Tale of two bishops

National Catholic Reporter, April 2, 1999 by Pamela Schaeffer

Many Amarillo Catholics say new leadership has brought conflict, turmoil to diocese

Two years after Bishop Leroy T. Matthiesen was appointed bishop of Amarillo, he was photographed for Life magazine in cowboy boots and clerical blacks astride a magnificent white horse. The black-white contrast in the July 1982 issue was appropriate, for when it came to the morality of nuclear arms, the bishop had forsaken shades of gray.

At a time when the nation's Catholic bishops were preparing "The Challenge of Peace," their 1983 document on the immorality of nuclear war, Matthiesen took out after Pantex, a major employer in Amarillo and the final assembly point for the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal. Urging Pantex employees to consider giving up their jobs, the Texas Panhandle bishop emerged as one of the nation's most outspoken opponents of the nuclear arms buildup.

Although not all in Amarillo appreciated Matthiesen's stance, his national prominence and his local roots were, to many, a source of pride. Today, however, Matthiesen lives in retirement in a small house, giving his attention to gardening, writing books and serving as spiritual advisor to a group of contemplative nuns as he watches his diocese, under a tough new bishop, become a caldron of internal discontent.

Matthiesen, who grew up on a cotton farm in Central West Texas, was Amarillo's first homegrown bishop. Progressive bishops were in ascendancy in the early 1980s, and Matthiesen's supporters in Amarillo worried that his national reputation would be rewarded with promotion to a larger diocese.

"You get a good one like Matt and they take him away," a local admirer told Life. Matthiesen was valued not only for strong moral leadership but for a pastoral style that, priests say, included good listening skills, kindheartedness and tolerance for diversity.

Matthiesen was never transferred. By the time he retired as bishop of Amarillo in January 1997, at age 75, he had served the diocese for 51 years as priest, secondary school principal, newspaper editor and bishop. In the early 1980s, though, the bishop's friends and followers told Life they feared Matt would "ride the disarmament issue right out of town."

Generating a different response

Amarillo's new bishop, John W. Yanta, formerly a priest and auxiliary bishop in San Antonio, is generating a different response among numerous priests, diocesan leaders and laypeople. Although Yanta, 67, has a core of supporters among conservative Catholics who welcomed his arrival with open arms, many others who spoke to NCR said they'd happily ride the new bishop right out of town -- to send him the way of several priests he's sent packing and projects he's dismantled. In Amarillo itself, some of the greatest disappointment is linked to Yanta's refusal to support a proposed lay-owned Catholic high school that Matthiesen had heartily endorsed.

In an interview in Dalhart, Texas, between Masses on a recent Sunday, Yanta, asked about reports of turmoil, said, "I would say there's a lot of peace and joy also in this diocese.... We can emphasize the negative. There's a lot of anger in the kind of world we live in." He said he wanted to be a "good steward" and to live according to the "oath of fidelity" he took in becoming a bishop.

Yanta was in Dalhart, a prosperous farming community north of Amarillo, to try to calm parishioners' anger stemming from a forced leave of absence taken by their popular pastor, Fr. Dale Guidry. Guidry, former pastor of St. Anthony's Parish, took the leave to pre-empt his removal by Yanta related to what parishioners described as trumped-up charges against him.

Lay leaders in Dalhart said parish members were mystified and outraged at what they describe as the harsh treatment of their pastor. Yanta said details of Guidry's situation were confidential. The parish, he said, was called to be "reconciled" and "healed."

Guidry's replacement is a former Episcopal priest, Fr. James McGhee, who holds the title pastoral coordinator rather than pastor. At Yanta's request, and with Yanta present, McGhee publicly recited an oath of fidelity and a profession of faith at Masses on the weekend of March 20 and 21. Copies signed by McGhee and by his wife, Ann McGhee, the official witness, were distributed to parishioners.

Although Yanta was apparently well respected in San Antonio, where he was appointed auxiliary bishop in 1994, many priests and diocesan leaders in Amarillo regard him as a poor choice to follow Matthiesen. Matthiesen was widely regarded as a "Vatican II bishop" in the progressive sense.

Seven priests who spoke to NCR under the condition of anonymity, five of them in leadership positions in the diocese, and more than a dozen lay leaders and activists, described Yanta as personable in public, well liked by "pew people," but rigid, controlling and suspicious in his dealings with priests, authoritarian and confrontational in his administrative style, pietistic in speech and manner, and a poor listener who makes up his mind before he consults. One priest said Yanta talks incessantly about unity while thriving on -- even generating -- division.