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 was then we’ve abdicated our authority as a conference. We’re not a conference.

The New York Times had a similar problem. They set up their own commission right away and went right at it themselves and bulled their way through it. It was a different subject, certainly, but, nevertheless, all that was going on. I’d written asking that we start with a penitential service and make it public. Start out by saying, “Lord we have sinned. We Bishops have sinned.” By that time everything about Law came out. The administrators were as much a problem as the priests. We had a whole bunch of bishops, including myself, who had dealt with some of these cases, according to the way we dealt with them in 1981, 1982, and 1983. Law tried to say that at one point. By that time the storm was so bellowing, he was just brushed aside. That was taken as just a lame excuse. So then we had a penitential service at the end of the meeting, which I thought was a very good one. It was confidential, only the bishops. I’d say at least a third were gone because at the end of any meeting the guys are heading home. They have commitments and they’re out to catch an airplane.

I think what followed from all that and what I think hurt in the long run was the number of apologies that were made. Every time you turned around somebody was apologizing and this was overdone. It meant a lot and was sincere, okay, but stop apologizing so much. The question is what are you going to do about it? My main problem was we did not start according to who we are. Our mission is reconciliation. That’s one of the things I’ve heard repeatedly from people, “Don’t we forgive?” That’s my little song and dance on this entire thing. I got hit hard. I had one priest, back in ’82 with a problem. You can’t say it was too bad. Everything is too bad now. We’re dealing with boys 17 and 18 years old, so we’re still talking about whether homosexuality is part of all this or what. My mistake was not getting back to the young man after the abuse. I went to the priest and we took care of it and got him straightened out. I put him back on the job. Then a short time later I took him off because of alcoholism. He’s off the job now. From all this what I repeatedly get is, “Don’t we forgive?” That’s when people say they loved their priest. He was leading a good life.

PG: Of course, one of the things, among a number of things that bothers me about this whole business, is first, the lack of definition. Now, what is abuse? I’ve never gotten a straight answer on that one. A lot of it is conditioned by the fear of having to pay through the nose for all these so-called abuses. I’m not saying they’re not all abuses. I’d like to know a little bit more about them. Further more, dropping the statute of limitations, I think is a terrible mistake because, as is always said, witnesses die, people who know about it are no longer available and the poor guy is left swinging in the wind. How can he reply to accusations that come from – like in one case, your friend – what was it, sixty years ago? My God.

FS: He was 91 years old and in a nursing home. He was able to say Mass and give the sacraments the best he could. All of that had to stop immediately.

PG: With no true, real examination of what was supposed to be the problem and it was sixty years ago. God help us. I’m sure that our people, if they had been deeply involved in this, would never have tolerated that.

FH: I’d say that if we approached the problem as Church, we’d be getting a lot of our lay people saying, “Wait a minute. There’s something else to be thought about here. We want that priest. Sisters in a home had a priest who was pulled out for a thirty year old abuse. The Sisters don’t have Mass any more.

PG: Here’s the thing with this priest in this nursing home. A beautiful priest. He’s merely charged and he’s treated like he’s going around raping all these old ladies there. It’s just ridiculous.

FS: One of the terrible angles about this particular case is that this priest was my first pastor and we were very close friends. In any case, it was a Benedictine priest who accused him. That Benedictine priest when he was a seminarian was arrested for abusing other children. The Benedictines took him and ultimately ordained him. Maybe something happened to him. I don’t really know. I think if the guy is charged and arrested even years ago that ought to put a real halt on advancing this Friar for orders. I know one former Abbott said, “That fellow was trouble for us from the day he entered our community.” Obviously, I’m not exactly objective because this priest was a very good friend of mine. Fortunately, thanks be to God, it never hit the papers. Archbishop Gerety went down and we concelebrated Mass with him. He died about two months after that.

PG: I got a big kick out of the time we went down to concelebrate Mass with him. We did it in his room. He wasn’t supposed to be celebrating Mass publicly. We’re all vested to start the Mass and there’s a knock on the door. It’s some young woman that he knew, a Eucharistic minister. And we said, “Oh, come on in.” We’re just getting ready to start again and there’s another knock on the door, another Eucharistic minister.

FS: That was his last Mass. Look at Bishop McCarthy in New York, the former auxiliary. The people of the parish pleaded, “Bring him back. We want him.” I’m not so sure that the girl, it was a girl, too by the way, that he was supposedly seeing, was a teenager. She was in her twenties or so, which is a whole different matter. Cardinal Egan says that he knew nothing about it. It was out of his control. The Nuncio just kind of whipped him out and told Cardinal Egan. That’s what the story is, anyway. He didn’t know anything about it at all. Now he’s officially listed as retired. He’s in the Kennedy Directory. He’s listed as retired. He was a young fellow, in his fifties.

FH: Yes. I know him.

PG: It seems to me that it causes a lot of trouble and has affected the morale of an awful lot of priests.

CJ: You started out this morning talking about the issue of trust. I think when we talk of this topic we have to revisit the issue of trust. I think how this issue was handled has negatively impacted the issue of trust.

PG: There’s no question about that.

LS: If I could add one piece to that, as we go from diocese to diocese there is a lot more anger of people towards the bishops than there is toward priests who are abusers. People seem more willing to forgive them than they are the bishops who feel participated in a cover up.

FH: I get that observation from our people.

FC: I would support what you’re saying. Certainly among the younger families that I know there is a terribly unfortunate sense that they would not want to leave their child with a priest. That is a terrible indictment of everyone for the failures of the few. There’s a lot of anger with the bishops for not having addressed the issue. It’s unfortunate because a lot of the bishops did and they did it when they should have done it. Those who didn’t and let it fester for all those years caused all these problems. In my own personal experience I have two close friends – it’s kind of odd that it would happen – both have children that were abused. They are adult children now but they were abused – one when he was a teenage boy – the other was true pedophilia, he was under twelve. It was a terrible burden in one family and it was one of the factors that broke up the marriage. There were other factors as well. The other family in Minnesota left the Church.

FH: I think we’re being killed by all the anecdotes. They’re true. These things are happening. It’s one thing to say get over it. I have a good friend who was talking with his family and said, “I was abused.” God, they were all amazed. He was 35 years old. I asked him, “What did you do about it?” He said, “I got over it.” He said I just kept on going and I’m sure he did. The other thing that you mentioned still has to be addressed. That’s the anger toward the bishops and the perceived cover up. If we had gone back and looked at this from the point of view of reconciliation we would also have to start talking about what do we mean by cover up? What do we mean by confidentiality? What do we mean by transparency? I know some bishops who are not being transparent at all, but they talk about it. When you talk about the cover up, I was raised with the idea, first of all of confidentiality; secondly, what goes on at our dining room table does not go outside our house. Confidentiality has its place. We should be able to address that. We haven’t been able to because of the way that everything went. If we had started out on a different basis perhaps we could have ended with at least a public reaction that is not a public condemnation as it is now. So then we say to the Bishops, “Here’s what confidentiality means or here’s what transparency means.” But we’re not going to be transparent. I talked with one priest who had a problem with grown women. He came to see me, we talked about it, and moved beyond that. When all this blew up, they were asking for the files of the priest. I was at a gathering one night and this priest I just mentioned was there and I said, “Look, I never keep files on priests who come to speak with me about their personal problems.” He was visibly relieved. So, there are a lot of those things that we haven’t even touched yet. I know there are cover-ups still going on.

FC: I would like to respond as one layman to what you said earlier about a public penance service prior to this meeting, I think would have done immeasurable good and people would have accepted it. There still are people looking for deep pockets and all that. I think it would have reduced the anger.

FH: It would also have a basis for dealing with the parents, now. Reconciliation has to be between the victim and the abuser. I suspect not much is being done about that, other than the financial settlements.

PG: Of course, that question of payoffs is another one that bugs me because I think a lot of the bishops have really been in the hands of the insurance company. There is no question about the need for reconciliation.

FC: What Bishop Kincanus did in Tucson was very enlightened. He just opened everything up. It took awhile to build trust back. It happens when you open everything up and say, this is what we have. Now how are we going to deal with this? They came to a very amicable, if you can be amicable about something like this, but reasonable, conclusions.

LS: At this point, is there anything that could be said that could be circulated to the other Archbishops to build any sense of hope?

??: Hope for whom?

LS: For the people of the Church. As you listen to the conversation and as you speak, you can hear what it has done to people.

FH: Most of the action of the bishops has been good and necessary. We do the study, get the causes, all that is what should be done. My complaint is that we didn’t do the basic things. My analysis is that it’s locked into a five-year approval, so, so far, you can’t touch it. I wasn’t at the last meeting where it was discussed. I heard that a number of the bishops got up really in anguish over these good priests who were off the job. The response was, no, we’re not going to touch it. By this time, of course, the courts were having a heyday on costs.

LS: Carroll and I heard from two different people about a bishop who gave a talk in which he said the bishops were wrong in Dallas. He said that they allowed themselves to be pressured by time and the media. He said it was not the right circumstances in which to make such a difficult decisions. People responded, “Thank God a bishop has said that.” I’m wondering if there is anything that could be said now by the Archbishops that would give people a sense of healing?

FH: As we went along with this, there was always some division in the Bishop’s Conference about having public discussions. I think it would it be good to see the bishops arguing over this question. Now, we know very well that the press would have a field day with this. Victim’s families would react in different ways. I personally think there are too many of us saying, “Let’s get it behind us.” But, it’s not going to get behind us. The reason I say this is because we have the children of the abused people who know the stories. The press is going to keep this alive, right up to the time when they write his obituary. I believe that priests are still angry toward the bishops and question whether they can trust them. I say that from a very small sampling but I think it’s there. Who’s going to go into the bishop and say, “Bishop, I’ve got a problem,” if the bishop is going to remove him from office, or if the bishop can’t defend him. Someplace along the line, and I’m ready to do this, if need be, if I’m ever asked about the files on conversations with priests, I will refuse to respond. Priests are not protected in these private conversations as they are in the confessional but I would oppose releasing any such files. It’s one of my pet peeves right now, as you can tell.

FC: It’s surprising that after all these years that it’s such a raw subject matter. I do think it is passing and the spotlight is off it but…

PG: Of course, these things are going to come up, you know. Archbishop Pilarscyk of Cincinnati said that we have to eliminate original sin to get everything behind us.

LS: I want to listen to what you just said on the tape. Your open acknowledgement of the errors could be helpful to a lot of people. I wouldn’t quote it without checking with you.

PG: It’s an awful neuralgic subject. It’s one of these things that creates a football for the media.

FH: We’ve definitely lost the trust with the parents of small kids. I went through this with my own family. There were a number of us sitting around talking. There was this one priest that I had taken and now have him living with me. He says Mass with me but he’s off the job. They had all met him when they came up to Anchorage for one of my anniversary celebrations. He’s a wonderful guy. He really is. I said to them, “Do you think he should go back to work?” My niece with three little kids said, “No way. No way.”

PG: One of the aspects of this whole situation is that the priests seem to be convicted even before there is an assessment of what actually happened. The poor guy. It’s a terrible situation and he’s kicked off the job before there is any proof.

FH: There are assignments that they could be given that I think almost everybody would accept or tolerate. A nursing home is a perfect example of this.

CJ: Earlier today you talked about the structure meeting a need. In this case the structure doesn’t work. For the priest there’s a problem, structurewise if he goes to you. He’s caught once he goes to you. The structures aren’t even getting him help. Once he goes, he’s condemned.

FH: No, the structure provides a way of dealing with it. Whether you agree or disagree with what the conclusion was. But the structure was there and that gave us a way to deal with the whole thing. My difference with them is with the way we did it. We should have handled it as a conference. We should have done it without Rome and go on from there. We should do it with the laity. As these questions come up, we should have the lay people commenting and giving suggestions.

(Break)

PG: We had a situation in New Jersey. There is a fine, outstanding priest who had been kind to this young fellow when he was young – 30 or 40 years ago who had supposedly been abused when he was in jail. The prosecutor looked into the matter and decided that there was nothing there. The assistant prosecutor thought that there was something there. The prosecutor dismissed it. The fellow was suspended “voluntarily.” Well, the parish was up in arms. This guy in jail is trying to get something for himself. The whole thing had been looked into and dismissed. In a case like that what do you do? It did some good, I think, from the point of view of arousing the people. They were absolutely incensed that this wonderful priest should never under these circumstances, have been suspended. He was put back two weeks ago.

FS: To a tumultuous reception.

LS: As you mentioned before, you have to define some of these things. What does credible mean?

FH: The cases I hear about, if they’re bona fide pedophiles, which means abusing children under four years, those people can’t be trusted. They have a deep pathological problem, but the others can be rehabilitated.

PG: This is the thing that bothers me about the whole big to-do about it. We are supposed to be a people of forgiveness. If I hear of an accusation about one incident forty years ago I immediately say, “The dollar sign must be there, someplace.”

LS: Tonight I will give you a rough draft of an article about what we think you said about priests and you can respond to it. What we heard today will be added to each of these things. Would you take a few moments and read over the section on the hierarchy. There’s quite a bit on that. See if there are any reactions or additions.

PG: The qualities to look for in bishops. Some of us have sent inquiries and asked people to list what kind of qualities they would like to have in bishops. One bishop used to say, “Gee, what they want is a saint. They guy has to be perfect.”

FH: And talents galore.

PG: That question about the formation of bishops by the seminaries today (reading) “are they providing sufficient training to minister to the changing cultural realities and the implementation of Vatican II?” That’s my question about the seminaries.

LS: That comes directly from you, not your wording but your thoughts.

PG: A lot of good stuff here.

FH: I think there is a mistake in here, somewhat related to something we said before (reading) “In general, we did a poor job of implementing the Second Vatican Council.” I find that too sweeping.

PG: That’s what I think, too.

LS: Affirm that a lot of good has happened.

FH: We’re still going through the process of implementing.

PG: Realize that it took a number of generations before the Council of Trent took hold. Talk about scandal.

FH: A lot of bishops are doing many good things. There is always more you can do. Depending on the size of your diocese and the amount of help you have, you can only do certain things and so you make choices. How much do you give to liturgy? How much time do you give to training of laity? Speaking or writing about the council, etc.? it’s a broad process. It’s constantly there in front of us. There’s always more and more that we have to deal with and that’s the nature of the council. Realize that it took three years just to write those documents.

LS: One of the things you said before is you begin from the assumption these are good men who are motivated by faith. They’ve done some good. There’s more to be done.

FS: These are aberrations. One bishop, the bishop of Scranton, Bishop Jerome Hannon didn’t put any stock in the council. When the changes came on the liturgy, he absolutely forbade anything in Scranton. He died at the end of the council.

PG: You said he forbade anything.

FS: Any of the changes in the liturgy in the whole diocese. He died in ’65 and then Bishop McCormick, who was certainly not a liberal, by any means, is the one who brought all these changes in a year or so later than anybody else.

PG: It’s interesting – men of faith. Frank, you were saying that Archbishop Boland, my predecessor came back and put in all the changes. He was a man of faith. He took the decisions of the bishops. I remember one bishop that I brought a message to about the split of his diocese. The men of the province asked me to go and talk to him about it. He was about to retire. He was really upset by the whole notion but the conclusion of my meeting with him was, “Look, if my brother bishops want this, okay, I’ll stick around and we’ll do it.” I so admired that attitude. A lot of men were trained in an entirely different style of operation.

LS: Any reactions, just like you just did. What you said is that the statement we have in the summary is a sweeping statement and does not say it correctly. Any reactions to anything else in the section on bishops? What are listed are the observations of a single bishop. What we want to know is whether this is true for most of you.

FH: It says here it would be good see bishops argue among themselves. I would prefer to see it expressed that they have differences of opinions about a lot questions and would discuss that publicly.

FC: That became very apparent during the Kerry campaign.

PG: Absolutely.

FH: Bishops have disagreements among themselves. The arguing goes on too. Anyway, this is just a minor point.

PG: A lot of things have been said here that I don’t think have been necessarily lived up to. For instance, what to look for in a bishop (reading) “A good strong theological and pastoral background.” I think pastoral experience has been lacking in a lot of them that have been named, don’t you?

FH: I had almost none.

FS: Cardinal Levada said that when we was in Maine. He spoke at Charlie Murphy’s jubilee and he congratulated Charlie on all those years in the parish, of which he said, “I had none.”

FH: I had two years in a parish.

PG: It doesn’t necessary follow that a guy has to have the parochial experience. It’s not totally necessary but I think it’s very, very helpful.

LS: Even more than the pastoral is the parochial.

PG: When it says pastoral it usually means the whole thing.

FH: I’m talking about how you deal with people.

PG: All that stuff. Such a list of qualities, holy smokes. I think it’s a pretty good description, like the man who said that the people in describing what they wanted as a pastor always practically said he had to be perfect. He had to be a saint. That’s what it looks like.

FH: Like the old questionnaire they used to send out…

FS: One thing that I would see is bishops withholding information from priests who really need the information. Everybody has been beating up on Cardinal Law, unfortunately some of it with good reason. When he was still Archbishop he appointed a priest to a parish. The priest didn’t know it until he got there but Fr. Gohegan or one of the priests had been there a few years before. The people were still up in arms and raised all kinds of hell with this priest. He didn’t know anything about it. He called Cardinal Law and he said, “Did you know that whatever his name was here.” The Cardinal said, “Yes.” So said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” Cardinal Law said, “I didn’t think you needed to know.” Well, I think if he said to the guy, “Look, we have a problem here. Would you help me out?” I’m sure the guy would have said, “Fine, your Eminence. I would be glad to.” But to say, “I didn’t think you needed to know.”

FH: That’s all part of the secrecy factor. That’s why the secrecy, the confidentiality, transparency, all these terms we’ve been using have to be reviewed. They all have a place. When I worked at the Bishop’s Conference secrecy was extensive.

PG: I think, incidentally, with regard to the selection and appointment of Bishops I think that process needs some examination. It’s only a fairly recent development in the history of the Church that the Pope makes all the bishops. Again, that’s this over centralization that we’ve talking about. We wonder sometimes how much attention the Holy See pays to the Bishops of the Province. For many people the appointment of Bishops is a great mystery and is certainly a big factor in some of the discontent we learn about on the part of the people concerning how Bishops are named.

FH: If you protest about that you are considered more insensitive to the Holy See.

PG: I was named to Newark and I profited, if that’s what it’s called, by the process. I still don’t understand how a Congregation over in Rome really knows more than the bishops of the country do.

FH: They think they do.

PG: That’s exactly what I mean. The Apostolic Delegate, in one case that I know about declared, “The Apostolic Delegate wishes to overrule…” He paid no attention to the recommendations of the bishops. He was receiving all their recommendations. The particular man who was named bishop had connections and was named a bishop, without any input from any bishops. I think that, at least, has to be improved.

LS: I’m not hearing a lot of reaction, so I presume that what we have there is a basis from which to work.

FH: It is opening questions that are not addressed very much. Sometimes, if you talk them through, you can set some parameters, some tone to facilitate the discussion.

PG: I think a bishop has to be careful not to be a micro-manager. He has to have enough common sense to not attempt to control every single detail in the diocese. I realize that’s a matter of personality. It might be a sign of insecurity. He has to trust the people to whom he delegates. He’s got to be patient.

PG: (Reading) “The role of the bishop is to persuade, not mandate.”

LS: One of the things that came up this morning and came up in the interviews, and I’m not sure if it’s there, is the tension between faithful to the centralized church and being faithful to the pastoral needs.

PG: Well, I think I expressed my thoughts on that matter. We have the hierarchical structure of the Church that comes from the Lord. There’s often a tension between that and the pastoral responsibility to the people. It’s inevitable. So, the question is, how will you reconcile those things so that you come to acceptable decisions. We’re back to “Dialog, dialog, dialog,” and listening. When you come right down to it, the bishop has the last word but he has to be careful to assure that he’s taken all the right steps. Very frequently the bishop will give the last word but the decision is made by everybody, by the input that comes to him from the people.

FH: The bishop has to have a sense of what authority he has as a successor of the apostles. He has the responsibility for the ordinary jurisdiction for the territory under his care. Therefore, he is responsible for seeing that the gospel comes to life there.

PG: Exactly.

FH: I had one issue, which had to do with the policy on the age of confirmation, involving one family. It went on for two years before I finally got a mandate to do it. I wrote back and said, ‘I won’t.” I said, “I’m the bishop here and this is a disciplinary matter. That’s not your position to be telling me how I’m going to do that.” The reason that I bring this up is that there are a lot of things that come out of Rome and there are a lot of bishops who say if Rome says it, “That’s it.” That’s why I say it bears an understanding of what the role of a bishop is. There are a lot of questions he has to raise in conjunction with that. There have been a lot of other issues like liturgy and translations and so many other things where Rome has been intrusive.

PG: You’re right no one denies the primacy. We want to have a powerful primacy. When we’re talking about the episcopal position amongst the bishops in their diocese, I think that there are things that Rome ought to examine, too. I think there ought to be a certain modesty in the manner in which they approach things. They talk about collegiality. Collegiality means to trust the bishops and let them make decisions, unless those decisions are contrary to the faith or will have terrible consequence in other lands. Rome tends to be cautious, and rightly so, but this leads very frequently to an inclination to micro-manage.

FH: The difficulties I had involved mostly dealing with members of the Curia.

PG: Exactly

FH: If it’s legit, you complain. The one I had, the Cardinal eventually apologized, which makes me sure he signed it but I don’t think he ever followed it. I can’t imagine that a Cardinal would be concerned about the confirmation of one person in Alaska.

PG: I’ve had examples of that. You get inquiries about something and you ask why are they worrying about that over in Rome. They get some complaints, you know. When you’re a bishop most of the mail that concerns your policies are complaints. Very infrequently do you get someone writing to tell you what a wonderful job you’re doing.

FH: You don’t get those every day?

PG: The custom used to be, when I was first ordained a bishop, that Rome would let you know about the complaint but say something like, give this the attention it deserves.

FH: There was a period of time when that was being done. All the complaints would go back to the bishop who would be asked to take care of the matter.

PG: Exactly.

FH: Which is good.

LS: That’s subsidiarity.

PG: Exactly. Somehow that changed several years ago.

FH: Once, when I was at the conference, John Cronin wrote an article. It was controversial, something about labor relations. There was a letter sent to the Apostolic Delegate. He sent it on to a Congregation. The Congregation sent it to Bishop Tanner at our office. He sent it down to John. John prepared a response. It went back to Tanner’s office to Rome and finally back to the writer of the letter.

END OF DAY

PG: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Heavenly Father we ask you to bless our discussions this morning. Give us light to be able to speak the truth and to follow your Divine Son who is the truth. We ask all this through Christ our Lord. Amen

LS: Archbishop Hurley will be a little late. He is having breakfast with one of the students who is from Alaska. I would suggest we begin and the two of you could give us any feedback on the draft of the article we are planning to do.

FS: There are a number of typos. The “quad” on the first page, fourth line should be “quid.” Cardinal Bernardin’s name should be Joseph, not John on page 2. Top of page 3, about 4th line down, diner should be dinner. Page 5, line 2, Benedict XVI. Take out “the.” Down at the bottom of that page there is just one “n” in Siena. Bottom of the line, “priests” should be plural. Page 10, third line down, “individual” should be singular.

PG: Let’s go to page 2. “Vocation and Role of the Priest.” “The Archbishops are unequivocal in stating that the primary role of the priests is to be men of prayer.” It seems to me that that’s an overstatement. It’s true that every Christian has to be a person of prayer. I don’t think the primary role…It should state “like every Christian, he must be a man of prayer.”

LS: Take out the “unequivocal” too.

PG: Yes. We’re going to talk about these things. On page 4, “follow the flight attendant’s advice…Spend an hour every day in personal prayer.” I’m all in favor of that but I don’t like laying down that as a rule. That business, an hour, why does it have to be “an hour.” It could be two hours or three hours. I think he should strive to set aside ample time during…something like that, rather than give that as the mandate.

LS: What I would suggest because it is a quote, we can put a sentence before the quote simply saying that one of the recommendations is to strive to set aside adequate time for prayer.

PG: That’s what I would say. Page 6 – “spirituality can no longer…” I’m trying to remember the name of the Frenchman who said a priest should be mange, a priest should be eaten, that is with his apostolate and with his contact with people. In French you would say he is eaten up with that. It doesn’t sound too good in English.

FS: It sounds like a cannibal.

PG: There are probably some good quotes in English around someplace. There was an Abbe, a great spiritual writer in the old days who use the term mange. That phrase has always stuck in my mind. We had every single word of our education over there in French. When I heard that the Greg went to Italian I said that’s the end of Latin. One of the things that I noticed in Collins book. The Japanese were complaining about the length of time it was taking to get translations into Japanese for the things they needed for their Synod. One of the things that annoys me about the translations is that they try to shove them down your throat, which they’ve already succeeded in doing. Some of them are awkward. I get these things from Rome every day. Every once in a while the translations are not really English. Most of it is not too bad, but there are certain phrases that are really awkward. They’re telling us how to talk English. It’s sixty-seven years since I’ve come back from France. The language changes. When I get a magazine, such as Paris Matc, filled with the slang, I can’t figure out what they’re saying. How do you pronounce the name Hoge? On page 7, “Hoge’s research was describing the cohort and not every individual priest.” This is interesting. The young priests don’t seem to cotton to the laity. Of course, it’s been said many, many times that they tend to be conservative. I don’t know how true that is but it seems to be the general reaction. It gives material for thought about present day training of future priests in our seminaries. At the bottom of that very page regarding the Archbishops’ concern for the priests, it mentions that their role is constantly being expanded to include new tasks. What are we talking about there?

LS: In many dioceses today a priest has responsibility for a number of parishes or will be wearing many hats. He’ll be a pastor and have a job at the Chancery.

PG: I used to get a big kick when I was first bishop, particularly down in Newark, where we had a lot of priests. I would listen to these guys. They felt that every single new thing that came along had to be full time. For example, the director of the ecumenical office couldn’t run a parish at the same time he was director. I’m thinking to myself, “When I was a priest in New Haven, Connecticut I was serving the blacks and the Hispanics. I took care of the Archbishop’s Committee on Human Rights. I ran Project Equality. I was on the Board of Directors and running the finances of St. Raphael's hospital. And it seems to me that now everybody wants just one full-time job. I didn’t have much sympathy for that.

FS: It’s still pretty true in our diocese. We have a lot of priests who have two or three jobs but most of them have one job. I think there may only be two or three parishes, and I don’t think it’s too much more, where there is only one priest in the parish. That, plus the fact that there’s somebody a few blocks away. Nobody is that far away. I’m really pressing to think of more than two or three where there is just one priest.

PG: My point is that the chairman of the committees used to say it’s got to be a full-time job.

LS: I was working with a committee of priests. The young priests perception was that the older priests were burning out and the older priests believed that the younger ones were rusting out.

PG: Every so often you run into some young priest who says, “I’m not supposed to be raising money.” And my reply would be, “Do you want to eat?”

FS: Another thing about it is that they don’t want to live in the rectory. They want a nine to five job. They tell people not to come at night because they have other things to do. They say, “Don’t live over the shop.”

PG: Page 9. One bishop said he wanted to have just “Mass priests.”

LS: He (Archbishop Hurley) will be here in a few minutes.

PG: Of course it’s not unheard of it. For instance, over in Rome they had the custom, and they still do, to ordain the guys as Mass priests before they were really prepared to take over the full job. They would be ordained early. My question immediately is, “Who’s going to do the preaching?”

LS: Ask him when he gets back. We’ll get a good discussion going between the two of you.

CJ: Is that the same as the “sacramental priest?” We have it in California, in the Archdiocese. One of our Sisters basically runs the parish. The priest is there as a sacramental priest.

PG: Is he fully ordained?

CJ: Yes, he’s fully ordained.

PG: She does everything else. That’s a little different. That’s not the same thing. The priests in Rome that I mentioned are often ordained six months ahead of time to go out into the parish and just say Mass. I suppose they were able to baptize and so forth but they would do no instruction because supposedly they weren’t prepared for it. I remember one time I made a mistake. I was in the black work. I heard that there was a black Holy Ghost priest ordained. I invited him to come and say mass and provide a role model for the young kids. He came up and I asked him to say a few words. He was terribly embarrassed. I didn’t realize he was a Mass priest, he was ordained ahead of time and he wasn’t supposed to be talking.

LS: All the details would have to be worked out on this concept.

PG: Sure. To me that’s a shot in the dark.

LS: (He mentioned a diocese in New Zealand where the bishop ordained a widower, a Maori, after just two years of training. He was ordained just for the one Maori parish.) We get to work with dioceses doing long range planning. Most of it is really short range, particularly dioceses that don’t have a lot of priests. They are planning for five years. Beyond five years it won’t work without killing the priests.

PG: To me it speaks about a dysfunctional outfit, the church. That’s my opinion. We’ve got people without the sacraments and without proper relationship to Mass and everything else and we’re talking about celibacy. We ought to be talking theology. I can get support from Gerald Collins. He bluntly says that sound theology says we ought to be ordaining priests, married or not. Right now we are closing parishes all over the place. To me, it’s a dysfunctional church. I wonder what that means on page 9, “an institute for study of the priesthood.”

LS: It was a thought that Archbishop Hurley had, comparing priesthood to other professions. .

PG: This priestly fraternity and morale is a problem. There are many men milked dry because they have so many things to do. It’s pretty difficult for them to get together. When I was up in Maine we have one-man parishes all over the place. Now there are areas where there is no priest. The men were scattered all over the place because of the distances. So, men in a section, who would frequently be of French background, would get together one day a week and have a big dinner and maybe play golf. They would bring their housekeepers and the housekeeper would cook the meals. (laughing) It was pretty good.

FS: I think in Newark we have a number of groups of priests. We have twenty-six deaneries and the deaneries usually meet once a month for a morning or afternoon session. By and large, most of them go to that. We have a lot of support groups. Archbishop had Vincent Dwyer come in 1980 and start support groups. A lot of those are still going on. Some of the original members are gone or dead but new ones, young fellows, are taking their place.

PG: All of the guys that are retired down at the shore get together.

FS: The Polish priests, just by nature, I guess, have always been close. We have nineteen Polish parishes in the Archdiocese of Newark. Practically all of them have a forty hours devotion every year. They invite all the Polish priests from northern New Jersey and New York. They also invite some others, like myself. I go to about eight or nine a year. You see the same priests at all of them. They have a big dinner afterward. I shouldn’t say it is the forty hours that draws them, quite frankly.

PG: Is it in here that I read about the forty hours not existing anymore. That’s not true, at least for the Poles. There must be others also.

FS: The Polish parishes in our whole area.

PG: You should add to that, especially in certain ethnic parishes because the Poles are very strong on that.

FS: And the Slavs and Lithuanians.

PG: They all have that. Which is pretty good. They get together for the closing of the forty hours. They’ll sing their prayers and then they’ll have a big meal.

LS: Would it be appropriate to say certain ethnic, urban parishes?

PG: Not necessarily.

LS: The other thing that has to go in here is that you just added is the whole idea of the support groups that do exist.

PG: Absolutely. That has to be in there. That started a long time ago and, as Frank says, a lot of guys are still in them. They talk about their support group.

FS: Years ago it used to be confirmations. When the bishop would come for confirmation they would invited a lot of priests over. A lot of things went against that such as having confirmation on a Saturday afternoon. Most parishes have a mass on Saturday night. I go to a lot of confirmations and there are hardly any other priests, except the priests in the parish. They don’t get priest visitors for the Confirmations. In addition, there are many more meetings to go to than they had years ago.

LS: Carroll and I have noticed that priests hunger for fraternity with their brothers. They’re just so overwhelmed with so many other things.

PG: I think it’s important to put something here about the necessity of fraternity. On the bottom of page 11, it says we have to get more priests. Was that me? Yesterday, I pointed out that this business of the Synods has it all backwards. At the Council the bishops would write the documents and the Pope would merely approve it. Now, the bishops give all the input to the Pope and he puts out what he wants. I’m just trying to point out one of the things that’s wrong with this process. The Asian bishops met for their Synod. They wanted to have the ordination of mature, married men. The response from the Pope – not one word. You know, what kind of collegiality is that? The Pope takes it upon himself to write the synod document. It may reflect nothing or very little of what the bishops have said. The point is control. It ends up being written by some guy over in the Curia.

LS: One of the things you said in the interview is that you have hope in what Benedict XVI will do.

PG: It’s taking him a long time, I must say. There is a reporter who writes the letter from Rome for the Tablet. He said that some months ago everybody was panting, waiting for Benedict to do something, but he hasn’t done much. He wrote the encyclical and he did bring Archbishop Bertone into the State Department to head it. He was in the CDF. He wasn’t in the diplomatic corps at all, which is a big switch. He brought in an American to be his successor in the CDF. Those are the two moves he made. I noticed when he met with the new Cardinals he let them talk. The big things haven’t happened yet.

(Archbishop Hurley arrived.)

FH: I was just talking with a young man who is thinking about becoming a priest. I asked him what would happen if in the university here had not just a course but a major or a minor in priesthood.

PG: I mentioned that. That gives some sense to it. I didn’t quite understand what that was all about.

FH: This kid is going though engineering. So, instead of going through engineering, you would go through priesthood. That’s not the right term but it would be something like that. He was asking me about what it’s like being a diocesan priest and what’s it like being a priest. It would be very healthy for Catholic people, even if they never were ordained.

PG: I get that now.

FH: You take it as a minor, just as you would take a couple of courses.

PG: There would be a lot of attraction for that.

FH: They would not be in the seminary. That part of formation would be different. Anyone, I imagine, who would be thinking the way he is would be interested in such a program.

PG: You could make it ministries in the Church.

FH: Yes. If you go though here you learn all about the priesthood and you’re a layman out there. We need people out there who understand what a priest is all about. It’s a big mystery now.

PG: I think that’s a great idea.

LS: We’re on page 11 and were just beginning on the section on celibacy.

PG: I was making the point about Synods and celibacy. The Asian Bishops had their Synod. At the Council the bishops wrote the documents and the Pope bowed and said okay, probably. Now the bishops give the input to the Pope and then he screens it out according to what he wants to put in and what he doesn’t want to put in. It’s his document. It’s not from the bishops.

FH: That’s right.

PG: In the Asian Synod these guys were talking about the very serious problem of evangelization and they asked if they could have married priests, mature, married men. They suggested this to the Pope. The statement comes out from the Pope and there is not a word about it. Collegiality?

FH: John Paul was so insistent that it not be discussed.

PG: I cannot see that attitude of not discussing it prevailing because there’s too much talk about it. This has a way of bursting out.

FH: In my experience, whether Catholics or not, it doesn’t make sense. There’s nothing about the appreciation of what priesthood is all about. We can say the special union with the Lord and the imitation of Christ and all these things that are part of being who we are. But for the vast majority of people, it doesn’t make sense. They just want priests

LS: This is connected to your concept of the “Mass priest.” We’ll get back to that.

PG: In the discussion of priestly celibacy, it seems to me that we’ve got to be careful that a scientific study should be made of celibacy – what it does – what its purpose is and what particularly is the experience of the other denominations who have married people as their ministers. Let’s talk about it. I’d like to have a broad study on that whole question so that we’re dealing with facts and not just off the top our heads, like, “”I’m in favor of this” or he’s in favor of that. Let’s talk facts. That would be my suggestion.

FH: The way it goes right now is the only thing we can talk about, regarding the priesthood, is that we see it as a great value. That doesn’t mean an awful lot to a lot of other people.

PG: That’s right.

FH: You mention that the Episcopal minister is a married priest and he has the same values. He has a comparable sense of priesthood and he’s a great servant of the people.

PG: There was one thing that impressed me at the time that we were discussing whether we were going to tell Rome we would accept married Episcopal priests into the priesthood of the Catholic Church, It was how touched I was by the letters a couple of these guys wrote. They were so deeply spiritual. They were just beautiful.

FH: There was a whole development after that. Actually the final decision came from Rome much quicker than we thought. All of a sudden it was okay. When I was just starting off with Scott Medlock I went to see Ratzinger. I dealt with a priest on his staff so we did everything the way they wanted it.

PG: This is the father of the man you introduced us to before? He was a Lutheran?

FH: No, a Methodist.

FH: He went to Notre Dame. He also went to Duke and graduated from there. I called a theologian I knew there and said, “Tell me about this guy.” I had three different people that had a connection with him.

PG: We had a guy, a Lutheran minister. It’s interesting because it kind of a parallel case. His wife is a Catholic and a good Catholic. He’s had four or five kids and they’re bringing them up as Catholics and here he’s a Lutheran. He became a priest.

FH: I would say to Scott, “Basically, you want to be converted but you have two agenda that really can work together, being a Catholic and being a priest.” He still had the call to be a priest. He brought that with him. Anyway, we got through it with no trouble at all. Ratzinger said to me that we get a lot of blessings from some of these men. He was very positive about it.

PG: Archbishop Myers now is the chairman of the committee that Law was previously in charge of, the committee with the responsibility of accepting these Protestant ministers. He recently to me that he has quite a few applications from Episcopalian priests He also has a few applications from Episcopal bishops.

LS: (Mentioned about the Episcopal priests that he and Carroll met in a seminary in England and how they were so accepted by the other priests in the diocese.)

FH: None of my priests raised any questions about themselves in relation to Scott.

PG: I don’t think ours have either.

FH: Scott’s wife is a very attractive young lady. All the priests approved of accepting Scott. All but one came to the ordination and the one who couldn’t make it wrote a very nice letter explaining why he couldn’t make it.

LS: Do you want to talk about the “Mass priest?”

FH: I had some questions about the way you had it expressed, for instance, you said “people being denied regular Eucharist.” I don’t like that thing that they’re being denied. What I say is they’re getting the Eucharist by a method that is devised when we have a shortage of priests. We’re not denying them Eucharist.

PG: That’s true but we’re denying them the Sacrifice of the Mass, or rather, they don’t have it.

FH: That’s right, they don’t have it. I’m from an area where many of them don’t have it for a long time. We have places like that all over the world. I can’t say we deny them.

PG: Yes, that’s the way to say it.

FH: However, we can still provide them with the Eucharist.

PG: On that very page I did mark a sentence here, the first sentence on the top of the page, “the pastoral planning done in many dioceses today is highly unrealistic.” How do we conclude that? Have we made a survey or something.

LS: That should be deleted.

PG: We’re talking about the Mass priest.

FH: Yes, let me talk about the Mass priest. I don’t know when you stopped going to Bishop’s meetings.

PG: A long time ago.

FH: This is something I never thought I would even think about. Now I’m into it and I see what our priests are doing and what they’re like. I had an occasional pastor who would just say Mass on Sunday. Also, I had a couple of circuit riders who were blah in saying Mass, did nothing for the parish. I’ve heard of priests who do nothing but watch television, go through the Mass and go on their way. I suppose that’s like a Mass priest. All they’re doing is saying Mass and not even with any personal commitment to the people. Then I began thinking about the deacons we have. We have a couple of deacons who are good preachers. Most of them are sort of pious preachers. That’s when I started thinking about it. I had a couple of priests that were quote “Mass priests.” That’s the only work they did. They didn’t do anything else in the parish.

PG: I hate to interrupt but we have some of that in our place. We have all these retired priests down at the shore in Jersey, out of our diocese. They’re filling in. What do they do? They just say Mass. That’s it.

FH: We used to have the Jesuits when I was in San Francisco and Archbishop Mitty would not let them preach because they were ordained after three years in theology. He wouldn’t let them preach until they had the fourth year of theology. They came and said Mass. That’s not the help we needed. Preparing a homily every week would help us out but they couldn’t preach. So, they were Mass priests.

PG: They still have them in Rome. They ordain them a few months ahead of time so they can go out and say Mass. That’s all they do.

FH: That’s fine. It’s a plus. The whole question is to have the liturgy and the Eucharist both.
To ordain men primarily, maybe exclusively, to be able to provide the liturgy of the Eucharist for the people.

PG: I’ll raise a couple of questions. Would they preach?

FH: Only if they were trained for that.

PG: Of course we have deacons that are trained for that.

FH: We have some deacons there. We have two that are pretty good preachers.

PG: Do they baptize?

FH: Yes.

PG: I mean these Mass priests.

FH: Possibly

PG: Immediately, what we’re talking about is ordaining a man for a sacramental ministry, as I understand it. He could be trained, as the deacons are, not with the full range of theology that the priest is supposed to be trained for. But, we let them preach. I see a lot of possibilities.

FH: These things ought to be discussed. We’re training sacramental priests, only sacramental. That’s a plus. On the other hand we do have deacons who can do that. You might even have some parish administrators baptize. We have permission for them to perform weddings.

PG: Yes. That’s right.

FH: They prepare the people for weddings, so let them handle the marriage. These things need to be talked all the way through to find what would be the best way to approach it. The sacramental approach might even be better. That way we would have sacramental priests that are not permanent deacons. They wouldn’t have the same obligations as deacons. The idea would be that we have, certainly, mature, very competent men who could easily learn how to offer the Eucharist in a very significant and prayerful way. That would be their specialty. I would like to see it include the preaching.

PG: I don’t see any reason why that couldn’t be done. We’re doing it for deacons.

FH: This would give us something we could really work on in addition to a formation program. They’re respected in the community. The people get used to it. They get used to our deacons. It would take some adjustment, though.

PG: I think what we’re really saying here is that we regret that the people will not be able to always get the sacraments. Perhaps, there ought to be a rethinking of how we’re going to bring the sacraments to the people. Perhaps, as we train the deacons to do these things, why not train people to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass.

FH: The point is that they would be able to prepare for that. The people accept that. One of the good experiences of having administrators and priests is that the priest can go in to say Mass for the people. Then he goes his way. The administrator continues the ministries to the parish.

I had one Sister serving as administrator of two parishes. She told me, “When I get in there x number of people want to see me about themselves, their kids, catechists, etc. I just go from morning to night, even in this tiny, little village.” Then she goes back to her base village and it’s the same thing there. It’s just too much. I never appreciated that they are called upon to do all the community organizing and other aspects of parochial life. In the old days we had a lot of priests and priests would do all that. My point is, let’s talk the thing through. As I look at some of our deacons, I have at least two that I think would make very good priests. They would give a good presentation. If we train them especially for that, then obviously, they have to be men of good character and it will immediately raise the question of celibacy. We’re doing it with the Protestant ministers and why not – and, if he’s retired, he would have the time to devote to it, the time to prepare. That would become part of his call. He would not only offer liturgy, but he would really prepare. In which case, then, we could provide the liturgy and the Eucharist.

Another aspect of this is that they keep saying we’re denying the people Eucharist or they don’t get Mass. We have places all over the world where they don’t get Mass all the time. I grew up going up in the summer in the state of Washington, on my uncle’s farm. We only went to Mass twice during the whole summer. That’s how often they had Mass in the parish had

PG: I had a very good friend of mine who was one of the very prominent priests in the Archdiocese of Hartford. He had been brought up in a little place in the mountains in Massachusetts. When he was a kid he used to describe how on Sundays they would have private prayers in the family. They would hear the bells of all the Protestant churches down through the valleys, and see people going to church. They didn’t have a priest. The priest came once a year, He said Mass at their house.

FH: We have lots of examples like that. The anecdotes don’t give the answers but they raise all the right questions. How do you deal with that particular phenomenon? This goes against everything I learned in the seminary. It goes against everything I thought about for years and years and years. Now that I’m in a different set of circumstances and now that I see what the deacons or administrators can do and how the people are accepting the deacons or administrators, I see it differently. It took awhile. The people had to get used to it. Now they call a deacon to handle a baptism. They call a deacon to handle the wedding. They call the deacon to do this or that. It’s a great help to the priest and some of the deacons are a lot better at some of these things than the priest is. That gets into this “Dialog, dialog, dialog!” that you were talking about. Can we talk about these things? When I raised this question at a bishop’s meeting absolute silence followed.

PG: That is something that has not been brought up. Nobody has really thought about it except you.

FH: Maybe I should write an article about the Mass priest.

LS: We hope you’re serious about that. We’ve just had a piece of it here. As the dialog went on back and forth, you were just building on it.

PG: All sets of questions come up.

LS: You really ought to do an article on it.

PG: You probably hit the bishops before they really had a chance to think about it.

FH: I was coming out of right field. No one even said anything during lunchtime.

FS: What about your brother?

FH: He was dead by then.

LS: It’s interesting both Archbishop Gerety and Msgr. Seymour when they saw the word “Mass priest” asked what is this? It’s been exciting listening to the two of you dialog about this. I was also intrigued by the comment that that it runs contrary to everything you learned in the seminary.

PG: I think we are experiencing a Church that is faced with a shortage of priests to serve the parishes. We need imaginative thinking, as somebody said, outside the box, to discover creative way to bring the sacraments to our people.

FH: It seems to meet the crisis and it could be temporary.

PG: It won’t be temporary.

FH: Like most temporary things, they never end. If you take the whole history of the diaconate, it’s been in and out throughout the history of the church. This could be, too, except if it works and the shortage of priests stays. I know a lot of priests who would say I can take a Mass. When I was first ordained they said you could binate and then, with special permission, you could say three Masses. I had priests who were saying four and five Masses a day.

LS: I would hope you are serious about writing that article. What we’ll try to do in this section is to put t within the context that there is a need and we need to be able to think creatively, “Dialog, dialog, dialog.” Because of the need for the sacraments for people here is a possible suggestion. It doesn’t have all the answers but it will open up dialog.

PG: I think it’s important to tie it into the experience with the deacons.

FH: This is not a springboard to deal with the celibacy question. It could become a factor, just as the married priest I have is a factor. When I preached at his Mass I wanted to make some reference to his status. I asked what’s the difference between a celibate priest and a married priest? I still don’t know how to answer that question. I said the celibate priest brings a celibate love to God. The married priest brings a married love to God. Somebody said, “What do you mean by that?” I said, “I don’t have a clue.”

PG: You have to talk theology when you get into a lot of these questions. The thing that has always disturbed me, in the back of my mind, is that we let in, for example, the Episcopal priest to become Catholic priests, we do it on the basis of their personal feel of a call to priesthood. The Asian bishops asked for the ordination of the ordination of mature, married men to serve a theological need of the faithful. We won’t let them have it. There’s something wrong with that.

FH: We don’t even bring it up so we can talk about it. You know very well that if they do it in Pago Pago, they are going to want to do it in New York City, if the right bishop comes along.

LS: We only have about a half an hour

FH: I read this article and I have a couple of immediate observations. Are you intending to write an article about the interviews and meeting you’ve had? If so, don’t quote Joe Bernardin. You talked to six Archbishops and you’re speaking against a background of what you’ve heard from them. Not because of what Joe had said. You’re quite right, Joe would have been included in this if he were alive.

PG: I had the same reaction.

FH: There are several times where you have extensive quotes from the Pope, I’d say the same thing. Don’t eliminate all of them, but most of them. My reaction is you could have been writing that stuff about the Pope and Bernardin without ever having talked with us.

LS: What about the introductory paragraph? We quote the Pope there.

PG: I think it’s absolutely essential to start off with that.

LS: We may remove most of the quotes of the Pope out of the article. What we were trying to do is related to something you said yesterday. If you quote the Pope it gives you a little bit of credibility.

FH: On the top of page 4 you talk about the qualities of the priest. One of the things that we did not raise that I began thinking about was that we did not mention is priests saying Mass every day. There are a lot of priests who don’t say Mass every day. Obviously, they don’t have to. The priest I know are present if Mass is available. However, when they are on vacation and have days off or meetings they might skip Mass. When John Paul wrote on the Eucharist a couple of years ago he talked about the priest saying Mass, even by himself. First, it’s an act of the Church, and second, all the goodness of the Eucharist comes out.

PG: We have a lot in here about the necessity of the priest being a man of prayer. I think you could throw in the devotion to the Eucharist. We agree with the recommendations of the spiritual writers about daily Mass. I’m for that. I remember seeing a quote from Pope John Paul II recently where he talked of priests trying to say mass every day even when they are alone. I like what he said. I’ll tell you something else that bothers me. A lot of priests don’t say the office.

FH: That’s right. I think we agree that these are concerns. Maybe that day is past. That’s what we were raised to do.

PG: I’ve always felt that it puts you in touch with the Church and the Fathers and the spiritual writers.

FH: I’d rather take the time to do my own prayer. I can do the same thing without saying the breviary. That’s a valid point. Why do we have the breviary?

PG: Plus I was struck by the fact that Paul VI removed the strict obligation, except that he recommended that at least lauds and vespers. When we say the prayer of the Church we are one, even if said miles apart.

FH: One of the other elements is community prayer.

PG: But, you know the office puts us in touch with the prayer of the Church. All the religious organizations and the contemplatives are all saying the same thing. I think it’s a loss when you don’t say it.

FH: The response of some people would be, “I’m doing the same thing but in my own format I get tired of going down the psalms.” I’m happy we don’t have to sing it the way the monks do. That would drive me crazy. Another thought and this is kind of a thing in my own life is to have a chapel in the rectory. I used to ask, “Why? You have a church right next door.” When I lived in a parish I would go over to the church and I would pray there. Now that I live in my own house away from the church I have a chapel and I’m sure glad I do. There are a number of priests who have done this. There are some bishops have even mandated that when they are building a rectory, they can put in a chapel. I can see now a real value to that. It’s a thought. I think it’s legitimate. With all this stuff I guess I’d want to say I’m not saying it has to be done but, “dialog, dialog, dialog.” Let’s talk about it.

PG: I made something of a point here where we say the priest should spend an hour every day in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I don’t think we ought to be proscribing the precise terms, an hour a day – Why not say two or three – but we’ve got to urge the devotional life of the priest and the sacrament of the Eucharist as the center of it. It should be recommended.

FH: Here’s what some priests do, they take a full hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I have a number of priests who spend a lot of time in prayer and they even do it without the breviary because they just don’t like the breviary.

PG: My point is that I don’t like to make it a matter of obligation.

FH: You’re right. You’re saying here’s what several people say. There is a great value to the breviary, to praying it every day and there’s a great value to praying before the Blessed Sacrament. I wrote a little thing about my experience of the Eucharist. I was going to put it in the paper but never did. It dealt with my experience from back as a small kid in my family and being an altar boy.

PG: I was saying something similar this morning. Where do we get the faith from? From our parents. I can remember our mother with us as little kids in church teaching us how to pray to our Father.

FH: It’s just been there all my life. You devoted at least one hour to Fulton Sheen and the breviary. It helps. Again, this isn’t the only way. It’s in the context that this has served us very well. We believe in prayer, community prayer and even prayer in common with others who are not present with us.

LS: Basically, what I put down here is that these are values that come out of your own lived experience. It’s not something you want to mandate. Rather, it’s something you would ask people to think about and to dialog about. The values are there.

FH: One of the things that I would raise based on what I see with some of the priests is priests praying together. My whole history has been praying alone. I was only in a parish for two years and I was alone in Washington.

PG: That’s the experience of many priests. It’s hard to get together for some people. They just don’t have the opportunity.

FH: But I never tried. I would make time for myself. But not say, let’s get together and pray…

PG: A lot of guys do that.

FH: They do now. They have Jesus Caritas groups.

LS: We were talking about the support groups before you came in. We’ll put something in here about the value of support groups.

PG: We have support groups. We had Vince Dwyer back in the eighties. Guys are still in those same support groups. They’re wonderful.

FH: I tried to get them going and had a priest in to talk about it. Only one support group got going.

FH: Even just the mere fact of asking the question makes people think about it.

FH: Here’s one place here where you got a little preachy. The middle of page 6, “priest engaged in.” You say, “Spirituality can no longer be seen…” Do you think that yourself? You get it from all kinds of sources. Have we failed?

PG: I noticed this is a good word here, “Pope John Paul II was almost consumed…” I talked before about a French spiritual writer who talked about the priest as a man eaten up by his priesthood and his responsibilities. Mange.

FH: Consumed?

PG: Consumed with zeal for his office and so forth. That’s really what I’m talking about.

LS: We hear you. Get the idea in there and take away the judgment.

FH: I put a note here. We’re not passing judgment on our priests. It says “they should do this and they should do that.” That implies we’re telling them they have a problem. They’ll turn around and say, “So do you.”

PG: Even that sentence, “Spirituality can no longer be seen…” No longer?

FH: There are spots in this that are yours. If we were talking someplace we might say the same things to others. I don’t know that came out of the bishops you talked to. It might have.

LS: I’m not sure. I’ll go back and check it.

FH: “Spirituality can no longer…” That’s a concept that’s been around for a long term.

PG: I want to follow up on this business of judging. It’s a fact that an awful lot of priests are consumed with their apostolate and their priesthood. We’ve got to affirm, somehow or other – not give them a lecture that they’ve got to be men who are consumed.

FH: Page 10 on reporting, “No priest ever came…” It’s not that the priests are trying to hide stuff from the bishop. I think it’s more that we don’t want to enter that field. It’s your personal life and my personal life. A little bit different note on it. Priests just do not report, not squawk, tattle, about other priest’s lives. There are a lot of reasons for that. I would never want the situation where it became sort of a pattern that a priest is running in to tell you what so and so is doing. That dimension here is not clear.

PG: It should be put into the category of priest supporting one another, not reporting.

FH: Every once in a while the support should come from the bishop.

PG: Absolutely.

FH: The bishop in supporting Fr. X doesn’t have to give a lot of reasons.

PG: That would be picked on immediately by our priests.

LS: Should the quote itself be dropped, “No priest has ever..”

PG: Yes, that’s a judgment.

FH: Yes, that the kind of thing if you were at a mike you could say all this stuff. If I were writing this I would be changing it all down the line if I thought it was judgmental.

LS: Be more affirming. Take all the judgmental out.

FH: In my experience there are times I might have been able to help a priest if someone had alerted me to what was happening.

PG: That’s true.

LS: That’s a nice way of putting it.

FS: We have an avenue for that in Newark and I’m sure a lot of dioceses do. We have a Vicar for Priests. I think priests might feel more comfortable going to him than they would to you as a bishop.

FH: That’s why my experience is not typical. We have so few priests. Frequently, the bishop is the one they go to because I’m more removed from their lives than all of the other priests. They don’t feel at ease with the other priests.

FS: The Vicar for Priests has complete confidentiality. In Archbishop Gerety’s time if the Vicar for Priests said I think Fr. Hurley ought to be changed from here to there the Archbishop would never ask why. Okay, you do it. That was between the Vicar and the priest. It didn’t get to the Archbishop. Whatever the problem was it was being taken care of by the Vicar. The priests feel great confidentiality in bringing the problems to him.

FH: The only thing that I have that is comparable to that is if anyone needed counseling, we would pay for it. They would go to Father x. I’m not even told and I don’t even know how much it cost.

PG: Same thing.

FH: There’s a concern here that the bishop has to have and that’s the protection of one’s privacy. Since I’m retired I think, at times, that some priest had told me about another priest and I could have prevented a problem. One of the better things in my experience in a small diocese is that I know all the priests very well and they know me very well. It’s easy to go to them and even raise things with them.

LS: The way you put it before is I could have been supportive if I had known what was happening. That’s the message we want to get across.

PG: You, of course, could know the guys very well. In our case, there’s so much grief. I remember after the Council there was a saying that the bishop ought to be very close to his priests…When I got down to Newark we had a Senate of Priests and this issue come up constantly. Finally, Mort Smith, who is now the Bishop of Trenton said, “Hey listen you guys, do you realize what you’re asking the bishop to do? If we’ve got hundreds of priests, how could he possibly know everyone this way?”

FH: There is a story that I enjoy telling. Spellman, in his typical way, was announcing a list of those being made Monsignors. He said, “Father I’m making you a Monsignor and you haven’t reacted too much to that.” The priest replied, “You made me one last year.”

LS: Anything else you have that you want to make sure we get?

FH: I approached this as I frequently do with things that are submitted to me. I go through them fast and get my immediate reaction. Then I go back and take another look. We spoke a lot about the abuse issue, and the relations between the bishop and the priests and particularly the priest abuser. We also talked about the fallout from the bishops handling of this issue and their contact with priest abusers, the so-called Dallas phenomenon. I don’t think the other bishops spoke about it but we raised it here. We have similar concerns. If you are talking about the priesthood and the bishop and the relationship between the two, there’s a very evident problem in the relationship between the priest and the bishop as a result of the experiences and the publicity about abusers and about the removal from office and the making of files available. The one thing that I’ve always thought about since all this has occurred is that priests are not going to tell the bishop anything, if they are expecting the bishop to make a note and put it in the file. If you put it in a file you don’t know where it is going to go. The fact is that my successor is having trouble with a priest like that right now. The priest said I won’t give that for your file because I gave you something else before and all of a sudden you made things public.

PG: I think back, I never wrote anything for the file. If a guy would come in to talk to me I would never even think about writing a note.

FH: The same for myself. I don’t keep files on those personal conversations.

FH: I have my own secretary. If a priest wants to see me, he comes right in. I never put it off.

PG: That’s exactly what I used to do. I would arrange to see him as quickly as possible.

LS: I would like to include, what I heard here, that is that it’s very important not to lose sight of the priests who have been put on leave. We shouldn’t forget that they are priests and need our support. They should never feel that they are being cast off. Archbishop Gerety, you mentioned discussing this with Archbishop Myers and agreeing that it would be if you would keep in touch with all the men that are in difficulty in the Archdiocese. I’m not sure how we will word it. I think that speaks to the relationship between the bishop and the priests. Would that be appropriate?

FH: I think this question of the relationship between the bishop and his priests should be raised. Other bishops don’t think it should be raised. That’s a perfectly valid position. This is going to be contentious because what we’re saying is that what Wilton Gregory led at Dallas was wrong. I would say that. Put it that way. Now if you can just get down to the question of the trust. Several of the bishops around the country took the approach of releasing the names of the abusers. That way, those who have been abused will be encouraged to come forward. I found it to be a disaster, myself. It's very unfair.

PG: I think somehow there is a delicate way to refer to this. My feeling is that we should be concerned, not only with the victim, but also with the priest. We don’t want to neglect the Lord’s command for forgiveness. Keep in touch with them.

FH: How about something like, as we reflect on this whole situation, the bishop has to have a special relationship with the priest abuser, the way you go to the sick, you go to the sinner,

PG: Yeah, something like that.

(Tape ended here.)

FH: These are large issues to resolve in a short time. On the other hand, it’s also the kind of thing you can stay too long. It raises the questions.

LS: I’ll probably give both of you calls as we go along with this.

PG: I think you ought to include the others Archbishops, too.

LS: Everything will go to the other Archbishops. It was amazing how much common agreement there was.

PG: Well that is the comforting thing about the whole thing.

LS: What you have been focusing on this morning is the whole compassionate relationship of the bishop to the priest. Everything that goes in here has to be done within that context that it is a very special relationship. Your concerns come out of that relationship.

FH: You could include that special institute on the priesthood, as well as the “Mass priest” issue. If we were even to consider the concept of the Mass priest, we must include our priests from the very beginning. They must be directly involved.

PG: Absolutely. A very good point.

FH: That way they will have an appreciation of what it means.

PG: We’ve got to consult the faithful too.

FH: I would start with the priests and then move to the faithful. Then say is this something that should be considered over a period of time?

PG: I think the faithful will be delighted.

FH: I was in Juneau when the communion in the hand came in. While it was being argued, one day at Mass I said why don’t we just do it and see what the experience is. So we had communion in the hand. Two people came up after and said, “What’s the big deal?”

PG: One of our beloved peers, an older man, with a shock of white hair, got up and said, “Gentlemen, if we pass this regulation and permit communion in the hand, the Catholic Church is going to go into a precipitous decline. God, help us.”

LS: I cannot adequately express how energizing and helpful this has been. We are indebted to the two of you for making this trip. Every time you talked, it opened about ten new areas. I was thinking that you could make a whole article just out of that one issue about Mass priests.

PG: It seems the advantage of this approach is that when I first saw the mention of the Mass priest, I didn’t quite get the concept. The more you talk about it, the more enthusiastic I get.

FH: That shows how it has to be written.

LS: That’s why I would love to see you do an article on that.

FH: The other thing I didn’t get to and I have written an article before on this is general absolution.

PG: I was going to bring it up. I’m glad you did. You talked about the Mass priest and the implications and you begin trying to determine what he will do. So you ask, is he going to baptize? Next question, is he going to hear confessions? Well, maybe he isn’t trained for that. Then, can he give general absolution? That’s exactly what I was thinking.

FH: I was just newly in Juneau and wrote something on general absolution. One of the priests sent it to the NCR. The NCR featured it at the time of the Bishop’s Meeting in Augusta or Atlanta, Georgia. So, at that time I was able to get away with it. On the missions you have to do certain things. One of the best-planned absolution services I’ve ever seen was the one by Dozier. Of course, he got hit all over the place.

PG: We got slapped down for that.

FH: Eventually, the bishops began to step back from it when all the negatives came up and decided not to push it. My main reason now is that we have so many people that have no experience of the sacrament. The General Absolution can be a very good experience of the sacrament. My personal experience was that people who received general absolution would go to confession.

PG: I once discussed this with Archbishop Jardot. We got slapped. We had a program, which was called The Father’s Embrace, and it was all about the compassion of Christ. Part of the program was to have general absolution once in a while. I discussed this with Archbishop Jardot. I told him about a Brazilian priest out in the boondocks who only was able to get to each community occasionally. When he did get there he would give general absolution to all the people after Mass. This priest told that the results of this were exactly what you were describing. Many of the people would come to him and go to confession. Jardot said if you could prove that, that would mean a lot. You need the facts. That’s what I think we ought to be working with.

FH: That’s what I was told by the Archbishop when we had the meeting in Rome. When the issue came up there were only two of us who raised the question and commented favorably on it, Sanchez and myself. My experience is that you can get by with that when you are in a mission territory. But, I think it is desperately needed now that we have people who are just not going to confessions.

PG: I think that we have mission territory in the Archdiocese of Newark. We have enormous numbers of Hispanics and other people. If everybody in some of these parishes went to confession, I don’t know what the priests would do other than spend his time hearing confessions.

FH: I was trying to calculate that very issue the other day. When I was first ordained, four of us heard confessions every Saturday and every first Thursday. We were there the whole time we had set aside for confessions. The lines would get longer and longer. I was thinking how much that meant to the people. They would come and you would talk with them. A large percentage of our people are still not there.

LS: I was just thinking of mission. How many people did you say were in that one parish?

FS: Twenty-five thousand.

CJ: Confessions for an hour isn’t going to work.

FH: I’d sit there for an hour and read my breviary. That’s the best part of the breviary. I save it for that. When I was first ordained there wasn’t any time in the confessional except to hear confessions.

LS: The two of you have been an absolute edification.

PG: We enjoy it.

FH: There’s only one thing that we need.

LS: What’s that?

FH: That the other bishops and the chief bishop in Rome would agree with us.

LS: I think if they were here to hear you they would.

FH: No, no, no. No way.

(Archbishop Hurley left)

PG: There are so many things. The more you talk about them, the more possibilities you see.

LS: Isn’t it amazing.

PG: There were a lot of very good exchanges there.

LS: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were a couple of you and a few of the active bishops sitting around the table talking like this.

PG: Yes.

LS: But it’s what you’ve said from the very beginning, dialog. The other thing is you trust each other and you respect each other.

PG: That’s the reason why it’s important then when you have a large group, like three hundred bishops, to break into smaller groups. I used to notice once in awhile when we would break into small groups it was always the most fruitful part of the meeting because you can really talk. When you get up and make an intervention on the floor it really doesn’t have that intimate dialog that you need. Look at what happened with that Mass priest idea. Archbishop Hurley didn’t really have it formulated in his mind completely, either. He knew it was a great idea, he got up and presented it and there was no response. It landed on the floor of the Conference. My belief is that some theology has got to control all of these things. This whole question of celibacy has to be decided on the basis of solid theology. I don’t see any other outlet to this whole problem. If it is found, for instance, that celibacy is an obstacle to giving the sacraments to the people, you have to look at the issue. How you do it is another thing. You have to look at all the implications and how to present it. That has to be part of the consideration. That, of course, is what worries Rome. But it gets me that we let the married Episcopalian ministers and other Protestant minister become priests on the basis of their own individual desire to become priests. The way we ought to be solving that problem is considering how to bring the sacraments to the people and determine if this is an obstacle.

CJ: Beginning from asking, “What’s the need?”

PG: Exactly. I was very touched by the discussion in the conference when the question came up regarding ordaining Episcopalian priests. I was attending the conference meetings at that time and I had a vote. Rome wanted to know if we approved the ordination of these Episcopal priests who were asking for ordination in the Catholic Church. They had several letters from some of these men. I was deeply touched because they were men of very deep faith. It was very interesting and touching, too, to hear what they said about their desire for the priesthood and how they felt about it. But, it’s their personal desire. I was in favor of it but I’m thinking about the broader problem that ought to be decided on the basis of theology. Not on the basis of how they feel about it.

LS: Compared it to the Brothers in his community who requested permission to be ordained deacons.

PG: The major question is, “How is he serving the Church?” That issue developed in some of these contemplative orders like the Trappists. For a while everyone who said he wanted to become a priest, would become a priest. They rethought this and began to raise the question, “Just a minute, what is the need of our particular monastery and why should we be ordaining?”

LS: One of the things that we wanted to do was to be able to convey a sense of hope. That’s what the two of have given us. You are an edification.

PG: That comes from the virtue of faith, of course, and hope and confidence in the Church. I often think about that. There have been so many ups and downs in the history of the Church. It’s like the religious orders. I once said to one of our men, “Isn’t it too bad that some of the religious orders of women are not getting any recruits.” He said, “Look, the history of the Church is that you have religious orders that experience a large blossoming of their members. When the needs disappear, somebody else comes along.” That’s what happens. I’ve always thought about the mysteriousness of vocations. The Lord, Himself, is in charge of that particular department.

LS: There’s been some work done on the growth and death of religious congregations. They usually dwindle around some significant historical event, like the French revolution.

PG: Consider what an apparent disaster the French revolution was. Numerous priests, nuns, bishops and lay people were being put to death for their faith. There were so many people they wanted to put to death that they couldn’t use the guillotine because it would take too long. They just put them on barges, took them out to the middle of the river and sunk them. It was absolutely incredible what they were doing. Right after the French revolution all these religious orders start popping up all over the place. It was totally unexpected. So, out of the enormous disaster comes some wonderful, new religious orders and new saints, like the Cure D’Ars.

LS: I had this fantasy about an hour ago. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if the seats behind us were filled with people just listening to the dialog between the two of you? I believe they would have captured the hope and excitement in a way that the written word won’t.

PG: We’re talking on the basis of many, many years of experience. I’m talking from the experience, not only as a diocesan bishop, but as a parish priest for all my priesthood. I was never anything else, you know. All of this comes into it. You develop a sensitivity to people and their needs and their desire for the sacraments.

PG: I’m just sorry that the other men couldn’t join us.

 

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Last Modified: Tuesday, July 17, 2007
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