For His Friends

There has been quite a lot of media attention directed towards the Church in Ireland and the Irish government with regard to how both entities have dealt with reports of sexual misconduct against minors in the past. A devastating report issued about six weeks ago laid the blame squarely at the feet of the bishops and the police (in the Dublin archdiocese) demonstrating massive cover-ups on both parts and the reassignment of offenders. This study also examined claims of misconduct leveled against religious sisters, brothers and lay employees. As a result, the present Archbishop of Dublin asked a number of the former auxiliary bishops of the Archdiocese to resign their episcopal duties. Such a request won the Archbishop high praise from most quarters of the Irish media but irritation and anger from many of his priests. The turmoil was enough for Pope Benedict XVI to call a meeting of all the Irish ordinaries (residential bishops but not auxiliaries) in Rome on Monday and Tuesday of this week. The Holy Father met for two full days with the Irish bishops in attendance, allowed each of them to address the situation from their perspectives and at the end, at least publicly issued a statement saying that the bishops needed courage in dealing with the events at home, that he, the Pope, would write a letter to the Irish Catholics in which he would apologize for the mistakes of the past and would condemn such acts against minors as heinous crimes and sins. That letter should be forthcoming sometime shortly after Easter. Left unanswered was whether or not he would accept the resignations of the former auxiliaries of Dublin as called for by the present Archbishop. The media in Ireland have had a field day with all this and the victims of abuse probably feel their hurt even deeper.

The challenge to the moral credibility of the Church on this matter is not going to disappear quickly, even in our generation or the one which follows us, in my personal view. The credibility of persons in authority in the Church (bishops like myself no matter how hard we have worked to insure the future safety of children), the ministry of our priests with young people, the relationship of priest and bishop, have all been dramatically altered in the last ten years. Now, at least in Ireland in general and Dublin in particular, the relationship between the bishop and his brother bishops is challenged. I have a strong sense that after many years of writing much of this off as media-hatred for the Church and a local matter, the Holy See and this particular Pope now get it and they furthermore get the consequences for Church ministry for the future. It has become easier for bishops to seek release of a priest predator from his priestly promises and vows. There was a time early in my ministry when the burden of proof sat almost wholly on the shoulders of the bishop and the predatory priest was protected.

The Church in the United State suffered significantly in the last decade from the clerical misconduct situation. There is no question in my mind that we lost membership by people who either just could not believe what they were hearing and/or reading or chose to use this as a moment to leave the Church which might have hurt them in other ways. The morale of our good priests tanked in some instances. Our path to recovery is still long and daunting. But with our various “Child Protection Programs” and Codes of Professional Conduct, we are doing probably the best we can do in righting this horrendously wrong situation. Cover-ups should be out of the question and lay review boards who are privy to accusations against Church personnel should inform the public when they think I or any other person in authority is not living up to the claims of the Dallas Charter. As a bishop I must answer not only to a higher authority in the person of the Lord but in this matter to the collective wisdom of competent lay advisors who review all allegations and recommend action. Ireland has begun this process in an attempt and hope to regain trust.

Finally, sexual abuse of minors is not just a Church problem or issue. It is a societal issue. It needs to be addressed by society at every level. Almost all of my priests would tell you that most cases reported to them have nothing to do with Church personnel but rather a parent, family member, in-law, step-father or step-mother. Here in the Tampa Bay area the news of misconduct in recent years has centered on public school teachers, scout leaders, doctors. We have tried to do what we can to reduce the incidences in the Church knowing that it will be practically impossible to prevent every instance. Awareness on the part of the whole Church will help, from parents and elders observing behavior to the codes of professional conduct which require supervision from authority and observation from all. My heart goes out to the Church in Ireland at this time. We have been there. In some ways we are still there though we are clawing our way back to credibility and trust one incident at a time. Our goal is that children will always be safe on the grounds of or in activities of their Church.

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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.

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

Monsignor John Bolger, long time pastor of Transfiguration parish in St. Petersburg went home to the Lord just after midnight last night. He was ready, willing and at peace. A native son of Ireland, while small in stature he stood tall in his love for the people of Transfiguration parish and especially the school which was unable to out survive him. It broke his heart when it closed several years ago. With his Irish brogue and Irish accent, he was not always the easiest person to understand, but the people of the parish got used to it and took him to their hearts. They loved him. I loved him and I am very confident that the Lord loved him as well. I recall with special delight the occasion when for no apparent reason I invited him and some other priests to my house for lunch. It was then that I told him that Pope John Paul II had named  him and the others Prelate of Honor with the title, Monsignor. A small tear came to his eye and he looked at me and said, “there must be some mistake.” When the area was threatened by a hurricane (such as Charley), I would call him and the other priests who I felt were at some risk alone and ask them if they would like to join me in weathering out the storm. Monsignor Bolger would always thank me and say that we wished to remain in his retirement house as there were wonderful friends who would also look after him. To those generous and loving parishioners who cared for him, God Bless You. Rest in Peace Monsignor John – you earned it, “the old fashioned way.”

Many of the appointments of new bishops in this country this year have been long on pastoral experience and wisdom and not so much academic types,  bureaucrats, or men lacking in practical pastoral experience. Almost all of them exude a witness to hope that I believe our beloved Church needs at this moment in history. Now let me say up front, that I doubt if I would meet the template which presently seems to be driving the Holy Father’s appointments. There is no question in my mind about the appointment of Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan as Archbishop of New York, though. I believe that the Archbishop will soon be one of the most credible spokespersons for the Church in the United States and one to whom we U.S. bishops will turn to help us out of jams. His placement in the media capital of the world, New York, gives him ample opportunity to speak to many issues and his background as a legitimate Church historian gives him a very unique perspective. To whit, I encourage all of you to read his latest blog entry. All I can say, is right on, Archbishop Tim. If you have Sirius radio you can hear the Archbishop live every Thursday for one hour beginning at one o’clock.

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The late Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston was fond of saying about the Church he served, “we may be difficult but we are never boring.” That was my first thought yesterday with the news from Rome that Pope Benedict XVI would soon issue an Apostolic Constitution allowing Anglicans who are seeking unity with Rome to come over while retaining some of their traditional liturgy, prayers and practice. To accomplish this, some personal prelatures would be established around the world where governance would be by a person selected by the Pope from among the former Anglican clergy now ordained and serving in the Roman Church. So, the bottom line is that there may well be a new “rite” within the Catholic Church for these people who seek this form of union, similar to the Pope’s decision to allow the celebration of the former or Tridentine Mass several years ago. In return for this concession, the Anglicans would have to accept the authority  of the Pope as universal pastor and abide by the same rules and norms as you and I do.

In announcing this concession for the sake of unity, the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the U.S.’s Cardinal William Levada and the new secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, the U.S.’s Augustine Di Noia, OP made it very clear that our Church has no intention of going “fishing” in the Anglican communion for converts but rather were simply providing an option to those who had decided to separate themselves already. In London, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams was characteristically kind in response, but it had to be painful for him and for others of our Anglican/Episcopalian friends. The issues driving those who might take advantage of this new concession by the Pope are the ordination of women priests and bishops, of gay and lesbian priests who are openly so, etc.

I could be wrong but my sense is that not an awful lot of our brothers and sisters will take advantage  of this attempt at outreach. Here in this diocese I would be surprised if any Episcopal community would come over as there are many things about our governance structure that they do not like. We should also humbly acknowledge that there are a good number of disaffected Catholics who have become Episcopalians and are quite comfortable in their new home. Also, I can assure you that the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida has far more former Catholic priests serving as clergy than either our own or the Venice dioceses have. I have always been grateful that neither of our Churches “crow” about this reality and I assure my Episcopalian friends that it is not my intention to proselytize among their number. However, should a community wish to “come over to Rome”, it appears that it will be outside my competence and will be the business of the new prelates chosen for this purpose.

If you are interested in learning more about this announcement, today’s NEW YORK TIMES covers the story well as does the mother of all Catholics blogs, WHISPERS IN THE LOGGIA.

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Regular readers of this blog know that last week I took special delight in the naming of my associate pastor at St, Mark’s parish in Dania,  Father Fernando Isern, as bishop of the Colorado diocese of Pueblo. While celibates do not give birth to progeny, I hope we can be forgiven for the joy and satisfaction which is ours when someone with whom we have worked or know well is also entrusted with shepherding or assisting in shepherding a local Church. Today someone even closer to me over the years was chosen by Pope Benedict XVI as the next bishop of Cheyenne, Wyoming, a huge territory with about 50,000 Catholics in the state.

Bishop-Elect Paul Etienne

Father Paul Etienne first came into my life as a graduate of the College of St. Thomas in 1985. He had been a college seminarian at St. John Vianney College seminary on the campus of St. Thomas and had decided to take some time off to reflect on the commitment to celibacy. The Rector then, now Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, called our office at the Bishop’s Conference and said he had a young man who was making a mistake, that he had a vocation to priesthood but needed time. Knowing that we were looking for temporary help for the upcoming 1986 papal visit, the General Secretary at that time and my boss, Monsignor Daniel Hoye and I interviewed Paul and were impressed with his very successful background as a young business man after high school graduation and his academic achievements. Even though he came to Washington wearing “cowboy boots” we hired him and I got to know my co-worker well. He did an outstanding job for the papal visit but hated Washington and its big-city, urban environment. He was from Tell City, a small but very Catholic town along the Ohio River where the public school had been run by the parish and nuns. He was from a close-knit family of six children, faith-filled, loving parents, a small town. When the trip was over, he could not wait to return to Tell City, search for a job, and see how a relationship with a young woman he had met developed. That was November.

In December his older brother Bernie announced that he was entering the seminary and studying for the Evansville diocese where he was living. In the first week of January, Paul called me and said that he felt called again to the priesthood and would be approaching the Archbishop of Indianapolis about entering the seminary. At first I was incredulous, skeptical and challenging, wondering if this was not a reaction to Bernie’s decision. His younger sister had already begun the process of entering the Beech Grove Benedictine community. To make a long story short, Paul entered the North American College that Fall and four years later was ordained the first of the Etienne brothers. I vested him at his diaconate and preached his first Mass in Tell City.

A year later, brother Bernie was ordained, and about ten years after that brother Zach (Zachary) was also ordained for the Evansville diocese. Bishop-Elect Paul has had a good priesthood and has been a much loved and admired pastor of now four parishes, although the last two prior to returning in the summer as pastor of his home parish in Tell City lasted only one year each due to his co-responsibilities as Vice-Rector of Indianapolis’ college seminary program. Sister Nicolette has just finished a term as her community’s Vocation Director and now has returned to her first love, teaching. Brother Richard and sister Angela are the two “normal” siblings who have chosen marriage and each have children. It is going to be hard for this family to say good-bye to Paul who is going quite far away.

One final note. The three priest brothers are avid hunters. For ordination gifts, they gave each other hunting rifles. Come deer season, the boys can be found on their wooded farm behind some blind waiting for a vulnerable deer. I know; I have inadvertently placed a phone call to them only to be greeted by the sound of a rifle going off and told to hang up. I have already cautioned the bishop-elect that if he chooses to go hunting in season in Yellowstone (almost entirely in his diocese) or in the Tetons, he would do well to find out where former Vice-President Cheney (who lives outside of Jackson Hole) will be hunting that day!

Cheyenne’s lucky. They are getting a pastor, not a Church bureaucrat, and someone who will love and lead them.

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