November 4, 2021 Editor

If we’d listened to Cardinal Bernardin, the Catholic Church would not be so divided today

Steven P. Millies

November 04, 2021

photo above: Cardinal Joseph Bernardin speaks with reporters on the steps of his Chicago residence just before his departure for Rome to meet with Pope John Paul II, Sept. 23, 1996. (AP Photo/Peter Barreras, File)

WN: To the article highlighted below: Amen!

excerpts:

In Bernardin, Catholics had a leader who anticipated the style and ministry of Pope Francis in his openness to dialogue and his efforts to engage the world in constructive conversations. But Bernardin’s final years also anticipated the sort of opposition Francis has faced, especially among American Catholics.

The seeds of our divisions, as Catholics and Americans, were being watered in 1996. As those seeds have blossomed and propagated in 2021, we can look back on Bernardin to understand what has happened and how things might be different.

Bernardin was the Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago from 1982 until his death, but his importance stretched far beyond Chicago. No bishop in the U.S. could be associated more with the church’s efforts after Vatican II to engage and embrace the modern world as St. John XXIII had hoped when he called the council. Bernardin once wrote that his entire ministry had “taken place in (the Second Vatican Council’s) shadow.”

In Cardinal Bernardin, Catholics had a leader who anticipated the style and ministry of Pope Francis in his openness to dialogue and his efforts to engage the world in constructive conversations.

Yet Bernardin’s impact was not restricted to the Catholic Church. In 1996, John Rawls—a liberal philosopher committed to removing religion from public discourse—acknowledged that the consistent ethic of life advocated by Bernardin “is clearly cast in some form of public reason.” No accomplishment better illustrates Bernardin’s ability to make arguments for Catholic moral positions in terms accessible to nonbelievers, or his commitment to bring Catholicism to the world.

The Catholic Common Ground Initiative was Bernardin’s final and most substantial effort to promote dialogue in an increasingly divided Catholic Church. Beginning in 1992, Bernardin had grown concerned about how divisions over political issues and the implementation of Vatican II were beginning to disturb parish life. With Monsignor Philip Murnion, he began working quietly to gather influential Catholic bishops and laypeople who were committed to dialogue and church unity despite their disagreements.

The initiative challenged American Catholics to honestly discuss their views on the role of women in the church, human sexuality and how the church is governed.

When Bernardin announced Common Ground shortly before his death, he surely hoped to be leaving a gift to guide the church during a difficult period. But Cardinals Anthony Bevilacqua (Philadelphia), James Hickey (Washington), Bernard Law (Boston), John O’Connor (New York) and Adam Maida (Detroit) came out against Common Ground. Law captured the flavor of the criticisms when he said, “Dialogue as a way to mediate between the truth and dissent is mutual deception.”

He also quoted from the Second Vatican Council: “Let there be unity in what is necessary, freedom in what is doubtful, and charity in everything.”

The cardinals offered no comments and made no objection—until their press releases attacking the initiative after the announcement. Together, those five cardinals closed the door on dialogue. The church and the world have reaped the consequences.

Today, when Francis calls for dialogue about married priests in the Amazon, or Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics, or equal rights to civil marriage for LGBTQ+ people, he meets the same opposition Bernardin’s call for dialogue met. Dialogue seems to many Catholics to be a capitulation or surrender, and too many Catholics today are so sure about this that they feel entitled to say the pope is wrong.

Catholics have a profound influence on life in the United States. Generally, we say there are 70 million Catholics in the U.S. (though that number almost certainly does not reflect the exodus since the Cardinal Theodore McCarrick revelations and the pandemic). For the past 25 years, that sizable share of the population has learned to be suspicious of dialogue, and in turn Catholics’ polarization has driven broader polarization in the abortion debate, but also in the Obamacare debate, in the vaccination debate and in other ways.

After 25 years of dividing against each other, American Catholics seem unable to see the different way Francis has tried to show us: the way of dialogue. Acrimony and division have become our tools, our vocabulary and our habit, and we seem unable to find a different way.

People like to say that Bernardin was an apostle of reconciliation or dialogue or peacemaking. That’s true. But as director of the Bernardin Center and as Bernardin’s biographer, I prefer to say he was a witness to the hope that such things are possible.

Hope has to come first. From hope, we can begin and pursue the paths of peace that seem impossible. Hope is our license to believe in the impossible.

After he launched the initiative, Bernardin was asked why he had chosen to try to mount such an effort when he had so little time left to live. He reminded us that “a dying person does not have time for the peripheral, the accidental,” and said, “It is wrong to waste the precious gift of time given to us, as God’s chosen servants, on acrimony and division.”

Bernardin wanted his dying to bear witness powerfully to the senselessness of our angry divisions. He offered his death as an encouragement to seek dialogue and peace. He also quoted from the Second Vatican Council: “Let there be unity in what is necessary, freedom in what is doubtful, and charity in everything.”

Please click on: “Charity In Everything”

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Editor

Wayne Northey was Director of Man-to-Man/Woman-to-Woman – Restorative Christian Ministries (M2/W2) in British Columbia, Canada from 1998 to 2014, when he retired. He has been active in the criminal justice arena and a keen promoter of Restorative Justice since 1974. He has published widely on peacemaking and justice themes. You will find more about that on this website: a work in progress.

Always appreciate constructive feedback! Thanks.