Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 54

Larkin Haynes the St. Petersburg diocese so much so that the program ranks in the top 5 percent nationwide for women religious. Generally, it seems, Larkin has won the respect and admiration of priests and religious in the diocese during his tenure. Father Ed Lamp, pastor of St. Anne's Church in Ruskiri, got to know Larkin several years ago.

Lamp had been a monk at the abbey in Saint Leo for seven years when he decided he wanted to be a priest. He was ordained in 1983. Larkin helped make the transition from monk to priest very easy, Lamp said. He considers Larkin as "the most gracious, warm, kind person If he has a fault it's that he's too kind, too good. He tries so hard to please everybody.

I've learned the hard way since I've been a priest that you can't please all of the people all of the time." Despite all of the demands within the diocese, Larkin found time to develop a close relationship with Haynes, the late Episcopal bishop, and to initiate and nurture communication with Archbishop Iakovos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in North and South America, and with some Lutheran clergy. Larkin, too, said that the signing of the covenant of mutual respect and cooperation with Bishop Haynes on Jan. 20, 1987, was a highlight of his career. As for his plans for the future, Larkin said that he has a long list of things he wants to do. from 7-E a training program (or the permanent diaconate.

which graduated its first class of 31 deacons in May 1987, and a School of Pastoral Studies, which offers college credit courses for priests, deacons, religious brothers and sisters and lay ministers. In the last year alone, Larkin said, the diocese has put nearly $12-milIion into new construction. Soon after he became bishop, Larkin set up the Office of Vicar for Women Religious and a 12-fnember commission for women religious to increase communication between his office and the professional womei. religious in the diocese. Sister Barbara Ginter, a member of that commission and vicar of the Office for Women Religious, finds that Larkin is "so decent and so good that you can't fault him.

He's a prayerful, honest person." If Larkin does have a fault, she said, it is that "he shuns confrontation." He avoids talking about issues that are likely to divide, such as birth control, she said. The bishop also has been at the forefront of improving compensation for women religious. Acting on suggestions offered by the women's task force of the Florida Catholic Conference, Larkin improved compensation (monthly stipends, health insurance, housing, pensions) for women religious in women clergy. His firm stand made the Southwest Florida diocese one of just five in the denomination's 120 dioceses without women priests. Women as priests is one of the big issues being considered in the matter of Haynes' successor.

(The names of final candidates are expected to be announced in mid-March; the election will take place at a special diocesan convention in April.) Haynes was never reluctant to discuss the reasons for his opposition to women in the clergy. It centered, he said, on the lack of women among Jesus' original 12 apostles (which he saw as an indication that Jesus did not see women in that role) and on the longstanding tradition of an all-male clergy in the Roman Catholic Church. Primarily, he said, he was afraid that the ordination of women would be a major obstacle to the eventual reunification of the Christian Church. The coming together of all Christians was a dream he shared with Bishop W. Thomas Larkin of the Roman Catholic Diocese of St.

Petersburg. Hence, one of Haynes' happiest moments came on Jan. 20, 1987, when he and Bishop Larkin signed a covenant pledging themselves to the common goals of shared social action, shared worship and Christian unity. In his remarks that day, Bishop Haynes declared that his feelings for Bishop Larkin had grown "past the point of polite respect past the point of theological debate to a loving sense of relationship." According to his family and colleagues, that "loving sense of relationship" probably epitomized the life of E. Paul Haynes.

"First, I would like to work with the elderly in developing programs for them and building retirement homes," he said. "Also I'd like to work on getting more shelters for the homeless and setting up programs to help them get good jobs and get back on their feet. And I intend to keep doing hospital and nursing home visitations and pastoral ministries to the sick." Then, he paused and added, "I may even have a book deep down within me somewhere. I've seen an awful lot of growth here in Florida, and I think there's a story there." Larkin acknowledged that not all of his life as a bishop has been pleasant, and he admitted to having some regrets. In addition to long hours and weighty decisionmaking, he has had to handle difficult situations, particularly in dealing with fractured parishpriest relations and a few instances of priestly transgressions.

"Thank God, we haven't had too many of those," he said. And he is sorry that he and Bishop Haynes were not able to carry out many of the plans they had for projects, prayer services and social action programs sponsored by their two dioceses. Larkin admits having some concern about the future of the relationship between the area's Roman Catholics and Episcopalians, especially if Haynes is replaced by a liberal churchman and he is succeeded by a conservative. "I have wondered if my successor will see eye-to-eye with Bishop Haynes' successor the way the two of us did," he said, somewhat pensively. "But, all in all," he added, his face brightening, "whoever comes in to my job will inherit a wonderful diocese with a lot of challenges and a lot of opportunities for growth." from 7-E try also came in the growth of the diocese, which increased from 67 to 77 parishes during Haynes' years as bishop a period when most other Episcopal dioceses in the nation either remained stagnant or declined.

Other highlights included Haynes' introduction of the Cursil-lo movement in the diocese, a factor that stimulated the spiritual life of many of the local parishes, and the establishment of DaySpring, the diocese's conference and retreat center along the Manatee River near Ellenton. The bishop counted the strengthening of ties to other segments of the Christian community among his proudest accomplishments. He was a founder and stalwart member of Religions United for Action in Community, a forum designed to facilitate communication among the leaders of the major religious groups in the St. Petersburg area. For the last six years, he took a leading role in promoting the annual interfaith Thanksgiving service in St.

Petersburg, which attracts about 1,000 worshipers eatn Thanksgiving eve. He also gave his full support and encouragement to the annual Pontifax (bridge-builder) prayer services, sponsored by Roman Catholic and Episcopal women throughout the diocese. The bishop was not without his critics, however. Opposition to his refusal to ordain women priests or to allow them to serve in parishes under his supervision had been mounting since 1976 when the General Assembly of the Episcopal Church in America voted to accept ages, you need only ask for Peter Gibson, the superintendent of the glaziers' trust, who started as an altar boy when he was 12 and has been working on conservation of the windows since 1945. "Every working day of my life I come out of my home, where I have lived all my life with my mother and father who have now passed away, and the first thing that greets me are those great majestic western towers of York Minster," he said.

"I don't think any who come through the west door of York Minster can fail to be impressed by the majesty of the building. Seeing the beauty of this house of God is part of my life all I am doing is keeping faith with the medieval craftsmen who created these marvelous windows centuries ago." Allow him a little local pride. "I've visited the French cathedrals Chartres, Bourges, Sens, Le Mans and they are great cathedrals. But in none of those do you get, I think, the majesty of this building," he said, standing in the nave of York. par EPISCOPAL fW CHURCH J.

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2nd Ave. and 4th St. St. Petersburg, Fla. Ho) Communion and Healing Service Ph B22-4173 "Look at it tremendous size, you see.

Look at these pillars massive. As we stand here in the nave, see those windows in the clerestory. Each of those windows, 100 feet above our heads, is almost 35 feet high. When you get everything else that goes along with the size, the glass, the architectural details as we look at the arcading here on the south side of the nave, just look at it 14th-century perfection in itself." Awe was what the builders intended by creating buildings of such size, dwarfing everything else in the town. At York they made the nave and transepts so wide they could not be spanned by stone vaults, so the ceilings are of wood instead.

The visitor at the crossing of nave and transept looks up toward the ceiling of the central tower, 184 feet above, and feels insignificant by comparison, in a building that measures on the inside 486 feet from the west door entrance to the windows at the east end and 223 feet between the two arms of the transept. Cathedrals from 8-E dicular again, and, over on the other side, the free-standing octagonal chapter house with its pointed roof is in the Decorated style, built from 1260 to 1290, and extending from the Early English north transept. Complete the circuit by walking back to the west entrance through the grassy cathedral close on the north side, and you see how the later styles evolved naturally from the earlier ones, building a harmonious whole. Inside, the first thing a visitor might want to see nowadays is the restored wooden vault of the south transept, destroyed by fire after lightning struck in 1984. All these serene-looking cathedrals have actually led chaotic lives, their histories full of stories of fires, collapsing walls and towers, falling masonry ceilings and persistent reconstruction through the ages.

And if you wonder what kind of people they were who made these great buildings so lovingly over the 10e ST. PETERSBURG TIMES SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1988.