"I Am Just a Symbol"

'I am Just a Symbol"

Since his installation nearly three months ago, Archbishop Joseph Bernardin has barnstormed his new archdiocese, the largest in the nation. He has called on Polish parishioners in the blue-collar suburb of Cicero, conducted a prayer service in honor of the city's Hispanics, mingled with crowds at an ethnic-heritage Mass and family picnic in Grant Park and appeared in full ecclesiastical garb to bless Catholic charismatics. He has alternately pressed the flesh of the faithful and turned a sympathetic ear to complaints about parochial-school funds and church closings. However distressing the nuclear dilemma may be to him, Bernardin feels called, first and foremost, to make peace in his own parishes.

Although Bernardin has conscientiously tried to avoid the inevitable comparisons with his unpopular predecessor, the late John Cardinal Cody, Chicago's Catholics seem to delight in the obvious differences. A balding man with blue eyes that beam benevolently through thick glasses, the new archbishop may seem to be an unlikely object for a personality cult, but he is a folk hero compared with Cody. As one woman who pushed forward to shake his hand during a recent visit to a parish on the predominantly black West Side explained, "That man can feel. There is a lot of healing that has been done since he has been here."

Bernardin has certainly moved with dispatch to ease the problems and stresses left by Cody, who was not only autocratic and aloof but was plagued by personal and financial scandal during the last year of his life. Barely an hour on the job, Bernardin made a luncheon date with a pastor from a struggling black church who had been trying for two years to get permission parishioners Chicago nuns from Mother Teresa's order, the Missionaries of Charity, to work among his parish poor. Bernardin not only gave the venture his enthusiastic endorsement but volunteered to write Mother Teresa himself.

Long demoralized by Cody's indifference, Chicago's 2,468 priests have suddenly found that their opinions matter on such issues as financial accountability and the church's social mission. In the new heady atmosphere of collegiality, there is talk that Bernardin plans to convene an archdiocesan synod (the last one took place in 1905).

The son of a stonecutter immigrant from northern Italy, Bernardin was the only Catholic boy on the block in his home town of Columbia, S.C. Of necessity, childhood became a venture in grass-roots ecumenism. He recalls, "I used to go to the Bible school that the Baptist church sponsored, especially on the days when they gave out ice cream."

His father died when Bernardin was six, and the boy, his younger sister and their mother moved in with a series of aunts and uncles. Intent on becoming a doctor, he finished one year as a pre-med student at the University of South Carolina. Then Bernardin surprised his family by deciding to enter the priesthood. Says he: "I don't want to sound dramatic, but it must have been the Lord. I had a very definite feeling that I was being called to the priesthood."

He was ordained in 1952 and rose rapidly in the hierarchy. In 1966 Bernardin became the youngest bishop in the country as an auxiliary to Archbishop Paul Hallinan of Atlanta, a noted civil rights-era liberal. In 1972 Bernardin was named Archbishop of Cincinnati and was elected president of the U.S. bishops' conference from 1974 to 1977.

Bernardin, of course, has never deviated from papal teachings on such controversial doctrinal issues as birth control and the ordination of women. At the same time, he has been careful to dissociate himself from some of the more extreme activities of right-to-life groups. He recently crossed a pro-life picket line to attend a fund-raising event sponsored by the United Way. He later explained that Catholics should not withhold funds from all United Way charities just because some of them oppose the church's teaching on abortion. Says Dan Daley, a Catholic activist who heads the lay group Chicago Call to Action: "He is building up a reservoir of trust, faith and good will so he will have a solid following when the tough questions come along."

Bearing in mind the mistakes of the past, Bernardin says that he has no intention to "lord it over others." In his daily business Bernardin dresses more like an ordinary parish priest than a prospective prince of the church. He has invited two priests and three nuns to share the cavernous brick mansion he inherited from Cody, and prefers to drive his silver Oldsmobile himself, all in keeping with his notion of a no-frills clergy. Explains Bernardin: "I consider myself a servant first of the Lord, then a servant of others for the sake of the Lord."

As he ponders the challenges facing modern Catholicism, Bernardin feels that the time has come for lay people to take more responsibility. During the course of a workday that begins with prayer before dawn and often runs past 10 at night, there is simply not enough time for Bernardin to be all things to all people. Associates say he is embarrassed because he cannot reply personally to the 25 speaking, social and religious invitations he receives each day.

"There is a real spiritual hunger on the part of people," says Bernardin. "They are not reaching out to me. They are reaching out to the Lord. Perhaps there is a personal dimension, but I am just a symbol. In no way, I want to emphasize this, is this a reaching out to me personally. I have to remind myself of this every day."

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