Prelates say development creating rifts

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 20, 1995 by William Bole

In the booming resort towns of western Colorado, Archbishop J. Francis Stafford of Denver has witnessed the creation of what he deploringly calls "the culture of a leisure colony," where the rich dwell in mountainside mansions and the poor live below in valleys of squalor.

In the Cleveland diocese, Bishop Anthony M. Pilla has seen the more fortunate of his flock retreat into affluent suburban enclaves, while others suffer in the city, to the point that he seriously questions if the Catholic church there can still be called "one church, one family."

Both of these spiritual leaders have been confronted by one of the more complex material realities of this age - the widening social and economic distances between those who have in abundance and those who have little.

Both have made themselves heard as voices of dissent from the imbalances of unfettered growth. Both are now searching for pastoral handles on how to respond in practical ways to forces that seem to be pulling Americans - and their own flocks - further apart.

Neither prelate has a reputation as a critic of the establishment.

Stafford is better known for his doctrinal conservativism than for social activism, although he spent time as a Catholic Charities official in Baltimore and supported community-organizing efforts as a bishop in Memphis, Tenn.

With the publication late last year of his 14-page pastoral letter, "The Heights of the Mountains Are His: The Development of God's Country," the 62-year-old archbishop has acquired a new image as the region's most prominent detractor of what he calls "distorted development."

Stafford has tried to expose inequities areas such as Vail and Aspen where overnight development has spawned a new servant class. In an interview, Stafford said he has made a special appeal to "the rich who are oblivious to what is happening to those who serve them, what is happening to them as mothers, fathers and family members."

When Stafford's letter came out, the editorial board of The Denver Post made dear its view that the archbishop was butting in that he had a right to be concerned about such matters, the paper said "remedies to these inequities should be locally initiated, not imposed from the outside."

In Cleveland, some skepticism has greeted Pilla's activism as moral defender of the inner city.

Like other bishops across urban America, Pilla has faced the disagreeable task of clising some inner-city schools and parishes, which he candidly remarks could give the impression of saying one thing and doing another.

"But the problem is, if you ran deficits of $200,000 in every Catholic school, and you have 180 of them, you're not going to survive for long," said Pilla, whose diocese covers several other cities, including Akron.

A moral example

And then there is the bishop's friendship with real-estate magnate Sam Miller, whose exclusive suburban developments might seem to be the kind Pilla dislikes - but who also gives generously to parochial schools.

But the bishop, who acknowledges, even enumerates the ambiguities of his role, has made a lesson out of the work of his civic-minded Jewish friend.

"Sam is a moral example," Pilla said in an interview. He called Miller a model of how to balance development in the suburbs with investments in and contributions to the urban centers.

Pilla's message and private, have been severely off balance - intensifying the wealth of suburbs and the poverty of cities.

"You have all this development of highway systems and homes in the suburbs without any corresponding redevelopment of urban areas, without any concern for those who choose to stay in the city," Pilla said, sounding a key theme of his campaign, "The Church in the City."

The skepticism that has greeted the separate initiatives by Pilla and Stafford have been notably outweighed by the credibility that still seems to come with Catholic invocations for the poor.

On such matters, the church is usually perceived as acting out of moral values, rather than special interests or political ideologies. A natural advantage, too, is the fact that the social sentiments are normally backed with charitable dollars, for needs such as housing the poor.

But this does not mean the issues aren't personal, for both these bishops.

Stafford, who came tot he Denver diocese nine years ago, said he "got hooked" on the mountains and valleys of Colorado's Western Slope in the 1960s, when he started going out there for ski trips with his friend, Fr. Tom Dentici, then of Brooklyn. Stafford was a priest in Baltimore at the time.

When Stafford came west for the job of archbishop, he heard from a woman who for years had been a close friend of his and Dentici's. She told him that hyper-development of the region west of Denver had created an environment where even middle-class people like herself - a ski instructor - could no longer afford to live where they worked.

The archbishop recalled that later on he heard from another woman who said that in her immediate area alone, she knew of dozens of families and single men and women who were living in campers without toilets or showers, in cars and caves, under bridges and in gravel pits and parks.