Seattle Archbishop Hunthausen kept faith in storms of controversy

Former Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen sometimes found himself at the center of a storm of controversy over the way he practiced his Catholic faith, but he never let that dim his view of the need for social justice or keep him from talking to his critics, longtime friends said.

“I never heard one bit of bitterness or acrimony,” former Spokane Bishop William Skylstad, a longtime friend, said Monday. Hunthausen developed a pastoral theology, lived a simple life and “loved to be with people,” he added.

“His balance went so deep that he wasn’t thrown off,” said the Rev. Peter Byrne, associate pastor of St. Aloyisus and a former parish priest in Tacoma and Seattle. “But he didn’t get righteous.”

Hunthausen, who was archbishop of Seattle from 1976 to 1991 and a sometime lightning rod for his views on nuclear disarmament and an elevated role for women in the Catholic Church, died Sunday at a nursing facility in Helena. He was 96.

Born in Anaconda, Montana, in 1921, Raymond “Dutch” Hunthausen graduated from Carroll College in Helena in 1943, studied for the priesthood and was ordained in 1946, according to information from the Seattle Archdiocese. He taught at the college, became its athletic director, coached football, basketball, baseball and other sports.

He remained competitive throughout his life, and when watching sports on television would talk about what he thought a coach was doing wrong, Skylstad said.

He was president of the college from 1957 to 1962 when he was appointed bishop of Helena by Pope John XXIII. He was the among the youngest participants in the Vatican Council and the last living American bishop who attended that council. One of his roommates for the session was Spokane Bishop Bernard Topel, who became a mentor; like Topel , Hunthausen eschewed some of the trappings of his office and lived simply.

“He tried to implement Vatican II,” Skylstad said.

Named archbishop of Seattle in 1975, Hunthausen emphasized pastoral care, training lay people for the ministry and recognizing the value of women in church roles.

“He saw the possibilities that people had, and the gifts that they might bring,” said the Rev. Stan Malnar, who was a deacon in Seattle when he went to Hunthausen with an idea that was almost unheard of: to become both a priest and a physician. “He supported me.”

Malnar did both and would later run the maternity clinic for low-income women at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center and work at Hospice of Spokane. He keeps a prayer by Thomas Merton that Hunthausen often quoted, that starts “I have no idea where I’m going, I do not see the road ahead of me” and ends with “I will not fear for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Hunthausen believed no one should feel like a stranger in church, that it should be a place of healing and a welcoming community, Malnar said. When he talked about the parable of the prodigal son, he said the church was the father welcoming the younger son back, not the older son complaining about what was being done to welcome him.

In the 1980s, Hunthausen became convinced of the immorality of the growing nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union and supported the protests against basing the new Trident submarines with their multiple-warhead missiles at Bangor, Washington. He withheld half of his federal income tax to protest nuclear weapon spending; the Internal Revenue Service garnished his wages.

While that generated some support in Seattle, it was less popular in other parts of the Western Washington archdiocese that includes Army, Navy and Air Force bases. But Hunthausen went to Kitsap County, the home of the Trident base, to talk with those who disagreed with him, Byrne said.

“Even if you were on the opposite side of him, he could agree to disagree with you,” said Jerry Kuntz, a Loon Lake resident who worked for 40 years with the Seattle archdiocese, including 15 with Catholic Charities. “He led by example.”

Complaints from what Kuntz called a vocal minority were sent to the Vatican, which sent an “apostolic visitor” to investigate some of Hunthausen’s practices and later named an outside cleric as auxiliary bishop.

Hunthausen supported the auxiliary bishop, but was firm in his stance that the archdiocese never violated Vatican doctrine. In 1987 his authority was restored and Archbishop Thomas Murphy was appointed to assist in the operation of the archdiocese.

Byrne said he knew one of his parishioners regularly wrote to Hunthausen and the Vatican about arguments he had with how the archbishop was interpreting church law or doctrine. When the parishioner was hospitalized, Hunthausen was one of the first to visit him.

“He saw the possibilities that people had and the gifts they might bring,” Skylstad said. “He dreamed dreams that were about peace. He dreamed dreams that were about justice.”