ARTICLES

In Fact, It's Liberating

Bishop Vigneron Reflects on the New Evangelization

BY PHIL SEVILLA

I spoke with Bishop Allen Vigneron on July 19, 2003. Bishop Vigneron assumed the episcopal leadership of the Oakland diocese on October 1 of last year. Many local Catholics in Oakland have been anticipating the installation of the new bishop who arrived in Oakland at the beginning of 2003. Until October he was coadjutor bishop of Oakland; previous to that, he was president/rector of Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit and auxiliary bishop of that city.

First impressions are often important, and many faithful Catholics who have had the opportunity to meet and hear the new bishop during his frequent parish stops over the last year have been encouraged by his graciousness and traditional expressions of the Faith.

I found Bishop Vigneron open and available for an interview to discuss a recent work of his, titled, "The New Evangelization and the Teaching of Philosophy," featured in an anthology, The Two Wings of Catholic Thought, Essays on Fides et Ratio, published by the Catholic University of America Press in 2003. Bishop Vigneron's contribution was a monograph explaining the significance of Pope John Paul II's 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio for Catholic intellectual life today. By studying his essay on the "new evangelization," and listening to his views of the Church and her relationship to culture, local Catholics may have a clearer vision of where the new bishop may be leading his flock in Oakland.

Bishop Vigneron wrote that the Holy Father's intention in discussing the relationship between faith and reason (the "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth") is to move the people of God to a common action -- the new evangelization for the third Christian millennium. This "new evangelization" entails the evangelization of culture, and the bishop sees that the first step in accomplishing this is "to find points at which the Christian life and civic life intersect." Considering the glaring contradictions between the hedonistic society at large -- San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area -- and the mission of the Church to inculturate this society with the Gospel, it is intriguing to ponder how this new bishop from the Midwest will meet the formidable challenges of taking on the culture at this time, in this place.

Your Excellency, how do you effectively infuse faith in this culture?

Somebody told me once that the only person who can properly translate is the person who knows both languages; so, the translation [of faith into the culture] will occur in the lives, principally, of the lay faithful, who, to continue the metaphor, speak eloquently the language of Christ and also speak the language of the culture. They know where identities occur, and they likewise know where there are antagonisms or conflicts, and they will point those out.

There are a lot of things in our culture that the Fathers of the Church call the "seeds of the Gospel" -- our sense of dignity of the human person, our high priority on freedom. Typically we have given a high priority to responsibility and self-direction. These are all important in the Christian life of holiness, but there are a number of things that are in conflict: a distorted notion of freedom -- freedom as license. The problem is our unbridled competition. There's a danger, the pope says in Centesimus Annus, that the market economy can do a great deal to serve the human person, but there are people involved in that economy that make success a higher good than the needs of the human person. I really think that's one of the dimensions of the Council [Vatican Council II] that we're just beginning to implement -- our focus on the proper role of the laity in being the translators of the Gospel to the culture.

Here in the Bay Area we witness events like the San Francisco gay pride parade. Cardinal Ratzinger said, "Western culture is hellish when it persuades men that the sole aim of life is pleasure and self-interest." Would you comment on this?

In the book, The Diary of A Country Priest by [Georges] Bernanos, at one of the climactic points the sickly priest says, "Hell is not loving anymore." Another way to say that, and I think this is what the cardinal is getting at -- is that hell is being caught and trapped in oneself, and that is what living for pleasure does. It destroys any possibility of living in a real communion. The sad thing about the way people live out their sexuality is that they are really looking for the right thing underneath it all. They are looking for love, but they pursue this in such a distorted way that they wind up closing themselves off from love -- and that really is the hellish part.

The great moral theologians say we have an animal dimension to our nature, but if we confine ourselves to living at that level, we are actually worse in our culture than beasts. It becomes really horrible. The tremendous root of the confusion of the problem is a confusion about what it means to be a human being. Cardinal George reminded us last month [June 2003] of a real wrong-headedness about our proper relationship to God. Too many people wrongfully presume that our situation as a creature before God could only mean that we are demeaned; but in fact it's liberating, and acknowledging God as our creator brings us great happiness.

In your essay you compare the Old Evangelization with the next Christian culture. Would you elaborate?

The great synthesis that was accomplished, beginning with the Fathers of the Church and finding one of its great high points in the Middle Ages, and especially in St. Thomas [Aquinas], was the culture that built a society based on the Church's doctrine of creation. That gave a way, for example, to seeing natural law as a reflection of God's own lawgiving in the world. So you see how a whole tradition of civil law grows out of that kind of DNA. In the article I called it "creation culture," the synthesis of faith and culture based in great part on the conviction that the world is God's creature. That synthesis began to unravel already at the end of the Middle Ages, certainly in the Renaissance. The French revolution and thereafter aggressively tried to pull apart the synthesis. Well, what is the issue today? The fundamental question is, I don't think, so much, whether or not the world is created; but I do think it's a question whether or not communion is possible. We have the faith conviction that it is and how it is possible and, I think, that will be the seminal point for the development of the new Christian culture.

Would you elaborate how communion would be brought about?

Well, I don't know exactly how it will be brought about. What I call for in the essay is for, one thing, philosophers, and students of philosophy to look at the culture and see all the places where there is a yearning for communion and to see in the culture where even those who might not believe in Christ have some inkling of how communion is possible. I think marriage is an excellent example. The pope points out that it's the principal, natural expression of human communion. Society itself, the civil order, a city, the state, the nation -- that's a community. Yes, society can be hellish. People feel trapped in it, but they just don't know how to get out of it. Christ has the answer.

You recently facilitated a discussion with your brother bishops regarding the challenge the lay faithful are facing living in the contemporary culture. Do you have any insights relating that discussion to your duties in a diocese on the West Coast?

I thought about how to call people to holiness. The culture encourages us to "pain" [offend] God, to blunt the demands His love makes upon us. I think it's true throughout the United States. One of the things I have been very much thinking and praying about is what the pope calls the presenting of the face of Christ to people that will motivate them to feel fully the demands of God's love in the way they live out their lives.

It seems too often we see bishops who spend much time in the administrative and financial matters of the diocese and less on teaching and remaining close to their flock.

It is very important for us, priests and bishops, not to let the administrative role dominate what we do. I think it's not unlike the family. I admire the Holy Father, and he gives me a great example, and I do want to do the best I can to be a good teacher, hoping the faithful of the diocese grow in holiness, which is really the measure for the health and life of our community. A good parent, a good friend -- there are both aspects of this in a pastor's relationship with his people, and I think the Holy Father embodies [these aspects] very well.

Regarding the attributes of a good pastor -- a good teacher, a good father (parent), and friend -- how would you handle discipline as a "father" with errant members of your flock?

My observation from seeing the way the Holy Father has approached his ministry is that he does put a much higher emphasis on teaching and example than he does on using whatever coercive force there is in his authority. I have to infer that in his judgment this is the most effective way over the long run to help the Church and help us become the Christians we're supposed to be. That's the judgment he's made. I believe that it's quite clear that God's providence has put him in the chair of Peter, and I'm not going to second guess him. I certainly am ready to admit that his ministry has not been perfect. No one's is. There are limits to what any pastor can accomplish, and there were great popes and bishops -- Charles Borromeo, Leo, John Chrysostom. there were things that remained undone. When someone says that to me about the pope, my usual response would be -- well, this may be a side where he is not as strong as we would like, but I defer to his judgment. This is the way he sees it, and I will support him in that. The first reason to have confidence in the pope's good practical pastoral judgment is that God gave him the papacy. The second is that I believe he is a man of profound prayer, and that kind of prayer generally brings with it great gifts of practical wisdom. As a bishop I have to be careful not to ever mistake the proper gentleness of a shepherd as an excuse for pusillanimity.

How do you see the future here in the diocese with your experience so far in the Bay Area?

I'm very heartened by so many people of profound faith. I was talking to my spiritual director, and he was underscoring the need to trust the power of Christ. The presence of Christ, His merciful goodness, is really compelling to those who are even the least bit open to noticing Him.

You talk about the pope's theology of the body in your article. Perhaps you can reflect on that?

We are created by God for communion with Him and with another, and our bodies have their meaning directing us towards communion. In their "bodiliness" people are not aiming for true communion but simply pleasure or using their own body or using somebody else's for pleasure. That's really a violation of the very integrity of the meaning of the body. There's no necessary opposition between the soul and the body. This is what the pope is getting at with the theology of the body. We're not dualists. Our bodies are filled with our soul, and the soul expresses itself corporeally. When I kiss my nephew, that's a soul-filled expression.

Is there a difference between a philosopher and a Christian philosopher?

Yes. They are complementary. Typically the Christian philosopher can make use of the wisdom he has gained by faith to help guide him in his search for wisdom that would be attainable without faith. A classic example of that is insight into the world that's created. Historically it was Christian philosophers who took their knowledge that the world was created (and that was gained by faith) and used that insight with their surety and confidence to come up with an account of the world that's created that would make sense even to people who didn't believe in Christ. People like St. Thomas and Augustine did that. There's a difference, but there is no conflict between faith and reason. There are many things that Christian and non-Christian philosophers have in common. That's very important because if that weren't true, it would mean that there could even be a conflict between the divinity and the humanity of Jesus, and we know that's not possible. The goodness of nature is what makes it possible for reason, even without the enlightenment of faith, to obtain to some valuable knowledge. The development of a Christian philosophy that addresses the concerns of the contemporary person is needed, a part of what has to happen through the new evangelization.

How does a Christian philosopher become an agent in the Christian missionary task?

He does that not by propagandizing. He maintains his integrity as a rigorous thinker, but he will also make a contribution to the new evangelization. You look at the Holy Father and what he accomplished in his time as a philosophy professor, which has helped him greatly in his work as being an evangelizer. I have to say for myself -- in my aspiration to be a good bishop and preacher of the Gospel, I feel what I did as a philosophy student and teacher is a resource.

Would you say your style of leadership is similar to the Holy Father?

I don't want to sound like I'm building myself up, but I guess I do feel by my temperament that I'm more inclined to imitate the pope, and I see a lot of wisdom in the way the Holy Father approaches [leadership]. Clear teaching is, in the long run, very effective, especially because what we clearly present is Christ, and we go back to Novo Millennio Ineunte. It's the compelling gaze of the loving Christ that is going to bring about the change. I find it remarkable how many people respond to the Divine Mercy devotion. That devotion itself is the presentation of the tender compassion of God, which is very powerful in getting people to change their life. We have to be careful that we don't rely too much on the big stick. Expectations need to be articulated clearly, but underneath them needs to be made present the merciful gaze of the loving Christ.

We're living in a post-Christian era, are we not? How do we reclaim it? How do we return to a Christian society?

One island at a time. Each person has to do what he or she can; wherever people have responsibility. Obviously for the lay faithful, in their ordinary life, family is very important. We do have a big challenge, but I am confident God will use us. I do not know how it will all work out. But the battle is already won and our job is to try to discern the moves on the field that God asks us to make and to understand even sometimes when what seems to be a defeat, we'll advance His purpose. Even when you suffer a defeat, in the end be also able to serenely offer up your defeat with the sufferings of Christ; otherwise we'll become part of the very thing we're working against. Do not lose your zeal, and yet, in keeping your zeal, you also keep your serene confidence that even your defeat, united with Christ, will contribute to the ultimate victory. What makes us different from any other force in the culture is this confidence that Christ is the King. Even when the foe, the adversary seems to have won, he's always the loser.

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