James D. Conley, the Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, is in many respects a pretty typical example of the conservative-to-traditionalist flank of the American episcopate. He was critical of the Obama administration in its day; he inherited his see from the hyperconservative Fabian Bruskewitz and although he hasn’t continued some of Bruskewitz’s most toxic policies he also by most accounts hasn’t changed the diocese’s basic direction; he is close friends with other leading lights of conservative American Catholicism like Thomas Olmsted and Paul Stagg Coakley. This is the sort of bishop that Where Peter Is criticizes a lot and about which I myself have written very negatively in the past (sometimes a bit too much so). Yet I have a soft spot for Bishop Conley and have for a long time. In 2019 and into 2020 Conley showed remarkable humility and integrity in taking a leave of absence to pursue mental health treatment for severe depression. (By all accounts his friend Bishop Olmsted was a rock for him personally as well as logistically during this period.) Just as remarkably, after Conley returned to work, he wrote “A Future with Hope,” a pastoral letter to his diocese about healing—both medically and in the person of Christ, the Divine Healer.
My favorite passage in “A Future with Hope” comes towards the end and reads as follows:
What we can be always sure of—no matter what is happening in our lives—is that we are not alone. You are not alone! God knows your suffering intimately and wants to walk with you through it. As St. John Paul II wrote, “Christ took upon Himself all human suffering, even mental distress. Yes, even this suffering, which appears perhaps to be the most absurd and incomprehensible, configures the sick person to Christ and makes him share in his redemptive passion.” In this moment, as in every moment, God is whispering to you, “I know the plans I have for you…plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). The hope God gives us and the joy that accompanies this hope, is a precious treasure we must protect. When hope wanes, let us remember the countless ways God has blessed us, the particular instances in our lives where He has “come through,” and the dark times when He felt absent but, in hindsight, we could discern His presence.
I encourage my readers to read the whole thing.
Bishop Conley’s teaching here is remarkable, and if developed further might grow into the most important contribution to Catholic theological anthropology in a generation (maybe longer, if one is inclined to take a skeptical view of John Paul II’s theology of the body). In many secular circles this way of emphasizing the importance of mental health is conventional wisdom to the point of cliché; I’m downright sick of hearing about it from some people. Within the Church, though, there is still a widespread suspicion of treating these things as “ailments” rather than personality flaws or indicators of malign spiritual influence. (Of course, more than one of those factors can be at play at once.) As I’ve written before, it takes courage for a very conservative bishop like Jim Conley to think and talk about his experiences getting treatment, and it takes wisdom for him to think and talk about it in the encouraging but convicting way in which he does.
Since bishops’ teaching authority flows from, and is shared (is collegial) in, the one Christ, Conley’s contribution here makes sense. It should not be surprising to me to see a powerful, even beautiful teaching from a bishop whom I’m inclined to disagree with on many things. A bishop I “like” such as Mark Seitz or John Stowe, or for that matter the late Pope Francis, is still a fallible man who can say things or make decisions that I find concerning or unwise or offensive. Likewise, a bishop I “don’t like,” or “wouldn’t like if I were familiar with him for different reasons,” is even so an inheritor of the apostolic charisma who can give gifts like this to the Church and to the world. It goes beyond that, too—on an everyday level maybe deeper than that. Life is about the people we meet, and everyone we meet has something to teach us.
Pope Leo was elected with a complicated double mandate: first, to continue Pope Francis’s legacy in its substance and its great items; secondly, to deescalate some of the conflicts of recent decades and restore communion and fellow-feeling within the Church. So far he seems to be doing pretty well at both; he is a talented and impressive man and I am much more enthusiastic about him now than I was on May 8. It’s in the spirit of this double mandate and the Leonine call for peace and dialogue that I highlight this important theological and pastoral work done by a bishop whose factional orientation within the Church is very different from my own.
Image: Bishop James D. Conley. Image on the website of the Diocese of Lincoln.
Nathan Turowsky—a native New Englander, an alumnus of Boston University School of Theology, and one of the relatively few Catholic alumni of that primarily Wesleyan institution—works in the nonprofit sector and writes at Silicate Siesta.
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