A Living Stories Project
The stories of a community often relate to leadership;
sometimes to horror stories of what people had to endure and sometimes, those sparkling
moments when leadership was able to transform and inspire. Either way, the tradition pays
testimony to the esteem and value placed upon leadership.
No Regrets
I can honestly say at this
stage in my life that there are no frustrations about things that I have not been able to
do. I could do janitor work right now because I feel I have done a lot of stuff and have
no regrets. Some men feel that they have not been given the opportunity and I think that's
true. I was very conscious of that when I was Provincial. I used to say that to some
fathers,"I wish you could come with me to this meeting because that would give you a
broader view of the Oblates. You are so locked into your little place, you don't have any
vision around that and I felt badly about that. I felt some of us were privileged because
of whatever and others were just the hard workers in the trenches, doing their work but no
one knew about them and no one seemed to appreciate them.
Do you want to be Pastor?
I remember one Oblate. He had said to me as an old man,'I have never been
pastor." And I said, "What?" I don't know about that because maybe
some men were not appreciated in the past. I said,"Would you like to be pastor? I'll
arrange it. I'll get you a small place if you'd like to do that before you die because he
wasn't sick. I said I don't want you to die without that. And he looked at me and
said,"Let me think about that." But then he came to me and said,"No,I
don't want to do that. I'm alright now." But it affected me that he said to me
that he had never been pastor and he was such a sweet person. He had been asked to fill in
but he had never been pastor. So those things got to me.
Father Hanley changed the story
Father Hanley literally was our Savior, He changed our story and the leadership scene
in the province....He started another model of leadership, an empathetic model,
someone who would listen, a provincial who would dialogue, a provincial who would
negotiate. Father Burns would say to me at the table, "When I sent out all the
obedience's to the province, I would leave town knowing the men would have to be at their
new assignment in two weeks. Your job is much more difficult because you had to talk to
the men and negotiate every one of these contracts and ask 'Would you do this?' and 'Why
would you do this?' and try to get them what they wanted to do. Father Burns
was aware of that and able to appreciate a style so different to his own.
A new model of Leadership
Dick Hanley won the men over by his great kindness. His willingness to help out. He
volunteered so much. That is to me my biggest pain as an Oblate that he went to Rome and
became the Superior General and what happened to him. He got caught doing what he was used
to doing at the provincial level which was supporting the local Oblates and not
playing the political game in Rome. I admired him. He has always been a loss to us
and the Congregation. He was only with us for three years but he was a healer.
Backing the men or backing the Bishop?
In one term of office, the Province lost 18 men and mostly from the schools, and the
leadership did not have any insights into what was going on. We had a teachers strike and
the leadership was more concerned to back the bishop over the men. One night, the
Provincial went around to each of the Oblates at the school and confronted them with the
question whether they backed him and the Bishop or the staff who were asking for a living
wage. They said they backed the staff and so they were moved. I remember escaping the
purge because as the youngest, I volunteered to attend the phones. Much later, I grew to
appreciate the difficulties that the Provincial back then had to face but I recall saying
to him ,"You should have backed your own men." That's why Dick Hanley was such a
model, in that he always backed his men.
He is still our brother
My job as provincial was to back the men and not to curry favor with the bishops.
Certainly we want to do what the bishops ask us to do but I don't do that against
our own men. Certainly we had incidents as provincial where one of our guys came out as
gay and the Bishop wrote me a scorching letter saying, "How can you ...you are a
disgrace." And I'd write back,"Well I realize your concern, but he is still our
brother." Only then would he come off his high horse. Or I'd come back to the bishop
who had said,"You've never had a sober pastor there," and I'd come back
and say,"You've certainly had priests with this problem and our man is trying to
change his ways." Father Hanley was a model to me of the Provincial in that he
backed his men. I think that's what a leader is supposed to do. You are supposed to keep
good relations with the bishops but when your men are on the spot, you don't abandon them.
An unencumbered Province
I think we are freer here of the baggage of history. We have found the amalgamation
process easier because we don't have any institutions that we had to give up. We are
unencumbered allowing us to accept termination and to accept new men.
Evoking the presence of the legends for the future
If we evoked the presence of Father Burns or Dick Hanley and asked them what they might
say about our future, I think that they would call us to courage, be adventuresome, have
faith in God, trust the future. They have created the future. They were hopeful men and
that is why I am hopeful. We are going to make this transition. I don't know how
this is going to go, I do not know what shape this is all going to take but we are
going to make it and I believe that because we have their history and their lives. They
put their lives on the line. A lot of men have done a lot of work to make the province
work and if we don't believe that, we deserve to die. I am ready to go with it and to go
with what they want us to go with. I am ready to leave behind what I need to leave behind
and if they call me to something, lets go with it.
Being open to the call
I am very happy here, very contented with the work I am doing but I know if the call
comes to leave here, I will have to go. My regret is that I am not and have not been
capable of being a missionary in the classical sense going to a foreign country and
doing those heroic things that missionaries are wont to do, but the one thing I held to is
that I was able to be called. To leave home, to be uprooted, to let go of things, that was
a missionary call. If the province asked me to do something, I was always ready to do it.
The List of Provincial Leaders 1953-1999
Chas Burns
J. McDonald
Ed Collins
Richard Hanley
Ron Carignon
Paul Waldie
A. Harris
Paul Nourie
David Ullrich
Back to the top.
[ Day One ] [ Day Two ] [ Day Three ] [ Day Four ] [ Day Five ] [ Day Six ] [ Day Seven ] [ Day Eight ] [ Day Nine ] [ Day Ten ] [ Summing Up ]
If you recall stories associated
with leadership, you can share them by going to the Living Stories Discussion Page and
post your comments under Oblates of the West.
