A New Bishop Comes to East Tennessee

Father Mark Beckman, a native Tennessean from Lawrence County, will officially become the new Bishop of Knoxville in late July

Just as I waited a few days after the event of the resignation of our former Bishop Richard Stika to let my thoughts be known in this space, I thought it would be best and most fair to wait a few days after the announcement was made to collect my thoughts on The Bishop's successor. Just as my column on Bishop Stika’s resignation was written with a great deal of hesitancy initially, I have to say that I wondered if I should say anything at all. However, as one might expect, it was when I showed up at the parish that the questions came. “What do you think of the new bishop?” “What is all of this going to mean?” One friend of mine send me a message privately via social media and asked the question directly. “What are your impressions of him?”

At Roman Noon on Tuesday, May 7th, (that's 6:00 in the morning for those of us who don't take our daily liturgy at St. John Lateran), Pope Francis made it official through the office of the Papal Nuncio Cardinal Christophe Pierre that he was appointing Father Mark Beckman, a priest of the Diocese of Nashville and pastor of Saint Henry Parish in Nashville, as the fourth Bishop of Knoxville. He will be consecrated on Friday, July 26th. The place is yet to be determined, and I strongly suspect that is because the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus may not be large enough to hold all the people who will want to come. I received the email from the diocese at 6:00 that morning, and when I got up and checked my email I discovered the news was at the top of my inbox.

I cannot pretend to know Bishop-elect Beckman today, but I am greatly looking forward to getting to know him and I pray that I shall have that opportunity, and that my brother deacons will as well. Based on what I have learned about him, I can say that I am very hopeful about the future of our diocese and the Catholic community in East Tennessee. He is not a stranger to our area, indeed he's been part of his seminary summers in East Tennessee parishes back when we were still all a part of the Diocese of Nashville. He's familiar with many of our clergy, past and present. He also fulfills the one thing that was at the top of my wish list for a new bishop. I felt that we needed a native Tennessean running our diocese, and we shall have one.

https://www.youtube.com/live/iYQT8vDiqRA?si=SqfmObSSQy1uNRSz

As others have very correctly put it, our diocese is in need of healing and our new Shepherd will have to be very careful in the coming weeks and months in many ways in order that he might show with clarity that healing is what he intends to bring about. Even more than healing however, this diocese is in need of stability and continuity. We were only created a diocese in 1988, and hindsight has shown us that we have not always had the best examples of leadership, though that wasn't always known in the present moment. We need a bishop who loves the people of God and who is truly a pastor, whose primary interest is the salvation of souls, who understands that his most important job is to help get people to Heaven, and that we are here to help him in that Gospel mission.

It has been said of Bishop-elect Beckman that he is an unassuming and gentle pastor, that he is known to take an active role in his parishioners lives. As bishop, it'll be impossible for him to do that for everyone, of course, for us in East Tennessee he is now about to become the pastor of pastors here. A leader of leaders. In a very real sense, as one of his deacons, he truly does become my spiritual Father in the Lord. Many of us truly do await that spiritual guidance and pray that our people will truly feel embraced by it.

Because of the nature of the departure of Bishop Stika, there are still people in the diocese who are reeling from that. We need to be able to confront the reality of where we are and how many of us feel. As many of my readers know who read the post I wrote after Bishop Stika resigned, we need to be able to move on, but it doesn't make it easy to reconcile in your heart the problems of leadership of the man who ordained you and to whom you often looked for spiritual guidance.

East Tennessee needs a man after the Lord's own heart to lead the Church here. I pray for Bishop-elect Beckman that he is ready to open wide his arms and embrace that call from the Lord.