Orange Prelate-Designate Known for Some Conservative Views : No Personal Agenda for Post, New Bishop Says

The Most Rev. Norman F. McFarland, bishop of Reno-Las Vegas and bishop-designate of the Diocese of Orange, says he won’t be bringing a personal agenda or a “pastoral blueprint” to his new post in Orange County.

“I have to listen and learn,” McFarland said in an interview this week in his chancery office.

His style of leadership on social issues, however, may be considerably more conservative than that of his predecessor, the late Bishop William R. Johnson.

“I am not a marcher; I’m not a poster man,” he said. “That’s not my style. . . . I wouldn’t get myself arrested” in a protest.

‘A Man of Faith’

Such tactics, he said, are often counterproductive to laudable objectives.

“Am I a liberal or a conservative?” he asked. “I don’t know what those words mean. I’m a man of faith.”

McFarland was a strong and vocal opponent of ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, speaking out on the measure on the eve of a Nov. 7, 1976, statewide advisory referendum on the issue.

In the autumn of 1984, he condemned Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro, then the Democratic Party’s vice presidential candidate, for her position on abortion. Ferraro had said she opposed abortion but did not want to impose her beliefs on others.

Stand on Nuclear Weapons

McFarland said he is opposed to strategic nuclear weapons, especially to their so-called “first strike” use. But he said he does not consider nuclear weapons intrinsically evil, as some U.S. bishops do.

“I’m not a pacifist,” he said, explaining that the use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent is a complicated issue. “You have to do what is necessary to defend yourself, but within the moral law.” Using nuclear weapons, he said, would be “immoral” because “you’re not using bows and arrows.”

The death penalty, McFarland said, “philosophically and ethically can be justified,” but it “can be used only when all conditions (of the crime) are verified” and a fair trial has been conducted, and then only if there is “no other alternative which can provide the same result” of protecting society.

“In the modern day we can do better than the death penalty,” he said.

Emphasis on Poor

With reference to the large number of economically disadvantaged parishioners in the Orange County diocese, especially in the Latino community, McFarland said he endorsed Pope John Paul II’s frequent pronouncements that the church must identify primarily with the interests of the poor.

McFarland said he is not fluent in Spanish but is learning, playing language tapes in his car as he drives around Nevada, visiting various churches in the vast diocese three out of every four weekends. He can and does conduct Mass on certain occasions in Spanish.

“People should recognize privilege,” McFarland said, and acknowledge that “some people have been blessed by God” with certain advantages that have enabled them to prosper.

These advantages and the material successes they produce, he said, are “nothing to be disparaged,” and an individual should not be embarrassed over having achieved them.

“He should be embarrassed if he doesn’t use them for the assistance of others,” he said.

“Sometimes people are written off,” he said of society’s poor and disadvantaged.

‘Church Is Charity’

“What is the church?” he asked. “The church is charity.”

On the walls of the bishop’s office are various artifacts of his life in the priesthood. Above the mantel are photographs of McFarland and Pope John Paul II and the late Pope John XXIII, as well as one of Mother Teresa.

On another wall, inches apart, are photographs of St. Mary of the Mountains Church in Virginia City, awash in the stark white glare of a 1953 atomic test, and the U.S. Air Force’s precision flying team, the Thunderbirds. McFarland has flown as a observer in a Strategic Air Command bomber.

At 6 feet, 5 inches and 240 pounds, the 64-year-old prelate is a big bear of a man with a full head of silver white hair and with a more than passing resemblance to outgoing House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr.

McFarland grew up in Martinez, Calif., across the street from a church. His inspiration to undertake the religious life, he said, came from “contact with a priest who was happy” in his work.

The ring McFarland wears carries a motto in Latin, “ in veritate ambulare ,” or “to walk in truth.”

“Truth is the issue,” he said. “We’re living on a powder keg. . . . I want people to be sane, to be realistic” but also to recognize “the divine in our lives.”

McFarland said that he hoped that Orange County Auxiliary Bishop John T. Steinbock would remain at that post but that if Steinbock is sent to another diocese, he hoped he would be replaced by another auxiliary bishop, although that would be be a decision for the Vatican.

Bailed Out the Diocese

McFarland first came to Nevada from San Francisco in 1974 as an apostolic administrator to help bail out the diocese, which had a $3.5-million deficit because of bad investments. He was given complete authority over all fiscal matters for the diocese, reporting directly to Rome, he said.

Under McFarland’s leadership, the debt was erased, and in 1976, he became the fourth bishop of the 144,000-member Reno-Las Vegas Diocese.

Since the Vatican’s mandatory retirement age is 75, McFarland said, he has been told that his next assignment will be heaven, since anything less would be a disappointment after Orange County. He said he did not seek his new post and already had selected a burial plot in Reno.

McFarland said he is well aware of the problems created by the free and easy life that some have told him exists in certain parts of Orange County.

Concern for Family

He dealt with just such an issue in his present post. In a report to the Vatican on the state of the Nevada diocese, he wrote:

“Given the unique sociological and economic characteristics of Nevada . . . a 24-hour gambling industry that dominates the state’s life and economy in a hedonistic atmosphere with its attendant social ills, as indicated by its high transiency, crime, suicide and alcoholism rates, one would suspect that family life is subjected to enormous pressures in the diocese. The suspicion is well founded, and marriage breakup and divorce are higher in Nevada than anywhere else in the country. . . . It is perhaps because of these very dangers and the realization that extra effort is needed in such a milieu to preserve and foster true values that a good many Catholics are most cooperative with the church’s efforts to promote the family.”

While McFarland says that “gambling per se is not sinful,” it is for some “a disease.”

One of his chief allies in his battles to preserve the family in what he called “the tinsel and glitter atmosphere” of Nevada has been the Mormon Church.

For relaxation, McFarland said, “I play with the implements of golf,” but the days of his nine handicap are long gone.