Red Dirt Catholics
Join Jayce, James and guests from "Red Dirt" Oklahoma as they discuss what evangelization and discipleship looks like in real life.
Red Dirt Catholics
Pastoral Leadership (ft. Archbishop Paul Coakley)
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Jayce and James sat down with Archbishop Paul Coakley from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, to talk about pastoral leadership.
The Archbishop's perspective on addressing difficult topics with those entrusted to his spiritual care and standing as a guardian between them and the perils of modern society illuminates the profound responsibility held by those who lead.
Register now for the 2025 Discipleship Conference for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City! This full-day, bilingual event will feature amazing speakers, breakout sessions, adoration, Mass, confessions, vendors and more at the Oklahoma City Convention Center on Saturday, August 9. Register now to get the early-bird price at OKDisciple.org.
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Links and other stuff from the show:
Pastoral Letter, "On the Unity of the Body and Soul:" archokc.org/pastoral-letters
Red Dirt Catholics Email Address: reddirtcatholics@archokc.org
The Book "From Christendom to Apostolic Mission" (Digital and Print): Amazon
The Social Dilemma: https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224
Daily Examen Prayer: https://bit.ly/309As8z
Lectio Divina How-To: https://bit.ly/3fp8UTa
Welcome back to Red Dirt Catholics. We have Archbishop Coakley here today. Archbishop, thanks so much for joining us. He's rounding out the end of our series on leadership and we're going to be talking about pastoral leadership today. Archbishop, what's going on in your world right now?
Speaker 2:well what's going on. Actually. We're in the approaching the halfway point of the Lenten season, so this is really kind of my busy season between now and Pentecost, because we're approaching Holy Week, of course, but confirmations are in high gear now. Last couple of nights I've traveled to Ardmore. Last night I was in Edmond at St Monica, and so there's a lot of those sorts of activities going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it just runs, it does.
Speaker 2:It's a marathon, it's a daily Between now and Pentecost or so I'd say two to three, sometimes four confirmations a week.
Speaker 1:So it's good.
Speaker 2:Keeps me on the move.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crazy. Do you all parishes? Is the experience pretty similar everywhere you go, or is there a wide variety.
Speaker 2:No, there's quite a variety really, depending on the local culture, the local parishes I mean. They can be very small or they could be huge mega events. But it's something I really enjoy just to get around and visit our parishes and meet our young people, and so it's invigorating for me. I mean, between the confirmation tour and each year I also try to get to each of our Catholic schools and celebrate Mass and visit classrooms. So those are probably my prime opportunities that I really embrace just to do visitations in our local communities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome, I saw, I follow.
Speaker 2:St.
Speaker 1:Mary's in Ponca City's Catholic school and they gave you like a paper miter, yeah, they did, yeah, yeah, it was very clever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was just up in Ponca City, st Mary's last week, I think it was, and yeah, it actually is a pretty good fit. You know, the miter week, I think it was, and yeah, it actually is a pretty good fit.
Speaker 3:Oh, was it the miter? Yeah, I don't know. They got your head size.
Speaker 2:Origami miter I don't know who figured out how to design that.
Speaker 1:Fold a piece of paper into a miter.
Speaker 2:That's pretty crazy. That's impressive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then we have some Instagram. We have some Instagram troubles in the writer household that I'm really interested in talking about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, over our morning cup of coffee, Emily was processing her first cancellation from the cancel culture. It's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1:Emily is just, I mean, she's just a fire starter, you know. She's just, you know, with taking pictures of her house. It's just a controversial topic, it's just super easy to get canceled.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we had a brand that had collaborated with her and they were exchanging some communication via email and she'd mentioned that many of her followers were giving up social media for Lent and shared that she suspected lots of her followers that she didn't know. The 40,000 or so are Christian as well and a couple days later we noticed she was untagged and removed from anything from this brand's affiliation. So she was processing through that kind of frustrated. I was kind of championing the martyrdom, you know.
Speaker 1:I was actually fixing to say like maybe we need to petition Pope Francis for like digital martyrdom, but that's a thing.
Speaker 2:I don't know if we go that far, but hatred of the faith through digital cancellation?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean Jesus does promise some persecution and so I think in some sense notes that she's doing it right.
Speaker 2:You can see some Christian undertones just with what's in the home and what she's reading as they get posted there, the crucifixes on the wall in every room and things like that.
Speaker 3:But yeah, I did look up the social media manager and found that he may not be as aligned as we are with some things. So it made sense, but I think I don't know. It was interesting she and I recently listened to a topic on the briefing and he was talking about how the Grammys were going down and the amount of people who viewed it, and I think a good kind of we can kind of take this as an exhortation of anyone out there that has a social media following or influences culture in some way. One way to win the culture war is to be supplanted in it and exhibiting the true, good and beautiful.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I don't know for her. I think it's an encouragement. Well, build the following, that's following you for the right things and subtly influence the folks who like the interior design stuff and they can.
Speaker 3:She mentioned a story One person she followed had like a post where they had a full statue like a sculpture of Madonna and child, I think in in a room and she became kind of like even more of a fan, because she saw the little hint, you know, and looked her up and the gal had like six or seven kids and she was like, okay, this gal's gotta be Catholic, you know. Um, so I think it's, it's kind of fun to you know be who you are, and sure some people will, will cancel, and yeah, and others will be, you know, seeds will be sown and people will find encouragement in that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I was in Chattanooga last week for a uh is this gathering of 15 or so different diocesan youth directors?
Speaker 1:where we all get together and brainstorm ideas, share time, and one of my favorite parts as a very competitive person is that throughout the week there was a competition for points. So, like one night we got split into teams and we all had to be put into different rooms and we were given six different boxes that had a topic on it and it was some kind of puzzle like. One was music and it had 50 different lyric sheets and you had all these different teeny tiny like words that said you, you, you've complete the puzzle of the lyric and you had to. You had to get it right before you could move on one night or another. Another one was like we there's this game called is it a fish? I actually did it with the quinceanera retreat the other day, where you put a like. Imagine you put a powerpoint up and someone has to like grab a water bottle. That's like two people are going against each other and you have to grab a water bottle in between them and you start pressing, go and going through this PowerPoint and it's just different animals, but every now and then it's a fish and the second it's a fish. You have to grab the thing.
Speaker 1:So we competed all week by the end of the week I had amassed the most amount of points, but that didn't mean that I won the trophy. There was a final game where you had to toss a ball into a specialized basket. That was really hard to get the ball into and I completely choked and just didn't sink a single one. The winner was from the Diocese of Dallas and he only needed two. So basically, for every point that you got, you got a shot at the ball. And he had just like 20 points so not a whole lot of difference in number of shots and I bricked it. It was a miserable defeat.
Speaker 2:So what's your takeaway from that?
Speaker 1:My takeaway from that is to get better at random teeny tiny youth ministry games so that next year. I'll just practice all year long, until next year. That's awesome. Well, archbishop, would you open us in a prayer as we transition?
Speaker 2:Certainly. Let us pray In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Good and gracious God, our loving Father, we give you praise and thanks as we continue our Lenten journey toward the celebration of the great Paschal Triduum. We ask that you open our hearts and minds to the prompting of your Spirit. Give us insight, wisdom and understanding and recognition of the wonderful, powerful things that you are doing in our lives, in our church. Help us to be your instrument to win the world for Christ. Bless our conversation today. We ask all of these things through Christ, our Lord. Amen, Amen, In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Speaker 1:Amen, so pastoral leadership.
Speaker 2:Pastoral leadership.
Speaker 1:What does that even mean? I've heard pastoral, I've heard pastoral leadership and I've heard it used in a lot of different contexts.
Speaker 2:I've heard it used in a lot of different contexts. Well, you've been talking, I know leadership and pastoral leadership is a particular kind and style and way of leading. I think that is, I would say, ultimately rooted in the witness, the example, the teaching of Jesus the good shepherd, the supreme pastor. Pastoral leadership comes from the Latin word pastor, which means a shepherd, so it's a way of leading that is rooted in the gospel. I would say it's a way of leading and people of faith providing for the spiritual needs. Providing for the spiritual needs, guarding, enlightening, nourishing a flock entrusted to one after the manner of Jesus the good shepherd.
Speaker 2:So pastoral leadership is exercised, obviously by our Holy Father, pope Francis, and bishops who are charged with shepherding God's people and their collaborators who are priests and pastors of parishes. But pastoral leadership can be, by analogy, exercised as well by others, by all of the baptized, I would say, who strive to lead with a shepherd's heart and to form a people to move in a particular direction which is ultimately oriented toward Christ. Calls for us to be healing and reconciling and teaching. Yeah, so it's really broad. It's broad, very broad.
Speaker 1:It's really broad, so let's dive into that a little bit more. Like you mentioned guarding. You know, as a pastor, what does guarding look like? I mean we say shepherd a lot and it makes sense with pastor, you know, like guarding against wolves and things. Do you have some examples? Of when you were a priest in your parish, where you were guarding against wolves, or even like as a bishop, like, tell us about the wolves you've killed.
Speaker 2:Oh, the wolves? No, but that's right. It's our duty to protect the flock from, maybe, from error, and maybe we do that. We guard the flock because of through our teaching ministry or through admonishing. We do that in the confessional. We do it to guard and protect from unseen or unrecognized dangers, whether they be in the culture, whether they be in society.
Speaker 2:So there's all sorts of different ways in which we need to have our antennae up, exercising spiritual discernment to recognize where the dangers to the flock might be at any particular time time, certainly when I was a parish priest, when I was a priest in Wichita. I remember this many, many years ago, 30 years ago. One of the things that we were dealing with at that time was we had the most notorious abortionist in the United States in Wichita, and one summer an organization called Operation Rescue came to town to kind of raise up the profile and warn about the snares and the traps of disregarding the dignity and sanctity of human life. Just to be in a family, as a parent, as a father, guarding your flock, guarding your family, your children, exercising your responsibility to discipline appropriately, to teach and to instruct, to warn of the dangers that are ever present.
Speaker 1:Yeah, last night. Last night I was picking Peter up from his grandma's house. He went over there for dinner and he had found this little foam sword that he really likes to play with, but I don't know why he just started chewing on it. He was just chewing on it like crazy and I could see that there was plastic that could mess with him, so I look at my son.
Speaker 1:I'm like, hey, was just like chewing on it like crazy, and I could see that there was like plastic that like could mess with him. So I'm like so I look at my son, I'm like, hey, do not chew on that anymore. And five-year-old's man five seconds later back in the it's back.
Speaker 2:It's back in his mouth and and so that.
Speaker 1:So this is an opportunity of like in a on a much smaller level, not battling a notorious abortionist, but where I just got to like talk with my son. I'm like, hey, I said this, this is what you did. I think this was a poor choice and I need to help. I need to use this moment as a reminder for you. So we had to like go to bed 20 minutes later or something like that. That's like the worst thing in the world to him.
Speaker 3:Having to go to bed earlier is like you would think that I'm torturing the poor boy with his reaction to that.
Speaker 1:He cried all the way over. He's like Daddy, do you? Daddy, are you mad at me? Why are you doing this? I'm like, I'm not mad, I'm just trying to help you understand. I think it's working. Um, so that's. That's an example from the from the discipline side of things.
Speaker 3:With that, however, you have you seen fatherhood with pastoral stuff james, yeah, as you draw the analogy to a shepherd, like the first quote that came to mind was um. A shepherd, like the first quote that came to mind was um was blessed, stanley Roethlisberger's, you know, kind of famous quote like a shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger. And I think, whether we find ourself as a father or a spiritual father or priest or bishop or a leader in the church, there's, there's often the temptation to kind of ignore the sign of danger or to avoid the sign of danger. And I think, like our own spiritual attunement should be, like you said, the antenna up. We should be kind of actively trying to be aware of what the sign of danger is.
Speaker 3:And then the mark of a shepherd would be that he's always present to the flock. You know, he's very, he's very, he's near. Is he always like, vigilant and active in that Like, do we always see his vigilance? No, not necessarily, but he's ready, right. And so I think, just listening to that analogy of a shepherd that came into my head there, I think in my own areas of leadership, whether I'm leading a Bible study and discipling some guys, or I'm listening to what's happening in my family, there's especially around difficult things, let's say, like sexuality or another hot button topic. There's a temptation to avoid or just not see the hard thing because we don't have the words for it. But I think we have to have the courage to take a step into the danger. Um so, to carry the shepherd analogy, if we can kind of hear the wolf on the outskirt like we're probably going to change our position, you know between the wolf and the flock.
Speaker 3:And so I think, um, for me, like pastoral leadership is often going near the danger, like likest the danger and not being scared to even potentially engage with the danger amidst their flock. So, like one that I'm actively with where our culture is, that I'm keeping in mind is like my son. My oldest son is approaching seven, so approaching the age of reason. He's also clearly, as a young boy, like starting to notice the opposite sex. You know that women are beautiful, and so my wife and I are. You know it would be inappropriate at now to introduce things that he's not yet thinking, but it'd also be inappropriate to ignore, right? So if he's talking about a young woman in his class, like because we'd be scared of introducing something that's dangerous, we might avoid that. But but a shepherd should, a pastoral leader should actually kind of lean in at what's appropriate for now. Um and so for us that's looked like little conversations about how we should relate to women and how we should
Speaker 3:respect women, um and uh and to kind of enter the messiness a little bit. But I think similarly, like, if we're to me pastoral, I can't be separated from a relationship, and so, like, if we're close with people and we're hearing something we need to like, lean into that relationship, so in, like Bible study or discipleship, we'll get a clue. Someone might gently resist a statement, avoid a statement, avoid a conversation. Their eye contact could change. We'll get a clue to know we should lean in a little bit, and I think a good pastor should lean in. I can't imagine what it'd be like to be a parish priest, but we'd probably hear little rumblings of things or a resistance to a homily or avoidance of a topic, and that would be the time to start having active conversation.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, you know one of the things I think Pope Francis has emphasized so much. He's introduced, in a certain sense, a whole new lexicon of terminology that maybe we hadn't been familiar with before, maybe because of his own cultural background. But he's certainly spoken a lot about accompaniment, and I think accompaniment is a way of exercising, it's a form of pastoral leadership where you lean in, you're with the people, whether it's as a father with his family or a parish priest with his parishioners. We walk the same path and we don't remain aloof.
Speaker 2:We can't remain aloof because we can't guard, protect guide unless we're walking with the people and, I would say as well, in casting a vision, knowing where we're going. I think that's an important part of pastor leadership, whether it be for the bishop, for the pastor, for the father of a family, to know where we're going and to have a vision. So that's an element as well. I would conclude yeah staying close and knowing who
Speaker 1:these are, like, james, when you were talking about it the other day, I was doing an interview with somebody for summer camp, like someone who was interested in being a counselor, so we asked a couple of different questions to get a sense of like where their spiritual maturity at is and different things like that. And through our conversation and listening I could tell that this particular person just like had a really low self-esteem for themselves and like probably struggled with scrupulosity in a little bit and some of just the ways that he would phrase his relationship to God. And so I took a moment even though I'm in the middle of an interview, you know, where I'm just trying to like objectively determine whether or not this person's a good fit for our camp. I just like couldn't help myself and I was like, hey, you know, like you are good and you are loved and you're're like you're a son, you know, and just like stopped it.
Speaker 1:But it was a great moment of like where the Lord was allowed me to be able to accompany this guy and like be there and say, hey, some of the ways that you're phrasing these things like denotes what isn't reality and is a lie. So that's a great thing to dispel To bring in truth. I imagine is a huge way, and probably a huge way as a bishop that you can impact an archdiocese and you've done that in multiple different ways, like through different letters. We had our podcast about the gender ideology stuff that you sent a letter out for the faithful. What are some other ways that truth is like a key factor?
Speaker 2:Well, in everything really, certainly in the moral life, but just in terms of presenting our faith and its integrity. You know, the truth without love can be misused. So to preach the truth, to speak the truth in love, I think, is an important way of being a pastoral leader. Certainly, we can't avoid the truth. People are entitled to the truth, to the fullness of the gospel, and that has to be presented in its integrity. But we don't preach the truth as a weapon. We don't, as people like to say nowadays, weaponize. We can't weaponize the truth, we have to offer it, we propose it. We can't impose it, but certainly to preach the truth in love is the duty of every shepherd, of every pastor, of every pastoral leader in the church. So yeah, that's critically important.
Speaker 3:I love the emphasis on truth with love, because if we ignored truth and focused on love alone, we might it becomes mere sentimentality.
Speaker 3:Right the danger we might prefer tolerance or comfort. If we focus on truth alone, we might disrupt things and be led astray as well. I'm curious if you have any advice to someone in a leadership position in the area of perhaps changing something or addressing something that's off. Because sometimes we hear like a critic of perhaps a leader or priest, where he comes in and makes a needed change and someone might say, well, he didn't do that, so pastorally right, and I think that's a good piece of feedback. But it could also be dangerous if we leaned on, if we looked at pastoral meaning only gentle or something, and so I wanted, like, how would you advise someone, from a matter of discernment, to not be too polar on our view of pastoral? You know, like always leading and making the right decision, you know, whatever the cost, but then also maybe always preferring to not ruffle the feathers too much. You know there's kind of a mean in between those extremes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a time for everything. I think, as you're describing the good and gentle Jesus, I was recalling last Sunday's gospel.
Speaker 2:Jesus comes in and cleanses the temple you know as a whip of cords and drives out the money changers and upends their tables, and so, yeah, there's a time for firm action and even righteous anger.
Speaker 2:But I think in order to bring the hammer down, I think as a pastor or leader you really need to have first kind of demonstrated a real care and concern and compassion and love for the people that you're trying to lead. And I think if we have established a relationship of trust and they really believe that we care for them, that we want their good, then we're in a better position to speak the hard truths. But that has to be done generally, I'd say, in the context of a relationship that's being established or has been established. That gives us a great deal more freedom to deliver the hard message. But to come in and anything any pastor, any priest who's receiving a new assignment hopefully will know that you don't come in and upend the money changers' tables the first Sunday in the parish and institute all kinds of changes right away without first demonstrating that you're there to serve and you're there to build up the community, not to tear it down, but again that takes a great deal of sensitivity.
Speaker 2:Tear it down, but again that takes a great deal of sensitivity. Kind of one of the tension that most pastors will face as they come into a place, particularly a new place for them, is you hear the refrain well, we've always done it this way. I say well, that's not necessarily a reason to keep doing it that way.
Speaker 2:But before coming in and making sweeping changes, we need to maybe make time to observe, to listen, to ask questions, to understand and then eventually to discern a way forward. So those are some tensions that every pastoral leader needs to live with that every pastoral leader needs to live with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just like again. It's just so rooted in relationship right. Like you're there, you're seeing things happen. You're seeing things you know, good and bad, and instead of saying I see this, let's change it. You know, and it just being like from an objective piece, like the pastoral leader, if I'm understanding you correctly, would say I see this.
Speaker 1:let's have a conversation about the entirety of it, and it's like a process. You go through a process and you think it through through and you bring key people in on it, and then you can come to a decision in that way, or at least allow them to be heard if you're discerning, removing something or adding something or whatever the change might be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah that the change might be. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think the pastor may recognize clearly and immediately, maybe, where changes need to be made, but you have to bring the people along and make sure that what you're going to propose, that they will be capable of receiving. And that may take a little bit of time until trust is established and reasons can be marshaled why you would propose such a change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Do you have a story about that that you know? Maybe you remove names and things being our bishop but I'm actually really curious of like walking us through, like the thought process that you've had before, where you're like walking in and like I'd like to make this change and maybe we need to talk about Wichita instead of here or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or some other place, some place far away, some place far away that's not here. Yeah, well, I think it's—I'm trying to think of a particular instance that— I suppose I'm going to just talk about my experience here. Actually, I arrived here 13 years ago as the new archbishop. 13 years ago as the new archbishop and I inherited, if you will, an archdiocese that had been very stable. Archbishop Beltran, my predecessor, had been a much beloved shepherd and pastor and things were not broken. So it was a good opportunity for me to come in. It wasn't a fixer-upper kind of an archdiocese, but after being here for a year or two I began to recognize I needed to cast my own vision of pastoral leadership. Where are we going now?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Where are we going from here now? Where are we going from here?
Speaker 2:And so one of the things that we did. I consulted with our presbyteral council, the priest council and some of the chancery staff and did my own reflection and prayer on it and then I decided we were going to do a process for envisioning process. I think we called it to really try to articulate a vision of where we are going, and it was a process that took months and maybe near on a year to really gather and marshal the right people and really assess, understand what the needs are and then begin to cast a vision, which ultimately led to what's become almost a tagline. But it's really the Great Commission, you know, go make disciples. We use that so often here in the archdiocese. But that was a it wasn't always there.
Speaker 2:It wasn't always there and it came as a fruit of this process of pastoral listening, pastoral discernment, gathering a people, a group of leaders, clergy, lay, religious, to help me to articulate a vision. And we've been in the process of striving to implement that vision. Striving to implement that vision which led ultimately to the kind of reorganization, restructuring of virtually every office here in the pastoral center, regrouping some of the talents and some of the responsibilities. In other words, it didn't happen overnight, it was a general, it was a patient process and I think patience is what was necessary. I could have come in and recognized, you know, and said this is where we're going Buy in or get off the bus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, buy in or get out. You know, go to Tulsa, baby, get out of here.
Speaker 2:In the reorganization that we undertook, we didn't let people go. We cast a vision and let people know that this is where we're going. If you're excited about this, join us. If you think that you need to look for something else or maybe serve the church in a different way, we'll hold it against you. But we tried to give everyone the freedom to accept the vision that had been articulated or not. But I think people have bought into the vision by now and that was ultimately what led to the ultimately to promoting the cause of Blessed Stanley, which had already been well underway. But then, after his beatification, to discern whether or not we needed to build a shrine and what kind of shrine we would build and what other purpose might the shrine serve, which was we had a great need for to serve a blossoming and exploding Hispanic community and which needed more Spacious places to worship. So, anyway, it was a process that led to, through a lot of different avenues of decision-making, to where we are right now.
Speaker 1:A changing of the vision or really, maybe not even changing, but just like a Refining. A refining I like the way that you worded that and the patience that you had through that process. All of this preceded my time at the Archdiocese, I'm sure, but you mentioned there's something that I was excited to drill into is like the conversations that you had of like this is where we're going now. We've just like taken a year to all discuss this together. This is my decision as your shepherd and pastor, and did you have any pushback of like, oh, I'm not super interested in that vision. And as a leader, how do you deal in that sphere?
Speaker 2:Well, you try to. Obviously, if people choose to go a different direction, you don't hold it against them. I mean, everybody needs to be, to be free to, to, to join and share in the vision and help to advance and propose the vision to others. But I think for the most part people were ready for that.
Speaker 2:So it has to be done with respect for the person, and they're not everybody's maybe ready for those kind of changes. People get accustomed to and comfortable with where we are and where we've always done things and maybe what becomes the status quo and human nature being what it is, sometimes it's hard to take the risk of imagining that there are other ways to do things.
Speaker 3:But we didn't have wholesale we certainly never set out to clean house or anything like that.
Speaker 2:We had a lot of people that were here for many many, many years serving the church and our archdiocese in the pastoral offices here. Think we were very fortunate that uh, the people that stayed and bought in uh under a new leader, um, uh have been great team players, so um, that's awesome one.
Speaker 3:One thing I've I've appreciated being a part of that process in some respect and inheriting the earlier parts of it as we moved here was the reality that it wasn't just you. If we take the analogy of sheep further, that while we're a flock and we're hearing your voice and the Lord's voice and obediently following it as humans and people made in God's image, we're able to kind of transform from sheep to mini shepherd as well to help. But there's a leadership quote I used to have on my wall when I was kind of a young aspiring leader. That in the quote kind of described a leader and then it ended his aims fulfilled. They say we did this ourselves.
Speaker 3:And I see a lot of that where folks have championed some of the pastoral letters because they feel as if they were a part of that vision and so they're almost kind of sharing that as their own.
Speaker 3:I've seen it with even new people who have a missionary mind coming to the diocese like reading the pastoral letter and sharing it, or a small group of discipleship using the pastoral letter as a tool to kind of share the vision and I really love how you've done that. I remember you spoke at Theology on Tap once and you made a comment like I can't evangelize Oklahoma City, my office can't evangelize Oklahoma City. This is for you and I think the empowerment that comes from a process of time that has the leader really immersing himself amongst the sheep. It almost lets the sheep see themselves as leaders as well and I think if the whole flock is moving, then in one of us gets a little astray, we can see pretty clearly we're not with the flock anymore and so you could have probably got some of us early adopters out going this way and lost a big chunk of the flock. But now many of us are just caught up in the current of the flocks moving this way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate that. One of the things when we first started the process, when it was after my first year or two in the Archdiocese to really begin to discern and to try to cast a vision, the expression we used was try to articulate what I called a mutually shared vision. I didn't want it to be my vision. It had to be a vision that there would be buy-in for, and so we brought together some key leaders from all across the archdiocese, different states of life, and tried to articulate a vision that would be shared. And that was the concern as well that there needs to be broad, broad buy-in to, to a pastoral vision and in order for it to be, uh, be able to gain traction, yeah, and not to, um, create division.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and not to just let something, to not let something just be some like a book that we gave to everybody and you know, and that was it you know, to and you know, and that was it, you know, to allow something to gain traction, actually seep into the pores, and I really think that it has, in a huge way, like Go Make Disciples is like everyone's on board with that thought process, when I remember it being like somehow controversial, you know, like thinking about it like 10 years ago, which is interesting, that's awesome. I feel like experience in leading pastorally is a really big teacher within it all of just like you know, being young we probably aren't as patient in different things, and so we make that mistake. And then we learn that and we're like, oh, I should have. Now I understand why what my priest was doing. You know back time, do you have a particular time where you remember like learning a key principle of that?
Speaker 2:Maybe upon reflection I would, but I wanted to mention something that was hugely instrumental for me as a young man when I was in seminary. I just started seminary my second year in seminary, the pope died. In fact, two popes died, but my first month in first theology, the cardinals in conclave elected Cardinal Ortilla as the next pope, who took the unusual name of John Paul II, but he was 60 years old at the time of his election maybe 59 actually, which is a lot younger than I am right now. But he was robust, he was vigorous and he was attractive. He was charismatic, I mean, and I was just beginning seminary, so he was a man who just inspired the heck out of me. I mean, I was just.
Speaker 2:I said I'm all in with this guy and you know, he took his position on the world stage during the time of solidarity in Glasnost, leading to the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Speaker 2:He was everywhere implementing the Second Vatican Council in an authentic manner to bring the church together.
Speaker 2:So I mean, I think what I would like to emphasize by pointing that out is that we need examples, we need inspiring leaders to show the way, because that was he was the only pope that I knew all of my years as a seminarian and all of my years as a priest, and ultimately he was the one that appointed me a bishop and then died about four months, five months after my ordination, my Episcopal ordination. But he was, for me personally, in my life, I'd say the pastoral leader par excellence, I mean a real shepherd who didn't run, he didn't back down. I mean he faced down global communism and he dealt with controversies within the church and kind of led the church to a new era, if you will, which would be basically the full reception of the Second Vatican Council. Yeah, I mean, I think that the personal qualities of a leader cannot be underestimated, as to the impact that a leader can have in a home, in a parish, in a diocese or globally within the church.
Speaker 3:The thing I love about John Paul II as an example there is. You cited a lot of things we saw externally, um, but also as we read about him and get to know more, we see lots of examples where he kept the smell of the flock, you know, where he was very much amidst the people, like he had the families from the, the salt and light movement that that he stayed in relationship with, in fact, like invited them into them into the Vatican to stay or would still go on trips with them and so, like you know, one huge area like the theology of the body, for example, that he's written on and influenced.
Speaker 3:And there's very much like a JP2 generation amongst us, younger Catholics that have embraced him um, that came from a place of great proximity to and relational, relational closeness to, different people in the flock. Now could he have relationship with everyone in the worldwide church? No, that'd be impossible.
Speaker 1:But he somehow kind of did.
Speaker 2:But he kind of did because he was the first global pope. I mean, he's the one that traveled the world and nobody had done that before.
Speaker 3:And I think, in some respect, the relevance of what he wrote, the conviction of what he shared and addressed and took head on like was reinforced by his continued conviction of having these you know deep relationship with folks. Like how could a man who's celibate write so well about you know human sexuality within marriage if he didn't intimately know and understand that? And I just think that's a beautiful example. I even remember your friend, bishop Conley, when he was here and we shared that podcast together, him talking about things after his emotional health sabbatical that he was convicted about. It was almost modeled from that same leader he shared.
Speaker 3:Well, there's a few families and friends my mother, like people he wanted to be intentional about making sure had a good amount of his calendar time and his emotional closeness and I'm curious on that. Like you know, one challenge probably being a pastoral leader is one that I have a few different roles, like I'm boss to some people, brother to my priests, you know, father to my priests, or if I'm a parishioner, perhaps I'm like friend with my pastor, friend with my coworker, but I'm also their leader.
Speaker 3:So how does one navigate that in those kind of I'll call it dual relationships that you hold with people, but then also navigate it in your own life, outside the role, to make sure you have great relationships that are giving you life?
Speaker 2:You know, I learned early on, when I first became a bishop. I never saw myself as being on track to become a bishop, so I never gave it much thought and even, as I mentioned, john Paul II was the only pope that I had ever known. I had only known one bishop, really, essentially when I was a priest in Wichita, bishop Gerber, and I really admired his Episcopal style. But when I became a bishop I was thinking, okay, now how do I do this?
Speaker 3:And so I think it was making— there's not a school for you guys was there's not a school for you guys, there's not a book on how to bishop?
Speaker 2:actually, there is there was a like. There was a 10 day or 7 day mandatory workshop. We called it baby bishops boot camp but, we were summoned to Rome and you you go to a about a 10 day immersion. It was totally unhelpful.
Speaker 1:Oh brutal.
Speaker 2:But we learned how the different dicasteries of the Vatican worked and such. But my point was simply, I knew how Bishop Gerber bishoped and so when I first set out, I was thinking well, I'll just do what Bishop Gerber did. Well, I quickly realized that I'm not Bishop Gerber and that my style is very different than his, and so I finally had to give myself permission to be comfortable in my own skin and just doing this the way I know how, the way that is natural for me, utilizing the gifts that God has given me, without trying to ape or imitate somebody else's style. So, to be what a bishop is called to be as a father, brother and friend, for example, to his priest I had to do that in a way that was authentic to me and I had to be approachable.
Speaker 2:But one thing I discovered is it's very different being a bishop than a priest, because as a priest, all of my closest well, not all of my closest, most of my closest, many of my closest friends were my brother priests.
Speaker 2:We'd hang out together, We'd make days off together and all of those things. As a bishop, it's not quite the same. I mean, I am called to befriend my priests, and I do, and I have, but there's a different relationship because there's also the fatherly part of it as well and I have to be a father to them and a brother to them as well. So it's constantly kind of shifting. But whatever shift is being made from father, brother or friend, for example, it always has to be in a way that it flows authentically from who I am as the person that God created me to be, uniquely gifted with particular talents and particular limitations and a particular personality. I can't morph into somebody else, whether it always has to be authentic to who I am and the person that I've grown to become, with all of my limitations and whatever gifts as well.
Speaker 1:I love that. Yeah, that reminds me of something from Pope John Paul II. I don't know I'm very bad at remembering where I read it or what it was read by, I just remember who. I'm very bad at remembering where I read it or what it was read by, I just remember who. But there is some document, some exhortation to young people specifically as Archbishop was talking there, I felt like it was echoing what he says there, where he essentially says be who you are, be who you are, don't be afraid, be not afraid, be who you are.
Speaker 2:That's one of the things I think I learned from John Paul II. Watching him, I mean he was an anomaly and a mystery to the Vatican Curia when he came storming into town from Poland at the age of 59. He would sneak out of the Vatican to go skiing and they'd drive him crazy, but I mean he knew what his needs were. Another story that was told about him was he told I don't know his chief of finance or somebody in the finance office that he needed a swimming pool at the Vatican. I love this story Because you know he was an active, vigorous guy, he would go canoeing, he would go camping and he was feeling enclosed and confined. And they said, well, holy Father, that's a pretty exorbitant expense to put in a swimming pool in the Vatican. He said, well, it's cheaper than another conclave, you know, because his predecessor lasted 33 days and then died unexpectedly and John Paul was saying you know, I need this, you know for my health, for my well-being.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a great way. I hadn't heard that story from the Curia perspective. I'd always heard it from the media perspective after he'd made the decision to do that. And so some media person comes in and is like you just spent this amount of millions of dollars on this pool, like what do you have to say for yourself, like that could have gone to the poor and all these different things. And Pope John Paul just leans to the microphone and goes I like to swim, you know it's just awesome.
Speaker 2:No apologies needed. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:I don't know what to tell you, man, I need it, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what to tell you, man, I need it, yeah.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Well, there is some importance as a leader of knowing what you need to be healthy physically emotionally spiritually.
Speaker 3:What's that look like in your own life, you know? How have you surrounded yourself with support or how have you, you know, put things into practice in your own life too? Um, I think what I would say like kind of offset the demands of Bishop and then support you for it, cause if we're, I think, if we're honest, like a little compassion to our priests and bishops, like we expect a lot, like, um, people throw around the word like clericalism, for example. I'm convinced the lay people throw around the word like clericalism, for example, I'm convinced the lay people. For the negative sense of clericalism. We're the ones mainly responsible because we make everything go through Father and we expect everything from Father, as opposed to empowering Father and asking Father how we can help him lead. So I'm just kind of curious on that sense, with the high demands, how do you make?
Speaker 2:sure you have appropriate support.
Speaker 2:Obviously, balance is the golden mean For me. I recognized early on actually in seminary, long before I became a priest I know that my spiritual health was absolutely critical and crucial. So my days, every day, begins in prayer and that's my number one commitment. I'm fortunate as a bishop to have a chapel in my own home, in my residence, and with the Blessed Sacrament. So the first hour and a half, two hours of every day are spent literally before the Blessed Sacrament and praying, going over the scriptures, liturgy of the hours. So a good, solid foundation spiritually is very important for me and it always has been. Friendships are very important, friendships of all all kind old friends, new friends, lay friends, clergy friends. So I think I need to live a normal life where social beings. Aristotle said man is a social animal. I think it was Aristotle, but at any rate it's true, some Greek guy. So I think it was Aristotle, but at any rate it's true, some Greek guy.
Speaker 1:Some guy Sounds smart.
Speaker 2:So that's important to have healthy, wholesome relationships. People lay, clergy, men, women and I've maintained friends from my past, from Kansas when I was there, and certainly made new friends here. So that kind of balance is very important. Intellectual stimulation I read, I love to read, and I've got a stack of books two feet high next to my bed and, uh, um, so I and I, I, I spend a bit of time, you know, uh, reading for pleasure as well as for staying updated on what's going on and what I need to know, keep abreast with in the church and in the world society. So, uh, and that's how I kind of keep things balanced for me. Just putting balance in my own life.
Speaker 2:Most listeners probably know that I've fallen in love with the Camino the way of St James. I've done that five different times. I used to be a runner, I used to run a lot marathons and bike. I still bike but uh, uh. But I've fallen in love with, with, uh, hiking and walking and doing like the camino several times, planning another one, uh, so that kind of balance is necessary in my life lots of follow-up questions in my head, but one just out of pure curiosity what's in that stack next to your bed, what, what?
Speaker 3:recently have you read that?
Speaker 2:you'd, I was an English major in college so I was always literature and poetry and novels and things more of a classical not necessarily just the Greeks and the Romans, but the great books. But of late it's been more. I've really been enjoying reading history and biography. Maybe it's because I'm older now and I want to learn from others, but I recognize a lot of gaps in my own education and among those were, like American history. I didn't really know much of our own history, so I've read a number of different biographies in the last few years and some of our great American leaders, whether it's George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, so a lot of those types of things.
Speaker 3:Any favorites as of late.
Speaker 2:Well gosh as. I'm talking biography and history. I'm also thinking of some of the great novels that I've loved that really influenced me. One is Les Miserables. Most people are familiar with the musical, but it's based on a novel by Victor Hugo which is a profoundly beautiful story of friendship and redemption and great heroic figures in that novel. So Les Miserables is one of my favorites. Actually. I love Les Mis.
Speaker 1:I've attempted to start the book multiple times.
Speaker 3:It's really thick.
Speaker 1:But the musical I am crazy into, so, so much, so like if I ever were to get up the guts and gum shin to decide to get a tattoo like it would be like two, four, six, oh, one would like Jean Valjean's prison number would be one that I like. I 24601, like Jean Valjean's prison number would be one that I find his literary character profound and like something that I really look up to and forward to yeah.
Speaker 2:There was a powerful vignette in that story, of course, of the bishop who showed him compassion and refused to throw him under the bus and turn him in for robbing his house of his silver, but instead—.
Speaker 1:Gave him more stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and gave him a way forward redemption.
Speaker 1:Shot at the pastoral leadership yeah, for real.
Speaker 3:I love that part of the story. What would you say to the leader who has acknowledged my prayer, my time in prayer, my quality of prayers not what it used to be and maybe is acknowledging the need, but has the tension of like there's so much I have to do, I don't have the time to begin my day in prayer anymore. How would you exhort a leader in that space?
Speaker 2:Yeah, st Francis de Sales, great doctor of the church, after whom our seminary who's building where we are this was called St Francis de Sales Seminary. He was a great doctor of the church and a real early advocate of lay spirituality, introduction to the devout life. If your readers or listeners haven't read that, it's a great spiritual gem. But Francis de Sales once said if you're too busy to spend 15 minutes in prayer, spend 30 minutes in prayer, which is kind of obviously counterintuitive. But he said your priorities are wrong if you're too busy to pray.
Speaker 1:If you think you don't have time, you're wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's essentially yeah.
Speaker 2:But no, it's contrary to, maybe to what Francis de Sales said. I would say you start with what you can do. You have to build a prayer life. We don't find time to pray, nobody's going to find time to pray because everybody's busy. I'm busy, you're busy. You have to make time to pray, make it a priority and, if you can only if you're not praying at all start with something doable. Maybe I'm going to commit to going to mass every Sunday, no exceptions, if your personal prayer in your life is non-existent. Commit to five minutes a day, say one decade of the rosary, but just do something, build a habituation form a habit.
Speaker 2:I mean virtues are. Are habits uh, good habits, um. So I think that's uh, but be start with something that's grab for the low hanging fruit, you know, and uh start that.
Speaker 3:Can you share a time or a challenge where your pastoral leaders, in your pastoral leadership, you felt stuck, were incapable or didn't know the answer, and you found God provide amidst your time in prayer Every day?
Speaker 1:I mean really I mean.
Speaker 2:I've discovered a beautiful prayer. It's been a part of my prayer routine for the last five or six years the surrender novena. It's become kind of popular. I don't know if you We've done it on this podcast before. Okay, well, that's been a part of my prayer for and I really I pray it daily and it's just. I've learned that and it seems like the Lord has been leading me along this path in my own spiritual life, my own prayer life, of learning the habit of surrender, abandonment to divine providence, just learning to turn things over to the Lord rather than trying to do it all, figure it all out myself, that's. I quickly realized that God is God and I'm not, and problems that seem intractable, insurmountable, unmanageable to me, when given to him, he's demonstrated to me personally again and again that nothing's too hard for him to handle. I just need to trust that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and isn't that the crux of it all? Really as we dive down to it. I think that's a great place to land the plane. Archbishop, it's been absolutely phenomenal getting to talk to you about this and pick your brain. Thanks for your honesty and sharing and your pastoral leadership for us here in Oklahoma City. But this has been Red Dirt Catholics. I'm Jace, I'm James and I'm Archbishop Coakley.
Speaker 2:We'll see you next time.