Inside
NCR
We will miss Cardinal Bernardin. He
was a strong NCR supporter. Some years back he told me he viewed the paper as
"a candle in the night."
"Keep the flame lit," he said.
While cautious by nature, Bernardin was generally open to the
press. The noise of newsroom banter would noticeably drop some decibels when my
assistant, Jean Blake, announced, upon answering the telephone: "It's Cardinal
Bernardin."
Years back we would talk together about the church or the crisis
of the time. In recent years, our conversations were more personal. Most
recently they focused on his state of health and his thoughts about death.
I remember three years back, just after Bernardin was accused by
the misguided Steven Cook, who claimed he had been sexually abused by the
cardinal. Bernardin called. It was clearly the nadir of his life. I heard in
his voice that afternoon his total isolation. "Tom," he said, "I don't even
know the man. I don't remember him. I've never abused anyone."
That he was placed in a situation in which he felt forced to
defend himself, to plead through planted doubts, was, I thought, a humiliation
of unimaginable dimensions.
Cook later recanted. Bernardin flew to the dying man's bedside to
reconcile and forgive. The instinctive act was pure Bernardin.
Not long after came the news of his cancer. Following the
diagnosis, Bernardin called again. He told me, as he told others, that it was
far easier for him to deal with the cancer than it had been with the abuse
accusation. After all, he said, cancer was a natural illness. It happened to
many. Being accused of sex abuse was different. It was a blow to personal
credibility. "Without my credibility," he said, "I have nothing."
Confronting cancer and the prospect of death moved Bernardin to
quickly separate the essentials from nonessentials. He began to choose more
carefully what he did with his time. He began each morning ministering to other
cancer patients, writing letters, telephoning. As he said, "enjoying being a
priest again."
In the year and a half from diagnosis to death, he found himself
laughing a lot more. He began to find humor in ordinary circumstances. Much of
this had to do, it seems, with a sense of new freedom and an ability to enjoy
the moment, friends said.
Somehow the idea of the dying Bernardin laughing with gusto
through his tears still provides me solace as I adjust to his departure.
Bernardin was eager to get the Catholic Common Ground Project
going. We spoke shortly after it was announced. It pleased him enormously that
Cardinal Roger Mahony offered his support. That came in the wake of public
attacks on the effort by other U.S. cardinals. Mahony's support, it appears,
led to Bernardin's decision to ask the Los Angeles prelate to be chief
celebrant at last week's funeral Mass.
The last conversation I had with Bernardin came one evening when
he called just after he had learned from his physicians that his cancer had
returned, this time in the liver. We talked about his condition, about the time
he might have left, about death. I remember most what seemed to be the
cardinal's apologetic and consoling manner. He seemed genuinely sorry he could
not finish all the work he had planned. He seemed sorry not to be able to say
goodbye as he might have liked. I had the feeling he was calling to console
me rather than to seek consolation.
In the weeks that followed, we exchanged notes, but it soon became
clear that anything beyond prayers on my part would be intrusive.
Writing this column, I feel gratitude and loss. The former for
having known him a bit; the latter for knowing that the church will not be the
same without him. My thoughts drift back to last summer when I interviewed him
on the first anniversary of his cancer operation. We met in his Chicago
residence.
After the interview, we dined together. Following dinner I
prepared to go, thinking he had other things to attend to. But he insisted I
stay.
He invited me upstairs to his study. He wanted to show me around.
He wanted to show me the bed Pope John Paul II had slept in during his visit to
Chicago. He grinned as he asked me if I wanted to use the bathroom the pope
himself once used. (I did.)
Afterward we sat and talked. He seemed at peace. We spoke again
that night about the church and the gift of life and the acceptance of death.
He was especially aware, he said, of the briefness of life.
I remember his words that evening. "Life is like a meteor," he
said. "It passes briefly in the night -- and then is out." Yes, but this meteor
brightened the sky -- and changed it forever. And the spirit and memory of this
meteor live on.
And, as Bernardin years ago encouraged me to remember, the dawn
will surely come.
-- Tom Fox
National Catholic Reporter, December 6,
1996
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