Mike Aquilina spares no expense in pleasing his interviewer. I was scheduled to meet him on a Saturday at the offices ofThe Pittsburgh Catholic. He then was its editor, but at the end of September resigned to become the editor of New Covenant magazine.
Crossing over the Ohio River into downtown Pittsburgh, I found the off ramp blocked by police barricades and was guided along a long detour that took me onto the far side of Third Avenue. Mike’s office was on First, and between it and me there was — a parade.
After several frustrated attempts to find a way around the throng, I looked both ways (making sure no police were nearby) and dashed across Third, between the pom-pom girls and the Marine band. I found Mike, a knowing grin on his face, outside his office. “How did you like the parade? We asked the city to throw it just for you!” How could I not be touched?
Given Mike’s evident facility in greasing bureaucratic wheels, I figured he would know something about dealing with the bureaucracy in the Church.
KEATING Most Catholics that I have contact with who have dealt with diocesan bureaucrats have horror stories to tell. I don’t get too many positive stories. Of course, there is a reason that you hear the negative but not the positive stories. But what’s a Catholic going to do? I’ve heard from so many people who see something improper in the liturgy, something wrong with the parochial schools, and want to get through to somebody at the diocese. They write a letter straight to the bishop and never hear back, or they get back a letter that reads like a form letter from a Congressman: “Thank you for your comments on the Social Security bill.” What is a Catholic layman supposed to do? How can he get through to the Church bureaucracy? Is it an adversarial relationship?
AQUILINA Only if we make it that way. I’m on the other side of a lot of those calls, and people tend to assume that if you’re on the payroll of the Church you’re an evil human being. You get these calls where people start out by lashing out at you.
I can understand that sometimes, by the time they get to you, they’ve already talked to someone in the parish, and maybe they’ve talked to three different people in the parish and have gotten nowhere, and by the time they get to you they’re good and angry, and they’re going to take it on you.
You’re at a distance, you’re a voice on the telephone, you’re disembodied, you’re not quite human. You absorb the shock for a lot of their anger. What we have to realize is that people who work for the diocese take call after call from people who are angry for one reason or another. They’re not all doctrinal, they’re not even mostly doctrinal, issues. A lot of them are just logistical things in the running of the parish. But if you take angry call after angry call through the day, after a while this has an effect on you. You would not believe the effect of an act of kindness on someone who is working for the Church.
KEATING You mean the power of schmooze?
AQUILINA I think so. Planned Parenthood certainly realized that because that’s what they do, they schmooze like crazy, and that’s how they’ve effected so much change. They wield such power because they’ve at least given this veneer of love. Now, we have real love, and we should be doing that.
Now, this isn’t to deny there are problems, but I don’t think that we accomplish a lot when we launch into questioning people’s intentions or their motives or their sanity or their intelligence on the phone. What we should do is what the new Catechism tells us to do: We should make excuses for people. We should try to understand why they’re saying what they’re saying, and we should try to excuse their behavior whenever we can.
KEATING Your own diocese has received some flak regarding its sex education program, and I take it that this would be one of the situations that you’d be alluding to-a lot of angry calls based on incomplete information. Although this area is not your department-you’re with the newspaper and not with the education office or the family life office-you get a lot of calls.
Someone calls to complain and he gets hold of you. What do you wish you could tell him? Sometimes, after a debate with an anti-Catholic Fundamentalist, I have had an urge to say to him, “Look, you bungled your presentation. Let me give your side for you. This is how you could have done better.” If you were in the position of these callers, what would you recommend they do and say?
AQUILINA First I’d like to make a clarification. Sex education is the term that has been put on the program by other people, but it is not appropriate. There is nothing on sexual technique, nothing on the mechanics, nothing on the plumbing in the program. It’s really just getting out what’s in the Catechism and encyclicals. It’s chastity education, and in the tradition of the Church; it’s about self-discipline. I want to make that clear. I’m not going to play their game.
KEATING What age range does the chastity program cover?
AQUILINA It covers everything from the earliest years to the latest years. In the earliest years, it says that a family is a mother and a father and children. And in high school it gets into issues in dating, but at no point is it dealing with plumbing. I know. I wrote the parents’ guide to it.
KEATING So there’s no biology in it?
AQUILINA No, none. In the parents’ guide there is a diagram in the back that parents can rip out if they want, or they can use it if they want. It just shows a man and a woman in the most antiseptic drawings you’d ever see.
KEATING All right. Let’s use this, then, as a paradigm. Someone calls in steamed.
AQUILINA What I would say is he’s already made a mistake. I would never make any phone call when I’m angry because it’s counter-productive. You are not in control of your reason at that point. Your irascible appetite is out of control; what you do is go before the Blessed Sacrament and pray. That’s what you want to do. And you don’t just go in and go out. You go there, and you talk to our Lord about it and . . .
KEATING . . . and what are you asking him for?
AQUILINA To give you the words for the phone call, to give you the wisdom. To help you love the person on the other end of the line and to see Christ in that person. That’s where you’ve got to begin. You’re not dealing with a bureaucrat; you’re dealing with an image of God. That’s where you’ve got to start.
KEATING So I go to the Blessed Sacrament and I pray. I’m going to call Mike and I’m going to get my anger under control. I’m really upset. I’m still upset about the issue, but I’ll be upset with him in a nice way. Now, what else do I need to know?
AQUILINA Make the phone call or write the letter, whichever would be better. Just say, “Hey, I just read this, and if it’s true, it’s terrible. I don’t want to believe it’s true. Tell me what’s going on.”
KEATING So there should be an element of automatic skepticism about anything that might reflect negatively on the Church?
AQUILINA Right.
KEATING But you always have a working presumption that something’s been misconstrued?
AQUILINA Yes, and have a desire to believe the best about people. Then really listen to what people are saying. Don’t question intention. We don’t have a right to do that. When our Lord says don’t judge, that’s what he’s talking about. He’s not saying don’t judge actions; he’s saying don’t judge intentions. People might be acting out of ignorance or any number of things.
KEATING Let’s continue on this. Let’s say I read in some publication-it might be the city paper, it might be a national Catholic publication-about something in my own area. I’m going to write a letter or call in. I’m going to do it politely, but to whom do I write? Whom should I call? There’s something fishy going on in my parish or diocese. Whom do I go to? Do I start at the top with the bishop and work down, or do I start with my pastor and work up?
AQUILINA I would try to find the person responsible for that issue. If it’s in education, find the director or secretary or vicar for education in your diocese. Begin there. Or you start with the person who is in question. That would be the most beautiful thing to do, to go to that person and, if that person is in need of correction, that’s precisely what our Lord says to do. Start with that person and say, “What’s going on here?”
KEATING Okay, so I find an article written by Father X or Sister Y . . .
AQUILINA Go to Father X or Sister Y, show the article, and ask, “Is this true? How can this be true?” If he says, “You’re right it’s true, and I’m proud of it,” then try to correct him, and, if that doesn’t work, then. . . .
KEATING I’ll give you a hypothetical. Take Fr. Richard McBrien. Let’s say that in my parish’s RCIA program the book we’ll use is his Catholicism, which has now been condemned. I go up to the pastor, and I demonstrate from objective newspaper accounts that the book is questionable. He says, “We’re going to use it anyway. It’s my favorite book.” What do I do?
AQUILINA At that point go to the vicar for education and say, “You know, I saw this article,” and you show him that you went through the channels and you’ve done everything in charity. If you still don’t get satisfaction, then you go to the bishop.
KEATING Let’s presume the vicar of education says, “Okay, we’ll take it under advisement,” and you never hear back from him.
AQUILINA How long do you wait? I would follow up with a phone call after a week or so. And if you’re not getting satisfaction, then . . .
KEATING In a matter of weeks?
AQUILINA It depends on the situation, of course. If you think it’s endangering a lot of souls immediately, you let that be known in a phone call. You don’t have to do it an angry way, but just say that this is an urgent situation. I once knew a priest who was doing things liturgically that I knew were wrong. These weren’t with inessential parts of the Mass. I went to him and told him, and we talked for a long time. He eventually became a good friend of mine and didn’t do that stuff again.
KEATING Was it a matter of ignorance or willfulness?
AQUILINA I think it was bad training.
KEATING So ignorance, really. Was he receptive to your stringing him out on that?
AQUILINA Yes, because I wasn’t in his face.
KEATING How did you open the discussion?
AQUILINA I said, “Father, I have a question. Can we talk?” A priest knows that he’s there to answer questions, and he’ll talk. Just explain why you’re troubled. I think that too often we can go in and say, “Do you know that you’re violating such-and-so rubric?” Maybe this guy never cracked open the book of rubrics. We have to take that into consideration and help him to get where he needs to be.
KEATING Liturgical problems are ones that probably most often come up in the consciousness of the layman; that’s where he sees the Church. Normally he’s got to go to his pastor or one of the other priests to address it. And naturally the priest, even if he’s approached well, will take a defensive posture, because no one likes to receive criticism. To what extent, from your own participation in this kind of situation, did you mug up a list of citations and bring some paperwork with you, or did you just sit down with empty hands and start talking? Did you just play dumb and say, “Duh, I think we might have a problem here”?
AQUILINA [laughing] I said, it’s my understanding that while with some areas of the liturgy, the priest is allowed to change words, with the words of institution he may not. I said, can we look at the sacramentary together, and you can show me if I’m wrong. So we did did that, and I never heard him change the words of institution again.
KEATING So you achieved the desired end while preserving his dignity . . .
AQUILINA Yes.
KEATING We used to have Catholic Answers speakers out regularly-once a year, twice a year-to a parish in the high desert of California. One day the pastor was shouted down by his parishioners because in his homily he explained that the Church teaches that the Eucharist is symbolic. He actually thought that was what the teaching was. He didn’t know the true meaning of the doctrine of the Real Presence. It was a matter of bad training. It was a shocker to us because he was someone who more or less liked what we were doing . . .
AQUILINA But he just didn’t know the faith well. I’ll give you another example. There is a young monk I know who’s wonderful and brilliant and probably one of the most orthodox people I know-really a prayerful man, too. He got called to fill in at a parish, and after he arrived there he began to feel sick. He thought, I’ve got to go through with it-it’s a Sunday, and these people have got to have Mass.
So he went ahead, and, as the Mass went on, he got sicker and sicker. He began to feel woozy, and at Communion time he went to the Eucharistic minister and said, “I think I’m going to pass out. You guys just take it.” He sat down and prayed to make it to the final blessing, which he did.
A week later he got called by the chancery. Some people had initiated a letter-writing campaign because he’d turned over his duties of distributing the Eucharist. He never heard from these people directly. On the day of the Mass he didn’t know that anybody was angry. But they went to the top immediately, with a campaign of letters. He got copies of all these letters and wondered, “What did I do?” This is a man who is orthodox and good and has been doing much in the United States to promote the Pope’s teachings.
KEATING Wasn’t there a certain degree of fault on his side in that he should have been aware that there are priests who regularly don’t distribute Communion and let extraordinary ministers do it as a matter of course, which is improper? Maybe he should have said to the congregation, “I’m not feeling well, therefore I’m having the extraordinary ministers distribute Communion.”
AQUILINA Let’s make an excuse for him-he’s a monk. In his enclosure, he’s not exposed to a lot of the things that we’re exposed to day to day. For him this seemed the reasonable thing to do.
KEATING So the episode had a lesson for both sides, both priest and congregants.
AQUILINA Right. To deal successfully with someone, we have to know something about him, about his style.
KEATING Take bishops for example. Each has his own administrative style. Some are hands-on, as though they had experience in secular corporations -delegating authority and overseeing the larger issues and leaving the minutiae to underlings. Some bishops are hands-on, but in the wrong way. They deal with the minutiae themselves and tend to let the big things lie fallow. They’re criticized for that, probably justly. Other bishops are hands-off everything, it seems. They may attend their meetings and conferences, but they don’t seem to be around except for confirmations. How do we take such things into account when trying to approach a bishop about a problem in the diocese?
AQUILINA I think it’s like a family. There’s all kinds of good families, and there’s all kinds of good fathers. Bishops are fathers. We have to understand them as our spiritual fathers, and we have to treat them like fathers. You’re right about the differences in methods, and that’s one way we can make excuses for them. Maybe I just don’t understand the method that my bishop is using or his plan. Some Bishops try to fight battles, fight on all fronts at once. Others are methodical and they take one job at a time. Each style is okay-there are all different kinds of good families.
KEATING What about the bishop who is a sub-rosa operator? In a lot of dioceses people are told, “The problems being addressed behind the scenes.” This sort of bishop works slowly, and you’re told it may take awhile, but after a few years there still is no visible change. What should be the attitude of the person who is concerned with the ongoing problem?
AQUILINA You should keep in touch, let them know that you’re still waiting, you’re still praying for this, and that you still want to know if it’s being addressed. Say that, if any progress can be reported, you’d like to know- that kind of thing.
KEATING There’s a sense among many laymen that we’re told a problem is being addressed quietly, behind the scenes, when in fact nothing’s being done. It’s a bureaucratic smoke screen, design to put us off so we don’t bother the higher ups.
AQUILINA Sometimes, unfortunately, that’s true, but significant things happen behind the scenes, such as when Governor Hugh Carey of New York was excommunicated. Nobody knew about it. The Church didn’t tell anybody, and Governor Carey didn’t tell anybody. Things like that happen often, and sometimes the story doesn’t get told until years later.
There has to be a certain element of trust. The thing that’s most distressing is when you see people who don’t treat a bishop like a father. Yes, sometimes you have to confront your father with his alcoholism or whatever. Sometimes you have to do that, but you always do that in a loving way, and you never march in front of your dad’s house with a sandwich board. That’s unthinkable in a family context. You’d say that’s a dysfunction. You’d never insult your father.
KEATING Family matters are usually kept private. Should problems in the Church be kept private too?
AQUILINA This morning I rode in on the bus. There’s a guy who is a Fundamentalist, a former Catholic, and we sit together regularly and we converse. He doesn’t read Chick publications; he reads the local daily. That’s where he gets all his information against the Church. It’s all given by Catholics, liberal and conservative, who are feeding this stuff, gleefully, to the press, and people like my bus companion are eating it up-not good for the Church. We have to find a way around this situation. We have to make sure we don’t weaken the bond of a father with his children while still addressing the problems in the family.