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Happening ... in the Local Church
Sixth bishop named for Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana
A conversation with Bishop-elect Timothy Doherty
By Kevin Cullen
The
Catholic Moment
The morning after being introduced at a news conference, Bishop-elect Timothy Doherty took time to reflect on his new appointment and his hopes for the people of the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana.
Here is a condensed version of that 40-minute interview:
Everybody that I talked to after the news conference said they were touched when you kind of choked up a little and talked about how humbled you were. I think they could relate to having life change so suddenly.
“You just have a glimpse, at this point, at how much (it will change). As I look back, a number of times I have done what I call ‘parachuting’ in. Any priest worth his salt has stories about parachuting into a scene you don’t know. There could have been a great joy or a great tragedy, and you are being asked suddenly to take Masses this weekend to another parish without being told anything. If you have a trust in God, things will happen that you would have never foreseen. God does have a way of carrying you …
“What I think people might not understand is what goes into the obedience of a man that he would accept (the appointment). This is not like getting an executive job at a corporation; there is not the typical ‘headhunter’ culture. There aren’t first and second interviews ... For any job I’ve had, with only a couple of exceptions, I’ve had to be vetted and interviewed, so this is very different in that I have to learn the culture of the people, the faith culture of the people, kind of on the run. I want to be very respectful of that, and if (as many pastors say) it takes three years to get to know people in a (large parish) assignment, it means I am going to make mistakes and I’m going to stub my toe a few times, and inadvertently I’m going to stub other people’s toes. I’m just trying to be sensitive to that.”
Did you ever envision yourself as a bishop?
“I think every priest tries to imagine what he would do, on those days when you’re ticked off at your own bishop (laughs) … but the older you get, the more humbled you become. There are days when you find it difficult to hold it together as a pastor, and you get to realize how the bishop is trying to help and work with your friends who are priests, and not everybody is easy to work with, and you only form a more profound respect. Anybody just reading the news the last 10 years would wonder what could this possibly be about and how could anybody fulfill this and what kind of holiness and transparency would I be capable of? ...
“I admire having pointed out to me in our own diocese and elsewhere, people … say how (a bishop) interacted with the congregation or the kids, and so you marvel at what people value, and marvel at the access that people have to bishops, the warmth, the approachability is very important … you begin to mentally take notes on what people need. They want a bishop who smiles, they want a bishop who believes, and they want a bishop who is capable of human friendship.”
Catholics tend to identify with parishes and pastors. What is the bishop’s role in bringing souls to Christ?
“Even people on my parish finance council say, ‘We’ve got to get through the minutiae and repairs done so we can be about the business of fishing for men.’
“The bishop has the responsibility in several ways … he is one, but not the only one, of their connections to the Universal Church, so it is very important that we (bishops) be conscious of what it is to be Catholic in that sense.
“In terms of bringing souls to Christ, I think we have to be conscious and deliberate about it. Each locale will be a little bit different about how they do that. We have to have due reverence for our sacred places, for our sacraments. The bishop has to be a good example of being a good pastor, and sometimes that means he is a good administrator … at other times, you bring souls to Christ by letting people know that you have a soul.
“There is a temptation in the American culture … (to say) that your soul has come to Christ in a moment, and it’s done, let’s get on to the next thing now that I’m fully converted. I think our ethos is more that life demands a constant conversion.”
What is the best part of being a priest?
“For me, totally unplanned, was the experience of Christ in the sacrament of penance — it is really there — and the sacrament of anointing of the sick. For better or worse, through my priesthood funerals have been important to me. Those are difficult, but I find that there is a moment to evangelize there.”
What is the greatest challenge?
“The biggest challenge is always to trust in the Holy Spirit. Part of that challenge is to trust that I have been called into ministry for reasons that I hope are apparent by my assignments and I have been useful, but all of us have an idea that some big part of our purpose may not be known to us until heaven — (that) even on those days when you feel like a failure, if you’ve tried to be faithful and helpful, that God won’t waste a response to what you feel is your call.”
How do you stay a priest?
“You have to very much find good priest friends and trust them. You have to pray in the sense of, first of all, spending time with God, and the book prayers, the recited prayers, take on a different meaning. You have to relish the Mass and you have to trust the sacrament of penance to be a guide.
“Those are some of the main things … but as I got older, to have a confessor, to get good advice from priest friends, to know what battles to fight and what battles to avoid. I have been blessed to have some people in good times, but also people to put things in perspective in tough times. You can’t be a priest for over 30 years and not have some tough times. I think today, too, to stay a priest you have to be collaborative. You have to be very conscious of the baptized people in your church and you sometimes have to be just as conscious about baptized people who aren’t Catholics, and understand that in some way Christ has come into all these lives, and all of us, for a purpose.”
On the role of the laity …
“It is being tested and constantly being redefined. We are living in kind of contentious times. People try to pick parties, both among the clergy and laity. People ask if you are liberal or conservative; you just like to say, ‘I’m faithful and I’m orthodox.’ In the current climate it is important we all decide that when we speak of the Church … (that we realize) all of us have a stake in it. Commonweal (magazine) had a nice editorial a few weeks ago that ended by saying that the Church is for all of us, and when our leaders fail we should have some forgiveness and when we fail we should expect the same. I liked that.”
What do you look forward to each day?
“I’m reading an interesting book right now, by James Martin, the Jesuit — The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, subtitled Spirituality for Real Life. It has to do with being centered in God, and it has to do with the great humor about ministry is, you get up in the morning and you look at your list you made in the office the evening before, and right after Mass two people come up to you that throws the whole day off, and probably the whole week, so you try to stay focused on what you believe needs to be done, but you have to be free enough to make some changes on a day-to-day basis. That is the same as being married, or working for a company, or anything.
“Things come to you, so I look forward to getting done the things I should be doing, but I always know that as you look back on the week knowing you have been involved in some things that are very grace-filled that you wouldn’t have thought of at the beginning of the week.”
In your many years of priesthood, what do you think is the most important thing you have learned about people?
“Lots of things … years ago, I was in a meeting, and someone said, ‘The purpose of a homily is to let people know, and help them to see, where they responded to God’s grace during the last week.’ When I take that kind of an idea with my homily preparation, you begin to see your parishioners and people in a different way and you see that there are a lot more holy people than you might expect, that parishes are full of holy people.
“I’m not talking about just the pious people or the people with rosaries and devotions and Mass, but the people who, out of love and charity, are working with their families. They’re taking care of elderly parents, they’re caring for disabled children, they’re staying with a job that doesn’t do much for them personally, but it helps them to feed the people they love. I think sometimes the vocabulary of holiness somehow got taken away from people’s ordinary experience.
“Part of any priest’s role should be to help people reflect on their life and think, ‘Gee, is this what being a good person, a holy person, a good Catholic, is all about? I’ve been doing most of that.’ And it will encourage them to discover more within their own vocation about how God is alive with them.
“… Now things are just moving way too fast for people. I think a part of holiness is just being able to be quiet and alone every now and then … people refer to a Blackberry phone as a ‘Crackberry’ because people now can’t live without it, they have to be hooked in 24 hours a day and it has robbed them. A machine sets the tempo to their lives rather than the beating of their own heart, and that’s tragic.”
On preparation for the episcopacy …
“Each bishop is called to a certain place at a certain time, so sometimes a skill set is going to be needed more in some decades more than others. When people are called to be bishops, a lot has to happen to have that person match up to a diocese and the times. It is less of a comment on individual talents or capacities; it depends upon what are the needs of the Church in a place or time.”
A bishop-elect becomes “intensely aware of the conference of bishops, the apostolic nuncio, and the fact that you are joining a college of people with vast experience and wisdom, who not only have loved their Church and humbly answered their call, many of them have suffered greatly in the course of it and to have that become apparent in a couple of days, to me, after this call, is huge. I can’t absorb all of this at once. I am trying to absorb Lafayette and people … but all of a sudden a whole dimension has been added to my life.”
“… There is no way I can imagine what it is like for a couple who has their first child, (but) oh, boy, within a week or two it becomes really apparent. Obviously, they had nine months to think about it … there is no gestation for bishops. There comes a point where you suddenly realize that everything is now different. You begin. Your prayers take on a different tone, more of a listening mode, truly.”
Could you talk a bit about your interest in health care ethics?
“It started as an interest from the point of view of science and how this was beginning to change human life and behavior … my interest in health care came about partly from issues of justice as a parish priest, consulting with families on the extent of treatment they should pursue and certain issues in fertility. Move ahead to 1990 … I had this interest, and I had gotten a degree in moral theology. I really wanted to be a pastor … I got involved in some RCIA for a couple of years and thought, ‘This is what I want to do.’ Bishop O’Neill (Joseph O’Neill, then bishop of the Diocese of Rockford, Ill.) said, ‘Well, if you are really looking for a change, I need someone to get a degree in medical ethics so we can have a seat at the table,’ because euthanasia was huge in the early 1990s and through the ’90s.
“Because I already had a bit of an interest, the bishop suggested I go ahead (he earned a doctorate in Christian ethics). It grew into issues of hospital mergers, health care, a lot of corporate issues, which is where I spent a lot of my time.
“You can measure it from a moral point of view, but you can also measure from the amount of money we spend on heath care as a culture … It is as big an issue as it ever was.”
What are your thoughts on how you plan to communicate with the people?
“There is no substitute for pressing the flesh and being with people for Mass and coffee and doughnuts and those kinds of things. That is as much for my ability to meet them as for them to meet me. But in terms of communicating, we are also in an accelerated mode, where the Vatican offices and everybody are saying we should be reaching out more electronically. We should reevaluate our communications modes and methods. I don’t think I’m going to be a tweeter or a Facebook person, and there are so many blogs right now that it’s just astounding.
“I’ll have to look at what’s the local culture and the local needs. The thing I wouldn’t want to happen is to get so dependent on electronics that if we have a power outage we can’t be church.”
Do you think you will write a column for the newspaper?
“I’ve written one for my parish. I look at several diocesan newspapers; most bishops say something, and I would like to do that, but again, that would depend upon what the people’s interests are in the diocese.”
If you could ask God for one blessing for this diocese, what would that be?
“That’s a great question. That we would discern together what we should do and who we should be based on the present mission that we have already stated for ourselves. That’s always a dangerous and brave thing to pray for. Our baptism calls us to be priest, prophet and king. What’s the nature of that today — not for the year 1990, not for 2080 — but today? How do we live out that baptismal call, all of us together? That’s the thing we need to pray to. I don’t know that any one person can discern that for themselves.”