c. 1996 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin, the son of an immigrant seamstress and a stonecutter and became one of the most influential and beloved U.S. Roman Catholic leaders in a century, died Thursday (Nov. 14) after a long but graceful battle with cancer. He was 68.
Bernardin, who headed the Archdiocese of Chicago and its 2.3 million Catholics since 1982, was a modest and low-key leader. He helped guide the Catholic Church in the United States through the turbulence unleashed by the Second Vatican Council and gave American bishops a voice in the political arena _ a voice that continues to be heard.
In 1983, Bernardin articulated the notion of the”consistent ethic of life,”weaving together in what he called a”seamless garment”the church’s teachings against abortion, capital punishment, nuclear arms and euthanasia with a firm defense of the poor and powerless.”He had brains, holiness and people skills like no other bishop,”said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.”Bernardin was the one everyone went to when things were falling apart and he put them back together again. He was the most important bishop in this country since Vatican II.” He was also a deeply pastoral and humble spiritual leader who never lost touch with his people. In his pastoral life, Bernardin discarded the conventional model of a bishop as autocrat and disciplinarian, seeking instead to build consensus and heal divisions in what was often a troubled archdiocese and church riven with doctrinal divisions.”There are so many people out there who are better than I, who live good lives, sometimes at great costs to themselves,”he said in a 1985 interview.”I see these people. I talk to them. They write to me. These are the people who keep me going each day.” Bernardin died at his home in Chicago at 1:33 a.m. Thursday (Nov. 14), surrounded by family and friends, said Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Raymond Goedart. Bernardin had been battling pancreatic cancer since June 1995. On Aug. 30, he announced that the cancer had spread and was inoperable.
The cardinal then embarked on a remarkable two-and-a-half month public journey toward death in which he put into very public practice the beliefs he preached.
Bernardin made his dying days an eloquent witness against euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide. In one of his last public acts, he wrote to the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, urging them to reject efforts to legalize doctor-assisted suicide.”How characteristic of this generous-hearted man,”said Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston.”At a time when most of us would have chosen privacy, he chose to share even his experience of death in the hope that it might serve our nation in creating a better society.” Ironically, Bernardin died on the 92nd birthday of his mother, who resides in a Chicago nursing home, and on the anniversary of his father’s death. He died just hours before the concluding session of the annual fall meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, an institution he loved, led and continued to shape _ first as its general secretary between 1968 and 1972, and then as its president from 1974 to 1977. Most recently, he chaired a committee charged with restructuring the conference and its social policy arm, the U.S. Catholic Conference. The meeting’s final session was devoted to discussion of Bernardin’s final report.
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Said Bishop Anthony Pilla of Cleveland, a close friend and current president of the NCCB, Bernardin was the one who”so often found the way out of perplexities and difficulties in which any organization as large and as varied as the conference inevitably finds itself in.”It was his voice that time and again spoke the words that brought debate to a successful and harmonious conclusion and restored a sense of unity and common endeavor,”he said.
Cardinal John J. O’Connor of New York, a sometime opponent of Bernardin on matters before the bishops’ conference, called Bernardin”a fierce battler for the cause of human life, including the unborn and those who are vulnerable at any stage of their existence.” (END OPTIONAL TRIM)
Joseph L. Bernardin was born April 2, 1928, in Columbia, S.C., to Joseph and Maria Bernardin, immigrants from northern Italy. He received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore in 1948 and received his master’s degree in education in 1952 from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He was ordained a priest in the diocese of Charleston, S.C., that same year.
In 1966, Bernardin became an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Atlanta and in 1972 was named Archbishop of Cincinnati. In 1982, he left Cincinnati for Chicago, when Pope John Paul II appointed him to the position vacated by Cardinal John Cody, who had died earlier that year under a cloud of allegations of financial misconduct.
As Chicago’s new archbishop, Bernardin worked to restore confidence in the archdiocese and in the church as a whole. The pope gave him the red hat of a cardinal in 1983.
A member of the U.S. church’s progressive wing, Bernardin was also a master consensus-builder and conciliator who led the bishops into the thick of some of the most controversial and highly visible public policy debates. He led a sometimes unruly flock of shepherds to virtual unanimous endorsement of the bishops’ landmark 1983 pastoral letter”The Challenge of Peace,”which sharply criticized U.S. policy on nuclear weapons and the arms race.
From 1983 to 1989, Bernardin served as chairman of the bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities. In that role, he helped put the church’s opposition to legal abortion on the nation’s political agenda by linking it to other issues of human dignity, including the obligation of government to protect the poor and the vulnerable.”In the past, I have stressed that our concern for life cannot stop at birth, that it cannot consist of a single issue _ war or abortion or anything else,”Bernardin said in a 1985 speech at Catholic University.”I have always considered that a substantial commitment to the poor is part of a consistent ethic and a concern for women in poverty, a particularly pertinent aspect of this `seamless garment.'” Even in his most difficult public moment, Bernardin acted with the grace and sensitivity that were so much a part of his public persona.
In November 1993, Stephen J. Cook filed a lawsuit in Cincinnati accusing Bernardin of sexually molesting him in the late 1970s. Three months later, after a barrage of accusations and speculations in the media directed at Bernardin, Cook recanted his accusations.
Bernardin disclosed in January 1995 that he had met privately with Cook, who was then afflicted with AIDS, and offered the dying man his forgiveness. He convinced Cook to attend a Mass that”brought closure and peace to both of us.”Before Steven left, he told me that a big burden had been lifted from him. He felt healed and was at peace,”Bernardin said.
Bernardin’s final initiative was to serve as chairman of the Catholic Common Ground Project, an effort to promote dialogue and discussion among feuding factions in the church on such issues as the changing role of women, religious education, the meaning of human sexuality, the image and morale of priests and the question of how decisions are made in the church.
Linda Pieczynski, president of Call to Action, a Chicago-based group of liberal church reformers, voiced sentiments expressed by many of the nation’s 60 million Catholics.”We rejoice that he is at peace in the arms of the God he loved so much and devoted his entire life to,”she said.”His legacy as a peacemaker and reconciler are his gifts to us, along with the incredible example he set by showing us that death is not to be feared, but a friend, leading to our ultimate meeting with our Creator. “We are thankful that in his last year he has spoken so eloquently about the need for us to be loving and civil to each other, even in our disagreements,”Pieczynski added.”We hope that the Catholic community will continue the work of reconciliation he began this year as a sign of the respect we have for his memory.”
MJP END ANDERSON
