University of Notre Dame

Institute for Church Life

The Council of Elders:
Tapping the Wisdom of the Vatican II Archbishops

Transcript of the Meeting at the University of Notre Dame
August 14-16, 2006

Participants

Archbishop Peter Gerety, Retired Archbishop of Newark (PG)
Archbishop Francis Hurley, Retired Archbishop of Anchorage (FH)
Msgr. Francis Seymour, Observer, Archdiocese of Newark, Archivist (FS)
Mr. Frank Cunningham, member of project team (FC) (not present on 16th)
Sr. Carroll Juliano, SHCJ, member of project team (CJ)
Bro. Loughlan Sofield, S.T., member of project team (LS)

(Msgr. Seymour accompanied Archbishop Gerety to the meeting. There have been minor editorial changes in the transcript for the sake of clarity. Since you were unable to attend the meeting, Archbishops Gerety and Hurley would appreciate and feedback that you would like to contribute. You can do so by writing Loughlan Sofield or calling him at 301-277-7442.)

PG: (prayer) In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father we ask you to come amongst us and enlighten our minds so that we will see clearly what we are about to do. Strengthen our will so we will have the courage to speak up and express ourselves for the love of the Church. I ask you to direct our deliberation this morning, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

LS: As you can see we are being taped. We can eliminate or erase anything from the tapes that we want. I want you to be free to talk about anything. Before anything would be made public, you would have a chance to review the transcript and edit it. I thought we could begin by identifying some of the areas that you would like to talk about. Ultimately, what do we want to share with people? Using the summary sheet of what we heard from all six Archbishops, what are some of the areas you would like to talk about, develop, sharpen, or give sharper focus? We are not constrained by what is there.

PG: There is a quotation here by John Paul II about structural change. He’s talking about the body of the Church. He talks about governance. What I think we’re talking about in these discussions is how to both involve the whole body of the Church, bringing in the talents and all of the gifts of all the baptized, while at the same time safeguarding and maintaining a meaningful hierarchical structure.

LS: You say meaningful. What do you have in mind?

PG: I’m not a canon lawyer but I don’t think that canon law supports the full involvement of the laity. It’s all voluntary. It depends on the charismatic leadership of pastors, bishops or any other leaders. As I understand it there is no real obligation under canon law to involve anybody.

FH: When you say that I think of law as a guide for what we’re doing but it’s used by some as the gospel for what must be done.

PG: Absolutely.

FH: Anytime I see an article that says, “canon law says, therefore, we must do this” I get skeptical. But, I have not worked as a canonist or in a chancery.

PG: Neither have I.

FH: I think it is a mistake to start with canon law. We talk about a structure and involving the people. Canon law is like our civil law. You start with the situation you want to address and the things you think should be done, then you test it against the law

PG: That touches on something I’ve been thinking. Even if the law is there, it won’t work unless you have what Paul VI called a change in attitude. We’re talking about a vision of the Church in which we are all convinced of the direction in which we should be going in order to involve the body of the Church in the governance of the Church and tapping the gifts of the people. Priests and bishops have to really believe what’s necessary to be done and do it. The canons should support it.

FH: The first question is whether this is consistent with the Gospel? The Gospel is similar to the United States constitution. Canon law is like civil law. The two set the framework for actions.

FC: May I make two quick observations. First, my understanding is that there is a tremendous difference between Roman law and common English law and I think that often causes problems. We tend to look at canon law in the same way that we look at English common law and that is case laws are something for every situation. My understanding of the Roman law is that it is the broad principles and then you try to work within those broad principles.

PG: That’s the reason why we have dispensations all over the place.

FC: The second thing that might be useful is to read the exact words on that commitment to creating better structures. Creating better structures of governance is not the entire statement. The entire statement is very interesting. This is from John Paul II. “A commitment to creating better structures of participation, consultation and shared responsibility should not be misunderstood as a concession to secular, democratic model of governance but as an intrinsic requirement of the exercise of episcopal authority and the necessary means of strengthening that authority.”

PG: Exactly. He’s talking about convincing ourselves. That’s what has to be done.

FH: That reflects Pope John XXIII at the council. “We will persuade, not mandate.” That was what he said was the general approach he was taking when he announced the council. Yes, we must be convinced and persuade on the basis of convictions.

LS: That’s one area we would want to address. What are the other areas you would like to look at?

PG: I think what you are asking is to spell out the general headings

LS: Definitely. I just want to know what the other issues are. Our time is limited. We want to make sure that we give at least a little time to any of the things you think are important and give the major time to what is most important. What are some of the others areas that you want to make sure that we do talk about?

PG: To me, the key word in this whole business in tapping gifts is collegiality.

LS: Which also comes under that whole structural area.

FH: It’s more than that. Collegiality carries more the motivation and conviction. With that is the whole area of subsidiarity. Collegiality and subsidiarity are both expressions of the same thing.

PG: If the relationship with the primacy and the bishops was really founded upon a vision of collegiality of the Church, involving everybody and truly involving them, I think a lot of our problems would find some good solutions. From what I read about the synods, they are pretty much controlled eventually by the curia. The curia are extremely cautious about letting anybody really get out there and express himself. When people do express themselves, which I guess has happened at the synods, the final statement doesn’t reflect, in every respect, what was said. That’s a complaint that I’ve heard from practically everybody that’s been at these things.

FS: Look at the Vatican Council. The curia wanted to set the whole agenda for it. Cardinal Lianart and a few others protested and thanks to John XXIII they changed the whole thing in the very beginning.

PG: Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. At the council the bishops were the ones who wrote the documents and then received the assent of the Holy Father and some criticism from him once in awhile. At the synods that’s not what happens. They have a long discussion but then the Pope composes a report on what was said, his response. I believe that that’s the opposite of what collegiality would be.

FH: I make a difference between consulting and engaging. I get a lot of advice from people and then decide whether I want that advice and how I’m going to use it. If you engage people, the difference to me is that together we decide what should be done. Together we arrive at the conclusion.

PG: The way it seems to work is that when you get to the point of making a decision the bishops go home and the curia makes the final decision.

FH: Yes. Were you at the meeting in 88 or 89 when the Holy Father called all the Archbishops of the US?

PG: No, I wasn’t there.

FH: That’s too bad. We were all called over there and the Pope wanted to hear from us.

PG: That’s not a bad idea.

FH: It was following the existing system of the Archbishop or Bishops of a province or diocese. A structure for consultation would be the province, the Archbishop and the Bishops. The Archbishop is the moral leader, not a jurisdictional leader.

PG: He’s not a commander.

FH: No, far from that. He’s not a chief either. We had a meeting scheduled for all of us before we went into our first session. I, and many others, would caucus and talk about the things we would like to say. Then we were instructed by the Holy See, through Archbishop May not to discuss anything concerning the meeting with the Pope. We could not get together to talk about that.

PG: Even among yourselves?

FH: Even among ourselves. We began wondering what we were here for. We got our instructions about what time we were having lunch, etc., but we couldn’t talk about the issues. I’m convinced that they were reacting to a previous situation when we had one of these consultations with the bishops over in Rome. We were to spend a month there. There were about ninety of us at the one I went to. For convenience sake they scheduled the ad limina visits with the Pope and dichasteries while we were there in Rome. We caucused before we went in to visit the dichasteries. This killed a couple of the Cardinals. They had never heard of anything like this. I remember Bishop Tom Conley, of Baker, Oregon, going after someone. We went to visit a Cardinal at the Liturgy office. This was also the time when the Archbishop of Nebraska had this Brown series on sex education and that was a very controversial thing. So we had a caucus. We went in loaded for bear and the questions that would come up. They did not like that at all. Once the Bishops started question, they would introduce a number of points. I’m sure that when we went into the meeting the agenda was all set. The format was that there would be speaker from the curia and then one bishop selected to speak on behalf of the group to whatever the subject was. Then, they would open the floor to comments, not discussion. You could tell the Pope whatever you thought about something. That part was good and the Pope was there for most of it and he listened. He always listened carefully, but as you say, once you walk out the door, that’s the end of it. You don’t know if it’s every going to be used or thought about again. It was a variation on the synod.

PG: It was a little switch, I noticed, when the new Cardinals met with the new Holy Father. He let them discuss in that meeting, which was a big change. The question is, now, what happens?

FH: That was a major step forward. My hope is that as he goes along that he will continue to do that. The point you make is that the bishops and priests have to be motivated to take that approach.

PG: Whoever is the Archbishop in the province or in the diocese has to be willing to listen to people who disagree with him. That’s why they are having a discussion. We’re used to that in this country. That’s one of the things about the United States and our conference. I believe that we really have some great discussions.

LS: Are you saying this is something that has to exist at every level of the Church? We’re talking right now about Rome but there needs to be an opportunity, as you said before, regarding all the gifts of the laity. What are the structures, or the governance, where people are going to feel engaged, going to feel listened to?

FH: I'd like to raise a different tack on this. We’re talking about engagement of the laity. The first thing is that a whole lot of them don’t want to be engaged. That’s a given, even educated people. Or, they say, I have enough problems in my own house. I don’t want to get into all these things that you are concerned about. The other thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about is the new immigrants coming into this country and the whole cultural mix. I would like to see our laity involved in, or engaged in, contact with the Catholic and non-Catholic immigrants. The culture is out there. If our lay people go out and take care of the culture, that would be a type of engagement that would be much more valuable than telling us how to organize the youth programs. I don’t know quite what I mean by this. It’s not clear in my own mind. You read so much now about culture. I don’t know if you’ve read Tom Freidman’s book, “The World is Flat.” It’s an interesting concept. I’ve been trying to relate it to Church. If the world is flat for business and for government, then the world is flat for the Church. “Flat” meaning that with hi-tech communications we can conduct business - and other items, from remote places. You could be making a reservation on an airplane and be talking to India.

LS: You were starting to say what the implications for the Church are?

FH: The implications for the Church are that a lot of who we are and what we do is effected by the culture of the people. We have a culture in the United States. We are living with materialism. That conditions, to a certain extent, what we do. I was thinking of the foreigners coming in. We’re arguing about the borders, and the Mexican’s coming across, and English as the first language and the language for everybody. That’s us telling them what they have to do if they want to be here. If you could turn it around another way and say, “What can I learn from these new people coming in?” “What do they bring?” I think, for instance, with the Hispanics, we could learn about liturgy. We have a brand new Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and I’ve been there a couple of times and I find the same old American songs. We have a lot of Filipinos and the whole concept of family is very much a part of them

PG: The same thing is true with the blacks. They have their own culture in this country. I’ve never forgotten – I was with them for 24 years. The first years, this was before the council, of course, we were using the old hymns and everything else that we were using in the Irish parishes. When the movement started to bring in the gospel singers and the spirituals and adapt all our liturgical texts to those tunes, it was very interesting to see the change in these people. At first they acted as if they had left all that stuff behind. A couple of them said that to me. Before you know it, they are right in there. If I go back to my old parish amongst the blacks now, they are bopping all over the place.

PG: It’s true. The media picks and chooses certain things and ignores certain things and people think that’s the reality. Many years ago Bishop Francis, our late auxiliary, raised hell with Bill Cosby. His show was supposed to be a typical American black family but he said to Cosby, “you never mention a word about going to church. Black people go to church. You never bring that up in any of your shows.” Cosby said, “Well, I guess we don’t.” If you look at that show you would think that black people never go to church because it’s never brought up.

FH: I saw a review in the New York Times, New Faces of Christianity by a fellow named Jenkins. His basic question is what does Christianity look like? He asks what does Christianity look like with the blacks and how does their culture effect our understanding of Christianity. “I am a Christian but I am from this particular culture.” This is somewhat different than how the Irish or Italians look at it.

LS: Did you finish off what you started off saying? You started off talking about engagement and how we relate it to culture. I think what you were starting to say sounds like it isn’t that we should be telling people to come in and we’ll tell you everything you should be doing. I thought what you were asking is how do we get people to engage with the culture?

FH: Engage with the people by recognizing their culture as one of the riches of the community. We have a culture. In every culture there are problems as well as positives. In terms of evangelization and in terms of people being engaged with others who are not Catholic, the meeting ground is where they meet in their cultural activities. That’s where our Catholics should have a sensitivity to reflecting the gospel, even what we teach. Say here’s where we are and here’s what we teach.

PG: You frequently hear that we have to be a welcoming Church. There’s more to it than that. It’s really a question of not just welcoming these people, but welcoming their culture and welcoming their way of doing things and trying to understand them. That requires a change of attitude for a lot of people in this country.

LS: This issue of attitude has come up quite a bit. How does the attitude have to change and how do we go about doing that?

FH: I think it’s going to happen. I think there’s an element here of encouraging our people to mix with people and not stay apart from them. That gets to this whole perennial situation where the Irish like to be together and the Blacks like to be together. That’s fine. But, if they live in isolation, that’s when the problems come up. If we could encourage the mixing of the cultures. Our challenge is how do we keep the sense of the Church alive in our people as they go through all this. Take how we deal with our legislators. That’s a culture too, of passing laws. It has been said that a Catholic can’t vote for a senator who’s for abortion. That whole phenomenon, to me, was sort of being removed from the legislative process and the culture in which our legislators live when they are trying to be political, trying to reflect their own people. As we went through all that, my reaction was that time must be spent with the politicians to understand their problem.

PG: I’m sure you must have seen the goodbye talk that Cardinal McCarrick gave to the congressmen and women. He got them all together as sort of a farewell party when he was resigning. It was a terrific talk. He understood their situation. It was not confrontational, but at the same time he tried to urge upon them some sense of how, as Christians, they should approach their problems and not just put religion aside. It was a fantastic talk. I wrote him a letter to tell him. It was in Origins.

FH: There was also a criticism of McCarrick, how he handled this whole voting issue.

FS: George Weigel did quite a column on it a few weeks ago.

PG: He wrote a letter to those places that published what Weigel said, giving Weigel the dickens for not really interpreting properly what he said. Weigel is very, very conservative.

FS: Weigel complained that Cardinal McCarrick was being a centrist and Weigel gave extreme examples of one side or the other and then asked, “Cardinal would you approve of this?” Obviously, he wouldn’t. Cardinal McCarrick often used the example of when the Pope came to Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark. He walked down the middle aisle. They wanted to put a cope on him and a miter and a crosier. He said, “No, no, no. I can’t do that.” This way I can walk down the aisle and extend my hands to both sides, which he did, just wearing a cassock. Cardinal McCarrick has often used this example of what we should be doing, walking down the middle. You don’t have to be walking down the right or the left. Weigel tore him apart for that. Cardinal McCarrick didn’t quite say that it was yellow journalism. He came very close to accusing Weigel of being very insensitive. He wrote a great response to him.

FC: Could I explore the notion of what you mentioned before about the world being flat. Were you talking about the sense that the Church needs to catch up with the rest of the world to be aware of the all the changes, including the cultural ones that are going on in the world? I’m interjecting my own opinion here. Sometimes I think we’re in blissful isolation from what’s going on in the rest of the world.

FH: I guess I don’t talk about it that way. I guess I’d say the fact is that our people are out there. This world is flat and there is much more mixing together in all kinds of fields, like higher education. Our people are there, so how do we motivate them and do whatever we can to enable them to share their Catholic culture with the others and confront the problems that come their way. The Muslims are one of the best examples we have of a real challenge to our country. They come in with a very definite idea of what they want.

PG: I would say that we’ve always catching up. When Pope John XXIII called the council he said, “We want to have agornimento,” which means catching up, and bringing things up to date, so that we can talk to the culture that we’re in. Even this business of discussing ways of involving this whole body. It’s adapting. It’s enculturation. It’s all these ways that people think and we’re trying to profit by it.

LS: Is that what you meant when you talked about how do we get all those gifts that are out there?

PG: Yes. We have a culture of dialog in this country. We have a culture of the democratic way of doing things. Now, it’s constantly said by certain people, “Well, the Church is not a democracy.” That’s true. The Church wasn’t originally a monarchy either. We always reflect the culture in which we find ourselves. We’re always catching up. Changes happen and we have to adapt to them. One of the things about the holy, Roman, Catholic Church is that she tends to be very conservative; she preserves the faith. There are always new challenges when things start changing as to how we’re going to present the Church to our people and to the world. We’re catching up. We’re always going on agornimento.

FH: It’s a constant requirement. John the Baptist says reform. Christ said reform.

PG: Luther said reform.

FH: So, the whole idea of reformation relative to sin and everything else is an ongoing challenge to every good thing that’s happened. To be able to accept the grace of God we have to reform ourselves.

PG: Here’s something that I think we have to keep in mind: the Church isn’t a democracy and the Church isn’t a monarchy. The Church always reflects the situation in which she is. For instance, it would never have occurred to the early people in the Church that they were going to have a pope who was a single monarchy. Why did that happen? It happened for many historic reasons. All during the Middle Ages, people would not have understood what you were talking about if you had talked to them about the American democracy. They had kings and so the governance of the Church reflected it. Here we are in a situation in the United States and a lot of other western countries where we have democracy and we have parliaments and everything else. Inevitably, in our thinking we have to reflect that.

LS: What would that look like?

PG: There’s a tension in the Church, which is necessary to keep in mind. We have the hierarchical structure of the Church, which has been laid down by the Lord, Himself and the challenge is how to involve the body in that without losing the hierarchical structure and the decision-making that flows from that. That’s where the tension is. It’s always been there. It’s exacerbated by the growth of constitutional democracy in which people are constantly expressing their ideas. This is something new. We have the only monarchy which really amounts to anything and it is the Pope. It reflects the situation at the time of the Protestant Reformation in which concentration took place, necessarily, in order to preserve the ability to preach the faith. There were all sorts of things happening and the Church reacted. As a result we have a juridical state of mind that came about because of that, in which there is a concentration of the power in the church and a downplaying of what the bishops should be doing. For instance, in Rome we’re told that the Bishop’s conferences don’t have any real doctrinal power and if they are going to make statements, they’ve got to be totally unanimous. That’s the first time that ever happened in the history of the Church. Even in General Councils that never happens but that’s what we’re told. If we had dialogued about that, that would never have been laid down as a principle.

FH: That’s a case in which if we did dialog about it, especially in public, the controversy would be out there for everyone to see. Sometimes I think that’s a healthy thing. When we talk about democracy people think that means you ultimately end up voting. Democracy also talks about being with the people and listening to the people. All the successful politicians are responding to the people and then they take what they learned and put it into legislation that is supposed to be consistent with the constitution. This is the same thing for ourselves. What we put in or what we start must be reflective of the gospels.

PG: That, of course, is one of the elements that sort of tempers democracy. We have the faith. You don’t vote on faith. What we do is we inculcate the faith in the minds and hearts of people. Or rather we strengthen and fill out the faith that they already have in their hearts and minds because of their baptism and the instruction they have received at the local level.

FC: Is it impossible to replace or lose the current hierarchical model, which is a monarchy and replace it with another hierarchical model that would be more workable in this culture?

PG: I think monarchy is a loaded term. It’s a political term. Sometimes we do talk about the Pope being the last single monarch in the world. That’s not really a good term. The Pope is the successor of Peter. He has universal jurisdiction and he has the position as the final teaching authority. He’s a man filled with faith too. When he meets with the bishops he doesn’t treat us as underlings. He does treat us as brothers. Church means that we are a body and we are brothers and sisters of the Lord. We may reflect political structures but they are not totally what should be the model for the governance of the Church.

CJ: How would you see it actually changing? How could it change?

PG: I think it’s in the process of changing. I think that Vatican II brought into the Church a tremendous reform movement. It’s been going on. What we’ve been talking about is tapping the talents of the people. This must reflect the current of reform.

CJ: Do you see the structure changing?

PG: That’s the big question. How do you go about that? As Archbishop Hurley is saying, and as Pope Paul VI talked about, a change in attitude is the key to the whole thing. It will develop to the extent that it reflects the faith and the existence of the great body of people that are all the baptized, the brothers and sisters in the Lord. There was a conference that involved Archbishop Wuerl when he was still in Pittsburgh. It included Peter Steinfels and a few other people. Archbishop Wuerl said we’ve got to develop what is already there and I agree with him. We’ve got to develop such things as parish councils and pastoral councils. They are not effective yet. Based on our good theology and faith we, as priests, bishops and laity have to develop and attitude that seeks to tap the talents of the people in the best way possible. These structures have been urged by the council, and the Pope’s recommendation was that we should try to make them work and really make them effective. If you have large numbers of priests and bishops who are convinced that these councils are a threat to their authority, they will never work. A lot of us were formed in pre-Vatican II and it will take a long time to change.

FH: I was thinking of what you’re saying there. There are people indicating ways in which they would like to function as part of the Church. They don’t react to the Church the way you or I did growing up. The kids now are totally different in terms of the necessity of authority and the use of authority, but it’s all there. They’re not influenced a lot by the things that influenced us. I see priorities. I’ve already asked a few priests here about the volunteer programs that are going on. We have a lot of volunteers here. In the past they went into the convent or the priesthood. Now they’re into all the secular organizations. I think that’s good. Our Catholic social services in Anchorage had only one Catholic on a staff of about thirty. One Catholic! All of them were taking care of the poor. Our director is not a Catholic. She said, “Well, I saw what you were doing here. I liked it. That’s why I came.”

PG: That’s what we’re talking about. This has been going on for a couple of generations. I was reading an article about it the other day. It was by a Frenchman. It was about what’s happened to sin. We love to say that the people have lost their sense of sin. That’s no analysis. The fact of the matter is that the whole attitude toward this catechetical enumeration toward sins has lost its meaning. They talk about their relationship with Almighty God. We were always in this juridical state of mind. You made a list of sins: I did this two times, and so forth, a laundry list. It never seemed to develop that notion of relationships. It was there. After all, it was a question of standing before your Almighty God but it tended to be sort of a laundry list. That’s not the way people look at it today.

FH: I can remember trying to figure out some sin to confess. You can’t go in and not confess anything.

PG: People say I missed Mass. The question is why did you do that? Was it so important? We used to say that to miss Mass on Sunday was a mortal sin. Three quarters of our people never thought that. It was the laundry list.

LS: It sounds like you’ve identified some foundation blocks, such as the gospel, good theology, and the faith.

PG: Relationships are what is important. People today tend to think much more of religion as relationship with Almighty God. They don’t think of someone commanding from on high, saying you’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that.

LS: I was talking with Basil Pennington before I went to give a presentation. When I asked him what he would talk about I was sure he was going to say centering prayer and he said relationships.

PG: People think that way nowadays.

FH: Take what Benedict said in his first encyclical. The opening pages are powerful. I’ve been working with those a lot. When he talked about love that threw the reporters off. They didn’t know how to handle that. He didn’t issue condemnations. When he got into eros and agape he began to treat it as a relationship and an attraction that grows to a commitment. He lists a number of relationships, to your neighborhood, to your work, and on down the line, and ultimately to one’s relationship to God. The one that stands out among all the others is the relationship of a husband and wife and how the relationship between the two of them together strengthens their love of God. In our culture, if you’re a priest or a nun, that’s considered a special vocation to God. That’s why we’re put on a pedestal because we give ourselves to the Lord. When Benedict goes through his list, he places the married couple in the prime place.

PG: That’s a big switch.

FH: That gets back to the council. The council had a tremendous impact and it’s not going to be lost. We’re going to have a whole new generation dealing with it and implementing it. That’s very important. That’s one of the things about both John Paul and Benedict; they both said they completely support the council in terms of what it’s about. How you apply it is left it open to a lot of questions but that always happens.

PG: Do you remember the letter that Phil Murnion sent to all the bishops? He said, “Dialog, dialog, dialog!” We’ve got to talk to one another. We’ve got to develop relationships with one another. It’s a little different from this political structure.

LS: It goes back to what you said before, to persuade, not mandate.

FH: John XXIII said that right from the start of the council.

LS: If these are the building blocks, good theology, faith, relationships, dialog, if the tension is we have to find a way to involve all the gifts of the laity and maintain the hierarchical aspects of the Church, how do we go about doing that? I think you began to give some clues to it as you were talking. You talked about the fact that the world is flat and that one of the great influences is the cultures. There was a variety of ways in which you talked about the cultures; it’s not just the cultures of a certain country but also a wider concept of culture, like a culture of politicians. How do you bring all of this into the new world? You said part of this is listening. Part of this is attitudes. Part of this is developing structures. What would you recommend?

FH: The key has to be the attitude. Do we trust our people to preserve the culture and the faith?

PG: That’s the key word, the trust. In dialog you have to trust.

LS: And what prevents the trust from happening?

PG: Fear.

FH: Lack of knowledge, power, security.

PG: An example would be the attitude of the curia that you were talking about when you couldn’t even talk about what you were talking about. That’s fear.

FH: Fear that we can’t handle it. And a lack of trust.

PG: And a lack of trust based on fear.

FH: You know the columnist, Cal Thomas? He wrote a column recently. He touched on trust. He was relating more to government and Bush. He said the number one element of trust is to trust somebody. We keep saying we should trust the laity. Well, trust them. He said that’s the greatest thing that can be done in terms of developing trust.

LS: (speaking to PG) You said it when we did the interview with you. You said you gathered together a group of business people and they came up with a solution different than the one you would have come up with. Is that true?

PG: Sure.

LS: You said if I asked them to come and I asked them for their input and I did something different, that would be crazy.

LS: This is about relationship. People don’t trust unless there’s a relationship.

PG: That’s right. You have to respect these men and women, respect their talents.

LS: Take this beyond your single situation. If the Church is going to have the power and influence to implement the gospel, and it’s going to be done by a variety of people, primarily the laity as we move into the future, then there needs to be a way of building relationships that ultimately lead to trust.

PG: The thing that has always astonished me – I’ve had a great deal of experience on this, is getting people together to bring solutions to bear on the problems. I’m always astonished at their willingness to get together once you show your trust. They’ll work their heads off to support you.

LS: So, what does that say to us as a Church?

FS: You have to be open. One of the things that Archbishop Gerety did was reveal the state of our finances. We never knew what that was before. As a matter a fact some years ago when Cardinal Krol was starting a papal foundation I heard him say that he told the people in Rome that if you want help, then tell us what you need and tell us the problems. If you keep that a secret, no one is going to contribute. If people know what your need is they’ll contribute.

PG: The funny part of it is that it’s true that most people didn’t know anything about the specifics. They knew we had troubles but they didn’t know the extent of them. Even the bankers who were holding the notes didn’t know the extent of the problem. I’ve never forgotten what happened when I got together with five or six banks that were each lending us money. They couldn’t believe it when I told them where we were.

FH: This gets down to another element of administration, which is good for a bishop: delegate and check.

PG: You bet.

FH: It’s easy to delegate. It’s not too difficult to delegate. I’ve seen many examples where the Bishop walks away from it. These people are human like the rest of us.

PG: I mentioned that the original group decision was not quite what I thought it should have been, but I accepted it. When we finally got around to straightening things out were the ones who faced up to the banks and got us on the road to recovery.

LS: You built a relationship with them and trust developed.

FC: You asked the question before what prevents people from this collaboration or trust? I don’t think we were ever taught the benefits of it. I don’t think that’s ever been expressed. In my own experience of assuming management of fifty-five or sixty people, I found out that when I would get people more involved, two things would happen. One, they took ownership of what was going on. Second, I was more empowered. I felt better about myself and I felt better about my ability to provide leadership.

FH: You always have to remember the other thing that’s related to what you’re saying. Your lay consultants are not always going to be your best people even though they might have the prestigious positions. They can also be the strain. When I first went to Anchorage we had several parishes all set to build and I stopped four of them. There was absolutely no sense in what they were spending based on what they had. One parish would have had to take the entire Sunday collection to pay off their debts if they were going to start building. I didn’t make any friends on that one. The first thing I said was no. It lingered quite awhile. There was quite a bit of anger over it. You get into things like the trusteeship of the last century. That was part of the problem. It’s always difficult to decide what’s a good balance. I think that’s where the involvement of a number of people is always a very salutary thing. They test one another.

PG: I like your word, to take ownership. The council made some recommendations about parish councils and various other instruments that can help in the governance of the Church. It’s in establishing those and getting people involved and taking ownership, that you tap everybody’s gifts.

FH: At the same time you purify your structures. Your structures work better. You do a little better job of selecting people.

PG: At the meeting where Peter Steinfels and Archbishop Wuerl were involved, Wuerl was saying that we have to build on what emerged from the council. I believe that that is the direction we should be going. Steinfels was much more impatient about that. He thought that we should establish some mechanism for obligatory responsibility. I think we have to work towards that but I think it has to develop from this movement of getting the people involved. The regulations and the rules will develop gradually.

FH: I have another element of trust that should probably be developed. If we bishops trusted one another that would be a great step forward. I think that’s a major item. What can we do?

CJ: I wanted to ask what you meant by obligatory responsibility?

PG: This is a complaint I’ve heard and I think Peter Steinfels was referring to this. I hate to quote him because I don’t have exactly what he said in my memory. He was saying that bishops were of the idea of developing what we already have. He said that’s not enough. He wanted to have the law of the Church, the canon law, so structured that the authorities have to listen, not just… Make it obligatory in law. My personal feeling is that that has to develop. I agree with Archbishop Wuerl that when you get people involved, then these things start to become clear.

FH: In terms of building trust you sort of work to it. You don’t mandate. No matter what law you put down, one can get around it someway or other.

PG: This has been one of the reasons why I’m not familiar with what’s going on in the seminaries these days. If we’re going to have change of attitude in the minds of those who are placed in positions of authority, like priesthood and those in parishes and bishops, it would be tremendous if there were greater emphasis in the seminary on how you relate to people and how you rely on their talents. Now what’s going on, I don’t know.

LS: Next week I’ll be here at Notre Dame to talk to the M.Div. students, which include seminarians and lay students. I asked them what they wanted me to talk about. They said they want me to talk about human development, because they don’t focus enough on that enough in their programs.

FC: There’s also an historical split which I think addresses what you’re talking about between the seminary M.Div’s. and the laity M.Div’s. I don’t know detail but there is a difficult relationship.

LS: It is stronger here than anywhere else I’ve been. In the past, there has been outright hostility between the lay students and the seminarians.

PG: Why would that be, I wonder?

FC: Power.

FH: I am in control. That is one of my problems. I like to be in control. Then we all get in positions where you have to exercise the control.

FC: it’s not a real good metaphor but my understanding is that the seminarian students kind of see themselves as the Marine Corps and the lay students see themselves like Peace Corps.

FH: I think I’ll use an analogy. The priest comes along seeing himself as a ceo, ultimately in a parish, and if he becomes a bishop, ultimately in the diocese. I don’t know if there is a break between the two. I think that would be worth exploring to see if there is some relationship there. This could be related, then, to the structures that we have developed in the Church because of authority. We have this high authority of the Pope. We have this high authority of the bishops. The interesting thing that we never talk about is the relationship of the bishops to the Pope. There are many people who still think that the bishop has to roll over and do exactly what comes out of Rome. That’s not the understanding of either of the two offices. All are successors of the apostles.

PG: I think that in our Bishop’s conference we’re been too ready to roll over.

FH: More so now, then in the past.

PG: Exactly. I’ll give you a good example of this. It’s the whole question of the translations. It’s the people who are going to be the most influenced by the new translations. Nobody asked them what they think.

LS: This is contrary to everything you two have been saying, if you want people to have a sense of ownership, you have to involve them.

PG: Absolutely.

FC: My pastor told me that as a result of those translations, he wasn’t going to have a crisis of faith, but he sure was a crisis of obedience.

FH: I was distracted this morning. I thought of one situation in Anchorage. They didn’t follow the instructions at the end of communion. We had one priest up there who mandated kneeling. He has a parish of elderly people. They want to kneel in front of the Blessed Sacrament. God can’t tell them differently.

(During the break the tape was left running and the following were some of the comments during that time.)

FS: The bishops of England and Wales just voted to do away with the holy days, pretty much all of them. I get the Catholic Herald and one of the big complaints is they said nothing to the lay people. They just decided that amongst themselves. They said why didn’t they ask the lay people what they thought about it. The Catholic Herald is rather conservative, but a lot of them said, “We don’t mind going during the week. Now you’re not giving us any motivation at all.”

FS: You mentioned before about priests being CEO’s and all. The Pope said to the class he ordained this year, “Don’t be careerists,” which I though was very clear. He spelled it right out.

FH: That could also refer to special workers who aspire to the episcopacy. Even though the Scriptures say it’s a good thing to aspire to the episcopacy

(The meeting resumed.)

LS: Carroll and I do a lot of work around the issue of collaboration. The issue that was raised more frequently in the past than now was, “Will I be involved in the decision-making?” It all had to do with who makes the decisions. Our understanding of collaboration, and what seems to be coming more frequently from people, is how do I use my gifts to help to transform and bring the Gospel into these cultures that we live among today. Do we spend so much time worrying bout the structures, rather than spreading the Gospel?

PG: That’s Archbishop Hurley’s point. If you are men and women of faith, it’s true that there is a person in authority because of the hierarchical structure, but the whole relationship develops if you get involved. When you trust one another, the decision that is made is really made by the whole group. Although the man on top, or I should really say the center, has the last word.

LS: You have to have that. What I was hearing before is that there needs to be a listening, which builds relationships so that people feel as though they have been heard and listened to and the trust develops.

PG: I think that an awful lot of that is going on right now. As you were saying, we have lay people involved in the Church, in many ways. It’s absolutely inevitable that the way in which you handle the governance of the Church is going to develop and will reflect their presence. It has to. Nobody who is actually the final authority can just ignore what he is listening to. There is no way to do that.

LS: My experience is that the areas where there is the greatest lay involvement are where there are the fewest priests and religious. In missionary dioceses the laity’s involvement and ownership is so much greater than in large urban areas.

FH: The one limitation is that the laity are not involved in the decision-making process. They hit the glass ceiling when it comes to the decision-making process. That’s real.

LS: When they feel it, they’ll let you know, whoever it is, whether it’s women or anybody else. As long as they feel listened to in that process they are open. Here’s what I put down when I tried to summarize what I heard in the six interviews. I identified a number of areas. Under the theme of vision I wrote, “The Second Vatican Council provided a clear image for the involvement of the entire People of God in the mission of the Church. Vatican II set in motion is still far from reality. The vision has never been adequately implemented. The Bishops need to realize that they can not do it all and that there are ways and means of delegating adequately to the laity.” As you said before, delegate and check.

PG: My feeling has always been that the essence of administration is delegation. I would add one thing to that. Vatican II not only talked of the involvement but it also recommended certain structures, for instance parish councils.

LS: I’d like to get back to that. You may know that CARA did a study on the Diocesan Pastoral Councils. It was fascinating hearing it reported. It was a two-hour presentation and it could have been summed up in two sentences. The Bishops thought they were working well. The staffs weren’t convinced they were working. That was a summary of what was happening around the country with diocesan pastoral councils. People are struggling to find ways to make pastoral councils work and we think one of the major problems is that we are still looking at it as a corporate body of management, rather than what the new pastoral council is supposed to be.

PG: I think that’s probably true. It’s a whole question of the faith atmosphere you bring to this and the relationship among the brothers and sisters in God and in the Lord. You’re right. If you see it as a corporate structure, that shouldn’t be what we’re talking about.

FH: We also have to allow for the fact that some bishops and some pastors are not good at that style of leadership.

LS: Does that go back to how are we training people for ministry?

PG: Even if you have the best training sessions you can devise, you’re going to have personalities to deal with. I have never forgotten one time after the council when we had a month long training session for pastors in which they were taught to do all the things we’re talking about, relate to Catholics, the talents of the people, get together with your staff and talk things over and dialog. One of the guys who was the most vocal said, “I’m glad I went through all of this. I’m going to go right back to the parish and do all we’ve been talking about.” He went back and within two days he made three big decisions and didn’t consult anybody.

FS: One of the bishops of New Jersey told me he just started a Sister’s Assembly and he said that ought to keep them quiet for a while.

LS: Maybe you’ll have some suggestions later about how we change those attitudes, because that issue of attitudes keeps coming up, whoever is in leadership.

FH: I can give you an example of our finance council. We had good people, but too agreeable. So, I got two women on the council. One of them was a banker and the other a business owner. Did they ever make us tow the line, especially the banker.

PG: Talking about attitudes, one of the things that I have observed over the years is based on what I’ve seen on boards of directors of hospitals or universities. The old style very frequently was to get a nice bunch of fellows who agree with what the leader is doing. They never got into any real disagreement. Everybody is yes Sister, whatever you want, or yes Archbishop. Yes, yes, yes. That’s what happened too frequently in our institutions. One of first things that I had to do in the Archdiocese of Newark was to put people in who were independent thinkers and were willing to take responsibility. The old system was that nobody had a responsibility except the administrator, who might be a Sister or the Archbishop in the case of the university

PG: In reading through this summary, I thought there was a tremendous consensus on the direction in which we ought to be going. I was amazed, to tell you the truth.

LS: Archbishop Borders said the exact same thing.

PG: You know what I think that tells us. It says something about the basic faith community in which we live. These are statements of faith, the relationship of brothers and sisters in the Lord. You can have a Bishop who is conservative, but when you really come down to it, he’s a man of faith and he agrees, basically, with that relationship. How you bring this about is the question. Basically, I think the bishops, in general, would go along with what we’re saying. After all, they voted it at Vatican II.

FH: I keep going back in my own thinking to how do we shake this thing up and get off first base.

PG: I think we need leadership. For instance, I’ve been hoping that the present Pope would begin to bring about true collegiality among the Bishops. In all my reading, that’s the big cry. This whole business of criticism of the curia is based upon their support of what they see the Pope wants. If the Pope is going to really push collegiality in the true sense, then his aides, over there, the buricrats will fall in line.

LS: What would it look like if there were true collegiality? How would it be different?

PG: First of all, you’d have the Bishops saying what they believe and you’d have the Pope entering into true dialog with them. I used to be struck, for instance, when we’d meet with John Paul II we were lectured to, but nobody ever got up and made a suggestion about what we ought to do. I remember one time I was at Commonweal with the Steinfels and the various people who were running Commonweal, like Ed Skillen and George Higgins was there. We got talking about collegiality in the Church. They were doing much of what we’re doing here now; discussing the directions we ought to going. George Higgins, with a little bit of profanity attached, said that one of the most wonderful talks on collegiality at the council was given by Wytea but he didn’t know a damn thing about it. (Laughing) That’s true, you know. We’ve got all sorts of statements about what we ought to do but then it just doesn’t work out.

FS: The watchword in Archbishop Gerety’s administration, and it was quoted widely, “Don’t bring me problems. Bring me solutions.” That’s what he wanted to hear about. He knew the problems. He would ask everyone, “What do you think about it?” Then he would weigh them all.

LS: What is the solution? You started by saying leadership. What’s the solution to developing leadership in the Church?

FH: It has to be exemplified…

PG: I think there has to be a major element of education. I wouldn’t be prepared to lay out a whole program but I do know, for instance, when I was first made a Bishop, we used to have some continuing education sessions for Bishops. It was all on theology. There was hardly anything that Vatican II said about the involvement of the laity. That was in the background. I guess it was a part of it. Businessmen have to be educated in how to handle authority and how to relate to their employees. We’re not talking about the same thing in the Church. We’re talking about brothers and sisters in the Lord. You need instruction to help people understand the attitude you have to have. You can’t change people’s attitude unless you talk it through and give them instruction.

FH: At the same time we’re being trained into taking authority. I’m going to be a pastor someday. I’m going to be a bishop someday. I’m going to be the authority. That current of thought is there. You put the two together. Then you’re going to have the problem of the temperament or the personality of the individual, pastor or bishop.

PG: We’re living in the remainders of the post-Triditine church, with its highly centralized authority. The Church was structured against the revolt at the time of the Protestant Reformation. That attitude went right through the whole body of the Church. If affected the priests and anybody else in authority, including the people who were superiors in religious congregations. Authority, that’s it.

FH: Even from the Council of Trent. That’s when Latin was mandated so that everybody could be one, pulled together by a common language. In a sense we have a parallel of that going on at the Bishop’s Conference now. Authority is more centered in Rome. I keep citing the pastoral letter the bishops wrote as the simplest way for me to describe the differences. With the pastorals on Peace, Economics and Women we did a very extensive consultative process involving hearings and reports all around the whole country. It was distilled and we had a mixed group of people doing the writing and then the draft would go to the all the bishops. Each of those pastorals took five or six years. The Peace Pastoral I think was eight years. We would then bring them back to the Bishops. We would get a draft and go back to the Bishop’s meeting. All the Bishops would be asked to respond to the draft. Then they would go out with consultations again, maybe several times. There were extensive consultations, a little bit smaller each time. They kept narrowing it down but we finally got to the final document.

PG: Now, that was a great process.

FH: There’s a relationship being built there among all kinds of professional people. We had a great relationship with the military. They had generals come to talk about the bomb. That’s when we were joking that if we never finished the letter we would get great publicity every time we would meet and talk about it.

PG: During the time of the Pastoral on the Economy we had a large number of businessmen meet with us in Newark. It was terrific. It was fantastic to listen to them. That all got into the process. I’ve always thought that was the way to handle those things…

FH: Up in my area we had a number of meetings with businessmen. One of our greatest critics was Mr. Novak, who took as opposing view and had a whole group taking the negative side. They had taken a totally different approach on this. By the time our document came out they had already written their own document. I said, “Fine. Let’s talk it out.” We had a pretty good mix of people watching all this.

PG: I think it’s very important to emphasize that we’re talking about a community of faith in this business. Political models may give us a hint how to handle our affairs. They’re not the true models of what this relationship amongst ourselves should be. We’re a community of faith, of brothers and sisters in the Lord. That’s has to be the theological principle that controls everything we do.

LS: Could either of you say a little more about that, about the community of faith? It sounds like it ties into some of the stuff you were saying earlier.

PG: If we’re going to have attitudinal change, we’ve got to emphasize that these relationships should develop in the Lord. We have been in this situation since the Protestant Reformation and during the Tridintine reforms when structures were set up which were really emphasizing authority, rather than the relationship as brothers and sisters. That was there but the emphasis was practically all on structure. We’re in a situation now, post-Vatican II, where we’re being urged to have a different model and a model of faith. The other one was faith based too but the emphasis was less on brotherhood and sisterhood. We have to maintain the hierarchical structure and there is going to be tension. Nevertheless, the exercise of authority has got to be based on that notion of service and brotherhood and sisterhood.

LS: You said before that we’re trained to be CEO’s and we’re trained into taking authority.

PG: I think, yes, we’re trained to take authority, but we’re not trained how to handle it.

FH: Or, even how to exercise it. We had a priest up in Alaska who is now retired. He would run through the Mass and a number of the parishioners asked, “Does he really believe what he is doing up there?” I’m sure we’ve all seen priests like that. There is nothing about them that exudes a sense of belief. I really believe this in the Real Presence. First of all, do I really believe, as a matter of faith, in the collegiality that has to be characteristic of my administration? Do I really believe that? That becomes a matter of faith.

FC: Does the metaphor of the shepherd and the sheep work any more? I look at that metaphor and think, the bishop is the shepherd and I’m one of the lambs. If you think what sheep and lambs are, they’re pretty stupid animals. We need to be shepherded, but in what sense does that work anymore? You have an educated laity.

FH: It all depends on which picture of the sheep and shepherd you look at. In some cultures the shepherd is at the back. We have the dog running around. The shepherd would be at the back leading them and the sheep would be following. The shepherd will keep pointing them in the right way. Now, there’s a lot to that. The analogy, from that point of view, would fit in with this whole idea of collegiality and participation. The Bishop is guiding these people. He can’t control them. There are just too many of them. He’s guiding them and trying to keep the sense of direction and he has to realize that he’s not going to succeed all the time anymore than the Lord did. The Lord had his twelve apostles and he couldn’t keep all of them in line. It all goes back to the fact that it’s a matter of faith. That faith has to get right down to the things that we do.

PG: Do we really see Christ in that person that we’re talking to and the so-called sheep we’re shepherding? Do we really see them as brothers and sisters and do we really believe that we’re serving them in the humble way that the Lord demonstrated?

FH: You can use the analogy of the family, the parents. They have to suffer an awful lot and they have to watch their children do a lot of crazy things and a lot of wonderful things. We enjoy looking at families where they’re all hanging together, being successful in their jobs, going to Church together. That’s all great. Then we’ve got this other family that’s scattered all over the place. Maybe that gets us back to Benedict and his encyclical on love. The couple are the premier in the list of these relationships. This is the one that stands out. Which means, then, a particular Bishop and pastor would have to say, “I should expect to be no more successful than the parents I know are with their kids.” I’m going to be no more successful than Jesus was. When He announced the Eucharist they all walked away. That was a tough saying. He let them go. I think maybe there is something in all that.

PG: I often think too that when we talk about the Bishops being teachers it is very important to remember that the Pope uses the family as the primary example in teaching love. While we call ourselves teachers, the fact is that we received our faith from our fathers and mothers. They were our primary teachers. I always say that at Confirmation.

LS: I’m trying to picture what these leaders of faith communities look like.

PG: Servants

FH: Don’t worry about what they look like. You have to realize that you have to deal with it whatever form it takes. How do they run the University here with the nine thousand students? It’s a Catholic university and I’m sure a number of those kids never see the inside of a Chapel. Would that be correct?

CJ: I bet it is.

FH: That’s a fact. That gets a little bit to what I said. The culture is a reflection of the way people live and act and think. We have a whole generation of youngsters coming along who are a mixture of a lot of things. Our job is to be, as a matter of our own faith, realizing that we have an obligation to be wherever we are as a shepherd and the belief that Our Lord is with us. That’s another big factor too. I just bought, The New Faces of Christianity. The author is saying, for example, the face of Christianity is different in the southern part of the world from the northern part. It’s different in Africa. He was talking about fundamentalism and how the Scriptures impact the different cultures. Also, they get to conservatism, which then becomes authoritarianism. I have to get back to it obviously. He’s trying to say, “What is Christianity?” We have said many times that we are a very Christian nation. What does that mean now when we have large numbers, or we have a Christianity that reflects large congregations, these mega churches? The other point he was making is the reliance upon the Scriptures as the ultimate authority and I wonder if we’re not affected very much when we say that there are a lot of conservatives going to the Catholic Church at the present time. The ultimate authority, then, is the Scriptures and God. Where does that leave the bishops and the pope? I have to finish the book to see what he says about all of this.

LS: I was thinking before when you were reflecting about the effect of the Pastoral on the Economy and the one on peace, what would happen if you could have people agree and disagree?

FH: The Pastoral on Women was the one that was really somewhat taken over by Rome. The first draft was put aside. That was a result of a consultation around the country. As I look back on it, I think that is when the tide changed about the operation of the conference. We’re big. We have money. We have a lot of resources, you’re talking personnel and, religiously, we fit right into the very thing that we have with the rest of the world: the American way, the American styles, the American this or that. It was copied all over the world. Rome was very concerned about us setting the pattern because of the way that we responded to all these things. That’s when one senses the fear of the power slipping away from the center.

LS: I was what you meant in talking about the Women’s Pastoral and indicated that the bishops can’t just roll over. Is that what you said?

FH: Yes.

LS: Isn’t that basically what happened? What are the other options you have?

PG: One of the functions of the primacy of the Holy See is to keep it all together. Without worrying about the women’s thing, the fact of the matter is we do have these various cultures all over the place and Indians are going to think a little bit differently about the position of women or the position of the family than we are. So, the position of Rome has to be to keep all this stuff together. Her tendency is to be cautionary, which is clear enough, I think. That’s inevitable because of the position in which the Pope finds himself, the primary of the whole thing.

FH: We have to protect the center.

PG: Absolutely.

FH: The Pope has to preserve the center. That’s part of the dilemma of this whole thing. The Pastoral on Women passed. It wasn’t just like everybody rolled over, but it didn’t pass by a sufficient number to become an official authorized statement of the conference. That was the only difference. Rome had a lot of influence and, for my own part, I voted against the statement because it didn’t say anything new. I know of other Bishops who felt the same way. Several said, “So, what’s new. We should be taking this a step further.” Everyone who had followed the first version, asked where it would lead? We never had the opportunity to find out where it would go because it was diverted early on.

PG: That’s one of the things that the Holy See ought to be thinking about, where is it going?

FH: The other thing I want to get back to is that you have to expect a lot of these things in the Church. It’s never going to flow just one way. The pendulum is always going to be there in this multi-faceted world that we live in. While we keep going for a certain amount of unity and coherence, we have so many other things that are going on anyhow.

PG: I often think about the situation of the poor Anglican Church. They’re going off in all directions. The Archbishop of Canterbury makes an appeal that they should consider the results of what they are going to do and they proceed with the exact opposite.

FH: Everybody knows that he does not have the authority.

PG: Exactly.

FH: That’s where his limitation is. I use this frequently with our own people. We get an appreciation of what it is to have a central authority so that these issues can be dealt with and ultimately decided that this is the way we’re going to do it. If you look at the history of the Church, a lot of things we decided were ultimately changed, anyhow. So, if we have faith, we cannot get depressed over all this.

PG: That’s right.

LS: If we had a community of faith?

FH: That’s all the better.

PG: And what we’re talking about is that the pendulum swings. We’ve been through a long period of authoritarianism in the Church. Vatican II brought in a movement that’s swinging a little bit to the other side now. And that seems to be more congenial to the way we think.

FH: It’s getting a little more conservative but so too are our people. That’s why we have so many Republicans.

PG: It starts swinging and then people begin worrying about where is it going.

FH: Did you see the book advertised out there, “The Politics of the Democratic Inclusion? It’s how in politics you have to include everybody.

PG: I want to add to what Archbishop Hurley was saying. We have these enormous numbers of lay people that are now involved in the Church, a whole phalanx of people. It’s something new in the life of the Church from what we knew as young people. That’s all part of this movement that has to take place and it’s out of that will come all sorts of ideas about how you will structure these dialogs. I think we see developments all over the place that are hopeful.

LS: I would like to see that whatever we put down it has that sense of hopefulness.

PG: Exactly. No question.

FH: Sometimes in our parishes there has been a lot of publicity on the sex scandals, etc. People ask, “Is the Church going to survive?” They hear of million dollars going out. I say, “Forget this whole thing of the Church collapsing. I say this, not because I have the presence of the Holy Spirit. I say, “Look at this whole Church, everybody out here praying. That’s going on all over the country. Whatever else is going on, you have all these people praying.” They’re not going to let it collapse.

FC: That might be growthful.

PG: Maybe that’s what we need.

FC: I was struck by the Pope’s comment that the Pope may actually constrict and that’s okay.

FH: I’m not exactly sure what he means by that. I think a lot of what I call the fringe Catholics are out on the fringe of the circle and do not get involved in the center. Completely aside from going to Church, they don’t want to get involved and stand back. I think that’s why a number of women are out there, just because the Church is not responding to so many of the women. I don’t know. The old thing you used to say, “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.” And when anybody says, “I’m no longer a Catholic.” “Oh, yes you are.” I would tell them they are. If they come over for Thanksgiving they are still one of the family. (Some laughing over some side comments.) I think we’re also exemplifying here the persistent necessity for humor.

Everyone: Yes.

FH: It’s sort of laughing at yourself, in many respects not taking yourself too seriously.

FC: That’s a beautiful insight because it’s lacking across the culture right now, even in the political scene. There is no humor anymore. Everyone is so strident and confrontational.

FH: I went to Washington many years ago, on the staff there. In San Francisco we had only a handful of blacks but I had friends among them. I’d mimic the blacks and they would mimic the Irish, on and on, and we’d have a great time. So, I go waltzing into Washington, DC and I started talking the same way. I got over that fast. DC is not San Francisco.

CJ: So much for that.

(Lunchtime. (Break for lunch. Began the afternoon session by sharing a one-page summary that was distilled from what was said about the laity by the six Archbishops in the interviews. Following is that summary.)

A COUNCIL OF ELDERS: THE WISDOM PEOPLE
A Vision of Hope

THE LAITY

Vision. The Second Vatican Council provided a clear vision for the involvement of the entire people of God in the mission of the Church. What Vatican II set in motion is still far from reality. The vision has never been adequately implemented. The bishops need to understand that they cannot do it all, and that there are ways and means of delegating adequately to the laity. Sit down with them and help them along, but, ultimately, the problems are the problems of the entire Church and it is the members of the Church, not just the Bishops who need to develop solutions. To the degree that the laity take seriously what Vatican II has said it would make an enormous difference in the Church.

Mission and Structures. The mission of the Church can only be accomplished when we develop clear structures, supported by canon law, that provide opportunities for laity to become more involved in using their varied gifts in more meaningful ways at every level of the Church. One of the hallmarks of such structures is that there would be frank and open dialog about all issues. The structures need to become more collegial.

The Primary Theology. The starting point for all lay leadership is the conviction of the church as the People of God, that all have an obligation and responsibility to participate in the life of the Church. The church will only accomplish its mission to the extent that it involves all the People of God. This principle needs to be applied to the actual daily living of the church. Although, the Second Vatican Council dealt with the role of the laity, this has never been adequately implemented. The mission is the responsibility of everyone. The laity needs to be involved in developing solutions for the challenges that face the Church today.

Steps for Developing Lay Leadership.
1. First, all Church leaders must listen. “If you listen you learn and if you don’t listen you don’t learn. Ultimately, you learn a lot of things that you would probably prefer to not learn. Listening doesn’t preclude sharing your ideas.”
2. Second, empower peoples’ gifts. As you listen you begin to identify people’s gifts. “Get everyone in every category to do more than they did and then get them to work together. It works.”
3. Third, emphasize discipleship. Mature discipleship is contemplative discipleship. It is not an authentic apostolic life unless it is a contemplative life.
4. Fourth, foster collaboration. “Bring people together with different expertise, finance, education, social services, etc. Create an atmosphere where people feel free to share and challenge each other. Then just ask questions. It works.”

Clarify the Role of Priests. The emergence of lay leadership does not detract from nor deny the need for priests. The priests have a definite, important role to play. Emphasizing the role of the priests will help to erode some of the fear in some priests that may interfere with the full development of lay leadership.

FH: (Was asked to say the opening prayer.) I thought the laity would be doing that. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of this day and for the opportunity we’ve had to share our thoughts with one another and that they will give you service and give you glory. Strengthen us in your love. Amen

FC: It certainly wouldn’t effect whether I could say an opening prayer or not, but I tell people that I’m piously impaired.

LS: You have the one page we just handed out. If you could also have the summary we sent you available. Any disagreements about the section on the Archbishops, in general? (Read from the summary.) And I added the sense of humor from what was said this morning.

PG: That’s the balance wheel.

LS: As you mentioned this morning, the deep faith must be the underpinning for the whole thing.

FH: I read through the whole thing and my reaction to it was you have a lot of stuff to work with in terms of priorities. I think everything in there, if I was trying to write a paper, this would give me a lot of stuff to work from. I don’t see any objections to anything. This is what people were saying, whether you like it or not. It seems that we are all pretty much concerned about the same things. That’s why the element of the laity became the primary focus.

LS: Each of us said, when we came back from interviews, that it was the number one issue that everyone spoke about, not just in passing but also even with some passion about it. Again, that came up this morning. Could we focus now on the page we handed out? We had all of the material and we kept trying to cut it down. Just before I came the other day I tried to say what do I see as the major issues concerning the laity. This is what I came up with as a starting point for whatever we come up with as a beginning document. Any reactions you have to this page will be appreciated.

PG: I thought it was much too summary. It lacked dynamism. There were certain criticisms that I had myself, such as the phraseology. Look, for instance at the part on Vatican II in the section on vision. I think that vision of the Church is absolutely critical to how we do anything. It’s got to be a vision of faith. It seems to me that we ought to whack away at that question of faith. That’s pretty basic to the affair. The Second Vatican Council provided a clear faith vision. It’s true, that it’s far from reality but we go on to say that the vision has never been adequately implemented. That’s true too but I don’t think it gives enough credit to what has happened already. We’ve already said about these thousands of people who are out there trying to implement the programs of the Church all over the country, and the world. It seems to me that we ought to say there that much progress has been made. Thousands of people are involved but we still have not reached the goal of adequate implementation.

LS: Acknowledge what has happened.

PG: Yes and put a positive light on it. I think we’ve got to really bring out the fact that… (Reading) “It is the members of the Church, not just the Bishops who need to develop solutions.” I think we’ve got to throw in there that it’s our common baptism that makes us brothers and sisters in the Lord. We are one body. The Bishops in the body are servants. They have a key role but, nevertheless, they have a servant role. When we talk about structures, it’s very important that we keep in mind that we are men and women of faith. It’s our conviction that we are brothers and sisters that will permit certain structures to develop that will continue to develop the imperatives of Vatican II. We’ve got to have that constant faith vision before us and realize that the body is one. We have different roles but the body is one and we’re all involved and responsible for it.

LS: The community of faith that you talked about this morning.

PG: Yes, something like that. When we talk about developing steps for lay leadership we’ve got to get them all to share that theological vision and realize, once again, that Church leadership is servant leadership.

FH: I jotted down a few things here. One of the reactions that I have to the whole document and to this is that what is said here is being said by lots of people, so there’s nothing new about it, not even new perspectives. All that has been written about extensively. There have been many talks given about it. I saw the hang-up on structures. We talk structures and we should be talking people and relationships with people.

PG: I agree with you on that. The problem is to try to get the words, the modes of implementation or some blasted thing like that. We do have to have an approach to carry out these imperatives of Vatican II. Yet, if we get into this structure too much, we’re stressing the mechanics and that’s not what we’re talking about.

FH: When you say that, you begin veering toward structures. What I’m thinking of here is what that can be to our people. As you said earlier today, faith. We, as bishops and we as priests, have to convey a lot to our people and I see that as the first function. The mission of the Church and structures are necessary. They’re going to have to come. I’m reacting a little bit differently in the sense that the substance of who we are and the substance of what we all share together. We are faith, what you mentioned before, baptism. This is who we are. Now, if that is who we are, what is it that we should be then doing with it? Instead of saying the Church is all the people, just say all the people should be transmitting the faith, or the love of Christ, or the Church is central to our lives. The sacraments are the great gift of God. We have to believe all of that. That’s going to be undergirding whatever we end up doing. When we get into the doing and the specifics of doing, that’s when we begin to deal with structures. So, the structures are going to help us do all these things. I share your point here too; we’ve never adequately implemented what we have. We all say that and it’s true, but it’s being implemented in many, many ways. It’s never going to be completely implemented. The Church is a constant flow of life, the spiritual life, the daily life, and all that. No matter what we do with this, it’d still going to be beyond us because, after all, we’re dealing with the Lord.

PG: It seems to me that we have to convey the message that the Church is alive and there’s plenty of life there.

FH: What is it that the bishops and priests should be giving to the laity? The Church is alive. We have all kinds of problems. We know that. But, the Church is very much alive.

PG: I was at a big meeting and there were a lot of people there. I made that the point of what I was talking about, “The Church is alive.” Boy, did they love it.

FH: Your statement here, (Reading) “The Church will only accomplish its mission to the extent that it involves all the People of God.” What do you mean involve all the People of God? If you really mean literally involve all the People of God, you have how many millions of people out there that are supposed to be involved. And what do we mean by involve? Usually, what that involve means is that we want to get them into activities and brings us immediately down to structures and parishes and so on. That’s one of the expressions that I would never use.

LS: I guess, for me, involving means getting out and transforming cultures. That’s where we want to see everyone involved, not necessarily working back at the Church but being the Church.

FH: I’m not saying so much transforming the culture as living the culture.

PG: I think the word involve is too limiting. They won’t all be on pastoral councils and that kind of thing. But, we’ve got to make our people feel that they are part of the living body. They’ve got to feel that this is what I am.

FH: There is something related to that. I am known among my priests and people as not being a great liturgist. But I’ve been talking liturgy the last couple of years, especially as I’ve seen how the liturgy is carried out by different priests. I say to the circuit rider priests: You have to have a good liturgy, a good homily and you have to smile. The people on Sunday must go away saying, “Wasn’t that great.” It’s like coming out of a movie you’ve enjoyed. And that should be what we try to convey to them. I know that’s what all this material about the liturgy is really geared to. That’s what we can give to them. A lot of the people who go to these mega churches are all our own people. They’re being attracted by something. I’ve been watching all the liturgy and it gets very distracting. Yesterday I went to the liturgy over in the crypt here and the priest was fine. He started on time, gave a nice little talk and then went rapidly through it. He was very active. He walked in fast. Everything he did was fast. The Mass was fast. That’s what so many people want, a fast Mass. I’ll add another factor. Do away with trite words, words that everybody is using all the time. People have gifts. That’s one of the things they’re saying. It’s true. In the context I was saying, all this has been said before. Part of the challenge is to express it in words that are new or to expressions that are new. Another word is leadership. That’s used all the time. I guess what I’m basically getting to is that I’m more concerned about what we as priests and bishops have that we are passing on to our people.

PG: We bishops ought to give a good example of god preaching. There are a lot of complaints about that. We’ve got to give the example and be well prepared when we appear before the people. I’m struck when I go to priest’s funerals that some priests get up and obviously haven’t prepared at all. When I was still a priest I wouldn’t think of appearing before the Bishop that way.

FH: I agree. I now say that about all funerals. That is a core moment for dealing with people, particularly when you’re conscious of who these people are. Your homily has to be geared to the audience. Since I’ve been retired I get a lot of requests. All the old timers want the old man to do it. I have lots of funerals. The one thing I do is develop something distinctive for each one. I almost have to because it’s the same audience all the time, minus one. They all expect me to come up with something a little bit different. I always consider that as one of the prime times for a well-prepared homily and often it’s not nearly as well prepared as I think it should be. Your point is the same thing. (looking at the next topic on the sheet). A lot’s is being written about the role of the priest. That’s part of the trite words; they are used in many, many different places. What might help you to give a new little twist on this? Saying the same thing in a different way is, I guess, what I’m talking about. The other thing is you talk about “what will be accomplished when we develop clear structures, provide opportunities for laity to become involved, frank and open dialog on all issues.” We need to have good contact with all people. Instead of us telling them what the Church is and what our faith is, what do they want to talk about. What do they want to talk about right now? I was thinking of this the other day as I was listening to one of these talk shows that is all politics. They wanted to know Bush’s stand on stem cell. He vetoed that bill. And they were asking, “What do you think this is going to mean politically?” Come November, it won’t mean a thing in the world. He said they’re interested in Iraq, peace. That’s what they’re going to be talking about. They not going to be bringing up stem cell. They’re concerned about it but it’s not going to be high on the political agenda thing. I think the same thing we have here when we’re talking about, shat is it that people really want to talk about.

PG: They want to talk about the gospel and God and their relationship with God. There’s no question about it.

FH: That is a big thing. Also, I think we realize that, and probably more so than we even recognize...

PG: That’s probably another thing. After many years in ministry, when you get up to announce the gospel, everybody sits up and listens. It’s power.

FH: The other thing that I think shows that there’s an appreciation of religion. Once I had a funeral for a teenager who was killed, a skateboard accident. All during the Mass I was thinking, Oh God, I have this dull thing going on. After Mass I had a number of kids come up and say, “That was wonderful. I sure enjoyed this.” These kids weren’t even Catholic. I realized that there is something more significant going on at the altar. Even the young catch it. We don’t have to entertain them or come up with a lot of gimmicks. That’s why a speaker like Fulton Sheehan had a great way with a turn of a phrase, an expression, all of which would help. That should be part of our training. We also have to realize that what we do at the altar is going to have a certain power.

FS: Benedict Groeshel said in one of his talks that when the Pope was at the Denver World Youth Day many years ago, he got up before this crowd and goes, “Ohhhh!” He said the whole place went crazy. He said if the politicians did that, they would be thrown out. All he had to do was kind of grunt and everybody went, “Whoopee!”

FH: Remember the media was trying to say that the Pope wasn’t going to be well received in Denver. All kinds of columnists, including Cookie Roberts - I think she’s very, very good and she’s a Catholic and she has a lot of things to say – but she was one of those saying the Pope’s going to find a divided Church.

PG: Another thing about it. In these youth rallies, the media can’t believe the numbers.

FH: And the excitement. I remember something that Monsignor George Higgins said. The Pope was in Chicago and there were massive crowds of people along the street clapping, and he says, “Look at all those women out there clapping. They don’t agree with the Pope on birth control, but they’re clapping all the while!” That’s part of what I’m saying, “What do they really want to talk about?” That means that there are times when we have to be talking to them, other than from the pulpit. That’s where our mixing with the people is important. I’m conditioned, too, by the thrust of community organizing we have in Anchorage. It’s been very difficult but effective. We had a community center for the Natives. The young lady we have that’s orchestrating all of this has a real knack for it. They had invited the Superintendent of Schools to come up and ten or so got up and put it right to her. We need to have community organizing.

PG: You’ve got to be careful. I remember when I was Bishop of Portland in Maine; our social service arm started organizing the Indians. They had the whole state tied up because they were suing for the return of the land. The towns could not issue bonds or anything else because they were in court with these “blasted Indians.” We have three Indian reservations in the state. We were on the border with Canada. They don’t pay any attention to that. That’s all their land. “We were here first.”

FH: So, those were some of the reactions that I had.

LS: This is so helpful. In addition to the content of the things you’ve said, it’s pulling things out of the original interviews and giving them a sense of life. This is just meant to be a summary but we’ll pull back all of those things that make this real and to make all of those content changes.

PG: A summary is only one page.

LS: I think we also wanted to find out if there was anything that also might say, “No, that ‘s not what we believe or say.” You’ve given us all of the nuances in terms of this.

FH: This is helpful because it triggers a lot of thoughts. This kind of thing is very, very helpful and the summary you gave of all of the Bishops does that. It triggers a lot of thoughts.

PG: That’s what happens in dialog. “Dialog, dialog, dialog” that’s what Phil Murnion said. What happens is that you get ideas you never thought of.

LS: We just watched the two of you bounce ideas off each other.

FH: Imagine what the Church would be like if we did this thirty years ago.

LS: We’re going to take different areas from the original summary for your input.

FC: What I was hearing this morning was the expressed need for structure for structural change and the Church that will enable true collegiality and subsidiarity, while being hierarchical. This is kind of a framework. But, I’m hearing something different now. That that is just a means to end. What we’re really talking about here is things that are expressed in the terms relationship, the terms brothers and sisters in the Lord, what you want to talk about and changing attitudes, that was another thing. And I don’t know where I’m going with this, except that I just see something, it seems like we keep encompassing something a little different as it gets discussed but something that is more important and gets right to the heart of it. If my bishop in Kalamazoo came over to our parish and said, “I’m going to have a listening session and what would you folks like to talk about?” They would be lined up out the door. People would really want to come in and talk. The first thing I think people look to the Church for is, “How can the Church help to make sense out of my life.” It’s going to get into human sexuality and it’s going to get into economic questions and all this area. It would be a wonderful experience. I don’t know how realistic it is that it would ever happen. That’s my observation of what I see going on. It’s not a question. It’s not anything I’m trying to get a reaction to but I think it’s very enlightening and very hopeful, which is another word I’ve heard a lot of toward the end of the last session and the beginning of this on of what a future Church could look like.

LS: When you just went through that Frank and made the transition from this morning to this afternoon, is it that you don’t have to focus on structures, focus on these other things and the structures will take care of themselves.

FC: No, I don’t think I heard that. I think I heard that the structures are a means to an end. If you know what the end is, then you start to focus on the structures, how do we get there. When you said you didn’t like the word structure, I thought yes. The first thing that came to me was the institution. We’re looking for institutional change. I don’t know if that’s a better term.

PG: Lots of people will tell you that they had nothing to do with the institutional Church. That’s a bad word.

FC: That is true.

FH: Setting up the structure is the Bishop’s job. Let him worry about that. He’s in good touch with everybody. He’s in good touch with the Vatican Council. He’s in good touch with other Bishops. It gives him a lot of ideas, things that could work. Of course, he has his staff working with him. When the Conference took steps to implement the Vatican Council many individual experts wanted to be part of it.

FC: Some of the questions this morning were leading to what will the structures look like, what will they be. It’s not reasonable to expect, out of a group like this or a meeting what these structures will be. But maybe it is reasonable to project a process for this journey. We know there is going to have to be different structures. What is it that we’re looking for and what is the process for getting there? I just use your example, “What do the people want to talk about?” If that’s a goal, of hearing the people, then you could start saying, “Let’s get some folks in here and find out how do you structure this thing? How can we get to people? How can we economically hear from them?” It could be terribly time consuming but very worthwhile. When you find out, what do you do with that? That becomes another structural issue.

LS: Does it also tie in with the sense of excitement and energy when you were talking about the three pastorals? Whatever that structure or process was, there was an excitement as the two of you talked about that.

PG: The thing developed as it went along. That’s what happens when you get a lot of people together. First of all, all the people are all talking out of faith vision, their relationship with God, and with my children, for example. A lot of things happen when you start talking out of that faith vision, depending on the circumstances in which people feel themselves. I was thinking, Frank, while you were talking about the things they would talk about. They would talk about their relationship as husband and wives, etc. I’ve always noticed that when you get lay people together they are people of faith and, boy, that’s the central thing. They’re really interested in how does this fit into the circumstances that I’m in right now. They have a lot of terrific thoughts that we good old celibates maybe haven’t considered.

FH: When it came time for those statements, nobody was thinking of structure. The structure was already there. After the council we had restructured the conference. The suggestion for the peace pastoral came, I think from either Gumbleton or Bishop Peter Rozazza. Part of it was a reaction to Viet Nam. So the question was, “Who is the best person to take the lead in this?” We went through a lot of names and Joseph Bernardin was the one who surfaced. We gave him a staff and because of the conference we were able to provide money as well as staff. The next thing was to get a committee, and it was a mixed committee, true to the council, not just Bishops and priests. There was a process whereby the committee could get out and listen. That was part of the value of the aftermath of the council. The structures will follow once we know what we want to start with.

PG: It’s only as you start using that structure and begin to get people into it and realize what can develop from the structure. The structure itself kinds of grows.

FH: Yes. The idea was for a wide consultation with people with direct vested interest in peace. That’s why we included the military and officials from government. It took eight years. The big thing was that we had the money to put up.

PG: How about the Call to Action? That was another example of listening sessions. I presided at most of those meetings.

LS: It was a great process.

CJ: Has there been a process similar to that recently?

FH: You mean the Call to Action?

CJ: Yes, and the one you were talking about before.

PG: I think things kind of slowed down.

FH: I think that the Economic Pastoral followed somewhat the same route, as the Peace Pastoral. We got a lot of attention because we were addressing the issues that meant a lot to people, a lot to businesses. The third one that we took off on is the one that, I think, was causing Rome really to worry, the Pastoral letter on women. The women started speaking. Everything that came out of the first draft of that was, “Oh my God, here we go.” I know that in Rome they were very upset with the public hearings because what the women were saying across the country. They didn’t want to invite anymore of this. The thing was how do we contain it. That’s why what we ended up with nothing new.

FC: Was that the end of that particular style of process, though?

FH: After that we’ve relied on committees of Bishops. They would draft statements and consult a few people. We had some good statements come up that way. The statements have value to the people who are interested in that subject. A lot of people would like to have the knowledge and the inspiration with respect to the information. The authorities say this is what the Bishops have said. The general public isn’t going to read them. The vast majority of the clergy don’t read them. Some of the Bishops don’t read them.

PG: I plead guilty.

FH: I do, too. I say am I really interested in this issue? That doesn’t say we can’t do a lot differently. Maybe we do too much.

PG: Those three things that you’re talking about and the Call to Action was an early effort at listening and engaging. That identified a lot of areas of concern of the people. It didn’t issue any statement, particularly, but it was a great exercise. I never forgot the people down in San Antonio, the Hispanics. They were terrific. We heard a mouthful down there.

FH: The Call to Action came out of the desire for lay involvement. Cardinal Dearden masterminded all that. Bernardin and he were close. Then the conference got behind it and there was participation. One of the things that we realized was that if we, Bishops, took a topic a certain direction, many wanted to be there from the beginning in case something significant might develop. I remember a lot people saying, “Oh, these guys will never agree on anything.” They knew that there were different schools of thought. I always contend that people will come at least once, because if something is going to happen they want to be there. If nothing is going to happen, they’ll bail out. That happened quite a bit with things we were doing. This is another example that the structure was there and then it was expanded tremendously and it was a different kind of function. It wasn’t geared so much to a statement as to a process, whereby people could come together and have everyone listening to everyone. Rome disagreed on some of that.

PG: A lot of the Bishops disagreed too. The very notion that each person expresses concerns is a neuralgic area for some.

FC: Look at what the Pope called for. He called for a commitment to creating better structures, participation, consultation and shared responsibility.

PG: Incidentally, in any of these things you have to bring in statements of the Holy Father. Paul VI stated that we need a change of attitude. If the Pope said it, people will perk up.

FH: As John Paul said, there’s a value to most of those encyclicals, not read by many people, but by those people who are interested or involved in the issue, so that’s a great help. I don’t downplay the statements any more and I’ve pretty well accepted the fact that it’s only rarely that we’re going to get any wide publicity and wide dissemination.

LS: Did you want to follow up on your question about whether it is still going on?

FC: No that was answered. I think what’s implied is we need to create better structures if we’re going to accomplish any of these things.

FH: From what we’ve been saying here, the priest has to facilitate conversation with the people, to listen to the people and to get to know them and live with them. From the structure you get a lot of suggestions about how certain parishes do things. That’s usually the imagination of the pastor. We have nine parishes with lay administrators and they ended up being good leaders and the people follow them, just as much as they follow the priest.

LS: When you talk about structures and people wanting to be listened to, I was thinking of the Call to Action meeting that was sponsored by the Bishops’ Conference as we were getting ready to celebrate the 200th anniversary of this country. In recent years there have been these groups that have emerged, like the Call to Action and the Voice of the Faithful and they’re saying where is there a place where I can be heard. In some dioceses they are not allowed to meet on Church property. They are told that they not allowed to do this or that. It seems to have a very negative effect in terms of what we’re talking about.

PG: Of course that’s true in Newark and in Bridgeport. The statement has been made that they have their own agenda and that agenda is not according to the faith. That’s the implication. This is before anyone even hears what they’re doing.

FH: There are certain speakers, and one wonders, whether they should be there or not be there.

FC: Doesn’t that go counter to the very thing that you were saying that we have to engage the people and listen to them. If you tell a group that they can’t meet within your diocese and that is, in effect, what’s being said…

PG: Interesting about the Voice of the Faithful, I think it was up in Boston. One of our leading theologians advised them not to get in the grip of the Bishops. I said immediately did that guy make a mistake. If we’re all one, you simply can’t ignore the Bishops. That’s impossible, if you are going to get any place in the Church.

FH: Especially on this issue. On the sexual abuse issue that had to meet with Bishops

PG: Absolutely.

FH: Even to complain. You look at how we, the Bishops are handling the sexual abuse matter. It’s the Bishops alone doing it. We had some consultation. We had a lay committee. That had troubles. They got some very vocal, aggressive Catholics and they didn’t like the treatment they got from the Bishops and I think they had a real good point. But, the response to that whole thing should be the response of the Church. Get our people participating in how we’re going to deal with this scandal. All the public. I think we would be a lot better off than going the way we are.

CJ: Maybe we could look at the summary we did on the sexual abuse. (They took time to reread it.)

PG: There’s a lot of good stuff here.

FH: Sometimes it says, “he.”

LS: It means one of the Archbishops. These are just notes we pulled out of the interviews.

PG: Many years ago, incidentally, in our seminary I was very strong on being somewhat tough on whom we admit. Maybe tough is the wrong word but I mean trying to get quality amongst our students, fellows who showed signs of good maturity, etc. I don’t know whether our screening process was producing that or not. I know we had a few disasters.

LS: Every diocese has them.

PG: One of the dangers when we are lacking students and have a dearth of vocations, and this is context in which I talked to my seminary faculty, the tendency is to let down the bars and be kind of weak on how you screen people. I think that’s just the wrong thing to do. I think you have to give priests a real solid pride in the standing that they have of their peers and amongst the people.

FH: That also relates, too, to what one of you was saying about the intellectual qualities of the younger priests. We are a heady Church in dealing with a lot of the issues that come up, e.g. the medical-moral issues. One must have some intelligence. How do you balance these moral questions? You need your theology and you need your practicality and you need knowledge of the issues.

LS: Any reactions you have toward what you see there. These are statements we developed from what we heard from you.

PG: I agree with a good deal of what is said here. I think that the process that was established is unfortunately skewed against the priests. It has brought about a separation and an alienation between the Bishop and the priests. That’s my impression. That’s exactly what Dulles said was going to happen.

FH: And it’s happening.

FS: I said to one Bishop who was at Dallas, “Why don’t the Bishops listen to Cardinal Dulles?” He said, well, he spoke too late and most of the Bishops had made up their mind and were really in a rush to get home and I said, “Thanks a lot.”

FH: Let me give you my take on this. First of all we were in Dallas for two days regarding something very basic and we had to be out in two days. That’s number one. Then we had been given a document prepared and circulated in advance. Meanwhile, the Cardinals had been summoned to Rome by the Pope. When the Cardinals came back from Rome everyone of them except one said, “The Pope meant zero tolerance.” That’s a quote. Cardinal Mahony said that. Cardinal Bevalaque said that. The Pope has said no one who would offend the young should be in the priesthood. I wrote a long letter to the Holy See (and never got an acknowledgement of it) stating that, “Those who would offend” could be applied to any priest. If one would offend, he’s out, fine. But suppose they “would not,” just as we make that judgment on all priests and on a new priest coming out of the seminary. The bishop is hoping and judging that they “would not.” Also prior to the meeting five of the seven Cardinals came out publicly urging zero tolerance even for all priests of the past, no matter how long ago their offense, no matter that he went through rehabilitation and now has a clean record since then. Before we got to the meeting the Cardinals had already conditioned the outcome. That’s my take on it. They were public in that. Now, that’s really unfair. Then we have a document that goes out to the Bishops to read, absorb and then discuss and say is this what we want to say. But, already we have the Cardinals declaring themselves. Of course, the press and all that was a unique thing too. Then we had to vote on the document. The question of zero tolerance did come up and it was voted down and I’m convinced that a lot of that was because we’re going to get bashed terribly by the people. It was a Bishop’s problem as much as a priest’s problem. There was all of that upset. There was neither the time nor the context to have the type of discussion that Avery would like. I could have said the same thing that Avery did but not as nicely as he said it or as eloquently as he said it, but the same thing. I also asked the question, “Why did we go to Rome, why not handle it ourselves?” There was a little pause. Finally, the answer came back, “Well, we don’t have authority, therefore the only way we can mandate something for the Bishops is they get the approval of the Holy See.” My response to that