Catholic Church: an Interview with Bishop Gerald Barnes
By David Olson
On Thursday, Pope Francis will complete his third month as head of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. I recently sat down with Bishop Gerald Barnes of the Diocese of San Bernardino – which comprises Riverside and San Bernardino counties – to discuss Francis’ leadership. As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to rule on the constitutionality of California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Barnes also discussed church teaching on homosexuality and marriage. In addition, the bishop talked about immigration, priest sexual abuse and the need for the church to embrace the cultural traditions of its followers. Here is an edited transcript of the conversation: Press-Enterprise: How would you assess Pope Francis’ leadership of the church so far? Bishop Barnes: It’s the things that not only he’s saying, but that he’s doing, that I find are speaking to many of us. We were just talking about the bishop’s dinner. The dinner was held the first Saturday in April this year. And every year I go in this regal kind of formal outfit that I don’t particularly care to wear. But that’s supposed to be the dress for this. This year, I thought, ‘You know. I’m not going to do it. I’m going to go in my suit.’ So it was the morning of the dinner and I’m hosting a visit from a Korean bishop, from Daejeon, Korea, who was visiting. So we were together that morning. And we’re talking about Pope Francis and I said, ‘You know, in our ministry we see a lot of very simple people, a lot of very saintly people, very committed people, grateful people. And when you look they have very little. And they’re still grateful. We see them throughout our ministry.’ I said, ‘I’m looking at things differently. I’m not going to wear this thing tonight.’ He said, ‘You know why this is making an impact? Because he, the pope, is speaking to us as bishops. He’s speaking to the people, but he’s speaking to us, that we need to look at our lives.’ And you know, when I went in the suit – this same suit (Barnes pointed to the simple black priest’s suit he was wearing) – that evening a few people said, ‘Is this because of Pope Francis?’ They assumed it. There was no order: ‘You shall not wear these kinds of things.’ It’s the example. And what example are we giving? I think that example of not only reaching out and being present and accompanying the poor and the marginalized – it’s not only doing that. It’s how are we living our lives in simplicity, with the values of poverty? Not living poverty, but living the values of poverty. I don’t think anyone wants to be poor. But how do we live our lives that speak to the value of poverty, which is dependence on God. How do we do that? And what example are we giving our people? Q: Is what you’re wearing any different from what a parish priest would wear? A: It’s the same thing. Q: (The pope) was known for doing that in Buenos Aires (wearing a simple priest’s suit), going out to neighborhoods, taking the bus, taking the subway. And obviously as pope – wasn’t it an ermine cape he declined to wear? A: Yes, lined ermine. And the chair that was replaced. It’s not a throne. It’s a simple chair he sits at now. He gives his addresses standing, not sitting. And not with the mitre on, which is the pointed hat. Q: He also has a much smaller apartment. He decided to forgo the large papal apartment. I think he famously said, ‘I don’t need all this space.’ A: That’s right. Q: I understand he eats with … A: The people who work there: Maintenance people, landscaping people, housekeeping people. Q: What message does that send to the church? Not only forgoing the quote, unquote trappings of being pope. But also in his daily life having dinner one-on-one with maintenance people … A: He’s doing what we’re all called to do. That’s the life of the Lord. Jesus ate with everyone. He didn’t have his private place. What the pope is saying is, our ministry, as unique as it is, should not, cannot, separate us from the people. We’re not supposed to be removed from the people. We’re there for and with the people. I think that’s what he is modeling for us. A: The pope said, instead of focusing on introspection and being managers, priests need to be out in the community serving the poor and suffering. That seems to fit in with that, that priests need to be among the people. Q: We look at it as priests, because he is a priest. He’s a bishop. He’s the pope. But the message is not just for us. It is for everybody. Everybody needs to look at that. In our society, we have certain places, certain areas that are restricted, because of rank or your place in the social status, hierarchy. I think he’s asking us to question that. Even among certain groups there are those who are at the top and those who are at the bottom. Are we not supposed to be one? So how do we relate, even among ourselves in society, with those who are the most in need, those who are given less respect, dignity. All of us have the same dignity and all of us merit the same respect. It’s a question for us as church leaders, there’s no doubt about it. It is clear. But it’s a question for all of society, and how we treat people that others marginalize. Q: You’ve probably heard this: That there are larger crowds at the Vatican. Vendors are even reporting higher sales of (papal) memorabilia. There’s been hope that he would help reinvigorate the church. Do you see that happening? A: I think it’s beginning to happen. It’s time that’s going to be able to tell that. It can’t just be a fad, or the newness of it, the novelty of something like this. It’s got to be something that penetrates the person totally, that’s changing our way of viewing one another and the world. It’s acquiring new attitudes. That takes time. Some people will buy into it as something very novel and move back to the way they were. Others will buy into it for awhile and then they will see it is difficult, they can’t give up the other (way of life). Others, it will be a conversion. There’s a readiness factor. And everybody’s not ready at the same time. But the message is for all times, and we have to continue living the message. And I think what it’s going to do is it’s going to cause a lot of us to think and re-evaluate how we’re living our lives. And some of us, by the grace of God, will do the conversion. But conversion is continuous. Others will hold off for awhile. But that’s okay. The time will come for them also, if we’re true to the message. Q: Tens of millions – maybe hundreds of millions – of Catholics have left the Catholic Church for evangelical churches, especially in Latin America. And there are also a number of folks – especially young people – who now have no religion at all. And a lot of them were Catholic. Is there anything the pope can do to keep more of those folks in the church? Because he’s a new type of pope in a sense, who has these expressions of humility and has generated some excitement, do you think he’ll be able to attract some of those folks back into the church or … A: Yes, I do. I think it’s not a very simple thing that has to take place. He is speaking by his words and by his actions to the leadership in the church. So leadership has to change in the sense that it has to be more welcoming of people, allowing people to express their spirituality in different ways. Q: What do mean by expressing their spirituality in different ways? One of the appeals of evangelicals is they often have more vibrant services. A: Exactly. And in the Catholic Church we do have a part of our spirituality and worship that is the charismatic movement, which not only welcomes but identifies itself with that kind of spontaneity of expression. Now, how well integrated is that in parish life? That’s the question for leadership. Not that the charismatic movement exists over there, but that it exists as part of who we are – even though I may not choose to express my spirituality in that way. We had a day of prayer here a month or two ago. We divided the pastoral center into seven or eight different locations where people could experience different forms of prayer. You went into one room and it was just silence. In another room, it was music. In another room it was art and people involved in creating something with their hands. Outside it was nature. And it was the planting, working with the soil. In another room it was charismatic, spontaneous prayer. And in another room it was reading scripture. They’re all different forms of prayer. How do we in our parishes foster that, acknowledge that, integrate that? I think that’s one thing that can be done. At the other side is with the people themselves. So many times the people have this relationship with the Lord, but it stays just with the Lord, and it is not integrated into walking with their brothers and sisters. So I think the message he is giving: Wherever we are we have a responsibility to walk with our brothers and sisters. I can’t just lead an institution and just be on my own. I’ve got to be in community. And that community exists to praise and thank and worship God. And to minister to my neighbor, and my neighbor is everyone. It can’t be exclusive. I think that’s the message that’s coming out. We as leadership have to do more with our own. But I think he’s also speaking to others that you can’t just be out there and think that that is OK, to exclude others. Q: That event with the different forms of prayer: Was that the diocese maybe sending a signal to parishes that there are different ways of expressing yourself spiritually? A: That’s what we’re trying to do. We also run into that here in this diocese, as diverse as it is. You were at the (diocese’s) inaugural Mass for the pope, and you saw the world there. That’s the other challenge we have in our parishes: To see how the different expressions of Catholicism are lived. For instance we have a Mass in Igbo (a Nigerian language). We have a large and strong Igbo community here. They dance at Mass. As we stand and pray and sing the Gloria, the Igbo are dancing from their pews, they’re dancing the Gloria. As they enter the church before Mass, they dance in. How do we not just not permit that, but experience how privileged we are to witness how other people pray, how other people worship, and not to say there’s only this way? Our African-American Catholic community, when they belt out these old Negro spirituals, that’s not something other communities are used to. That diversity needs to be not only respected. We need to learn from that. Q: Many evangelical churches offer different types of services: More contemporary, more traditional. So it sounds like the idea is giving folks options and letting them know there are different ways of being Catholic. You don’t have to sit there quietly… A: We’ve had that to a limited degree. If you go to the 7 a.m. Mass in the morning, it’s quiet, you don’t have all these songs. If you go to the 10 o’clock, it’s more family-oriented. If you go to the 5 in the evening, it’s more teen-oriented, the music style, the preaching. But we need to do a lot more of that. Because the cultural element is also important. Pope John Paul (II) was one of the big apostles of that. First for not being from Italy, after so many hundreds of years. And his connections to the world and all his travels. It brought us closer. When he goes to Papau New Guinea and there are bare-chested women there, at the Mass, and we all see that, and the pope is there. And that’s Catholic. It brought us in touch as Catholics with other Catholics who don’t look like us, who don’t pray like us, worship like us and yet they’re Catholic. And how do we do that in our local parishes? Q: On May 5, the pope asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to act decisively to root out priest sexual abuse. Are there any other actions the pope can take along these lines? A: I think that one of the actions that needs to be taken, and I’m not in that arena to know what is being done, what are we doing in other countries of the world? We know the abuse of children is worldwide. It’s in all sectors of society. What are we doing to raise that (issue) in other nations and cultures that are not as open to speaking about that? Here in (parts of) the English-speaking world, wherever we are, Australia, New Zealand, America and (part of) Europe, it’s out there, it’s out there in front. And we’re began to see things happening in other parts of Europe: Germany, Belgium, non-English-speaking countries. But we also need to look at where this is happening in Asia and Africa and Latin America, and can the pope help bring that awareness that this a world problem, it’s not an English-speaking problem, it’s not a Catholic Church problem, it is a world problem? What’s happened to us here – as painful as this has been. And it’s extremely painful, and sad. There’s a profound sadness about this whole thing. We’re beginning, and it’s going to take awhile, but we’re beginning to see and to understand that we, church leaders, need to take a role of eradicating this from all aspects of society. It should never have happened in the church. Never. But it did. It has. We need to as leadership say: It cannot happen in schools either. It cannot happen in team sports, leagues. It cannot happen in homes. My prayer is the pope will take that kind of leadership to keep this awareness alive, that maybe we can begin to address the immensity that is there. We have to advocate for the victim, wherever the victim is. I think that’s one of the big things for our diocese. It’s become a ministry of outreach. And I think the pope can help that by continuing to raise the issue with bishops of other countries and lend support to those countries where the church is taking some leadership. Q: Most legal analysts believe the Supreme Court is unlikely to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide but that there’s a strong possibility that Prop. 8 will be overturned here in California, meaning that same-sex marriages would begin here some time soon. As you’re probably aware, some polls find that a majority of American Catholics support legalized same-sex marriage. How would you explain to Catholics why the church opposes same-sex marriage? A: I don’t think we’ve gotten our story out well enough. In the Catholic Church, you have to go through a six-month program of formation. And it’s probably too short. Six months. But it’s what we require. Not only do you have to attend workshops, encounters, retreats. But you have to sit down with a couple, a married couple from the parish, with the priest, and go over difficult things that happen in married life. We talk about personalities, we talk about finances, we talk about sexuality. You talk about spirituality. You talk about some major areas and how that affects married life. What I’m trying to say is that for us as Catholics, this is a sacrament. And it entails a great deal of preparation in order to celebrate or receive that sacrament. I don’t think we’re telling our story broadly enough. We have a marriage initiative here in the diocese. We started working on this five or six years ago. And we’re trying to teach our children in middle and high schools about the vocation of marriage. This was before Prop. 8. Our concern was we have so many people – young people — living together as a married couple, but they’re not living the sacrament. They have not been married. And so many divorces in our Catholic Church. We’re now at the national average. I think we’re at 50 percent. We were concerned as a diocese: What are we teaching about marriage? And so we put together this initiative in which we’re looking at: How do we talk about this to young people, about what marriage is, as a vocation? And then how are we preparing people for marriage? Let’s look at our programs. What needs to be strengthened? Where are we weak? Where can we partner with others? And then of course the celebration of the rite. It’s a very rich ritual. But how are we celebrating it, those who are presiding? And then how do we walk with the people after they have vowed their married life? What are tools that we offer them? We’re doing all this, but we’re not teaching enough in a broad way how we see marriage. So people don’t enter a marriage by saying, ‘Well, if it doesn’t work out we can always get divorced.’ No, we’re going to work this out. We’re going to see what we can do to work this out. And not just for the sake of the children. For us and the children. So we want to change that mentality, people living together three or four years as man and wife. Q: This initiative is about strengthening the heterosexual institution of marriage and emphasizing the importance of marriage as a lifelong commitment. But what would you say to someone – especially young Catholics – who may say my uncle or my friend has been with someone of the same gender for 20 years? A: That’s my point. In teaching marriage, we’re teaching about man and woman. And if we got our story out, our message out, people would understand why we do not see a union of two (people) of the same gender as marriage. Because that’s not what our theology of marriage is. If we teach much more what we believe marriage is, then people understand: I can see why you as Catholics, or we as Catholics, cannot support marriage between homosexuals, because that isn’t the way we see marriage. And our belief is that that is the way society has seen marriage. By marrying two gay people, we’re changing how society has viewed marriage through millennia. We as the Catholic Church don’t see marriage that way. That is not what marriage is for us. The young people ask this question all the time. All the time. And they ask it within the context of how the church sees homosexuality. Because they tie it together. What I try to help them understand is that the church believes that all of us – all of us — are created equally in the image and likeness of God. And every single person – every single person – merits respect. Every single person has the dignity of being a child of God, gay or straight. And therefore, I tell the kids, the young people, we don’t use language that hurts people, that diminishes people, that takes away their dignity. We don’t tell jokes about gays. That’s not who we are. We respect them as a brother or a sister. That’s who we are. I don’t know if some of these young people have heard that. I can see in talking to them that they buy it. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Most of them. Then we talk about marriage. Let’s talk about what marriage is in the Catholic faith. Let’s talk about the union of man and woman, why we were made differently. We were made physically and biologically differently for a reason. Then we talk about life being the most precious gift God has given us. There’s nothing more precious than life. That God breathed life into us so we carry that breath of God into us. And that life is the value we always protect, that we always nourish and celebrate. And that we bring about. We are to bring about life in each other. And we talk about relationship. And what is valued in a relationship: Respect, affection, commitment, security, responsibility. And we talk about what gender is. And we talk about sexual intercourse, and the purpose of sexual intercourse, the most intimate expression of love, the deepest expression of love. And God is love. And one of the purposes of sexual intercourse is to express that love. But also tied into that is that new life comes about. And God is the author of life. And God is love. And this is why this action of sexual intercourse in Catholic teaching is reserved for marriage. When you explain it to the kids, do they buy it right away? No. But do they think about it? Yes. Q: There are other issues in which, either a large majority in the case of contraception, birth control pills, for example, where a large majority of (U.S.) Catholics disagree with church teaching. And there are many who disagree with male-only priesthood, or celibacy, which obviously means lack of marriage for priests. And many Catholics believe that, apart from the moral issues of abortion, that abortion should be legal. Is it wrong for Catholics to wrestle with their consciences on these matters? A: No. It is good. We need to think about it. We need to wrestle with it. There are several teachings in the scriptures we may have a hard time appropriating: What do you mean, turn the other cheek? What do you mean that you can pay him, who only worked an hour, exactly the same as you paid me, and I worked eight hours? We have a difficult time. There are other things that not everybody can appropriate at this time. And we need to struggle with it. We need to wrestle with it. The Catholic Church teaches that conscience is the highest form. Respect must be given to one’s conscience. Your conscience is what guides you. But our role as a church is to help form that conscience, through the moral teachings that come from scripture and from the church. When people are telling me they are wrestling with – I’ll give you an example. I got a letter on immigration, and a lot of people don’t agree with the church’s teaching on immigration. This lady wrote to me and said immigrants were bleeding our country, and her kids weren’t getting as good an education because the immigrant kids were holding them back in class. And that her husband wasn’t getting as good a salary because immigrants work for cheaper wages. All this kind of stuff about immigrants: That we would have better health if immigrants didn’t deplete us of our resources in health. She was saying I disagree with you. But then she writes, ‘But I could be wrong, bishop, because I was a big supporter of capital punishment. But through the years I have changed and I no longer support it. So I could be wrong with this, too.’ Q: You were thinking, ‘She’s thinking about it, and that’s what’s important.’ A: Exactly. Q: On the subject of immigration reform: You’ve obviously taken a leadership role in the church on this issue. And this year is seen as the best chance in many years for immigration reform. Why is this such a priority for the church? A: Well, I think some people would say, ‘Because all these people are Catholics.’ That’s what they say. It is a priority for the church because we are Catholic. Not because they are Catholic. What drives us is the dignity of the human person. We believe people have a right not to immigrate. They should be able to find within their home country what is basic for the care of life and the celebration of life. So they have a right not to immigrate. That means we need to look at what is happening in countries and why people are leaving. There’s war. There’s persecution. There’s a big divide. There are no opportunities. Then we also believe that people have a right to immigrate. We believe nations have a right to protect their borders. There have to be legal ways to immigrate that are not intimidating to the people, that are not asking people to wait 14, 15 years to join a relative who is here, because the process is so slow and the system is broken. We believe families have a right to be together. So we’re in this because we believe the system is broken, it is unfair, it is unjust, it is dividing families and it is keeping the immigrant in a position that is not giving him his full dignity. We are not for open borders. But we are for the rights of every individual and the rights of families. And the system is not protecting that. The system is not giving these people those rights. I’ve met so many people who say, ‘Bishop, I’m an illegal immigrant and I’m from Canada, Ireland, Poland.’ They’re from everywhere, Asia, Africa. They tell you their story and you understand why they did that. You can understand that. Did they break the law? If you look at the law, yes, they broke this law, just like I did when I made an illegal turn. I broke a law. I’m not illegal. The action I did was, but I’m not. And then they say, ‘Well anyone who breaks the law should be in jail.’ Well then you should be in jail because you just made that wrong turn. You should be in jail. You broke the law. Let’s be consistent. The church has been a champion of immigrants since the very beginning. It’s not new. We did it with the Italians, the Irish. We did it for the Japanese and Chinese in the 1800s, early 1900s. The church has always been there. Q: The last 15 priests now who have been ordained in the diocese have been Latino or Asian. And more than two thirds of priests overall are Asian, Pacific Islander, Latino or black. And when I wrote a story on this two years ago, I was told that more than 90 percent of priests nationwide are white. And when I talked with a guy named Timothy Matovina at Notre Dame, I asked him, ‘What’s going on here?’ And he credited you with being a leader in the Catholic Church on multicultural outreach and said that the diocese had a national reputation for being especially welcoming of diversity. Why is it such a priority for the diocese and for you personally? A: I grew up in one of the most diverse areas of Los Angeles at that time, which is Boyle Heights. Boyle Heights in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s was one of the most diverse areas. You had Armenians. You had what were called white Russians. You had Jews. You had Japanese. You had Chinese. You had Italians. You had Hispanics. You had African-Americans. They even had a center there, All Nations Center. I went to Roosevelt High School. Many of the students there were Japanese, born in relocation camps. Jews. My neighbor, my best friend at the time, was Jewish. Although I know that I’m Hispanic, the neighborhoods were racially, ethnically diverse. So I carry part of that with me. That’s who I am. But the church, that’s the way the church is. That’s the church, especially in this country. In my family, which is my extended family, there are blacks, there are Asians, there are Hispanics, there are Anglos. That’s my family. It’s predominantly Hispanic, but all these others are there. Q: If I remember you’re part Irish background, mostly Hispanic but … A: Yes, but culturally Hispanic. My great-grandfather married a Hispanic in Arizona after the Civil War. So you’ll have all these people on Sunday morning eating menudo: The black guy, the Filipino guy, the Anglo. They’re all eating menudo. But then we’ll have barbecue in the evening. It’s that kind of a family. I guess that’s what’s influenced me. My parents were in the South in the 40s and they saw discrimination, blatant discrimination. My mother was working in a department store and she was reprimanded. A black man came in and she said, ‘May I help you sir?’ And she called him sir. They told stories of how they walked down the sidewalk and if a colored (the term used at the time) man was coming, he had to walk into the street. They had not experienced that. They had experienced discrimination against Mexicans in Phoenix, where they grew up, where they had separate water fountains, separate toilets, they sat in the balcony of the movie theater. They had that. But they had not seen it that much. They modeled for us the dignity of the person. Everybody had this right to respect. But that’s what the church teaches. So I found that just came together. When I came here, there were these groups, but they were somewhat segregated. There was an initial effort to bring them together, and I credit that to Bishop (Phillip) Straling. He really took some steps and then he handed it over to me, his auxiliary. And he gave me orders: I want you to develop this Asian ministry, and we’re not doing much with the Native Americans. That was how I took that leadership. But I think it’s who we are as a church. Q: One last question about Pope Francis. He’s made some strong statements about greed, what he calls the cult of money, ‘the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.’ He’s talked about how so much was done to help banks but little has been done to help people who are dying of hunger and who lack healthcare. What do those comments say to you, in connecting that with church teaching? A: It’s challenging to speak to poor people, marginalized people about God. How do you speak to someone about God in the midst of their poverty, in the midst of their suffering, in the midst of their being marginalized? But the other big challenge in this country is how do you speak to those who are affluent, those who think they can buy their way through things? Those who don’t see a need for God. How do you speak about God to that group? They don’t see the need. To be happy, what does that mean? What is it that you really want that’s lasting? Not that will just make you feel good for right now? I think that’s the way we’re going to have to talk to people who are more affluent. Because we’re talking about things that money can’t buy.
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