The Archbishop's Visit
Archbishop John Vlazny's Chapter Talk to the Monks.
February 14, 2010
Archbishop is a great supporter of our monastic community and a dear friend.
It’s very good to be with all of you, and I know that this is the time that the Abbot usually shares some teachings with you, and he’s graciously allowed me to be with you. Let me tell you a few little things about where I’m at and what’s going on in the Archdiocese.
Now, how much time do you spend in here? I don’t want to go over your usual time.
Abbot Peter: Our usual time is about twenty minutes. But we could stretch… [laughs].
Archbishop: Well, just stop me if I go on to long. One of the delights of being a Bishop is when the Bishop comes, most people expect it to be long and boring anyway [laughs]. When I was in Southern Minnesota, I had a Sunday Confirmation and it was the 11:30 mass. They usually don’t schedule a Confirmation on a regular Sunday Mass because the people really don’t want to sit through such a long ceremony. So the kids are all processing and I’m standing in the back, with my miter, crosier, and all the vestments on, and this woman walks in the front door with her three kids, she looks up, she sees me, and she turns around and walks out! [laughs]. I said you can’t do that, and she’s like, oh yes I can! [laughs].
At any rate, this is now my thirteenth year as the Archbishop here in Portland. I was installed on December 19th, 1997 and as you know, it’s been quite a ride. I just returned from a trip to Italy and Belgium. I went over because every other year I’ve had to go and visit our seminarians who are in Rome. Now we have one who is at Louvain in Belgium. I say first of all, something that I feel very good about, is that we have a good group of seminarians preparing for priesthood in this Archdioceses. It’s amazing, the greatest influx of seminarians came into our Archdioceses during those years of bankruptcy. It’s like the Lord tells me, “See I’m still in charge. You think it’s down time? Well it’s uptime in other ways.” We’ll be able to ordain four this year and last year we ordained seven. What has opened up finally for us is an effort to reach out and invite young men from Latin American countries to come and study here. The priest council recommended to me several years ago, that, indeed, it was helpful and important for us to try and get more priest who spoke Spanish very well. To serve our Hispanic parishioners more effectively. You know, we have more than half our Catholic people in this Archdioceses are Hispanic. Our effort to reach out to them is part of our evangelizing ministry, to be a welcoming Church, so the people know, they are part of our family.
The Pastoral Council said rather than get priests, why don’t you try to recruit some seminarians, especially from diocese where they are richer in vocations and where there are men looking to come and work here and see what we do. So finally, this year, that effort has produced two or the four candidates to be ordained. One’s from Nicaragua and one’s from Columbia. Two of the four then, are men who came here to study English, go to the seminary, and by the grace of God, persevere. I think now, in the coming years, every year one or two men will be of Hispanic background. One of the things we need to pray for is a greater number of men from the Hispanic community itself, who are living here now, to come and serve our people. That takes a little longer.
When I was a priest in Chicago, I was working with the Hispanic community for many years, it was 1969 when we first started to get Hispanic seminarians. All of them left. It took a long time but now in Chicago, I’d say a significant core will be ordained every year. Twenty-five to forty percent are from Hispanic families in Chicago. They finally had an effect in reaching out.
I tell you that because that’s one of the concerns. When I came here we had around thirteen or fourteen seminarians and now we have forty. So that’s a good sign but it never seems to be enough! This coming year, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, who have been here for many years are calling back three of their priest who have served our Archdioceses. So we are losing all three of those priests. I’m grateful that they have served so long and faithfully. They have been such a part of the Church, that losing them is not easy. I had a wonderful meeting with the priests, deacons, and staff from their parishes and we came up with a nice plan to see how we can serve those parishes. This year, God bless us, it doesn’t look like any of my priests are retiring. So we will be able to keep serving the people as effectively as we can.
One of the graces, of course, is the expansion of lay ministry. I often think about this, obviously, our priest are important to the life of the Church and our people love their priests. That’s probably why they get mad at them, because it’s like you always get mad at the people you love most, if they’re not living up to what you want them to be here to do. The lay ministers have made a tremendous impact. They do many of the things that we priests, use to do but don’t have to do. So many of our priests are learning to let go of some of their responsibilities. One in particular, is the administration of finances in a parish. In the old days, pastors would spend hours at their desks paying bills and balancing the checking account. Things that really are not the priestly ministry as such. Now, those parishes will have an administrator or someone who will come in and do that for them. Another example is the schools. Pastors were always responsible for the schools but they weren’t the principal or teachers, but they had to be present and insure the Catholic identity. So the expansion of the Lay ministry is a good thing.
The second thing is just a continuing concern for my retired priests. We are starting a capital campaign for the Archdioceses this year and that will probably be my last act. We’re doing this because many of the financial resources of the Archdiocese were depleted with all the litigation and bankruptcy experience. So to make sure our retired priests are cared for adequately will be one phase of the capital campaign.
Ever since I’ve been a bishop, we made steps forward in establishing an Arch-diocesan Pastoral Council. Every pastor is suppose to have a Pastoral Council, which would be the principle planning body of the parish. When I came, we didn’t have a Pastoral Council for this Pastor! It was always something my predecessors wanted to do but never got accomplished. So we started working on is with monsignor Chuck Lienert helping to get the thing going. Nine and a half years ago we established an Archdiocesan Pastoral Council and we’re already into the fourth group. They serve three years and have been marvelous supporters and come forth with lots of good ideas. I was especially grateful they were there during that time of litigation and bankruptcy. They came up with Archdiocesan pastoral goals. Things that they hoped I as bishop and those who collaborated with me and Archdiocesan leaders would try to focus on and encourage our parishioners to take on more seriously.
The first goal, that came up upon consultation with all the Arch-diocesan Pastor Councils was faith formation at all levels. One of the things they felt was that we were providing reasonably good faith formation for the kids, but we didn’t have much for the adults in our parishes. We also weren’t doing very well with our campus ministry and we weren’t even reaching out to the prisons. I just went and made my visit to the Sheridan Penitentiary last November for Sunday mass. I have to say it was a beautiful experience. I was there and they were ready to pray; they were grateful I came; they prepared the music well and they sang almost as well as you! So there’s all these opportunity but we haven’t been able to support them.
Then, of course, ministry formation. It’s one thing to put people in positions of responsibility in parishes, it’s another thing to train them. It’s not fair to give somebody a job without spending some time and effort to help them prepare to take on that particular job. There’s one assignment that the Church gives however that she doesn’t take much time preparing before, that’s Bishops. You just suddenly find out you’re going to be a Bishop! I went to Bishop’s school about two years after I had been a Bishop [laughs]. They have a three day seminar for us! But you learn on the job. So proper training is something we’re trying to do especially.
Then our Deacon core is growing; we have fifteen or so in training. Someday, they’re going to outnumber us priests. They’re going to be an important part of the way reach out people. So to serve them more effectively.
The second one is youth and young adult ministry. We’re not family men with our own children but there’s one thing family members really want, they want to be able to pass on to their young people the things they treasure most. There’s always a certain number of our young people who stop going to Church and people just wish we would do more to support our young people and help them understand how important their relationship with God and faith is in the Church and our lives. A couple of years ago, our development director came up with this idea to send a thank you letter to all the people who had made donations to the annual appeal in October. So they sent them a little card saying thank you from the Archbishop and a prayer card that they could send back in and list on there the intentions you wanted the Bishop to pray for. What they thought people were going to do because it was November, was mention their beloved dead. But you know what the number one request that was asked of me, from the people sending in those card, was “Bishop, please pray for my young adult children who no longer go to Church”.
Again, just two weeks ago, during the first meeting of the Pastoral Council, one of the men wanted to share with me that he has nine children and only one of them goes to Church. I had another man come to see me in my office, who had worked previously in our Catholic schools. I didn’t know why he wanted to come and see me, but I said I’ll see him, I thought maybe he was looking for another job. So during our meeting, I didn’t know where our conversation was going but it finally came down to his two adult children, twenty-three and twenty-one, no longer go to Church. He just wanted to share that with me and he wasn’t asking me for any easy solution.
So I wonder with young people if there’s a more effective way for us to reach out to them as Church. Sometimes I start feeling guilty about it. Should I have done better? Then I have to say that it’s one of those things that goes beyond me personally. But it’s something I want to pay more attention to. So youth and young adult ministry was the second priority and I ask you to pray for that intention. If they ask me to pray for it, I’m sure they would ask you monks.
The last one was that we would be much more caring, compassionate, sensitive, and pro-active in reaching out to our growing multi-cultural Church, especially to the growing Hispanic population. So those are the three pastoral priorities.
The latest Pastoral Council still wanted to give me a few things to focus on and I’ll mention them to you. One thing is to take the Peace and Justice ministry off the back burner in the parishes and more into the center of the Church’s planning. To promote Pro-life ministry and mission as a Justice issue not just a Church issue. So much in the world, when we talk about Pro-life, they say you keep your religion out of politics. But this isn’t just religion, this is a Justice issue. Just like we are against war, were against murder, were against stealing, were against the violation of the human life in any phase, from conception to a natural death. Pro-choice people are clever, they try to marginalize us by saying, well that’s just a religious issue and you shouldn’t bring in a religious issue. But again, this is much more than a religious issue, and the Pastoral Council thinks we should focus on it. So our Justice and Peace office, is also working on this issue. What I did was appoint a lay man who is working with a pastor from Salem who’s particular focus is on Pro-life ministry. This is something I would like you to pray for. Also for a greater sense of unity around the Pro-life ministry because it’s one of the issues in the Church that is contentious right now. You know, united we stand, divided we fall, and we’ll never make any head way if we are always fighting with one another.
The people are also very conscious of the immigration issue. We simply have an unjust system and frankly, the way our Catholic people reacted a couple of years ago, when it was discussed in Washington, was scandalous I thought. Actually, our people aren’t much better about it than anyone else. They don’t quite understand what is happening in this country. People aren’t coming here because they want to live in the United States, they’re only here because they want to support their families. Many of these people send their money back to Mexico. In fact, I think that’s part of the problem with vocation recruitment. We know some young men who were interested in becoming priest, but there was a subtle pressure on them to stay in the work place, so they could make some money to help support their families. The poverty is just so desperate in many of these families down south of the border.
The last, of course, is the fact that the central mission of the Church is evangelization, proclaiming the Good News, and calling people to conversion. What they said was, how could you as Bishop encourage our priest and pastoral ministers to help our people to develop a stronger personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. The Pastoral Council came up with all kinds of ideas: more retreats; more opportunities to be in settings like this monastery; actually they weren’t exactly sure what they wanted and I’m not either but it was a nice goal! [laughs]
Fr Bob Barron, one of my former seminarians from Chicago, is now a great teacher and theologian, wrote a book called The Strangest Way , and if you haven’t read it, it’s a neat little book about discipleship. He says the strangest way is the way of the disciple of the Lord. There’s three stepping stones, three essential parts to being a disciple of Jesus Christ. I’m going to try and talk about this at Confirmations this year. First of all, Jesus Christ has to be right there in the center of all your relationships. He can’t be just on the margins, some who you just touch base with, maybe on Sunday morning. Jesus Christ has to be in the center of your life if you’re really going to be a true disciple. Secondly, you have to be honest. You have to admit, you too are a sinner. Jesus didn’t come to earth because we are all so great, he came because we were messed up and he needed to pick us up and save us. We’re all sinners, we have to admit it, we have to seek forgiveness, and we have to forgive one another. The last thing he says is the realization that my life is not just about me. My life is about God and other people. That is where the Lord challenges us, that our inner goodness be perfected in our outward goodness and care for others. The rich caring for the poor, healthy caring for the sick, the holy taking care of the unholy.
Those are the things going on in the Church. I’m going to be seventy three years old later this month. The Abbot was asking me how am I about retiring. Well, when you’re seventy-five you must write a letter to the Pope submitting your resignation. Whether he accepts my resignation the day he receives it or postpones it for awhile, frankly, I don’t care. I love my job and I’m not trying to get out of it but I do see there might be a little grace in retirement! [laughs] It’s a wonderful Archdiocese with wonderful and support people. Also, I’m extremely grateful to the priest who keep things united through the hard times. Please pray for them and we pray for you. Especially praying for an increase in vocations and a happy old age for all of us who are getting near the finish line.
God Bless you all.
+Archbishop John Vlazny