Bishop Ottenweller: ‘If you want adventure, try the priesthood’ |
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Written by LAURIE STEVENS, Chronicle Writer
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Friday, 06 June 2008 01:00 |
TOLEDO—His priesthood may stretch back to the Second World War era, but Bishop Albert H. Ottenweller still has his eyes firmly fixed on the future of the church as he celebrates his 65th jubilee.
At 92, retired Bishop Ottenweller is the 10th oldest bishop in the United States. He has lived and worked under six of the seven bishops to lead the Diocese of Toledo, served as auxiliary bishop of Toledo from 1974 to 1977 and served as the second Bishop of Steubenville from 1977 to 1992.
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| Bishop Ottenweller in the garden at the bishop’s house behind Our Lady,
Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Cathedral. (Chronicle photo by Laurie
Stevens) |
A familiar theme of his service as priest and bishop that continues into his retirement is his advocacy for greater lay participation in the mission of the church.
“One of the biggest things of the Second Vatican Council for me was when the Council fathers gave us a definition of church we hadn’t heard for a long time: ‘the church is a people of God,’ ” Bishop Ottenweller explains. “I heard that with great joy, because in my experience, I thought that it was going to be the lay people that change the world.
“I believe that they have a responsibility, through their baptism, to work for justice and peace, and that’s how the world is going to be transformed,” the bishop adds.
He continues to work with Catholic laity in his retirement, most recently through the Servant Leadership Center of Toledo that he founded with Tiffin Franciscan Sister Nancy Westmeyer four years ago.
“Servant leadership was a method of helping laypeople learn how to be active and responsible in doing justice and peace,” Bishop Ottenweller explains.
At the heart of the center is a 10-month process in which laypeople gather for prayer and Scripture to reflect on their gifts and discern how they are called to create a more just world.
Sr. Westmeyer explains the process is based on the belief that every person really wants the world to be a better place, and has gifts to make that happen.
The bishop remains on the board of the Servant Leadership Center and still attends meetings and other activities.
“It’s just amazing to watch the transformation in people,” he says.
In a recent interview, Bishop Ottenweller shared some of the other experiences that shaped his ministry over the past 65 years.
Formation and ordination
Bishop Ottenweller was born April 5, 1916, in Stanford, Mont., the town where his father, Charles, moved early in the 20th century to make his fortune as a blacksmith. After the tragic deaths of his older brother, Raymond, and his younger sister, Beatrice, in infancy, his parents moved back to Fort Wayne, Ind., to be closer to family.
In the summer of 1922 his family moved again when his father bought a blacksmith shop in Leipsic, Ohio.
With humor Bishop Ottenweller traces his journey to the priesthood back to his eighth-grade teacher at Leipsic St. Mary Elementary School, Sister Mary Clement, who took him into the corridor one day and asked, “Albert, have you gone to see Father Christ yet about going to seminary?”
He told her no, and she began to cry.
“Well, you know, you can’t see a nun cry,” says Bishop Ottenweller. “So I went over to see Fr. Christ, and that’s how I got in the seminary.”
His pastor, Fr. John Christ, took him to see Bishop Samuel Stritch, who later became archbishop of Chicago and named a cardinal. “I was terrified, you know, going and seeing the bishop,” adds Bishop Ottenweller.
He chuckles remembering how Bishop Stritch seated him in his big office chair, and then sat down on his desk across from him, swinging his legs back and forth.
“He had me in the palm of his hand, just like that,” says Bishop Ottenweller. “He talked to me a little bit, and boy from then on, I thought that would be real cool to go to the seminary.”
He enrolled at St. Joseph High School, a minor seminary is Rensselaer, Ind., in 1930 — a time when the diocese could not afford his tuition because of the Great Depression. His father sacrificed to pay his tuition, room and board of $100 a year.
He graduated from St. Joseph High School and College and went on to the Sulpician Seminary at the Catholic University of America in Washington, where he double-majored in biology and philosophy and later received a theology degree.
As the Second World War escalated, many of his classmates felt torn between completing their education and leaving to fight. Bishop Ottenweller remembers he received good advice from a former chaplain teaching at Catholic University, who told the seminarians they could do more for the war effort and for people’s spiritual lives as priests.
Bishop Karl J. Alter ordained Bishop Ottenweller a priest June 19, 1943, and he began his ministry as associate pastor at Delphos St. John the Evangelist.
At the height of WWII, he remembers leading devotions every Thursday night to pray for the war effort and the men in the service. “It would be standing room only in that church. Everybody came to pray,” the bishop says.
During those years, he says his most difficult job was informing parishioners when their loved ones were killed in the war. The armed forces called the rectory with the news and asked the priests to deliver it in person.
“It was so sad,” says Bishop Ottenweller. “I never liked war — I think it’s so senseless. That sure gave me a negative feeling toward war, to have to do that.”
After 16 years at St. John, the bishop was transferred to Swanton St. Richard Parish. He next served Blakeslee St. Joseph and Montpelier Sacred Heart, and moved to Bono Our Lady of Mount Carmel in 1962. Six years later he became pastor of Delphos St. John, his first pastorate.
Welcoming the migrant community
Bishop Ottenweller developed a close relationship with the migrant community while serving in rural parishes, and some of the people he met there made a tremendous impact on his priesthood.
He directed the diocesan Apostolate to the Spanish Speaking from 1958 to 1969, and also worked on the Governor’s Migrant Affairs Committee.
The bishop proudly looks back on programs the diocese offered to assist migrant workers, most of whom at that time traveled to northwest Ohio from Texas.
In the 1950s, he says, the Diocese of Toledo had the first migrant summer school in the United States. The Tiffin Franciscan Sisters taught about 100 children in Fort Jennings.
He can remember riding a bus around the migrant camps to round up the children for school, hammering on their doors and calling out, “Escuela!”
“That was a wonderful time,” says Bishop Ottenweller.
A favorite story he tells happened while he was pastor in Bono. One spring, the migrant workers were in dire need of food because bad weather was making it impossible to earn a living in the fields.
On a Saturday morning, Bishop Ottenweller answered a knock at the rectory door and found a young boy outside holding up a huge picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He handed it to the priest and just as quickly turned to walk back to a waiting car.
When Bishop Ottenweller called out to him, the boy simply responded, “My mother said you’d like to have that picture.” He got in the car and they drove away.
Five minutes later, the phone rang. It was “the fellow in charge of the Lucas County Welfare Department,” says Bishop Ottenweller. “He says, ‘I hear you’re having some trouble getting some food for migrant workers.’”
The man offered to hold a news conference at the rectory about the plight of the workers, which sparked a flood of food donations that quickly filled the double garage at the rectory to the ceiling.
“See, I believe that was Our Lady of Guadalupe taking care of her people,” Bishop Ottenweller says solemnly.
Fulfillment in the priesthood
In 1974, Toledo Bishop John A. Donovan told Fr. Ottenweller he had been selected to be the first auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Toledo. To accept, he had to send a telegram with a code word to Washington.
The news came as a surprise to the priest, who was then serving 90 miles away from the Chancery office. “There are not too many pastors [that] become bishops,” he adds.
Bishop Ottenweller accepted the position, but he requested permission to remain in parish ministry. During his time as auxiliary bishop from 1974 to 1977, he served as pastor of St. John and later Findlay St. Michael.
In 1977, he was appointed Bishop of Steubenville, Ohio.
When he retired from Steubenville, Bishop James R. Hoffman invited him to move into the bishop’s house in Toledo, where he currently resides.
“I love the Diocese of Toledo. It’s my home,” he says. “I like the people and the priests, and I like Bishop Blair, and I think it’s an exceptional diocese.”
Today Bishop Ottenweller can’t imagine any other pursuit that could have brought him the happiness and fulfillment he has experienced in the priesthood.
“I really feel that I have not wasted my time on this earth,” he says.
Asked for his advice to men considering the priesthood, Bishop Ottenweller simply declares, “If you want adventure, and you want excitement, and you want to think that your life is being well-spent or there’s some real purpose in your life — try the priesthood.”
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 27 August 2008 08:46 |
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