5,000 Attend Installation of New Bishop

In a ceremony reflecting the growing diversity of the Catholic community of Orange County, Bishop Norman F. McFarland was installed Tuesday night as the new leader of the Diocese of Orange.

During his 20-minute talk, McFarland characterized “the family of Orange” as 52 individual parishes, “each contributing to the common good according to its capacity and sharing in it according to its need.”

Prayers and hymns in Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, and Polish--all translated into sign language--punctuated the mostly English installation service and Mass that drew more than 30 bishops, 200 priests and 5,000 parishioners to the Donald L. Bren Events Center on the campus of UC Irvine.

Among the members of the hierarchy attending were Cardinal Timothy Manning, retired head of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and his successor, Archbishop Roger Mahony, who presided, escorting McFarland to his ornate, wooden seat.

Participants in Ceremony

Lay dignitaries participating in the ceremony included Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley and Carl N. Karcher, founder of the Carl’s Jr. food chain.

McFarland, apparently referring to Mission San Juan Capistrano, founded by Father Junipero Serra in 1776, said he celebrated “the continuity of Christ’s church in this blessed land on the Pacific Rim. Soft Spanish accents echoing off adobe mission walls and the sound of padres’ footsteps on El Camino Real are heard again tonight as we re-enact the mystery our brothers and sisters in the faith have been celebrating here for over 210 years.”

The 65-year-old bishop said that, in addition to being a son of the church, he spoke as “a son of California,” adding, “I rejoice in both distinctions.”

Importance of Latinos

He spoke briefly in Spanish, apologizing for his lack of facility in the language, but emphasizing the importance of the Latino community to the church, and vice versa.

McFarland touched on many aspects of the church in Orange county in his homily, from the plight of undocumented workers to the county’s reputation for self-indulgent life styles.

The diocese, he said, has an obligation to “match the generosity of the past,” which “means continuing to reach out to the indigent and to the homeless in our diocese, helping the alien and the undocumented to share a place in our society.”

McFarland also referred to some of the uncertainty about changes in the Catholic Church mandated by the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. The church, he said, “continues to struggle though the typical upset and confusion of a post-conciliar age, in a world which seems so often on the brink of madness with its permissiveness and seductions, its hedonistic approach to life.”

In such a time, the bishop said, “some want a message that is more peaceful and theoretical. Others want a Gospel that is more full of tension and more revolutionary.” McFarland recounted the growth of the church in Orange County:

“In its brief life as a diocesan family,” he said, “Orange has earned an enviable reputation for a spiritual vigor and organized vitality in the face of unprecedented growth that has seen, over the space of 10 years, a 60% increase in membership with a third more parishes, assisted by a host of programs and agencies on the diocesan level.”

This growth has largely been the result of an influx of Latinos, now estimated to make up between a third and a half of the diocesan total of half a million people.

“Much of this success,” he said, “is the result of the vision and enthusiasm, the inspiration and just plain hard work of Bishop William Johnson.” Johnson, first bishop of the Diocese of Orange, died last year.

The ceremony was formal and solemn, despite the seeming incongruity of an age-old rite conducted in a public university’s new sports arena.

The participants and spectators reflected the panorama of McFarland’s life. Among the priests marching in the processional were seminary classmates, colleagues from the Archdiocese of San Francisco, where he spent much of his career, and the former chancellor from the Diocese of Reno-Las Vegas, which McFarland headed until his appointment to the Orange County position.

McFarland’s brother, sister-in-law and two nieces from the small, Northern California town of Martinez, where the bishop grew up, sat in the front row.

Glenn McFarland said his older brother “called us up to his room” before the ceremony and that the bishop looked “more rested than I thought he would be.”

Kathy O’Connell, Glenn’s daughter, now lives with her two children in the same house where the McFarland brothers grew up. She said her daughters use the bishop’s bedroom as a playroom and have found some of the brothers’ possessions stored in the attic.

“We found a teddy bear up there,” she said. “We’re not sure whose it was.”

Today, the bishop stands 6 feet, 5 inches tall, and, at Tuesday’s ceremony, carried a wooden and metal staff that was taller than he is.

The bishop, whose motto is “to walk in truth,” quoted frequently from Scripture and St. Augustine, warning about “the danger of half-truth” and distortion by “half-measure” in the interpretation of Christian doctrine.

“Will you walk with me, my dear people of Orange,” he asked, “on the way of truth . . . ?”