Texas After Violence Project Interview with Bishop Emeritus Leroy Theodore Matthiesen, part one

COPYRIGHT 2008 BISHOP EMERITUS LEROY THEODORE MATTHIESEN* AND TEXAS AFTER VIOLENCE PROJECT

Date: July 26, 2008

Place: Amarillo, Texas

Equipment: Sony mini-HD DV camcorder; Sennheiser external microphone

Recorded on: Sony mini-DV cassettes

Interviewer: Virginia Raymond

Videographer: Gabriel Solis

Transcription: Susanne Mason

Reviewed & edited: Kimberly Bacon

BISHOP EMERITUS LEROY THEODORE MATTHIESEN: By the way, in case we’re not done, I’ve arranged for— I take my lunch over at St. Francis Convent right next door, a light lunch, and it’s become kind of a semi-retirement home for elderly nuns. Of course they were all involved in this Johnny Frank Garrett thing because Sister Tadea was killed here and raped and so on. Anyway, the evidence is overwhelming. I just reread the thing I wrote in [inaudible] and there’s mistakes in that, I mean things that I didn’t know at the time.

RAYMOND: Right. Well at the time you were, I think that everybody was— a lot of people were convinced he was guilty but the issue was the abuse and the—

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Yeah, but you know why? Well we’ll get into it. What else? As you know, most of the religious leaders of Texas, I don’t know about the Baptists, but the Catholics bishops and the Methodists, Episcopalians and so on, we had repeatedly issued statements asking for the removal of the death penalty, the abolition of the death penalty. What is that, a piece of candy?

[referring to small red digital tape recorder]

RAYMOND: It’s pretty, isn’t it? I’ll put that close to you. You have a nice, soft voice.

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Okay, so give me a little idea what you [inaudible].

RAYMOND: That’s good. Some of the things we for sure want to talk about are— the focus of this interview has, sort of, we need to talk about Johnny Frank Garrett, but if you are not too tired and if you don’t mind I’d love to hear about Pantex and then the other thing, I’ve heard you speak eloquently and write eloquently about stewardship of the land—

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Yes. I grew up on a cotton farm.

RAYMOND: About praying, not praying for rain.

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Patience. Pray for patience. I’ve got some staunch inhibitions about all of that. People repeatedly up here say, “You’ve got to pray for rain, pray for rain. “ And I say, “Are you asking me to ask God to change his mind about the way he created the world?” It’s a semiarid region, and we try to squeeze more out of it. We’ve got this big thing about— this was known as the Great American Desert when the first explorers came and then they drilled and found water. Then they discovered the Ogallala Aquifer, which reaches from here to South Dakota. It was changed from the Great American Desert to the Breadbasket of America. Now it’s in danger of going back because of Pantex’s involvement and the river polluting the Ogallala and the ball game is over. And the table’s also dropping because we’re over irrigating and that kind of stuff. We’re squeezing water, but that’s a whole new story. So what else?

RAYMOND: Well, some of these other things that happened during your term as bishop have really changed. I think you were, the Vietnamese started arriving in Southeast Texas—

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: 1975.

RAYMOND: In 1975, and you were installed in 1980 so the church that’s very close to here, Our Lady of Vietnam. I don’t know if you have any thoughts about that.

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Oh, sure. I haven’t been accused of having an unpublished thought. But I was trained in journalism and I archive things and go back to it. I had wrote that book my brother said—

I have an older brother who’s ninety-one. He said, “You sure have a good memory. “

I said, “Well, I was trained to archive material, this kind of stuff.” We called it the morgue. And I said, I knew some of that and what I didn’t remember, I just made up. Not facts, but in between. Anyway, so.

RAYMOND: So are we ready to formally start?

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Whenever you’re ready.

RAYMOND: Okay. I’m just going to say some things.

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Is this okay if I’m comfortable like this?

RAYMOND: Yes, you are in charge of your own self and the interview. BISHOP MATTHIESEN: All right. Retired bishops get to do that.

RAYMOND: Yes. We are, it’s June 26, 2008. We are here at the home of Bishop Emeritus Leroy Matthiesen?

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Mm hm. Theodore Matthiesen.

RAYMOND: Leroy Theodore Matthiesen. Gabriel Solis is behind the camera and my name is Virginia Raymond and the Bishop has consented to let us interview him today, and I thank you very much. And we’re here at his home in Amarillo. Bishop, could you tell us just about growing up, being from the area?

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Well, I was born on a cotton farm thirty miles northeast of San Angelo, central West Texas. On June 11, 1921, so I’m eighty-seven now.

RAYMOND: Happy Birthday.

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Thank you. I don’t call them happy. I kind of mark the passage of time. So I grew up there, and developed of course a love for the soil, the land, that kind of thing. Then I went off to the seminary in Ohio and spent eleven years there. Different world. And the seminary was the pontifical college Josephinum, so there were guys there from all over the United States, and that opened up a whole new brand world for me. And I was ordained for service in the Diocese of Amarillo and that was part where I grew up, that was part of the diocese and my bishop at the time was Bishop Laurence FitzSimon and he was very much interested in history and all these kinds of things and creating a good church newspaper for the diocese so he sent me up to Denver to study journalism under Monsignor Matt Smith. That was a system of newspapers, Catholic newspapers for the United States. At one time we had a circulation of almost a million copies a week and served about thirty-two different dioceses from the East coast to the West coast. Again, I was exposed to a much broader understanding of the immensity of the world, the church, and all that kind of thing. And when I came back, then later on a bishop, then became editor of the paper. Wrote a column— the [paper is the] West Texas Catholic now called. It’s gone through several name changes. And in 1952, I believe it was, that I started a column that was called “Wise and Otherwise.” And I wrote that until about 1999 for a long period of time. So this book that I wrote Wise and Otherwise: The Life and Times of a Cotton Picking Texas Bishop, came out of those columns, reflections, memoir, autobiography, that sort of thing. Then after coming back from Denver— I was there two years and got a degree in journalism and that sort of thing.

Then later on, the next bishop, John Morkovsky wanted to start a preparatory seminary for high school guys. He asked me to do that, to be the rector of that. I said I would if I could get some training in secondary school administration. So he sent me to Catholic University in Washington D.C. and I got a degree in that. And that again exposed me to a lot of different cultures and ways of thinking and that sort of thing. Came back from that and then became principal of our high school, and while I was editor of the paper, and I was pastor of a parish, St. Lawrence here in Amarillo. And vocationary for the diocese. Again, very broad exposure. And that, I think, brought me to where I am now in my thinking about the state of the world, the state of society, the state of the church, and that’s of course my principle focus of attention. And so I was ordained for this diocese in 1946. In 1979 my predecessor, Lawrence DeFalco, had died of cancer. He had resigned before that and the Priest Senate, as it was called in those days, elected me the administrator. And that went on for nine months. People used to ask me, “When are we going to get another bishop?” I’d say, Its going to be a nine-month pregnancy. And then all of a sudden I was born. I was ordained a bishop in 1980, May 30th. And I served until I retired in 1997.

Prior to that, I had been pastor of St. Francis of Assisi parish, east of Amarillo. Within its territorial lines, and that’s how our church is set up, parishes with lines, lay Pantex. There was a big sign on Highway 60, U.S. 60, saying, “Pantex: Research and Development arm of Sandia Laboratories.” In those days, there was lots of talk about atoms for peace and I thought, Oh, boy, that’s really great. I didn’t know until later on that that was not exactly what they were doing. They were assembling nuclear warheads produced elsewhere, all over the country. And the parts were delivered here and Pantex, which is funded by the first Department of Energy, it may still be, I’m not quite sure. Yeah, I think it still is. And then they get private contractors to run that. That whole place started as a munitions plant in World War two. And then for a while there was nothing going on there, but then came this, and I was— when I had people right in St. Francis parish who worked there. And the people here in Amarillo and what became St. Lawrence Cathedral also worked there. And then I began to wonder about that, and then as time went on, it didn’t take very long, people used to ask me, “What’s going on out there?” And I gradually found out and when they referred questions to me about whether or not we should be working out there— these were Catholic people-- I referred that question to the Bishop.

Now I’m the Bishop. And the buck stopped there. So when Ronald Reagan, President Ronald Reagan was elected— President Jimmy Carter, under his administration, the atomic energy commission or whatever was in charge of it at the time, developed what they called the neutron bomb, the enhanced radiation warhead, which was described as a nuclear bomb which would of course kill on impact, but the biological rays would go out, the neutron rays would go out and kill all biological life. That struck me as being immoral because it would kill anything: human beings, babies in the womb, all those kinds of things.

And so I issued a statement, thinking that when that announcement was made, that under President Ronald Reagan— Carter had decided not to do it although the technology was there, and Reagan then decided to go ahead with it. I thought surely the media are going to call me and ask me what I think about it, but they didn’t. I had drawn out the statement and put it in my desk ready for the news media to come and they didn’t. So I gave it to the editor of our paper, and I said, Here, this I think is an important development and as the bishop I think I need to take a position on it and I have. So I issued a statement and I said, Put it into the paper. Don’t put it on the front page, just put it someplace. Well, in those days we had two papers locally, the Morning Times and the evening. The Morning Times said, “Bishop decries nuclear arms race.” It got a ho-hum reaction. The next one, some headline writer picked up on that and said, “Bishop calls on Pantex workers to resign.” And all, h-pa pa pa broke out. And there was just anger here.

But eventually— well, what happened was, I received a call from Bishop Fiorenza who was then bishop at San Angelo, thanking me for making that statement. We were going to meet, the bishops of Texas in Corpus Christi, a couple of weeks later, and he said, “I’d like to put that on the agenda of the bishops’ meeting.” I said fine, asking for a resolution of support for your statement. I said, Well, do you think they’ll support it? He said, “Well let’s find out.” So we went down there and he introduced that resolution to support my statement. He had already given them copies of it. Well, it was in the news. After he passed it and it was seconded, there was a silence. And I said, Before you vote on this, you need to know that when you get back home, you’re going to be greeted by news people. They said, “That’s okay.” And they passed it unanimously. Not only that; they issued their own statement. They’ve always been consistent with this all the way through. As with the death penalty, the abolition of that that they call for constantly because these are seen as attacks on— When trying to get rid of the enemy, you also kill innocent people. That was of course also their problem with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To this day, people say it saved lives. Well, it did save American lives, of course. My own brother was over in Germany at the time, and he was preparing to go to Japan for that, and then this came and they surrendered. Now they’re saying they also saved a lot of Japanese lives because they would have died in defending their country. And so, but again, preemptive strikes and taking the lives of innocent people is immoral; there’s no question about that. So here we are still. So what happened was that got on the agenda of the National Assembly of Bishops in Washington, D.C.

And then we got into this Cardinal Bernadin in Chicago. He was appointed chairman of a committee of five. It was balanced. There was one bishop who was very strongly for, another was against it, two that were in between, and for two years they did an extensive consultation in this country. The result of that was in 1983 in May, the issuance of the Peace Pastoral: The Challenge of Peace, God’s Promise and Our Response. And in that, there was a condemnation of the possession and use, the deployment and use of— but still the judgment was that given present circumstances at the height of the Cold War, they said, well actually what happened was that under the guidance of Archbishop John, what was his name? He’s not retired, in San Francisco. We had passed a total moral condemnation of the assembly, and deployment and of course use of nuclear weapons.

The next day, Cardinal Bernadin who personally approved that said we have to reconsider. Because in June of eighty-two, there was a U.N., a second U.N. General Assembly in New York, and the question came up about this, and the secretary to the Vatican came over and their statement that the Holy Father at that time issued said that given present circumstances, one may still say that the possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrent, not for use, but as a deterrent, was still morally acceptable on the condition that when the Cold War ends, if and when it did, then that condition would be removed. Well that was in eighty-three, and he said every five years we’ll review this. In 1988 the Berlin Wall was still up, I believe, so the Cold War was still there, so they kept it going.

In 1993, it didn’t even make it on the agenda. It went to the Committee on International Policy, which kind of shelved it. And it hasn’t changed since. Bishop Tom Gumbleton retired, and I and others have tried to get it back on the agenda, but haven’t succeeded. At present circumstances, I hope that they’ll get it back on there. Meanwhile, we bishops have been concerned about, as some say, rearranging the decks of the Titanic while it’s going down instead of dealing with really big issues, dealing with the safe environment and stuff, which is important, but my goodness, let’s go on and deal with and address other issues that do away with respect for life from beginning to the end. So with all of that I’m in the position I am now. I’ve been asked, “How do you feel about what you did in that age of nuclear policy? Oh. “Were you proud of what you did?” And I said, I don’t understand that question. I just made the statement that I did, and I did it. I was really stunned when the whole world descended here, the major television networks. Even Pravda came over and asked for an interview. I said, Hmm, I don’t think so. That kind of thing. I’ve also gotten involved in another issue, and that is the issue of ministry to gay and lesbian Catholics. I got into all kinds of trouble with that one.

RAYMOND: I didn’t know about this. When was this?

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Well, when I was the bishop and I began to get— when all of these abuse cases broke in Louisiana with Larry Bothea and the diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, Archbishop Flores called us together in Beaumont and he had a priest there by the name of Michael Gemeo, who was a certified counselor over at Texas A & M. He was a priest, he was also a canon lawyer. He had a civil law degree, and he was a counselor and he laid out for us the way we needed to handle this sort of thing. Subsequently, I had him come up to Amarillo and address our priests, and then I received a request from Sister Janine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent, who were— they had started a New Ways Ministry, using a term that was used by a now deceased bishop from Brooklyn. My memory chips are eroding. But he used that term. We call it New Ways Ministry: new ways to ministry people, including gays and lesbians. And that’s still a problem for us because the church has officially in the catechism of the Catholic Church officially described homosexuality as a basically disordered function. Well, it lays a kind of a guilt trip because there are those who think they can, people can change their, what do you want to call that, their sexuality? And some try. So anyway, they wrote to me and asked to come to Amarillo. I checked around or they sent me all kinds of recommendations from other bishops. What they were doing was simply talking about that, talking about how to minister to gay and lesbian Catholics who are having a really tough time in closets and all that sort of stuff. So I did, and they simply talked about that, and you didn’t make judgments about that. I remember getting a letter from a local bishop in Oklahoma saying, “Did I not know that Cardinal James Hickey in Washington, D. C. would not allow that?"

And I said, Yes, I know that, but he’s not the bishop of Amarillo; I am. So I’ve always been something of a rebel, I’m afraid.

RAYMOND: I did not know about this. I guess it didn’t appear in Wise and Otherwise. So the new ways to date, when you say they came to Amarillo—

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Yes they did.

RAYMOND: Did they stay here or what?

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: They spoke at St. Anthony’s hospital. There was a nun there— that’s another whole sidetrack here, there was a sister there by the name of Olivia Pendergast, and she was from Ireland and she had gone back to Ireland and discovered hospice, which was totally unknown here and came back and persuaded the sisters to build a free standing hospice at St. Anthony’s hospital. They didn’t have the money to do it, so they asked— well, they had a board of directors. They needed I think it was going to cost like three million, way back in the early 1980s. So the board said okay and they invited a man named Jim Matthews from Indiana, a Methodist, who was a great fundraiser. I mean big time stuff, although he looked like an Indiana farmer— called himself Hoosier Tex. He told me about the meeting they had in which the president of the board, Bill Ware, president of Amarillo National Bank, proposed that the sisters— and they had all the big wheels come up from San Antonio because it was the Incarnate Word Health System, and about eleven hospitals in Texas and said, “We’d like to have Jim Matthews here to head up this campaign to raise the money.” They asked him there, he was the president.

He said, “Yes, I’ll do that on one condition; that you allow me to get the pastor of the First Baptist Church here to be my co-chair.” But he didn’t mention that, he just mentioned the name.

And Sister Ira, sister from the head of the thing said, “Which parish does he belong to here?”

He said, “Sister, I’m not a Catholic. I’m a Methodist.”

“Oh, well.”

And then he said, ”Sister, “ He was all for it, he had gone over to Ireland himself and he’d seen it, the work they do. In other words, they help people who are considered to be terminally ill, like six months to live to the very end, not just— So he said, “Sister, in Amarillo, to raise three million, you don’t go where the money ain’t. You go where the money are. And in Amarillo, the money are with the Baptists. That’s why I want Winfred Moore.”

Winfred Moore, a wonderful guy. And with his cooperation and support, I mean, all he had to do was put the word out and he raised four million. So Sister Olivia— so they opened it up and it began functioning. Well, one day a young man was admitted by the doctor. It takes two doctors to sign them in, and he was dying of AIDS. Now what? So she called— she asked me to come to a secret meeting of several ministers, including a young Baptist from a town outside. So she told us about this problem. This young man, she said, was dying. And he was the son of a big rancher here, and his father would come to visit him but would not go into his room because they all thought it was contagious. And so she said he stood outside in the hallway and yelled to his son, but he wouldn’t go near him. So she was trying to let us know that you don’t make judgments about how do you get this stuff. He’s here, he’s dying. And it’s interesting, one of these, this young Baptist from this little town came with his Bible, “Well here it says, blah, blah, blah,” but everyone else went along with it. And it’s doing well. And at just that time St. Anthony’s Hospital and High Plains Baptist merged into Baptist St. Anthony’s Hospital. Doing very well. That’s another issue that, somehow or another I’ve gotten into controversial issues all my life: that is the nuclear question, the gay and lesbian ministry, and other things, well, the death penalty, the murder and rape of Sister Tadea Benz, whom I knew quite well.

RAYMOND: Let me just ask. I’m a little confused. The AIDS crisis, when people were dying, a lot of people were dying at first, and when the hospice movement started, was some distance from when the sexual abuse scandal came out.

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Oh, sure.

RAYMOND: And so I’m a little confused time-wise, when Bishop Flores called you together and then the thing with Sister—

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: That was very early on.

RAYMOND: Oh, he did?

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: It was— I had just been the bishop here for a couple of years.

RAYMOND: Oh, okay.

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: The first thing that happened, of course, was the murder of Sister Tia. That was on Halloween night in 1981. And now this came after that.

RAYMOND: I see. So the August letter about Pantex in West Texas Catholic—

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Same year. I mean 1981, that was in August of 1981.

RAYMOND: And September was the bishop’s meeting in Corpus.

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Yep.

RAYMOND: And October was the tragedy.

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Sister Tadea. All of that happened like wow, you know?

RAYMOND: Now I also read that the Capuchin sisters—

BISHOP MATTHIESEN: Capuchin. Capuchin, yeah.

RAYMOND: Capuchin came in August.

continue to part two

COPYRIGHT 2008 BISHOP EMERITUS LEROY THEODORE MATTHIESEN* AND TEXAS AFTER VIOLENCE PROJECT