests with enthusiasm for their job and to see that they worked in the sense of Vatican II. Simply, that’s it. I’ll tell you something about that. I think the people need to be enthusiastic too. But if the priest s not enthusiastic it’s pretty hard for them. I have a brother who lives up in VT. He’s a retired doctor. He’s very friendly with the parish priest up there. He’s a very dynamic guy, a Vatican II guy all over the place. He’s running a big conference. It’s one of these things that ought to be run on a diocesan level. He has people coming in from all over the place. He’s running it all by himself in the parish, Frank McManus, Helen Prejean, people like that, all sorts of people. Well, I knew him. I’m a friend of his. I wasn’t doing well. I had a couple of (?). I wasn’t up to doing much. He wanted me to talk. I said, “Look, I just don’t feel up to it but I’ll come up and say Mass.” So I went up there to say Mass and Frank McManus had a little stroke. He was supposed to talk at the Mass. He’s the liturgist. When that word came through, the pastor said, “Can’t we have you give a little talk?” I said I always prepare my talk and I don’t have a thing prepared. I thought about into the late evening and said, “Okay, I’ll give the homily tomorrow.” So, I gave a homily along the lines that the imperatives of Vatican II are irreversible. I believe that. There are a lot of obstacles in the way and lot of these cultural obstacles and a lot of fears and problems about the changes. My point was it’s irreversible. Nobody can stop it. We’re going to have bumps in the road but don’t lose your enthusiasm. What struck me after the Mass was the enthusiasm of the people hearing those words. That’s what I mean. There’s an attitude you have to have.
LS The priests got enthused when they heard your message. The people got enthused. What is it that people aren’t hearing? What is it that they’re not getting?
PG You know as perfectly well as I do that there’s a great demand for accountability and it’s not being supported by cannon law. That’s what I think Lavdea was saying but I don’t want to put words in his mouth. He might suspend me. I’m in effect suspended anyway, so I don’t care.
CJ If there was one thing you could change in the church today what would it be?
PG What I’m talking about is what I do. There’s a financial problem in the Catholic Church in the US, as you know. When I cam down to Newark in 1974 there was a very, very serious financial debt. I wondered what was being done about the debt? “Ah, the horse will come in someday.” That was about the attitude. What did I do? I did what I did as a young priest up in (?). I got together a lot of businessmen and businesswomen and formed them into an Archbishop’s Committee on the Laity. Some of them were a subcommittee of a finance council. We had a big thing going. That’s what I would do. You’ve got to get the people involved and when you get them involved and they see that you’re taking seriously what they are advising you to do, they get enthusiastic. That’s how you do it.
LS It’s so simple, isn’t it?
PG Well sure it is. It’s common sense but our formation frequently stands in the way. And so it is, as Archbishop Laveda was saying, the law is vague. I know this to be true. I know of a few instances where the pastor (?) the parish council. What does he do? Does he have an election? Oh, he may piddle around and make out he has one. This guy that I’m talking about, he just puts people in there who are just yes-men and that’s the end of that. That’s what I’m talking about. If you don’t have some way to force him to be accountable, and even if you do have someway to force him and make him accountable, it’s going to be difficult to make him accountable. I can tell you from my experience over many, many years. Even if I set the thing up it’s difficult to keep the accountability going. As you read about the condition of the church today, accountability is what everybody wants. They see that situation up in Boston and other situations. Where were the lay people in this thing? Where was the advice? What’s going on here? I’m all for getting accountability into the structure of the church. These consultative bodies which are established with vague (?). As Laveda said the canons that established them are too vague on their responsibilities. That’s correct but that’s a beginning. There was a conference at which Bishop Wuerl from Pittsburgh was present. He gave the opening talk and he suggested that these bodies are a good beginning and they should be built upon. Peter Steinfeld immediately challenged him and said they have to be structure so that there is accountability, not just this business of maybe we have it or maybe we don’t. That was a good exchange. I agree with Bishop Wuerl and I agree with Peter Steinfeld. I think you have to get real and yet it’s difficult to get all those things in place and particularly when you have the cultural business. There is a struggle going on in the church between pre-Vatican II and Vatican II. I don’t mean a fight. There are certain cultural difficulties in changing those things. I remember I once had a wonderful canon lawyer here when I was in charge. I think he was exaggerating a little bit. It was after the 1982 or 83 change in canon law came out. I’m not a canon lawyer. I had the canon lawyer in the office and asked him, “What’s changed?” He said, “Nothing.” Well, its’ decorated. If you look at canons and see that it’s all decorated saying Vatican II says this and says that. But then you get back to the whole thing is hierarchical and there’s no accountability. There’s an attempt to get it in there but it’s a very cautious attempt. These structures are vaguely set up and that’s what Laveda said and I agree with him. That’s a cultural problem.
LS The talk you gave to the priests sounded like it is very much based on the ad limina talk that the Pope gave to the Bishops of PA and NJ.
PG I pulled that out because I wanted to make it official. The fact of the matter is that the body of that is talk is my own vision of what the Church should be.
LS I hear the connection between what you believe and what the Pope believes.
PG Exactly. But I’m not sure the Pope fully believes it. I was able to get that quote to support what I wanted to say. It’s always good to start with the Pope. The other thing I did was start with praising the priests for sticking with it. I tell you that’s a big problem today. The priests are overwhelmed with what they have to do.
LS What do you recommend to change that?
PG The first thing we’ve got to do is involve the lay people. The second thing we’ve got to do is to find out how to get more priests. Now, here again, I think we have to talk about that. The (?) of the question for a lot of people is celibacy but we’re not permitted to talk about it. If you bring it up, you’re slapped down.
LS Every bishop we’ve talked to says that every issue needs to be open to be talked about.
PG Certainly, that is one of the problems. I’m hoping to God that Benedict XVI will do something about it. I’m really delighted with the things I’ve been reading. There’s the Salt of the Earth and I’ve got these other four books. I’m going to read them all. I tell you this man is brilliant. He knows what’s going on. I hope he’ll open up a little, at least I (?). I think he really didn’t get to the nub of questions that are on people’s minds. He didn’t really respond to them. He had some thoughts but I had a lot of other thoughts. Let’s talk about this.
LS What would be some of those thoughts you would talk about?
PG Like celibacy?
LS Celibacy would be one, what would some of the others?
PG I think the background, as far as I’m concerned, is celibacy. It’s served the church very well but it seems to me that celibacy shouldn’t get in the way of the evangelization of people. Theologically, I have a great problem seeing so many parishes lacking priests and seeing the tremendous problems facing people in the parishes. Even if we get the people involved, we’ve got to have priests. I’d like to have an open discussion about, “Is celibacy getting in the way?” I’m not saying it is. I’m just saying let’s talk about it. You see what I mean?
LS One of the other Archbishops said almost exactly the same, “I believe in celibacy, but we’ve got to talk about it.
PG Exactly. That’s what I mean and we’ve got to respond to the needs of the people. It’s all very lovely to say we’ve got to pray. The Lord, Himself, told us to pray for workers in the vineyard. He didn’t say they all had to be celibate, though. Now, I’m not saying that that the solution is to eliminate obligatory celibacy for the priesthood. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, let’s talk about it. You can’t discuss these things unless you’re talking of facts and good theology. There are a lot of factors that have to be brought into that discussion and they can’t just be off the tops of our heads. We have to know what we’re talking about and we’ve just got to be really willing to face up to facts. That’s all I’m saying.
LS What I hear you saying is that we are an evangelizing church and we’ve got to discuss whatever gets in the way of that.
PG Yes, that’s true. We not only have to be evangelizing. Evangelization covers the whole gamut of what the church has to do. For instance, paying off the debt in the Archdiocese. I think part of evangelization is that if we didn’t pay off the debt we wouldn’t have anything to do. And let me tell you that these men that we had involved in that whole business, I just bow my head to them. When I first brought in the Finance Council, and got top notched people, the interest rate was 7%. The situation we were faced with is that the banks were willing to negotiate on the basis of (?). There was one member of that group who disagreed with accepting a floating agreement. That was dangerous. I, myself, didn’t agree with that arrangement but all these men were in favor of it, so I just bowed to what they said because I felt, talking about responsibility and accountability, they were giving a recommendation. I accepted it even thought I had all sorts of problems with it. They knew more about finances than I did but I still disagreed with them. So did (name). Well, during the Carter administration interest rates kept going up and our floating loan was going up and up. Finally, it was going up toward 20%. I wrote a letter and told the banker that we simply had to do something about these unconscionable interest rates. He didn’t like that word at all but we had to enter into discussion. We appointed a small committee to do the negotiations and they knew what they were doing. John Culligan was the head of it and there was a banker. While they were doing the negotiations, the lead banker called me up and said, “Gosh, Bishop, couldn’t we just sit down and discuss this matter as friends and settle is ourselves. I said, “No, I’m not bypassing the Finance Committee
LS You’re giving me a vision of what it means to be in leadership in the Church today.
PG That’s what I’m talking about. They had a terrific battle. I wouldn’t touch it. I let them handle it and it came out 7% firm. Talking about involving other people, the body of the church, I got all the pastors involved and there was a big battle at the banquet. They said, “Nothing doing. We’re not going to (?).” We called in all the pastors and told them about our difficulty and the response of the bank. They weren’t going to lend us money. Every one of those pastors dealt with banks. That changed it. One of them said, “You gave us (?).
LS Just one last question. I think you are the oldest of the Archbishops we’ve interviewed. You’re 93?
PG Yes, 93. In the body of the Bishops of the universal church I’m the 47th.
LS If the Pope were to call you as the oldest Archbishop in the US and say, “What do I need to understand about the US? What do we need to talk about? What would you say to him?
PG I’d say, “Pope (?), I would love to have you set up a real system of collegiality, that’s not a fake.” He talks in that interview about collegiality and all these consultations they have. I’m sure that they are making an effort but the bishops are not permitted to talk about certain things, at least they haven’t been. That’s all I’m going to say there.
LS So you go for the one big value, not a lot of little issues. If we set up this structure for real collegiality, then we can deal with all the other issues.
PG Sure, and even the dimensions of collegiality. We ought to talk about that. We’re Bishops, successors of the apostles. Listen, yeah, you’re the primus. You’re the top. We all acknowledge that.
PG (We thanked him and turned the tape off and he kept talking.) This business of collegiality. Collegiality goes right down through the structures. It goes down through the parishes and everything else. It involves the parishes, the Bishops and his priests and everything else. The manner in which that is handled needs great discussion. Accountability comes into all that. To set all that up requires a real collegial spirit in which we really dialogue with one another and find out how to do it. We all want to do it.
LS I love that term, “collegial spirit,” not just laws and regulations.
PG The law doesn’t mean a damn thing if you don’t have the spirit. That’s what I think. This is true in every situation. In this country, for instance, we had prohibition. Do you remember that? Well that was the law but nobody supported it. If the law isn’t supported it gets no place. It doesn’t mean a thing.
PG (Again, we thanked him and turned the tape off and, again, he continued.)
…been involved in these social problems. We need to take more of a
look at the internal things. Well, fair enough, but I don’t think
the Church ought to back off the social issues. If you do that, you’re
turning your back on Gaudium et Spes. I’ll tell you there’s
a cultural situation, there are certain negative attitudes among certain
people about Gaudium et Spes. They think it’s too dreamy, etc. I disagree
with that. That’s a cultural (?).