Thoughts on the Job of Being a Coadjutor to an Archbishop

The rumors have been flying for over two weeks in the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis as to the possibility of the appointment of a Coadjutor assistant for our Archbishop Harry Flynn who will be required to submit his retirement letter in a couple of years. As with most rumors, nobody has seen any documents. But in this computer age, electrons are spinning and flying from monitor to monitor at the speed of light. Parchment is what is really wanted, but electrons will do for the time being.

Our Archdiocese is the home of some wonderful things that have been happening and we have every right to be proud of them. And Archbishop Flynn deserves much of the credit. Specifically I am thinking of the rehabilitation of the St Paul Seminary and the increasing number of seminary enrollments and ordinations, the 30 plus Eucharistic Adoration chapels going 24 hours a day, and many more in smaller parishes providing such opportunities to their parishioners at limited times, parents committed to Catholic education for their children and the recent announcement of the construction of a new Jesuit high school in a poor area of South Minneapoolis.

Not all is shiny here. Like much of the United States, many Catholics, priests, religious and lay, read the headlines of the secular newspapers for information as to what was to be expected from the Second Vatican Council which was held in the 1960s. This was also the time of the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., also the beginnings of the resistance movement to the Vietnam War, and the beginning of the age of sex, drugs and rock and roll. And Catholics had their own movement and they started to make it up before the reports from Rome were even published.

Well, forty years later, Rome and many of the Bishops of the U.S. are attempting to put the brakes on some of these extemporaneous movements that were not based on any written documents of Vatican II.

Our St Joan of Arc parish has become the poster child for parishes who have adopted a ministry devoted to Peace and Justice, Diversity, the Environment and full lay participation in church management. It's infamous "gym Masses" with homilies given by secular speakers with national reputations have given St Joan's a reputation world-wide in scope. Many parishes no doubt have similar ministries, but the "Joanies" get the publicity.

Archbishop Flynn, to give him credit, has attempted to restrain the doings at St Joan's, and elsewhere, with only paritial success.

What one wonders, should be the role of an Archbishop when confronted with the disobedient? The Archbishop gives us one answer that he gave in his homily at the consecration of Father Samuel J. Aquila of Denver as Bishop of Fargo in August of 2001:

"Archbishop Harry J. Flynn of St. Paul-Minneapolis was the principal consecrator. He sat on the altar as he delivered his homily, offering words of advice to Bishop Aquila in a booming voice.

"The title of bishop is not one of honor but of function," Archbishop Flynn told the new bishop. "A bishop is to serve and not to rule.

"The greatest should behave as the least and the leader as the one who serves," he said later, adding that Bishop Sullivan provides an excellent example to follow."

But maybe times have changed since then. Archbishop Flynn was 68 on that day when he was Consecrator of 50 year old Bishop Aquila.

I don't think that Bishop Aquila has been noted for being a passive shepherd in Fargo. On the contrary, he has not been afraid to take a stand by warning Catholic politicians that they "risk the possibility of Hell."

The good Bishop even confronted his flock in his 2004 Pastoral Letter entitled "You Will Know the Truth and the Truth Will Make You Free" when he noted that many Catholics “are more influenced by the secular culture in which we live than by the teachings of Jesus Christ,” and stated that many Catholics have “an inadequate understanding of the Catholic faith.”

He added that "The first area of concern is that many people who call themselves Catholic “even reject the principle that we must accept what the Church believes and teaches, and think they can pick and choose what to believe,” writes the bishop. "We must never forget that certain Church teachings," - those revealed in Scripture and Apostolic Tradition and upheld by the Magisterium - "can never change," he said, "regardless of whether no not people accept them or are faithful to them."

I think that there are a lot of peole in the St Paul - Minneapolis Archdiocese who would be quite ready to accept an Archbishop who lays it out right on the line for us. We're tired of people "making it up" and being allowed to do so.


Thanks and a Tip O' the Hat to our Pal, Mitchell, from Our Word who Tipped us off to the Article on Bishop Aquila's Consecretation.
Pastoral Letter found here