A People of Hope: Archbishop Timothy Dolan in Conversation with John L. Allen Jr. - Hardcover

Allen Jr., John L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307718492 ISBN 13: 9780307718495

Publisher: Image, 2011

Synopsis

One of the world's most respected religion journalists profiles New York's Archbishop Timothy Dolan, one of the country's—and possibly the world’s—most important Catholic leaders through lengthy exclusive interviews.
 
Unique among the current leadership of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Dolan shares his insightful perspective in this series of conversations on the present and future of Catholicism.  In these pages Dolan shares a perspective which is typically not part of the information an average person would know through today’s media.  This omission often leaves outsiders with a terribly flawed grasp of what’s actually happening in the Church.  Legitimate stories on, for example, abuse and Church authority can’t be dissolved by reactive conspiracy theories about how the media is out to get the Catholic Church. That said, if these scandals are all there is to the Catholic Church, why would anyone bother being Catholic?

It may not be surprising that there are an estimated 22 million ex-Catholics out there, yet it is revealing that even more people have chosen to remain with the Church.  Tens of millions of Americans, and hundreds of millions more around the world, still turn to the Church for inspiration, for its sacramental life, for its experience of community and service. In every diocese in America you can find parishes that are flourishing.

The faith represented there is not an exaggerated religious frenzy that feeds an uncritical view of the Church. Catholics are nothing if not sober realists about the humanity of their institutions and leaders.  They see the Church not as a debating society or a multinational enterprise, but a family—with all the flaws and dysfunction, but also all the joy and life, of families everywhere.  This is why Archbishop Dolan is such an important part of the Church’s emerging landscape.

In A People of Hope Dolan is seen at his best, capturing an upbeat, hopeful, affirming Catholicism that’s the untold story about the Church today.  As readers spend time with Dolan here, they may find that his love for people and zest for friendship is what’s truly fundamental about the man, not a PR device calculated to conceal some other agenda. Dolan can and does draw lines in the sand when he believes that core matters of Catholic identity are at stake. He’s well aware that we live in a deeply secular world in the West, in which powerful pressures, both subtle and overt, seek to blur the counter-cultural message of Catholicism on many fronts. One key to Dolan’s character, however, is that changing hearts, not knocking heads, is always his first instinct.

John Allen draws out a picture of future trends by exploring where Dolan wants to lead, and how will a Church that increasingly bears his imprint look and feel?  To understand this, what’s really necessary is to get inside his head and then let him speak for himself. To that end Allen frames questions in a way that allows Dolan to expand on the topic himself as much as possible. The result is a book more “with” Dolan than a book “about” him, which is indeed the best way to understand the man.  At the end, one can agree or disagree with Dolan’s outlook, but one may at least be better equipped to understand why thoughtful modern women and men might still believe there’s something worth considering in the Catholic message.

Whatever the future may have in store for Dolan—staying in New York until he dies, being called to Rome to work in a senior Vatican post, or something else entirely—he will be a force in the Catholic Church both nationally and internationally for some time to come, and it’s well worth trying to discern what that might mean.

About this title

About the Author:

John L. Allen Jr. is associate editor of The Boston Globe after 16 years as the prize-winning Senior Correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter.  He also serves as the Senior Vatican Analyst for CNN. He’s the author of seven best-selling books on the Vatican and Catholic affairs, and writes frequently on the Church for major national and international publications. He’s also a popular speaker on Catholic affairs, both in the United States and abroad. His weekly internet column, “All Things Catholic,” is widely read as a source of insight on the global Church. John divides his time between Rome and his home in Denver, Colorado. He grew up in Western Kansas, and holds a Master’s degree in Religious Studies from the University of Kansas.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Introduction

Historic runs of success always become the stuff of legend. In baseball, Joe DiMaggio’s fi fty- six- game hitting streak in 1941 still sets the stan­dard for consistent excellence. Basketball fans will always celebrate the eighty- eight- game winning streak the UCLA Bruins put together from 1971 to 1974, as well as the companion ninety- game unblemished mark posted by the Lady Huskies of the University of Connecticut from 2008 to 2010. In the world of entertainment, people still marvel at the thirty- seven- week run of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album atop the Billboard charts in 1983 to 1984, or the fifteen consecutive weeks as box offi ce champ logged by the blockbuster movie Titanic in 1997.
While there’s no exact parallel in the Catholic Church to a winning streak or a long run at the box office, perhaps the closest anyone’s come in recent memory was the eye- popping run of promotions, honors, papal votes of confidence, and signs of growing celebrity racked up by Archbishop Timothy Michael Dolan of New York from February 2009 to June 2011. Consider the record put together over that span by Dolan, sixty- one years old as of this writing, which, by ecclesiastical standards, is still quite young:

· On February 23, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI named Dolan the tenth archbishop of New York, after serving just under seven years as the archbishop of Milwaukee. In Catholic terms, New York is on a short list of pace- setting dioceses around the world, such as Milan in Italy, Paris in France, and Westminster in the United Kingdom, whose in­cumbent is seen as a global point of reference. New York is tradi­tionally considered the most important bully pulpit in the American Catholic Church, and since New York is also the media capital of the world, its archbishop is inevitably a premier “front man” for Catholicism.
 
· On May 31, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI tapped Dolan as an “Apostolic Visitor” to Ireland, helping lead the Vatican’s  response to that coun­try’s massive sexual- abuse crisis. Benedict is deeply worried about Ireland, once a cornerstone of Catholic culture in Europe, and his concern was refl ected in his choice of visitors. They included Cardi­nal Cormac Murphy- O’Connor, the former archbishop of Westmin­ster, England; Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston;Archbishop Thomas Collins of Toronto, Canada; and Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa, Canada. All are considered among the most infl uential prel­ates in the English- speaking world, and Dolan is now on that list.

· On November 16, 2010, Dolan was elected president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, making him the de facto leader and spokesperson for more than 250 Catholic bishops who run dio­ceses and other jurisdictions across the country. (He’ll hold the posi­tion until November 2013.) Dolan prevailed in the balloting despite a strong custom in the conference that the sitting vice president, at the time Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Arizona, automatically ascends to the top job. In effect, the upset result means Dolan’s fellow bishops weren’t just following a script — they wanted him, specifi ­cally, to be their voice.

· On January 5, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI named Dolan a member of a new Vatican council designed to promote “New Evangelization,” which is the apple of the pope’s eye. (To be honest, no one yet has a clear idea of what this office might do; what’s relevant is that Benedict XVI takes it seriously.) Dolan joined heavy- hitters such as Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan; Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi of the Pontifical Council for Culture; Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, Aus­tralia; Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria; Cardinal Marc Ouellet of the Congregation for Bishops; and Cardinal William Levada of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That’s a Vatican “A Team” if ever there was one, and the fact that Dolan is part of it, even in advance of getting a cardinal’s red hat, speaks volumes about where he stands. (Dolan himself says his first reaction upon scanning the list of names was “My Lord, how did I make this cut?”)

· On March 20, 2011, the famed CBS News program 60 Minutes de­voted an entire segment to Dolan, proclaiming him the Catholic Church’s answer to its woes of the past decade, including the sexual- abuse crisis and a steady attrition of the faithful. The introductory voice- over for the segment dubbed Dolan the “American pope.” In comments after the piece aired, host Morley Safer, who clearly did not share Dolan’s views on a range of controversial questions such as abortion and gay marriage, nonetheless said of the archbishop: “He is a genuinely jovial, life- embracing, people- loving man. There’s no question of that.”

· Two months later, on June 2, 2011, Dolan traveled to Rome for the first meeting of the Pontifical Council for the New Evange­lization. He was accompanied by Matt Lauer, Al Roker, and the crew of NBC’s Today show, the highest- rated morning news program in America, with an average daily audience in excess of six million people. Dolan arranged an on- camera introduction to Pope Bene­dict XVI as well as behind- the- scenes Vatican access for the Today crew, and then effectively cohosted a live broadcast from Rome. During the segment, Lauer described Dolan as the “highest- profile person now of the Catholic Church in the United States,” someone with “enormous charisma, a great personality.”

Collectively, this was a remarkable rise to prominence in a short arc of time, especially in an institution typically inclined to think in cen­turies. By the time the dust had settled, there could be no doubt about Dolan’s status. Prior to February 2009, one could have made a compel­ling argument that Timothy Dolan was a key to the American Catholic future. By the spring of 2011, it had become crystal clear that Dolan is very much the Church’s present —Rome’s go- to guy in America, the prelate other American bishops look to for leadership, and the new media darling of the Church in the United States. Nor is Dolan quite finished yet. Sometime in 2012 or 2013, right around the time his term as president of the U.S. bishops’ conference is ending, Dolan will likely be inducted into the College of Cardinals, making him “Cardinal Dolan” and thus eligible to vote for the next pope.

One can celebrate Dolan’s ascent or lament it — and, to be sure, there are examples of both views, inside and outside the Catho­lic Church —but at a purely descriptive level, the bottom line seems clear. Anyone who wants a sense of where the Catholic Church in the United States is headed, at least over the next couple of decades or so, must get to know the man who is now its preeminent face and voice. Further, Dolan’s extroverted personality and media savvy suggest that he won’t just be a behind- the- scenes power broker, but also an impor­tant voice of conscience in public debates for some time to come. A bit like Pat Robertson on the right or Jim Wallis on the left, Dolan is fast becoming one of those religious leaders in American life with impact well beyond the boundaries of his own confessional group.

Easier Said Than Done

Getting a satisfying read on Dolan, however, is easier said than done. In part, that’s because he’s a larger- than- life character who, upon first contact, tend to overwhelm one’s senses. He’s over six feet tall and a wide load of a man, reflecting his love for food, drink, and a good cigar, and his relative lack of enthusiasm for formal exercise. He’s got a booming voice, a raucous laugh, and a kilowatt- laced smile that could probably power several blocks of downtown Manhattan. He’s quick with a joke, the kind of hale- fellow- well- met who never saw a back he didn’t want to slap or a baby he didn’t want to kiss. Had Timo­thy Dolan not become a Catholic bishop, he could easily have been a U.S. senator or a corporate CEO, such is his charm and relentless energy.

At a time when the public image of Catholic bishops in the United States is arguably at an all- time low as a result of a persistent sexual- abuse crisis, bruising political fights over health care reform and gay marriage, and a variety of other issues, not to mention the general difficulty of asserting religious authority in a culture profoundly skeptical of such claims, Dolan stands out as a towering exception to the dour stereotype —  a truly nice guy who also happens to wear a miter. In general, people tend to be so dazzled the first few times they encounter Dolan that it takes a while for their critical faculties to come back on- line, so they can begin to ask: “But what is this guy really all about?”
Dolan is so relentlessly upbeat, in fact, that one risk is to reduce him to nothing but a series of one- liners and photo ops. That was the thrust of a 2009 profi le in New York magazine that labeled Dolan the “Arch­bishop of Charm” —  suggesting, perhaps, that beneath Dolan’s one- liners, there’s not much “there” there. It doesn’t help that Dolan loves to take shots at himself, deliberately playing off such impressions. I once watched him drop in on a meeting of lay movements where he didn’t make many statements but asked a lot of probing questions. When I commented on it later, he said: “I figure I can get away with acting dumb for about the first year . . . until they realize that I ain’t acting!”

In truth, Dolan is far more than simply a charmer. There are at least three deep currents to his personality, which sometimes sit in un­easy tension with one another. First, Dolan tends to be an ideological conservative on matters both secular and sacred, giving him a strong sense of identity and a clear vision for where the Church ought to go. (In his 60 Minutes interview, Dolan said that if “conservative” means “somebody enthusiastically committed to and grateful for the timeless heritage of the Church . . . I’m a conservative, no doubt.”) Second, he’s a country pastor, whose implied model for Catholic life is his father’s backyard BBQ pit in Ballwin, Missouri, where all are welcome and everyone gets along. Third, Dolan is a keen Church historian, having studied under the legendary Monsignor John Tracy Ellis at the Catho­lic University of America. That training affords him a striking ability to ask probing questions, to stand back, and to size up debates objectively, being fair to all views.  

Part of the drama of Tim Dolan —part of what makes him such a fascinating, and at times unpredictable, force in Catholic life —is trying to guess which combination of those instincts will prevail in any given situation.

Dolan Vignettes

Because of Dolan’s outsized personality and complex character, no one anecdote can do him justice. The following are three vignettes that, taken together, capture something of the Timothy Dolan experi­ence. Among other things, they illustrate how Dolan is able to win friends and influence people, both at the top of the Church and at the grassroots, and even among non- Catholics with a chip on their shoul­ders about the Church. Taken together, these stories also help explain Dolan’s rapid rise into the ecclesiastical stratosphere.

“Even I’d join the Church!”

In late December 2009, I spent an exhausting week following Dolan around in New York. The schedule included a stop at the renowned Temple Emanu- El in order to light the first candle of Hanukkah. (Among other notables, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg is a member of the congregation.) One could make the argument that New York’s Fifth Avenue is among the most evocative pieces of Jewish- Catholic real estate on the planet, home both to Temple Emanu- El and to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. On this occasion, the congregation pulled out all the stops to cele­brate Dolan’s visit, including something you definitely don’t see every day: At the end of the service, the choir performed a toe- tapping, doo- wop version of the classic holiday number “I Have a Little Dreidel,” which could easily be the anchor track on a Hanukkah Goes Motown album. After the service, Dolan was mobbed by people wanting to thank him for coming, to get their pictures taken with him, and to shove pieces of Hanukkah cake into his hands.

I was hovering off to the side, trying to watch the scene unfold. At one stage, a member of the temple’s governing board pulled me aside for a chat. He asked what I did for a living, and I said I’m a journalist who covers the Catholic Church. That prompted this proud septua­genarian Jew to launch into a semi- tirade about Pope Pius XII, the mess over Pope Benedict’s decision to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust- denying bishop, and what he sees as broad rollback on rela­tions with Judaism from the Church. Having worked himself into a lather, he then asked what I was doing in New York, and I explained that I was working on a book about Dolan.

The guy’s body language changed in a flash. Conspiratorially, he drew close, smiled, and offered this sotto voce comment:“He’s such a magnifi cent human being . . . If every bishop were like Dolan, even I’d consider joining the Church!”
 
“Ah, my friend Dolan!”

One gorgeous Italian Saturday in early May 2011, I found myself in Spoleto, a small town in the Umbria region about an hour and a half north of Rome. I had been asked to say a few words at the opening of a photo exhibit dedicated to Pope John Paul II, timed to coincide with the late pope’s beatification on May 1, 2011. The featured speaker was Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Eastern Churches, and formerly the “substitute” in the Vatican’s Secre­tariat of State under John Paul II, meaning the official responsible for day- to- day administration of the Church. It was Sandri, sixty- seven, an Argentine by birth who hails from an Italian family, who announced John Paul’s death to the world from St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2005, memorably saying:“We all feel like orphans tonight.”

Just days before the Spoleto event, I had written a piece proclaiming Sandri a leading candidate to be the next pope. Such perceptions are sort of the third rail of Vatican politics —no one, ever, wants to be seen as campaigning for the job. As fate would have it, I ended up seated next to Sandri at lunch, which could have made things a bit awkward. In the course of conversation, however, I mentioned that I was working on a book with Dolan, and the previously restrained Sandri lit up:“Ah, my friend Dolan!” It turns out that Sandri served in the papal embassy in Washington, D.C., during the same period that Dolan worked there in the late eighties and early nineties, and like so many others, Sandri was won over by the up- and- coming young American cleric.

From that moment on, the ice at our table was melted —an in­stance, perhaps, of Dolan working his charm even at a distance. Among other things, the loosened- up Sandri told a hilarious story of visiting Los Angeles in summer 2009 for a meeting with the Maronite church, which has its origins in Lebanon. When Sandri presented his Vati­can passport at LAX, an official of the U.S. Customs and Border Pro­tection service apparently asked him:“Oh, are you part of the Vatican delegation for the Mic...

About this edition

• Publisher: Image
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0307718492
• ISBN 13: 9780307718495
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256