Take five

Bishop Larry Silva ponders seminarians and clergy, St. Damien, his episcopal motto, same-sex marriage, and other things that have shaped his first five years as head of the Catholic Church in Hawaii

By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald

Bishop Larry Silva was back home on June 29 after a long mainland trip and in a relaxed mood. He wore a white, loose fitting clerical shirt with a subtle tropical floral pattern, untucked, and a modified, button-down roman collar. Hanging around his neck was a small, freeform cross of polished wood.

After posing for a few photos, he tells the photographer, “It’s hard to believe it’s been five years,” and settled into the corner of the couch in his fourth floor chancery office, his customary seat when engaging visitors. He spent the next 45 minutes talking with the Hawaii Catholic Herald about reaching his first milestone as Bishop of Honolulu.

The job of bishop seems to be a nice fit for this veteran pastor who spent his first 30 years of priesthood working in Oakland, Calif., parishes.

“I just consider the diocese a big parish,” he said.

“My greatest joy is getting to know the people and the priests, being able to visit the parishes, being their pastor,” he said.

“I am just very grateful to the Lord and to all the great people, the priests, the deacons, the religious and all the folks who have supported me and prayed for me.”

Bishop Clarence “Larry” Silva was vicar general of the East Bay diocese in 2005 when he was plucked at age 55, as one of Pope Benedict XVI’s first episcopal appointments, to be the bishop of his birthplace.

The islands had been without a bishop for about a year following the surprise 2004 assignment of Honolulu Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo as Bishop of Richmond, Va.

Bishop Silva did not have the local “small kid” pedigree of his Portuguese predecessor Bishop Stephen Alencastre, or the entrenched island experience of Bishops John Scanlan and Joseph Ferrario. But he had tons of Hawaii cousins, all tracing their heritage back to a pair of Portuguese immigrants who had arrived during the time of Damien, and a long and steady personal affection for this place that he left at age one.

‘Witness to Jesus’

One of the first things new bishops do is pick a motto.

Bishop Silva’s — “Witness to Jesus” — runs across the bottom of his episcopal coat of arms.

Only three words long, it is ambiguous in its simplicity. The first word can be read as a noun or a verb.

“I like that,” he smiled. “It’s on purpose.”

“I chose that motto because I think the Catholic Church is very heavy with doctrines, with structures, with laws, with rituals, and so on. And all those are important. But they make it easier for us to lose sight as to what is key to it all.”

“And that is, our faith is based on a person and a relationship to a person, to Jesus who is our savior, who died for us, who rose from the dead and who is present with us now.”

“I wanted to emphasize that we are to give witness to Jesus and to be witnesses to Jesus.”

Bishop Silva explained his motto’s first word.

“It means to proclaim with your being, to proclaim with who you are, with the way you live, the way you act.”

It’s a total commitment, he said, explaining that “witness” has the same derivation as the Greek word for martyr.

“To give witness in that sense is to lay down your life for Jesus, as he did for us,” the bishop said.

His greatest challenge

If parish life is the bishop’s greatest joy, his greatest frustration has been dealing with parish priesthood turned vile by the sexual abuse of children.

“That has been very sad, very difficult, very disheartening,” he said.

On the global level, “it affects the priests, it affects morale, it affects the way the people view the church,” he said.

“In many ways it undercuts the moral authority of the church, and that is unfortunate.”

The bishop added that the scandal is also used by those “who would like to undercut the moral authority of the church.”

“But, unfortunately, they have a point. These things did happen. They did get covered up sometimes.”

Years: 5 And other significant numbers Has Bishop Larry Silva been busy? You be the judge. SACRAMENTAL DUTIES Confirmation Masses: 186 CLERICAL MATTERS Priests incardinated: 9 Priests ordained: 6 Perm. deacons ordained: 17 FRIENDLY SKIES Neighbor Island flights: 140 Mainland trips: 28 International trips: 6 EXECUTIVE BUSINESS Official meetings: 625 (an estimate based on this year’s total) These figures were compiled by Anna Weaver with help from the bishop’s office

Locally, Bishop Silva said that he’s had to deal with 10-12 cases. They run the gamut from unsubstantiated and “nuisance cases” to instances where “the priest admitted that it happened.”

“Some of the accused [clergy] are dead, but that doesn’t stop people from suing,” he said.

One of the bishop’s priorities is “strengthening the bonds with the priests.”

“I think I have, by and large, a good relationship with the priests,” he said. “They are my major collaborators.”

“And I have a good [lay] staff. They have been strengthening their bonds with parishes,” he said.

“I think there is a greater sense that we are one church. The parishes are important and have their own priorities and needs, but they are a part of a greater picture.”

“I inherited a good vicariate system. I am grateful for that. I didn’t create it. It was something we worked at developing. That’s been helpful.”

Bishop Silva said he will continue to import priests from foreign countries, the mainland and religious orders.

“At the current time, it is the only way we can staff our parishes,” he said.

Developing a local clergy

But the aspiration of any diocese is to have a local clergy, and the bishop isn’t shying away from that lofty ambition.

“One of the things I have done from day one is talk about the need to promote vocations, to the priesthood and religious life. I think we are having some success in that.”

The bishop said that he inherited one seminarian when he arrived five years ago. This fall the diocese will have nine, “and possibly 12.” That’s more seminarians the diocese has had in 25 years.

“The seminarians are all local,” he said, born, or raised, in Hawaii.

Bishop Silva doesn’t take full credit for the jump in numbers.

“It is partly a national trend,” he said. “The seminaries are fuller than they have been in the past couple of decades. I think young people are more open to it now than ever.”

“A lot of it has to do with making some effort to ask, to promote,” he said. “In many ways, the church in the United States was not very good at that.”

“We are grateful for the priests that we have from other countries and many of them have become incardinated and are now a part of us,” he said.

But “our own local clergy is always the goal.”

Even more than that, he said, would be the ability to send our priests to other parts of the world.

“That would be the greatest ideal, not only to take care of our own needs, but to be able to send missionaries to other parts of the world,” he said.

Vocation promotion is everyone’s job, he said.

“Everybody has to be involved in it,” Bishop Silva said. “As I have said many times to Father Peter Dumag, the vocations director, it’s not his job to give all the vocations talks, to do all the vocations promotions and activities. It is his job to get others to do it, to motivate them and to resource them to do it, especially the priests and religious.”

He admitted it takes a little encouragement to get the clergy going. “Some are a little hesitant,” he said, but “most of them are stepping up.”

‘What am I doing here?’

Hesitancy has also become less of a problem for the five-year bishop.

“I think I’m becoming a little more confident in this role,” he said.

“In starting out, there were many, many times when I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ ‘How did I get here?’

The answer was always, “It’s God’s call, God’s grace.”

“He’s been very good to me and helped me in many ways. There is really a grace to the office. I find myself being able to do many things that I never thought I could do.”

Such as preaching.

“I love preaching, but it is a challenge to preach so much. I am always giving a major homily here or there, and that’s a little difficult.”

But because of a good prayer life, the bishop said, “God has been good to me and blessed me with what needs to be said — most of the time.”

He said he rarely can afford the two to three hours of preparation homiletics professors say are necessary to craft a good sermon, but “because I think about things, contemplate things, the Lord gives me insight.”

‘And it came to pass’

Speaking of God’s grace, a big download of it came in the canonization of St. Damien.

“Indeed!” the bishop said.

“When I became bishop, I knew that the Damien cause was on the way. And I thought, how awesome is this that I could be bishop when Damien is canonized.”

“And it came to pass.”

“I’ve always admired Damien since I was a little boy,” he said, “and I have heard so many others from around the world say the same thing.”

“I just feel very, very, very privileged that I was the bishop at this place, at this time,” he said.

And speaking of high points. “I must mention the Road Map,” the bishop said.

That would be the “Road Map for Pastoral, Program, and Facility Needs 2008-2013,” the diocese’s strategic plan.

“That was a major, major accomplishment,” he said, “not just my accomplishment, but the accomplishment of the whole diocese through my leadership and pastorship.”

“And then, of course, there is the capital campaign. I think that people realized that if we are going to be really serious about implementing this Road Map, we would have to pay for it. And they stepped up to the plate and did so. So I am very, very grateful for all of that.”

Fighting same-sex marriage

Being an American bishop in the 21st century requires some witnessing to Christ in the public square.

In that vein, Bishop Silva has been a vocal opponent of the push to legalize civil unions and same-sex marriage.

He recognizes that the issue comes with its Christian challenges.

If same-sex marriage becomes legal here, he said, “it’s going to be a challenge to maintain the cultural roots of our faith, which is based on love and acceptance of people and yet also based on principles and right ways of relating to one another.”

“It’s going to be a great, great challenge to be able to be faithful to who we are as Catholics and followers of Jesus, and yet live in a world that tolerates and condones what, I believe, the Lord does not condone.”

“Not that he condemns the person,” Bishop Silva said, “but there is right and wrong.”

“We have to get back to who Jesus is and what the Scriptures reveal about him.”

“There are certainly many places where Jesus is inclusive and prodigally so,” he said. “There are also many places where he draws some definite lines.”

Bishop Silva is not shocked by this recent struggle. He believes society has been paving the path to same-sex marriage for a long time.

“The definition of marriage has been eroding for years,” he said. “We have forgotten that there is a value to virginity and commitment, and taking things one step at a time, in the proper order. That has all eroded marriage.”

“And so I think that same sex marriage, civil unions, is just an indicator of more of the same — an erosion of the very notion, the very institution of marriage.”

“I fear that our whole culture is unraveling,” he said.

The bishop applauded Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement of a new Vatican office for a “new evangelization” of traditionally Christian countries that are “no longer Christian.”

“I think that is a wise thing — to not just preach the Gospel where it has not already been heard, but to preach it where it has been forgotten or obscured. I think we are in that situation in America.”

When not busy being bishop

Even bishops need some downtime, and Hawaii’s relative isolation and natural beauty provide pleasing opportunities for Bishop Silva.

“I have a wonderful place to live and I have a lot of privacy there,” the bishop said of his residence at St. Stephen’s, a former land developer’s mansion turned seminary turned diocesan center that has a panoramic ocean-to-pali view of windward Oahu.

Bishop Silva enjoys a close friendship with the athletic Father Peter Dumag who has nudged him into a few non-episcopal adventures like the Honolulu Marathon, (walking, part way), the Great Aloha Run, snorkeling and scuba diving (he was certified this year) out Waianae way.

He’s also hiked Mount Olomana — to the top.

And the neighbor islands are a bountiful bonus.

“I sometimes have to pinch myself,” he said. “There are people who scrimp and save all of their lives so that they can come to Hawaii and maybe see one or two islands, and here I can see them all the time. I just never tire of the beauty of them.”

Bishop Silva makes dozens of flights a year — to the other islands and the mainland — so it is fortunate that he likes airplanes.

“I like traveling, I do,” he said. “I love to fly, so God put me in the right place.”