By Gary Stern
The Journal News
February 25, 2009
http://lohud.com/article/2009902250359
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| Archbishop Timothy Dolan speaks to the media after greeting priests and seminarians during a visit Monday to St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers. Photo by Mark Vergar |
Michael Morris was heading to a Mass in 1979 at the great Catholic basilica in Washington when he overheard a young priest preaching to a group of pilgrims from St. Louis. He stopped to listen and came away impressed.
"He had a personality that was very magnetic," Morris recalled.
Two years later, Morris was an undergraduate at Catholic University in Washington and found himself in a graduate seminar with two other students, one of whom was that same priest: Timothy Dolan of St. Louis.
"I got to know him really well," Morris said. "You could see that God had plans for him, that he would contribute a lot to the church. And he was fun to be around. He would say, 'Mike, you ought to think about becoming a priest.' "
Sure enough, Morris now teaches church history at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers. He was among those at the seminary Monday who welcomed Dolan, their new boss.
"The providence of God is mystifying," Morris said with a laugh. "He's really a regular guy ... becoming the archbishop of New York."
Just a regular guy. It seems that everyone who has met Dolan - named Monday as the 13th bishop and 10th archbishop of New York - has the same kinds of stories about him. They talk of his booming laugh, how he throws his arms around strangers and drops his bishop's skullcap on babies, his love of baseball and food, and how he brings joyfulness to his duties that can take getting used to.
"When he first came here, we thought he was trying to put us on because of the stresses we'd been through as a diocese," said Richard Lux, professor of Scripture studies at Sacred Heart School of Theology in Hales Corners, Wis. "People thought that he was too friendly for a bishop, he was trying to schmooze us. Turned out, he really is that friendly and people have to get used to him being a real touchy-feely kind of person."
The question a lot of New Yorkers will soon be asking is how Dolan's Midwestern, everyman persona will fly when he encounters the mix of demands and expectations that come with being on the big nation's big Catholic stage. How will his style - the friendly bishop - translate into substance and leadership?
In his ministry as a priest and bishop, the 59-year-old Dolan has won many people over with an embracing pastoral approach that pushes orthodox Catholicism without chastising anyone. He is known for reaching out and listening, even to those who might disagree with his unapologetic support of church teachings on abortion, birth control and gay marriage, among other matters.
Others say he is slow to act, relying on his easygoing manner and a mastery of sports analogies to put off hard decisions. Advocates of aggressive action on sex abuse, for instance, say Dolan has let them down in Milwaukee.
"He is a steely, rock-solid, right-of-center conservative," Lux said. "But he's not an ideologue, not doctrinaire. He likes to engage, will have a beer with you, and wants to understand your point of view, but that doesn't mean that he will change his. He should be great in New York, with such a diversity of views, but he won't be quick to jump on anyone's bandwagon."
In "The New Men" by Brian Murphy, a 1997 book about the Rome seminary that Dolan was then running, Dolan said he wanted to be a priest from his earliest memories.
Dolan described growing up in suburban St. Louis during the 1950s, the oldest of five children. His father, Robert, was a Navy veteran who worked in a factory and tended bar on Saturday nights. Young Tim became a favorite of the Irish nuns at school.
"The religion was presented so positively, so attractively, so holistically as - perhaps only someone from Europe, someone from Ireland, could do - something that animated your whole life," he said.
Dolan enrolled in a high school seminary, leaving home at 5:45 a.m. each day. By the time he got to college seminary, the reforms of Vatican II were taking hold and Dolan had to struggle with folk songs in church and the demise of the Latin Mass.
Then he was asked to study at the elite American seminary in Rome, the North American College. He was on a path to leadership in his beloved church.
He served at three Missouri parishes, got a doctorate in church history, did a stint as secretary at the Vatican's embassy in Washington and shook things up at the St. Louis seminary. Then he was recruited in 1994 by a future cardinal named Edward Egan to run the North American College, a high-profile job.
"He really challenged us," said the Rev. Luke Sweeney, who was a seminarian there and now serves as vocations director for the Archdiocese of New York. "He is very perceptive. In a few seconds, he has real insight into people or situations, which really helped him as the rector."
After being made a bishop in 2001 and serving briefly in St. Louis, Dolan was sent to Milwaukee - an archdiocese in crisis.
Longtime Archbishop Rembert Weakland had just retired after admitting that he paid $450,000 to a man he had had a sexual relationship with two decades before. The man accused Weakland of abuse.
Many in Milwaukee's Catholic community looked to their new, chummy but orthodox bishop as a savior of sorts.
"New York's gain is our loss," said Al Szews, a retired professor at Marquette University and president of the Milwaukee chapter of Catholics United for the Faith, an orthodox group. "He will not only be your bishop, he'll be your priest. He inherited a bad situation here, but he is a holy priest, down to earth. He speaks to the ordinary people in the pews, but don't let that fool you. He's very intelligent.
"He is realistic, but Reagan-like as far as being upbeat," Szews said. "He truly believes that Jesus Christ is in charge and he is merely an instrument."
But Maureen Fitzsimmons-Vanden Heuvel, another self-described conservative Catholic who has fought the closing of an old, Irish church in Erin, Wis., for a decade, said Dolan is not aggressive enough in defending the traditional Catholic values he espouses.
"His personality reminds me very much of John Paul II, which is great but in my humble opinion he needs to get himself a 'Ratzinger,' " she wrote in an e-mail.
The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is struggling to recover from the sex-abuse crisis, having paid more than $25 million in settlements. Nine civil suits are working their way to trial and Weakland admitted in a videotaped deposition in November that he knowingly transferred abusive priests.
Weakland also said Dolan, after his arrival, never discussed past abuse cases with him.
Peter Isely, Midwest director for SNAP - the Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests - charged that Dolan has delayed remaining abuse cases so he wouldn't have to deal with them. He also faulted Dolan for not removing church administrators who protected dangerous priests and for saying that he can't intervene with religious orders that have not revealed the whereabouts of their own abusive priests.
"I like Dolan well enough personally - he's very entertaining and you know when he's around - but his big splash just fizzled out," said Isely, who has communicated with Dolan regularly. "He's very sunny and optimistic, but he doesn't want to go there and deal with these clergy crimes."
Nancy Moews, southeast Wisconsin director for Voice of the Faithful, a Catholic reform group that has been rebuked or banned by several bishops, has had a predictably strained relationship with Dolan. After the group brought in an excommunicated priest as a speaker last year, Dolan wrote in an e-mail to priests that the group was more interested in dissent than dialogue.
"He calls us voice of the doubters," Moews said.
In Milwaukee, Dolan has led an ambitious planning process that has taken into account many of the same challenges to the church that he will confront in New York.
In a pastoral letter released Jan. 24, he addressed: half-empty city churches; a lack of priests; growing numbers of Catholics leaving the church; a general rejection of the church's moral message; and other problems.
He endorsed the expansion of lay leadership for parishes, a lessening of administrative responsibilities on pastors, the sharing of clergy, lay leaders and buildings by parishes, and new forms of governance for Catholic schools.
Dolan challenged parishes, pastors and himself to push forward and to be accountable.
"You see what's happening here," he wrote. "Our conversations about planning have not been reduced to nervous chatter about closing parishes or trimming numbers of priests, but about the challenges and needs of God's people right now."
Despite the demands on his time and his budget, Dolan has tried to remain connected to the larger community. He's maintained a staff person who works with other Christian groups and other faiths.
Paula Simon, executive director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations, said Dolan has worked hard to understand Catholic-Jewish relations. She said he has been a committed partner, even calling Jewish leaders to his residence on Feb. 13 to talk about controversial statements made about the Holocaust by a traditionalist bishop whose excommunication was lifted by the pope.
"He asked us what he could do to make sure these issues were addressed," Simon said. "He said, 'What are you hearing? What can I do to mitigate any problems?' With total sincerity. What you see is what you get with him. He is open and warm."
Simon said she hoped Dolan's Midwestern attributes would play in New York.
Rob Astorino of Mount Pleasant, who first interviewed Dolan last year for the Catholic Channel on SIRIUS XM Satellite Radio, where he is station manager, said Dolan would do fine in New York.
"He's like an average, typical Catholic who happens to be an archbishop," he said
Reach Gary Stern at gstern@lohud.com or 914-694-3513.
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