A Stable Figure during Two Decades of Change

By Stuart Vincent
Newsday
June 24, 1996

He was ordained a priest when Latin was the language of the Roman Catholic mass, when churches routinely had several priests, parochial schools overflowed with baby boomers and the Brooklyn Diocese stretched from Coney Island to Montauk Point.

He became bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre when Vatican II reforms were still sending shock waves through the Church and the numbers of priests and nuns were in decline. presiding bishop of what is now the nation's eighth largest Catholic from the founding bishop, Walter P. Kellenberg.

A Catholic population that has grown by more than 325,000 is served was founded in 1957, no priests were ordained here this year. Neighborhood parochial schools have largely given way to regional schools, girls serve at the altar for mass, and Central and South American immigrants have replaced Europeans as the fastest growing group of Catholics.

The sweeping changes and crises in the Roman Catholic Church and the Rockville Centre diocese have demanded of the bishop that he be not only a leader in faith, but equal parts financial manager and psychologist, booster and referee.

He also has bumped heads with both Catholics and non-Catholics on local issues, such as closing and consolidating Catholic schools, and on issues that affect the entire Church, such as priestly celibacy and abortion. As bishop, McGann also stands as a symbol of the Church that some maintain is too authoritarian and restrictive to women.

But above all, McGann, a Brooklyn native who was in the eighth grade when he declared his intention to become a priest, has been known as a church leader who is accessible to his priests and parishioners, espouses a moderate stance in an increasingly conservative Church and has a knack for pulling together the disparate interests of his faith to

His pastoral style hasn't precluded McGann from winning national recognition as an officer with the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, or from asserting himself, most notably at the 1987 funeral of former CIA director and Roslyn Harbor resident William Casey, when he shocked those present by speaking out against aid to the contra rebels in Nicaragua, a policy Casey had helped engineer.

Just three years ago it was unclear whether McGann would make it to this anniversary. What began as a routine examination for a leg injury suffered while on vacation led to McGann's lying in a hospital room in Bethesda, Md., weak and in pain from debilitating blood disorders. He was cut off from priests and parishioners, questioning whether he would ever return to his office, wondering whether he would recover at all.

"For a year there I wasn't sure whether I was going to be able to continue," McGann, now 71, said in a wide-ranging interview last week in the rectory of St. Agnes Cathedral. He rolled up his sleeve in a characteristically informal gesture to show the bandage covering a spot where only hours before blood had been drawn at Rockville Centre's Mercy Hospital for one of his ongoing blood tests.

For more than three months in 1992, he was treated at the National cell count) and thrombocytopenia (low platelet count). Had it continued much longer, he said, "I would have written to the Holy Father and said, Physically, I couldn't do it. You'd better appoint someone else.'"

But McGann responded to treatments and on Jan. 21, 1993, the Feast of St. Agnes, made a triumphant entrance into the cathedral as the crowd erupted in thunderous applause.

"I will never forget the response as he walked in, which was really the first time in months he had been anywhere for anything public," said Msgr. John Bennett, pastor of St. Christopher's Church in Baldwin and McGann's secretary from 1978 to 1985. "It was incredible, and more than one person said that's the best tonic ever. That and the power of people's prayers."

As leader of the diocese, McGann has provided those people with a more democratic leadership than some bishops, saying he believes one needs to hear "many voices" to effectively run a diocese that stretches from increasingly urbanized Queens border towns to the rapidly growing parishes of Brookhaven and the seasonal wealth and hidden rural poverty of the East End.

"I think anybody who's going to run it from the top down is not going to make it," he said last week. "The people are smart, and they know what they want and what they don't want, and you've got to dialogue with them."

He's an easy-going man with a reputation for never forgetting a name. Parishioners say his is the common touch of someone who feels more at home walking among the people than wrapped in the cloak of his office. He's a church leader who makes them feel he cares about them, who moved his installation as bishop 20 years ago from St. Agnes Cathedral to the Nassau Coliseum to give more people the chance to attend.

He's a bishop who doesn't put on airs when he puts on his vestments, who will patiently pose for pictures with couples renewing wedding vows on their 50th anniversary or with young people and their parents at Confirmation.

"I think he's looking after the welfare of the people, and he's very concerned," said Al Mazza of St. Mary's in East Islip following a mass as presiding bishop, 25th as a bishop.

"He's a great man," said Joyce Norwood of Riverhead after speaking with the bishop following the Riverhead mass. Four decades ago, McGann Sharon and Fran Johnson, took their First Holy Communion. "He doesn't forget a face," she said. "He said, The Johnson twins. I remember them!'"

With the creation of the Rockville Centre diocese in 1957, McGann was tapped by Kellenberg to be an assistant chancellor, and later Kellenberg's secretary. He accompanied the diocese's first bishop to Rome for the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and later, as bishop, he was at the forefront of embracing the changes Vatican II engendered, including those in the office of bishop.

"Even the life of the bishop is different than it was in the Fifties. Many times he lived in isolation. Nobody went to see him. He had a chauffered car," McGann said. "I had to go to get shoes mended, and I went to the shoe store the other day. I went to the tailor, and the fellow said, Hey, you come here?' And I said, Yeah, I've got to get my suits pressed too.'"

Not all the changes McGann brought about were the result of Vatican II. He angered parents and students fiercely loyal to their Catholic schools when he responded to dropping enrollments and soaring costs by closing two high schools in 1984 and consolidating parochial elementary schools six years later. Protesters, some from families where two and three generations had been educated at schools scheduled to close, dogged McGann wherever he went, and some parents pulled their children from Catholic schools in protest.

The two diocesan high schools McGann closed were Maria Regina in Uniondale and Holy Family in Huntington; then he moved St. Agnes High School from Rockville Centre to the Maria Regina building and St. Anthony's High School in Smithtown to the Holy Family building. St. Agnes later closed and became Bishop Kellenberg High School, run by the Marianist brothers. St. Anthony's is run by Franciscan brothers.

Six years later, McGann warned that financial burdens could "crush the life out of Catholic elementary education if we don't take action" as he introduced a new system of regional schools, each supported by several parishes. There are now 16 regional schools and 43 independent parish schools.

In 1987, McGann put into place a policy that addressed an issue the Church had been loath to confront for decades. It required a priest accused of sexual abuse be removed from his parish and ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation. Seven years later the policy led to the diocesan removal of a priest for the first time. Advocates for sex-abuse victims on Long Island and nationally, however, say the Church still is not responsive enough to accusers.

McGann has responded to the growing Hispanic Catholic population with more Spanish-speaking priests, deacons and outreach workers. Between 1980 and 1990, the number of Hispanics on Long Island rose from almost 102,000 to more than 157,000, according to U.S. Census data.

At McGann's old parish of St. Anne's in Brentwood, where two-thirds of the population is now Hispanic, all three priests and a permanent deacon speak Spanish to serve recent immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Peru as well as Puerto Ricans who have been there since the 1920s. Co-pastor Thomas J. St. Pierre said the newer arrivals aren't very comfortable in English and are usually needier than the established families. "The need is very great for advocacy, food, temporary help, connections," he said. The parish has about 5,000 families, but its outreach program helps many more, he said, and its weekend soup kitchen feeds about 150 people.

If changes in the diocese wrought by shifting demographics, the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and changes in society at large have forced McGann to make some tough decisions, they also have given him unprecedented opportunities to open the windows of the Church and invite more lay people to participate in her ministry.

Laymen and laywomen now distribute communion. Girls serve on the altar at mass. Since 1978, McGann has ordained laymen as permanent deacons, [CORRECTION: Bishop McGann ordained his first class of permanent deasons in June, 1979. The same feature gave the wrong year. 6/25/96.] clerics who perform all of the functions of priests except saying mass, hearing confession and annointing the sick. At the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Lloyd Harbor, which trains priests for the Rockville Centre and Brooklyn dioceses, Latin has been replaced by Spanish and Creole and other languages far more useful to the local church. And a growing Catholic population in Suffolk County allowed him to establish three new parishes. Church, to be present to the time and place, whatever that is," said McGann. "And that was always true, but you can become very complacent when you had many more priests, many more religious. You didn't get so anxious about what lay people were doing . . . The Vatican council said this is their action as well as yours."

Wilma Ferguson of St. Joseph's parish in Ronkonkoma wished the altar servers, recognizing that the young woman wants to serve the Lord as much as the young man," she said after the service in Riverhead on June 9. "I always wanted to be one altar server when I was young. I knew the whole mass in Latin."

Frank and Maria Ayala of East Hampton, part of Long Island's growing Hispanic community, had for years asked the diocese for a Spanish-speaking priest. McGann sent a priest to them when one became available, they said. "For five years now we have had a Spanish priest in East Hampton," said Frank Ayala.

Montfort Naylor Jr. of Miller Place took advantage of the diocese's Pastoral Formation Institute to become a deacon two years ago.

"He has been the real reason I found myself and found the Church," he said. McGann founded the institute after Rome restored the office of looking for something in my life, because it wasn't complete ... I went to the institute and immediately knew that's where I belonged ... Bishop McGann has been phenomenal, supporting us and encouraging us and giving us a reason to be."

Not all Long Island Catholics are as enamored with the bishop. Leading a diocese in an era of church reforms has required something of a balancing act from McGann. What some see as progress, others view as a trampling under of church traditions and teachings. As Auxiliary Bishop Emil Wcela recently observed, "There are people who are saying things are going too fast. There are people who are saying things are going too slow."

Traditionalists who long for the pre-Vatican II Church say McGann is too liberal and "has tolerated incredible abuses" in Church doctrine, should be more vocal in opposing abortion and more vigilant as to what is preached from his church pulpits.

"There's not too much of the official teachings of the Church that are promulgated in our diocese. You don't hear it from the altar," said Sal Guadagna of Northport, a member of the local Traditional Latin Mass Television Network founded by the conservative and often controversial Mother Angelica. "They're dealing with faith and love and justice. But everyone sort of knows that, and they're looking for truths."

Reformists see change coming too slowly and want the Church to allow priests to marry, to ordain women and to become a more democratic institution. To some of them, McGann is a "middle-of-the-road to conservative" leader. continuing exclusion of women from the priesthood and decision-making in the Church causes grave concern, because, one, justice isn't served, two, people aren't served and, three, the Church is becoming desacramentalized with the Eucharist and other sacraments less available as the pool of male celebrants is less available." McGANN SAID he deals with various interests by attempting "to figure out what is the teaching of the Church, the practical teaching of the Church, and then you meet with the people who are advocating for one or the other to say why you think one is the best approach and why maybe, in some ways, you can make accommodations. Like you can have a Latin mass. We have it in two places twice a month, but we have people who want it in every parish every Sunday."

That style is one of McGann's strengths, said Bishop Thomas Daily of Brooklyn. "He collaborates well, he's an outgoing person, he enjoys meeting with people and working out solutions and developing consensus," he said. "And he's a master at it. I've seen him do it with religious and laity."

Although McGann has never emerged as a dynamic national leader in the style of Cardinal John O'Connor of New York or Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, he won election as treasurer of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1984, beating out an archbishop. Hehas sisters who were Sisters of St. Joseph and of a long association with the bishops' liaison committee with the Leadership Council of Women Religious. He also chaired the bishops' Catholic Telecommunications Network of America from May, 1990, to December, 1992. The attempt to set up a national Catholic network was later scrapped in the face of competition from private networks.

The Rev. William Callahan, a Jesuit and director of the Catholic, independent Quixote Center in Hyattsville, Md., concerned with social-justice issues, characterized McGann as "someone who has been pastorally both progressive, although not in sense of a liberal crusader, and someone who has been willing to take the Vatican II directions and let them quietly evolve as far as the people of his diocese were willing to take responsibility for doing them." for William Casey, a parishioner and friend of the bishop. McGann used the opportunity to remind Casey's friends and family that the U.S. Catholic bishops "opposed and continue to oppose the violence wrought in Central America by support of the contras." Casey had been one of the architects of the nation's support for the contra rebels in Nicaragua in defiance of Congress. With then-President Ronald Reagan and former President Richard Nixon seated in the front row of St. Mary's Church in Roslyn Harbor, McGann said, "I cannot conceal or disguise my fundamental disagreement in these matters with a man I knew and respected."

The remarks outraged Casey's family and friends. Nixon fired off a letter to McGann, rebutting his eulogy.

"McGann was willing to speak out and even to raise the subject," Callahan said. "Even as he praised Casey's zeal and enthusiasm on U.S. policy, in no way was the Church giving approval" to the policy of support for the contras.

One of McGann's goals in the years before he hands the keys of his month, when for the first time since 1957 no priests were ordained for discuss a national plan for encouraging vocations.

"I would love to see us be able to do more on vocations. We have a new vocation director, but it's not one man, it's the attitude of the people," McGann said. "Do they want their children to be priests and religious? Can we encourage more of these people from other ethnic backgrounds to enter the priesthood?"

His own path to the priesthood began with a religious upbringing and encouragement from parish priests. His twin sister, Mary, who later and served for eight years as the community's general superior, recalled how her brother came home for lunch one day from Our Lady of Good Counsel school and told their mother he would be taking the entrance exam for Cathedral Preparatory Seminary that very afternoon.

Msgr. Joseph Colligan, a seminary classmate and longtime friend, recalled the sunny July day in 1944 when he met McGann in the parking lot of the Lloyd Harbor seminary, and the bitter cold January day when he and another seminary classmate, the late Rev. John Callahan, stood on either side of Msgr. John McGann as they prepared to enter St. Agnes for McGann's ordination as a bishop.

A quarter century later, McGann acknowledges he is near the end of his reign, but he said he doesn't spend time worrying about his successor, who is likely to be a more conservative bishop.

Jay Dolan, a history professor at Notre Dame University and author of "The American Catholic Experience," a history of the American Catholic Church, said McGann is more typical of the bishops appointed by Pope Paul VI, when "bishops were chosen because of their pastoral virtues," he said. "I think now bishops are chosen not so much because they're good pastors, but because they're loyal to the pope, and that's appointed have reflected his mindset, his mentality, which is a very traditional, conservative mindset."

McGann said it is unlikely he will have as much influence in recommendations, but that's not the way it's happening. It's coming more from Rome and the Council of Bishops. I think they have their ideas about who they would like to have where.

"The third bishop of Rockville Centre is going to be a different person, and his approach could be much different. I was here when it started," he said, adding that he believes appointing someone from within the diocese is an advantage. "Somebody might be coming in from outside who it's going to take a while to find out how we got where we are now, and should we continue that way or should we change it?"

But then, that was how it was even when he took over from Kellenberg. "I had to close the minor seminary St. Pius X in Uniondale he started. I had to close the two high schools. And yet when I went to A STABLE FIGURE DURING TWO DECADES OF CHANGE Significant events in Bishop John McGann's two decades of leadership in the Diocese of Rockville Centre Paul VI, succeeding Bishop Walter P. Kellenberg. Diocese of Rockville Centre. married or single men who may perform all the duties of priests except saying mass, hearing confession or anointing the sick. of the diocese with a service at St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre, which was renovated for the occasion. He had declared 1981 a holy year in preparation for the anniversary. McGann closes St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary in Uniondale and two Huntington. Conference of Catholic Bishops. demonstration against Bill Baird's abortion clinic in Hempstead. About 500 Baird supporters mass around the clinic entrance. stock in companies doing business in South Africa by May, 1987, unless there are "significant steps toward dismantling apartheid." resident William Casey, McGann says the U.S. Catholic bishops "opposed and continue to oppose the violence wrought in Central America by support of the contras" and "I cannot conceal or disguise my fundamental disagreement in these matters with a man I knew and respected." The support for the contra rebels in Nicaragua. Suffolk, greatly reducing the size of Long Island's largest parish, St. Joseph's of Ronkonkoma, which had about 10,000 families. The new parishes were later named Holy Cross (Nesconset), Resurrection (Farmingville) and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (Lake Ronkonkoma). for the following year, a move largely designed to raise teacher salaries. the total to four, and reorganizes the diocese into three regions, each headed by an auxiliary bishop who answers to Auxiliary Bishop James Daly, the vicar general. diocese in 20 years, at St. Pius X chapel in Uniondale. More than 500 Catholics attend. Telecommunications Network of America, serving until Dec. 31, 1992. lifeout of Catholic elementary education if we don't take action," McGann unveils a school survival plan to transform and consolidate the traditional parish-based school structure into a system of regional schools, each supported by several parishes. Metropolitan New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which includes Long Island, preach together for the first time at a prayer service in Woodbury. Bethesda, Md., for treatment for aplastic anemia and thrombocytopenia after two months of treatment at Mercy Hospital in Rockville Centre following a leg injury suffered on vacation in July. October, celebrating mass at his cathedral for the Feast of St. Agnes. the sick, to deal with declining numbers of priests and an aging population. Parishes surrounding Long Island's health-care facilities are to become more involved, with a greater reliance on lay and religious chaplains. may be altar servers. His letter follows official Vatican approval in March, although the final decision was left to each bishop. hospitalized after feeling faint while attending an investiture ceremony for the Knights of Malta at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. He remains at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan for two days for heat exhaustion unrelated to his blood disorders. the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., to pay homage to the Virgin Mary. The event is also used to mark the 25th anniversary of his ordination as a bishop and 20th anniversary of his installation as presiding bishop. Cathedral. Cardinal John O'Connor of New York and bishops from many dioceses attend. PHOTO CAPTIONS 1) Newsday color cover photo by Jim Peppler - (John McGann) 2) Newsday photo by K. Wiles Stabile- (Bishop John McGann). 3) In 1958 McGann, far right, was named a monsignor; Bishop Kellenberg, center, and McGann's family. 4) Photo courtesy of The Long Island Catholic / Thomas F. Maloney - Twenty years ago today McGann was consecrated as the presiding bishop and posed for this portrait. 5) Photo courtesy of The Long Island Catholic - In 1979 Mc Gann, far left, visited with children at a diocesan mission in El Cerado, Dominican Republic. 6) Photo courtesy of The Long Island Catholic - In 1986 Mother Teresa, on an annual visit to New York, spoke at St. Agnes Cathedral, and McGann was her host. 7) Newsday photo by K. Wiles Stabile - In 1991 McGann led 2,000 abortion foes from St. Agnes in a demonstration in Rockville Centre. 8) Photo courtesy of the Long Island Catholic - Last year, marking 45 years since ordination, McGann, center, and LI's Rev. Edward Tarrant met Pope John Paul II in Rome. 9-11) John McGann, at far left with his twin sister, Mary, on the day of their First Holy Communion, knew by the eighth grade that he wanted to be a priest. He was graduated in 1944 from Cathedral College in Brooklyn, top row center in his class photo at left, and from the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Lloyd Harbor in 1950, right. 12,13) Photos courtesy of the Long Island Catholic / Thomas F. Moloney - The bishop's twin sister, Mary, became Sister John Raymond shown at left in 1982; another sister, Eleanor, became Sister Thomas Joseph. At right, in March, 1994, McGann followed Lynbrook Rabbi Gil Sichel CORRECTION: Rabbi Stuart Geller of Lynbrook appears with Bishop John McGann and Westbury Islamic leader Al-Haaj Ghazi Y. Khankan in a photo of a 1994 service that appeared with yesterday's Part 2 story about McGann. The rabbi was misidentified because of incorrect information supplied to Newsday. Pg. A02 NS 6/25/96 and Westbury Islamic leader Al-Haaj Ghazi Y. Khankan into Garden City's Cathedral of the Incanation for an interfaith service of reconciliation and peace.

CORRECTION:
Rabbi Stuart Geller of Lynbrook appears with Bishop John McGann and Westbury Islamic leader Al-Haaj Ghazi Y. Khankan in a photo of a 1994 service that appeared with yesterday's Part 2 story about McGann. The rabbi was misidentified because of incorrect information supplied to Newsday. Pg. A02 NS 6/25/96 Bishop McGann ordained his first class of permanent deasoncs in June, 1979. The same feature gave the wrong year. Pg. A02 NS 6/25/96

GRAPHIC: Newsday chart by Richard Cornett - The Diocese Through the Years / How the Diocese of Rockville Centre has changed since 1958. Newsday photos by Jim Peppler and K. Wiles Stabile; Other photos courtesy of The Long Island Catholic / Thomas F. Maloney - (see end of text for complete captions)