Stockton Bishop Troubled by Speculation on Future

Bishop Roger Mahony of Stockton, a frequent speculative choice as a possible successor to 75-year-old Cardinal Timothy Manning of Los Angeles, says that the talk makes trouble for him back in his diocese.

“It’s a compliment but it creates difficulty” Mahony said. “People can ask, ‘Is this person really committed to this diocese?’ But I love it here.”

He has been in Stockton for nearly five years. The Hollywood-born bishop was previously auxiliary bishop of Fresno and was an adviser to Manning in that diocese when Manning was bishop before succeeding Cardinal James Francis McIntyre in 1970.

Manning submitted his retirement request last Oct. 15 but no public response has come from the Vatican. Speculation has increased about favorites for the position heading the largest archdiocese in the country--nearly 2.4 million Roman Catholics in three counties.

Mahony, who turns 49 this month, addressed a large workshop on the U.S. bishops’ peace pastoral letter last weekend in Anaheim during the Los Angeles archdiocese’s annual Religious Education Congress.

Asked in a telephone interview about the sequence of appointment announcements by the Vatican, Mahony said he has noticed that the recent pattern in overseas locations has been to announce a bishop’s retirement and his successor simultaneously. This differs from a previous pattern of leaving time between the two announcements, allowing opinions to be solicited from the diocese before the choice of a successor is made in Rome.

Father Joseph Battaglia, communications director for the archdiocese, said he has heard of letters sent by the apostolic delegate in Washington to clergy asking for assessments of the archdiocese and its needs. “If the letters are being sent out now (before any announcement that Manning’s resignation has been accepted), it is likely there won’t be any great interval between announcements and it might be simultaneous,” Battaglia said.

Sixty black clergy and laity who are members of the predominantly rural American Lutheran Church met in Los Angeles this week to work on a position paper defending the value of spontaneity and emotion in worship and arguing for more denominational backing to black community action efforts.

Black churchgoers number between 6,000 and 7,000 in the 2.3-million-member denomination based in Minneapolis. And of the more than 5,000 clergy only 23 are black.

The Rev. Raymond LeBlanc, pastor of First Lutheran Church in Carson, said black Lutheran congregations are able to vary from the liturgical formality of most Lutheran worship services but many inside and outside the black congregations find it disturbing.

The black worship style--evident in Baptist and other churches--is often “looked upon as less than Lutheran,” said LeBlanc, who is chairman of the denomination’s Task Force for the Black Agenda. “We like to praise God with more emotion. This is one of the gifts we have to offer the church.”

LeBlanc, speaking for himself, also said that more denominational support is being sought for social action involvement. “Many times, what has happened is that we were a dialogue short and a day late” because of slow responses or lack of time and money commitment, he said.

Bishop Nelson W. Trout of Los Angeles, the first black bishop in the American Lutheran Church, suggested that the Commission for a New Lutheran Church should have more black input during the process leading up to a merger of three denominations by 1988.

Nan Arrington Peete, a Los Angeles businesswoman who decided to enter the Episcopal priesthood, will reach that goal today at Upland’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, where she is on the staff.

Peete is one of only 11 black women among the approximately 700 women Episcopal clergy in the U.S. church. She will be the first black woman among the 18 women priests in the Los Angeles diocese, according to a spokeswoman for the 75-year-old parish church.

Before earning a master of divinity degree last year, Peete had obtained degrees in economics and management and worked as a consultant for a public accounting firm in Los Angeles. She was on the board of the Los Angeles Metropolitan YWCA and still serves on the board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles.