Have there been bishops who have strongly influenced your life — in either positive or negative ways? In the second of his series on the The Documents of Vatican II Tom McMahon takes a look at four bishops who had a profound influence on his outlook in the light of what collectively all the bishops of the world discerned at the Second Vatican Council.

Four Bishops who had a profound influence on my life…

I introduce you today to four Roman Catholic bishops who have had a profound influence on my life. As I write about them I have in mind two of the documents of Vatican Two, which I have just re-studied. I will comment on their content in Part III next week. Here I reflect on how the DECREE ON THE BISHOPS' PASTORAL OFFICE IN THE CHURCH [Link: Christus Dominus 28Oct1965] and the DECLARATION ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM [Link: Dignitatis Humanae 7Dec1965] have played out in my personal life. Both documents are heavily underlined in my worn book. I regret that in 45 years I have been able only once (in 1966) to study these documents in group. Unlocking their treasure alone has had difficulties, especially when banished from institutional ministry because I married. We had little time in the 1960's for community study.

I have just returned from Sacramento, California, having witnessed an outstanding involvement of the Roman Catholic Church in the Modern World. What I witnessed makes me realize the directives of Vatican Two are powerfully alive; the 700 plus in attendance heard ample evidence of the vitality of the People of God at work today, carrying out the mission of Jesus our Christ. (CHURCH IN THE MODERN WORLD, 5th document of the Council [Link: Gaudium et Spes 7Dec1965])

Bishop Frank Quinn

On June 1, 2010 I introduced you in Catholica to retired Bishop Francis A. Quinn [See: An International Whirlpool of Religious Chaos Part VII www.catholica.com.au/gc1/tm3/130_tm_020610.php].

Photo Essay of Bishop Francis Quinn

The article about Bishop Francis Quinn to which Tom McMahon refers is available for purchase in the archives at the Sacramento Bee. You can though still view for free a moving photo essay of the aged bishop on the newspaper's website. The five frames above are just a sample of the photographs in the collection all of which are available for purchase. Click on the image above to see the complete photo essay at full size on the www.sacbee.com website.

I want to use this bishop today as an example of the church in the modern world. On Wednesday, cutting short my Senior class on our search for a non toxic God I entrained to our State capital where our legislators have for the 19th time in 25 years failed to pass a balanced budget, leaving California in financial chaos. At the Crest Theater I was enthralled by a BEACON OF HOPE program during which nine ecumenal and business speakers offered living voice presentations of Nelson Mandela, Bobbie Kennedy, Caesar Chavez, Mother Theresa, John the 23rd, Kahill Gibran, St. Paul, Aung San Suu Kyi, Isaiah the Prophet — all addressing justice and our duty toward the less fortunate. I saw clearly there was no church or civic foot-dragging. Frank Quinn after receiving a LEGACY OF LEADERSHIP award from the hands of a youthful man of color — Sacramento mayor concluded with words that showed this to be no empty pie-in-the-sky ceremony. They meant and achieved business.

As old newspaper photos were flashed on the theater screen 88-year-old Bishop Quinn spoke firmly and gently about his personal conscience struggle when 30 years ago he first saw the police arresting men, women, and children as they protested their homeless condition. The next morning the Sacramento Bee carried a photo of this robed bishop blessing elderly Catholics at the Cathedral. (I know that a protesting Frank slept on the cathedral stairs among the homeless as he had done in San Francisco when pastor of St. Gabriel's in the 1970's.) Calmly the bishop said "I became aware that I was wearing the same roman robes of those who killed Jesus and I saw Jesus again crucified in the arresting of the homeless by Sacramento police. We have got to do something." [Look up Cottage Housing at www.cottagehousing.org and see where 1200 once homeless children have been reunited with their once troubled parents who now own their own homes.] A section of this rehabilition project is deservedly named QUINN COTTAGES. The rebuilding of broken lives, originated in the American culture of affluence, poverty, greed, and violence was clear in the honest reports of a number of those who have benefited by this spiritual, religious and civic project. In Cottage Housing we had church and State working together. The healing Spirit of the God of Genesis permeated the entire evening. The human myth in Genesis opens with "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep and God's Sprit hovered over the waters." I was witness to a Sacramento version of the Mystery Spirit at work.

The Sacramento Gay Men's Choir offered three songs with family and peace as themes. These 35 men stood unified in love of one another and society, each so different in age, body structure, skin color, and facial appearance. All bore genuine smiles; human beings offering joy to the world. I weep as I recall the conservatives in the church of my youth calling homosexuality an aberration. The final song "STAND BY ME" was offered by sixty cottage residents. I was moved as I question a resident who had with her a three-year-old darling, once a divorced mother and cast off, drug addict in society, her four grown children now in college. How America and the world benefits from such God-centered humans working together. I see Bishop Quinn's influence on laity as they rightfully assume their priestly servant role as disciples of Jesus.

The Editor's 1967 Reprint Edition looks as weathered as the copy Tom McMahon describes in this commentary. Love the price on it: $1.65! Click image to enlarge.

The Middle Ages are an ugly period of human history; the Council of Trent was a major transition contributor to the Renaissance. We need keep in mind that everything in life is process, there being no such event as an isolated experience. The so called Protestant Reformation is on going process, a mixed sign of the slowness of how humans work or don't work with one another in disputes. (Please note the deliberate use of the verb "is".) A post-Vatican Two period is one in which we have the privilege of listening to the other, ours being the privilege of dialogue without punishment. Within the Christian family Jesus would have no enemies; the gospels tell us of Jesus working out disputes among his followers. I encourage Roman Catholic bishops worldwide to read Vatican Two's last document: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM [Link: Dignitatis Humanae 7Dec1965].

Trent contributed to the on-going rescue process of humanity by challenging the Roman bishops of the day, offering ambitious reforms in the midst of ignorance, superstition, and chaos. These reforms basically centered on hierarchy and clergy. One of the first mandates was the prohibition of bishops to lead and have armies, each bishop only to have spiritual power in his own diocese. Trent gambled in the re-creation of a once debased priesthood, putting all their eggs in the one basket of one man representing Jesus (sacerdos alter Christus = priest another Christ). Trent brought back Jesus by establishing a seminary system wherein clerics were/are educated as the seven sacraments. Progress in educating people was virtually nil, terribly limited by poor communication, people's illiteracy, and European centralization with a politicized Rome and a monarchical pope as the only spokesperson. World War Two shattered European control and the flood gates of education burst upon the face of the earth (again new creation, Spirit over void).

Bishop Francis A. Quinn, once a seminarian with the likes of this writer, once a simple parish priest in San Francisco, before he assumed the episcopal office read well Vatican Two's document simply entitled BISHOPS. Back in 1967 S.F. Catholic Monitor editor, Frank Quinn, with a Cal Berkeley degree in Journalism published two of Tom McMahon's primitive articles on Vatican Two and Church Reform. I follow here with three bishops who have permeated my life. All have interesting biographies on Wikipedia.

Archbishop Thomas Arthur Connolly

I was introduced to the world of Thomas Arthur Connolly when in 1937 I carried his golden gloves in a midnight Christmas pageant and pontifical mass. TAC would be at my grade school baseball games and I was one of his special mass servers; with my mother as his secretary this handsome Irish son of a San Francisco stevedore (he bragged about working the docks while in seminary) argued my mother into allowing me to go to seminary at age 13 and he was forever into my 40's a parent figure who chastised me brutally when I was expelled from Cabrini parish for preaching in 1967 a homily on the dignity of the female body. "Brick and mortar " Connolly died a reclusive tyrant, famous for his hostile words about his successor Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen … "the god damn kraut ruined my diocese". American San Francisco native son Thomas Arthur Connolly was a bishop right out of the medieval period. I had difficulty resisting the bullying power of this handsome, perfect, clerically correct gentleman. After Vatican Two at age 36 I began to quietly wonder.

Archbishop John Joseph Milly

Archbishop John Mitty was born in New York, a silent and rough cleric who had once been chaplain to West Point Military Academy as well as fighting American units in WWI. I am a "Mitty man", that is one ordained by this reclusive bishop who when he came to my seminary in the 1950's ordered the pool emptied of students so that he could swim alone. The priests feared Mitty who never had a nickname. He came to San Francisco in 1932, the diocese in heavy debt, his predecessor exiled to Rome for fathering a child, and its Foreign Born Irish Clergy (FBI) at war with The Native Son Clergy (my uncle Tom Bresnahan ordained in 1922, a victim of 1920's/30's clerical hostilities and while dying on his feet from untreated Parkinson's was accused by Mitty of being drunk while saying mass.) The sprawling archdiocese was in chaos; only one man had a say and I can remember well his public chastisement of the older priests for not paying their parish debts. At an official mandatory clerical gathering (to which we all had to wear hats in 1959) I heard the Archbishop loudly clarified his position saying "there is only one priest in the archdiocese of San Francisco, JOHN JOSEPH MITTY, ARCHBISHOP OF SAN FRANCISCO, the rest of you are flunkies".

Archbishop Angelo Roncalli (Pope John XXIII)

As a young First Lieutenant in the US Army I met Angelo Roncalli face to face on Ash Wednesday of 1961. This bishop of Rome, John the 23rd changed me completely as he spoke of his own personal spiritual life. I heard Jesus sharing peacefully in the modern world. John had Jesus' answers to world problems. (Read Pacem in Terris [Link: Pacem in Terris 11Apr1963]) Francis A Quinn, once a humble parish priest and loved by people is a "Mitty man", ordained like myself to say Mass and administer Sacraments. Frank has had his share of experiencing low morale of the priests where alcoholism has been rampant and loneliness a killer. I need to ask Frank about his first assignment after ordination, as the spiritual quality of the first pastor makes or breaks a newly ordained. I am unable to find Frank Quinn's book, described in Wikipedia as a journey through the seminary maze of unspoken sexuality; I so admired Frank for writing of his personal world, literally a modern day clerical version of Alice in Wonderland.

When assuming the office of Bishop of Sacramento Francis Quinn knew well the model of pre-Vatican Two medieval bishops and obviously choose the path of John the 23rd. There are a dozen other bishops, men hand picked by Apostolic Delegate Jean Jadot in the glory days of church reform, who deserve honor mention for their noble Jesus' work. Their legacy lives on in sincere well educated Roman Catholics who work well with other faith persuasions in putting the Church into action in the modern world. As I read Catholica, a full time job to keep up with the massive information offered, I see signs of healthy life in Australia with the likes of Bishop Geoffery Robinson. Jesus is alive down under. Jesus is a troublemaker, esp. when he mixes with the materially affluent … and might I add in humor that I see the Australian old Church going "PELL-MEL" the wrong way.

I have asked Editor Brian to rerun the link to Greg McAllister's "Priest Pedophiles — Manichaean Candidates?" [LINK]. Take a read of Greg's analysis of my seminary training (Mitty and Connolly's as well). The warp and the woof contains the process of preparing a male for the continuation of medieval power over people, using clerical isolation as a tool to remaining fixated on saving souls while ignoring earthly life. The problem remains today that the seminary system is basically the same as it was in 1600ce. Unfortunately clericalism has processed itself into an anti-Christ; ordination of a human being, male and female, is the setting apart of one individual, a direct contradiction to an historical Jesus who gathers his followers in community and sends them out with a message of hope.

Tom McMahon in San Jose. Ca. See ya next week with more on bishops and priests. 06/07/2010

[Index of Commentaries by Tom McMahon]