Review of Joseph Bernardin: Seeking Common Ground by Steven Millies.

           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).

THE WONDERS OF THE WEBB TELESCOPE

The poet and the artist prepared us for the Webb Telescope images of the beginning of the universe.  

A copy of Van Gogh's painting of the restaurant at 

Arles, France by Matthew Lange, London.

The artist:

Van Gogh in his painting of the restaurant in Arles, France and the cosmos in the background. 

The poet: 

Nature and Incomparable Dignity of Wisdom

For Wisdom is mobile beyond all motion, and she penetrates and pervades all things by reason of her purity.

For she is a breath of the might of God and a pure emanation of the glory of the almighty; therefore nothing defiled can enter into her.

For she is the reflection of eternal light, the spotless mirror of the power of God, the image of his goodness. 

Although she is one, she can do all things, and she renews everything while herself perduring; Passing into holy souls from age to age.  she produces friends of God and prophets.

For God loves nothing so much as the one who dwells with Wisdom.

For she is fairer than the sun and surpasses every constellation of the stars.  Compared to light, she is found more radiant;

though night supplants light, wickedness does not prevail over Wisdom.
The Book of Wisdom Chapter 7, vs. 24-30
But our consciousness is also aware of:  

            "A voice was heard in Ramah, 

            sobbing and loud lamentation; 

            Rachel weeping for her children 

            and she would not be consoled, 

            since they were no more."

                                Matthew 2:18

 

Tasting the Nothingness of Our Times by Matthew Fox

 Part of the Via Negativa and the Dark Night of the Soul is a deep tasting of Nothingness.  I think many of us are tasting Nothingness today in the face of an unhinged Supreme Court beholden as it is to Opus Dei, the Koch brothers and the NRA. 

Gazing into the void of nothingness. Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash.

We should not run from this encounter with Nothingness. Nothingness is part of the deeper spiritual experience.

On June 14 we devoted a DM to this topic, how Thomas Merton and Meister Eckhart both address Suffering and Nothingness while discussing the “spark of the soul.”   And Hafiz speaks of Nothingness in a poem we shared recently.  

Repeated blows from the unsupreme court decisions released in the past ten days bring up the Nothingness reality anew. 

One feels almost helpless in taking in decisions that give government rights over the bodies of women and girls—including the 10-year-old in Ohio who was raped and recently had to flee her state to seek an abortion—and throw out a 49-year-old constitutional right to do so. 

How many other similar mad stories will play out thanks to the witch-burning admirers on the supreme court who just signed off on a document that tells women and girls that they, six judges on the supreme court, have the right to demand girls and women bring all fetuses to term because they say so?  (Not because the Constitution says so—because it does not.)

The case of the 10-year-old girl forced to flee to another state for an abortion made headlines worldwide. WION, from India.

Or the radical decision to hasten the killing of mother earth, our mother, by gutting the EPA of its rights to challenge the industrial polluters and fossil fuel engines of our culture.  An advance of matricide therefore. 

The Koch brothers are rejoicing (one has already left earth and facing his maker as they say; Dante would have made a special place in hell for him) and other fossil fuel magnates will get even richer; maybe Joe Manchin and his coal-based business enterprise is rejoicing too.  But future children choking on bad air and responding to more drought and fires on the one hand and more floods and hurricanes on the other, and food shortages galore, not so much.

Or the arrogant decision to throw out a 111-year-old law in New York state that limits the rights of gun owners to carry their guns wherever they wish even in crowded cities, subways and the rest.  Sounds like an invitation to…you know what.

Leah Litman and Adam Serwer join MSNBC’s Mehdi Hassan to discuss Supreme Court plans to take up a case that could give state legislatures essentially unchecked power over the outcome of federal elections.

The “leader” of the new majority, the spouse of insurrectionist Ginni (“there are no rules in war”) Thomas, actually invited new lawsuits so that the current court in its infinite wisdom can challenge gay marriage and contraception on the same basis that they challenged Roe v Wade.  It seems this court sees itself as bedroom police rather than as impartial jurists.

The same court is eagerly committed to take up next year the topic of letting state legislatures decide national elections (just like the last president tried to do this year but failed).

Yes, there is lots of nothingness on our tables at this time.  

To be continued

Evil and the Deadly Sins of the (once) Supreme Court by Matthew Fox

 

DAILY MEDITATIONS June 27, 2022 Three judges who objected to the Dobbs decision called it embarrassing.  And it is.  And will be for all time.  An insult to the Supreme Court itself, to jurisprudence, to all the decent judges who created Row vs Wade 49 years ago and Casey as well.

It will unravel America, since our system depends on respect for jurisprudence and that includes the once Supreme Court.  Just as Hildegard of Bingen, as we saw yesterday, pictures the anti-Christ as five beasts (yes, five—as in five Supreme Court judges) gnawing at the ropes that keep society together.Let us examine the sins of the Dobbs decision using my method for examining and transforming evil, a method that blends Eastern and Western wisdom, honoring the 7 chakras named in the East and the 7 capital sins named in the West.  I employ this method in my book on Evil, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.   We have already made note of the seventh chakra which is about building community through sharing and building up of light.  The very tone of Alito’s document, as one historian has pointed out, is ugly to the core.  There is no attempt to reach out to others or make common ground or even to put out feelings that are positive.  Instead, the authors declare all past judges “egregiously” wrong—which is another way of saying only Alito is right. This takes us to chakra # 1 which is about Arrogance.  Arrogance oozes out from this document in its tone as well as its ridiculous arguments—that the word “abortion” is not in the constitution.     Neither is the word “assault weapons” or “AR-15”—but the same court has no problem putting such weapons in the hands of 18 year olds.  And in addition this week, nullifying a New York law of 111 years that forbids hidden weapons on the streets of New York and elsewhere.   Arrogance is what drives a once supreme court to dismiss the concern of 72% of American citizens (including 43% of Republicans) who do not want Roe overturned.    Arrogance is what drives a supreme court to refuse to cite women or listen to their stories of suffering when rape happens, incest happens, or miscarriages happen or circumstances are such that they cannot afford to bring another child into the world.   Arrogance is men telling women or the government telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies.   Arrogance is born of what Hildegard calls “drying up” and “carelessness”—not caring and ignoring the cries of others.  Ignorance born of lack of curiosity is a deadly sin of omission associated with arrogance.

Adultism and School Shootings of Children by the Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox

 

June 3, 2022

A psychologist offering advice in a time of school shootings recently advised parents to "Reassure the children that adults are there to take care of them."

But they AREN’T!  That is the problem.  Adult politicians with their priorities frozen have proven that they are married to the NRA no matter what happens to children.   Many adult politicians go into denial about murderers and their guns and instead talk on about mental health without a word about getting military assault weapons off the streets. Three days after the slaughter of childrenin Uvaldo, Texas, before the childrens' bodies were even buried, NRA held a gathering. Voiceover of Ted Cruz speech to the 2022 NRA convention, days after the Uvalde school shooting, with a montage of family photos with assault rifles and other guns. Tweet video by @CWebbOnline (you may need to turn on the audio).

Texan senator Ted Cruz spoke there and offered his solution to gun violence–purchase more guns—this time for teachers.  Nothing about limiting assault weapons available everywhere.  (Ted Cruz has accepted over $450,000 in donations from NRA over the years.) Many politicians are clearly not there to take care of the children.  Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has received over $350,000 of donations from the NRA over the years, responded to the Texas massacre by criticizing the Miami basketball team for running an announcement to ban assault weapons!

Emma Gonzalez, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where 17 people died in a 2018 mass shooting, calls out President Trump and the NRA by name at an anti-gun rally in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Report by CNN. Neither are senators McConnell, or Governor Abbot or 47 other senators there to take care of the children.  They are there to coddle and love the NRA for the sake of their adult ambitions.  They have made that abundantly clear.  Their one priority is that money not cease flowing into their political coffers.

Adultism reigns when adult agendas—”keep me as senator,” “keep me as police chief”–prevail over children’s lives.  Would banning assault weapons help?  When America banned such weapons in 1994, shooting deaths fell by 43% in the country.  When the ban was lifted ten years later, killings increased by 243%!  So it seems like politicians can offer more than “thoughts and prayers” after all–if they choose to.  But those in idolatrous relationships with the NRA do not choose to do so.

The health of Mother Earth is another case of adultism.  There too, many politicians prefer to turn their backs on children and on future generations to surrendering their cozy relationship to the fossil fuel industry that awards them as generously as does the NRA. The Earth is a children's issue since they live on it too and might one day have their own children to do the same. "You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,’" climate activist Greta Thunberg tells world leaders at the 2019 UN climate action summit. Guardian News.

But many are the politicians selling out the future of the Earth for the sake of filling their current political coffers.  Adultism compounded. In contrast, Jesus said, "do it to the least and you do it to me."  He also advised adults to "turn and become like children."I think he sensed the sacredness of children.  As opposed to the idolatry of adultist agendas.