Farewell to a Prince of the Church
Cardinal John J. O'Connor called home at 80
(May/June 2000)

BY MICHAEL S. ROSE

TEN YEARS AGO, as a university student, I was working for an architect in New York City. That’s when I was first introduced to Cardinal John J. O’Connor—not personally but through the media. His name was constantly hurled about on talk radio, in the daily papers and on various television programs emanating from Manhattan isle. I wondered: "Who is this man?"

Never before had I heard or seen one man so violently assailed, so vilified. I can still see the front page headline of an issue of the New York Post from nearly a decade ago: "Cardinal’s Red Rage." The 72-point headline accompanied a photo of the cardinal, his mouth open wide in mid-shout—an unfortunate action photo that kept resurfacing over the years every time, it seemed, a controversial article on the cardinal appeared in the New York press. Clearly the man was despised by agents of the media, even as he was beloved by so many Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Day in and day out he took a beating.

Over the next five years I slowly came to understand why: He was doing his job as Archbishop of New York, perhaps the toughest of ecclesial positions in the world next to that of the Holy Father. He was not afraid to speak out, to defend the faith, or to assert the Church’s moral authority. When he mounted the pulpit at St. Patrick’s Cathedral to address a subject of high moral or civic interest, New Yorkers listened. Many did not often heed his counsel, but he was recognized as a moral force. And for this he was criticized, oftentimes bitterly so, not just by the secular media but by dissenters within the Church and even by some of the more vocal of his Protestant brethren.

William Devlin, president of the Urban Family Council in New York, saw the cardinal as "a lover of people, a lover of Jesus Christ and His Church, and a lover of the City." He explained that everyone seems to have some problem with Cardinal O’Connor, but for Devlin, a Presbyterian elder, his problem is that he has no problem with the cardinal. "Unlike some of my fellow Protestants," he said, "the cardinal courageously spoke on relevant issues of the day: biblical truth, justice for the unborn, defender of the poor, labor sympathizer and promoter of one man/one woman for life in marriage."

It is his same Protestant brethren, he adds, "who with one breath have vilified O’Connor as anything from ‘the whore of Babylon’ to ‘the Antichrist in vestments,’ who are unwilling to speak courageously as O’Connor did all the while he was a priest and all the while he was the spiritual head of the archdiocese of New York."

Secular anti-Catholics certainly added their share of insults and complaints. They didn’t like his clear and forceful stance—the Church’s stance—on abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage, for example. Liberal Catholics, in their own way, added their share of insults. By the same token, so-called "conservative" Catholics assailed him for his vocal opposition—again, united with the Holy Father—to the death penalty, immigration reform and his support for organized labor. (He once said that he wanted his casket to have a union label.) In the eyes of some it seemed the Archbishop of New York could do nothing right despite the fact that he was an exemplary priest and prelate, beloved by many. Cardinal O’Connor, who died peacefully on May 3 at the age of 80, will be sorely missed in New York and throughout the U.S.

The actions of a true shepherd
Devlin related an incident that illustrates the New York cardinal’s modus operandi. "Back in June of 1992, Cardinal O’Connor led a march through the streets of New York to an abortion facility," he recalled. "Upon arriving there, he prayed for the women, the children and the abortion workers. During the procession, gay and lesbian activists spat on him, screamed obscenities and held signs filled with hatred for the cardinal, the Church and God who O’Connor was representing that day. He responded to the hurls, the spit and the hatred as Jesus did on His way to the Cross: he loved the people who hated him."

In a statement the day after Cardinal O’Connor’s death, Chicago’s archbishop Cardinal Francis George said the late prelate "challenged the people of New York and the people of the nation to respect the lives of the unborn, the infirm and the unwanted." For O‘Connor, Chicago's archbishop continued, "this was not empty rhetoric. He supported his profound oratory with the actions of a true shepherd."

Even in the past five years, after he submitted his resignation—which was never accepted—to Pope John Paul II, in accordance with Church law, he continued to serve as a highly visible shepherd, giving moral guidance to a morally rudderless society.

When Major League baseball teams scheduled their opening day games on Good Friday one year, the cardinal boycotted them publicly. "I love the Yankees. I love the Mets. I love baseball," he wrote in his column in Catholic New York. "But I will not go to a game because major league teams played on Good Friday." He also criticized youth baseball and soccer leagues for scheduling games on Sunday mornings.

His defense of marriage was just as unequivocal: He condemned proposed legislation backed by Catholic mayor Rudolph Giuliani that would grant homosexuals, lesbians, and unmarried couples the same legal rights as married couples. In a homily at St. Patrick’s he proclaimed that "It is imperative that no law be passed contrary to natural moral law and Western tradition by virtually legislating that marriage does not matter." Likewise, he opposed Mayor Ed Koch’s executive order requiring all social service agencies, including those run by the Church, to provide equal services to homosexuals. The cardinal refused on the grounds that it would make the Church appear to be sanctioning homosexual practices and lifestyle. He also prohibited a pro-homosexual group from meeting in New York parishes, while at the same time celebrating Mass with Father John Harvey’s Courage, a ministry to homosexual men and women who seek to live by the Church’s teachings on human sexuality.

For this and other statements and actions he was not endeared to the New York gay and lesbian population. In fact, they turned out to be the cardinal’s most bitter enemies. In 1989, for instance, homosexual activists chained themselves to pews during a Mass at St. Patrick’s, throwing condoms at the cardinal during the consecration. Thereafter, the gays and lesbians hi-jacked the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade and hurled blasphemous insults while passing by the cathedral, where Cardinal O’Connor watched the parade year after year. Meanwhile the cardinal was opening houses for AIDS patients and making unannounced visits to Catholic hospitals where he ministered to AIDS patients, most of them homosexuals. In fact, USA Today once reported that he "washed the hair and emptied bedpans of dying AIDS patients, some too sick to know who he was."

Even when Cardinal O’Connor proposed to move failing public-school students into Catholic schools at the expense of the Archdiocese, he was criticized, most notably by the Episcopal Bishop of New York.

It is also instructive to note that during his sixteen years as Archbishop of New York he refused to close Catholic schools or parishes in poor neighborhoods. He resisted the defeatist attitude adopted by many American bishops and made the necessary sacrifices to keep existing Catholic communities intact. It is also notable that very few renovations of traditional churches were carried out under the cardinal’s watch. "Hardly any churches in New York City have been harmed," said Austin Ruse, President of Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute in New York. "They almost all are classics," he added.

The litany of his other noble gestures is endless: He walked picket lines with strikers, donated his Social Security benefits to an African-American scholarship fund, gave blood to the Red Cross urging others to join him, and campaigned for livable wages for migrant and hospital workers. His example, the cardinal understood, was important. He didn’t think he could ask his priests and other Catholics to do anything that he himself was not willing to do.

Champion of the unborn
Cardinal O’Connor was probably most well-known for his defense of the unborn and his compassion for pregnant mothers in need. Even after suffering through brain surgery, he delivered a homily in January reiterating his commitment to assist mothers contemplating abortion. He said: "It’s a promise I made years ago, that anyone threatened with the possibility of an abortion can turn to the Archdiocese of New York, or personally to me and we’ll do everything possible to support the mother and the birth of her baby.

When Bill Clinton vetoed legislation that would ban the partial-birth abortion procedure, Cardinal O’Connor urged Catholics to return to the traditional practice of not eating meat on Fridays in reparation for such barbaric acts.

He provoked a firestorm when he publicly opposed the pro-abortion views of prominent Catholic politicians such as Governor Mario Cuomo and former Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Both said they opposed abortion personally, but believed women had the "right to choose." The cardinal responded by writing in 1990 that Catholics who opposed the Church’s teachings on abortion by "advocating legislation supporting abortion, or by making public funds available for abortion…must be warned that they are at a risk of excommunication."

For years now the cardinal has even had a long-standing order to keep Bill Clinton out of St. Patrick's Cathedral, no matter how important the occasion. In the days following the 1996 crash of a TWA flight near New York, Mayor Giuliani organized a mem-orial service for the victims' families at JFK Airport. Cardinal O'Connor was set to officiate until he was informed that Clinton planned to attend. "If Clinton is coming, you can count me out," the cardinal told Giuliani, citing the President’s disregard for the sanctity of life.

Above all, Cardinal O’Connor always made his case consistent with the demands of charity, with malice toward none and love toward all. In a society whose leaders—even leaders of the Catholic Church—have largely caved in and accommodated themselves and their flocks to the low standards of society, Cardinal John J. O’Connor stood his ground. Some criticize him for "wanting to be liked," but if you ever lived in New York you would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the good cardinal was despised for proclaiming the truth, mocked for being a priest for the people, and even burned in effigy for daring to be "politically incorrect."

The Archbishop of New York wasn’t perfect. He was sometimes too quick to condemn, and he put his foot in his mouth on occasion, but the cardinal was always the first to admit his own shortcomings. He even admitted to the New York Times in a 1996 interview that he’s "said some dumb things" through the years. For this and his entire pontificate in New York he ought to serve as a model for his brothers in the episcopate. For a job description of what a Catholic bishop does, see Cardinal John J. O’Connor.

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