Archbishop Dolan’s ‘Times’ interview.
It’s good to know the newly minted president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops isn’t boycotting a newspaper whose coverage he finds wanting. In today’s New York Times, Laurie Goodstein has an interesting interview with Archbishop Dolan.
Of course, Goodstein had to ask about the condom business, and Dolan said, “You get the impression that the Holy See or the pope is like Congress and every once in a while says, ‘Oh, let’s change this law.’ We can’t.” No surprise there.
And Dolan’s assessment of the health-care-reform law isn’t quite so dour as his predecessor’s [PDF]: ”Archbishop Dolan said the bishops ought to be ‘great cheerleaders’ for the expansion of health care coverage, and could possibly support a ‘refinement’ of the bill. He said he did not yet know whether the bishops would want to ‘overthrow’ the legislation completely.”
But, according to Goodstein, Dolan was most energetic when it came to the issue of attrition.
Archbishop Dolan leaned forward as he cited recent studies finding that only half of young Catholics marry in the church, and that weekly Mass attendance has dropped to about 35 percent of Catholics from a peak of 78 percent in the 1960s.
He said he was chagrined when he saw a long line of people last Sunday on Fifth Avenue. “I’m talking two blocks, a line of people waiting to get into …” he said, pausing for suspense. “Abercrombie and Fitch. And I thought, wow, there’s no line of people waiting to get into St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the treasure in there is of eternal value. What can I do to help our great people appreciate that tradition?”
Sounds like he’s been reading Peter Steinfels in Commonweal.
Speaking of, indulge me while I post my favorite moment from the archbishop’s press conference following his election as president of the USCCB. Not to worry, we’re launching a fundraising effort to support our hitchhiking budget to and from USCCB meetings.
I think the critical issue here is not the Pope on condoms or even whether the USCCB will support the health care bill (with some adjustments), but how the Bishops will “put their house in order” and “reinvigorate the US Church to stop drift.
I think his coments lean towards more of the same of what we had under Cardinal George with a rosy glow of humor added.
The problem is that, if drifters don’t have credibility in the teacings/teachers, governance/governors, I don’t see how that will stop drift.
If a good friend you enjoy being wth but strongly disgaree with on issues discuss those issues, his kindness is not going to change your view.
We had a Year of the Priest; now a “Year of the Mas.” Nothing wrong with that, but will it change things? Or, just move us on to the smaller, purer Church?
I was surprised at the shabbiness of the front parlor. Is there no Catholic (individual, magazine, organization, etc.) in New York willing/able to step up and decorate the room?
That parlor looks like how the new missal translation sounds.
And his feet on the furniture!!!! Looks at home in his space.
Have to disagree, Margaret. He looks verrry uncomfortable, imho. The big foot touching the skirt of the hideous couch is body language for eeeuuuuwww.
Obviously he has better taste than the bunch of junk in the parlor. (Look at his lovely pectoral cross.) The furniture came from someone’s basement. The coffee table? LOL.
The white walls and moulding? Bleh. The grimy register? The old rug?
Surely “his space” is somewhere else in the gloomy pile.
Maybe HGTV would take on the front parlor for their Next Design Star challenge.
I’ve been in that room; it came with the house.
I think in one TV interview from the same site, Archbishop Dolan himself described the decor as being like that of a funeral home. But even they are cheerier nowadays. Reminds me of an old-fashioned Victorian convent parlor furnished with bequests from deceased benefactors. ( I hope he has cosier private quarters to retreat to after a hard day.)
Margaret, of course it came with the house. A room for receiving female callers like you and Laurie Goodstein. Every old rectory, bishop’s palace, motherhouse, etc., has a dreary front parlor. Some are worse than that one.
The original horsehair furniture in Dolan’s residence was probably replaced with the current stuff when Spellman died. Out with the lace antimacassars (once used to protect against macassar), the mammoth carved oak furniture, the bronze lamps, the portraits of previous archbishops.
(I doubt that you have been in the private quarters of the archbishop, the rooms where he has comfortable chairs, big enough for him, where he hangs out, watches t.v., goes on his computer, invites his male friends for a drink, etc. No fringe on the rugs, no dirt on the registers, no coffee tables, etc.)
It wouldn’t cost a fortune to decorate that parlor. I hope someone who saw that picture in the paper this morning will volunteer to do it.
Anyway.
“Year of the Mess”, Bob — you forgot an “s”.
That video clip has finally convinced me: at the long last, I, just now, got a subscription to Commonweal.
Are we serious here? The crying need at issue is:
better interior decoration?
His mention of Commonweal is interesting — he seems to regard Commonweal as some kind of leftist, unruly publication — though of course there are voices much farther to the left, including very angry and alienated ones (but ‘it’s not as if we’re in crisis…’). Maybe the intelligent analysis and truth-telling that Commonweal represents is more unsettling to bishops, hopefully to salutary effect, than the noisier protests. Or is Commonweal more feared than America because less subject to ecclesiastical discipline (as in replacement of editors)?
Well, he’s right on Abercrombie and Fitch. Some of us walked up Seventh Avenue into the Park, and back on Fifth. I couldn’t believe the line.
I liked Ralph Lauren’s ads much better.
I must say I’m glad I don’t need to stand in a line to get into St. Pat’s — it’s crowded enough! But standing in line to get into a store, any store, is not something I ever hope to do. (A&F especially; just thinking about the stink of cologne wafting from that store makes me short of breath.)
Perhaps he is glad Commonweal was not present because he feared they would ask some questions that would make him uncomfortable because they are intelligent and critical and don’t allow him to get away with schmoozing, or repeating the party line.
Perhaps he thinks that people who read (and write for) Commonweal are the Catholics who can’t be handled by warm gestures nor satisfied by just another iteration of the familiar talking points. If so, that’s great!
In many ways, this should be exactly the time when people should be returning to the church. But the leaders of the Church have always had a tin ear. If Dolan and his fellow leaders would spend more time discussing the spiritual impoverishment of modern life and misplaced values — like materialism and consumption that leads to the line at Abercrombie and Fitch and $300 sneakers for teenagers — they might bring people back in. Many people are searching for alterantives to the business as usual way of life that has brought on the Wall Street mess, the economic collapse and the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, the violent and ugly rhetoroic of politics that drown out the voices of the sane. The Church should provide the answer they are looking for but instead our leaders want to keep carrying on about issues related to sexual morality (a topic that we are compromised on thanks to the sexual msiconduct of members of the clergy.). Did anyone read the Travel supplement in Sunday’s The New York Times? If Dolan wants to see an insidious evil at work – look no further than the luxury surfing resort created for the uber wealthy which is surrounded by impovershed people.
Is the “Year of the Mass” anything more than spin-doctoring for the new translation of the Roman Missal expected in Advent of 2011?
The likelihood that Claire is right and it will be “the year of the mess” is fairly overwhelming.
The decor matches the current strain of theology at large in this church.
John Allen has an NCR piece that the Abp. will do it with “barbeque and beer”
Right!
Rita’s comments are spot on!
Two decades in the Catholic press and this is how I get digitally immortalized . . . .
Like all hierarchs, Dolan is a politician in the world’s oldest all-male feudal oligarchy. And, he should be judged as such.
Obviously, the Vatican needed to give Dolan a consolation prize for not getting a red hat because Cardinal Eagan is still hanging on.
Besides, the hierarchy wants to position a PR savvy prelate at the helm at this time to help in beating back the budding reform and renewal movement in the US coming from the grassroots.
I don’t ever remember Jesus picking his disciples for their PR skills.
In the NY Times (11/23/10) article, Dolan seems to try to position himself as a bulwark against the “disaffection in Catholics” in that literally millions of Catholics have abandon the church of their birth.
But, if he fails to be honest with us about his own contribution to getting us in this mess, what would make anyone think that he has a clue about getting out of it?
The reason for the general Catholic alienation that Dolan laments is that the hierarchy has repeatedly betrayed the people by their (the hierarchy’s) complicity in the sexual exploitation of children by priests with impunity, and by their embrace and endorsement of a pastoral leadership that is more akin to an international corporation than the Body of Christ.
Sadly, Catholics are confronted with a hierarchy that is hopelessly IRRELEVANT to the lived experience of the vast millions of Catholics around the world.
Even more sadly, the situation is not going to get any better in our lifetimes.
It seems that the people and the hierarchs have reached a standoff where the hierarchy ever defensive behind walls of denial for the modern world, and where Catholics are no longer willing to encourage their sons to minister as priests.
The implications of that demographic time-bomb must keep the prelates up late at night.
The “disaffection” Dolan bemoans is rooted in the decisions of Catholic men and women over the last forty years, really, to IGNORE the hierarchy as we muddle along in our own lives, continue to live the Beatitudes, practice the corporal works of mercy, and await the time when our faith, hope and love can be spoken aloud in our own churches free of the hegemony of hierarchs.