Archbishop Hunthausen: Homecoming for a people's prelate

Applause for 91-year-old Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen rolled through a packed St. James Cathedral for more than a minute at the start of Sunday Mass, and for nearly a minute before the final blessing.

"You touch my heart," said Hunthausen, coaxed to say a few words by cathedral pastor Fr. Michael Ryan.

The Vatican felt otherwise.  

In the late 1980s, it  investigated Hunthausen.  It tried to strip him of authority,  and parachuted in an orthodox bishop with orders to impose discipline, dogma and docility on the Archdiocese of Seattle.  It didn't work. The Holy See backed down after a revolt in the pews.

"I love that man," said sculptor John Sisko.  Added Ryan to Hunthausen: "Your being here is a dream come true."

It was the dedication of Sisko's striking bronze shrine honoring Pope John XXIII that brought Hunthausen from his retirement home in Montana to the cathedral where he was archbishop from 1975 to 1991.

"Both the Church and this parish reflect (Hunthausen's) remarkable vision of the church," Ryan said in his homily, namely a place of worship and service with "a broad mind and a big heart."  Added the pastor, who worked closely with Hunthausen:  "In so many ways, this Archdiocese is what it is today because of him."

In turn, Pope John XXIII shaped Hunthausen.  Hunthausen was a neophyte Montana bishop when the recently consecrated John XXIII convened the world's bishops in the Second Vatican Council, its goal to open up an insular church.  The Council began exactly half a century ago.

"I want to open up the windows of the Church," John XXIII said, "so that we can see out and the people can see in."

The "Good Pope John" was a short, 77-year-old Italian prelate,  supposedly a "caretaker" pope.  

But he brought to the papacy, temporarily as it turned out, a new plainspoken, humble style. 

When Vatican theologians presented a draft of his encyclical Pacem Terris (Peace on Earth), John XXIII spread his hands, smiled and told them:  "I am the son of simple peasants.  Write this in language that they might read it."

Archbishop Hunthausen was called to head the Seattle Archdiocese in the mid-1970s, one of a generation of "pastoral" bishops appointed with a goal of bridging the wide gap between shepherds and flocks.  

They contrasted markedly with orthodox authoritarians nowadays being named in such key Catholic dioceses as San Francisco, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Denver.

Hunthausen was a local reflection of the "Good Pope John." He moved out of the Archbishop's mansion on First Hill and into St. Thomas Seminary in Kenmore.  

On weekends, he was seen piloting a big tractor-lawn mower. Unlike many bishops, aloof "shepherds" who hobnob with rich donors, he was often seen visiting the jail cell of a young, oft-imprisoned, anti-war protestor named Jim Douglass.

Hunthausen was also an advocate of peace,  and paddled a kayak to protest the Trident nuclear submarine base at Bangor. He took a step further by refusing to pay the portion of his federal taxes going to the Pentagon. The feds feds put a lien on Hunthausen's modest salary.

Hunthausen regularly broke bread and worked with other faith  leaders in Western Washington on civil rights and social justice issues.

Ultimately, the Vatican sent Cardinal James Hickey of Washington, D.C., to investigate goings-on in Seattle.  

One Hunthausen sin:  A gay-lesbian Catholic group, Dignity, had been permitted to have a mass at St. James Cathedral to close a conference.

The Vatican decided to strip Hunthausen of his authority in five different areas, and sent Bishop Donald Wuerl to take command.  (Wuerl is today cardinal-archbishop of Washington, D.C.) 

Hunthausen resisted. He was aided by a young, Rome-trained diocesan chancellor:  Fr. Michael Ryan helped Hunthausen deal with the Vatican's dissembling, icy and cutthroat politics.  

Wuerl was ultimately sent packing, but Ryan forfeited his prospects for wearing a bishop's purple hat.

Hunthausen and Ryan were both in Rome during those heady days of what "Good Pope John" called "aggiornamento" -- bringing the Catholic Church up to date so it could preach the Gospel effectively in the modern world.  

The Council revised the liturgy, embraced religious freedom,"  reached out to other faiths,  and revised what Ryan called "a stagnant, self-sufficient church."

Hunthausen returns to Seattle every few years, most recently to be honored by the Washington Association of Churches.  Curiously, his successor bishops in the Seattle Archdiocese never seem to show up for such occasions.

One visit was painful.  

Hunthausen came back in 2009 to testify at a lawsuit brought over acts of sexual abuse committed by a Spokane priest in the 1970s.

The "Good Pope John" is now "Blessed John XXIII," one step short of sainthood.

"He's not yet a saint, so it can't be life-sized," Sisko said of his sculpture.  

But, Sisko added:  "We pushed it.  He was short to begin with."  

Pope John XXIII stood 5'1" tall.  The sculpture is 4'6".

"He has touched all our lives in ways we are sometimes unaware of," Hunthausen said of "Good Pope John."  

Of Hunthausen, Ryan with his voice cracking added:  "This is the church you helped create.  This is that church."

The Sunday bulletins at St. James each week carry reflections from the "Good Pope John."  

One recent reflection: "In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure.  In these modern times, they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse and behave as though they had learned nothing from history which is, nonetheless, the teacher of life . . . We feel we must disagree with these prophets of doom who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand."

Did Pope John XXIII have premonitions of today's Catholic hierarchy?