For His Friends

First, a confession. I spent all day in a clinic and in doctors’ offices for regular post-op visits. All went very well on that front. What I was not able to do was watch the live video of the second day of the annual Fall meeting so for these reflections, I am dependent on news reports from CNS and other sources. As you know, EWTN is not carrying the bishops’ meeting this year, gavel to gavel, so it was not possible  for me to record the meeting and watch it this evening. Anyway, here goes.

Most all the action items passed with sizable majorities. While almost every action item had one or two votes against, this preventing a unanimous action of the assembly, I have always held that if the Nicene Creed  (the one we recite and pray at Mass) were placed before the bishops, it too would garner two or three negative votes.

One item which had the largest number of “no” votes was a proposed pastoral letter on marriage. Although the bishops’ National Advisory Council encouraged a “yes” vote on the proposed pastoral, bishops who spoke today felt that while there was nothing wrong with the proposed text, there were some issues and passages which could have been rendered better . The pastoral received five more votes than necessary for passage. The bishops also overwhelmingly approved a revision in the “Ethical and Religious Directives” which guide local bishops, health care facilities, doctors and nurses in hard decisions about medical treatment in an age when technology allows life to be maintained and sustained for years. The Pro-Life Committee saw their work product, a statement on life and birth in a technological age pass by a wide margin. All of these actions are available to you now on the USCCB web site.

The long work on a new translation of the Roman Missal is over and now Rome’s approval is awaited. Sometime in 2011, the new Missal will be implemented in the English speaking world. We will have to get use to some new language and there will be a period of catechesis in 2010 and early 2011 which I and our priests will lead to get you ready for the changes.

Finally, several bishops came to the defense of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development whose collection will be taken up this coming week-end in churches throughout the U.S. Founded about 30 years ago, CCHD has given grants to many organizations and agencies and sponsored an education program on the roots of poverty. Conservatively oriented Catholics have beeb taking shots at CCHD since its inception. Several years ago it was learned that a grant recipient was ACORN which was involved in projects not in accord with Catholic teaching. Several years ago before the US Government and Congress became aware of ACORN’s malfeasance, CCHD had dropped all support for this organization. I personally believe in and support CCHD and feel that our bishops’ committee  has acted responsibly with regard to this challenge.

That’s it from m perspective. Some final thoughts and notes on the meeting tomorrow.

+RNL

After an opening Mass in the hotel, the bishops began their annual Fall plenary assembly by spending the morning in what are called “regional meetings.” Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina are all in “Region XIV” so the bishops of the twelve dioceses of those four states comprise the regional grouping. I know that one of the topics which the bishops were asked to discuss is the number of seminaries spread across the United States at this time. This discussion comes at a moment when it appears that vocations are on the rise and seminary enrollment is increasing. As I mentioned earlier here, St. John Vianney College Seminar opened in September with about 80 seminarians (the highest ever) and St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach opened with about sixty seminarians but a total enrollment of eighty is not more than a year or two away. Seminaries are expensive operations but there are strong regional arguments to be made for them (training future priests for ministry in Spanish to Hispanics, for example.) No one wants to close their seminaries in this country so I wonder tonight what suggestions may have come from the regional meeting discussions this morning.

The Plenary opened with an hour and twenty minutes of formalities including an address by Cardinal Francis George, our President, and the papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi. These two talks have always been a part of the opening “ritual” for the meetings. Cardinal George began by speaking about the importance of priests to the ministry of bishops and painted a fine picture of what the Church might be like if there were no priests. He did this largely in the context of this being “the year for priests” as declared by Pope Benedict XVI. It was a fine reflection for we bishops about how important and vital our priests are not just to the Church which is obvious to all of our people, but to our own ministry as bishops.

The Papal Nuncio’s talk spoke about the qualities needed of the bishops in light of love for the Church. He opened with a long quotation from Pope Paul VI prior to his death about the gift of love from Christ to the late Pope in the Church. He then outlined three necessary qualities for bishops: fidelity (allowing here for some application of creativity in addition to preserving the treasury of the faith), prudence, and hope. He paid special tribute to a national meeting of Diocesan Vocation Directors recently held in Newark, finding the Directors to be impressive, resourceful and full of hope. Our own Father Len Plazewski is the President of the National Vocation Directors and God knows he reflects all those adjectives. The Nuncio ended his remarks by sharing a letter which he received from a priest asking for the appointment of “more positive” bishops. “Check, Archbishop. And thanks for your remarks.”

The rest of the afternoon was given over to the introduction of the “action items” which the bishops will begin to debate and vote tomorrow morning. The assembly had only ninety minutes, max, to submit formal amendments to the Action Items.

Finally, my successor as Chairman of the Board of Catholic Relief Services, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, gave the assembled bishops a wonderful picture of CRS today, along with a stirring four minute video. The archbishop noted that only 22% of Church-going Catholics could identify CRS as the Church in the US’s overseas disaster relief and development agency.

Cardinal George asked the bishops assembled to support a statement which he wished to make on health care reform. We’ll download that statement for you here as soon as it is available.

+RNL

Update: Cardinal George’s Statement is now available at the USCCB website for this year’s November meeting, or you can access it directly.

I am fairly certain that it was about a year ago that I began this effort at “blogging” when on the way home on AMTRAK from the annual bishops’ meeting in Baltimore, I wrote my first entry. It is an  effort which I  have enjoyed immensely and I am grateful for all the compliments and even the occasional criticism which have met my various efforts. Next week the bishops will be meeting again in Baltimore but I am unable yet to be present. I regret this reality but accept it as an additional part of the occasional suffering and disappointment which accompanies my long recovery.

I spent last night reading the materials for next week’s meeting. The public agenda is rather light and the “Executive Session” agenda looks interesting as it always does. A recent trend which I have alluded to in the past is to put the more important issues requiring discussion and discernment into “Executive Session” and place only those items which are ready for final debate and vote into the open, public sessions. This trend would deeply bother many of the bishops I knew well and admired from the late seventies and eighties who were pleased with the move to openness and transparency but we are a different breed of “bishop-cat” these days, preferring not to air certain issues in public until they are ripe and ready.

What I will do this year since I will have the time is provide my own comments and thoughts on matters before the bishops each day of the meeting and at the conclusion of the daily sessions. Obviously, I will not be privy to closed session discussions and even if I were, I would respect the confidentiality of those meetings. To do otherwise would be “going rogue” as we have recently come to understand that phrase.

Looking back on my year in the blogosphere, I am learning still. I think I made a good decision in the beginning to allow my readers to share comments with me but not publish them. I prefer catechesis to confrontation and have no desire to enter into polemical jousting with anyone. Most of the comments have been helpful and constructive – some, especially from those engaged in keeping “Hillsborough Cares”  from coming into existence have been vicious. But I read them all and have corrected some errors in my own work as a result of the constructive criticism which has come my way through the “comments.”

Finally, if it is indeed an anniversary for the “Blog” it can right be celebrated by all of us, not just myself. Thanks for listening, reading and responding over the last twelve months.

Bishop Lynch

As they often say on Sunday afternoon between 350pm and 415pm, but slightly paraphrased from the NFL games, “We would like to welcome those people who have been watching the Church in the US and the world through Whispers in the Loggia to our humble little commentary on a great local Church, the Diocese of St. Petersburg.” If this is the first time you have taken a peep at this blog, maybe a small introduction would help. For the first nine or ten years I was here as bishop, I communicated on a regular basis with the people of the diocese in two ways: with a daily radio program of five minutes of something less than pearls of great wisdom entitled “On the Air with Bishop Lynch” on our powerful and gifted 100,000 watt SPIRIT FM. Then I also wrote a fairly regular column for the diocesan edition of the FLORIDA CATHOLIC entitled “Out of the Ordinary.” The paper is no longer a part of our diocesan communications opportunities. After ten years of deadlines for submission to the paper and recording sessions, I was fairly worn out and found myself writing and talking about what I and others considered minutiae of Catholic Church life.

The electronic media began to catch my attention and this blog, soon to celebrate its first anniversary, is the result. I write only when I have something to share or teach. The average time it takes me to prepare a 500 word blog entry is between 20 and 30 minutes (sometimes they read like “haste makes waste”) and there is only the moment when the muse suggests I write, not a deadline. Do I reach as many people as the former column and radio show – not even close, but “hits” on this blog were rising until my five week confinement in late July and August. Now in recuperation, I am beginning to get my energy back and have time, lots of time every day, to share reflections on our lives as Catholics.

I read your comments personally but do  not answer them because in some instances I wish to avoid useless polemics and in other instances some are very personal to the person who comments. Many have offered me new perspectives in challenging pastoral problems.

Now some news. Bishop-elect Etienne has asked me to deliver the homily at his episcopal ordination on December 9th in Cheyenne. I am grateful to Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap, of Denver who as the principal consecrator  has allowed me this privilege. Most of my diocesan family remember that in the year of his death, 1996, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin preached at my episcopal ordination. I am not much more agile at this moment than the Cardinal was that January 26th but it will be a labor of love.

I promised myself and my doctors that I would not make trips outside of the diocese until after my ileostomy is reversed soon after the first of the year, but I will make an exception in this instance. I will be unable to attend the November Bishops’ meeting in Baltimore but should be back to full form to welcome the USCCB to St. Petersburg in June for their special assembly.

Finally, John Barry of the ST. PETERSBURG TIMES does a second wonderful job in four days in today’s paper’s coverage of the Holy See’s announcement about the offer to the Anglican Communion. I could take no exception to his conclusions. I will return to this topic myself in a few days when by mind is better capable of dealing with what was for myself a total surprise.

+RNL

The nation’s Catholic bishops will be meeting from Wednesday morning to Friday noon this week in San Antonio, Texas, for the annual Spring meeting. For approximately forty years the US bishops have been meeting in plenary session twice each year, once in June and once in November. For almost ever, the November meeting was held in Washington, D.C. but about five years ago, for the simple reason that Washington hotels were charging an “arm and a leg”, the bishops moved their Fall meeting to near-by Baltimore which has subsequently also learned how to charge “an arm and a leg.” The Spring meeting has always rotated around the country to different places, sometimes being combined with a local observance of a host diocese. This week’s meeting is thin on action items in the agenda and for the first time since 1984 I will not be attending the meeting. I have heard that as many as eighty other bishops will also not be in attendance at this meeting. Important local business makes it impossible for me to leave before Wednesday morning and I would end up only being there for one afternoon public session and, quite frankly, there is little to suggest that we go to the expense to get me there. I should point out here that next June, the nation’s bishops will be in St. Petersburg for what is called an assembly which is a hybrid or cross between a five day continuing education opportunity and a retreat. I promise to be at that one.

The bishops’ conference has changed significantly in the last decade or so and continues to change. With its recent reorganization two years ago, the surviving committees of the conference are still in the crawling stage of trying to find out what they should be doing and how they should go about doing it. This is understandable when something is so radically restructured as was the Conference and patience is called for. In time, I suspect the number of action items requiring debate and vote will increase but we must learn to organizationally “walk” again before we can even think of sprinting and running.

Something that was once frowned upon is also becoming more commonplace. After the Second Vatican Council in 1974 the NCCB/USCCB opened the doors of its meetings to outsiders including the media. A few hours (seldom more than three) were reserved every meeting for an executive session without observers and media but almost everything was done “under the lights.” Now more and more of our business is being conducted behind closed doors, out of sight of the inquiring minds of the press and the media. I lament this change because even with its concomitant risks, I think the business of the Church in this country should be conducted in the open. God’s people would generally be impressed at the level of debate and discussion which the bishops have among themselves, even sometimes on seemingly contentious issues. There is nothing wrong with disagreement and if it centers on a matter of faith or morals which it never has in my twenty-five years, it will ultimately be decided anyway by those higher than ourselves. As much as I personally dislike the commentary which always seems to accompany certain coverage of our meetings with its obvious slants and biases, I would argue for their right to be present.

So the bishops convene in the shadow of the Alamo for a meeting far less critical than the battle once fought there. I will miss seeing my brothers but November and Baltimore will come soon enough.

+RNL

I thought I would conclude these reflections on the USCCB meeting which ended yesterday in Baltimore with some other thoughts and reflections. I had the honor of serving the Conference of Bishops twice in my adult life, first from 1972-1975 as a young lay man from Ohio and again from 1984-1995 as a relatively newly ordained priest. I loved the Conference and serving its members. The staff was extraordinary, deeply devoted to the Church and in love with their work. The bishops were largely united, mostly in the task of implementing the decrees of the Second Vatican Council within the Church in the United States. Every non-retired bishop had both voice and vote but only a few exercised the option to speak at meetings.

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