Bishop Thom Hennen of Baker, Ore., formerly a priest of the Diocese of Davenport, greets guests at Sacred Heart Cathedral’s Red Dinner June 4 in the Rogalski Center at St. Ambrose University in Davenport.
By Barb Arland-Fye
For The Catholic Messenger
DAVENPORT — Sacred Heart Cathedral’s Red Dinner bore the flavor of a family reunion with Bishop Thom Hennen, its former pastor, presiding at Mass and delivering a heartfelt speech emphasizing faith, family, community and the cathedral as the connecting point. Now the Bishop of the Diocese of Baker, Oregon, Bishop Hennen made the 1,700-mile trip to return to his home diocese to celebrate Mass and the Red Dinner on June 4.
“I have been a bishop for a little over eight months. I am still very much in the listening and learning phase,” Bishop Hennen said during his dinner presentation that blended insights and humor, grace and humility and imparted lessons applicable to all Catholics.
Prior to the sold-out Red Dinner, an annual fundraiser for Sacred Heart Cathedral, the Davenport Diocese’s mother church, Bishop Hennen presided at Mass in the cathedral where he served as pastor for four years before his appointment to the episcopacy. Bishop Dennis Walsh, Bishop of the Davenport Diocese, attended in choir, meaning he was present, but did not celebrate or concelebrate. Eight priests concelebrated and two deacons assisted.
Afterwards, lay and clergy lined up informally to talk with Bishop Hennen during the cocktail hour and silent auction before dinner in the Rogalski Center at St. Ambrose University in Davenport. The bishop also circulated among the many tables, chatting and laughing with guests, which delayed his talk but no one seemed to mind. His speech inspired and delighted the audience, which laughed knowingly at the humor he sprinkled into it.
Bishop Hennen recounted the shock he experienced receiving the call from the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States asking if he would accept his appointment as the next Bishop of Baker. “I told the Nuncio I felt that I was too young. He told me to ‘trust in the Lord.’”
The new bishop took that advice and is beginning to feel more at home in his vast diocese of 67,000 square miles in eastern Oregon. He has completed his first confirmation season, with visits to 42 of the 57 parishes and missions in his diocese and plans to complete the circuit by the end of his first year.
He shared with the audience “a few of the things I have learned (or learned in a new way) as a bishop that I think might be helpful for everyone.” These are excerpts from his insights:
- “There are good people everywhere … To be sure, I miss you all dearly. I miss Iowa and the Quad Cities. I miss my family and friends, my brother priests of the Diocese of Davenport, my former coworkers, colleagues and partners in ministry. I miss the regular interaction with people I have known, in some cases, my whole life or relationships that I have developed over years and decades. But, there are many very good people in Oregon too, and I am coming to know them better and to truly love them.”
- “There are difficult people everywhere.” He joked that people wanting to share their complaints with him “assume there is some kind of ‘divine download’ that takes place at ordination and that I know the entire history and context of the issue.”
However, he has to remind himself, “Their fear may be overblown, but it is a real fear. Their anger may be misplaced, but it is real anger. Their expectations may be unreasonable, but there is almost always something that can be done. Just listening, releasing that ‘pressure valve,’ is already the beginning of healing and often the first step toward a realistic solution… I have to remember that the person in front of me is a beloved child of God. This is a good thing for all of us to remember in the Church, not just priests and bishops.”
- “As a bishop, the worries are amplified, but so are the joys. Many of the same concerns I had in parish ministry are the same in this ministry, only there are many more of them,” he said. The stakes may be higher, “quite literally souls, maybe generations of souls are on the line,” but “not everything depends on us. Thank God!”
Bishop Hennen gave examples of what brings him joy — confirming young people, presiding at his first Chrism Mass as a bishop, visiting men in two large prisons, bringing them the hope that comes from a loving, forgiving God.
- “Grace finds a way.” Bishop Hennen still wonders why he was chosen to serve as a bishop when other priests, in his opinion, are better qualified. “They are older, smarter, wiser, more experienced, taller,” he joked, referring to his stature.
“I often feel like Peter, who after the miraculous catch of fish fell at the feet of Jesus and said, ‘Lord, depart from me for I am a sinful man.’ And yet, Jesus told him, ‘I will make you a fisher of men.’ … I know, as Peter and all the Apostles learned, that it is not about me. It never was. It is about Jesus and what he is able to do in his Church.” Grace finds a way, Bishop Hennen said, “because this is and always has been about what God is doing.”
- “Community is important at all levels. We do this ‘Church thing’ together or not at all,” Bishop Hennen said. “We need each other, and this starts at that first, almost cellular level of the family, whatever that may look like.” Families, the bishop said, “need to be supported, certainly at the societal level, but especially within the Church. And this happens best at the parish level … where the people of God are nourished in word and sacrament …”
A diocese’s cathedral provides the connecting point, he said. “I knew this well from the four truly blessed years I spent at Sacred Heart Cathedral. I know this even more now in my new diocese.” The cathedral should be the model for parish life, he said. It is “where we celebrate such things as the Rite of Election for those entering the Church. It is where we gather for the Chrism Mass. It is where ordinations are celebrated. The cathedral is the home of every Catholic in the diocese and a welcoming oasis for passing pilgrims. It is a welcoming mother, a shining beacon, and an instrument of that community that brings about true communion. Yes, community at all levels, but especially within the Church.”
Those gathered for the dinner — from different parishes in and outside the diocese — embrace Sacred Heart Cathedral as the connecting point and its ability to foster community.
“The cathedral is a vibrant community,” said Father Jason Crossen, Bishop Hennen’s successor at the cathedral, and a close friend. “In many ways, the cathedral exemplifies a lot of the ministries that you find in the parishes throughout the diocese. The Red Dinner started out as a fundraiser but it’s become a community builder.”
Sacred Heart parishioner Jim Tiedje needed convincing in the early years that the Red Dinner would become a successful fundraising event. “But look at what it’s become – a true welcoming of all parishes.”
Mary Jo Dopson of Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace Parish in Clinton, was attending her first Red Dinner. “We love to see Father Thom; I mean Bishop Thom, and catch up with him. (In his early priesthood he served in Clinton). And we’re very proud of the cathedral.”
