Word: shannon
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HUNCHING forward on a chair in the living room of his adobe house in Santa Fe, N. Mex., James P. Shannon, former Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, talks concernedly about the exodus of priests and nuns. "What they need," says Shannon, "is some sort of reassurance that their 'one act' has not completely vitiated them as ministers, as priests, as human beings." Shannon knows what he is talking about. For his "one act"-marrying without dispensation Mrs. Ruth Wilkinson, 51* -he was automatically excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church...
...Shannon still wears his episcopal ring as well as a wedding band. He attends Mass regularly at St. Anne's Church in Santa Fe, but carefully honors the excommunication penalty and does not receive the Eucharist; to take communion, he feels, "would be disruptive of the good order of the church." He cares deeply about that order, still reverently referring to Pope Paul as "the Holy Father." Shannon says grace before every meal. He conducts simple home devotions-Scripture readings and a few prayers-several times a week...
...Shannon's entry into clerical ranks was considerably less traumatic than his departure. He was born 49 years ago this week in Minnesota, one of six children in the family of a South St. Paul cattleman. After graduating as valedictorian from the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul in 1941, he entered St. Paul Seminary, and was ordained in 1946. Soon Shannon was off to academia: an M.A. in English from the University of Minnesota (1951), a doctorate in American studies from Yale (1955), the presidency of the College...
Thomas (1956). In 1965 Shannon was consecrated bishop by the Most Rev. Egidio Vagnozzi, then the Vatican's Apostolic Delegate to the U.S. "They criticize us for not having intellectuals in the hierarchy," remarked Vagnozzi. "Now we have an intellectual, and we shall see what happens...
What happened was that Shannon soon emerged as the most progressive and provocative member of the U.S. hierarchy. He was the only Roman Catholic bishop to march with Martin Luther King at Selma. He was also the only bishop to join a group of Catholic intellectuals in signing a 1967 open letter criticizing U.S. policy in Viet Nam-thereby earning a tough reprimand from Vagnozzi. He publicly endorsed Milwaukee's Father James Groppi and California's Cesar Chavez. Then, in 1968, his appearance on an NBC television special about the U.S. Catholic Church occasioned a critical resolution from...