4/28/02

Knowing the place for the first time ...

Five years ago, during my first conference with the local media after being named Archbishop of Chicago, I recalled a few words from the poet T.S. Eliot: “…and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Coming back to Chicago as Archbishop after having lived elsewhere for 38 years has been a process of getting to know the Archdiocese, and myself as well, for the “first” time, for I had never been Archbishop of Chicago before.

When I began as Archbishop five years ago, I was given a document which presented goals for this local Church. Because 8,000 people had been consulted in the writing of the Decisions document and because it was, in a certain sense, Cardinal Bernardin’s legacy, it was clear to me that my first concern would have to be accepting the goals and working toward them. The goals for the Archdiocese set out in the Decisions document were three: 1) working toward our becoming an evangelizing Church; 2) strengthening our handing on the Catholic faith in Catholic schools and catechetical programs; 3) improving the preparation and formation of seminarians and of candidates for the diaconate and for various lay ministries. There will be a more formal report on how these goals have been and are being met, but it should be fairly clear that most of the programs and changes and activities of the last five years have had as their purpose the achievement of the goals set out in the Decisions document.

Besides following through on the Decisions document, I had two other personal goals in these first five years. I wanted to visit each of the Archdiocese’s 378 parishes. I’m about 60 parishes short of reaching that goal, but I think I can get there in the next year. I also wanted to work toward shaping a staff at the Pastoral Center which would be transparent in its operations and would be directed in every department and agency toward the mission of the Archdiocese. The temptation among those who minister and work in the Church is to see all that we do as either management of things or ministry to people. But the mission of the Church, our common purpose in response to our common faith, is more fundamental than either management or ministry. Ministries come and go, but the mission of the Church remains constant. A heightened sense of mission encourages every Catholic to feel part of a single ecclesial purpose, even if a particular ministry is in trouble or if a situation is fundamentally unmanageable. We cannot be a local Church at all unless we have confidence in the mission Christ gave his Church.

While working toward these goals, I have had to learn how the Church and the society operate here. About 70 percent of my time is spent in administration, 20 percent in celebrations of various sorts, and only 10 percent in more directly priestly tasks. That’s a distribution of time that has changed my life, not always for the better. Getting to know a lot of people here is rewarding; remaining only superficially acquainted with so many is frustrating. Besides learning and listening and traveling around the Archdiocese, I have commitments outside Cook and Lake counties with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and as a member of a number of commissions in Rome. Conferences and speeches also take me out of the Archdiocese from time to time. The time has gone by very fast.

The single most important event of the last five years has been the celebration of the Great Jubilee of the year 2000 and the beginning of the third millennium of Christianity. A Jubilee is a moment of grace, a time when we celebrate the gift of God’s life joined to ours for our salvation.

Such a gift cannot be hoarded; it must be given away, shared. In the Archdiocese, we celebrated the Jubilee with several events to make God’s grace visible; and we spoke about the Jubilee as a moment for sharing Christ’s gifts. Integrating the Jubilee into the mission of the Archdiocese had us speaking about sharing Christ’s spiritual gifts as evangelizers and sharing Christ’s material gifts as stewards. Evangelization and stewardship remain at the center of parish programs today and will, I hope, stay there for years to come.

Concerns that have dominated my few years here have been financial and, to a lesser extent, administrative. In setting policies for the Archdiocese, I have the advice of the Presbyteral Council and the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council. In administering the Archdiocese, I have the skilled help of all those in the Pastoral Center. In pastoring the Archdiocese, I am blessed with the assistance of the auxiliary bishops and the priests and those associated with their ministry. Concerns arising from the scandal of sexual abuse of minors by some priests and its mishandling by some bishops dominate the life of the Catholic Church throughout the United States as I write this column. In Chicago, we have, I believe, acted responsibly to assure the protection of children and to help victims. Mistakes can come to light, however, even with the good policies elaborated over ten years ago. What has to happen now is a restoration of trust in the holiness of priests and the honesty of bishops; this trust, which grounds pastoral life in the Church, has become a casualty of the current scandals.

Long before anybody ever imagined that I would become Archbishop of Chicago, a Chicago priest who had been assigned to St. Pascal’s parish when I was in grade school explained to me that it takes some years to become Archbishop of Chicago. He was speaking of Cardinal Meyer’s untimely death after only six years as Archbishop here. After just five years, I feel I am only beginning “to know the place for the first time.” What is encouraging, however, is the goodness of so many Catholics here and the good will of so many residents of Cook and Lake counties. I am profoundly grateful to God for the graces of these past five years; and I am grateful as well to the bishops, priests, religious, deacons, lay ministers and lay faithful of the Archdiocese for their example to me and their cooperation in governing the Archdiocese and in living the faith together in this particular Church.

My episcopal motto says that Christ is glorified in his Church. Despite my own faults and failings and those of many others as well, that conviction remains the bedrock of my ministry. In faith, I believe it; in practice, I experience it here, and I am grateful. You are daily in my prayers, and I count on being always in yours.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Archbishop of Chicago

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