New military bishop anchored in Diocese

There must have been something in the water: Over the years, nine men who grew up on Grove Avenue in Albany have become priests -- including Bishop Joseph Estabrook, newly ordained auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Military Services.

"I knew Archbishop Joseph Ryan since I was eight," Bishop Estabrook remarked, referring to an older Grove Avenue alumnus who became a military archbishop and the first archbishop of Anchorage, Alaska. "When he visited, he'd come pick me up, and I'd serve Mass for him."

Later, Archbishop Ryan would have an even more important influence on his young neighbor: He persuaded Bishop Estabrook to join the Navy, where he would make his career.

Young years

That, however, came after an unusual and interesting upbringing. Bishop Estabrook is a native of Kingston; his grandparents owned several hotels in the Catskill Mountains, and his family lived in one during his early childhood.

When he was ten, the future bishop's family moved to Albany, where they joined St. Teresa of Avila parish. Bishop Estabrook attended St. Teresa's School and Vincentian Institute in Albany. Among his classmates at St. Teresa's was Sister Maureen Joyce, RSM, now executive director of Catholic Charities for the Albany Diocese.

Party split

Bishop Estabrook described his family as having both deep faith and strong political views, expressed in very different ways. His mother was a dedicated Democrat; his father, a staunch Republican.

"My mother was always a more devotional Catholic, and my father was more theological. In college, I used to write home and see what he was reading," the bishop continued. "My father was also a great example of social justice; he used to walk around with quarters in his pockets to give to the homeless. My mom used to be into novenas and making sure we were all connected with that."

That atmosphere nurtured Bishop Estabrook's call to the priesthood from an early age. He was initially inspired by the Trappist order at St. Joseph's Abbey in Massachusetts, but Msgr. John Hart of the Albany Diocese advised him to join the priesthood here.

Into the seminary

At first, his family was amused by his decision. "I'll give you six months," the bishop's mother told him when he said he was entering religious life, knowing that he found it difficult to stick with one path for too long. Bishop Estabrook joked that her comment made him remain a priest.

At Mater Christi Seminary in Albany and, later, Christ the King Seminary in Olean, the seminarian showed promise in music, teaching and social work, but turned down offers to study in any of those fields, unsure of what direction he wanted to choose.

Instead, after he was ordained in 1969, he served at the Albany Home for Children and St. Vincent's parish in Albany, and as director of the diocesan Family Life Office.

The latter position became more and more of a full-time job, as the Diocese worked to promote pro-life issues, Marriage Encounter groups and enrichment for couples. Bishop Estabrook eventually realized that a layperson should be leading the office, not a priest.

Join the Navy

Just as he was deciding to turn over the work to someone else, the priest got a call from Archbishop Ryan, offering him the chance to enter the military.

While his friends couldn't picture him as a military man -- Bishop Estabrook remembered Rev. John Mealey remarking, "You can't even keep your shoes shined!" -- that life turned out to be a perfect fit.

"What was so attractive," the bishop said of the military, "was that you never do the same thing twice."

Around the globe

Bishop Estabrook joined the Navy in 1977, thinking he'd only be in the military for three years. He never left.

He mentioned several of his myriad assignments over nearly three decades of service:

* In Jacksonville, Florida, he was on his first assignment at the Naval Air Station when he bumped into the Navy's chief of chaplains and mentioned that he'd like to go to sea someday. The next thing he knew, he got a phone call saying, "Can you be ready to go in two weeks?" He ended up traveling on ships from Europe to Egypt, ministering to servicemen whose average age was 19-and-a-half.

* After that, he thought he'd be leaving the military -- until friends asked if he'd consider joining the Marines. Though he'd never thought about it, he agreed, and spent two years in that branch of the military.

* In 1982, back in the Navy, he was ordered to study joint strategic planning so he could understand how line officers thought and consequently help them with ethical decision-making. After that training, he was stationed at the Pentagon, where he worked in recruiting and organized Catholic ceremonies involving the military in the Washington, D.C., area.

* The USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier, was his next assignment; he traveled all over the Pacific Ocean, often celebrating eight Masses on a Sunday for servicemen on different ships. "I really loved the sea," he told The Evangelist.

* Brief assignments in California -- at a naval hospital and the Jesuit School of Theology -- followed. Bishop Estabrook said that working with gunshot victims and young men addicted to crack cocaine "really opened my eyes" to the importance of the work chaplains do in hospital ministry.

* In 1989, Bishop Estabrook suddenly got a call that a priest was needed in Sigonella, Sicily. When the Gulf War broke out, Sigonella was used as a dropoff for caskets for servicemen killed in action; once, when 3,000 empty caskets were left on a runway, the troops were so emotionally impacted that the future bishop held a prayer service to comfort them. Attendees filled an entire airplane hangar.

* The 1990s brought a three-year stint of training new Naval chaplains at a school in Rhode Island, where Bishop Estabrook learned he enjoyed teaching.

He moved on to work in the Navy's Chief of Chaplains Office and simultaneously became an ethics consultant for the Navy.

In 1997, he became senior chaplain for the Pacific Fleet, in charge of all chaplains at sea, in submarines and on shore. He spent much of his time traveling from place to place.

By 2000, the future bishop realized he'd be retiring from the military soon and returning to the Albany Diocese. To get reacquainted with life as a parish priest, he became command chaplain at the Marine Corps base in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

His "parish" included 12,000 troops. (A previous story in The Evangelist profiled his successful effort to build a $9.5 million chapel there; search the archives at www.evangelist.org.)

New summons

A call from Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, apostolic nuncio to the U.S., informed him that he wouldn't be coming home, after all: He'd been named an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Military Services.

When he spoke with The Evangelist before his July 3 ordination in Washington, Bishop Estabrook still didn't know exactly what his duties as bishop would entail. He expected to go on a retreat in August with fellow new Bishop Richard Higgins where the details would be hashed out.

"I will be traveling about 80 percent of the time," Bishop Estabrook noted. "We need to keep in touch with the Catholic people, their concerns and anxieties. We have to know what's going on with them."

He expects to visit Europe and the Far East, especially places like Bangkok and Singapore, where there may not even be priests assigned to the military bases or detachments.

"People really need to see a bishop," he added. "Nothing replaces personal interfacing."

Goals

The newly ordained bishop has three goals: boosting the morale of chaplains, educating Catholics about their faith, and creating more spiritual depth in Catholics' faith.

On the first goal, he noted that priests in the military need to not only "be comfortable and happy themselves, but excited enough to talk to young guys about vocations." He also wants to find ways to maximize the talents of priests in the military, since their numbers have dropped just as they have outside the armed forces.

Regarding the latter goals, Bishop Estabrook believes that many Catholics don't understand why the Church teaches what it does. If they did, he thinks they'd become even more faithful. He would also like to help Catholics want to go to church not just as a "good cultural experience," but as a means of deepening their faith.

Of all the archdioceses in existence, Bishop Estabrook remarked, the Military Archdiocese serves the youngest population. Although many of the men and women in the armed forces don't practice their faith, he added, "there are a lot with dynamic faith. There's more of an opportunity for us to try and get vocations."

The new bishop admitted that he was surprised his career has taken such twists and turns, but said that "doors open up, and I go through them.

"Being in the military, people call you `Father,' `Monsignor,' `Captain,'" he mused; but "it doesn't matter what your role is. You're just a platform for the Holy Spirit to do His work. Evidently, God wants me to do something on a different level, so I'll wait to see what His next orders are."

(7/15/04)