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America's Cardinal

I was out to lunch last week with my friendly neighborhood undertaker and my secretary.  All joking aside, he's had some health issues lately and it's been quite a while since we've been able to enjoy a post obsequies repast.  It made me feel good when he asked me if I wanted to go out, not just because we always go to a nice place and he pays, but because it meant he's feeling better.  In the midst of the lunchtime chatter he just came out of nowhere with, "I tell you, we've got a great Cardinal.  He tells it like it like it is, and he seems like a down to earth guy."  He was speaking, obviously, about Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York, who just got the red hat last month.  I agreed, though I thought that since he's not our bishop here in the Newark Archdiocese it was strange to refer to him as "our Cardinal."  Then he and my secretary tried to talk me into inviting him to St. Anthony's.  I  explain that his Eminence has in the vicinity 400 parishes to care for, "so I'm sure he's got enough on his plate without visiting parishes in another diocese."  The following day we had a funeral here with a different funeral home.  I was waiting at the mausoleum for the flowers to be brought in and everything to be set up before the family was sprung from their cars.  That undertaker came up to me, and again out of the blue, said, "Boy, our new Cardinal is something else. So much energy! He's incredible!"

It's not just funeral directors who've made comments to me about Cardinal Dolan, or called him "our Cardinal."  Many parishioners have mentioned him to me since his elevation to the Sacred College was announced, and the response has been uniformly enthusiastic.  Having been in his presence on a couple of occasions, for the annual Mass offered for high school seniors at St. Pat's and when Don Bosco's relics were at the Marian Shrine in 2010, I can testify that he has a natural charisma and warmth that comes through.  Simply put, he loves people; being around them, talking with them, slapping them on the back while having a good laugh.  In the two events with young people you could see he knew how to connect, how to touch their hearts.

The Cardinal Archbishop of New York has always been a prominent position here in the U.S.  It's the closest thing we have to a primate or a patriarch.  Being a democratic people we have the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which has a rotating presidency, often held by a bishop from a smaller see.  I was surprised when Archbishop Dolan was voted in as president because there is this perception that New York and Boston have too much pull in the American Church already, without one of their archbishops taking holding the USCCB chair.  God's ways are not our ways, and his election gives me hope that the Holy Spirit really is working through the Church's bureaucracy. 

We are emerging from a dark period in the Church's history.  I would not say the crisis and scandals are over by any means, but I believe we are finished with allowing the scandals to quiet us or make us timid.  The HHS mandate was hoisted upon the Church at this moment because the secularists in the government thought that we would not fight back, or give only a token defense.  We fought back, and thankfully other Christian groups, most of whom do not share our concern over contraception, see the bigger picture and have backed us up.  Now, more than ever, we need a clear, lucid, orthodox, and enthusiastic voice to articulate the Catholic position: Cardinal Dolan is the man for this moment.

In the past it seemed like we had two extremes when it came to public churchmen (and women).  On the one side we had firebrands, who may have been orthodox, but presented an angry face to the world.  Many of the faithful loved them, but they had a hard time connecting with those outside the fold.  In other words they weren't very good apologists for the Faith.  The other side we had clerics and religious with smiling faces but who were dissenting from Church teachings, confusing the faithful and condoning immoral behavior and promoting theologically questionable views. 

In Cardinal Dolan we have someone who is strong, orthodox, and knows how to communicate to a world that doesn't take the truth of the Catholic faith as a give in.  He shows that being a faithful Catholic doesn't mean being sad or psychologically repressed.  In his 60 Minutes interview, Morley Safer couldn't believe that a man so open and warm could possibly really be "conservative."  And that's the lie that Cardinal Dolan reveals.  We can be happy and faithful, and I would say that those that are faithful are actually the happiest people of all.  Because they know who they are and what they believe and are not afraid to show it. 

With bishops like Cardinal Dolan, and the "new wave" of Catholic apologists like Fr. Barron we have turned a corner.  We have voices who can both preach to the choir and speak to the world.  It's for the Church to seize the moment and follow their lead.