An interview with Dolores Leckey.

Dolores Leckey worked at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops for twenty years. At her retirement in December 1997, she headed the secretariat that staffed committees on the laity, on marriage and family, on women, and subcommittees on youth and on lay ministry. The membership of these five committees totaled thirty-five bishops.

A printed interview cannot capture Leckey's ability to listen, or her merry laugh, which she deploys often, but her responses suggest the eminent good sense, level-headedness, and straightforward speech that must have been great assets in her work at the bishops' conference.

* MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS: You have had a unique position from which to view the two most important groups in the Catholic church in the next century: the bishops and the laity. Presumably we will have no shortage of bishops as we do of clergy and religious, nor will there be a shortage of lay people. In light of the future we can imagine, the leadership quality of the bishops will be ever more important. Assess their strengths as you now see them.

* DOLORES LECKEY: For one thing, I would have to say that their leadership qualities have shifted. I don't see the kind of thing we saw in the early- to mid-eighties where bishops were really standing up for issues affecting the destiny of the world. That doesn't seem to be there now. Their focus is now internal.

In terms of recent developments around internal issues, I see this: that while there is still this seed of hope that maybe there will be more vocations to the priesthood, the bishops are looking with a little more confidence to lay leadership. That's a strength. How did this happen? I think this comes because they have more experience in their dioceses. They seem to be more confident that lay leaders are going to be able to help pass on the tradition of the church. The bishops have this enormous job and they're happy to have people collaborating with them.

* STEINFELS: Where do you think the bishops are weak, or underprepared for the challenges they face?

* LECKEY: This is a mirror image of their strengths. They are trusting of lay people, but not enough of one another, or so it appears. There isn't the kind of trust about differences that we saw in the eighties when the pastorals on peace and on the economy were being debated. Here were bishops who had serious differences and yet the bond of brotherhood or Christian solidarity was stronger than all of that. Now, with liturgical and ministerial questions, they are into camps a little bit too much. As a result, you have minimal participation on the part of some in the bishops' conference.

* STEINFELS: IS this part of the polarization question? Or do you think that people are more focused on their dioceses and less focused on the national scene?

* LECKEY: They are more focused on their dioceses, although many generously come forward and accept some national positions. With the restructuring of the NCCB, we may see a bit more participation. The last I saw of the restructuring proposal, bishops couldn't serve on more than one committee, and so many more will have to fill in.

* STEINFELS: Turn to the laity. What do you think are the strengths of the laity overall? How well prepared are they for dual responsibilities within the church and as the church in the world?

* LECKEY: When we did a consultation in preparation for the 1987 Synod on the Laity (250,000 people participated in one way or another), we noticed that the lay vocation to participate in politics, to shape the social order, was not part of how the laity saw themselves. Except for prolife people, they didn't really see running for public office or being a public servant as part of the lay vocation.

* STEINFELS: Would you say that when the laity see themselves consciously as Catholics, it is through work in the church?

* LECKEY: I have never held the view that participation in "lay ministry" somehow siphons off your energy to be a conscious Christian presence in the world. I have never seen the data that says that is true. In fact, we have evidence of the opposite. For example, we would receive a letter from a bank vice-president reporting that since he had become a lector and really paid attention to the Scriptures, he began to see people differently, began to see problems differently. This is the classic way: steep people in Scripture or in service, and in the sacraments. Unless your defenses are enormously high, liturgy is really forming people. Liturgical pioneer Virgil Michel was right!

One strength lay people have is that they are being formed through lay ministry. Another is being part of this massive spiritual quest that's going on. Go into a bookstore. Twenty-five years ago there was a little shelf of books on the occult. Now whole rooms are dedicated to spirituality, the spiritual classics. A lot of it is New Age, but a lot of it isn't. Another strength the laity bring is their experience in the ecumenical world. Lay people are very prepared, should the hopes of the encyclical on the millennium come true, that Christian unity would be achieved. They marry non-Catholics, they work with non-Catholics, and their children marry non-Catholics. We have done things side-by-side all along.

* STEINFELS: Lay people have moved into many jobs and roles once reserved for clergy and women religious. They don't usually have the long formation of religious and clergy. What do you see as the strengths they bring to these tasks? the weaknesses?

* LECKEY: Particularly young adults don't have a formation within the web of Catholic culture anymore, or conscience formation about Catholic social thought. I can still remember my first job in a New York City playground. Walking to work, as a college student, I was thinking, "I must put in a good day's work because of.... everything I've been learning in my ethics class." That was part of the air you breathed. A lot of that is lost. At college today, what is required theologically of students? A lot was required a generation ago. The Catholic intellectual life is not touching the lives of people who are very expert in other areas.

There is in the Catholic laity today, on the one side, a sense of freedom and autonomy, and on the other side, a sense of - well, the church can't say very much to us. There is a two-edged sword. There's autonomy. And there's a lot of neediness. Catholic lay people are looking for support in their family lives; they want some kind of spiritual help. They want things that will help create a meaningful life, a stable life for them in a sea of change. What kind of educational mission can address this, I don't know. Catholic laity are very well educated in most areas and they also have money. But to really believe that the church is a viable instrument for creating a just and more wholesome society - I am not sure people really believe that except super-orthodox people.

* STEINFELS: In light of this, what did you make of the Vatican document on lay ministry ("Instruction on Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priests," Origins, November 27, 1997)? At some point in reading it, I said this is not about lay people, this is about clergy.

* LECKEY: That's exactly right. It's about clergy and I think the underlying assumption is that after all it is the clergy who have to set the tone. If you are going to let your authority be run over rough shod, you are going to have serious problems. But we don't have a problem with that in the United States. We are very respectful of the roles of the clergy and roles of the laity.

The document arrived last November just as we were about to have a workshop on lay ministry for seventy bishops. Bishop James Hoffman went to Rome to receive it. He is now chairing the ad hoc committee dealing with this. The message he brought back was: Look, if you've had a problem it's going to help you. If you don't have a problem, don't get worried about it.

The Instruction had its roots in the 1987 Synod over the whole question of women and women in ministry - I think it was the flurry over altar girls; now we have altar girls in most places. So ten years have passed while they were trying to work on it.

* STEINFELS: Do you think there is polarization today within the church?

* LECKEY: I think there is a polarization. I think it is more methodological than substantive. It has to do with a certain pedagogy. There are people in the church who think that the bishops have relinquished their proper authority by listening to the laity, and listening to other people. And that, in fact, there would be no problems if the bishops would talk long and loud. Another teaching method is to engage in a dialogical exchange. Some people do not accept this as a legitimate method and do not want to participate in a dialogue. What's to be said? If the bishops would just do their job, and tell everybody what's right and true, then the church won't have any problems.

There are others, I include myself, who say that we learn best by being engaged with one another. And I go back to one of the greatest documents in the church, Ecclesiam suam, in which Paul VI laid out a way of being in the church. You engage in a dialogue. It's a path to holiness. We have to listen to God within us. We have to listen to the expression of God in others. We have to listen to the magisterium. We have to listen to the tradition. But if you feel there is nothing to be listened to, in another person, that goes back to trust. Religious experience depends on a certain kind of trust.

* STEINFELS: AS Cardinal Joseph Bernardin cast the issue in the Common Ground Initiative, polarization occurs on all fronts, among conservatives, among liberals. From all of the work you've done, what would you say are the main failures of liberals and conservatives?

* LECKEY: Liberals think dialogue will solve everything. That's one. If you just talk enough, that somehow.... Liberals are dealing in stereotypes as much as conservatives are dealing in them. This is one of the things I really learned at the NCCB, that lay people hold a stereotype of the bishop. It was of this great corporate bishop who sat around trying to dream up mean things to do to people. When they would finally meet flesh-and-blood bishops, they'd be blown out of the water. To see that this was a person striving to be a good, holy Christian, listening to the people, trying to do the very best he could. They had this totally bizarre image.

I think we've done that to each other. From the liberal point of view there's been a problem in not recognizing the strengths that are there, the things that are worth preserving in the tradition. There's a kind of automatic discarding. Or that the ordination of women will solve every problem. Or that married clergy will solve every problem. You know what gets people? It's not ordination of women; it's not whether or not we have a married clergy. It's down to a very basic human relations problem. It's how they're treated in their local church.

* STEINFELS: So, you don't think the women's ordination question is a big fracturing issue in the church, as Humanae vitae was?

* LECKEY: I do not. I do not.... Not in the lives of ordinary women, day in and day out. Nor is it in the lives of feminist theologians. The ones I know are hanging in.

* STEINFELS: About conservatives? What do you think are their weaknesses or failings?

* LECKEY: I think it has to do with equating style and expression with substance. It's not the Creed and it's not the fathers of the church and the mothers of the church. It's this: Should we even talk about a certain topic? What I discovered in trying to bring some very, very conservative people into the discussion, is that they don't want to talk to anybody else. It's pointless as far as they are concerned.

* STEINFELS: Lots of people talk about generational differences, people who grew up before the council and people who grew up after. That gets intercut with yuppies and Generation X. What do you think?

* LECKEY: Just in informal conversations with young people that I've run into through the network that everybody's children seem to have: first of all, they are fascinated that there are churches where you can go and there is a beautifully put-together liturgy. I find young people fascinated by Trappists! By some of our old customs. Statues! Sacred space. These are the same people who are reading all of these spirituality books. We have a lot of this in our tradition, and we were so busy changing things....

* STEINFELS: What consequences do you foresee for the foreclosure or the closure on women's ordination? I ask that because people say: Oh women, they hate the church. I meet young men who know young women who won't go to church. But I don't see a lot of that. What do you think?

* LECKEY: I don't see that either. The young people I know would not object to the ordination of women; they would probably even like it. But it's not going to drive them from the church. On the other hand, I don't think that young people are worrying about doctrine one way or the other. They're worrying about their community life.

* STEINFELS: Do you have any answers for questions I haven't asked?

* LECKEY: This is not a question, or an answer, but a hope. I would really like to see the NCCB undertake something to do with the global economy. That's a hard one to get at - your pocketbook. The other thing that I would like to see is something about lay people in the public service of society. I'd love to see the bishops do something on that and come together around that, and hold up public service as a true vocation.

Margaret O'Brien Steinfels is the editor of Commonweal.