wfn.org | Cardinal John O'Connor: an Unwavering Advocate of Vatican Values

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Note #5884 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

4-May-2000
00181

	Cardinal John O'Connor:  an Unwavering Advocate of Vatican Values

	Commentary by Peter Stanford
	Ecumenical News International

GENEVA -- While it has often been said that the papacy of Pope John Paul II
is largely out-of-step with social, economic and political conditions in the
west, Cardinal John O'Connor, the redoubtable archbishop of New York who
died May 3 at 80, did his very best to make sure every one of America's 55
million Catholics was at least aware of the official Vatican line, even if
they chose to overlook it.

	Described by the Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein as 'militantly
pro-Wojtyla -- a reference to O'Connor's admiration for Pope John Paul II --
O'Connor was a high-profile prince of the Church of the old-school, acutely
conscious of the dignity of his office, as physically large as he was
mentally combative, and sure in everything that he was right.

	If O'Connor ever doubted the power of the authoritarian, muscular
Catholicism that he embraced, he never admitted it.

	He had scarcely drawn breath after his appointment in January 1984 as
leader of America's most prestigious Catholic diocese when he launched into
the pre-election political battle with a eadline-grabbing attack on the
Democrat candidate for vice-president, Geraldine Ferraro.  As a Catholic and
a member of his diocese, Mrs Ferraro could not, O'Connor stated, make a
distinction between her private views on abortion and her support for it as
a legislator.  He believed that her position was precisely the sort of
morally relative, liberal stance that was
damaging the church.

	Given that his target was the first woman to stand for the White House in
American history, O'Connor's attack did much to establish his traditionalist
credentials on both spiritual and social matters.  Feminists never forgave
him -- or had cause to do so -- but Ferraro need not have felt especially
singled out.  Soon afterwards, O'Connor fell foul of the redoubtable Mother
Teresa who came personally to New York to force the cardinal, in a
confrontation reported in detail by the media, to allow church property to
be used to care for people with AIDS.

	O'Connor had previously blocked such moves and again his uncompromising
message on AIDS -- "the truth does not lie in condoms and clean needles" --
made him a ready target for both public health campaigners and the gay
lobby.

	But though the cardinal joined conservatives in opposing abortion and
homosexual rights, he also campaigned against the death penalty.  He was a
prominent advocate for disabled people and people living in poverty, and
personally intervened to help settle industrial disputes by pressing for
workers' rights.

	O'Connor appeared to revel in being a sign of contradiction in the modern
age, never afraid to take unpopular stances or say what was, for others,
either politically incorrect or plain
wrong.  He made enemies amongst his fellow American bishops by acting as the
Vatican's messenger in the redrafting of an initially distinctly
anti-nuclear pastoral letter on war and peace.  At Rome's insistence, and
under pressure from a conservative White House, the letter was toned down.

	In 1992, O'Connor was the most pro-Vatican of his colleagues in a row with
Rome over their pastoral letter on women.  The U.S. bishops were summoned to
Rome, told to rethink whatever radical notions were in their draft letter
and then consigned to the care of O'Connor to make sure that the final
version said nothing more or less than the Pope's own statement on the
matter, the 1988 encyclical "Mulieris Dignitatem."

	Faced with a choice between shaping Catholic doctrine to the particular
needs of the world's richest and most powerful consumer society and sticking
inflexibly to the Vatican line,
O'Connor always chose the latter.  His anti-abortion militancy played well
with evangelical Christians and with the direct-action pro-life lobby, but
went down badly with his own flock, most of whom were as ambiguous as
Geraldine Ferraro in their attitudes.

	The Ferraro question came up in a new form in 1990, when practicing
Catholic Mario Cuomo was governor of New York State.  Cardinal O'Connor
again reaffirmed his view for a faithful Catholic there could be no
distinction between public and private views on the subject of abortion. 
But this time he went further, banning Cuomo and all like-minded politicians
from speaking on church premises and warning that those, as he put it, who
helped to multiply abortions were at risk of excommunication.

	Occasionally O'Connor could, however, misjudge both Rome's intentions and
his own power.
	One year after being appointed to New York, in a move that was flamboyant
even by his own standards, O'Connor announced that he was beginning the
process to have his predecessor, Cardinal Terence Cooke, declared a saint.

	Vatican officials slapped down the idea, pointing out that canon law states
there must be at least a five year pause after the candidate's death.  They
did little to conceal their irritation.

	It was a rebuke that wounded O'Connor for he was a man who had had respect
for hierarchical structures and knowing your place drummed into him not only
by the church but also by a long career as a chaplain in the U.S. Navy where
he rose to the rank of Rear Admiral.

	Those who knew John O'Connor were enthusiastic in their praise of him, but
he made more enemies than friends.  Talk in the early 1990s that he might
become the first North American Pope was prompted by his closeness to the
ailing John Paul II, but ignored the fact that to some cardinals at least,
and to many U.S. Catholics, he was a maverick and in some ways anachronistic
figure.

	Born in Philadelphia in January 1920, his father's family had all emigrated
to the States from Cork and Roscommon in Ireland.  His closeness to Ireland
-- he visited the land of his forefathers twice in the 1980s as part of
peace delegations and he took great delight in the annual Saint Patrick's
Day Parade around his cathedral -- was matched by a workaholic tendency
which he said he had inherited from his ethnically German mother.  He was
ordained in 1945 and received masters degrees in clinical psychology and
ethics before joining the navy as a chaplain.

	He spent eight years, from 1975-83, as an auxiliary bishop for the forces,
before being translated briefly to head the diocese of Scranton and then
eight months later to New York.

	In recent months, as his health declined after surgery last year to remove
a brain tumor, Cardinal O'Connor rarely appeared in public.  However, in
March, in one of his last acts before he died, he announced in his diocesan
newspaper that the Vatican, on his recommendation, had begun the process of
considering Dorothy Day, the well known American radical, activist and
journalist, for sainthood.

He died from complications from his brain tumor, surrounded by friends and
family who spent the night at his Manhattan home praying for him.

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