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Interview with Archbishop Nienstedt
(This article originally appear in the October 2007 edition of The Catholic Servant.)
By John Sondag
[The Most Reverend John Nienstedt is the new Coadjutor Archbishop of the
Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. “The Catholic Servant” recently
interviewed him at the Chancery in St. Paul.]
“The Catholic Servant”: The Second Vatican Council called all of us in the Church to holiness, and most probably you are going to be leading us in this Archdiocese within the next year. How do you as an Archbishop see your role as helping people to attain holiness?
Archbishop Nienstedt: Let me first begin by saying that I think it’s the Lord Jesus who calls us to holiness, and the Second Vatican Council reminded us and called us to a renewal of our basic, fundamental vocation, which is to grow in our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. So, I hope to do that in several different ways.
First of all, by encouraging our priests and pastoral leaders
in the work that they do, because holiness takes place in homes, in
parishes, in schools, in small groups. It takes place wherever two
or three are gathered together in Christ’s name. And so, in my
job as a bishop, as an overseer, as an episkopos, the overseer,
I think I have the primary duty of setting a context, and then within
that context, to encourage those who are on the front lines who are
called to bring out the holiness of God’s people and to encourage
them in that. So getting out into parishes and celebrating Masses is
one of my priorities—I’ve
been out the last three weekends to different parishes in different quadrants
of the Archdiocese. I find that to be very invigorating. Next Friday,
I’ll celebrate the first of fourteen Masses at our Catholic high
schools; again, getting out and just trying to encourage that sense of
holiness taking place in the context of the schools.
I mentioned in my homily at the Mass of Reception that during the last
six years I’ve met with a group of high school men from our Cathedral
High School in New Ulm, who gathered once a month to do Lectio Divina. I
encouraged them in that form of prayer, which is the form of prayer that
I use on a daily basis. I don’t think I can’t do that myself
here, but I’m hoping to do it at the University of St. Thomas.
I’ve already talked to the president, Fr. Dease, about having one
Sunday, the first Sunday of the month from October to May, where I will
invite young students on that campus, or students on other campuses,
to come over on Sunday night from 8:00-9:00 PM to pray with the Archbishop.
So I hope to set that example. I hope to be a presence in our parishes,
in our schools, on our university campuses, in our religious education
programs, among the new movements that have arisen in the Church since
the Second Vatican Council, many of which have a presence here in this
Archdiocese, as I’m beginning to find out. So, yes, I hope in various
diverse ways that I can assist in the work of people’s growth in
holiness.
“The Catholic Servant”: In a sense you’re the CEO of a large corporation and, even though I don’t like to use a business model for the Church, there is a whole element of leading. Do you see yourself also as a person who has to set direction for the Archdiocese?
Archbishop Nienstedt: Rather than using the image of a CEO, I’d prefer to use the image of the father of a family because I believe that the Church, as a community, is really a family of faith. And so the father figure has to be one of leadership. He has to set the example. He has to call the members of the family to discipline so as to remind them that they each have responsibilities if the family is going to function in a good way, in a positive way. So, I see that role of being a father figure as very much a part of what it means to be a bishop.
When I was rector of a seminary, I went in with the idea that I wasn’t going to be any young man’s father. Then I went on retreat the next summer and it was revealed to me very clearly that that’s what God was calling me to be. So it was a good experience for me to come to that realization. I think it’s not accidental that we call priests “father.” A bishop is first and foremost a priest. He’s that bridge between God and His people. So I think of being a father figure in the Archdiocese. Now, how do you do that when it’s so large and you have so many priests and so many parishes? That’s what I’m going to find out, what I need to find out.
“The Catholic Servant”: Pope John Paul II talks about solidarity within the priesthood. There’s certainly a solidarity that priests need to have with their bishop—seeing themselves as cooperators with the bishop in what they’re trying to accomplish. Do you envision any ways that you want to encourage that, so that priests have a sense that they’re working with you and that you as a group, as a bonded group of men, have a task to accomplish?
Archbishop Nienstedt: Today is the feast of St.
Monica and tomorrow is the feast of her son, St. Augustine. In Hippo,
where he returned after his conversion, St. Augustine really wanted to
live in community with the priests, and ended up doing so as the bishop
of the diocese. He had that very close relationship with his priests.
Now, obviously, it’s not
possible for us to all live in one big house, in one big seminary, and probably
the priests would not appreciate that.
For example, on Saturday night I was at the Church of St. Peter in Richfield
with the pastor, Fr. Tony VanderLoop. We offered Mass at 4:30 PM, and
I met the staff and the parish council afterwards for hors d’oeuvres
and a little bit of punch. We then went out to a local restaurant,
and he had invited eight other priests to come out for dinner. I found
that very stimulating. These were priests that I had met very briefly
at the convocation but never had a chance to sit down with and talk to.
So I said that I want to bring in priests for dinner at the Archbishop’s
house. I think that probably the best way to do that is by classes and
ages, so they feel comfortable with one another and can speak up. But
I certainly do hope to engender that kind of priestly fraternity and
solidarity. I think that’s most important.
When I was in the Diocese of New Ulm, and I hope people will excuse me for making references to that, but it’s what I’ve known for the last six years, I had only 43 active priests, and so I was able to get to know them pretty well. We would gather twice a year for pastoral leader days and one day a year for presbytery days, and I made myself very available to them if they wanted to get together for lunch or dinner. I would also take it upon myself. I would call them in terms of their assignments. If they had an assignment board meeting or personnel meeting, I felt it was my responsibility, as the bishop, to call them and personally ask them to go to a particular assignment. Because quite frankly, they hadn’t put their hands in the hands of the Vicar General or the head of the assignment board; they made their pledge to the bishop. Now whether I can do that here, as Archbishop of this large Archdiocese where I go from 43 priests to 460 priests, is in itsel f is quite a jump and quite a challenge. But I do believe there has to be that personal relationship between the priests and the Archbishop. You can’t just be the CEO and consider them little managers out in the parishes. There has to be this rapport between us.
“The Catholic Servant”: John Gagliardi, who is the long-time football coach at St. John’s University, always said, if I’m not mistaken, “Play to your strengths.” And you as a bishop in this country certainly have looked at the strengths of the Church in the United States. What are our strengths that we should be playing to, even here in this Archdiocese?
Archbishop Nienstedt: Yes, I have been a bishop for eleven years, and so I have had an opportunity to see the faith of Catholics up close: in city situations, in rural situations, and now back again in a large city situation. I’ve been able to view different parts of the country and make comparisons based on that and also with the limited exposure I’ve had in Guatemala and in Europe. I would say that one of our strengths is the fact that a good number of our people still go to church on Sunday. I believe that there is a deep yearning for holiness that I sense among our people, young and old.
I think that just historically—you know the old pendulum tends to swing from one side to another—we had a very content-oriented catechesis prior to the Second Vatican Council with the Baltimore Catechism. That’s what I was raised with. I always found it helpful to be able to fall back on those definitions that I memorized so long ago. But certainly there was the difficulty that that was all headwork and didn’t touch the heart so much. Now in my home we did do that and I’m very grateful for the home my parents gave us because we lived the faith there. Those answers in the Baltimore Catechism really not only touched my head, but also my heart because we lived the Faith in daily life. But apparently, that wasn’t the experience of everyone. So after the Council, there was this felt need that we had to go towards a more experiential experience of the living Lord. If you look at the writings of Pope Benedict XVI, he says that very often. He says that before the question, “Is there a God?” none of us can remain neutral. We either have to say “Yes” or “No.” But then, typically, according to his great thinking process, he says, “But if we say ‘Yes,’ it can’t be just to a set of dogmas, it can’t be just to a moral system of values. It has to be to an event, to the person of Jesus Christ.” And so I think the Council called us to personalize our faith. But the problem was it seemed we went from so heavy a content-centered catechesis to an experiential cateches is, and the pendulum never stopped in the middle. I think we’re coming back to that now; I really hope we are. That we realize that we have to: it’s not either-or, it’s both-and.That we have to have a deep personal relationship with Jesus. But Jesus came with a message and He came with a set of teachings. To follow Jesus, we have to go through the narrow gate as the Gospel told us on Sunday. I thought that Gospel laid it out pretty clearly. He’s not saying that you can just do whatever you want and consider yourself a follower of Him. He says to strive to enter through the narrow gate, as the patriarchs did: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I think that’s very challenging for us. And so I think one of our strengths is that we have the capability now for doing this type of catechesis. We have a great gift from the pontificate of John Paul II, of happy memory, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Compendium of the Catechism. We have a lot of good programs, good teachings.
The Ad hoc committee on the implementation of the Catechism has been extremely successful in bringing our catechetical texts up to a higher level, a higher bar if you will, of catechetical excellence. I think we’re in a good position to really delve into the catechetical movement. I also think, and I know this is something you’re involved in, that we need a new approach in the strengthening of a new kind of apologetics. When I had the opportunity to talk to the students at the Cathedral High School in New Ulm, many of them said to me that they would go out and work at Burger King, or Arby’s, or wherever, with their contemporaries from the Lutheran Church. And often they would be asked fundamental questions like, “Why do you worship Mary?” and “Why do you believe the Eucharist is really the Body and Blood of Christ?” These were good, fine young teenage Catholics, but they didn’t have an answer. I think that uote s what the Baltimore Catechism helped us to do—it gave us the answers in a very short pithy way. And I said to the guys, “Well, if you can really scratch the surface of your fellow Lutheran believers they probably wouldn’t be able to give you an extensive answer either.” But they’re much better about giving you the apologetics in their approach to their catechesis. I think that’s very helpful for us, to be able to have short answers that we can give to those who ask us questions about the Faith.
“The Catholic Servant”: You can’t win a game if you
don’t know your weaknesses. If there are any weaknesses in the Church
in this country, what would they be, and what defense could we put up in terms
of defending against these weaknesses?
Archbishop Nienstedt: Well, I like the weaknesses that
Matthew Kelly points out: (1) Individualism; (2) Hedonism; and (3) Minimalism.
Individualism leads us to such corporate situations as Enron where people
feel that their workers’ money is their money and they can do whatever they want with
it. It’s so much as saying, “Everything stops with me. It’s
me, me, me.” That’s very prominent in our society today.
Hedonism says, “If it feels good, you do it.” That is compounded by the fact that we don’t really understand the reality of sin. I don’t know how people can read the Bible and come away with anything but the fact that sin is indigenous to human nature. Weseen it time and time again that people wander away from the commandments of God and they get in trouble. We see the promiscuity; we see the addictions that are prevalent in our society; we see the self-gratification that is all over the place. If it feels good, you do it. You have to challenge that, it seems. That’s a real weakness in our society.
And that sense of minimalism which says, “What’s the least
I can do to get by? What’s the least I can do to get by in this
test, in this course, in life? What’s the least I can do
to get to heaven? What’s the least I can do to be considered a
Catholic?” So I think those are some of the weaknesses that are
indigenous to our American culture. But they can be overcome.
These are all temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. In
one way or another, they have been with us from the beginning of time,
and they will be with us until the end of time—until the second
coming of Jesus. We just have to be able to face that fact and realize
that when we give in to temptation, we sin. Sin is real. But if people
don’t recognize that, if they don’t realize that—sometimes
I think that people feel that God is just this Pillsbury doughboy in
the sky. You punch him and he laughs and giggles, and everything is going
to be forgiven in the end. We see in the face of God and Jesus that He
calls us to live a disciplined, holy life. And that means avoiding sin,
avoiding temptation, avoiding these weaknesses that are present in our
society.
“The Catholic Servant”: Since you brought up the whole question of sin, one of the roles of our Lord is that He went around casting out demons—one should not just say that demons are ideas. Do you see that in your role as Archbishop to be concerned about demons? Are demons a reality that we should be aware of and what is your role as Archbishop in exorcising them?
Archbishop Nienstedt: Well, first of all, we have to
define the reality of the situation. The demon isn’t just a red-skinned character
that you might see in the movies or in cartoons. The devil is a real, personal
force for doing evil. It may not have a human face, but it is a real force
affecting us as human beings; it is a supernatural force that really has an
impact on us. It’s real.
One of my mentors is St. Ignatius Loyola, who says, “There are
only two banners that we can stand under; one is the banner of Christ
and the other is the banner of the evil one.” But we are waged,
according to St. Ignatius Loyola, in a battle of good against evil, of
light against darkness. And that battle is something we can’t be
naïve about. The devil is a personal force that is working on me
all the time, trying to divert me away from Christ and towards my own
selfish gain. He does that in very subtle ways at times, and sometimes
in overt ways, but always by cloaking evil as if it were a good. If I
go ahead and do this, somehow it’s going to benefit me. That’s
what we have to be careful about, because the devil is a very clever,
wily creature, and he can undermine us in so many ways. I think we see
that in the abuse of drugs, the abuse of alcohol, the abuse of sexuality.
All these things have a certain pleasurable aspect to them. And
the devil corners us and draws us in on that aspect. Obviously, drugs
can be used for good purposes. And alcohol can, when it’s used
in moderation, be very enjoyable and add to the party. And obviously
God created us to use our sexuality to procreate humanity. That’s
part of the vocation of the human race. But used in excess, used in a
selfish, self-gratifying way, it becomes very destructive. We see that
all around us today.
“The Catholic Servant”: Where do you see your role in warding off, fighting, defending, protecting?
Archbishop Nienstedt: Well, I see myself as being faithful to the message of Christ, reminding us that there is a war going on between good and evil. I think knowing in a very specific way and encouraging the use of the sacrament of Penance, Reconciliation. I’m very distraught that more people are not taking advantage of the opportunities that we have today to celebrate that great sacrament. I had the good fortune of teaching the Penance Practicum at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit for thirteen years. You can’t teach a course like that and not come to a more profound appreciation for the value of that sacrament.
I tell priests we have to be able to make that sacrament available,
and why wouldn’t we? We have the privileged position of seeing salvation
take place right in front of us. The priest is an observer of God’s
working in a person’s life, bringing the person to a greater holiness,
to greater conversion of life and heart and mind. That has to take place,
and the way the sacrament works best is in the regular fashion. It has
to be one on one. That’s the way Jesus did it. Jesus multiplied
the loaves and fishes for the crowd. But whenever we find Jesus forgiving
sins in the New Testament, it’s always one on one. “Your
sins are forgiven, go and sin no more; go in peace.” So that has
to be the way that the sacrament of Penance works. And it does work.
I’ve seen it work in my own priestly ministry, in my ministry as
a bishop. And so, I think it behooves me to foster and encourage the
proper use of that sacrament.
John Sondag is Director of Religious Education at the Church of St.
Helena, Minneapolis, and publisher of “The Catholic Servant.”
This article was funded by the St. Pius V Chair of Writing sponsored by Jeffrey and Janette Howe.
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