Friends Recall Cardinal’s Remarkable Life

Even now, those who knew the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago find themselves awash in the light of his extraordinary life.

Perhaps no American cardinal has been more influential or quietly outspoken on vexing issues of our time--war and peace, abortion choice, care for the poor and anti-Semitism--than Bernardin, who died in 1996 of pancreatic cancer.

But what has made Bernardin so extraordinary--and the reason he has left such an indelible impression on Catholics and non-Catholics alike--was that although he was cloaked in the vestments of a prince of the church, he was as unassuming as modesty, as approachable as a brother.

Now, in a one-hour documentary, “Bernardin,” airing tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28, the cardinal’s friends and confidants share their recollections of this man who deftly exercised great power and influence, knew public humiliation in being wrongly accused of sexual abuse, and public vindication and honor.

Produced by Martin Doblmeier and Frank Frost, “Bernardin” is not so much a critical look at Bernardin’s life as a tribute filled with poignant remembrances of mirth and melancholy, including an interview with the man who first accused Bernardin--and then recanted--charges that Bernardin had sexually molested him.

Bernardin was always unassuming. Resolute but never one to dictate, it was precisely his quiet manner and ability to fashion consensus among the nation’s politically diverse bishops over such issues as the immorality of nuclear arms or the rightness of America’s social compact with the poor that has left a legacy of seeking “common ground” within a church strained by differences.

The overarching theme that brought coherence to Bernardin’s thinking on a wide range of seemingly disparate and daunting issues was a theological theorem that he called a consistent ethic of life. Bernardin didn’t just respect life, he was awed by it. He believed that all creation is imbued with life by God. It was from this rationale of a “seamless garment” of life that Bernardin believed that the church could coherently oppose abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment and nuclear war.

It was the same seamless garment, as Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles points out in the documentary, that impels humankind to care for the poor by providing adequate health care, nutrition, housing and clothing.

Even as Bernardin celebrated life, he accepted his own death--and it is in recounting his death that the documentary shines. When he was found to have incurable cancer, he was like a black-belt practitioner of martial arts. As death rushed toward him with vengeance, Bernardin took its power and turned it on itself. He used the occasion to comfort others similarly afflicted.

* “Bernardin” airs at 10 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.