CATHOLIC VOICES

Deacon Walter Ayres, 69, is the director of the Diocesan Commission on Peace and Justice, which assists Catho­lics and the wider community to understand and respond to God’s call to human solidarity as found in Scripture, the witness and teaching of Jesus, and the social doctrine of the Church. He has been married to his wife, Karen, for 35 years and has two daughters, Maura and Monica. The Evangelist talked with him about a wide range of topics for its Catholic Voices interview series, which will run periodically in the newspaper and online.

TE: Tell us about your child­hood and upbringing?

WA: I am from Conklin, New York, born in 1949; Roman Catho­lic father, Byzantine Catho­lic mother; one of five boys, second of two, number two in the pecking order. Went to school at Susquehanna High School in Conklin. (My) first freshman year (was at the) University of Pennsylvania; spent it pining for my high school sweetheart (and) managed to flunk out. (My) second freshman year and second college was at Eisenhower College, made Dean’s List the first year so I wouldn’t get drafted and didn’t see that again until my final semester. Majored in pre-journalism. I got accepted to Syracuse University Journalism program, but I had an offer for a job at the local paper in Geneva. So I took a leave and never did go back to graduate school.

TE: Where did your work take you?

WA: I worked at (the paper’s) bureau in Seneca Falls, New York; left there got hired by a paper in Indiana, the Greenfield Daily Reporter. I worked there for a year, and then got hired by the Binghamton Evening Press. Worked there five years and was on the losing effort to unionize the newsroom and realized my journalism career at that paper was over. I took a year off to write the great American novel, sold my house, quit my job, ended up with no house, no job, no money; one of the best years of my life.  I came to Albany, worked at the legislature for three years, the House Operations Committee, which was the political arm of the Assembly Democrats; got fired for refusing to violate the election law, which forced me to look for another job. Got hired to be the AT&T spokesman when they broke up the phone company in 1984. And my reward after five years of that was to get promoted to corporate spokesman in New Jersey. My wife said she was not moving and neither were my children, so I threw myself back on public service and got hired by the State Ethics Commission and worked there for 22 years.

TE: What kind of religious memories do you have growing up?

WA: We went to Mass every Sunday. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, who were at a convent in Binghamton, came out every Sunday to teach us country boys and girls our Catechism. And I learned not too many years later that when I am around the Sisters of St. Joseph, my faith is very strong and when I am not, I am in trouble. I thought about being a priest. I remember coming home, bringing my alb and cassock back and wanted to play priest in the living room and making my brothers receive Communion using Necco wafers. 

TE: Your wife and daughters were the driving force behind you be­com­ing a deacon?

WA: We came home one day and she and my daughters sat me down after dinner and said that they saw in the church bulletin at St. James, now St. Francis on Delaware Avenue, was having a discernment night for people who wanted to be deacons and they thought I should be a deacon. I thought if somebody thought I would be a deacon, the priest would say something. But I said I am not going to do this on my own, you are going to have to come with me, and (my wife) did and we met with Father Joe Cotu­gno at the rectory there and he was then the head of the deacon formation program. My wife just kept asking questions and I remember he would lean across the table and tap her on the arm and say, ‘They are going to love having you in the program.’ He never once said that to me. He said if your wife and daughters are telling you, follow them.

TE: What makes a good deacon?

WA: Listen to what people want. Some people want to be deacons to say I am here to tell you what to do. And I know people who are deacons and have actually said that to people in the parishes. I always figured, growing up after college and living in several places, the Church was here long before I got here and it’s gonna be here long after I’m gone. My major goal is to not screw things up. And the way you do that is to listen to what people want.

TE: What do you do at Catho­lic Charities and the Peace and Justice Commission?

WA: I tell people that we are like the advocacy arm for the Diocese and Catholic Charities. We do presentations to parishes and different groups on Catholic social justice and what it is and why we are involved in advocacy. We go to rallies and demonstrations in support of programs that the Diocese and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops support. For example, we were involved in raising the minimum wage, the Fight for 15; we were involved in paid family leave; we marched down the street with Bishop (Howard) Hubbard and Bishop (Edward) Scharfenberger, both have been involved in the effort for farmworkers rights. It’s not just a thing of one bishop; it’s a Church thing.

TE: Talk about the inter­section of religion and politics?

WA: For me religion has always been political. When I grew up in the ‘50s, dad ran for town supervisor and the Sunday before the election, the local Presbyterian minister got up in the parish and announced that they were forbidden to vote for a Catholic. This was before Kennedy got elected. And it was my first instance of anti-Catholic sentiment. And when Kennedy ran, I remember one of my younger brothers getting into a fight in school because his classmates said a Catholic could never be president. My dad grew up in a time when Al Smith ran for president and they were getting beat up because of anti-Catholic sentiment. We have the option of being on the side of people who are oppressing a group or the group that is being oppressed and I think most of us forget for a long, long time, we were the oppressed people. John Adams proposed that (Catholics) not be allowed to vote because we owed allegiance to a foreign potentate. That was one of the reasons that I got into the social justice stuff. I think as Catholics, knowing our history, we need to always be on the side of the people that are oppressed. 

TE: What is your life ­philosophy?

WA: I have actually tried writing in the last couple of months a rule for life, like St. Benedict’s Rule. And the No. 1 thing is trust in the Spirit above everything else. Trust in the Spirit.

I never thought this is where I would be. I never wanted to be a deacon and if someone called me up today and said ‘Walter, you can’t be a deacon anymore,’ I would say, ‘Thank you, I have a lot of other things to do.’