Bishop Salvatore Cordileone

Just days after Bishop Salvatore Cordileone was appointed the fourth bishop of Oakland, he sat down with Monica Clark, Voice editor, to talk about some of the issues facing Catholics in the Oakland Diocese.

As you begin your ministry here in the Oakland Diocese, what vision do you have as its new bishop?

I never envisioned being a bishop, let alone a diocesan bishop, so when I got the news there was some nervousness and trepidation, I’ll have to admit. But I am excited about being in the Bay Area.

I’ve always kind of wanted to live here, but beyond that, now that I’ve spent some days here I’m getting very excited about what I see happening and about taking on the new challenges. There are so many challenges that we face, but they are exciting ones.

As I told the priests at the Chrism Mass, we will have to be patient and take time to get to know one another.

I know I will make mistakes; I’m certainly not immune from making mistakes. And at times decisions have to be made, and very often some don’t like the decision that is made. But if we work together, if we are open and honest with each other and work together with mutual respect and in charity, we can learn from our experiences.

I am looking forward to getting to know the priests, meeting the people and visiting the parishes, and working together with the staff here in the chancery.

The Oakland Diocese is one of the most ethnically diverse in the nation. What do you see as the greatest challenges to the Church here in relation of multiculturalism?

Different cultures have their own devotions, devotional life and styles of worship. I think we need not just to respect that, but to promote it because it nurtures a faith life. We need to understand that and inculcate that, especially in young people because that kind of devotion will firm up their faith and solidify their Catholic identity.

When I celebrate these different devotions with different ethnic groups, I tell them this is the patrimony of the whole Church. The posada tradition is the Church’s; it’s a Mexican custom, but we are all enriched by it.

	Bishop Cordileone studies a ceramic panel portraying the life of St. Francis de Sales, patron of Oakland’s first cathedral. Damaged along with the cathedral by the 1989 earthquake, it was restored and now hangs in the conference center of the Cathedral of Christ the Light. (See story at right.) José Luis Aguirre photo
	Ceramic panel links new cathedral to old   By Voice staff When Oakland’s original cathedral, St. Francis de Sales Cathedral, was renovated in 1966, a large ceramic panel by Italian sculptor Angelo Biancini was installed in the side altar area to the left of the sanctuary, set against a reredos of dark granite. Dedicated to St. Francis de Sales, the panel included a large representation of the saint with smaller images of some of the best known incidents of his life, including his founding of the Visitation Order with Jane de Chantal, a conference with Louis XIII at Avignon, and a treatise he wrote on “The Love of God.” The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the cathedral beyond repair and caused cracking in the ceramic, which was removed and placed in storage before the cathedral was razed in 1993. As part of the plans for the new Cathedral of Christ the Light, Diane Winters of Winters Tile Works was commissioned to restore the ceramic in a new form that would visually link both cathedrals. The panel (in photo at left) is now part of the donor wall in the cathedral conference center.

It’s a bigger challenge at the parish level than the diocesan level to respond to ethnic diversity because they are sharing the same space and there are language issues involved. But if people can share the riches and attend events of a cultural group different from their own, they will be enriched as well.

There is something else that I think we need to pay more attention to. There is also such a thing as Catholic culture, which is at a deeper level and connects us all. It is a sacramental view of the world and we need to keep that vision before us because if we don’t, the Church is going to become an association of different cultural groups. The Church will be international, but it won’t really be universal.

You served as pastor of a parish on the U.S.-Mexican border and as auxiliary bishop in San Diego, which has a very large Hispanic population. What are your views on immigration reform?

Our nation has always been a nation that welcomes immigrants. I don’t quite understand why there is a problem because we need the labor and they need the work. They are so desperate for work and they go to great lengths to try to find employment here. I don’t understand why we can’t accommodate people who are not criminals or offenders, but are sincerely coming here to work hard and support their families.

The principles that the U.S. bishops articulated in their joint pastoral letter with the Mexican bishops are very on target. Most importantly, people have a right to have economic opportunity in their own countries, to provide for themselves. They also have the right to emigrate when that is not possible. Nations have a right to control their borders.

So the rights have to be balanced off. But we can’t shut down our borders and close off the possibility of immigration or just choke it to a trickle.

When I was pastor in Calexico, I used to jog early in the morning and right in those streets just past the border I would see the workers lined up — like the story in the Gospel — the growers would bring their busses down to hire them for the day and bus them up to the fields. And they would have to go home across the border at the end of the day.

I attended a meeting at the border shortly after I became auxiliary bishop. There were people from the faith community, business leaders and immigration advocates. The business leaders spoke about how they need immigrants to meet their needs for labor. A tomato grower spoke about one of the immigration raids shortly before the harvesting season. She lost most of her workers and couldn’t find people to replace them. She lost 75 percent of her crop. She could not find people to replace them.

What about the border fences?

While I was in Calexico, I developed a friendship with a Methodist pastor who is very focused on the border issues. He is now in San Diego and he’s leading a campaign to keep open an area right on the southwest most corner of the continental U.S., a beach area called Friendship Park, dedicated in the early 1970s. Since then people have been gathering on both sides of the border so that if they couldn’t cross, they could at least visit with each another.

Now it’s been shut down because of putting in the border fence. He’s been celebrating a communion service there every Sunday at 2 p.m. and although the park has been closed, he continues to hold the service there. From a practical sense and what it represents by its very name, it’s sad to see the park have to be shut down.

I don’t know if the fence-building program is going to go forward with the new Obama administration. There’s been work on the three fences. One’s there already and they’re going to put in two more.

So you see the fences as having a negative impact on families who live on both sides of the border?

Another of those very important points from the bishops’ joint pastoral is that immigration policy should favor family reunification. My fear (about immigration reform) is that the priority will be given to people with the high tech job skills that we need. This feeds into a utilitarian view of people rather than holding up and valuing the more basic values of family.

Bishop Cordileone talks with Voice editor Monica Clark (left) and staff writer Sharon Abercrombie during a press conference, March 23. GREG TARCZYNSKI PHOTO

To me it is a very important point to favor family reunifications. There are a lot of people here who can’t even return to Mexico for a visit without the risk of not being able to return here to work.

Every year in October I have celebrated Mass for the undocumented migrants living in the canyons north of San Diego and working in the flower fields. Mount Carmel Parish in Rancho Penasquitos has a ministry to reach out to these people, primarily faith formation and practical things.

These workers live in the canyons because they are undocumented. Again, if your view is utilitarian, these people are useful to us because they are fulfilling a job, and if they are a drain on the economy, then we get rid of them. Or do we value them because they are human beings? The personal encounter makes such a difference.

You see what lovely people they are and you can’t help but love them and want to welcome them. If it is human encounter and you are truly valuing their personhood, Christ is present and will change you.

You went to public schools and I’m wondering how you view Catholic education and the future of Catholic schools.

I’m all for Catholic education. The absolute priority is giving our people Catholic faith formation. Catholic schools are more important today than when I grew up because the values of our faith are being so undermined in the world we are living in today.

It’s not just a matter of taking a religion class and you learn those values. The sacramental view, those values that we hold so important, have to inform the curriculum throughout the school.

Sometimes Catholic schools have to be closed. I recognize that, but maybe we need to come up with creative solutions to insure that our young people get good, solid faith formation so they don’t succumb to these self-destructive trends (clearly that’s what they are) that are all throughout our society now.

Many young people have drifted away from the Church. What do you think can be done to bring them back?

This generation, as opposed to their parents and maybe for some of them their grandparents, is not so much rebellious as searching. Many of their parents, and in some cases grandparents, rejected what had come before them. This generation is, I think, open to formation in the faith, but they are open to other influences as well.

We have an opportunity to reach them. They have a sense that the world is just not the way it’s suppose to be, that there must be a better way. But they don’t understand what that better way is. So we have an opportunity to reach them, but we have to figure out the practical ways to do that.

That certainly means communicating with them in ways that they communicate with each other — high tech means, which we’re going to be talking about a lot in the very near future. We have a timeless message that we have to couch in language they can understand.

Young people will respond to integrity and courage. There is a lot of corruption in our society, and unfortunately it even affects youth. Still youth by their nature are idealistic. Most of them, if they see that people really care about them and are concerned about their own good and are not imposing rules upon them that don’t seem to make sense and are people they can respect because of their courage and integrity, then they will respond.

After your appointment to Oakland was announced, there were lots of comments on blogs about your support of the Latin Mass. What do you see as the role of that liturgy in the life of the diocese?

Latin is one element of the Catholic culture that I mentioned earlier. Language is such a fundamental part of what a culture is. I think not that the whole liturgy should only be in Latin, but that a greater use of Latin to bring people of different language groups together to pray in the ancient tongue of the Church has value.

Pope Benedict’s vision is that the liturgical reform of Vatican II has kind of gotten off track and a greater familiarity with the pre-conciliar liturgy will help us get back on track with authentic liturgical reform. It doesn’t mean that we go back to the pre-conciliar liturgy, but we understand better the principles that are spoken of at the Council and see them in the context of what he calls an organic development.

This is part of a long process of liturgical reform going back to Pope Pius XI who first spoke about the full active and conscious participation of the faithful. So we see this in a context that there is a continuity rather than a rupture.

Just about everyone probably knows that I have celebrated the Tridentine liturgy so I’m not revealing any secrets. When I do celebrate it, it helps me to understand better what the bishops at the Council were thinking when they were talking about liturgical reform. So I think it has a value in that sense, and neither Pope Benedict nor I would want to force in on anyone.

But he also wants to respect those who prefer to worship in that form and an accommodation as much as possible should be made. I think if we are comfortable with the availability of that, with the familiarity with that, we would be more at peace in terms of liturgy, rather than allow it to be a cause of conflict.

I acknowledge at the same time that there is a need for inculturation, not that it becomes showy, but there are authentic prayer lives of different cultures that can be legitimately incorporated into the liturgy for those cultures.

When I was living in Rome, there was a little church in the center of the city that was used by a community from Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). There were certain differences in the way they celebrate the Mass that are in keeping with their culture, using certain movements and processions and types of music that were quite beautiful. I would see that as a legitimate sense of inculturation. Traditions in our own African American spirituality are another example.

I wouldn’t support putting the readings of Scriptures in Latin as a unifying factor. English is the predominant language here, but that doesn’t mean we should not proclaim the readings in other languages at diocesan liturgies and I enjoy the Prayers of the Faithful being done in all the different languages with people from those cultures proclaiming them.

Can you talk a bit about your spirituality, your prayer life?

My prayer life is always centered on the Eucharist. At a certain point in my priesthood, I was indirectly challenged by the witness of a priest friend to make a holy hour every day before the Blessed Sacrament and I follow that.

I also pray the Liturgy of the Hours and the rosary, meditate on the Scriptures, especially the text I will be preaching on, and I do centering prayer just to enjoy those moments with the Lord. I always know that the Lord has touched me in prayer when it’s hard to leave, when I get to the point where I want to stay. Just to be silent before the Blessed Sacrament. Everyone struggles with distractions and your mind wanders, but I focus on the Lord’s presence and enjoy that.

I understand that you visited our cathedral in January when you were in the Bay Area for the annual Walk for Life. What do you think of it?

I am thrilled with this whole cathedral complex, and I am so grateful to Archbishop Vigneron for leaving this to me (laugh), but I’m not grateful for the huge price tag (laugh). That is one of the big challenges we have, especially in these economic hard times.

I am grateful for his vision of this complex being the center of the diocese; a diocese needs that heart. It can spread from here to unite this local Church. We have to see this cathedral in the context of the entire diocese and all the great needs throughout this diocese.

What is your experience of the cathedral as a worship space?

I would say uplifting. It’s very vertical and I think that we can easily lose sight of that and just focus on the horizontal — Church as a social network. The Church is the body of Christ and is meant to bring us to heaven. And this cathedral lifts us up. The image of light and the whole shape of the building lift us up to God and forward to the altar.

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