Looking for the New Shepherd
Chicago Catholics express hopes for next bishop
Joe
Paprocki leads a session at the 38th annual National Association of Lay
Ministry conference held at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, June
3.
Chicago
Catholics are as feisty and independent as the wind that famously whips
across this city from its lakeshore. In decades past, they
enthusiastically embraced the labor and Catholic Worker movements. At
some parishes today, lay people give sub-radar reflections at Sunday
Mass.
“Catholics here have a strong sense of the
vocation of the laity,” says Greg Pierce, a local publisher and
community organizer. “They believe that it’s their church as much as it
is the priest’s, the cardinal’s or the pope’s.”
When Cardinal Francis George proffered his
pro-forma resignation two years ago after he turned 75, Pierce went into
action. He invited a diverse group of parishioners to write essays—a
series of open letters—to whoever becomes the next bishop of Chicago.
Pierce asked them to describe the kind of leader they seek. He and
Claire Bushey, an editor, compiled the essays into a book, whose title
describes what resides in the hearts of many Chicago Catholics: An Irrepressible Hope.
While the compilation represents the yearnings of people in a
particular diocese, it also mirrors the hope that Catholics across the
United States harbor in this Francis-enlightened era for a more
inclusive, merciful and laity-empowered church.
The writers ranged in age from 14 to 83.
They are black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American. They include
priests and religious sisters, fallen-away Catholics and parish
activists, a high-school student, a union organizer, several business
leaders and one woman who claims to be officially excommunicated. (Full
disclosure: this writer also contributed an essay.)
The prioress of a Benedictine monastery uses
an encounter with Cardinal George to describe the bishop she seeks.
When her mother was dying, George came to visit. She asked her mother if
she would like the prelate’s blessing. The ailing woman suggested that
she give the cardinal her blessing instead. “This story holds for me the
seeds of a possible future for the church,” the prioress writes. “One
in which women are recognized for who they are as the bearers of
blessings for all.”
Many other writers advocate greater
inclusiveness and a larger role for the laity, but there are just as
many pleas for a humbler clergy. One businesswoman cites the example of
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who asked anyone who had been hurt by the
church to contact him. “He spent the rest of his life replying to those
who wrote him, even on his deathbed. May our leaders understand that
whenever our church primarily fears scandal, we sin.”
A retired pastor says he wants a bishop who
“considers Chicago home, not Rome...who goes to our plays, movies and
symphonies, likes hot dogs and pizza and dislikes tired pieties.... And
yes, he should walk the parish dog. It’s good for the heart.”
A journalist accompanying his elderly mother
to Mass finds himself pondering the words of the Creed. “What does it
say about the Catholic Church when the word ‘love’ fails to appear in
either version of our creed?” he asks. “It says we need to refocus.”
Some of the stories are heart-wrenching. A
newspaper reporter recounts how the archdiocese informed his friend
dying of cancer—a woman he’d served with on the parish council—that she
could not receive Catholic burial rites. The reason: the woman had
sought ordination in the Roman Catholic Women Priests organization. “I
am certain in my bones that someday...church leaders will come to a new
understanding about what it means to be a priest,” the woman’s friend
writes.
Many entries press sore points that have
driven away many cradle Catholics, like the university administrator who
describes her pain at leaving the church of which she had been a part
for 60 years. The leadership “will not allow divorced Catholics to
remarry, yet will grant annulments when a marriage has existed for years
and with children,” she says. “It does not accept long-term committed
relationships among homosexuals, yet affirms the sanctity of marriage.”
It is unclear if these appeals from the pews
will have any effect on the kind of leader Chicagoans ultimately
receive. Pierce, the publisher, sent a copy of An Irrepressible Hope
to the papal nuncio in Washington. He even received a response. “It was
a very nice letter,” Pierce says, “but very non-committal.”
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