A Healer for Catholics

As a member of the U.S. delegation to the Synod of Bishops in Rome this autumn, the Archbishop of Cincinnati earned a signal honor: he was the only bishop to be elected on the first ballot to the planning council for the next Synod. Last week Joseph L. Bernardin, who at 46 is one of the nation's youngest archbishops, received an even more important accolade. In Washington, D.C., at their annual meeting, the 248 U.S. bishops present elected him the next president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the collective voice of the U.S. hierarchy.

In a church torn by internal dissent, Bernardin is not as easily identified with either church wing as were his two predecessors, Detroit's John Cardinal Dearden, a favorite of liberals, and Philadelphia's John Cardinal Krol, a respected conservative. Theologically moderate but socially progressive, Bernardin is perhaps best known as a healer--a conciliator who is engagingly willing to hear all sides of an argument.

Bernardin's tolerance of divergent views may well grow out of his background. The son of an immigrant stonemason from northern Italy, he grew up in heavily Protestant South Carolina, where, he told TIME Correspondent Richard Ostling, "I learned early in life how to live with people whose beliefs differ from my own." He attended public high school and the University of South Carolina before entering St. Mary's

Seminary in Baltimore. Ordained in 1952, he rose rapidly to responsibility, and was consecrated bishop in 1966 as auxiliary to Atlanta Archbishop Paul Hallinan. Two years later, on Hallinan's recommendation, NCCB President Dearden picked Bernardin as general secretary of the hierarchy's staff in Washington, a job that made him well known among U.S. bishops.

Pope Paul named Bernardin Archbishop of Cincinnati in 1972. He has headed the 19-county archdiocese and its 511,000 Catholics with remarkable aplomb, steering a hazardous course between the church's sometimes apoplectic right and its sometimes radical left. For example, he has left the choice of religious curriculum--often a source of bitter quarrels between liberals and conservatives--to individual parishes.

Serious Talk. Yet Bernardin can and does intervene when he deems it necessary. He recently banned from the diocesan high schools a text called Love, Sex and Marriage because he judged it to contain doctrinal error--an act hailed by the ultraconservative national weekly The Wanderer. On the other hand, Bernardin offended many supporters of financially strapped parochial schools when he endorsed a tax increase for the distressed public schools. But he effectively tempers criticism of such decisions by carefully hearing all parties to the controversies and, when he disagrees, calmly explaining his own position.

Some who otherwise support Bernardin wonder whether his cautious decision making and cultivation of approval may not be signs of overweening ambition. His defenders contend that if the archbishop is ambitious, his zeal is for the welfare of his church, not himself. An almost compulsive worker, Bernardin rises at 6 a.m. to put in a 17-hour day of diocesan business and prayer. But his work is not all done at a desk: he enjoys spending many hours in informal but often serious talk with his fellow clergy and lay people.

Bernardin's diligence and powers of conciliation will be sorely tested during his three years in national office. As two pessimistic reports to the bishops' conference last week indicated, the church is embattled both from within and without. One of the two appraisals came from Jesuit Sociologist John L. Thomas, who warned the bishops that today's technological society in the U.S. is "bereft of any convincing sense of ultimate purpose or rooted moral belief." Moreover, in the mobile U.S. society, Catholics have lost much of their comforting old ethnic solidarity. The changes in the church that followed Vatican II, Thomas noted, have added to Catholics' feeling of rootlessness.

The bishops' own committee on moral values painted an even more dis mal picture of an America gone morally mad with thievery, white-collar crime, "perjury and other violations of honesty at even the highest level of public life." The committee's report also scored economic exploitation of the poor, widespread pornography, violent entertainment and violent crime, more frequent divorce and not only wide acceptance of abortion but the beginning of acceptance of mercy killing. "In significant ways, contemporary Western culture is nonChristian; some would say it is anti-Christian," the report concluded. "Christian beliefs and values are actively opposed by some extremely strong forces in society."

To counterattack such forces, Bernardin calls for a renewed emphasis on both faith and moral principle, but he places an equally heavy emphasis on the need for social justice. His fellow bishops apparently feel the same way. In one significant action last week, the bishops opposed "efforts to use food as a political and strategic weapon," and called on "the whole Catholic community" to fast at least two days a week in order to help the hungry. Much more controversially, the bishops voted in a closed and heated session to authorize their pro-life committee to question Nelson Rockefeller's qualifications for the vice-presidency. The committee thereupon asked congressional investigating panels to ensure that the nominee would not use the office "to promote permissive abortion." While the bishops obviously had the right to criticize, the strategy seemed out of keeping for a body that had just elected a conciliatory president--and also seemed unlikely to earn any friends for their cause.

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