Meet the Cast: Bishop Clarence Mickleson
We Are Not Saints Series
Hello again, everyone. This is Jay Carson back again with another edition of Meet the Cast. We’re interviewing the cast of characters from the upcoming series, We Are Not Saints. We’re most honored that today’s guest is Bishop Clarence Mickleson, the bishop of the Diocese of San Luis Obispo, California.
Jay Welcome, Bishop Mickleson. Thank you for taking the time to chat with us today. It truly is an honor to have you with us.
Bishop Thank you, Jay. I’ve been very much looking forward to this.
Jay I understand that you’re the first bishop of the Diocese of San Luis Obispo, and that Fathers Paul Foris and Jared Röhrbach serve there also. Could you tell us a little bit about the diocese?
Bishop Certainly. We’re a comparatively small diocese with fewer than a hundred thousand Catholics in our boarders. We have about twenty parishes and about fifteen schools, ranging from preschool to high school. For such a small diocese, we have a significant staff — around two thousand priests, religious brothers and sisters, teachers and administrators, and support personnel.
Jay That sounds to me like a very large operation for one man to administer.
Bishop [Laughs] Oh, no. I couldn’t possibly handle the entire operation by myself. We’re blessed with a lot of highly competent and dedicated people. They make my job seem easy.
Jay You appear in all four books of the We Are Not Saints series, and you play a pivotal role in several of the stories, yet we don’t learn a great deal about you personally. Would you tell us something more about Clarence Mickleson the man?
Bishop Sure. As you said, I do play a pivotal role in this series, but I’d prefer that readers not pay that much attention to me. I’m not the primary focus of any of these books, so I’m more than content to remain in a supporting role, as it were.
Jay How about your early years. Were you born in San Luis Obispo?
Bishop No, as a matter of fact, I was born in Youngstown, Ohio, to a solid, working-class family. It was 1958 and Dad had a very good job in the steel mills. That allowed my family to send me to parochial school and Catholic high school. But by the time I graduated, all that had changed. The mills had all closed and by 1980 my dad was out of work. I had to depend on scholarships to get me through college.
Jay As an African-American family, was it difficult growing up in in Ohio?
Bishop There were difficulties for African-Americans everywhere in this country. Racism was the status quo. I do think that we had it a little bit better in Youngstown than many other places. The mills brought in large numbers of Blacks after the First World War, and there was a huge backlash at the time. But by the time my grandfather moved his family north from Mississippi in the 1940s in a second wave of immigration, things had settled down. The unions greatly improved pay and conditions for workers of all races. Of course, all that ended when the mills shut down.
Jay You mentioned a college scholarship. Where did you get your undergraduate education?
Bishop I gained a full scholarship to Loyola University Chicago and was admitted to the college seminary there.
Jay You did quite well, I understand.
Bishop You could say that. I graduated Summa cum Laude. I believe that’s why the diocese sent me to Rome for my theological studies.
Jay And that’s where you met Cardinal Romero?
Bishop Yes. You can imagine how flattered I was that a guy like me would come to the attention of a cardinal from the Roman Curia. Only much later did I realize that he’d been actively scouting for bright young talent to take under his wing.
Jay The cardinal kept an eye on you during your time there?
Bishop It was much more than that. He deliberately developed close relationships with the young men he mentored. Two or three times a month, he’d take us out for what he called aperitivo — cocktails and a meal. Of course, he’d ask about how we were doing, but he already knew. He kept close tabs on us through his contacts at the university and the seminary. He never asked a question he didn’t already know the answer to.
Jay You mentioned mentoring. What was that like for you?
Bishop He explained to us how the Vatican bureaucracy operated, giving us privileged inside information and coaching us on how we should handle ourselves in our dealings with it. He also encouraged us to ask him questions about himself and his office. He was always remarkably forthright with us. He wanted us to be as knowledgeable and effective as possibly by the time we graduated. He had high expectations for us.
Jay So, you were one of his protégés?
Bishop Yes, but much more than that. We became close personal friends, and we still are to this day.
Jay I hope we’ll get to speak to the cardinal sometime in the near future. He sounds like a most interesting man. Before we run out of time, I’d like to ask you about your relationship with Father Paul and Father Jared. We’ve already spoken to them, but what can you tell us about them from your perspective?
Bishop When I came to San Luis Obispo in 2005, I inherited several seminarians who had been studying for the archdiocese, but who lived here. I had to try to ease their transition from one diocese to the other. Paul and Jared stood out as natural leaders of the group, and I came to rely on them. The cardinal had trained me well. I saw their potential. They were both juniors at Catholic University in Washington DC, so it was a simple matter for me to get them invited to a reception for the cardinal at the Vatican embassy the following spring. Of course, I gave the cardinal a heads-up about them. They were just the sort of young men the cardinal was always looking for. Not surprisingly, he brought them onboard as soon as they arrived for their theology studies in Rome the next year.
Jay What was your impression of them when they came back from Rome after ordination?
Bishop I wasn’t wrong in my assessment of them. They are both remarkably capable young men.
Jay From what I read in the novel, The Priest, you didn’t go particularly easy on them. How is it that you gave them such challenging first assignments?
Bishop You have to understand that the cardinal’s protégés were being groomed for responsible positions in the church.
Jay To be bishops?
Bishop Exactly. With our current worldwide clergy shortage, I didn’t want to delay preparing them for what would most likely be their futures. For Paul, I desperately needed a secretary to handle all the crazy details of my office, and he had the ideal temperament for it.
Jay And Jared?
Bishop He had the most potential of any young priest I’d dealt with before or since, but his judgment needed honing with real-world experience.
Jay That’s why you assigned him to your most difficult parish?
Bishop Yes — that and the fact that I had no one else I could send there. He was the only priest not already committed to a parish, and I needed to send someone strong. The situation was becoming critical. Our next step would have been to close the parish, and that would have left a couple hundred people without a church.
Jay We’re almost out of time, and I wanted to ask you one more rather delicate question. Our readers are aware that Paul and Jared were a gay couple. Were you aware of it?
Bishop [Sighs] Not officially. Let me explain as briefly as I can. As a bishop, I have many responsibilities, not only to the diocese as it is today, but to the future as well. Also, my decisions have consequences, for better or worse. Sometimes, not to decide is the best decision. These two young men have enormous potential. They are also young and inexperienced. As we all do, they need a certain amount of time and latitude to make mistakes. That’s how they’ll learn and grow. It was my decision to grant them that latitude. In other words, there are certain things that Clarence Mickleson might have been aware of that Bishop Mickleson might have ignored — as long as it was possible.
Jay We’re out of time, bishop, and I want to express my sincere appreciation — along with our readers — for your kindness and candor. I hope you’ll come back and speak with us again soon.
That’s it for this session of Meet the Cast. Thanks for joining us. Don’t forget to follow us at medium.com so you won’t miss any of our upcoming interviews. And be sure to look for our next interview where we’ll be talking with a character from the other end of the spectrum: sex worker, Tony Keating. So long until then.
Email Bishop Mickleson: clarence.mickleson@WeAreNotSaints.net
