Going forward:
Hehir, J Bryan
WORLD WATCH J. Bryan Hehir GOING FORWARD THE LEADERSHIP OF CARDINAL DEARDEN On October 15, Cardinal John Dearden would have celebrated his eighty-first birthday. Instead, last August 5 the...
...Elected twice as president of the episcopal conference, he spearheaded its reorganization and gave it a wholly new stature and importance in the life of the church...
...David O'Brien of Holy Cross expressed his conviction at the time of Dearden's death that future historians will rank him "as the most important American bishop since James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore...
...His personal conception of ministry, expressed in his talks to the clergy of Detroit, reveals a man of deep faith, schooled in the ways of prayer...
...To watch Dearden from a distance or close-up was to see the example of an ecclesial man...
...But the appointment itself reflected the high regard in which he was held...
...Amen...
...Elected by his brother bishops to attend all the synods from 1969 through 1977, he was invited as a "father of Vatican II" by Pope John Paul II to attend the Extraordinary Synod of 1985...
...Ellis in' his article...
...We will never know fully how Dearden saw, felt, and interpreted the conciliar era, but a biography will be a litany of significant experiences and achievements...
...The local church of Detroit was joined on that day by the prayers of the church in the United States, for Dearden's ministry could not be fully understood or appreciated only in terms of his archdiocese...
...Cardinal Bernardin noted in his homily at Cardinal Dearden's funeral that Pope Paul VI had sent a personal note of gratitude to Dearden for his work...
...In 1976 he confidently led the "Call to Action" process of consultation through uncharted waters of dialogue in the church...
...Judging by the testimony of those who served with him and were served by him in Detroit, one has the strong sense that at that level of ecclesial life Dearden fulfilled another of the definitions of leadership cited by Msgr...
...In 1970, when the complexity of embodying the life of the council in the church was intensified by the convulsions of social change in American society, Msgr...
...Ellis quoted from Max Lerner's description of creative leadership: "It means the ability to penetrate the heart of any situation and assess it...
...He was called by vocation to lead-as a bishop in the local church, as a cardinal in the universal church, and as president of the national episcopal conference...
...His exact role is not now known, and may even be lost to history...
...John Tracy Ellis wrote a sober essay about the demands of leadership in The Critic...
...As is often the case, one accomplishment led to another assignment...
...and those who are satisfied...
...He was, in the best sense of the term, a churchman, an eccle-sial man...
...The details of this part of his ministry are least well known to me...
...anking God...
...This, . I think, is all I promised to do when I began this huge work...
...Dearden's ministry was, of course, rooted in the local church, the archdiocese of Detroit...
...His sense of the church was so rich and his love for the church so deep that it could sustain those he served, those he worked with, and those who worked for him...
...John Dearden went forward and many followed for the good of the church in the United States...
...And it means maintaining a dialogue between those who make the decisions and those at a lower level who help in making the decisions or who carry them out...
...Intellectually, he was both broad and deep, joining theological knowledge with a cultivated sense of historical judgment...
...To put an individual's life in perspective, it is useful to consult historians...
...Central to it will be the cardinal's role in Vatican II...
...What made the writing on the chapter on marriage and family particularly important was the concurrent work being done by the papal commission on contraception...
...This detailed knowledge of the history and documents of Vatican II made him a singularly valuable voice in setting the direction for the implementation of the council in the United States...
...When a problem facing the church needed to be "penetrated and assessed," one could count on both wisdom and courage from the archbishop of Detroit...
...supporting the ministry of priests and religious, and suffering the loss of both...
...With God's help I have kept my promise...
...The church of his country and the universal church were equally the beneficiaries of his gifts of faith, intelligence, and courage...
...The post-conciliar period found Dearden in the pivotal leadership role of the hierarchy in the United States...
...Despite urging from many, he never took hold of this challenge...
...Here was a bishop enthusiastic about and committed to the implementation of Vatican II: interpreting the continuity of and changes in Catholic life...
...It is risky to try to capture the meaning of a man's life in a word, but in John Dearden's case one word provides the pivotal idea of his life...
...A biography awaits one of the historians of the church in America...
...At the Mass celebrated to observe his retirement, the cardinal drew his final reflection from St...
...and the spirit of the council informed how he led...
...It means developing a climate...that is conducive to change...
...The Reverend Bernard Haring, the subcommittee's secretary, wrote later that Dearden's leadership was the key factor in shaping this important part of the coun-cil's teaching...
...Cardinal Dearden, in my view, met this demanding test on every count...
...The record-from internal reform of the church to school desegregation and busing-shows both the courage to decide and the self-confidence to hear a spectrum of opinion before and after the decision...
...and assuring the presence of the church's voice in American society, traumatized as it was by war and racial conflict in the sixties and seventies...
...Quoting Abraham Kaplan, Ellis observed that "to be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone...
...the substance of the conciliar teaching shaped the meaning of leadership for him...
...The demands of the conciliar era specified the challenge of leadership for him...
...Dearden experienced the council as a member of the Doctrinal Commission...
...Augustine's closing lines of The City of God: "I am done...
...Years later he could recount from memory intricate debates about single words in a conciliar text...
...I ask, not to thank me, but to join me in rejoicing and thanking God...
...calling the laity to new roles in the church...
...From all who think that I have said either too little or too much, I beg pardon...
...After the council, Dearden was asked to join the papal commission and to chair a critical working session with major figures in Catholic theology who had come to opposing conclusions during the work of the commission...
...Amen...
...The bulk of this time of leadership was fulfilled during the age of Vatican II...
...The one great task he left unfinished was his autobiography...
...It means making decisions while keeping the options open as far as possible, so that the number of choices does not diminish too quickly...
...He was chairman of the subcommittee which drafted the chapter on marriage and family in The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World...
...reshaping the church's institutions and strengthening the faith of its people...
...Instead, last August 5 the church of Detroit celebrated his passage to eternal glory...
Vol. 115 • October 1988 • No. 18
