As Archbishop of Seattle, and pastor to 600,000 Western Washington Catholics, J. Peter Sartain's job requirements will include the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job. The soon-to-be archbishop has ministered in towns with go-to-meetin' traditions (Memphis and Little Rock) where Catholics constitute a small minority. He now moves to one of America's least "churched" regions.
He'll need to adapt to our way of doing business here: Everybody gets consulted about everything. Barriers get bypassed. St. James Cathedral has hosted burial services for an Episcopalian congresswoman (Jennifer Dunn) and a gay state senator (Cal Anderson).
With suspicious, hostile secularists -- a notable media presence here -- Sartain will find he has no room for clerical error.
The new Seattle archbishop will discover, as well, that just because Northwesterners don't go to church doesn't mean we are not spiritual. Our environment suggests the work of a Creator.
But as many of us came here from someplace else, traditions were left behind. In his current posting as Bishop of Joliet, Bishop Sartain comes from one of the places we've left behind.
Bishop Sartain, 58, spoke Thursday of "this transition in my life, quite a large one," displaying a capacity for understatement. He talked of a leadership stype with ears open: "I try, as best I can, to listen to all points of view."
But the flock tend not to obey its shepherds.
Our state's Catholic governor spoke last year at a NARAL Pro-Choice Washington luncheon, while a pastor and bevvy of right-to-life activists recited the rosary on the street outside the Sheraton.
Western Washington used to be a hotbed of ecumenism. Outgoing Archbishop Alex Brunett has served as Vatican point-man on dialogue with Episcopalians and Anglicans.
But ordination of gay and lesbian Episcopal bishops has circumscribed cooperation. Bishop Sartain will need to work his way through lots of political correctness and relativism to carry out his pledge of "meaningful fruitful dialogue" with the Protestant brethren.
The Catholic Church here has championed social justice on a range of fronts, its bishops particularly outspoken on immigration.
Catholic clergy led the first mass immigrants' rights march through downtown Seattle. When the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill requiring social service agencies to report illegals, Brunett responded with a blunt Lenten message: We will rat on no one.
Sartain spoke to the issue on Thursday. The Catholic Church has "a history of being an immigrants' church," he said, adding: "Many of those here without papers are Catholics. They are part of the body of Christ."
The new archbishop speaks Spanish, and greatly expanded Hispanic ministry as the Bishop of Little Rock.
"We recognize, the Church does, governments' rights to protect their borders," Sartain says. But he worries that enforcement splits families and separates parents from children.
The Seattle archdiocese incurred Vatican suspicion in the 1980's with pacifist Archbishop Raymond Hunsthausen at the helm. An attempt to bring the archdiocese to heel, and strip Hunthausen of authority, was blocked by priests and laiety.
The Vatican ought to look West for a few lessons. "We have never closed a parish, we have never closed a school," Brunett said Thursday. He pointed proudly to new high schools and a doubling of Catholic Community Services.
Sartain recently encountered a high-profile sex abuse case in his diocese. A priest-abuser was sentenced to four years in prison, after attempting suicide last winter. The Chicago Tribune reported that the man's ordination was twice held up after he disclosed being abused as a child.
Of course, this was about all TV reporters could ask about Wednesday. The Stranger, always virulently anti-Catholic, reported that Sartain removed a priest who engaged in homosexual activity.
The Seattle archdiocese was early to recognize the priest-pedophilia crisis, but is far from sin-less in its response. Unlike the Spokane and Portland dioceses, however, it has not sought bankruptcy protection.
Anti-Catholic prejudice persists in some "progressive" circles: Just read e-mails from the abortion rights lobby. Code words were prevalent in the 2008 I-1000 campaign that legalized assisted suicide in the state.
Still, even secular Seattle turns to the church in times of trial.
St. James Cathedral long ago supplanted its Episcopal counterpart, St. Mark's Cathedral, as a place where folks pray for peace or go to mourn victims of 9/11 or slain police officers or a homeless man beaten on the streets. Archbishop Brunett spoke to our great downtown rally after 9/11.
The welcoming mass at St. James on Thursday saw palpable relief that the Vatican has not sent a hard-line "enforcer" visit. Private clerical reactions to the Sartain appointment ranged from "cautiously hopeful" to "a great guy."
"The Lord is my shepherd, I'll not want; he makes me down to lie in pastures green; he leadeth me the quiet waters by," read 23rd Psalm verses sung by St James' choir.
After he is installed a couple months down the line, however, Archbishop Peter Sartain will discover that Northwest waters are rarely still.
SIC: SPI/USA