LESSONS AT GOOD SHEPHERD
Castelli, Jim
COUNCIL VS. PASTOR LESSONS AT GOOD SHEPHERD Before the people of Good Shepherd parish in Alexandria, Va., and Arlington Bishop Thomas Welsh agreed on a plan of reconciliation in late January,...
...The council appealed to Jadot, expecting sympathy, but he said he had no jurisdiction in such a dispute...
...I don't know," Cooke laughed, "I haven't used it lately myself...
...When Welsh was named to Arlington, no one seemed to know why, except that he could be expected to bring some Krol-style conservatism to the post...
...the real disagreement was over what was meant by advisory...
...Both sides said the agreement should not be seen as a victory for either side, but that was a diplomatic lie that was surely part of the agreement itself, because the agreement contained concessions it seemed Welsh would never make...
...Welsh defined the problem as "an issue simply of whether a parish advisory board is truly advisory to the pastor or whether, in reality, it is the body which runs the parish...
...Two incidents at the bishops' meeting in November, at the height of the dispute, give some indication of the general feeling of the bishops about Good Shepherd...
...The situation was complicated by the fact that the new diocese had not yet set up any diocesan commissions or due process machinery...
...In addition to whatever subtle pressure he felt from the bishops' conference, Welsh faced a good deal of local publicity and, finally, the opposition of many of his own priests...
...In another incident, at a time when there were rumors that Welsh was considering placing the parish under interdict, a reporter asked New York Cardinal Terence Cooke at a press conference if he could explain the church's teaching on interdicts...
...Welsh appointed three priests to represent him in negotiations with three members of the parish...
...After Hannan dissolved the parish council, Welsh sent a letter to all the parishes in the diocese explaining his position...
...jim castelli (Jim Castelli, a previous contributor, is on the staff of the NC News Service...
...Welsh was named to head the Arlington diocese in Northern Virginia last summer after it was split from the Richmond diocese, which now covers the rest of the state...
...Shortly after Welsh's appointment, Quinlan, probably because he expected a hassle, left Good Shepherd for Richmond and Bishop Sullivan...
...The council then considered appeals through the U.S...
...On balance, it seemed the council was correct...
...bishops' conference arbitration committee and an appeal to Baltimore Archbishop William Borders, head of the region where Arlington was located...
...Hannan said he generally supported the seven-point plan, and parishioners seemed ready to give him another chance...
...Right now, at least, it seems there's been a happy ending...
...But the biggest victor in the whole affair was Vatican II, because the outcome showed that even though the Church may vary from parish to parish and diocese to diocese, it operates within certain limits that cannot be exceeded...
...Meanwhile, during the year before the split, Good Shepherd, under its pastor, Father Thomas Quinlan, had gained a reputation, even nationally, as a progressive, far-out parish where the laity exercised a good deal of power in the middle of a growing sense of community and excitement...
...The main features of the reconciliation were the reinstatement of the parish council dissolved by the new pastor, and the replacement of the new pastor by a team ministry, of which he was "co-pastor...
...the bishops' arbitration committee would act only if Welsh asked it to...
...this would have seemed unfair because of his general popularity, the observer said...
...Only the leadership, not the people, had changed...
...The council responded with a lengthy critique, and an exchange of letters between pastor, parish and bishop began...
...Baum's mistake had been the purchase of a half-million dollar mansion...
...He likes things done right," said one Philadelphia source, "but he likes things done...
...While most of the new episcopal appointments made since Archbishop Jean Jadot became apostolic delegate in the summer of 1973 were marked by fairly extensive local consultation, there was no such consultation in Richmond...
...To put the semantics in a better perspective, it would be accurate to say Henry Kissinger plays a merely advisory role for Gerald Ford...
...A number of priests got together to talk things over, believing Welsh, by sending the letter, had made Good Shepherd a diocesan-wide issue...
...Although Welsh too won a victory—he got a second chance at establishing himself as a leader in his diocese by imitating his northern neighbor, Washington Archbishop William Baum, and in effect admitting he'd made a mistake, rather than battle to defend it...
...Things may not run completely smoothly at Good Shepherd, but it seems the parish won't have any more abnormal problems...
...Shortly after, he did away with liturgical innovations such as the ever-condemned communion-in-hand and the use of women distributors of communion...
...When Richmond Bishop John Russell surprised everyone by retiring as soon as he was eligible, Auxiliary Bishop Walter Sullivan, a young liberal, was named apostolic administrator, a position he held for about a year until being named to head the new Richmond diocese after the split...
...He followed up by dissolving the council, with Welsh's full support...
...The council, seeking Hannan's removal, told Welsh, "The issue involved his appointment of a priest who was unable to cope in a renewed Catholic community and the role of the laity as 'sharers of responsibility' in that community...
...While the council's rhetoric emphasized the question of "shared ministry" or co-responsibility, the real problem was one of due process and accountability...
...This was probably because, as one observer noted, in the absence of certainty about the split, consultation would have looked like a referendum on Sullivan...
...In an address to the full body of bishops, Jadot, emphasizing cooperation with the laity, said in one none-too-subtle paragraph, "We must learn to make parish councils work...
...And the whole affair may have given evidence that due process, accountability, shared ministry and other Vatican II concepts can work—with a little effort...
...There was even some optimism that he would be better able to move some conservative priests along than a more liberal bishop...
...It may have the problems of a normal parish, not of a cause celebre...
...For the key issue—what made the dispute basically a matter of personality—was that the parish had not done anything it hadn't done with the blessings of its old pastor and bishop...
...Good Shepherd showed that the Church may have reached the point where reform cannot be dismissed by a whim of personality...
...But he and other bishops did have another influence on Welsh—peer group pressure...
...The question of whether or not the council was "legislative," as Welsh and Hannan claimed, was a straw man...
...But sources indicated that Welsh had virtually no support in the conference outside of Krol, and there was agreement that Krol would never have placed himself in Welsh's position...
...Borders had no real power over Arlington...
...Welsh and Hannan gave every indication that by "advisory" they meant, "You say what you want to say, and 111 do what I want to do anyway...
...Hannan, uncommunicative at first, anounced in his first homily that he was in effect downgrading the parish council...
...The split had been rumored for a long time, and rumors had been fueled by a growing ideological split— basically, it seemed there were more liberal priests in the south and more conservative priests in the north...
...The council had played an advisory, not a legislative, role for Quinlan, but he had listened to it...
...But the change at Good Shepherd was so quick and from so black to so white that it raised larger questions of justice for the whole church...
...There was drama, suspense, nostalgia—the cast of characters was perfect: —A newly-appointed, conservative bishop and protege of Philadelphia Cardinal John Krol, who had to deal with —An affluent, progressive parish used to being given its head under the leadership of —A liberal and liberated pastor generally regarded as something of a character, and who was replaced by —A traditional, middle-class style pastor after he— the character—headed for greener pastures in a Richmond black inner-city parish...
...Welsh replaced Quinlan with Father John Hannan, a very different type, and the general assumption was that Hannan had been sent in to clean up...
...It was this negotiating team that reached the plan of reconciliation, including appointment of Father Thomas Egan, an easy-going retired military chaplain as co-pastor with Hannan...
...Borders was sidetracked by a heart attack during the dispute and probably didn't have a chance to say anything one way or the other...
...PASTOR LESSONS AT GOOD SHEPHERD Before the people of Good Shepherd parish in Alexandria, Va., and Arlington Bishop Thomas Welsh agreed on a plan of reconciliation in late January, their five-month dispute had provided one of the best running stories in the Catholic press for quite a while...
...Some background is necessary to understand this...
...Then, in November, several women tried to distribute communion at mass and were rebuffed by Hannan...
...The priests expressed their dissatisfaction to Welsh, and this was a major factor leading to a six-week cooling-off period between Welsh and Good Shepherd...
...This may not seem like much, but, according to one well-placed source, it is a powerful force within the bishops' conference...
...Every diocese and parish is subject to some degree of change—more or less freedom, more or less creativity—when leadership changes...
...It seemed that this rule of personality might exist without any form of accountability: there was no diocesan due process...
Vol. 101 • February 1975 • No. 15
