Bishop Builds Bridges With Other Faiths : Ecumenism: Catholic Archbishop William Keeler has devoted much of his career to improved ties and has helped defuse tensions between the Vatican and U.S. Jewish leaders.

As a Boy Scout in Lebanon, Pa., in the 1940s, William Keeler learned more than building campfires and tying square knots. He learned something about God.

Summer camp brought the Roman Catholic youngster into contact with Protestants and Jews.

“And that offered me many opportunities to work with people from other churches and to engage in a kind of informal dialogue with them, to see their goodness and their interest in things that were good,” he said.

Keeler, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Baltimore, is continuing that same ecumenical philosophy during his three-year term as president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Keeler, 62, has devoted much of his clerical life to improving ties with other denominations, especially Jews. In February, he met with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to discuss a wide range of issues, including peace in the Middle East, improved Israeli-Vatican relations and efforts to combat anti-Semitism in Poland.

“He’s very respected for his work in the Jewish-Catholic dialogue, very competent, very knowledgeable in what is a very delicate area,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit scholar who wrote a book about Catholic bishops in the United States.

“The Jewish community knows when they need someone to talk to, he is there. He is easy to work with and is very sensitive to their concerns,” Reese said.

In 1987, Keeler was instrumental in arranging meetings between the Pope and American Jewish leaders, who were stung by John Paul’s earlier reception at the Vatican of former Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, alleged to have had links to Nazis in the past.

Keeler again eased strained ties in 1991 when Cardinal Jozef Glemp of Poland wanted to visit the United States. Glemp had delivered a sermon two years before that many Jews viewed as containing anti-Semitic references. Keeler helped set up a conciliatory meeting between American Jewish leaders and the Polish cardinal.

“He has a quality of intellectual honesty and integrity,” said Rabbi A. James Rudin, national inter-religious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee. “Some of the things he raises a lot of people don’t want to talk about. He’ll talk about not only anti-Semitism but the roots of anti-Semitism over 2,000 years, and how those roots have to be eradicated.”

It makes sense to Keeler that different faiths should develop ties rather than remain isolated by their differences.

“In an age of increasing secularism, there is enormous value for people of faith to link up to identify common concerns and to bear a common witness to the faith we have that every human being has a special dignity as a child of God,” Keeler said.

Keeler describes his role as conference president as that of being a traffic cop--keeping conference business moving. But he also may need his diplomatic skills as Catholics struggle with potentially divisive issues such as the role of women in the church.

In November, the bishops defeated a controversial document, nine years in the making, that outlined the role of women in the church. It firmly prohibited ordination of women while affirming their equal dignity.

“We came into a meeting with a document that many felt was only half-cooked,” Keeler said.

The church does not see itself as being authorized to have women priests because of tradition that dates to Christ, Keeler said. He said he understands why this exclusion would upset many women.

“Especially in a culture that looks at issues from a context of women rightly gaining equality in many areas of society,” he said.

Keeler was born in San Antonio and grew up in Pennsylvania. A priest for 37 years, he served as an expert adviser for Pope John XXIII at the reforming Second Vatican Council of 1962-65. He took over the Baltimore Archdiocese in 1989 after serving as bishop of Harrisburg, Pa.

Keeler said he choose the priesthood as a way to thank God.

“I thought, the Lord has blessed me and how can I say thanks and what would be the best way. And it got clearer and clearer that this is what I should do,” he said.