Bishops’ Conference Mourns Bernardin

From the moment the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops opened their annual fall conference here, a dying archbishop nearly 700 miles away occupied their thoughts.

As the bishops took up the business of voting on weighty matters of church and state, a silent and struggling presence seemed to walk the aisles in the grand ballroom where bishops met.

In silent prayers, in public prayers, in abbreviated conversations on the elevator of the Omni Shorham Hotel, the name of Joseph L. Bernardin was on their lips.

On Monday, the black-suited bishops with clerical collars heard that, as much as he wanted to, he would not be among them. He told them so in his own hand, on the stationery of a cardinal coat of arms with an address in Chicago.

“I had every hope of attending,” he began. “Unfortunately, my rapidly deteriorating health will not make it possible. Please extend my regards to all the bishops. Assure them of my prayers.”

Then, as he was wont to do, he put in a plug to get more bishops active in the conference.

He signed the letter, “Peace and love, Joseph.”

On Tuesday, the bishops took the Clinton administration and Congress to task for reducing aid to Third World countries and cutting programs for the poor.

It echoed a fight 10 years earlier, one that Bernardin had engaged: the defense of those least able to defend themselves. A decade later, the bishops were saying there was backsliding by government. They approved a 10-point “Catholic Framework for Economic Life.”

But between the “action items,” between the attention to ministering to youth and commenting on the economy, between the votes for treasurer and debate over the rules for funeral liturgies celebrated in the presence of the cremated remains of a body, Bishop Anthony M. Pilla of Pittsburgh--president of the conference--read another letter from Bernardin, this one dated Nov. 7 and addressed to the United States Supreme Court.

Its first sentence was, “Dear Honorable Justices: I am at the end of my earthly life.”

Bernardin was urging the court to rule against legalizing assisted suicide, which he saw as a looming threat to life that had gained favor in two federal court districts.

The approach was vintage Bernardin. He had found what clergy call a “teachable moment,” when those who would not ordinarily be receptive to godly instruction stop and listen. Such a moment can be a baptism or a wedding, or a flood or earthquake. Bernardin seized upon his own imminent death.

Pilla read on. “There is much that I have contemplated these last few months of my illness. . . . Creating a new ‘right’ to assisted suicide will endanger society and send a false signal that a less than ‘perfect’ life is not worth living.”

On Wednesday, the bishops had to vote on how Catholic universities and colleges can preserve academic freedom, so valued in America, while remaining faithful to the teachings of the church.

But in the morning, Pilla braced them for the worst. He had received a call from the Archdiocese of Chicago. The cardinal’s condition was grave.

Pilla read a prayer for times like these, a prayer Bernardin had read often to comfort others.

“God of power and mercy, you made death itself the gateway to eternal life,” he began. “Look with love on our dying brother and make him one with your Son in his suffering and death. . . . As he accepted the suffering you asked him to bear in this life, may he enjoy happiness and peace forever in the life to come. We ask this in Christ our Lord. Amen.”

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By the day’s end, the bishops had approved a compromise that would have pleased Bernardin, who earned his reputation as a consensus builder. Six years after Pope John Paul II directed them to reign in errant theologians at Catholic universities, the bishops approved a document that affirmed the right of academics to appoint the theologians--a prime objective of college presidents and professors. But it also gave local bishops a procedure for exercising oversight, if necessary, of theologians who might not be teaching “authentic” doctrine.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles, had only the night before arrived from Rome, where he and some of the other cardinals had gone for a previously scheduled consultation. He didn’t stay. He caught a flight to Chicago.

Only months earlier Bernardin had asked Mahony to join him in launching an initiative to promote dialogue on issues such as the role of women in the church. The church in the United States, Bernardin had said, had to find “common ground.”

Now, in the dying cardinal’s official residence in Chicago, the “archbishop of Hollywood,” as some in the Vatican call Mahony, concelebrated the Mass for Bernardin--the central act of Catholic worship. For believers, it speaks of death and resurrection, of God’s grace and salvation. It points not to the common ground of temporal controversies but to “the ground of all being--God.”

Bernardin passed from life into greater life, as his church believes, in the small hours of a cold, dark Chicago Thursday. As the bishops arose in Washington, snowflakes fell “from the heavens,” as they say, like the soft down of doves. Some heard the news first on CNN, others the “Today Show.” For some, it was the tolling of telephones.

The man the world new as His Eminence, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, the archbishop of Chicago, the man the bishops knew simply as Joseph, was dead.

“God come to my assistance,” intoned the reader. “Lord make haste to help us,” the bishops replied.

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There were two more letters to be read. The first was from Pope John Paul II, the Supreme Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ, the shepherd of shepherds, the man who made Bernardin a cardinal in 1982.

“I offer my prayerful condolences to the auxiliary bishops, priests, religious and laity,” the pope wrote. “I join all gathered for the solemn funeral rite in commending the cardinal’s noble soul to the eternal love of Almighty God.”

There was the letter from the Vatican secretary of state, equally comforting. Pilla thanked the Vatican. Then he said:

“Our first item is the debate and vote, Action Item Number 8, the revised guidelines for receiving Communion. . . .”