Forming the Faith

He obviously thinks very highly of you, having elevated you from your diocese in Pittsburgh. Do you think you line up with him theologically more than you did with Pope John Paul II?
I'm just so impressed by the way this Holy Father goes about his ministry. I like to think that I try in my own small way to reflect that. He does put a lot of emphasis on teaching. I find that this Holy Father speaks out of the same great tradition that we bishops all speak out of. I just feel very comforted by what he's saying, by the way he presents the teaching. And that's not in contrast with his predecessor; it's really in continuity with his predecessor. I think one of the things that we probably could all recognize is Pope Benedict is the logical successor to Pope John Paul II.

Why?
Because they both have this ability to look at the faith, analyze the current situation and then find ways to apply the faith to the circumstances of today. And maybe that accounts for these huge crowds of people coming down to St. Peter's Square. I'm told there are more people coming to St. Peter's Square and to the audience hall to hear this pope than any pope in history.

You upset the [U.S.] bishops when you first came to D.C. and said you would not deny communion to pro-choice politicians.
I'm not sure about that. I think there are some people who have their own views on that. But what I said was—and this is what the bishops said too—when it comes to the matter of communion, there are a lot of pastoral approaches and bishops can differ on that. And they do. There's no one correct way that everybody has to follow, but there are a number of pastoral approaches to how do you bring people to understand what their obligations to the faith are. The task of the bishops is to help people understand what it is we believe and what the implications of our faith are, and out of that will come their decisions, their right decisions. You can't force people.

Statistics show a good number of Catholics in the U.S. don't believe you have to follow the guidelines issued from the Vatican. For example, 75 percent believe you can be a good Catholic without obeying church teaching on birth control. How do you confront that mismatch between people who say they're Catholics and identify with the core beliefs of Catholicism but distance themselves from the social teachings of the church?
I think that's been the case from the very beginning of the church. The church has always proclaimed Christ has risen—that's the heart of our proclamation. With that comes a way of seeing life and therefore a way of acting. I think there are many people who struggle with living out their faith. And that's a reflection on our need to teach and the need of the Catholic faithful to accept more fully the challenge of the faith.

Another [survey] states that 76 percent of Americans believe you can be a good Catholic without going to church on Sunday.
It's one of the reasons why the number one priority of the Conference of Bishops in the U.S., when we were asked, all of us together, what would you highlight as the number one priority of the church in the United States for the next five years, we said faith formation.

And what does that mean?
Educating people in the faith, faith formation particularly around the sacraments. It means helping people understand better what the faith actually means and how we live it. We come to mass, for example, because we believe in the mass, in the Eucharist. We're not only hearing the proclamation of the faith, but we're being changed, transformed by it. Now that's not an easy concept for our culture to deal with, because it brings us into the whole world of sacraments, of supernatural or spiritual world that you can't measure in a quantifiable way. There's a lot of Catholics who don't understand the faith because of that, and for that reason don't live it in all the aspects.