By Gretchen Keiser

Six months after May 5, 1988, Archbishop Eugene A. Marino, SSJ, and his staff are moving more in the rhythm of archdiocesan matters and less in the blizzard of attention that engulfed his historic installation.

Still attending to a large backlog of personal mail and invitations that accrued between his March appointment and his May installation, the archbishop now has a larger personal staff to assist him.

In the next week, they will be mapping out his schedule for the first six months of 1989, particularly the parish Confirmation schedule.

In an interview Nov. 21 discussing his first six months in Atlanta, the archbishop said his 1989 schedule would be built around parish Confirmations and his desire to answer each request in the affirmative. Where scheduling conflicts cannot be resolve, he said he would favor "the parishes I have not been to and ... the smaller places." He noted that he has been to some metropolitan Atlanta parishes several times in the course of events already.

"Even though I would prefer to do all the Confirmations myself, I may have to ask the vicar general or the dean or Monsignor (John) McDonough to do some of the Confirmations," he said, while discussing the intensity of activity that has characterized his first six months.

For parishes that have not yet had a personal visit from the archbishop, it is not because he is touring Atlanta.

He has been too busy so far to see traditional newcomers' sights like Stone Mountain Park, the High Museum or the Fox Theater. His only ride on MARTA has been one trip to the airport, his only cultural evening a black Gospel show he attended as a special guest of the performers May 26.

The day after he was installed, Archbishop Marino took up his role as shepherd of the archdiocese, while still attending to some commitments made while he was auxiliary bishop of Washington, DC, and to his role as secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and member of the executive committee.

Since then he has been to over 30 different parishes and missions of the archdiocese to celebrate Mass, a special anniversary, a ground-breaking, church blessing. His most rural visit was a weekend spent in the north Georgia parish and mission of St. Anthony's, Blue Ridge, and Good Samaritan, Ellijay. He has visited Athens, Cedartown, LaGrange and Toccoa on day trips outside metropolitan Atlanta. Both Catholic high schools, Marist and St. Pius, and several campus centers have hosted a visit; he has celebrated Mass for cloistered sisters of the Visitation in their Snellville monastery, dined with the Trappist monks in Conyers, and hosted several gatherings of the Atlanta Conference of Sisters at his residence.

So far he has been struck by the diversity of the parishes. "All of our parishes have a unique, distinct and a kind of a refreshing personality. I've found no two parishes alike," he said. "The worship space, the style of celebration tends to be different from parish to parish."

A happy discovery has been that the Cathedral of Christ the king has a full parish life and that it is ethnically diverse, with an Hispanic dimension that is reflective of the presence of Hispanics throughout the archdiocese.

"One of the things I'm very happy about is our Cathedral is a real parish" with a school, activities for youth, senior citizens, young adults and "a vast array of activities," Archbishop Marino said.

"That is not the case in many dioceses ... In many cases the cathedral is downtown, the parish is elsewhere or there is no parish at all. I'm just happy that we do have an alive parish."

Archbishop Marino said he was also "very encouraged" by reports that the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults was well-rooted in some parishes and "that we have had a substantive number of people coming to the faith through the RCIA."

"I'm very encouraged by that. I want to find out why that has happened in some parishes," he said, in order to support its flourishing elsewhere.

One of the most striking differences between the archdiocese of Atlanta and that of Washington, DC is the less political atmosphere, he noted.

Having spent over 20 years in Washington, first as a priest and later as a bishop, he suspects it's unique in its mixing of politics with everything else, including the life of the Church.

"Politics is so involved in the mainstream of life (in Washington). You find it in everything -- social life, religious life, the life of the Church. So many people work for the government, you tend to find an admixture of that in dealing with people in parish council activities, doing the work of the Church," he said. "It's not necessarily bad ... It's different."

"By contrast," he said, "I find Atlanta to be very different." It is "very cosmopolitan. A large number of Catholics from someplace else -- not native Atlantans, not native Georgians, people from the heartland, the Midwest and the Northeast. It brings a richness and a variety that makes it a very cosmopolitan city."

On the other hand, it is in his Atlanta neighborhood near the Cathedral of Christ the King, where he walks regularly, that Archbishop Marino has found native Georgians whose demeanor and graciousness evokes memories of his boyhood in Biloxi, MS, -- people "who have time to speak" to everyone they meet, whether they know them or not, "whose whole orientation" is to be very friendly and outgoing.

By the same token, his most exuberant welcome in his first few months in Georgia was in the community of Cedartown, where the leaders of the city, Catholic Protestant and otherwise, turned out for a public reception that reflected traditional Southern hospitality.

His role as the first black archbishop in the Catholic Church in the U.S. continues to draw tremendous interest. Press attention, while slacking off from the flurry that erupted at the time of his appointment and installation, continues steadily, with journalists from Italian Catholic magazines and black publications like Ebony seeking interviews along with traditional media coverage.

His presence is requested at black Catholic gatherings, and at other Catholic meetings, such as the National Catholic Educational Association's Chicago convention where he is scheduled to be a keynote speaker in March 1989.

On the other hand, his focus is upon the archdiocese he is learning to know and which he said steadily at the time of the appointment would be his chief concern. Invited to be one of the four principal concelebrants with Pope John Paul II for the Rome beatification Mass for Mother Katherine Drexel in November, he declined because he would have been away from the Cathedral and the archdiocese on the pastoral feast of Christ the King.

Although six months have gone very quickly, "I really feel bonded to the archdiocese," Archbishop Marino said.

The archbishop said that he feels he is starting to develop a rhythm in working with his closest collaborators: Father Edward Dillon, the new vicar general, Father Peter Ludden, the chancellor, Father Peter Dora, his administrative assistant.

Father Dillon is "someone I can pick up the phone and talk to and discuss major decisions I have to make. He knows the Church, knows a lot about the law of the Church, knows the priests of the archdiocese. He is a well-informed, calm, reflective kind of person. I'm able to run ideas by him," the archbishop said.

He will feel more "on top of" his scheduling demands once his first six months of 1989 are mapped out, and he still feels that he has not found sufficient time to work with department heads and familiarize himself with their areas of responsibility.

But he has established a collaborative and supportive model for work at the administrative offices of the Catholic Center in Atlanta. A Friday afternoon meeting with department and office heads is scheduled every two or three weeks so that the archbishop can discuss his concerns and hear those of others who represent efforts to serve the archdiocese administratively, including heads of the Hispanic Apostolate and the Office for Black Catholics.

The meetings begin with the afternoon prayer of the Church and spend about an hour on business of importance to the archbishop or one or more of those attending, who include priests, sisters and lay men and women.

Asked about his view of the meetings' importance, Archbishop Marino said he hoped they would underline for administrators and staff people that what they are doing has a unique quality because it is done for the Church. "I hope they would see that as a ministry, and see themselves principally as a people of faith, of hope, of love and of prayer," he said.

He also hopes that the "attitude of cooperation and collaboration would filter down" to other meetings held in the building within departments. "I would hope more and more we could see ourselves as a team ... and develop a mutual interest in what various members of the team are doing," he said, not only trying to avoid conflicts in plans, but seeking to support one another.

Beginning those staff meetings, he has frequently said that just in praying together briefly something good has taken place.

In the interview he lightly added that he was not expecting every building meeting to begin in the future with "a recitation of the rosary."

But he believes people working for the Church "should see they are part of the archbishop's effort to bring the healing message of Jesus Christ in all of its power to the community."