The Council of Elders:
Tapping the Wisdom of the Vatican II Archbishops
ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS HURLEY
Transcript of Interview
Frank Cunningham and Loughlan Sofield conducted the interview in his home in Anchorage, Alaska on May 18, 2005.
FH=Archbishop Francis Hurley
FC=Frank Cunningham
LS=Brother Loughlan Sofield, S.T.
LS. Thank you for being willing to do this. You got the material we sent? We contacted the nine of you are the oldest. The only one who was not able to do it is Archbishop McCarthy from Miami. One of the priests said that he is incapable. Six of you said and only two said they are not doing any interviews since they retired. One is Archbishop Cronin from Connecticut and the other is Archbishop Hunthausen. They were the two. The other six all said yes. You’re the first one we’re doing and we really think this worked out perfectly. We were supposed to Archbishop Borders about a week ago but he ended up in the hospital twice in the last month. He’s doing fine right now. The others are Archbishops Borders, Gerety, Hannan, Flores and Quinn. We think that your wisdom could be a great gift to the Church, your individual wisdom and the wisdom of the six of you. We’re looking forward to being with you today.
FC: One of the things that is important to us is that you were in a position of leadership in the years following the Council and what that meant. You and your peers of trying to implement the Council and to understand what went on and what we want to do now. The overarching concern is that we would like each one of you to identify what you consider are the overarching issues today and what you would suggest as the pastoral responses. That would frame the discussion.
FH: Feel free to ask anything you want. If I don’t want to say something, I’ll say that.
FC: We understand that. That’s certainly the understanding. I read this talk that you gave to the Commonwealth North Forum on the Dallas meeting. I thought it was terrific, very candid.
FH: That was before I ran into trouble myself up here. I was there yesterday because they had their annual meeting there yesterday.
FC: Is that like an economic club?
FH: It’s basically and education on current issues of what’s going on. Everybody there is economic, business, politicians and educators. I was asked to go on the original board. I didn’t quite know who they were and what they were about. It became very valuable because we had extraordinary speakers. Each of us has contact for that. A lot of it had to do with government, economics, the pipeline, all those things. I found it very interesting. I was on the board for a number of years. We met every Tuesday morning.
FC: Then you get a number of speakers every year?
FH. We get them as often as we could. We try to get them once a month. We had Fr. Ted Hesburgh.
FC: Oh, good. I just saw Fr. Ted Tuesday.
FH: How is he?
FC: Wonderful. He’s has macula degeneration. He’s so positive in his outlook. He has students who read to him and people who help him with Mass. He was at a retiree’s luncheon, and my wife retired from the university this year and told everybody how wonderful they looked and so everybody started laughing. He gave a nice little talk on aging gracefully, I think would be the best way to put it, the things you need to do and should do.
FH: I’ve known him for many, many years.
FC: He’s such a good man.
FH: I met him when he was just appointed to be president, in the early 50’s. I was in the seminary. He was sitting around with a group and it was pointed out that he was the one who was going to take over Notre Dame. It didn’t mean much to me then except the football team. When I ended up in Washington we had a number of things to deal with.
FC: He still does extremely well. He’s 87 years old and he has a memory that’s very, very sharp. My wife had him speak one night at a gathering she was sponsoring for service and social justice people. I sat at the table with him. I had met him but I wasn’t sure if he remembered or knew who I was. She asked me to take him back to his apartment. On the way out I asked myself, “Do I introduce myself again and say who I am because I worked for Holy Cross or just leave it alone. I said, “I’m just going to leave it alone.” As we were walking up the stairs he says, “So, Frank, how are things at Ave Maria Press?” He knew what was going over there. He’s just a powerful man.
FC: So, what are the major issues facing the church?
FH: All we know about now is what we read in the papers, is abortion, birth control, ordination of women and things like that. That’s unfortunate. Most of our people are not upset about these. They know how to live with this and how to handle it because they’re living with this in their own family. In my extended family we have at least four that are homosexual. We had a family reunion about a year ago (not audible.)
I’ll use an example we had up here about a year ago. We had a constitution amendment that was started by the Mormons. They were pushing it. Then when it got to the legislature they had the hearings. There was an interesting statistic. Before we started our campaign we had polls. Two-thirds to one-third in Alaska were in favor of a man and woman constituting a marriage. There was a campaign. It finished. The statistics remained the same. I found that very interesting. I don’t know what that means. What I did here in the diocese. We addressed the issue but did not get involved in campaigning. I’ve frequently taken that kind of approach on things. I have a very serious question about just how active the Church should become in political campaigns. Even with that, most of what I’ve written I’ve never told anyone how to vote. I would take care of the issues and be quite clear where the Church stood and where I stood. Many times I’ve been criticized for that for not standing up and going after certain things. I suppose it’s part of my disposition but it’s also very consistent with what I think John XXIII was looking for, to rule by persuasion. Also, I’ve been very impressed that after Vatican I the Archbishop of Little Rock, I think his name was Fitzgerald, was one of those who did not accept it at first but then he did.
FC: He stood against infallibility.
FH: But, also, in one of his statements, he spoke about the Church’s relationship with the United States (Unclear) It is our responsibility to persuade people of who and what we are. I think it is a very powerful statement in terms of the Church. We will be a force. John XXIII made it very, very clear that you persuade, you don’t mandate. I followed that very much up here. If you give the Church’s teaching, in some respect, you establish who you are. I never tell anyone how to vote. As I look at a number of these issues, can someone be against or for any of these issues, other than the morality of it. Specifically, legislation shouldn’t be doing this. I think there’s a legitimate point of view on some of these issues. On the other hand, we know that what is passed in the legislature has a very profound influence on the moral thinking of our people. So, it’s a difficult situation. It’s almost impossible to argue about. I think our number one problem as a Church is educating our Catholics, in general to be able to talk knowledgably about the civil, societal issues of the day. We don’t have a lot of control over what issues come up. That comes up from other groups, from politicians, from special interest groups. We’re frequently responding to what others are saying. (Partially unintelligible about homosexuals and legislation.) It’s not a simple matter of whether it should be or not be. I do feel our people have to enter into the discussion. I think they would like to be but I don’t think they feel at all prepared to do that.
LS: One of the issues, as I think I hear you saying is that we, as Catholics, need to be better educated to be involved in our governmental process.
FH: And also to have a sense that this is what we should be doing, without giving the impression that we’re telling you this is what you must believe.
LS: In the Commonwealth, this is what you are doing by being there with the leaders, by persuading them by introducing them to certain speakers.
FH: Yes, the speakers, but also the issues that come up. We would talk about them and different ones would reflect what Republicans did, Democrats, did, what certain people did It was a forum in which everyone could listen to what every one is thinking. That’s why we had the forums publicly, so that we get the issues out there so that everybody will know what we’re talking about.
LS: With your community organizing background, the whole idea of building alliances and that was what you were doing. Do you see the Church in the United States doing that today?
FH: I don’t want to generalize, but I can give you a current example, in my opinion, and pertains to the charter on sexual abuse. This time the charter has been sent out, worked over, gotten recommendations and the bishops have consulted their councils about the charter. At the same time, they made it very clear that they really wanted comments on substantive things, not everything. I don’t know this for sure, but I can guess. The consultation in most dioceses is that they’ll send it out and ask if anybody has anything to say and we’ll have a meeting about it and they feel like they have been consulted. I think one of our major problems is we do a lot of consulting, but consulting doesn’t engage people. I think that what would engage people is that they would brought in to the issue and to the how and what we feel. I take the Dallas charter as an example of that. This whole thing on sexual abuse is a Church issue. It is not just the bishops, not just the priests, not just the victims. It is a Church issue. The Church has suffered. Many of our people have attitudes about all of this. Now, how should we respond? We should respond as Church. We are responding as bishops. The bishops are consulting but any number of priests will tell you, “Why say anything. Nothing is going to happen anyhow.” We’ve all been in that kind of a situation where you know that the people who are in authority consult and listen and then go on. And I use as an example of this, probably the closest we’ve come to this was on the Pastoral Letter on the Economy in which we really engaged the people and, even though it still remained a bishop’s statement and a bishop’s decree when it was finished, but we engaged them. This was also true of the Peace Pastoral. It generated a lot of discussion. It was very clear to me that we were out there about atomic war, peace, justice, all those things and engaging the people. I remember Brian Heihr telling me about a year after the Peace Pastoral, of which he was the principal writer, that it was being used extensively in universities. That’s good.
LS: Regarding the Pastoral on the Economy, I did a little research project and interviewed people in the business world and asked them what influenced their values. The only church document they mentioned was the one on the economy. Many of them disagreed with it because they were looking at it from a different perspective, but it engaged them.
FH: In the economy one I had a meeting with the Secretary of the Interior under Nixon. We had a public discussion over it. Neither of us was trying to put the other down and it was very good. It was very well received. He knew we weren’t supporting anyone. From that point of view that was a very positive conversation.
In regards to Dallas, the point I’m making is that we’re engaging our people to the point that they are part of the response now. That’s a different way of saying what the Voice of the Faithful is saying and all that. If we bishops could take the initiative in doing something like the pastoral letter approach, I think we would get a tremendous response from our people. I can think of some issues that we could possible have addressed head on because it would come from the people.
LS: What would some of those issues be?
FH: The suits. Talking about addressing the whole phenomenon that this is a small percentage. Having the Church responding, “Look, this is a small, small number.” Now, we’ve said this and others agreed but it never gives up. It always keeps coming back. I have my own little pet project on this. I’ve been writing and talking about zero tolerance. I’m totally opposed to it. I had a letter to the editor in American magazine. Archbishop Quinn wrote an article about the whole abuse question and the charter. So, I responded with a letter to the editor and said, zero tolerance has to go. Zero tolerance has created a whole new class of victims, those good Catholics who have lost their formed, well performing priests. They did something twenty-five or thirty years ago and they are out. No recall. I think it would have been a very interesting thing to see how many Catholics would have stepped forward to say we want these priests back to be our leaders. That’s what I get from most of them. We believe in forgiveness.
FC: Anyone who has raised a family would step forward and say…
FH: That’s the crossfire here. I had a case 1982. It was a seventeen year old boy who was quote, molested, but it was consensual conduct between the priest and him. I dealt with the priest. I made a big mistake. I didn’t go back to him. In the long haul that turned out to be bad. At that time, I did not consider the priest an abuser. It was borderline. I had a priest that had a kid and I had to take care of that. Now, what would happen if the people would candidly and publicly address these things, even the bad performances. He had done a lot of good things. He took in anybody who had a problem. My point is that whole story should be out there.
LS: Can I just try to summarize something here? As I’m listening to you the thing that is striking me is that right now maybe the issues are seen as something the bishops need to deal with. It’s the bishops’ problem, whatever the issue is. You’re saying these issues are all Church issues. They affect everybody and everybody has a part to play in their resolution. As I’ve listened to you, you’ve said, if this is going to happen, there are two things, education as Catholic. I think of education from the Latin, meaning to draw out of people. So, what I hear you saying is there must be a real engagement with people on a level that we truly want to hear what it is they feel, believe and their experiences. They’re not going to talk us and then we have to go resolve it as Bishops. It’s a Church issue. And then you said one of the Church issues would be the Dallas covenant. What would be some of the other issues?
FH: We (? women and maybe that was another mistake. It passed but not by two-thirds. I was one of those voted against it. My main reason is that it said nothing new. It didn’t take us any place.
LS: Part of the reason that we’re doing this research is because I had an opportunity to talk with you when I was up here doing the priests’ retreat. First listening to you and then experiencing what women up here are doing up here for the Church. I’ve gone back and told the people the story of how you got permission for the women to witness marriages and to do funerals and baptize. Is that what you have in mind?
FH: That’s part of it.
LS: What’s the rest of it?
FH: Its’ connect to the whole thing of the involvement of all of our people in the life of the Church and recognizing their legitimate place at the table, even though the Bishop has to have the last word and the sole voice at the end. There are some bishops who do not want that last word. When you get into these issues you’re in a tough place. There are certain conclusions that are not going to be unanimously accepted. We have to deal with that.
FC: That’s not unlike any ceo of a large organization who consults and draws people in and then has to make the final decision.
FH: I stay away from using that business model. That generates other impressions. I do look at it from the point of the Second Vatican Council, who really makes up the Church? By right, everybody is a member of the Church.
LS: The term you just used a moment ago, “their legitimate place.” That’s a powerful term and you say it with passion. How do we move the Church in that direction? We’re not there. How do we do that?
FH: (laughing) Pray!
LS: We do that.
FH: (Still laughing.) Some things can only be taken care of by prayer and fasting?
LS: How do we move the Church toward what you are suggesting because what you are suggesting is a real engagement.
FH: I would see the shortage of priests as the ideal sign to active the things that would address this by action and not by discussion. If you want to have a discussion you are going to have to take care of too many legitimate issues and probably never get to the heart of it. You begin by saying, “We need help.” There’s no place else to go. As we do that, we should be saying, but we should be doing this anyhow. In every phase of our lives, things that we should have been doing, we didn’t do until we were forced to. Families have it. Business has it. The military has it.
LS: Someone once said to me that necessity is the mother of theology. Where should it be moving us and what should it be moving us toward? If I go to dioceses, and yours is one of the most missionary dioceses in the US. The shortage of priests forces us to do things that, as you just said, we should be doing. What are some of those things?
FH: One of the things. I appointed administrators in the parishes who were fully in charge of everything, except what only a priest could do. Most of them have taken that right on and the clearest proof is that the religious and the laity are just like pastors, my turf or church). So, when the Bishop deals with them, even though they know that they are subject totally to the will of the bishop, they are arguing for their parish and the concerns of their parish and why their parish is special and they have to protect the people from the bishop. They you get into this phenomenon when you’re looking for money from them they don’t understand. One thing I did is I made them totally in charge. I did have a canonical pastor in each parish. I had one priest, ten miles away and I told him that he was going to be the canonical pastor. He was type who liked to have thing spelled out a lot more. He said, “What does that mean?” I said the first thing is don’t get in the way but I want you to be available there, and if need be, to move in on something that is not right. But, I don’t look upon you as someone the administrator reports to every week. It’s just like every other parish. I’ve included them as representatives of the administrator at the consultator meeting. They could not be consulters. They are not priests.
LS: You found a place for them at the table.
FH: I have them as advisors at the table. One of the reasons why we can do a lot of that stuff here is that we are small. Most of our priests and Sisters knew each other very well. They worked together in the parishes. So, when we moved in this direction, for the most part, it was successful because everybody knew everybody. The priests knew the Sisters. We had type of familiarity.
LS: When I visited the Kenai Peninsula in your diocese I saw a better relationship between a priest and Sisters than I had seen anywhere else. I guess my question is, we have moved that far where do we have to go now? We now have women, particularly, in administrative positions. You’ve given them a seat at the table where they are with the consultors. Where do we have to have to go beyond that? Where are we being called?
FH: I don’t know if I can answer right off.
LS: I guess I was thinking, this is where we are and as we look to the future…
FH: I guess that an area that has always been a concern that our lay people accept them in an authorative position. In point of fact they have at one place and Sister Joyce has been there for twelve years and had been there as the religious ed person and, quite frankly, if we put a priest in there, it would be awfully hard for her to still be there and it would be awfully hard for another priest to be there and for her to go. We haven’t had too much of a problem because many of our changes were necessitated by health or such reasons, as a religious being called back to their community. The people generally do accept this. The way I describe this frequently is that the administrators are basically community organizers. The priest is a community leader. I use this distinction because with all the experience I’ve had. There was one Sister in particular. She said she had a problem. I said, “What’s the problem?” She said Father can go in and say Mass and then has to leave to go someplace else. The people would say, “Sister we need help with the children and we need help with the catechesis.” She would end up several days in a little tiny place dealing with several families who were eager for help in educating their children. When she would go over there for two or three days she would be pretty tired out by the time she got to go home. She couldn’t cover the parishes.
LS: That raises a question for me. What do we expect of anyone in leadership in the church, given the fact that we are going to have fewer and fewer priests. Given the fact that the average age of a Sister in the United is 72 or 73. Laypeople. When are we going to reach that point?
FH: We have training programs for our laity. We’ve had several continuing educational programs. A number of them were entered into by the laity, themselves. We had the one out Loyola in New Orleans. We had a program here that involved people coming in one weekend a month. We’ve had speakers and they would spend the weekend. Every month, for nine months in the year, we would send up two people to have workshops for them. A number of the people that we now have in the parishes came out of those workshops. Some of them just took it for personal interest. Then we began putting potential deacons in it. We wouldn’t accept them until after two years. Then we had a better idea of what we were accepting. The training and education of the laity is developing. Most people who get into the programs want more education because they are responsibly dealing with issues in the Church. Some of them are quite good. They are well read. That’s one thing. There are a number of people who want education. That’s a very popular thing. We have a lot of families up here with the husband is a professional person and the wife is intellectually curious.
LS: You have an interesting diocese. My impression is that you have a diocese with more former volunteers who have a given a couple of years of their life to do Church ministry.
FH: Jesuit volunteers.
LS: Yes, and other volunteers who went out of the country to do it. I met more people up here statistically who have gone through a number of different programs because they have this desire or call. How can we as a Church because it’s going to be different. We’re not going to have priests. We’re not going to have Sisters.
FH: As long as you have a bishop, you have a priest. Let’s get that straight. He is your parish priest and it is his responsibility to see that you get all your faculties and to do what he can. A good example of this happened in the last 2 weeks. (End of side 1) I had one priest who has the responsibility for one parish and then went to say Mass at another parish and then had a parish meeting on top of that. He was establishing very clearly that he was on top of this thing. They still have a priest. The priest is a community leader for the whole community. He’s expected to provide leadership. The priest should be a part of the social climate in the area in which he lives. The people, including the non-Catholics need to know about him. Apparently it was easier some years ago because we had 3 or 4 priests in a parish. Now we have one priest and that puts a tremendous drain on the priest, which means then his work is primarily the sacraments. A terrible term that that I never liked in the past was the sacristy priest. I’m beginning to rethink that. When I first came here I was always on the side of you have to get out. Get to know the neighborhood and all those things. With the situation being what it is now and with the centrality of the priesthood being Christ in the Eucharist and the sacraments of the Church, that’s where he has to be. So, he’s going to be much more like a “sacristy priest.” I was never big on liturgy myself. That’s what’s holding our people together now, the liturgy. That’s when people go to church or don’t go to church when they get a great experience of going to the Sunday liturgy and, if they do, they are going to come. We see this is going around to different parishes. It’s the liturgy that they want. Most are good but their different. We had an example of two priests. One priest was very organized and very much the same each week. The other priest was a surprise every Sunday. The people would go to where they find the liturgy they liked. There was nothing about the Masses that was unrecognizable. But, we don’t have that now; there aren’t enough priests around. They’re getting the liturgy. The problem then is about the community. It’s clear now, when the people come to Mass on Sunday they come as a community of faith. They don’t come to the Church and become a community. That’s why I think the source and the summit is the Eucharist. It is the source of community but is also the summit. I think that we should get that idea across and, work with our people. To a certain extent we do have that up here. You feel like the people are with you.
LS: You are talking about the centrality of the Eucharist. In many ways this diocese is going to be a model in terms of ten years down the road when there aren’t enough priests to celebrate the Eucharist. Any ideas of what we could do about that?
FH: I don’t know. I made a proposal at the Bishop’s meeting to which there was absolutely no response and never even a word afterward. I suggested that we consider a “Mass priest.” It may be a screwy idea. I’m not totally convinced of it myself. In terms of trying to explore ways of keeping the sacramental life of the Church going, and it’s going well, it to train priests for the liturgy. The liturgy now is such a focus point. Let’s take the very possible situation of a deacon or the married or unmarried men who are being hired. A lot of them would be very interested in getting involved in the liturgy. Suppose they could be instructed in the liturgy. I cite as an example, when I first ordained in San Francisco, we had the Jesuits being ordained as priests after three years of theology. Archbishop Mitty didn’t like that. So, he would allow these priests to say Mass but he would not allow them to preach. They were helping us in the parish. We used to say; we don’t need help with saying Mass. We need help with the sermons, the homilies. They were Mass priests. The Episcopalians have it. Others have it. It’s a pejorative term and what I learned about it historically was that in monasteries there would be about 15 priests saying Mass and all that did was say Mass. Right now we have “circuit riders.” They ask me what I want them to do. I say, “Say a good Mass, give a good homily and smile. You do those things and the people will go away with a richness for the day because you’re leaving the next day and you’re not coming back for two months.” So the personal attachment of the priest and the role of the priests as a community leader is compromised by the fact that all e does is come in and say Mass. I had two priests that I pulled off the circuit because they were very inefficient in liturgy. I’m not saying if I’m right or wrong but it makes a very difficult situation. I have a question that I ask the people when I put in a lay administrator. They say, “Oh, we have to have a priest.” Then I ask, “Is any priest better than no priest.” They say, “Yes, absolutely.” There was one case where I said to the people that this parish is really a very good parish; it’s attractive to priests. So, if I get a priest for here after going through all my priests and let those who are older ask for it, if they want it. It stopped right there. ). They knew. (Unintelligible) It’s a rather ruthless way to go at it and there is a great danger in it that the relationship between the priest and the bishop. We don’t like to undercut our priests. We’ve always had instances where, “I don’t want that guy as my assistant.” We’ve been that personal but we don’t talk that way. My point is this, if a priest can come in and say Mass and do the nice things and take care of what he can do, while the administrator can take care of baptisms and weddings, etc. We basically have a Mass priest. I’m one. They all know I’m too old to do anything else. I’m a Mass priest for many of these parishes. I go in just for one day and then off I go.
FC: My mind is just racing at the idea. We need to train people to lead our public worship, our public prayer. How complicated can that be? I don’t think it’s a terribly complicated thing.
FH: I don’t think it is. We have a married priest here. He had a very, very good background in the faith. It was very easy for us to do it.
LS: I was thinking while you were talking that Cardinal Mahony wrote a pastoral, As I Have Done for You. It compares the parish of 50 years ago with the parish of today and concludes that there is no similarity. You’re giving a paradigm for the parish of the future. I want to make sure that I’m not misrepresenting what you’re saying. You are saying that liturgy has to be the sun and center of our lives. We need to have someone who is ordained who really sees that as the focus of his life. I’m hearing you say, and maybe I’m reading into this, that John Paul II says that we want to bring the laity into the liturgy as a community. You said that the religious and laity who are out there have a primary role as community organizers, building community. We begin to separate the two roles. The expectation in the past has been that that is the role of the priest. You are now giving us a different paradigm. Is that accurate?
FH: Yes. We’ve had a specialist in the Church for all kinds of things, canon layers, social service, educators, and teachers at all levels. The people in the big cities are not yet aware of the real shortage because they still get a Sunday Mass because of the university or the convent or the monastery. They have two or three priests come in on a weekend and hear confessions. That’s fine.
FC: In a way that supports your model.
FH. Yes. My stand is, let’s get a model that fits now.
FC: Why do you think people didn’t respond to this, just too new?
FH: I really don’t know. The thing that puzzled me the most, not even afterwards did anybody say anything about it. Some guy usually would say, “You know you’re screwy.” And I know enough of them well enough but not one word from any of them. I’m sure it’s nothing they talked about. Another thing, take a look of our deacons. I have three of them I can think of right now that I would have no trouble at all ordaining as priests in terms of character and qualities.
FC: Are they married?
FH: Yes, even if we started with widowers to get away from the celibacy question. If we started with widowers, we would find a number of them. Some of them are looking for something to do. A lot of them have plans. They don’t have to do the parish work. It’s just a germ of an idea. It really has to be worked out.
LS: That’s what we’re looking for, identifying what the issues are. One of the issues facing the Church is that the model that we have won’t work in a few years because we won’t have the people there. Maybe one of the issues is that we have to rethink how we look at a parish and maybe we need to clarify the roles of what people do. That may change the whole way we look at such things as pastors. You talked before about having lay formation training programs. You are adding a dimension that I don’t hear in most lay formation programs and that is putting the focus on their primary role to build community and be community organizers. I don’t see a lot of people coming through lay ministry formation training program who are being trained for that role. I think what you are suggesting to us is that we began thinking entirely differently it might give us a whole new way of thinking about who would be doing it, how would they be doing it, etc.
FH: It would add a dimension to the training that might not be there now. For example, I’m in a good position. My first administrators were all nuns. They were all educated; they knew how to do it. They knew community organizing, without even using the word. They had the skill, plus they also had the knowledge. The nuns are well educated which enabled them to deal with everything. I’ve found some of my deacons that are pretty shallow and it shows up terribly in their preaching.
LS: You’re blessed up here. I wouldn’t say that about some other dioceses where I’ve been. The Sisters who I met here who are in leadership positions are exactly what you just described. You are a missionary diocese. I was just sharing with a group that I was working this week that I feel a deeper faith among the people up here in Alaska than I do in most other places where I go. There’s something special up here. I don’t know what it has to do with. There is a hunger.
FH: The people here in some respects are different. They are conservative because they come from outside. It’s not because they want to be like the outside but everything is back there like their history and their religion. They come up here and I went through this and I’m now doing things differently. They raise their children differently. It’s ten pm and it’s still not dark. A lot of things happen and we have to do a lot of things on our own. Less now in Anchorage than it used to be. In smaller places it happens. They are willing to allow the experimental things to happen out there in the bush. “We don’t need them.” I got this a lot. They would ask, “How can you do that?” They don’t have an Episcopal minister; they don’t have a Catholic priest. So, that’s all right, but don’t do it here.
FC: They accept it.
FH: Yes. They accept it from that point of view.
FC: Now I’m making an assessment of you and what I’m hearing here. Is it fair to characterize you as someone who engages the world, someone who looks at our rich treasury of Catholic history and wisdom and offers that to people? I’ve sensed an openness with you, which is why you can think creatively, think outside the box, and reconsider things that you held for a long time. Usually, as we get older we hang on to those things. You’re sitting here saying, “I’m rethinking that. I’m rethinking this.” Even when you were talking about your pastoral administrators and how they were starting to get their sense of turf and you are laughing, being jovial about it. It reveals to me an understanding of human nature, how these are just things you have to deal with.
FH: They have a sense of their authority. The response with almost all of them when you say this is what I want, they respond. They will accept that.
FC: What’s clear to me is that you are not threatened by that. You’re the boss. Whereas other people would see that as someone trying to take their power.
FH: Yes.
LS: One of the things that is needed in leadership is someone who has that balance, who sees the richness of tradition but isn’t afraid to engage the world or to try things that have not been carved in stone before.
FC: I think the opposite of you, Archbishop Hurley, is to see the Church in opposition to the world. They see the Church as a bulwark against this decaying society. That’s a defensive position, whereas yours is an offensive position.
FH: Another thing that effects me personally. I always say this is what the Church allows or recommends. There are a lot of things that may seem that I’ve done them by way of exception but if you bring together the various principles of the Church, you can make a decision, which you actually do all the time. We do it with our lives and other things. When you are trying to figure out the right thing to do, it’s not that I forget the law or disregard it. There are other factors. This is all part of making a moral decision. I think the most simplistic example I can give is that when we all went to grammar school we learned that there are three things necessary for mortal sin. If one of those three is missing, it is not a mortal sin. I remember hearing confessions and five women from a rural community came and confessed not going to Mass and the fifth one came in and when I asked her why she had missed Mass, she told me she had just had a baby. Oh, my gosh. That taught me.
LS: What did it teach you?
FH: I was reacting with a little bit of anger. I know that because I was at the point where you can only take so much. It tells you a lot about what happens to a priest in the confessional.
LS: That goes back to your initial point, to engage people, to ask a person why, rather than just give him or her a penance.
FH: That’s part of the skills of confession.
LS: It’s also part of the skills of leadership.
FH: It’s all part of that.
LS: What I hear is that the leadership in the Church, not just the Bishops, is not only not engaging but may be disengaging.
FC: That’s what I think.
LS: It goes right back to the beginning of this interview and your involvement with Commonwealth. Any leader has to be involved because they’ve deepened their own understanding of their Catholicism and because they are clear on some of this stuff.
FH: You say influencing. That’s not the right term. I think I try to contribute to conversation. I just throw it out there. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything but there is another point of view. We try to convince them by persuasion. Your first step is to get into the picture. Terry Shiavo (?) is the perfect example of the need to bring together the various principles of the moral decision-making process. We have a medical problem. We have a human problem. We have a moral problem. Dick McCormick or Notre Dame was a master of bringing together the various principles in order to get to a conclusion. I was recently reading an article by Gerry Coleman, the Sulpician, on the Shiavo case in which he develops the whole thing and respect for life has to be a factor but so is the medical and burdens of what was going on. And just by way of coincidence, when we bishops did the medical-moral guidelines about five years ago, when we got to the question of hydration we did not take a position because there was such a disagreement among the theologians. There was no final word said about it until the Holy Father was speaking to a group of doctors. A lot has to do with how it’s taught. Is it taught in such a way that there is no exception to the rule? There was one family here and I walked through the process with them in making a decision about life support for the mother. That’s the anguish that people feel but at least try to give them the things to work with.
FC: Do you think you have a unique understanding of your role as a teacher as opposed to other bishops in the country?
FH: No. I have no way of judging that. From the time I’ve been a bishop I’m up here, so I’m out of contact with most bishops. When I was back in Washington that was different.
FC: There seems to me to be a movement, when you talk about problems in the Church, toward mandating rather than persuasion. I look at the Kerry thing last fall and the communion thing. Some bishops actually mandated an interpretation of that because of his interpretation on abortion, you could not vote for him.
FH: I think that was a big mistake. On the other hand, I’ve been thinking about that lately, and maybe it was good that they did sound off because I know that there are some bishops out there who think that way. If we’re really going to have transparency now, why are we afraid to discuss things when we have examples like this that makes it very clear that we are not with one another and when the bishops and the bishops issued, by way of a statement that it’s up to the bishop to do what he wants in his diocese. I was not in any position to say anything publicly. Since I’ve retired, the Archbishop here is the one who has to address those issues. I want to say, what do you mean Kerry. How about the million of Catholics voting for the Democratic platform. If you want to push this. They voted for a platform that was for abortion. It is the party to which the Catholics really gave historically. What are the issues and where do we legitimately find (unintelligible) and can we be big enough to accept it when (unintelligible) That’s one of the big problems for the bishops. It’s all part of another aspect of all this. That’s not a new phenomenon in the Church. We’ve seen it before and the Church responded. The Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent. In the Council of Trent it was the issue of Latin and the universal regulations for the liturgy. It was all about bringing us Catholics more together. I use this analogy for John Paul. When he became the Pope, he found a lot going on, a lot of experimentation and one of the things that he struggled with is that debate never ended. At some point you say the experiment is over. He found a whole arena out there and he gradually began to pull it back. The question then is, did he pull it too far? That leads to the other question of how much authority was exercised by the congregations. At what point does the congregation (?) I had one direct encounter on the liturgy and I got a mandate and I refused.
FC: Doesn’t the congregations exist to serve the bishop?
FH: We all do the same thing.
LS: You just said got a mandate and I refused. Why?
FH: They had no right to come to tell me about a liturgical regulation on the age of confirmation. That’s none of their business.
LS: One of the issues that is needed in terms of our decisions as church is that they need to be from a pastoral perspective. One of the things I hear you constantly bringing in is that pastoral dimension. It isn’t just what are the laws and regulations but what makes sense and what fits?
FH: I don’t like your distinction. Actually, if we can take our laws and, if we can apply all the laws to bear, we then learn what to do in a situation. When canon law first came in someone would open the book and say, “It says right here.” And I would say, turn 25 pages and see what it says there. That’s why you have canon lawyers, to explain why you have this law and that law and how are they reconciled.
LS: Sometimes, when there is a lot of tension, like at Dallas, sometimes you look for a simple solution, like zero tolerance. What I hear you saying is that we have to be open to a lot more complexity, all the differences and complexities that are out there and not rush to simple solutions. Would that be appropriate?
FH: Well, I wouldn’t say that. Dallas is not a good model because the thrust of it was to protect relationships. We dealt with whether or not we could reassign priests. That’s why I would have like to have had the Church deal with all that. For example, one of the things that hardly anything was said about was rehabilitation. We were sort of written off. We were not complimented because we used modern science, modern psychology, in depth understanding of human nature that we didn’t have before. We used all that and then no one really pushed to see how well did it work. I recall Fr Rosetti saying that something like 87% were fine. They went out. They were taken care of. The whole Church has to respond to that so that we don’t make a big mistake.
FC: The notion of the consultation, to me, in Dallas, seems to be a perfect example, if the consultation, as you described it had taken place, the results of what happened in Dallas would have been very different. I think zero tolerance wouldn’t have come out. I think the people would have warned the bishops against zero tolerance.
FH: We weren’t talking zero tolerance. That came later. We were talking about, one act and you’re out. A lot of this was to restore the trust of the bishops.
FC: Was some of it a reaction to the media, too? The consultation as you talked about it might have helped to learn how to handle it better than we did in the past.
FH: At least it would have helped to know what all of the people would be saying. We could not have answered it until a couple of years. We should, at least, have started something like that. There are too many other contingencies that come in. My own objection is that we started off on the wrong foot. We should have gone in and said, “We’ve sinned.” I proposed we have a public penitential service to begin the whole thing. We had a very good one at the end but very confidential. No one could be there except the bishops.
FC: You think how far that would have gone in terms of public perception.
FH: I think so.
FC: In terms of lay Catholics, I think that an awful lot of stuff that came after just wouldn’t have happened.
FH: At least it would have put it in a different context. My basic context about this whole thing is to use reconciliation as the basis for our response. If we had done that we could have done everything we had there but we did not come from who we are. We are charged with the mission of reconciliation. That’s why we exist as priests. That’s what Christ’s mandate was. We did not start from that basis.
FC: To go back to the consultation and persuasion role, you mentioned that you saw the general education of Catholics as a serious problem. Am I seeing this correctly in the ability to persuade, the ability to public witness.
FH: I use a lot of terms loosely, like public witness. People aren’t persuaded but what they see. If I say I’m going to persuade, I’ve already conditioned my approach. I have to say honestly to you, here’s what I see. Here’s the situation. I don’t like to use the word persuade, but if we’re going to leave room for the Holy Spirit. We should be open to that. Then I think we need a full-blown discussion and it may make things very difficult. Let me give you an example. We were not allowed as bishops to discuss mandatory celibacy. It was off the agenda. I’m not sure if the bishops all would have voted on it, even if it were on the agenda. We could not even raise the question. I had a very interesting experience with the Holy Father. During your ad limina visit you have a 15-minute time with him. It’s been a marvelous experience. I was thinking of what I wanted to say. He really doesn’t have to worry about Alaska when he has all the other states all over the world. So, I would always think, “So, what would I like to say to him.” What I said to him the last time I visited with him. There had been a lot written about mandatory celibacy. So I said to him, “I just want you to know that I support mandatory celibacy” or words to that effect. He said, “Thank you.” He almost never says anything. Here’s where I might get in trouble. I said, “I do think we should publicly discuss it because the only thing we hear is the adverse side.” If we had a full, public discussion I’d be out there saying why I’m convinced that this is a good decision, always admitting it could be changed. I’ve thought about this a lot. I’m sure they are worried about what the media would do with this and the turmoil it would cause. It could be a zoo. However, that’s who we are. Here’s who we are. To me it would be better to go through all that. I don’t think we would lose one thing. We have people who respect one another and acknowledge their basic differences. The celibacy is a good issue to do it with because it is strictly a disciplinary law. We already have married priests in the Eastern Rite. We ordain married priests. It would be a great discussion. It would give us an opportunity to talk about human sexuality and all things. It would be exciting.
FC: He wasn’t too receptive.
FH: Most of the time he doesn’t say anything. That’s why when he said thank you it surprised me. Actually I did that in conjunction with ordaining Scott Medlock, a Methodist minister. He had gone to Notre Dame and married a girl from Notre Dame. He was in the Methodist church and he joined the Methodist ministry. He went down to Duke University and got his degree there. He wrote to Ted Hesburgh and basically said he would like to become a Catholic and wanted to be a priest. Ted contacted me and I put in the request. He was pastor of a Methodist church.
TAPE 2
FC: So many of the Church seem to focus on human sexuality and our understanding of human sexuality, the Augustinian approach to human sexuality. Sometimes I just wish that could be an area of consultation and go to the lived experience.
FH: (Unintelligible) I would say we still need a lot of education.
(Unintelligible. Concerning the poor and social services)
I think we have a long way to. Part of the problem is how much do I have to identify with the poor. We are not all called to be St. Francis. The moment I say that am I being defensive? I have to ask myself whether I am really being honest. I don’t have the call to be St. Francis or Mother Teresa. A lot of people can do that. How much do we seek out the poor? I directly relate this to the social justice question. You can’t confront poverty without realizing that there is a social just question involved in this too. That points our how important the issues of the economy are.
FC: The Pope reminded us of that many times. It’s a teaching with some of his strongest supporters continually look past. I think it was in New York the first time when he talked about consumerism, coming to grips with consumerism, clearly telling us that we consume too much. That goes to a deeper social problem, too, what we think we need to be happy. Consumerism isn’t the answer. We think it is.
FH: There are so many interrelated aspects, worship, the spiritual life, prayer life. You can hardly give up one of them without affecting the others. If you really take the liturgy as the word of the Lord and what Christ did…
FC: Then the dismissal rite takes on real meaning, go forth and…
FH: That’s why so many of your parishes try to give people opportunities to do something. The parish has been a marvelous structure in the Church in the United States. I would add to that the Catholic school. Andrew Greeley did a marvelous social analysis of that for the Catholic Church and for the bishops.
FC: On the other hand in a way it presented a laity to the hierarchy that it’s ill equipped to deal with.
FH: What do you mean by that?
FC: I don’t think a generation of Church leaders went to great lengths to provide education opportunities. Now we have an educated laity and they can’t be treated the same way that they were in that earlier generation, that is told this is how it is and this is how it has to be. I think that’s what you’re speaking to when you say let’s engage them and hear what everyone has to say. I think you’re different in that respect. You’re comfortable engaging people and bringing them in to help make an informed decision. You’re reserving your right as the bishop to make the final decision but you are trying to make an informed decision.
FH: Ideally, you don’t get to the final decision by yourself.
FC: When people are consulted and listened to, then they take ownership.
FH: Yes.
FC: Do the bishops talk about this?
(There is a large part here that is unintelligible.)
FH: One thing the Pope did is to pick some themes and proclaim them everywhere. When he would travel, you would ask who are all these people on the streets cheering and clapping when the Pope goes by. Probably 90% of them are against birth control but “He’s our Pope.” They’re crying when he dies. Why was he so acclaimed by the world? (Unintelligible.) So, how do we get our principles out there in a way that people understand them?
FC: You made a very interesting distinction a while ago and you said that it was an issue of discipline. I forget what issue it way.
FH: Celibacy. It’s strictly a disciplinary law, like eating meat on Friday.
FC: As opposed to a doctrinal.
FH: Yes. It’s not the divinity of Christ.
FC: One of the things that was annoying me when the Pope died and the new Pope was elected, they were talking about the hard line on doctrinal questions, like birth control and celibacy. As I was thinking, “No, no, no.”
FH: We’re fighting the power of the press. I’ve had a good relationship with the press.
(Break)
FH: I just assumed that the issues that the Archdiocesan committee would raise were issues that they had in their parish and with their pastors and the people. But, they weren’t. Those who were quote, liberal were saying we should be out there doing this or that. It took me a while to catch on.
LS: There’s a wonderful principle in family therapy called triangulation. When person A has a problem with person B they try to get C to take care of it. Then it never gets resolved. I think before the break you were beginning to break open for us that we need to look at the parish in a new way. That will depend on looking at the specific roles of people in the parish. The thing that came across most strongly to me is that the priest really must focus on the Eucharist. There needs to be someone else, who is trained, to be the community organizer and pulling the community together. Right now, those roles are in one person, the pastor. Maybe we have to begin thinking differently.
FH: With that became the role of the pastor as the ultimate father of the parish. It leaves things open ended with possible role conflict.
LS: Let me just see if I can summarize for myself. I was struck by the fact that you never had a simplistic answer for any question. You showed how you have to bring in the wisdom from many different places and consider many different principles. I also heard you saying that there needs to be a transparency. We have to be open about what’s going on and we have to talk about what’s going on. I also want to comment on how you combine the both/and. We have to accept the wisdom of what is the Church and what is our heritage but also be open to look at other possibilities. You also said that there are certain basic principles that are absolutely essential and that what we do must flow from those principles, whether it is forgiveness or whatever. It would be helpful if we clearer on the essence of who we are and what we believe. And, ultimately the bishop has responsibility and when all is said and done he has to act.
FH: And, what are the principles that should be operative? Not, necessarily, what solutions can you provide, but how do you convey the principles that need to be operative.
LS: Those where some of the things that I heard. Were there other things that you wanted to emphasize?
FH: The Bishops Conference has lost a lot of its role and position of leadership because so many things are being decided by congregations. Congregations should be consultative. You hear members of the conference saying, “I wasn’t consulted. That’s not what I would have said.” There is a tendency to pull everything to the center, which is called for because we have a lot of scattered things out there. We have a good example of how necessary that strong center is, such as the Episcopalians who are trying to stay alive but they have no one center to go to. That’s a plus for us to have that. Now, how do we hold subsidiarity of the conference? That has been pulled more and more back to Rome. I also think we made an egregious mistake by going to Rome with the sexual abuse problem. That should have been handled by the bishops in the United States. Solve our own problems. Time did it. Dan Rather did it. Companies like Enron and their problem with their ceo, is something they are solving themselves. It has to be more than just them. I raised that at the Dallas meeting. I asked, “Why did you go to Rome?” The conference has no authority. The only way that they are brought together and get a response and would be to commit everybody (unintelligible)
The Cardinals came back, the Cardinals were part of the problem, and said that the Pope said there is no room for anyone in the priesthood for anyone who has abused a youngster. I agree.
LS: You said before that the principle they were working from is that you have to protect the child, but it doesn’t bring in the other principles of forgiveness, reconciliation, etc.
FH: All the action was focused on the priest who had to be removed in order to protect the children. We have sin in the world. Historically, we’ve gone through this in the Church a number of times. If there is no reconciliation, then we have to deal with all these things. Reconciliation brings in everything. It could have addressed everything. Ultimately, you have to say the victim and abuser have to be reconciled.
LS: Anything else you want to add?
FH: You’ve got to get all those young people but don’t invite them to join an organization. Everyone starts a house of formation. What would happen if instead we started an Institute for Vocations to the Priesthood in some university or school?
FC: Like a discernment place.
FH: No. It would be a place to get my education. I would major in vocation
to the priesthood. Again, this is how I start wild ideas. I could go to
the university and get a degree. Does a vocation go with it? Maybe yes,
maybe no. It would be a very fascinating thing. They do it for business,
art, etc. They have institutes for law, medicine, etc. It would be an institute
that would focus on vocations and even as narrow as just the priesthood,
rather than to expand it to everyone else. It’s kind of a center that
Notre Dame would do. Someone could go there and take major courses and get
a degree that could be used for anything. As I said, don’t invite
them to join an organization or go to a house of formation. I thought of
doing it here but I didn’t have the money or personnel to do it or
I probably would have tried it. In a house of formation you might have two
guys there and that’s costly. The two guys who might be questionable
to begin with even though their good guys. Others have closed their formation
houses down. Also, you don’t have community when you only have two
or three fellows. We have a young enthusiastic, energetic guy who’s
running the formation house here. He’ll do a good job with what he’s
doing but we have a whole mass of people out there. If you say come to a
house of formation, it’s like saying you have a vocation, so go to
the seminary.
We established a chair at the University of Alaska. It hasn’t quite
gotten off yet because we don’t have a religious partner as such.
Nevertheless, it’s there. It’s all the future. There’s
real potential for the future.
LS: The way I’ve heard people describe you is as a doer. You see the possibilities and you get involved with the Commonwealth or anyone else where you see possibilities. I think it says something to us about the type of leadership needed in the Church.
FC: Also luck.
FH: The university thing is interesting. I was asked to come to a meeting. They had lost their accreditation. It’s now Alaska Pacific University. It was closed down for a year. Others were trying to resurrect it. They had lost everything. The first thing they had to do is to qualify to have loans with the federal government. So the federal government sent somebody out here and told them to go out and meet with the Archbishop. I had worked in Washington for many years. So, they invited me to be a part of it. A committee of three came from the Department of Education. One of the members of the committee was someone I knew. He was a former Sulpician priest. He sat next to me and said, “What’s really going on here?” I said, “Just go home and say yes.”
FC: That’s what I mean by luck.
LS: But, you also engaged them. This is an unrelated question. You’ve been in Alaska for thirty-six years. One of things that seems to be happening in the Church in the US today is that bishops seem to get changed a lot. Do you have any thoughts on that?
FH: I think, right now, the position I would take is that they ought to be changed pretty often. I can see it in myself. You reach a point where I could sense it wasn’t the same. You don’t get new ideas. It was easy to go from Juneau up to here. I was ready to move, mostly because I was frustrated. There wasn’t much to do. There was a lot to do. There was nothing when I went there. Nevertheless, how long should a bishop be in a place? Forever? That’s the extreme. I would say it would be a good thing to look at this as a possibility. In the overall picture I would say it should be something like the rotation of pastors. If you have your Church well set up and if there is some understanding of what needs to be done. It’s comparable to pastors. You’re father and all that kind of thing. I find myself moving up with the older generation and that became my major contact. The new Archbishop already has others and that’s healthy. A lot of them I know but I’ve never engaged them.
LS: You talked before about engaging laity. Is there anyway they could or should be more engaged in the selection of bishops.
FH: Yes. When I look back and see how they appointed me. The only ones consulted were the other bishops. When Jardot came in he started consulting everybody. That upset a lot of bishops. He was asking a lot of questions of a lot of people. When I was at the Bishops’ Conference Archbishop Jardot would send stuff over to me and it would be that so and so is proposing so and so as a bishop. What do you think?
I believe this too. A bishop should be committed to staying wherever he is appointed. Don’t accept a diocese unless you are willing to die there. There is something to longevity.
LS: The reason I ask is that you go to some dioceses and because there has been so much changes of bishops that the priests say that they are not going to worry about what the bishop says because they believe he’ll be gone soon. It undermines what’s happening in the diocese.
FH: When I came to Juneau I put in why it should exist as a diocese. It was true but there was also some self-interest in it. I said as long as it’s not a diocese no one is ever going to come. I said I’d stay. It’s sort of an emotional thing; you go back and forth on it. I do feel that a bishop should be willing to stay where he is appointed.
FC: That reveals an attitude of commitment, as opposed to, “well I’ll do the job here so that I’ll be considered elsewhere.”
FH: We’ve had examples of that.
FC: Peggy Steinfel. Bishops should be from their own diocese.
FH: When you take a diocese this size, there isn’t that much talent for bishop when you are looking for certain qualities.
FC: I spent my early adulthood in Vermont. It’s a small diocese. There is limited talent. The bishop who was there when I was there was great, Robert Joyce. After he retired they brought in someone from outside.
FH: There were some guys in parishes that I made sure I moved them.
LS: Bishop Kenny of Juneau showed me a letter where he told a parish that the priest they had had volunteered to be there for three years. He said that he didn’t think the man was good for the parish. He said I don’t have anyone to replace him and I won’t let him stay. He said that it’s more important that you build a community. He told them he would get someone to say Mass whenever he could. It’s the question you mentioned before that you asked the people in one parish, “Is any priest better than no priest?”
FH: What I would have done differently is to not tell the people. Mike was very much more into transparency. That’s a positive thing. I would also add confidentiality. Everybody appreciates confidentiality. In my home that was very clear: outside this home you tell nothing about what goes on in the home. We should be addressing that. How far do you go? The reason I would not announce certain things to people is that I know which groups start raising hell. It’s like SNAP. They criticize everything that’s coming out of Rome.