Boston's new archbishop leans into transparency, trust in God's grace to face challenges ahead

(OSV News) -- It was during a session for priests at the 10th National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis in July when Archbishop Richard G. Henning, who will be installed as archbishop of Boston Oct. 31, made peace with what was to come.

"God finally broke me, in the best of ways," he shared with OSV News a couple of weeks later during a lengthy and refreshingly candid Zoom conversation.

It was two talks that stopped him cold: one by Daniel Cellucci of the Catholic Leadership Institute, who shared a moving testimony of his child's cancer diagnosis and how he hadn't "signed up for" that as a father -- and relating it to the many struggles facing priests that they, too, might not have expected when they first "signed up for" seminary. And the second by Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, who articulated the poverty of priesthood -- how Jesus Christ embodied a poverty "of not being able, in the end, to control everything," as Bishop Flores put it.

"It was then that I finally came to peace with things internally," Archbishop Henning said in the OSV News interview.

What he was coming to peace with was a fact that no one else in the room knew: that not long before, he had been told that he would soon be leaving the Providence, Rhode Island, Diocese he had been leading for just 15 months and then heading an hour north-northeast to a city with more than three times the Catholic population.

While he is looking forward to getting to know his new home and flock, the appointment to Boston came as "a shock," Archbishop Henning said -- a fact that he shared with almost remarkable honesty and candor. Those characteristics were present throughout our recent wide-ranging conversation, indicating an authenticity that many have described as a trademark characteristic.

Particularly concerned about leaving his Providence flock so soon, Archbishop Henning pointed to his episcopal ring and spoke of the nuptial imagery between a bishop and the local church entrusted to him. "This symbolism means a great deal to me," he said -- and it was borne out over the past years in Providence where he was busy "throwing myself into the work."

"But I'm a man under authority," he added, and, understanding this, it didn't take him long to accept his new appointment.

After the formal announcement was made on Aug. 5, Archbishop Henning has been the subject to a great deal of scrutiny from secular and religious media sources, and he seems to relish that pundits can't figure out what to make of his appointment to such a significant see. Neither outwardly liberal or conservative, he appears to embrace what the late Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago famously described as living "simply Catholicism" -- which the late cardinal articulated as the Catholic faith "in all its fullness and depth, a faith able to distinguish itself from any cultures and yet able to engage and transform them all, a faith joyful in all the gifts Christ wants to give us and open to the whole world he died to save."

In fact, Archbishop Henning is almost allergic to making any kind of foray into political activism, describing himself not as a politician but a pastor in the first interview he gave representing his new role. Nor is he eager to fire up the social channels and weigh in at a moment's notice on the latest cultural brouhaha, though he admires many who do.

Rather, the Long Island native moves to another new city in another new state ready to give his all. "I realize my life is not my own now," he said. "I'll be completely theirs."

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Much of Archbishop Henning's short tenure in Providence was spent in parishes, and The Boston Globe reported that he put 30,000 miles on his car during his short tenure. As he traveled, he listened and learned, or was simply present. He also was on the cusp of undertaking a pastoral plan to help the local church navigate the ramifications of shrinking resources and the need to downsize its institutional footprint -- as have many dioceses in the U.S. -- a task now awaiting his unnamed successor.

Archbishop Henning is not getting a pass, though; he will face similar challenges regarding governance and reform on a greater scale in Boston. And he brings to those challenges a unique background -- both as a Scripture scholar and as a former seminary professor and administrator -- that could serve him well, in addition to the perspective of his own life experience.

The now-archbishop was ordained an auxiliary bishop of his home Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, in the summer of 2018, about a month after revelations that former Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick had lived a double life as a notorious sexual predator and a couple of weeks before the release of the damning Pennsylvania grand jury report that chronicled decades of sexual abuse and coverup in most of that state's dioceses. Within his first month as a bishop -- as if a whole bushel of apples is made rotten by a few -- then-Bishop Henning had requests for his own resignation.

Archbishop Henning acknowledged that "it was very difficult" to become a bishop amid those scandals. But he learned some important things. One was the need for bishops "to be willing to take criticism" when it's warranted and even when it's not. Even when someone "is irrationally critical or angry and hostile and maybe wrong ... I still have to love that person. I still have to find a response that does not dismiss them or give up on them," he said.

He also learned, during that difficult time in the church, the importance of being straight with the people of God. "One of the high values of the people of God and the clergy is transparency, you know, of being just honest with people," he said.

The 2018 experience also taught Archbishop Henning the importance of being "direct" in leadership. "I don't want to make the mistake of trying to manipulate people, nor, in some sense, waste time," he said. "So when I meet with a priest and there's something, some difficulty, I will tend to be, I try to be compassionate, but I'm direct."

That summer of 2018 -- which Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York referred to as the "summer of hell" -- was "a wake-up call" for bishops, Archbishop Henning said -- "that we really have to be authentic."

"That's a struggle of every day, every month, every year," he said. "I don't live in abject poverty, but I try to live, you know, simply and oriented toward mission."

With the Archdiocese of Boston having been ground zero for the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the United States, following The Boston Globe's revelatory "Spotlight" reporting in 2002 that sent shockwaves through the church, it follows that Archbishop Henning will be scrutinized in his approach to clergy abuse and to victims. Critics are increasingly vocal that bishops should continue to improve upon both abuse prevention and on the handling of allegations -- including those of adult misconduct, as boldly stated by outgoing National Review Board chair Suzanne Healy at the U.S. bishops' June general assembly in Louisville, Kentucky.

Archbishop Henning, who said he has taken a special interest in abuse prevention work long before he was a bishop, said that in Providence he was "already thinking about those things," and having conversations with the diocese's priests both "to make sure the people entrusted to our care are physically, spiritually, emotionally safe" and to emphasize that "clear and conscious boundaries are just good order" for priestly ministry.

"The challenge for us as ministers is that we do have to interact with people often on a very emotional level and frequently at moments in their lives when they are vulnerable, right?" he said. "So if we stop doing that, you know, what's the point?"

One concrete insight offered by Archbishop Henning relates to confession. "The reconciliation room is a problem," he said, suggesting a return to old-style confessionals where a screen separates priest and penitent. The "reconciliation rooms" and their face-to-face style introduces a vulnerable situation, Archbishop Henning explained, "and it certainly is a risk that a predator could exploit that, right?"

Acutely aware of the many issues facing priests today, the archbishop also said that another key question in preventing abuse by priests is how to keep priests "from going off the rails."
"Our authenticity, you know, is our best prevention," Archbishop Henning said, "because we are human."

"If you raise a child in a polluted city, that child's gonna end up with asthma, right?" he reasoned. "We are all affected by the environment in which we live, and it's an environment that is hedonistic, it is hyper-sexualized, it's constantly telling us to do what feels good and to avoid anything that challenges us or is difficult."

"This is not a healthy environment for priests," he added. "And then throw on top of that all the challenges of ministry in our own age, and the fewer numbers of priests, and that they are living mostly by themselves -- it's a perfect storm of difficulties that requires, I think, a return to the most basic foundations of the faith, of spiritual direction, of daily prayer, of good, solid friendships (with each other), of good, solid friendships with lay faithful that don't have an agenda."

Archbishop Henning has certainly made that a priority.

"One of my most important strengths are some really fine married couples that have been a part of my life for decades and whose own kind of faithful witness strengthens me in my chastity, you know, to see them kind of being with one another and being faithful to that whatever comes, that's an inspiration for me," he said.

As more cases revealing adult vulnerability to abuse continue to come to light, Archbishop Henning acknowledged that it's difficult to handle adult misconduct or abuse cases in the same fashion as the abuse of minors, particularly since law enforcement often will not get involved. As of 2024, only 13 states and the District of Columbia have laws criminalizing clergy sexual misconduct perpetrated on adults under their pastoral or spiritual care. Massachusetts is not among them.

"When you have individuals that engage in what at least appears to be a consensual sexual relationship, there isn't a crime that's committed," he said. "I know that's not a good enough answer because that was the kind of answer people might have given in the 1970s. But I think it is a little bit more complex.

"It's not like you can just simply say, 'We report everything to the police,'" he continued. "I don't know that the response in those circumstances can or should be the same. But I understand that that also brings with it a risk that, as the goalposts move, in 10 years, someone's gonna look back and say, 'That was a cover-up.'"

These more complex cases, he said, should be addressed on an individual basis -- with the "key element" being whether or not "coercion or undue influence" in the form of "abuse of authority" took place, he said. And who, he wondered, should address them?

"We haven't done this in Providence, but I know a number of dioceses have introduced some version of a review board -- again, distinct from the child review board," he said. "I think that's a helpful development, and one that I will be kind of observing others do. Because I think that gives us at least some way to do a more objective, transparent examination, even if names are not revealed, and we don't humiliate people in public."

Another challenge for bishops today is a growing number of priests leaving ministry within the first few years of ordained ministry. Archbishop Henning is a former seminary formator and administrator at the Immaculate Conception Seminary -- which served the Brooklyn, New York, and Rockville Centre dioceses for 80 years -- and oversaw its transformation to a retreat and conference center, after a merger with the New York Archdiocese's St. Joseph's Seminary.

Priests are burning out very fast with increasing obligations being placed on them, many for which they are not necessarily prepared. Coming changes in formation might be necessary to respond to the challenges for priests today, especially as more institutional decline looms for the Catholic Church in the U.S. -- something Archbishop Henning admits is a sort of "apocalypse," for which he tried to prepare his former seminary students as far back as 2011.

In regard to this, Archbishop Henning -- ordained in 1992 and reticent to claim any particular expertise -- regarded seminary formation as having improved from his own time as a seminarian, crediting Pope St. John Paul II's apostolic exhortation "Pastores Dabo Vobis" ("I Will Give You Shepherds").

"The seminary formation I experienced, I would say, was too shallow, and it was insufficiently kind of faithful to the church's own teaching at times," Archbishop Henning said. Recent changes made following the 2002 and 2018 priestly scandals have put a greater emphasis on spiritual formation, which the archbishop called "a good thing."

"I think that getting men to develop a robust interior life and prayer life in the seminary is a really important thing," he said. "I think right now, in light of the Holy Father's kind of influence in this, there is a tremendous focus on human formation, responding, I think, to the reality that so many of our men in formation are coming from unhealthy family environments or experiences that really need a lot of healing. Sometimes they just need help to kind of function."

Archbishop Henning believes we will see "happier priests and bishops" when greater communion is facilitated with laity. "In the life of the Catholic Church, if you look at where some of the most vibrant faith life and leadership is occurring, it's coming from the laity," he said.

"For me, the thing that has made me happiest as a priest has been that connection to people," he said. "I certainly have good relationships with peers in priesthood and in episcopacy, and those are very important relationships, but it's that real connection with regular folks in the parish, I think, that also brings another element."

While recognizing the increased number of priests living alone due to necessities of ministry today and a greater awareness of boundaries can be a catch-22 in this regard, Archbishop Henning also underscored the importance of seeing the cleric's connection with his people as something of a nuptial bond.

"Obviously there's differences, but the Eucharist itself is the icon of what it means to be a priest. It's also the icon of what it means to be married. This is my body, blood given for you, right? So I think maybe that's an area that could help men cope better with the challenges and demands they're gonna face when they get out of the seminary," he said.

Archbishop Henning also said he knows that bishops cannot maintain a status quo with a business-as-usual approach to pastoring.

"We have parish after parish that has a plan that was created for mission in a different age. And that now becomes a burden rather than a tool of mission," he said. "But, of course, a burden that is emotionally fraught and so very difficult to change, right?"

As Archbishop Henning tackles those challenges, working in the self-described academic's favor is that he is unafraid to theorize and ask questions -- and that he also "tries to figure out how to get from the theory to some kind of expression of reality.

"So how do we figure out how to come alive with discipleship and mission and a true sense of community in kind of the ruins of that prior age?" he said. "How do we take that plant (of the past) and bring it alive? I don't have these answers. These are questions that I can't answer."

And he will bring these questions with him to Massachusetts.

"I'm not gonna go (to Boston) and tell them what to do or even necessarily start this conversation, but I think this is the conversation of the next decade or two for the church," he said.

But he stressed that, despite that decline, despite the challenges with governance, despite the abuse that the church continues to wrestle with, hope remains.

"I think that's, again, why Indianapolis is important because I think that's pointing us to this truth: The church is still alive," he said. "There may be institutional decline, but it is not a decline in the Gospel or in the Eucharist or the Lord himself, right? That is all well and good and alive, and will be as long as there are people who will surrender themselves and trust in his grace."

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Which brings us back to Archbishop Henning's Saturday morning at the National Eucharistic Congress -- the one that "broke" him. That experience gave him an opportunity to truly practice -- and model -- what he preaches.

That's especially evident when the Scripture scholar identified the 13th chapter of St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians as his favorite Pauline passage -- what is called St. Paul's ode to love.

Archbishop Henning might not have wanted to leave his Rhode Island flock after investing himself so much in such a short amount of time. He might not have relished the idea of the burdens of office awaiting him in Boston. But it's clear that he has surrendered himself to God and trusts in his grace. And because of this, as he comes to know and love his new flock, there's a good chance the feeling will be mutual.