May 11, 2023 at 7:00 a.m.
JOURNEY OF FAITH
Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger celebrates the 50th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood on July 2 as well as his 75th birthday on May 29. Bishop Scharfenberger, who was installed as the 10th Bishop of Albany on April 10, 2014, talks with The Evangelist about what led him to the priesthood, what he would tell young men discerning the priesthood and what he plans to the tell the pope on his 75th birthday in this exclusive interview with The Evangelist.
TE: When did you first become interested in the priesthood?
BE: I think I was attracted to what priests do pretty early. It might have been even as early as when I was first an altar boy in third grade. They were people that related well to us because there were priests in our school. They had a good relationship with the sisters and vice versa and I liked that. I liked being in school with classmates and what went on there and I liked the connection with the church. Remember in those days, at least in my neighborhood, there was a strong connection among family, church and school so that was a part of my life and therefore priests were a big part of that. The liturgy itself was definitely a part of it. I was attracted to that and I suppose as time went on I became more aware of what the ministry of the priest was, but that gradually developed because I didn’t know that until I was really in the seminary. But the seed must have been planted by the Holy Spirit early but I wasn’t interpreting that as a vocation because as I have told you before, I was more attracted to being a pilot. I wanted to be an airline pilot. I thought that was great what they did and that was what I thought would be my profession, my business. Of course, I found out when I wrote to all the airlines about the age of 11 or 12 — they didn’t know I was a kid and they sent me literature — that you had to have 20-20 vision, so that was the end of that.
TE: Was there someone, as time went on, that noticed in you the seed that the Holy Spirit planted?
BE: As we got toward the decision where we had to enter high school, I became aware that there was a preparatory seminary, Cathedral Prep, (and) I knew that was a place where people who were interested in becoming priests would attend high school. I remember Father McDade, I went to confession with him behind the screen not knowing that he knew me but, of course, now you can tell everybody. So at the end of confession I said, “Now I am not sure which school I should put down first because I also like Bishop Loughlin and Bishop Molloy and I remember him saying, “Well Eddie, put down Cathedral first.” He knew it was me and he told me to put down Cathedral first and that is what directed me to that school and that’s where I started making other contacts.
TE: So that started your journey to the priesthood?
BE: It became more likely that (going to seminary) would happen, but it wasn’t as though I had an aha experience. By the time I entered high school and I went to Cathedral Prep and I met other young men who were going in that direction, I never started thinking about something else other than priesthood. Of course, I had not yet been through questions about dating and marriage, but those questions would come up along the way. Would this be a commitment that I could make? People would tell me “You should marry, you should have a family,” and I thought about that because I come from a big family. For me it was a very smooth and gradual process. I never had any real roadblocks in the way, but I did have doubts about my ability to do this.
(When Bishop Scharfenberger was at North American College, his classmates convinced then-Bishop James A. Hickey, and later cardinal, to make diaconate a big deal with families coming to Rome instead of being ordained in their home parishes in the states.)
I remember it was at that point, I said I know that diaconate is important, but I am not being ordained to be a deacon. I am focused on the priesthood. It seemed to me to be the wrong focus, bringing people over, celebrating diaconate when this was a transitional thing? I went to my spiritual director and I said, “To me, this is not a big deal. I don’t think I want to take diaconate right now. I want to go home and get some pastoral experience.” It wasn’t really a doubt about priesthood and I remember him telling me to follow the advice of St. Ignatius: Stay the course until you have a good reason that it’s not the case. I didn’t have doubts about priesthood but I just didn’t feel ready.
I did end up going home that summer and doing some work in a local, inner-city parish where I worked with the youth program. And this is the important point. In the middle of August while I was still living in this parish, it just struck me one day, if I ever had an aha moment, in fact I did. It was you know what, it is not about whether I feel ready, it’s whether God wants me to do this. If God wants me to do this, I have to be confident he is going to give me the grace. It was the most definite experience I had that it was not about my ability but about trusting that this was what God had planned for me and therefore, as long as I gave myself over to the Lord and his Church, that I would find the ability.
TE: What do you remember most about your ordination?
BE: I tend to see things seriocomically. I see things humorously while I’m seeing them seriously. So the one thing that kept in my mind is that I was being ordained at the Chair of Charles the Bald. We were in St. Peter’s so that was a big deal. We have all of our families over there and we have this beautiful choir, but I remember my spiritual director who was also a church historian had told us a few months ago, “(The Chair of Peter) turned out to be the Chair of Charles the Bald through carbon sampling, so it is not the Chair of Peter at all.” I just remember thinking about that as I was being ordained that you know, while this is a very, very important thing we’re doing, don’t lose your sense of humor. It was kind of like a “Who am I experience.” I don’t deserve this, this is not a crowning point. Yeah, we worked hard and all of that and yeah, it is a big deal, but it’s also we are being ordained to serve so I was struck by both the awe and the majesty as well as the mundaneness. As we are being ordained, there are people milling all around, but that is Rome, the sublime and the ridiculous.
TE: What did you do after your ordination?
BE: I was ordained July 2, 1973, and then immediately went home and as of Aug. 1, for two months, I was placed in a bullpen. I started out as a parochial vicar for two months and then I took my assignment at St. Ephrem’s in Bay Ridge and it was supposed to be a three-year assignment and I started in September 1973 with the intention and understanding that I’d be there for three years and then probably sent someplace else. During that period of time, I did what any parish priest did. I anointed the sick, I celebrated Mass, got involved with the young people of the parish, trained the altar servers, worked with senior citizens. Whatever priests do, I did that. It did occur to me that I had begun a degree in moral theology and they had mentioned to us that we could continue that at some point after we did some pastoral work at a parish. I remember having a conversation with Bishop (Francis J.) Mugavero about that. He said sure and he gave me a call in 1976 and said, “Do you want to finish that degree?” So I went back to finish that for a few years in Rome.
And I was ready to come home but what had happened is one night, the people from the Tribunal were over there, around 1978, Marion (Max) Reinhardt was the officialis at the time. … Bishop Mugavero was there and I remember him taking all the seminarians and priests who were studying there out to dinner one night. I was up in his hotel room with some of the other priests and I remember him saying, “Oh, Eddie, I have to go to confession for a minute.” So he takes me into his room and says to me, “I know that Max Reinhardt has been talking to you, but we really do need somebody to study canon law so would you be willing to do it?”
That was totally out of left field. So then he asked me to study canon law and said why not go to Catholic U, so that’s how I got to study canon law. I did that at Catholic U and when I was finished there, I came back and from 1981 on, I was living in a parish (Our Lady of Mercy in Forest Hills), while I was doing tribunal work and was almost like a part-time associate. Most of the people thought I was a parochial vicar because I said Mass every Sunday, I did confessions, I did weddings and all that. For a good 20 years, from 1981 to 2001, I was in tribunal ministry and in a parish. Plus I also helped out with a parish on Long Island (St. Matthew’s in Dix Hills) on weekends. That began around 1988.
TE: How did you get to St. Matthias?
BE: I knew that Bishop (Thomas) Daily was going to be retiring. I thought to myself, I really want to go back to fulltime parish ministry. I went to Bishop Daily and I said, “Not for nothing, I am aware that St. Matthias is becoming vacant.” I knew it was a multi-ethnic parish and I had this feeling that the train is going this direction and if I stay on the train I may never get back to fulltime parish ministry. Whereas I figured if I crossed the platform, I’ll go on that train and get back into parish ministry. I said, “I am not choosing my parish,” and he goes “Oh, very interesting.” He was very happy that I did volunteer and it went through the personnel board and I remember the personnel director saying to me, “Eddie, thank you so much for volunteering for that.” The parish had required language skills. They had Spanish, Italian, Polish, English and German Masses. I think it was around January 2002, right after 9/11, Bishop Daily said we are going to assign you there.
TE: what do you remember most about your time there?
BE: It was to some extent a homecoming because I grew up in Ridgewood so I knew the neighborhood very well. I knew the people, I knew their way of thinking. It was a madhouse. It was crazy. We had eight Masses on the weekend. … It was a full-service parish, we did everything. There were a lot of activities going on. The biggest challenge was trying to keep people together and the best way to unify them was food, the Eucharist and ethnic food. We did a lot of ethnic celebrations. Plus we had a huge school with about 400 students. We had a group of sisters, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, who were still in the convent. There were about six or seven of them. And we had a major social ministry there … what eventually became St. Francis’ Table.
TE: How did you get the call to become Bishop of Albany?
BE: It was a shock. I was at my parents’ house one afternoon and I get a call from Father (Richard) Marchese at the Nunciature and I saw the 202 area code come by, so it started as a phone call. He said to me in a little while a priest is going to be calling you and I didn’t know what that was about. About 50 minutes later, I picked up the phone and it was (Carlo Maria) Vigano (former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States) and he says, “Pope Francis has appointed you Bishop of Albany.” My heart dropped. I said what’s this all about. It was crazy. I was about 66 and at that point there was no thought about any major transition. I was totally surprised and he said, “Do you accept it? It is a very important diocese, it is the capital of New York State.” After that, Marchese got on the phone and said, “You can tell your parents, but keep it quiet.” We decided to do the announcement the following Tuesday, it was the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Then Bishop (Nicholas) DiMarzio calls me up right after that and says, “You can call me Nick now.”
TE: How did that transition go?
BE: I came up under cover of night that following Friday and came up to St. Pius and I was in touch with Father (Michael) Farano, that was his parish at the time. So I stayed over there that Saturday morning and met with Bishop (Howard J.) Hubbard, Father Farano, Elizabeth Simcoe, Father Ken Doyle. They gave me some of the basics, like what’s the financial condition of the Diocese, what’s our litigation with the priests. They were talking about the Mercure case that was pending. Father Farano, I remember telling me, “The Diocese, we pay our bills. We have managed pretty well. We have a good annual appeal but it is pretty much hand to mouth. We don’t have a lot of reserves, we don’t have a lot of land.”
It seemed like it was fairly stable and we set the installation date of April 10 and I laid low for that period of time. One of the things that we discussed was where would I live. I said, I am not going to kick Bishop Hubbard out, but having two bishops in the same place, I am not sure how that works out. They said we have this place on Tudor Road that used to be a rectory, if you want to live there, and I said yes.
Quite frankly, my fear was that I was never going to be a priest again. I thought all a bishop would have to do is sit behind a desk and look at balance sheets and go to endless board meetings which I don’t minimize. I am effectively a CEO and corporate officer of all of these parishes and corporations, but what became clear very quickly is that I would be out in the parishes, certainly at confirmations. We are dealing with 126 parishes and doing at least 40-to-50 confirmations a year. I wanted to get out in the parishes and I still enjoy that more than anything else.
TE: What is going to happen when you turn 75 at the end of the month?
BE: Quite frankly I will tell you what is going to happen. There are a lot of rumors circulating around. I was told that somebody said I was going to be retiring to St. Mary’s in (Hudson) because the word is that I like Father Barratt’s garden. So therefore I am going to be at Holy Trinity Parish. And also people know that I have a condo in Florida which fell into my and my brother’s lap last March. I have no intention of moving to Florida. So what I am going to do is I have to write my letter on May 29, my birthday. So I will write, “Dear Pope, it’s been real.” (Bishop said with a hearty laugh) Something to the effect that I’m at your disposal. I’m not going to tell the pope one way or the other what to do, but I am not going to request to retire. I have to submit my resignation because I have to but I am not going to make a special request that I am ready to retire, because I am not.
One bishop, who is a classmate of mine, said guys that were ordained in 1975 are being asked to stay three years longer. So it’s logical that if you were ordained in 1973, you can add two years. I just heard from another bishop friend who said, “Oh, don’t worry if you are in bankruptcy, they’re not taking bishops out until the bankruptcy proceedings are over.” I think it is very likely that I will be here unless they have some crackerjack they want to replace me with, which would be fine.
TE: What advice would you give to someone discerning religious life?
BE: I am not sure in my time, and this might be a little bit edgy, but in many ways we were self-formed. This was a time of great turmoil in the late ’60s and I am not sure whether or not our formation was as ideal as it might have been if for no other reason than nobody had any understanding at the time of the importance of human formation. That being a priest is much more than knowing your theology, as important as that is, and much more than just putting on a cassock. I would say to any young man that’s interested that remember your ministry is going to be primarily to people and it’s a relational ministry that involves walking with people as Pope Francis always says on a very personal basis. Be willing to take the time, with great patience, to work with people on their spiritual journey. Right now, increasingly so, our process of formation is geared to helping you be good fathers and brothers to the people that you walk with in faith.
I would say to them that if that’s what your vision of priesthood is, that you are there as a father, as a brother to walk people on the journey of faith and to celebrate the sacraments of the Church, then we will give you all the support that you need. I would also say to them that if you have any questions as to whether or not you will be able to do this, I will share my own story and say it’s ultimately up to God because God will give you the grace to do that through the sacramental life of the Church and the importance of your prayer.
You have to pray. Jesus has to be the center of your life. If there is anything else attracting you to the priesthood, all the other things that go with it, it’s not going to work. You will not be happy. Jesus must be the center of your life because he’s the one calling you as his disciple. That has to be your focus. However, don’t fear and if it turns out that you discern this is not for you, you will not be any worse off because the formation that you are receiving will help you be a good Catholic man.
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