Editorials: Cardinal O'Connor, R.I.P.
Court has said that the organizers of Boston's Saint Patrick's noted with sadness and praise by Catholic and non-Catholic Day parade have the right to determine who could partic- ...
...This continuing antagonism represents a loss for both communities, but it especially inhibits the church's ability to get a fair CARDINAL O'CONNOR, R.I.P...
...Tolerance must work both ways on this difficult issue...
...Old Saint Patrick's Cathedral in Lower Manhattan...
...He was have upheld the Boy Scouts' right to exclude atheists (an a fierce defender of labor unions, an advocate for AIDS explicit belief in God is part of the Scout oath) and girls, just victims, and a strong opponent of anti-Semitism...
...Court has said that the organizers of Boston's Saint Patrick's noted with sadness and praise by Catholic and non-Catholic Day parade have the right to determine who could partic- alike...
...Estabin death...
...He did not hesitate to call prochoice mosexuality are far from clear...
...Given that rightness, his ready sense of humor, and his commitment fact, the public status of homosexuality should be worked to the church's social teachings...
...O'Connor was a stalwart champion of the poor, the ipate and thus may exclude gay groups...
...The full implications of the pro- ilar issues he was an unapologetic proponent of the found changes taking place in our understanding of ho- church's views...
...Other state courts working class, and the so-called man in the street...
...An organization of gay libertarians has even filed a peace and skeptical about military spending...
...Commonweal 6 May 19, 2000...
...They walked over me in life," Dubois is supposed to the vast majority of Catholics-and yet seems removed to have said about his burial plot...
...media, the universities, and the arts remain notoriously indifferent, if not openly hostile, to the church...
...Perhaps, as the New Jer- the poor, the needy, and the sinner at the forefront of the sey court claims, Dale's sexual orientation does not in any church's mission...
...When he died earlier this month moral message, a message Cardinal O'Connor represented after a largely discreet battle with cancer, his passing was so well...
...The next archbishop of New York could way jeopardize the purposes of scouting...
...Much of the cultural elite in the own...
...Where the next leader of New York's church could must make in its own way and by its own lights...
...The courts broaden O'Connor's legacy is in how he engages the world should not force the Boy Scouts to embrace a view of ho- of ideas and art...
...In the public debate about abortion, hothat acts on behalf of boys and their parents-about a much mosexuality, sex education, capital punishment, and simcontested moral issue...
...O'Connor's influence with the used to compel the private moral acceptance of homosex- pope, especially on the appointment of bishops, was subual conduct crosses a line...
...hearing in the larger culture...
...But that is a de- do far worse than to emulate O'Connor's example in that cision the Boy Scouts-or the church, as the case may be- regard...
...There is truth in that debe free to press his case with the Boy Scouts, just as gay scription, although it shortchanges the pastoral and evanCatholics should continue their efforts to persuade the gelical emphasis O'Connor brought to his ministry...
...The trustees of the cathedral obliged...
...Often he smithy of modern culture-a culture whose appeal extends lost...
...The mission of the Boy with the cardinal, such as former New York Governor Scouts, as now constituted in its own bylaws, is to shape the Mario Cuomo, were impressed with O'Connor's forthmoral character of children and adolescents...
...New York is the cultural capital of the namosexuality they cannot in good conscience adopt as their tion, if not the world...
...Yet even those who clashed question of basic sexual morality...
...After a as some feminist organizations restrict their membership to long and distinguished career as a chaplain in the U.S...
...counterproductive efforts to curb dissent and impose disIn this case, the demand that antidiscrimination law be cipline within the church...
...women and civil rights groups bar Ku Klux Klan mem- Navy, he became more and more outspoken on issues of bers...
...A ruling against the ly he did not shy away from the label "conservative," and Scouts, the libertarians argue, will put the self-selectivity of he was a firm supporter of Pope John Paul II's sometimes gay groups in peril...
...out in ways that demonstrate a maximum tolerance for Much has been written about O'Connor as a man who reasonable people on both (actually many) sides of what re- placed institutional loyalty at the center of his sense of mains a profoundly divisive question...
...The gospel places dered" nature of homosexuality...
...Theologicalbrief in support of the Boy Scouts...
...lishing a dialogue and mutual respect between CatholiCardinal John O'Connor, New York's outspoken arch- cism and New York's cultural institutions could go far to bishop for the last sixteen years, was not a man anyone improve the effectiveness of the church's countercultural was likely to walk over...
...Let them walk over me from the forces and people shaping that culture...
...There Irish congregants on many issues, including the owner- is something anomalous about a church that exists in the ship of parishes and the appointment of priests...
...Dubois's Though opposed on several neuralgic issues, the two comtenure as bishop was stormy, and he battled his mostly munities could make common cause on many others...
...It puts the Court in the position stantial...
...James Dale should himself as a priest and bishop...
...For church to rethink its attitude about the "inherently disor- the most part, he had his priorities right...
...Whether or not that influence was beneficial reof dictating an organization's position-an organization mains a question...
...For some the treatment of Catholic politicians to task for what he saw as the abanhomosexuals is a simple civil rights issue, for others it is a donment of Catholic principle...
...Like O'Connor's generous overtures to the Jewish community and for ecumenism in John Dubois (1764-1842), the only non-Irish bishop to lead general, New York's next archbishop should work to break the church in New York, is buried beneath the entrance to down the stereotypes on both sides of this cultural divide...
Vol. 127 • May 2000 • No. 10
