As owner of the two-time Super Bowl Champion Denver Broncos, Pat Bowlen knows the value of prayer and priests.

He considers Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput a close friend and has welcomed him as a special guest at his team's two Super Bowl victories. Bowlen attributes much of his success in life to the influence of priests, in his childhood and as an adult. He spoke recently with Register correspondent Wayne Laugesen.

You signed your name recently to a full-page ad in the Denver Post and donated money in order to show support for bishops and other priests in the wake of the scandal that has been playing out in the media. Why did you do that?

Because I have some idea what they're going through with all of this stuff. It has been hard on them. They've had some problems among some of their peers, and they are serious problems, but you can't paint the whole Catholic clergy with the same brush.

Every organization, whether it's the Denver Broncos, the Colorado Rockies or any other organization of any kind has its problems with certain people within the organization. You can't, in fairness, let them color the whole organization. But how you keep the public and the media from doing that is another question.

Tell me a little about the role of priests in your life, particularly when you were growing up.

I was born and baptized Catholic, so my religious roots go way back. I went to an all-boys Catholic Jesuit residential high school in Wisconsin. I think four years with Jesuits is an experience all kids should go through. I've also been around priests most of my adult life because I have some close friends who are priests, so perhaps I see them a bit differently than the general public sees them. In my youth I saw them as teachers and counselors and adult role models. They played a pretty dramatic role in pointing me in the right direction.

How much of your personal and career success do you attribute to your lifelong associations with priests?

Certainly I attribute my ability to get through high school, college and law school to the discipline I gained from the priests who taught me. They were responsible for getting me the kind of education I needed to get to the position I'm in now.

How about prayer? What role does that play, if any, in your everyday life as an NFL franchise owner?

I pray all the time, yet sometimes we lose. Sometimes he listens, and sometimes apparently he does not [laughs]. I suppose the owner of the other team might be praying too, which might explain some of those losses. I suppose sometimes they're praying harder than I am.

All the evidence indicates that this is no more of an abuse problem in the Catholic Church than anywhere else —probably less. Why do you think the media has latched on to it?

That's the media for you. I deal with the media every day, and a story is a story. Obviously this is a story with some serious ramifications and some very serious aspects to it, but it has become a full-fledged feeding frenzy now, and based on my own experience with the media, somehow that just doesn't surprise me too much.

Is the unfortunate misrepresentation and distortion of facts working on the public? Is this creating an image problem that will cause long-term harm to Catholics and the Church?

I don't know. I mean, I think perhaps people who are not connected with the Catholic Church —or people who have become disconnected for whatever reason —could be duped into thinking that priests are dangerous and the Church is some kind of unsafe environment.

But anyone who spends much time around our religion and its institutions would know that what has dominated media attention are a few isolated incidents that are not a true insight into what our religion and our priests are about —not at all. The problem is, the media treatment of this will have a potentially lasting impact on people who are not active in any religion or faith, or who have fallen away from their Catholic roots for whatever reason.

As one who deals with the media frequently as part of your job, do you have any advice for pastors, bishops and other priests?

That's a tough one to answer. Like I said, I deal with the media every day. But we're talking sports here, not other people's lives. I've been through showdowns with the press, obviously with controversy surrounding the new stadium and whatnot. And I think at some point you just have to put all the noise out of your mind and do your job to the best of your ability. Of course that's easy to say, and hard for an archbishop right now because he's right there on the firing line all of a sudden.

It's hard for me to counsel someone in that position as to how to react, as opposed to how I react regarding a business that I own. If a player gets drunk and falls down in the driveway, well that's what some players do and society knows that. If I have players with very serious problems —such as the player in [North] Carolina who murdered somebody —well that's very difficult. We're talking about stories in the media now that affect the entire Catholic Church, and that's serious stuff that's very difficult for anyone to deal with.

You've had Archbishop Chaput come to at least one of your winning Super Bowls. Does his presence help you through what's quite obviously a stressful situation?

He's been to both Super Bowl victories, and I hope he goes to the next one, too. It's helpful to have a priest at the game, and it's especially helpful if the archbishop is there because I suspect he has a little closer communication to God than I do. I'll tell you this —it did not hurt at all to have the archbishop along at those two Super Bowls.

Wayne Laugesen writes from Boulder, Colorado.

Image credit: "Pat Bowlen" by Jeffrey Beall/ Wikipedia  (CC BY-SA 3.0)