By RUSSELL SHAW

Achbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., of Denver, enjoys a growing reputation as an outspoken and courageous member of the hierarchy, with no reluctance to defend the Church's doctrine or criticize the ecclesiastical establishment when he considers that the right thing to do.

VISITOR: In your intervention, you said bishops need to concentrate more on their pastoral responsibilities. Does that reflect personal experience in some way?

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: What I said essentially was that sometimes pastors do the missionary, evangelical work while we bishops sit in our offices. It's important for us not to let that happen. We've got to get back to being apostles and missionaries.

Personal experience was part of it -- the experience of going from a missionary diocese like Rapid City, which is really poor and rural and very unstructured compared to a diocese like Denver, which is highly structured and has a rather large bureaucracy.

But that's not the primary reason I said what I did. I would have said the same thing if I had come here as bishop of Rapid City. I sense that that's the problem of the Church in the United States. We bishops have to be the ones who spark and energize the Church. We need to stay in touch with that primary dimension of our call. We can’t just delegate it to other people.

VISITOR: What was the reaction to what you said?

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: I got incredible reaction to it. A lot of people talked about it. For three or four days afterward, people were still asking me if I was the bishop who gave that intervention, and thanking me for it.

VISITOR: Realistically speaking, how do you get bishops out of the chancery?

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: You can’t get bishops out of the chancery unless they really want to get out. There are so many forces that would keep them in. I don't think bishops go to the chancery and stay there because they want to. They find greater joy in pastoral ministry. But a lot of our chanceries are big, and everybody wants to come to the bishop. I could spend all of my life ministering to people who work for me -- and that's a very small group compared to the whole diocese.

You have to control the structures. When I was in Rapid City, I probably spent 70 percent of my time out of the chancery and 30 percent in. In Denver, it's just the reverse. Part of it is not knowing the diocese and wanting to know it before I delegate authority. But I think it takes a concerted effort on the part of the bishop to get out because of all these forces trying to bring him back in.

VISITOR: Now that you’re in Denver, we're hearing a lot more about what you have to say -- for instance, your statement last June about the Catholic Theological Society of America report that appeared to advocate ordaining women priests. You said that raised questions about the Theological Society's continued usefulness to the Church. Why did you make that statement?

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: I was horrified by their document -- that the professional organization that most Catholic theologians in our country join would spend a year's time preparing a document that attacks the Holy Father's teaching. It was arrogant and a disservice to the Church. I just wanted to say it was irresponsible.

St. Francis of Assisi told his brothers that they had to love theologians because they ministered Christ to them. But the work of theologians is to find ways of articulating more clearly the faith of the Church, not articulating challenges to that faith. The theologians responsible for this report were involved in an act that was betraying their vocation.

VISITOR: Would it be fair to say you feel pretty strongly about the teaching role of bishops?

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: I think the only reason that bishops exist is to pass on the faith of the Church. Part of this comes from being a Franciscan. St. Francis said the brothers were supposed to follow the Gospel without "gloss". Glosses were the commentaries written by theologians that excused people from following the Gospel to some extent.

The responsibility of the bishops is to teach the faith without commentary that explains it away, because we love the apostolic faith of the Church. And you're impelled to speak up when it’s being denied, especially within the membership of the Church.

VISITOR: Do you feel that these days a bishop exercises his teaching responsibility primarily by teaching individually or as a kind of collective exercise in collaboration with other bishops -- for instance, through conferences of bishops -- or is it both things?

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: National conferences of bishops can be helpful to us in getting to know one another and exchanging views -- knowing the climate, the culture. But if an episcopal conference is going to be really collegial, the teaching has to have its origin in the bishops, and that is impossible in a huge conference like ours in the United States.

In the time we have available, meeting together for a few days twice a year, there's no way that this body of 300 men can collegially respond very well to issues. And so I'm skeptical about these very large episcopal conferences as teaching bodies.

The conference of bishops is very important, but we can never see the conference as taking the place of our individual responsibility and authority in teaching. I see it as a help to me. And sometimes I see it even as a hindrance, because we're not able really to fight things through on account of the limitations of time -- especially when it comes to liturgical translations.

VISITOR: Last fall a committee of the U.S. bishops' conference issued a statement called "Always Our Children", addressed to the parents of homosexuals. The document affirmed its loyalty to the teaching of the Church on the morality of homosexual acts, but some people said it actually tended to undermine the teaching and it became quite controversial. What did you think of "Always Our Children"?

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: If it could be read in a culture that wasn't politicized as our own is, it might be a more useful document. Taken in itself, it doesn't say anything that's damaging to the Churchs moral teaching, but right from the start it was obvious that it was being used as support for their position by those who don't agree with the Church's teaching.

I wish the whole body of bishops had had a chance to review it before it was issued. We could have fine-tuned it and taken out areas that were used in an ambiguous way. It isn’t bad in itself -- it just says too much. But I don't like it, I can say that. I like some of it, but I wish it were more precisely stated. I won't use it as a teaching tool in my diocese because it isn't clear enough.

The pastoral advice to parents is pretty good, but at the same time it's important for parents whose children may be involved in homosexual activity to worry about them. When I was a young priest, parents were very concerned when their children left the Church. Now the response is generally, "Well, at least they're still going to church" -- even though it's some other church. We can be too consoling. Most of us don't want to worry about our children, and we're all for a consoling message to take away our worry. But to worry is a virtue. St. Monica worried her son Augustine into holiness.

VISITOR: In recent years, Colorado has been a focal point for a great deal of controversy and debate over gay rights issues. What is your view of that question in general?

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: Just since I've been there, Gov. Roy Romer asked me to be on a citizens'committee advising him on domestic-partner laws. I resigned after the first meeting I attended because it appeared the committee had already made up its mind.

My effort as a bishop will be to try simultaneously to demonstrate the Church's love for all people without regard to sexual orientation and at the same time be uncompromising about the Church's teaching on family and on marriage -- which is marriage between a man and a woman, oriented to children.

I’ve only been there seven months and this hasn’t become a matter of public conflict for me -- yet. But it may. This is what we have to do, though. Truth articulated with love is always truth in its fullest.

VISITOR: How do you see the Church in the United States -- is it healthy, sick or something else?

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: I don't know enough about the Church in the whole United States to be able to speak of the whole country. I know something about South Dakota and something now about Denver, and I would say from my experience that the Church is both healthy and hurt.

Catholics know there is something special about being Catholic. They're proud to be Catholic. They really do want to know Christ, and they struggle. And they feel joy when they hear good preaching and are called to holiness.

But all you have to do is look at priestly vocations and the state of religious life, and you know we have some major problems. I think the Church gets the vocations it deserves. The diminishment of vocations is a sign of weakness of faith -- and I don’t mean just cognitive truth, I mean enthusiasm and commitment. There is a loss of the sense of being the Body of Christ. The lived ecclesiology of the Church in the United States is pretty poor. I don't think Catholics understand that the Church is the Body of Christ in the world. They haven't been taught that way. If they are, then young men and women will respond.

There is good will. There's a lot of openness. But we just haven't done an adequate job of catechizing.

Many of the administrators in the Church seem disappointed in the direction the Church has gone lately. They're critical, and because of that they're standing in the way. It's sad because so many of these folks have given their lives through religious consecration, through ordination, or just through the gift of time -- and they're so sad.

They should read the signs of the times -- young married couples who love the Church and are considered more traditional, those religious communities that are getting vocations, the sparkle in the eyes of seminarians who can’t wait to be evangelists for the Church.

VISITOR: Are you happy to be a bishop?

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: I'm honored to be a bishop. I never expected to become one. I've always had a deep reverence for the episcopacy -- I still do -- and that leads me to feel astonishment that I am a bishop. These days at the synod, I see the Holy Father, I see the cardinals and other bishops, and I think, "I'm part of this group!"

But do I like it? I would joyfully go back to the friary. The difference between being a Capuchin -- which I still am -- and being a bishop is that as a Capuchin you’re a man of God and as a bishop yor’re a man of the Church. I have the care of the Church as my responsibility.

But there's also something extraordinarily joyful about being a bishop. You have an opportunity to make an impact that you couldn't make otherwise. The advantage of being bishop of a place like Rapid City is that you can be a pastor; but the advantage of Denver is that it's a much bigger stage -- you have a chance to impact the Church, and I'm grateful for that. And there's a great peace in it, too. Looking back now, I can see a pattern being drawn in my life without my being aware of it.

Shaw is Our Sunday Visitor's Washington correspondent and editorial consultant for the Knights of Columbus.