In thinking how fickle life can be, even within the Church, Raymond Hunthausen, Archbishop Emeritus of Seattle, Washington, came to mind the other day.
I did a bit of research and discovered that, with God’s grace, he will celebrate his 96th Birthday this coming August. He requires assisted living arrangements now. I ask the Lord’s blessings upon him as I do all those who have given their lives in service to the Gospel and the Church.
Archbishop Hunthausen is familiar to me. I remember the controversy he caused in Seattle during the days I was serving in the Marriage Tribunal in St. Louis.
In the 1980s, the Archbishop was hailed by many liberal-leaning activists in the Church as a champion of markedly controversial social, theological and pastoral agendas.
During his tenure as Archbishop of Seattle, he spoke openly and often of his condemnation of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the presence the Trident submarine bases off the coast of the Archdiocese. He made national headlines when he joined protesters on the outskirts of the military installation and announced that he would refuse to pay a portion of his income tax to the Federal government in protest against nuclear armament.
He was among the first and very few of the American Bishops to begin a public dialogue with activists seeking political equality for homosexuals.
The actions of the Archbishop eventually came to the attention of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Pope Saint John Paul II who called for an investigation of the Archbishop to be conducted by then-Archbishop James Hickey of Washington, DC.
Among the official findings of the investigation, Archbishop Hunthuasen was accused of the following: that he had allowed divorced Catholics without annulments to take communion; gave lay people unauthorized influence in shaping programs as “a kind of voting process on doctrinal or moral teachings”; permitted intercommunion at weddings and funerals; and that he allowed a homosexual group to meet in the cathedral, which risked ignoring the Magisterium’s judgment that same-sex acts were “an intrinsic moral evil, intrinsically distorted and self-indulgent.”
In addition to welcoming the gay group to the cathedral, the investigation charged that the Archbishop had defended homosexual dignity in the Seattle Gay News in 1977.
Lastly, the Archbishop was accused of ignoring the canonical restrictions placed upon the licit celebration of General Absolution.
The Vatican’s reaction was to appoint an Auxiliary Bishop with special faculties, Donald Wuerl, who was to have final authority over six areas: liturgy, marriage, clergy and seminarians, ex-priests and any issues related to health care and homosexuals.
In effect, Archbishop Hunthausen was canonically stripped of office. He resigned as Archbishop of Seattle in 1990.
One of the things prophets most consistently get wrong is timing.
Does this mean that the prophet should cease speaking or forgetting the inspiration he has received? Often, even when the timing is wrong, prophetic words convey something from God that the Church should heed or at least notice.
Was Raymond Hunthausen a prophet? Was he a forerunner of the activist, pastoral, and socially-conscious style of church leadership that has been championed by Pope Francis?
Much of what Archbishop Hunthausen proclaimed sounds a great deal like the kind that harmonize with Pope Francis’ message, one which inspires, one which forgives, treats those who fall outside strict doctrinal with tolerance and bestows mercy on those who might be considered unworthy under other regimes. Openness to homosexuals, broader welcome to communion, a greater, equal role for lay people, a witness to faith determined by compassion and attention to suffering rather than law and order.
The overlap between the Pope and the former Archbishop appears rather astounding.
And so, I just wonder if the Archbishop was just another example of a prophet with wrong timing!
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