Oral History Center University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

George Crespin

A VATICAN II PRIEST’S FAITH JOURNEY

Interviews conducted in 2013 and 2014 by Germaine LaBerge

A Donated Oral History

Copyright © 2015 by The Regents of the University of California

Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The audio recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.

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All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and George Crespin dated January 22, 2015. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1000 words from this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long as the use is non-commercial and properly cited.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should follow instructions available online.

http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/collections/cite.html

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

George Crespin, “A Vatican II Priest’s Faith Journey,” an oral history conducted in 2013 and 2014 by Germaine K. LaBerge, Oakland, California, 2015.

TABLE OF CONTENTS—GEORGE CRESPIN

INTERVIEW HISTORY by Germaine LaBerge i

INTERVIEW #1: February 21, 2013

Tape 1: Side A 1

Childhood and family background, New Mexico and California—Education at St. Joseph’s College Minor Seminary, 1951-1956—Keeping up Spanish language skills

Tape 1: Side B 11

All-male environment at minor seminary—St. Patrick’s Major Seminary, 1956- 1962—Election of Pope John XXIII—Beginning of Diocese of Oakland, 1962, under Bishop Floyd Begin

Tape 2: Side A 21

Ordination and first Mass, 1962—Preaching—Holy Ghost Parish, Fremont— Marriage Tribunal at Chancery Office

INTERVIEW# 2: March 7, 2013

Tape 3: Side A 31

Culture of the diocese—Travels in Europe, 1968, and Humanae Vitae—Draft Induction Center, 1967, during Vietnam War—Second Vatican Council, 1962- 1966

Tape 3: Side B 38

More on Vatican II—The church as the people of God—Function of the curia— Implementation of Vatican II in the diocese

Tape 4: Side A 46

Liturgy innovation at St. Francis de Sales Cathedral with Donald Osuna—More on Vatican II—Repercussions of speaking up on Humanae Vitae— Accomplishments of the council

Tape 4: Side B 55

More on the documents of Vatican II—Thoughts on marriage, birth control, religious liberty

INTERVIEW#3: May 2, 2013

Tape 5: Side A 59

More on Vatican II documents—Impact on women religious, then and now— Pastoral Office of Bishops—Catholic education—Non-Christian religions

Tape 5: Side B 67

Vatican II thinking in the young diocese—Parish work in Union City

Tape 6: Side A 76

More on parish work, challenges, and a tragedy—Water delivery system, racial issues, parish school

Tape 6: Side B 85

Case of sexual abuse at the parish

INTERVIEW#4: May 10, 2013

Tape 7: Side A 91

Team-building in a bilingual parish—Parish as community—Appointment of John Cummins as Bishop of Oakland, 1977—Sabbatical at University of Notre Dame—Appointment as chancellor of Oakland diocese

Tape 7: Side B 103

Responsibilities as messenger of the bishop—Convocation of priests—Twenty- fifth anniversary of ordination—Clergy abuse cases, 1980s—Ministry to Spanish- speaking parishioners in Berkeley, 1980s—Appointment as vicar general of the diocese—Interview for the U.S. Catholic Conference, and reasons for non- appointment

INTERVIEW #5: May 23, 2013]

Tape 8: Side A 119

St. Joseph the Worker Parish, Berkeley, 1981-2011—Cesar Chavez and Father Bill O’Donnell—Diversity of culture and spirituality—Sabbatical in New Mexico—The Berkeley Alliance, 1990s—Work in Berkeley public schools as advocate for Spanish-speaking community

Tape 8: Side B 130

Life and death of Fr. Bill O’Donnell, and social justice—Writing homilies— University of California, Berkeley—Chancellor’s Advisory Group under Chang- Lin Tien—Clergy abuse scandal and false accusation

Tape 9: Side A 142

Last month at St. Joseph the Worker Parish—Different visions of the church

INTERVIEW# 6: June 10, 2013

Tape 10: Side A 153

More on Bishop John Cummins’s legacy as Vatican II priest—New Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland

Tape 10: Side B 165

More on cathedral and John Cummins—Personal spirituality

Tape 11: Side A 177

Summing up

i

Interview History by Germaine LaBerge

How did this oral history come into being? Carlo Busby, former pastor of Holy Spirit Parish/Newman Hall, in Berkeley, knows George Crespin well. Father George lived and worked at St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Berkeley for over twenty years, where Carlo came to know him both as a pastor and friend. Carlo, with a keen interest in history, realized that Father George had witnessed historic times in the Diocese of Oakland and the United States, and suggested to me, a retired oral historian, how beneficial it would be to capture his recollections.

Father George Crespin had been chancellor and vicar general of the diocese, and had recently retired from active duties at St. Joe’s in Berkeley. George was ordained a Catholic priest in 1962, the year the Diocese of Oakland was formed, and in his various capacities, George had worked closely with the first bishop, Floyd Begin, and then Bishop John Cummins. George not only had the time to devote to interviews, but also had (and has!) an excellent memory and an easy way with the spoken word (both English and Spanish.) And so, we met at Sagrada-Sacred Arts in Oakland where we agreed to this joint venture—documented in the pages following this interview history.

There were six interviews in all beginning February 21, 2013, all recorded at my home in Berkeley. Father George needed no notes to recall events of the Second Vatican Council, the beginnings of the fledgling diocese, his early ministry as a parish priest in Fremont and then Union City, his outreach to the Spanish-speaking parishioners of the diocese, his handling of clergy personnel issues (including the abuse scandals), his own spiritual journey during changing times. I came to know Father George not only as a priest but as a community presence in Berkeley, concerned about his flock and their education, their water rights, their faith, their everyday struggles. In these interviews, Father George is at the same time clear-eyed and faith- filled, compassionate and forgiving. He is renowned throughout the diocese and the country for his devotion to individuals and to the institutional church he sometimes does not understand. He has served both tirelessly and well and I am privileged to have spent these hours with him, recording his story.

Church historians and historians of the city of Berkeley alike will find a treasure trove within these pages. Berkeley High School owes him a debt of gratitude for his involvement in the education of the Latino students—as does the University of California, Berkeley.

George did not edit this oral history. I edited lightly and there may be a few errors in spelling or full names.

After we finished recording in 2013, George told Bishop Cummins about this experience. In addition, Karl Pister, a trustee of the Franciscan School of Theology and former regent of the Graduate Theological Union, encouraged the former bishop to accept the invitation to record his oral history. So, as Father George and I finished our interviews, the new set began. Historians will want to study both interviews, as the subjects covered dovetail and give similar but unique views of the church of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

I am grateful to Carlo Busby for encouraging George to record his memoirs for future researchers. Kathleen Zvanovec, the transcriber and final typist, is excellent beyond measure— ii she was able to find obscure names and spellings and make sense of some garbled portions of the recordings. Thanks, too, to the Regional Oral History Office of The Bancroft Library, for accepting this oral history and digitizing same for their archives. The subject matter fits well into their collections of the history of California.

Germaine LaBerge, Interviewer February 2015

1

Interview #1: February 21, 2013

[Tape 1: Side A]

01a-00:00:02 LaBerge: This is February 21, 2013, interview with Father George Crespin. I just want to start with saying one of our focuses is going to be Vatican II and how it was effected in the Oakland Diocese. But we want to get a background of you, Father George, so why don’t you tell me the circumstances of your birth— where, when, whatever you know about that.

01a-00:00:46 Crespin: I was born at a very early age in Vaughn, New Mexico. It’s a little village—it wouldn’t be even a town—about ninety miles east of Albuquerque in the plains. Its claim to fame was that during the Second World War both the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe railroads met there or crisscrossed there. They were the two rail lines that provided transcontinental service, and during the war it was key to getting the equipment and supplies to the coasts to be shipped out to the Pacific or to Europe, and they crisscrossed right there. So it was the only place in the country where the two lines met, and as a result it was deemed a security risk because a well-placed bomb there would have disrupted transcontinental service, so that’s what made it famous. At the time I was born I think the population was about two thousand. I went back twenty years ago and it’s down to about eight hundred, because there’s just really nothing to hold people there except history, their connections.

01a-00:02:08 LaBerge: Yes, and what date and year?

01a-00:02:11 Crespin: I was born April 18, 1936, and probably lived there about five or six months, and then my parents moved to Albuquerque, and that’s where I remember growing up as a small child before coming to California.

01a-00:02:29 LaBerge: And do you know—why were your parents there? For a job?

01a-00:02:38 Crespin: No, they were in New Mexico because that’s where they were born, and multiple generations had been born on my mother’s side, which is Sánchez. We’ve tracked it back—I’ve got a cousin who’s into genealogy. He’s a priest and he did a study, a genealogical study, and got the earliest relatives located in New Mexico in 1610.

01a-00:02:59 LaBerge: Oh! For a long time then.

01a-00:03:00 Crespin: And on my dad’s side, the Crespín side, we think either my great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather came in 1820 and settled in that area. If you know 2

anything about New Mexico history, and I see some—you have the same things there—there’s a deep historical consciousness there among the people that have lived there all along. They’re very much tied to the land and they’re very much tied to the history. So there were about sixteen families that came from Spain in the early 1600s and settled in different parts of Northern New Mexico, and there are descendants of those families still. So one of the families was the Sánchez family. There are others that are famous also, but that’s the one that I come through.

01a-00:04:01 LaBerge: How many brothers and sisters?

01a-00:04:02 Crespin: I have two sisters. We were all born in New Mexico, but we came to California shortly after the birth of my youngest sister, because by that time we were in the Second World War and my dad was thirty-five, I think, at the time, and just at the age where he still could be drafted for the war. And with three small children, he preferred not to have that happen. But the alternative was to come and work in the shipyards on the coast, so he came, moved here. He came a couple of months ahead of us, found a job, found a place to live, and then we settled here. We lived in Oakland for a year, in the housing projects that were located where the Kaiser Auditorium is now, down by the lake. And then when the war ended in 1945, we went back to New Mexico. The plan of my parents was to stay there, go back home now. But they found out they didn’t like it as much as they liked the Bay Area ! [laughing] So a month later we came back and then we moved into Alameda. There were some housing projects there where Alameda College [College of Alameda] is now, right through the tube.

01a-00:05:21 LaBerge: Let’s go back. Tell me your parents’ full names.

01a-00:05:24 Crespin: My father’s name is George, and my mother’s name is Mary.

01a-00:05:31 LaBerge: Okay, so Mary Sanchez.

01a-00:05:31 Crespin: Mary Sanchez, yes.

01a-00:05:37 LaBerge: In New Mexico was he involved with the railroad?

01a-00:05:42 Crespin: No, he was a truck driver when he was courting my mom. In fact, I guess that was right up to the time that we came to California. When we went back, one of my uncles, one of my mother’s brothers, was a bartender, and he got my dad a job in bartending, and my dad pretty much did bartending the rest of his life after that, there and here. 3

01a-00:06:02 LaBerge: So when he came back, after working in the shipyards and everything?

01a-00:06:05 Crespin: Yes, that’s how he worked, at a number of places in Berkeley, Alameda, Oakland.

01a-00:06:11 LaBerge: So when you came back to California you lived in Alameda. So did you mainly grow up in Alameda?

01a-00:06:16 Crespin: We lived there from 19—what was it—1946 to ‘54.

01a-00:06:26 LaBerge: So that’s where you went to school.

01a-00:06:26 Crespin: Went to school, public school in Alameda, Webster School was the school, in the area where we lived it was the projects again, because they had so many people coming here they couldn’t build housing fast enough, so they built these government—cracker boxes we used to call them. And they put schools in the middle of those because there were mostly families that were moving in. So I went there second through sixth grade. I’d done the first grade in Albuquerque before we came. And then by that time I was an altar server at St. Barnabas Church in Alameda, and began being interested in wanting to go to a Catholic school. So I lobbied my parents for a while, because they didn’t think we could afford it, but it worked out. So then I went, and later my sisters followed me, to St. Joseph’s in Alameda, and I graduated from there.

01a-00:07:27 LaBerge: So did you stay there through high school?

01a-00:07:27 Crespin: I went one year to St. Joseph’s High School, because I got a scholarship to that, and then at the end of that year I asked if I could go into the seminary, and my parents—they weren’t thrilled about it but they said yes, you can go.

01a-00:07:41 LaBerge: So as a sophomore in high school.

01a-00:07:42 Crespin: A sophomore in high school.

01a-00:07:43 LaBerge: High school, okay. Okay, going back a little bit—so you’re the oldest?

01a-00:07:47 Crespin: I’m the oldest, the only boy, and the priest. [laughter] So spoiled rotten! I’m fortunate that my sisters don’t hate me still. 4

01a-00:07:58 LaBerge: But they didn’t know you were going to be a priest, to start with.

01a-00:08:02 Crespin: They didn’t know that, but I was still the favorite. They kid about it now. In fact, for my forty-fifth anniversary my sister wrote a little poem in which she threw in the line there, “We always knew that you were Mom’s favorite.” [laughter] So yes, but we’re close. The two of them live out in Contra Costa County, Pleasant Hill, and married with kids and grandkids.

01a-00:08:31 LaBerge: Yes, well tell me about—what was your religious background/training in your family?

01a-00:08:38 Crespin: Well, everybody went to church. Everybody was Catholic, everybody baptized, everybody went to church. My dad—I don’t remember in New Mexico what his practice was. When we were living out here and he was already bartending, Saturday nights were heavy nights for him, and he’d get home late, and Sunday morning was always the time that he wanted to be up and about. So he’d go to Mass with us on occasion, but it was usually my mom would take us. She took us to catechism classes there at St. Barnabas, and then we had the religion classes at St. Joseph’s. But we were Mass-goers, not necessarily overly religious.

01a-00:09:19 LaBerge: Yes, not rosary-sayers—like the family rosary, or—

01a-00:09:23 Crespin: No, no, no. My dad was working nights, so we seldom saw him in the evenings except on his days off. But it was just average, it wasn’t anything— plus, I think it kind of shocked them when I said I wanted to become a priest—“What for?” [laughing]

01a-00:09:39 LaBerge: So what were the other influences?

01a-00:09:43 Crespin: Well, I think, like I said, I was an altar server at St. Barnabas, and enjoyed that. I got to be good friends with the young assistant priest who was there at the time, John [A.] Coghlan. He was famous because he strongly resembled Burt Lancaster. [laughter] And he knew it! But he was really good to those of us who were altar servers. He’d take us out to the Russian River and places during the summer, or just after the stations of the cross for a milkshake or something. It was all very much innocent kind of stuff. This wasn’t yet the age of abuse and that kind of thing, and I think it was far from his mind and ours. So we just enjoyed him. It was always a group of us, four or five of us, and got to be close friends with him. 5

And then I started feeling around the age of twelve or so, thirteen, that maybe I wanted to go to seminary, but I wasn’t sure where. I had been to a couple of retreats in Richmond, at the Salesian—it used to be their minor seminary. It’s Salesian High now. It was their minor seminary, and they had retreats in the early part of the summer for grammar school kids, from the sixth grade through the eighth grade. Their idea—I guess they were interested in our spiritual development, but they were really trying to get vocations, and putting a heavy push on—so I thought maybe the Salesians. I thought I would like working with kids, thinking about them. I thought a little bit about the Franciscans. I had gone—I think John Coghlan had taken a group of us to St. Joseph’s College, which was the minor seminary at the time, but got turned off by it. It was too rich, it was too plush, and I thought no, I don’t know if I want it like this. I don’t know if I’m going to feel comfortable in that kind of a setting.

But time went by and when I finally had the nerve to talk to him about it, Father Coghlan, and just say, “I think I want to be a priest.” And he said, “Oh, I’ve been waiting for that for three years now!” [laughter] He said, “I didn’t want to say anything to you, but I was waiting for it to come from you.” And I said, “Yes, but I really don’t know where to go.” And he said, “There’s no question. You’re going to the diocesan seminary, and that’s it.” So the discussion was over! And it was a blessing.

01a-00:12:21 LaBerge: Then how do you go about applying, all of that?

01a-00:12:26 Crespin: Once a year, in those days, they had an entrance exam that you could take. It usually was in March or April. You could take the exam and see if you qualified, if you had the basic educational background. And then they’d check your family also and religious practice, and so on, and they needed a letter from your pastor, that kind of thing. But if you made it through those hoops, then they would accept you to the minor seminary the following September, so that’s what happened.

I think I waited until my birthday, so it was my fifteenth birthday, I think, when I asked. I approached my mother first, because I thought she’d be more receptive. One night she was already in bed, and it was my birthday, and I thought—she can’t say no to me on my birthday. So I sat there in the living room just trying to figure out how to bring it up, and I went into her bedroom. She was already in bed, but she wasn’t asleep, but she was in bed. And I said, “Mom, tomorrow is the entrance test for the seminary, and I think I’d like to take it.” “Why?” she said. “Because I think I’d like to go to the seminary.” “Why?” “Because I think maybe I want to be a priest.” “Well, I’ll have to talk to your father about that.” He wasn’t home, he was working. 6

The next day I think I came home early from school, because he would leave for work around four o’clock, and often we’d just miss him as we were getting home from school, so I must have come home early. So he was showering and getting ready to go to work, and then he went into the bedroom and my mom followed him in there. I was in the room next door waiting. And for the longest time they were talking, it seemed like a long time. Then the door opened, and my dad came into the room where I was and he looked at me and he said, “Well, Father.” And I knew I was in! [laughter] But he said, “If you go, you stay. This isn’t a game.” But later on he told me no, any time you want to come home, you can come home. He said it wasn’t like I was nailed to that cross forever. But they were very supportive, and so I didn’t have to go through that. I think most of it was in my own head. I was thinking the finances—because we were living on the edge economically.

01a-00:15:06 LaBerge: And you had a scholarship already to St. Joe’s.

01a-00:15:09 Crespin: Yes, and I used that. That’s why I didn’t ask to go in the year before. But then I thought well, how are we going to do this? The seminary made some accommodations and arrangements.

01a-00:15:21 LaBerge: I didn’t know how—if the seminary was free or there was tuition.

01a-00:15:26 Crespin: In those days it was $50 a month tuition and room and board, I guess, the whole thing, which was—of course, that was 1951, so everything was a lot less expensive. They got me a scholarship, one of the parishes offered to support a seminarian, and they committed to me—which interestingly enough, was St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Berkeley.

01a-00:16:01 LaBerge: Really!

01a-00:16:05 Crespin: So I was supported through the seminary by the ladies’ aid group or the sodality, or some group from that parish. That was interesting and I went to that parish later on. So I went in in September of 1951.

01a-00:16:23 LaBerge: What kind of preparation did you have to do, like during the summer? For instance, did you have a psychological exam or was there anything like that?

01a-00:16:32 Crespin: No, they didn’t do anything. The only thing that happened was one of the staff of the seminary, a priest, it was Father Ray [Raymond J.] Maher—I know he was the treasurer—came and met with my parents. I wasn’t in that meeting, but I guess they were talking partly of these finances and were they going to 7

be able to support me through it or not. Whatever they worked out, they worked out. But that was the only—other than the test, which was—

01a-00:17:04 LaBerge: Kind of a really academic test.

01a-00:17:06 Crespin: Yes, it was an academic—it was English and Latin. I had been taking Latin at St. Joseph’s, unwittingly I think. But then when you got in, when you got there, you had to take another test. I did well on the English test but I wasn’t up to their standards in the Latin, so I had to repeat first year Latin in that first year there at the seminary. Then I finally got caught up.

01a-00:17:38 LaBerge: And otherwise, was the curriculum similar to St. Joe’s, with extra theology?

01a-00:17:44 Crespin: No, we didn’t have any theology. We had religion classes, but it was a college prep course. So was St. Joseph’s in Alameda, the high school. But I think it was a little bit more serious at the seminary, and the courses expected more. At the time we used to complain, but I think looking back all of us agreed that we got a very fine education, both at the high school and at the college level in the seminary. We thought we were getting cheated somehow, but comparing it to other people’s experience we did very well.

01a-00:18:29 LaBerge: So St. Joseph’s College goes through high school and college?

01a-00:18:31 Crespin: No, it went—in those days it was called the minor seminary, so it went through the four years of high school and the first two years of college, six years.

01a-00:18:39 LaBerge: Okay.

01a-00:18:40 Crespin: And then the major seminary, St. Patrick’s in Menlo Park, was the other two years of college, which they called philosophy years, and then four years of theology. So the whole program was twelve years, but it was high school, college, and then post-graduate.

01a-00:18:56 LaBerge: Yes, yes. Did you choose a major for college, or did everybody do the same thing?

01a-00:19:00 Crespin: Everything was chosen for us. The only choice I remember getting was we could decide in the first year of college, we could decide either French or Spanish. 8

01a-00:19:12 LaBerge: And you chose—

01a-00:19:13 Crespin: I chose Spanish.

01a-00:19:13 LaBerge: Did you already speak Spanish?

01a-00:19:16 Crespin: I understood it, because when we were in New Mexico a lot of people spoke Spanish, and family and my grandmother lived with us at different times, especially when my sisters were being born. She didn’t speak English, so if we wanted to eat we had to be able to address her in Spanish. [laughter] And so I understood always, and probably could speak it through the age of five or six, with the vocabulary that’s appropriate there. But then I lost it, because once we got to California we didn’t have family here really, so they didn’t have the opportunity to keep up. My dad grew really rusty with his Spanish. In fact, he was kind of embarrassed towards the end of his life about trying to speak it, because he’d been so much out of practice. My mom used to speak a lot to her aunts and cousins and so on by phone, because that was the most of the contact, and so her Spanish was fairly good. But when I was ordained I could understand at the level of a seven-year-old, I think, but I couldn’t speak by that time. So after ordination I went down to Mexico a couple of summers and worked on it.

01a-00:20:28 LaBerge: So now you’re fluent, aren’t you?

01a-00:20:29 Crespin: Yes, I like to think, I like to think, yes. I can get through any situation, anyway. [laughing] It may not be pretty, but I can get through it. I think if I hadn’t had that base as a young child, that tape recorder going off, it would have been very difficult, because I don’t think I have an aptitude for languages. Some people can pick up four or five. Tony Valdivia, I don’t know if you know Tony, but he’s a contemporary.

01a-00:20:54 LaBerge: I don’t.

01a-00:20:55 Crespin: He’s retired now, but he’s a priest. He lives with [Retired Bishop of Oakland] John Cummins, at John’s house. Anyway, he’s got such a good ear he can imitate any language, Russian, German, Italian, Portuguese—he’s got that kind of ear. I don’t. But I had the pronunciation tape in my head, and so I was able to move with that.

01a-00:21:22 LaBerge: I think Carlo [Busby] has the ear, too. Both that he can still speak Italian, but he could do a little Spanish, a little French. 9

01a-00:21:30 Crespin: I’ve never challenged him on that, so I don’t know. [laughter]

01a-00:21:34 LaBerge: Whatever you’d like to say about the seminary, what kind of a transition it was for you, your reflections now, looking back, compared to what the seminary is like today?

01a-00:21:51 Crespin: Okay. I’ll try to be brief here. Well, for me the seminary was a step up. It was the first time—

01a-00:22:01 LaBerge: Well, you mentioned that you thought it was “too rich” for you.

01a-00:22:01 Crespin: Well, yes, they had a swimming pool and tennis courts and individual rooms.

01a-00:22:06 LaBerge: And where is the minor seminary?

01a-00:22:07 Crespin: It was in Mountain View, but it was damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake [1989], so they eventually had to pull it down. But I’d never had my own room or my own bed.

01a-00:22:19 LaBerge: Of course!

01a-00:22:20 Crespin: I slept out on the sofa in the living room, because my parents were in one room and my sisters were in the other. And so to have that kind of space and privacy was a real step up. We had to have a dental examination before going in, and the summer before I went in I went to the dentist and—no cavities. We had to have another examination at Christmas time, and I had twelve cavities by Christmas.

01a-00:22:52 LaBerge: Because of the food?

01a-00:22:52 Crespin: The diet, I guess. The water, the diet, whatever, but it was that kind of an experience. It wasn’t major, but it was just interesting. I think looking back, with the benefit of time, the idea that was operative was that you catch young people, young men, before they discover girls. You get them at an early age and protect them from the world and keep them active, keep them busy. They had a very extensive sports program. We had a cultural program. We had plays and musicals and things, and then a heavy academic [program]. So it was a good experience. 10

For me, I never really felt homesick except one day. It was early on, it was within two or three weeks. I was in English class, and the professor there was—he was tough. He had broken his back diving into a swimming pool. He was a very good swimmer. He broke his back, and that was years before I met him. But he was in constant pain, so it didn’t take much to set him off. He was a good teacher. He was one of the best teachers I had during that time.

01a-00:24:11 LaBerge: What was his name?

01a-00:24:12 Crespin: Larry Taylor. But he was really tough. Especially those of us coming in—I went into the second year, sophomore English class, which was appropriate for where I was. I had to repeat the Latin, I told you. But he just gave out all kinds of homework, and so I spent most of—we had two or three hours of study hall in the evening, and I spent most of that just on his assignments and letting other things go.

One morning early on, as he was accustomed to doing, he said, “Okay, Gentlemen, pass your homework forward.” There were long rows of us, because we were maybe forty or thirty in a class. So the guy behind me was also new. He was from Sacramento. And he said to me, “Geez, George—I didn’t finish. Did you?” And I said, “Yes, but it took me all night.” And I look up and there he is standing right over me. [gesturing] I wasn’t quite sure how to respond, and when you’re nervous a lot of times you laugh. So I smiled weakly, maybe laughed, and that just set him off. So then he started hitting me over the head, “You think you’re so smart? This is serious business and you’ve got to learn. Next time I’ll just throw you out on your ear.” So he was yelling at me and I was sitting like this, [gesturing with hands folded] trying not to laugh, because I was nervous. I guess the only other alternative would be to wet my pants, but I was just trying to maintain control. Then he finally stopped. But that night I thought—this isn’t the place I want to be. But I got past that. I became a big hero for the other guys, “This is the guy that Larry Taylor hit!” [laughing]

01a-00:26:04 LaBerge: So maybe it helped you. [laughing]

01a-00:26:06 Crespin: Yes, it made me friends that I might not have had prior to that.

01a-00:26:12 LaBerge: And was Larry a priest?

01a-00:26:12 Crespin: He was a priest, yes.

01a-00:26:13 LaBerge: Were all the professor priests? 11

01a-00:26:15 Crespin: All the professors were priests in the minor seminary. In the major, we had a couple of laymen, like a science/biology professor or something like that. But for the most part they were all priests, and a lot of them young priests, although some had been there for a long time.

But I’d say academically it was superior. I think we had a very good education. We learned good study habits and good discipline. They initiated us gradually into a prayer life, and it was low-key. It wasn’t anything— because we knew we were still eleven years away from being priests, so there was time for everything. The one criticism I would have, looking back, and I’ve expressed that for several years now, that it was a very unhealthy situation to live in an all-male environment during those critical years of high school and early college, adolescent years. So I think—it wasn’t unhealthy in the sense of—the professors were always worried about homosexuality, but that didn’t seem to—at least if it was present in my time I didn’t relate to it or didn’t—

01a-00:27:45 LaBerge: You didn’t know it was happening?

01a-00:27:47 Crespin: I had no knowledge, yes. But I guess it could have contributed to that, but it didn’t. But what it did was it made it difficult for us to know how to socialize, and especially with women. During very formative years we didn’t have that experience that would have helped us to know how to relate better. So we were very male—we stayed adolescent, I think. We didn’t emotionally or socially mature, the way our peers were doing on the outside. So I think that that was—

01a-00:28:28 LaBerge: I’m going to stop this, because we’re almost at—

[Tape 1: Side B]

01b-00:00:03 LaBerge: Father George, you were just commenting on being in that all-male environment as an adolescent.

01b-00:00:17 Crespin: Yes, what I think is it stunted our growth emotionally and socially. And as a result, a lot of priests after ordination didn’t know how to relate to women, sometimes didn’t know how to relate to other human beings, apart from their gender, and stayed in an adolescent mode well into their middle years. And I know that happens, apart from the seminary—there are some guys that never grow up or they stay jocks all their lives. But I think some of that happened in our cases too, so that I was happy when they did away with the high school portion of the seminary, because I thought that it’s better for kids to be home with their families and having normal experiences—normal experiences today 12

are quite different from what would have been normal experiences for us back in the fifties or sixties, but it’s still—I think it’s better to grow up in a family at that time if you can, rather than in a very artificial setting.

01b-00:01:28 LaBerge: What did you do in the summers?

01b-00:01:34 Crespin: We had summers off, so usually from about the first week in June to the last week in August we went home. Most of us had to work, and we’d get jobs.

01b-00:01:49 LaBerge: So where did you work?

01b-00:01:50 Crespin: So I worked—I had a man in the parish there in Alameda at St. Barnabas who worked at what used to be called Judson Pacific-Murphy Steel. It’s now where Emery Bay is, that area right there, but it was a big steel mill there. He was high enough up that he could get me a job, so he got me a job for several summers there during the high school years. The first year, for the first week and a half, I worked in the shop, just general errand-runner because I didn’t know how to do anything. But then he got kind of nervous because he felt that the environment was too rough, that they were telling too many dirty jokes and it wasn’t good for my innocent ears. [laughter] So he got me a job with the same company, but going over to San Francisco and taking care of the lawn at the mother of the owner, her house. She lived over in the Mission District in San Francisco, and so I’d go and water and trim and weed and paint, whatever, so I was pretty much on my own all day. They gave me a pickup truck to take over and so I worked there. So it was good, it gave me something to do, it gave me some money—which I needed. I didn’t learn a lot of steel welding or anything like that, but it was—the work experience end of it was good. And then at one point later they moved me into the accounting office, and I worked as an accountant’s assistant a couple of summers. In fact, I was doing the payroll when they were building the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

01b-00:03:35 LaBerge: Really!

01b-00:03:37 Crespin: We were doing the payroll for the workers on that bridge.

01b-00:03:42 LaBerge: Well, that was good experience for later, in having to—

01b-00:03:45 Crespin: Knowing how to work with numbers. 13

01b-00:03:46 LaBerge: Yes! [laughter] Well, now I’m wondering about your own experience, about relationships with women as human beings. Because it seems—you didn’t get stuck, it seems to me.

01b-00:04:06 Crespin: Well, I had that one year out of high school.

01b-00:04:08 LaBerge: You did. And you had sisters.

01b-00:04:08 Crespin: I had sisters. I don’t know—it’s hard to—I just like people, which a lot of people coming on these days don’t.

01b-00:04:21 LaBerge: No, you’re right.

01b-00:04:22 Crespin: So that’s always been easy for me. I guess just because of the whole training I’m more comfortable in the company of men than women, but I’ve had very close women friends all my life, sometimes they’re part of a couple, sometimes they’re not, but I’ve always had good relationships there. And I— if people think that I don’t relate well to women or to men, they don’t give me that feedback. I don’t get that kind of feedback. I hear about other priests, that he can’t deal with women, that’s his problem. And it does affect what happens in the parish, because for the most part it’s women—

01b-00:05:04 LaBerge: It is women, it is women.

01b-00:05:07 Crespin: —who make the thing work. And if you don’t know how to relate to women, then you’re asking for a lot of trouble. I think part of it was just growing up in a normal house in a healthy home, and having the two sisters helped, although I was the big brother, and since my dad was gone a lot my mom relied on me to do some of the disciplining when my dad wasn’t there, which was probably a mistake in retrospect. But you just do what they tell you to do.

But no, I made some very good friends with some nuns, early on after ordination, the nuns teaching in the schools where I was. Some of them became lifelong friends, and some of them stayed and some of them left. And couples—I meet with one couple—we met at that time, at the time of my first assignment in 1962, and we still get together about once a month or every five weeks. They moved around, they were up in Mendocino for a while, they’re presently down in Santa Cruz, but we’ve kept up the relationship. There are several friends I have that have been friends for fifty or sixty years. So I have that gift, blessing, whatever you want to call it, of being able to maintain strong relationships. There’s a couple, this summer, that are celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary, and they asked me to perform the Mass because 14

I celebrated their wedding banns. So that will be a lot of fun, and we’ve had close contact over the years as well.

So I guess part of it is temperament. I’m a people person. Actually, I judge myself as kind of shy and reserved, until you get me in front of a crowd, and then I change. [laughter] But I like—I used to like much more being in the company of a lot of people. I can’t handle it anymore. I prefer it more quiet. But I’ve always liked to be with people, and I remember my first year—this is moving ahead a bit, but the first year of ordination I didn’t want to go home before ten thirty, eleven o’clock at night, because I would just go home to quiet and to nothing. So I’d go visit families at that hour.

01b-00:07:41 LaBerge: Wow!

01b-00:07:42 Crespin: And they called me Midnight George—if I knew that they’d be up and I wouldn’t get them up out of bed. But there were some families that I knew didn’t go to bed before eleven thirty/twelve, and so I’d stop by and just visit, because I couldn’t handle being alone, and the place where I was the pastor was not very friendly, so I was alone. But I found ways to compensate for that.

01b-00:08:17 LaBerge: What parish was that?

01b-00:08:18 Crespin: That was Holy Spirit in those days, Holy Ghost in Fremont where I was first assigned.

01b-00:08:24 LaBerge: Well, let’s go back to the major seminary. What was that difference in transition?

01b-00:08:34 Crespin: The minor seminary was the high school and the first years of college. There was a lot of life there, there was a lot of discipline. You worked hard, but there were a lot of opportunities for athletics, for drama, for all kinds of different activities.

01b-00:08:55 LaBerge: What did you participate in?

01b-00:08:57 Crespin: I participated in some of the plays that they did. In fact last night somebody was saying, “Did you ever read Julius Caesar by Shakespeare?” I lived it!

01b-00:09:09 LaBerge: Were you Julius? 15

01b-00:09:09 Crespin: I was Julius Caesar in the play. Every year they’d put on one or two plays, and some of us got a chance to perform in some of them. But it was a happy place, there was a lot of life, the only sadness really, that I remember from those days, was when friends would leave. You’d wake up one morning and say, “I hear so-and-so left last night. He went—he quit.” And sometimes—I had the experience five years in a row where my best friend each year left during the summer, and it really made coming back hard, because it was just—I developed these close relationships and then they were gone.

01b-00:09:56 LaBerge: And you never heard from them again?

01b-00:09:57 Crespin: Well no, I kept up with some of them.

01b-00:09:58 LaBerge: But it’s not like going to school with them.

01b-00:10:00 Crespin: It’s like you come to a parting of the ways. Their vision changes, their goals change, and you don’t have as much in common with them anymore as you would—I still have close contact with some of them, some of those who were my best friends in those years, and so that piece hasn’t changed. But it’s just that they took a different turn. But other than—that was the only sadness I remember, other than the day I got hit, but that passed quickly. I made up for it—I got so determined that I was not going to let him ruin the experience that I wound up getting the honorable mention for the best grade in that class. [laughing]

01b-00:10:42 LaBerge: Wow!

01b-00:10:46 Crespin: He never apologized, I don’t think that was his style. But he let me know in other ways that he appreciated that I was working.

But going to the major seminary was a big change, because the impressions that I have of the major seminary, that I had going in and that I still have— everybody there wore the black cassock all day, when they came to class, for the meals, for everything, so it was very much—I can’t think of the word in English or Spanish, but—

01b-00:11:27 LaBerge: Clerical?

01b-00:11:30 Crespin: Well, very clerical, yes, but there was that sameness. Everybody was expected to look the same and act the same, and I had a musty smell that I associated with St. Patrick’s. The professors were all old and tired for the most part, and 16

their best teaching years were behind them and we didn’t get them. We got Frank [B.] Norris, who was a young theologian who’d just come back from Europe. We got him and he was our lifesaver, and then Bob [Robert J.] Giguere was the philosophy professor. He was not only philosophy but spirituality, liturgy, culture—he was very much an influence there. But all the others were just going through the motions—at least that’s how I felt.

What was happening at that time was we were beginning to get the translations of books from the French or from the German, from theologians in Europe who had been producing a lot. We were just beginning to get the translations. So that was kind of exciting, but it meant that as we read what was being said, it was just so different from what was being taught to us that it was hard to know how to deal with that. I would just take books in. I would try to sit toward the back of the classroom and just take books in and read them during the lecture, because what they were giving was not that significant, and this other stuff was more exciting.

01b-00:13:13 LaBerge: Why don’t you tell me some of the authors.

01b-00:13:19 Crespin: [Jean] Daniélou, Jungmann,—what’s his name, a Frenchman—Suhard, [Yves] Congar, [Edward] Schillebeeckx, all these people had been writing and they wound up being very engaged in the [Second Vatican] council. But we were already familiar with their thinking. Frank Norris had directed us to a lot of them, and Bob Giguere as well.

01b-00:14:00 LaBerge: Whereas what were you hearing—were you studying Aquinas, or...

01b-00:14:07 Crespin: We were studying a deformed version of Aquinas. It was Neo-Scholasticism, which was the deadest and the driest and the dullest, and not even real Thomism, but that’s what we had. The textbooks—they were in Latin. The lectures were in English but the textbooks were in Latin. And just—there was no life to them. It was stuff you knew you had to learn, because we thought we might need it some day, and as a result we learned it and later on figured most of that we didn’t need—we needed to unlearn [it]. But we were fortunate enough to know that there was an alternative, and so I would read thirty or forty books a year apart from whatever we were required to read for the course. But usually we were only required to read the textbook and to make sure we understood it. They weren’t big into independent thinking. But you could get the education if you wanted.

The priests that came out just before us, two or three years before us, didn’t have that advantage, and so when they came out they thought they knew theology and then found out there was a whole other thrust in it as a result of the council. And many of them couldn’t handle it. It was too confusing. They 17

either rejected it altogether or they left the ministry. Others educated themselves, like Bill O’Donnell. I don’t know if you knew Bill.

01b-00:15:56 LaBerge: Yes.

01b-00:15:58 Crespin: But Bill was self-educated. He just got out before the wave of new thinking came into the seminary.

01b-00:16:07 LaBerge: So he was older than you?

01b-00:16:07 Crespin: Yes, he was six years older, so he—and John Cummins, self-educated himself—because they didn’t get it in their classes, and so they had to get it somewhere. The seminary was—it was a very negative experience for me. Those six years were very painful.

01b-00:16:37 LaBerge: Wow—what kept you, what motivated you to stay?

01b-00:16:43 Crespin: There were times when I didn’t know. [laughing] A couple of times I went to my director, Father Giguere and just, “I can’t do this anymore.” “No, no. Hang in there.” And I’m glad he persuaded me to, but it was just—it wasn’t life-giving, it was draining. I remember thinking to myself, if God really wants us to be priests then why does he make it so hard? The very people that should be preparing us for it are the ones who are turning us off to it.

01b-00:17:16 LaBerge: Yes.

01b-00:17:20 Crespin: I found out later that the purpose behind it all, obviously, was that life was going to be that way. [laughing] It wasn’t always going to be easy, and sometimes you had to struggle and sometimes you do things that you really appreciate having to do, but that’s just part of life, which you don’t know at that time.

I spent most of the seminary time blocking out things that I just—I knew by that time I didn’t agree with or didn’t— So we’d have a talk by the rector every afternoon from one thirty to six. If I didn’t want to get really upset I’d bring in a book or something, so I wouldn’t have to listen to it. I’d go to the classes, but it was not an environment that I identified with. I had some good friends there, and I think the friends were an important part of why I stayed also. But it was—for me it was a dark period. Those six years, contrasted to the five that I spent in the minor seminary—which I identify with light and life and activity—these were just gray or heavily black because of all the cassocks. But it was just not a place that I enjoyed being part of. 18

01b-00:18:50 LaBerge: What about the prayer life?

01b-00:18:58 Crespin: The high points were we had good liturgies. They were all in Latin, but we had good music and it was all chant. We’d call it high church now, but at the time it was—

01b-00:19:08 LaBerge: It was the norm.

01b-00:19:09 Crespin: It was the norm, yes. We were encouraged to make visits to the Blessed Sacrament every day, so usually at night after night prayers I’d stay in the chapel for half an hour/forty-five minutes. That’s where I anguished—do I want to stay? Do I want to leave? Help me to figure this out. But I think I learned how to pray. They had meditation at 6:15 in the morning, and I’m not a morning person. So if I could stay awake during the meditation period, I’d consider that a triumph. [laughter] Not so much to have any kind of spiritual experience, but just to stay awake. I’d prefer it later in the day.

They didn’t initially encourage too much connection with scripture, because that was dangerous stuff. And finally when we got into theology, which was one of the last four years, we could have a Bible and read it, but before that we were not encouraged to do that. So scripture wasn’t a big part—although because of the push on liturgy that was coming, not so much from the seminary faculty but from Frank Norris and Bob Giguere, we knew a lot about liturgy, we read a lot about liturgy, and I think grew in our understanding of liturgy, never imaging that it would change so dramatically and so quickly right after we were ordained. I, from the early years was very much a fan of moving the Mass into the vernacular language but never thought I’d see it in my lifetime.

01b-00:21:07 LaBerge: Well, and it happened almost overnight.

01b-00:21:11 Crespin: Yes, and within three years after ordination I was saying Mass in English, which I would never have expected. So the spirituality was all focused on the priesthood, which is understandable, I think. But I would have preferred, I think, in retrospect, that it be more grounded in the nature of baptism and our Christian calling. That’s the basic call, and then within that you can take a different route toward the priesthood. But because the spirituality they preached was priestly spirituality, for those that left, they left without anything that could help them later. Many of them left the church, even if they hadn’t been ordained yet, but the only spirituality they knew was seminary spirituality, and so they didn’t have a big handle on how to maneuver ordinary life as a Christian layman. 19

01b-00:22:30 LaBerge: What’s your memory when Pope John XXIII was elected.

01b-00:22:34 Crespin: Elected—it was our first experience of a new pope being elected. We were all alive when Pius XII was elected in 1939, but we weren’t—

01b-00:22:46 LaBerge: You weren’t conscious.

01b-00:22:48 Crespin: I certainly wasn’t conscious of what was going on in Rome, but for this time we were. The most memorable experience that I had in connection with that was the American spirit is always tending toward business, so they had pools on who was going to be the next pope, and you’d pick a square. You picked a number and then, “Okay, your cardinal is this one and that one.” And I got this—I said, “Who is this guy? I don’t even know him.” [Angelo] Roncalli. And then I forgot it, but when he was elected then I thought—well, that’s my guy! So I won the pool.

01b-00:23:34 LaBerge: So you just randomly picked him.

01b-00:23:35 Crespin: Yes, without knowing anything. But it was an exciting thing. We weren’t yet, I think, geared toward change in the church, or at least there weren’t many hopes that the new pope would make a difference, that nothing was going to dramatically change. And so we didn’t expect that. We kind of got into the election, the white smoke and the coronation or whatever they did to popes in those days. But then when he announced the council [Second Vatican Council], of course everything took on a whole different light. Even though the word coming out was—well, this is not going to change anything. It’s just dusting and cleaning. So we didn’t have high expectations of the council, and we were ordained just before it started. We were ordained in June, and the council started in October. But—

01b-00:24:52 LaBerge: So tell me about your ordination and your first Mass in your first parish.

01b-00:24:54 Crespin: Okay. Just a little introduction. The Oakland Diocese was formed in February—

01b-00:25:10 LaBerge: Oh yes, tell that story!

01b-00:25:16 Crespin: Okay, well Archbishop [John Joseph] Mitty died. I don’t remember the date on that, but it’s probably in 1961, something, November or October. We were waiting for a new archbishop to be appointed, and on some morning in 20

February of 1962 we got the word that four dioceses—San Francisco was going to continue, but three other dioceses had been carved out of it: Santa Rosa, Stockton, Oakland. Then we went through this period of not being sure what that meant in terms of our future, whether we’d get to choose or we’d be assigned. The decision that they made was that you belonged to the diocese where your parents were living, so my parents were living in Berkeley at that time, so I automatically went to the Oakland Diocese. I was kind of disappointed I remember, because almost all my close friends were from San Francisco, and I thought, we’re not going to be able to share as much as we had anticipated sharing. But as it turned out, I was immensely grateful later that I wound up in Oakland rather than San Francisco. But so the announcement was made. It just added to the nervousness and the jitters that we were beginning to experience because we were close to ordination. And some time in April they had the installations of the four bishops, [Joseph] McGucken in San Francisco, and [Hugh] Donohoe in Stockton, and [Leo] Maher in Santa Rosa, [Floyd] Begin in Oakland. And at one point they came to the seminary, because there’s this ceremony I guess that still goes on there, and I bothered to go to it, where they install the archbishop. They give a pallium, it’s like a stole but—

01b-00:27:22 LaBerge: But it’s bigger.

01b-00:27:22 Crespin: Yes, it’s bigger and better, for the archbishop, and there’s a ceremony to present it to him. And so Cardinal McIntyre came up from LA as the ranking prelate in the area and a bunch of other bishops, and we had that ceremony in the seminary chapel. It was just the seminarians and whatever priests chose to come, and then after that we had a big banquet. I was what they called the house president, or the class—yes, I was class president, which automatically made me president of the whole school, so I got to give one of the welcoming speeches to the assembled hierarchy in the dining room. So I don’t remember exactly, but I said something to the effect of—“We want to tell you how grateful [we are] that all of you have come, and bless this occasion and bless this place with your presence. We’re so happy to have the new bishops here, and Cardinal McIntyre, thank you for coming down. I’d love to keep talking about all that your presence means here to us, but we’ve got to go to class in about ten minutes, so I have to cut it short.” The cardinal shot back, “Take the rest of the day off.” [laughter] Which was the intention, but I didn’t know how to exactly express that. Well, we got the rest of the day off. I was a big hero to the student body for getting the afternoon off. The bishop, again, was mightily impressed, “That’s an Oakland boy!” And as a result of that, he wanted to send me to Rome to study canon law right after ordination.

01b-00:29:23 LaBerge: You are kidding! 21

01b-00:29:29 Crespin: He got it into his head that this one has a career. I didn’t know that—John Cummins told me that later. But he said, “I had to fight him off, because he was dead set on sending you to Rome,” which I think would have crushed me at that point. I wasn’t ready for that, although it might have been interesting being in Rome during the council.

01b-00:29:49 LaBerge: Sure, but you didn’t know that was going to happen.

01b-00:29:51 Crespin: Yes, or didn’t care. Anyway, then I was ordained at the St. Francis de Sales, June 9, 1962. The rest of my classmates were ordained the same day, but in their own cathedrals in their own dioceses. So there were three of us: Dick Murray and Walter Saunders, were the other two. Dick was killed in an automobile accident about seven years later. And Wally Saunders stayed in the ministry maybe seven or eight years and then left and got married. So I’m the remaining one from our group anyway. There were some Dominicans ordained with us at the same time, in fact David—[abrupt ending]

[Tape 2: Side A]

02a-00:00:05 LaBerge: You were just saying about David O’Rourke is at Point Richmond now.

02a-00:00:17 Crespin: Yes, he was very active within the Dominicans, and he also worked for the diocese in the family life office for several years and he’s written books. We don’t have much contact with each other, but we keep reminding each other that we go back to the same day, the same ordination ceremony.

So there wasn’t too much memorable about that—in those days you stayed at the seminary until the day of the ordination and then they sent, appropriately, a funeral car to pick us up and take us to Oakland. So the three of us, Dick Murray and Wally and myself got picked up around seven-thirty/eight o’clock in the morning and were driven to the cathedral in Oakland, St. Francis de Sales for the—I think it was a nine or ten o’clock ordination ceremony. I didn’t make much of the symbolism of that at the time. But it’s interesting to recall.

02a-00:01:19 LaBerge: Lots of family there?

02a-00:01:22 Crespin: Yes, I had family come from New Mexico, a lot of my relatives came, friends, former classmates, and people who had been in seminary. It was a really good time. The tradition—that was a Saturday morning, I think, when we were ordained. It was the Vigil of Pentecost. I remember that. And then you usually had your first Mass, solemn high Mass, the next day, Sunday. So I had that at 22

St. Joseph the Worker Church, because that’s where my family was living, so that was where I had my first Mass.

02a-00:02:00 LaBerge: Oh that’s—just the way your life has come around in a circle.

02a-00:02:00 Crespin: [laughing] It keeps going around in circles, yes! And then a reception at the Presentation High School cafeteria I think we had afterwards. I remember the strangest feeling was not so much—those two days were really beautiful and rich, and just experiencing all kinds of love and support. But the Monday, the next day, I had asked the pastor if I could say one of the Masses there, and so I did. It might have been just a private Mass. It wasn’t one of the regularly scheduled Masses. And then I walk up there and it’s my family! It was my parents, and some of my uncles and aunts had come from New Mexico, my sisters, their boyfriends or husbands—boyfriends I guess they were at that time. But it was just—and I had never given serious thought to the fact that I might someday wind up preaching to my family! [laughing] And it was—I don’t remember what I said or what I did, but I remember it giving me just a weird feeling. Because of all the study I’d done on liturgy I came out with a conviction that I was always going to give a homily whenever I celebrated Mass. That wasn’t the custom, as you recall, but it began to become more common, and so I said a homily.

02a-00:03:31 LaBerge: You were pre-Vatican II. You had that—you had it before Vatican II! [laughing]

02a-00:03:36 Crespin: Yes, I know the old and that’s why I don’t want to go back there! But then we were right on the cusp of the new, so I preached and then I—I’ve preached ever since. I think there have only been two days in the fifty years that I haven’t preached at a Mass, that I homilized. I think both those times I was sick and just barely getting through the Mass. Otherwise, ready or not, here I come! It has been a good discipline too, because it has forced me to take the reading seriously. I don’t say that I sit down and prepare long hours for the weekday Mass, but it has kept me fresh, just having to rethink and then try to reach this congregation, which is different from the congregation—I’m in Richmond now, and different from the congregation in Berkeley, and so on.

02a-00:04:33 LaBerge: We didn’t talk about any—what kind of preparation you’d had in seminary for preaching. Is that worth covering?

02a-00:04:43 Crespin: [laughing] Not too much! We had a rhetoric class in the minor seminary, the last year—the second year of college where we did debating. We had a homiletics class in the major seminary, and I don’t know if that was one year or two. It was taught by a man who had taught it for about sixty years. And 23

basically what I recall of the class—I don’t remember principles about preaching or how to use stories, I just recall, [imitating professor speaking to him] [chuckling] “You can’t be heard. If you’re going to be heard in a church you’ve got to speak louder.” And so it was all on the mechanics.

I don’t remember—I think whatever I learned about homilizing came from Frank Norris, just his putting us in touch with the scriptures and current thinking. The big thing in those days was kerygmatic theology, which was—I start forgetting names already, but there was a theologian who had done a lot of work in the Philippines, kind of liturgical ministry connected with preaching. Kerygma was the proclamation, the good news. And kerygmatic preaching, then, was preaching the good news and preaching from the scriptures, which again, wasn’t the case at the time. The priest was preaching whatever he wanted to, and to take it from the scriptures was a fairly new concept. But so Frank Norris talked a lot about that to us.

But the homilizing class—it wasn’t a bad class. The professor, I’m sure, had a lot to offer, but he was old and he was tired.

02a-00:06:53 LaBerge: And you didn’t have practice, you didn’t give practice homilies or sermons?

02a-00:06:57 Crespin: We did. In the last year that you were in the seminary which—you would already be a deacon, you practiced giving a homily during the meal. So they had a raised pulpit in the dining room, and you preached as your classmates ate. It wasn’t geared for an awful lot of feedback. [laughter] Or if you needed affirming attention you didn’t get that. But they did that and then they—the faculty would meet after that meal and give a critique, and then the rector in one of the next couple of days at the evening session that he had with us— spiritual direction it was called—he would relay the critique. “You didn’t make eye contact,” or if your thought wasn’t clear, “it wasn’t clear what you were trying to say,” that kind of thing. But it wasn’t extensive. We didn’t get an awful lot of that.

02a-00:08:06 LaBerge: Well, let’s go back to 1962, and where did you then go after being ordained?

02a-00:08:14 Crespin: We were given two or three weeks off after ordination, and then I was told to report—I got a letter telling me to report to Holy Ghost Parish in Fremont. A little background there—Fremont in those days was just a small village, and the pastor there, Monsignor Vincent Breen, had been sent there as a punishment. He had been a school principal, a Catholic high school principal and teacher for several years, and then somehow got into a big disagreement with somebody else on the faculty and he had to leave. And so he was sent out to—Centerville [as] it was known at that time—kind of put out to pasture. They were thinking—well, he can’t do any damage out there. But it turned out 24

that that place just exploded in growth, so that—and I think Fremont today is the third or fourth largest city in California if you take the whole population. So it was beginning to grow. So their plan of punishing him backfired because the parish became fairly large and active. He was a hard man to get along with, and he went through associates by the month. Some of them he didn’t like and he would ask to have them removed, others just walked out. They couldn’t take it anymore. So by the time I was ordained he was alone. They’d taken away his last associate about a year before and said, “We’re just going to leave him alone now because he can’t get along with anybody.”

[Bishop] Begin, in one of his first acts as the new bishop, went there for a confirmation, I guess in May of ‘62, so shortly after he arrived but before I was ordained. And he said, “This place is like a diocese. How can you do this by yourself?” And [Breen] said, “They don’t like me and they haven’t sent anybody to me.” So he said, “I’ll send you the first priest we ordain.” [laughter] So guess who? When John [Cummins] was able to persuade him not to send me to Rome, this was the other alternative, which had I known— while I liked it very much. Breen and I—we weren’t on the same page, but he was off playing golf most of the time, so—I should remember that this is going to be on tape.

02a-00:10:55 LaBerge: Right, this is when you would go visiting at night to the families.

02a-00:11:01 Crespin: Yes—so he didn’t know how to break in a new priest. I think he was kind of disillusioned himself, but he wouldn’t let me preach. But it wasn’t like, “You’re not going to preach.” He wouldn’t tell me until Saturday what Mass I was going to be saying and whether I’d be preaching or not. And he didn’t like to preach, so he presumed I wouldn’t like to preach. And he brought in Dominicans, so he’d have them preach at all the Masses.

02a-00:11:42 LaBerge: Oh!

02a-00:11:42 Crespin: And sometimes I’d have something prepared, but obviously not be able to use it. A couple of times he caught me off guard and I wasn’t prepared, and kind of sweat out having to get up there and talk off the cuff. But he just—I guess he thought he was doing me a favor, but I really wanted the experience and wanted to begin to have an opportunity. I lasted ten months there, and it wasn’t pleasant, but I could have handled it. But the bishop at that point decided he wanted to put me in the marriage tribunal at the chancery office.

02a-00:12:24 LaBerge: Oh! He had his eye on you! 25

02a-00:12:27 Crespin: Yes, he did. I think I cried for ten days when I got that letter saying that “you’re to report to the chancery office,” because I was just beginning to get in with the families and the people, and the summer had been hard because I didn’t know anybody. It was kind of a downer. But as school came back in and the parish picked up, I was beginning to like it. I started a youth group and was enjoying it, a young married group and so on, and was having a lot of fun. But then it all ended.

02a-00:13:04 LaBerge: So what—I didn’t ask this. What was your—did you have a vow of obedience? Or what’s the difference between a diocesan priest and one who belongs to a religious order?

02a-00:13:13 Crespin: We make a promise of obedience to the bishop and his successors. That’s part of the ordination ceremony, a prayer that you—he takes his hands and puts your hands between them, “Do you promise obedience to me and my successors?” So it’s just understood that yes, if you belong to the diocese—

02a-00:13:31 LaBerge: If you are asked to go, you go.

02a-00:13:37 Crespin: You go. Later, I think we got to the point where we would negotiate with people, “Would you like to go? Or if you don’t want to go there where would you like to go?” But at that time you just got a letter saying go, and there was no backing away from it. So I knew I couldn’t do anything about it. My mother, however, thought she could. [laughter] So unbeknownst to me—I didn’t find this out till about four or five years later—but she saw how unhappy I was, because it was obvious. I couldn’t get through a Mass without crying in the last days there at the parish. So she made an appointment with Bishop Begin and went and told him that this was a very bad decision on his part, and he ought to take my feelings into consideration, and I needed to be in a parish. I didn’t need to be working in an office. Innocent, and he just told her, “He doesn’t belong to you anymore. He belongs to me. Period.” I think that’s why she never had the courage to tell me about it. I found out from somebody else. But she never mentioned it, even though I knew for many years after that, she never mentioned it. I didn’t bring it up. So I went there and—

02a-00:15:03 LaBerge: These are the chancery offices on Lakeshore?

02a-00:15:06 Crespin: No, this was on Grand Avenue, West Grand, 534 West Grand—I think that was the address. This is getting—it’s much more about me than I’d anticipated, but I’m sure— 26

02a-00:15:24 LaBerge: It’s part of it. It’s part of—

02a-00:15:25 Crespin: Setting the context, okay.

St. Francis de Sales had been designated a cathedral. The bishop was not going to live there. The pastor, who I think you know, was the pastor who had been there for twenty or thirty years. It was a downtown parish, which meant not an awful lot of activity and he liked it that way, the pastor at the time. He resented the fact that the bishop was coming in and was going to create all kinds of work for him. But one of the first things the bishop said is, “You’ve got to clean up that rectory. It’s a mess.” So just as I arrived—it was in the middle of March—just as I arrived they were starting to rip up the carpets and tear down the walls and rearrange stuff and put in new plumbing. I remember going there before I moved in, and he took me up—I don’t know if you remember the house, if you’ve ever been in the house.

02a-00:16:35 LaBerge: No.

02a-00:16:35 Crespin: It was a red brick house on Twenty-first and San Pablo. But he took me to the back room there, which was just a mess. There was rubbish all over the place. It smelled awful. And he said, “I think you’re going to like this room. Charlie Hackel, the priest before you, was here for thirty years.” [laughter] And I wanted to cry! I thought thirty—so then he told me, “But this room won’t be ready for about a month or six weeks, so you’re going to stay in another room temporarily, down below,” which was also a mess. But at least it had all the garbage at one end of the room and there was a bed in the middle.

There was going to be, eventually, a bathroom connected to it, but there wasn’t at that point. So to use the bathroom I had to go through Monsignor [Richard] O’Donnell’s bedroom and use his bathroom at whatever hour I needed to go, and I thought this is not going to work. So I asked the bishop, I said, “Bishop, you know what the condition of the house is. It’s going to be very awkward until they get it finished. Can I go to stay at my parents’ place in Berkeley and go back and forth to the chancery from there, and that way it’ll be less messy?” “No. You go there and you stay there.” So we did that. I spent most of my time at home anyway, because there weren’t any meals yet at the dining room at the cathedral, or if there were I didn’t want to go. I don’t remember which. But at any rate, I went home and ate dinner at my mom’s place and then would go back to sleep at night there. So that went on for about a month I think.

In the meantime, the office—so I was going to be working in the marriage court— 27

02a-00:18:51 LaBerge: And who was the director of that?

02a-00:18:54 Crespin: At that time it was, temporarily, Ivan Parenti was the name of the priest who was in charge. But he was going to be sent to Rome to study, so he was going to be there a few more months, I think three or four months and then would go to Rome. And then I would be in charge. No training—nothing!

02a-00:19:17 LaBerge: So this is annulments?

02a-00:19:16 Crespin: Annulments, yes, anything to do with marriage—dispensations and all that kind of thing. So it was a very bleak moment in my life, I think. I didn’t want to do that kind of work, first of all.

02a-00:19:37 LaBerge: That’s not why you studied for twelve years.

02a-00:19:38 Crespin: Yes, and what I really loved, was beginning to love the parish. It took me a while to get adjusted to the rhythm, but once I got adjusted—and I was going to be living in a place that had almost no life to it, coming from a suburban parish that was filled with life. I was going to be working in something that I didn’t like, and the living conditions initially were totally inadequate. But somehow you get through that. Then he started saying to me that I would be the next one to go to Rome, that he’d send—

02a-00:20:20 LaBerge: He, the bishop?

02a-00:20:22 Crespin: Bishop Begin, sorry, yes. He said, “Ivan’s going to go this year, but then next year you can go and join him there and get a degree in canon law.” And I didn’t want to do that! And so I resisted as much as I could, and by that time John Cummins had told me—“Well, he wanted to do this right after ordination. At least I fought to get you some parish experience,” which I’ll never stop thanking him for. But he began this and I kept saying, “Bishop, I don’t really think that’s what I want to do.” And he didn’t understand that, because he thought he was doing me a favor. He was putting me on a career path that had been his. He went to Rome to study in the North American [college] and then he stayed, got a canon law degree, came back and worked in the chancery office and then became bishop. But I didn’t want to do that. [laughing] I knew, deep in my heart, that if I went to Rome, got a degree, I’d be stuck in the chancery office for at least twenty-five years, at least, and I didn’t want that to happen. But finally—he finally gave up. He didn’t push the issue, because he could see how resistant I was. So I didn’t go to Rome, I didn’t get the doctorate, and I only had to spend twenty-three years in the chancery office, in two different sessions that I worked there. 28

02a-00:21:54 LaBerge: How did you know John Cummins?

02a-00:21:58 Crespin: Well, I didn’t. I met him when he went with the bishop to that first gathering, where they did the pallium thing, I met him. But I guess he knew about me, and I knew about him because he’d just been made the chancellor, and very young—he was only thirty-three, I think.

02a-00:22:15 LaBerge: Yet he had been sent to Rome for canon law?

02a-00:22:17 Crespin: No, no. They just plucked [him] out of [Bishop] O’Dowd High School. He was the dean of boys and all of a sudden he’s the chancellor. But he was very good to me, right from the start, and he got me through a lot of rough periods and also got me involved in things that he knew I would be more interested in. A lot of the civil rights movement was starting at that time, and so there were some religious organizations—there was a Council on Religion and Race and there were some other groups that he plugged me into, because he knew that that might help distract me from all the negativity going on in the chancery.

02a-00:23:00 LaBerge: So he was essentially your boss at the chancery?

02a-00:23:03 Crespin: Well, there was Bishop Begin, he was the boss. He was the boss. John didn’t have a whole bunch of responsibility—well, he had a lot of responsibility; he didn’t have a lot of authority.

02a-00:23:17 LaBerge: Authority, okay.

02a-00:23:20 Crespin: But he—he managed to work with it. It was a challenge for him, too, trying to work with Begin, because Begin was so erratic. You’d go and ask him for something, a permission, one day he’d say no. And then you’d go back the next day and he’d say yes. Or if he said yes the first day and then go back and the next day he’d say no. If you got the answer you wanted you ran with it and you never went back, but it was very difficult to work with that style. But I wound up later on living with John at Corpus Christi Parish, when I was moved from St. Francis de Sales. But we got through—I spent ten months at Holy Spirit/Holy Ghost. It was changed to Holy Spirit. I spent three years at St. Francis de Sales—March ‘63 to June or July of ‘66, and then I was moved to Corpus Christi. In residence I was still in the chancery, but they moved to Corpus Christi.

02a-00:24:28 LaBerge: For how long were you there? 29

02a-00:24:30 Crespin: I was there for five years.

02a-00:24:34 LaBerge: Okay.

02a-00:24:35 Crespin: I had tried to resign from the marriage court about every three months. I’d let them know that I wasn’t—that I didn’t think this was the best use of my skills. I wrote them a letter with the help of Don Osuna once. He [the bishop] was in Rome at the council, and I was really depressed. I thought, I can’t do this, I can’t do this. And I wrote to him and I said, “Bishop, I want to ask you one more time to please release me from this. I’m not temperamentally suited to this work. It’s taking a toll on me emotionally, physically, and spiritually. I just don’t feel that this is an appropriate place for me to be.” And he wrote back and he said, “Well, we can talk about this when I get home, but in the meantime, I assigned you to that job, which means the Holy Spirit assigned you to that job. And if you find that your personality isn’t suited to this work, then you should change your personality.”

02a-00:25:57 LaBerge: Oh, my gosh!

02a-00:25:59 Crespin: And I’ve still got the letter! [laughing] So it was—that was the context in which—but I kept trying, and finally after eight years he let me out.

02a-00:26:09 LaBerge: Eight years!

02a-00:26:11 Crespin: Yes. The first year was really hard, for all of the reasons I’ve told you. Plus, I’d arrive there in the morning and there would be a stack this high of marriage cases. [motioning twelve inches]

02a-00:26:30 LaBerge: And mainly were you dealing with the papers as opposed to the people?

02a-00:26:31 Crespin: Yes. Yes, so it was—I’d open up a folder and see what the next step was, and write a letter saying we’re still missing this or we’re missing that, and just day after day go through the same thing. After about a year of that—I was very insecure, because I didn’t know canon law. I was just making it up as I went along, which probably was better all the way around.

02a-00:26:54 LaBerge: But probably it was better! [laughing] For the people involved!

02a-00:26:59 Crespin: Yes, but—towards the end of the year I went through another crisis. When I could see that I wasn’t going to get out, as I had hoped, then I thought I’ve got 30

to do something to make this bearable. So I started asking the people to come in, so I could put a face to the name and to the case. And that helped me. It was a very selfish move on my part, because it helped me to take a more personal interest and make sure that they kept moving, rather than just see them as stacks that—they were there yesterday and will be there tomorrow. When you see the people behind them and their story and how much anguish and hurt they’ve been through because of this, then it motivates you. But it was good for the people too, to have somebody on the church side hear their story and express some kind of sympathy.

02a-00:27:57 LaBerge: Oh, of course!

02a-00:27:58 Crespin: And say, “We’ll get this done. We’ll do this. Just get me this paper or that name.” So from that point on I saw it more as a ministry, and not as a job. And that changed everything in terms of the way I did the work.

02a-00:28:17 LaBerge: You know, we’re almost finished with this tape. I think this is a good place to stop and then we’ll pick up with—because this was the same time the Vatican Council was going on. You and I can think about whether to go with the Vatican Council or continue with where you’ve been in your life, or weave it in.

02a-00:28:43 Crespin: We can probably weave it in. I’m uncomfortable talking this much about—

02a-00:28:43 LaBerge: Yes, I know you are. I know you are. 31

Interview #2: March 7, 2013

[Tape 3: Side A]

03a-00:00:06 LaBerge: Okay, this is March 7, 2013, interview number two.

03a-00:00:21 Crespin: We’re going to do—

03a-00:00:23 LaBerge: The last time we met I turned off the tape and you were telling me a couple of stories, just about the culture of the Oakland Diocese. One of them was about you wearing a clerical shirt and that relationship with Bishop Begin. If you would—

03a-00:00:53 Crespin: Okay. I was assigned to the tribunal in the chancery office in March of 1963, after having served ten months at a parish in Fremont, at that time Holy Ghost Parish. The chancery office was a formal place, and Bishop Begin, coming from Cleveland, from what we called the East Coast, was trained in that formal style. He had a hard time adjusting to the casual style of California, even in the clergy. So his expectation was that we would wear the suit, the black suit with the collar, all day while we were working. I found that very uncomfortable. I just couldn’t get comfortable. The building was air- conditioned, but even so it was stuffy, and so it was very easy for me to take off my jacket. Except that in those days either you wore the rabat—whatever it’s called, the collar with the little bib in front. You either wore that with a dress shirt, with cufflinks, which I didn’t particularly like, or some other kind of shirt underneath. But if you took off your jacket, of course that wasn’t very formal. So then I found out about these black clerical shirts that were short- sleeved, that seemed ideal. So I got one and started wearing it.

Within two or three days the bishop came to my office and he said, “Why are you wearing that shirt?” And I said, “Oh, it’s much more comfortable. I can work so much more easily.” “I want you to wear your jacket. You cannot wear that shirt.” And I said, “But Bishop, I can perform so much better if I’m comfortable.” “You’ve got to wear that jacket. You’re a member of my staff. All the young priests look up to you and will see that if you could do that they’ll all do it, and so you’ve got to wear your jacket and not wear that shirt,” I guess, was the understanding. So for a couple of days I did, but then it just— it was impossible. So I thought well, if he throws me out he throws me out, but I’m not going to work that way. So I just left the jacket off. I’d wear it to work, but I just took it off when I got to work and he never said another word. But it was his way of trying to impose a formality on us that we weren’t used to. 32

The other story was a little bit more typical, I think—two, yes, two more. One is we went to Europe. I went to Europe with Brian Joyce and a couple of other priests.

03a-00:03:59 LaBerge: And this was what year?

03a-00:04:00 Crespin: Nineteen sixty-eight. We left on August 1, 1968. We had planned this for several months and we were going to be gone for almost six weeks, so I had to get special permission from him to be gone for longer than my normal vacation period, which was three weeks. And he said, “Good. That’s good. I’m glad you’re going to travel to Europe. Are you going to go to Rome?” And I said no. “You’re not going to go to Rome?” And I said, “No, it’s not in our plan.” “You should go to Rome.” So I just dropped it at that. We went off and spent the five and a half weeks there.

The notable thing that happened was the day before we left, [Pope] Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae [On the Regulation of Birth], the encyclical on birth control, and it was the buzz here as we were leaving. We were all somewhat distraught by it too. I was happy that I was gone that month, because it was an awful month here for people that had expected that the decision would be otherwise. But when we arrived to Barcelona we sent a telegram to Paul VI, telling him we didn’t think that that was such a good idea to have issued that encyclical, and we signed it, which probably affected our future careers, but we didn’t care at that point. I don’t care now.

But on the trip, it was the late seventies, and hair fashion, facial hairstyles were changing into the long, long—lamb chop sideburns were in vogue, and so I thought well, just for the fun of it I’m going to let my sideburns grow. So they were fairly long by the time I got home.

03a-00:05:48 LaBerge: May I ask, while you were traveling what did you wear?

03a-00:05:51 Crespin: Oh, regular clothes.

03a-00:05:54 LaBerge: Oh, regular clothes, not looking like a priest.

03a-00:05:55 Crespin: Yes, we weren’t traveling as priests, although we did get outed at one place. We were in Toledo, in a silver shop, looking at different things, and we were speaking English for the most part, although all of us spoke Spanish. One of the clerks there at the store said, “Are you priests?” And we just looked at her in astonishment and said, “Why do you say that?” “We could tell.” [laughter] But we weren’t wearing clerics. 33

We came home and the very first day I was back in the office the bishop came by my office to welcome me back, and then he did a double take at the sideburns—he didn’t say anything at that time—and asked me, “Did you go to Rome?” I said, “No, we didn’t.” And he walked away shaking his head saying, “You should have gone to Rome.” But then about two days later he called me on the intercom and he said, “Father Crespin,” which I knew was bad news because he always called me “George,” and if he called me “Father Crespin” I knew he was mad. “I want you to come over to my office immediately.” And so I went over. And he went on this big—I would call it a tirade—about the sideburns, that again, I was a member of his staff and that was giving a bad example to the young priests, and he wanted me to take them off. And I said, “Well, I don’t really see what is that important?” And he said, “Well, if it’s not that important, take them off.” Well, that wasn’t where I was going with that, but anyway—so there was no arguing. And so I just—the next morning I brought them up about a quarter of an inch and then thought to myself this is stupid. We shouldn’t be so oppressed that he can control what we have on our face. So I stopped and he never said another word. He made his point, but he didn’t want to pursue it.

And then the final thing I think gives more an intuition into his style and his whole mentality. There had been a series of demonstrations at the draft induction center on Clay Street in Oakland, downtown. That’s where the draftees would go to be registered and then given their orders as to when they were to show up.

03a-00:08:36 LaBerge: And this is 19—

03a-00:08:37 Crespin: This is September of 1967, I think, so just a little bit before the previous story. A nonviolent group had demonstrated the first morning, on a Monday morning. It was Joan Baez and people who followed her nonviolent philosophy. The second day it was a group less committed to nonviolence. I think they were jumping on cars, or maybe even burning some cars. But anyway, the police came out in full force on horses, and the evening news showed them beating the protesters out there on the street. So a group of us got on the phone that night, young priests, and decided we needed to be there to maintain the peace, to be between the police and the protestors so that neither of them would get out of line, because it was really looking like a police riot rather than a demonstrators’ riot, at least on the news. So we went there, we got there at six o’clock, the next morning, on a Wednesday morning, all dressed up in our clerics because that was the whole idea, to create a buffer. And we stayed till about ten o’clock and nothing happened. There were maybe six or eight thousand people there, but nothing really happened. We went about our duties or business, whatever. 34

About three weeks later I got the intercom phone call again, “Father Crespin.” I went over and he said to me, “I want you to explain yourself.” And I said, “I don’t really know what you’re talking about.” “You know damn well what I’m talking about.” I didn’t know what he knew of the things that I had done that he could have taken objection to. So I said, “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then he went on to say, “Well, you have embarrassed me in front of the sheriff and the mayor and the local police.” And I said, “Oh, that’s an easy one. That one I can explain and hope that you’ll understand.” We had been experimenting with Masses in homes and in parks and all kinds of [things like] that, and I was afraid he knew about some of that, but he didn’t. So then I said, “Oh, that was just a question of, we saw that there was the violence on that Tuesday morning and we wanted to prevent it from happening again the rest of the week, so we decided to go there and stand between...” “You were there demonstrating.” “No, no, we weren’t demonstrating. We were just trying to maintain the peace. We were trying to give a witness of nonviolence.” “You were demonstrating, and you didn’t have my permission. Why didn’t you ask for permission?” I said, “Well, Bishop, you know that if I had come to you in advance and asked your permission you would have said no.” “That’s right,” he said. “You knew I would say no and you went anyway, so that’s deliberate disobedience.” [laughter] And I said, “Well, no—we didn’t see it that way. But Bishop, a lot of times people put you on the spot for making a decision for them that they should really accept the responsibility for in their own consciences, and we didn’t want to put you in that situation.” We hadn’t really discussed that before, but that made sense to him.

03a-00:12:04 LaBerge: You are quick on your feet! [laughter]

03a-00:12:09 Crespin: So he just said, “Yes, it’s true. A lot of time people do put me in a difficult position and it’s not always a good place to be, but you could have asked me if I wanted to be asked.” I said, “Well, I didn’t know that option was available.” He got very upset. He threatened to suspend me. He said, “I can suspend you, I can throw you out of the priesthood if I want.”

03a-00:12:39 LaBerge: Is that true?

03a-00:12:42 Crespin: No, but he thought I didn’t know—which I didn’t, but I consulted. But this went on for about thirty minutes he just—because that was his style too. And I then went back to my office and then was depressed for about a week or so.

I had to go to a meeting, a canon law society meeting somewhere on the East Coast, and one of the canon lawyers there was from the West, Alan McCoy, another Franciscan, a very saintly man. He was provincial of the Franciscans for a while here in California, and he was also a very noted canon lawyer. We 35

went out for a walk because we had known each other before. He said, “You seem down. What’s going on?” And so I told him. And he said, “He can’t do that. Actually, nobody has that kind of power over you unless you give it to them.” And I always remembered that. That was kind of a—it became a theme of mine later on through the turbulent sixties and seventies, that people have as much power over you as you let them. Canonically, he couldn’t do all he was threatening to do. But in the early days we didn’t know that. [laughing

Fortunately the bishop embraced the Second Vatican Council, so most things we didn’t have to fight him about. But he had that old school mentality, the sense of the importance of the bishop, and the bishop possessed the spirit and nobody else did, so it made for interesting experiences.

03a-00:16:47 LaBerge: That’s a good segue into the council, but before we do that, who were the other priests who “demonstrated” with you, didn’t demonstrate, kept the peace. Do you remember any of their names?

03a-00:17:02 Crespin: I think Don Osuna, Tony Valdivia, Michael Donohoe, who left the priesthood twenty or thirty years ago. There was a group of about a dozen of us. Most of us were less than five years ordained. But I don’t remember specific names.

03a-00:17:33 LaBerge: Well, let’s then go to the Second Vatican Council, and the fact that Bishop Begin went. Did John Cummins also go?

03a-00:17:42 Crespin: John went the third session, I think. The bishop went in 1962, in October. And I think he took with him his two vicar generals. He had two: John Connolly and Nick Connolly, who were not related to each other. He went and he used to boast that he sat through every session of every day of every month at the council. He never missed a session. Theologically, he wasn’t prepared for it, because the council brought around a lot of changes. He was a canon lawyer, and kind of a strict canon lawyer. His pastoral instincts were fantastic. He had a good pastoral heart, but it had been covered over by his canon law training, so that when push came to shove it was the canon law that came out. But he went, and I think the second session in ‘63 he took the Connollys again, and. then the third session, in ‘64, he took John Cummins. And so John was there as the council work was beginning to be finalized, so he was there for several of the votes and a lot of the discussions.

By that time, by ‘64, it was clear that the council was taking a direction that nobody had expected—nobody around here had expected. I remember going to a canon law meeting in San Francisco. It must have been in 1963, in October. And the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, John J. Ward, gave a talk at the banquet at this canon law meeting. And he said, “A lot of you people are nervous and worried about what the council’s going to do. But I’m here to 36

tell you, Gentlemen, that nothing’s going to change, that the council isn’t going to make any changes.” That was the first year of the second session of the council. So it wasn’t clear at the beginning, but then as things began to be developed it looked clear enough. Even at the end nobody had an idea of how fast it would be put into motion, as soon as it came to a close.

The first thing, obviously, was the liturgy. It went half Latin/half English at first, for about—I don’t even think it was a year. But people saw that that wasn’t going to work at all, so then it went all into the vernacular language. Altars got turned around and people started answering more of the responses than they had. It was clear that we were in a transition period, and things that we thought would never change began to change very quickly. When I was still in the seminary it was the early sixties I guess, there was a group of us that was very actively pursuing liturgical reform and advocating for it, even though it wasn’t in motion yet. But I remember we thought for sure it had to go into the language of the people, but it probably would take twenty to thirty years, given the pace at which the church moves, and then within four or five we were saying Mass in English.

03a-00:21:33 LaBerge: So what were you hearing? For instance, like this auxiliary bishop telling you nothing was going to change. What else did you hear about the discussions, and how openly were people able to talk?

03a-00:21:50 Crespin: The bishop didn’t talk too much, other than about the general context of what a great thing it was for all the bishops of the world to be together, and the Holy Spirit was surely guiding this. He kind of committed himself to follow up what happened, because he was so confident that it was the work of the spirit. But he didn’t share too much. There were a series of articles in the New Yorker magazine, by a man with the pen name of Xavier Rynne—

03a-00:22:20 LaBerge: Oh, that’s right!

03a-00:22:22 Crespin: —who turned out to be a Redemptorist priest I think, but I don’t remember his real name. [Rev. Francis X. Murphy] But he wrote letters from Rome and long articles that were gobbled up by all of us, because he was giving a lot of the inside activity and a lot of the movements and the political negotiating that was going on, so it was all fascinating stuff. But that’s about it. After the council I think we had a whole array of theologians coming through and giving talks here at USF, at St. Mary’s College, I think Santa Clara. But during the council itself they were all working on the different commissions, so even between the sessions of the council the committee work went on. And so there wasn’t a whole bunch of information available, because they were working with drafts and they didn’t want—some of the drafts were leaked, but they didn’t want people to be too distracted by the drafts, because they could 37

be changed. So there wasn’t an awful lot. It was more a feeling, as I recall, just a general feeling that this really is going to change things. We weren’t sure how and to what extent, but there was an optimism, especially from the younger priests.

The older priests began to get nervous and dig in their heels, because they weren’t ready for it. I remember the pastor I was living with—I was living at St. Francis de Sales, the old cathedral, and the pastor—Pinkie O’Donnell was his name. He was probably in his late sixties/early seventies. He didn’t want to see any kind of changes. And of course, the cathedral had to be the first place to implement them! So when we went into half English/half Latin, it was in the first Sunday of Advent, I guess in 1965 probably, ‘64 or ‘65. He got himself so worked up about that, that the morning where he was going to say the first Mass in English and Latin he had a stroke and had to be taken to the hospital, and he never did celebrate the Mass in English. He didn’t die then but he was sidelined from that point on. That’s how strong people’s reactions were, especially those who were opposed.

Those of us who were supportive, in a way had been prepared through reading the European theologians and the scripture people and the liturgy people in the fifties. So we knew the thinking and the theology behind a lot of what was happening in the Vatican Council. We just hadn’t expected that it was going to be set into motion so quickly. But we were happily receiving it, whereas there was a whole group of priests, probably the majority, were very negative and fearful and just—“I’m agin it. I don’t care.” So already that tension was beginning to build. And then as we went, after 1965, into the implementation phase, and we’d have to have workshops with the clergy so that the priests knew exactly what was going to happen and why, we had some horrible arguments and discussions at clergy gatherings, because the older clergy for the most part—there were some who were a little bit better prepared for it than others, but most of them were very fearful, and it was going to just create a lot of instability for them. The things that they had held certain were all of a sudden beginning to be changed or done away with. And those of us who were younger were confidently moving ahead because we had the theological base for it.

03a-00:26:56 LaBerge: So who would lead the workshops, for instance?

03a-00:27:01 Crespin: The bishop would set up workshops, usually at San Damiano [Retreat Center in Danville, CA], and bring in either theologians or bishops or people that had some competence in the area that we were talking about. John Cummins was, I think, instrumental in a lot of that, because he was the chancellor at the time. And while he didn’t have free rein, the bishop liked him and I think respected him. But he was young at the time. He was only about thirty-five, so the bishop wasn’t sure if he could trust him totally, because he didn’t have that 38

canonical mentality or background. [laughter] But John would be the one feeding names, because he made a lot of contacts at the council when he was there. He would go to the daily press briefings and he would go when different theologians were giving talks on the implications of this document or that document. So he was very knowledgeable and had some good contacts.

Incidentally—you don’t have to shut off the machine, but next Tuesday Bishop Remi De Roo, who was the bishop of Victoria in British Columbia— he’s the only living bishop who was present at the council—he’s going to be part of a talk on Vatican II, a workshop at St. Mary’s College with an Italian historian, Massimo Faggioli I think his name is, who has written a book [Vatican II, Fifty Years Later] on Vatican II. In fact, I got it at Sagrada. He’s going to give the talk and then I think Bishop De Roo is going to respond to it. But that’s the one name that goes all the way back to the—he was just a young bishop in his early thirties at that time. Then John knew him, and I think through John’s effort he’s coming next week—John Cummins.

03a-00:29:02 LaBerge: Well, how much input did the bishops who were in attendance, like Bishop Begin, have in the council? Were they each on a commission? Did they each have research to do? What kind of participants were they?

03a-00:29:22 Crespin: I know they gave talks. They were somewhat limited because they had to give their talks in Latin. The language of the council was Latin. Cardinal Cushing, from Boston, offered to buy a translation set for the use of the council, so that the talks could be translated into the native language of the people, but the Vatican refused that. No, they had to do it in Latin. [abrupt ending]

[Tape 3: Side B]

03b-00:00:00 LaBerge: So the Vatican didn’t agree with having the translation.

03b-00:01:36 Crespin: The translation. So they had to do it in Latin. I know there were commissions formed for each of the themes, one of them being documents. And I know some of the bishops served on them, but I don’t remember if Bishop Begin was ever on one of those. It was bishops and theologians for the most part that were working on that. At least I wasn’t aware of the fact that he might have had that kind of a hand on it.

03b-00:02:16 LaBerge: What did you know of—he wasn’t a cardinal then, but of Joseph Ratzinger [later Pope Benedict XVI] then?

03b-00:02:27 Crespin: Ratzinger was one of the theologians, very closely allied with Hans Küng, and was one of the more progressive voices in the council. His contributions were 39

widely applauded by at least the more progressive people in the council and afterwards. So it was kind of a shock when he did a 180-degree turn after 1968, which is the date that most people say he got his big scare. He became nervous about all the forces for opening up and liberalization and progressive things inside the church and out, and he just became persuaded that that was a dangerous thing and so then he began to oppose them. But at that time he was one of the big stars. It was Hans Küng, Bernard Häring, Joseph Ratzinger, Schillebeeckx, Jungmann, John Courtney Murray had a big role. There are names that are escaping me, but all the real heavyweights, both in theology, in liturgy, and in scripture, they were all there and they were all participating. And most of them—there were some traditional theologians there who were textbook theologians, but most of the theologians who had the biggest impact in the deliberations were progressive theologians, some of whom had been silenced by the Vatican prior to the council, but then got restored. I think each bishop could take his own theologian if he wanted, and so that’s how some of them got there. They weren’t necessarily invited directly by the Vatican. They were asked by bishops to go as their personal theologian or to assist them anyway.

03b-00:04:34 LaBerge: Was Thomas Merton there?

03b-00:04:36 Crespin: No, Thomas Merton was—he was in the monastery where he was—

03b-00:04:41 LaBerge: He was silent. [laughing]

03b-00:04:42 Crespin: —where he was on occasion. He traveled a lot, but no, he wasn’t a participant. There was one nun, at least one, from the United States—Sister Mary Luke Tobin.

03b-00:04:59 LaBerge: Oh, that’s right!

03b-00:05:01 Crespin: I don’t she was there at the first couple of sessions, but when the direction of opening up became more clear, then they saw the need for having women there as well as Protestants and Orthodox.

I think I may have mentioned last week, Begin wanted to send me to Rome to study canon law, and had I gone it would have been probably in ‘63 or ‘64, so I would have been there for that whole experience. And it would have been nice, but it wasn’t worth the price. [laughing] It would have been something— just a lifetime memory to have been a part of something like that, something as dynamic. 40

03b-00:06:01 LaBerge: You talked about the theology, the liturgy, the scripture. Were those the three—

03b-00:06:08 Crespin: Those were the three major thrusts. The first document to come out was the document on liturgy, but tied into the whole liturgical reform was the reengagement with scripture, because Catholics had really fallen behind Protestants in terms of being able to explore the scriptures, because [Pope] Pius XII had issued a couple of documents, a couple of encyclicals putting the brakes on Catholic participation. But any reform of the liturgy has to go hand in hand with a deepening awareness of scripture, because scripture is so much a part of the liturgy. So there were biblical scholars there as a result of that.

Some of the other themes—there was the document on revelation [Dei Verbum (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation)], there was the document on ecumenism [Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism)], there was a document on the church, obviously [Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church]. Those were all flowing out of the renewal of scripture and liturgy. Some of the other documents, like the church in the modern world [Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World)], the document on religious liberty [Dignitatis Humanae (Declaration on Religious Freedom)], which was John Courtney Murray’s contribution, and uniquely American. Those came out of a renewed understanding of moral theology, or a social justice kind of theme. The Pope had taken off the table birth control and celibacy—this was Paul VI—so he had said you guys can’t discuss that because I’m going to take care of it later.

03b-00:08:07 LaBerge: I forget the dates. When did John XXIII die?

03b-00:08:11 Crespin: He died in June 1963.

03b-00:08:15 LaBerge: So in the middle of the council.

03b-00:08:18 Crespin: He was there for the first session, from October ‘62 to December of ‘62. And then before it could reassemble the following fall, ‘63, he died. He died in June. I forget the date, but it was in June.

This fellow, Massimo Faggioli, has written a book on how to interpret Vatican II or how to interpret what has happened since Vatican II. He is very knowledgeable. But he points out there how in that first session the interventions of John XXIII were critical to keeping it on focus, because there were a lot of people—the curia wanted to derail it and just say more of the same. The bishops, with the quiet approval of John XXIII attacked that and said no, we’re not going to do this. We’re going to start from scratch and 41

we’re going to start with a whole different scriptural base and a liturgical base, and he supported that. And a few times in the middle he had to get involved, according to Faggioli. So he wasn’t just this gentle, old man who had this brilliant idea and then sat back to let them fight it out. He really guided the process, in the preparation for the council as well as in what happened at that first session, where literally all hell broke loose because the curia had prepared the initial documents for the bishops to come and rubber stamp, and when the bishops got there, especially the European bishops and some of the Latin American bishops just said no. That’s not why we’re here, and we’re going to do this and we’re going to do it right.

03b-00:10:21 LaBerge: And when you say European bishops, you mean non-Italians?

03b-00:10:24 Crespin: Well, I think the Italians were probably involved there, too, but it was mostly the French and the German and the Belgian and the Dutch. They were the more vocal voices—Austria, and then some of the other groups followed in with them. The American bishops were pretty slow to get on the bandwagon, because they were much more conservative as a group and less intellectual. They weren’t chosen because of their knowledge of theology. Most of them were canon lawyers before they became bishops, so they were more by the rules.

03b-00:11:07 LaBerge: Just for the tape, because somebody who doesn’t know much about the church might read this and use it, could you explain who the curia is?

03b-00:11:19 Crespin: Okay. The curia basically is the administrative apparatus that the pope has to govern the worldwide church. The local equivalent would be the chancery office and all the different departments in the local bishop’s chancery office, the heads of the schools and religious education and marriage and family life and all that kind of thing. So the curia is that. But it’s more than that because, as there’s the famous saying, that popes come and go, but the curia remains.

03b-00:11:59 LaBerge: And is that true that there’s not a change of—

03b-00:12:06 Crespin: I think technically, and I don’t know if this was true before the council. It’s technically true, since the council, that when a pope dies or resigns, as Benedict did, they’re supposed to submit their resignation. But the top level, the cardinals in charge of the different congregations—my feeling is that probably they continued on in those positions and then may be replaced as they got older, or retired. So it’s not like a new administration coming in in our country, [Barack] Obama came in following [George W.] Bush and— 42

03b-00:12:41 LaBerge: Yes, a new cabinet.

03b-00:12:42 Crespin: Yes. No—and besides that, it’s only the top people that resigned. So there’s a cardinal in charge of every congregation, but he’s a titular head. There’s usually an archbishop who’s the secretary of that congregation who really runs the day-to-day stuff, and then others who work, or the civil servants who work. And they don’t change too much. So the curia represents the status quo. And coming out of especially the Reformation and the First Vatican Council, representing papal authority and the need to maintain authority in the Vatican and not to share it throughout the world. So that was their major effort in the council, was to try to retain as much power and authority as the Vatican bureaucracy or the curia had, and not want to see any of that diluted or changed. And the forces, the more progressive bishops, were moving precisely for that, to, in effect, really do away with it, at least as it had operated.

The vision of the council, the Second Vatican Council, was that the Synod of Bishops, which was representatives of all the bishops’ conferences of the world, who would gather on a regular basis, would replace the cardinals and the congregations in terms of helping the pope to run the church. And Paul VI started to put that apparatus in place, but John Paul II would have none of that. He did have some synods of bishops, but they could only talk about what he wanted them to talk about, and he already had the resolutions coming out of the synod written before they arrived. So it was not intended to be a serious thing.

But the curia run the major congregations, the Congregation [for] Bishops, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is the old inquisition, the Congregation for Mission, the Congregation for the Clergy, the Congregation for [Catholic] Education, the Congregation on the Liturgy, all the major areas have these congregations, and then they have staff. From there they make decisions affecting the whole world, which is not good government but is also very bad church, because you have people who are bureaucrats, very isolated in the Vatican, which still has a mentality of about maybe fourteenth to fifteenth century—you really think that when you’re there—making decisions for Africa, for Asia, for the United States, when they have no understanding at all of those cultures and the religious benefits and challenges that are present in each of those cultures. The biggest example we have of that right now is the new translation for the Mass. People who don’t speak English even, composing prayers, and prayers that don’t fit, certainly this culture’s mentality, using words that we haven’t used for a long, long time—“humbly we beseech you, prostrate at your feet.” All that kind of stuff. That’s the downside of having a central authority making those decisions, when the vision of the Second Vatican Council was that that would be much more distributed out to the bishops, individual bishops or the bishops’ conferences. 43

But that undermined—John Paul specifically said bishops’ conferences had no authority to make regulations for that country. It had to be either Rome or the individual bishop. So he didn’t want people ganging up on him.

So the curia mentality is something very entrenched and it continues to the present. It’s a medieval carryover which is hardly adequate to the needs of the twenty-first century. I’m sure it’s going to take a hit now, because there are so many scandals coming out—even though these leaked documents, that was under Benedict. The secret commission that he appointed that’s going to provide its information to the cardinals. The curia is going to be changed, and it’s probably likely that they’re going to pick somebody for pope who’s a good administrator, because the last two popes have not been, so each little congregation becomes a kingdom unto itself, and nobody has to report to anybody. And if everybody has to report to the pope and the pope isn’t a good administrator or has so many other things on his plate that he can’t pay too much attention here, then they take advantage of that. [Editor’s note: at time of this interview, Pope Benedict XVI had resigned and the new pope, Francis I, had not yet been elected.]

The vision of the Second Vatican Council was shared responsibility and shared authority. I think the central concept there was the church is the people of God. When the curia prepared the document on the church, they started with the church is the pope and then the cardinals and then the bishops and the priests and then the sisters and the laypeople. And that was one of the first strong reactions they got. The bishops said no, that’s not how we’re going to define the church. It took them three or four sessions of council to finally develop their document the way they did it. The very first chapter is, the church is a mystery, first of all, a mystery of God. But the next chapter is the church is the people of God, and then later come the bishops and the priests. So that insight guided everything else, because if the church is the people, then for example in the liturgy, then the people have to be fully involved in the liturgy. It can’t be just the priest doing these things. If the church is the people, then the mission of the church, which is to bring the gospel to the whole world, is the mission of the people, not just the mission of the bishops or the priests. Back in the thirties, Pius XI issued a document on Catholic action. This is what social justice was called in those days.

03b-00:20:37 LaBerge: Was that the title of it?

03b-00:20:40 Crespin: No, I don’t remember the title of it, but in there he said Catholic action is the people participating in the mission of the bishops, and that was the mentality. And it wasn’t until this new document on the church came out in the council that people began to understand—and still haven’t quite picked up on it— because they haven’t experienced it much. [laughing] They began to understand that no, this is our church, our responsibility, our mission. We 44

should be able to help determine the direction. There were some openings there. The explosion of ministries in the church, both in the liturgy, eucharistic ministers, lectors, so on, but also in the parishes—ministry to the sick, ministry to the youth, ministry to the divorced—all these ministries that came out of that understanding. But the mission of the church is the mission of all of us, and so it’s not just how much can the priest do, but it’s how does this community want to address the specific needs that are there and what kind of ministries do we need to create? So that fundamental insight of the people of God, I think, the church is the people of God, really gave a lot of depth and direction to a number of the other documents there.

03b-00:22:28 LaBerge: How did you first hear about all of this, maybe before the workshops? What would be the buzz? Whether you got together with friends and talked about it or—and how then you’d even know how to implement...

03b-00:22:50 Crespin: Well, remember we had to wait for the documents to be finalized, because they were undergoing revision all the way through, so we didn’t have substantive material to work with. What we had were articles that were written by theologians or scholars. Some of the bishops wrote in their diocesan newspapers: “get ready, we’re going to have the Mass in English,” or, “we’re going to be more involved in ecumenical activity,” or whatever the area was that they were touching [on]. So it was bits and pieces. It wasn’t a unified vision. Some books were being written at that time. Michael Novak wrote a book. I don’t know if he wrote it during the council or right after, but he was a liberal, he was a Ratzinger at the time. He was very liberal and then he turned very conservative. Do you know Michael Novak?

03b-00:23:49 LaBerge: Yes.

03b-00:23:53 Crespin: So it was mostly self-taught in those early years, because we didn’t have authoritative information or documents yet to work with. Once the documents started coming out, and I think the first one was the document on the liturgy [Sacrosanctum Concilium (The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy)], once they started coming out then we grabbed onto those and began trying to catechize or inform the people, which wasn’t always easy, because if you were an associate in a parish with a very conservative pastor he wasn’t too hot on your getting the people all stirred up. So that was a challenge.

But then as soon as the council was over—I guess it happened differently and at different paces in the different dioceses in different parts of the world, but here, because Bishop Begin had been at every session and he came home saying, “I wrote those documents,” he was very supportive. And fortunately, we had John Cummins, who was on the wavelength theologically with what the council was doing, and he was in the chancellor’s position, so he was in a 45

position to help organize, right away, workshops on what the Vatican Council accomplished and what the documents mean and how they might be implemented.

So we were, the Oakland Diocese, was one of the first ones to really implement the council and to begin to understand it. And part of that was the wisdom of Bishop Begin, or it could have been by accident, but I think he pretty much put in staff in the key areas of the diocese who were young priests. I was in charge of the marriage court at the age of twenty-eight. His secretary Joe Skillin was a year ahead of me, twenty-nine. John Cummins was about thirty-four, thirty-five. Mike Lucid became the head of religious ed and he was very young also, a contemporary of John’s. Gary Tollner was put in charge of the liturgy, and he wasn’t a dynamo but he was open and could work with other people. Frank Maurovich was put in charge of the Catholic Voice, and I forget the others, but there were just—he was surrounded by— and his staff, with the exception of the two vicars general, who were the classic naysayers—the prophets of doom, I think John XXIII called them— not them, but people like them—

03b-00:27:07 LaBerge: Are these the Connollys?

03b-00:27:07 Crespin: The Connollys, the two Connollys. So everything was a challenge, because we’d go in and talk to the bishop and he’d get pretty worked up about the need for something, and then they’d take him out for a drink and it would all get undone. So then the next day we’d have to start all over again. They were both canon lawyers, both very conservative, and not enthusiastic at all about the Second Vatican Council. So there was a lot of tension back and forth.

The beautiful thing was that Bishop Begin changed his mind—on a daily basis! [laughter] So if you went in and he said no to you for something you were proposing, you could go back the next day and he might just as easily say yes—more often than not he did. And if you got a no, you went back. If you got a yes, you went and did it before he changed his mind again. But no wasn’t final, so that a lot of things were made possible. And again, it was all done in the name of the council and he was a proponent of the council. So even though I don’t think he fully understood the implications of it, but he was very supportive of it then, so we were able to go ahead.

So Oakland became one of the more progressive dioceses on the West Coast. The other one that was on kind of the same wavelength was Seattle. But San Francisco remained very conservative, Los Angeles remained conservative, and some of the other smaller dioceses up and down [the coast].

03b-00:28:55 LaBerge: And the bishop of Seattle, was that Hunthausen? 46

03b-00:29:00 Crespin: Yes. It was Hunthausen. And in Los Angeles it was Cardinal McIntyre for the longest time.

03b-00:29:10 LaBerge: That’s right. And San Francisco—

03b-00:29:10 Crespin: Bishop McGucken. Joseph McGucken.

03b-00:29:18 LaBerge: Where did Don Osuna come in that—

03b-00:29:21 Crespin: He was ordained a year after me. He’s celebrating his fiftieth this year—it may be next month. He was at St. Jarlath’s in Oakland, and then when I left— I was stationed at the cathedral while I was first starting in the chancery office. I was there from ‘63 to ‘66, and we were—I wasn’t the associate, but I was trying to be helpful. We were trying to put together the new liturgy in a new style and we were not doing it very well. I was doing it part-time, but when I left, about a year after I left, Don was sent there as the associate and told to do something about the liturgy, which he did! [laughing] For the next nineteen years! And so that’s when the—it was both—it was Don having the bishop’s support most days. [laughter] Monday mornings the bishop would get a report of what happened at the cathedral yesterday, and so he’d call Don in and bawl him out, but basically he was supportive. Mike Lucid was the pastor at that time I think, the rector, and he was very supportive of Don. And then Joe Skillin and John Cummins were all supportive. So Don knew he had free rein and then he went as far as he could with it. And he just—

[Tape 4: Side A]

04a-00:00:03 LaBerge: You were talking about—

04a-00:00:17 Crespin: Don Osuna.

04a-00:00:17 LaBerge: Don Osuna’s gifts.

04a-00:00:19 Crespin: Yes. He had a very good understanding of liturgy.

04a-00:00:27 LaBerge: Just native, or he—

04a-00:00:29 Crespin: No, he—through the seminary we did get a lot of positive instruction in liturgy, but then also there were so many books coming out by liturgical 47

theologians—again from Europe for the most part, and there were some things going on here, St. John’s of Collegeville was a century of liturgical—

04a-00:00:51 LaBerge: Collegeville, Minnesota?

04a-00:00:50 Crespin: Minnesota, yes. It was a center of liturgical reform way before the council started. So through his own studies and interests, and then he’s an accomplished musician and had done a lot of work with choirs in the seminary and knew how to blend the music into the liturgy and how to make it prayerful and creative. He just—he’s a creative genius is what he is. And so he just poured himself into that effort to build up the cathedral. They had other goals—the priority was liturgy, the second priority I think was the school, and the third was the senior population there in the downtown area. I think that was—as I recall. But he was able to create a mood that people responded to, and people would flock to the cathedral from all over the diocese.

But also, those were the days when a lot of people were coming up to the GTU [Graduate Theological Union] and to St. Mary’s College, to USF [University of San Francisco], less to Holy Names but there also, to study for the summer. There were good summer programs and jet-set theologians were coming out: Hans Küng and Bernard Häring, and Barnabas Mary Ahearn and a lot of other people. But everybody came knowing you’ve got to go to the Oakland cathedral, because that was the place where all this was being—I don’t want to say showcased because that makes it sound like a performance, but you could see in action what the council was talking about in terms of the reform of the liturgy, and making the liturgy culturally relevant and yet a prayerful experience. I remember talking to him. We were close friends in those days. I remember talking to him once and he was just really exhausted. He said, “You know, for each Sunday’s liturgy, just on the liturgy alone, I spend about sixty hours a week.”

04a-00:03:23 LaBerge: Wow!

04a-00:03:24 Crespin: Because it was the working with the musicians and creating whatever it was going to be, that particular liturgy and pulling it all together. So it was his tremendous commitment and boundless energy and a real liturgical sense that made that whole thing happen. Bishop Begin was very proud of the reputation it had, but he wasn’t always happy with some of the stuff they did. But Don would go in and explain to him and make it understandable. Because Monday morning first thing he’d get the two vicars general and other people like them coming and attacking what they heard had gone on. But then he would call Don in, and Don would come and explain and say, “No, no, it wasn’t like that. It was like this.” It didn’t always help, but at least he allowed it to go on and he allowed it to continue. It became internationally known. People would 48

come to the Bay Area, maybe for some other reason, from England or France or Italy or Spain, and they had heard about the cathedral and they knew that that was one place that they should go as a participant in one of the liturgies.

When they first started they did two Masses a day, the ten thirty and the twelve, which must have been exhausting. But then eventually—well, what happened was that pastors in the local area here saw that there were people coming to the cathedral for Sunday liturgy because what they were offering wasn’t anywhere near it. And even though it would take a special kind of genius like Don had to be able to duplicate that, the fact that the cathedral had such inspiring and energizing liturgies moved the pastors to try to do the same thing in their parish. So that it really—it elevated all the boats, just the fact that this was the principal church in the diocese was doing this, and it freed up other people to begin to be a little more creative. So a lot of parishes imitated the cathedral, and it wasn’t a crass thing to keep our own people, but it was this is obviously something people are looking for and want, so we need to provide it. So it had that ripple effect throughout the diocese really. And of course, whenever we’d have a diocesan experience or a diocesan liturgy, they would experience it again, the priests, and know that they had to take this back to their people. So it was an exciting time.

04a-00:06:34 LaBerge: And at this time, when you left the cathedral, is that when you went to St. Joe’s?

04a-00:06:37 Crespin: No, I went—from St. Francis, I went to Corpus Christi in Piedmont. I was still in the tribunal. I stayed in the tribunal from ‘63 to ‘73.

04a-00:06:47 LaBerge: But you were in residence.

04a-00:06:48 Crespin: But I was in residence, and I thought—I knew that I was going to be, I had heard, John Cummins said, “Be prepared. You’re going to get moved.” “Okay.” I thought that they were going to send me to St. Bernard’s out in East Oakland, which I would have hoped for because I wanted to be in a Spanish- speaking community, and that was one of the bigger ones in Oakland at the time. And so I had my head geared that way when he called me in and told me I was going to Corpus Christi—and I [said], “Are you sure? Do you know what you’re doing?” Because I didn’t see myself relating to the hill people, and not very sympathetic either. But his thing was, the pastor there was not doing a very good job and a lot of those people were coming to the cathedral for Mass and involvement, and he wanted to try to build something up there, so he thought maybe I could be helpful even on a part-time basis.

It took me a while. It took me about a year before I was open to the people. They’d come to me with their problems—you guys deserve it! Go get yourself 49

a therapist. [laughter] I was not very sympathetic. But I grew to know and love that community—those communities, because Corpus Christi is really three: it’s Piedmont, it’s Montclair, and then it’s Trestle Glen. But I became good friends with the people in all the different aspects of that community and then spent my last year there as associate. I was split up from the canon law department.

04a-00:08:38 LaBerge: Who was the pastor?

04a-00:08:39 Crespin: Pearce Donovan, who had been superintendent of schools, who was very conservative but he liked me. And the reason he liked me is he liked John Cummins. John had been his dean of boys or something at O’Dowd, when he was principal of O’Dowd. And then John was living there at Corpus Christi when I moved there, so it was the two of us. He had an associate too. They changed periodically then. John and I stayed there—I stayed there for five years, and John was there for about three before he was made the executive director of the California Catholic Conference in Sacramento. So we were there in the last—they were the last years of the sixties. The Immaculate Heart sisters were still staffing the school. They were a very creative group of women. And we had one who was just marvelous with organizing liturgies, so we had some very celebratory, festive, dynamic liturgies, good music and good musicians. And the people there began to not feel the need to go to the cathedral any longer, and so we had a good thing.

It was also during the period when Cardinal McIntyre was attacking the Immaculate Heart sisters, and we went through that pain with them, because we were very close to—there were a group of about sixty of them living at the convent. And we just saw how he just beat them down and beat them down, until finally they had to quit being a religious order and just go off on their own, because they couldn’t work with him or under him. An interesting sideline there was that we were with them in the period when they moved from the habit into street clothes, and it wasn’t an easy transition for them. They would begin trimming back the habit and then after a while they saw that that wasn’t really what they wanted to do. So they started wearing street clothes. And each day we’d go over for Mass—several days a week—and it was always a, “How do you like this outfit?” [laughter] So we saw them go through that phase where they hadn’t had to choose their attire for so many years, and then to try that all over again. It was kind of funny, in the middle of all the pain that they were going through.

04a-00:11:22 LaBerge: Now are these the IHMs?

04a-00:11:23 Crespin: The IHMs, yes. 50

04a-00:11:23 LaBerge: From Monroe, Michigan. I was in college at the same time, and there were a couple of nuns who asked us to go shopping with them. [Crespin laughs] Because they had no idea, no idea how to—

04a-00:11:41 Crespin: Actually, they weren’t from Monroe. There’s the group there, but they were—

04a-00:11:42 LaBerge: Oh, they were from LA?

04a-00:11:44 Crespin: They were based in LA, yes, and that’s the group that broke away. The Monroe group I think is still—

04a-00:11:49 LaBerge: It’s still going, yes. Is that Corita Kent? Was she—

04a-00:11:51 Crespin: Corita Kent, yes. She was the artist in the group. What was the name of the— it won’t come to me—Anita Caspary was the head of that group, the provincial or whatever they were called.

04a-00:12:13 LaBerge: Well, back to the actual council. When John XXIII was still alive, how did he change—what did he do so that the curia had to accept that the documents they had written weren’t being rubber stamped, that that’s not the way it was going to go.

04a-00:12:37 Crespin: Well, the documents were mailed to the bishops before they got to Rome in ‘62. These are the working documents, and the presumption is that these are the ones you are going to approve. I guess some of the more progressive bishops got in contact with each other and decided on a strategy, that we’re not going to accept this. So they, in one of the early sessions, just said, “No, we’re not going to work with these. We’re going to start our own.” And I think the curia appealed to John XXIII, “Are you going to let them do this?” And he said yes. [laughter] So he did it just—he didn’t alienate anybody. He had to work with those people and they were entrenched, and he knew that it was not in his best interests to alienate his staff. But on the other hand, he was encouraging the other bishops and the ones who were saying throw it out and start from scratch, he was encouraging them saying, “Yes, you’re on the right track. Yes, this is what I had in mind.” So the curia saw that he was not going to support them in that. He was going to let them battle it out with the bishops and not take their side. Secretly, I think he was supportive of the other group anyway.

He died six months after the first session, and then Paul VI was elected, who was very much part of the reforming group of bishops and very much in sync with that, but also a very nervous person. [laughing] He could see all the dark 51

sides of everything that was going on, and he, on some issues, had a failure of nerve, probably with the encyclical Humanae Vitae, because he himself had taken birth control out of the agenda of the council and said, “I’m going to appoint a commission, a papal commission to study this and give me direction,” which he did. He had about two hundred and forty people on that commission—theologians and canon lawyers and physicians and family life experts and philosophers, psychologists. It was a mixed group. And of course, the group worked for about two or three years I think, maybe longer—at least three years—and came up with its recommendations.

About 60 to 65 percent of the commission voted in favor of some kind of a change in the church position, and the other 35 percent said no, we don’t support a change. Of course, Paul VI went with the minority, because he couldn’t face up to dealing with all the implications of adapting or changing the regulations. Interestingly, just for historical purposes, the man who became John Paul I, I don’t remember his maiden name—[laughter]—he was on that commission and he was with the majority, and John Paul II was with the minority position. And we know which side won that one!

04a-00:16:35 LaBerge: Wow. Yes, yes. Did you ever hear anything back from your telegram?

04a-00:16:44 Crespin: No. We never heard, not directly. Years later, when we get into more modern times, I’ll tell you the repercussions of that. [laughing]

04a-00:16:53 LaBerge: That your name was known?

04a-00:16:56 Crespin: My name was etched in stone in the Vatican, which prevented, I’m sure—I know I was investigated as a possible candidate for bishop and was found wanting, so I suspect that was part of it. That may not be the only thing, but it was part of it.

And then later on, in 1990, I was invited to be the—to allow my name to be considered as the general secretary for the United States [Conference] of Catholic Bishops, in Washington. And when that process started, I remember getting a letter from the general secretary at the time, Bob Lynch, who’s now bishop of Tampa, Florida, I think—would I allow my name to be considered for this position? I talked to John Cummins—I was chancellor at the time— and he said “Oh, it’s a great opportunity. I hate to lose you, but it’s a great opportunity. You’ve got to leave your name there.” Okay. So I left it there and found out that they started out with thirty-eight names of priests from all over the country, whittled it down to eighteen and I made that cut. And then they whittled it down to eight and I made that cut, and got it down to three and I made that cut. That was at the point where I was called to Washington for an 52

interview. I’d been told by Bob Lynch, the general secretary—“Now, this is all super secret. It has got to be confidential. You can’t tell anybody.”

So I went back, was interviewed. This was in February of 1990 or ‘91—‘90 I think it was. Anyway, I was interviewed, and as he took me to the plane, because I was coming right back, and he said, “Well, I shouldn’t be doing this, but you got the job. But we still have to interview one more guy, so I can’t really officially say that, but we’re sure that you’re the man we want. I’ll call you when it’s finally decided.” So about a week later he did call me, and he said, “You got the job. They approved you. There’s just one formality. I have to go to the executive committee of the bishops’ conference and get their approval. But the president of the conference is John Quinn from San Francisco, and he knows you and he likes you, and a couple of other bishops know of you, so that’s just going to be a formality. As soon as that’s done, I’ll call you.” So then no call came for about two weeks, and then finally he called and he said, “George, I’ve got some bad news.” “Fire away.” “I can’t offer you the job.” And I said, “What happened? Did the bishops’ committee not approve it?” “No, no, no. They want you.” And I said, “Well, then I don’t understand. What went wrong?” And he said, “Well, as a matter of courtesy, I went to the papal nuncio to tell him that you’re the person we’d selected to be the next general secretary,” because it was a twelve-year term. It was six years as associate and then six years as the secretary himself. And he said, “He doesn’t qualify,” and didn’t give any explanation. To this day I still don’t know what it was that disqualified me.

04a-00:20:54 LaBerge: But that’s what you assume.

04a-00:20:57 Crespin: Yes. He said, “The committee was disappointed, and they even discussed for a while trying to fight for you, but right now they’re engaged in a battle with Rome over Hunthausen in Seattle, and Charlie Curran—

04a-00:21:13 LaBerge: The moral theologian.

04a-00:21:15 Crespin: Yes. And he said, “They don’t have the energy for another fight.” So that’s my closeness to glory.

04a-00:21:27 LaBerge: And when you were close to becoming a bishop too, did the same kind of thing happen?

04a-00:21:31 Crespin: Well, I just knew that they were sending out questionnaires to people about me, but then nothing ever happened, so I figured. [laughing] In retrospect—I was disappointed over the job for the U.S. Catholic Conference. I thought that would have been an exciting experience, and I thought I had something to 53

contribute. They were looking, in those days, for a Hispanic. They wanted to diversify the staff there in Washington, and I thought I could have done something. But it was not to be. And they did me a favor really. The guy who did get the job, who by sheer coincidence was the secretary to the papal nuncio—[laughter]—just pure coincidence—his first task and his first year’s assignment was to organize the Denver World Youth Day, when John Paul was coming to Denver. And I thought to myself—thank God!

04a-00:22:41 LaBerge: Would you have wanted to do that?

04a-00:22:41 Crespin: [laughing] Thank God I was delivered from that!

04a-00:22:48 LaBerge: Can you give me those names, the papal nuncio?

04a-00:22:54 Crespin: Pio Laghi—L-A-G-H-I [spells].

04a-00:23:04 LaBerge: And what about his secretary who became—

04a-00:23:08 Crespin: Schnurr, Dennis.

This is a side anecdote. When Cardinal Mahony, or Archbishop Mahony was installed in L.A., I went down for the ceremony and was staying in the same hotel with all the other dignitaries. And I got into the elevator at one moment, going down I think. And there was Archbishop Pio Laghi and his secretary. I don’t know who the other person was. I walked in and I recognized—I knew who he was, so I said, “Archbishop, I’m Father George Crespin from Oakland.” He said, “Oh yes, I know about you.” That made me nervous! And then he said, “You’re Hispanic, aren’t you?” And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “And you speak Spanish fluently?” I said, “Well, I try.” “You’ve done a lot of work nationally with Hispanics.” “Well, I’ve done some.” “You’re about forty-two?” I said, “Actually, I’m forty-five,” I think I was at the time. And then we reached the ground floor and I got out and left, but it made me nervous knowing that he knew that much about me, which kind of confirmed the suspicion I had that I was being observed as a possible bishop candidate. I’d love just to see my file in Rome, to see what they actually do know! [laughing] And what they’ve never found out!

04a-00:25:02 LaBerge: Yes, it’s a little bit like the FBI. It’s a Catholic FBI.

04a-00:25:02 Crespin: Yes, yes. [laughing] 54

04a-00:25:10 LaBerge: Let’s see—how are you doing?

04a-00:25:11 Crespin: I’m fine.

04a-00:25:12 LaBerge: Do you want some water?

04a-00:25:15 Crespin: I’ll just take a little drink here.

04a-00:25:22 LaBerge: Well, let’s talk more about the Vatican Council, and more of your observations of the importance, the way you were talking about the people of God being one of the concepts that drove changes.

04a-00:25:36 Crespin: Well, I think that the major accomplishments of the council, and there have been a lot of books written about it, especially recently because of the fiftieth anniversary, but putting the liturgy at the center of the spiritual lives of Catholics, I think was a major accomplishment. Because prior to that, with the Mass in Latin and the priest up there mumbling with his back to them, the people didn’t know what was happening unless the bell rang to tell them this is something important. And so they’d say their rosaries or they’d read their prayer books or do whatever. And so to make it possible, especially through the language, for people to be directly involved, for the priest to be there welcoming them in instead of pushing them back. And then for the ministries to be able to develop, eucharistic ministries, women as well as men being able to give out communion, read the lessons, all the different possibilities that that created. I think that was, probably, the result of the council that most touched most people, because those Catholics that care still go to Mass, and those that really care try to be involved in it in one way or another. I think that the liturgy became the signpost for the changes. It was the major example that people experienced Sunday after Sunday of a new way of doing things.

The document on ecumenism had a big impact initially. It’s not quite so prominent fifty years later, but I think it’s because so much of the groundwork has been done. It’s not a big deal anymore for a Catholic to go to a Protestant service or a Buddhist service—we just take it for granted now! And before that you were going to hell if you went! So the easy approach to other Christian religions and then other faiths, is all a fruit of that, and I think that’s all to the good. I don’t think it has been confusing to Catholics that—then our religion isn’t the best one after all, or the only one. I think people have been able to understand that there are many paths to God, and we’re on ours and we firmly believe that ours comes through Christ. Other people are on their own journeys, and they all lead to God too! So I think the document on ecumenism opened the door for that kind of thinking and that bringing down of the wall that separated us from everybody else. And a lot of good things have come 55

from that even though we’re not so self-consciously working on ecumenism the way we were in the sixties and the seventies.

The document on religious liberty, I think has had a profound impact in ways that weren’t expected. The document itself was written and approved, I think, to advocate for Catholics to be able to have religious freedom in Muslim countries, or in non-Catholic, non-Christian countries. I think that was the insight that they had. John Courtney Murray had a bigger vision, but he wasn’t necessarily saying that, because he didn’t want to kill the whole thing. But when the bishops put into the document that every person—belonging to a religion is a free act, and every person has to be free and able to do that, they weren’t thinking [about] Catholics! [laughter] But it turned out that that same argument, obviously, applied. That everybody has to be free in arriving at his own faith and practicing, and you can’t be coerced and you can’t be prohibited. So I think in terms of giving people—I won’t say an argument, but a motivation for feeling that I have to work out my own faith and faith beliefs. I can do that with the guidance of the church, but ultimately, if I’m going to accept or reject a part of the Catholic faith, that has to be my decision. It can’t be somebody else’s. But that’s what it led to anyway. But the most startling thing it led to—

[Tape 4: Side B]

04b-00:00:02 LaBerge: Okay—the most startling thing.

04b-00:00:07 Crespin: —that it led to was the whole idea about the importance of conscience, because they made a strong case in that document for—people have to be able to follow their consciences. Again, they were thinking other people, not Catholics necessarily. But that immediately came into play when Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae, and the whole birth control discussion that went on as a result. And the tool is already there for people to pick it up and say, “Well, I’m following my conscience. How can they tell me that this is wrong? This is an act of conscience.” And then the whole conscientious objection thing during the Vietnam War, so many, especially young people, fellows, resorted to the conscience principle. But just that—that was not a new teaching. It has always been in the Catholic tradition that you have to follow your conscience. And if push comes to shove, even if your conscience is wrong you have to follow it. You should form it correctly, but even if it’s wrong, that’s what you have to do. That has been promulgated among Catholics—and it works for all kinds of pastoral questions now. People who were divorced and are told they can’t receive the sacraments because they’re divorced, “Well, I made a decision of conscience.” Or gays, the same thing, in terms of their participation. Or a lot of other things, Roy Bourgeois, the priest that they just suspended, “I’m following my conscience in supporting what I think is a woman’s right to be ordained a priest.” So that awareness, I think, was 56

something new. It was I think the combination of that document and Humanae Vitae that opened that door for everybody to see. I think that has been a major impact.

The church in the modern world document [Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World] I think was significant in the sense that it opened the door for Catholics to embrace the struggle for justice and peace in ways that they hadn’t so widely before, and made them see, again, that this was part of their mission. It’s not just something that some kooky groups of people do. But it’s the mission of the church, the joys and the hopes which the document starts out with, so I think that’s what led to so much of what happened in Latin America in terms of liberation theology and base communities and options for the poor, all came out of the thinking that went into that document. So at so many levels, the document got into the bloodstream, and even though some people at this point would try to deny it or negate it, I think for those Catholics who were raised through that period, it has become part of the DNA. For those who were raised not knowing what a difference the Vatican Council had made, it may not be quite so deeply embedded.

04b-00:04:05 LaBerge: How did you come to your view of birth control?

04b-00:04:11 Crespin: That’s an interesting thread. I remember the first time we studied the whole idea of birth control and contraception, it was in the second year of college in the minor seminary, so that would have been around 1955-‘56. We were taught what the church is teaching, and I remember saying to myself that doesn’t make sense. There’s something missing here, there’s something that doesn’t quite compute. But in those days you didn’t challenge the teachings of the church, and I also wanted to be ordained a priest, so I didn’t vocalize my questions. They weren’t negations, they were just questions. I don’t understand this. I don’t understand the line of thinking here. Then we went through more formal presentations in theology, and I still didn’t understand.

After ordination, when I was first moved into the chancery office, ripped out of the parish in Fremont and put in the middle of downtown Oakland, a good friend of mine, a priest, Rolando Juarez, was associate at that time in Alameda, at St. Joseph’s Basilica. St. Joseph’s Basilica was forming a group of couples, young couples that he was training to do pre-Cana conferences, and he said to me, because he knew I was just totally devastated, he said, “Why don’t you come and work with us here? You can be helpful. You’re fresh on the new thinking, and they’re really good people and very committed.” So I started working with them. He got transferred, so he stopped working with them, but I was still close by, so I kept up. 57

Each time we met, once a month/every six weeks, they would take one of the themes that they would share with the young engaged couples and go over it and make sure that they were all on the same wavelength. It was all very helpful, but when they came to the question of birth control the whole process broke down. Most of them had had experiences that made them not accept the church’s position. A lot of them had tried the rhythm system and had six or seven kids to prove it, and they just couldn’t accept it. And so their experience is what convinced me that the initial uneasiness I had with the birth control teaching was confirmed in practice and it didn’t work. This was in 1966, ‘67, so it was before Humanae Vitae, but we knew that that process was in place, so we were pretty much all presuming that the decision was going to go the other way, that the change was going to come. And so when it didn’t—then everybody was devastated. I think almost all the couples in that group that were still working, quit the pre-Cana movement. I stopped working on the pre-Cana, because I said, “I can’t teach that to couples, in fact, because I don’t believe that.” And they felt the same way. So I think that was a big turning point.

04b-00:07:57 LaBerge: And the pre-Cana movement is not in existence anymore, is it? I haven’t heard anything.

04b-00:08:05 Crespin: Well, they have pre—I think they have—

04b-00:08:08 LaBerge: They have marriage prep, but I don’t know if it’s a—

04b-00:08:10 Crespin: Yes, I don’t know, because I stopped paying attention. But they’re still doing some stuff, and they’re still doing the natural family planning sessions. But my experience after the sixties, very early into the seventies, was that nobody was paying attention to the whole question of birth control. They resolved that in their minds. Even very simple, uneducated, unsophisticated people from Mexico, who were coming up here, they initially would confess that they were practicing birth control and then gradually they stopped. They kept coming to confession, but that wasn’t on their list anymore. So it just took care of itself. I would blame it on the Spirit, but other people might say otherwise. But it became a non-issue, much the way the whole gay relationship/gay marriage/gay lifestyle has undergone the change there too. People saying, in my conscience I’m okay with that one, so it’s not a problem.

But it was very painful. I was glad when I was out of the country that month of August 1968, right after the encyclical came out. I think it came out on the thirtieth of July or the thirty-first of July, and we were gone the whole month of August and into the first week of September. And here it was emergency meetings and people anguishing, and “I quit the church,” and “I’m going to quit the priesthood.” We had a couple of heavy discussions in the first couple 58

of days of the trip, but after that we sent the telegram [to the pope] and we just let it go. Whereas some people here—some priest friends of mine, made their decision at that point to leave the priesthood, and like I say, a lot of the couples decided not to work anymore in that whole area. I don’t know. I missed out on that portion.

04b-00:10:33 LaBerge: Well, and of course it’s still, there’s still repercussions, say, in the healthcare law now, with—

04b-00:10:36 Crespin: They’ve changed the question to religious liberty, but it’s the same straw man. It’s just another indication of how out of touch the bishops are with where the people are. The bishops are fighting the mandate because it goes against the Catholic teaching on contraception, which no Catholic—relatively few Catholics—follow anymore or believe in.

04b-00:11:04 LaBerge: Yes, I know.

04b-00:11:06 Crespin: It defies logic. Could we take a break?

04b-00:11:10 LaBerge: Absolutely. And you know, this would be a good place to stop.

04b-00:11:11 Crespin: It’s a good place to stop?

04b-00:11:13 LaBerge: It’s a good place to stop. 59

Interview #3: May 2, 2013

[Tape 5: Side A]

05a-00:00:00 LaBerge: The last time when we finished we were still talking about Vatican II, but there were four subjects we hadn’t covered, the documents on—I’ll just start with one, say the document on religious life [Perfectae Caritatis (Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life)]—whatever you’d like to say.

05a-00:00:40 Crespin: Well, at the time I think it seemed like an innocuous document. It was just a kind of a repetition of the value of religious life and of the vows and so on. But hidden in there—I don’t think it was deliberately hidden—but hidden in there was a call to the religious communities to get back in touch with their founding insight, their founding charism, because most of them were started in times of need: special needs of the poor, of children, of the sick, and so the communities were founded to deal with those situations. Over the years and centuries they had branched out to do all kinds of things, and most of them had wound up either in hospitals or in schools. But their uniqueness, I guess, had been blurred. So this was a call for them to get in touch with their roots and to address, using that insight of their original charism, to address the needs of today.

Different communities in different parts of the world took that with varying degrees of enthusiasm. But the religious communities in the United States really took it seriously. And so since most of them had been founded in Europe initially, they went back into their roots and studied the founder’s vision and clarified what their mission was and then tried to apply that vision to the needs of today. And so what that meant for the American religious—90 percent of them anyway—was that they changed their, not only the habit was the symbol of the change, because the habit had nothing to do with their mission as such, it was just what was used at the time. But they changed their habits, they revised their regulations, the rule, the norms that they lived by. They restudied the meaning of poverty, chastity, and obedience in today’s world, in this society, and began to undertake some very serious changes.

This was also happening at the same time as the feminist movement was beginning in this country and the whole sexual revolution, and civil rights and human rights, and so there were a lot of other influences. But the basic action of the nuns was to get in touch with their original charism. That led them into some fairly dramatic changes in lifestyle and also in governance. They moved, over the space of about ten or fifteen years, from having a mother general or a mother superior to having a team leadership, and they were very characterized by that. They were much more into consultation among their own membership, so that everybody was taken seriously and everybody had a voice. They opened themselves up to new possibilities of ministry, which led 60

them out of the classroom and out of the parish system as such and into other areas where there were needs, especially among women and children I think is where they focus more, and then social justice, but those often blended together.

So that—the upshot was that they got into trouble with some very conservative bishops. Cardinal McIntyre down in Los Angeles was the key example. And I was more attuned to that because I was living at Corpus Christi Parish in Piedmont at the time and we had Immaculate Heart sisters teaching there in the school. So they were living all the agony—it wasn’t too much ecstasy—of what was going on with the cardinal, and then it was impacting them here. And then—most bishops were more accepting or understanding. I think all were kind of confused and not really prepared for the women to be so forceful. And yet, the amazing thing for what happened with the religious women here is that they found a new sense of identity and a new sense of mission as religious women, but they didn’t get shrill or radical, even though they were accused of that. They were much more prayerful, much more gospel-based, and much more willing to try to do their work and not have confrontations with anybody they didn’t have to have confrontations with, and so [it] has marked them over the years.

Even now, with this particular struggle with the Vatican, they’ve taken the same posture. Their decisions are made with the whole group. The leadership who has met with either the bishops here or the bishops in the Vatican always say, “Well, we’ll have to go home and talk about this with our membership.” And they’ve done that on a couple of occasions and it’s clear that they’re going about it very prayerfully and in touch with the gospels. So in that sense they’re a role model for the rest of the church. The sisters, particularly the American sisters, took the Vatican Council document on religious life very seriously, and that was the cause of all their problems. But at the same time, it showed what a profound change the Second Vatican Council could make, if followed.

05a-00:07:13 LaBerge: Yes.

05a-00:07:17 Crespin: They’re probably the best example of that. So I think that document, while at the time it seemed to be nice—but it was explosive. It was a seed there that eventually came into flower.

05a-00:07:33 LaBerge: I think we should say for the tape, just for later, that what we’re talking about as far as 2013, is that the religious congregations are being investigated by the Vatican, and censured. 61

05a-00:07:46 Crespin: Yes, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, LCWR, has been under investigation. The communities themselves were investigated separately, and the results of those investigations have never been published or revealed—and maybe will never be. We don’t know. But the LCWR investigation still is going on. The negotiations are still going on between the leadership and the three bishops, the American bishops that the Vatican appointed. But also, they had recently, within the last two or three weeks, a meeting with the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the old Holy Office of the Inquisition.

05a-00:08:37 LaBerge: Yes.

05a-00:08:43 Crespin: And it’s been made worse, just for the record—after the nuns met with this cardinal—it must have been early April. I don’t know if it was—it was after Easter. But after they met with this cardinal, they came away from that meeting saying that the cardinal told them that the pope had confirmed this process and approved it, and he issued a press statement to that effect, the cardinal did. But it’s not clear, or at least from the other commentaries that have been written since then, it’s not clear whether the pope actually was coming out with a decision having given it a lot of thought, or whether it was just one more item on the agenda of the meeting that this cardinal had with the pope, and he said we’re going to continue. “Okay, go ahead.” So it remains to be seen, really, what the pope thinks about that. And I think that leaves the sisters with a tiny ray of hope.

05a-00:09:46 LaBerge: What’s the name of the cardinal?

05a-00:09:48 Crespin: [Gerhard Ludwig] Mueller.

05a-00:09:55 LaBerge: What involvement did you have in the diocese with any of them, besides being at Corpus Christi? You’re just telling me your observations? Or did you work closely with any [of them]?

05a-00:10:11 Crespin: I worked with a lot of individual nuns, and I worked a lot with the Holy Names sisters here in Oakland and with the Mission San Jose Dominicans as well as the Holy Family sisters. For a while I was the chaplain of the Theresians, which was the female counterpart of the Serra Club, which was promoting vocations to the religious life—that was in the sixties and the seventies and in that capacity had contact with a lot of the leadership of the nuns, because we would invite different sisters to come and speak about their communities and their work and so on. But I didn’t have an official role. Later as chancellor, in the eighties, I had some contact. I was instrumental in 62

bringing the Mexican Dominican sisters into the diocese, who have worked for the last twenty/twenty-five years here with the Spanish-speaking, principally. But I haven’t had any official—it has all been more being an observer, an interested observer on the scene.

05a-00:11:26 LaBerge: Well, let’s move to one of the other documents. How about the one on bishops? [Christus Dominus (Decree Concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops)]

05a-00:11:35 Crespin: [chuckling] I hope the tape doesn’t pick up laughs.

05a-00:11:38 LaBerge: Oh, it does! And it’s good that it does. [laughter] Because it gives the flavor of what the conversation is.

05a-00:11:46 Crespin: Well, the one on bishops, contrary to the one on the religious [life], I think the one on bishops was a hopeful document, because it affirmed the role of bishop as the head of the local church and strengthened the bishop’s role there— instead of being a branch manager for the pope. So it talked about the bishop as the authority in the local church, always in union with the holy father, but not necessarily just a spokesperson for the holy father. So that that was a very important thing.

And also, I think [it] authorized—I don’t know if it was that document or one of the others, but I think it was this one—authorized the formation of national conferences of bishops, which again, strengthened the local church or the national church and gave it an organism through which to work and try to work together. The understanding was, and it was always made very clear by the bishops themselves, that this was a voluntary organization and it didn’t speak for each bishop. They still had their independent voice. But it was a way of the bishops bringing their influence to bear on the national scene. The highlight of that, the fruit of all that, were the famous pastoral letters written in the eighties by the bishops: the one on the economy, the one on nuclear arms, one that they tried, on women, but didn’t quite succeed with it. But it gave the bishops a unified voice, a pretty much unified voice, which they hadn’t had before. Pope John Paul II got nervous about that and tried to water down their importance and authority, but I think the document pretty much set it up, set up that structure, so it was still something to be realized.

So I guess I contrast it with the document on religious life. The document on religious life didn’t seem to have much promise, but it really flourished, whereas the document on the bishops seemed to have a lot of promise, but then its momentum was stalled by John Paul pretty much and by Benedict also. But it did really emphasize the importance of the local church, and that the local church should be making most of the decisions on its own rather than 63

being dependent on approval or permission from Rome. One great example of how that was abused was the new English translation of the liturgy that came out, because while that was actually for all the English-speaking countries, but when the initial translation was published it was a very acceptable, almost poetic translation. The one sin it committed, in terms of Rome, was it tried to be inclusive in its language, which was more an English-speaking problem than one they would have had in other languages. And the Vatican didn’t approve that, and so it scrapped the whole effort, as you may remember, and it started from scratch, but this time with apparently non-English-speaking people, so that the translation we got reflects that.

05a-00:15:40 LaBerge: You’re talking about the most recent one?

05a-00:15:42 Crespin: The most recent one. The most recent one was done over the objections of, certainly, the American bishops, and I think some of the other national groups also. So that shows what the—had the bishops’ local authority been respected, the previous translation—they had already approved it and then they were overruled. In an ideal situation they would not have been able to be overruled. If that was their decision then it should be recognized. So it shows what could have been and what is.

05a-00:16:18 LaBerge: You know, I can’t even—I haven’t even tried to memorize the new one. I just can’t bear it! But you have to use it.

05a-00:16:28 Crespin: I don’t use it.

05a-00:16:29 LaBerge: You don’t use it?

05a-00:16:29 Crespin: I don’t use it. I’ve got number two memorized and I just do that one and either stumble my way through the prayers, the orations of the opening prayer, the offertory prayer, the communion prayer, or just make them up. That’s strictly not to be done, but I do it in the interest of people being prayerful at Mass as opposed to trying to figure out—what did he say?

So that’s the—but I’m sure there’s a lot more that doesn’t come to mind in terms of the bishops document, but looking at it in retrospect, it strengthened the role of the bishop, because what had happened as a result of the First Vatican Council was that the role of the pope was elevated, and it was their intention to level things off, but it got interrupted by the Garibaldi invasion of Rome, and so they never finished that piece. And so they did finish that piece and they strengthened the role of the bishops, individual bishops as well as groups of bishops, and it could have made for a very different church, but then it got undermined by John Paul particularly. 64

05a-00:17:49 LaBerge: Wow. I’m so impressed with your ability to synthesize all of this and to reflect back.

05a-00:18:00 Crespin: Well, it’s the lazy way to do it. [laughter]

05a-00:18:01 LaBerge: No, it is not at all, not at all. Okay, let’s move on. When you get the transcript you might want to add something.

05a-00:18:07 Crespin: I’ll deny it all!

05a-00:18:11 LaBerge: What about the document on education? [Gravissimum Educationis (Declaration on Christian Education)]

05a-00:18:14 Crespin: That was almost a nothing document. And I don’t think it has stood very much the test of time. It reemphasized the importance of education, things that we all believe. But the experience of Catholic education throughout the world is so different, that it had to be very general and vague. The Catholic school system in the United States has been the backbone of the church, the immigrant church, and prepared people for an adult faith. But in other countries—I think of Mexico, which I know better, but I suspect it’s true in other Latin American countries certainly—the Catholic schools were for the rich.

05a-00:19:00 LaBerge: Oh!

05a-00:19:03 Crespin: People who come up from Mexico and you suggest, “Oh, why don’t you send your kid to the Catholic school?” “Oh, we’re not that rich.” It’s just a mindset that the wealthy got to go to Catholic schools, and the poor went to the public schools, and there was a little bit of that even here. But in many parishes, especially early on, the parish pretty much picked up the cost of the school. And if there was a tuition it was a dollar a month or something like that. I remember that’s what it was when I went. So it was accessible. But in many places it is not accessible at any level: grammar school, high school, college.

So what it said—it just repeated the value of a Catholic education and getting a Catholic perspective on things, which is all to the good. But it didn’t, I don’t think, create any lasting impact in the whole educational scene. So as a result, in this country we’ve seen the demise of the Catholic school system, largely because of the lack of nuns as they began to move into other works and leave the convent besides, and because of expenses, where it’s just too expensive. And so while there’s always been, at least in the local scene here, the effort to try to maintain the Catholic schools in the poorer sections of the diocese—and 65

Bishop Cummins was very strong on that—it just hasn’t been possible, because the attendance would drop and the school couldn’t make it. And the parish was probably also struggling to make it, so it couldn’t be of much help. Outside groups like FACE [Family Aid to Catholic Education], the assistance to students in Catholic schools, they could help a bit but couldn’t ultimately overcome this big financial flood or financial drought, depending on which way you want to look at it.

And then you have the anomaly, which would be worth exploring in a whole other book—I’m not prepared to do that, but I have opinions. [laughter] The people that went through Catholic education, especially those who went through twelve years of it, went through college, were often the most likely to be angry at the church and leave it at the end of that. [laughing] So many parents that I know complain about, “We really sacrificed to send our kids to Catholic schools, and then they came out and left the church.” The families that I know who talk about that, their kids really didn’t leave the church. I think they moved ahead of it, because they still have the values and they’re still very committed to service and to human rights, so they got the message, but the vehicle that’s supposed to be supportive of that message often failed them, I think. So even though they would like to go to their parish church, they don’t find a home there, they don’t hear a voice that resonates with what they believe. And so it’s not the Catholic education that did that to them, it’s the fact that they got educated and didn’t find a voice in the parish communities, for the most part, that they could identify with in terms of what they know.

There are some exceptions, like Brian Joyce’s parish, Christ the King in Pleasant Hill, Dan Danielson’s out in Pleasanton, and some others. But for the most part you don’t find young people seriously interested in that because they’ve got more important things to do. And their more important thing to do isn’t to go skiing on the lake for the weekend, it’s working in different movements: peace movements, human rights, civil rights, immigration reform, the women’s movement—whatever it happens to be—so that the education is still producing fruits, it’s just that it’s a disconnect right now with typically what happens in a parish.

05a-00:23:35 LaBerge: That is really, George—and how you’ve explained that makes so much sense, because my children and most of the kids they went to school with [for] twelve years, Saint Theresa’s and Bishop O’Dowd, don’t practice Catholicism.

05a-00:23:51 Crespin: They don’t hate it, it’s just irrelevant.

05a-00:23:54 LaBerge: No. It doesn’t—it’s not relevant. It’s irrelevant. Well, let’s—you might think of more on that. Let’s move on to—the last one I’ve written down is the 66

document on the Jews. [Nostra Aetate (Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions)]

05a-00:24:10 Crespin: I think that made an impact, not so much on the ground but in the air. I think it tried to turn around the mentality, the anti-Semitic mentality latently in Catholicism about the Jews were Christ-killers. It put that one to bed, for the most part. There might be private people that still feel that way, but there’s nothing that they can find in church documents to justify that. But it didn’t really, I don’t think, create a deep rapport between Catholicism and the Jewish religion. I think even the popes have tried, in their own ways, going to Jerusalem, meeting with Israeli leaders and rabbis and so on. Well, one of the problems, I think—and history could prove me wrong here—is that there’s been a confusion in a lot of people’s minds between the Jewish religion and the state of Israel, and the Zionist movement which is so strongly anti everything but Judaism. So it’s hard for people to overcome that impression, that what the state of Israel does and what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians and all the things that the Zionist movement has produced—that those are not things we necessarily have to make peace with or defend, in terms of our relationship with the Jewish religion.

I think the intention of the document was to remind people we come out of the Jewish tradition, so much of our own worship and understanding about God and so on, comes out of the Jewish tradition. So we owe a debt of gratitude and we have a lot in common there, but the centuries have produced horrible anti-Semitism in the church itself or in Christian countries, in Germany. They had one of the most recent examples. And so it has not really borne fruit yet. I think there may, at some—we got out of the Good Friday liturgy that the faithless Jews crucified Christ, but as long as the Palestinian question is not resolved I think a lot of intelligent Christian people, Catholics and others, are not going to feel very positive about Judaism. That’s my own opinion, but that’s what I’m giving here all the time anyway. [laughing]

05a-00:27:13 LaBerge: That’s good, that’s good!

05a-00:27:20 Crespin: And there wasn’t anything besides that notable in the document. It did encourage and spawn some dialogues, and sharing of pulpits with rabbis and so on. But the rabbis were the most reluctant, I found, in my experience. I married some Catholics who were marrying a Jewish person, and they wanted a joint ceremony. We had to get permission for it, but the permission was readily given. But there weren’t too many rabbis that would be willing to be on the same stage as a Catholic priest. There was only one on the peninsula that I knew of. He was famous for being willing to do mixed weddings. But most of the rabbis—this is what the couples themselves would tell me—they went to four or five rabbis and they all said they wouldn’t touch it. So the hesitancy is also on their side as well as on— 67

05a-00:28:20 LaBerge: I’m going to fast forward.

[Tape 5: Side B]

05b-00:00:02 LaBerge: Well, why don’t we move into a different subject, and that is going back to the Diocese of Oakland, which we started to cover. You’ve said a little bit about what you were doing, that you were in the chancery and then you were—well, that’s where you were. You were in the chancery doing marriage—

05b-00:00:40 Crespin: Yes, during the sixties, most of the sixties.

05b-00:00:43 LaBerge: So tell me more about how Vatican II then impacted the diocese.

05b-00:00:49 Crespin: Okay.

05b-00:00:48 LaBerge: You’ve spoken about liturgies and about Don Osuna.

05b-00:00:55 Crespin: I’m [trying to think] where to start—our diocese, and I may have said this before. I don’t remember. Our diocese was created in the same year that the Vatican Council opened, 1962. We were in February of 1962, although actually, the formal functioning of the diocese began at the end of April in 1962, and the council began at the beginning of October. The diocese was just getting organized as Vatican II was starting. Bishop Begin was, I think, one of the few bishops that went to all the sessions and didn’t miss a single day of the hearings, so he was there the whole time and caught the whole flavor of it. I’m not sure he understood the implications of a lot of it, but he was very supportive.

And so it was possible, more possible for us as a diocese than it would have been for other dioceses, to form offices and programs coming out of the Second Vatican Council. We didn’t have to set aside things that had been in motion for decades. We were brand new and were setting up new things. So we were, early on, having an office of worship, which presided over the implementation of the liturgy. We had an office of ecumenism early on. We began with the priests’ senate Presbyteral Council. We had very early on a personnel committee that took responsibility for all the assignments, whereas before that it had just been the bishop and his one or two advisors. There was a whole flavor of something new. The diocese was new, these new insights and directives were coming. They started coming in ‘64 when the liturgy document was implemented, but then after that it was a whole succession of new directions. And we were poised, because we didn’t have any old, long 68 traditions that we had to overcome in order to start something new. I think that was one thing.

The second thing was that the bishop, deliberately or unconsciously, we never knew, appointed very young people to head up these offices. John Cummins was appointed as chancellor at the age of thirty-three. I was appointed head of the matrimonial tribunal at the age of twenty-seven. His secretary, Joe Skillin, was twenty-eight I think—twenty-seven or twenty-eight when he was appointed. Frank Maurovich eventually took over the Catholic Voice, and he was very young. So all the people, with the exception of the two vicars general, the two monsignors Connolly, John Connolly and Nick Connolly, who aren’t related except in mentality... [laughter] But everybody else, it was not only young, but kind of in sync with the thinking that was coming out of the Second Vatican Council. So it was easy to give that tone right from the beginning, and I think that was a real blessing.

So without even being self-conscious about it—and I think we were a Vatican II diocese—I think we only started using that terminology when people came and wanted to change us, but before that we just thought, isn’t the rest of the church going in this direction too? And then we found out probably not. So there was that élan, that vitality that was here. Bishop Begin wasn’t always comfortable with everything but he went along with it, and then at times even boasted about it, like the liturgy at the cathedral. Sometimes he’d have Don Osuna on the carpet Monday morning, but by Friday of that same week he was already bragging about all the things that were happening at the cathedral, so it was a mixed bag.

I’m trying to think what else significant there was. I think the other thing that was important was what was going on outside of the church. The East Bay was kind of the hotbed for a lot of the social action and social justice movements, the free speech movement [at UC Berkeley]. The civil rights movement was very active in the Bay Area, and through John Cummins we got involved in any—he got some of the rest of us involved in that movement. He’s the one that appointed Bill O’Donnell chair of the chaplains with the Catholic Interracial Council, which is the beginning of Bill’s conversion experience, and he assigned me to work with the religion and race conference, which was the local version of the civil rights effort. John also was very ecumenically minded. He was largely responsible, although he gives Begin the credit, but it was really John’s work that got the GTU, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley—he got the Catholic participation in it. There were other things going on and there was an openness to the diocesan structures being involved in these things, whereas that might not have been true in other places, but the Bay Area is such a good hothouse for a lot of that activity, and we were part of it. We weren’t on the sidelines watching, we were very much a part of it. 69

I think that shaped a lot of the diocesan thought processes—unconsciously really, because by the time—I think it was 1986 or ‘87 when we had the first diocesan pastoral council, we tried to identify the five priorities of attention for the diocese, things that the diocese was committed to and needed to work more on. And typically youth was one thing, outreach I think was another, but I don’t remember the five now. But the fifth one was a surprise to everybody, and that was social justice. It didn’t come from the clergy this time, it came from the people involved in the process. We had known social justice was important, but we didn’t realize that the people saw it as such a high priority. And that was kind of a surprise, but because it was part of the everyday rhythm of things then, we hadn’t focused on it that much—we just did it. So that was—I think that social justice, that ecumenical spirit, was very much alive.

I can’t remember if I mentioned before the dinner that the bishop sponsored, Bishop Begin. When he first arrived—he arrived in April of ‘62, and by September, prior to going to the first session of the Vatican Council, he held a dinner in the Claremont Hotel for about 450 people, protestant ministers and Jewish rabbis and their wives, and then the pastors of the diocese. It was the first ecumenical gathering that we had had here in the diocese, and it was just fortuitous that it was a social event. It was a dinner that Bishop Begin sponsored. He paid for the whole thing and invited—he got lists, I don’t know how—but he invited as many key ministers and rabbis as he could find and asked them to bring their wives along. And it was just—it opened up a sense of not only hospitality but of professional relationship I’d say, that a lot of us built on after that. There was so much goodwill created by that gesture of Begin before the Vatican Council had started, so ecumenism wasn’t really high on the agenda at that point. But it opened up the way for priests to meet with their local Protestant ministers or to be part of different groups and to start Bible reflection groups and all kinds of things that came from that. But it was just that initial gesture set a tone and then we could pick up from that.

05b-00:10:33 LaBerge: That’s kind of amazing. There are different pieces that you say about Bishop Begin, where he’s got some kind of vision but it’s almost like he was fearful to follow it too much.

05b-00:10:43 Crespin: Yes, my own instincts there, my own interpretation of that is Bishop Begin was a very decent human being with a good pastoral heart and vision, but it was all tempered by his canon law training. He studied in Rome for theology, he stayed in Rome right after his ordination to get a doctorate in canon law, and then he came back and worked in canon law after that. But he got that Roman canonical mentality that kept holding back his instinct. But when he set those to the side and just let his pastoral spirit open up he was perfect. But we were always dealing with the Jekyll and Hyde version of Begin, because sometimes it was his pastoral sense that we could easily support because he 70

had a good pastoral mind, heart. But it was always—the canon law piece was always lurking in the shadows, putting the brake on many of his instincts. So he was conflicted, I would say, but we managed, because of the way he worked, we managed to capture the good and water down the bad. [laughter]

05b-00:12:13 LaBerge: Well, tell me about the conference that you were on, on religion and race.

05b-00:12:19 Crespin: That was a national group that was set up, but we had a local branch of it. I think it was John Cummins who first was asked to go to meetings, but then quickly he asked me to help with that because there were more things to do than he could handle, and he knew that I had all kinds of free time on my hands because I was doing marriage work and that wasn’t very challenging.

So I was able to work locally, and I remember going to a couple national meetings. One was with Bill O’Donnell, where they were just trying to get the religious communities to get seriously involved with the civil rights movement, and that was the basic effort. And so it was happening at the national level and it was happening at the local level, and we were a part of that for a while. I don’t remember exactly how long it lasted—maybe five or six years. But by that time there were enough other local initiatives working either on civil rights or ecumenism, and since we were involved in both we were a part of all of that. So then we had our own versions of it, not so much dictated by the national, whatever was going on nationally, but there was enough going on locally that we could involve people, be supportive of those efforts, and try to have a voice in that whole movement, especially the civil rights movement. That was its focus. There were other things going on. There was the anti-war movement going on, anti-Vietnam, anti-nuclear. There was the support for the farm workers. That was in the mid-sixties. So there were a lot of things happening.

And the young priests particularly, I think, that were ordained in those early years came out with a great sensitivity to these social issues. Some of the pastors were supportive, others were not clear on the—I don’t want to say clear on the concept, but weren’t as supportive or didn’t really understand, and some few opposed. But I’d say that the working clergy, at least in the sense that the ones who were moving outside of the parish boundaries and working in community issues were mostly the younger ones and very actively engaged in that.

And then eventually, in the late sixties/early seventies, we began to lose a lot of the young clergy because they got disillusioned with the lack of support from the bishop or from the pastors and in some cases from the people themselves. So we lost some of our brighter lights at that point. I always had the intuition too, and I’m not even sure if I’d be willing to back it up at this point, but at the time, very self-righteously, I thought well, the social justice 71

piece is important, but if you divorce that from prayer or from spirituality, or if you get too caught up in the movement but don’t have a faith-based reason for it, then it’s very easy to become either cynical or angry when things don’t work out or when you don’t get the support. So I think several of the young priests who left were—left very disillusioned because things weren’t changing, and I think a lot of lay people went through the same thing. Some of the more committed priests—and the proof is to this day they’re still involved in social justice things, but not in the church.

05b-00:16:19 LaBerge: Yes. What about the sanctuary movement work?

05b-00:16:23 Crespin: That really began, to my knowledge, in the late seventies or the early eighties when we were engaged in exterminating people in Central America. They were fleeing for their lives, really, from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, to a certain extent from Nicaragua. And they would come up here, and with the exception of the Nicaraguans, they were here undocumented, they were here illegally. They had no place to turn except the churches, and so that’s when the churches—I think it started in Berkeley, typically, but spread throughout the area to about twenty-five or thirty churches, Catholic and Protestant, maybe Jewish also, that opened up their sanctuaries. St. Joseph the Worker, where Bill O’Donnell was a pastor at the time, it became one of the first Catholic parishes. Bill did the right thing, but probably in the wrong way. [laughter] He just declared the parish a sanctuary, and there wasn’t much consultation of the parishioners or the parish leaders. But this was the right thing to do. [laughter] So we were a sanctuary. But that movement—it was an ecumenical movement, so it came out of the ecumenical context that had been formed over the years. And one of the strongest ones was a group in Berkeley—I forget if they had a name.

05b-00:18:01 LaBerge: East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, I think. Or is that—

05b-00:18:04 Crespin: Well, that’s a place—Sister Maureen [Duignan] has been running it for twenty-five years or so, and it’s a place that’s given great service to the refugee community. It was not disconnected from, but it was separate from this group of clergy from Berkeley that used to meet every Tuesday morning to do reflections—it was called a lectionary group, I think is what it was called. But they used the same lectionary and they’d go over the readings for the following Sunday with an aim toward helping them in their preaching, but also it was a good way for people to exchange ideas and communicate with like minds. So that lasted maybe twenty years or so. Bill was very, very faithful. Every Tuesday morning. He never missed, if he was not in jail. I don’t know exactly whether out of that group came the sanctuary covenant or if that was started separately, but they were all involved in the same things, so 72

it’s sometimes hard to separate who the players were because they were involved in the same things.

05b-00:19:28 LaBerge: How did your job change from being at the marriage tribunal—and how long were you there?

05b-00:19:36 Crespin: I was there for eight years. I was assigned there in March of 1963 and was finally released in June of 1970, so it was seven years plus. I was assigned because the bishop was forming the tribunal, the marriage court. He had a priest, Ivan Parenti, who was going to be trained in canon law. He had him working there, but then he was going to send him to Rome and he wanted somebody else to be in charge while he was gone, and so I was the person designated for that purpose. So I worked at it. I didn’t really want to be there. [laughing] I told him I really didn’t want to be there. The first day I was assigned to the office he called me in. I’d already been shown my desk and the stack of work that was waiting. And he said, “Are you happy to be here?” And I said, “Well, not really.” And he said, “Do you enjoy canon law?” “Well, not really.” “Did you do well in it in the seminary?” “Not really.” “Do you think you can learn it?” “I’ll try.” “Learn it,” he said. So that was the introduction. And then about every three to six months I tried to resign, and that was where the famous “change your personality” statement—

05b-00:21:15 LaBerge: Oh yes.

05b-00:21:16 Crespin: But he wouldn’t let me. So I stayed there until finally I guess he got tired of saying no or just decided a change would be good for everybody. So he let me stay—I was in residence at Corpus Christi Parish in Piedmont. I’d been there since ‘66, but in finally 1970 he let me just stay there as associate. So I was there for a year as associate and then was assigned out to Union City as pastor. So that’s how that transition took place.

05b-00:21:53 LaBerge: Okay. So tell me about that and how long you were there in Union City. What’s the name of the parish?

05b-00:21:59 Crespin: Our Lady of the Rosary.

05b-00:21:59 LaBerge: Okay.

05b-00:22:00 Crespin: Let me just go back to one anecdote. I may have mentioned it already, but if I did, stop me. 73

While I was still in the marriage court, one of my responsibilities was to do the dispensations. Not just the big ones like the marriage annulments, but little things like special permissions to do weddings here or there, to do, as time went on, to do joint weddings. And at one point—it was early on, so I think the council was still going on, and so it must have been ‘63 or ‘64. A couple came and they wanted to be married. They’d talked to their pastor, and their pastor said it wasn’t possible. But he said you can go down to the chancery if you want, so they came. She was a Catholic and he was a Protestant. But his father was a minister, maybe Presbyterian or Congregational. They wanted the father to perform the ceremony. They’d heard stuff coming out of the Second Vatican Council, that there were going to be more ecumenical activities, and so they thought that they might be able to do that. So I said to them, “I don’t really think we can do that, but let me check with the bishop.” I went to Begin and, “Absolutely not.” So I went back and I said I’m sorry, he said no. And so they were very disappointed and said, “Can’t you, isn’t there—who else can we ask?” And I said, “Well, Rome is the only one that could give that permission.” “Can you ask Rome?” And I said, “Well, let me go back to the bishop.” So I went back to the bishop and said, “They really feel strongly about this, and they’re wondering if we couldn’t request permission from Rome.” “Oh, they’re not going to do that. That’s never going to work. I don’t even know why you’d bother, but go ahead.” So I wrote to them and explained the case. He was at the council shortly after that, so he was over—I don’t know if he went over to the office that does that. But while he was away the letter came back from the Vatican. A one-page letter in Latin, which I understood to say yes.

05b-00:24:25 LaBerge: [laughing] How well did you read Latin?

05b-00:24:26 Crespin: Well, I still was fresh with it because we had had it for ten years/twelve years in the seminary. So I read it and—it sounds like yes to me. So I called this couple and said, “We’re on. It’s a go. But just try to keep it quiet.”

05b-00:24:46 LaBerge: Don’t advertise.

05b-00:24:46 Crespin: We don’t need a lot of extra publicity on this one. “It’s just going to be the people who are there,” and so on. So they got married—

05b-00:24:59 LaBerge: And so where did it take place?

05b-00:24:58 Crespin: St. Augustine’s in Oakland. I’m not sure if it took place—yes, it took place in St. Augustine’s with the father presiding. I don’t even think there was a priest co-presiding. It was just the father. On the evening news that night there was, “Ecumenical breakthrough in Oakland! Something never heard of before—a 74

Protestant minister officiates at a wedding in a Catholic church.” And then we started getting articles from New York and from Paris—and then ultimately from Rome because it appeared in the newspapers there also. They picked it up.

Shortly after that I got a letter from the Vatican, or Bishop Begin got a letter from the Vatican, in English this time, saying “obviously you misunderstood.” But it was too late. So I was on the cusp of a—[laughter]

05b-00:26:02 LaBerge: You were on the cusp. On the cusp!

05b-00:26:03 Crespin: Unwittingly, but on the cusp. So anyway, that’s—

05b-00:26:08 LaBerge: That’s wonderful!

05b-00:26:10 Crespin: That’s just interesting, because it was noteworthy, newsworthy.

Back to Union City. I was very happy in Corpus Christi. I think that one year that I was associate there was maybe the single happiest year of my life as a priest. It was—the pastor was Pearce Donovan, who was the retired superintendent of schools. He was very conservative himself and not very engaged, but he trusted me because he liked John Cummins. He and John had worked together at O’Dowd High School, and he knew John liked me so he instinctively trusted me. So he let me do whatever I wanted there, and we were able to do some really good things. I could do these things and I didn’t have to worry about the finances and all the administration. The people were—

05b-00:27:10 LaBerge: So for instance, what—

05b-00:27:13 Crespin: For instance, remember the riots in 1968? Were they the Los Angeles riots?

05b-00:27:23 LaBerge: There were some, and also I was in Detroit and there were [riots in] Detroit also.

05b-00:27:27 Crespin: Okay, and then after that the Warren Commission was formed, and then it came out with its document about a year after that saying that we live in a racist society. And so I thought well, we need to do something locally, so I asked if it was okay, and he wasn’t sure it was going to work, but he said go ahead—Pearce Donovan—to bring together a group of blacks and whites from the parish, because we had some black doctors and professionals living there, and just to try to use the document to work through, see how much of what 75

they were saying that resonated with the experience of people. That was a very, I think a very successful effort. Some of the African American people refused to participate. They were just so hurt and so disillusioned by their experience with the church—they still went to Mass, but they said they always felt like outsiders. They told me, because I went to visit each of them individually to see if they would participate. But I got some very painful stories from people who on the surface were part of the parish, but of how they’d felt rejected at every turn. But we did that and I think it opened up some people’s minds. I left shortly after that, so we weren’t able to follow up with it.

We had some great liturgies. We had a Sister of the Immaculate Heart, Sister Margaret Stein, who was just amazing with the ability to prepare liturgies and pull them off. So we had great liturgies there during that period. But he wouldn’t have been comfortable celebrating, Monsignor Donovan, but he let me do it that whole year. I can’t remember other specifics right now, but anyway, I was very happy there and then all of a sudden Brian Joyce called me and said, “We need you to go to Union City.” And I’d never been there before.

05b-00:29:48 LaBerge: What was Brian’s position?

05b-00:29:48 Crespin: He was chancellor. He was the chancellor. And so he said, “It’s a hard place to fill. We need somebody who speaks Spanish.” And they thought I spoke Spanish more fluently than I actually did at the time, but at least I had the base so I could work with it. He said, “But there’s just one hitch. Right now the bishop is open to this, but some of his advisors are opposed to your going there because they think that you’re too young, you’re too inexperienced, you’re too independent. You’re not a team player.” And all the kinds of things that they’d picked up on. So he said, “The bishop—he’s open to naming you right now, but we’ve got to get you in his face so he can tell you. Otherwise these other people are going to get his ear and they’re going to scotch the whole deal.” So it was Holy Week, and I said, “Well, if the chancery’s closed I can’t even go down and just happen to bump into him. What do I do?” He said, “Go to his house. He lives in Piedmont.” “How do I do that?” And he said, “Make up some excuse.”

05b-00:31:12 LaBerge: Where did he live?

05b-00:31:14 Crespin: He lived on Seaview. A big mansion.

05b-00:31:16 LaBerge: Oh yes! I know how big they are. 76

05b-00:31:21 Crespin: Three sixty-five Seaview was the address. And he said what—

[Tape 6: Side A]

06a-00:00:07 LaBerge: This is tape six. So you are trying to bump into Bishop—

06a-00:00:15 Crespin: Trying to bump into the bishop. So this was Wednesday of Holy Week when Brian was having this conversation with him, Brian Joyce. And he said, “You’ve got to go to his house, because he’s not going to be back in the chancery office till Monday.” “What do I do? What do I do?” So then I remembered that I had a wedding coming up in May or June, but it was a couple who were going to get married in Sausalito or Tiburon, over there somewhere, which was the San Francisco Archdiocese. They wanted to be married outside, I think. I was going to do it without even asking permission, but I thought well, this will give me an excuse to go see him.

So I walked up to his house. It was Holy Thursday morning about eleven o’clock, and the sisters were working there. They answered the door, and I said I need to see the bishop. “Okay.” They went to get him and he came down in his bathrobe. He was relaxing. “Hi Bishop. I was just in the area and I thought I’d stop by.” [laughter] I don’t think I was very convincing, but he heard me out anyway. I said, “Well, I’ve got myself in this situation here where I committed myself to do this wedding, and I thought it was at,” oh that’s what it was. “It’s going to be in a Protestant church, but I thought it was a Catholic church, but then later I found out it’s not, but they’ve already made all the arrangements, the invitations are printed, I’ve promised them I’d marry them. Could I have your permission to go ask the Archbishop of San Francisco for permission to do that wedding?” “He won’t give it to you.” I said, “Well, could I at least try?” “Well, I’m sure he’s not going to give it to you, but you can try if you want. Oh, and by the way, I’ve been thinking that I would like to send you to Union City.” “Where was that, Bishop?” And he said, “You’re the man we want to send there.” “Well, I’m humbled, Bishop. thank you. If that’s your will, I’ll be happy to go.” So that was taken care of.

Actually, I did eventually write to Archbishop McGucken in San Francisco, asked for the permission, he granted it. [laughter] So I wound up being okay with the law anyway, on that one.

06a-00:02:49 LaBerge: Can I just ask a question on that?

06a-00:02:50 Crespin: Sure.

06a-00:02:50 LaBerge: When you were ordained did you take a vow of obedience? 77

06a-00:02:55 Crespin: That’s a promise.

06a-00:02:55 LaBerge: It’s a promise, not a vow.

06a-00:02:57 Crespin: Yes.

06a-00:02:57 LaBerge: So different from—

06a-00:02:58 Crespin: Yes. It’s a promise. You put your hands inside the bishop’s hands during the ordination ceremony and, “Do you promise me and my successors obedience?” And you say yes, because otherwise they won’t ordain you. The assumption is you’re going to obey the bishop, but it’s not a vow. It’s a big sin if you commit it, if you break it. Was that the full extent of your question?

06a-00:03:25 LaBerge: That was the question—because you had to ask permission for a lot of things.

06a-00:03:29 Crespin: Yes. We were supposed to. [laughing]

06a-00:03:32 LaBerge: And for the most part you did, and sometimes you forgot.

06a-00:03:36 Crespin: Well, like I told you before, the bishop saying, “You could have asked me if I wanted to be asked.” That kind of thing.

So I went to Union City. That was a very interesting experience on a lot of levels. I was there for eight years, and I’ve remarked repeatedly that I got twenty-five years’ experience there. It was a very exciting, difficult, painful, enriching, challenging experience. The Franciscans had been there in charge of that parish for about fifteen or twenty years, and there were five of them there, all young guys. I think the oldest was thirty-two/thirty-three, but the others were all younger. Between them they were covering the Our Lady of the Rosary Parish and St. Anne’s Parish in Alvarado, which is the other half of Union City. But they decided they wanted to pull out. They couldn’t—the pastor was leaving to get married, but they weren’t saying that at the time. Another one wanted to leave to go up to the missions. Another one wanted to leave to go study, and two more were thinking of leaving the priesthood altogether. So anyway, they couldn’t keep those people there. They had to pull them out, so they just returned the parish to the diocese.

It was all in a hurry, that’s why Brian was so concerned about getting somebody in there quickly, because they were leaving at the end of May regardless. They were very liberal. They were known throughout the south 78

county as being the most progressive church parish in the area, and so for all of them to be pulled out at the same time, it was hard for the people. And then it was even worse, because the people had, by this time, all the prejudices about—the Franciscans are the real priests and the diocesan priests are the ones only interested in money. So we came in with that understanding on the part of the people anyway. And the Franciscans weren’t totally honest—the ones there weren’t totally honest with the people about why they were leaving. They were just saying well, the diocese is concerned that we’re too progressive and they want to send somebody in to clean it up.

06a-00:06:00 LaBerge: So you came in—there you are! [laughter]

06a-00:06:03 Crespin: There I am as the great enforcer. So I came in with that atmosphere. To top it off, the week before I arrived they removed all the statues from the church and substituted a risen Christ image over the altar instead of the traditional crucified Christ. So when the people got there the first Sunday that I was there, they were shocked. They walked in, and I didn’t really know the difference because I hadn’t been there and I didn’t know—I knew something was different but I didn’t realize the full extent.

06a-00:06:45 LaBerge: And the Franciscans had done that.

06a-00:06:46 Crespin: The Franciscans had done this. They’d done that, thinking it needs to be done. We don’t want to leave that for George to do, so we’ll do it and get the blame for it but it’ll be done. And they hid all the statues, so I didn’t even know where they were. I later found out that they were in a basement somewhere. But that just provoked a tremendous negative reaction. People right away assumed that I had done that. The Franciscans were gone, so they weren’t saying anything.

I began to get a sense of the divisions in the parish; racial divisions. It was about 50/50—50 percent Spanish-speaking and 50 percent English-speaking at that time. When groups of people started coming to me and saying, English- speaking people would come, “We want you to take down that Mexican Christ from the altar.” But the Mexican people came to me and said, “We want you to take down that Anglo Christ from the altar.” So I had a sense of what was ahead in terms of the divisions.

The history there, briefly, was that Decoto, which was that part of Union City, had largely been a Spanish-speaking, small town. And then in the fifties and early sixties they started building tract homes on the periphery. So you would have a doughnut experience with the core town being largely Hispanic, but then all kinds of newcomers moving in from Oakland and other places, who quickly began to take over in terms of political office and in terms of 79

influence and all that. So the old-timers had the feeling that their town had been taken from them and to a certain extent their church too, because a lot of them didn’t identify with the more progressive things that the Franciscans were doing.

So that was the context. And it took a while—it took at least a year before I felt the people accepted me.

06a-00:08:56 LaBerge: Wow.

06a-00:09:02 Crespin: And it was just a horrendous year.

06a-00:09:05 LaBerge: Did you have help?

06a-00:09:08 Crespin: At the time I thought—there was an associate assigned with me. There were actually two: a Spaniard who was assigned to cover the Alvarado church, St. Anne’s, and so I just let him do it because I had my hands more than full with the other place; and then an associate, a young fellow, who wasn’t—he didn’t speak Spanish, which meant that he couldn’t work with half of the parish. He wasn’t that much into work. In fact, he created work for me, but that’s a whole other story that I don’t think needs to go in the book. But so there were three of us replacing five, plus all this antagonism, plus what was going on in the city at the time.

At the end of August—I got there in June—the end of August they started having a series of school board meetings, because in June—in the elections they had passed a bond issue providing for the building of a new middle school which was to be named Cesar Chavez. That was part of the bond issue, the name was. A lot of the non-Latinos were very angry at that. They didn’t like the fact that it was going to be named Cesar Chavez, and they were trying to get the building of that school canceled. They just wanted it stopped because of the name. There was clearly a need, because the community was growing very rapidly and the schools were overcrowded. So there was the need, but they were willing to let that go over the name.

So I went to one of my first school board meetings there and there must have been four or five hundred people at this meeting—it was in one of the auditoriums—where the vote was going to be taken, the discussion and the vote. And when the vote was taken, the vote was three to two in favor of not building it because of the name. At that a riot broke out in the group. They started throwing chairs up at the school board, and people were yelling and arguing. The people who had taken me to the meeting said, let’s get out of here, because it’s going to get ugly. So we left. But that was one of the tensions there in the community, the thing around the schools, and that 80

particular school and the racism that was evident in that, plus the racism in the parish itself.

It was really an awkward start, but I knew at least that I was going to have my hands full with this one. On top of that, the parish work was heavy. When I got there they passed over to me folders for twenty-four weddings that were programmed already that I had to do that summer and into the fall, most of them in Spanish. My Spanish at that point wasn’t that good. So it was torturous for everybody. Also that year between August and December six teenagers committed suicide.

06a-00:12:36 LaBerge: Oh my gosh.

06a-00:12:37 Crespin: They were unrelated, theoretically anyway. But it just seemed like every two or three weeks it was happening again, and I’d never had to deal with that before. In the month of December, twenty-two people died and had to be buried, so I was just going back and forth to the cemetery, the funeral home, the church. It was just the perfect storm. One of the fellows who committed suicide was a young eighteen-year-old Mexican who hung himself in the back yard, and his mother had found him. When I got the call I went to the house, and they were undocumented I think. They didn’t speak English, didn’t know what to do in the face of this, what the procedures are, who do you call. So I wound up staying there all night with them. The call came to me about ten o’clock at night, and I wound up staying there till eight or nine in the morning, trying to comfort them, get things going, call the police, get the... But the word of that got around. I didn’t publicize it, but it got around the community.

06a-00:13:55 LaBerge: That you had stayed.

06a-00:13:57 Crespin: Yes, yes, and so that began to open people up a little bit, and then over time it changed completely. But that was a turning point, I think, for me.

In the course of the time there we had a series of crises. One was the water company that served Union City was based in Connecticut I think, or Rhode Island, some place on the East Coast. The water was horrible. It smelled bad. It made old people and babies sick with diarrhea. You’d pour it in a glass and you couldn’t see through the glass. It was filmy. And so we got a campaign going and we got the State Department of Health to come and check it out. And they took it and analyzed it and then came back to us and said, “Yes, well it smells bad and it tastes bad and it might make some people sick, but it’s not unhealthy. So you just have to live with it.” So then we started a campaign to buy out that company so that we could connect to EBMUD [East Bay Municipal Utility District], which was obviously better. But that took about a year’s work of organizing, but we were able to do that. 81

06a-00:15:16 LaBerge: So you and other churches? Or you and...

06a-00:15:19 Crespin: We were really the only church in town. There were two or three small Baptist churches, but there weren’t any of the major churches. There was just a coalition of community people.

In 1974—I got there in 1971—in 1974 a young Mexican fellow, [a crow caws in the background] probably about twenty-seven/twenty-eight, was shot and killed by a policeman. He had taken a canned ham out of one of the local grocery stores and was trying to steal it. The owner ran out after him and there was a policeman close by and followed him, and trapped him in a trailer court. The guy ran in the trailer court thinking there was an exit at the other end, but there wasn’t. And so he was trapped and the policeman shot him. He wasn’t armed. And so that created a huge furor. There weren’t good relationships between the police and the community anyway. Out of a thirty-two person force one person kind of spoke Spanish, with 50 percent of the community being Spanish-speaking and many of them monolingual. So this set off a huge furor and demands for a grand jury investigation, because the police department kind of whitewashed it. They said he was acting within procedures. And so then we asked for a grand jury investigation and they said it was within the regulations. So there was great frustration in the community. They burned down a couple of houses out of anger.

The police chief, who was new, Bill Cann, William [M.] Cann, C-A-N-N was out of Boston and an Irish Catholic. A young fellow. He was thirty-two years old and this was his first job as a police chief, and he was very open and very honest. We developed a close relationship. When he was feeling pressure or stress he would call me up and say, “What are you doing, Father?” And I’d say, “Well, I’m just here.” “Do you want to take a ride?” And his way of getting stuff out was to drive around and talk while he was driving. So he did that several times and we developed a good relationship. When all this was happening he called me and said, “Do we need to do something? We can’t just let the community come apart on this issue. Can we do something?” “I don’t know—I’d be happy to host a meeting at the parish if you want to come here and talk, and we invite the community to come and see what we can do.” And he said, “Oh, that’s a great idea.” So he agreed to it—I forget who actually had the idea, but in the conversation it came up. And so we set a meeting for June 11, 1974.

06a-00:18:40 LaBerge: How do you remember that date?

06a-00:18:43 Crespin: Well, because of what happened. I’m not all that good at—but I have some dates clear in my head. It was in the parish hall. We only announced it in the parish bulletin. Eventually somebody picked it up in the local newspaper. But 82

it was a community meeting to talk about the relationship with the police department, and so on. We didn’t want outsiders coming, because there were a lot of other things happening in the Bay Area. The Patty Hearst thing was going on right around that time, and what was the organization?

06a-00:19:17 LaBerge: Yes, the SLA [Symbionese Liberation Army].

06a-00:19:19 Crespin: The SLA, yes. And we didn’t want people from Berkeley or Oakland coming to our meeting because our problem was very local. So we kept it reasonably quiet but had the meeting. About a hundred people showed up that night. And he came. He came by himself, dressed in his suit. I found out later that he had told the other police officers who worked that area, “I’m going to be there, but I want to be alone. I’m not going to take a revolver or anything. I want people to know I come in peace. And I don’t want any of you there. So just know that I’m going to be there and we’re having this meeting, but I don’t want anybody there.”

So we had the meeting. We started it and right away there was a lot of anger, especially from the Latino community, about what was going on, the way they were being treated by the police. I was just sitting there and he was up at the microphone taking the questions and so on. And at one point the meeting got so out of hand they weren’t letting him answer. They were yelling and interrupting him, and so I got up and stood next to him and said, “We’ve got to make some progress here and we’re not letting him talk. We’re not trying to get any real conversation going. So from now on, I’m going to decide who’s going to speak. So if you want to speak, raise your hand and I’ll point to you and let you have the floor.” And so we went that way for a while and it kind of calmed down a little bit, but there was still a lot of tension in the room.

And then all of a sudden I hear four pops—pop, pop, pop, pop. And I—it was June, so it was before the Fourth of July. I thought maybe it was some firecrackers, they had firecrackers. I was standing right next—the chief was here and I was right here next to him. He fell back, on his back, and then people were screaming and yelling and telling me, “Get down, Father. Get down, Father.” So I went down on the floor not quite sure why, but I went down. And then I heard a couple more bullets and then raised my head, and I saw he was lying there with his eyes open and he was bleeding from the neck. And so then I wasn’t quite sure what to do, and somebody came up to me, “Shouldn’t he be anointed?” “Oh yes.” So I asked somebody to call the police. I don’t even think they had 911 at that time, and it took a while for them to get there. I went over to the house and got the oils, came back and anointed him, and then found out that four other people had been shot. They were in the line of fire. 83

By that time the police were crawling all over the place. They took him in an ambulance. He was alive but unconscious, and in reality he never regained consciousness. He lasted for about three months in intensive care but then died. I think he got pneumonia, but he never regained consciousness. It was just—it was a horrendous thing, first of all, trying to figure out who would have done that. We found out that they had shot from outside the hall, through a window and across the hall—he was standing at the opposite wall, and they shot him. And later, years later, I found out when they had a trial for somebody that they had discussed whether they should kill me too or not, because I was obviously in cahoots with the police. They had a discussion about that, but then finally somebody persuaded them—“No, we just want the cop.” Otherwise you’d be doing this by yourself today. So it was just a nightmare. Then the next thing that happened—

06a-00:23:19 LaBerge: And what about the other people?

06a-00:23:22 Crespin: The other people, they all wound up in the hospital. None of the injuries were permanent, but a couple of them were in the hospital for about a week, shot in the shoulder or in the leg, just because they had their backs to where the shooting was coming from and were right in the line of fire.

So in addition, the next day, to dealing with all the press and the TV, the police wanted all kinds of explanation as to why we had the meeting and who knew. But in the community there was just a lot of anger. The Anglos were furious that somebody, they presumed Mexican, had killed the chief or shot at the chief. The Latino population was just horribly embarrassed and afraid of what might be the reaction. And so there was the need to try to calm down that situation. So it was a couple of weeks out of hell, and that’s why I remember the date.

06a-00:24:32 LaBerge: I see that. I can see that.

06a-00:24:37 Crespin: After a few months—he died in September, I think, and was buried. He was married with three kids, three small kids. I tried to be helpful to his wife, but she was so angry at me because I obviously got him into this, that she wouldn’t talk to me. She didn’t want me at the funeral. She wanted no contact whatsoever, and then she eventually moved out of Union City. But it was a very painful experience. So that’s why I say that in eight years I got twenty- five years’ experience.

06a-00:25:13 LaBerge: Oh my gosh, both because you were trying to make the situation better, and it must have been scary too, just plain old scary. 84

06a-00:25:22 Crespin: Well, it was once I realized how seriously some of the people were taking it. But I think that whole experience shocked the community, and things quieted down after that. There weren’t the angry demonstrations or any outbreaks— people just couldn’t believe that this had happened in their midst, and then more so after he died finally. So there was that.

06a-00:25:52 LaBerge: And it happened at church too, that’s another—

06a-00:25:51 Crespin: At the church hall. Yes, so it—

And then the other memorable—there were some more, but [the other] memorable experience was the school. We had a parish school which was installed at Bishop Begin’s insistence over the objections of the priest—it was the Franciscans still at the time, and the people. They didn’t want a school. They were happy without it. They didn’t want the burden, they didn’t want the divisions that come when you get the school families and the parish families. That kind of thing. And they escaped that, but he insisted. They stalled him as long as they could, and then finally it looked like he was very serious and they said, “Well, we don’t have any nuns.” “I’ll get you nuns.” So he brought some Franciscan nuns from Malta, who spoke English—somewhat—and who were very old school in terms of their teaching methods and their discipline and all the rest. But the people there kind of liked that. [laughter] It was an Italian I couldn’t understand.

But it really did divide the parish, those who were pro-school and those who were against the school. And that was very clearly marked—more so than I think in a lot of other places where the school has always been there and it’s just something people accept. They might like it or may want to send their kids or may not. But here—it wasn’t there and it was imposed from outside. And then—so the leadership, the parish leadership was very anti-school, everybody on the parish council and the chief leadership. So the school had its own, went its own way. I tried to connect with it, and I connected with the sisters. I had a good relationship with them, but at times not a very good relationship with the parents, because they thought that I had been sent there to close the school—another one of the rumors that had circulated before I got there.

I forget what year it was. It might have been 1975, I guess, because it happened a year after the shooting, the mother general came from Malta to live with the sisters at the convent there, because she felt—she got word that they were becoming too Americanized. They had been here in this country for twelve years, so you’d hope they had [been] a little bit Americanized. But she saw that as a bad thing and that they were becoming too independent and thinking too independently. And they were the most submissive women, but it all depends where your starting point is. So she came and lived with them 85

from about January through June, which created a living hell for them, because they were being watched at every moment and they were feeling under the microscope. They all lost weight. One almost had a nervous breakdown. One of them left. We had seven or eight nuns there, so it was a good group. By June she decided, after school was out, so it must have been the fifteenth or twentieth of June, she decided that she was going to pull them out. So she did. She picked up all her nuns and went home to Malta, left me with a school—

06a-00:29:41 LaBerge: And no nuns.

06a-00:29:42 Crespin: And no faculty—nobody. So I had to scramble to see what we were going to do. Fortunately for me, unfortunately for her, Sister Celestine Mary [O’Brien]—I don’t know if you would have known her, a Holy Names sister. She taught for years at St. Francis de Sales. She was the principal there but had—I don’t know if they closed the school or she just was burned out —but she was really tired. She was looking for a year’s rest. But when she heard about my plight she said, I’ll come and I’ll run your school for you. So she came mid-July and assembled a faculty and was ready to go in September and did. But it was just an awful year for her because she really didn’t need that. She was tired. She was kind of burned out, and to have all the hassles of a school where you’ve got no living memory of what happened there—

06a-00:30:46 LaBerge: So did she bring nuns or lay faculty?

06a-00:30:49 Crespin: No, no. It was all lay faculty.

[Tape 6: Side B]

06b-00:00:00 LaBerge: So the school functioned then, for the next year, with lay faculty. And how did that work with the community?

06b-00:00:40 Crespin: Well, the old divisions were still there of people pro or con the school. Clearly, starting with a whole new faculty and no memory, no living memory, they had their bumpy moments. And by January or February she was ready to either quit or attack anybody who didn’t like what was happening. So she left at the end of that year and just barely made it. And then I got a former nun, former Holy Names [nun] that I’d known from before, and she came but she had never been principal before. She survived two years and they weren’t fun, by any means. But she survived. But at the end of the second year she said, “I can’t do this anymore.” 86

So then I hired a third principal, a man who came highly recommended by the school department and the resume looked good. I didn’t know what to look for. I’m not an educator, I was just looking for somebody who looked like he or she could handle the job, which was not easy. I hired him and we got started. He had a great reputation of being strict, of keeping the yard clean. By January—I went away right after Christmas, and when I came back I was accosted by the whole faculty, but one by one. They didn’t come as a group. They came one by one and said, “If that man stays another year, I’m leaving.” And it was unanimous. There wasn’t anyone that was saying no, I don’t agree with that. So I began to explore and the more I found out, the more—he was not an educator. He had no idea about curriculum; he had no idea about management of the school. What he was good at was discipline. The parents wanted that, they liked that, but that was about the only saving feature. So I consulted with the school department and they said, “Well, fire him. Don’t renew his contract,” is what they said. So it came March and I told him, “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to renew your contract.” And he came back at me and he said, “But it’s a two-year contract.” And I said, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” So I went back to the school department and said, “Now what do I do?” “Break it. Break the contract.” “Are you sure I can do that?” “Yes.” So I went back and said I’m going to break it. “I’m going to sue.” Then I went back and said, “He’s going to sue. What do we do?” “We’ll fight it out.”

So in the meantime, he had pretty much told the school board and the parent community that I was trying to close the school, and that it had nothing to do with him. So they all turned against me, clearly. And once he decided to appeal my breaking the contract, there was a procedure where the local school board initially hears the case and makes a judgment whether the contract can be broken or not. And then if it’s appealed it goes to a group from local Catholic school districts in the area—not even just in the diocese. So it went to the school board and they supported him. I think it was five to two or six to two. There were two people who were supporting my position, both of whom were women who were active in the parish. And they got accused of sleeping with the pastor and that’s why they voted—yes, it got to that level! It was really nasty and they took a lot of abuse. But eventually it got up there. They supported him. And so I appealed to the next level, and after the next level had its hearings—and all this took several weeks—they came back to me and they said, “You’re right. He’s incompetent, but you can’t fire him.” And I said, “Okay. Now what do I do?” So then I went to the bishop and said to him [that] this was an untenable situation. “I’ve got the whole parent community against me.”

06b-00:05:37 LaBerge: And the faculty’s going to leave.

06b-00:05:37 Crespin: And the faculty’s going to leave—and they did. They all left. “So he’s going to have to have a whole new faculty. It’s going to be very ugly. I don’t have 87

any credibility in that community anymore, in that school community. So I’m backing off from the school.” “You can’t do that,” said the bishop to me. I said, “Well, I don’t know what else to do.” He said, “Well, I’ll remove you from the parish.” I said, “No, that’s not what I have in mind. I don’t want to be removed from the parish, I just want to be removed from the school.” So after going back and forth we finally agreed that I would obviously, as pastor, still stay as the one in charge of the school, but I would appoint the associate to be my representative to the school and he would do all the stuff, report to me. So that seemed to work out. The associate that I had at the time was a priest by the name of Steve Kiesle. I don’t know if you know that name.

06b-00:06:37 LaBerge: No.

06b-00:06:40 Crespin: Anyway. It worked for a year and then I burned out, so I asked for a sabbatical leave to go regroup. I went off to Notre Dame for a year, 1977 to ‘78 and really got my energies back. He stayed in charge of the school and the parish while I was gone. I came back in June of 1978 and right away he said, the associate said to me, “I need a vacation. I need to get out of here.” So he took off the day after I got there. And the week after he left, the police came to me and said, “Where’s Father Kiesle?” And I said, “Well, he’s away.” “Do you know where he is?” “No, I have no idea.” “Why? Is there something I can help you with?” And they said, “Well, we have reports that he abused children these last few months and we have a warrant out for his arrest.” So it turns out that he had molested about six kids. They were all altar servers from the parish. Fortunately, one of the kids was the son of an Alameda County sheriff, so when the father found out about that then he got all of that stuff going. So it was all in motion before I got home.

And then eventually I was able to get hold of him through the—he was on vacation. He had gone to the East Coast with two kids. So through the mother of one of them, I was able to track him down and just tell her that when you know he’s going to come and drop off the kids—they were two brothers—I want to be there, because I don’t want him to know what’s going on. So we worked it that way, and I told him what was coming down. So I said, “I’d prefer that you not come back to the rectory, because I don’t want the police coming to the rectory and taking you out in handcuffs from there. That’s not going to be helpful to anybody. So I think you should turn yourself in, but I don’t know what’s going to happen after that.” That’s what ultimately happened.

06b-00:09:16 LaBerge: He turned himself in.

06b-00:09:17 Crespin: He turned himself in, yes. But then—of course, it was dealing with all of the upset in the parish. Not only the parents of these kids, some of whom were 88

very angry—to this day. And then the rest of the parish wondering—it was not an easy thing to deal with. So within six months, I was back to being burned out again. Back to where I had started.

06b-00:09:46 LaBerge: Oh my gosh! You had everything coming at you.

06b-00:09:50 Crespin: A little bit, a little bit.

06b-00:09:52 LaBerge: And that was early—as far as the subject of abuse coming up in public, that was early.

06b-00:09:54 Crespin: It was before it began to be publicized. And it made the papers, so it was all over the press, and so unusual at that time. People thought of that as exceptional, and we found out later that it was more common than we had hoped. He eventually—he got off fairly easy. I think he had three years probation I think is what he got. He didn’t have to do jail time for that. But he never came back to the parish and everything just kept going. But by that time—John Cummins was the bishop by that time, and I went to him and I said, “I need to get out of here. I pretty much, when I took the sabbatical, thought I’d come back and spend the rest of my life there. I really loved the community and the parish. And I got back to the place where I was, and I don’t like that place, so I need to get out.” So he said okay. And I said, “Just as long as it’s not a big parish, anything you want is fine. I don’t want to go to a big place now.” Well, being at the chancery office as chancellor, which was not a big parish, but it brought its own consequences.

06b-00:11:16 LaBerge: Why don’t we—

06b-00:11:18 Crespin: Stop here.

06b-00:11:19 LaBerge: Yes, and start with that and then how John became bishop too.

06b-00:11:23 Crespin: Okay.

06b-00:11:27 LaBerge: If you think of another—you’ve said a lot about that parish. If there are any other issues—I guess you’ve probably said the biggest ones—we could do that.

06b-00:11:38 Crespin: Yes, I can’t—those are the major crises there. 89

06b-00:11:44 LaBerge: Wow. Okay. I’ll turn this off. 90 91

Interview #4: May 10, 2013

[Tape 7: Side A] [beginning of recording omitted from transcript]

07a-00:01:47 Crespin: —and so they sacramentally, they had group penance services every Saturday, one in English and one in Spanish. People came, not only from the parish but from the surrounding region, because it was the only parish offering the group penance rite of reconciliation. The music was very contemporary and the spirit was really very joyful, both in the English Masses and in the Spanish Masses. There was some tension in the parish between the two cultures, a little bit of resentment I think on the part of the Spanish-speaking that the English- speaking were taking over the parish. Just the same thing as was happening in the city. And the English-speaking not understanding why the Spanish- speaking couldn’t learn English and have everything in English. But I kind of dealt with that and it was kind of exciting.

We didn’t have a lot of money, so I was able to form a pastoral team and quite a large one—I think nine or ten on the staff—but it was mostly either with volunteer or cut-rate prices, so that I had, at one time I had four sisters working there, two Holy Names, one Dominican, and one Immaculate Heart.

07a-00:03:27 LaBerge: As your team, not as teachers.

07a-00:03:29 Crespin: As part of the team, they were part of the pastoral team. I had a deacon candidate—was he a deacon yet? He was already a deacon— a deacon who was retired and independently wealthy, so I didn’t have to pay him. The sisters came as gifts from their communities, so that as long as I covered their health benefits I think, and maybe some stipend, they didn’t need regular salaries. And that’s the only way we could have made it. But we did have [a] fairly large team. So we were trying to develop a sense of team and it wasn’t easy. It was hard, really, because all of us, whether religious or lay or clerics, have been trained in a very individualistic mode, and to try to develop a team sense and a team working arrangement was not easy. We all believed in it, so we worked at it, but it wasn’t easy.

07a-00:04:46 LaBerge: How did you come up with the idea, since you hadn’t done that before?

07a-00:04:49 Crespin: It was kind of—it was—I don’t know where I—there were some of the more advanced parishes, both locally and nationally, who were trying to use that model. And it seemed to make the most sense. I accepted it only reluctantly, personally, because I like doing all the different things in the parish. I like being part of the CCD [Confraternity of Christian Doctrine] and being part of visiting the sick. And quickly, it became clear to me that if it was going to depend on me, or if most of it was going to fall on my shoulders, most of it 92

wasn’t going to get done. There was just too much work. And so for pragmatic reasons I accepted it, even though for intellectual reasons I had already bought into the concept.

But it was at the point where staff meetings were very painful things. We kept up to date on what was going on in the different sectors. We had—everything we had to do we did in duplicate, one in English and one in Spanish. So we had an English CCD, Spanish CCD, an English liturgy committee, Spanish liturgy committee. At one point I added up all the groups and committees that we had and there were close to sixty. And there was a staff member attached to each of those groups, and so obviously some staff members had two or three or four different groups that they were responsible for. So there was a lot going on and it was hard to keep on top of it all. Sometimes I despaired of it and sometimes it was working well. And then each of the staff members, especially the sisters, felt that their projects had priority.

07a-00:06:52 LaBerge: Yes.

07a-00:06:52 Crespin: And they wanted the priest to be there. I remember one telling me, “Just slow down, George. You’re working too hard. You’re going to burn yourself out. You’ve got to slow down and you’ve got to stop doing some of the stuff that you’re doing.” I said. “Okay. I’ll stop being present at your activities.” “No, no, that’s not what I had in mind.” [laughter] So it was just interesting. We all grew through the experience and a lot of tears—we had brought in facilitating experts to try to help us to get through some of the roadblocks, and we worked at it and I think we were reasonably successful given the time. This was the mid-seventies, again. But it was a challenge.

One of the sisters was the one who just said to me, and I may have mentioned this last week, that, “It’s just so demeaning for me,” she was in charge of visiting the sick, “to go and be with the sick and go through all of their pain and their suffering and their doubt and their insecurity. But then when the time comes for anointing them, I have to call you to come in, who don’t even know these people maybe, and I’ve spent hours with them. And yet I can’t do what they really need at that moment. I have to call Superman in.” Another one of the sisters—they were all very progressive and early feminists, one of them said to me at one point, “I hate you.” And I said to her, “Well, I can think of several reasons why that might be true, but tell me yours.” [laughter] And she said, “I hate you because you can say Mass and I can’t.” And I said, “Well, some things I could maybe correct, but that one I can’t do much about.” And she didn’t talk to me for about a month. She was that offended by the thought. And then finally after about a month she came back to me and said, “I’m not mad at you anymore.” “Oh, oh good. What brought about that change?” And she said, “Well, I just got to thinking, and I wouldn’t want to get up to say the 93

six-thirty Mass every morning.” So it was that simple, but that’s the level at which we were operating.

So we worked, we had staff meetings on a regular basis and staff retreats, and the things that are reasonably common now, although I think some of those things are disappearing again, but at least we were working at it. The people, for the most part, got used to the fact that they were going to be dealing with whoever on the staff was in charge of that area, rather than with the priest. The tendency—because it was a progressive parish, but the people were not visionary thinkers. They were just trying to live their lives.

07a-00:09:51 LaBerge: About how many parishioners?

07a-00:09:50 Crespin: We used to get about, I think, eighteen hundred people at Mass on the weekend. We had two Spanish Masses, and the main one was full, and that would have been about seven or eight hundred. The main English Mass was full. And then we had other Masses Saturday evening and Sunday. I think between eighteen hundred and two thousand on the weekend. It was hard to talk about registration, because the Latino people don’t register.

07a-00:10:35 LaBerge: Yes, yes.

07a-00:10:37 Crespin: [laughing] Not only do they not use the envelopes, they don’t register either. And with a lot of them there was the suspicion—they don’t give their names to anybody because of the immigration problems that they’re worried about. So I didn’t insist on that. You couldn’t very easily. But we had lay people preaching, at a time when we could get away with it. [laughing] And just, I thought, a very vibrant parish experience. We were one of the first parishes to have a deacon working both liturgically and then pastorally in the parish. And then our liturgical celebrations were very well done. We had good liturgy people, both from the parish and then leadership from the staff that prepared exciting liturgies. So we were in that initial thrust of trying to bring the parish alive, trying to get as much participation as we could from the people and then develop lay leadership and all that kind of thing. I think we succeeded fairly well, given the resources and given the fact that everything had to be done in duplicate. So it was a very heavy thing.

We also, in the Spanish-speaking part of the parish started working with the base communities, the comunidades de base, which had come up from Latin America. And we were, I think, doing well. One of the sisters took responsibility for that in the Spanish-speaking community and she kept it going, because it needs constant nourishing. You just can’t have a meeting once every two weeks or once a month and think that it will go on. So that was successful, I think. And then we also started working in PICO [Pacific 94

Institute for Community Organization], the community-organizing group. We were one of the first parishes to be involved, certainly in the South County, in terms of trying to put the faith movement to work in the social arena.

07a-00:12:52 LaBerge: What does PICO stand for?

07a-00:12:55 Crespin: Pacific Institute for Community [Organization], I think. It’s very active in this diocese to this day. OCO [Oakland Community Organizations] in Oakland is part of that. BOCA [Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action] in Berkeley, CCISCO [Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization] out where I am, in Richmond. COR [Congregations Organizing for Renewal] down in Hayward. There may be other expressions. But it’s a great instrument for social justice action and for community involvement, and for relating the local parish to the wider community. Most often it’s ecumenical. There in our place we were really the only mainline church in town. There were a couple of fundamentalist, small storefront places, and there was one very Southern Baptist Church, but there wasn’t much else, so that we were pretty much the ones behind that whole effort there. I’m sure I’m going to think of something else later.

But I think our parish council was very active, good leadership, very visionary. Not just worried about the bathrooms in the hall and that kind of thing, but they were really trying a new direction.

07a-00:14:19 LaBerge: Yes, and was it mixed Spanish- and English-speaking?

07a-00:14:23 Crespin: That one was bilingual. There were usually some bridge people from the Spanish-speaking community who spoke enough English to be able to participate. We did, I think—I can’t really remember now whether we had a smaller subgroup, just Spanish-speaking that would feed into the parish council but could discuss the issues in Spanish. Because their issues often were not the same as the issues of the wider parish community, so sometimes they needed a forum for that. We had a lot of leadership training and a lot of workshops. We sent people to workshops and things, so that I think we had a fairly intelligent and, for the time, sophisticated lay leadership in the parish, and that’s what made it work. And it was at that time when we were setting up—some of them were already set up when I got there—but the sacramental preparation programs, the baptismal, the marriage preparation, the other things. They were very active and well done. I think I can close that piece.

It was one of the hugging-est parishes I think that I’ve ever been in! [laughter] And in the English-speaking community as well as in the Spanish-speaking. People would stand outside the church afterwards and greet each other, and they would do it across cultural lines, because the Spanish Mass was at ten 95

and the English Mass was at eleven fifteen or eleven thirty. So as people were coming out of the Spanish Mass the English-speaking were arriving. A lot of them knew each other because they were neighbors and this kind of thing. So there was a lot of good interaction. We did do a series shortly after I arrived there, trying to explain the Latino culture and the principal values to the English-speaking, so that they wouldn’t be so threatened by the unknown, which is what always creates a problem. And it was reasonably successful. And then the English-speaking was, “Well, why don’t you have a series for the Spanish-speaking on what the English culture...” I said, “Well, they have to live in it every day and they’re experiencing it fairly consistently.” But we did some modest efforts there. The one thing we didn’t have much of was ecumenical action, because of the reasons I’ve mentioned. But at every other level it was good.

07a-00:17:05 LaBerge: There was a lot going on there.

07a-00:17:08 Crespin: Yes, it was busy. That’s why I said I got twenty-five years’ experience in eight years! We had Bible study groups and some family support groups and all kinds of other things that I can’t even remember now. I remember saying at one point, to the heads of the different committees and groups, that I was feeling guilty that I was spending a lot of time with the un-churched, the couples that would come for baptism or for marriage who were not practicing at all, and saying to them, “Am I neglecting these existing operations by spending so much time with them?” “No, no. We’re doing fine. You take care of those that aren’t connected in.” So everything—it wasn’t perfect, but I think people had a good liturgical experience and a good community experience of parish.

Those that would move away, be transferred in their jobs or something, they would come back to visit or write and say, “You spoiled us, because we’ve never been able to find a community like that.” So that was satisfying to know, that they got the experience. It was kind of heartbreaking to see that they weren’t going to find it in too many other places. But I just felt that— well, it may not exist everywhere or even in most places, but at least they’ve had a taste of what it’s really supposed to be all about, the parish as community and as a community that reaches out. I think at that level we succeeded, with all the problems, the sex abuse thing being the real heartbreaker at the end of my time there anyway. But it was a good experience.

07a-00:19:09 LaBerge: Where did you find a group for yourself? Like now that you have a group of priests that you meet with, like a support group. Or was it the pastoral team?

07a-00:19:19 Crespin: No. [laughing] 96

07a-00:19:21 LaBerge: I wouldn’t think so. But I thought I would just—

07a-00:19:25 Crespin: We all had very different expectations of what being a pastoral team meant, and it was a constant source of conflict, because some people needed it to be their personal support group and other people needed it to be their professional support group, and other people just needed to have some place to check in and get maybe some assistance or support for their activities. We never really solved that one, because people had different expectations.

I personally, I belong to a support group, the group that I presently am involved with, for forty-seven years. So since the sixties I’ve been part of a Jesus Caritas [Fraternity of Priests] group, and that’s been consistent. I did take a sabbatical from it during the years at Union City, because I was constantly in conflict with one of the other people and just would come away angry rather than supported. And at one point, when I thought he had crossed the line, I just said to the group, “Well, I can’t continue this way. Either he goes or I go.” And they said, “Bye. He needs us more than you do. So bye.” But after about—it was about three years, I really missed the support and needed it, so then I swallowed my pride and went back and said, “Can I come back?” So it’s been fine ever since. But that was the chief support. There were families in the parish that I got close to, and they were very supportive. But I didn’t talk to them about the stuff that was going on in the parish, because you can’t do that. So I needed to be outside of the parish for that. I think—

07a-00:21:23 LaBerge: That’s it. So during the time you were there is when John Cummins was appointed bishop?

07a-00:21:28 Crespin: Yes. He was sent to Sacramento, to the California Catholic Conference, he was the first executive secretary of the conference. I think that was in ‘68 or ‘69, and then while he was there he was made auxiliary bishop in Sacramento. And then [Bishop] Begin’s time for retirement was looming and he wasn’t happy about it because he didn’t really want to retire, but he was going to be turning seventy-five in the early part of May right around this time in 1977. In the last three or four months before his retirement he developed brain cancer and so was basically not functional towards the end. But the date had been set—I think May 3 or May 4, something like that, was the date for his retirement to become effective and for a new bishop to be appointed.

John Cummins got the word that he was going to be the new bishop, he was coming back. But Begin never knew that, because even—John, the last time he saw Begin, John knew he was coming. Begin didn’t know who was coming, and John had been sworn to secrecy, so he didn’t tell Begin that at the last visit, and then Begin died a couple of days later. But miraculously, the timing that had been worked out anyway is the time right around his death. So 97

John arrived in 1977, and I remember getting a call from Don Osuna on a Tuesday morning, so it must have been late April. He said, “We’ve got a new bishop.” I said, “Who is it?” He said, “John Cummins.” “Oh, thank God!”

But I was thinking selfishly, because I had wanted to take a sabbatical. I was pretty burned out at that point and wanting to take a sabbatical. There was a program at Notre Dame that I wanted to go to, and I’d asked Bishop Begin for permission to go and he refused it. His statement was, “If God wanted us to take sabbaticals, he would have provided for that. But this is just the devil wanting to get you away from your work.” So he said no. But knowing that he was going to be retiring I applied anyway and I thought well, by that time, the time I have to make a down payment or something, he won’t be the bishop anymore. And then when it was John, the first thing I said when I called him to congratulate him that morning—

07a-00:24:18 LaBerge: Congratulations, and by the way—

07a-00:24:21 Crespin: Yes, “Can I go ahead with my plan?” “Oh sure, yes, fine.” [laughter] So that’s why I remember so clearly the transition there. So the transition was smooth because John knew everybody. John was coming home, and so John knew everybody. Brian Joyce was the chancellor, and he’d worked with Bishop Begin—worked with is kind of a positive expression of what actually—he was very good, but he was limited in what he could do, because he had to bring Bishop Begin along and that wasn’t always easy, but he did a really good job. And he was really, then, delighted when John Cummins was named, because he thought finally, because he and John were good friends. They’d go golfing and skiing and all kinds of things together. But then they found out they couldn’t work together.

07a-00:25:19 LaBerge: Really!

07a-00:25:23 Crespin: Yes. Early on it became clear to both of them, although they couldn’t talk about it with each other. But since I was good friends with both of them I’d hear from John that it was just, “Brian’s style is not my style. I’m not sure it’s working very well.” And Brian would come and say, “I’m so frustrated. I was looking forward to this and I find I can’t get anything to move.” And so I kept pleading with the two of them—“Talk to each other. Sit down.” But they’re both Irish and they couldn’t do that very well. So then, eventually—well, I went away on a sabbatical for a year, came back. It was still working, but both of them visited me in Notre Dame separately and had the same complaints. “Well, if you can’t resolve it, there’s nothing I can do from here.” Then I came back, hoping to stay at Union City—I just thought the rest of my life I thought I would be—and then it all exploded again with the sex abuse thing. That was Steve Kiesle. 98

By October—I’d come back in June—but by October I was pretty much burned out again, so I went to John and I said, “I need to get out of here. I don’t care where you send me, just not too big a parish. I’m not ready for a big thing right now,” because I think All Saints in Hayward was coming open and I didn’t think I wanted or could, actually, deal with that. Anyway, he said, “Well, I’ve got something else in mind. Chancellor.” I said, “We’ve got Brian.” He said, “Well, I’m thinking that maybe he might be able to thrive better in a parish setting anyway.” So he, several months in advance, told me that I would be coming to the chancery office probably in the spring, May or June of ‘79 now, because I came back in ‘78, so ‘79. It turns out there was just a comedy of errors. John had the place picked out where he wanted Brian to go, which was Saint Monica’s in Moraga, but he waited too long. Brian was normally the one that worked on the changes, but John couldn’t have him do that one. [laughing]

So when everything was ready to move and I had been told and Brian knew that I was coming in as chancellor—but he didn’t know where he was going. Well, actually, he found out by rumor that I was coming as chancellor and he called me and he said, “George, I’m hearing these rumors. Is this true?” And I said, “John hasn’t said anything to you?” And he said, “No.” I said, “Well, this is what I know.” So at the time when it would have been appropriate to announce that Brian was leaving the chancery and going to a parish, the pastor of Moraga was in Europe on an extended trip and John couldn’t get hold of him, so he couldn’t notify the pastor that he was being moved to another place, and so therefore couldn’t announce that Brian was going to Saint Monica’s. And also, as a result, couldn’t announce that I was taking Brian’s place. [laughing]

So it was just a chain of unfortunate events. So I left Union City telling people that I couldn’t tell them where I was going. He left the chancery office not sure of where he was going, and then it all worked itself out, but it was a problem that should not have existed. And I swore to myself, as I went in to do that job, I’m not going to let this happen. I’m not going to keep people in the dark. And for the most part I think I did. There were some times when you couldn’t put all the pieces together at the same time, but that’s how I got into the chancery.

07a-00:29:39 LaBerge: Two things—one, if this isn’t appropriate, say so. How then did Bishop John and Brian get along after that?

07a-00:29:53 Crespin: Famously.

07a-00:29:53 LaBerge: Because they are friends—sometimes friends can’t work together. They do other things, where one has to be boss or— 99

07a-00:30:00 Crespin: They both have tremendous mutual respect for each other. They’re good friends, they’ve continued to travel together and to play golf and go skiing and all the rest, but it’s just that one piece where they have different working styles.

So it just—and my style blended in better with John’s style, and I could figure out pretty much how he wanted to work and it wasn’t a problem for me. I don’t even know if I should say this—John’s style was he needed to make the last, the final decision on things. He also has famously had great problems making decisions. [laughter] So I think that’s one of the things that may have frustrated Brian, that Brian’s a man of action and couldn’t get answers. I knew John and had worked with him before. Not as closely as we did when I was chancellor, but I could work with that style and get things done. I knew when I could go ahead and do things, and I knew when I had to check with him and make sure he was on board with it.

The difficult decisions—I don’t even think I’ve told John this—the difficult decisions I handled while he was gone. He wasn’t around, so I couldn’t ask him and I just—and more often than not he was relieved that I had handled it the way I did, but it would have been more difficult for him to deal with it, especially with moving some people or removing some people. It worked well. I felt very supported by John and he felt comfortable with me. He knew that I wasn’t going to embarrass him or put him in an awkward situation.

07a-00:32:01 LaBerge: Well, I want to go on with that, but before that, could you reflect a little on your sabbatical at Notre Dame?

07a-00:32:05 Crespin: Oh yes. That was a great—

07a-00:32:07 LaBerge: Because that was—all of that time still things were popping, and Notre Dame was—

07a-00:32:14 Crespin: Oh, it was a great experience. I’d gone with some of my staff to a workshop on parish teams, I think it was called, and five of us went to a three- or four- day workshop at Notre Dame. And while I was there I found out about this program. It was called the Religious Leaders Program. It was a euphemism for burned-out people.

07a-00:32:38 LaBerge: [laughing] Like right now with the Sophia Center or SAT [School of Applied Theology]. 100

07a-00:32:44 Crespin: Yes, it was started by Jack Egan, a very famous Chicago priest who was heavy into social ministry and urban ministry. He, at one point was burned out and he was big friends with Ted Hesburgh, the president of Notre Dame for so many years. Hesburgh said, “Why don’t you just come and live on the campus for a semester or a year and just relax and get yourself nailed back together again.” And he so enjoyed that experience, he said this is something too rich not to share with other people. So he set up this program where between twenty-five and thirty priests and sisters for the most part—we had a couple of lay people in our group, but most of them were priests and sisters—could go and just be on the campus, take whatever courses we wanted, take them for credit or not, just audit if we wanted. But just soak in the whole environment.

And that appealed to me very much, because I was at the point in my life, and I never moved to another point after that, where I don’t like things too structured. I didn’t want a sabbatical that was going to say you can do this, but you can’t do this, and so I took full advantage of it. The sisters who were in the program lived in communities of four in apartments there on the campus, and the men—there were about a dozen of us, all priests, I think one brother— we lived in one of the graduate student dormitories. We had separate rooms, just showers down the hall, but it made it more individualistic in that sense. And there was a good—I was the oldest of the priests—I think I was at that time forty-two. So I was the oldest of the priests who were doing the program. All the sisters were older than I was, than we were, so it was that kind of a mix.

I must have read fifty books during that year. It was so rich an environment. I took courses in theology and in sociology and history, literature. I wanted to do a lot of things that we’d never had offered to us in the seminary. So I probably took too much—the first semester I think I took four classes, which would probably have been about fifteen units. But I didn’t have to do the papers or the exams, so I was able to do the reading that went with most of those programs. The second semester I think I backed off to maybe ten or twelve, just to be able to relax a little bit more.

But it was a stimulating environment. Notre Dame is a unique place. Obviously educationally it’s probably one of the best undergraduate colleges in the country, for academics, not just for football. [laughter] It doesn’t have much of a graduate program. They don’t emphasize that. But for undergraduate you get a very good education. I was impressed with the caliber of the teachers. It was a group of people, and I suspect it’s typical there—they were very personally committed to Notre Dame. They were into education, but they liked Notre Dame. Part of the family, there was this family spirit that was created there.

I happened to come into contact with the underbelly of the system, which was while I was there the groundskeepers and the laundry workers and the 101

housekeeping staff wanted to organize—and justly, from what I could see. They were getting very low salaries and no health benefits, or they had to be working there three or five years before they got health benefits. Notre Dame fought them on it. Hesburgh got one of the biggest union-busting law firms in Chicago to come and fight them, and eventually, that year, defeated them. Even the Teamsters came and tried to help them get organized, but two or three years after I left they did get organized. But it was very tense. I was the only priest who supported the workers, because all the other priests were somehow in jeopardy of getting fired or asked to leave. But I was on sabbatical. I didn’t care. I tried to talk to Hesburgh on a couple of occasions— he wouldn’t see me—to plead the case. So I just supported the other—but that was disappointing, because from my perspective Ted Hesburgh had this worldwide reputation for human rights!

07a-00:37:59 LaBerge: Exactly, exactly.

07a-00:38:01 Crespin: And yet in his own back yard he couldn’t apply the message. But other than that it was a very powerful experience.

I plugged into two communities there, besides the community that I was a part of. We met every two weeks, I think, for dinner and sharing, but otherwise we were on our own. But I plugged into the Latino community there, both faculty and students and even neighborhood people, and part of that was through the union-organizing effort, because a lot of the workers were Hispanic. And the other community was the California expats. There are a number of people, both on the staff and in the faculty and graduate students and so on, who were from California. And so we would get together periodically and do our California thing—drink a lot of wine.

But it was a very enriching experience. I love reading. I love to take classes. I hate the pressure that academics sometimes brings, and so I tried to do it the easy way with just auditing courses. But I got an awful lot out of those courses and was recommending it very highly to all kinds of other people as well. So it really refreshed me and rejuvenated me and I was ready to come back and apply all this new knowledge to the parish—and then within a week it was all unraveled.

07a-00:39:42 LaBerge: It all blew up.

07a-00:39:43 Crespin: Yes.

07a-00:39:46 LaBerge: But maybe it helped you deal with that better than you would have otherwise? 102

07a-00:39:50 Crespin: Well, I was rested, so if I had been run down it would have been difficult. Yes, it was very—being part of Notre Dame football—that’s a religion within a religion.

07a-00:40:04 LaBerge: Oh, it is. And you braved the winter too?

07a-00:40:07 Crespin: Well, I didn’t have a choice. It snowed—it wasn’t the first time it snowed, but it snowed on Thanksgiving Day, and we didn’t see the ground again till the first week in May. It just never went away. It was a particularly cold winter, they said. But just—and I’m cold blooded, so I was cold the whole time. But still, it was all in all—they had great speakers come in, come through Notre Dame, on economics, on politics, on religion, on philosophy. There was always—you had to choose between things to do on a given evening. So being in that environment was really stimulating.

07a-00:40:52 LaBerge: So let’s go back then—we’ll jump to the chancery.

07a-00:40:55 Crespin: Okay. [laughing]

07a-00:40:56 LaBerge: Tell me, what does a chancellor do?

07a-00:41:01 Crespin: Chancels. [laughter] Well, the chancellor is the bishop’s gopher. So the chancellor does whatever the bishop assigns him to do. In my case, John Cummins told me that, “I want your work to be 90 percent working with clergy personnel, 5 percent supervising a couple of the departments, and 5 percent garbage.”

It was clear that he wanted the bulk of my time dedicated to working with the priests, which meant being the one—I was on the personnel board automatically then—being the one, when the personnel board made decisions or recommendations that John approved, then I put it in motion. I would call the priest and say, “You’re going to be moved,” or, “Are you willing to be moved?” And “We’re thinking of this and are you open to that?” to make it all flow. Because if you’re doing five to ten changes in parishes, that’s ten to twenty moves. And so to get the timing right and make sure that no parish is left uncovered. Sometimes some of the priests were not anxious to move, and so it meant going back to the personnel board and saying, “He doesn’t want to move,” and the personnel board saying, “Well, we’re going to do it anyway,” or, “Okay, then let’s try to find another place.” So it was like putting together a big puzzle, and you couldn’t really rest until all the pieces were in place. That was just the logistics of it. 103

The harder part was just working with the priests. This was the eighties now, because I went in there in ‘79. There was a lot of unhappiness in the clergy. Priests were—the old-timers were feeling unmoored, because all the changes were happening as a result of the Second Vatican Council. The young priests were feeling unappreciated and not valued. And then there was the time when a lot of priests were questioning their own vocations and a lot of people were leaving. So it was a time when they were frustrated and most of them, or a lot of them, were frustrated and angry. And they would take that frustration out on the bishop—he’s the logical one to blame for all their problems, although that wasn’t necessarily always the case. But so it meant dealing with a lot of unhappiness and people just needing to ventilate.

I had one instance that is symptomatic of that—a fellow, we had taken a fellow from another diocese. His bishop asked John, as a special favor, “Would you take this guy? Maybe he needs a new start. He’s not working out here.” So John said yes. God bless him. So we assigned him to a place and then within two or three months he was doing exactly the same things that got him in trouble in his own diocese. And so we finally made the decision that it was not going to work here and we’d have to send him back to his bishop. So I called him in, and we sat down and talked.

Are we running out of tape or are we okay?

07a-00:44:56 LaBerge: You know what—let it, because this is—let’s stop it.

[Tape 7: Side B]

07b-00:00:17 LaBerge: Okay, this is tape 7, side B. You were telling me about—

07b-00:00:21 Crespin: Okay, so I called this priest in to tell him that we were sorry, but it wasn’t working. We have to send him back. He just exploded. He got furious and was yelling at me and saying that he’s never been understood, and he’s been wanting to be a priest and they don’t let him be a priest. He was going into the priesthood and it’s going to be my fault. So I just let him talk because that’s what he needed to do. And then after ten or fifteen minutes of a tirade then we could have a little bit of a conversation. At the end he recognized that he didn’t really have much choice. So as he started to leave my office he turned back at the door and he said, “You know George, I find you sympathetic and warm, not like everybody says about you.” [laughter] He closed the door and left. But it was just—that was kind of emblematic of the needs the priests had, a lot of them anyway, of confronting their problems, without really wanting to do that, and having to blame somebody else.

07b-00:01:36 LaBerge: And you became one of the persons blamed. 104

07b-00:01:38 Crespin: Yes, because I was—

07b-00:01:41 LaBerge: You were delivering the message.

07b-00:01:43 Crespin: —sort of kill the messenger. And I was so closely associated with John Cummins that they—and they couldn’t really attack him head on, but they could me because I was vulnerable. The classic example of that was we had a convocation of priests, our first convocation. Those were gatherings that a number of dioceses did in that period. It was in the mid-eighties, where they thought the clergy is so fractured and so divided and so angry, we need to pull everybody together and spend some time and get to know each other again and get to become comfortable, and see if we can’t come out with some kind of unified vision of what we’re all about. And so we had one, and it was up at Clear Lake. But it was the first opportunity that the priests had under John Cummins I guess, as a group, to ventilate. And so they had a plan for the week, but it got sidetracked and there was a lot of anger expressed. They wouldn’t direct it directly at John, but everybody knew that that’s what was happening. But they did direct it at me, without even necessarily using my name. They’d talk about the Chancellor. [laughter]

07b-00:03:15 LaBerge: The Chancellor.

07b-00:03:16 Crespin: Which was a big secret.

So it happened that—this was 1987. There was this one exercise—we had a couple of Holy Names nuns facilitating the group. There was this one exercise where the question was asked, “What would be the one positive step the diocese could take at this point?” And they had possibilities, and people could add on if none of their possibilities were represented there, and they had pink dots, red dots, blue dots, yellow dots, and put them behind those things. Well, the one that got the most dots was: fire the chancellor.

07b-00:04:08 LaBerge: Wow!

07b-00:04:08 Crespin: So I remember being kind of stunned by that. I knew a lot of people were unhappy, because if you affect where they live and where they work, or if you confront them about a drug problem or an alcoholic problem—but I was just taken aback by that. They had a reconciliation rite one of the first nights, and they kind of reconciled with John. It was a very touching experience, but there was still all that anger that now they couldn’t even direct in John’s direction, so they focused on me. 105

It was the day where we were going to celebrate the anniversaries of the priests who had special anniversaries, and it was my twenty-fifth, but I began to feel as that day went on, at the liturgy and other—like a leper. I began to feel like everybody was looking at me, and it was probably a lot of my imagination, although there was some reality to it. So I couldn’t—there was a banquet that night after the liturgy to honor—I couldn’t go. I just got in my car and drove for about an hour someplace and got a hot dog someplace, because I just felt so uncomfortable. And at the dinner I understand that they were naming the different honorees and then—“George Crespin. Where’s George? Where’s George?” And they didn’t know—I hadn’t told anybody I was—they thought maybe I had gone home, which I didn’t think I could very well do, but I didn’t want to be there. So some of them gave me a standing ovation, but the damage had already been done. And the way I know—that night I came back and went to my room and then Ernie Brainard, I think, came to my room and said, “Where were you? We’ve all been looking for you.” And I said, “No, I just took ride.” And then he said, “No, John Cummins wants you to come to his room and he wants to talk to you.” So we went and we had a drink, but it was—they were telling me what had happened.

But I never felt comfortable again in a large clergy gathering—to this day. I’ve always been somewhat anti-clerical, so some of that is a part of that. And the way I know how deeply it hurt, because I thought—I offered to resign that night. I told John that, “Obviously, there are enough people that are not happy with what I’m doing, so...” and he wouldn’t let me. So he made me stay on. But the next—we had a convocation maybe three years later, and by that time I don’t think I was still chancellor, but I was vicar general. I drove down there with a young, Mexican priest who since was killed in an automobile accident. But on the way back after the convocation he said, “I kept hearing stuff about the last time, how you got beat up the last time we had a convocation. What was that all about?” And so I started telling him the story. I had to pull off the road because I just—

07b-00:07:45 LaBerge: You couldn’t, you were—

07b-00:07:45 Crespin: Yes, and even now!

07b-00:07:47 LaBerge: Even now as you’re saying it. It’s making me so upset even to hear it.

07b-00:07:54 Crespin: So there’s still all that—I thought I’d dealt with it and put it aside. But it really hurt, because I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, and clearly— 106

07b-00:08:08 LaBerge: And not necessarily—it wasn’t what you wanted to do necessarily. You were following—

07b-00:08:15 Crespin: Yes, I was following what the bishop and the personnel committee… But it was in agreement with most—we had a lot of people in parishes that shouldn’t have been there. Some of them were pastors and they needed to be removed because they’d done so much damage to people, and we had a lot of untogether priests or arrested-development priests. But you deal with those and also then with the alcoholics or the drug—and if somebody had a problem with the police or wound up in jail I’d have to go bail him out, and we’d send him off to Guest House and House of Affirmation and other places. There are enough of them that wind up getting upset at you, and so it all was a cumulative thing.

The irony was that that was in May, I think, of ‘87. It had already been announced that Frank Houdek, a Jesuit, was going to become the personnel director. So I was not going to have that responsibility anymore starting in June or July, so everybody knew that I was leaving the job. Maybe that’s what emboldened them to—because they knew I wasn’t going to have any more say in what was going to happen to them. I don’t know what happened. But anyway, I was just as happy to be relieved of that responsibility. It was a tough—it was a tough assignment, and just to finish that piece off. There’s always a resurrection after a passion.

Since it was my twenty-fifth anniversary, I was having a celebration of it, but not on the actual date, which is June 9. I moved it into July because people that wanted to come from Mexico and New Mexico, family and friends, couldn’t come while their kids were still in school, so I moved it to the middle of July and had a week-long celebration of my twenty-fifth. It was just a tremendous positive, affirming experience—from the people. Which is what we—

07b-00:10:28 LaBerge: Yes, which is what you’re in this for. So where was the celebration and what did you do?

07b-00:10:36 Crespin: It was a week-long thing. I had people coming from out of town, so we had a welcome dinner on Friday night at some friend’s home in Concord. There were about sixty people there that came either from Mexico or from New Mexico. On Saturday we had a dinner dance, and I kept having to move the venue because the number kept growing. I finally had it at the gym at St. Joseph’s in Alameda, the high school gym there, because we had seven hundred people there. 107

07b-00:11:12 LaBerge: Oh my gosh!

07b-00:11:15 Crespin: And that was just dinner and a dance and a gathering. It was a happening really, because people saw people that they hadn’t seen for years. And then the next day we had a Mass at St. Joseph the Worker with a multicultural flavor, because by that time I had become heavily involved with the different ethnic pastoral groups, and so it was just a mind-blower in terms of the liturgy itself. Everybody, to this day, still talks about how they had never experienced anything like that. And then we had, after that, in the schoolyard, ethnic dances from the different groups and also ethnic foods. It was a whole day thing. The next day I’d arranged for the people that came from out of town and anybody else who wanted, but mostly the people who came from out of town, to go up to Tahoe. So we had two buses and I got a good deal, because they charged $13 a person but they gave us back $20 in food coupons and playing money, so people got—so it worked out okay. So we went Monday and Tuesday, came back Tuesday night, and the next day we were going up to Napa to a wine tasting that my brother-in-law had worked out. He worked in the wine industry at that time, so it was a wine tasting at a place with lunch provided. On the way up there, on that Wednesday morning, I got a kidney stone attack and wound up in the hospital for a week, there in Napa.

07b-00:12:53 LaBerge: Oh no! In Napa!

07b-00:12:57 Crespin: Which if you have to be sick, it’s not a bad thing.

07b-00:12:58 LaBerge: Yes, that’s not a bad place, but you couldn’t be—

07b-00:13:01 Crespin: But I couldn’t finish off the tour. I guess it was just from exhaustion. I’m not sure, but anyway.

07b-00:13:09 LaBerge: But it was—there was an affirmation after all the—

07b-00:13:12 Crespin: Yes, having had the negative experience, this one was just so affirming, so positive, and I felt so appreciated as a priest and as a person.

07b-00:13:28 LaBerge: But how else would you—did you deal with going back to work after—I just can’t imagine coming back to work after that.

07b-00:13:39 Crespin: Well, I closed my door a lot! [laughing] You just have to do it. But it wasn’t easy. What made it easy was that by the time I got back to work after the 108

sickness, after the kidney stone thing, Frank Houdek had already taken over the personnel piece and I didn’t have to deal with that anymore. A down side, looking at it now in retrospect, was Frank, because he knew of all the criticism that had been leveled at me, didn’t want to prejudice his mind with any information that he got from me, so I couldn’t tell him about some of the problems that were in progress or people that he really needed to—

07b-00:14:30 LaBerge: To watch.

07b-00:14:30 Crespin: Watch or—because I offered, and he said, “No, I don’t want...” Okay. But that was the time when a lot of the sex abuse stuff was beginning to come out, and he didn’t want to hear it. It wasn’t that he was saying I don’t want to hear about sex abuse, he didn’t want any information from me.

07b-00:14:48 LaBerge: From you.

07b-00:14:52 Crespin: And so it all stayed there and then things began to blow up. I’d dealt with a few cases myself in the eighties when it first started. Well, the first one was Steve Kiesle at the parish [Holy Spirit in Fremont] still. And from that experience then, I got a sense of what should be done. When the first two or three cases came up—it must have been ‘82 or ‘83, something like that—I developed a system of trying to work with it, which was first of all there would be the complaint. It might be a letter, it might be somebody coming in to complain. Then I’d try to check the facts and make sure that this could have happened, and then would call the priest and talk to him and say, “This is being said about you and you have to say...” Of course they would always deny it initially. And then, if it was a young person, because some of them were early teens or late teens, I’d meet with them and try to—pastorally try to help them and then meet with the parents and try to get them into some kind of counseling.

At that point they were not looking for money. They wanted the priest out of wherever he was. They wanted some help for their children or for their family if it was a wider thing. And they wanted some assurance that he would never be put in contact with kids again, which all made a lot of sense. And so we were trying to work with that. But at some point the lawyers got involved, and then they wouldn’t let me meet with the victims or the families, because they said then that it was going to come back to haunt us in court. So I had to stop that side which I thought was the more important response and just let the lawyers deal with things, which was then very cold and impersonal and made people upset, and that’s when they started asking for money.

So it was—and it was just heartbreaking to hear the stories. I remember one man came in, he was about forty-three, forty-four years old. He was in his 109

third marriage and said, “Because of what happened to me as a child, I’ve never been able to get into a relationship of intimacy. Every time things build up I just explode and I can’t deal with it. And I’ve never said this to anybody before.” So we tried to get him into some kind of therapy. Sometimes the priest that they were talking about was already dead or wasn’t in the picture. But it was a bizarre time. And a lot of that I wouldn’t take to the personnel board because it was notorious for having leaks. I didn’t want anybody’s reputation unjustly or justly tainted. So I dealt with a lot of it myself. John was supportive in most instances of what I was recommending, but relieved that he didn’t have to do it himself, because he wasn’t very comfortable with that.

07b-00:18:36 LaBerge: And are you the one who had to contact, say, the civil authorities? Or—

07b-00:18:47 Crespin: In those days that wasn’t the practice. In fact, the civil authorities would contact us. I’d get calls from the police saying you’ve got this priest out here and you’ve got to get him out or we’re going to have to take him to jail, and pleading with me—“Don’t make us have to do this.”

07b-00:19:04 LaBerge: Don’t make us do this, yes.

07b-00:19:07 Crespin: So we did—but it just wasn’t in anybody’s thinking—it certainly wasn’t in mine, but from what I gather any place else either—to get the police involved. It was a problem we had to take care of as a—we needed to get help for the victim, deal with the families, get the priest into some kind of therapy, get him off the job. But we weren’t thinking instinctively of police. That began to be—well, it really didn’t become procedure until after the Dallas meeting of the bishops where they came out with this new thing, and that wasn’t until 2004 or 2005, I think. But I was doing this work in the eighties, and there wasn’t—we knew it was a problem and we knew it needed attention, but it didn’t occur to us. Because I had to do a couple of depositions on cases later, and, “Why didn’t you call the police?” And I said, “Well, the police would call us.”

We never, to my knowledge, at least while I was working with those cases, I never returned a priest to ministry. We always tried to offer assistance to any families, to the individuals. [cell phone musical ring tone] But we didn’t involve the police and we didn’t tell the parishioners, because we weren’t going to be sending the priest back into a parish, so we didn’t have to notify the new parish. We didn’t always tell the people in the parish itself why the priest was gone, why he left all of a sudden.

07b-00:21:07 LaBerge: Why he left, yes. 110

07b-00:21:12 Crespin: In retrospect, it probably would have been better to do that. We’d have avoided a lot of problems if we’d done that, but it just wasn’t—I was making it up as I went along really. I’d keep John informed, but he didn’t want to get too much involved in it.

07b-00:21:36 LaBerge: So to me it sounds like you’re doing the job, say if it’s the US president, that the chief of staff does, or like the Berkeley chancellor with the executive vice chancellor. You were running the thing, running the—

07b-00:21:51 Crespin: Pretty much. Except the financial piece. The vicar general, Bill Macchi, was the one that John Cummins had—he dealt with the property, the finances, the investments, all that kind of stuff, loans to the parishes. I didn’t get involved in any of that.

But the programmatic piece is what I had. In fact, it grew a lot in the time that I was there because we kept seeing needs that weren’t being addressed. Hospital ministry was a major challenge, because the hospitals wouldn’t pay for a Catholic chaplain, so we would have to pay for them if we wanted to have them, and it was clear that we needed them. The parishes were telling us we can’t do the parish and also cover this hospital, so we were trying to help alleviate that burden. But at one point we had a hospital ministry office and staff, with—it was about a half-a-million-dollar budget, because we were the ones having to pay the chaplains and so on.

As the different ethnic groups became more prominent here—a lot of the Southeast Asians came at that time, the Cambodians, the Hmongs, the Vietnamese, and then people coming up from Latin America and people coming from Poland and from Nigeria—we started pastoral centers to help integrate them into the diocese. So wherever we could we got priests of their culture or their language to celebrate Mass for them and to do the pastoral work. And we worked with those priests—that’s where Sister Felicia [Sarati] came into the picture. So we, in the time that I was there, we probably opened up about twelve different pastoral centers. I forget—I’d have to look at the directory again to see. But anyway, the point is that during that period the programmatic dimension of the chancery increased considerably, because we were trying to meet different needs that were coming to our attention.

Eventually it came to the point where the diocese couldn’t afford this anymore. I think ‘88 was the turning-point year where we had to start cutting, so some of those things had to be trimmed. But for the most part we tried to respond to the needs that came to our attention. At one point it was getting harder and harder to keep on top of all this, and we had an organizational expert come in and do an analysis and tell us what we needed to do. The first thing he said was you’re in charge of too many things. I was responsible for thirty-two different departments—obviously not very good—plus, doing all 111

the clergy stuff. And so he recommended a reorganization where we put in a couple of layers of middle management to keep things together, and it worked much better that way. But it just—we grew too fast and we couldn’t keep on top of it.

In addition, during those years I got, through the job, involved in some other organizations. There’s a group in Region Eleven—the way the country’s split up—a group of Spanish-speaking ministers or heads of offices of the Spanish- speaking in the different dioceses [RECOSS, Region Eleven Committee on Spanish-Speaking]. I got elected to be the president of that group. I think I had two three-year terms, and it was in the same period, the eighties. Also, I got involved in a national group of personnel directors, because I’d go to their meetings to learn, because I’d had no experience in personnel, and wound up getting elected to the board and then eventually getting elected to be president and past-president—you go through that whole thing. So that was about six years that I was involved in that group and going to meetings maybe twice a year in different parts of... So while I was chancellor and in charge of the priests, and then increasingly these other departments, these other involvements came. Each time I’d talk to John and say, “John, do you really want me to do this?” And he’d say, “Well, if you can handle it, it’s great experience and you can do a lot of good.” So I had those involvements. I was also on the national team for the third encuentro [Encuentro Nacional Hispano de Pastoral], the national meeting of Hispanics. I was on the planning team and the facilitating team for that.

So part of that outside involvement was what made the priests upset, because they were saying, “He’s traveling all over the country and we’ve got all these needs here and he’s not taking care of business.” They couldn’t get hold of me or get a response from me same day because sometimes I was gone. But I don’t think I neglected—but it did take longer because of all this, and that’s part of the resentment, I think, that was built up for the convocation when there was that reaction. I don’t, looking back on it, I don’t know how I handled all that during those years, like from ‘81 to ‘87. I remember not having too many days off, because I’d stay home on Wednesdays, which was my day, and catch up on correspondence and do enough to keep my secretary busy for a week. Otherwise, I just couldn’t do it. There were too many other distractions.

07b-00:28:26 LaBerge: And where were you living at this time?

07b-00:28:27 Crespin: I started out—I tried to go to St. Joseph the Worker in Berkeley, because I’d always admired Bill O’Donnell and we’d been friends, but he didn’t have any room. He said, “I’d love to have you but we don’t have any room.” So then I went to St. Bernard’s in East Oakland. Actually, John Kennedy, one of the Kennedy brothers, who had just been named to be the pastor there and we had 112

always got along well, so I thought okay, I’ll live with him. Between the time that I accepted to live there and I arrived there, he had decided he didn’t want to be pastor there and they sent somebody else who would not have been— had I known that that was going to happen I probably wouldn’t have gone to that parish. So it was not a happy experience because—I lived there for two years—but the pastor had some serious emotional problems that got reflected in the parish. But from my—they had dinner at five o’clock every night, and I was at the office usually till six, so I think I had two meals there in two years, because I couldn’t get there and then after a while I didn’t want to be there.

But I lived at St. Bernard’s, and then an opening came up at St. Joseph the Worker in 1981, and Bill said, “Okay. We’ve got room now. Why don’t you come?” So I went there and then stayed there till two years ago. I wanted to go there because there was a Spanish-speaking population that really was being kind of neglected. Bill didn’t speak Spanish, but he tried to learn and he just couldn’t. I knew that I could be helpful. I couldn’t do everything that needed to be done, but I could be helpful there. And I knew about that because somebody from the parish had come to me as chancellor and said, “We’re being abandoned. We’re not being take care of.” So that stuck in my craw, and when I saw that maybe I could be helpful over there—so I did that.

07b-00:30:50 LaBerge: But that was another piece of what you were doing, is—

07b-00:30:55 Crespin: The people, especially the Spanish-speaking at St. Joseph the Worker had no idea that I worked at the chancery.

07b-00:31:00 LaBerge: They thought you worked full-time at St. Joe’s.

07b-00:31:02 Crespin: They thought I worked full-time there and I was just hard to get a hold of. But there didn’t seem to be any point in complicating everything, so I just did what I could when I was there.

I’m trying to think in the eighties what else might have been going on—

07b-00:31:29 LaBerge: That’s a lot! That’s really a lot.

07b-00:31:31 Crespin: Yes, I’m glad I had the energy at that time to be able to do that.

07b-00:31:37 LaBerge: Well, how did you transition into becoming vicar general?

07b-00:31:43 Crespin: Well, it was—that’s a whole different story. [laughing] Eighty-seven was when we had the convocation and when all that happened. Then John took the 113

personnel piece and put it in Frank Houdek’s hands. He’d already made that decision. And he said to me, “You just be the administrator of these programs that you’re supposed to be overseeing anyway, these thirty-two programs.” But now with mid-management. So that went on for a couple of years, and it was in that period where also he wanted to start thinking seriously about building a new cathedral.

07b-00:32:29 LaBerge: This was before the ‘89 earthquake?

07b-00:32:31 Crespin: No, it was right after it. Okay—yes.

07b-00:32:33 LaBerge: That was the earthquake.

07b-00:32:36 Crespin: That was the earthquake, yes. Anyway, he had me doing that. At one point Bill Macchi wanted to leave the chancery office. Bill was the vicar general and the finance man. He wanted to leave the chancery office and go to a parish, and so John then made me vicar general.

07b-00:33:06 LaBerge: And did you want to do that?

07b-00:33:07 Crespin: Well, he changed the job description. He made me the vicar general, so I had the title and the responsibility, but I didn’t have the financial piece. He hired somebody to do the finances. At the same time as I became vicar general I became moderator of the curia, which—people would ask me what does that mean? And if they were people from the chancery office I’d say, “Well, if you’re the curia, then I moderate you.” [laughing] So I was really kind of the—not the chief of staff but the chief operating officer I guess. So I had the major departments reporting to me, the school department, Catholic Charities, The [Catholic] Voice, the CCD department, and the people who were coordinating some of the other departments. I had the operations piece still, but not the finances, although I was the supervisor for the finance person too. So we just slid into that.

[laughing] But the way—I’m not sure, to this day, if there was a cause and effect. But in the year—maybe it was 1999, probably—right after Christmas I got a letter from the head of the United States Catholic Conference, Father Bob [Robert N.] Lynch who was the general secretary for the conference, asking me if I would allow my name to be put into consideration as his successor as the general secretary. I didn’t even know the job was open. I didn’t know much about the job. I wasn’t sure even how to answer, so I talked to John Cummins and—what’s this all about? He said, “Well, it’s a great honor to be asked. You should leave your name in and see what happens.” Okay, so I indicated yes, I’m okay with that. That was in mid-January. They 114

went through a process at the national level of starting out with eighteen potential candidates and narrowed it down—no, thirty-eight candidates. They narrowed it down to eighteen and then they narrowed it down to eight and then they narrowed it down to three and I made all those cuts. So I was asked to go back to Washington for a personal interview.

By that time I’d studied more about the job and it looked interesting. The first five years were to be in charge of the social action departments of the conference, and the next five years are to work more with the bishops themselves. I knew that I had pretty much had been blackballed from being a bishop, so I thought well, maybe this is another way I can make a career change.

07b-00:36:26 LaBerge: And why had you been blackballed from being a bishop?

07b-00:36:27 Crespin: That’s another story. We’ll come back to that. [laughing]

07b-00:36:30 LaBerge: Okay. We’ll [come back to that].

07b-00:36:33 Crespin: So I went back to Washington. I was the second of the three people to be interviewed, and at the end of that interview, Bob Lynch said to me, “You’re going to get the job.” And I said, “Well, you still have to interview somebody else.” “Yes, but I’m sure that he’s not going to offer what you’re offering. And we’ve already pretty much discounted the first person we interviewed.” So he said, “I can’t offer it to you yet, but I’ll call you when a decision’s made.” So then about a week or ten days later he called me and he said, “George, the job is yours. How soon can you come?” This was now the end of February.

07b-00:37:28 LaBerge: Ninety-nine or 2000?

07b-00:37:29 Crespin: I think it was—yes, I’m not—I think ‘99, but I’ll go back and check it. So I said, “Well, probably not till after Easter. I’ve got a lot of commitments here, and after Easter it would be an easier—“ “Okay, start packing and you can start telling people now,” because he’d sworn me to confidentiality before that. So I started telling people, “Guess where I’m going? I’m going to Washington!” And he said to me, “There’s just one formality that we have to go through. I need to present your name formally to the executive committee of the bishop’s conference, but I don’t think there’s any problem there. John [R.] Quinn is the president this year and he likes you.” And so, okay. So he said, “I’ll get back to you as soon as that’s done.” 115

So I didn’t hear from him for a couple of weeks, and then finally after two weeks—it was on St. Patrick’s Day, I recall—he called and he said, “I’ve never had to do anything this difficult before.” And I said, “What? What’s up?” And he says, “I can’t offer you the job.” I said, “What happened? The executive committee didn’t approve me?” “No, they want you.” “Well, then I don’t understand.” And he said, “Well, I perhaps made the mistake of going to the papal nuncio as a courtesy to tell him that we were naming you to be the general secretary, and he told me, “He doesn’t qualify,” and scotched it right there. He said, “I went back to the executive committee of the bishops and they debated for a long time because they really wanted you.” But they were in conflict with the Vatican at that time over Archbishop Hunthausen in Seattle and Father Charlie [Charles E.] Curran, the moral theologian, and he said, “They just don’t want to take up another fight at this point, so it’s easier for them just to let it go.”

07b-00:39:35 LaBerge: Who was the papal nuncio?

07b-00:39:40 Crespin: I want to say Vagnozzi, but I’m not sure.

07b-00:39:42 LaBerge: We’ll get that later.

07b-00:39:49 Crespin: So then, once again, I offered my resignation to John and he wouldn’t let me. And I think it’s at that point that he made me vicar general, as a booster. That’s how I got to be vicar general. [laughing]

07b-00:40:17 LaBerge: Now, do you want to keep going for fifteen more minutes? Or is that a good place to stop?

07b-00:40:21 Crespin: We can keep going, so we aren’t doing this in December still.

07b-00:40:23 LaBerge: Okay. Do you want to talk about how you were blackballed for being a bishop, how that happened?

07b-00:40:29 Crespin: Well, I don’t really know how.

07b-00:40:30 LaBerge: Or when or—how did you find out?

07b-00:40:35 Crespin: Well, I just kind of knew. My name had been considered since the eighties. They were looking for Hispanic candidates for bishop at that time. I was prominent, in the sense that I was in a responsible position in my own diocese 116

here, a chancellor. I was heavily involved in some national organizations and in a lot of Hispanic kinds of things. So I knew my name had been presented, and some people told me that they had received questionnaires. They’re not supposed to say anything, because it’s automatic excommunication. [LaBerge laughs.] But they told me, “We got this form and we support you in this.” But it never happened. And then after a while I got to think—well, maybe it’s not going to happen. Then—I’ll keep this part anonymous—but a priest who had worked in the marriage court—

07b-00:41:53 LaBerge: With you?

07b-00:41:54 Crespin: —after me, had found some cases that we handled, that we had handled somewhat creatively.

07b-00:42:06 LaBerge: You talked about something that you handled creatively.

07b-00:42:08 Crespin: Yes—well, he went through that file. I don’t know if I mentioned that part of the story. But one day the secretary, who used to be my secretary there at the tribunal, called me and said, Father So-and-So is going through the dead file, which was our name for cases that…”What should I do?” she said. And I said, “Don’t do anything. He’s got to do what he’s got to do.”

Years later, John Cummins was in the hospital. He had some cancer in the intestines. Anyway, it was malignant cancer and he had surgery and was in the hospital for a while. I was kind of acting, in charge. I was chancellor at the time, not vicar. This priest who had gone through these files was made a pastor, it really didn’t work out. The parish was very badly divided and we had to pull him out. Well, he got so upset at me that he said I’m never going to be a pastor again, and I’m just going to quit the whole thing. And so he took a leave for about six months, and then after six months he changed his mind and he wanted to come back. He was talking to another priest and saying, “I’d really like to go back, but I can’t.” And he said, “Well, why not?” And he said, “Well, the bishop’s in the hospital.” “Well, why don’t you go talk to George?” “I can’t talk to George.” “Why can’t you talk to George?” “He hates me.” “Why would George hate you?” “Ever since I turned in that negative report on him to Rome, he’s hated me.” I didn’t know about the negative report. [laughing] But that could be one of the reasons.

Also, when Pope Paul VI came out with his encyclical on Humanae Vitae, on the birth control thing, I was on vacation with two other priests—

07b-00:44:06 LaBerge: With Brian Joyce and somebody else. You started telling about that. 117

07b-00:44:11 Crespin: And we sent a letter to the pope saying it’s not a good idea, then we signed it. So Brian Joyce—

07b-00:44:18 LaBerge: So Brian Joyce also never—

07b-00:44:19 Crespin: —never got made a bishop either, even though he was clearly one of the most qualified candidates. I also heard from somebody later that I was reported for not offering people opportunities for private confession in Union City, which was not the case.

07b-00:44:46 LaBerge: And you were telling me today how you had communal celebrations, that people came from—

07b-00:44:49 Crespin: I had heard of them and was not opposed. I’ll have to do it quickly here so we don’t run out of tape. I was not opposed to that because I kind of did believe in that, so we kept it up, but I thought some people may still need private confession. So we set up a time each Saturday for people to come for private confession, and they could come to the group thing. But somehow that got reported to Rome as I was not allowing people private confession.

So on any of those—and I’m not sure which one. [laughing] Or there may be something else. But for whatever reason, I knew I was not going to be a bishop. That’s why I thought well, maybe I can be helpful this way. That didn’t work out either.

07b-00:45:42 LaBerge: Yes. All of that is so disappointing after all the good work you were doing.

07b-00:45:50 Crespin: It was disappointing, and I went through another six-month depression after that one. But in my life—and this is kind of being more general—I’ve always received so much support from the people and so much positive feedback and so much—and even now when I got thrown out of [St. Joseph the Worker Parish] Berkeley a couple of years ago, I know that I have been a good priest. And the people have acknowledged that. And also increasingly, along the way, I’ve become more and more disenchanted with the bureaucracy. And so what the bureaucracy thinks doesn’t much matter to me, as long as the people recognize what I’m trying to do. And actually, I think I was spared not becoming a bishop, because look at all the stuff the bishops have had to go through these last ten/fifteen years, and the disrepute that they— 118 119

Interview #5: May 23, 2013

[Tape 8: Side A]

08a-00:00:03 LaBerge: This is May 23, 2013. Last time we made notes about different things that we haven’t covered, and one was your thirty years in Berkeley. And part of it—I know you’ve talked about a little bit is—we talked about other subjects, but maybe we could just focus on that for a little bit.

08a-00:00:32 Crespin: Okay. Well, I have a connection to Berkeley—I don’t know if I would have mentioned this before, but my family lived in Berkeley—

08a-00:00:42 LaBerge: That’s right.

08a-00:00:43 Crespin: —at the time that I was ordained a priest, so I said my first Mass there. Both of my sisters were married from Berkeley, having graduated from Presentation High School here in Berkeley. And then in 1968, when my father died, we buried him from St. Joseph the Worker, and eventually I celebrated my twenty-fifth anniversary there also. So there are a lot of personal connections to the place. As a seminarian we lived there from 1954 to 1968 actually, so that in the summertimes I was home I was living in Berkeley at my parents’ home and going to Mass there at the parish during the vacations and whatnot, so I knew some of the people.

But when I was transferred from Union City in 1979 I wanted to go to Berkeley because I thought it was—well, I liked Berkeley, and I thought it would be a good house to live in. There were four or five priests living there at the time and it seemed like a good community. But when I approached Bill O’Donnell, the pastor, he said, “We’d love to have you, but we don’t have any room.” Every room was taken. He kept one room available in case Cesar Chavez was in town, as a guest room, but he didn’t have any space. So he said, “The first thing that opens up you can have.”

08a-00:02:27 LaBerge: So it must be a big house.

08a-00:02:29 Crespin: Yes. It was built for a pastor, a retired pastor—because the one who built it had that in mind—two guest rooms, two full suites for associates, and then there was a room for the housekeeper and a room for the cook. And by the time I got there they didn’t have—they had a lady who was the cook and she lived there, but they didn’t have a live-in housekeeper anymore. So there were a lot of rooms, but because we were close to the GTU [Graduate Theological Union] a lot of students, student priests, priests on sabbatical liked to come and live there, so it was a good house from that perspective. 120

So in 1981 Bill called me and said, “We have an opening. Do you still want to come?” And I said sure. I was living at that time in St. Bernard’s in East Oakland—

08a-00:03:26 LaBerge: That’s right.

08a-00:03:27 Crespin: —but already [working] in the chancery. I started my term as chancellor in 1979. So I lived there, and one of the main reasons I went there—I liked the place, I’d always tried to get in, but then in my capacity as chancellor I got a visit from a parishioner, from the parish there, St. Joseph the Worker, from the Spanish-speaking community, kind of complaining that, “They’re not taking care of us and we’ve got quite a good community here, a big community here, but there’s no services in Spanish.” I had talked to Bill after that to see what could be done and he said, “Well, we can get a priest to come in and say a Mass on Sundays, from one of the orders in Berkeley.” And they did that and it was working okay, but that kind of stayed in the back of my head, so when the possibility of going there arose, then I thought well, this gives me a chance to try to address that need also. So I went there and pretty much agreed with Bill that whatever work I did in the parish it would be in the Spanish-speaking community, because that was the biggest need, and that worked out very well.

Most of the people in the Spanish-speaking community never knew that I was the chancellor. They thought I was just one of the other priests there in the parish, and that was just as well. There wasn’t any need. I was around enough so that it worked. I stayed there through the eighties, and I’m trying to think at what point—there was one point when Bill had a heart attack, but that was— maybe it was in the nineties I think, so it was later.

So people came and went from that parish. We had a lot of priests doing their doctorates, and that made for an interesting house. Bill really welcomed conversation, and the dinners sometimes would go two hours at night. I often had to make appointments in the evening, because that was the time I had available for work with the people, so I didn’t get in on all of the conversations, but a lot of them. And they were just fascinating. Sometimes it was theology, sometimes it was scripture, sometimes it was church politics or whatever, but always very interesting. And some really good priests and brilliant in some cases. So that made for a very lively house, and I think that was part of the—not deliberately set up that way, but part of the ongoing education of Bill O’Donnell, because he really grew in leaps and bounds, theologically, from where he started having left the seminary, because the seminary didn’t have much to offer at the time that he was ordained. It was offering the old stuff, but it wasn’t connected to any of the new thinking.

08a-00:06:38 LaBerge: Were you in seminary together? I forget. 121

08a-00:06:43 Crespin: No. He was six years ahead of me, so he had just left as I went in. So we kind of knew who each other was, and then we worked together off and on in the sixties on different—civil rights and farm workers and things, but we didn’t know each other well, just respected each other from a distance. But Bill was very permissive in allowing us to do all kinds of things there, especially with the Spanish-speaking. He felt bad—he could not learn Spanish no matter how hard he tried. He just didn’t have an ear for languages, so he was grateful that that part of the community was being taken care of. I’m trying to think of what—

08a-00:07:37 LaBerge: Do you want to talk about any issues that came up? Or how he got involved with the farm workers?

08a-00:07:46 Crespin: He got involved with the farm workers very early on in the sixties. I think he was part of that original march that Cesar Chavez made from Delano to Sacramento in the spring of 1965. I remember going one day. It was during Holy Week that I went, and I think it was on my day off on Wednesday, Holy Week, and I joined them just outside of Stockton as they walked in. Bill had been going pretty frequently. But I was there on the day that they signed their first contract with Schenley, and that was a major, major victory. But Bill had been involved and he got to know, he got to be pretty close friends with Cesar Chavez and some of the top leadership in the union. They would call him when they needed a priest or needed some kind of support and he was always there, he and a couple of other priests from San Francisco.

But then it turned out that when Cesar Chavez would come into the Bay Area he would stay at the rectory. Bill would offer him space there, and he called it Cesar’s Palace. [laughter] And then he had a lot of meetings there at the church, not just the farm workers—also the farm workers, but some of the anti-war stuff, some of the anti-Vietnam, anti-nuclear arms. Later on it was some of the unions that were organizing or were being threatened with dissolution, so there was always a space there.

He really set a pattern which was admirable, I think, for the church to be seen as the home of the dispossessed and the people that were struggling. And so he declared it a sanctuary at one point in, I guess it was in the eighties when the Central American refugees were coming. Periodically, we would put up refugees who were passing through, and did it willingly, until a couple of them robbed us and then Bill didn’t do it anymore. But there were all kinds of gatherings there, and so St. Joseph the Worker took on this aura of the social justice parish. It was largely because of Bill. The parishioners, some of the old-timers didn’t even agree with what Bill was doing, but most of them were open to it and kind of respected him. But he made the parish the center for a lot of activity. So when people wanted to have an event or a talk or a gathering, that would be one of the first places they’d check out to see if 122

they—because it was a logical place and everybody knew where it was and everybody knew that they’d be welcomed. So he really, by his own leadership and involvement made it a central gathering place.

Over the course of his life he got arrested more than three hundred times because of his activism, and several of the parishioners with him as well as other people who had no connection to religion. There were a lot of Catholics who had fallen away from the church who came back because of Bill, and they saw a way that they could live out their Catholic commitment through social justice. So he was very, without even trying, it was just the force of his example that would be very persuasive to people. So he worked at that.

When I went there I had the impression that he was so busy taking care of the world that he was neglecting the parish. But when I got there I saw that that wasn’t true. He was very good about visiting the sick, working with people who had personal problems or marriage problems. He was very, very empathetic at funerals. So the people there—some people left because they couldn’t handle his politics, but the people who stayed there really came to love and appreciate Bill as a total priest. He was out there [motioning], but he was also very much aware of the needs in some community. He was well respected in the city. The police all knew him by name, because sometimes they had to arrest him. “Sorry to do this, Father, but we’ve got to do it.”

His involvement was—it was ecumenical too. He was part of an ecumenical group of priests and ministers that met every Tuesday to share scriptures, the scriptures for the following week, and that group lasted, I’d say, twenty/twenty-five years until some of them started either getting sick or dying or moving around. But it was—and almost everything he did was ecumenical, I think. Again, it was unconscious. He worked with the people that were concerned about the issues that he felt were important, and very often it was with the Protestants and some Catholic priests as well or sisters. But it was—the parish had a very open, tolerant, welcoming environment there, and that appealed to me. I wasn’t able to help out much. I used to kid people or kid Bill saying that he was the one that got arrested and I stayed home to say the Masses. [laughter] But that was a little bit too simplistic, but I never—it wasn’t my thing, but it very definitely was his.

08a-00:14:16 LaBerge: But during normal times you said one Spanish Mass or more?

08a-00:14:22 Crespin: If there were no other Spanish-speaking priests in the area who—and a couple of times he had Spanish-speaking priests coming in from some of the religious orders, but when there was nobody else I did the Spanish Mass all the time. There were a couple of times when we had a Spanish-speaking associate. Don Osuna was there right after he left the cathedral and we split up that work. But I was the default Spanish-speaking priest, and I was beginning to do more and 123

more of the weddings and the baptisms, because as people got to know me, then they’d ask.

08a-00:14:52 LaBerge: They asked you.

08a-00:14:57 Crespin: Yes. So in that period, in the eighties and even the early nineties, I was mostly working in the Spanish-speaking community. I’d say English Masses on occasion if there was a need, but most of the work was confined up there. So much so that when I became pastor in 1995 the comment was fed back to me that some of the parishioners were saying, some of the English-speaking parishioners were saying, “Well, who’s going to take care of us now?” Thinking that I wouldn’t. But we did.

I’m trying to think of notable things that happened in those days there. Bill was absolutely opposed to anything we could do to honor him. So his twenty- fifth anniversary came and went and significant birthdays came and went, but he would not allow us to do anything. He was just totally, totally adamant on that. So we never had any big celebrations that way. We did—well, this is after I was already pastor, and that’s where he died, actually. We celebrated the 125th anniversary of the parish. I think that was in 2002. But we weren’t big on parish festivals or parish—that kind of event, the typical thing. But gradually the Lady of Guadalupe celebration turned into a major annual event there.

08a-00:16:45 LaBerge: During your time?

08a-00:16:47 Crespin: Well, it began when I was already living there and could work with the people to try to develop it. It started in the eighties, and we started a Latino youth group during that period, young adult really, because youth for them is anybody under thirty who’s not married, so you have a quite good range there. We had two separate catechism programs, CCD programs, one in English and one in Spanish. The effort both before I was pastor and even after, to try to bring the two communities together was just never really successful. We did some bilingual Masses, which managed to offend everybody. People were just not convinced that that was necessarily a good experience. They felt community, but they felt that the language barrier was too great. I might have played into that, but I thought bilingual Masses are good for people that are bilingual, but if you’re not then half of the experience you lose. You can do it once in a while for a special cause, but regularly, I didn’t see that as a good pastoral solution, so it was better.

And since not only the language is different but the spirituality is so different—I knew that trying to preach there, that when you preach to a Spanish-speaking group you step back a few years and step outside of this 124

culture, because we had a lot of immigrants. Some of them were long-time residents, but most of them were recently arrived immigrants. Their prayer life was different, their theological world was different.

08a-00:18:51 LaBerge: Can you elaborate? In what way?

08a-00:18:54 Crespin: Well, they like to sing and they like a lot of music at Mass. [laughing] And they don’t mind having kids running all over the place.

08a-00:19:04 LaBerge: Yes.

08a-00:19:10 Crespin: They have special celebrations, like the Day of the Dead or Our Lady of Guadalupe, or Ash Wednesday is a big day. It’s just—every Latino alive goes to get ashes on that day. There we’d get maybe, in the evening when we’d have most of the attendance, we might get a thousand or twelve hundred people coming just that night! We’d have an English service right before the Spanish Mass. And by the time the English service was winding down it was already filled with Spanish-speaking who were coming for the next one. But it’s just a, so their—we had the living way of the cross, the youth group would usually portray that. So it’s just a different spirituality.

They weren’t concerned about the questions that were concerning some of the English-speaking—the more progressive ones were concerned about the role of women in the church and birth control and some of the other things that at that time—they were issues then, some of them are still issues now. But they could care less. That wasn’t the concerns of theirs. So what things we had to talk about at the English Masses, we didn’t talk about too much at the Spanish Mass, because they would have said what are you talking about? What’s significant about that? So it’s just different cultures. If I said the main Masses, the main English Mass and the main Spanish Mass back to back, which I did later on as pastor, then I’d really notice the time warp.

08a-00:20:58 LaBerge: And you yourself would have to switch your thinking.

08a-00:21:03 Crespin: Yes, and I’d preach different homilies, because it was a totally different audience. In the English-speaking it was a mix. There were old-timers there, people who had been practically born and raised in Berkeley. That was their parish and it was very dear to them, and those that agreed with Bill’s whole outlook on life were very proud of what was going on. Others were furious, but some of them stayed. They stayed because, “This is my church and nobody’s going to take it away from me.” So we had a little bit of that. There are no Republicans in Berkeley, so we didn’t have to worry too much about that or if—there’s a handful maybe. [laughter] So we could talk more openly 125

about some of the political things going on and connect them into a faith response.

It was a challenging audience, the English-speaking, because it was old-timers and it was people recently returned who’d been away from the church for a long time, but because of Bill came back. We had a growing Filipino population which has its own perspective and spirituality. We’d get people from the GTU who would come to Mass and some of the seminarians would want to be involved in things. And there were some of the bilingual Spanish- speaking who would come to those services as well. So it was a very diverse community, and that we used to like to highlight because there weren’t too many parishes at that time in the diocese that were so diverse, by choice almost. Later on many more parishes, because of the influx of different immigrant groups and people moving around, most parishes, this diocese [tends] to be very diverse, which is again another plus but a challenge at the same time.

I’m wandering a bit, but—

08a-00:23:20 LaBerge: Oh no, you’re not! I think we’re—

08a-00:23:21 Crespin: I’ve covered a large swath.

08a-00:23:25 LaBerge: How did you become pastor?

08a-00:23:26 Crespin: Well, it was interesting. [laughter] It’s never easy. I was coming to my, I think it was [my] fifteenth year in the chancery, between being chancellor for the first eight and then—maybe it was longer—chancellor for the first ten, I guess, and then vicar general for the last five. I was tired of it. I never really wanted to be there, although we did some exciting things, I thought, in those years. But [I] kept offering to resign or kept asking John Cummins to let me go back to a parish. And so finally in 1993 or towards the end of ‘93 he said that yes, that I could leave and he was going to start looking for another chancellor.

So I began to plan, and part of the plan was that I was going to take a sabbatical, leave the chancery, take a sabbatical, and then come back and become a pastor somewhere. It was very vague. I decided to go to New Mexico for the sabbatical and to live in Albuquerque and take classes at the University of New Mexico and then just get reconnected to the land of my birth. So ‘94-‘95, the academic year, was the year that I was gone.

As I was leaving, I pretty much assumed that I would be going to another parish to be pastor. I found out indirectly that Bill O’Donnell assumed that he 126

would be leaving and I would become pastor. And when I found that out—I knew how much he loved that place. He’d been there almost twenty-five years—how much we both loved that place, I said to him, “Why don’t we try to figure out a way that we can both stay?” So we sat down, because knowing how the chancery office works, having been there for so long, I knew that they probably didn’t have a clue as to what should happen to either one of us. But if we offered some suggestions, they might buy into one of them. So we came up with four different plans. One was that Bill would stay as pastor and I would come back as his associate; the second was Bill would retire and I would become pastor, but he would stay living there; the third was we would become co-pastors. That was Bill’s idea, but I didn’t feel comfortable with that because our styles were so different I knew that wouldn’t work. And then I forget what the fourth one was—I guess that—I can’t remember. Anyway, but there were four alternatives that we presented to them.

They decided to wait to make their decision until later on in the year, so I went away in August of ‘94 and was on sabbatical that year. It wasn’t until about March or April of ‘95 that they addressed the question, and the solution they came up with was that Bill would become senior priest. He didn’t want to retire. He was very clear on that. He would become senior priest and I would be the pastor. He was okay with that, and I was fine with that, too. So it meant that we could both stay, both basically continue doing what we were doing, but be able to continue uninterrupted in the work that we’d been doing. So when I came back in ‘95, then I was made the pastor and Bill became senior priest. We didn’t change rooms; we didn’t do anything; we just left everything the way it was and it worked.

He, to his credit, never interfered. He was happy to be free to do all kinds of things. He still referred to himself as the, sometimes it would slip out, pastor, but most times it was senior priest from St. Joseph the Worker. He was so clearly identified in people’s minds with the place that he didn’t have to give the title. Everybody knew who he was and where he was from. So we really never had any conflicts or any difference of opinion about things. He pretty much let me run the place. Financially it was really tight, because Bill—as long as there was money in the checking account to pay the bills that week he was content. And there wasn’t much long-range planning or worrying about things that maybe could happen unexpectedly. So he was happy to be delivered from that, and there wasn’t much of a staff or organization, so I wasn’t tied down by things. I could start some things and whatnot. And he didn’t have any problem with that.

So it worked well, but it was just another example of—sometimes a bureaucracy isn’t narrow or close-minded, it’s just that it’s not creative. And so if you present it with a creative possibility then it will look at it.

08a-00:29:37 LaBerge: What new things did you do? 127

08a-00:29:40 Crespin: That’s a very interesting thing—why’d you ask that? [laughter] I went away thinking if I ever did get a chance to come back here as pastor there were all kinds of things I’d start to give the parish new life. The English-speaking community was dwindling; the Spanish-speaking was growing. And so I had visions of coming back and trying to do some work with the different groups, Asians—Filipinos mostly, Latinos, Anglos, some few African Americans that were there, Louisiana Catholics, more than you’d think. I had all these ideas in my head.

While I was on the sabbatical I think I had a major shift in consciousness, or my paradigm shifted. I came back very negative on church activities for the sake of church activities, the usual—the men’s group, the women’s group, that kind of thing. I didn’t see the usefulness of it or what it was contributing to the real work of the church. I had taken a doctoral seminar on the sociology of religion at New Mexico, and there were twelve students in that seminar. The professor was an ex-Jesuit and probably ex-Catholic too. Everybody else was doing a doctoral program but me. And he at first didn’t want to let me in, but I was fascinated by the idea and I thought that I could learn a lot, but maybe I had something to offer too because of experience. I was about twenty years older than most of them in there, but they weren’t kids, as doctoral students. And as it turned out, half of them were Catholics, about six of them were Catholics. I was the only practicing Catholic, but they were knowledgeable and interested. There were a couple of times when mostly—they would bring their dissertation work and share it and we would have discussions about it. Since I didn’t have that they were—but they were very interested in what the Vatican Council had done, so he asked me to give a couple of lectures on that initiative. But through that whole experience I came to a new understanding personally of what the church is all about, and what religion is, and what things are sociologically always part of any religious organization, which I thought were kind of unique to us as Catholics and I found out everybody else—

08a-00:32:53 LaBerge: Did the same thing.

08a-00:32:52 Crespin: —did the same thing. I guess the idea of mission—what’s the church supposed to be doing?—through the reading I was doing and some of the discussions.

But by the time I came home my conviction was more in line with Bill’s, that the real work of the church was out, going into society and not so much trying to form little groups inside the moat. I’d had flashes of that in the past but never was in a position to do anything with that, and now I was. So I scrapped all the plans that I had about new groups and activities and started just trying to give as good pastoral service as I could for the sick and the dying and the 128

troubled, and people with family problems and personal problems, marriage problems.

But [I] decided that one of the biggest needs in our community there in Berkeley was that the educational system was failing the minority kids, the Berkeley system. Some of this came out of reading I had done while I was on the sabbatical. I’d read a thesis of a sociologist from Santa Barbara I think, just predicting the future of California and saying by the year—2020 I think was the year he was looking at. He was saying the demographics of California—he wrote this in 1990, I guess he wrote it in 1990, so it was a thirty-year look. But he said the demographics would be so different that the state will be largely Latino, which has a very young population, and the white population particularly is going to be aging and will not have as many young people in it. So the result was going to be that by 2020 we’d have the people who vote, which is traditionally older white people, making decisions about resources that were going to be taking care of their needs, but not necessarily addressing the needs of this young, growing population in terms of education and health and recreational facilities and all kinds of things. So I was very taken by that, because it seemed to me to ring true, and so I thought well, when I get back there or after I was back, that maybe a contribution that I could make would be to try to improve the educational experience of the Latinos in the Berkeley School System. That was the only one I could impact. I couldn’t do the country, couldn’t do the state—maybe [I] could have an impact on the Berkeley schools.

08a-00:36:09 LaBerge: So there wasn’t a school by then at St. Joe’s?

08a-00:36:10 Crespin: We had a school. It wasn’t a very good school and it was struggling because of finances the parish was having to put in—about $80,000 a year, which we really didn’t have. There weren’t any nuns there anymore. It was all lay staff. And it was mostly serving non-Catholics, people who weren’t a part of the parish. There was a largely African American group in the school, because they were mostly middle class African Americans who could afford to send their kids to the Catholic school. The old-timers didn’t have children anymore and there weren’t too many families in the parish. The Latinos couldn’t afford to go, and besides, they didn’t have the tradition of Catholic schools, because in Mexico, Catholic schools are for the rich. They’re not for the poor. So we didn’t have much of a Latino presence there. Most of the kids, I’d say, 95 percent of the Latino kids from our parish were in public schools. So that’s why I thought if I’m going to invest time in this it’s going to be better directed toward the public schools where most of our kids are.

So I spent the first three or four years just getting the lay of the land. Now this is after I was pastor, so the late-nineties, and joined every group or got on boards for different—the YMCA for example and the Police Athletic 129

League—not the library. The Berkeley Alliance was a group that was formed during that period of cooperation between the university, the city, and the community. Any way that I could get into a place where I might be able to influence the thinking. And it was—I think it was successful. I don’t know how much change we were actually able to bring about, but we raised a lot of consciousness about the fact that the schools were not serving the minorities, and people were pretty much aware of the fact that they weren’t serving the African American population, but they never factored in the Latino population. The Latinos were about 30 percent of the student body in the district, so that’s where I put my energies.

And I thought—at one point I stopped and I said is this a good idea? Because you’re neglecting the parish. Because I was spending easily 50 percent of my time on these matters, the school matters. But the parish wasn’t suffering, because it wasn’t built to require a lot of attention since the days of Bill. And I felt, well, these are all part of the parish too, so it’s not like I’m doing my own thing someplace else and it doesn’t have any impact on the people—it is. And people began to recognize that the parents in the Latino community, they began to call me if they were having trouble with their kids or trouble with the school, or if they felt the teachers were racist or that their kids were being tracked. So we had a lot of input into individual cases, if not the overall system.

08a-00:39:45 LaBerge: I think I read someplace that you had a really good relationship, say with Berkeley High, and that those folks would call you when they had a problem.

08a-00:39:55 Crespin: Yes. I knew the principal and the vice principals fairly well. They changed often, but I got to know them. [laughter] I knew some of the teachers who had been there for a long time. We formed a group of the Latino staff at Berkeley High, so there were teachers, there were some administrators, the librarian, people that did the special mentoring programs and whatnot. So we would meet once a month and try to figure out what the needs of the kids were and how, where we needed to push, whether we needed to involve the parents more or push the administration more or advocate for more teachers, or whatever it was.

So there were groups that were formed during that time, precisely around the whole question of education. For those groups I was in on the ground floor, because they hadn’t existed. As I got around and got to know people, then I knew who might be interested and who might be helpful. So it was a time of a lot of activity and a lot of political awareness, I think, that we raised in the community, the Latino community, making them feel that they weren’t voiceless, and the Anglo community, making sure that we weren’t invisible. So I think as I left there, later, we’ll get to that eventually—that was the contribution that people felt that I had made. They saw it as a social justice 130

issue, which it was, and saw it as something that I was uniquely in position to be able to deal with, coming out of a Latino background but also being in a position of potential influence in the community, so it worked well.

I’ve been to a couple of meetings of one of the groups that I belong to—I stayed away, because now that I’m out of the city, I’m out of the loop. But I think they’re not struggling with the same problems that we were faced with I think, because those problems were addressed, maybe not totally, but at least they’re—the administration is more conscious of having to deal with the problem of kids who come in with no English whatsoever and how to deal with them or their problems. The kids who come in without Head Start or any of the advantages that some of the other kids have, or how to deal with kids whose parents don’t read. So with a lot of those things there are structures in place now, in the district. So I think the work that we did had some fruits. We didn’t get everything we wanted but we made good progress I thought.

I’m trying to go back—I guess the last thing I’d say about Bill is he continued his work. He had a couple of heart attacks and had to have bypasses twice, but he kept going, he kept going. At one point he had to do six months in the federal penitentiary for having trespassed at Fort Benning, Georgia, the School of the Americas, that protest. It was from March to late October, early November that he was in jail. He subsequently died about a month after getting out. [a siren in the background] A lot of us are convinced that it was that time in jail that probably just took its toll, final toll. He already had a bad heart, but the diet there and the lack of attention, medical attention. But that was his choice. That’s the way he wanted to go out.

08a-00:44:19 LaBerge: I’m going to turn this over.

08a-00:44:22 Crespin: Okay.

[Tape 8: Side B]

08b-00:00:00 LaBerge: Okay, so we are, finishing up on Berkeley.

08b-00:00:26 Crespin: Berkeley.

08b-00:00:27 LaBerge: And maybe on Bill O’Donnell.

08b-00:00:31 Crespin: Yes, I just—his death was a major moment, I think, both in the city of Berkeley—certainly in the parish, but I think even in the diocese. He really wasn’t taking care of himself by resting or doing things that would have been in order. He kept going, pushing himself to go to meetings and be part of 131

protests and get arrested, all the rest. And I think he kind of knew that eventually this was going to happen, and he probably wanted, orchestrated it in such a way that he was still on the job as it happened. He wasn’t going to let up before—

08b-00:01:25 LaBerge: Like a malingerer.

08b-00:01:29 Crespin: But when he died it was on a Monday morning. It was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

08b-00:01:34 LaBerge: Oh!

08b-00:01:34 Crespin: So December the eighth he had said the Mass. On Mondays he said the early Mass. He came in and had breakfast, and I was sitting there. His sister Mary had been living with us for a few months and she was at the dining room table. We kind of chatted. At breakfast in a rectory you mostly read the paper. You don’t talk to people. [laughing]

08b-00:01:59 LaBerge: Yes, sometimes in family houses it’s the same.

08b-00:02:02 Crespin: You do the same thing! So we chatted and then he just got up and announced, “Well, I have work to do. You guys can sit around here all day.” So he went in to work on his computer. What he would do on Monday mornings was he would write the comments that he put in the bulletin every week. Those writings were very famous, because he wrote about things that he could refer to in homilies, but he couldn’t really say what he wanted to, but he did it in his bulletins. But it was always a kind of a gospel reflection on the happenings of the time, the happenings of the day. So he went in and started to write at his computer. I went upstairs and about twenty minutes later, even less, the housekeeper came and said, “There’s something wrong with Father Bill. He’s asleep at the computer.” And I thought uh-oh. And so I went down—my room was above his. I went down and there he was. He had just slumped over, his head just resting on the keyboard. And on the computer was—“Next Sunday is called Rose,” he was going to say Rose Sunday, and he never got the Sunday out. Rose was the last word he wrote. We called the fire people and they worked on him for about a half an hour, but he was gone. I think the minute he laid his head down he was gone.

And so that week was a very intense week, first of all getting the word out, and secondly trying to figure out how we were going to fittingly honor him. The problem was that the next Sunday was the big celebration of Guadalupe. 132

08b-00:04:03 LaBerge: Guadalupe [December 12], because it’s the same week.

08b-00:04:05 Crespin: Yes, yes. And so we were trying to figure out how do we do this? Do we cancel Guadalupe? But we couldn’t. What we planned was that his body would come to the church on the Saturday night for the five o’clock Mass and we’d have a celebration for him. I guess it was a type of a—kind of a wake but not really a wake. And then they’d take the body back to the mortuary, and then Sunday afternoon the city of Berkeley, or the school district, I’m not sure which, allowed us the use of the Berkeley [Community] Theater, the little theater there, right downtown, because we knew the church would not hold the people that would want to come. So we set up a program, and it started I think at two in the afternoon and went till about five or six, with his body present. They brought the body in. And all friends from the union movement, from the farm worker movement, politicians, [U.S. Congresswomen] Nancy Pelosi was there and Barbara Lee was there. Other people that he had interacted with and worked with over the years, and they just got up and gave different tributes to him. So we had maybe three thousand people in the community theater for that, most of them stayed the whole afternoon.

And then after that we marched with his body back to the church from downtown Berkeley to the church, and the police department was very helpful in closing streets for us. And then his body stayed over in the church overnight, and then the next morning we had the funeral Mass. The church holds about six hundred people seated, with a little bit of squeezing and having people stand where they can—on Guadalupe we would normally have about a thousand or eleven hundred. I’m sure for Bill’s funeral we had fourteen, fifteen hundred people scattered in that church. They even put loudspeakers outside for people who couldn’t get in.

But it was a very impressive—I think it was one of the most impressive priest funerals I’ve ever been to. This was in 2002, I think—2002 or 2003, maybe 2003. It was a real celebration of what it means to be a priest in the world today, because that’s what Bill was. He was very loyal to the church—much more so than I consider myself to be. He was very proud of being a priest, but he was very much involved with the issues of the day and made an impact and was respected widely by people who had no connection with religion, for what he was doing. And so all that was celebrated, and I think that’s one of the last days I ever felt really proud to be a priest, because of the example that he had shown and the recognition that people displayed for his life as a priest, I think was a very—personally, for me, a very powerful thing.

But I think for a lot of people it was a major event. Tom Bates, the mayor of Berkeley, called him a Berkeley saint, which is a dubious honor, I guess. [laughter] But he made a strong impact on individual lives and he had an impact on some of the social movements of our time. A big representation 133

from the farm workers came up from Delano. I think maybe about thirty or forty of them came, and we had them standing up in the—partly standing because there was no room, but partly so they’d be prominent up in the sanctuary in one of the alcoves with their flags. It was just a very moving experience, which was a fitting climax to his life and his service there at Berkeley, at St. Joseph the Worker.

08b-00:08:57 LaBerge: I know that someone wrote a book about him, because we’ve had it [at Sagrada].

08b-00:09:00 Crespin: His sister took some of his writings and put them together. Some of them were his homilies and some of them were his bulletin writings, I think. Bill wrote a lot, so there’s a lot in his legacy. He wrote bulletins for about twenty years, every week an article, and so you get a real sense of his thinking. Even when he had to give a dedication or a grace before meals or a benediction, he always wrote it out and he saved those. So they had those, and then his homilies he always had written out, so there’s a lot to work with. I don’t think it was edited as well as it could have [been], but it is reflective of his thinking. Father Bill, I think is the title, something like that. [Father Bill, Reflections of a Beloved Rebel]

08b-00:09:51 LaBerge: Now, when you say he was very loyal to the church—so he didn’t get in trouble doctrinally or—he wasn’t censured or—

08b-00:10:07 Crespin: Well, he just got called into the bishop’s office regularly.

08b-00:10:11 LaBerge: [laughing] Okay, but not by the Vatican.

08b-00:10:13 Crespin: Not by the Vatican or anything and not by John Cummins. Bishop Begin was the one that was just furious with him sometimes and he would—for things he’d say in the pulpit or being present at different protests and things. But he just took that in stride. He knew where the bishop was coming from and so he expected that. He wasn’t offended or surprised. Bill was also very, very tolerant of people who didn’t agree with him. He would argue, discuss forever, but he never got snide or nasty or put down people. And even when they weren’t there, he wouldn’t talk about them in a negative way. He just accepted the fact that they looked at things differently and they had their opinion and he was going to have to act on his. But he—so doctrinally no. He never pushed that button.

He knew—increasingly he became very fluent in theology and spirituality. It was just amazing to see the growth in him. And it was all self-help, because he really—like I say, the seminary at the time that he went through wasn’t 134

dealing with a lot of the new ideas, and so he picked it all up from friends, from—I’m sure he got a lot from the Berrigans [Philip and Daniel] and from the people that he knew in the movement. He did a lot of reading. He liked history particularly, did a lot of reading. Those discussions that he had with the Protestant ministers, the ecumenical group on every Tuesday, I think he just learned wherever he could. But his thing was not church issues. The world was bigger than that. [laughing] And so he couldn’t—he believed women should be ordained; he believed clergy could be married—all that kind of stuff. But he felt that wasn’t—he had better things to do or more important things to do. And so I think in that way you could criticize the war, you could criticize big government or corporations and not get in trouble with the church. It’s only if you suggest that women ought to have a bigger role, then you get in trouble with the church.

So he—John Cummins sometimes would kind of [intake of breath] Bill! But he liked and respected Bill very much, so he never called him in, he never publicly chastised him—or even privately I don’t think. And I remember his last words at the Mass for Bill, the funeral Mass, he got up—he wasn’t the preacher, but he got up at the end and said a few words. But his final words were—“Truly, this was a man.” It was from a play, maybe from the one about Thomas More.

08b-00:13:27 LaBerge: Oh, A Man for All Seasons?

08b-00:13:30 Crespin: Yes, yes. That’s the kind of respect that John had for Bill.

08b-00:13:42 LaBerge: Now this just sparked this question—how do you do your homilies? Do you write everything out?

08b-00:13:49 Crespin: I did the first year, and then it was pointed out to me that I was preaching to the paper, because I was so insecure that I couldn’t take my [eyes] off [the page]—that I wasn’t making contact with the people. [laughter] So after that I never wrote them out. I’d get an outline in my head and sometimes the outline, the schema, would be fairly well filled out. I knew how I was going to express different things, depending on the amount of time I had to work with. But they’ll never have to spend a lot of time going through my homilies or my papers or my writings. [laughter]

08b-00:14:35 LaBerge: So how do you do that? Do you go for a walk? Do you just sit?

08b-00:14:38 Crespin: Well, in the early days I just sat and usually would fall asleep around eleven or twelve o’clock at night on a Saturday night, not quite sure how it was all going to come together. In recent years, I think all my years in Berkeley, I 135

went out walking in the morning, about six thirty or seven for about forty-five minutes to an hour, and that’s when I would do the thinking or what praying I was going to do that day and what preparation I was going to do for either funerals, that sometimes required some special thinking, or the Sunday homilies. But at that point my memory was still good, so I could count on having ideas and just going over and over them as the week went on, because I’d usually start since Monday, thinking about it anyway. Maybe around Thursday or Friday it would come together. I’ve always, even when I’ve had to give fairly weighty homilies, like I had to preach at the funeral of the man who was my confessor in the seminary, and he was very well revered. He’s the one who kept me in the seminary at times when I wanted to leave, Robert Giguere was his name.

08b-00:16:08 LaBerge: Could you spell his last name?

08b-00:16:09 Crespin: G-I-G-U-E-R-E [spells]. I was close to him most of my life. There were times when I wouldn’t see him for a year or so, but we’d usually keep in contact. But I was shocked when after he died—I’d been to visit him a couple of days before he died, but I was shocked after he died that the fellow who was taking care of him said, “Well, you know, you’re supposed to preach at his funeral.” And I thought oh, what do I do here now? So I did it, and I did it without any notes. It was at the seminary chapel and it was filled, because he was a very popular priest as a confessor and as a spiritual guide. So that was—but I just went over and over and over what I wanted to say until I could get it kind of concise.

I did a homily last October—a friend of mine was named lawyer of the year, Catholic lawyer of the year, by the St. Thomas More Society in San Francisco, and they had what they call the Red Mass, and he asked me if I would preach at the Mass, which I did, and that was in front of lawyers and priests, judges and so on. I panicked—well, panicked is probably a good word, but worried about it for the two weeks just prior to it, but I never wrote anything down. It was all up here [pointing to his head].

08b-00:17:41 LaBerge: All in your head.

08b-00:17:43 Crespin: And most of it came out.

08b-00:17:45 LaBerge: Wow. What is his name?

08b-00:17:48 Crespin: Dennis McQuaid. Q-U-A-I-D. 136

And then at the parish, that’s the way I preached. In Berkeley it was fairly easy, I think. Maybe I was in a rhythm where people seemed to respond positively, especially the English-speaking responded well. They liked those homilies very much and they used to go to Mass for Bill’s. But after Bill there was a vacuum, and since I was mostly still doing the Spanish-speaking stuff other people were preaching in English. But I got good feedback.

Here in St. Cornelius [Richmond, CA] it has been a struggle. I guess part of it is maybe my memory is starting to get shot, but I really struggle with preaching since the beginning of the week. And yet by Saturday I still—all I have is ideas floating around and I don’t have an outline, I don’t have something tight. Since the first Mass is seven o’clock Sunday morning, which I usually get—it seems to work, but I’m almost ashamed to confess it. I just— by the time I get to the homily I just say well, I’ve given this thing a lot of thought. I’m just going to now talk and just—it may not come together perfectly or I may leave some things out, but I’m just going to talk, and people respond very positively to that. I can’t use fancy language, especially in Spanish because I don’t know it, but my thinking is, I think, fairly clear and people relate to it or they understand it anyway. So even now in these last couple of weeks when it has been clear that the pastor’s leaving may be announced, people come up to me and [say], “Are you going to stay? Are you going to go, too?” “No, no. I’ll stay.” “Oh good. We like it when you preach.”

08b-00:20:09 LaBerge: Oh, that’s the feedback. Yes.

08b-00:20:10 Crespin: Yes. So that’s an excuse, I guess. The people in Union City, way back in the seventies, used to say to me, “You’re much better when you’re not prepared.” [laughter] So I took that as an order.

08b-00:20:33 LaBerge: You don’t know how much preparation really goes—it just looks—you don’t have your papers.

Well, how long were you pastor [at St. Joseph the Worker]?

08b-00:20:44 Crespin: Okay. 1995—June something to 2006, it was February second or third, 2006. The time that I was there—accomplishments, who knows. The work with the schools I think was the major undertaking that I took and probably the thing that I would be remembered for, certainly in the Spanish-speaking community and in the academic community of Berkeley. Even at the university, because I was involved with some things up there.

08b-00:21:24 LaBerge: What did you do up there? 137

08b-00:21:29 Crespin: I was on the Chancellor’s Advisory Group for two or three years. This was when Chancellor—

08b-00:21:38 LaBerge: Birgeneau or Berdahl?

08b-00:21:39 Crespin: No, Tien.

08b-00:21:42 LaBerge: Oh, Tien! Yes. Chang-Lin Tien.

08b-00:21:47 Crespin: Yes, okay, yes—that’s why I couldn’t remember it. I took part in a couple of conferences up there on educational issues, and through that participation was able to get some of the Berkeley schools included in a pipeline that the university was sponsoring to help kids prepare directly for entrance into Berkeley. They weren’t going to do any Berkeley schools. They had a set of schools in San Francisco and a set of schools in Richmond, but they didn’t think Berkeley needed it. I made the case that they did, so they got included too.

I worked with some of the Latino students here at UC Berkeley, formed a couple of groups. We’d just get together, and if they had questions we’d deal with them, formed a small community a couple of years with that. Got to know at least the Latino faculty up there, and through them gave some talks or lectures. We started a graduate and baccalaureate Mass for the Latino graduates, which went for about twenty years—it’s still going. They just had it on Saturday at Newman. There was a priest there who picked it up.

And then the Berkeley Alliance was this group that was formed with the university, the city, the school district, and the community to try to get some joint projects going, because the university never wanted to participate. They thought they were too big and had other things—and the city and the school district really wanted them to be a part of what was happening locally, too, so that group was formed to allow the university to gracefully participate. Anyway, so there were those efforts. I forget the question even now, what you had said.

08b-00:23:54 LaBerge: Well, it was—I started with how long were you pastor—

08b-00:23:59 Crespin: Oh pastor, yes.

08b-00:24:00 LaBerge: And so you started talking about your accomplishments and the work with the schools. Yes. 138

08b-00:24:06 Crespin: So most of, I’d say it was in the field of education. Internally in the parish we had a parish council, which is always a struggle, but we did it. We had a finance committee. The liturgy committee—the liturgy committee was pretty active in preparing at least the English-speaking Masses. We never quite got to the point where we did the Spanish-speaking. There was another group that took care of that. The school kept going. It was closed only after I retired, so I wasn’t part of that.

My first commitment to the people there was to paint the church, because it was a horribly dark church inside and then there was chipping. The paint was chipping all over, peeling all over the walls. So it took a while to raise the money, but we raised the money and painted it totally white inside, just to get a feel for the space. And then the painter that I had contracted offered some advice for the trim. So it worked out really well, and so the church looks much brighter. We put in a whole new set of lighting too, because it was just very, very dark. And after the church had been painted, some people came up to me and asked—did you put in new stained glass windows too? Because they were visible for the first time, standing out. But in terms of legacy I think that’s one I left.

It was just doing the day-to-day work there. We were part of the founding group of BOCA, which is community organizing, the local unit of PICO, which is the larger, the national organizing group. We were already working in the field of education before BOCA was started, so when we became a part of that, then we adopted their system of organizing—which was helpful to us because we were doing it by the seat of our pants, just going from one crisis to another, and they gave us an instrument that we could use. But also, we were the one parish, initially anyway, that was dealing with poor people. We were the ones that had more issues for the group to take on. We didn’t get too many African American churches at the beginning because there was another group that was forming and they wanted to do housing and then didn’t want to participate in the other groups. Our group, as a result, got the attention of most of the other churches in those early groups.

I think we were known in the city. I was known because of my involvement in a lot of the civic groups. Any time the city or the school district or even the university wanted to communicate with the Latino community of Berkeley they would come to the church, because they knew that that was where they could get the word out. And if they needed Latino membership on committees or boards or things, they would come to us looking for that because that was the point of contact. So I think during those years that I was pastor that was the reputation that the parish had. It was in touch with the Latino community, which for so many years had been invisible and ignored and underserved. And then finally through the attention, the light that we focused on it, not only the schools but the health department and other city services began to devote many more resources to that group. 139

08b-00:28:23 LaBerge: That’s a real legacy. So did you decide to retire? Because—

08b-00:28:33 Crespin: Well, yes and no. When I went on a sabbatical, way back in ‘94, I lived by myself in an apartment.

08b-00:28:42 LaBerge: In Albuquerque.

08b-00:28:44 Crespin: In Albuquerque and went to school. And for the first time I had to take care of myself. I had never had to cook for myself and do the laundry and do the cleaning and all the rest. And I thought—I actually kind of like this! I can do it better than I thought—I never thought that I’d be able to be a cook, or not a cook, but I could cook well enough for me to eat it. I wouldn’t invite other people over, but I could do it for myself and not choke or gag.

So I came back from that thinking well, if I live long enough I think I really would like to retire. Before that I hadn’t considered it. The longer things went there, I began to get really worn down by the administration piece of being pastor and had a hard time bringing energy to that. It wasn’t a tremendously difficult parish to administer, but we did have a school. It was in constant economic trouble and a big turnover of faculty all the time. We had the financial needs of the parish itself, and so on. But anyway, I just grew really tired and wanted to retire. I was still shy of seventy, so that was the earliest I could retire. But I was just kind of holding on, but the idea looked more and more impressive, more and more attractive, so it was in my mind.

Then it happened that while I was being called back, the clergy abuse scandals were going on. There were some that were going to trial, and because I had dealt with some of them as chancellor I was being called back to give depositions in some of these cases. And in one of the depositions I was totally blindsided by the lawyer who was asking questions and I couldn’t figure out where he was going with them. But then finally he said, “Well, do you know that there’s an accusation against you?” And I said, “No, I don’t. I didn’t know that.” And we had to stop and regroup and I talked with the lawyer.

But it turns out that this fellow that I had known and helped over the years, way back since the time in Union City, who was a drug addict with a personality disorder besides, kept winding up back in jail. I think he spent, of the twenty years prior to that, he spent probably fourteen or fifteen of them in jail. I would help him all the way along, especially when he’d get out of jail he’d need some help in getting himself together and getting some money. Or when he was in jail, I’d send him money to help meet his personal expenses. Well, at one point I’d just finally “had it” and he was out. And I said, “I’m not going to continue. I keep hoping against hope, but nothing happens. You keep 140

going back into the same pattern. So if you continue to do that I’m out of here. I’m not going to be available to support you anymore.”

Shortly after that he got arrested again. He was in prison. He wrote to me saying, “Can you help me? Can you put some money in my books?” I did, but in the meantime they had transferred him to another prison.

08b-00:32:47 LaBerge: So he never got it.

08b-00:32:48 Crespin: So he never got it. So then he thought that I had cut him off, and I don’t know the process that he went through because I haven’t talked to him since then. But he thought well, I’ll get money out of him, so he contacted the lawyer who was handling a lot of these cases at that time and made this accusation, which was not true. So this lawyer was doing the deposition. He’s the one that told me, “Well, you know you have a charge against you.” When I found out I knew who it was and why he was doing it, but there wasn’t much I could do. That was during the year’s grace period. The state had declared a year when the statute of limitations didn’t apply and people could file cases. So we went through that whole year and nothing was filed. I think this is the way it was, yes—the deposition was in October or November of 2002, I think. Two thousand three [2003] was the year that was going to be the—

08b-00:34:10 LaBerge: Grace period.

08b-00:34:11 Crespin: —the grace period. I found out that there might be a charge filed. Two weeks later Bill died, so I didn’t even get a chance to tell him what was going on. And so we dealt with that. That whole next year went by with nothing filed in the court, but Bishop [Allen] Vigneron was here by that time, so he told me, “Well, there’s nothing, but—the day they do present a case we have to suspend you until we investigate.” So I knew that that could happen almost at any moment, and I pleaded with him, “Until something becomes public don’t suspend me, because if you do you’re going to raise more questions by the suspension.” So he kind of went along with that. That year finished out, and I had no word of anything filed.

In the next year, the year after that grace period had closed, they still allowed depositions to be filed, I guess, and predated them December 31, or I don’t know how they dealt with it, but either a bunch of them were filed right at the very end of that year or—I don’t know how legally they worked it out. But anyway, I found out in February that a charge had been filed with the court. So then the bishop called me in and he said—or he didn’t call me in, somebody else did, and said, “You have to be suspended.” I was trying to plead with him to give me a little bit of time anyway to—but, “You can’t say Mass anymore and you can’t present yourself as a priest anymore.” 141

08b-00:36:19 LaBerge: Oh!

08b-00:36:22 Crespin: “You can’t wear the collar.” So I said give me some time to think, and I went home and thought and then I came back and said, “Well, can I resign? If he won’t give me more time, can I resign so that the parish will not be in an uproar for the next four or five months without a pastor? Get me out of there and put a pastor in and allow me to resign.” I was about two months shy of turning seventy, so the answer came back yes, you can resign. So I resigned. I didn’t—did I retire? I retired. I retired, yes, and I guess I resigned at the same time. I don’t know the distinction at this point. But anyway, I think it was February the third of that year is when I was put off the job. I had to leave the next day for a funeral of my uncle, who was kind of like my second father, in New Mexico. So I was gone for two weeks, which was nice. At that point I just left a letter to be read at the pulpit on the Sunday explaining to people what had happened, stayed there for two weeks, came back. It was around Washington’s birthday by that time and [I] was prepared to pack and move. In the meantime, Jayson Landeza had been made the administrator. He was living there with us anyway, and when I got back he said, “No, you don’t move until this thing is settled. This is your home.”

08b-00:38:13 LaBerge: This is your home.

08b-00:38:13 Crespin: “You stay here.” So I stayed until—well, I stayed.

But the case was resolved in the church hearing at the end of May, and they decided there was no evidence to substantiate the claim. In the meantime, the lawyers who were pursuing these cases had come to an arrangement with the diocese that they would bundle them. They weren’t going to go to one trial after another, they were going to do them all together. And they bundled mine in with the other cases, even though no evidence was ever presented and no depositions were ever taken. No proof—it was not even discussed. But the diocese was so anxious to get rid of all these things at one time that they threw mine in. I had no say in that. It was the lawyers who were handling it. And then eventually I found out they made a settlement, a global settlement.

08b-00:39:27 LaBerge: For all the cases.

08b-00:39:30 Crespin: But then my case involved a settlement also.

08b-00:39:33 LaBerge: So this guy got a settlement. 142

08b-00:39:33 Crespin: Six hundred thousand—I don’t know how much of it he got, because the lawyers probably took about 40 percent of it anyway.

08b-00:39:40 LaBerge: Yes, but he got something.

08b-00:39:41 Crespin: Yes.

08b-00:39:42 LaBerge: Oh my gosh.

08b-00:39:43 Crespin: So he got what he wanted. But like I say, I wasn’t a part of any—the suit, the lawsuit wasn’t against me, it was against the diocese. So they were calling all the shots and all I could do was stand by and watch.

08b-00:40:03 LaBerge: Even so, it’s so upsetting. It must have been.

08b-00:40:09 Crespin: It was terribly upsetting, except that I knew it was not true. I’d say 90 to 95 percent of the people that expressed themselves expressed that it wasn’t true, that they were convinced it wasn’t true. And so I had tremendous support from people. It was one of the more positive experiences of my life in terms of people showing me appreciation for my ministry and trust in me. There was even one man from Berkeley who said, “I don’t believe it, but even if it’s true, I’m still with you.” [laughter] And I said, “Well, you don’t have to go that far, because it isn’t, because it isn’t.” So it was a painful way to end. That wasn’t the way I would like to have gone out, but it ended better than I could have anticipated. There are some priests in San Francisco that are still in limbo, that never had a decision made one way or the other, whereas the strategy on this side was to get past it as quickly as possible.

08b-00:41:23 LaBerge: I’m going to change the tape.

08b-00:41:24 Crespin: Okay.

[Tape 9: Side A]

09a-00:00:02 LaBerge: We’re still talking about your time in Berkeley. Also, what Jayson said, being able to stay because that was your home.

09a-00:00:17 Crespin: Yes, he was very, very gracious. So on the strength of that I stayed, and then after I was exonerated, or whatever the word would be, by the church 143

investigation process, he said, “Well, now you can stay.” And the bishop said, “You can say Mass again. You can go back to being—“

09a-00:00:44 LaBerge: But for four or five months there you couldn’t do any of that.

09a-00:00:47 Crespin: I couldn’t do anything, no.

09a-00:00:46 LaBerge: So what did you do? What did you do with your time?

09a-00:00:48 Crespin: Well, fortunately, I broke my ankle about two weeks into the time off. So I was laid up in my room for almost four months. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t go up and down the stairs, so I just sat there and watched a lot of basketball games. And yes, it would have been difficult had I not been able to stay there during that period.

But it all worked out very well, so that by the time I was healed—I think when the bishop told me I could say Mass again, I was leaving. It was on the Memorial Day weekend, so it was right around this time, [I was] leaving with a family that during this whole period had said to me, “We’re going to Ireland for two and a half weeks. Come with us.” I had never really envisioned going to Ireland, but I thought why not? It’s far away. [laughter] And so I was leaving to go with them, and I was not going to be around for a Sunday because I was leaving, I think on a Saturday. No, I don’t know how it worked out. I wanted to be able to say Mass before I left, and Bishop Vigneron had said well, there’s a lot of paperwork we still have to do and forms we have to file. But I pressed him, and the lawyer I had, the canon lawyer who was handling my case pressed him also, and so he agreed. So I got to say one Mass before I left for Ireland. I said it on crutches, because I was still on crutches, but I just wanted the people to know I was back. And so that was another very moving celebration. It was on, I guess, Sunday, and I guess I was leaving maybe Monday, Memorial Day was the day after.

But then I came back and then Jayson said “Stay. I need you,” because he was running two parishes, St. Columba’s [in Oakland, CA] and ours. So we stayed, and then when he decided to go with one parish—I really wanted him to stay with St. Joseph’s, but he wanted to go back to St. Columba’s, so that’s when Stephan Kappler came as the new pastor. And his first words to me were, “I’m doing a full-time graduate program in psychology. I need you. Are you willing?” And I said, “Yes. I don’t mind the work with the people.” It’s the administration I didn’t want to do, but the work with the people has never been a problem. So he said, “Well, you can be a big help to me.” So then I took care of most of the stuff, the pastoral stuff, the day-to-day, because he was gone most days to class. But the day-to-day stuff I dealt with and then helped with the weekend Masses. And then he left. He had a couple of mild 144

heart attacks that led him to know that he was probably extending himself too much and he wanted to finish that program, so he left the parish and that’s when his successor came and at first said, “George, I want you to stay.”

09a-00:04:10 LaBerge: And tell me his name, John—

09a-00:04:12 Crespin: Direen. D-I-R-E-E-N. [spells] He, from the beginning it was something—he said, “I want you to stay,” the first time he came to visit the parish before moving in. I said, “Well, thank you. I’d be happy to help.” Because I knew, I’ve always known, that once you’re retired, you’re there at the pleasure of the pastor. If he wants you there, you stay. If he doesn’t, you don’t. So there was no—I wasn’t going to fight about that. But he never tried to talk to me— period. We’d pass in the hall and say hi. He never had meals with us, breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

09a-00:04:57 LaBerge: When you say us, who else was there?

09a-00:04:58 Crespin: Ghebriel, Father Ghebriel Woldai, the Eritrean priest. Tom Martin, an Australian priest had been living with us for fifteen years, but he was asked to leave almost immediately after John arrived. For no reason really, was just asked to leave, and John brought two Vietnamese priests to live there.

09a-00:05:32 LaBerge: But he didn’t eat with you?

09a-00:05:32 Crespin: I think twice in the two years that we were there, and that’s because he had company and he invited them for dinner. But we never had a conversation about how to deal with anything, pastoral work or anything. He never told me what he wanted, what he didn’t want. And he just was invisible. He’d leave sometimes early in the morning and not tell anybody, the secretary, where he was or when he’d be back. People would call and be looking for him and, “I don’t know. I’ll take a message.” And she’d give him messages, and more often than not he would not respond to them. So it was a strange presence, and then he began doing things that were not recognizable at St. Joseph the Worker, putting up banners for the Catholic radio, putting out stuff about—I guess, is it Dignity? [Courage—ed.] The group that tries to change gay people to go straight—and just very conservative kinds of causes. His preaching was almost totally about abortion.

09a-00:06:52 LaBerge: I’ve heard that from parishioners, too.

09a-00:06:56 Crespin: Yes, that, Sunday after Sunday. I never listened to any of his homilies, so I spared myself that. 145

But anyway, at one point he walked in when I was having breakfast one morning, and he just said, “Can I talk to you after you finish breakfast?” He’d just let the housekeeper go and the secretary go, so I thought that’s what he wanted to tell me, that we weren’t going to have secretarial help nor cooking, so we’d have to fend for ourselves. But what he said was, “I want you to leave. I need your room. There’s another priest that wants to come and live here.” And I said to him, “John, I’m the one doing most of the pastoral work here. Why is it you’re asking me to leave and not any of the other people, yourself included?” And he just said, “Well, you know how it is when a new pastor comes, that people have a hard time transferring their allegiance from the old pastor to the new pastor, and I want to avoid that.” I said, “John, there have been two pastors since I retired, and people had no question in their mind who was the pastor and who they should go to. If they were confused, I would always send them to the pastor. There was never any...” And he said, “Well, I want to take this parish in a different direction, and you’re in the way.” That I could deal with, because that’s honest.

09a-00:08:30 LaBerge: Yes, you know that that is honest.

09a-00:08:36 Crespin: So I left at the end of—

09a-00:08:41 LaBerge: Now how soon did you leave?

09a-00:08:45 Crespin: That first interview, or the last interview, was June the second of 2011. I know that because I have a file in my computer that has anything related to that whole incident goes into the June second file. He asked me in that same conversation, “How soon can you leave?” And I said, “Well, gee. I don’t know. I don’t have any plan. This catches me off guard. I just presumed I was going to stay here until I got carried out, but I’ll need time to figure out something and see what’s available.” And he said, “Well, the sooner the better.” I said okay. About three days later he sent me a letter—we live in the same house. [laughter] He sent me a letter with a copy to somebody in the chancery office saying that, “I want you to vacate the premises by June 30. Take everything out of the church and the house.” And that was it. So it really didn’t give me a chance to say goodbye to the people. Of course there are more details, but I think that that’s enough. [laughing]

09a-00:10:17 LaBerge: Yes, that’s enough.

09a-00:10:20 Crespin: So that’s how the thirty years ended.

09a-00:10:21 LaBerge: Wow. And you were out by June 30? 146

09a-00:10:23 Crespin: Yes, I got out by June 28.

09a-00:10:28 LaBerge: You didn’t originally go to St. Cornelius?

09a-00:10:29 Crespin: I did.

09a-00:10:29 LaBerge: You did, so that—

09a-00:10:31 Crespin: I had several offers. I had about eight priests call me, pastors, saying why don’t you come live here.

09a-00:10:37 LaBerge: Who knew about it.

09a-00:10:38 Crespin: Yes. Filiberto [Barrera] from St. Cornelius was one of the first to call me, but he had the double advantage—one was that he had a room available right away. A couple of the others said, “At the end of the summer—we’ve got people here, but at the end of the summer you could come.” And the other one wasn’t close enough to Berkeley—I knew that people were going to keep calling on me for help one way or the other, Masses or funerals or weddings or whatever. And so it would be helpful to be closer than further, because some of them were out in Contra Costa County. So I chose that one, and then he needed the help. He has a very large Spanish-speaking population and he was by himself there. So I thought I can be helpful. So I did—I think I’d want this to be part of the record.

09a-00:11:38 LaBerge: Okay.

09a-00:11:41 Crespin: The Sunday after he told me was Ascension Sunday, which we just celebrated a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t start getting word out, but it got out almost immediately by the end of the day he sat me down in the morning. People knew and were beginning to call. “Is this true? When...” And by the weekend—

09a-00:12:03 LaBerge: And how did they know?

09a-00:12:04 Crespin: I don’t know. I didn’t do it. But by that Sunday, people knew and a large contingent from the English-speaking community, especially the social justice crowd, came to the Spanish Mass, which was the Mass I was scheduled to celebrate that day. So much so that when I went out there and saw who was 147

there I thought I’m going to have to do this bilingually, because these people don’t—a lot of them don’t speak Spanish.

But anyway, it was Ascension Thursday and I gave this kind of a homily. I won’t do the whole thing, but just an outline of it: “When Jesus left the apostles, he didn’t leave them a manual or a guide or any kind of instructions what they were to do. He just said the Holy Spirit will tell you what to do. So they were left with, now what do we do? How do we get organized? What happens next? So they went through a period of experimentation in governance. In some places it was a strong presence, with James in Jerusalem or Paul wherever he went was founding communities. But the expressions that the church took in those early decades, and even centuries, differed according to place and the temperament of whoever was the founding figure there.

It wasn’t till 313, when Constantine declared Christianity an official religion and they could come up from the catacombs and come above ground, it wasn’t till then that they had to get some kind of an external organizational structure. And the one they took was modeled on the Roman Empire, because that was the most obvious sociological political structure. So they took that structure, with all the heaviness that was a part of that, the strong emphasis on blind obedience and loyalty and you take orders from the people that give you orders and you don’t talk back to them. But it was just a whole mentality that started bad and through the course of the centuries, in the Middle Ages just got more and more hierarchical, more and more emphasis on obedience and we’re in charge and you do what we say.

So that structure is the structure that came down through history, until the Second Vatican Council, when the Second Vatican Council said, ‘Well, the church is really the people. And it’s about communion, not about who’s in charge and who’s at the bottom of the pile.’ And so that set off a whole different way of thinking about church and doing church, and that’s what we’ve been living in these last fifty years since the end of the council.” “But,” I said, “There are a lot of people who have not been able to accept that and who are actually hankering after the old, and that’s what’s happened here. We have a clash of visions of what the church is all about. And so it’s not a personality difference, it’s not that we couldn’t get along—we never tried, in a sense, or he never gave me a chance.” “But,” I said, “It’s just two different visions. And that’s a struggle, but it’s not only going on here. It’s going on all over the country and all over the world.”

So that’s the context that I tried to put it [in], so it wouldn’t be a personal thing.

09a-00:15:59 LaBerge: And it was also honest. It wasn’t saying, I’m moving and not saying why. 148

09a-00:16:06 Crespin: Yes, so that’s the way I tried to present it, and I told the people who were furious and wanted to do something, I said, “Well, if you want to do something that’s your right. It’s your church, you’ve got to—if you want to try to preserve it. But you can’t make me the issue, because first of all, that’s not the reality of things. Secondly, I have no right to be here. If he tells me to go, I have to go. There’s no questioning there. So if you go down that [path], Bring Father George Back, you’re going to lose right off the bat. But if you say, ‘We want our parish back. We don’t want it taken away from us. We don’t want a direction imposed on us that we’re not prepared to go,’ then....” And they had all kinds of problems with him in the two years anyway, the leadership. So that’s how that whole thing played out.

09a-00:17:04 LaBerge: And there were things on the website and on the—I don’t know if you want to go into that.

09a-00:17:10 Crespin: Oh sure. As long as we have time, if you’ve got time on the tape.

09a-00:17:13 LaBerge: Yes.

09a-00:17:15 Crespin: Okay. I never check the website of the diocese or the Catholic Voice, so I wasn’t aware of it.

09a-00:17:26 LaBerge: I wasn’t until this happened. [laughter]

09a-00:17:30 Crespin: What happened was the group wanted to make its case to the bishop [Salvatore Cordileone]. And it happened that he was coming on the weekend of the seventeenth and the eighteenth of June to do a visitation at St. Joseph the Worker and to do confirmations. So they knew he was going to be on the premises on that Saturday and that Sunday. So the confirmation was Saturday evening. They decided not to do anything there, not to mess up the confirmation experience for the kids. But they did say, “At the major Mass on Sunday, we’ll stage a protest outside the church.” What I understand was they had maybe a hundred fifty/two hundred people there outside the church. I was away that weekend because I had a wedding scheduled down in Lompoc, which was perfect for me because it gave me a chance to be away and say I didn’t know anything about it. I knew it was going to happen, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with it anyway, because it was their deal.

They were outside there, the bishop avoided them, Cordileone. He is a frightened kind of guy, and John Direen also. So they went in a side door to the church, and he wouldn’t come out to meet with them. And after the Mass was over he started to go in a different direction, and somebody went to him 149 and said, “Would you come out and talk to people?” “No.” And then nobody’s quite sure what was said, but somebody went outside and announced from the top stairs of the church, “The bishop said he would meet us inside.” So the people had not gone into the Mass, they stayed outside. Then they started to make a beeline for the church, where the bishop was. And apparently he didn’t say that or that wasn’t his intention, and so the people that were his bodyguards started pushing the people out, and they were trying to get in. And the people in the back didn’t know what was going on, in the back who were just entering into the church, where all of a sudden there was this pushing and shoving going on. And then John called the police and the police came. They couldn’t do anything because no laws were broken, but he was just very frightened.

A week or so after that he [Bishop Cordileone] put an explanation on the [diocesan] website about the troubles in Berkeley and talked about this very unpleasant experience that he had had, and it was due to the fact that I had been asked to leave. The reason I had been asked to leave was that I was performing marriages without permission and I was not willing to hear confessions the old style, in the ear, that I had done baptisms invalidly. I don’t know how you can do an invalid baptism, unless you don’t use water, and that—I forget. There were a number of things said there, that I’d risked people not being married because I hadn’t done the proper paperwork and a whole bunch of stuff, none of which was true. Or some of it was maybe a partial truth, like the confession thing. Whenever I heard confessions I heard them in the little chapel, which allowed for face-to-face. John—we had actually used the confessionals as storage places, because we weren’t using them anymore. John reopened one of those and started hearing confessions in there. He never said, because he never talked to me or anybody else, he never said that he expected us to do that, so we just kept doing what we were doing. In the allegation it was that I refused to allow people the opportunity for private confession, which was not really the case.

But anyway, when I found out about that, I was just furious. I finally got a hold of a copy of what was being said and didn’t know how to deal with it directly. So what I did was I wrote a letter to the clergy. It was specifically directed to the priests who had written a letter of support on my behalf, about twenty-five/thirty priests that had written to the bishop saying... And I wrote back to them saying I was going to write just a thank you for your support, but now I also have to add that I need to reassure you that the things that were in that statement were not correct, not true, some of them absolutely false, others only partially true. I closed it with, “Nobody ever asked for my opinion about this. This material that appeared on the web clearly has to be directly from John Direen, and they’ve accepted his version of what happened without any consultation.”

So then the priests got back to the bishop and started pressing him, because, “Why did you not consult George? Why did you not try to get his version?” 150

So finally he wrote me a letter, sometime in early July saying, “I’m sorry about all this that’s been going on, and if you’d ever like to come in and talk about it with me, I’d be happy to speak with you. And if you don’t want to come to the chancery office, we can arrange to meet in a neutral place.” So I wrote back and said “Yes, I’d be happy to give you my version of things, and I’d prefer not to go to the chancery office for that.”

So we met at St. Albert’s College a week after that. He was very nervous. I was very calm. [laughter] And as soon as he walked in—I got there ahead of him—as soon as he walked in the room where I was waiting, “I’m so happy you came, George. I didn’t think you’d come. But now I see that you’ve come and I’m so happy that you came because I really didn’t believe that you were going to come.” He doesn’t know how to fill in the space. And then we finally sat down and he said, “Well, I don’t really have anything to say to you and I don’t really have an agenda for this meeting.” And I said, [ringtone in the background] “Well, I don’t really have an agenda either, but I have a few things I’d like to say.” And so I went on just to tell him how offended I was by the fact that all these things had been put up there, very questionable things, and seemingly with his approval, because there was no disclaimer and clearly it was John’s version, and how unjust that was. And then I—somehow, I did most of the talking. We were there about forty-five/fifty minutes.

In the middle of that I said to him, “I’m not even going to ask you to take that off of the website. That’s your decision if you want to leave it up there. But you need to know that the longer that stays up there, the worse you look and the worse the diocese looks, because I’ve spent my whole life in this diocese. People know me, and they know what I’m capable of and what I’m not capable of. And they know as they read that description, they either laugh because they know that that’s absurd, or they get very angry because they know it’s filled with lies. You do what you want about it, but it doesn’t affect my reputation at this point, it affects yours.”

And then we talked about some more things. I don’t remember all the conversation, but what was notable was at the end he didn’t promise anything. I didn’t ask him to commit to anything. At the end, as we both stood up, he went down on his knees, and I said what the hell are you doing? And he said, “Would you give me your blessing?” And I said, “That’s not necessary.” And he said, “Yes, I need it.” “Well, you know what you need.” So I did. I prayed a blessing over him and then helped him up. And as I helped him up, the instinct in me just—I just gave him a big hug. And he kind of stiffened—he thought I was going to violate him or something, but then—and then we left.

09a-00:26:43 LaBerge: Wow. 151

09a-00:26:43 Crespin: As we were walking out, to make conversation he said, “Well, what do you have planned for your future, George?” I said, “After this experience, I don’t think about the future anymore.” But that’s how it ended.

09a-00:26:55 LaBerge: That’s how it ended. Wow.

09a-00:26:59 Crespin: And then he never did anything there. It makes for interesting storytelling. [laughing]

09a-00:27:08 LaBerge: Yes, it is. Shall we end it there?

09a-00:27:11 Crespin: Yes, that’s a good place to end. 152 153

Interview #6: June 10, 2013

[Tape 10: Side A]

10a-00:00:05 LaBerge: Okay. Here it is June 10, and George, you just told me today’s the fifty-first anniversary of your first Mass. Anyway, last time we finished, I think, on your time in Berkeley—sort of. But you were going to talk a little bit about John Cummins asking for a coadjutor. And I don’t know what year that was or—

10a-00:00:50 Crespin: It was either 2004 or 2005. I don’t remember when Bishop Vigneron first arrived. He came in February of—it was either—I think it was 2004, but I have to double-check on that. I should have just checked on that.

Anyway, John Cummins—I don’t remember if I said much about his time in Oakland. But he was a native Oakland resident, born in St. Augustine’s Parish in North Oakland, grew up there, went to school, went to the seminary from there, said his first Mass there, was stationed at the Mission Dolores Parish in San Francisco as a young priest and then quickly moved to [Bishop] O’Dowd [High School]and then [was] told to get a [master’s] degree because he was obviously bright, had a special interest in history, and that’s where he started his degree work.

He was plucked out of there when the new bishop [Floyd Begin] came, by his cousin Monsignor Nick Connolly, who was the pastor at St. Leo’s in 1962 when the diocese was formed. He was plucked out of there to be made the chancellor. I think he was thirty-three years old at the time. A fortuitous choice, because John, besides being bright, was very personable and pretty much self-educated in theology. So he was up-to-date on a lot of the things that were going on and he was close friends with other people who were up- to-date, like Father Jim Keeley and Father Ray Decker and Father Mike Lucid. So he worked as chancellor, and it wasn’t an easy job because the bishop was a little bit ambivalent about—one day he was progressive and the next day he was very conservative.

10a-00:03:05 LaBerge: We’re talking about Bishop Begin.

10a-00:03:05 Crespin: Bishop Begin, yes, sorry. Yes, Bishop Begin. And so John was his chancellor. The two Connollys, Nick and Jack, were the vicars general, and they were the ones that had the key influence on Bishop Begin. They were both pastors at the time also. John was there full-time but didn’t have the experience, and I think he really wasn’t interested in playing the power game. He was genuinely interested in trying to get some things going in the diocese. So he was consulted on occasion, not very often in those early days, but he was pretty much given a green light to work in the ecumenical movement, to work in the 154

whole civil rights—whatever relationship the church was going to have to civil rights. He was largely responsible for getting the bishop to back the housing initiative that bore the name of the congressperson—I want to say Rumford. Was it Rumford?

10a-00:04:25 LaBerge: Oh, yes—Byron Rumford.

10a-00:04:26 Crespin: Yes, it was the Rumford housing initiative [1964] that was very controversial, but it was going to try to take the discrimination piece out of the housing market. A lot of people were opposed to it—a lot of Catholics even. But the bishop took a very courageous stand, and I think it was because John Cummins was there feeding him information and helping him to follow his conscience.

John was instrumental there when the movement began on the part of Catholic seminaries to come to Berkeley to be part of the Graduate Theological Union. It was John who was the one meeting with the Jesuits, meeting with the Franciscans, with the Dominicans, meeting with the Protestant leadership at the GTU and trying to pull all that together. Bishop Begin had a hand, in the sense that he was the one who had to give the ultimate okay. One day he was very much opposed to it and the next day he was very much in favor of it—it depended on what day you caught him. He kind of gets the credit for assuring the Catholic participation in the GTU, but it was really John Cummins who was doing all the legwork and the PR work and the foundation for that. So John deserves a lot of credit for his role in establishing the GTU, and I think that was around 1966-‘67, somewhere in there.

He was the one that related to civic leaders. There wasn’t an awful lot of civic engagement between the diocese and the local polity, but whatever there was it was mostly John Cummins who did that. He worked a lot with ecumenical leaders apart from the GTU but in the diocese at large. It really turned out to be the public relations face of the diocese, which was positive, because he was capable and knowledgeable there so he did a really good job. He had the trust of the priests. He was one of them and was always very accessible to the clergy as chancellor, so he was very well respected and liked and trusted, so that made it easy. Other officials in the chancery didn’t enjoy that same popularity, let’s say. [laughter]

John lived for a while at St. Margaret Mary Parish with an old pastor, Emmett O’Conner, who was in his eighties by that time, a very erudite, scholarly kind of man. John all his life had an appreciation for older people. His own parents lived to their nineties, and he was very solicitous for them. But also, he made a lot of friends at Cal-Berkeley, older professors who were mentors to him. Ray Sontag is one person he always mentions, who was a professor of history, I believe—and the older clergy too. He was very solicitous for the older 155

pastors, and in those days there weren’t too many retired priests, because retirement hadn’t really become a common thing yet, but he was always very good to them.

10a-00:08:12 LaBerge: Did he work on his degree at Berkeley?

10a-00:08:14 Crespin: He worked on his degree at Berkeley. He never finished, and I kept, for the next twenty-five years, encouraging him to do it. But he was just too engaged with what was going on from day to day, and you have to have time to be able to do that. So he never did. He always maintained his interest in history but he didn’t—and he had a fabulous memory for names and places and dates that went along with that career.

I’m trying to think what are the major pieces he was responsible for in those days. He did a lot with the African American pastors and churches, was close personal friends with many of the key pastors in Oakland, got along very well with them. I’m sure there’s more, but I just haven’t given it thought.

At any rate, I think it was in 1969 or ‘70, the California Catholic Conference was formed, which was the political arm of the California bishops, and he was chosen to be the first executive secretary, so he was in the founding group there. As a result, he left Oakland and went to live in Sacramento. He was there, doing a very good job, because again, he’s so personable and the bishops all trusted him. Maybe [they] didn’t always agree with everything he wanted to do, but at least he had their trust and he always took them into consideration in making decisions, and got them to be much more open than they might have been otherwise to some of the state legislation that was taking place, I think. It was one of the early gay rights, gay civil rights legislation that he persuaded them to back. I’m not sure many of them did it very willingly, but at least he kept insisting that it was a civil rights issue and not a religious issue. I don’t remember the piece of legislation, but I remember it was when Willie Brown was the speaker of the assembly at the time, and I think he worked with Willie Brown.

So he did, I think, a very good job there in Sacramento. He was there about four years or five when he was made auxiliary bishop of Sacramento. That must have been around 1974 I think, or so, at which time he left the job with the conference and became full-time auxiliary to the bishop of Sacramento, and loved it up there. He loved the northern part of California. It was closer to ski country and he was at Davis, living there. He wasn’t involved with the university, but he had some contact there and remained there until Bishop Begin was dying.

In those days, retirement was automatic at seventy-five for bishops, and he was approaching his seventy-fifth, Bishop Begin was approaching his 156

seventy-fifth birthday and they knew he was going to retire. It was already in the wind that he would be retiring on his seventy-fifth birthday, so everybody was expecting a change at that point. What nobody expected was that he developed a serious brain cancer in the last two or three months that he was still working, and so it was a question of whether he would live long enough to retire. But apparently, the Vatican already had its contingency plan, so as he was dying, John Cummins knew that he was coming as bishop to Oakland. But he was under the seal of confidentiality and secrecy, or whatever else, so he couldn’t say that to Begin. Begin died without knowing who was going to replace him, although John said that the last visit he had with him he felt very awkward because he knew that he was going to be bishop but he didn’t say anything.

So that was in 1977, I guess in June of 1977 that John was installed as bishop at the Kaiser—it was at the Kaiser Center and then the reception was at the Oakland Museum, which was fairly new at the time. He remains bishop for almost twenty-five years, bishop of Oakland. With his taking over here in Oakland, the stamp of Vatican II was hugely impressed. John had been very much brought up in that whole environment. He attended a couple of sessions of the Vatican Council at the invitation of Bishop Begin. He was chancellor at the time, but he really soaked up as much as he could and went to all the lectures by the theologians and the talks and the press conferences, so he knew a lot of what was happening there. And it was very much in line, his own thinking was very much in line with the Second Vatican Council. But the underlying themes of co-responsibility, of collegiality, of lay participation, the role of women was one that was very important to John.

He felt very strongly about consultation, that anybody who was going to be affected by a decision ought at least to have the opportunity to express an opinion. They didn’t have to necessarily agree with the decision, but he felt that everybody had to be heard, and he was very strong on that and used to sometimes scold some of us who didn’t always have that as our primary intuition. When I’d go in and tell him we’re going to start this task force or this committee or this project, “Who’s on it?” And I’d say so-and-so and so- and-so. “You don’t have any Republicans on it.” “Oh yes, I forgot.” [laughter] Or very conservative people—he wanted every voice to be heard. It was really to his credit and that’s the way he ran the diocese. He wanted women to be included. He was early on in including women in key positions in the diocese, and even as chancellor ultimately. He went as far as he could, given the times, I think, but was very insistent on that. He always consulted and took the advice of the Presbyteral Council, the priests’ senate. He said anything you people pass via consensus I’ll implement, but if you give me a five-four vote, I’m not going to move on that. But he said, “If you show me it’s a clear consensus of the clergy, then I’ll do it.”

10a-00:16:24 LaBerge: Do you have an example of either the five-four or the consensus? 157

10a-00:16:33 Crespin: No. But I’ll have to really go searching. Most times people knew him well enough that they weren’t going to go to him with something that wasn’t—

10a-00:16:43 LaBerge: A consensus.

10a-00:16:45 Crespin: —just a slight majority, like the Supreme Court. Not that kind of thing. He wanted to make sure that most people were going to buy into it. He didn’t want to create division and have some people be the winners and some people be the losers. So he tried to keep everybody in the ball game, and I think very successfully. He started the Diocesan Pastoral Council and worked with it the same way. One funny thing that came out of that—I was the [brief interruption in recording] I was the chairperson or the moderator. We had two weekends in a row of the delegates to the Diocesan Pastoral [Council]—or maybe they were a month apart. There were two separate weekends, a Saturday and a Sunday.

10a-00:17:43 LaBerge: So it was consisting of lay people?

10a-00:17:46 Crespin: It was lay people, it was pastors, it was women religious, it was representatives of the different movements and the different ethnic groups in the diocese. So there were about four hundred people meeting at Holy Names College for a weekend. The purpose of that first gathering was to select a council, a smaller group, a pastoral council of about twenty/twenty-five people that would do the work of the council and then select the priorities of the council. So those were the two tasks that the general convention had. And at one point we were having elections for representatives on the council, so there were to be representatives of the priests, representatives of the parishes—of the different deaneries I think they were, representatives of different ethnic groups, representatives from the nuns, from the brothers. There may have been another group.

As I was preparing them for the vote, giving the instructions to the people as to how they would vote, it occurred to me that really only one of the positions on that group, on the council, would necessarily have to be a woman, and it was only the women religious. Any other one could have gone either way, especially in terms of the deaneries, but I didn’t mention that fact as I was preparing [them], just saying we were hoping to get a good mix of delegates and have all kinds of voices represented. And one thing that seemed clear is that the only woman who could wind up on this is the religious women. We took the vote, there were eight deaneries that were voting their representative. Eight women were elected, which wasn’t exactly what I had in mind! [laughter] But there were enough other men from other places. But it was just interesting that the people—that was in 1984, I think, but people were 158 sufficiently sensitive to the position of women in the church and wanting to make that happen that that was the way it turned out.

That was a very good group, a very hard-working, successful group. The priorities that were selected, and let’s see if I can remember all five of them. One was lay leadership, another was youth, another was evangelization, [one] might have been liturgy, and the surprise, the fifth one, which surprised everybody, was social justice. Because there was a very strong push for that, which turned out to be, I think, a very wise selection on the part of group, because then we were able to do some things that we might not have had the impetus to do or the backing to do. But anyway, the pastoral council is just an example of John’s insistence on shared responsibility and everybody participating.

His tenure was during the time when most of the American bishops were very pastoral and somewhat progressive. They’d all been appointed under Pope Paul VI, and the papal nuncio at the time was Archbishop [Jean] Jadot, who was a Belgian. But he was sent here by Paul VI with the mission to appoint men who are pastoral to be bishops of dioceses, because up to that point the tradition had been canon lawyers, people that had studied canon law, preferably in Rome, and they came with that mentality. Paul VI wisely saw, because I think he experienced it at the council itself, that the American bishops were among the most conservative group as a block at the council, because they were all legalists, all canon lawyers and not very well up to date on the latest theology and liturgy and so on. So he told Jadot to change that, so he did.

So the bishops that we had in the seventies and up until the mid-eighties were very progressive, very pastoral. They’re the ones that came out with the economic pastoral, they’re the ones who came out with the pastoral on nuclear weapons. They tried to do a pastoral on women, and there just wasn’t enough consensus yet for them to be able to do that. But they were very vocal and they issued a lot of statements on the USCC [United States Catholic Conference] and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops [NCCB] in support of the poor, immigration, against prejudice and racism and so on. It was a very activist group and vocal. [Pope] John Paul II gave a different kind of instruction, apparently, to the nuncios throughout the world, so they began selecting much more conservative people, people who thought like John Paul II. He had a valid perspective and a valid point of view, but to make that the only one was, in retrospect, a big mistake.

But John [Cummins] was part of that group and very much involved. He was national chairman of different committees on the liturgy I remember, on faith and science, on ecumenism. He was very involved and having to go regularly to Washington for meetings with the different committees that he was on. And during a part of that time I think he was the president of the California Catholic Conference, so he was very much involved at that level too. 159

10a-00:24:44 LaBerge: What involvement did you have in any of this that he was doing?

10a-00:24:49 Crespin: [laughing] Very little. Well, I was—

10a-00:24:54 LaBerge: Like the Diocesan Pastoral Council. It sounds like you ran that.

10a-00:24:56 Crespin: Well, I was part of the planning group for that, although Brian Joyce was really the inspiration for it, the motivator. He’s the one who put most of it together. But I was part of that group, and I was the one leading the convention both those weekends. One of my responsibilities as chancellor— he told me that the principal responsibility was work with the clergy, so I took most of that off of his plate. I think I may have mentioned before that he didn’t like messy situations, so he was grateful that I was doing that and sometimes didn’t even want to know what I was doing, so he didn’t have to get involved. So I did that piece.

At the state level I was involved with the Region Eleven Committee on the Spanish-Speaking, RECOSS it was called. I was the leader of that group. Each diocese would send representatives from their Spanish-speaking ministers to form this statewide group, because a lot of the issues were bigger than just any one diocese. So from 1981 to ’87, I was the chairperson of that group, and so I had to go to meetings in Sacramento with some of the bishops, and John was very supportive. He would go to meetings if it fit into his schedule, but he was very supportive in that field. I think in terms of working with John—

10a-00:26:55 LaBerge: How did he deal with, as time went on, with the new bishops who were more conservative?

10a-00:27:06 Crespin: His nature is to be friendly and to rise above ideology, so he made an effort. It became increasingly more difficult as more ideological bishops were appointed. John had no trouble with the old conservative bishops, and Archbishop McGucken or McIntyre down in Los Angeles. He could get along with them very well. But when ideological people started being appointed who just already had their agenda and weren’t open to other issues, then he continued to try to work with them but increasingly was frustrated that they weren’t open to—it’s like what’s going on in the Congress right now. The positions are pretty well taken and hardened, and then there’s not much dialogue that goes on. So it went so contrary to his style of operation that it was very frustrating for him.

I think he managed to hold the California bishops pretty much united during his time at the conference, but he could see—I remember talking to him as he would come home from some of the national meetings. He’d just shake his 160

head and say, “It’s all changed. It’s all changed. I don’t feel at home there anymore. I don’t feel part of it. They want to be exclusive, and they want to have the small group run everything and exclude everybody else. And so he regretted that. He felt bad about that, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

10a-00:28:52 LaBerge: Obviously, he didn’t have a say in who his successor was.

10a-00:28:55 Crespin: John?

10a-00:28:55 LaBerge: Yes.

10a-00:29:00 Crespin: Well, he thought he would at least get veto power, but he didn’t get that. I had another inspiration before that—it was still while he was...[pause to think]. It’ll come to me later. I can’t think of it right now.

As he was approaching his seventy-fifth birthday he understood that he was to retire. He didn’t want to. He wasn’t ready. He was still very healthy and engaged and able to do a lot of work, and what’s more, he enjoyed it. He loved being bishop. He was a very humble man, so it wasn’t because it put him on the center stage, but because he had good pastoral instincts. He felt like the pastor of the whole diocese and loved people and would always be the last one after any celebration at the cathedral, or at a parish if he was there at confirmation. He’d always be the last one outside still talking to people. He liked that interaction and got energy from it. So he wasn’t ready to set it aside, although he knew he had to.

But what he did want to do was have some input either—if not into the choosing of the person, at least have the opportunity to mentor that person in the first few months. That’s why he wanted a coadjutor/auxiliary, somebody who is—a coadjutor means you’re going to take over, you’re in line to take over, but not yet. You’ll be there working with the former bishop, because he saw this diocese as very complicated. By that time we had pretty much highlighted the diversity in the diocese, all the different ethnic groups, which put together made up the majority of Catholics in the diocese, and we were very conscious of that, trying to see them as a blessing for the diocese rather than a burden.

He was conscious of the big difference with rich and poor in this diocese, and also—the huge differences, apart from economic, between Contra Costa and Alameda. And then the diversity issue—town and gown, because we had a number of educational institutions that he really tried to relate to, UC Berkeley as well as the GTU, Holy Names [College], St. Mary’s. He felt that whoever came in was going to have to be familiar with all this, know the key 161 players, know how to hold it together and make it work. So that’s why he felt he needed at least a year to introduce this new person who already would be into the ministry as it developed here.

And so a year before he turned seventy-five he wrote to the nuncio and asked if he could have a coadjutor appointed, and who could be there through the transition period, and John would stay on in charge of it in a transitional mode. The nuncio said he would get back to him and he consulted with Rome I guess, and then got back to John and said, “The pope said yes. You can have a coadjutor. We’ll get on that right away.” This is about in March or April of the year before John was to retire. I think his retirement was going to be in February—I want to say 2005, but maybe it was 2006. Those dates I can look up.

Anyway, the months went by and nothing happened and then John was in Washington, D.C. in November, for the bishops’ meeting, their annual meeting, and he ran into the nuncio and he said, “What happened? I thought I was going to get a coadjutor.” And the nuncio just said, “Well, the plan has changed.” And so John [said], “What do you mean?” And he said, “Well, we’re not going to do that.” John was furious, not at the nuncio, but he was really upset. He consulted with some of his bishop friends and I think particularly with John Quinn, Archbishop Quinn, who told him, “The only way you can get any change in whatever decision has been taken is to go there and to get in their face, the cardinal or the Congregation [for] Bishops, and maybe the pope himself if you get a chance, but you’ve got to be there. You can’t just write or you can’t send e-mails.”

So John decided to go [to Rome]. He thought about it for a while, but then he—because he’s not usually that bold or confrontational. But this was something he really felt strongly about, so he decided to go. He invited me to go along with him because he hates to travel by himself and he needed company. It just happened that I could get away from the parish at that point, so I went with him. It was in early December. We got there on a Friday afternoon, the plane arrived around four, or maybe earlier, two or three. We had planned for us to get to the North American College, where we were going to be staying those days that we were there, and for him to call the office of the Congregation [for] Bishops and ask for an appointment with the cardinal in charge, Cardinal Re, R-E. [Giovanni Battista Re] And he got it for Monday morning after the weekend, at ten or eleven o’clock in the morning.

So all weekend we stayed there, we did a little bit of touring around, but we stayed at the North American College because he was working on his presentation of, “This is what the diocese is all about, these are the complexities, these are the points that have to be taken seriously,” and so on. I would stay in my room reading and he would come every once in a while and say, “I just added this paragraph. What do you think?” And so he had this whole thing worked out; it was about a half an hour long. 162

We went over to the congregation office on the Monday morning. I took a rather thick book, thinking this is going to take a while, because I knew I wouldn’t get into the meeting, but I’d wait outside reading it. And finally they took him in.

10a-00:36:14 LaBerge: And the meeting was with Cardinal Re and other people?

10a-00:36:18 Crespin: Yes, I think just with Cardinal Re. I never got in, but I think it was just the two of them. I could hear voices and started to read, and almost immediately John came back out, escorted by the cardinal, and the cardinal was just saying, “Well, now don’t worry. We’ll take care of all this.” And then he found out I spoke Spanish, the cardinal did. John introduced me as the Spanish-speaking vicar general. And so then the cardinal started speaking Spanish to me, and he kind of ignored John—at least as he walked us to the elevator. It wasn’t a large time. When we got outside I said, “What was that all about?” And he said, “Well, he didn’t give me a chance to make my presentation. He just said, ‘Well, we know Oakland is such an important diocese that Oakland deserves an ordinary right away, not a coadjutor, because it’s such an important diocese, and we want an important bishop for this important diocese. We will give your request consideration and let you know soon.’” But it was clear that they weren’t going to name a coadjutor.

So then about a week later, it was before the end of December, so within a week after we returned to Oakland, John got the word that Bishop Vigneron was being named bishop of Oakland, Bishop Vigneron who was an auxiliary bishop working in the seminary in Detroit, in the Archdiocese of Detroit.

10a-00:38:08 LaBerge: That’s the archdiocese I grew up in, so I was feeling a little—[laughter]

10a-00:38:16 Crespin: Yes, well... But it was—

10a-00:38:27 LaBerge: Appointed immediately?

10a-00:38:31 Crespin: He was appointed coadjutor, but the idea was that the transition would take place quickly—“as soon as you get your letter in, he’ll take over.” So some of us did a little research and found out that the regulation read, “Upon completing his seventy-fifth birthday a bishop may hand in the letter of resignation.” So we got to John, and by that time he was so upset that he was open to it. And we said, “Don’t send the letter. It says you may, it doesn’t say you have to. What are they going to do if you don’t send the letter?” And again, not being the kind to buck authority or to be confrontational, but he felt strongly enough that he needed more time with Vigneron, so he wasn’t going 163

to rush his resignation. So his birthday was on March 3 of that year. I think that that was 2005. He didn’t send the letter all summer.

He went somewhere to a national meeting, and the papal nuncio was there, and the nuncio came up to him and said, “We haven’t received your letter yet.” And so then he felt pressured and he said, “It will be in the mail,” so then he wrote it. But he at least was able to stall for six months, during which time he had a chance to explain to Vigneron, although I don’t know how much he was really able to communicate to Vigneron, because Vigneron wasn’t necessarily open to being tutored by John, I think is the kind way to say it. [laughing]

10a-00:40:15 LaBerge: Yes, yes. My impression, just as a layperson, was when Bishop Vigneron came here, he had a mission.

10a-00:40:27 Crespin: Yes.

10a-00:40:30 LaBerge: To build a cathedral. It looked like that to the layfolks.

10a-00:40:35 Crespin: Well, the cathedral project was already underway.

10a-00:40:37 LaBerge: Oh, it was? Okay.

10a-00:40:39 Crespin: Yes, that’s the piece I think that I went blank on a little bit before, and maybe if it’s okay, we can go back to it just for a second. The earthquake was in 1989. It was clear, within a year after that, that it [St. Francis de Sales Cathedral] could not be restored easily. There were engineers who said yes, it could be done. I remember John tells the story of receiving a bid from some engineer, saying it would cost maybe $15-$16 million. So he said, “We could retrofit it.” And John asked him as they were going through the building and the engineer was talking to him about it. He said, “If we are able to retrofit it, would you feel comfortable bringing your family to Mass here?” And the fellow said no. So that did it for John, and he just said, “No, we can’t do that.” So then he began thinking about what to do next, because there was still plenty of time. It was still in the nineties and there was plenty of time, but John is notorious for taking time with decisions, not making quick decisions. That’s an understatement, I think. He just really agonized over things.

And so he couldn’t decide whether to put the cathedral on the same spot where it was, where St. Francis de Sales was. He thought it should be closer to a BART station. He thought it should be in Oakland. He considered moving it into some of the suburban places that some of the priests were pushing for, but he never was comfortable with that. He wanted it accessible to freeways, and 164

there were a lot of conditions that he had that I think were genuine and sensible, but it just delayed the process. So we—I was at one point delegated to work with a real estate man. I’m embarrassed that I can’t think of his name now—De Luca, Joe De Luca, who knew a lot about Oakland and was into Oakland politics, but he was in [the] real estate business. So he and I went to look at all kinds of places in the downtown area, to see if they would fit the criteria that John had placed. Some of them did, some of them didn’t. We actually looked at the spot where the cathedral is now and discarded it, because first of all, it was going to be too expensive, and secondly, I think whatever cathedral was built was going to be dwarfed by those other large buildings all around there. And then the property was too expensive. So we kept looking, but more and more time was going by. When I left the chancery office in 1994, then I dropped out of the project and then I think Alan Oliveira was also doing some of the work in that. He was the business person for the diocese, a priest.

10a-00:44:13 LaBerge: Was there any talk about making one of the other churches the cathedral?

10a-00:44:19 Crespin: There was. They tried several. They tried St. Felicitas out in San Leandro and they tried St. Augustine’s in Oakland. They tried [Our Lady of] Lourdes. John just never—he was open to trying to see, but then they never met the requirements that he had, and so none of them was selected. We used them as pro-cathedrals during those years, but there was no serious thought given to redoing any of them.

And then they had a competition, maybe late nineties, of architects, a worldwide competition. A number of architects submitted designs and they got down to three. The number one choice of the committee that was working on that was Santiago Calatrava, who had built the—bridges are really his thing. He built the one up in Redding, he’s built the setting for the Athens Olympics, the Olympic stadium. He has done the art museum in Milwaukee, I think, and all kinds of things all over Europe and this country. [He’s] well respected and very creative and enthusiastic. His design won the competition, and so they began negotiating with him, and it was a very exciting design. I got enthusiastic about it myself, even though I wasn’t part of the process anymore. I thought this will really put Oakland on the map. People will come to Oakland just to see this cathedral.

10a-00:46:25 LaBerge: I’m going to turn this over.

10a-00:46:24 Crespin: Okay.

165

[Tape 10: Side B]

10b-00:00:01 LaBerge: Not for very long, but—okay, here we are on side B of tape ten.

10b-00:00:12 Crespin: Okay. So they began negotiating with Calatrava, and it became clear that they were starting from very different perspectives. John was anxious to keep the cost down. He set a limit of $80 million for the cathedral and, if possible, the new chancery office. He wanted everything on the same site. Calatrava came in a little bit higher than that, and that made John nervous. But Calatrava kept assuring John and the committee that he would help in the fundraising, that he could use his own contacts and his own reputation and he would do a lot of the fundraising, even locally. He became very close friends with Don Osuna in that process, and anytime he came out, Don would have him for dinner and for conversation. But after a while it became clear that they were moving further and further apart. Calatrava had this distinction, reputation, of going two or three times over budget in all his projects, and that made John very nervous. So they finally, after about two years’ negotiation back and forth, they finally decided that they couldn’t go ahead with Calatrava, and that’s when they went across the bay to Peter Hart or—

10b-00:01:55 LaBerge: I can’t remember.

10b-00:01:55 Crespin: I can’t remember either, but the one who did it, who was local, was in the final group for the competition anyway. He was the second or third choice. Craig Hartman is his name. So they went to him and he came up with a different design. Calatrava’s was more exciting, more inspirational I think. This one is fine. I don’t have any specific criticism. But when Calatrava was here and still in the running, or running the show actually, at that point, they showed him different sites. I wasn’t part of the group by that time. But they showed him different sites, and the site where the present cathedral is is the one he said, “It has to be here. This is the center of Oakland. This is the most beautiful view. You’ve got the lake right in front here. There are freeways coming in. This goes to the BART. This has to be it.” By that time, that property had doubled in price.

10b-00:03:02 LaBerge: I bet!

10b-00:03:03 Crespin: Because they knew we were after it, too. So it became a more expensive project, I think. They wound up paying something like $25 million just for the property, but because that was Calatrava’s intuition, that this is the ideal place for it. So then they went ahead and built it, parted ways with Calatrava and the cathedral got built. But the fundraising was still going on. There was a major donor who was going to give $60 million, who remained unnamed. I don’t 166

know if they ever got named in the process. Everybody knew who they were, but... [laughing]. John was trying to put together the money before starting the actual project, and it was in that time that the change was due to come.

10b-00:04:04 LaBerge: I see, okay.

10b-00:04:07 Crespin: And there was another reason why he was trying to get an extension or as long as he could, because first of all, he didn’t think it was fair to the new bishop to plop this thing on his lap. Secondly, the fundraising hadn’t been done and everybody knew that the best shot at getting the funding was through John, because he was known and loved even thought it was the job he most hated. He hated to ask people for money, but he became accustomed to it because that’s what he had to do to make that project a reality. But it was right in the middle of things. So that’s when Vigneron arrived and saw that the train had already left the station, in terms of the cathedral. He, to show his commitment to the diocese he said, “I adopt that as my first priority, to finish the cathedral, to build the cathedral.” So he wasn’t, I don’t think, sent here—

10b-00:05:02 LaBerge: He wasn’t given that—

10b-00:05:02 Crespin: He wasn’t sent here to do that, but he took it on and relied a lot on John. John still felt very responsible during Vigneron’s time here, although increasingly excluded at the same time.

So anyway, I think the bottom line in John’s experience as bishop here is that we had probably a model Vatican II diocese. There were only two or three other ones in the whole country that were even close to Oakland in terms of really reflecting the spirit and the teachings of Vatican II. Part of that was through the cathedral under Don Osuna, who really made the liturgy alive and made it the heart of the diocese. All the parishes were trying to imitate the cathedral, in part because it was being very well done, but also in part because their people were coming to the cathedral and were abandoning them. So in order to keep the people close to home they had to imitate, as much as they could, the cathedral.

We used to get requests from priests from all over the country, to come and join the diocese. And there were two places on the West Coast that received those kinds of applications—Seattle under Archbishop Hunthausen and Oakland under Bishop Cummins, because everybody knew of the reputation for being open, progressive, alive, and so I think that’s the reputation we had. And for many years that was a good thing to be known for. Towards the end, it was a bad thing to be known for. [laughing] It was not in favor in Rome, certainly. And we’ve been suffering the consequences of that ever since, because every bishop they’ve sent since John has been one totally opposed to 167

what it was that we were about for a least those twenty-five years. So John, really through his strong leadership and very firm convictions about participation, collaboration, collegiality, inclusion, made this a very good local church, I think. Anybody who experienced it in those years has very good feelings about most of what happened in those years. Unfortunately, because that was not seen as a value or as a plus by the powers-that-were in the Vatican, they were anxious to get rid of him. They wanted him out as fast as possible.

10b-00:08:01 LaBerge: So how long did he stay? Till the fall?

10b-00:08:05 Crespin: He stayed—yes, I think it was in October. His birthday was in March, and he finally wrote his letter in September, and the date was put as quickly as possible right after that in October, so when Vigneron took over as bishop.

10b-00:08:31 LaBerge: And he moved where?

10b-00:08:33 Crespin: John stayed at the cathedral until they sold the rectory there, because they’d already torn down the church. But he stayed there in the rectory. It was under Vigneron, I think, that they bought a house, the house where he’s living now near Lake Merritt. They bought it for the diocese, but told John he could live there as long as he wanted.

10b-00:09:02 LaBerge: Near the old chancery?

10b-00:09:03 Crespin: It’s behind it. It’s a couple of blocks beyond Lake Shore Avenue, up in the hills there behind the chancery. He’s very happy there. He likes the place and he’s comfortable.

He’s continued to be involved informally. He has done whatever Vigneron or Cordileone asked him to do, which wasn’t much. He continued to participate in the cathedral group, because he felt that he couldn’t walk out, and he felt responsible there. But apart from that, mostly just if individual pastors would ask him to do confirmations, or if they wanted him to be there for the fiftieth anniversary, the hundredth anniversary, or for the death of a priest or well- known layperson, then John has continued to do that. But in terms of real responsibility, I don’t think he’s hypersensitive in that regard, but I think he really was given the impression that he was in the way. That, “Thank you, but no thanks.” So at the end of his—he doesn’t talk in these terms, but I know this is how he has to feel, that he was a very loyal priest and bishop and very supportive of the institutional church, and was not treated well by it at the end. 168

The choice of bishops, I think, is a reflection of how they felt, what their judgment was on the work that he had done, sending three people in a row to undo it. That’s not an affirming action.

10b-00:11:00 LaBerge: Yes. And not honoring his request or not giving him the time.

10b-00:11:07 Crespin: Showing him in every way that they wanted him out, they wanted him out. I’ve had trouble with the institutional church for a long, long time, much longer than just recently. And John was always the one who, “George, you’ve just got to be loyal. You’ve got to be in there.” So I was furious at the way that they treated him, because if that’s how they treat the people that support them, how do they treat their enemies? [laughing] But it’s just—I feel sorry for him. I think he knows he’s done a good job. He’s been a good priest, a good bishop, a Vatican II bishop even. But he just—it’s sad for him that what he spent his life doing has been so little appreciated by the authorities—not by the people.

10b-00:12:05 LaBerge: Not by the people for sure.

10b-00:12:06 Crespin: The people are very appreciative. So there might be more about John, but I think that’s kind of what I would—

10b-00:12:20 LaBerge: That was a good summing up too. And I think we covered the—didn’t we— we didn’t cover all that. So would you feel like today talking about your own faith and spiritual journey? Or we could do it the next time.

10b-00:12:39 Crespin: I can start. [laughing] I don’t know—it’ll either be very brief or very long. I have no way of knowing till I start talking.

I think I would start with I was a 1940s and a 1950s Catholic, in the sense that I was born into a Catholic family. My parents were Catholics, but they weren’t very involved. They’d go to Mass. That was about it. I got into Catholic school—we moved to California from New Mexico during the war, and when we came out—I was in a Catholic school for the first grade in Albuquerque, but when we came out here then it was public school, and I went to public school for the first through the sixth grade I guess it was. But then because—it was an innocent kind of thing—I noticed that the Catholic school kids got more holidays than we did. [laughter] We’d be in school and they’d be off.

10b-00:13:46 LaBerge: Well, because they got the holy days! 169

10b-00:13:47 Crespin: They got their holy days, yes! So I pressured my folks to let us go to Catholic schools and they finally did enroll all three of us in St. Joseph’s School in Alameda where we were living.

10b-00:14:01 LaBerge: But before that, were you an altar boy?

10b-00:14:02 Crespin: I was an altar boy at St. Barnabas Church, which was our parish. The pastor was an old Irish—a nice man but we were kind of afraid of him. And the associate was Irish American, American born, a real active guy, very personable, John [A.] Coghlan is his name. He was known because he resembled Burt Lancaster, and all the girls particularly were always hovering around him. But he was very good to us, and I think one of the—I don’t think he was the reason I wanted to be a priest, but he’s the reason that I went to the diocesan seminary. Because I’d been to retreats with the Salesians, and I was studying at St. Joseph’s High School by that time under the Marists. I liked the Franciscans, what I thought the Franciscans did. So I knew I wanted to go, but I didn’t know where. And one day I was talking to him, to Father Coghlan, and I said, “I think I want to go to the seminary.” He said, “I’ve been waiting for that for three years!” But then I said, “But I don’t know where.” He said, “There’s no question. You’re going to the diocesan seminary. That’s it!” So the matter was resolved that quickly, and I’m happy it worked out that way.

So I went, but it was a very traditional Catholic family, and not super-Catholic but just practicing Catholics. We got the education at the grammar school, St. Joseph’s in Alameda and then the high school. I went into the seminary at the age of fifteen.

10b-00:15:56 LaBerge: This was ninth grade?

10b-00:15:56 Crespin: It was ninth grade. We didn’t have much money, so I didn’t think my parents could afford to pay for the seminary, though in that first year I got a scholarship to the high school, so that’s why I decided not even to try to go to the seminary if I could save my folks that kind of money. And then—but at the end of that time I really wanted to go, and so I asked them and got their— they were a little bit surprised I think, my parents, but they were supportive.

And then we had typical seminary formation pre-Vatican II style, which was heavy on discipline, heavy on traditional spirituality, pray the rosary, make a half-hour meditation, do a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, the normal stuff that was considered part of the spiritual life of that time. The education itself was very good, especially at the minor seminary, which was a six-year program, high school and the first years of college. The religious education was okay. It wasn’t spectacular but it was okay. 170

I went to the major seminary, St. Patrick’s in Menlo Park, and I got there in 1956. There were already some rumblings coming out of Europe in terms of a new approach to liturgy and a new approach to scripture. The things that were coming were coming in translation, and it was slow in coming but we were aware of them. And then we had a couple of professors in the major seminary that were more in touch with the European movements and opened them up for us, so we got an insight into a lot of thinking that had not reached the American shores and certainly had not reached St. Patrick’s. We were using the same textbook that they’d been using for a hundred years, and all our theology courses were in Latin. If we had a book in English, the professor would translate it into Latin for us, so we wouldn’t understand any of it.

10b-00:18:32 LaBerge: Backing up, where was the minor seminary?

10b-00:18:35 Crespin: It was in Mountain View, St. Joseph’s College in Mountain View, which was damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake and eventually torn down, but at that time it was still thriving.

10b-00:18:51 LaBerge: So who were some of the new people you were reading?

10b-00:18:56 Crespin: There was Jungmann, Josef Jungmann. Who was the famous Parisian cardinal—Cardinal... You’re catching me with my weak point here, remembering names at this point.

10b-00:19:13 LaBerge: That’s okay.

10b-00:19:17 Crespin: There were people writing in scripture also, a lot of work being done with— there was a Frenchman—French or German, Parsch was his last name, Pius Parsch was his full name, who wrote commentaries for every day’s Mass for the whole year. He was very liturgy-oriented and scripture-oriented, which was totally different from what we were getting, and so a number of us got into preparing for Mass every morning by reading his comments and trying to integrate that into our lives. [Leo Joseph] Cardinal Suenens was the one—they come, but it’s about ten minutes into the conversation that the names come back. There was Louis Bouyer I remember. There was—a couple of famous theologians writing about church and what the church is, but it was different from what we were getting.

So anyway, that began to change my thinking and be reflected in my spirituality, I think. I became more liturgically oriented, and this was different than for most of the other seminarians. There was a group of us that were into this line of thinking, and the other seminarians called us the lit-niks, because they thought that we were off base and that we were mostly concerned with 171

lacy surplices and incense, which wasn’t the point at all, but that’s how they caricatured us. But there was a small group of us that were focused more on the Mass, and frustrated more by the Mass as it was celebrated, knowing that it could be different. We got more into praying the breviary, the Divine Hours [Liturgy of the Hours; Divine Office], even though we didn’t have to, and began to center our spirituality more on the sacraments and the Mass than on the typical devotions that were common at that time even at the seminary.

So I guess that’s when I first got an inkling into the theology of the church, and the church as community, the church as family, the church as the people. This is well before the council, because I was ordained a few months before the council started.

10b-00:22:17 LaBerge: That’s right.

10b-00:22:19 Crespin: There was a lot of this thinking, that we did push a lot at the seminary and got participation in the Mass, which meant we could answer the Latin responses. But the rector was very opposed to that. It was an uphill struggle, I remember, just to get that kind of involvement. And then to get singing in the Mass was another struggle, because the rector and most of the faculty were not in favor of that. A lot of the students didn’t like that, so it was just this, again, this lit- nik group that was pushing for this kind of stuff. So I guess part of my spirituality, from early on, was combatative. [laughter] And you had to struggle to get anything that you thought might be meaningful, and it was always a challenge and always a conflict.

But going through theology then, at St. Patrick’s, ‘56 to ‘62, I just learned so much both from reading what was beginning to come out now in greater supply from Europe. And I had a confessor who was very much in tune with all this, Father Robert Giguere, who helped me in my own personal growth to incorporate this line of thinking, and then a few friends who were of the same mind. So I think my spirituality moved away from being a very personal: me and Jesus, me and God, or me trying to stay out of hell or trying to get into heaven, to an understanding of the big part of the church which is the people, which celebrates through the sacraments, which provides a vision for people.

So by the time I was ordained, my own understanding of what it meant to be a priest, I think, was totally changed from what it had been when I went in. I went in with a lot of fear, as I recall, even at the age of fifteen. I thought well, no, I don’t want to go to hell, so what’s the best way to avoid that? Well, become a priest! I found out that’s the best way to fashion a path toward it, but it just—it turned from a very inner-centered and fear-centered faith to something more joyful, more hopeful, more trusting. And learning more about scripture was a very important part of that, because the more you read and 172 reflect on scripture, you see that it’s very different from the catechism and very different from what was normally taught.

So by the time I came out of the seminary, I think I pretty well understood that the priesthood was not a reward for having spent eleven years in the seminary and was not some kind of special privilege, even though that’s the way it was advertised—you were coming out as another Christ and you’re on a pedestal and you’re different from other people. We were told, “You should not have friends among laypeople because you’re different, and only priests will understand what you’re all about.” I came out with a sense of wanting to serve, and I think that was pretty well in place at that point, and wanting people to understand the faith as I was beginning to understand it, and to enjoy that rather than to spend their lives with guilt and fear.

Somebody asked me about a year ago, when I was approaching my fiftieth anniversary, “What do you think you’ve accomplished in these fifty years?” [laughing] And the only thing that came to my head was I think I’ve spent these fifty years trying to move people from bad religion to good religion, to really appreciating what our faith is and not living with guilt and fear. [bird song in the background] And I think I started out that way, I grew in that conviction, I think, through the years, working with people.

I was astonished when I first began to hear confessions at how good people are. It was just that they were so open, so transparent about their lives with somebody who had almost no experience. I was twenty-six years old and what did I know? But I wasn’t scandalized at anything I heard and I wasn’t surprised by anything I heard. I was just edified by the struggles that people were going through trying to live a life close to God or at least not offending God. So the confession, for me, reminded me, I guess, of how good people are not how bad people are. And I think that’s pretty well been a part of my understanding through these years, that if I can help people free themselves from guilt or from fear or from whatever else chains them, binds them, then the sacrament of penance can do that. Maybe not indefinitely, but at least at the moment it can do that.

I have always liked celebrating Mass and made the promise to myself, even before it was common, that I would always preach at any Mass I celebrated. I think the recommendation about homilizing during the week at weekday Mass, came a few years later. But it was already part of my own thinking. And I think—I don’t know if I already mentioned this before, but I think only two times in the fifty-one years have I not preached at a Mass that I’ve said. And that’s not because I think I have so much to say, but it’s just I feel that it’s an important part of my role as a celebrant to try to open up the word. [motioning] The two times I didn’t preach I was sick. I didn’t feel I could speak any more than necessary without throwing up. 173

And having to preach or feeling the need to preach has forced me to be much more understanding of human weakness and human nature, because I’m preaching to myself too. I always, in preaching, always said we, not you, because I didn’t feel that it was my role to separate myself from whatever the message was that I was trying to share with the people. So that’s a very important part of spirituality. And for me it’s still, preparing homilies, is a real challenge sometimes—to keep it fresh, to keep it alive, to reach the wide variety of people that you have at any Mass. But then take the language thing too, from an English Mass to a Spanish Mass, totally different spiritualities and cultural expectations, and so on. Or you have very well educated people, as we had in Berkeley and English-speaking, sometimes university people, and have people very simple in their faith. So preaching is always a challenge, but the way I’ve approached it anyway is—are we okay?

10b-00:31:21 LaBerge: Keep going. I’ve got to get a pen. But keep going.

10b-00:31:24 Crespin: Okay. The way I’ve approached it is that in reading the scriptures, and it was impressed on us very early on, that we should always preach from the scriptures. In the times prior to the Second Vatican Council the priest would preach on whatever he wanted. It didn’t matter what the—

10b-00:31:42 LaBerge: What the reading was.

10b-00:31:43 Crespin: —what the reading was. He just preached on whatever was on his mind. And we were pretty much imbued with the notion that you have to—the readings are an integral part of the Mass, and that’s what has to be broken open for the people. So I start with thinking, what does this passage mean? And then, what does it mean to me? And then, what might it mean for the people, and in what way can I help them to understand the message and then integrate it into their lives? So often, it’s not a regular pattern, but often in my preaching as I’m trying to open up one of the passages, I’ll stop and say, “Okay. Now what does this mean for us?” And then try to get into how this can fit into our everyday understanding about who we are and what we’re supposed to be about. So I think that discipline has made part of my spirituality preaching, not because I’m preaching to others, but I’m trying also to see how this should be impacting me.

The traditional devotions fell off the cart very early.

10b-00:33:16 LaBerge: You’re talking about the rosary?

10b-00:33:16 Crespin: The rosary, unless I’m at a funeral, then I can do it. But it’s not meaningful for me if I’m all by myself, just walking in through the woods. 174

10b-00:33:28 LaBerge: The stations?

10b-00:33:29 Crespin: The stations of the cross went by the way also, because I identified those with a one-sided understanding of the paschal mystery, an emphasis on the sufferings, but it ends with the tomb. [laughing]

10b-00:33:50 LaBerge: Yes, yes.

10b-00:33:51 Crespin: And it didn’t reflect what I was learning to believe and trying to integrate into my understanding. So the stations went by. I was never very good at meditation, because—and this is my excuse—we always practiced it early in the morning, and I’m not a morning person. So we had fifteen or twenty minutes of silence in the morning and I’d fall right asleep, and the struggle to keep awake was always there. I tried later in the day, sometimes in the evening and it worked better, but in the mornings where we were supposed to do it, I just never could do it.

I’ve done a lot of studies in scripture, and so when I open up the scriptures, whether they’re for the Sunday coming up or just for my own use, there’s a lot of—I get a lot of personal benefit that comes from those studies and from understanding. I’ve read some scripture scholars who are very much into what the context was, what the meaning was, what the Greek was and the Latin and so on, and I know that that has to happen and is important, but my connection with scripture is very much pragmatic. This is something that’s supposed to be helping me in my daily life, and it’s supposed to be helping the people. And at some points I’m supposed to be translating that for them, so it’s—even now, in the mornings when I walk I usually spend the first half of the walk reflecting on the scriptures for next Sunday, so that—a sermon doesn’t always come easily as a result of those reflections, but sometimes it does.

10b-00:35:49 LaBerge: Yes, well, you mentioned you don’t write it down. It’s your—

10b-00:35:52 Crespin: No, it’s coming—and that’s frightening sometimes, because I go to bed Saturday night not having the slightest idea what’s going to come out Sunday morning. Or I’ve had two or three homilies in my head and I’m not sure which one I’m going to choose, and sometimes I wind up putting pieces of them together. But I think my mind works fairly logically, so that I think they don’t come out as a jumble. People seem to appreciate the fact that I seem to be talking to them rather than reading at them. I’m blessed, I think, with the ability to think on my feet and to make some kind of sense out of that. So I don’t think my preaching is what it used to be. I think it was better before. I was more vivid in my examples of everyday life. Now I’m more talking ideas, I think, concepts, although I try to put flesh and blood on them. 175

But in a new community it’s hard, too. It’s always been hard for me to preach to people that I didn’t know or that I wasn’t sharing life with. As a pastor or a priest in a parish, you know the people and you know where they are and what they emphasize. I’ve been in this place for two years now and I’m getting to know the people, and I get good feedback from them, “We’re so glad you’re here.” Or, “We like it when you say Mass,” or when you preach. But I don’t feel I know them yet, and I’m not sure if I will, because I’m just not involved in their everyday lives in the way I would have been if I were one of the priests on the staff.

I think in terms of my own private spirituality, it’s undergone a huge shift from the seminary understanding even into the early priesthood. You question a lot of things as you go along, and some of them are the moral teachings of the church that you can question and it doesn’t necessarily affect your faith in God. But there are other things you do question—God himself or herself. But what does that mean? What is life after death? What’s the meaning of suffering? How can it help? What about the church? What about the scriptures? I think so much in the Old Testament is—I see it now as self- serving for the Jewish story, and some of the New Testament self-serving for our story. Things that I just accepted without questioning, I’ve questioned and had to explain to myself and sometimes to other people.

I think my notion of God was dramatically changed by contact with the whole new cosmology, the universe story, just beginning to think in terms of galaxies and the universe and billions and billions of stars, of planets, of galaxies. It just opens up your idea of God so widely that you don’t even know who to pray to, because who is God? Certainly not the God that I was always trying to please or trying not to offend. And so that’s fashioned my thinking in ways that I could not have imagined.

Working with the Spanish-speaking has also influenced my spirituality, because in the Spanish-speaking cultures that I’ve worked with anyway, largely Mexican but also Central American, there’s a tremendous amount of faith but not much theology or theological understanding. They don’t have that background. Most of them, what little religious education they got they got from first communion, and that was pretty much the end of it. The rest is in the home, and it’s in the practices in the home and revolving around the parish, but the life of the parish. They don’t have serious reservations about God and a lot of theological points. They just trust. They have a very simple belief. They don’t need to know a lot of things, they just experience God in their lives. Now, that happens more easily in the home country, but it still continues here as well.

So in relating to that spirituality, I think it has opened me up, made me less—I was strictly a head Christian, relating mostly to beliefs, but it made me understand that it has to be a whole, a full human experience. And I see it and I’m envious of the way some people can live it out so totally and be so 176

peaceful in the face of horrible life experiences. I think that contact, and also with the poor, I think that also affects your own spirituality and your sense of yourself and the sense of what you should be doing in this life to walk with people, the whole theology of accompaniment or of solidarity. I think that’s all had an impact on my life in prayer. I pray more now with people than I do by myself. I do by myself too, but I have a lot of opportunities, even in retirement still, to visit the sick or to work with families who’ve just lost somebody in death, or to struggle with people who are trying to come to grips with who they are, or with couples or families that are coming apart. And very often I’ll just, in the middle of whatever we’re talking about, just say, “Let’s just pray here. I don’t have any answers, but maybe if we put everything in God’s hands...” So that kind of prayer, or in the hospital bed, whatever that— that I think and hope is genuine, and I hope it’s really an acknowledgement of our helplessness before God and our need to be at peace with God.

I just finished a book, one of the books that Carlo [Busby] gave me a couple of weeks ago. My Bright Abyss:[Meditation of a Modern Believer]—have you seen that?

10b-00:43:58 LaBerge: Yes. I’ve only glanced at it and then read two reviews.

10b-00:44:05 Crespin: It’s a very powerful book. It’s a book you have to read and reread and reread, because he’s so profound. But one of the last paragraphs in that book—I just finished it last week—he said, “When it comes down to it for me,” he’s talking, he said, “faith is not so much about beliefs but acceptance.” And I think given the context in which he’s writing it, and the context in which I was reading it, I said yes, that’s right on. It’s not about propositions and what you believe or you don’t believe, it’s about can you trust? Can you trust that God is making everything okay in his own way, in his own style, and in his own time? So that’s what I find myself preaching about mostly. That I can always tell where my own spirituality is by the way I preach, especially spontaneously at Mass in the morning. I find myself talking a lot about trust and about acceptance, about compassion, about being sensitive to the needs of the people around us as we see that in Jesus.

I took Sunday’s gospel in preaching and just said, “Yes, Jesus raised somebody from the dead, but that wasn’t the big thing that comes out of that gospel passage. Other people have raised people from the dead. The prophet raised people from the dead, in the first reading. But it was just that Jesus could be so sensitive and so compassionate, that he would go up to these people that he didn’t know and restore that young man to his mother.”

10b-00:45:56 LaBerge: And they hadn’t asked him. 177

10b-00:45:58 Crespin: They hadn’t asked him, yes. And he didn’t ask them, “Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the Ten Commandments? Do you go to the synagogue every Saturday?” So I guess that’s where I know where my spirituality is when I’m preaching, because it’s not prepared. My life has been a preparation I guess, for that, but the homilies aren’t prepared. I think I may have mentioned to you earlier, when I was in Union City back in the seventies, I was overwhelmed by all the times I had to give homilies or talks in the course of a day or a weekend—

[Tape 11: Side A]

11a-00:00:01 LaBerge: [You were talking about] when you were in Union City and you were preparing, spending time preparing.

11a-00:00:20 Crespin: Well, I was complaining that I didn’t have the time to prepare, because things were happening so fast and I had to give four, five, six, seven different sermons or talks on a given day, and I would comment to people, “I feel so bad, because some of this stuff is just kind of off the top of my head because I don’t have time to prepare.” And the response came back to me, “Father, everybody agrees you’re much better when you’re not prepared.” [laughter] And so—I’m trying to put the best possible face on that! I would say, “Well, but what comes out when I’m unprepared is what’s really in there anyway.”

11a-00:01:03 LaBerge: Yes, yes.

11a-00:01:03 Crespin: So I think my faith journey has been more trying to establish a competence and a connection with God, the living God, which is somewhat ambitious. But my faith doesn’t revolve around the church. It hasn’t for a long time. It doesn’t revolve around a lot of the teachings. I think I’m just trying to understand what it means that we are alive, what it means that we have received this gift, what it means that our lives here have meaning or purpose, the significance that they have. Meaning, I guess is the ultimate word.

And to try to help people to find that meaning in their own—and if they can find it in some other church, fine. If they can find it in nature, fine. They don’t have to find it the way the Catholic Church finds it. There are a lot of ways to God and no one way to live it out, and to try to put people into straightjackets or molds is not religious, it’s not helpful, it’s not authentic, because each of us is unique and we have to find our own way. If we can help each other find the way to meaning, which is another way for me of saying another way to God, find a way to God, then if we can help each other—great. And if others can help us, also fantastic. 178

But the ultimate reality is that we are part of a much bigger plan of God and we fit in. We’re not apart from that plan, but we will be much more at peace with ourselves and perhaps feel much more fulfilled in our experience of life if we know how to do our part, to take the place we’re supposed to take, in that plan. And if there’s anything afterwards, then that’s a bonus, but there’s no way of knowing that.

When I turned sixty, several years ago, I was obsessed with the idea of dying. It’s going to come soon, and I’m going to be buried. I don’t understand it and I don’t like it, and I don’t know what waits on the other side and I need to know. So I went on a retreat up at the Redwoods [Monastery]—I don’t know if I mentioned this?

11a-00:04:20 LaBerge: I don’t think you’ve talked about that, no.

11a-00:04:20 Crespin: Okay, up to the Trappistine monastery, Redwoods Monastery up in Garberville.

11a-00:04:26 LaBerge: Yes, I’ve been there.

11a-00:04:26 Crespin: Yes, it’s a great place. I spent a week there reading everything I could get at hand about death, and praying and trying to think. And at the end of the week I was really very much at peace—and had no new insight into death. [laughter] But I had come to the conclusion well, if something’s going to happen I don’t have any control over it. I don’t know what’s going to happen on the other side, but I trust. I trust that God is doing a good thing, and I’d love to come out on the other side as a person, maybe even as George. I’m not sure if that’s the way it works out or whether we get reconfigured somehow or we just become part of a—who knows? But I don’t think I fear it now. Now, if I got a diagnosis tomorrow of terminal cancer maybe I’d feel differently. But I don’t think I fear it, and I try to be peaceful in the face of it, knowing that this God that I’ve been trying to serve all along is not going to all of a sudden just throw me into an abyss. I just have to trust. I think that would kind of sum it up.

11a-00:06:01 LaBerge: That’s a beautiful putting it together and summing it up.

11a-00:06:10 Crespin: Well, here we are! [laughing]

[End of Interview]