COMMENTARY: In memory of a friend, a mentor and a brother priest

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.) CHICAGO _ He taught the whole country how to die. One hears that phrase over […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

CHICAGO _ He taught the whole country how to die.


One hears that phrase over and over again as we mourn the death of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, surely the greatest American Catholic leader of our time. He died as he lived: with hope and faith and serenity, honest and yet undemonstrative.

If death is truly a friend, as Bernardin often said in his last days, then he showed us how to await that friend. If he is right about death, and his manner of dying proved his convictions, that is very good news for all of us.

He was a man for this season in Chicago. He came at a time of chaos, after the death of Cardinal John Cody, who had been embroiled in accusations of financial wrongdoing. Bernardin restored respect and credibility to the archbishop’s office, if not to the institutional church itself. In his willingness to listen to everyone and to seek dialogue, he was also a man for this season in American Catholicism.

His recent Common Ground project to promote dialogue between the left and the right is fundamentally a good idea that will probably die with him. This is not a time for listening in the church.

Was the cardinal a liberal or a conservative? He simply did not fit the paradigm such a question seeks to impose. He was a man who sought consensus, who built coalitions, who did all he could to keep as many people happy as possible. He argued repeatedly that building consensus was the only way to govern in the church today. But there are many other cardinals in the American church who apparently disagree.

Rather than classify Bernardin as a liberal or a conservative, the better question to ask is how effectively did he govern. The answer is that Bernardin has had immense influence on everyone in Chicago and many others around the nation, more than any other Catholic churchman.

Whenever there were complex problems to solve, his fellow American bishops and the Vatican turned to him to orchestrate a compromise or finesse a solution. After hearing him talk at some length about such finesses, I once said to him,”They’ll carve on your tombstone the words `If if weren’t for me, things would be a lot worse.'” He beamed and said,”Well there are a lot worse things they can say about someone.” Bernardin was almost impossible to dislike. He combined authentic goodness with great political skill. And in Chicago, we think that the last is a matter for high praise.

Politics is nothing more and nothing less than the art of government. It has always been required for success in the Catholic Church, but especially in these turbulent days after the Second Vatican Council. Some would have wished that he was more direct on pastoral matters, such as ministering to Hispanic Catholics and helping lay people understand rules governing their access to the sacraments _ a complicated issue in a church many of whose members are not always living in accord with church teaching.


However, he did show in his handling of the problem of clerical pedophilia that in times of crisis, he could be forthright, direct, and determined, even when most of his priests did not go along with his actions.

The rest of the American church, to say nothing of the rest of the American priesthood, has yet to catch up with him on that issue.

Finally, he was a man of incredible patience. It is not easy to listen to all the ideas, many wise and many less than wise, that flow into a bishop’s office. The impulse to tell some of these people that their ideas are less than wise is certainly very powerful.

Many would lose their temper under the stress of the office and its requirement to be patient with everyone. Yet the cardinal’s supply of patience seemed inexhaustible. In the disagreements he and I had through the years, he was always far more patient than I, and was far quicker to seek reconciliation.

We will not see his like again.

MJP END GREELEY

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