COMMENTARY: Bernardin book sales should send signal to pope

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a 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.) UNDATED _ I hope someone tells Pope John Paul II that the initial printing […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a 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.)

UNDATED _ I hope someone tells Pope John Paul II that the initial printing of 50,000 copies of Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin’s memoir,”The Gift of Peace,”sold out in its first weekend in the bookstores and the next printing will be 150,000.


Sales of the book are solid evidence of the late cardinal’s enormous popularity in Chicago and the rest of the country. They also point to the grave risk the Vatican will take in sending someone to Chicago as the next archbishop who will repudiate Bernardin’s life and work.

Yet not everyone admired Bernardin and it is much to be feared that those who did not like him may have a decisive influence on the choice of his successor _ men like the Rev. Charles Fiore, whom Bernardin suspected of involvement in the sexual abuse suit against the cardinal.

Fiore has denied he prompted Steven Cook, the young man who first brought and later withdrew the charges against Bernardin, to name Bernardin. But exactly what he said is of less importance than his recent reiteration of his own belief that Bernardin was a sex abuser and a theological liberal who tried to undermine Vatican rule in the United States.

Bernardin’s bitter enemies in the”hard right”of the church have been relatively quiet in the last two months though they have been lobbying the Vatican demanding Chicago’s new archbishop be a conservative _ their kind of conservative.

One of them wrote to me recently saying Bernardin is burning in hell because of all the babies he killed by”single-handedly”destroying the American hierarchy’s anti-abortion campaign.

The people who write these letters are not the kind of nuts who pen little notes around the edges of envelopes. Rather, they are literate men and women who use good grammar and spell correctly. Only the content of their letters are off the wall, as are the editorials in their journals.

Joseph Bernardin a theological liberal? Who was undermining the Vatican? Responsible for the deaths of babies?


Someone has to be kidding. The simple fact is that the Catholic bishops could have put all their strength into campaigning against abortion and they still would have lost. They do not have the votes; they do not have the votes even of their own people, and there is no way they could get them.

If that is true, then the real question becomes how does one influence the abortion debate when one does not have the political muscle? Bernardin’s style was one of moderation, of trying to communicate, of stressing the church’s concern about all the problems of life, including the death penalty, the nuclear arms race and the plight of the poor.

However, for the”hard right”any other strategy in the abortion debate than their own is heresy.

Another example of the fury of this claque of Catholics is an editorial by Ralph McInerny in Crisis magazine demanding Bernardin’s resignation because of Bernardin’s role in the Common Ground project that seeks to establish dialogue among the church’s feuding factions.

Make no mistake about it, this group rejoiced at Bernardin’s death _ some of them not so quietly _ because they now see a chance that one of their own will take over the Archdiocese of Chicago.

How big is this hard right, really? The Vatican thinks they represent a large number of American Catholics, perhaps even a majority of the”confused”laity. In fact only 6% of American Catholics agree that abortion should be illegal even in cases where there is a danger to a mother’s health. This is the outer limit of the hard right.


If one adds the other issues on their agenda such as opposition to a greater role for women in governing the church, opposition to the use of inclusive language and a get-tough approach to dissident theologians, they are no more than 1 percent of the Catholic population. They will write off these statistics on the grounds that I, too, am in favor of abortion _ a calumny. But I didn’t collect the data. Let them collect data of their own which will show that they are more than a tiny handful of vile, evil people.

Yet they may have their way. One hears tales that the pope thinks the appointment to Chicago is the most important in the world.

Given what has happened in other important places _ Vienna, Melbourne, Dublin _ there is a high degree of probability that Fiore and his friends will be delighted with the next archbishop and the archdiocese will become a free- fire zone.

DEAEND GREELEY

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