Catholic World News News Feature

Archbishop Levada: the Pope's surprising choice May 14, 2005

The Roman rumor mill had begun predicting the appointment 10 days ago. Nevertheless, yesterday's announcement from Rome-- that Archbishop William Levada would be the new prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith-- was shocking. It is a critical appointment, and one that deserves careful analysis.

Two days after his election, Pope Benedict XVI confirmed the appointments of all top officials in the Roman Curia. With that single, simple decision the Holy Father ensured a smooth transition at the Vatican, and gave himself time gradually to assemble his own leadership team. But while he could re-appoint every other key official, Pope Benedict still was faced with one critical personnel decision: finding his own replacement as the Vatican's top doctrinal official.

This would be the new Pope's first major appointment; indeed it could be the most important appointment of his pontificate. After the Pope himself, no other official in the Catholic Church has more influence than the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Along with the Secretary of State (currently Cardinal Angelo Sodano) he has unlimited direct access to the Pontiff; his signature appears on some of the most important documents released by the Holy See, explaining Catholic doctrine and defining the limits of orthodox belief. During his long tenure at CDF, Cardinal Ratzinger had emerged as the trusted right hand of John Paul II, and his logical successor as Pope Benedict XVI.

In a word, it is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this position. And now, with this first crucial decision, Pope Benedict has taken a relatively obscure American prelate-- a metropolitan archbishop, to be sure, but by no means a household name even among knowledgeable American Catholics-- and made him the second-most influential leader in the universal Church. Archbishop Levada will inevitably become a cardinal at the next consistory. More than that: with this appointment, he quite suddenly becomes the most influential American prelate in Catholic history.

Biographical background

William Levada was born on June 15, 1936, in Long Beach, California, into a family of Portuguese and Irish ancestry. Entering the seminary for the Los Angeles archdiocese, he was sent to study at the North American College in Rome in 1958. He was ordained to the priesthood in December 1961, in St. Peter's Basilica, and obtained a doctorate in theology at the Gregorian university.

After working in the Los Angeles archdiocese as a parish priest, seminary instructor, and director of continuing education for the clergy, Father Levada returned to Rome in 1976 to work at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He was on the CDF staff in 1981 when a new prefect, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger arrived; the two reportedly enjoyed a good working relationship.

In 1982, now-Msgr. Levada returned to Los Angeles, where he was director of the Catholic bishops' conference of California. And in 1983 he became auxiliary bishop of the Los Angeles archdiocese. In July 1986 he was named Archbishop of Portland, Oregon. And in 1995 he was named to his current post as Archbishop of San Francisco.

From 1986 through 1993, Archbishop Levada served as the only American member of the editorial committee preparing the Catechism of the Catholic Church-- again working closely with then-Cardinal Ratzinger. He was also appointed by Pope John Paul II as one of the bishops serving on the full Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, again bringing him into regular contact with the current Pontiff. He participated in the Synod of Bishops for the Americas in 1997, and was named to the post-synodal council. Since 2003 he has chaired the doctrinal committee for the US bishops' conference. And in 2002 he was a member of a joint US-Vatican panel that hammered out changes in the American bishops' "Dallas policy" on sexual abuse, winning Vatican approval by bringing that policy into line with the Code of Canon Law.

The role of the CDF

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is undoubtedly the most important dicastery within the Roman Curia. The prefect meets with the Pope at least once a week, to discuss the most important issues involving the doctrinal and moral teachings of the Church. Even the offices of the dicastery testify to its importance; the CDF is located in a building just to the left of the Vatican basilica, behind the Bernini columns of St. Peter's Square. The CDF is also the oldest of the Vatican congregations; only the Secretariat of State-- formed in 1487-- has a longer lineage. The CDF traces its roots to the office of the Roman Inquisition, established by Pope Paul II in 1542, in his apostolic constitution Licet ab Initio. Originally this office was a panel of six cardinals, constituting a tribunal to hear cases involving claims of heresy or schism. Later the office would be given authority over issues involving morality as well, and charged with compiling the notorious Index of forbidden books.

In 1908, when he reorganized the Roman Curia with his constitution Sapienti Consilio, St, Pius X gave the Inquisition a new name, the Holy Office. Its current title came from Pope Paul VI, with a new curial reform after the Second Vatican Council. The task of the congregation was also amended; the CDF was now perceived not as a tribunal, hearing charges, but as a corrective body, issuing statements as required to ensure proper teaching of Catholic doctrine. In April 2001, Pope John Paul II gave the CDF an important new responsibility: hearing the cases of priests charged with grave moral abuses, including pedophilia.

The CDF consists of a panel of 20 cardinals and 5 other bishops (including, until now, Archbishop Levada), who meet periodically. The permanent staff in Rome is guided by the prefect, a secretary-- currently the Salesian Archbishop Angelo Amato-- and an undersecretary-- now the American Dominican Father Augustine DiNoia. There are 30 staff members, of various nationalities. So the appointment of Archbishop Levada as prefect leaves the CDF with two Americans among its top three officials.

The CDF is charged with helping bishops to preserve the integrity of sound Catholic doctrine. The staff examines the writings and statements of theologians whose views raise questions about their orthodoxy, and offering corrections when necessary. Any decisions taken by the CDF are made by a vote of the cardinals who are members of the Congregation, and subject to the approval of the Pope.

Pope Benedict XVI, prior to his election as Roman Pontiff, had served as prefect of the CDF since 1981. He succeeded Cardinal Franjo Seper, who had held the office since 1968.

A gift for compromise

In nearly 19 years as a metropolitan, how has Archbishop Levada distinguished himself? Within the US bishops' conference he is seen as moderately conservative: a prelate who will uphold the doctrine of the Church without condemning those who oppose Church teachings.

Writing in 1994 about the reception of the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Levada rejected the notion that Catholics are free to pick and choose among Church teachings. He wrote:

A "cafeteria" approach to the faith has no basis in Scripture or the Church's tradition. Indeed, it has always been the case that rejection of even one of the doctrines of our faith implies a rupture with the visible communion of one faith and one Church.

Such a forthright approach to the integrity of Catholic teaching would seem to presage conflict between the archbishop and the public leaders of San Francisco, a city where liberal politicians (including many who identify themselves as Catholics) and homosexual activists often control the public agenda. But as Archbishop of San Francisco, Levada has not become a focal point of public controversy.

On the contrary, in 1996 the archbishop found an inventive way to avoid a confrontation with San Francisco lawmakers over a new city ordinance designed to benefit homosexuals. When city officials enacted a new policy, requiring all the firms that did business with the city to provide spousal benefits to the "domestic partners" of their employees, the offices of Catholic Charities were faced with the prospect of losing crucial government funding if they did not adopt a policy that would, in effect, recognize same-sex partnerships as equivalent to marriage. But Archbishop Levada brokered a compromise, allowing employees of Church-related groups to designate any individual-- a parent, sibling, friend, or indeed a homosexual lover-- as the recipient of benefits that had previously been reserved for spouses.

The archbishop defended this policy as a way of extending employment benefits without recognizing same-sex unions. But other American prelates rejected the compromise as an unnecessary concession to the gay-rights lobby, and a missed opportunity to take a potentially unpopular stand in defense of a fundamental moral principle. Moreover, by accepting this compromise arrangement in 1996-- relatively early in the nationwide drive by homosexual activists to secure spousal benefits-- the San Francisco archdiocese put pressure on other local churches and Catholic institutions to accept similar compromises.

Last year, when another public controversy arose within the American Church, over the status of Catholic politicians who support unrestricted abortion, Archbishop Levada again sought to maintain doctrinal principles without incurring public wrath. In a June 2004 statement on the reception of Holy Communion by politicians who support abortion, the archbishop wrote:

Can a politician be guilty of formal cooperation in evil? If the person intends to promote the killing of innocent life, s/he would be guilty of such sinful cooperation… Should every Catholic politician who has voted for an unjust law favoring abortion be judged to have this intention? I hope not. [Emphasis in original]

With his heavy emphasis on the intention of the politician who support a policy of unrestricted abortion, the archbishop left room for the arguments advanced by prominent Catholics who claim to be personally opposed to abortion, but bound to vote for the legalized killing on constitutional grounds. And on the sharper question of whether a pro-abortion politician should be denied access to the Eucharist, Archbishop Levada again took a nuanced stance. He stated clearly that such individuals should not receive Communion. But if they violated that precept, and approached the altar, he suggested:

With regard to Catholic politicians, the prudent practice for ministers of Holy Communion would be to refer any question in regard to their suitability to receive the sacrament to the bishop of the diocese.

In that June 2004 article the archbishop did not explicitly answer the question of how a bishop should respond to such inquiries. But later, in an interview with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, he did address that issue by saying, "Many of us as bishops are newly committed to seeking a path of dialogue on these areas." Implicitly rejecting the more direct approach taken by several other American prelates, he continued: "You don't start that path of dialogue by telling people you are going to refuse them Communion."

During the past decade, then, Archbishop Levada has taken a clear public stand on the two public issues that have brought most down the greatest social pressure upon the American hierarchy: the campaign for homosexual rights and the dispute over administering Communion to pro-abortion politicians. In each case, the San Francisco archbishop found a way to avoid a direct clash and to ease pressure against the Church. But in each case, too, his escape from the heat of the dispute came at a price; his stance undermined the positions taken by other American prelates who had chosen to take a clear stand and risk a direct clash with the popular culture.

Confronting the scandal

No public issue, of course, has caused more scrutiny of the American hierarchy than the sex-abuse scandal. And since the CDF is charged with responsibility for handing the discipline of pedophile priests, it makes sense carefully to examine Archbishop Levada's performance on that front.

At the American bishops' June 2002 meeting in Dallas, with the sex-abuse scandal dominating the agenda, Archbishop Levada rose to emphasize that negligent diocesan bishops, as well as pedophile priests, bore responsibility for the crisis. He observed: "We are suffering for the mistakes of bishops and administrators who did not place the future protection of children above their desire to protect the reputation and service of priests who had proven themselves unfaithful to their duties."

How has the archbishop himself handled the sex-abuse issue? The Portland archdiocese, which he led from 1986 to 1996, is now bankrupt because of payments won in court by abuse victims. Several of the devastating lawsuits against the archdiocese involved priests who were restored to parish work by Archbishop Levada after having been accused of molesting children, or protected from criminal prosecution when their misdeed came to the archbishop's attention.

In San Francisco, too, the archbishop has been roundly denounced by sex-abuse victims for what they see as his uncooperative attitude in efforts to identify and punish clerical abusers. Virtually every bishop in America has heard such complaints from the lawyers for sex-abuse victims, whose efforts to gain access to all chancery files inevitably clash with the Church's need for confidentiality. But some of the criticism raised against Archbishop Levada has also come from neutral parties. For example James Jenkins, a layman chosen by the archbishop to chair an independent review board examining child-abuse allegations, eventually resigned in protest, charging that Levada had stymied the work of the board through "deception, manipulation, and control." In his most notorious effort to silence complaints of clerical misconduct, Archbishop Levada ordered Father John Conley to stop making public accusations against another cleric, Father James Aylward. Despite the archbishop's admonitions, Father Conley persisted in his complaints. Eventually Father Aylward-- the accused abuser-- was quietly transferred to another parish while Father Conley-- the accuser-- was suspended from priestly ministry. (The archdiocese insisted that the reasons for Father Conley's suspension were unrelated to his whistle-blowing activities.)

The incident ended in utter disaster for the San Francisco archdiocese. The archdiocese paid Father Aylward $750,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a young man against Father Aylward. Father Conley also sued his archbishop, claiming that he had been unfairly stripped of his priestly ministry. He, too, won a financial settlement, along with an official acknowledgment from the archdiocese that "Father Conley was right in what he did" when he reported to police when he witnessed Father Aylward's wrestling with a teenage boy. That concession was all the more noteworthy because, in a deposition, Archbishop Levada had testified that he would not have reported the incident to police.

One final, particularly telling indication of the San Francisco archbishop's attitude toward sex-abuse crisis can be seen in his response to the scandal that shook the neighboring Santa Rosa diocese. In 1999, Bishop Patrick Ziemann of Santa Rosa was forced to resign when it came to light that he had blackmailed a priest to serve as his on-call homosexual partner. Archbishop Levada stepped into the breach as temporary apostolic administrator of the Santa Rosa diocese, where he forced to deal not only with the former bishop's tawdry history of sexual misconduct, but also with profligate spending that had left the little diocese with a massive $30 million debt.

As Bishop Ziemann left Santa Rosa in disgrace, Archbishop Levada pointedly refrained from condemning him; on the contrary he asked the faithful to join him "in thanking [Ziemann] for the energy and gifts he has shared far and wide." Resisting efforts for public disclosure of diocesan records, Archbishop Levada announced that the diocesan debt was the result of "poor investment decisions." At a public forum in the Santa Rosa diocese in February 2000, the archbishop rebuked laymen who called for criminal prosecution of Bishop Ziemann. "It's very inappropriate to call for the bishop to go to jail," he said.

An American at CDF

In his response to the sex-abuse crisis Archbishop Levada has shown a distinct bias toward protecting clerics-- and especially his fellow bishops-- rather than satisfying victims and reassuring the faithful. In his response to public debates on Church teachings, he has shown an instinct for tactical diplomacy rather than bold confrontation. Presumably Pope Benedict XVI felt that this knack for compromise was a desirable quality, to be sought in the new prefect for the CDF.

In selecting his own successor, the Holy Father could have tapped any prelate in the Catholic world. Early speculation about the likely candidates for the post had centered on Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, the principal editor of the Catechism, who is already one of the most prominent members of the College of Cardinals. The Pope might also have considered Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone of Genoa, who served with him as secretary of the CDF, or Archbishop Angelo Amato, who holds the post of CDF secretary today.

Instead the Pontiff chose an archbishop who, while he is respected within the American bishops' conference, is not widely known outside the US. Was Pope Benedict deliberately looking for an American to head the CDF? Reports that Chicago's Cardinal Francis George was also considered for the post lend credence to that theory.

But why would the Pope want an American prefect? The question is based on speculation, and so any answer will be speculative, too. But it seems plausible that Benedict XVI-- perhaps prompted by other prelates, perhaps even responding to discussions among the cardinals before and during the conclave-- recognized that he has frequently been perceived as a stern doctrinal enforcer, and should seek out a different sort of personality to work with him at the CDF. An American prelate, bred in a pluralist society and experienced in managing dissent, might be able to offset complaints about Vatican intransigence.

Whatever the reasons that lie behind his surprise selection, Archbishop Levada is likely to bring a very different style of leadership to the CDF. In the process, he may also set a markedly different and unexpected new tone for the pontificate of Benedict XVI.