Cardinal Joseph Bernardin (1928-1996) was the most influential United States bishop of his era. Millies provides a concise though thoroughly researched, positive though fair-minded, clear-written biography. This book is part of the Liturgical Press “People of God” series.
Bernardin was born about seven
months after his immigrant parents arrived in South Carolina. The family came
from the Trentino region in what today is northern Italy and was ethnically
Italian in language, food and all aspects of their culture. Bernardin’s father
died when he was six-years old and he was then raised by his mother and by
extended family. South Carolina was less than one percent Catholic during
Bernardin’s time there. He attended public high school and began pre-med studies
at a public university.
Millies traces Bernardin’s
confidence, his ease with Protestants and non-Christians and his gentle compassion
to these childhood and young adult influences; i.e. processing the loss of his
father, depending on relatives and regularly interacting with non-Catholics.
Bernardin was ordained in 1952.
Prior to becoming the youngest bishop in the United States in Atlanta at age
38, Bernardin, like most bishops, had scant parish experience. Instead he spent
most of his early priesthood in the Charleston, South Carolina Chancery,
including as chancellor and vicar general. The book proceeds more or less
chronologically. Along the way Millies provides some intriguing, little-known
facts. For example, in 1972 Bernardin, without publicity, became a first order Franciscan.
He maintained a Franciscan spirituality thereafter and requested to be buried
in his Franciscan habit.
As in Chicago’s Democratic machine,
to move ahead within the Catholic clergy it is necessary to have a patron.
Bernardin’s first patron was Archbishop Paul Hallinan (1911-1968), who served
as bishop in Charleston for about five years and then was archbishop of
Atlanta. Millies takes us inside the mutually beneficial Bernardin/Hallinan
relationship. When Hallinan contracted a hepatitis infection, he summoned
Bernardin from Charleston to, for all practical purposes, run his Atlanta
Chancery. The two navigated race relations in Atlanta. They were so respected
that at Hallinan’s funeral segregationist Gov. Lester Maddox (1915-2003) and
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) shared the same pew.
Three weeks after the Hallinan
funeral, King was murdered. Bernardin soon left Atlanta for his new post as
general secretary of what today is called the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Washington, DC. It was Bernardin’s second mentor,
Cardinal John Dearden (1904-1988) of Detroit, who put him in charge of the
conference. Both Hallinan and Dearden, as Millies describes them, were changed
by Vatican II (1962-1965). Schooled in a clerical, self-assured church, these
two bishops embraced the Vatican II vision of a church in dialogue with the modern
world. Bernardin caught the same spirit.
In Washington and at his subsequent
positions, as Millies writes, Bernardin had to balance two sides of his public
personality: a hard-working “cautious bureaucrat” and a compassionate pastor. Millies
recounts how, in casual conversation with two young Cincinnati priests,
Bernardin admitted that his practice of prayer and reflection had faded away,
while his administrative duties had taken over all his waking hours. The
priests challenged him, and Bernardin resolved to spend the first hour each day
in prayer.
As this biography moves to Chicago,
where Bernardin served as archbishop from 1982 until his 1996 death, Millies
delves into areas of controversy. Through the USCCB, Archbishop John Roach (1921-2003)
selected Bernardin to chair an ad hoc committee on war and peace. Millies
mentions that characteristically Bernardin insisted on diversity among the
members of the committee, including a bishop In the Military Ordinariate and a
Pax Christi bishop involved with anti-war protests. With the strong
encouragement of bishop members of the committee, other bishops, and USCCB
staff members Fr. Bryan Hehir and Edward Doherty (1915-1992), Bernardin also introduced
a new process for ecclesial statements by inviting experts and interested
citizens to testify before the committee. In May 1983 the bishops, voting 238
to nine, approved The Challenge of Peace.
The document was widely covered in newspapers and magazines, making Bernardin a
national figure. Millies mentions the “national political storm” caused by this
document, including objections from the administration of President Ronald
Reagan (1911-2004) and from neoconservative Catholics. He explains that the
document’s process and the reaction to it reinforced for Bernardin a concept
that would later bring more controversy: a consistent ethic of life.
Millies is straight-forward on the
clerical abuse crisis. Bernardin “followed the familiar pattern and transferred
[deviant] priests from one parish to another,” he writes. On the other hand, Bernardin
eventually realized that the abuse was a national problem that required a
national policy of reporting. His Chicago plan became a model for the so-called
Dallas Charter on abuse, enacted (though not consistently followed) six years
after Bernardin’s death. Millies also recounts the incident in which Bernardin
was accused of abuse; the retraction of the
accusation; and the reconciliation between Bernardin and his accuser. Millies,
like others who
recount this incident paints Bernardin as an innocent victim. That’s accurate
to an extent. But
Millies leaves out a fact: The accuser, a former seminarian in Cincinnati, was
indeed abused by a priest whom Bernardin failed to monitor.
In the latter part of this biography
Millies supplies some history that pertains to the current dysfunction of the
United States bishops’ conference. From his earliest days of priesthood, Bernardin
was clear in his opposition to abortion. Beginning in 1974, however, he strove
to explain that the sacredness of life is not just a Catholic thing. Further,
he believed that focusing exclusively on abortion was too narrow an approach to
promoting dignified life. He began to use the phrase “seamless garment” to
describe an inclusive social ethic. In his final months Bernardin launched the
Catholic Common Ground Initiative, an attempt to advance his thinking through
civil dialogue. Unfortunately, Bernardin—usually a savvy insider—didn’t have
the support of enough fellow bishops. Even as he was in his final days, an east
coast Cardinal attacked the Initiative. Others piled on to undermine the
seamless garment metaphor; their campaign said opposition to abortion has to be
“the preeminent issue.”
It would be nice to say that now
26-years after his death Bernardin’s legacy as a conciliatory peace bishop is
solidly in place. He directly influenced a handful of bishops, though they are
retired or soon to retire. There are a few other Bernardin-like bishops. But to
judge by their recent votes, the majority of United States bishops now prefer
to righteously call out politicians and others who do not meet their standards
rather than engage in the Vatican II-inspired dialogue with the world.
What about Bernardin in Chicago?
There is a school and a cancer clinic named for him. Plus the Bernardin Center
at Catholic Theological Union (www.ctu.edu) nobly keeps his spirit alive. Millies
was a professor in South Carolina when he wrote this book. Fittingly, he now
directs that Bernardin Center.
Catholicism can still be an
instrument for peace. It will take a new generation of young adults who, perhaps
inspired by Bernardin and others, apply their own thoughts and experiences to
Christian engagement with the world.
References
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
(1983). The Challenge of Peace:
God's Promise and Our Response. Washington, DC: United States Conference of
Catholic
Bishops.
https://www.usccb.org/upload/challenge-peace-gods-promise-our-response-1983.pdf
The Journal of Social Encounters, Volume 6 Issue 2 #145 July 2022
Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2016. 137 pp., $14.95, ISBN 9780814648063
William Droel, National Center for the Laity, Chicago, IL
Droel edits a free printed newsletter on faith and work,
INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago,
IL 60629).
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