In Spokane: A Pauperish Yet Princely Churchman

By Jane Estes

Long before President Carter was asking Americans to set the thermostat at 65DEG, the temperature at 1908 East 14th Avenue in Spokane, Wash., had been held near 40DEG--not to save energy but to save money. 1908 East 14th is a drab four-room frame house in a blue-collar neighborhood. It cost $4,000 eight years ago, but at the time, as the present tenant explains, "they were having some trouble keeping the paint on it. Great strips would peel off. They were flopping all over the place."

The present tenant is the Most Rev. Bernard J. Topel, 75, for the past 22 years the Roman Catholic Bishop of Spokane and thus the spiritual leader of a diocese numbering 74,000 souls. People who worry about the worldly dignity of the church militant will be pleased to know that the bishop's residence was finally painted by volunteers four years ago. But going to lunch with his excellency might give them pause. These days, when the bishop brings home a guest, he tends to grin and confess, "Lost the front door key. We'll have to go round the back." Then he leads the way to an entrance that has been patched with plywood since thieves broke in to steal last spring. They only got $1, the bishop happily reports, and were lucky at that. Normally there is nothing of value in the house. The $1 had been put aside to buy seeds for the large, ragged vegetable garden that provides most of his food. "Funny thing," says Bishop Topel. "I've only bought one packet of seeds in the ten years I've lived here." That first packet apparently gave him a flying start on the rows of beans, peas, carrots, squash, turnips, potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes and comfrey, an herb he mainly uses for tea, that now fill his garden. Neighbors often help with the staples. "I like certain things," admits the bishop, and the word gets around. "But it is literally correct that I have not paid one penny for food for my house for the past four or five years."

It follows that the bishop does not favor rich viands, even for an occasional guest. A recent lunch visitor found himself dispatched to the garden to pluck a lettuce. As he rinsed it he was confronted with a choice between fish-head soup and lentil soup. (Not straight fish heads, the host explained. Those go for fertilizer. Rather a nourishing fish-head broth.) The guest chose lentils. Followed by some lettuce leaves, drenched in dill-pickle juice, and then by rolls (left by a neighbor) that the bishop turned into dessert by adding some home-grown rhubarb. Such frugality is not done for the mortification of the flesh or the confusion of friends' palates. "I have come to the realization," the bishop mildly explains, "that the most important thing I can do in the church, and that applies to Christians in general, is to live simply in order to give money to the poor. If you don't buy any clothes for years, that saves a lot of money too."

Accordingly, Bishop Topel has learned not only to scrimp on food but to iron patches on his worn-out trousers. For several years now he has worn a pair of black shoes bequeathed him by a priest in his diocese who died. They are two sizes too large, but the bishop solves that problem by wearing two pairs of socks. That in turn is a help when he keeps his thermostat down in winter and goes about indoors, as he sometimes does, clad in coat, hat and muffler. Word of this behavior reached a Jewish matron far away in The Bronx. She wrote saying she would send wool shirts and woolly pajamas. "I wrote back," he recalls, "pointing out that there must be people back there who needed such things. By return mail I got thermal underwear and ski socks." He laughs. "I put them in a drawer and forgot about them. Two years later, here I am, wearing thermal underwear and ski socks! It turns out that if you're really willing to run the gamut, you can save a lot of money for the poor."

Vows of poverty are not exactly a new idea to Christianity. But there are special religious orders for such things, and a bishop, some churchmen feel, is an administrator, after all, and a worldly eminence. "Kings should live like kings, princes should live like princes, and bishops should live like bishops," a man from Louisville summed up this view in a letter to Topel. Moreover, some cynics point out, if it came to cash accounting, the good bishop might very well generate more money by fund raising than by raising turnips to save on his food bill.

Such observations simply stir the bishop's laughter. Topel clearly believes that it is not the number of dollars raised, but the sharing of what one has with others that matters, and the fact of living poor as well. The people who now come to him for help, he notes, "are much more at home in my little house than they would be in a stately bishop's residence."

Bishop Topel always felt "a bit out of kilter" wearing his jeweled ring. But what he refers to as his "poverty binge" did not really set in until ten years ago, long after he had become a bishop. Topel had wanted to be a priest ever since he was a six-year-old growing up in Bozeman, Mont., the fourth son of an East Prussian tailor who had immigrated to America in 1878. He studied at Carroll College in Helena, Mont., and was ordained in 1927. He proved gifted enough at mathematics for the church to send him to Catholic University in Washington, D.C., for a degree in education, and then to Harvard and Notre Dame for a master's and doctorate in math. For his whole priesthood, 25 years, he taught at Carroll. "I became a bishop without ever having been a pastor or working in the chancery, the common way to become a bishop. I thought I was the least prepared man to become bishop ever," says Topel. "But then I decided afterward I wasn't."

The great majority of his diocese would agree. A disarming man with a sense of humor and a head for figures, Topel soon proved himself a conservative administrator who delegated authority well and led the diocese into such forward-looking social projects as homes for unwed mothers and housing for the elderly. A notable achievement, the one he is most proud of, was the establishment of the Immaculate Heart Retreat House and a new kind of religious retreat involving private work with a spiritual director and, for the priests and lay Catholics who go there, a 30-day period of almost total silence and prayer. Says Topel: "Sometimes that brings remarkable changes in people's lives."

Bishop Topel has always turned his salary back to the diocese. But ten years ago, after Vatican II emphasized the need for the Catholic Church to bear witness to poverty and downplay priestly perquisites, trappings and titles generally, Bishop Topel during a prayer retreat "suddenly got the conviction that God wanted me to move into a smaller house. I wanted to live like the poor, and that's the way it's been ever since." He even manages to turn over to the needy some money from his Social Security check.

The first dramatic step was to sell the bishop's 17-room brick residence, which Topel did for $25,000. (As the legal "corporation sole" of the diocese, the bishop can dispose of diocesan assets as he sees fit.) He also sold his gem-studded crozier and pectoral cross. All profits were turned over to charity through a special ecumenical committee.

When he turned 75 this spring, Topel, as church regulation requires, submitted his resignation, only to be named apostolic administrator of the diocese until such a time as a bishop could be found to replace him. So far, none has been forthcoming. He still works a full day at his office in the chancery, and whatever his own fiscal condition, will leave the diocese very well run and very well off. "The great majority of the Catholics here like the poverty thing," he observes, though he notes that some, those who favor "triumphalism" (a prideful attitude about the church and its secular image), still feel his eccentric pursuit of poverty is misplaced in a bishop. Topel is indeed much loved and admired for his unworldly show, but not all of his views sit easily with members of the diocese. In a column written for the weekly Inland Register, Topel once addressed the topic "Black Is Beautiful" and ended by giving three reasons he might like to be black himself. An irritated parishioner thereupon dropped off a box of black shoe polish. The bishop laughed. And, no doubt, joyfully applied the blacking to the dead priest's shoes. -- Jane Estes

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