S P R I N G 2 017 V O L U M E 28 • I S S U E 02
A Graduate School of Theology and Ministry
Cardinal Bernardin’s Legacy 20 Years Later: Still Calling Us to Be a Confident Church By Steven P. Millies
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here is a book about the Archdiocese of Chicago whose title struck me as just right from the first time I picked it up: This Confident Church (Notre Dame, 1992). There is not another local church in the United States quite like Chicago. I’ve always thought that we only can explain it by the strange alchemy of coincidences that came together where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan—the unruly tribalism of immigrant groups who meet in the sanctuary of a common faith, the local political tradition that mingles cynical cronyism alongside the most idealistic reformers, and the restless striving that Cardinal Joseph Bernardin builds and breaks and re-builds in a city that defines itself as a Second PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN H. WHITE City. Chicago is the most American of all cities because of these things. It is the city that works, and its local church is a worthy companion. The Archdiocese of Chicago knows its past, yet it always has been a church that would try something new and stretch out to grasp the future. That takes confidence. One of Cardinal Bernardin’s assistants told me something that the Cardinal told him. In 1982, Bernardin met with St. Pope John Paul II just before he was appointed to Chicago. In that meeting, John Paul told him, “I know that the way the church in the United States goes is the way that the church in the world will go. And, I know that the way that the church in Chicago goes is the way the church in the United States will go. So, I’m putting all my trust in you.” John Paul understood this confident church, and he knew who was the right man to help guide it. The decades following the Second Vatican Council were the right time for the church in Chicago to meet a leader like Joseph Bernardin. I was nine years old in 1982, not long past my First Communion at St. Gerald in Oak Lawn when Cardinal Bernardin arrived. I moved away to start a graduate program in 1995, barely a year before Cardinal Bernardin died. All of the critical years of my faith formation took place where, week after week, we prayed for “John Paul, our pope, and Joseph, our bishop.” It was difficult to avoid thinking about the church being in the world in those days. The southwest side of Chicago is defined more by parish boundaries than by borders and streets. But night after night we saw a pope on the news who swayed world opinion, and we saw our bishop doing the same thing. To be Catholic was both global and local. If there was any tension between the global and local level, we were too confident to notice. Our world is more fragmented today. Scandals and arguments about politics and the practice of faith have made the church more cautious. We’re all a little less sure of ourselves. I think we can look back at Cardinal Bernardin with something other than nostalgia, though. His way of being Catholic in the world still can offer us a guide. He described the U.S. bishops’ pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Peace,” as “a sign of the humble self-confidence and spiritual and intellectual maturity of the Catholic Church in our nation,” a church that is, “more sure of itself because it is more trustful of the gifts which have been given it” in the years following the Second Vatican Council. Those gifts of the Spirit are still here. Prophetic voices like Cardinal Bernardin’s call us to claim them, to be the city of God, and never to forget our baptismal calling to be this confident church. w’ STEVEN MILLIES, WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN THE ARCHDIOCESE OF CHICAGO, IS THE AUTHOR OF JOSEPH BERNARDIN: SEEKING COMMON GROUND.
IN THIS ISSUE: See page 6 of Logos for an interview with Professor Kevin Ahern on the topic of his Sunday at CTU lecture, “Being Church in a Divided World: The Legacy of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin for the 21st Century.” Ahern (left) with CTU President, Rev. Mark Francis, CSV.
Alum Receives Bernardin Award from USCCB Graham Golden applied for a ministry internship while studying for the priesthood at CTU. Looking back, he sees that it changed his life. That internship was with the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), in Rev. Golden’s home diocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is part of the domestic anti-poverty and social justice programs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CCHD works at the local level with low- and moderateincome persons. Its mission is to support these people as they bring their voice into public policy decisions that affect their daily lives and livelihoods. Today he coordinates program development, evaluation, and research for the Catholic Foundation of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. Golden is a Norbertine priest who serves as parochial vicar for Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in his home town of Albuquerque. S GOLDEN continued on page 7